Oaks Park

12 Million Dollars Worth of Ice, Seriously?

Pictures from the Mississippi Street Fair, the latest area of Portland to be encompassed by the gentrification process. Obviously a lot of outrage over the whole thing.....it makes it hard for the lower class to live in Portland. Hell, it makes it hard for people like me to afford a house when they start at half a mill.

So, in light of Woody Guthrie's recent birthday and the news of the 12 million dollars worth of ice we have been storing in running refrigeration trucks for the past two years, now unfit for human consumption. I decided to post a verse from "Christ for President". What is wrong with our culture? Our government? How many people would 12 million dollars feed or educate? Where are our GD priorities? I am heartbroken to hear of such a waste of money, energy....sick.

Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars

In another lifetime

Do you believe in another lifetime? I just turned 32 and I haven't thought about my next lifetime for a few years....until someone brought it up to me the other day. I used to believe that there are old souls and new, that you had the opportunity to repair the past in the future, but why not repair the past in the current? I speak from first hand experience when I say that I have done many things in the past that I would change but how far do you go? I have spent the last year of my life trying to make amends with those I felt I have done wrong. I get very caught up in emotions and am extremely idealistic. I kind of feel like "Earl" apologizing to people that have no idea what I am even referring to. It makes me realize how self-consumed we are as human beings. We all have our own concept of reality and the same story can resonate completely differently from party to party. So far as my next life...this one has been pretty good to me. I often think there are things I would change if I could wiggle my nose and do so, but if there wasn't heartache, how enjoyable would the good times be? Enjoy the moment..........

My neighborhood is cooler than yours

Fiona and I went to Sunnyside Environmental to play this morning and when we got home the much anticipated Sunnyside Neighborhood Newsletter was at my door. It comes once a month and is inevitably chocked full of all sorts of information that makes a person, like myself, smile. I live in a truly amazing place. First of all, it tells of the last meeting and how they showed clips from the film Portland:Celebrating America's Most Livable City as one of my fellow neighbors (an employee of PDX Office of Transportation) discusses on-street bike parking which will be going in soon on Belmont. Very cool. Other topics include an upcoming art stroll in September, the creation of the Sunnyside Sustainability Committee, details of the next Plastic Roundup, talk of the neighborhood swap shop co-op and other good stuff. My favorite article, however, is regarding the topic for our next neighborhood meeting on the 12th. ...."innovative community power generation and distribution opportunities." They want to create an energy "co-op" modeled after those used in Europe. Our neighborhood would be the first in the US to try such a thing. F-ing amazing. The article speaks of a pilot project in which they would convert the Sunnyside Environmental School's "current oil-fired boiler system to a carbon-neutral fuel coupled with integrated photovoltaic grid-tied electric. Excess energy would be used to heat and cool neighborhood residences, further integrating the relationship of the school as the center of the community." I am there. Rock on Sunnyside, you are rad!