Recently in Superfund Category

When I can't find time to blog about anything else, I can always blog the Superfund Site!

Last weekend I was charmed to see this purple balloon sitting among the blackberry brambles. Up on the bluff, there were a lot of people making noise, so I assume there was some kind of festivity going on at UP which resulted in purple balloons being sent willy-nilly across the landscape.

It seemed not only nicely incongruous (as so many things do at the Superfund Site), but nicely symbolic of the University of Portland's planned purchase of the property.

As a neighbor, I truly hope it happens. I can think of no better steward of the place, given their proximity, and especially after hearing their interest in the property couched in terms of the Pastoral Letter. There are plenty of reasons to be cynical about universities as property owners. And I've never noticed UP as a particularly community-oriented institution. Indeed, in the 20 some years that I've lived in North Portland, I've barely noticed them, beyond the marvelous dog walk opportunities on campus among the students, and a one-time visit to my neighborhood association by one of their community outreach staff (they may well have visited more often -- I don't go that often myself -- but it felt like a new thing when I did see them).

However, I have to believe that their commitment to the values set out in the Pastoral Letter are sincere, and I think this is the best opportunity for us as neighbors to have access to the property, as well as an opportunity for UP to engage its neighborhood.

I'm totally confused by the state of affairs recently -- Zeidell wants to maintain moorage as part of the land deal, and UP is suing him over it because I think he added the moorage at the 11th hour? And I haven't seen much about it in the news lately, but I may have missed something (and goodness knows that OregonLive isn't going to help me search).

In any case, I really hope it works out. Even if it meant fewer off leash walks for me and Pica, I think it could be a nice contribution to the neighborhood, especially the North Portland Greenway.

On shore, these things look like they might be breast implants that fell off a container ship on its way to Terminal 4, but the other day I saw this one floating in the water, and it looks like it might be an actual jellyfish -- but what do I know. This in the Willamette River, at the McCormick/Baxter Superfund site beach.

And this is my first youtube entry, in honor of the much ballyhooed google purchase. Next time I'll make the captions bigger.

Matthew asked me to give a talk at the Public Speakers room at the Affair at the Jupiter Hotel and so I'm going to talk about my dear old Superfund site -- I never get tired of that place!

I described my talk as:

"A brief historic overview of the north Portland McCormick/Baxter superfund site and adjacent properties, together with some photos, some music, some digressions on how to conduct historic research on Portland industrial properties, and a series of sincere questions about the aesthetic appeal of abandoned industrial sites in a post-industrial economy (with some mostly uninformed parallels suggested between punk/goth/emo, and the 18th century Cult of Ruins)."

And I think that's pretty much what I'll do -- with any luck!

No They Do (aka Pete) will be joining me with some soulful strumming. He's promised me a cover of Nothing but Flowers, from which I took my talk title.

We'll be going at 3 PM on Saturday.

And boy oh boy -- the other speakers sound really interesting. There will be talks on dancing, drinks, furniture, geography, karaoke, reading, democracy, and of course art, among other things. My kind of stuff. I'm kind of intimidated, actually, but I think my pictures will be good, anyway and I'm pretty good at projecting my voice so at the very least, it will be easy to hear.

Here's a description of "Public Speakers" from Matthew:

12 x 14
(Public Speakers September 29 - October 1, Jupiter Hotel, Portland, Oregon)

Public Speakers is a group of autonomous cells in four cities commissioning and presenting new public lectures for a popular audience. Past lecture events include "Psychedelic Logging," "Mansex Agitprop," and "Monkey Wreaks Havoc in Suburbia" (all in Portland, Oregon). For more information write to publicspeakers@gmail.com.

(Mary again): I hope to see you there!

Update:

You can download the complete program as a PDF here

Spine and I went canoeing in the slough last weekend, and he blogs about it here. One thing I forgot to reference in my comment there was this fine history of the slough.

Find out what's a slough and how is it pronounced.

On a darker note, Spine mentions bodies partly in jest, but seriously -- just a couple years ago they found this woman's body cut up and put in a suitcase into the slough. Her boyfriend did it, of course. When I told Betsy I was going on the slough with someone and used a masculine pronoun she got all worried it was someone I'd met on the internet or something and was like, "be careful!"

I tried to find a reference to that slough cut up body story in the internet, but get nada with searches like "columbia slough" + "cut up body" "suitcase" "murder" etc.

OK -- this might work.

If not, I'll give you the highlights:

"Divers began searching the Columbia Slough at Kelley Point Park for Brown's body and evidence in the murder and soon recovered human remains from the slough."

and

"Police stopped searching and asked the public to watch area waters for a green, Army-style duffel bag that possibly held clues to the murder and more remains."

Sure enough, someone found it at the beach, but not the slough beach.

Anyway -- yay! The slough is fun!!!