My post last week about beavers around here caught the attention of my friend Aimee, who works for the Oregonian. She says in an email:

I just wanted to send you a thank you for the posting you made last week about the beaver-fallen tree next to the Hawthorne Bridge. I thought you made a pretty cool find, so I went there to check it out myself. And I don’t know if you saw today’s Oregonian, but I ended up writing a story. So thanks for the indirect tip!!

Awesome. Right now the story is on OregonLive’s home page, but you can go directly to the story right here (warning: annoying demographics wall before you get in).

Thanks, Aimee, and I really hope you don’t mind me quoting your email!

Tags: beavers, ceid

Last night, some guy was shot in the parking lot of the Wild Oats on Capitol Highway, then dumped next to Kes and Aileen’s house in Hillsdale. From KGW&:

Just before midnight, central precinct officers found the man’s body at a Legacy Hospital hospice center at 6171 SW Capitol Highway. Sgt. Brian Schmautz said it appears the unidentified man was shot at a strip mall nearby and then moved to the hospice, where he was prounced dead.

This panned out interestingly for Kes, who works in an in-home office. Here is the email thread between Kes and wife Aileen, who works here with me.

On Oct 12, 2007, at 1:42 PM, kes wold wrote:
A guy was shot and killed at Wild Oats last night, and the body was dumped in the Hopewell House parking lot around midnight last night. Story is on kgw.com

Glad they didn’t use our mud hole…[Kes and Aileen are doing a major remodeling job that is held up because of city permitting woes. They have a giant pit next to their house. --ed.]

On Oct 12, 2007, at 1:52 PM, Aileen Jeffries wrote:
at least it was a Wild Oats parking lot. Had it been the east side, it would’ve been a gas station or strip club parking lot.

On Oct 12, 2007, at 2:04 PM, kes wold wrote:
This is great, our shitty side of the house will be on the news, as will the shot of the minority eating Burger King [Kes is referring to himself. --ed.] on a half finished deck over a giant mud hole… Just the impression Hillsdale was going for

Saks [the cat] was rolling around on his side so I could pet him and he rolled right off the belvedere [part of the deck]! He’s OK

Tags: aileen, crime, kes

I was on my daily constitutional, minding my own business and listening to a lecture about the racial constructs of 17th- and 18th-century Latin American and Brazilian societies on my iPhone, expecting the rain to start at any moment, when, lo! I pass the fire station located right next to the Hawthorne Bridge along the Eastside Promenade–and a bunch of the oak trees there are being cleaned up by a city crew. Upon closer look, I notice that these hadn’t been cut down by people.

“What…?” I started asking the closest tree crew fellow.

“Beavers,” he answered cheerfully.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah!”

This is about three blocks from work, in the middle of the city, granted next to a river, but a very wide, un-beaver-dam-able river, see.

lyzadanger posted a photo:

Beavers have taken a liking to these oak trees near work.

I had to walk from work to go pick up my TT at Matrix, where I was having my A/C bearings dealt with (plus a new battery; I’m preparing for a Significant Road Trip). This hike routed me all the way through the new South Waterfront chaos and the scale of it kind of knocked me off my feet even though I thought I had understood before.

Pedestrian access between the Riverside area and South Waterfront is poor to fair; I think they are expecting folks to take the trolley; or perhaps they didn’t think about it at all. One has to traverse a completely dead zone between the Marquam and Ross Island Bridges, a terrain of filthy industrial riverside sites, crumbling asphalt sidewalks and mud patches with puddles. Because of this apocalyptic buffer zone, the actual siting of the South Waterfront explosion seems arbitrary. They are building a city from nothing, cheek and jowl with heavy industrial.

However, the entire walk was made by being able to get close to the frankly awesome aerial tram station adjacent to the new OHSU building. It’s all gears and shiny metal stuff. Add to the fact that the tram car looks like a chromed grape on a lever, and you have my love, even if I don’t want to give it. I just don’t want to pay $4 for the honor of a ride. But I’m crumbling.

The building sites (for out-of-towners’ reference, there are about half a dozen quite tall, quite expensive condo buildings, skyscrapers really, under construction, simultaneously) remind me of Berlin, perhaps it’s just the (close, foggy, cool) weather that is similar to my last visit to the German city. But it’s also the freakish amount of construction in a formerly dead zone. For them, they’re building where the Wall was, for us, we’re trying to ignore that the rest of the area is highly-polluted and grim. Perhaps its this hearkening to Berlin that gives me an overwhelmingly European hit, perhaps it’s the (Swiss) aerial tram. All that’s actually happening there is that cars are driving in and out of an apparently underground parking area and the dull echo of hammers across acres of silent space. One would think hammers would be obsolete by now.

All in all, the area seems clever more than natural. Transit choices go for cute over useful: the rickety, adorable trolley or the unaffordable tram that only goes to the hospital on the hill. The infrastructure isn’t exactly there yet–literal skyscrapers brush up against filthy, abandoned warehouses and gas stations. Even though the throngs haven’t moved in yet, it already feels homogenous to me. The building colors run a short gamut from beige to soft blue and I can already pick out the elements that will look dated in a decade.

I’m not saying the whole thing is dreadful, just odd. What are your guys’ initial impressions?