St. Mary's Wall

Back to the wall saga----

I didn't have my camera with me today, plus it was a snotty rain in the afternoon, almost freezing and never getting beyond about 7am bright. I'll bring it along tomorrow, but the scoop today is that they have left the huge deciduous (oak) tree in the center of the lot, while the large pine is gone, leaving a raw stump about 20ft in the air. Yeesch! The cracked corner is knocked down to the height of a knee-wall and it continues at that height along to where the quaint arched gateway cuts through. Above one gateway is a carved stone arch that says "St. Mary's Academy" in a gothic Victorian script, above a gray slat door, and the teardown stops there on the side facing East. Packed earth berms slope away from the edge of the wall up to the level of the carpark, covered with gray plastic membrane and sandbags, keeping the dirt solid and dry. The old flagstone knee-wall turns the corner and heads west up the hill for about 30 or 40 ft, until the second arched gateway filled with a gray slat door. The original height and capstoned wall continues to the corner as if nothing is happening down the hill. The little ferns and mosses are all still soaking up the rains and thriving, green as glow worms on the flagstones.

Grief

My favorite dog is leaving the planet and my heart is breaking. There's nothing I can do except hug on him, pet and scratch him, give him some yogurt and doggie cookies, push the water dish over, and help him up if he wants to go outside. Nothing but everything I can to help him and give him love and touch.

You're never ready, you just aren't, unless you're good at keeping your heart in an insulated place far away from where it's supposed to be. I'm no good at that with animals, and even though he's been sliding in that direction for a while, it was still a shock to see it so baldly and with no other meaning than this. I'm tired of saying goodbye to animals, but I can't quit loving them, there's no other way than to love the hell out of them, so a fresh heartbreak, another raw grief, and time to say goodnight again. I know what unconditional love is because I've learned it this way, over and again, the noble animal souls who leave me behind blessed with their unconditional acceptance and love for me. There's no 'right' way to do grief, you just shoulder into it and keep breathing. Hugging other animals is a fine solace.

Today's Teardown

As pleased as I was to see the wall mostly still standing, I was then horrified to see what they were doing today to the huge trees on the lot. It seems they're removing the back fill that was put in at least 40 years ago to create a parking lot (by the size of the trees) and maybe leaving the wall intact? The backhoe operator is very delicate when digging near the wall facade, and is working on taking out the big slabs of asphalt and pounding them into smaller chunks that can be scooped up with a bulldozer. He takes out a chunk of the old concrete that's behind the flagstone with the vest guy guiding him, then he comes back for the soil. None of the rest of the wall is being disturbed (today) but since they're taking out the trees, maybe the wall is part of the preservation of whatever the future use the site will have.

This is what's on the other side of the street, facing the moss wall, the modern alternative.
Say it ain't so.

I know, why do I care, right? I don't work or live there, it didn't belong to my family or anything, so who cares? This wall is an historic part of the whole St. Mary's Academy & Church complex and is at least 100 years old, if not 175, and there's no replicating it if it's torn down. I mean, look at this gray nothingness---

The moss, the placement of each stone by human hands and mortared generously, the quality that has lasted this long, that's what I value in my urban surroundings, why I love Portland so much. If it's gone in a few weeks, someone noticed it happening, and took some last pictures of the beautiful stonework and inner-city mid-winter greenness of it. It's a living wall, it really is.

It's Gone Now

This morning I went by the wall and activity on the block had picked up noticeably, now a trailer with a backhoe was being unloaded above the corner here. I had to rush to my 10am Bio Anthropology class, and hoped for the best.

After my last class let out, after 2, I walked down the hill with the sunshine on my back and stopped behind the flagger on the corner and just took it all in: this corner was gone. The backhoe was directly above where the ledge had been, piles of the flagstone heaped next to the equipment, retaining walls of crumbling concrete falling away towards the street, stony earth being scooped out and away into a dump truck. What will be?

Are they shoring this corner up to preserve the wall? Or is this antique remnant of St. Mary Academy's playground garden being replaced with the battleship gray concrete panels found across the street? With no moss whatsoever. I'm going to hope for the best, shore it up, re-pour the retaining wall behind it, then put the stones back. The moss will take a few years, but I have a buttermilk recipe that can accelerate the re-colonization. I know what the odds are, but it can be fixed, just that iffy, cracked and bowed out corner.

Ay, Carumba!

...I can't put in the Spanish inverted exclamation point, but it's implied, okay?

