Fall at the Chinese Garden

I’ve not gotten a lot of use out of my membership this year. Most summer days were too hot for a visit. Then the rains came. But today was sunny though in the chilly side with temperatures in the 40s as 12 mph winds. Still, the garden is fairly sheltered from the wind.

There wasn’t as much fall color as I had hoped. My neighborhood has some bright oranges, yellows and reds. But there was some.

When your plants don’t flower, have a mum show. There were pots of full sized mums and miniature ones. “Penji” I think they are called in China. I do know they aren’t called “bonsai.”

But the show stealer was the tiger made of mostly mums to celebrate the year of the tiger. Personally I thought he looked pretty tame.

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A Quilt Restored

You might remember the summer of protests in Portland OR during 2020. And though the protests were overall peaceful (in contrast to national news reporting), there was some damage. In the case of the Oregon Historical Society, not only was the front wall of windows broken, but a quilt of significance to African American history was stolen. The identity of the quilt should be a clue that the vandalism and the Black Lives Matter protests were separate groups of people, at least in some instances.

At any rate, the quilt was found, returned, and restored, and here is the Oregon Historical Society’s blog about the restoration.

Chinese New Year

I have a membership to Lan Su Chinese Garden again after a couple years’ break. What better way to initiate it than the New Year celebration with the Dragon Dance at night? My daughter got the best close up video, but alas I am too cheap to upgrade to Premium so as to include videos here. So if you really want to see a video leave a comment and I’ll reply by email with an attachment.

I started out with a daytime visit. Remember how I used to just miss seeing the plum blossom tree in full bloom? This year I made it. Even though the lanterns overtake the blossoms, I’m including this photo as proof. 🙂

This photo also shows the tile design called ‘Plum Blossom on Cracked Ice’ because the tree blooms so early in the year that the ice is not always gone. This year, however, was pretty mild.

And here is a close up–not very high as I wasn’t daring enough to climb onto a bench.

The floats were already out, so I got a preview as well as a look at other flowers in bloom. (Many more look just ready to pop.)

Not only do I have the dragon float, but also in the background is the willow tree I always try to photograph for seasonal continuity. The dragon looked a lot fiercer at night.

And I did get a still of the dragon dance, though the video is much more impressive.

Gingerbread Union Station

It is time for my (almost) annual visit to the Benson Hotel’s gingerbread creation by Chef Duffendorfer, a delightful tradition. While the castles he creates are elegant, I especially like recognizable creations like this year’s Union Station.

The roof tiles, station windows, and bridge are chocolate–15 lbs of dark chocolate were used. See the snowman under the bridge?

The photo makes it look like a snow mouse, but it was a snowman IRL. The snow is made from white chocolate, 30 lbs of it.

Here’s a front view.

The train and tracks are not made from chocolate (nor was the train running), but what is a train station without a train? IRL there is no pond, but it makes a prettier creation! I love the details: especially the decorated tree and another snowman.

 

And the chocolate “gravel” on the path! Thirty lbs of marzipan were used in various details.

The White Stag sign is a Portland landmark.

The White Stag building is in the NW area, but not so close to the station as the creation looks.  But it is so Portland, that it is great to have it in the creation. Around Christmas time the white stag is turned into Rudolf. Alas, even my detail photo doesn’t show the red nose.

And gingerbread.  The creation took 200 lbs of housemade gingerbread to complete. I couldn’t smell the gingerbread this year, but I believe it was there.

 

More Thinking than Sewing (and Vanport Mosaic)

I recently signed up for Elizabeth Barton’s “More Abstract Art for Quilters” through the Academy of Quilting, and it has been fascinating. It moves quickly, so I am gathering potential projects.

Most likely I will not make all of them.

I like this one but I don’t see myself making all those circles out of fabric. Maybe someday if I run out of other ideas I could do it as fused applique or reverse applique. Time will tell. That was the first week.

The second week involved making grids.

This project at least has straight seams. The top grid was deemed stronger; the bottom one had the major flaw of being split in half horizontally. Multiple assignments followed.  Do several value studies for the top one; crop the bottom one into something useful and do value studies. But before I got to that, Lesson 3 came along. So this one moved into the potential folder.

Of course there have also been comments about and links to observe well known abstract artists–totally fascinating. The third lesson involved watching Mondrian’s path to increasing abstraction and the assignment to follow similar steps from a photo we had taken. So far I have only the photos to ponder.

The car wasn’t there when I composed the shot, LOL.  And I will just ignore it as I work with this photo –if it is the photo I choose to work with.

I lean to working with this one.

