Wreath Double-Whammy

UPDATE: the kids figured out that Peacock Lane is, in fact, unclaimed territory. They wasted no time in claiming it as their personal wreath-selling domain. In previous years, a Boy Scout would serve the street's greenery needs; he apparently moved on. Nobody else has supplied the street for a few years, leaving the residents on their own to buy at retail. So when M and R walked the street, and identified themselves as "the house on the end, behind the tree," most of the houses ordered.

 

Of course, it probably helped that I was putting up our holiday lights this weekend, signaling to the rest of the Peacock Lane residents that our house will, for the first time in anyone's memory, participate in their show. 

Because of this, we've been invited to the Peacock Lane planning meeting.... looks like we're now running with the IN crowd. Thanks, kids!!

 

Add another case-in-point to my earlier blog about the small-town community feeling.

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M dances ballet. This year, her ballet school is doing a holiday wreath fundraiser. There's a ten wreath minimum. There is one wreath to choose from. Ballet wreaths are 'local delivery' only. Basic 20-inch wreath: $20.

R is in Boy Scouts. This year, his troop is doing a holiday wreath fundraiser. There is no explicit minimum, but the scouts have a whole bunch of wreath and swag choices. Boy Scouts can ship an order anywhere in the continental US. Basic 20-inch wreath: $20. Shipped anywhere: $38. I'll post pictures of the Boy Scout offerings shortly.

Oh, the dilemma! **

I get the strong sense that both programs are using the very same wreath manufacturer right here in Portland; the end product should be identical in both cases. And, because both programs are going direct to the manufacturer, they're selling at the wholesale price.

Here's the description that seems to be accurate for both programs:

Hand tied northwest greenery using Oregon Juniper, Incense Cedar and Noble Fir. Adorned with Ponderosa pine cones. Inner diameter: 12 inches; outer diameter: 20 inches. 

These same wreaths, at the local store or corner tree stand, will cost around $30 this year. So you get a discount over retail, and help fund a developmental program.

So here's the general call out for wreath orders. If you're local to the Portland area and would like to support either program, we'll happily take your order for a wreath and deliver it directly to you. You can specifically state your preference for one charity or another. Otherwise, we plan to fill the ballet minimum requirement ahead of the Boy Scout program.

Boy Scouts have another fund raiser they do as well, so Scouting isn't really missing out if we err toward ballet.

Gotta love the conflicting family obligations, yeah?

 

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** One program (ballet) uses the stick (minimum sales) to complete the program; the other program (Boy Scouts) uses a carrot (more options, shipping).

The Bigger It Is, The Smaller It Feels

I've been ruminating on this for a while now and it has been sneaking into my blog. I find it paradoxical that we've moved into the city core from the metro edges, only to find that we have a tighter, more hometown flavored life now than ever before. Here are some cases in point:

1. Our neighborhood has a beat cop. I haven't met him yet, but I know his first name.
2. The gas station attendants know us as neighborhood locals. They ask how we're doing as we fill up our cars. When we need air for tires, they give us tokens because "neighbors can use the air machine for free."
3. The neighborhood Boy Scout troop connects us throughout the central SE by way of professional contacts, with doctors, restaurateurs, sewer workers, lawyers and architects.
4. I read the neighborhood newspaper, the Southeast Examiner only to find long-lost college classmates quoted in articles - and living only blocks away!
5. My son gets to meet the mayor...and give a speech to the Portland City Council.  Among a handful of things that makes R stand out to the mayor is the uniqueness of our location...right off Peacock Lane
6. More than one restaurant in the neighborhood not only remembers us but tends to know what we're going to order -- we have 'usuals' !!
7. A neighborhood meat wholesaler has offered to let us by at restaurant pricing, just because we live in the neighborhood and are active in the neighborhood community.
8. Political candidates come to our door. No, Really. We get a lot of door-to-door canvassing.
9. We shop in the same Fred Meyer store where Grandpa Jerry worked as he finished school. There's a multi-generational thing there, nowadays.

