This Week in the Mercury
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Roaming Linda Wysong: Backyard Conversations
Posted by Temple Lentz on Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 8:24 PM
"I have mixed feelings about this place," Linda Wysong admitted during her show yesterday afternoon. "This place" is the South Waterfront, and the show, Backyard Conversations, is an exploration of the strange little world down there, south of the Ross Island Bridge.
If you've got any interest in how cities are born and constantly reinvented, and the conflict between "civilization's" need for natural resources and the need to control them, head down and check out the last couple days of Wysong's tours.
This spot down by Ross Island, in the shallows between the Tualatin Hills and the flats of the Willamette River, has been a gathering place for centuries. And in the 150 years or so that whitey's been in control, the built environment has changed dramatically. Some times because of what we've built...and sometimes because of fires or flooding that erase the work and allow us to start over.
Right now, this spot is a fascinating and confusing place, and Wysong's tour delights in that contrast. It's the intersection of high-tech transit (the Tram and the Streetcar), old-school industry (Zydell shipyards), nature that can be touched and lived, and nature held at a distance through a high-end pane of floor-to-ceiling glass. What once was mined is being replaced, and what was poisoned is being purified--at the same time that the most permanent structures to date are being erected on this spot, changing the landscape more dramatically than we've seen in quite some time.
Human history is the history of creating, erasing, and trying again. Of trying to control nature, failing, and trying again with a little more respect. At the South Waterfront, you can see these processes as they happen. And if you look at it through the lens Linda Wysong provides, you'll see it as a constant flow, much like the river you're standing next to.
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