I’ve told you that Portland is a city where dogs are very popular, but I still prefer cats. Our cat, Mouse (Miss Mousie Mouskin of the Mouseville Mousekins), is my favorite, of course.
Crazy Second floor ledge walking
She has the balance of a desire for adventure and a love of relaxation that I find copacetic.
But I’m not the only one here who loves cats. There are cats all over the neighborhood, happy, brave, silly and even weird.
There are cats in art here, as well. The McMenamin brothers’ chain of bars and hotels have a a picture of its “distillery cat”, along with Ruby the brewer witch and Hammerhead guy, who is painted in every one of their establishments.
Distillery Cat
While we were visiting Edgefield, which is a McMenamin’s location east of Portland, we saw this disgruntled cat on the back window of a car.
Window cat
Sunnyside Environmental School, in our neighborhood, has one painted on its doors, I guess to keep the free roaming chickens company.
Sunnyside School Cat
Auntie Bridget puts cats into her art all the time. My birthday card this year, which went all the way down to Salinas, featured her and Grandpa Nelson, as cats!
Auntie Bridgett’s cat card
That’s all I’ve got to say about cats in art, for now. But rest assured, there will be more…later.
With all the walking we do around the neighborhoods, we get to see a lot about people’s lives. We see them moving in or out, jump starting dead batteries, arguing with their children, picking the fruit in their gardens, and helping pull fallen branches from the street.
We see a lot of dogs being walked… on leashes and off, poking along behind, dashing ahead, or being wheeled in carriages. Portland is a very big dog-city. I heard that 50% of the households have one or more dogs. That’s millions of dogs!
A Mariposo at the Symphony
I do enjoy the dogs. I love seeing the dog-joy on display when the leash is unclipped and they run at top speed, just because they can. I love how dogs are part of people’s lives wherever we go.
Kitten showing super powers
But you know me. I am a cat person. Their joy of sleep, their short list of needs, their “yeah, you feed me, but let’s not make a big deal about it” attitude.
This cat, on this corner. Always.
Cats in Portland are mostly people friendly. They will saunter up to be petted, or dash over as if checking our credentials. They roll to be petted or stoically stand their ground. What they don’t do as much is run away. These are confident cats.
I enjoy their company very much.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Thanks for petting me, now go away. New people are coming!
Fall will officially be here in just two weeks, and the weather is still hot and dry. Walking is limited to the evening because of 90 degree temperatures in the daytime.
And I’ll bet it is!
After dinner yesterday we walked south passing one of our favorite neighborhood landmarks, Fort Awesome. It’s a house.
We continued to Sewallcrest Park, where we saw adult kickball last year. There were lots of other folks out enjoying the evening.
Pick up soccer game
There were two groups of soccer players, a young ladies’ team and what seemed to be a men’s pick-up game (they asked Grandpa Nelson if he wanted to play), both playing half-field. When the ladies were finished, the men moved to the center and used all the space.
There was a group of older men playing basketball, making good shots and passes but wisely taking lots of breathers and drinks of water in between.
Old dudes playing hoops
Besides these organized games, there was the usual nappers, dog walkers, and joggers. A mom and her daughter rolled by on skateboards. The sunset turned the light pink and everything was magical.
Art car
On the way home we enjoyed special Eastside Portland views; the sun going down at the end of Hawthorne Street, an old car enjoying new life as an art piece, and front yard chickens, being chickens.
This is my last post (for now) about River View. This one is mostly just questions and delights. I have made a quick run through email sources and historic newspapers of Oregon, and not found enough references to help much.
For example, I am sad that this mom only lived to be 39, but happy that her family decided to include her nickname on her stone. Rest in Peace, Becky Hunt.
This headstone, for Domingo V. Ruiz, 2nd Oregon Co. F Private Adopted, 1944, is the only Latin name in the circle of stones dedicated to the 2nd Oregon Regiment. Who is he? Why was he “adopted?” I will do more research and get back to you.
This stone was decorated with little doodads..a heart shaped necklace, some bits of wood. Hmmm. Who was Rocky? A boxer? A flying squirrel?
Mr. Jacob Mueller has a symbol on his headstone that I don’t recognize…it’s not Woodsmen of the World, Odd Fellows, or Masonic, or even the Deathly Hallows. Does anyone recognize it? I have found references from about the right time to suggest that he was a diplomatic to Frankfurt -on-the-Main, a part of what is now Germany, in 1885, and that he had a sister who lived in Estacada, Oregon and a brother who lived in Portland.
