There was a tender tulip with a curl ...

I couldn't help but think of the poem below when I saw the curl of this tulip petal, a lovely sight in someone's front yard.

Found at The Poetry Foundation, online:

There was a little girl

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

The Interior - First Congregational Church, downtown Portland, Oregon

The Povey Brothers designed and made the stained glass windows.














The pipes certainly are beautiful. Wish I could have heard the organ.




The craftsmanship makes these details exquisite.






More curves and arches--they're throughout the sanctuary.








I don't like those light fixtures one bit. Can you find the two people standing in front of the window? If you do, you'll be able to tell just how huge it is.

The Exterior - First Congregational Church, downtown Portland, Oregon

Found on the WWW about First Congregational Church--it faces onto the South Park Blocks in downtown Portland:

Swiss architect Henry J Hefty. Cost $100K to build over five years 1889-1895. Venetian Gothic style, resembling Boston's New Old South Church. Two 100' towers were removed in a 1940s modernization, leaving only the 185' central tower. Cruciform interior 92'x92'. Slopes down to pulpit, with gallery, capacity 1100

Welcome to Portland's First Congregational United Church of Christ!

Our Vision -- We are a progressive Christian community in the heart of Portland. We celebrate diversity through our warm and inclusive welcome. In our worship and in our lives, we believe that God is still speaking and that the risen Christ lives in and among us. We covenant together to:
create a sacred space that is accessible and welcoming to everyone;
work for justice in our community and in our world;
express, in our living, a care for creation and a stewardship of all God's resources;
nurture our relationships with one another through our listening and our caring;
grow in faith, learning and service.
If this vision catches your imagination, we welcome you—whoever you are, whatever household of faith into which you were born, whatever creed you profess, whatever your race, sexual orientation, or gender identity, you are welcome in this place if you come looking for the presence of God or to rededicate yourself to God’s purpose. Please do not leave this place without a prayer for yourself, your friends and famly, and for all those who worship here; for our nation in these times of trial' for all hapless victims and recovering survivors throughout the world; for the fellowship of the Christian Church universal; for the advancement of God's realm of justice and peace; and for all men and women of every nation, race, and faith who sincerely desire to live together in unity and peace. We invite you to join us in our mission of peace and justice by becoming a member of our church. We stand ready to assist you in every way possible. God is still speaking and the risen Christ lives in and amongst us.

Our History -- First Congregational United Church of Christ was established in 1851. Our current sanctuary and 175-foot bell tower was built in 1891, designed by Swiss architect Henry J. Hefty to resemble Old South Church in Boston. The stained glas
windows were designed by Povey Brothers of Portland. We are people of different ages, education, races, abilities, sexual orientations and gender identities. We hold varying theological and political beliefs and come from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. We celebrate and find strength in that diversity and view it as a way of understanding the inclusiveness of God's love.

We celebrate the image of God in every person and we affirm all relationships of support that are founded on the principles of love and justice. We encourage all members to share their talents, gifts and energy in the life, work and leadership of the church. We are a community which is spiritually alive, intellectually curious, and open to new learning, ideas and scholarship. We are tolerant and supportive of other religious traditions and committed to learning about and from them.

McMenamins Kennedy School, northeast Portland

Kennedy School is 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. In early March I rode the bus there for a day-long meeting. It was fun, riding a bus I'd never ridden, going on streets I'd never seen, and then getting off the bus practically in front of the building.

Found on the WWW: Renovated in 1997, the 1915 Kennedy School features Portland's most unusual lodging, 35 classrooms-turned-guestrooms, hallways lined with colorful artwork, an outdoor soaking pool, restaurant, and a brewery located in the old girls' lavatory! Sip a fresh-juice cocktail in the Honors Bar or savor a whiskey and a cigar in the Detention Bar. Our theater is one of the "10 Theaters That Do It Right" (Entertainment Weekly). We'll bring beer and pizza to your seat during the movie!


The Detention Bar--what a hoot!


Seen in a front yard flower bed.


From the Ladies Home Journal, April, 1916. I love this photo of the school.


Here's a hallway--what an interesting carpet. I imagine it would have confused elementary school students.


Another historical rendering that I found in a hallway. I remember doing a May Pole Dance in the sixth grade, all of the boys and girls in my class. I felt amazed at our accomplishment!

Found on the WWW about McMenamins:
McMenamins is a chain of nearly sixty brewpubs, microbreweries, music venues, historic hotels, and theater pubs. The chain is located mostly in the Portland metropolitan area, but has many other locations in Oregon and Washington. According to the Brewers Association, McMenamins is one of the top 50 largest craft breweries in the United States.

