Aug. 27, 1997
Committed to cultural diversity.
Volume XXVII, Number 35
(Tin' ^ n rtla n h ODbserUer
SECTION
B
■ K A B U K I
im i in u n i t o
a I r n ò a r
(Ü
B a n n e ri
to
w ave over A lt e r f a
The race is on
Summer youth
hoist artworks
over northeast
“It’s Time for the Cure,” is the theme
of this year’s Race for the Cure, a walk
and run in the fight against breast cancer.
Portland runners and walkers will take to
the streets for the event on Sunday morn
ing, Sept. 2 1. Registration forms are avail
able at JC Penny, Pier I Imports, Lady
Foot Locker or in the Oregonian.
rtistic and colorful banners are
jettisoning a splash of brilliance
upon the canopy known as the
Alberta corridor - between Martin Luther
King Jr. Boulevard and 23rd Avenue on
Alberta Street.
A ceremony to mark the hosting of the
artworks, created by kids employed in a
summer youth program at Sabin Community
Development Corp., was scheduled Tuesday
at Roslyn's Garden Coffee House at north
east 14th Place and Alberta.
The program, in it's second year, was
called creative, innovative, and fun for the
11 youth who participated, according to
Robert Coley of Sabin Corp.
Adriene Cruz, a local banner artist, as
well as other mediums, of great renown saw
the challenge and grasped the opportunity to
teach design, plan, conceptualize, construc
tion, machine sewing and monster applica
tion to the I I neophytes, eight ol which
were young men 14 to 18 years old.
A
Building discipline
A series focusing on child develop
ment and parent education will be pre
sented this fall by the Oregon State Uni
versity extension service in Washington
County. “Building discipline habits in
children below the age of 14 takes time,
planning, and a knowledge o f what behav
ior will be healthy in your family, says
Sue Cook, extension service program
assistant. For classes, dates, times and
locations call 725-2101 and request “ Fall
1997 Parenting Schedule.”
Fair at Ainsworth church
Ainsworth United Church of Christ
presents the Ainsworth Fall Festival Sat
urday and Sunday, Sept. 20-21 at 5:30
p.m. Many neighborhood artists will share
their talents and items will be on sale.
There will be wonderful barbecue lunches
and dinners, storytelling, games, balloons
and prizes for kids.
Free bike clinic
A free legal clinic for bicyclists with
bike lawyer Ray Thomas will be held
Sept. 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Intel Rohr
Acres Auditorium, 2501 NW. 229th,
Hillsboro. Call Terry Crawford at 264-
6664 to register.
Wilderness weekend
You can discover Opal Creek Wilder
ness, one o f the Pacific Northwest’s
largest and most pristine ancient forests,
during an outdoor adventure sponsored
by Portland Parks and Recreation, Oct 3-
5. Contact the park bureau’s outdoor rec
reation at 823-5132.
Help serve meals
University Park Loaves and Fishes
needs help to deliver meals-on-wheels to
seniors and homebound persons. If you
can give your time, talent and energy,
please call 285-8199.
Street fair fun
Local artists, merchants and residents
will be celebrating in the Belmont Street
district of inner-southeast Portland, Sat
urday, Sept. 6. A street fair will feature
live music, carnival games, street per
formers, sidewalk sales and a food pavil
ion.
Dance at Rexali Rose
Portland’s only dance forum at Rexali
Rose Theatre, 2403 N.E. Alberta St. is
held Sunday, Aug. 3 1 at 7 p.m.
Rally on equality
Equality on the Equinox, a rally cel
ebrating fatherhood, motherhood and fam
ily will take place Saturday, Sept. 6 at
noon at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Live
bands will perform. The event will en
courage communication and harmony
between men and women, making divorce
less adversarial and champion joint cus
tody of children
Kids Games Friday
A host of events for kids with special
performances by the Buffalo Soldiers,
Clown Around, Dragon Dancers and rap
per L.G. Wise, will take place during the
fifth annual King Games, Friday, Aug. 29
from 9 a m. to 3 p.m at Alberta Park The
festivities are sponsored by the Youth
Gangs Program.
s i B M IS S IO N S : C o m m u n ity
( a le n d a r in fo i m a d o n « i l l be given
p r io r i) ' it dated tw o weeks
before the ia eut date.
Aaron McPherson puts an iron to work assembling a brilliant banner for Alberta Street.
Modern culture rooted
in eroding families
issues, Pipher is the author of
several best sellers, including
"Reviving Ophelia" and most re
cently, “The Shelter of Each
Other. Rebuilding Our Families."
The sym posium takes its
title from her latest book, in
which Pipher explains how the
overw helm ing impact of mod
ern culture erodes the family
unit every day - from the over
worked. harried existence of
most parents, to the plight of
children raised by appliances.
