Beginning June 15 and continuing for about one year, the 17th/Powell overpass will be closed for light rail construction.

Northbound 17th Ave will be detoured to McLoughlin Blvd. via Holgate Blvd, but will remain open to local traffic between Holgate and Haig St.
Northbound bus lines 17 and 70 will be detoured to Milwaukie Ave via Center St.
Southbound 17th Ave, including access from Powell, will remain open.
Alternative cyclist and pedestrian access across Powell is available at 13th and 21st avenues.
Sidewalks on Powell under the structure will be closed.

The weekend of July 20, Powell Blvd will be closed at 17th Ave for demolition of the overpass, with crews working 24 hours a day. In addition to the round-the-clock work the weekend of July 20, additional night work will take place this summer while crews remove the retaining walls on Powell, and another weekend early next year for round-the-clock work setting girders for the new structures. Neighbors will be notified in advance of night work.

Good news Garden Supporters! The Brooklyn Community Garden has been awarded a substantial development grant from the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District. These funds will pay for major expenses like leveling the field, getting the irrigation system installed and operating, buying materials for building a shed and a stairway, removing the old cherry tree, and lots more. This is exciting news because it insures that this garden is gonna happen!!!!  You’ve probably heard that our Ground Breaking Celebration marking the official start of Brooklyn Community Garden is set for Saturday, June 2. Activities will include sod removal, bark chip hauling, grass couch building, collaborative sculpture/ sign-making, etc. The Ground Breaking event will be a big deal, not to mention lots of fun for everyone — and we need YOUR help to make it all happen.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

Ground Breaking Celebration Volunteer Organizational Meeting. 

Tuesday, May 22, 7 to 8 p.m.

Loaves & Fishes (SE Milwaukie and SE Center) 

Email us to get involved!

This meeting will focus on all aspects of preparing for the Ground Breaking Celebration on June 2, the schedule of events, site staging areas, and volunteer sign-up.

Here are some of the volunteer jobs:

• Sign making (these need to be made before 6/2)
• Event set-up/ clean-up
• Refreshment organization/ serving
• Supervisors for individual project areas (lots will be going on)
• Tool Coordination
• General labor
• Pick up trucks & drivers
• Flyer design and distribution

This is an opportunity for YOU to make the garden happen. Hope to see you on the 22nd.

Lee Kamrass,
Brooklyn Community Garden Coordinator

P.S. If you can’t make the organizational meeting on the 22nd, please let me know via email if you’d like to volunteer for a specific job.

Dear Neighbors:

Please make a point to attend the BAC Board Meeting Wednesday May 9th at 6:30PM at the Loaves and Fishes center at 3925 SE Milwaukie Avenue. This is an opportunity to see how the board makes decisions on a monthly basis. To join the board, you need to come to two out of four meetings over a four month period. People join the board for lots of reasons:

• Be involved with decisions that affect the neighborhood
• Meet similarly engaged board members
• Work on issues near and dear to your heart
• Feel great about your contribution to your community
• It’s fun!
• Lots of ways to plug in–from our ice cream social in September, to the Movie in the Park in the summer, to the community gardens that we’re getting established.
• People are our most important resource

Highlights this month:

• Ice Cream Social–Help plan this annual event and sign up to volunteer
• Neighborhood Cleanup Planning and Delegation-We need volunteers!
• Community Garden update from Lee Kamrass
• We want to hear from YOU!

Photo Credit: Bright Design Lab

Hammer & Hand and Clean Energy Works Oregon are partnering up to help Portland homeowners improve the energy efficiency and livability of their homes by offering free “whole-house” assessments and incentives in the form of rebates reaching $2500 and no money down financing.

Hammer & Hand’s free “whole-house” assessment helps owners identify ways to make their homes more energy efficient and comfortable, like installing new insulation or upgrading an old heating and cooling system.

To receive the maximum level of instant rebate on your home’s energy remodel sign up for Clean Energy Works Oregon’s $500 Spring Bonus before it expires on April 30th. To sign up, visit Hammer and Hand’s Clean Energy Works Oregon’s web page (hammerandhand.com/cleanenergyworksoregon), click on the Clean Energy Works Oregon button and fill out the form using rebate code “CNHHA”.

Questions? You can reach Hammer & Hand’s Home Performance Team at 503.894.1198.

You can download our latest newsletter by clicking this link. Enjoy!

Dear Neighbors-

TriMet is hosting three light rail open houses in February and March.

Come check out their progress!

Dear Neighbors:

Please make a point to attend the BAC General Meeting tomorrow, Wednesday January 25, at 7PM at the Loaves and Fishes center at 3925 SE Milwaukie Avenue.

Highlights:

• Portland-Milwaukie light rail update from Tri-Met
• Community policing update from Jacob Brostoff
• News on the Portland Skatepark Plan from Colin Sharp
• Community Garden update from Lee Kamrass
• Nonconforming Sewers update from Mike O’Connor
• News on a possible neighborhood Octoberfest and Criterium Bike Race with Tom Rousculp
• Portland Harbor Superfund Site update from Von Summers of the Portland Partnership

…and our annual neighborhood action public brainstorming session!

Please bring all of your project/grant ideas, complaints, wishes, etc to the meeting and be ready to discuss!