History
McMenamins was founded by Mike and Brian McMenamin, brothers who grew up in Northeast Portland, Oregon; they trace the beginning of McMenamins to the 1974 opening of Produce Row Café. They created the first post-Prohibition brewpub in Oregon — the Hillsdale Brewery & Public House in southwest Portland — in 1985. That same year McMenamins became the first brewery in the USA to legally use fruit in the brewing of ales (raspberries, for Ruby Ale, one of their "standard ales").
Their first theater pub was the Mission Theater (1987). The company then entered the broader hospitality business starting in 1990, when they converted a 74-acre-site (that at one time served as the Multnomah County Poor Farm) into Edgefield, which over the years has been expanded to include "vinting, distilling, gardening, lodging, [and] golf." By 1997, food accounted for over half of McMenamins' total sales. The purchase, $4 million remodeling, and 1997 re-opening of the Crystal Ballroom as a dance hall/music venue got McMenamins into the staging of national music acts.

By May 1998, there were 37 McMenamins locations in Oregon and six in Washington, grossing $50 million/year in business.

Notable locations
Many of its locations are renovated historical properties; as of June 2004, nine are on the National Register of Historic Places:
a former elementary school (Kennedy School),
a movie theater built by Universal Studios (The Bagdad Theater and Pub),
a building once used by the Church of Sweden as a Swedish Evangelical Mission (Mission Theater),
the site of a former general store once owned by Oregon's first state treasurer (Boon's Treasury),
a saloon once used by Polish immigrants to plan what became the west coast's first Polish Catholic Church (White Eagle Saloon),
a saloon and former brothel in downtown Centralia, Washington (Olympic Club Hotel),
a pioneer homestead with an octagonal barn (Cornelius Pass Roadhouse),
a former Multnomah County poor farm (Edgefield),
a ballroom with a floating floor (The Crystal Ballroom),
a saloon in Olympia, Washington called Spar Café and Bar, first opened in 1935.

Other locations include a former Masonic retirement home (The Grand Lodge), a building that was part of the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition (St. John's Pub) and a former funeral home in North Portland (The Chapel Pub) that also serves as the company's headquarters.
As of May 2009, McMenamins is in the process of renovating The Hotel Alma in downtown Portland, a former hotel, bathhouse and nightclub, into what the company hopes will become another property on the National Register of Historic Places.

Look, up the sky! It's a ... ?

At first I took this photo on March 10, 2010, because of the Fish Grotto sign that hangs in front of the Fish Grotto Seafood Restaurant at 1035 SW Stark in downtown Portland. Once I checked the photo in the camera, I noticed that giant crustacean in the background, hanging on the corner of a building. So I zoomed in for a few others shots, not that I had my actual zoom lens with me--that thing's pretty heavy.


It must be an inflatable crab--it reminds me of piles of crab legs I used to see at the buffet at the Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Not my sort of dish to dine on. Anyway, it's hanging on Jake's Famous Crawfish‎ at 401 SW 12th Avenue in downtown Portland.

I remembered that I'd noticed the crab from a block to the north, as I rode by on the bus home on Burnside. Then I remembered that I had seen something just like this at the other Jake's site--Jake's Grill, 611 SW 10th Avenue, also in downtown Portland.


Yep, it's a crab for sure. There's the sign to prove it.

Gotta love Portland!

Rip City Uprise

The roller-coaster-tilt-a-whirl that was this season for my beloved Portland Trail Blazers is finished. I am not a fair-weather fan. I stayed with them to the end of Thursday night's Game 6--Mama did, too. We'll be back for the first pre-season game. I imagine it will be in October, 2010.

We want all of our players and coaches and the general manager, everyone connected with the team, healthy in body, mind and heart, ready to give their all again--for their team, for their fans. Thank you, guys, from the bottom of our hearts.

In particular I want to thank you for giving my Mama a new consuming interest for the past three seasons. Never in my life would I have believed that the little ol' lady (who is now 84) would have become a basketball fan! She even misses "Wheel of Fortune" for the Trail Blazers! Thanks to KGW and CSNNW for broadcasting the entire season. Thanks to Mike Barrett and Mike Rice. Those two networks and those two guys played a large part in Mama's transformation from someone who happened to be into the room when the TV was on NBA basketball into a FAN.

13 players misses 311 games in the regular season, due to injuries.

Regular season schedule, 50 wins, 32 losses.

And we still made the play-offs.

Plus, no one misbehaves on or off the court.

I love these guys!

