by under the bridge
found in the annual purge of the photo album, not my usual subject matter
the underside of Granville Street Bridge, the section over Granville Island
maintenance repairs and upgrades for earthquake resistance
made me think of a few ‘bridge’ quotes:
I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.
– Max Beckmann
We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
London Bridge is broken down, my fair lady
– Henry Carey: Namby Pamby
Added Feb.2, 2014: How timely! The Vancouver Sun has posted an article and many photos of the Granville Bridge’s opening to great fanfare 60 years ago. The bridge was built above an earlier Granville Bridge that had spanned False Creek since 1909. The 1909 bridge had replaced a third Granville Bridge which was built in 1889, when Vancouver was only three years old.
January 4, 2014 in History, Photoworks, Urban by Marja-Leena
I worked in an antiwar paper Willamette Bridge in 1970. That was a very lively and good weekly paper and one of the best counter culture meeting places at the time. Portland, Oregon as it was then. Next to skid row of poor farmworkers, cent-hotels and bars.
So we got good first hand interviews from time to time. I don’t remember the name of that particular bridge that was in the mass head, but there are huge amounts of bridges over there. Since then, they’ve found out that Portland has several zig-zag figures underground, earthquake zones. More than they knew before. Very good that they reconstruct your bridges!
Ripsa, I’m glad my bridge photos triggered some “bridge of another kind” memories for you. Thanks for sharing tidbits from your past life in Oregon.
By the way, when you mention so many bridges in Portland, I looked up to see how many are in the Vancouver area: 32!
Marja-Leena, I found Wikipedia article, which said Portland has 16 bridges, plus Columbia-river has yet railway bridges, three of them. I’m not sure if those are all. I’ve been regularly on Burnside and St. John’s bridges, which has pedestrian walkways. Walking was not very common in those days…
But clearly Vancouver won that one. Maybe the cultural people start a new paper called The Bridge?
Oh yes, Portland has a sister city called Vancouver, but if it has bridges of it’s own, it wasn’t mentioned on this article.
Ripsa, as far as I know there is no publication by the name of Bridges, but we do have one called ‘Georgia Straight’, or just ‘The Straight’ now. That’s the body of water along our city and coast, also called Salish Sea. There are certain groups pushing for a bridge across to Vancouver Island so we would not need the ferries. Cities are often by bodies of water, so it goes that there will be bridges.
After 17 years we left Portland by way of the Morrison Bridge. Sometimes the trick in life is knowing which bridges to burn and which to cross.
Nice photos, Marja-leena.
Susan, you lived there for that many years? Would that have been your longest stay in one place? Interesting that there should be this conversation with two former residents of Portland, Oregon!
I love your statement – I wish I had gotten that for my quotes! Thanks, glad you like the photos. As I said these are not my usual subject but obviously I was drawn to capture these for some reason when parked underneath that bridge one day.
Considering the fact I left home when I was 18, that’s still the place I lived longest other than Portland and Providence that both got 17 years of my life – just about half considering my age as of the last birthday. The only times I’ve ever lived in one particular home other than the original were two fine apartments – 7+ years each in one overlooking Providence’s huge Roger Williams Park and the other with a view of Mt. Hood.
Some of our bridges are made of sticks and twine woven with love and trust.
Susan, I knew you’ve lived in many places and thus have had an interesting life, and still do. And, I do so like your bridge – it’s very portable for all those moves!
Marja-Leena, Susan:
Susan, I lived there only two years, after that I got too homesick, had get back home to this North corner of Europe.
I would say I have burned several bridges during my life. But by accidents most. Being in wrong places at wrong times.
Marja-Leena, from here, this distance, I can’t stop wondering how actually very different Europe is than America. Latin America is not the same as Portugal or Spain neither.
I am happy that I have few contacts still left and I can practice my English, having not hardly at all studied it at school. My husbands family are one of the first ones to move to Oregon, I’ve seen some wood work tools of one of his forefathers from 1850-60’s or so.
Hmm. Maybe we have different kinds of bridges? Portland Steel Bridge looked a bit like the one in you picture.
Ripsa, I think it’s wonderful that countries have different cultures. Immigrants from all over the world have brought their cultures to North and South America and of course even Europe and elsewhere. Bridges between cultures, we could say!
