Live in NEN or SESNA? Tuesday Night they Talk Transportation for the Neighborhood Plan!

Tuesday, July 9th at 6:30pm, the joint NEN-SESNA project to update the Neighborhood Plan meets to consider transportation.

They'll be meeting at Court Street Christian Church, 1699 Court Street NE, in the heart of the neighborhood.

The bulk of the neighborhoods are sandwiched between the railroad and a line that roughly follows 25th street.  Institutional uses like the Airport, and State lands for the Prison, State Hospital, and Fairgrounds are other significant borders.

Much of the neighborhoods are inside the 1903 city limits and they enjoyed robust streetcar access to the city center.

Parking Meter Editorial and No Third Bridge Front Page Piece Show Contrasting Approaches

Better late than never, the paper finally ran a piece on the N3B group.  Its timing, of course, is curious:  Long after the City Council deliberations and vote, long after the information might have served the public interest for this milestone.

The approach in the piece, also less analytical and more personality-profile, differs interestingly from a sort of companion editorial on parking meters.

(It should be noted that the reporter behind the N3B piece previously worked in depth on WESD, and is an investigative reporter rather than features writer.  We can hope that her piece is just the start of more in-depth reporting!)

If the paper has seemed locked into the a priori conclusion and circular logic of "we need a bridge because we need a bridge," on the matter of parking meters, in their editorial today they show a significantly different spirit of inquiry, exhibit analytical curiosity and sophistication, and a willingness to innovate and experiment.

They also met with parking meter critics in a formal editorial meeting, a courtesy they did not extend to N3B advocates.

But the spirit in this editorial is frankly close to the spirit of the N3B advocates.

So why the disconnect?

Constance Fowler Show at Hallie Ford Offers Quiet Respite from Heat and Noise this Weekend

Need something quiet this weekend? A respite from heat, firecrackers and mortars, libations and food?

Hallie Ford might be just the ticket.  In addition to the permanent collection, there are three shows, each very different and worth the visit.

Constance Fowler, Waller Hall, 1938-40 (reprinted 1969),
wood engraving, 6 ½ in. x 6 in.,
gift of Constance Fowler, FOW92.003.
Hallie Ford Museum of Art

Constance Fowler's show is interesting, but it is the woodcuts from early in her career that steal the show. Completed for her MFA thesis, the twenty woodcut prints, shortly after published as The Old Days in and Near Salem, Oregon in 1940, show her engagement with the valley around statehood and the Civil War, a very small number of whose inhabitants, quite elderly of course, might still have been around.

The book is lovely, but it looks like it has been in circulation perhaps and might not have been printed on acid-free paper.  It looks, in fact, like it is all too vulnerable to time and age.  It's a pity, because it could be a more important example of book art - at least locally.

The Old Days in and Near Salem, Oregon
(Seattle: Dogwood Press, 1940),
twenty wood engravings of historic structures
 and sites in the Willamette Valley

WPA- and Depression-era art showed a lot of interest in history and in people, producing a regionalism across the country that after the war yielded to abstraction and expressionism.  Fowler moved similarly. Curator Roger Hull notes

the postwar phenomena of Abstract Expressionism and complete non-representation were as challenging for her as they were for many of her contemporaries the country over. She spent the rest of her career experimenting with vocabularies of organic and geometric abstraction.

Your mileage will vary, of course, but I found her non-representation generic - too typical and ultimately not very interesting.  It didn't speak.

But when she engaged with the land and people here, in this place, as she did earlier in her career, even maybe got a little sentimental, as she might have in a couple of the interiors from The Old Days - well, there's a there there.

Downstairs in the permanent collection there are other WPA-era works for more context - and one contemporary painting of Oregon City that's a ringer the group!  From a distance it fit right in, and it wasn't until you got up closer it began to dawn that this wasn't from the 30's, but was from the last decade.  Nicely done.

Elsewhere in the museum is an overwhelming show of Holly Andres' staged photos.  I don't know how to bend mention of them to local history, transportation, or urbanism, but they're mighty powerful.  Check 'em out.

