Skip to main content

Flowers, Friend, Before You Die

Flowers, Friend, Before You Die

This marker commemorates for all time
the gracious generosity of
Ira Frost Powers
to the people of Portland
"And so thy thought, when thou art gone,
shall yet live on. - A friend of grateful man"

The Birthday Club
George L Baker    W.J. Hofmann    Ernest A. Sommer
Charlse P. Berg    Ernest L. King Donald J. Sterling
Chris D. Bruun    Dan J. Malarkey    Nathan Strauss
John H. Burgard    Julius L. Meier    Guy W. Talbot
C. C. Colt    Phil Metschan    Wm. L. Thompson
Virgil A. Crum    Otto W. Mielke    Wm. F. Turner
Charlse E. Dant    Roscoe C. Nelson    Harry B. Van Duzer
Kenneth D. Dawson    Emery Olmstead    Dean Vincent
Franklin T. Griffith    Ore L. Price    Raymond B. Wilcox
Russell Hawkins    Frank H. Ransom    Ralph E. Williams

September Nineteen Thirty


This plaque is placed on a large rock, in an obscure partially hidden stretch of roadside on Highway 43 in Portland Oregon. Just south of the Sellwood Bridge, along the Willamette River, is Powers Marine Park. The park is between highway 43 and the river, and somewhere in the middle of that park is this rock and plaque.
Ira Powers, according to the city of Portland's park page, was the owner of Powers Furniture around the time of the great depression, and he donated a large chunk of the land in that area to the city. The area of Tryon Creek state park, Terwilliger Blvd, and Lewis & Clark College. It is unclear whether the actual land of Powers Marine Park was part of the donation.

I do not know what "The Birthday Club" is.

Now Ira has this post on my well visited blog remembering him, along with a fairly modest plaque mostly hidden on a nondescript rock in an unmaintained or improved part of a fairly unused city park. Fame.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why shooting should be banned on public lands:

I don't need to say too much. The pictures speak for themselves. These pictures were taken at ONE spot on NF-45 forest road in Mt. Hood National Forest. The road is also known as "Memaloose" or "Maymaloose" road depending on which sign and map you read. It is maybe 50 miles outside of Portland, southeast on Hwy 224 - along the Clackamas river. The country up there is some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. The ridge lines, and the deep jagged canyon from millions of years of raging water in the Clackamas river are something wonderful to behold. Driving up this road, we passed at least 5 spots that seemed to be popular with shooters, before we turned around. The road is a steep one lane paved road, and our GPS said we went from 700ft. at the river to 3000ft. almost instantaneously. At some points there are steep 1000 foot drops on either side of the road. It is breathtaking. Until you come across the shooting sites, which make you nauseous. I

Free Topographical Maps

The Libre Maps project has purchased and made available for free all of the USGS Topographical maps of the USA. All 50 states. The maps have always been free sort-of, there was just no where until now to actually GET them for free. The Libre Maps project raised enough funds to buy the many gigabytes of data and the Internet Archive is hosting them. These are great 24k scale topographical maps folks. The same types you pay for in sporting goods stores. And many applications on your computers can work directly with them and your GPS. You can get water and tear resistant paper and print them out.. All good stuff... For the lazy in the audience, here are Oregon's.

Not safer, just stupider.

The first definition of stupider is "Slow to learn or understand; obtuse." I think that there would be good cause to add to it "See American". Today, while passing through the security checkpoint at Portland International (PDX) I witnessed the TSA personnel sending people to the back of the line for not taking off their flip-flops. They shouted endlessly about removing liquids, regardless of size. And they generally treat every one of us like we were infants incapable of understanding simple instructions. But perhaps they might be on to something.