Spring in Portland is an exciting time. You don’t know, hour to hour, if you will have sun or rain. Trees that have been bare all winter get dusted with petals before their lacy green petticoats come out.
Spring Canopy
The ground smells alive as the rain and mosses work together to create life.
Each Rhododendron bloom looks like a perfect bouquet.
Wild roses and strawberries burst with buds and fruit, bright red against the dark shady soil.
The state flower, Oregon Grape, which isn’t a grape, can be found putting on its tiny sour fruits.
I remember walking around this very neighborhood, just about a year ago, apartment hunting. I saw a yard with its just- out -of -the -flat zinnias and thought how optimistic the gardener was, planting heat loving zinnias in what I thought was the perpetual damp of the northwest. But last summer’s heat set me straight, and I walked by the zinnias everyday, being reminded of how much I still have to learn about my new home.
Optimistic zinnias
Being in our old neighborhood, I got to visit the flamingos! They are all decked out for Pride Day next weekend, lead in their own parade by their friend duck playing a kazoo. I smiled to see that our gnome is still lurking in the bushes, chuckling as people spot him.
Our new house is a condominium in the Belmont/ Sunnyside neighborhood. There are two sections. The one next door was built in 1999 and ours in 2006. They are both nice, and a little different from each other. Our section has smaller ground level patios, but we also second floor balconies. I don’t know what the other differences are because I haven’t been inside any of our neighbor’s houses.
But last night we got to meet some of them! It turns out that there is a potluck in the patio between the two sections every second Sunday of the month at six in the evening. It drizzled off and on all day yesterday and by evening, it was a good steady rain, but that didn’t stop the potluck. Tents and tarps were put up, tables and chairs squeezed in underneath, and twenty people brought food, wine and conversation.
What a pleasant evening! We all kept our jackets on, but we shed hats and got cozy. As the new people, we were trying to learn everyone’s names while eating all the delicious food. There was a fine roast beef, pasta with meat sauce, a rice and artichoke casserole, and chicken shish kabobs and our contribution, broccoli salad. There was white wine, red wine, sparkling wines, and even a red ale that tasted almost like cherry coke.
Then came the desserts! Our chocolate chip cookies went over well, but the stars were Eric’s Mexican chocolate ice cream (with cinnamon) and Jaqueline’s peanut butter brownies.
As the evening progressed we needed to push up on the tarp occasionally to spill the accumulated water, but everyone was a good sport about getting a bit damp here and there. “This is Portland!” They said.
When we were all full of food and wine and talked out, we gathered our dishes and leftovers (we brought home just three cookies) and our damp chairs, which we will air out in the morning, and walked the thirty feet to our place.
Pajamas and the Tony Awards, quite a few glasses of water, and then bed.
After the Rose Parade yesterday, we were all pretty tired. We had walked about four miles all over town. We came home and rested before our NEXT outing!
Jack Kent
Our friend Jack Kent had a book release and signing party at Auntie Katie’s book shop, Books with Pictures, down on Division Street. Jack does two different comics; a strip called Gulls, and single panel comics called Sketchy People. His wife Verity were there too, so we had a nice visit.
Auntie Katie and Tom
At the shop we ran into Tom Goevelinger, an Oregon native who I know from my years teaching in Salinas. It was fun to catch up with him, his family and mutual friends. Cousins Jasper and Kestrel weren’t there, but there was a baby we all got to share. His name is Mirren and he’s a very good sport.
Grandpa Nelson and Mirren
This morning Auntie Bridgett and I walked over to The Sidestreet Gallery, where she is showing some of her collages and her painted cups. There were snacks and lots of fun conversations, and some incredible art.
The Sidestreet Gallery
Artist Alicia Justus does so many beautiful things it is hard to tell about them all. On the walls were gouache paintings that look like illustrations from the old Russian storybooks I read with you.
An Image without Words, by Alicia Justus
She also does wonderfully detailed dolls! They are made of felt and other materials, embroidered and dressed, and delightfully full of personality. No sooner do you look at one than you start making up a story about it in your head.
It was fun to talk to Alicia about her inspiration (“way too many vintage children’s books”, she says) and see how this is reflected in her dress as well as her art.
Alicia’s dolls
A ceramicist and painter paired up in a show called “Wild Art”.
Denise Krueger was showing her whimsical ceramics, which all look like weird, dreamy sea creatures. and these were set alongside Shari Carlson’s paintings of animals. Most of her work showed sea creatures as well, but my favorite was a goofy looking emu.
