Campus Wander

Sara had an interview today on the University of Minnesota Campus, and so I wandered around until she was done.  Here are some things I saw.

Man, the Richardson Romanesque of this campus?  Amazing.  So many good details. 

I heard this group coming long before I saw them.  I’ve never been in the kind of running shape to run with a group, but this looked fun.

There’s a big mall/quad area that has these red Adirondack chairs scattered around.  Quite lovely.

Outside Coffman Memorial Union was this formidable sign.

I wandered around Coffman Memorial Union. It’s the student union. They had this great photo of TV time in the (presumably) 1950s, or early 1960s.

And look, you can still have TV time today.  I would bet there is a lot less newspaper reading, though.

I hung out with John Sargent Pillsbury for a while.

I wasn’t the only one hanging out.

I enjoyed this person following the rules of the sign.

Sara & I walked across the Washington Avenue Pedestrian Bridge.  It crosses the Mississippi and joins the East Bank of Campus with the West Bank of campus.  And! The student clubs paint ads in it.  Here are some of my favorites:

Game of Thrones was a theme in many ads.

Being formerly Idaho girls, we easily spotted the Mormon club.

It’s always good to have a good artist in your club.  Then your panel looks better.

Quiddich and a Yule Ball? Amazing!

And, oh my gosh, if this club had existed in my college days, I would have signed right up.

You can see that the SOBER club was lacking a full-artist-type person.  But they did a pretty good job with what they had.

Here she is.  The Mississippi!

And our next stop, the Weisman Art Museum. 

The museum had some good stuff.  I even found a platter on display made by my friend Sue, who participated in the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour. That was pretty exciting.

And the Pedicord Apartments?  It rocked my world.  I loved it.

“What is that?” I said to Sara, while pointing.  She gave a shudder.

Inside, the hallway was super claustrophobic. The artists had used forced perspective very effectively.  Plus, there was goopy stuff all over the doorways.  I loved it!

And then I went back out and read the informational sign and it got even better.

When you leaned in to listen at the doors, you could hear what was going on inside the rooms.  Really creepy and incredible.  Highly recommended.  I spent some time figuring out what made the sound start when you leaned into the doorway.

Here is more information about the piece.

From a balcony at the Weisman we could take a picture of the Washington Avenue Pedestrian Bridge.  The light rail runs below the part we walked on.

We went in search of postcards, which afforded me this picture of these overalls, worn by enthusiastic students to games.  Earlier in the day, at the campus bookstore, I watched a guy trying a pair on.

Getting home from the Eclipse

And here’s where I should have kept to what I had planned. 

Instead of following the Oregon Bikeways path between Salem and Champoeg, we made the mistake of using Waze.  Waze kept wanting to put us on the freeway.  Unfortunately, every entrance to the freeway had very long backups.  We would wait for a while and then Waze would re-route us further south, to wait in another long line for the freeway.  We did this four times, never actually reaching the freeway, before I called, “Uncle,” we stopped at a truck stop to have a mediocre meal, and I took over the navigating.

This man was walking faster than cars were moving.

There was a lot of this:

I didn’t keep track of what time we left Salem, probably 1:15-1:30 pm. After the truck stop, I used Google Maps and chased the roads that were green.  It meant we went out of our way, but at least we were moving.  Once we got far enough north on back roads, we easily popped onto the interstate and had a quick trip home. But overall?  Probably five hours in the car.  It took us an hour to get there.

Still totally worth it.

Matt as the Oregon governors

After the eclipse, I stood in line to have the letters and postcards cancelled, and then we took a self-guided tour of the capitol.

Here’s Matt, sitting at the governor’s desk.

And now let’s see Matt as the governors.  As Theodore T. Greer:

As Julius Meier: (note that after that first picture, I neglected to take photos of the name plates, and there is not a convenient State Capitol Virtual Tour of all the portraits.  So I’m matching faces to Wikipedia entries, especially for the pre-1960’s governors.  Feel free to suggest corrections.)

As Oswald West:

As Vic Atiyeh:

As Ted Kulongoski:

As John Kitzhaber:

As Tom McCall:

As Barbara Roberts:

As Bob Straub:

And also as the dog:

I was quite taken by this very large mural of a good lookin’ shirtless guy.  Who was that guy?  Why did a shirtless worker make the cut for official statehouse murals? 

Matt’s birthday is celebrated

Matt wanted to do an escape room for his birthday, so we visited Portland Escape Rooms for their Steampunk-themed escape. We made it out of the dirigible (although we did neglect to find that last life jacket for the captain.  He said he was fine to go down with his ship)

Matt, myself, Greg, and Burt joined five other people we hadn’t met to conquer the various puzzles presented to us.  This room had a reset factor, which kept everyone occupied the entire time.  Whenever people were standing about, the costumed actors would tell us the flux-capacitor (or whatever it was) needed to be adjusted. I quite liked this as it eliminated the need to beat previous teams’ times.

