Podcast appearances and mentions of rocky butte

Recorded February 19th with all of our campuses together at our Rocky Butte location.

This week I'm adding a comfy touch to the van, taking you on a trip to Rocky Butte, an inactive cinder cone for a beautiful sunset and I'll also talk about my new GoPro.Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVugkF8HGXruPdjkA0aCKVwEpisode Links:Rocky Butte: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_ButteThe Grotto: https://thegrotto.org/Nick's Famous Coney Island: https://www.facebook.com/Nicks-Famous-Coney-Island-120178271327944/EVA-dry E-500 Renewable Mini Dehumidifier: https://amzn.to/3dKc45REVISWIY 150LBS Rare Earth Magnets (with hooks): https://amzn.to/37Mn4w1*Disclosure: The above are affiliate links and if purchased, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.Contact: vantales@vandogger.com

It is with great pleasure that I talk with you this morning about a splendid novel by a good friend and fellow Old Mole, Patricia Kullberg. I’m not sure how this novel slipped by me in 2015, but it did. While at lunch with another Portland feminist and leftist, Johanna Brenner, in the course of our conversation Johanna asked, “Have you read Patsy’s novel?” No, I was ashamed to say, I had not, and could not really recall it ever being mentioned to me. The novel is Girl in the River, and besides being a rich historical novel about Portland and about the work of one particular Portland woman, it is a wonderfully told story.Since I knew Patricia had been a physician and Medical Director for Multnomah County Health Department, I expected her novel to be well researched and historically significant, what I did not quite expect was how totally captivating her story would be and how convincing and well fleshed out her characters are. Her main characters are Mabelline (a.k.a. Mae Rose), Mae’s dear friend Trudy, and Dr. Ruth Barnett. Although Patricia hastens to tell the reader that her characters are fictitious and the story a product of her imagination, there can be no doubt that Dr. Barnett is modeled on a real woman—a woman who helped hundreds of women terminate their pregnancies. For many years, Dr. Barnett maintained her clinic under a “longstanding arrangement between the legal establishment and the abortionists.. So long as no woman died, the law looked the other way…And no patient of Ruth Barnett’s had ever died. She was the best. Everyone knew it, from the mayor to the street sweeper.”Mae comes to know Dr. Barnett because she and Trudy are very sought after prostitutes who are very much a part of the high society of Portland, and Dr. Barnett is also a well known part of that ‘high society’. Mae’s mother ran a boarding house in a small town in Portland, and Mae is her do-everything helper; she helps in the kitchen, cleans the rooms and looks after her hard-working mother. When Mae’s mother, Lilly, dies quite young and unexpectedly, “a man with a pressed shirt and clean nails showed up at the Rose Home for Mill Hands and Lumberjacks. He’d come to take possession not of Mae, but of her home. He was from the bank and had papers to prove they owned it.” For a time she turns to a man she already knows for help;  “She went to live with Mr. Goshorn and his six striplings.” Fortunately for Mae she is able to extricate herself fairly quickly from that slave-like situation, and soon finds herself on the streets of Portland with no money and no real means of employment. She is soon arrested for vagrancy (the catch-all charge used to incarcerate the poor and jobless.” She finds herself in Rocky Butte jail without bail or any likelihood of freedom. Already an avid reader, she is hopeful when she hears that:Rocky Butte had a library. Mae, picturing the colossal, wood-paneled room of the library downtowns with stacks and stacks of books, had been excited until she surveyed what the jail had—five copies of the Holy Bible; two guides to reading it; several manuals on household crafts, half of which Mae could have written herself; a couple dozen novels like Little Little Women and Pollyanna; and several issues each of Dime Detective and Screen Book, dog-eared and torn up.Without giving up too much of the story, suffice it to say that Mae is eventually rescued by a woman named Trudy who admits to Mae that she is a prostitute and counsels her to avoid pimps at all costs, and suggests that Mae go into business with her (under the protection of a Madam). “…Mae decided maybe she didn’t mind the big bucks and being her own boss, the fun and the glamor. She liked being admired. She didn’t give a hoot about being loved. Not by a man.”Mae and Trudy have quite a good life together and genuinely love each other, though Trudy always seems to want more from Mae than she can honestly give. The descriptions Patricia Kullberg gives of Portland street life and the web of political and police corruption shine with authenticity, and she often quotes or paraphrases from news stories of the time, adding to the veracity of her story.Eventually, Mae wants out of prostitution, and she manages to talk Dr. Barnett into taking her on as an assistant. Certainly a big step down in income and in the luxuries of her daily life, but for the first time she has work that is deeply meaningful to her, and works for a woman she genuinely admires.This is a rich and wonderful story; once I started it, I read it up in two days and felt in its thrall for many weeks after. I don’t think I have done justice to the complexity of this tale nor the relationships that Mae has with both men and women. I will close by quoting from the epilogue:Ruth Barnett continued to perform abortions after she was arrested and her clinic shut down in 1951. She never turned a blind eye to a woman in trouble. She was repeatedly arrested and hauled into court, but did not exhaust her legal appeals until 1967. At the age of seventy-eight and suffering from malignant melanoma, she became the oldest woman ever sent to prison in Oregon. She was paroled five months later and died in 1969, less than four years before the landmark decision, Roe vs. Wade.Writing this book was obviously a labor of love for Patricia, and it has been a labor of love for me to read it. We can only hope she writes more fiction to go along with her many nonfiction articles and collaborations.I have been talking about Patricia Kullberg’s novel, Girl in the River. 

Hey there guys! For this weeks episode we had on the lovely, Alex Noce. Alex is an incredibly interesting character. He helps produce the bizarrely funny YouTube series Cooking With Troy, as well as another series called Cascadia Now! We walked something like 2.5 miles through the small mountain that is Rocky Butte out in NE Portland out by the airport. Music by: "Sting Operation" by Anamanaguchi (http://www.anamanaguchi.com/) "Dali" by Finn Riggins (http://finnriggins.com/) "Born on a Day" by Black Moth Super Rainbow (http://blackmothsuperrainbow.com/)

Hey there guys! For this weeks episode we had on the lovely, Alex Noce. Alex is an incredibly interesting character. He helps produce the bizarrely funny YouTube series Cooking With Troy, as well as another series called Cascadia Now! We walked something like 2.5 miles through the small mountain that is Rocky Butte out in NE Portland out by the airport. Music by: "Sting Operation" by Anamanaguchi (http://www.anamanaguchi.com/) "Dali" by Finn Riggins (http://finnriggins.com/) "Born on a Day" by Black Moth Super Rainbow (http://blackmothsuperrainbow.com/)

In which we learn of A Day Called X. In 1957 CBS showed a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Harry Rasky about Civil Defense in PDX. Narrated by actor Glen Ford, if featured, amongst other things a look into Portland’s Doomsday Bunker beneath the soils of Rocky Butte.

Portland’s walking expert Laura Foster has recently released her latest book, "The Portland Stairs Book: Walks, Views, Stories." Join the author as she shares with you the best and most interesting staircases in Portland. Covering 207 staircases (and 10,155 steps), Foster’s journey combines geology, architecture, history and horticulture to tell the amazing stories of twenty outdoor staircases.  The stairs include the Willamette River Bridge Stairs, The Westover Terraces Steps and Rocky Butte’s Grand Staircase.  Presented at Hollywood Library January 23, 2011.More information about Laura Foster can be found on her website at:http://www.portlandhillwalks.com/