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.

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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.