Finally, who was May Her Cha? Again, an unusual name for an historically racist cemetery in an historically racist city. There are ads for River View from the early 1900s that actually say “absolutely and exclusively limited to the Caucasian race.” Are some racist dead guys going to be cranky? Or have we finally learned to get along, at least in death?
There were a few other Chinese headstones nearby, the earliest death was 1987. Maybe sometime around then, the despicable policy was changed. Or maybe Ms Cha, living to be 103, earned some respect!
As you know, I love questions. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I love cemeteries. They always seem to ask more questions than they answer!
For example, in one section of River View Cemetery were nearly a dozen headstones with a man’s name, another name in quotation marks, and the date the man died. Sometimes the word “drowned” was included.
Robert Wilson, for example, was 27 years old when he “drowned”, so we figured the Embleton was a ship he was serving on.
There was also the headstone of a young man named Joseph W. Curling, also “drowned” on the Embleton.But he died November 20, 1888.
I started looking in old newspapers for the Embleton. This ship had it rough.
In 1885, the Embleton, a British merchant sailing ship, stopped in Acapulco, Mexico, to deliver coal. Apparently it picked up some diseased fresh water, because a few days out of port, the sailors began to sicken and die. Captain Payton continued up the Pacific coast of South America for his home port of Tacoma, Washington.
By the time the Embleton reached Tacoma, only two men, two ship’s boys and Captain Payton were still alive, having guided the ship with less than half of her usual crew. An official inquiry found the Captain blameless and the remaining crew heroic in their efforts. The ship was cleaned and returned to duty.
But this brings the question. If Robert Wilson was on the Embleton in January 1885, he was on a ship of sick and dying men. How did he “drown”? Who was keeping track of how the men died? “Drowned” was not included on every headstone of a sailor who died on duty, so why this one?
And as to Mr. Joseph Curling, he became crew of the Embleton five years after the disastrous infection. I can’t find any evidence as to when he came on board, but his November 20, 1888 date of death is odd. That entire month, the Embleton was on the Willamette, between Portland and Astoria. Did he simply fall overboard and drown?
Later, in 1890 to 1891, the Embleton took almost two years to cross from Scotland to Tacoma. Even back then, that was really slow. There were several news articles expressing concern, including one titled “Is She Still Afloat?”
Like I said, questions. You gotta love ’em.
As you might guess, the Embleton itself ended badly. Sailing across the Irish Sea in a dense fog in July 1900, it was hit midships by the liner Campania, cut in two, and sank with all but seven men. Some ships just can’t catch a break.
There were so many interesting things (and people) at River View Cemetery, I wanted to share some more with you. The famous people memorialized here don’t stop at founders and politicians. Important people like Henry Weinhard, one of the first and most successful brewers here in the land where we love beer, is buried surrounded by his family and whimsically remembered with a can of beer.
Beer!
Colonel Owen Summers and his Second Oregon Regiment from the Spanish American War in the Philippines are all here. The men are buried in a circle that surrounds a statue of a soldier, the flag nearby at half-staff for the late John McCain. Colonel Summers himself is buried away from this area, with his wife and family.
Captain Couch
Captain Couch, a sea captain who developed an entire portion of the city, is buried under an impressive, nautical themed column with chains, an anchor, and compass. Another set of “streets” buried nearby are Flanders, Glisan, and Hoyt.
You see, when Captain Couch mapped out his neighborhood in Northwest Portland, he labeled the streets by letters: A, B, C, etc. Later city planners wanted something more “romantic”, so they chose men from Portland’s history to coincide with the letters, like Ankeny, Burnside, and Couch himself. This decision now gives us a shorthand history lesson as we drive through town. We can also see that, like today, offspring of important people often married offspring of other important people, which we see in headstones such as “John Couch Flanders” and ” Caroline Couch Glisan”.
Couch merges with Glisan
David Campbell, the Fire Chief who died saving his men in 1911 and who is also memorialized on West Burnside, is buried here.
Harvey Scott, who was editor of the Oregonian newspaper for many years, is here. He and I don’t see eye to eye on things, as he opposed women’s suffrage and public high schools. Interestingly, his sister, Abigail Scott Duniway, a suffrigist and prolific author who also edited a newspaper ( The New Northwest) is buried at River View. I wasn’t able to find her memorial, but I haven’t covered even half the ground yet.
In the words of another famous dead person, “I shall return.”
Yesterday, Auntie Bridgett and I decided we wanted to go on an adventure. We wanted to ride our bikes across the Willamette to the River View Cemetery. It would take about half an hour to get there, and we had maps to show us a good bicycle route. But we hit a snag.
