Dear Liza

Back to Downtown

Dear Liza,

**Plaza outside Student Services Building**

Well, since I wasn’t able to find what I needed Downtown Tuesday, I needed another trip. But that is absolutely okay with me, because I love it! The day was sunny and breezy. There were people out walking their dogs, summer camps on walking trips, and even a small farmer’s market on the Park Blocks.

First, I visited the Oregon Historical Society Research Library. I have a part in my story where the school children are walking on a field trip, and I wanted to know what they would be walking past. I found the City Directory for 1903 to see what was there. As it turns out, the neighborhood I am interested in, the northwest, was mostly houses, with about ten churches, at the time. Businesses and city services were closer to downtown.

One of the fun things about research is that you do a lot of looking at other things before you find the ones you are really looking for. I found a book of detailed maps of downtown Portland from the big re-development in 1985. Loving maps like I do, I fell into that one for quite a while.

Then it was time to return to the City Archives. Walking down towards Portland State University is always interesting. There are young people, music, fountains, and always something new to see. This fellow, washing windows 5 stories up on a 14 story building, looked very at ease in his work.

Since thousands of students come to the University everyday, there is great public transit to this area. Street cars, light rail, and buses are all over the place.

I found interesting information on the parade that the city of Portland had to honor President Theodore Roosevelt on his visit in 1903, and then it was time to head home. Walking back, I noticed that The Portland Building is under a huge construction project. The giant statue “Portlandia” is still attached to the front of the building, but completely draped to protect her from the work. I miss her.

After dinner, we all walked up the The Laurelhurst Theater to see “Ocean’s Eight”. It was a fun movie and the walk home, under the lovely pink sunset, was the highlight of a very good day.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Into Summer

Dear Liza,

**Hollyhocks and day lilies, living together, mass hysteria!**

Now that is is officially summer, our evening walks have moved from six o’clock to more like 7:30. It stays light until nine and it feels silly to waste all that lovely sunlight!

Yesterday evening Auntie Bridgett and I walked around the neighborhood and noticed that the flowers are really exploding. Sweet peas, roses, day lilies and hollyhocks are shooting up out of the ground like the police are after them.

Even the sunflowers are getting tall and majestic. The bees all seem to be prosperous and busy.

We met a new cat, a very friendly young lady with beautiful markings and a tag that declares her to be “The Princess.” She not just allowed, but demanded, that we pet her, squeaking in a very royal voice.

On the way home we passed The Belmont Inn, and stopped in for a few games of Monster Bash, our favorite pinball game. We played together for a few, then went head-to-head. My score of six million made me very proud until Auntie Bridgett whupped me with forty-four million!!! Holy smokes, I need more practice!

Aw, shucks. More pinball….

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Day Downtown

Dear Liza,

I needed to do some more research for my story yesterday, which means a trip downtown. Auntie Bridgett had a morning free and came with me. We caught the number 15 and off we went. My first stop was supposed to be the Oregon Historical Research Library, but it turns out they don’t open until 1:00 on Tuesdays.

So, Plan B, I walked back across the Park Blocks to the Portland Art Museum, where Auntie Bridgett was enjoying the Richard Diebenkorn exhibit. I enjoyed the sketches he did early in his career, when he was in the Marine Corps, as well as the abstract paintings he did later.

While I was looking at art, I got a text from Grandpa Nelson. He told me about the City of Portland Archives, which are right downtown, that had (he had discovered) a whole file on the 1903 parade Portland held for President Theodore Roosevelt when he came to visit. I figured since the OHS library was still closed, I’d head to the archives. They were about 15 minutes away. This became Plan C.

But it took me longer. I saw a young family walking down the Park Blocks wearing matching T-shirts that said Free Ice Cream. They looked so friendly, I mentioned their shirts and we had a nice conversation. They were helping a friend advertise a new church downtown, and this was their fun way of getting to talk to people. I met some nice folks AND got a coupon for a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cone! Score!

At the City Archives, I found that once again, timing wasn’t on my side. They were closing in 20 minutes! But the lady was very nice, brought me the thick folder, and left me alone. It had lots of information, but not what I was really looking for. But she took down my contact information and said she would have another look when she had time, and I promised to come back tomorrow to see what she had. I would come back to the OHS, anyway, because by this time I was brain dead and ready to go home.