All this, while we live, flat-out, in the city. Oh sure, you might be thinking to yourself, you're in a neighborhood, so you've got neighborhood stuff. Well, here's my list of big city things we live with that are of note:

• I can take any one of four bus routes to other places in the city, all within  two blocks of our front door.
• The library is two blocks away.
• Things that do not require driving to access:
  
  • The airport ($2.00 each way, no parking necessary)
  • Ballet (both performances and school)
  • theater,
  • downtown
  • mall shopping
  • nightspots
  • professional sports
  • family-style movie theater
  • three different high schools
  • groceries
  • pharmacy
  • garden store
  • gas station
  • dance studio
  • play ground
  • Boy Scouts
  • dozens of restaurants
  • Kinko's
  • Health Care (docs, naturopaths, optometrists, etc.)
  • City Library
  • Banks
  • outdoor produce stand
  • haircuts
    
• Come time for high school, we can choose between the neighborhood high school, or three close-at-hand magnet schools: technical; arts & dance; business & commerce
• We are equidistant to three universities: Reed College; Portland State; University of Portland; and a seminary. All three are close enough that a child could live at home while attending.
• Our in-town fireworks display, on the Willamette River, is a bike ride away -- 35 blocks.

Here's the paradox. When we lived in the 'burbs, the societal arguments for doing so often included 'sense of community.' Okay, I'll accept that. EXCEPT that I never had a beat cop I knew by name. I never had a candidate come to my door. The mayor didn't recognize my kid and know where he lived. Shoot, I even recognize the three guys who scavenge returnables out of our recycling every Thursday evening, before the garbage trucks get there.

This is the sort of 'know everybody' stuff you expect from a small town -- Myrtle Point, say, or Pacific City. Only it's happening deep within the one town that contains half of the state's population.... it's certainly not happening in the suburbs, where we're told we'll get that sort of lifestyle.

There really isn't a way to wrap this set of observations up; no ribbon of prose to tie around this blog entry like a bow and turn it into an essay. It's just a societal paradox I need to put forward. I'll close with a question:

We're learning that the post-WW2 belief that our cars would change the world turned out to be all too true, but in dangerous and unanticipated ways. Our 'alternative energy' societal thinking marks not NEW thinking, but rather a return to sustainable OLD thinking. Does it not follow, then, that the post-WW2 thinking about suburbs, and the aloofness they built into themselves, is yet another body of societal thinking that is changing?

I certainly feel like my SE Portland experience has re-shaped my thinking.

The Face of the Fan Base, 2008/9

 

So, we got the following email this morning. This is worth celebrating, in my opinion.

Hi N,

I thought you might get a kick out of this site: http://www.nba.com/blazers/index_main.html

S and I are actually shown at the top in the animated GIF!

P

A quick look at the link, and ..... Yup. There they are!

Founding members of the Johnson family VIP people Hall of Fame.

Portland is such a small town, really. I could riff on how, the closer to the center of city I move, the more it transforms into a small-town community atmosphere. This snapshot is just another example of how intimate our town really, really is. 

Here they are, afterall, two of our favorite people now representing the whole community as 'the face of the fan base' on the front page for the only top-tier professional sport in Portland. Imagine... 

Taliban splits with al Qaeda, seeks peace

This from CNN today:

Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with the Afghan government to end the country's bloody conflict -- and are severing their ties with al Qaeda, sources close to the historic discussions have told CNN.

During the talks, described as an ice breaker, all parties agreed that the only solution to Afghanistan's conflict is through dialogue, not fighting.

My Baha'i identity is watching these events unfold both cautiously and hopefully. Please let this be for-real.

Sources: Taliban split with al Qaeda, seek peace - CNN.com

Weekend Update

I got to start my day with a workout at the gym. C got the kids going with the still-new routine of ballet and gymnastics on Saturday mornings. It's working better every week, this new schedule.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to a variety of maintenance and get-ready-for-winter activities. I washed both cars, for instance. I did some basement and garage organization and cleanup. Stuff  like that.

