Cassette Artifact

Cassette Artifact, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Moving to Tumblr

Blogger has become to difficult to work with, so I am moving my so-called blog to Tumblr. To THIS ADDRESS (which is also cleverly titled "Paul Hehn").

You can also always go to my FLICKR for photos.  I post there with some frequency.

I hope this transition goes smoothly.  Thank you.

Multnomah Falls

Falls Pic in Pic, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

With Cleo and Sarah.

Movie Mirror Scares

Lyle's Boxes

IMG_2419, originally uploaded by lyle trial.

Fashion Curated

Fashion Curated, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Wall Drawing

Wall Drawing, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

"I'm on a Horse"

Animals Are Scary

Time Saving Tips From Comcast

These four identical envelopes arrived in the mail yesterday.

I Can See Myself in 3-D

I Can See Myself in 3-D, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Some Kid Project

Some Kid Project, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Ralph Spoilsport Motors by DJ Mystaspot

DJ Mystaspot

John Lennon Says...

Kirsten Dunst: "Turning Japanese"

Ouch! Sportscast Follies

To be fair to this poor guy: this is probably the kind of job I'd do if I were in his business.

Mystery Mardi Gras Postcard

We received this Mardi Gras postcard the other day. It's a mystery. We can't think of who sent it to us.

Yesterday, in the beautiful afternoon sun, I went for a walk with my pal, Greg, in southwest Portland.

We started, as we often do, at one of his restaurants, the Corbett Fish House (hey, that's me in that photo there!).  

We went down to the walkway along the Willamette River and headed south, through Willamette Park and on down along the railroad line to the Sellwood Bridge.  We crossed Highway 43 and went up the hill to the Riverview Cemetery -- founded by some of Portland's early big shots.  Many of them are interred there, also.

It's a beautiful, sprawling cemetery, and the weather was terrific.  We wandered around the grounds for quite a while.  We even stopped to see the grave of Virgil Earp, which was festooned with flags and homemade tributes (!).  Here's a photo of it:

Just as we were leaving the cemetery, I noticed this stack of what looked like someone's schoolwork, being held in place by a rock.

My guess is that someone found this stack of papers and, as a kindness, placed it up off the ground and held it steady with a stone, in case the rightful owner happened to retrace their steps.

I resisted the urge to look through the papers -- it wasn't quite clear to me what kind of homework it is.  Yes, I thought about the possible "good find" if the papers included some personal notes or some revealing tidbits of human nature.

But it seemed somehow wrong to interfere with whatever was going on there.  And it's not really my nature to be all that nosy.  I took some close-up shots, so there may some clues... something familiar to somebody somewhere.

Iris and Cleo

Guy Hehn's Letter to Borden Chemical

At Dad's memorial service on Saturday one of his former colleagues at Borden Chemical brought in a copy of the e-mail that Dad sent out when he retired.  Here it is:

Guy and Wanda

Guy and Wanda Hehn

Guy and Wanda Hehn, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Guy and John

The Window Feeder

Seven Years

Yesterday on a walk, between Normandale Park and Rose City Park, I encountered some gas company employees putting in a new pipeline down one of the streets.

One guy was digging in a trench, and five of his colleagues were standing around.  As I walked past the guy digging, I asked, "How come you're the only one doing the work?"

He straightened up and laughed, then looked back at the other five.  He pointed to each one, saying "Thirty years, twenty years, twenty years... fifteen years, fifteen years..." and then pointed to himself and said, "...seven years."

We laughed and I went on my way.

Album Cover, Cleo

Album Cover, Cleo, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Larry and His Big Green Truck

This wonderfully sunny afternoon held a little neighborhood excitement, in the form of a long, green truck that was simply too big to fit through any of these old urban avenues.

It was around 3:30, so there was still a fair amount of foot-traffic.  Kids getting out of school.  Moms and dads escorting younger kids home from school.

I happened to look out the front door in time to see this truck come down our street and approach the traffic circle (a traffic circle is an intentionally placed, street-narrowing obstruction).