That ends thoughts on art quilts for today; continue reading if you are interested in the photos of torii. I was attending a Vanport Mosaic event, and they are located at the site as well as integral to the weekend.
It is Vanport Mosaic weekend, a time of memory activism.  The story of Vanport is not well known, and the Mosaic project’s purpose is to unearth and perpetuate minority stories that have been silenced. The Vanport story is a story of race relations, some successes and some failures. The town of Vanport was constructed by Henry Kaiser because he needed housing for workers he had attracted from all over the US for his shipyards during World War II, and Portland was dragging its feet because many of the people coming in were African American or poor. The housing was segregated, but schools, work, and entertainment were integrated. Since families worked shifts, there was 24/7 daycare provided.
After the war, there was less need for workers.  White workers moved into Portland, an option not available to black workers.  Others moved into the vacated homes, they included veterans, Native Americans, and Japanese, who were returning from the concentration camps where they had been sent during the war. The torii are a memorial to the Japanese experience, an experience that is another major feature of the weekend.
Memorial Day, 1948, Vanport was flooded.  Residents had about an hour to evacuate with what they could carry. The town was totally destroyed. (For those interested in more, here is a link to the online Oregon Encyclopedia entries on Vanport, and here for the Japanese incarceration.)
The Mosaic project includes gathering stories from folks who lived there and filming them. The day, an annual event, includes showing the films, other exhibits related to the town, the flood, and the imprisonment. Often classroom projects are shown. This year one was from a human geography course with proposals for a more visible memorial than what exists.

Unless I get a lot accomplished on this week’s assignment and post again, I’ll link this post to Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday (button in sidebar).

6/1/2019–ETA: Today was a play, Gambette, about the Japanese experience.  Here, from an exhibit in the lobby,  is a photo of an enlarged tag like those required to be on each person and item of property.

These are memorialized in the rows of metal tags on the torii sculptures.

 

 

In Search of Plum Blossoms

After the hectic days around Christmas and New Years, it is hard to shift gears to think to check for plum blossoms at the Lan Su Chinese Garden. Usually I am too late. This year, at the same time of month, I appear to have been too early.

Other flowers were in bloom though.

(I’m posting these for all the people buried in snow–spring will come.) Mostly, though, moss was the feature–that is a Pacific Northwest winter, rain and moss. We haven’t had s much rain as usual, but enough to make moss.

It was a rainy day, and I went on purpose to hear the drip from the tile roof, but it was a  misty rain while I was there, so I still haven’t heard the featured sound. Someday.

That was last week. This week I tried again.

Still not full bloom. (I don’t think this is the tail end–looked like buds waiting to open to me.) Meanwhile, decorations for Chinese New Year have begun. Here are some more lanterns.

It was a great day for reflections.

In the foreground might be rosebuds. At any rate, there were no roses in bloom either of these visits, though I did see buds.  These are the first visits I remember that there was not even a single rose. Still there is always much to see, no matter the season or weather.

 

 

Zoo Lights

It’s that time of year when lights appear all over town.  So far I’ve seen Crale House, Peacock Lane and the Christmas Ships.  This year I made it to the zoo for its display. I was too busy gawking to take many photos.

Although there were some themed lights like the nativity and Christmas trees, most of the lights were animals or lights densely placed on tree trunks and branches. At one point we walked through a tunnel of lights so solid as to be almost disorienting.

At the beginning I was intrigued by the snake.

One of the few snakes that looks harmless.

Midway a group of animals and trees

These alternated, flashing on and off to the rhythm of music. Timing the camera to the scene was difficult. I missed the two bright pink hippos and a bright green alligator. It would have taken video to do it justice.

And near the end, a dragon.

Other effects, impossible to catch in photograph, were an eagle appearing to be flying and a peacock opening and closing its tail feathers. Some children identified another exhibit as scenes from Wicked.

There are two ways to view it walking the marked path or by train. I’ve been told each is quite a different experience, so I may have to visit again.

Autumn at the Chinese Garden

I’ve visited several times since renewing my Lan Su membership, but for one reason or another didn’t take many photos. Last week I was camera happy.

First some overviews–it has been so long that I’ve forgotten names of some of the building.

I do remember the land boat (left), but not the pagoda’s name.

And the zigzag bridge–shaped because evil spirits go in straight lines, thus they can’t get across.

I was amazed at how much green remains in the garden. It has been a mild fall. On my street there are bare trees that had been yellow, red leaves still hanging and a few green trees delaying the color thing.

The poetry wheel is either new, or I’ve managed to visit at times when it wasn’t displayed.

