My Blog

I'm in Glenwood Springs, Colorado!

artopium — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:53:38 GMT

Hey folks, I've gone home for the holidays. My last few weeks in Portland were wet and a bit dreary, but I managed to stay dry by squatting in what I must say is the finest and most pristine squat I have ever had the privilege to squat in. About 8 of us were sleeping in a 5 bedroom, 4 story (including basement) mini-mansion that someone found as an abandoned foreclosure right near the PSU campus. Besides, my tent is on it's way out. For Thanksgiving I traveled to Seattle with a very good friend, then left Portland via Amtrak to Glenwood. I'll be in Glenwood for a while, then Denver, then hopefully to Austin, Texas for a bit. I'll then be heading back towards Glenwood, then to Portland by sometime near March. Anyway, that's the plan. It's been snowing a lot here since I've arrived. A good friend told me it snowed in Portland just recently, but I'll bet it's not much compared to the consistent flow of the white fluffy stuff here in Glenwood.

Back in the City of Roses

artopium — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:52:15 GMT

Hello all! I just returned from the Oregon regional rainbow gathering held this year in the Ochoco National Forest just outside of Prineville. I got there near the end of the gathering and there were maybe 60 or 70 brothers and sisters present. It was nice, as it created a real sense of intimacy and closeness. I have to admit that there were no elders there and that there was a bit more drinking than you would normally see at a rainbow gathering, but it was made up for by the mad pirate "space bag" play on the last day, and the family vibe that was felt by everyone. At the end of the gathering, we spent a day cleaning up the campgrounds, then 19 of us carrying our own packs packed up on to a blue bus (also referred to as the blue pirate bus) and headed back into Portland. When we arrived, there were many brothers who had never been to Portland before and I offered to give them a tour of the city and show them a kosher place to sleep. After terrorizing Old Town / Chinatown with our crazy hippie ways and meandering through Pioneer Square, we rode the MAX to Washington Park and slept in the bushes. It was great having family with me in Wash. Park, sharing food and good times. The next morning was Saturday, so naturally we went to Saturday Market at the Skidmore Fountain MAX stop. Our group split up as a brother and myself stayed in the market to sell jewelry on the sidewalk and the rest went to go check out the city. We agreed to meet back at Pioneer Square at 5 PM. However, it wasn't long before this brother and I found ourselves on another journey entirely, say, through the looking glass, as a very kind brother in the market traded some l for one of my pendants. I packed up my jewelry and decided to see the City of Roses in a new light. I have been here a while. Why not follow this new brother through the city and see it through his eyes? So I did. And we both wandered through downtown, a bit aimlessly, as I was following him, you see? And our trip through downtown led us right to Pioneer Square, and just as we arrive, there's everyone else from camp, standing at the MAX stop, yelling at us to hurry over to them. As we dash up to the stop, MAX tickets are thrust into our hands, a MAX train arrives, and we tossed onto the train, almost all in one motion. We're told "You're going to a party," although I'm still reeling from the fact that if we hadn't arrived precisely when we did we would not have seen anyone this evening, so it was meant to be that we should be going. An hour and a half MAX-plus-bus ride later we arrived in Forrest Grove to find ourselves at the McMenamins Grand Lodge. This has to be the grandest, largest, manor of an estate-mansion I have ever seen. It's three stories tall and hundreds of rooms big with an east and west wing, and sits on a many acre garden. As we begin to walk through we quickly notice the tent areas for the stage and band and all of the incredibly rich looking white folk everywhere. Then someone points out to me the compass the square and the G symbol over the main entrance and I quickly realize this is a Freemasonic lodge, a Freemasonic party. And here we are, standing on the outskirts of this very rich place and very rich party looking very dire, tired, dirty, worn down and very hippie. I mean, we just cam back from the regional, slept in the park, wandered downtown, and now we're here. However, when the blue bus finally arrived, it was explained to me that the lodge used to be a Freemasonic "old people's home", but is now leased by the McMenamins as a hotel of sorts, with a spa, hot-tub area, and a bar called "The Doctors Office" in the basement hall. Also in the basement were a series of restrooms with showers in them, so some of us naturally jumped in and got clean, and although our garb didn't fit in with the slacks and collard shirts of most of the others at the party, we quickly fixed that by stripping to our undies and sitting in the hot tub singing gypsy songs. We danced and rocked out to the band playing, and although I was a bit apprehensive about the type of people at the party, I found everyone to be accepting and kind. Speaking of Freemasonic buildings, the Mcmenamins Grand Lodge isn't the only Freemasonic building near Portland no longer used by the Freemasons. A few blocks away from the Central Public Library is the largest Masonic Temple in Portland, built in 1921 as a recreation of King Soloman's Temple and for the purposed of housing all the branches of Freemasonry, including the Eastern Star, Kinghts Templer, et. al. it is now called the Mark Building and is used as the Portland Art Museum administrative offices. Noticing that Portland has many curiously no-longer-used freemasonic buildings, and that the predominant symbol of the city is the rose, I began to think of another secret society I know of that uses the rose as it's symbol: the Rosicrucians. Hmmmm.

