More Cross-Country Symmetry
Here is just a series of insane connections.
I'm doing a documentary project on the never built Mt. Hood Freeway in Oregon. There's almost no information about it anywhere on the web save this this nice entry in Wikipedia.
One of the folks I interviewed in Portland urged me to contact a guy named Blaine, who did his senior design thesis on the Mt. Hood Freeway. In his research, he unearthed tons of old documents I might be able to use. He recently moved to Berkeley! "Cool," I figured I could interview him the next time I visited the Bay Area to be with Elizabeth.
I call when I get back to Brooklyn. What luck! He happens to be in Brooklyn and he has his laptop which still has the documents on it!
Great! It gets greater.
Blaine also happens to be a member of the Rebar Group who did this great installation showing how to reclaim a parking space back for open green space. Transportation Alternatives was planning on doing something similar called Parking Spot Squat so I interviewed him about Mount Hood and that, two stories for one!
Even better! It gets betterer.
A few weeks later, I email Blaine to tell him that I am heading to the Bay Area to do a similar highway piece on the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and I ask if there is anyone he can recommend I interview. He says his close friend Suzhana is great pals with a Mr. Jacobs who would be considered the Bay Area's expert to talk with and if I send an email to him he would forward it to her to send on to this gentleman.
Moments later, I get a wonderful email back from this Suzhana elated to hear from me. You see Suzhana is Suzie (to me!), a gal I volunteered and hung out with at Transportation Alternatives in NYC many, many years back. The last I had heard from her was by email about a year ago and she was working in a European country which had just undergone a government overthrow. Rioting in the streets.
Scary stuff. Almost as scary as some of these coincidences I run into.
I'm doing a documentary project on the never built Mt. Hood Freeway in Oregon. There's almost no information about it anywhere on the web save this this nice entry in Wikipedia.
One of the folks I interviewed in Portland urged me to contact a guy named Blaine, who did his senior design thesis on the Mt. Hood Freeway. In his research, he unearthed tons of old documents I might be able to use. He recently moved to Berkeley! "Cool," I figured I could interview him the next time I visited the Bay Area to be with Elizabeth.
I call when I get back to Brooklyn. What luck! He happens to be in Brooklyn and he has his laptop which still has the documents on it!
Great! It gets greater.
Blaine also happens to be a member of the Rebar Group who did this great installation showing how to reclaim a parking space back for open green space. Transportation Alternatives was planning on doing something similar called Parking Spot Squat so I interviewed him about Mount Hood and that, two stories for one!
Even better! It gets betterer.
A few weeks later, I email Blaine to tell him that I am heading to the Bay Area to do a similar highway piece on the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and I ask if there is anyone he can recommend I interview. He says his close friend Suzhana is great pals with a Mr. Jacobs who would be considered the Bay Area's expert to talk with and if I send an email to him he would forward it to her to send on to this gentleman.
Moments later, I get a wonderful email back from this Suzhana elated to hear from me. You see Suzhana is Suzie (to me!), a gal I volunteered and hung out with at Transportation Alternatives in NYC many, many years back. The last I had heard from her was by email about a year ago and she was working in a European country which had just undergone a government overthrow. Rioting in the streets.
Scary stuff. Almost as scary as some of these coincidences I run into.
posted by Clarence Jr. at 12:43 AM
1 Comments:
Hey, crazy as this is thought I'd connect a few dots here... Got to your blog through Bike Snob NYC, which I read daily. I also read BikePortland.org, cause I live in Vancouver, WA and work in Portland, OR. Anyway, about connecting dots... Saw an interesting post a few days ago on Bikeportland.org that mentioned the Mt. Hood Highway demise.. Here's an excerpt from the editor found in comment #2:
Jonathan Maus (Editor)
May 27th, 2008 10:17 2re: mt. hood freeway...
back in February 2007, when I first raised concerns about the CRC on this site, I met Jim Howell.
Howell is a 72 year-old longtime transportation activist who was involved with the Mt. Hood Fwy defeat.
I wrote about meeting him in this post - Concerns about the Crossing.
Howell said the CRC project reminded him of the Mt. Hood saga and blamed its defeat on "ODOT's hubris".
What it boiled down is that a lawsuit was threatened against ODOT because they did not fully examine all the options -- instead they were only wanting to consider the Division Street alignment which went smack-dab through dense residential areas.
For more on the defeat of the Mt. Hood Freeway, see this Streetfilms video.
and here's the link: http://bikeportland.org/2008/05/27/crc-highway-project-hits-speed-bumps/#more-7661
Just connecting dots...
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