Morning Walk and Linnea Hall in Portland

Among saved programs from songfests of the Runeberg Lodge an illustration of the Linnea Hall in Portland, Oregon, appears.  In an earlier entry to this blog, in 2011, I mentioned this program and a song from the program, Romance, by Merikanto, I had found while searching the internet for songfest performance songs.  On a morning sight-seeing walk in Portland these past few days I saw the Linnea Hall in Portland.  The hall had been a gathering place for Scandinavians in Portland.  

Twelfth Anniversary of Spice Drawer Mouse

Big Project From North Slope District

Large Tree They Saved

Last autumn I read with others at a celebration of Madeline Defrees collection of essays.  The book was titled Subjective Geographies, from one essay that had been included in an anthology from the 1980s.  I had an essay in the same anthology, my essay was titled “Stars and Streetlights”.  I read from the Defrees essay at the celebration and spoke about how I had happened to know Madeline Defrees.

Plans for the event coincided with a Facebook save the tree alert from my neighborhood from the 1980s.  I lived at an apartment in one house for about six years and my books Memory (1982) and Shelter (1985) were published while I lived there.  

I moved.  My bike rides took me along different streets.  Last autumn I walked to the Facebook tree location and took my own photo of the tree. 

Wide Area For Large Tree

Farther along I noticed that another tree was marked and I brought this to the attention at the North Slope District facebook.  I emailed the large project then followed progress and notified the Facebook group different times.  But the decision went against keeping the smaller flowering tree.  Now the tree would have been flowering, it is gone and some grass and cement replaces it – although the tree was supposed to become replaced, according to the project plans. 

Today I took photos of what the project did at that place, North 8^th and North K in the North Slope District.

Telephone Pole
where tree removed

At Climate Change Event Today

The beautiful tree near the climate change event.  The event takes a moment for a photo.

At Wright Park Today

Traffic on detour away from the continuing street project ahead of the Light Rail that will extend the Tacoma Link Light Rail to King Boulevard includes the Pierce Transit bus at the top of the photo.  At Wright Park Pond was an egret.

Folk Costume From Malax Finland

Laura Jensen in Malax Costume

This from Folk Costume on Wikipedia:   Following the outbreak of romantic nationalism, the peasantry of Europe came to serve as models for all that appeared genuine and desirable. Their dress crystallised into so-called "typical" forms, and enthusiasts adopted that attire as part of their symbolism.

Linnea Gord Jensen in cosutme
with Leonard Svedberg

Each village has a different folk costume.  By crystallised I believe is intended a gradual accumulation of a village costume that matched everyone else in the village, and this happened in the nineteenth century at a time when historians accumulated songs and dance patterns, gathered and published them together.  The published music books were an opportunity for immigrants to the United States to perform songs they knew well from their childhoods together as a part of communicating together.  
Long-ago Peasants of course did not have music books.  The folk costumes were a way of remembering a time in the past.   My mother brought a folk costume back from Finland with her in 1938.  I have a photo of her with Leonard Svedberg at a gathering.  I tried the costume on over ten years ago and took my photo in the costume.  I have the folk costume that belonged to my mother.

Bike To Venersborg 1998

 
Today was the last day of the two for one sale on Tofu at Safeway.  So I was happy I had taken the bike to the store.  At the end of the month I will be in Portland for Association of Writers and Writers' Programs Annual Meeting.  I last attended in 2014 when the meeting was in Seattle.  When I get there, each time, I think about how it matters how you get there, which has been a theme regarding Ecology.  

I attended the Annual Meeting in Portland in 1998, I brought the bike I had then along, my second adult bike since the first adult bike in 1990.  The current bike is the third adult bike.  I noticed I could stay at a bed and breakfast in Vancouver, Washington and visit an Historical Swedish landmark called Venersborg, near Battle Ground.  If I took the C-Tran to Battleground I could ride the bike to Venersborg.  I made contact first with a Venersborg representative.  

I rode an hour and a half to Venersborg.  My ride back was half an hour, downhill.  It was nice enough weather and the scenery was beautiful.  This was the only time I took the bike on the train.  The plans for my trip this month will not include the bike.