Dave Knows Portland

Archives for March 2011

Hawthorne Build Your Block Challenge

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Mount Tabor Middle School is a finalists in Umpqua Bank’s Hawthorne Build Your Block Challenge.

The winner of the challenge is awarded a $10,000 grant for their neighborhood project.

Each winter the front entrance to Mount Tabor Middle School become an unsightly and unsafe mud pit. Portland Nursery‘s experts have studied the issue and donated a design plan to construct a path leading from the front door to 58th street.

Mount Tabor School Path

The Wall, which fashions paths and retaining walls from recycled materials, has offered to build the hardscape at a sizable discount; Por Que No is donating up to $500 from its March 30 sales to the project. The Build Your Block Challenge grant would put the project over the top, and construction could begin this summer in time for the 2011 school year.

The other challenge finalists:

Pocket Park and Garden on Main Street (between 35th and 36th)
Description: Umpqua will work with SE Uplift to create a lush 3,000 square foot pocket park full of native, medicinal and edible plants – where multi-generational community members and visitors can relax, take lunch, garden or play a friendly game of chess.

Harvest the Rain with Sunnyside Elementary
Description: Umpqua will work with the gardening and sustainability program at Sunnyside Elementary to create a rain harvesting demonstration project. This project will help water the gardens at Sunnyside with captured water and teach neighbors how to do the same.

Vote from now through April 15, 2011 for the project you think is most deserving of the $10,000 grant. Cast your ballot at the Umpqua Bank Hawthorne location (3557 SE Hawthorne Blvd). Visit the bank or the Facebook page for more information.

7th Planet Picture Show presents Hard To Kill (24-March-2011)

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Hard To KillPortland’s weekly answer to MST3K, the 7th Planet Picture Show, takes place at 7pm this Thursday, March 24, 2011 at Mount Tabor Theater (4811 SE Hawthorne).

The film this week is the Steven Seagal classic Hard To Kill:

Mason Storm, a ‘go it alone’ cop, is gunned down at home. The intruders kill his wife, and think they’ve killed both Mason and his son too. Mason is secretly taken to a hospital where he spends several years in a coma. His son meanwhile is growing up thinking his father is dead. When Mason wakes up, everyone is in danger – himself, his son, his best friend, his nurse – but most of all those who arranged for his death.

Join Will Radik and colleagues as they skewer extraordinarily skewerable films.

Show is free, but there’s an entirely optional suggested donation of $5. There’s a bar too, so you must be 21 and over to attend!

March 23, 1806: Lewis and Clark Leave Fort Clatsop

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Heather at Fort Clatsop

Almost two years after their adventure began, Lewis and Clark and their crew packed their stolen canoe and began the journey home on March 23, 1806.

At 1 P.M. left Fort Clatsop on our homeward bound journey At this place we had wintered and remained from the 7th of Decr. 1805 to this day and have lived as well as we had any right to expect, and we can say that we were never one day without 3 meals of some kind a day either ore Elk meat or roots, notwithstanding the repeated fall of rain which has fallen almost constantly since we passed the narrows… we had not proceeded more than a mile before we met Delashelwilt and a party of 20 Chinnooks men and women. This Chief leaning that we were in want of a canoe some days past, had brought us one for sale, but being already supplyed we did not purchase it.

March 22, 1913: Happy Birthday Tom McCall!

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Governor Tom McCallOne of Oregon’s most celebrated governors, Tom McCall, was born on March 22, 1913 in Egypt, Massachusetts. He spent his childhood splitting time between the family ranch near Prineville, Oregon and his state of birth.

After earning a journalism degree from the University of Oregon he worked at Moscow, Idaho’s News Review, before moving back to Oregon to work for The Oregonian, and then KGW as a radio news announcer. He served as a war correspondent for the Navy in World War II, and then returned to Portland and hosted a talk show on KEX. His political career began in 1949 when the Young Republican worked as an assistant to Governor Douglas McKay.

In 1964 Tom McCall was elected secretary of state, and in 1966 he was elected governor. Notable legislation he supported during his two terms included the beach bill, providing for public ownership of Oregon’s beaches, and the bottle bill, requiring deposits on soda and beer bottles. Also under his administration urban grown boundaries were established.

Governor McCall left office in 1975 and returned to broadcasting, working as a news analyst for KATU television. He died of cancer in 1983.

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