I said to Iris, already home from school and in the kitchen, "Hey, come take a look.  This promises to be entertaining."

More than I'd bargained for, as it turns out.  Rather than go around the traffic circle, the driver went left, down Thompson street and toward Grant High School.  In the process he went over the curb and across the neighbor's yard, taking out the NO PARKING sign and the STOP sign.  That parking sign is either knocked down or stolen at least twice a year, it seems, and was only replaced a couple of months ago, after I had called to urge the city to finally take action.

Parents and kids who saw this were wide-eyed and gasping.  The driver and his big green truck proceeded on, not even pausing to survey the damage.  As he turned right in front of the high school, his truck sideswiped the power pole, giving us all a moment of fear -- but he didn't knock it down.  He merely shaved a chunk off.

And he kept going.

I lamented not having a phone or even a pen (!) on me, because it sure looked like this driver was not going to stop for any reason.  So I ran after him.

A block and a half and another turn later, I caught up with him as he paused briefly.  But he didn't actually stop until I'd pounded on the side of his cab.

Although I was out of breath -- it's been a long time since I chased a big green truck down the street, man! -- I lectured the old guy up one side and down the other.  I think you could say I gave him Holy Hell, in fact.

I asked him if he knew what he'd done, and he shrugged, the old bugger.  "I know, I'll pay for it, but what was I supposed to do?  I had to keep going, there's no other way out of here."

I told him it was customary to at least stop and check to see exactly what kind of damage he'd caused.  I asked "are you new to the truck driving business?"  He said he'd been doing it since 1949.  "I'm 78 years old," he told me.

I told him to write down his name and truck company, and his license number and his truck number.  He handed me a post-it note a minute later (he was writing to the tune of my cussing him out), but all he'd written down was his name.  I handed it back to him with more instructions, but he was a little slow on the uptake.

I wrote down what I needed.  He said "I didn't want to inconvenience any one about this."

I said "You think that's what this is, an inconvenience?"

"Well, I've taken up your time here, haven't I?"

I told him it was not an inconvenience for me, it was a matter of public safety and well worth my time to stop him and let him know there were kids all over the place and that "you just can't go through the neighborhood knocking shit over left and right, with kids all over the place."

"Well, now, I've got four grown sons of my own," he said.

"Well, that's dandy, Larry, let's call up your grown sons and tell them what kind of driver you are."  I got his name from his driver's license, you see -- a Washington license (my family chuckles at this, I'll bet, being as how I've always half-jokingly said to them "the only thing worse than an Oregon driver is an Oregon driver with Washington plates.").

He sighed.  He had the look of a guy who has been chewed out his whole life.

He was mostly concerned with how to get out of the neighborhood.  He blamed "dispatch" for telling him that 37th would get him to Columbia Boulevard.  I chided him, "you mean you've been driving for sixty years and don't bother to look at a map?"

He defiantly said "I got a map, they gave me a map."  It was a printout from Google.  "What was I supposed to do?" he asked me.

I told him as soon as he saw that traffic circle at the end of the block he should have known he couldn't come down this street.  He shrugged.

He drove off and I went home and reported the incident (a few others had already called, it turns out).  On the back of the post-it note with his information was what was obviously a shopping list.  That was the best part, as you can see below.

Just your everyday, average grocery list:

The Anatomy Lesson

Anarchy

Local Portland History: Rossmere

This is a scan of a map that is in a book of title transfers.  The book was in our house when we bought it in 1992.

The book includes the original 1907 title transfer from when the house was built, which is the same year they changed the names of the N-S streets to numbered avenues.  We live on 37th, which was called Vinewood Avenue before that.  Going down the list, 38th used to be Hydah, 39th used to be Thaxter, etc.

I'm pretty sure up around 44th and Thompson you can still see "Beverly Avenue" stamped into the old concrete curb.

The book of title transfers includes a history of the property from 1850 to 1910.  The original chunk of land was originally a claim by John Quinn, but eventually became the property of Philip A. Marquam.

