Racoons, Party of Five in Everyday Ramblings

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I like this picture of some almost hidden architectural detail of a porch in my neighborhood. It is interesting now after seven years of wandering around with some sort of device that contains a camera how much of this detail I have accumulated.

My oldest sister used to chastise me for being big city focused and not caring about my local community and it is true. I don’t read the local paper and rarely listen to local news but what I do instead is wander around and take pictures.

Now that she is gone and I appear to be channeling her local history energy it is as if she touched me with a magic wand when she was leaving and left me covered in a shimmering web of connections between the past and the present and a rich vein and variety of almost endless marvels right here in the heart of things.

My student friend and a lovely woman she brought with her dropped me off here at home after the history lecture on Thursday evening and as they pulled up to the corner I said, oh and there is the Carnegie library and there is the Shul “Jews of Ashkenazi descent have traditionally used the Yiddish term “shul” (cognate with the German Schule, school) in everyday speech.” And there is… And they were marveling about how I live in the epicenter of the neighborhood that was incredibly vital from about 1870 to 1970.

Yesterday I had some relatively free time. It was hot and muggy and buggy out so one really doesn’t want to be exposed to the worst of it midday when it is like that so I went down the historical rabbit hole again.

I organized all the materials I have, an E book to be read on my laptop, a Kindle book to be read on my iPad, a book I bought last week that is about the history of my church (which is intimately tied to this neighborhood) and a book on Jewish History in Portland I picked up at the library yesterday. It turns out the author of that book knows all sorts of folks I am acquainted with because I asked to be a friend of hers on Facebook and she accepted me.

She also is a cat person. :)

So on Thursday I confirmed that the building across from me was built in 1888 and was originally the Immanuel Baptist State Church. In 1912 it became the Kesser Israel Synagogue until the early 70’s. It is now a Pentecostal Christian church with a small very committed population that does not live in the neighborhood. They are mostly white working class folk with big bodies and big families and they rock out with electric guitars and pop gospel on Sunday mornings. I am not sure if the building was empty for a time. That is another piece to be filled in.

One of the things I am discovering here is that um, history, it is um, not precise.

We are talking mostly here about the recollections of human type people prone to, well, cementing memories that may be conflated or misplaced so I am finding all kinds of dates and addresses that don’t match.

In 1885 there was a movement to start Kindergarten programs here and they named them in the same way they named firehouses, so it was No. 2 that was opened here, either right here next to the stable or up one block across the street where some accounts say there was a Unitarian Chapel. That first year they had 150 kids from 4 to 6 years old and it was free.

So of course now I have to find out more about that. First I have heard of this. I knew the Neighborhood House had a Kindergarten for Jewish kids but it wasn’t built until the 1920’s.

But my absolute favorite find yesterday links all my interests (well except poetry but if I write a poem about it we’ll have that too). It is from a listing of church services in Portland on Sunday December 6th 1903…

First Unitarian Society (the precursor to my current church) Yamhill & 7th Ram Tirath Swami of India will speak – Subject “The Expansion of the Self”.

Ha! A yogi. He was young, only 30, good looking, charismatic and was trained as a mathematician in Lahore before he gave it all up to become a preacher for Hindu Vedanta. He was speaking to the fair people of my congregation about the importance of all of us being equal and how critical it was to get young Indians into American Universities no matter what their caste or ethnic background so that they could go home and better the life of their people.

And this, my friends, has come to pass.

Okay I could go on but need to get ready to go to said church.

The title refers to the 4 teenage racoons I had gamboling in a playful roiling mass all over my patio night before last. Mom was there too keeping a watchful eye on them. They were huge and hysterical to watch, both a little unnerving and adorable.

Luckily I had brought all the bird stuff in about 15 minutes before.

Last updated June 28, 2015