Auntie Bridgett’s Brompton folding bicycle, Nigel, had a flat back tire. Fixing it would involve tools she doesn’t have and time she didn’t want to spend, so we changed our plans. We would drive Nigel to Clever Cycles, then continue driving to River View.
Eva, checking Nigel out
Clever Cycles on SE Hawthorne is the first bike shop we ever went into here in Portland. Auntie Katie rented us bikes from here to ride around town years ago. Eva, one of the many bike mechanics there, looked at Nigel and agreed that she and her colleagues would take care of Nigel and we could pick him up in about a week.
We headed across the river and south to River View Cemetery. I’ve been told that “there’s a lot of good streets buried in River View,” and that this is the “high class cemetery.” It certainly is better maintained than Lone Fir…the lush grass is watered so often in these dry summer months that my sandaled feet got damp. Even the oldest stones are clean and legible, with no ancient grass covering them and no vandalism to be seen.
Dead people’s view of the River
And this does seem to be the high-rent district for dead folks. George Abernethy, the first Provisional Governor of the Oregon Country, died five years before River View was founded, was buried in Lone Fir, then moved to River View. I guess Lone Fir had too much riffraff.
Founded in 1882, River View holds many of the founders of Portland, names that are familiar to anyone who has even briefly visited the city. William Ladd, (Ladd’s Addition), James Terwilliger, (Terwilliger Curves,) and Henry Pittock. (Pittock Mansion) are all within shouting distance of each other.
Their headstones are often huge, needing to impress upon you just how important these men were. Besides their headstones, there are three benches in a part of the cemetery called Founder’s Park where Mr. Ladd, Henry Failing and Henry Corbett are memorialized, with their accomplishments carved in stone. It seems a bit…much.
Mr. Failing’s bench
However, a bench is a bench, and we enjoyed Mr. Failing’s quiet company as we ate our cheese and crackers. I will tell you more about this interesting cemetery tomorrow!
Yesterday morning, Cousin Liza and I got to have another adventure before I left Salinas to come home to Portland. We woke up early, had a quick breakfast, and got our adventure clothes on. We packed some bread, cheese and blueberries for snacks and were out of the house by 9:00.
We enjoyed looking at all the flowers that are going to seed, and talked about how flowers help plants make baby plants. Her great grandma Billie would be so proud of her! Liza can recognize lamb’s ears by their fluffy leaves, magnolias by their big white flowers and seed pods, and maples by their hand-shaped leaves and helicopter seeds.
Saying Hello to an old friend
Once we got to Hartnell College, Liza knew exactly where we going and ran ahead of me, getting to the panther long before I did. She decided that we should ride the panther (who can fly) to Disneyland, where we would attend a Disney character party, in costume. We got into costume, had manicures, and put on make up.
Liza was Ariel, I was Moana’s Grandma, and the panther was Raja, Princess Jasmine’s pet tiger. We flew on the panther to the airport, where we got on separate planes (not sure why). We performed at a ‘show’ by the student union, where we snacked, saw a squirrel, and fed the birds.
Giving the panther a manicure
Then we headed across Central Avenue to Central Park. Liza loves to climb and do things that scare her a little bit, knowing that most things are only scary at first. She is always careful to pay attention to where she puts her feet.
I hated to see the morning getting away from us, but soon it was time to head back to her house. On the way, we ran into Irene, a dear lady who worked at Beverly’s Fabrics until it closed last year. We had a hug and a chat and went our ways.
Liza the Brave
After Liza and I played with a picture puzzle that your mommy Katie used to play with, it was time for Liza and her mommy Olga to take me to the bus stop so I could head home. She told me “Spakoini Notchi” and “Paka” which mean ‘good night’ and ‘goodbye’ in Russian. I am glad that since she has gotten back from her trip to Russia to visit her other grandparents, she is speaking a lot more in Russian. That language and culture is a gift from her family and she should treasure it.
200 piece puzzle
After an hour on the bus and two on a plane, I got home to my city and my people. We stopped for dinner at a new place called Perlot, on NW Fremont, which was tasty, delightful, and musical! We had delicious food, good wine, and listened to jazz by local musicians. What a treat!
Having such a short time to visit friends and places here in California, yesterday I combined one of my favorite people, Donald, with my favorite place, THE BEACH. I wanted to explore a part of the Sand City beach that has interesting things, just off of Highway 1.
The View from the top
We parked on a little road that leads to an old sand and gravel company. The gate was open, so we walked right in. Walking past old equipment and broken chunks of concrete and asphalt felt like we had found the ruins of an ancient city. The high dune above the beach had been covered with poured concrete of different textures, and looked like a lava flow.