So we had a snack and caught the bus. Auntie Bridgett suggested we get off a little early and walk through Lone Fir Cemetery, since it had been a long time since we saw the dead people. Does this become Plan D? It was peaceful and beautiful as always, and we saw this lovely carved headstone for Elenor Springer. There were smaller stones from her three sons that outlived her, but no marker for Mr. Springer, to whom she was “beloved wife.” Another mystery!

More downtown time tomorrow, and hopefully, fewer Plans and more results!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Magic All Around

Dear Liza,

I know I have said it many times, but I love our neighborhood! There are so many delightfully odd, silly, adorable things just all over the place. This sad and lovely painting, for example, hung from a local tree. The lady looks so sad!

While out walking in the warm evening yesterday, we came across the tree with the “dinosaur infestation”, only to see that there are more! Now there is one in the birdhouse and even in the bird bath!

Not far away was this tiny fairy door, just there at the base of a tree.Other evidence of fairies were seen nearby. Small branches used to make fairy fences and pretty collections of pebbles are sure signs of fairies. Lucky us, to have magic so close by!

Then we ran into things that sort of fit the theme of magic, as well. A lovely black kitten came up and wanted some attention.

We saw a sign on a fig tree that said “Keep off the dirigible plums”, a reference to Xenophilius Lovegood’s house in the Harry Potter books.

And finally, at the teeny tiny library that is also a poll taking blackboard (this week the poll was “koalas or pandas?), we found a tinier library, holding tiny kid-made books! They were astonishingly cute and inspirational…. if I was going to write books for fairies, what would I write about?

I will ask Cousin Kestrel. She is my local expert.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Shakespeare on the Mountain

Dear Liza,

On Friday night, we tried a new pub for dinner, The Thirsty Monk, on SE 32nd just off Hawthorne. Actually, we had been there last summer, but only for a beer on a hot day while the Hawthorne Street fair was going on. We had tacos, french fries, and yummy chips. We have now added it to our list of favorite places!

Friday night was also the first play of the season for the Original Practice Shakespeare Company. As I told you last summer, this is a group of people who put on free Shakespeare plays in the city parks, and they don’t rehearse! Each actor has his or her own lines on a scroll in their hand, but they don’t practice together and don’t know what the other actor’s lines are.

As you can imagine, this leads to a different sort of play. The lines don’t flow smoothly and sometimes the actors get lost. There is a prompter, like a referee, who gets them (and us) back on track. It feels very improvisational, and is sometimes disjointed. Last summer, we saw some good plays and some that were hard to follow.

The play was performed at the top of Mt. Tabor, just a few miles east of our house. It has lovely views west to the city and east to Mt. Hood, trails for hiking, roads for driving, and stairs to the top. The stairs were a challenge, but it felt good to earn our way into the free play. I took pictures and enjoyed the views, as well as watching the people who came to see the show.

But the play was hard to follow, even though it was one we all knew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In addition to the un-rehearsed quality, all the lovers were played by women. The “he” and “she” pronouns that usually helped keep track of players were gone, and at Intermission many people, including us, decided it was too chilly to try to follow the play, and we all headed back down the mountain and drove home.

Still and all, a lovely evening!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Lan Su

Dear Liza,

Thursday was the Summer Solstice, which means it was the longest day of the year. The sun stayed up here in Portland until 9:00. But most of the fun was much earlier.

**Kestrel, Lion, and Jasper at the gate to Lan Su**

I walked to Auntie Katie’s house, and the cousins and I got on the number 4 bus to the Lan Su Chinese Garden on Northwest Everett Avenue. This is a whole city block with a wall around it, filled with trees, bushes, a big pond, pavilions, bridges, and even a tea house. It feels so magical and peaceful, you forget you are in the middle of a big city.

The garden was built in 2000, but feels much older. Many of the larger magnolia trees were transplanted full-grown from other gardens, and give the place a feeling of solidity. You can see the tall city buildings above the walls, but they seem very far away. It is easy to imagine fairies living in the crannies of the rocks, dipping their tiny cups into the pond.