Saturday evening was at Baha'i Star Trek night. I'll explain Star Trek nights in a future blog post. Suffice it to say they're a lot of fun and rather goofy!

There is just SUCH a sense of community evolving for us here. Tonight, for instance, C and I were reading our community newspaper, The Southeast Examiner, together. I was reading an article on the upcoming Apple Festival at the Portland Nursery when I stopped dead mid-sentence. You see, I came across a name of someone I knew from college. He's a neighbor! I haven't crossed paths with this guy since 1985 in Corvallis. He's about six blocks away. I just HAVE to look him up; even when we were college acquaintences, we never lived this close to eachother.

Workouts - Oh How I've Missed Them!

Though we've had a membership at a gym for about 18 months,  we've been under-utilizing it. Mostly because we've been concentrating our time on the house project. Well, last week, both C and I started 'poking' at the implementation of regular gym workouts. I started carrying my gym gear in my car, and pushing things around on my calendar to make room for workouts. Though I didn't actually get in to the gym last week, the setting-up process sure got my appetite going.

C, on the other hand, succeeded in getting to a morning class or two last week. She was ecstatic, as a result. This is, after all,  something the oncologist has been counseling her to do ever since she finished her cancer therapies.

 This week, she's already done three classes, with plans for more. She says pilates 'hurts so good' and that it's rewarding to be going again. Looks like the schedule works in her favor, too. She can drop the kids at school, go immediately over to the gym and be on with her day by 10am, energized and exercised. Apparently, the class instructor has already made a relationship connection with C, and is working with her to develop specific strategies for improving her overall fitness post-cancer. I'm proud of her for making this a priority.

For me, Wednesday nights are an obvious choice for a non-negotiable workout time, as are Saturday mornings while the whole family is over in Tigard doing ballet, gymnastics, etc. Even if I can't get to the gym on Saturday, I can still use that time to jog, or something. It'll be put to use, I'm sure. I worked out yesterday, with bike time and some upper body weights (light  weights, high reps, concentrating on remembering the form). This morning, my chronic back pain (from falling down the stairs last spring) is noticeably better. As is my posture. Dang but my body likes it best when I work out.

There's still room, I think, to fit in a morning session or two during the week. I'm continuing to sculpt my schedule to support that idea. Not being a morning person, for example, I've been actively working to move my natural wake-up time forward. I'm not actually going to the gym yet, but the clock radio and the timer on the coffee maker are cooperating to train me for an earlier wake up.

I haven't mentioned it to C, but she seems to be getting up earlier too. I sense that she's moving things along more purposefully so as to get to her class on time. This has the side-effect of a more relaxed, in-front-0f-the-curve school prep. The kids are feeding off the calmer atmosphere and stepping up their performance as well. It's all good - so much less drama nowadays!

So, it seems we all got an immediate emotional boost from the return to the gym. The children sure connect with the benefits of their dance and gymnastics time. Now, us parents get to have the same benefits.

Robber uses Craigslist to hire unwitting look-a-like decoys?

 

by The Oregonian
Wednesday October 01, 2008, 9:42 AM

A guy who robbed an armored truck driver Monday in Monroe, Wash., and escaped downriver on an innertube may have hired as many as 12 men to dress the same and show up for a temp job at what would become a crime scene. The Seattle Times has the full story here.

Mike, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, told KING-5 that he saw a Craigslist ad last week seeking workers for a road-maintenance project. He inquired and was e-mailed instructions to meet near the bank at 11 a.m. Tuesday and to wear specific clothing. "Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask ... and, if possible, a blue shirt," Mike told KING-5.

No contractor met Mike and about a dozen other similarly dressed men who showed up at the bank, and they thought they had been stood up. Then, KING-5 reported, a man told them about the bank robbery.

Did innertube robber use Craigslist to hire unwitting look-a-like decoys? - Breaking News From Oregon & Portland - Oregonlive.com