Eric Norberg, Editor & General Manager Brian Monihan, Publisher Sandy Hubbard, Independent BEE      Advertising Representative Molly Filler, Page Design Jaime McCaslin, Accounting Eric Norberg:     Sandy Hubbard: Call: 503 / 232-2326    Text: 971 / 407-7942 fax: 503/232-9787 text: 503/757-0014 "Pamplin Classifieds" want ads: 503/620-7355 Circulation/subscriptions: 503/620-9797 Accounting/Billing: 971/204-7712 Community Newspapers, Inc. Editorial and Sales Address: 1837 S.E. Harold St, Portland, OR 97202-4932 Remit bill payments to: Accounts Receivable Department P.O. Box 22109, Portland, OR 97269-2109 e-mail: ReadTheBee@Outlook.com [only valid address!] THE BEE IS LOCALLY OWNED BY THE PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP December, 2023 - Vol. 118, No. 4 Scroll down to read this issue! Memories of THE BEE's first 100 years! In 2006, THE BEE celebrated its centennial of serving Southeast Portland!  A special four-page retrospective of Inner Southeast Portland's century, written by Eileen Fitzsimons, and drawn from the pages of THE BEE over the previous 100 years, appeared in our September, 2006, issue. Click here to read the special centenary retrospective! _________________________________________ BEE SUBMISSION AND AD DEADLINES Next BEE is our Pre-Christmas (Jan.) issue (out a week before Christmas), with a deadline of December 7. (The February issue has an ad and copy deadline of January 18.) INTERESTED IN ADVERTISING? CLICK HERE FOR RATES AND INFORMATION!      ____________________________________ Want to subscribe to receive the PRINT version of THE BEE in the mail? Email circulation@pamplinmedia.com -- or telephone 503/620-9797, during weekday business hours. The 12-issue annual print subscription rate is $25 per year for addresses anywhere in the United States.. International rates are available; inquire via the e-mail address or the telephone number two lines up!  _________________________________________________________________________ Daily news!  The Portland Tribune is updated a number of times every day, to bring you the latest news of the Portland area and Oregon.  Click on the banner at left to read the Tribune online! THE BEE has a second website -- searchable for past stories.  The content for the current month includes what is on this one, presented in a different format.  To visit our newer website, click the banner at right! GDPR NOTICE: The owner of this website, www.ReadTheBee.com, collects no information on this site from any reader, and never has. Contractor crews here were preparing to “plant” a new replacement lamppost at Sellwood Riverfront Park. (Photo by David F. Ashton) PP&R starts returning light to dark parks By DAVID F. ASHTON For THE BEE After the fast and unannounced tearing out of park lighting in some Southeast Portland parks in February, Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) soon felt the wrath of the neighbors about the unsafe darkening of their parks at night. As reported in the April issue of THE BEE, Southeast Uplift Chair Nanci Champlin convened an online “Light Our Parks Community Roundtable” in which more than thirty participants vented their ire about it. Perhaps due to that meeting, as well as because of the letters sent to the Portland City Council sent by the SMILE neighborhood association, the Portland City Council responded by obtaining grants from Metro and the federal government to help defray the estimated $15 million cost of replacing the light poles in the affected parks. PP&R officials said the work to install the replacement lampposts would likely commence this December. However, the materials came in earlier than expected. Work began in Sellwood Riverfront Park to replace the missing lampposts on Tuesday, November 7. “Seventeen lampposts with lighting are being installed in that park; eight light poles are to be installed in the original locations, five poles are shifting locations, plus three new poles are being added to the park,” PP&R Public Information Officer Mark Ross told THE BEE. Seeing installers using a power shovel to scoop out dirt, we asked if the lampposts are also getting new bases. “No; instead, the poles will have a ‘direct-bury’ type foundation; that is, the lamppost will be embedded five feet directly into the ground, and will not be attached to a base,” Ross explained. “The contractor intends to finish the installation in that park before Thanksgiving. The other Southeast parks affected by the abrupt removal of lighting will be receiving their new lampposts in due course in the months ahead. The replacement project is underway. Remember, when the new lampposts are installed, don’t hang hammocks, or attach anything, to the lamp poles: That’s in Portland City Code 10.12.100! Just hours after vandalism was discovered at the entrance of Holy Family Catholic Church in Eastmoreland, parishioners had removed the graffiti, and elegantly boarded up where the stained glass had been shattered in the front doors. (Photo by David F. Ashtoin) Eastmoreland’s Holy Family Catholic Church vandalized on Hallowe’en By DAVID F. ASHTON For THE BEE Parishioners of Holy Family Catholic Church were saddened to discover that, on Hallowe’en night, October 31st, vandals had smashed the stained glass in the church’s front doors, and had