There are so many things to see every step of the way. The pathways are all pebbles laid in lovely patterns, pleasantly bumpy underfoot. From the tiny mondo grass to the fragrant gardenias, there are a hundred delights for all the senses. Sitting in one place and looking, I mean really looking, at the pond, you see the reflections of the clouds and buildings on the surface, then the shadows, then the water skippers, then the golden koi and pebbles underneath the surface.

**Looking at the Tea House across the pond**

At the tea house, we enjoyed pot stickers, bao, edamame, baked tofu, and Kestrel even had a small pot of rose tea. We sat on the second floor by the window and had a lovely view of the garden below. Everything was so calm and quiet, even the smaller children remembered their manners.

After a few hours of exploring, nibbling and imagining, we headed out to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. The kids climbed on rocks, played in fountains until they were drenched, then walked themselves mostly dry until we all caught an orange line train home. A few hours quiet time, making dinner and reading stories, got us ready for a nice evening.

I went back to my house and Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I had a nice walk around the park and neighborhood, happy to be here in Portland for whatever lies ahead.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Ever-changing Laurelhurst

Dear Liza,

I have told you about Laurelhurst Park, the lovely old park in our neighborhood. It was created about 113 years ago when the neighborhood was developed from dairy farms and pastures. The park is land that was a gulch, or ravine, and too prone to flooding to build on, so they made it a park. Good call, city planners.

**Helping new grass in the off-leash area**

Since there were no trees here when the park was developed, all the trees were planted at the same time, so most of them are the same age: 113 years! These great trees give the park a sense of history and permanence, peace and mystery.

But yesterday we had a strong reminder that even in this permanence, there is change. Auntie Bridgett and I were walking in the park, enjoying the shade, the summer campers, the birdsong, and the happy dog joy that was everywhere. From across a clearing we heard a large CRASH, and within a few minutes, an ever larger CRASH! It was so loud in the peaceful park, we were all stunned. It sounded (and I know this sounds silly) like a giant monster had stumbled into the park and was ripping up trees.

I ran towards the sound, wanting to see what it was. A huge tree by the west end of Firwood Lake

**Yes, that’s me beside the fallen limb**

had lost one smallish limb, then a giant limb. They had grown too heavy with new growth, and without the slightest provocation of wind or weather, crashed to the ground. It was sad, like seeing a peaceful giant, still in his prime, dead on the ground.

People came from all over the park to see and take pictures. One fellow knew who to call and soon some maintenance guys came on Cushman carts to put up Caution tape, in case more limbs fell.

We stood (at a safe distance, because Auntie Bridgett worries) feeling sad at the death of the beautiful branch, appreciating the life forces at work. Trees are living, changing beings, and to expect them to stand tall all the time is unrealistic. We all lose a limb every now and then. don’t we? I keep learning new things.

Love,

Grandma Judy

OMSI

Dear Liza,

Yesterday Cousins Jasper and Kestrel and I went to OMSI, The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It is only one train stop from their house and we spent the whole day there! At the train stop, we met a nice lady named Maria and her son Josue. They mostly spoke Spanish, so I got to practice speaking Spanish for a while. They met some friends and off they went.

The Museum moved from Washington Park, where the Zoo and Rose Test Garden are, to the current site on the east bank of the Willamette River, in 1992. It has a Planetarium, space capsule, a hall for changing exhibits, and a large hands-on room called Turbine Hall.

We started with a visit to the temporary exhibit on The Robot Revolution. The first floor was very informative, and we read a lot about how robots are built, how they ‘learn’ new information, and how they move. There was a small soccer filed sort of area where two robots were trying to score goals while another robot tried to block them. We could even make robots move, like this big spider walking one, or a robot about 10 inches tall who was programmed to do different moves, like push-ups, headstands, or wave.

Upstairs, the exhibits were much more hands-on. Kestrel played tic tac toe against a robot, and mostly played to a tie. She used “grippers”, what robots use for hands, and had to do a lot of figuring out to make them work. It was great to watch her brain work!

While Kestrel was doing these things, Jasper was building robots with Cubelets. These are, as you might guess, cubes that you put together to make robots. Each cube has a different job: battery, mover, light, rotator. By putting the different cubes together in different order, you can make robots that move, light up, or other things. Jasper worked on these for almost an hour, finally creating a robot different from anyone else’s, that walked in a weird wobbly fashion while lighting up.