Parents are undermined by a
host of influences that invade their
"houses without walls," she says,
and beleaguered families blame
Mary Pipher
themselves for what is essentially
a cultural problem.
Maintaining that "much of our
modern unhappiness involves a
crisis of meaning and values,”
Pipher contends technology and
consumerism have become the
gods of the '90s.
est-selling author Mary
“We really underestim ated
Pipher talks about "re
the effects of TV and other
building our families and
ls,” she says. "For the first
communities during a Sept. to
12 o lec
time in history, children are
ture and at an all-day symposium.
not being socialized by their
Sept. 13, at Lewis & Clark College.
p aren ts.”
A national authority on family
Lewis & Clark
hosts dialoge
B
professor o f performing arts and humanities guide PSU's Chicano-Latino studies program.
Chicano-Latino studies opens
hen Ruben Sierra was a child in
the “Tex-M ex" (Texan-M cxi
can) culture of San Antonio, Texas,
there was a lot of love within the family.
But in the schools the perception he loo often
encountered was that Mexicans were lazy or sav
ages.
"Yet the roots of Chicanos are found in the
Aztecs. Maya and Toltecs-complex civilizations
with tremendous skill in math and science,” says
Sierra.
Now, as Director of Portland Stale University's
newly established Chicano-Latino Studies program,
W
his duties include helping people to learn and
giving them accurate information which doesn’t
foster stereotypes.
Beginning this fall, PSU students can enroll in
the program which offers a cohesive body of study
on the forces that shaped Mexicans and Latin
Americans in the United States over the past 300
years. Students work towards a minor or a certifi
cate in Chicano-Latino Studies.
Sierra, who was hired in 1995 to direct the
program, says, "It's one of very few such programs
in the nation. And we’ve had the chance to define
and refine it over the last two years."
Panel sees many looks for MLK
B\ L ee P erlman
hen it comes to a new street
design for the four miles of
Northeast Martin Luther King
Jr. Boulevard between Broadway and Co
lumbia Boulevard, one size does not fit all.
That was the direction indicated by con
sultants and staff at a meeting of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard Transportation
Project Citizen Advisory Committee last
week.
The committee is examining how and
where to add $1 million worth of physical
improvements to the street.
"There is no single clear cut, black-white,
A or B solution," consultant Lloyd Lindley
told the committee. Instead, he said, staff is
looking at different treatments for different
parts of the boulevard
The committee will fine-tune a series of
design alternatives prepared by staff at its
next meeting Sept. 11, and these will be
discussed at a public workshop on Sept 18,
consultant Elaine Cogan said
One all-or-nothing solution concerns bike
W
i
Wholesale removal of the street's medians
to make room for on-street parking appears
to be growing less likely
lanes, will either be added to all of the
boulevard or to none of it.
Lindley said that one design alternative
will show how the street would work with
bike lanes and onlv two lanes of traffic.
However, he added, "What we've heard traf
fic-wise is that bike lanes just won't work
here.”
The committee is working with the Bi
cycle Transportation Alliance on a plan to
install bike lanes on North Williams and
Vancouver avenues, he said.
A long-cherished goal that seems to be
growing less likely is the removal of the
street's planted medians, and its center left-
turn lanes, to make room for on-street park
ing
An analysis prepared by the consultants
listed several negative results of such ac
tions. These include the elimination of ref
uges to help pedestrians cross the street,
elimination of any chance to widen the side
walks. and forcing cars to make left turns
from travel lanes and thus obstruct traffic.
The committee raised another negative:
the removal of the median's large trees.
Cogan said tha, if the median was re
moved, "The trees will be victims, but maybe
there’s a greater good ”
Geri Ethen of the Piedmont Neighbor
hood Association retorted, “You'd have to
show me a lot of greater good to justify tree
removal ”
Aviva Groner of the Eliot Neighborhood
I
oulevard
Association suggested a compromise: nar
rowing the median and replanting smaller
trees.
The committee also tried to classify the
character of boulevard segments as a way to
determine what treatment they should re
ceive.
There was general consensus that the
W a ln u t P ark a re a at N o rth e a s t
Killingsw orth Street, and the area near
N ortheast Knott and R ussell streets,
are com m ercial nodes; that from N orth
east Shaver to A lberta streets has be
come a housing area, and from N orth
east Stanton to Ivy streets is destined
to become one based on its zoning; and
that from Northeast Lom bard Street to
Colum bia Boulevard is part o f the in
dustrial area to the north.
There was less certainty about other parts
of the Boulevard. Michael McElwee of the
Portland Development Commission com
mented, “I don't think there’s any one big
solution You have to look at little solutions
block by block "