yesterday I heard that my neighborhood was ranked the 5 best in the world by time out magazine. I mean it’s definetly a good area,,, but also each entry was proposed by a writer/editor located in each city then to be reviewed by the global editors, I’d be interested to find out where this person lives, idk if it’d be more interesting for them to live in the neighborhood or outside of it.... maybe it was the neighborhood signs that they put up recently, now people know the name of the neighborhood.
but to add one more note about how not important any of this is, each entry on the list is riddled with more links than any of my pages. it’s all reccomendations of places to spend money, it’d be wild if they weren’t making money from shouting out these places, so really its just ads... always has been
I wanted to check the wikipedia page to see if anyone’s updated it, I don’t know if I have enough pride/care to be the one to do so
I did get to learn some cool stuff from the page though, like how there is a kerns neighborhood tree inventory report that (in 2014) documented 3,140 trees represented by 91 different types. Now this was in 2014 but I did see people this summer in hi-vis vests walking around everyday measuring tree trunk circumfrence and staring at trees holding clipboards. I never asked them what they were doing because I find it hard to talk to strangers, but they seemed like students so it also could have been a school thing.
anyways, what’s more interesting to think about is the amount of trees that I remember falling since then, while many get replaced by a young tree, some don’t...
like when my favorite tree fell down; an old sumac with a large canopy and a beautiful twisting trunk... the photos might not do it justice... but it used to be very photogenic, I would see people pose infront of it from time to time.
10.6.2023
this was the night I learned to always try to appreciate what you have while you have it, I had quite a few art projects that I was going to use this tree for, but I always put it off, I didn’t think it be here today and gone tomorrow.
a few people actually said sorry for your loss which I thought was sweet, and on top of that two of my neighbors tried helping us hoist the tree back off the sidewalk (they were invested in the tree similar to me, it really added great character to the block, we ended up having to sawzall it apart so that it would block the sidewalk.
I really didn’t get much time to mourn with it. but I took half the day off the next morning to go around and collect branches that I wanted to keep.
I’m unsure if there are any other sumacs in the neigborhood, it might have taken one off from the 91 types.
but the thing about sumacs is that they like to make groves, so they spread out and sprout more branches further away from what would be called the main trunk. I bring this up because the sumac keeps sprouting, there’s a root system down there that is trying to regrow...
does this mean that the tree could still be counted in the inventory report,
what makes a tree a tree, do you count saplings,
or is it best practice to only count established trees,
what if the sapling is growing from a 20+ year old root system?
what if it’s just the rhizome left?
swifts
some more neighborhood news is that the swifts left chapman elementry early this year, which hosts the largest population of vaux swifts...
ne of the new locations they found was the local greek orthodox church,
I had noticed them but since they weren’t in that great of numbers it didn’t click that they were swifts
from what I’ve heard, the swifts left because of agressive crows... sad because it adds a layer of complication to the idea of feeding crows
but also interesting since in my photographing of crows I accidently documented peace between the crows and swifts in my neighborhood
they make their nests inside of chimneys which is meant as a substitute for old growth snags... which we obviously lack... everywhere
here’s a guide if you find swifts in your chimney during the month of september during their migration
in my research I kept finding photos captioned “chimney swifts”...
I was assuming this was just the (even more) common name for vaux swifts, turns out its a different species that migrates on the east coast
so just add that to the confusion since there is also a species called chapman’s swift which isn’t connected to chapman school
but what’s cool about the chimney swifts is how they were the first of these swifts to be recorded in chimneys (hence why they got the name),
I was hoping the latin name referenced this, but it basically translates to swift of the open sea...
anywats in 1915 an art student turned self taught scientist (sounds like someone I know...) commisoned* a fake chimney to study them
althea sherman was her name, she contructed a “bird acre” that had different natural and constructed habitats for birds all with holes to better view and study them.
*(money came from her father’s farm profits related to a land grant from the mexican american war... always comes back to colonialism...
she acknowleded that the increase in agricultural land lowered the amount of viable habitat, but also allowed her to study them in grand new ways.)
one last bit of interest regarding kerns
despite most of kerns being in NE portland, it is technically a SE neighborhood
besides being in the SE neighborhood coilition, a lot of neighborhood maps deliniates NE vs SE by i-84
very much from wikipedia if you couldn’t tell