Portland Visit

Last weekend I visited Beck's new home in Portland. Here is Ponchke inside her box.

Beck and Robert near their house. We're walking to the Max (the light rail) that runs close by.

On the way, we walk along the newly renamed Rosa Parks street. Below you can see that the old sign for Portland Ave. has been painted over. The cross street is Detroit. I was just writing about street names in my diss. In the US, since somewhere around the 70s, people have been trying to memorialize new histories by changing street names. MLK street is a primary example. This has typically been met with resistance. People who oppose the renaming just don't see the importance of names, they worry about the economic impact. Of course this has underlying race and class implications.

We ride the Max downtown. There are bike racks inside!

Beck leads us to make a quick stop to see this neat mural about Portland women's history. We see names again. Names under each woman's portrait remind me that there is so little presence of women in history. Women of color even more so. We are still at the stage of introductions. The mural hails us from our route to introduce the women. It puts the names to the faces and tells some of their stories (there is a legend on the left side not captured in the photo). For example, the text describes Amara Perez,

longtime community organizer, is the program director of In Other Words Women's Books & Resources. She is the founder of Sisters in Action for Power & a community group for gay women of color called Happy Hours.

We come across this installation art on the side of a coffee shop. Wooden letters reminding us that "this too shall pass." I think about GW in office.

Here's the artist's statement posted beneath (click image to enlarge).

More Portland art. This is the work of City Repair Project. An effort by a bunch or urban activists to take back city intersections and make them interesting and pedestrian friendly by slowing down the cars.

and this YMCA model was spotted in a store in Portland. Just think, someone is likely to get this as a X-mas present.