It was also my first time with employees as characters in the room.  They were very fun.  This was an improvement over the guy who sat in the room with us, but was not a character.

After, we went to eat and I caught a picture of this group of men through the window.  Their age span makes me think this is a family group, but they could also be enthusiasts of some kind.

Manhattan Project Hanford

The Manhattan Project National Historic Park is made up of three sites:  Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington.  Fun fact:  If you collect National Park Stamps, the stamp for the Manhattan Project is in three parts.

There are two tours offered at the Hanford Site.  Here is the link to register. We took the Historic B Reactor Tour, but had I known the Pre-Manhattan Tour existed, it would have been my choice.  Each tour takes up a big chunk of the day and involves a bus ride to the site, a guide and a lot of time to look around.  All for free.  Thank you, National Park Service.

We met outside of Richland, where we looked at some exhibits, like this newspaper. Our guide showed us an introductory video and then we loaded up the bus and were off.

Our guide was great.  She also teaches Biology to college students.  She was very good at repeating the questions asked so everyone could hear them and knowledgeable overall.

Headed out to the site.  At a certain point in history this road would have been closed to the general pubic.

It wasn’t a long trip, but did allow for a short nap.

And here it is!  The historic reactor.  What you are looking at are the caps on the rods.  Scientists changed the amount of plutonium produced by moving the rods in a very big cube. [Science!  Not my strong suit.  Go watch a video or something if you want to know more]

As usual with science things, I was more interested in the people part of the equation. A whole bunch of people had to be recruited to this desert to build the reactor.  They weren’t told what they were doing, just that things needed to be built.  And the people needed to be fed.

The site was full of all sorts of repeating colorful patterns.

And some good vintage and modern signs.

Here’s the view from the outside.  Once everything was built, the construction camps were taken down.  The town of Richland was rebuilt so the workers at Hanford had nice places to live. That’s where the Alphabet Houses came in.  The population of Richland was 300 before residents were evicted in 1943.  Then workers for the Hanford Engineering Project arrived and there were 25,000 people in Richland by 1945 Spokane Architect Albin Pherson designed most of the city. He designed a variety of single family homes, duplexes, apartment buildings and dormitories.  Each design was designated with a letter of the alphabet.  If you visit Richland, you can walk through the Gold Coast Historic District and see a selection of the Alphabet Houses.

I greatly enjoyed my tour of the Hanford site and recommend it for anyone visiting the area.

REACH museum

We were in Richland to experience the Hanford tour with Matt’s mother, but we stopped at the REACH museum first.

I’m still uncertain just what the REACH museum is, even after having visited and after looking at their website. I think it’s talking about how the Columbia River sustains a large area around it.  Here’s a big picture of the Columbia and how it reaches so very far, as indicated by the green patches.  I think that big brown area where the word “irrigated” is might be the Hanford site.

The REACH had some nice displays of how the Tri-Cities area developed, geologically and with human influence.  It’s also the first place I learned about the 2300 people kicked off their land with 30 days notice so the Manhattan Project could build a nuclear power plant.  Also about Alphabet Houses.

Other people displaced by the Manhattan project?  Native Americans.  They had lived in the area for thousands of years.

Portland Pride Parade with the Rosetown Ramblers

I was quite pleased to participate in the Portland Pride Parade this year, by dancing on the Rosetown Ramblers float. But before we could dance, there was the setup.

Speakers and the box of supplies.

Check out the retro placard and handle on the speakers.

First order of business. Assembling the trailer on which we danced.  The trailer itself was easy, the sides folded down and we put in bolts to hold it.  But then there was the matter of assembling the cover, which came with no instructions.Some of the people had assembled before, but for the most part, we just tried things.  It was kind of like a free Escape Room.

Eventually things started looking good and people donned some festive crinolines.

We gathered for a pre-parade photo.

And then we waited for the start.

Our caller was Janienne Alexander, who calls for the Tualatin Timber Squares.

Our successful flag (and shading device)

Other participants also took advantage of the waiting time to take some photos.

I was interested in this young woman’s fanny pack with speakers.

Nordstrom was near us.

Eventually the parade started and we danced.  It was fairly overwhelming with the combination of hot, loud (even with earplugs) and also trying to look at the crowds and pay attention to the dancers.  It was fun, though.

Near the end of the parade, Joan joined us.  She was part of the color guard at the beginning and looped back to catch us.

When I took a break from dancing, I took crowd photos.

And I saw Dave, who is a member of the Rosetown Ramblers, but marched with the leather community.

Tiffany and Eileen finished the parade with smiles. I look forward to next year’s parade.

Best snack for Family Book Group

The bar code is obscuring the full title, but we read I am Princess X for Family Book Group. Danielle came up with this most excellent snack item.

She also posted many images of Princess X around the room, sneaking them into normal displays.  This was very fitting to the story, and was a delightful bonus.

Librarians are so fun.