spray-painted a symbol on the bricks next to them. “From our security system, we discovered that the vandalism took place at 3:50 a.m. on November 1st,” the church’s pastor, Father Rodel de Mesa, told THE BEE. “We first noticed it in the morning when going in for our Children’s Mass service, and we felt badly that the young people had to see it.” In addition to the broken glass, one of the vandals spray-painted in red what appeared to be a star within a circle. One of the parishioners who came to help with the clean-up suggested that perhaps the vandals were attempting to deface the building with a satanic symbol – a pentagram – but it ended up being a star instead. “Our church family and community took action to board up the windows and clean off the paint – and, by the end of the day, everything was taken care of,” said Father Rodel. “This is more than a building, it is our spiritual home – and, like any home that has been vandalized, you feel violated. But, as Christians, we have to rise above this. “The two people who did this; well, we don’t know why,” Father Rodel mused. “We are all praying for them that they become better people.” The Portland Police Bureau sent officers to inspect the vandalism; and their investigation of the matter continues. Artist Wendy Red Star stands by the template used to create the monument which she designed and fabricated at Brooklyn’s Bullseye Glass Company, for display recently on the National Mall in Washington DC. (Photo by David F. Ashton) Brooklyn artist creates glass monument for display in Washington DC By DAVID F. ASHTON For THE BEE A gigantic work of art by Brooklyn neighborhood artist Wendy Red Star – which was fabricated at Bullseye Glass Company – was recently displayed on the National Mall in Washington DC for a month:  From August 18 through September 18. As Red Star described it to THE BEE, “The sculpture itself is mounted on a big granite block – so it looks like it’s ‘being born’ out of this granite block.” The project started after she learned that she’d been selected to do it by a nonprofit organization called “Monument Lab”, based in Philadelphia. “I was one of six artists selected for a trial exhibition to take place on the Mall. We six were to develop monument prototypes for the exhibition – which was called ‘Beyond Granite’, suggesting the artist’s sculpting was to be in a medium other than stone. “I immediately thought of working in glass, and working with the Bullseye Glass Company.” Originally from Montana, Red Star said she grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation; and has lived in Portland for 17 years. While getting acquainted with other monuments in the National Mall, she was drawn to Constitution Garden, where granite blocks show the signatures of the U.S. Constitution’s signers, arranged in a horseshoe design. “I wanted my work to speak to the many Native American Treaties that had been signed with the federal government – and my tribe, the Crow Tribe, in particular,” she said. That led her to research Native American Treaties between 1825 in 1880. Red Star observed that many Native people signed these treaties with a “X” or a thumbprint, or in some cases with a small drawing. “That is where the concept was born; I used my thumbprint. Within the ridges and whorls are written the names of all the Chiefs who signed treaties between 1825 and 1880 – as well as a quote by a Scout named Curly, who fought General Custer at The Battle of the Little Bighorn, and was a survivor. “Curly came to Washington DC in the early 1900s. In a congressional hearing, he spoke against opening up the Crow Reservation to non-native settlements,” Red Star continued. “He equated the upper portion of the land as not being natural earth – but instead the blood and dust of his ancestors – and he did not want to give up any portion of it, because it would be like giving up his ancestors. I thought that was so powerful.” “So, the red [in this artwork] comes from thinking about that quote – and the land.” After its showing on the National Mall last summer, the monument was transported to its “forever home” at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana – in Crow territory. “It’s not on the actual reservation; our second agency is right around that area, so it’s a great tie-in, and it will be on display permanently, for the public to see,” Brooklyn’s Red Star said. Officers from East Precinct and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office contained the suspected serial burglar on this used car lot and, as S.E. 82nd Avenue of Roses remained shut down for hours, finally found and arrested him in one of the cars on the lot – betrayed by his breath having steamed the windows of the parked vehicle. (Photo by David F. Ashton) Enormous police/SERT callout blocks 82nd Avenue for hours By DAVID F. ASHTON For THE BEE A police manhunt – involving officers from two counties – shut down one of the most important roads in Southeast Portland for hours on Tuesday morning, October 24th. It began when County Sheriff’s deputies, at daybreak that morning, spotted a “suspicious vehicle” – one matching the description of a van believed to be involved in a series of business burglaries – in a parking lot on 82nd Avenue, near S.E. King Road. When the deputies attempted