Tag: Portland

A break from work: Lan Su Chinese Garden

I was done with work at 1:30 on Friday like usual, but I had to come back at 3:30 for a meeting.  What to do for two hours?  A coworker suggested I visit the Chinese Garden.  I’d never been, I’m ashamed to admit, so I thought that was a brilliant suggestion and took myself.
Beautiful stones in the courtyard.  

The garden is designed so you are constantly looking at different frames.

Beautiful carved wood.

Overlooking the water and the Moon Locking Pavilion.

More beautiful carving.

More beautiful paths.

Peeking out onto the city street.  The garden takes up one full block, but it seems much bigger, from the inside.

Nothing makes me want to enter like a “do not enter” sign.
A small courtyard with more great stonework.

The plastic horses in this arrangement amused me.

The fabulous roof tiles are shaped like bats.

Six panels carved from ginkgo wood.  The fourth one says “Most cherished in this mundane world is a place without traffic; truly in the midst of a city there can be mountain and forest.”  Wen Zhengming.

This floor pattern is called “plum blossoms on cracked ice.”  So pretty!

The scholar’s study.

The tea house.

Steps across the water.

A beautiful waterfall.

Though all of the materials came from China, the plants came from the US.  This tree came from a house in Southeast Portland. The men working on the garden found it and asked the owner if it could be transplanted to the garden because the trees take so long to grow.  The owner said if his neighbors (who also loved the tree) agreed it could move.  It did.

This is a Lake Tai rock which is formed underwater over many decades in Lake Tai.  These are meditative rocks and viewing it from bottom to top is akin to venturing up a mountain peak.  It is now not allowed to export Lake Tai rock, so the garden is very happy to have been created at at time when export was still possible.

Keyhole framing.

Our great tour guide.

Nice “oasis in the city” photo.  That’s Big Pink, the tallest building in downtown Portland, peering over the garden wall.

More oasis stuff.

Yet more “oasis in the city”.

Here I got to tell my fortune.  I shook the can of sticks until one presented itself to me.  Then I looked at the number and opened the corresponding drawer to find my fortune.

Mine was “a long sought position in life will soon be yours.”  Sounds good to me.

Beautiful entrance to the Scholar’s private garden.

Nice detail here.

Here is the upper floor of the tea house.  If I had more time I would have gotten some tea.

Overall, this was a great way to spend a few hours before returning to work.  It is peaceful and calm and really is an oasis in the middle of the city.

A walk through Southeast

I had a class at the Attic Institute, so I walked from the Pearl all the way there.  It was a great day for a walk.  Here’s what I saw.
Inappropriate use of an apostrophe. 

The approach to the Burnside Bridge.  When I lived downtown and Matt lived at 29th & Stark, I would walk this bridge often, going between our two places.

Boy playing in the fountain.

Nice chalk graffiti on the bridge.

This establishment which advertised low-cost legal services and did not advertise with words all the plants for sale.  But the display spoke for itself.

Nice tiny little house.

I swung past the shuttered Washington High School, built at a time when they knew how to make high schools look awesome.

Including quotes over the doors. Ahem, Oregon legislature.  Ahem.

I was intrigued by this roof which does not match the Victorian-style house at all.

And then discovered that the tiny building itself is something of interest.

I saw a sign painter plying her trade.

This part of town has some really great facades.

Don’t those columns inspire awe?  The other nice part about the neighborhood is that the lots are small, so you can get very close to these houses.  And the houses get very close to each other.

There was a little bit of painting.  Some craft (the bookshelf) some art (the canvas).

These type of houses, with the hipped roof, are fairly rare in Portland.  When you see them, they are almost always sideways in the lot, like these.

Nice stonework on this church.

There was a farmers market open.

A helpful sign.

An attempt to capture the rose and the colorful bush behind it.

A good paint job begun.  But not finished.

Trees removed.  I bet the light changed dramatically in these houses.

Should you want to purchase a “garden condo” this one is for sale. It’s one bedroom, one bath, 997 square feet.  No parking.  $245,900.  Yeah.  That’s why I don’t live in this neck of the woods.  Sorry people who used to live in complex when it was an apartment.  People with WAY more money than you are eager to move in.

It wouldn’t be a walk on Hawthorne without a picture of the Ecoroof on the Hostel.  

Sewing machine not working?  Why not use a few of them as weights to hold the awning for a food cart.?

The food cart in question.

Don’t forget that “Gift Certificates Always Fit.”

Once upon a time it was the Sunnyside Lodge.

