The Multnomah Villager

Maplewood Elementary is holding a native plant sale this Saturday at the school to raise money for the new playground. There are flyers for this around the Village, but my neighbor Kathy who is heavily involved in about 200 fundraising activities for Maplewood provides us the salient info:

Maplewood Elementary School is holding its annual Native Plant Sale on Saturday, April 14, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m, rain or shine! A great selection of natives (from Bosky Dell Nursery) for both sun and shade. Many varieties sold out last year, so come early. Prices are $4 for 4″ pots; $8 for one-gallon containers and anywhere from $12-$16 for two-gallon plants (those larger ones will be priced according to quality). The proceeds this year are helping fund the new playground at Maplewood.

We’ll be there.

Our backyard fence apparently was installed during the Truman administration, and needs to be replaced. Have any of you in or around the Village had a wooden fence put in? Anyone you would recommend?

Woof! What a marathon meeting last night. Certainly not the most exciting gathering in the world, but there was lots of information shared. Here’s some facts in bullet-list form for those of you who didn’t join us:

• Commissioner Adams, who as they say in Hollywood  “would turn up at the opening of an envelope”, actually couldn’t make it to the groundbreaking of the new Multnomah Village Park on Monday, but the event was very well attended and I suppose now the park is official! There’s a work party on Saturday the 21st, which I have posted about previously.
• Tamara at Fusion Cut & Color asked me what was going to become of the parking area under the viaduct, which is currently used by business owners and visitors to the Village. I spoke to Randy Bonella about this, and he tells me that the parking situation is likely to improve, with the potential addition of up to 9 spaces and improvement of the state of the existing area. With parking such a hot-button issue around the Village, I’m almost hesitant to post this, so let’s wait and see if these improvements come to pass - but there will be no negative impact on parking, it seems.
• Turns out that Lincoln High School is using one of the baseball diamonds at Gabriel Park as their official field, since they don’t have room for a baseball field downtown (you know, what with PGE Park taking up all the space). They have asked to install a scoreboard. An old-style one with the hand-switched numbers. Non-lighted. After much snickering about how quickly this will end up painted Wilson green under cover of some dark night, the MNA gave its conditional approval to this plan. The scoreboard would be towards the back of the field, between the “main” Lincoln diamond and the Rocky Benevento field.
• I have to give credit to Kay Durtschi. That woman knows her way around transportation regulations and statutes and grants and all the stuff I’m glad SOMEONE knows, ’cause I sure am not sitting through any of those meetings.
• There’s a few key fundraising events upcoming for Maplewood School which will get a separate post tonight or tomorrow.
• Results from the design meeting re: the Jerome Sears property were discussed, presentations were made by Offier Lai of the PPB and Robert Liberty of Metro and more.

Just wanted to get something posted in a timely fashion about the MNA meeting. I often start out to post about them and then lost the momentum until it’s too far after the fact.

There’s a difference between writitng for a paper or magazine, and being a blogger. The easiest thing to point at is the fact that I can publish whenever I want, as quickly as I want, as a blogger. I don’t have to wait a week or more to “get it out there”, which is useful from a discussion standpoint. I’m also not accountable to editors, advertisers, etc. Oh yes, the people who know me in real life might say a word or two about something I’ve written, but that’s it. Of course, I’m not exactly doing hard-hitting investigative journalism here, so there’s a minimum of rsik of a brick through the window and all that.

A few things have happened in the past couple of weeks that have got me thinking about this odd hobby of mine, and how it relates to other published resources in and about our community.

• I’ve gotten a few comments and quiet emails from readers of this blog who were NOT mentioned in the recent SW Community Connection story on women-owned businesses in the Village - going to show that you always have choices to make when you publish a story, especially a cover story, and no matter what you do, some people will be upset, ’cause you can’t include everybody. That said, one of my commenters mentioned that a published list of the women-owned or women-operated businesses in the Village (inlcuding the ones that were NOT featured) would have been a nice addition.
• My friend Janna has gone from a columnist to a blogger to a columnist/blogger to publisher of Portland Family magazine. Congratulations Janna!
• I got an email on Saturday from Don Snedecor, publisher of the Multnomah Village Post, asking if I would be interested in writing a column in the Post. Lately, Don’s been taking some heat for his story content, and his focus on “crappy local businesses” (a complaint which certainly applies to this blog as well) and Don’s under the impression that the mysterious and dashing “Villager” will do something towards diversifying his content mix, I guess.
• I’ve lived through a minor comment war on the ratio of paid- versus non-paid-placement mentions in the Portland Picks newsletter.