to contact the driver, the man sped off northbound along the Avenue of Roses blowing through red traffic signals. The deputies didn’t pursue -- but they did radio ahead, asking for help from Portland’s East Precinct officers, who responded at 6:07 a.m. Near the S.E. Flavel Street intersection, the northbound speeding driver smacked into another car – but kept on driving. The female driver of the victim vehicle wasn’t reported to be seriously injured. When the deputies caught up to the fleeing vehicle, a white Ford Econoline van, they saw two occupants scramble out of their smashed up truck – a man and a woman – and run in opposite directions. The driver – later identified as 33-year-old Gary Duane Harrison, a resident of the State of Washington – bolted northbound. He ducked into the tightly-packed southern lot of Global Auto Motors, just south of Bybee Boulevard. Several blocks of S.E. 82nd Avenue of Roses were soon sealed off and filled with the support vehicles of the PPB’s Special Emergency Reaction Team (SERT), including three armored ones, as well as their Drone Team, Canine officers, and their fixed-wing plane overhead, providing aerial surveillance. A total of 32 officers were involved in this callout. Using a loud-hailing system, officers commanded Harrison to surrender several times – and for quite a while, to no avail. Finally, at about 11:20 a.m., SERT team members found Harrison hiding in a car on the lot (they’d noticed the parked car’s windows were steamed up from somebody breathing inside), and took him into custody without incident. Harrison told officers that he’d taken drugs just before being arrested, so he was taken to a local hospital as a precaution, but apparently it was simply a stalling tactic. Later that day, Harrison was booked into the Clackamas County Jail on charges of Attempt to Elude Police Officer, Unauthorized Use of Vehicle, Possession of Stolen Vehicle, Reckless Driving, and Failure to Perform Duties of Driver. A judge dismissed several of the charges at his arraignment; but Harrison is still in jail in lieu of $75,000 bail. Meantime, the female passenger who fled the van southbound, had been quickly found at a nearby business. She was identified as 35-year-old Hannah Melanie Thompson. She complained of injuries suffered in the crash, and was taken to a local hospital –.but she was soon released from medical care and was also booked into the Clackamas County Jail, where she’s being held without bail, on a Washington State Fugitive Warrant for Escape. S.E. 82nd Avenue of Roses finally was reopened to normal traffic by the noon hour that day. The featured forecasters at this year’s “What Will Winter be Like” forum at OMSI, from left: April Vogt of Avangrid Renewables, Tanis Leach of Oregon State University, Noah Alviz of the Portland National Weather Service Office, Kyle Dittmer of CRITFC, and Mark Nelsen of KPTV and KPDX television. (Photo by Eric Norfberg) What will winter be like this year? Well… By ERIC NORBERG For THE BEE The thirty-first annual “winter weather forecast conference” of the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society took place once again at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Inner Southeast Portland. The only difference was that this year parking there cost money, and the crowd was just a little thinner – perhaps, as a result of that. The problem with predicting weather months in advance is that modern forecasting tools are not of much use more than ten days in advance. So some other method must be used. And for most, it boils down to “analog years”. That is, forecasters go through the records of past years in the Portland area, trying to match the way the weather developed in the spring and summer in each of them, and what specific regional, national, and worldwide trends prevailed, and try to find past years which echo the way the current year has turned out so far. Then, those “analog years” are grouped together, and the forecaster tries to pick the most relevant ones, and forecasts a composite of how those winters turned out. If they succeed, they still probably have to guess about any major short-term events that might occur, since a successful “anlog year forecast” will match general trends over the three months of winter. None of last year’s forecasters foresaw the fairly robust snowstorm that developed last February, or the short-term, very-localized wind event that blew up through Westmoreland on December 27th, uprooting several trees and taking down all the high-tension power lines on the Holgate viaduct – plunging much of Westmoreland, and parts of Inner Southeast Portland out to 82nd and further, for as much as 25 hours. The narrow path of that destruction suggested that it could have been a small twister amidst the windstorm that did the damage. But in terms of general trends for last winter, it appeared that last year’s forecasts were not far off from reality. Temperatures were about normal; rainfall was slightly less than normal. Kyle Dittmer, who has been forecasting each year longer than anybody else at the forum this year, pointed out that although he had forecast five snow events and we only had three (and only one major one), he had come quite close to predicting the final snowfall total in inches for