This week was devoted to combat my inherent pessimism.  And since the ultimate cheer in my life comes from traveling, I have decided to do just that next week. Hopefully I will return with lots of stories and a sunnier disposition but until then I will be pretty much off line.

If you are curious, they will speak this language where I go

and knowing me, I will live of rice and beans, being chicken when it comes to street food.

Best clue: I will visit the house of this man (think Russian Revolutionary….). Now you know where I’m going.

Adios.

Best laid plans and so forth…. yesterday the weather made it impossible to photograph unless I wanted to risk damage to the camera. ( I did walk, but in pouring rain along the Sandy River so that at least the dog would have some fun.)

Which will not stop me from presenting the beauty of my city, culling from the archives a lot of architectural details I’ve photographed in the last 12 months in Old Town. Here is a short description of the history of Portland’s urban core: http://pdxoldtown.org/history/

The photographs do not include China Town, or anything further North. Mostly I walked between 2nd and 6th Ave, with Burnside the limit to the North and Washington to the South.

The area has undergone a lot of change  – show me the area that hasn’t – and it is amazing how a lot of money and a bit of restoration brought out the amazing architectural features that were there all along, unnoticed for decades.

The bar scene is hopping, and posh stores and hotels have moved in as well – a mere stone throw from the major shelters and food stations for the homeless population that start at Burnside and push North.

If you walk there in the late afternoon lines extend for blocks of those waiting to score a bed for the night, while across the street the more fortunate wait in line for overpriced, overhyped Voodoo Donuts.

The Skidmore Fountain is a gathering place for buskers and travelers, particularly during the Saturday Market where crafts and Kitsch are sold every weekend.

Let’s hope that the weather obliges tomorrow for a walk in “real time” – but what I am posting today is a pretty current state of affairs in this city.

Yesterday I was not able to walk for a variety or reasons. So what’s posted today is a collection of pictures I took over time along the waterfront, again and again fascinated by Portland’s bridges and developments on the waterfront.

There is an esplanade, a loop that surrounds the river on the west and east side. I usually start at the steel bridge and return via the Hawthorne bridge.

Some interesting public art graces the east side and the views across the river, particularly of Big Pink, my favorite building in town that has no right angles but beautifully light-reflecting surfaces, are spectacular.

From the west side you can see the sports arena and the convention center, both landmarks hidden behind the highway bridge.

Sometimes I walk at night, and that has become particularly intriguing with the light installation at the new Tillicum Bridge.

The lights change dependent on the strength of the river’s current – don’t ask me how that is technically possible, but they pulled it off.

The bridge is open to pedestrian and bike traffic and the streetcar as well.

Next to it is my second favorite building, the OHSU Life Sciences building, housing, among other things, the dentistry school. Here are some shots of the interior.

Just like in Roman times the geese guard the city

and those in it, asleep.

Few of the 12 bridges that cross the Willamette will be able to withstand a major earthquake, a point I was acutely aware of today when getting the news about the 6.9 earthquake in Guatemala, where progeny was about 20 km from the epicenter. No harm came to him, but one wonders what it does to the infrastructure of such a poor country.

On Tuesday I walked two areas where I once worked – the 137 acre campus of Lewis&Clark College where I taught Experimental Psychology for 15 years and Portland State University where I did the occasional replacement gig for colleagues who went on Sabbatical.

L&C is located 6 miles South of downtown, PSU, on the other hand, is situated smack in an urban area in the SW quadrant of the city. One school is private, the other a state school. Tuition for the small liberal arts college is $45.000 per year of a 4-year degree. In- state tuition for PSU is an annual $8000, double that if you need room and board. The private college houses 2.200 students, compared to 27.000 who attend PSU. The age range is small (and young) for L&C students, the range at PSU is huge, with many adults who work full time while also trying to get a college degree. The acceptance rate for both schools is about 60% of all applicants (first rate programs are half that, or less.)

Sports are serious business at L&C.

The Hoffman Art Gallery is actually quite good.

Reflecting pool in the garden….

Dove Cove and Theater facilities

The L&C campus nestles around a manor house that was built by one of the scions of a Jewish merchant family, the Franks. They dominated the market together with their partners, the Meiers, with department stores. Housing laws were not kind to Jews in this city, and so Frank, or so the rumors have it, moved South of the city to have his own estate. After 10 years of living there it was sold to the college. The gardens are well preserved, the whole campus breathes upper middle class and then some. Student housing is first rate.

The surrounding homes in the immediate neighborhood are yet a step above that.