We bought lunch in the cafeteria, pizza and fruit juices, and ate on the patio that looks out over the river between the Tilikum Crossing Bridge and the Marquam Bridge. It was a very pretty day, so there were lots of bicyclists, joggers, and boats to watch, as well as cars and trucks on the Marquam and trains on the Tillikum, which is only for mass transit, walkers and bikes.

After lunch we visited another part of the museum, Turbine Hall. This is a room almost as big as a football field, full of hands-on activities to study air pressure, gravity, wind, sound,water and engineering. The exhibits are so well designed that if a child can reach it, they can be successful at some level at it. Kestrel enjoyed exploring the wind and water areas, while Jasper enjoyed working with other kids to build an arch or make a machine play Score Four. There aren’t any pictures of Jasper because he hates having his picture taken.

We stayed at the Museum until almost 5 o’clock, and there wasn’t a cross word or bored moment. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Portland with children!

We left in time to make dinner and feed the cousins and Auntie Katie when she got home from Books with Pictures.

What a wonderful day!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Sudden Storm

Dear Liza,

On Father’s Day it was hot! Auntie Bridgett and I needed to sell some books back to Powell’s, so we went early and spent the hottest part of the day indoors, reading, practicing French on Duolingo, and researching.

**Grandpa Nelson celebrating Father’s Day**

By about six it felt cool enough to enjoy a walk in Laurelhurst Park, so we all three put on sun hats, and sunglasses, and headed out. There was blinding sunshine in the western sky and ominous dark clouds to the east. We kept an eye on it.

The park was full of families and dogs, people in hammocks and on blankets, playing frisbee, guitars, even a fellow practicing his accordion by the pond. We sat down to listen and enjoy the sun on the water, when WHOOOSH! a wind came through and blew leaves, seeds, dust and even small branches past us at eye level.

The families packed up, called their dogs, making a small exodus out of the park. I took videos and photos. Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett just wanted to get home before the rain hit. On the way home, I noticed a big branch that had fallen across the road about a block from us. I went up to see, and met a lady who had come to see, too.

Turns out, the big branch was really several very long branches, and they had fallen across a REACHNOW car, a rental business like ZipCar. The lady, and some other folks who stopped to help and I, managed to lift the branches off and get them out of the road, without doing further damage to the car.

I got the business information from the sticker on the window and let them know they have a damaged car.

Once we got home, I settled in to watch the storm as it progressed. Listening to the thunder was wonderful! We even got to sit out on the balcony for a while, until the wind shifted and brought the rain straight at us.

By eight o’clock, when we were meeting Auntie Katie for a post-Pride Day Father’s Day drink, the storm had passed and the sunset was pink and lovely.

Things are sure different around here.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Portland Pride

Dear Liza,

On Saturday, I helped Auntie Katie set up her double wide booth at Portland’s Gay Pride Festival. It was hard work, but it’s always good to help.

Auntie Bridgett drove me to Auntie Katie’s house at seven in the morning. We loaded up a van she borrowed from a friend, then went to her shop, Books with Pictures, and loaded some more. Boxes and boxes of books, bookshelves, snacks, banners, and chairs, were all tetris-ed into a space that I thought was too small for them. Then we drove to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, between the Morrison and Hawthorne Bridges, on the west side of the Willamette River.

**View of the festival from the Morrison Bridge**

A friend of Katie’s named Dot, who has a strong back, cheerful personality AND many years of book store experience, was an enormous help. I unloaded and sorted, Dot organized and shelved, and Katie figured out where everything went.

By 11:00, we were ready for business! I took a walk around the festival to see the other booths. There were so many different businesses and causes, with booths run by cheerful people. There were banjo players, bankers, car dealers, a softball league, Fred Meyer stores, and even a booth supporting the adoption of deaf dogs. There were some outrageous costumes, but mostly just really happy people enjoying being out together on a sunny day.

When the booth was ready and Auntie Katie had her lunch (of delicious pulled pork from Porklandia), I decided to head home. I had lots of snacks and water, so I walked across the Morrison Bridge and east for about 2 miles.

**The Willamette looking north from the Morrison Bridge**

By the time I got home I was so tired, I ate a big lunch and slept for two hours! But Auntie Katie was at the booth until 10:30 Saturday night, and went back for a full day Sunday, so I think I got off easy.

Love,

Grandma Judy