Our trip to Yellowstone

We just got home from Yellowstone last week. We had a great time there - of course we saw lots of geothermal activity, but we also saw lots of wildlife... I went there as a kid with my family and it's still one of my favorite vacation spots 30 years on...

The Velveteria!

As many of you may or may not realize, some Portlanders have adopted a motto for the city of "Keep Portland Weird." You see it around town on bumper stickers and such. Well, in an effort to show you that Portland really is weird and has no worries about losing its weird status, let me present the Velveteria...

The Velveteria is a museum devoted to the art of the velvet painting... yes, that totally cheesy class of art once relegated to only the best dives in town has now been elevated to something worthy of a museum... Caren & Carl have spent the last 10 years of their lives collecting these fuzzy paintings; there is now a collection of over 300 in the museum plus, the added feature... the blacklight room!

The Velveteria hosts a variety of themes including clowns, banditos, as they call them "lovely ladies" and their current featured image is the "Unicornicopia". Alas, this image is not on their website. It is too precious to display to the unappreciative masses.

So, the next time anyone is in Portland looking for something to do, check out the Velveteria. It has made a name for itself and has found notariety from the media, including Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and CBS Sunday Morning, as well as a segment on NPR. These shows would certainly not lead you astray...

I don't think...

The Maryhill Museum

Chris & I took a trip up the Columbia River Gorge yesterday to the Maryhill museum. It's about a 1:45 minute trip from Portland, about 20 miles east of The Dalles, overlooking the Columbia River, on the Washington side. For those who don't know, the Maryhill was originally a mansion built by successful business man and entrepreneur, Sam Hill for his wife, Mary. However, Sam stopped construction on the house in 1917 and before they ever moved into this house, Sam was convinced to turn the home into a museum at the persuasion of his friend Loie Fuller. Although born in the U.S., Loie was an influential interpretive dancer whose well known friends were among some of the most influential artists in Paris in the early 20th century. She helped to amass the art collection forthe museum, including over 80 sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

Hill also enlisted the help of his friend, Queen Marie of Romania, a Scottish-born noblewoman who married the king of Romania, to assist in building the collection for the Maryhill. Queen Marie dedicated the museum in 1926, almost 10 years after construction was originally stopped on the home, even though it was not yet ready to open to the public at this time. In Queen Marie's personal diary she commented on the house/museum built in the middle of nowhere: "that strange uncouth cement building erected by the just as strange old Samuel Hill. ... I knew when I set out that morning to consecrate that queer freak of a building that no one would understand why; I knew it was empty and in no wise ready to house objects for a museum. I knew there were scoffers about me, even hostilities, but a spirit of understanding was strong in me that day and I managed by my own personality, by my words, by my spirit, to move all the hearts beating there this morning. ... I knew that a dream had been built into this house, a dream beyond the everyday comprehension of the everyday man.

Queen Marie was also an accoplished artist in her own right. She wrote several books, was a talented painter and carved many pieces of furniture that adorned her home. Many of these pieces have been moved to the Maryhill and set up on exhibit there. When she came to dedicate the museum in 1926, she also brought with her $1.5 million in paintings and statuary as well as donating the gown she wore to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra.

The museum has some wonderful pieces in its collection, of which only about 20% is on display in the museum. There are also beautiful grounds surrounding the museum. Apparently, Sam Hill was a big advocate of setting up new road systems and using new materials in these roads. To this end he built approximately 10 miles of road on the grounds around the Maryhill. According to some accounts, these were the first paved roads in the state of Washington.

Chris & I had an enjoyable afternoon both in the museum looking at the collections and around the grounds looking at the amazing scenery. One other item of note about the museum, the grounds are the home to many peacocks (I think I counted over a dozen of them) which were added to the museum in 1970. Alas, the peacocks had molted most of their glorious plume of feathers, but they are still a sight to see were just one more bright spot on the day.

