When I don't have time to travel, I time travel. The buildings of architect A.E. Doyle are like portals to Portland's past. The architect's classical-inspired buildings, including the Multnomah Public Library, the Benson Hotel, Reed College, the former Meier & Frank now Macy's, and dozens of others built during the early 1900s, helped shape the City of Roses.
Brian Faherty was working in real estate when he noticed that otherwise tastefully restored historic homes often fell short on lighting. That gave him a brilliant idea.
A man built a house in Wales entirely by hand. His low-impact Woodland Home might have inspired a blog about being good and green and resourceful but instead I'm way too excited about the fact that the place he created looks like a house for hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Theme decorating is my weakness. This obsession interest stems from a troubled childhood, troubled because I was sharing an orange and yellow bedroom with my sister while my little brothers' room was outfitted with Charlie Brown and Snoopy bedspreads. The boys had a Peanuts theme. The girls had only a vague reference to citrus fruit.
Boys Fort beckons. Wandering through the pop-up shop is almost as much fun as sneaking into the “No Girls Allowed” forts of childhood. Boys Fort is chock full of the kinds of things that beg closer inspection. Like desk lamps made from vintage cage front mechanic’s lights. Or birch bark containers that look as if they were just peeled from the tree.
It's time to make like a bear and hibernate. The nights are getting longer so we all get an extra hour of sleep on Nov. 6 when we turn back the clocks. The idea of Daylight Savings Time was first proposed in 1895 by a New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson.
She was beautiful, no question. She had great bones and an aura of elegance. But there was something romantically tragic about her past. She’d been neglected, fallen on hard times, an innocent victim of changing fashions who deserved better and stirred all my Dickensian rescue fantasies.
Historic buildings can do that.