St. Johns Bridge, north of where Mama and I live, up Highway 30

I took this photo on April 11, the day that Mama and I went for a ride in the rented car. Since we'd yet to see the St. Johns Bridge but had heard how beautiful it was, we headed up Highway 30 to find it. As we rode along, I felt increasingly awful, the allergy difficulties setting in full force. Believe it or not, I couldn't make myself get out of the car to take many photos. Luckily, I found a suitable place o to pull over to take photos. One of these days I'm going to ride the bus up there and get off to see if I can find some spots to take more photos. I took a few more that Sunday.


Huge hardly describes these supports or whatever they're officially called.


See these men beside them and you can really tell for sure.

Here's info about the bridge, that I found on the World Wide Web: The St. Johns Bridge is a steel suspension bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, USA, between the St. Johns neighborhood and the northwest industrial area around Linnton. It is the only suspension bridge in the Willamette Valley and one of three public highway suspension bridges in Oregon.
The bridge has two 408 ft (124 m) tall Gothic towers, a 1,207 ft (368 m) center span and a total length of 2,067 ft (630 m). The adjacent park and neighborhood of Cathedral Park, Portland, Oregon are named after the Gothic Cathedral-like appearance of the bridge towers. It is the tallest bridge in Portland, with 400 ft (122 m) tall towers and a 205 ft (62 m) navigational clearance.
By 2001, average traffic on the bridge was 23,800 vehicles/day.

History

At the time of the proposal to build the bridge, the area was served by a ferry which carried 1000 vehicles a day. The proposal for a bridge was initially met with skepticism in Multnomah County, since St. Johns and Linnton were over five miles (8 km) from the heart of the city, and local business owners had minimal political clout. But after a lobbying effort that included a vaudeville-style show performed at grange halls and schools throughout the county, voters approved a $4.25 million bond for the bridge in the November 1928 elections.[4] Initially a cantilever bridge was proposed, but a suspension bridge was selected due to an estimated $640,000 savings in construction costs.
The construction of the bridge began a month before the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and provided many county residents with employment during the Great Depression. Because of its proximity to the Swan Island Municipal Airport, some government officials wanted the bridge painted yellow with black stripes. County officials waited until St. Patrick's Day 1931 to announce that it would be painted green.
Dedication of the bridge was put off for one month in order to make it the centerpiece of the 23rd annual Rose Festival. It was dedicated on June 13, 1931, and during the ceremony, the bridge engineer, David B. Steinman said:
"A challenge and an opportunity to create a structure of enduring beauty in the God-given wondrous background was offered us when were asked to design the bridge. It is the most beautiful bridge in the world we feel.”
The bridge was built within 21 months and one million dollars under budget. At the time of its completion, the bridge had:
the highest clearance in the nation,
the longest prefabricated steel cable rope strands,
the tallest steel frame piers of reinforced concrete,
the first application of aviation clearance lights to the towers, and
longest suspension span west of Detroit, Michigan.

It was not until the Marquam Bridge in 1966 that another non-movable bridge would be built in Portland.
By the 1970s, the bridge had been allowed to deteriorate, and cash-strapped Multnomah County asked the state to take over maintenance. Initially, the state declined, since it was also suffering from a lack of funds. But pressure from an association of county governments forced the state government to take it over on August 31, 1975. A county official estimated the move saved them $10 million during the first ten years of state maintenance.
In summer 1987, General Motors filmed the introductory commercial for the 1988 Buick Regal in Portland, Oregon and vicinity, including the St. John's bridge, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and on the Columbia Gorge.[citation needed]
Portions of the east approaches and east span were repainted beginning in 1987 and completed in 1994.
In 1999 the Oregon Department of Transportation announced a $27 million rehabilitation project that began in March 2003 and was completed in the fall of 2005. Included in the project was replacement of the deck, repainting of the towers, water-proofing the main cables, lighting upgrades, and improving access for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. By November 2004, renovation costs soared to $38 million, due mostly to the need to replace nearly half of the 210 vertical suspender cables. During the project, the bridge sidewalks were closed at all times. In addition, the entire bridge was closed at night and continuously for a month. The newly refurbished bridge was rededicated on September 17, 2006.

Last Friday at 3 Doors Down Cafe, SE 37th and Hawthorne Blvd.

Margarita Fresca, a deliciously tart and cold drink that I enjoyed last Friday. Here are the ingredients: Antiquo de Herradura, lemon and lime juice, and St. Germain Elder Flower Liqueur.


The perfect accompaniment for my margarita, grilled prawns, corona beans, Mama Lil's Hungarian peppers, basil and bread crumbs.


The other appetizer I devoured, small bite and swipe of bread by small bite and swipe of bread: potato and chevre cheese gnochi, cauliflower cream sauce, pine nuts and scallions.

Wonder what delicious-ness I shall dine on this Friday after work?