Now?  The Hawthorne Theater.

This sign made me giggle.

An after school walk

Home from Overlook Park, though Overlook, Arbor Lodge and Kenton neighborhoods.
Swirly parking strip.

Gnarly old trees in Overlook.
TARDIS
Gorgeous yard and cottage.
Precise hedge.
Telephone booth peeking over a hedge.
On the fence in that same yard is the “Poem Booth.”
My favorite secret way to cross a busy street.
Burning bush among the strawberries.
Stairs being overtaken.
Retaining wall overtaken.
A nice swoop and orange trim.
This home does not fit in at all, and is tremendously ugly, but I love it for those two reasons.
In the side yard of the tremendously ugly home are many wood crafted signs.
This bungalow went and grew a big backside in the Omaha woods.
Kind of looks like a dead cat, but was actually a very happy warm cat.

Victorian with a stellar paint job.
Check out the detail on the door.

Can I make it through this alleyway?

It was okay until I found myself completely surrounded by blackberry bushes.
I made it through, though can’t recommend it.

World Book Night

Have you heard about World Book Night?  Me neither. It’s a night where publishers publish books (list is here) so people can walk around and give them away.  How fun is that?  Powell’s had a kickoff event where Cheryl Strayed, Matthew Dickman, Amanda Coplin, Paul Collins, and Chelsea Cain all talked about a book that had influenced them.
Here’s Cheryl Strayed introducing the night. 
Matthew Dickman told us of his favorite book.  In the manner of all of the speakers, he managed to call out several before he got to the one he was really talking about.  He mentioned Island of the Blue Dolphins, (and I knew right then we were the same age, because that was a big one for me too) then talked about the poems they read in school, which were dense and heady and hard to comprehend.  So it was a watershed moment when he found All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton and he could read and understand the poems.  That lead him to Charles Burkowski and then his teacher gave him a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.  Along with the book came a postcard with Allan Ginsberg standing on a corner in New York with all his poet friends, and Dickman said that where he grew up, guys standing on the corner was a bad thing, and bad things came from guys standing on the corner.  To see a bunch of poets hanging about in such a way and creating art instead of trouble, was something to remember.  And so he read us an excerpt from Howl.
Chelsea Cain bought up her copy of Synonyms and Antonyms. Her mother had given it to her and inscribed a note in the flyleaf.  So we know that it was bought after a viewing of My Friend Flicka.  Cain pointed out that her mother made a habit of inscribing books, which means that now she can never get rid of said books.  Also that this was the first tool she was given as a writer and she used to page through it.  Now she uses a website to find her synonyms, which is a different thing than flipping through a book.  She then read to us from The Mystery of the Glowing Eye, one of the many Nancy Drew Books she read over and over again from first to fifth grade.
Paul Collins brought his copy of Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome.  Despite sharing a last name, too much time has passed between this event and this write-up of the event to remember why he chose that book.
Amanda brought Mouchette by George Bernanos.  She especially liked the version of the New York Review of Books Classics.
Cheryl Strayd brought her copy of Black Beauty that her mother read to her when she was three. (!)  Strayd said that she hasn’t read this book to her children yet, even though they are something like eight and ten years old.  The horrible things that happen to the horse are too much.  However, the book was incredibly influential in beginning the Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals and the writing is beautiful.  Plus, her mother was a horsewoman and always had a horse.
This was an excellent presentation and introduction to World Book Night.  Thanks Powell’s.

Trimet employs white-out to eliminate racist statement. Probably not ironically.

“No Blacks.” Someone had graffitied, in answer to the statement, “What makes this place great.”
Then the word “no” was covered in white-out.
I don’t really know if it was a Trimet employee who used the whiteout, or a random passerby with whiteout in their backpack.  Either way, I snickered.

Unique apartments.

These are near my house and I love them both.  I worry that they will be torn down for something fancier, so thought I would snap a few pictures just in case.
Here’s the street side of this complex.  I love the swinging modern silhouette of the building and the fact that the garages are underneath, with the apartments hanging over.  Some of the garage doors still work, and some are permanently sealed shut.

Front entrance.  There is a pretty shrubbery outside of every door and a garden area on the other side of the parking lot.  I’ve never seen inside these units, but I imagine they are all one-bedroom jobbers.

This fourplex is right next door.  I like how it looks like it has been added onto over the years.  There’s even a random bay-type window in one unit.  And the corners of the building have art deco glass.  A few of these units have been vacant for some time, and it’s a hot rental market here, so this is building I’m most worried about.