ArchivePage 3 of 5

Zakir Hussain Visits Portland

Published
by
galactictraveler
on April 19, 2008
in culture, entertainment and events
. 0 Comments

I love Portland because it attracts top notch world class musicians like Zakir Hussain. Zakir is revered as the best tabla player in the world and India’s music ambassador. He is also the son of Alla Rakha, a respected tabla player who played with Ravi Shankar in the 1960’s.

The performance was at the magnificent Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. We sat about 10 rows back from the stage; the short distance provided very intimate glimpses of drummers’ hands flying away to Indian and world fusion grooves.

Afterwards, my family and I got to share some sweet moments talking with Zakir. That’s the beauty of this hometown venue; security is not absurd and leaves room for human interaction.

Hands down, it was one of the best concerts I have ever seen and I look forward to his next tour through Portland. Zakir has played here every year, and like the turning of the seasons, his return is guaranteed.

I encourage all to catch his performance next spring and look forward to being transformed by his Indian rhythms once more.

Photographing Portland for the 3rd Anniversary of the PDX Flickr Meetups

Published
by
Aaron
on April 19, 2008
in events
. 0 Comments

This coming Saturday (the 26th) is the third anniversary of a bunch of Portland Flickr users getting together. Instead of having a single group meetup, a bunch of folks from the pdx Flickr group are gathering at various spots throughout the city to take some photos and have some fun.

The plans are still being finalized, but several meeting points and times are already in the works, from sunrise at Pittock Mansion to sunset near the St. Johns Bridge. All of the information and planning can be found at this Flickr discussion thread. With the range of times and locations, I hope that everyone who loves to photograph Portland can participate in some way in what should be an awesome day of photography.

image by Flickr user Whateverthing, used under a Creative Commons license

Featured Portland Flickr Image

Published
by
Dawn
on April 17, 2008
in culture
. 0 Comments

A quick search for Portland on Flickr reminded me that we have many talented photographers in the Portland metro area. Here is just one stunning image uploaded today to Flickr by atul666.

Photo by atul666

Attorneys who love chickens

Published
by
sarah
on April 17, 2008
in Uncategorized, north portland and portland is awesome
. 3 Comments

It is a Sunday, and of course I am going to the Chicken Fest at Livingscape Nursery. I have volunteered to help, I am, after all, That Chicken Lady. It is early, and it is cold, and I wonder if maybe I am too early. There are no chicken banners. There are no chicken-y greeters. I wander around, a minute, finding all the lovely hens who have been loaned by local chicken people. I say their breeds to myself. Banded Rock. Ameraucana. Rhode Island Red. Australorp! Cochin.

I see someone who is wearing a chicken hat. Ahh, I’m not too early. When he stops buzzing about, I approach him.

“I’m Sarah Gilbert,” I say. He is wearing worn jeans and a yellow felt hat with a chicken, and looks like he hasn’t shaven for a day or two. Like the sort of person who would run a nursery focused on sustainability and native plantings. “Are you THE Sarah Gilbert?” he asks warmly. He seems vaguely familiar. “Of course you are!”

We know each other, he tells me, and I can’t place him. I blame the chicken hat. “I’m your patent attorney!” he says.

Steve Adamson is very probably my favorite attorney, ever. His patient and careful explanation of the patent and trademark process for one of the startups I worked for was key in developing my own geeky love for intellectual property. I think my boss was very, very slow in paying him, and Steve never got angry or sent me to collections. I find myself hoping that he was paid in full. I went on maternity leave with my second son before that had been wrapped up.

And now he’s here, on N. Vancouver Avenue just around the corner from Pix and SCRAP, running a nursery. Where they sell chickens! I bought two babies, an Ameraucana and a Columbia Wyandotte (”I saw a picture of this chicken and I knew we HAD to carry them!” Steve said excitedly.) They also have blueberries, and huckleberries, and all kinds of great plants and seeds. You should really go there for your baby chicks and your native grapes. And maybe if you are an IP geek too, you could kvetch with him about the state of the USPTO. That’s just the kind of place Portland is.

Portland is a town of “do-gooders”

Published
by
Eva
on April 17, 2008
in events and portland is awesome
. 1 Comment

Oregon has more nonprofits per capita than any other state in the union and the bulk of those are located in Portland.  In some ways this is a really good thing.  When Robert Putnam was writing Bowling Alone he bet a steak dinner that the phenonema was nation-wide.  He lost.  He lost because of Portland.  We are a city that is socially and civilly engaged.

Oregon is not a wealthy state and all of the nonprofits struggle to stay afloat financially.  But Portland’s nonprofit community is small and tight and very collaborative.  I see this time and time again through CNRG’s monthly nonprofit networking and free training events at CubeSpace, through the Nonprofit Continuum Conference and through events like the one I attended last night coordinated by Carole Zoom.

Carole Zoom is trying to support the nonprofit community (and herself) by coordinating an efforts to help Portland nonprofits buy a building of their own.  This is something she did while living in Eugene and now that she lives in Portland, she wants to duplicate it here.  Last night was the initial meeting for this effort and she expected about 20 people.  I stopped counting when we got to 60.

Not all of the organizations that were in that room are in a place to participate in the purchasing of a building.  Some are not ready financially, some are not ready organizationally.  But, when we broke into small groups to discuss what could happen if organizations could make mortgage rather than rent payments, there was a incredible transformation that took place.  Every group that reported back talked about the synergy that came from those small, short conversations.  Groups that had never spoken suddenly started brainstorming ways to work together to achieve their mission, serve their target populations and generally be creative in the face of great needs and minimal budgets.  That is why Portland is Awesome.

