King Neighborhood Clean-up Day This Saturday, June 4

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for–the day the dumpsters show up outside the police precinct and you can get rid of that clutter filling the bowels of your basement or lurking under that blackberry bush in the yard. The dump rates are reasonable and all proceeds go to charity.

9:00-1:30, 449 NE Emerson $15/car, $25/truck.

Accepted items are: wood, EXCEPT yard debris, electronics, scrap metal, reusable items for donation to charity, household waste, EXCEPT kitchen waste, NO hazardous waste.

King School Students Work on History/Gardening Project

Second and third grade students from the King School SUN afterschool program are participating in a partnership with the Emerson Street Garden to learn gardening while working with neighborhood elders to help transform a vacant neighborhood lot into a community asset.

Sixth through eighth graders are partnering with artist Joe Sneed and students from da Vinci Middle school in a five day-a-week class on N/NE History, Art and Culture. They are collecting stories of local neighborhood history from local residents and incorporating these stories into a design for an archway entrance to the garden.

Eight grade students in the King School Technology and Design course will be working with engineers from the Portland Water Bureau to develop a learning center to be built at the garden to be used for educational opportunities and workshops into the future. The Technology and Design course is part of the International Baccalaureate program at King School.

If you would like to get involved contact Joe Sneed at joe.b.sneed@gmail.com or call 503.995.2632

N/NE History & Storytelling

From Groundwork Portland:

A remarkable group of individuals have come together over two meetings at Reflections Coffee and Talking Drum Bookstore to plan an inter-generational exchange between community elders and King School students. Students in the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods program on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the next 5 weeks will learn from community members about their experiences growing food, living in N/NE, neighborhood changes overtime, and what it means to have a community garden in King Neighborhood today.

Students will be taking the stories and lessons they learn and creating art that will then go at the Emerson Garden site.

Would you like to participate or help?
Contact Cassie at cassie@groundworkportland.org or 503.662.2590

U of P Conference on Food Issues

After hosting a wonderfully successful conference on water in the spring of 2010, the University of Portland is back this year with Food for Thought, a conference on food issues from April 14-16.

The conference will be keynoted by best-selling author Michael Pollan and features an impressive array of both national and local leaders, including Kevin Concannon, Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services for the United States Department of Agriculture, and University of Portland alumnus Fedele Bauccio, founder and owner of Bon Appétit Management Co. and member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

This will be an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in the many issues surrounding food and food production, from nutrition and genetic modification to justice and sustainability.

All events of the conference – including the Thursday evening meat tasting and lecture on meat production, the Friday evening screening of the film “Fresh,” and the four day-time plenary sessions on Saturday – are free and open to the public. Michael Pollan’s lecture, taking place at 7 p.m. on April 16 in the Chiles Center on campus, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd., requires tickets, which are available online at TicketMaster or in person at the Chiles Center box office.

For more information and a complete schedule of events: https://pilots.up.edu/web/foodforthought

Bikes and Culture

I stumbled on this link to an interesting article on the resurgence of the bicycle, bike culture and how it intersects with race. We live in a very diverse neighborhood in a city that tirelessly touts itself as the bicycle paradise. It would be great to see this environmental, economical, healthy, adaptable transportation form embraced in continually more creative ways.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/12470499]