Marquam was a big shot at the end of the 19th century and first part of the 20th century, at least in Portland.  The I-5 bridge over the Willamette River is named for him (and let's not forget Marquam Hill, the Marquam Trail, Marquam Gulch, etc.).

By the time the house was built, this part of that land (we're on the western edge of it, near the northern edge) had been cut to 80 acres and split into lots.  And named Rossmere.

Today's Bumper Stickre

I'm using the British spelling of "sticker" today.  For obvious reasons.

DIY Traffic Control, Portland Style

Melissa Tells You Off

Ha!  Everybody knows that in order to actually be smart, you need to know 87/100ths of what there is to know about Shakespeare and Elizabethan writing (as a genre, not as works by individuals).

Thanks for Posing, Dudes!

I don't know these guys.  They were walking right by this sign that I've seen before many times, and since I think the sign is knuckleheady, I asked these guys if they'd pose for me in front of it.  They happily obliged.

Animal Parts You Didn't Know Existed

But you can fry them and eat them, of course.

Soften Your Man-skin

Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Andrea's high school graduation day, 2008.

Skateboard (now stolen) Detail

Skateboard Detail, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Tonight around 10:15 or so we had a little excitement: a couple of seedy-looking dudes tried to camp out on our front porch and we had to call the cops.

I was in the basement, Iris was on the couch in the living room and Amy was upstairs in our bedroom. I heard a noise and looked at my TV monitor to see what was on the front porch. There was some guy there!

I ran upstairs and opened the door and said, "Hey, what the hell are you doing? Get off my porch!"

He turned around to face me. He was carrying a big plastic tarp (army green), and I noticed a white blanket on the porch. He said, "Ah, man... we're just lookin' for someplace to lie down."

That's when I noticed there was another guy already lying down, in the corner to my left. The guy with the tarp was kind of big, with black hair and a black beard and a baseball cap. He was barely coherent, but he was argumentative. The other guy skedaddled when I said I'd have to call the cops if they didn't leave.

They showed no signs of leaving, so I said I'd call the cops, and I shut the door. I grabbed the phone, then yelled upstairs to Amy to call the police. I kept an eye on the guys on the porch while she called. This dude just wouldn't shut up, and he woudn't leave. He said things like "a real person would say hello" and "just open the door so we can talk," and he mocked me with "I'm calling the cops, I'm calling the cops."

Once it was clear to him that we HAD called the cops, he hobbled off the porch in a hurry and ran up the street. We quickly enough noticed that he'd taken Iris's skateboard with him, the bastard.

Officer Tony Wilson of the Portland Police Bureau showed up about ten minutes later, too my information, apologized for being so late in coming, and told me he'd look around the park.

I was pretty dumbfounded at the idea that these fellers thought they could just camp out on our front porch.

That bastard took the skateboard out of pure meanness.

UPDATE:  Officer Wilson came by with some youngish guy he'd picked up.  "Is this the guy?" he asked me.  "Nope, that's not him," I said.  I saw some regular-looking guy with a little beard, carrying a sleeping bag.

"Okay, well, he said he wasn't, but he kind of fit your description."  No, he didn't, except that he was carrying a bundled sleeping bag.

As I was closing the door I heard Officer Wilson ask the guy, "okay, where do you want to go?"  The guy said, "well, I was just walking over to a friend's house to spend the night...."  Poor guy!

More Hummingbird!

He's got a nice little backward-spin move.

Just A Typical Bedroom

Just A Typical Bedroom, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Shooting Oswald

Shooting Oswald, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

After many years on Flickr, this is the most popular photo in my stream.

Another Hummingbird Video

At the Window Feeder

At the Window Feeder, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

The Ross Sisters

After about the one-minute mark, it gets interesting.

The Four Snowmen of the Apocalypse

Fog Above the Valley

Fog Above the Valley, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Iris in Medford, Christmas 2010

Anna's at the New Feeder

Anna's at the New Feeder
Originally uploaded by Paul Hehn

Christmas celebration at Lyle and Carrie's house.

Sentimental Snow Message

Sentimental Snow Message, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.