Shari Carlson’s Emu
While enjoying all the art, I noticed some beautiful ceramic “Flying Mermaids”, and noticed the name of the artist, Dawn Panttaja. Auntie Katie has friends named Jofish Kaye and Erin Panttaja. Could there be a connection? I texted Jofish right away, and he confirmed it! Dawn Panttaja, Portland artist, is the aunt of Erin Panttaja, playwright, mommy, and really nice person! The world just keeps getting more interesting.
I was raised in Southern California, often waking up at 4 A.M. on New Year’s Morning to stand on the streets of Pasadena to watch the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. The incredible design and engineering work on the floats and the precision of the marching bands was breathtaking.
So of course, now that I am living in Portland, “The City of Roses”, I wanted to experience this Rose Parade. So Saturday morning, after a stop at The Rocking Frog for coffee and sweets, we took the number 15 bus across the river to downtown.
We got off at 4th and Jefferson and started walking, and there it was! A band! a trolley! Kids and people with balloons and dogs, waving and walking. And then….. nothing.
Rain or no rain, FUN!
For an hour.
Rain came, then sun, then more rain. The adults in the crowd hunkered down and the kids found ways to have fun, as kids do. We walked around, since old knees hate to stand still. Finally, we heard a band! Following our ears, we found the rest of the parade.
A magnificently detailed float, portraying a much larger than life cougar and her cub, was the first entry. It was breathtaking, and so large it was hard to get a decent photo.
The first float
Over the next few hours, we saw one other float of that level of professionalism, the Reser’s Fine Foods float which featured an enormous sea otter. A dragon from Alaska Airlines and a giant rainbow trout from PGE were also very nice.
The rest of the parade was not engineered or precisely designed. It was delightfully quirky, human sized, and friendly. Marching bands all played well and were uniformed, except for Kentlake High School, whose members all wore costumes from different video games.
Clowns interacted with the crowd, and “pooper-scoopers” in striped prison garb followed the equestrian units. The women of the Union of Electrical Workers wore Rosie the Riveter “We can do it” outfits and struck the pose with giant smiles. The sailors from the USS Michael Murphy walked and chatted among themselves, rushing to pose for a smiling group photo at the drop of a hat.
Dancing Germans
There were dancing Germans, marching flight attendants with luggage, and the llama brigade.
My favorite group of the day was the One More Time Around Again Marching band and twirling unit. These men and women, all “of a certain age”, marched, danced, twirled and played in delightful unison. They did not have “parade face”, but were clearly having fun and inviting us to, as well. Auntie Bridgett gave them the nickname the “Have Fun Every Damn Day of your Life” band. I took a video, but can’t put it in this blog. I posted it on Facebook, though.
Llamas!
As I said, this was a very different kind of Rose Parade. It was homey, friendly, silly and fun, something I didn’t expect from a large city like Portland. People don’t travel from all over the world to be here, which means you can get to know everyone in the parade. You can go to their meetings and join their groups. YOU can be in the parade, if you like.
This is a mostly happy post, but fair warning for the next paragraph. It is sad but true. Yesterday was my very first Portland Rose Show. I took the number 70 bus up Cesar Chavez Boulevard and changed to the Red Line train to Lloyd Center. The whole trip took about 30 minutes.
At the train station, some artists were painting a memorial mural to two men who died at that station last year. Ricky Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche were killed after they defended two young women who were being verbally attacked by a man named Jeremy Christian. Mr. Christian stabbed and killed the men, and is now in jail waiting for his trial. The train station mural is bright and beautiful, with quotes from the young women and their defenders and expressions of solidarity.
Part of the Memorial Mural at Hollywood MAX Station
At Holladay Park I got off the train and enjoyed the shady trees, fountain and statues, then crossed the street into the Lloyd Center Mall. This is a bright, open space on three levels, with huge skylights and even a year-round ice rink! This is where Tonya Harding practiced when she was getting ready for the 1994 Olympics.
Skater doing his thing
Inside the mall, it didn’t take long to find the Rose Show. It ran the length of the second level, on at least 60 long tables filed with single specimens in tall vases of huge floribundas, tiny miniatures, and mixed bouquets.
There were styles of display I had never seen, like “Floral Portrait” (a single perfect rose pinned to black velvet in a gold frame) and “Floral Palette” (a set of five roses displayed light to dark, left to right).
Floral PortraitKathy Kromm of The Portland Rose Society
There were a few creative arrangements, but the emphasis here is clearly on growing beautiful roses rather than decorating with them.
I asked Kathy Kromm of the Rose Society why I didn’t see any specimens of Mlle Caroline Testout, the rose that started it all back at the turn of the century? “It’s not much of a rose,” she answered sheepishly. “We can grow better roses now, with more disease resistance.”