Hempfest in Seattle

artopium — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:49:43 GMT

I just spent the last week in Seattle, Washington. The first weekend of which I spent at Hempfest, an amazingly huge festival of music, art and products for the purpose of marijuana anti-prohibition, and pro-legalization. I would have to say at least 30 to 40 thousand people attended throughout the day and witnessed the 3 stages of great, live bands, and the many booth vendors along the Seattle beach a few blocks down from Pike's Market. To get to Seattle, my friends and I caught a ride using Craig's List ride-share category. We arrived at 2am and caught up with some friends who were dancing at a club party in Pioneer Square. Yes, both Seattle and Portland have a Pioneer Square, but they are quite different places to visit. We followed our friends directions, but alas we couldn't tell if anyone was home, so after crashing on the sidewalk in front of a "friend of a friend's" place, with a mild hangover the lot of us made our way to the festival. Synchronistically, at the festival, I ran into several rainbow brothers and sisters whom I worked with at Milliways Kitchen during the Rainbow National, one of which let me stay in her backyard. Expecting to only stay for the weekend of the festival I missed my rideshare back to Portland and ended up staying an entire week. Luckily my friend Paul was there on business and let me stay in his hotel room. I'm lucky because Seattle is not as comfortable of a place to do urban camping as Portland. There aren't convenient parks to camp in, and even if there were the police don't seem as friendly about the idea. One very cool place to go if you're ever in Seattle is Ballard. If there is anywhere I would try to urban camp in Seattle it would be the Ballard district, although I never did have to urban camp in Ballard as I met many people who were willing to let me stay at their place on their couch. You can meet lots of cool people at the Bergen Triangle Plaza at the center of Ballard, or at Mr. Spot's Chai House right next to the Triangle.

My first experiences with urban camping in Portland

artopium — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:48:20 GMT

So far, it's been a very interesting "mixed bag" of experiences trying to urban camp in downtown Portland. First, let me say that for all of the cities I could try and do this in, Portland is setup for it like an urban camping paradise. There are numerous parks to sleep in, and certain doorways seem to be acceptable sleeping places, although the idea of sleeping directly on the sidewalk seems silly in lieu of the fact that Washington Park is just a train ride away. At Washington Park, if you go far enough in, and it is indeed a large park, you will find many others who have zipped up into their sleeping bags and taken up a nice, quiet, and mostly peaceful plot of park to sleep in. My first several days in this town have been camping out with other rainbow brothers and sisters in the park. The weather has been very nice and temperate throughout the day, but it does get a bit chilly at night and I would recommend a sleeping bag rated to at least 30. It rains a bit in the spring and a lot through the fall and winter, but in the summer it's not anything you couldn't handle with a tarp, so I haven't need to pitch a tent yet. The people in Portland are amazingly friendly and actually, quite a few of them are travelers from many other places. It is a port town, I guess. But, just about everywhere you go downtown you will see others with travelers packs, walking around, taking in the culture, being the culture. There are so many free meal programs throughout the city that no one could possibly go hungry in this town. Going to them kind of makes me feel like I'm at Rainbow again, walking from kitchen to kitchen around the meadow. The biggest differences being that at rainbow I got fed wonderful, nutritious, vegan food that gave me much energy, even if I didn't eat very much, and Portland's free meal programs make me feel like I've been poisoned. Not to mention the fact that most of the free meal programs are visited by the mentally disabled or drug (heroin) addicts. Well, OK, so are rainbow kitchens, but at rainbow there's so much more love and consciousness present, and definitely no heroin, or most other powders. And alcohol is discouraged greatly.

Portland is amazing

artopium — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:45:47 GMT

I've been traveling with my new friend Heather through the metro areas of downtown Portland, Oregon, and I must say this town rocks! The town is setup neatly and is easy to understand how to get around once you understand the light rail (called the MAX) and the position of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. So far, one of my favorite places to hang out is at Pioneer Courthouse Square, located at the center of Portland's downtown. All the MAX trains intersect at what Portland calls it's "living room", where they show movies on a giant inflatable screen in the evenings and have something called Noon Tunes during the day where awesome bands play live. My other favorite place to hang out is at Rocco's Pizza, located right across the street from Powell's Books at the intersection of Burnside and 10th, this local pizza pub has been around for a while. There's a very eclectic crowd of students, homeless, white collar workers, bike enthusiasts, etc. that hang out front, who come for the gigantic slices of pizza and cheap beer.