Luckily the moles disregard class boundaries…

The classroom behind this door, shut off from any natural light/windows, was the place where I thought students had finally given up on me and started to move furniture around in protest of the difficulty of the materials (at the time the majority of psych students was certainly interested in the softer ends of the field and not the hard science corner.) Turned out to be a serious enough earthquake to displace the tables….

Downtown, on the other hand, offers a different picture. Much recent building activity is trying to improve the campus, which is stuck with old buildings, not the best facilities, and a general lack of funding given how many state universities in Oregon try to compete for a limited amount of money. Housing leaves much to be desired.

Yet the faculty is first rate, and honestly the education as far as I could see, did not differ in quality other than overcrowded classrooms, and more work for professors given the enormous variability in background knowledge and skills brought to the place by a wonderfully diverse student body. Students were applying themselves with an intensity generated by knowing what improvement a degree would bring to their lives; that could not be said as a whole for all of the L&C students, who chose the school often for its proximity to recreational activities that OR mountains and beaches offer: skying, surfing, hiking. The majority also had parents who footed the bill. Of course this might have changed in the decade since I retired.

Community gardens stocking the food pantry are right on the urban campus.

My favorite place at PSU is a little plaza that commemorates the achievements of women – The Walk of the Heroines – .

(Kamala Harris would know….)

 My favorite experience at PSU is the proximity to those who you would never meet in Dunthorpe, so that things are kept in perspective.

My Street Roots Vendor when walking down 6th Ave – the only paper newspaper I still buy….

110 years ago Portland showcased the first Rose Festival to celebrate its chosen flower (the weather and soil here make for ideal conditions to grow roses.) The Festival has many events, choses high school princesses – I believe an attempt to make them into more gender neutral ambassadors has failed, but I haven’t exactly kept up with it -, has a carnival come to town and closes with a grand parade full of flower-decorated floats, delightfully provincial.  Oh, and the Navy comes to town. More on that in a minute.

My Sunday walk brought me to the waterfront where the remaining floats were parked, flowers wilting and fruits, also used as decoration, seeming almost waxen.

.

Half of humanity was milling and looking at the left-overs, but mostly standing in endless lines to have a guided tour of the navy ships.

I saw only two this year, much reduced from years past. The river is cordoned off, coastguard and police boats with machine guns guarding the behemoths, and helicopters flying over people’s heads. Quite a martialist spectacle, and the sailors young, so young.

The homeless, who usually line the benches and the grassy fields of the promenade were sent back into the shadows of the bridges. (A few statistics: from 2 years ago, it has probably gotten worse since then. Around 4000 people are homeless in PDX, half of those without shelter during the night, 12.000 additionally housing-insecure people doubled up in unsafe conditions (leased flea bag motels etc.). Almost 20% of the homeless are families with children. 30% are chronically homeless, and almost 60% are physically disabled or mentally ill (think veterans from the Iraq and Afghan wars, native Americans and others who got hooked on the needle after traumatizing events and no medical care system to catch them.) 40% are people of color (compared to their 7% representation in the general PDX population). As a city we are in third place behind Detroit and Fort Lauderdale in use of food stamps, as a state tied with Mississippi for first place. The majority of foodstamp recipients is actually e m p lo y e d. Did I hear someone say living wage? I have no exact numbers for how many of the homeless have been catapulted into homelessness by a single catastrophic event – loss of job and illness with no heart insurance, for example – but I remember doing a frightened double take when I read about it.)

In any case, the Rose Festival makes people happy, and walking along the fair was a delight because the air was filled with happy squeals of the young set despite the eternally grey weather.

Entertainers hoped for a quick buck or two,

and a family of geese and their goslings got their own protective personell, shepherding them through the crowds back to the water. 

The knowledge that all the war ships would disappear the next day and leave the river to ourselves was encouraging.

Almost everyone I know is currently traveling, is about to travel or has just returned from a trip. To deal with my envy, I thought I do something this week that reminds me of the fact that one’s own city is just as interesting as many others.

The plan is to walk different non-touristy neighborhoods every day and submit the photographs a day or two later, only occasionally augmenting with something archival from the very spots depicted. Running commentary will be included. That means you don’t get any of the usual links to something interesting since my time searching the net will be spent walking instead. But it also means you can see the city with fresh eyes, in real time. And you are witnessing what catches my eye, with no particular theme in mind.

We start with Saturday’s walk South of the Burnside Bridge. Portland is divided into 4 quadrants, with the Willamette river dividing the West/East areas and Burnside St marking the North/South axis. I walked a small industrial area in the SE quadrant, which has recently seen some gentrification, new condos and a marked upswing in posh restaurants, with parking now a problem during the week. (Shout out to Olympia Provisions, who have a restaurant/bar down there an serve the best cured meats in town!)