Walking around the displays a third time, I noticed that there were many “old” roses, labeled Old Garden or Victorian roses. Most of them had small blooms but were intensely colored and had interesting foliage, like Moss Roses with their dark green, fuzzy-spiky sepals. I can see where Mlle Caroline Testout, which has a large round bloom in a bright pink, would have captured rose enthusiasts’ imaginations at the turn of the 20th century.
Crested Moss Rose, developed in 1827
But I know I can find Mlle Caroline Testout in the East Rose Garden in Ladd’s Addition, about two blocks from Auntie Katie’s house, so I didn’t worry.
When I had smelled and seen all I could, I caught the train and bus back home and had a rest before meeting Auntie Katie for snacks at the Nerd Out. I like being close enough for visits! I will enjoy having adventures with Cousins Jasper and Kestrel, and I will tell you all about them.
Back in 1888, Portland streets were not paved, which meant they were dusty all summer and muddy all winter. Getting around downtown was a mess! People didn’t want to walk very far to shop or get to work or school, and downtown was getting crowded. The city needed to stretch out, but had no way to do it.
The Morrison Bridge, built in 1887 to the east side of the Willamette River, and a few trolley companies, solved this congestion. Our neighborhood of Sunnyside was one of the first “trolley neighborhoods”, built along the newly expanding trolley line on Morrison Avenue, just a block up from Belmont. Riding the trolley across the river and east two short miles allowed people to work downtown but live in the country.. There were dairies and apple farms here until 1941!
Which means that rich people, like Thaddeus Fisher and J.C. Havely, built their lovely Queen Anne style houses within sight of dairy farms, but also a block away from the main hub of new shops and cafes along Belmont Avenue. The combination of cows, shops, and homes may seem odd to us, but apparently it was a winning combination in 1888.
Belmont Avenue is still the main drag of this area. Quirky small shops like Noun ( A Person’s Place for Things) and St. Cupcake make afternoon shopping fun. There are restaurants like Suzette, which offers sweet and savory crepes as well as cocktail and Circa33, and prohibition style cocktail bar. Circa 33 has a fifteen foot high liquor collection and vintage newspapers on the wall. StumptownCoffee is also a local gathering place.
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On the streets just off Belmont are a mixture of houses built in the late 1800s and newer condominiums and mixed use buildings, such as the Belmont Dairy Townhomes. Our favorite local place, TheHobnobGrille, is here. Great food, silly wait staff, and board games at every table make for a fun evening out.
It will take long months of studious, diligent wining and dining before we have fully explored our immediate neighborhood. But we are up to the challenge!
The other day Auntie Bridget and I passed the completed murals at Belmont and 33rd. We had seen them worked on all summer and fall. There are ten panels. This is what my favorite one looked like, months ago:
As we looked, we realized they were all images specific to our neighborhood of Sunnyside. There is the trolley car that brought residents here from downtown in the 1890s. There is the community garden…. and is that ThePiedCow?
Let me explain. The Pied Cow is a quirky coffeehouse located in a distinctive old house on Belmont Avenue. There is always this black Cadillac parked out front. It has a Haunted Mansion feel….spooky, but in a friendly, benevolently ghosty sort of way.
And that house is in the mural, with a lady ghost hovering above it. Hmmmmmm. The mural also shows another old house just around the corner, an equally distinctive structure, with bats coming out of it. Hmmmm again.
We walked and stared and took pictures. Then we went home and researched. There are indeed stories of the J.C. Havely House, which now houses the Pied Cow, being haunted by a benevolent ghost called Aunt Lydia. We can’t nail down WHOSE Aunt Lydia was, though. Mr. Havely, the railroad tycoon who built the house in 1893? A more recent resident? The answers are vague.
We spent a good deal of time reading and learning, then went and did stuff that needed doing. Auntie Bridgett did some collages and I continued organizing my office.
When dinnertime came, we knew we would go to the Pied Cow and see what we could learn. As we were walking around the block, we passed a young lady walking an extremely old dog. While we were sitting at our table in the yard, Bridgett looked up and saw this same young lady on the balcony on the restaurant, watering potted plants.
“Is that dog the one in the window, in the mural?” She asked. Phone, photo, check. Yes! It is! So the mural not only shows the house’s history, but its present! I am impressed. Intrigued. And I want to know more.
Why is the other house, a Queen Anne style built in the same year by Thaddeus Fisher, included in the mural? Is it also haunted? It is shown with bats coming out… did someone have bats in their belfry? Hmmmmm again.
The Belmont Murals, painted by Mado Hues in cooperation with the Portland Street Art Association, show a remarkable visual language. They answer questions you didn’t know you were asking and make you want to know more. That, in my opinion, is what art is supposed to do.
