UPDATE and some fall foliage

UPDATE: I didn't work today which was planned; I work on Monday and Tuesday next week. I rested every time my body told me to take it easy. I didn't want to go outside, so I walked in the building hallway some. I enjoyed watching the Royals beat the Blue Jays 5-0 on my big ol' TV. Thank you for your continued prayers, love and concern.



The Saturday that Leland and I went out taking photos of Forest for the Trees 2015 murals, we saw these beauties south of East Burnside. I imagine they all been blown off the trees by now. I'm glad that I got the photo through Leland's windshield .

See what prompted me to get off the 20 bus on East Burnside last Saturday

An enclosed tricycle. What do you think of it? While I think it is so cute, I myself cannot imagine being out in regular traffic in it--even with bike lanes--mainly because I cannot imagine riding a bicycle or a tricycle in traffic, period. Someone parked it here, beside the bike rack--that blue bar--so someone rode in it.



Once I walked across East Burnside onto NE 16th, I stopped to take this photo. Now I see that the enclosed trike is in between two bike racks; I wonder why it is not locked to one of them? Hmmm. Look ahead on the sidewalk and you'll see a bicycle waiting for its rider. I wonder if it is locked to a bike rack? Oh, one more thing to notice in this photo that I took in Northeast Portland. Beyond the green street sign and the yellow one with the arrow on it, see what looks like a tall building? That is the Big Pink which is on the west side of the Willamette, a mile and three tenths away! So cool to find the unexpected in a photograph!



Closer view of the back of the trike. It's an interesting piece of machinery.

Winter Opposites - No. 9, The family that cycles together?

May 20, 2011, I walked east on East Burnside, more than likely transferring from the 6 bus or the CL Line Streetcar to my last bus home, either the 12 or the 19, depending on which one arrived first. Naturally, this group of cyclists stopped at the traffic signal caught my eye. Although the sky is not blue, there is sunshine which probably made their ride more pleasant. May in Portland does mean layers are still a necessity. Here's what I think is happening with these people--the man and the children in the green helmets--love that sort of beetle bug shade of green--and the woman are a family. The other man is her brother, in town for a visit and altogether not too sure about this business of riding a bike in the big city.

April 10, the movement of pigeons and automobiles. Where have they gone?

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On January 26, 2013, I noticed the pigeons once again swirling above the intersection of NE MLK and East Burnside, at the west end of the used car lot. I've seen them off and on since I moved to Northeast Portland in January, 2011, flying in all directions at this intersection, sitting on the wires between utility poles and on the billboard above the mid-century roof of the used car lot. Once I had seen the pigeons being fed by a man as I stood at the bus/streetcar stop just a few steps to the right, out of this photo. On this particular day, I happened to discover that the man feeding them came out of the office at this used car lot. See several photos on this topic, below.
 

The evening of March 23, on my way home after the members' party at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center which is south of here, imagine my surprise when I saw this sight  from the bus shelter on East Burnside. No used cars beneath the roof, just a few left at the back edge of the lot, far from the street. When had someone moved the cars? Why? A quick Google revealed no online evidence of going out of business connected with this business. A mystery.
 

Here's a photo that I took on March 29, trying to capture the vast emptiness of the lot. I like that the Big Pink towers in the background, several blocks past the other end of the Burnside Bridge, less than a mile from where I stood to take this photo.



Back to the pigeons and their movement. The original billboard, pigeons perched, taken on January 26. 
 

The pigeons take flight because the man who feeds them has come out of the office and is walking west, to feed them across MLK, just south of the bus/streetcar shelter where I had seen once while I waited to transfer from one bus to the other. Can you see him? He's towards the bottom left corner of this closely cropped photo, smack dab between two poles. 



Once he's tossed all of the bird food onto the sidewalk, the man crosses the street and goes back to the office. The pigeons ignore his movement, way more interested in eating  than in following him. I suppose the actions of these pigeons prove that they are capable of learning. 
 

The original billboard, minus the pigeons along its top edge--they're over to the right on the utility wires. I bet they're wondering what's happened to the man who used to come out of that yellow structure with the blue roof, carrying an orange bucket of bird food for them. 



Another surprise. The new billboard, photographed on April 2. One pigeon perched.

An intersection which I frequent

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Photos taken on Saturday, February 16, 2013, on my way home from a good Saturday out and about. 

Top photo, a Portland Streetcar waits at the corner at a shelter/stop shared by it and the #6 TriMet bus. The streetcar is on SE Grand Avenue. When the traffic signal changes to green and it crosses the intersection, it will be on NE Grand Avenue. The street is crosses at the intersection is East Burnside, the thoroughfare that divides north from south in Portland. Those two young women are walking on the south side of East Burnside, heading west across SE Grand Avenue, toward the Burnside Bridge over the Willamette River--I didn't turn to watch them see where they were headed.