With his long roots there, does your husband miss his home in Oregon and how does he feel being an immigrant in Finland? I know he’s doing well as an artist…
Hi Ripsa, I can understand your homesickness for beautiful Finland. We didn’t arrive in Portland until 1993 by which time it had changed a lot from the 70s – as did Vancouver where I lived back then. I know for a fact there weren’t quite so many bridges in either place then. We all have regrets, but I always try to act according to the advice of an old friend who once told me all we can do is dance where we are.
I think we need to ask Marja-Leena to take a picture of Vancouver’s most beautiful bridge – the Lion’s Gate.
Nice to talk to you.
I see I have a photography assignment unless I can dig up an old photo!
Marja-Leena,
I agree with Susan, definitely!
Yes, my husband Leo is doing as well as artists do. I think artists life is a play, which lasts for the life time. But it’s some kind of serious play.
It’s quite something to watch. It doesn’t bring hardly any money in at all, but that’s not the meaning of the life, gather richnesses, is it?
He’s teaching local hobbyists right now.
Well, I am happy to have found this blog of yours! So tell me when I should stop blabbering, please!
Ripsa, such is the life of an artist indeed! Kiitos and thank you for your always generous commenting here. I enjoy the discussions so don’t stop!
Susan:
I don’t know if I wanted to come back because of beauty. It was rather the language. I am not like Nabokov who could change languages one from another and write literature. Unfortunately, not that talented (there are language-talented families). And so I was loosing Finnish.
My husband is a visual artist, so the language is not SO important as it was for me. I have been a critic in different papers since 1965. But we still speak English at home.
In Portland we lived both in Burnside-area (it’s all been reconstructed over the decades) and in North Eastern part of the city, which was a commune, an old wooden house and a barn. We had five people in the house and two in the barn, several cats, three dogs, a pond with goldfish, bamboo-grove in back of the house, cherry and pear trees, a very beautiful place.
All weekends in Cascade foot hills hiking or on the shore of Pacific, which is magnificent! America was an extreme experience about the nature! And then back home pass Vancouver B.C. and on South Canada highway to Toronto and from there down to New York and then hop to Iceland and Copenhagen and home.
Yes, I consider Marja-Leena’s blog some form of a bridge between two continents.
Interesting to know that you speak English at home, Ripsa. That is how you are maintaining that language while still speakng Finnish.
Your life around Portland sounded similar to life around Vancouver, I’m sure you would agree if you visited. Welcome!
Bridge thoughts–
My great-grandfather Nathaniel Youmans (also Yeomans–he’s the one that switched our spelling) was a bridge builder (in several ways, it seems.) He built bridges in Georgia… and seems to have been quite the ladies’ man…
Longfellow’s bridge–
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
etc., http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180811
32 bridges–
That’s a lot of bridges to stay up!
Marly – how very interesting in this context to learn that you have a bridge builder for an ancestor. Thanks for the Longfellow poem!
I’m recalling the lovely and romantic bridges over the Seine in Paris….
I’m sure his were not so big and fancy as the ones over the Seine! His were probably sturdy things to cross the Ohoopee and other Georgia rivers…
Still, bridge building is an important skill. The little covered bridges in some parts of the continent are charming. Paris’ bridges seemed much smaller and people friendly than what we have in North America with its massive multi-lane super ones on freeways that encourage even more cars instead of rapid transit.
Thanks Marja-Leena. Now I know that Montreal has 19 bridges. I could only think of four. Three I used driving to work over the years and one I used when visiting Moselito up North prior to becoming his neighbour.
Hi Ellena, of course Montreal would have a lot of bridges being partly on an island on the great St. Lawrence River. I remember crossing a couple when we visited in 2010. So you are not in Montreal anymore; do you miss it?
I grew up in Winnipeg which sits on the fork of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers so bridges were part of life there too.
I just got back from taking Terry to the airport. As we drove over the bridge into town, a bridge that takes us over the Wailuku River, we saw a boat and a helicopter looking for a drowned fisherman. Just another day in Paradise.
Hattie, oh dear, that is not good news. Hope they will find him alive. Another twist to this ‘bridge’ discussion.