Merrell, Thank you now Lena knows where to go. At least it’s not across the world. I hope one day she gets to see it.

Dona Meier and Franks is now a Macy’s. But it hadn’t been the old Meier and Franks for a long time the May Co. owned it for a long time. We miss the old one. You know the one that was proud of Portland. All medium to large cities have lost their most important department stores. A curling iron wouldn’t have worked no electrical outlets in the bathrooms. No you wouldn’t recognize it today. It is prettier than when I was a child and I thought it was pretty snazzy. My parents moved when I was 13 the summer of 1950 to a small town in central Oregon. I thought they had taken me to the end of the earth. No library, no swimming pool, no nothing as far as I was concerned. They did give me one gift. I spent part of that summer on Castle Air Force Base with some former neighbors. Can you imagine being naive enough to let a 13 year old spend her summer on an air force base, except that George was the commander of the Air Police. They took us to San Francisco for a weekend and I fell in love for the first time. It was a love affair that lasted until they started to tear the city up for Bart.

Irish, That too, but later after he was out of office I read somewhere, Maybe in one Bob Woodwards book that it also stopped him from going after Bin Ladin. He also could have said it himself on Charlie Rose. Oh Heck, I think I did hear Clinton say it on Charlie Rose. Bev.

C Hardy, I think the story is Clinton wanted to go after Bin Ladin but couldn’t because the press was accusing him of trying to deflect the attention away from his impeachment.

Dab a do, One place is in Vanity Fair’s article “Oral History of the Bush White House”, the current issue also available in the internet.

Dona, Hi fellow Oregonian! I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been here. Portland is getting prettier every day. I used to sit against the wrought iron fence around the courthouse and look at the confection know as the PP&L building while I waited for the bus. I think that is when I developed my love of architecture. I loved our downtown. I thought I owned it and only shared it with others. When I moved back here in 1970 from Texas I discovered someone had been polishing and cleaning up my city. I fell in love with it all over again. Now we have art every where, on the streets, at intersections, sitting on and hanging off of buildings. We have an art installation at all of our rapid transit stations, we even have art etched in the glass around the bus stops. The man who does that is a high school buddy of my kids. He was kind of the third child around our house in those days. I even had a three piece sculpture installed in my yard about ten years ago. I live close to downtown and we attracted a crowd when the artist came to do the installation. It is a wonderful place to live. My only complaint is there isn’t as much jazz as there used to be and I’m getting old.

Lena, I went to my book on Turner to see if I could find out where that painting was but it doesn’t say. Since the book is forty years old it might not be accurate anymore anyway. I hope someday you can see it in person. Bev.

Shirley, I live in a city, Portland, Oregon with a lot of street or public art. You can’t get away from it here! We have a beautiful topography also.

Lilly, Look at my answer to Livvy! Also, what kind of potter are you? I’d like to know the kind of work you do. Back in the seventies we had a potter up on the mountain named Richard Enna. I bought a lot of his work. I always wanted him to throw me some dinner plates for a table I built. Unfortunately I could never afford twelve. I thought setting a table with twelve plates each hand thrown would have been so beautiful. Each one different in it’s own way.

Kitty is that you? I’ve missed your reasonable responses to this place and it’s hot headed statements. Welcome back if it’s you. Bev.

Vivvy, Sports are important too. They teach kids to work together, to compete, to not give up and that the game is important and fun win or lose, except in Texas they can’t lose. I think we parents need to get involved in art and music like we do in sports and not leave it just to the schools. Just think art and music coaches, it’s an idea!

Vivvy, My daughter produces her own art and also has a collection she started for herself in her twenties, besides she is drawn to different work. I wouldn’t want to burden her with what she grew up around. Books, Art, Music [jazz] and Gourmet Food are my life so my kids have a bigger burden than you do. My daughter lives in NYC so she won’t have space for mom’s stuff, she’s had to give or store things of her own because of small spaces and my son’s wife can barely tolerate all the old stuff he collects and I can’t really fault her, as a young bride she had old car parts under her bed. I remember telling her before the wedding, love David love his old car parts. Now she tolerates having 1906 Ford taking up one of the spaces in her garage. See my message to Lee above for a partial solution. I don’t know what to do with my books. I had to trick a nephew and his wife to take the Harvard Classics I grew up with. When she said at least they are pretty I knew they were safe. Oh Heck! My art work isn’t pretty it is interesting.

Lee, I’d never thought about such a thing until recently. My daughter was the one who suggested it. A friend who is an artist/collector/former Art Professor agreed with her. I do not have a huge amount of money invested here. It is just a reflection of art during my lifetime. I didn’t even think I was collecting art. That was something rich people do, I thought. I grew up like a lot of people thinking original art was in museums. As a young wife and mother living on my father in law’s ranch I discovered some paintings in a storage room. I couldn’t believe someone had shoved them in there, one had been stepped through. I think when his wife, my husbands mother, died, people who helped take of the family had no idea they were originals, or maybe even cared. I salvaged three, one oil and two pastels. They were landscapes done in the early thirties by a classically trained local artist. I put them up on the wall. I lived on that ranch for five years and when it was sold I took them with me. This was 1960, just months later living in a college town a woman came by the business where I was working to sell art produced by her husband, head of the art department, and herself. I didn’t have enough money to buy the pieces they had framed and offered for sale, but she carried a portfolio with unframed work by both of them. That is how it started. I could buy interesting work for lunch money. I just never stopped. According to Michael my friend who is an artist. I was lucky because the things in that portfolio weren’t the commercial work but the things they were doing to stretch and learn. Maybe the only time in my life that have only a little bit of money paid off. Most of the work I’ve collected through the years were done by emerging artists. The thing I’d like to teach or share is you too can have art in your home. But for the accident of circumstance I might be decorating my walls from a furniture store instead of the artists. Wouldn’t it be great for this work to be shown at eye level in grade schools. Where they could really see and touch it? None of these are precious. They are real work done by real people over a period of almost 50 years. Wishful thinking? My son has collected old stuff his whole life, old car memorabilia, old military memorabilia and old Oregon artifacts and memorabilia. He now fills display cabinets with historical Oregon memorabilia and loans them to small museums all over the state.

Chris, When my daughter was a student there she walked through the museum every day after class. She said it was wonderful. She was focused on art all day every day. I live with art all the time but not in that quanity or quality. It had to have been wonderful.

James, My son would agree with you. When he was 19 he drove up to our house with a 1929 Ford Model A, delivery truck frame on a trailer. It’s wheels wouldn’t even turn. His dad said not in my front yard. So he and his friends parked it under a big tree in the friends pasture and rebuilt it. They finished it and painted it red. It even ran once in awhile. More than once I got a phone call to come get them with a tow chain to tow them home now about 25 years and several old cars later he has a 1906 Model N Ford in his Garage. It is adorable. It looks like a horse and buggy without the horse. I even made him a yellow linen duster with one of those funny hats to wear with goggles when he drives it because the windshield is very small. It is his pride and joy. It is all original. When Ford had it’s 100th birthday several years ago his little car was exhibited here for the Ford Executives. Sometime around that birthday he went there with a group of men from Oregon that belong to the old car club. All Ford owners. So if given a choice between the auto museum and an art museum he wouldn’t even blink and pick the old cars.