Portland. So how about this year? All four presenting forecasters dwelled at length on the apparent shift from a La Nina winter last year to an El Nino winter this year – which normally means a warmer and drier winter in Portland, with less snowfall in the city. Forecasts for an annual snow total ranged from none at all to perhaps a cumulative four inches. All seemed to think that there would be at least an adequate amount of snow at the resort level, although best snow would be at the early end of the season; all seemed to think if there were any snow in Portland, it would be limited to December and January, with perhaps an emphasis on January. The four presenting forecasters this year were Noah Alviz from the Portland National Weather Service Office; Kyle Dittmer of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Council; April Vogt, of “Avangrid Renewables”, and Tanis Leach, a recent graduate of the Climate Science program at Oregon State University. Mark Nelson of KPTV and KPDX-TV, as usual, presented the summary of how last winter actually turned out. The session ended two and a half hours after it began at 10 a.m. with a brief question-and-answer period between all the presenting meteorologists and the audience. And if you want to come next year – it’s always open to the public, in the OMSI Auditorium – it’ll be on a Saturday morning at the end of October next year, and there’s no charge to attend…except of course for the parking. Hundreds of witches paddled their SUPs under the Ross Island Bridge on Saturday, October 28, during Portland’s annual Witches on the Willamette Hallowe’en event. (Photo by Paige Wallace) ‘Witches on the Willamette’ cast Hallowe’en spell on Southeast By PAIGE WALLACE For THE BEE In late autumn, magic was afoot on the Inner Southeast Portland waterfront. Under sunny skies on Saturday, October 28, dozens of people dressed in black met up along the Willamette River’s east bank. They pumped up their rides on docks and beaches, preparing for takeoff. Were they witches? Indeed! But this coven hails from the water, not the skies – so. no brooms were needed for launching. Instead, each floated onto the mighty river atop a stand-up paddleboard (SUP). “Witches hear the call, and they show up,” was the only explanation offered by Saron Nehf, as she set out on her inflatable SUP beneath the shadow of the Sellwood Bridge. Portland’s seventh annual Witches on the Willamette event drew hundreds of costumed participants to paddle down the river dressed in witch costumes. Beneath their billowing black capes, many wore wetsuits to fend off the day’s chilly wind and waves. “The weather wouldn’t have mattered – this is super fun,” said Dayl Pytel, who drove down from White Salmon, Washington, to take part. “When I’m with all this feminine energy I feel so empowered!” Warlocks were welcomed, too. Colin Tomkins set out from the old boat launch at the end of S.E. Spokane Street, not far from his Sellwood home. “It seemed like the perfect Portland Hallowe’en spirit event – getting out in nature, and getting in touch with your magical side,” he said. “People go all out,” explained Woodstock resident Lynn Bauer – a repeat participant who plans to attend take part in this watery ritual every autumn. ”Last year, a guy had a real cat on his shoulder!” The official route started at Willamette Park, opposite Oaks Park, and spanned three miles north to Tom McCall Waterfront Park. However, some savvy witches chose to launch from the river’s east bank to beat the crowds and paddle a shorter distance. The docks at Sellwood Riverfront Park and OMSI proved popular. A few out-of-town witches even figured out this secret sorcery, having traveled to these launches from as far away as Bellingham, Washington, and San Diego. “Witches on the Willamette” is the brainchild of Portlander Ginny Kauffman, who enchants participants into donating to local charities in lieu of an entrance fee. This year’s event raised more than $2,600 for its designated beneficiaries – Stumptown Strays and the Sunshine Division. Kauffman shares future event dates and other details online – http://pdxsupwitches.com – and through the Portland SUP WOW Facebook group, which boasts more than 2,000 members. By midday Saturday, October 28, pedestrians lined the Tillikum Crossing bridge railings to watch the witches. They marveled at the clever costumes floating by below, and the sunny skies above. One passerby wondered if the paddlers had managed to conjure up this perfect fall day. Perhaps spells were cast. Only the witches know for sure. Comments? News tips? Click here to submit! Trying to remember or locate a BEE advertiser? Click here to e-mail us, and we'll help! Fair warning:  We have so many great photos on page 2 this month, it may take a moment or two to load on slower connections!  Now, prepare to enjoy what we have for you on page 2! READY TO TURN TO PAGE 2 -- FOR "MORE NEWS"? Click here! Note to readers: At some point, this, our original Internet website, may be replaced at this web address by our new website, as part of the Community Newspapers group. At that time, you will still be able to access this, our original -- and smartphone-friendly -- website, if you save this address:  www.sePDXnews.com. 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