Thinking out loud

Published
by
howard
on April 16, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Emily Harris grew up in Portland and attended Lincoln High.  She spent some time at KBOO and, in 2002, landed a post with NPR, reporting from Central Europe and then Iraq, a beat that earned her a 2005 WW cover story.
Now she’s host of the OPB broadcast Think Out Loud, which - to my mind - is a piece of what makes Portland awesome. According to Emily, other NPR affiliates around the country are closely following the reception that this program format finds among radio listeners in the OPB market.

Hawken, Lopez and Solnit at Literary Arts

Published
by
howard
on April 15, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Every time I come to Portland, I’m faced with the question of why I don’t live here.
- Paul Hawken, at Literary Arts-hosted discussion, this morning at W+K

Yesterday evening, along with writers Barry Lopez and Rebecca Solnit, Hawken sat the Armory stage. Lounging in comfy chairs on loan from the ReBuilding Center and amidst by the woody cacophony of Portland Center Stage’s Great Notion set design, the three tag teamed across a wide terrain from “community as reciprocity” to “prefigurative politics.”

One topic that loomed large was language.

Don’t call it alternative energy, urged Hawken. Energy from the sun or wind or tides is primary energy.

The answer to every either/or question is, I think, “yes,” sounded Solnit.

When we speak of social or ecological restoration, what we mean is “reconciliation,” elucidated Lopez.

While the affair at the Armory soared, the morning’s W+K coffee turned somber. Hawken foresees an immanent “red queen dilemma,” in which - amidst interconnected food, water, energy and climate crunches - societies scramble to meet basic needs.

And this (awesome Portland), stated simply, is one place that’s pointing the way. You must get tired of everyone telling you that, he smiled. But everyone is looking at Portland.

And what we need you to do is to keep raising the bar.

Make opportunities for wishes

Published
by
missburrows
on April 15, 2008
in entertainment, southwest and technology
. 2 Comments

Back in the days when I used to ride the school bus to school, I was told by a fellow classmate that if you put your finger on a screw (in the bus) and lifted your feet while the bus drove over the train tracks, you could make a wish. Strange? Yes. But I wasn’t going to question the possibility of getting a wish.

I no longer ride a school bus, but whenever my husband and I head in to Portland we pass by the Portland Aerial Tram. If one (or both) of the trams is out, I get to make a wish.

Silly? Yes. But who doesn’t want more opportunities for wishes?

Something in the muddy water

Published
by
adamd
on April 14, 2008
in culture and food and drink
. 4 Comments

There’s something about the hot, muddy water brew in Portland. It attracts even non-coffee drinkers. What is so magnetic about the many cafes and coffee shops around town?

It may be about our love of the drink, sure. Seattle is considered the coffee capital, but we have held our own. Legendary Stumptown Coffee had seven Portland locations before expanding to Seattle. And what city other than Portland could produce a Rails-powered, award-winning coffee tasting site?

There are plenty of cocoa and tea orders to show it goes beyond the love of coffee. It gets to the core of what makes Portland: community. We go to our neighborhood coffee shop because it’s our neighborhood coffee shop. We see friends, we enjoy the company of strangers, and we remember that we live in a city where people are valued.

So, yes, there is something in the muddy water, whether it’s from the Columbia to the north, the Willamette down the middle, or the brew from the shop around the corner. Whatever it is that keeps us coming together, I hope it never goes away, because when it comes to community, there’s no place like Portland.

Portland is Bicycling and Bicycling is Portland

Published
by
pdxbob
on April 14, 2008
in culture, entertainment, events, outdoors and portland is awesome
. 1 Comment

Do you think Portlanders like to ride bicycles? That’s a rhetorical question. Of course we do! The Springwater Corridor running along the east riverbank and then east through Johnson Creek is one of the best paved foot and pedal paths I’ve seen anywhere. If you like off-road, in Forest Park is the eleven-mile long Leif Erikson Drive,  a wide dirt and gravel swath that had originally been cleared for a earlier twentieth-century housing development (that fortunately fell through).

Then there are the organizations and online sites! The center of the online universe for Portland bicycling is BikePortland.org, a site which the founder, Jonathan Maus, dedicates himself to full-time. That’s where I get all of the latest news covering legislation, new bike rules, accidents, and anything else related to this greenest of all travel modes. There are also awesome (yes, they deserve that hype) organized bike trips throughout the year. A relatively new organization, ORBike, runs bike events such as the Portland Century, the Worst Day of the Year Ride and Bike to the Future. I volunteered to post signs on the Century last summer and then rode the quarter century (wish I had done the half century because the rest stops were stocked with goodies like fresh, prepared in front of you, strawberry shortcake, energy bars, fruit and lots of water). The best part of the ride was the people — everyone so friendly and accommodating. At the finish line, in the North Park Blocks at PSU, was a gourmet wild salmon dinner and local micro-brews waiting. I was in heaven! The most surprising part: I left my bike unlocked along with hundreds of others and out of sight for well over an hour and I had nothing to worry about. I would never ever have done that in Boston (my old home).

I can’t write about bicycling in Portland without mentioning the Bike Boxes. We lost a couple of bicyclists over the past year in accidents where they were hit by a truck turning right into them. One of the city’s responses was to create several bike boxes with the intent of giving bicyclists a safe haven in front of stopped traffic at lights. Our city government really appears to care about cyclists. This isn’t an endorsement in any way but one of the leading candidates for Mayor, Sam Adams, is in fact an avid bicyclist and advocate.

I live in the hills overlooking Cedar Mill, west of Skyline and it’s not an easy place to embark from on a bike trip. We will take our bikes down to Sauvie Island or to the East Esplanade to get some level riding in. Someday I hope I’ll be able to ride to work without worrying about manic rush-hour drivers. In Portland, I have hope for such a future.