February 23, 2021: Potpourri of Better Things -

A bust of York, the enslaved Black member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, appeared in Mt. Tabor Park over the weekend. Happy Black History Month!

It’s really beautiful. It’s up on the pedestal where a statue of Harvey Scott (1838-1910) stood before it was torn down last fall.

Here’s the double mystery, which I find pretty enjoyable. Nobody claimed responsibility for tearing down Mr. Scott, or said why. Speculation is that maybe it had to do with his stand on women’s suffrage? (His stand: Nope.)

Some other Portland statues were toppled right before Mr. Scott’s was. The folks who pulled those down were not quiet about their complaints, which mainly had to do with racial justice. Anyway, Portland Parks and Rec doesn’t know why Scott came down, and one of his arms was missing, and they had nearly zero budget last year, so they said at the time that they’d put him in storage and work with the Regional Arts and Culture Council about what to put up.

(Montage of leaves dropping from trees, calendar pages flipping, etc., to denote the passage of time….)

SO there the empty pedestal remained, and then this weekend, somebody put up York.

I love this next bit:

“This piece of art is a complete surprise for Portland Parks & Recreation,” Parks director Adena Long said in a statement Saturday. She said the bureau’s policy is to allow tributes placed in parks to remain, so long as they are not a danger to the public, and so it intends to leave the bust of York in the park for the time being.

So there you go! Just do it, as they say.

I’m feeling quite happy about PP&R this week. As mentioned earlier, they had nearly zero budget last year, because unfortunately, their funding was primarily fee based, and since all classes and activities were shut down, there was zero income. We all got a very sobering letter saying that we’d need to pass a levy, and then we’d need to wait for the levy to kick in, and then we’d have an actual TAX base for our parks and rec, like a normal city (my editorial), and only THEN, in 2022, would there be any programming. OUCH.

But then… the levy did pass, hooray, thank you, Portland. And THEN the City Council said PP&R could have a loan that would let them access those levy funds early , so there will be some programming this summer (mainly outdoors) including the Free Lunch + Play program.  It’s estimated that 50,000 Portland schoolkids face hunger daily, and the school free lunch program was very important to those kids and their families. But (as we know, alas) there was no school this year (though valiant efforts to help with hunger did arise).

Anyway, come summer, free lunch will return to the parks. Good news! And yes, it shouldn’t be needed, I get it, but since it is, I’m glad this is happening.

So that’s a bit of Portland good news, and now, moving to the UK, there’s news that opera singers are helping “long-haul” COVID patients, by providing them breathing/singing/vocalizing lessons over Zoom. All of those skills are pretty much what opera singing is about. It’s a great program – gives recovering patients a coach, gives out-of work opera singers a way to share their skills and help others. Gives both some human interaction. They are planning to expand it soon.

Okay, one more, but it’s a mixed bag.  It’s an interview between the (to me) annoying ZDoggMD and the effervescent and incredibly likable Dr. Monica Ghandi, of UCSF, on “The End of the Pandemic.” It is a true mood booster, except for when ZDogg gets going. Then I grind my teeth a bit. But it's mainly a style thing, and he may not bug you. It’s 47 minutes long, so I’ll just give you the big happy message, which is that all of the vaccines are protective against serious COVID, and all of them are 100% protective against death, and that's really all we should care about. Also, Dr. Ghandi gets an enormous kick out of saying, “Variants, schmariants,” because there will be boosters in time, etc.

I don’t know about you, but I feel as if, in recent days, there are pretty mixed messages out there about how soon our circumstances will become how much better. I realized today that it reminds me of the beginning of the pandemic, when there were mixed messages about how bad things would get, and how quickly. So, for what it’s worth, if you’d like to hear a couple of physicians who are blindingly optimistic, you might give this a listen. I’ve set the link for 29 minutes in, because I liked this section, but there are good sections sprinkled throughout.