Semana Numero Dos is now history, and I have a legal holiday long weekend to spend like a student. 'Cause that's what I am! I had some beer, and watched the last episode of my telenovela "Amar sin Limites" last night, with every woman of child-bearing age either about to pop or holding a newborn, the single women having weddings, and the people over 50 holding their grandchildren and smiling. And the evil characters living a life of shame or dead, the bad always get punished, and forgiven before they die. Now I'm down to only one show, 9pm on Univision, the costume epic of colonial Mexico, with amazing estates, horses and carriages, gowns and pirate attire, aging conquistadores and their willful children...Pasion. Pretty much sums it up, really.

School so far is amazing, I'm keeping up on the reading, and I had a chance to meet with one of my professors who is the head of the archaeology dept. for 30 minutes of course advising, she was very helpful. She was trying to encourage me to take the two statistics classes, but honestly, it's not likely, not when there's two alternatives in the Linguistics dept. that have a lot more interest to me. Math? NOW? I shudder to think. Aren't there Excel programs to crunch those numbers by now? We were seeing slides of her and her team in the 80s excavating a site in eastern Washington, and they still had to use survey equipment and plumb lines from 500 ft away. She even had to concede that GPS is the greatest tool ever, technological updates from other fields are being grabbed up in archaeology and anthropology as fast as they come along. More support for my position, I say. Excel all the way.

After class yesterday, I gave myself a thorough tour of the library, got into the PSU student access websites, found the extra material my art history prof posted for us to access, and then found the Chinese and Japanese literature in translation sections and checked out two titles from 18th century dynastic eras. Ever since I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" in 1997, I love to read these type of stories of long-lost cultural eras in Japan and China, I just get lost in the beautiful imagery and genteel mannerisms. Like I don't have enough reading to do right now?

Last Saturday I had a chance to catch up with my pal from the B-store days, Linsey, and she had a new laptop, bitemarks from a Doberman puppy/piranha, and had enjoyed her first non-retail Christmas in forever. We met at a very busy Zell's, kept a table occupied way too long chatting, and left smelling of really good homefries. Smoked wild salmon omelette cannot be recommended highly enough, so so good. She's all in Career Chick mode, which is great, she's got a great gig right now, but I wish she'd get back to writing her blog. Now that she has the new laptop that doesn't overheat and crash, the world is waiting...

Betty finally got herself another dog, my brother and I heaved a huge familial sigh. Since she quit working her part time job after Christmas, she's been cooped up in her condo and going sour fast, she didn't have anything to take her out of her deeply grooved rut. Of course, any step forward is good in this prolonged grieving process for her old dog, and I know he'll be his own little personality and eventually she'll bond with him as much as the other one. Already she sounds better on the phone, she's getting some exercise again, spending more time outdoors walking him a few times a day, seeing her neighbors going around the block, all of the fringe benefits of dog ownership. The puppy sounds like a mix of some boxer, shepherd, shorthair, tawny and about 50 lbs full grown. I told her to get some new running shoes and check the non-slip strips on the tiled stairs to the condo, he'll be a handful for a few years, pulling her around on a leash. My brother and I are so relieved.


Wild weekend, right? Maybe a trip to Best Buy to play with the computers, maybe check out the new Apple "Air", see a movie. Save the homework for Monday...such a slacker.

more moss

Just in Time

Since I've been walking back and forth each day to class, I keep going past this wall, and thinking, "I really need to bring my camera and shoot this wall, one of these mornings, these stones will be on the sidewalk."

Today, the entire block south and west of this corner was barricaded off, yellow police tape, cones, detour signs, the works.

So after I finished class, I went back there and filled the memory card, getting yelled at by guys in reflective vests and hard hats working on the other side of the street re-directing traffic. Some change is pending with this wall, and tomorrow it maybe started.

This wall was the main impetus for the Moss Project, although I've been thinking about it since November while leaf raking and noticing the amazing moss specimens glowing in the low sunlight. I felt like I was in a magical Welsh forest, here come the primeval wood sprites.
So, this is my newest garden in winter project, and saw all these camellias in bloom, and a trail of what I swore was jasmine. I had to track it down, and found this: below









So while I'm doing all this urban trekking, and in the barest time of year in foliage and bloom terms, this city is full of winter color and growth.
And the Moss Project will go on for a while...



This giant auger was getting placed as I was catching my homebound bus this afternoon...I'd have kicked myself for catching this amazing image but not having my camera with me. The antique steampunk pile driver was resting as the crew was smoothly landing this screwdriver from hell. I love this picture.

Here's another one, looking south:


So this huge build is at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge, and all this rich brown earth is being loaded onto double trailer trucks, hundreds of years of Willamette River floodwash and wharfside debris, clinking red bricks and crusts of old asphalt paving slipping down a thousand years into the pit. Welders, crane operators and hardhat conferences going on around the perimeter, and the rain starts coming down in a mist. Climate is a constant, and I get onto the warm dry bus. Will the wall be there in the morning?