Declare Your Independence! Go Gas Free. It's a Patriotic Thing

Last week the President announced his initiative on carbon pollution:

Many Americans who already feel the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it — they’re busy dealing with it. Firefighters are braving longer wildfire seasons. Farmers are seeing crops wilt one year, and wash away the next. Western families are worried about water that’s drying up. And while we know no single weather event is caused solely by climate change, we also know that in an increasingly warmer world, all weather events are affected by it.

The costs of inaction can be measured in lost lives and livelihoods, lost homes and businesses, higher food costs and insurance premiums, and hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency services and disaster relief. So the question is not whether we need to act, but whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world we leave to our children, and to future generations.

This plan will cut the dangerous carbon pollution that contributes to climate change. For years, groups like the American Lung Association have warned us that carbon pollution threatens our health and the air our children breathe. We limit the mercury, sulfur, and arsenic in our air and water, but today, there are no federal limits on the amount of carbon pollution that power plants can pump into the air. That’s not safe. So we’ll work with states and businesses to set new standards that put an end to this limitless dumping of carbon.

It doesn't just have to be the power plants.  Transportation also creates a lot of carbon pollution.

Here's an easy way to whack as much as 20% of fuel costs and reduce emissions: Make a commitment to Fuel-Free Fridays. Make the commute and errands by bike or on foot.

Some Ironies about Restoring the Mattingly Mural

There's news this week of a campaign to fund restoration of the montage of silent movie stars on the backside of the Elsinore.

So what happens when someone finally develops the parking lot on the other side of the alley?

Mattingly Mural:  Visible because of Parkway blight
and a surface parking lot!

From the paper:

The Friends of Mattingly's Mural and the Historic Elsinore Theatre's Board of Directors have begun a formal drive to raise the remaining $10,000 needed to restore the theater’s mural.

An anonymous donor kick-started the effort in January by giving $10,000. The total budget for the project is $20,000.

The late artist James Mattingly painted the 68-by-65-foot mural, “Theatrical Heartscape,” in 1984. A tribute to the theater's Vaudeville origins, it pictures early film stars Theda Bara, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich and W.C. Fields.

“It’s a lively tribute,” said theater director Steve Martin. “Obviously the ravages of time have faded it. It’s a great iconic gateway to downtown. It’s part of downtown. We want to restore it to its original grandeur.”

The support group and the theater have spent the past few months studying the project and choosing a restoration expert, Portland-based Dan Cohen of ArtFX Murals.

The plan is to clean the wall, repaint the mural and seal it in late August or early September, when the weather is likely to cooperate, Martin said.

The reason the mural was painted was because the side of the building was visible over the parking lot.  It was to decorate a void and reduce blight.  And if it has come to function as something of a gateway, it does so not because it presides over a gate, but because it presides over and uplifts something that should be at least a little shameful - a sites of demolition, the empty footprints where more valuable and more interesting things used to be.  The 1926 Sanborn map shows homes here where the parking lot is today.  (Not to mention the adjacent Capitol Theater...but that's another story.)

Weekend Fun: Racing at Pringle Creek Community Returns Sunday

Remember the racing out at Pringle Creek Community two years ago?  It was great fun and a terrific setting, but unfortunately they didn't do it last year.

Greenhouses, bioswales, and the cafe at Painter's Hall
make for a terrific backdrop to racing

But it's back again this year on Sunday, June 30th!

Juniors start at 8:45am, and the last mens race starts at 2:40pm.

Birdwatching and the Ruins of Fairview Hospital

With the warm weather they might even have a volleyball net set up!

Check it out and cheer on a race or two.

Summer Brings First Breakfast this Friday

Though you might have been fooled by the weather we've been having this week, summer is here!

Enjoy them while you can
Frank J. Moore Ad, April 1910
For more on Moore - here and here

On the Promenade

And that means the first Breakfast on Bikes for the season!

We will be on the Promenade just east of the railroad tracks at 12th and Chemeketa on Friday, June 28th. We'll have free coffee, pastries, and fruit for people who bike between 7am and 9am.

Tell your friends!  Recruit your neighbors.  Ditch the car and its tiresome commute!

Please support our generous sponsors!
Cascade Baking Company
Governor's Cup Coffee Roasters
LifeSource Natural Foods
Salem Bicycle Club
Willamette University.


View Larger Map