So I said “yes” to Don, and I guess there will be “Multnomah Villager” column in The Post starting with the next issue!
Now if I could just figure out something to write about - now THAT’S a universal journalistic dilemma!

Tuesday night at 7PM, that’s April 10th. In the back corner of the Multnomah Center. There are signs, if you haven’t been before. And don’t worry, Brian doesn’t ALWAYS make you introduce yourself and make a short statement….

More specifically, come down to the just-being-created Multnomah Village Park for the official groundbreaking ceremony. It’s too late for this post, really - I should have gotten it up yesterday, since most people wil be reading this at work tomorrow morning. But in the event that you catch this tonight, and you want to put a little Sam Adams into your morning down at the new park, then c’mon down!

For those of you that have NO IDEA what I’m talking about, information about the new Multnomah Village Park is at this link. The existence of the park is pretty much entirely the result of long and successful efforts by Village resident Randy Bonella, who’s also like to you show up for a work party on the 21st. I can’t get away from the office tomorrow morning, Sam or no Sam. However, I think that Jr. V and I wil try to make the work party. Info on that follows:

…. last but not least I have scheduled a work day on Sat. April 21, 9am-1pm, please let me know if you would be able to attend

Measure and mark the property according to the design
Clean-up debris and garbage (good news is that the city just mowed the site)
Remove some small tree’s that are unhealthy)
Prep walking paths (Drainage, grading)

I will have the following equipment at the site:
(1) wheelbarrow
(1) pick
(6+) Shovels
(1) rake
(1) 300 ft tape measure
Stakes
Marking tape
Sharpies

Please be sure to bring work gloves and wear appropriate shoes/boots.
I will have water, coffee and pastries available
Please pass on to friends and neighbors.

Oh, here’s Randy’s email address in case you’d like to RSVP.

Well, we were headed for O’Connor’s, but they don’t open ’til 8AM, and since a certain local six-year-old was up at 2AM ready to search for Easter Eggs, we were on the go rather early. So we couldn’t resist when passing by the open at 6:30AM Fat City! Great breakfast as usual, thanks for swapping out the HUGE pancake for french toast. The booth behind us was soon to be occupied by Joan Stein and her family, making breakfast sort of a school-bus-stop reunion. It’s chilly out this morning, and we’re headed for a walk downtown, so now to stop home and grab a windshirt or something, but it looks like it’s going to be a great day.

Among my favorite things at Fat City are these placemats.  You can buy them by the way. They remind me of the types of things you’d find on a long car trip, in a truck stop cafe or one of those restaurants that feature a large gift shop in the front. Evertime we eat there, I become infused with the desire to take a trip to the Wallowas or the Antelope reserve, that is, until I remember the sheer amount of driving that stands between us and those locations. One day….

Yeah, OK, I’d be updating more often if I wasn’t so crazy busy at the day job - you know the drill….

There’s a few things I ought to put out there…

1. Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting next Tuesday night at 7PM at the Multnomah Art Center. There will be special guests. Metro Councillor Robert Liberty, and Multnomah Distrit Police Officer Z Lai.
2. Journeys continues to live up to my expectations. I’m pretty much a fixture on Monday nights at this point ’round about 9PM.
3. First Friday is tomorrow (today?), and if the weather stays like it is right now, it’s going to be a mob scene around here.
4. Apparently we have a new flower shop in the Village. Kelly Reed sens the following note regarding her new shop located in with M Antiques. “I am a new small business opening up here in the Village. It is called “Kelly’s Flowers” and resides within M Antiques. I am waiting for a sunny day to do a Grand Opening but I do have flowers and just set up a nice bouquet for Annie Blooms for a special request”. Good luck Kelly. It’s been awhile since we had a good flower shop. Am I remembering correctly that there was one in the Crooked Red House?
5. Switch Shoes will be celebrating the beginning of their second year in the Village on Thursday April 12th from 6-10PM. DJ, refreshments and sale prices that last through the weekend.
6. To my amusment there are three consecutive entries in the “Police Blotter” section of this month’s Connection that end with some variation of the phrase, “Officers were unable to locate the dog.”
7. Next Saturday, April 14th, Maplewood Elementary is holding a native plant sale at the school from 10-2. Proceeds help to fund the future new playground.

Here’s a shot you won’t see in the average Multnomah Village photo tour. This is one of our favorite little quirky areas of the Village - it’s the narrow alley that connects Troy to Capitol between Renner’s and the row of stores next door. How’s that for Sunday afternoon randomness? Hope you all got outside today.