Siberian Wooden Houses

A few years back I found a graphic artist who created not only commercial art for clients, but also some great wallpapers/ backgrounds for your computer. He is a Russian that lives in Irkutsk and has a site called Vladstudio. His wallpapers/ art range from beautiful scenery to whimiscal creatures and I recommend them for anyone who is looking for a change of pace over the standard fare for desktop wallpapers.

A few days ago I was looking around on his normal site and came across a new sub-site that he had started. Apparently a while back he went around Irkutsk with his camera to take pictures of the beautiful old wooden houses around town that are falling into disrepair. These are some truly amazing houses with incredible, detailed woodwork. I have put one of the pictures up on my desktop wallpaper both at work and at home.

Each time I sit down to my desk I find myself staring at the pictures with all the detailed woodwork. My mind ends up drifting; thinking about the people who did this incredible work in a time when precision laser cutting machines weren't available. I reminesce that even if these craftsmen had jigs to aid in this work it would have been and incredible, labor-intensive act of love. Alas, I also end up thinking about how these houses are falling into seeming ruin. No one appears to be stepping up to rescue these houses from their inevitable fate.

My hope and prayer is that soon someone will step forward to save these houses and recognize the amazing gift this city has been given with these pieces of art that a person can actually live in. I invite you to also go look at these photos and ponder the talent of these amazing craftsmen of the past.

http://www.vladstudio.com/siberianwoodenhouses/

Kitty Redecorating Service

The cats have put aside their cat wrestling (mostly) for a more "grown-up," sophisticated hobby - home redecorating. Our entire house has been receiving the special decorative touches that only this exclusive kitty-provided service can offer. This week, the focus was my office/craft room where the girls decided that their artistic touches were needed. So one night after Chris & I had gone to bed we heard a crash coming from the room across the hall. When Chris went to investigate, he found that the girls had knocked over a rack of 100+ spools of thread, had continued to disperse the spools throughout the room and wreaked some other havoc in the process. Of course, they thought it was an improvement. I wasn't so sure...

My office is not the only area of the house that they have re-decorated of late. They decided they didn't like the window coverings in our bedroom arranged as they were, so they generously offered their services and "fixed" them for us. They also decided that they didn't like a lamp that was in our garage waiting for repair - apparently it didn't match the decor in the rest of the house, so they knocked it over and made it so we don't have to repair it now! How lucky for us! If any of your are in need of the Kitty Redecorating Service, just let me know... I'd love to lend them out to you for a few hours or even days so your home too can receive that special artistic vision that only 10 month old kittens have. But don't forget, these fickle artists only do their best work after you have gone to bed - so don't be too disappointed if they don't get to work right away. Believe me they are thinking about your home and how best to fix it up to make it a true kitty masterpiece once you head off to bed!

My camera is MIA!!!

I had friends being baptised on April 26 - an exciting time for us. I packed up all my stuff to take to church with me early in the morning and headed out - Chris was to meet me later. About an hour into working at church I realized I had forgotten the camera - so I called Chris to have him get it... about 5 phone calls back and forth and we realized that neither one of us knew where the camera was. It is not in any of it's "normal" places... OK, just have to rely on others to take the Baptism photos and look for the camera when we get home...

We get home that afternoon and I start looking in all the "not normal" places for it... and it's still nowhere to be found. We don't know what has happened to it, but it's definitely MIA. On the upside, this has given me an excuse to buy a new digital camera. I debated buying an digital SLR camera, but ultimately Chris & I decided the convenience of "pocket size" cameras that can go anywhere with us was preferable. So, this week, I took my birthday money and put it toward ordering a new camera... a Panasonic Lumix TZ5. Now if it would just hurry up and get here!

Has it really been over a month?!?

OK, I admit, it's been a while since I logged in... it seems like normal "life" coupled with everything else that is thrown into the works during Lent (for Orthodox, Easter was very late this year, not occuring until just last Sunday, April 27), my life was just a blur. It seems like everytime I'd think about blogging I'd get distracted with something else and be off like a headless chicken.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's all just an excuse....