Of the two photos at the bottom of the collage, the one on the left is of a pedestrian whose red clutch bag, red poncho, and red socks caught my eye. She's waiting to cross East Burnside, walking south on the west side of SE Grand Avenue. Once the light changed and she started to walk, she stretched her legs out and stepped out with determination, but I didn't watch her to see where she was headed. The photo on the right is the empty bus shelter/stop, waiting for the next bus or streetcar, passengers for either one. The Plaid Pantry behind it is a convenience store--when I first moved here from Jackson, Mississippi, I found convenience stores without gas pumps to be quite strange. Back home, such a sight was few and far between. 

Seen in Northeast Portland

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Actually, this is one half a block inside Northeast Portland. The street behind the man is East Burnside which is the street that divides Portland's north from south. The street on the left of the photo is NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. I took this photo on December 8, a Saturday. I was out and about, walking and looking and taking photos on a dry-at-the-moment Saturday morning--before I ended up at Tuba Christmas at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Since this is where on my morning commute I change from one bus to the other, or from one bus to the streetcar,  I am thankful that I've never before seen this man feeding the pigeons. 

I got off the bus when I saw these two vehicles.

I got off the bus to take these photos. Since "Leverage" and "Grimm" and "Portlandia" are all filmed in Portland, I naturally wondered what might be happening near these vehicles. Well, I couldn't find anything outside, so I gave up and walked to the nearest bus stop so that I could continue my homeward commute.

At work I mentioned doing this to someone who wondered if I had come near to finding the supposed shooting of the latest version of MTV's Real World. I wonder. And I doubt I'll ever know.

Seen through the windshield of my TriMet bus

I love all of these highway signs and street signs and reflections and traffic signals.
 

On the way home, stopped at the intersection of East Burnside and NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The green car heads south on MLK. The next intersection is with Grand Avenue. I'm on the 19. Up ahead, pulling to a stop at the bus shelter, you've got the 20 first, then the 12. There's one woman standing at the bus shelter, waiting for either the 12 or the 19, I'm guessing since she hasn't approached the 20.
 

By the time my bus pulled up to the traffic signal at Grand Avenue, the bus shelter had emptied of people.

Seen on the street, September 18, 2009

Something I never thought I'd see, a Pronto Pup trailer. Wonder what county fair it was headed to or from? State fair? Can't remember exactly when it happens here in Oregon. However, I do remember enjoying Pronto Pups at the Mississippi State Fair while growing, heading there with my Mama who had three goals--Pronto Pup, a pineapple ice cream cone, and some Malone's State Faire Taffy! She loved those three goodies! And she even worked at Malone's once, when I was a toddler I think. Anyway, some folks call 'em corn dogs, but they'll always be Pronto Pups to me.

I took this photo back when East Burnside was a two-way street at this location. The cross street is MLK. Looking at the original size photo and seeing Fishels, a furniture store in the building on the corner in the background, with vehicles heading west to cross the Burnside Bridge is somewhat disorienting. I mean, for the entire time I've lived in Northeast Portland, about 14 months, there has been nothing but east-bound traffic beginning at this intersection.


Love the vivid colors which show up much better once I took a photo without practically looking straight into the sun.

On the street, animate. Seen from the bus on East Burnside. October 8, 2011. Portland's just plain interesting.

Almost anachronisms abound. Left to right.

(1) The need for a box fan in Portland in October--see it in the doorway. It's usually in the low 60s, or cooler even.
(2) People sitting out from under cover--the two men closest to the curb. In October in Portland, it's more than likely to be raining.
(3) People smoking near the entrance of the Grendel's Coffee House. The Oregon Indoor Clean Air Act prohibits smoking in most public places and places of employment. Additionally, smoking is not permitted within ten feet of any entrance, exit, window, or air-intake vent.
(4) The USPS corner mailbox beside the brick column. According to a Sept. 8, 2011, article at Seattle PI dot com, in 1985 there were 400,000 of them out and about, now 160,000 remain. Actually the article is pretty informative.

Image cropped and altered with Picnik Effect HDR-ish.

Streetcar architecture from days of yore, on East Burnside between NE Grand and NE 12th Avenue

It's my understanding that streetcar architecture refers to businesses on the first floor and living quarters on the second floor and above. I'm not sure if these recessed areas existed when the buildings were first constructed or if they happened at some point later. I do like the looks of them. And I've seen plenty of evidence in the windows above, on both sides of Burnside, to lead me to believe that folks live upstairs--lamps, fans, kitchen-window sort of stuff.