My first day back home started with a long lazy morning of reading and writing, and then Auntie Bridgett and I went out for a walk. We took some books we need to get rid of, so we could deposit them in one of the tiny libraries in the area.
We walked through Laurelhurst Park, which is even more beautiful than I remember. The sun filtering through the trees and the smell of the earth and the blossoms reminds me why I fell in love with this part of town.
We continued our walk, turning where we felt like, noticing gardens. We kept finding things that were quirky, things you just don’t see everywhere.
A metal garden sculpture in the shape of the giant flower Audrey from “Little Shop of Horrors”. A sign with a man’s face and address, but no name, condemning him as a Peeping Tom. A sticker on a crossing button that says “You are way more important than your realize.”
We ended up at 33rd and Yamhill, where the Portland Street Art Association has just finished re-painting a giant flower in what is called the Sunnyside Piazza, a nicely decorated intersection. How nice that people get together to make the city more beautiful, and pull all the neighbors in to help! And, even nicer, the beauty is allowed to remain.
Just up the street is the now-completed Belmont Street mural, which I will tell you more about tomorrow. I want to learn more about it first!
We were tired after our long walk and came home to do some organizing. My office is still a bit cluttered and I need to find space to spread my timelines out. I will tell you more about that as it comes together.
Yesterday started out with you in Salinas. I got my bags packed, including eight bottles of wonderful wine, wrapped in jeans, tee shirts and stuffties. I looked around at your house, which has been my house, for almost five months, and I know I will miss being with you. Watching He-Man and She-Ra before school, building new LEGO sets and going on adventures has been so wonderful.
But all the time I was having fun with you, I was missing my people. Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett are the music in my life. When I am with them, my heart dances.
I needed to come home.
Grandpa Nelson had booked me into first class (my first time!) and Marcella the hostess took good care of me. She brought me wine, pita bread and humus, and a hot towel to feel all refreshed. I took pictures out the window because this will be my last flight in a while. I love looking at the landscape…it is a quilt that keeps changing, a breathing mosaic.
Then I landed in Portland! The day was bright, sunny and warm, and the whole city was smiling. Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett were waiting and we wrapped up in a big moving hug. I felt pieces of my heart wake up. I was home.
At our new house were flowers and a present, tea, and Mouse the cat. I was overcome with joy and physically exhausted. I napped for a while, made bean burritos for dinner, and then we rode our bikes to a very special birthday party.
Auntie Katie’s store, Books with Pictures, is two years old! She had a party catered by Mitch, the owner of the Nerd Out, and her dear friend Chelsea. There were free comics, huge paper and pens for the kids to draw with, and even a comic drawing battle. Auntie Bridgett’s team did very well, and the whole thing ended up in a tie.
It was fun reading stories and being silly with Cousins Jasper and Kestrel, and meeting new people, but we had an uphill bike ride to get home, so we headed off around eight o’clock. This far north, the sun is staying up much later. At nine, it was just sunset and still warm. We sat on the balcony and read, then watched the Giants win their baseball game.
This is my last letter to you until I get back to Portland! I am so excited about coming home, but sad to be leaving friends and family here in Salinas.
Coincidence? I don’t think so!
This week was a crazy combination of things that absolutely had to be done and things that were just filling time. There were lots of kids finishing their stories, me reading them, coloring, and just visiting with friends they won’t see over the summer. There were also games, which some of the kids got to lead. It was fun watching them take charge.
Running a game of Cats
The Staff Meeting started with a Retirement cake for me and everyone telling Judy stories. They said such nice things! Mrs. Burgess, who I have known since your Momma Katie was 6, still teaches at University Park. We had a good time.
Then, all of a sudden, it was Friday! My last day of teaching! I still haven’t completely realized it, but there it was. I wanted to take a minute to reflect and get nostalgic, but again, there wasn’t time. As I was handing out report cards, Moms came to get their children “early”. It was five minutes early, but they just had to go right now. Announcements came over the system. Younger siblings invaded.
Shredding…Thanks, Heather!
Once the children were dismissed, everything in the room had to be signed off and accounted for…computers, ipads, keys, emergency backpacks, remote controls, curriculum. Paperwork had to be shredded. Oy.
But finally it was done. My Pod buddies Heather, Leslie and Emma and I got a chance to sit in Leslie’s lovely backyard, having some really good cheese and beer and wine. We told stories and vented and just enjoyed being together. Then it was time for dinner at Taste of Thai with Auntie Olga, Uncle David, and Liza. Such good food in a pretty place.
