Friday, June 15, 2007

Yesterday

Midday I had another power lunch with Arthur Dye and brought along the above dog-eared file folder, a souvenir from my days in Bhutan, for show and tell value.

I gave Arthur another one as depicted: an old Kuensel, still in its envelope, with the original Bhutanese stamps.

We talked about North Carolina's Apple Valley, where we both have family connections, and about the expansion of Legacy Emanuel Hospital, a project of the PDC during the early days of Multnomah Friends.

Those were the days when "urban renewalists" still took a lot of cues from Robert Moses and company: condemn first, then "compensate" against already plummeting property values.

Quakers worked hard to derail such unfair brands of (sometimes state sponsored) tycoonerism, mixed with a Wild West style land grabbing mentality, holding out instead for fair compensation of the soon to be uprooted.

Native Americans faced a lot of the same issues and AFSC helped them too.

The upshot: more people went away happy from the negotiations, and Legacy Emanuel enjoys better karma to this day, is really a great hospital in fact, right up there with Sisters of Providence.

Later that same day, I took Tara on her first bridge pedal, heading down Harrison, over the Hawthorne, along Water Front Park to the Steel, then back along the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade. She had no problem powering back up Harrison, after a brief pit stop in Ladd's Addition for iced teas.