But the bones of the old district are still visible, homeless camps are everywhere in the shelter of the bridges, and the race between those applying graffiti and those removing it is accelerating. (Even five years ago you could barely see a plain wall from graffiti down there, now it is rare that you find spontaneous ones, not just the sanctioned large murals with signatures.)

Here are the images that caught my attention:

Nestled under the Burnside bridge is a skatepark for advanced skaters who are thrilling to watch. It is also a place where you can stand at 11am in the morning enveloped in second-hand clouds of marihuana smoke making it for a sweet smelling or perhaps enlightening adventure. The rest of the neighborhood is bustling at that time with hard work – there are meat packing plants, fruit distributors, large truck companies, a railroad track for freight trains, and now numerous start-ups that sell I don’t know what, mostly services, I guess. Sort of like NYC’s Chelsea’s transition from when I knew it in the late 70s to nowadays. A similar feel on a lilliputian scale.

Some of the old building details are still visible, 

mostly ignored by people who wait in line for the next table at a bar….

And music surrounds you, mostly blaring through open windows, no style left out.

It was a rainy day, a slight sense of decay enhanced by the grey light, and my heart went out to the homeless in their damp tents and sleeping bags. They were left behind by the Rose Parade (and the rest of us) that lit up the other parts of the city during our annual celebration of the city flower.

Occasionally German compound words capture with simplicity and accuracy a particular state of affairs. Heimweh denotes aching for home, (weh being a term the describes pain rather than simply longing). In contrast Fernweh describes an ache to explore the faraway. I am not familiar with a single English term that fits this concept, even though homesickness exists. Fernweh is more than Wanderlust. 

For anyone who lives between worlds there must come a point when the target of Heimweh shifts from the old country to the chosen one. At least, that is, if you made the right choice and live where you want to live, as I do. Oregon is home, has been for many decades.

I am going to give a lecture today to a group of young refugees and/or people with a migratory background and will ask them if they have reached that point. Or if that is a desirable goal for them at all, given that their migration has not necessarily been voluntary.

In any case, today’s photographs of ships and boats symbolized for me things that trigger Fernweh, and looking at the sky, the sight of planes triggers Heimweh. Luckily I will sit in one tomorrow on my way home…..

Then and now

Hamburg, world port, the river its lifeline, offers more views of boat than a single photographer could possibly capture. I do keep trying, though.

Below is part of Brahms’#2 – He was a son of Hamburg – during the opening concert of the Elbphilharmony, the building you can see in the cover photo.

https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/Elbphilharmonie-2017-Allegro-con-spirito-aus-Brahms-Sinfonie-Nr-2,brahms188.html

The German word for cemetery or grave yard is Friedhof which literally means courtyard of peace.

Today’s photographs try to capture that peace, with an occasional smiling nod to the differences in taste when it comes to decoration, and appreciation for the history that these places convey.

Sublime – 

Expected- 

Whimsical – 

Practical – 

Historical – 

You tell me –

The poem below, by German Jewish refugee Hans Sahl, should be familiar to ydp readers since I posted it some years back, but I am holding it close to my heart and thought it might move us again.

English translation by Professor Michael I. Allen

One of the nicest things someone recently said to me – indeed it registered great pleasure – was that I was a visual flâneuse. Here is the definition:

Today I was sauntering, really aimlessly walking, taking snapshots here and there in the neighborhood where I stay. One thing you can’t escape: there are Easter bunnies every where – chocolate galore….. so let’s follow the postman on his route to get away from temptation.

 

Street art spans silliness to politics

Pictures from this morning.

Lesson learned – never ever book with some Internet provider who you have never heard of.  The cost of a ticket a week before flying to Europe is considerable, but not outrageous. Trying to check in the evening before the flight turns out to be impossible. Some idiot had reversed my name to make Friderike my last name, and so the airline would not acknowledge my passport.  I spend literally over 2 hours on the phone with the internet travel agency who tells me they can’t do anything other than offer me a new booking for well over $2000 the day before flying. What can I do. Then they cancel the old flight and tell me I have to eat that cost as well, because it is too late to refund.

They also have to change the times, so a 2 hour layover becomes a 4 hour layover, and they do not give me a seat assignment until practically boarding, which is NOW.  I am done before I even started. From now on only deal with airlines directly.  Should I ever fly again, towards which I am currently not favorably inclined.

Stay Tuned.  I might make it to Hamburg after all.