Seen on the Walk to Work, September 30, 2011

A new, modern building on the corner of SE 6th Avenue and East Burnside. I cannot explain why, but it appeals to me, so much so that I always look up when I walk or ride by (if I'm on the correct side of the bus to able to see it out of the window). As near as I can tell, businesses occupy or will occupy all of the space.

Here are three versions of much the same cropped photo. This one is merely cropped at Picnik. The grays and rectangles are a gray flannel suit. The windows are the shiny tie paired with it by a stylist with personal flair.


This one is cropped and altered for clarity at Picnik. Clarity makes the grays pop which brings into greater focus the architectural details--those various rectangular shapes extended from the main structure. I don't know architectural terms, sorry.


This is the second photo, further enhanced with the HDR-ish special effect at Picnik. This version is just plain fun to me. Moving the Strength slider and the Radius slider, I came up with this combo which I like, mostly because of the glowing on the gray rectangles and the details become better visible in the clouds.

The absence of color waits to board the 70 bus

I took this photo looking north at the intersection of NE Sandy, NE 12th and East Burnside. The 70 bus stop is on NE 12th. Perhaps someone is inside the bus at the door, about to step off. I say this because it appears the woman with the white hair hesitates, with her right knee bent, before stepping forward. She seems to be looking straight into the bus, too, which makes me think she sees someone moving towards the door. Or perhaps I just clicked at the split second that captured her beginning to move. What do you think?

ABC Wednesday - L is for loud and love and Lamont and Leland!

Yep, loud. And I loved it, every single second of the February show at Doug Fir on East Burnside. Loud. Loved it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

I first heard Grupo Fantasma in Jackson a couple of years ago at a Crossroads Film Festival after-party at Hal & Mal's, one of my favorite hometown places to listen to live music. Grupo Fantasma, as I found on their Web site, is a "band incorporating elements of funk, mambo, merengue, and cumbia." I don't know what cumbia is, but I recognize the rest of those nouns and know their infectious beat. From personal experience I have to say that it's impossible to be still when this band plays. Besides blasting away to a Latin beat, the crowd of musicians enjoyed themselves a whole lot, just like the crowd on the dance floor. That night I bought their two CDs and played them often enough that I could almost sing in Spanish, phonetically, of course, not understanding a single word, but lovin' it!

So, the Wednesday that I knew Mama would probably get to come home on Friday, I read in the Willamette Week (a local alternative newspaper) that Grupo Fantasma would be at Doug Fir the next Wednesday night. Ah, I quickly realized, Kay would be here to help with Mama's transition back to apartment-dweller, so maybe, just maybe, I could go to the show.

I grabbed my cellphone and called our friend Chris who tends bar at Doug Fir. He's from Jackson; we've known him for 25 years, since the guys were all in elementary school; he's now a Portlander, too, and I love him like a son. I asked him to please check to see if the show was sold out. Nope, it wasn't, and he said he'd see if he could get me on the list as his guest. Whooppee!

Naturally our sweet friend Kay thought it would be grand for me to go, that she and Mama and Duncan would be just fine, so the night of Feb. 20 I got on the #20 and rode right over the Willamette River, 30 blocks to certain, rhythmic fun!

Chris had called earlier to tell me that I was on the list, plus one. To join in the fun, Lamont figured that he would ride his bicycle over after his dinner shift at 3 Doors Down Cafe. What more could a mama ask of her first born son than he be her plus one at a live music show?

Having been to Doug Fir's downstairs show venue in the past when Chris was spinning records, I realized if I wanted to sit down, watch people and wait for the show, I'd best get there early. What I didn't realize was that some other group was opening--they were OK but I don't even remember their name. Some people danced which I think is always good for a band's morale when there's a dance floor right in front of 'em. I sort of chair-danced a little bit, but mostly I was saving my energy for what I knew was to come.

When Grupo Fantasma started playing, the dance floor filled right up, practically packed with people moving to the pulsating sound. I stood up right where I was and had a blast, groovin' to the music, watching the musicians, watching the dancers. During their second song, Lamont showed up, and we had ourselves a fine time. The band played for almost two wonderful hours. I took some photos, and I bought their newest CD and a T-shirt. Lamont walked me to the bus stop across the street, and soon I caught the #20 back to the apartment. It was such a great night that it didn't even rain!



Yep, it was loud, and I loved it, and I loved being there with Lamont. If Leland hadn't had to study for an exam, he'd have been right there with us. I believe I'll throw in lucky as my final L word 'cause I'm one lucky Mama.

If you're of a mind to, go to Mrs. Nesbitt's Place for loads of other ABC Wednesday blogs! You'll need to look at the comments at her blog to find out who is participating this week.