SEE YOU TOMORROW NIGHT!

-The BAC

The BAC would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to Rainbow Painting and Bob Puzis. Bob offered to provide DISCOUNTED LABOR to spray a protective clearcoat over our entire mural which our artist Lew Jones painted on the SE 9th Ave pedestrian bridge last summer. The mural was made possible by a $2,046 grant from Portland’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement.

You’ll all be receiving the Brooklyn Neighborhood News on your doorstep soon, and we’ve included the following message to him on a BRIGHT YELLOW POSTCARD that will probably fall out of the newsletter in your lap. Please read it, sign it, stamp it, and mail it, (or drop it off at City Hall).

You can send an email of the postcard by cutting and pasting some of the message below, along with some personal comments, into an email and sending it to Mayor Adams at: Samadams@portlandoregon.gov

REGARDING INCREASED TRUCK TRAFFIC ON SE 26^TH AVENUE

Dear Mayor Sam Adams,

Over the past several months, representatives from the Brooklyn Neighborhood have contacted both the city and the railroad about the increased heavy truck traffic using the stretch SE 26^th Avenue between SE Powell and SE Holgate Boulevard to access Brooklyn Yards. The increase in noise and safety problems has greatly impacted the livability of our neighborhood. The street is designated a “Safe Routes to School”/bicycle route for Cleveland High School and Creston Elementary, and having these trucks rumbling down SE 26^th Avenue instead of SE McLoughlin and 17^th Avenue violates the residential designation of the street.

Our communications with the railroad thus far have convinced us that UP’s management does not feel it has a legal or moral obligation to ensure that their facility complies with the freight plan and residential street use guidelines.

We would like the City of Portland to enforce its own freight plan by increasing police presence in the area, installing “Trucks Prohibited” signs, and informing UP that they must obey the freight plan or face enforcement actions. We need to prioritize our safety and livability over convenience for trucks and the railroad.

Signed

If you are a homeowner in the area, maybe you’d like some flexible living space for a family member, or maybe you’d like to have some additional rental income, or maybe like me, you actually want to live in a smaller space that you built yourself and rent out the larger house. It’s also notable that building an ADU is one of the most ‘green’ decisions you can make for your city. Last month, Energy Trust of Oregon recently added ADUs to their list of residential structures eligible to receive a monetary incentive for energy efficient design (for qualifying structures, this incentive can be ~$2K).

In the course of building, and now living in, my ADU in NE Portland, I became so passionate about seeing more of them built that I have begun to offer classes to help other homeowners who want to build one. The one-day class is an on-ramp to the elaborate process of designing and building an ADU. The class will cover the spectrum of information that homeowners need to know to design and build an ADU on their property and is intended to help homeowner’s understand the ADU design, permit, management, and building process.

If you’re interested in learning more about building an ADU, visit http://pdxadu.blogspot.com/p/adu-class.html or http://accessorydwellings.org/

Class: Building an Accessory Dwelling Unit on Your Property in Portland, Oregon
Saturday, January 21st. 9am-5pm.  Register here: http://pdxadu3.eventbrite.com/

The first BAC Board Meeting of 2012 will be held at 6:30 PM on January 11 at the Thelma Skelton Loaves and Fishes center at SE Milwaukie Boulevard and Center Street. At this meeting the board will be discussing a request by the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association for a letter of support regarding moving the proposed location of a cellular telephone antenna tower that is slated to be installed a few yards from a residence. We’ll also be discussing which movie to show at our Movie in the Park this summer, as well as planning our General Meeting to be held on January 25. We have two proposed topics for the January General Meeting. David Harvey from Greenbriar/Gunderson will be on hand to update the neighborhood on the Portland Harbor Superfund Cleanup and solicit our comments and questions regarding this important issue. We’ll also open up the floor for general comments regarding what neighborhood issues you think the board should know about and/or do something about. What’s working in the neighborhood? What’s not working? What are we doing right? Where could we use help? Finally, we’ll have updates on the Community Gardens, our annual budget report, and anything else you want to bring up. See you at both meetings!

Thanks!-BAC Board Chair Mike O’Connor

Our Fates Are Connected suggests that an individual’s experience is in fact part of a larger, ongoing, universal  narrative. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival has frequently inspired me and it’s text forms the poetic structure for this show.

Parzival tells the initiation story through two characters. One of the characters represents the individual’s relationship to that which sustains the aspiring aspect of the human spirit,.  primarily, pursuit of one’s calling and the striving towards the divine. The other character represents the development of soul through each type of relationship to others and the world around us. The need to pursue worldly sustenance presents us with all those mundane to epic worldly challenges.

An individual’s maturation is in a way the heartfelt wedding of spirit work and soul work.
Our Fates Are Connected no doubt exposes my individual story, hopefully it also speaks to the shared universal narrative as well. Enjoy the work!

When I paint (oils, egg tempera, and these watercolors), I mix many of my own paints with pigments from my father’s ancestral homelands. I frequently use my mother’s maiden, and my middle name  Wegner, to honor my mother’s lineage. The watercolor shapes reference ocean life forms.

The November/December Brooklyn Neighborhood Newsletter can be downloaded at this link.