Weird concrete pours
We had fun taking pictures of the rocks, sand, and even a lizard who was very comfortable on his broken boulder. Nearby is a huge sand dune that was used by the city as a dump for many years. Because the sand and the stuff dumped in it are always shifting, you have to be careful and wear heavy shoes, because there are sharp and dangerous things. But it sure is interesting!
Climbing straight up a steep, soft sand dune, we found some old rusty chain, bits of beach glass and pottery, as well as new glass and bits of metal. Near the top we found a fellow sleeping in his tent, so we headed off and left him in peace.
On a bluff with a beautiful view, we found benches dedicated to people who had helped Sand City. Police chief Staples and Jerry Smith, men who worked hard to make the city successful, were people I had known when I lived in the area and worked on different committees. It was good to have a quiet visit in such a lovely place.
Donald and Jerry Smith
When we left the beach, Donald wanted to go by the Orchard Supply Hardware store. This country wide chain of really good stores has been around for 90 years, and they are all going to be closed by the end of this year! It makes me sad that 45,000 people will be out of a job, and that folks won’t have this store to help them fix up their houses.
Wonderful Store, Sad Closing
We got Donald’s buckets, hummingbird feeders, and wind chime, walked back to the car and he drove me to Salinas. I was exhausted, but I didn’t care. I felt full of joy, sunshine, and friendship. At Uncle David’s house, I looked at the treasures I had put in my pocket, but realized the real treasures were kept in my heart.
No, I’m not going back to teach! But while I was in Salinas for a few days, I wanted to go see me teacher friends and students at University Park. I got there early so I could get some hugs before everyone got into their lessons. I know how much an unexpected visitor can mess up the rhythm of a class!
I apologize for the shortage of photos in this blog. I was so happy being IN the moment, I didn’t want to spoil it by DOCUMENTING it. Fortunately, Pete Andresen, who has been a parent at University Park for 23 years, happened to take this delightful shot. Thanks, Pete!
I started in the office, to see Mrs. Stoopes. She makes sure all the paperwork (now, computer work) is done properly. She is such a dear lady and I have known her for so long! The office has been almost totally re-configured…the kindergarten classes have been moved to the big pod where I used to teach, and those big classrooms are now the teacher’s lounge and workroom. There is even what they call a PD room, for Professional Development. It’s set up with a screen, projector, and tables.
In the back of that building the old staff room has been turned into offices for Mrs. Padilla and Mrs. Laird, our Principal and Vice Principal. They are beautiful, bright and much easier to work in, I’m sure.
While I was there, I chatted with Mrs. Laird and made arrangements to visit a former student. B is such a fine fellow but has had a difficult time in school. With everyone’s help, especially Mrs. Laird and his Tucci aides, Daniel and Jessica, B is becoming his own best person. It was wonderful to have some time to just sit, eat a doughnut, and visit with him. I hope we will stay in touch!
I visited the new kindergarten rooms in the pod. I admit, I was skeptical about putting all those little noisemakers in one space, but it seems to be working. Mrs. Andersen and Mrs. Bateman are total professionals and know how to manage small people. It was good to see them.
In the Resource Room of the pod, I found one of my favorite people ever…Richelle Drollinger. She has taught special education and Resource for a very long time, and has been an advocate for kids who learn differently for her entire career. I love and respect her for it. She also has a very sweet smile.
As I walked around campus, I saw former colleagues, all of whom are in different classrooms because of the kindergarten switch. Everyone is still finding their feet and unpacking boxes, but the kids all seem happy and glad to be at school.
In the cafeteria I visited with Debi Massey, who is a teacher’s aide and also has the difficult job of running the lunchroom, and Miss Annette, who makes sure the kids get good food. These ladies work so hard and make the school better everyday.
Recess time came and I got to catch up with more students. Aaron has been back to Las Vegas, and got to be a ring bearer at a wedding in Mexico. I was happy to hear that Ramon is still drawing. It seems many of the boys have given up other activities to play Fortnite. This worries me, for lots of reasons. First because it is a game about war, and I would rather they practice peace. It also sets up all sorts of responses that will not serve them well in real life, where they will have to return when the game is over. I do not understand why their parents are willing to spend money to do such a disservice to their sons.
After more hugs and chats, I realized I needed to take off if I was going to get downtown in time for lunch with Pat van Noy, so I said goodbye to my old home away from home. My 28 years there were some of the happiest, and hardest, I have ever had.
Rest in Peace, Becky Hunt.
Dear Liza 