Workshops were taught–I’m not sure how many styles of poem were among the lessons. The form the garden sports is the couplet: two lines with patterned opposites.  If the first word of one line is “many” the first line of the next is “one,” for example. The poems I read did not follow that pattern. Workshop attendees could opt to exhibit their poems. I took some close ups to share, but the words weren’t visible in the photos. You’ll have to use your imagination.

The sun was bright and beautiful, but it did wash out color on some of my photos. On the other hand, it made shadow designs.

There actually were quite a few people visiting that day–and they did photo bomb some of my shots. It seems amazing I got any without people.

Some bits of fall color:

And pomegranates in two places, a large tree and a potted tree.

The tour guide said the ones on the small tree were the largest he had seen it produce. It seems a plentiful year.  In the past there has been fruit still hanging late into winter, so I guess they don’t harvest them.

And in spite of it being fall, there are still flowers.

I hope you enjoyed your vicarious visit.

 

 

Lan Su Chinese Garden and Rose Parade

It’s been a couple years since I last visited the Chinese Garden.  Out of town guests prompted me to renew my membership. As is my usual custom, we did the tour (I always learn something new) and sipped tea in the tea room.

I’ve always appreciated the carved panels. Previous guides have mentioned that each of the four represented historic philosophers’ gardens in China.

This guide pointed out that this panel showed the garden that the design of Lan Su was mostly based upon, noting the tea room (top), pagoda, and zigzag bridge. And here is the bridge in the garden.

Previously I’d heard the lore that the zigzag made it more difficult for evil spirits to cross; this time the explanation was more mundane.  It delayed passage, slowing people down, giving the experience of a larger garden. For a real philosopher’s garden would also be a small space in a busy city, made to look/represent large. As in the “mountain” and waterfall.

Sometimes the idea is all that is needed.

Then to the tea room.

This time we were seated upstairs where we got an overview of the garden.

And tea.

Each kind of tea has its own kind of pot and cup. I especially liked this delicate flowerlike cup for the Black tea with rose petals (timely because of the rose parade).

Here is the Lan Su float for the rose parade.

Yes, I was a wimp and viewed from inside on a chair! But floats were on the street later for close-up looks.

 

I have more float photos; maybe another day.

 

 

 

 

Vanport Mosaic: Memory Activism

The short version: During World War II there was an urgent need for ships; Kaiser Shipyards needed workers to supply that need, and they came from all over the country.  Kaiser, working with the federal government, built homes on a flood plain that became Vanport (between Vancouver, WA (Van) and Portland, OR (Port)), homes meant to be temporary. Although the need for ships dwindled after the war, about 4000 people remained. Vanport was Oregon’s largest city and the nation’s largest public housing, a thriving community until May 30, 1948 when the flooding Columbia River demolished it in 45 minutes.  For the long version, see this OPB hour long program.

In 2014, recognizing that the place and the flood were fading from the collective memory, Laura Lo Forti began interviewing and videotaping Vanport residents still alive. In 2016 Co-Directors Laura Lo Forti and Damaris Webb (with the help of many) presented the first Vanport Mosaic Festival.  I attended that first one and learned the history, missed the second, then attended the greatly expanded version this year.

The bus tour took us around today’s golf course and race track to show us where buildings had been. The guide for the tour I traveled with had lived in Vanport as a 6-10 year old; he had many stories to tell.

The only tangible remnant of Vanport is the foundation of the theatre.

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Besides the tour guide, there was another passenger who had been a resident. They searched a school photo to find themselves.

The tour started from the Expo Center; inside were impressive exhibits created by middle school students. First the Vanport sequence.

Several students pointed out that the school was integrated, but the living assignments were segregated.

Two  other middle school projects concerned the Japanese incarceration during WWII. This is related to Vanport in that some Japanese people returning –whose homes had been either destroyed or occupied by others–moved into Vanport homes vacated by ship workers whose work was over. And so they were dispossessed twice: by the internment and by the flood.

One project dealt with peoples’ experiences, each student summarizing, illustrating, and reflecting on one person. Here is one sample, Jack’s history:

And the student reflection:

Another told of a Japanese-Peruvian man, an aspect new to me. For a fee (I think it was 2 million dollars) U. S, housed Japanese-Peruvians in the centers. At the war’s end, U. S didn’t want them, Peru didn’t want them back, so they were sent “back” to a Japan they had not known.

The other project explored the various concentration camps.

It included a description of the temporary holding center, here at Expo Center, where people were held until the internment centers could be constructed.

At the Expo Center there is a permanent memorial, several torii with metal tags for each person imprisoned here and on the poles, embossed replicas of various news articles related to their forced leaving.

Memory Activism: Remembering in order to honor and to act differently.