by Heather Frederick
The Chestnut Street Lofts building at the corner of Chestnut St. and
Cumberland Ave. is the new kid in the neighborhood, and its residents are glad to be here.
The building includes thirty-seven residential units, each with its
own parking space, and two commercial units. As of presstime, only
two residential units and one commercial unit remain unsold.
Why has this building been such a success story?
First and foremost is its location. Not only is it within walking
distance of so much of what Portland has to offer, but being a part
of the unique neighborhood of Bayside is appealing. Portland is a
great city because people actually live in it rather than just work
in it, and the Chestnut Street Lofts condo owners are no exception.
We don't use our cars much!
Many of the Lofts’ residents work in Portland. Some of the residents use their condos as second homes but are very active in the Portland cultural scene.
The ages and occupations of the owners show how affordable
and appealing these condos are. Whether you’re a mechanic or an attorney or an artist, it's a wonderful place to call home.
The condos are "loft" style, and many are one big, open space. Several
artists live and work here, designing their space to accommodate their
lifestyles. The views are pretty incredible in any direction. Portland's investment in preserving its historic architecture, parks, and quality of life for its residents is a big plus for all of us who have invested in Bayside.
Walking through Bayside is always an interesting experience, and we
are glad to a part of the positive future of this neighborhood. We like the Bayside’s diversity and understand that the neighborhood will undergo many changes during the next decade. We appreciate that members of the
Bayside Neighborhood Association members are deeply involved in guiding its future and are committed to making sure that Bayside remains a great place to live.
It was good to meet many of our new neighbors at the December Open House that my husband, Linden, and I held at our new condo. I hope the Lofts tenants will make a positive impact on a terrific neighborhood. We're here for the long term.
(Heather Frederick is a photograph dealer and her husband a painter.
They live in Belfast part-time, where Linden has his studio. You
can see what they are up to by visiting: www.voxphotographs.com, or
www.lindenfrederick.com.)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
SOUNDS IN BAYSIDE
By Emily Koehn
An interview with our Bayside philosopher about his new book, Sounds: A Philosophical Theory (Oxford University Press, 2007).
B: How did you come up with the title for your new book? Were there any other competitors?
C: Honestly, there were a bunch of competitors. One was The World of Sounds. But it sounded too philosophical. I wanted to keep it short and sweet, which is more of my style, and not make the title excessive. A friend of mine titled a recent book of his about loyalty to friends, family, and country The Limits of Loyalty, and I liked his sense of aesthetics--call it what it’s about.
B: Describe what your book is about in three sentences.
C: Physics or science tells us that our environment is filled with disturbances and pressure waves that travel through the medium. The end result is that we hear sounds, music, pitch, timbre. The book is really about how it is that our brains and our auditory perceptual systems translate information about pressure waves and vibrations into auditory experience.
B: What is one of you favorite Bayside sounds? What is one of your least favorite Bayside sounds?
C: A favorite sound is hearing the plows move throughout the night in the winter. My least favorite sounds are heard in the summer, when the windows are open, and the f-bomb drops all throughout the day. That gets old surprisingly quickly.
B: Are sounds different in any way in Bayside?
C: As with any built urban environment, with few trees and little vegetation, it’s a highly percussive and reverberant neighborhood.
B: Are you drawn toward those types of sounds?
C: Yes. I live here. In fact, you can get more information about your environment in these surroundings. They’re complex, information-rich, acoustic environments with little sound dampening. (Some would say “sound-polluted.”)
B: What’s the easiest way to dampen sound and sound pollution in Bayside?
C: Trees and other absorbent, non-reflective materials, many of which are organic. In short, soft things. For example, notice when we have snow in the winter, how much quieter it is in Bayside.
B: Where did you compose most of your book?
C: In a third-story room in my home on Portland Street. I don’t look out the window, though--I face away from the window.
B: Give Baysider readers some advice on how to best listen to sounds.
C: Depends on what kind of sound. For music or when you’re trying to abstract from the source and listen just to the sound, close your eyes. But if what you want to learn is what’s going on around you through listening, trying to hear what someone’s saying, or when you hear the start of an engine, listen with your eyes, too. You’ll hear the sound with more detail.
B: Why did you decide to philosophize about sounds?
C: I’ve always had an interest in music. I’d say music first drew me to sounds.
B: Are sounds better than smells?
C: It depends on which sounds and which smells.
B: Who is the main audience for your book?
C: Cognitive scientists who are interested in perception as well as philosophers interested in understanding how perception depicts or represents the world as being.
B: I’ve heard one unexpected Baysider made it into the acknowledgements section?
C: Yes. My dog, Jackon. He’s got much better hearing that I do--very attentive to sounds. (He’s pretty good at smells, too.)
B: What will your next book be about?
C: The senses.
B: What about the senses?
C: How we distinguish different sense modalities from each other and how this discussion has been impacted by recent empirical discoveries dealing with exotic sensory phenomena like cross-modal perceptual illusions, synesthesia, and alien or nonhuman sense modalities. It deals with things like echolocation, electrochemical senses, neural plasticity, and sensory prosthetics.
B: Anything else you’d like to mention to the readers?
C: See you around the Bayside neighborhood.
B: Thank you for speaking with me.
C: My pleasure.
An interview with our Bayside philosopher about his new book, Sounds: A Philosophical Theory (Oxford University Press, 2007).
B: How did you come up with the title for your new book? Were there any other competitors?
C: Honestly, there were a bunch of competitors. One was The World of Sounds. But it sounded too philosophical. I wanted to keep it short and sweet, which is more of my style, and not make the title excessive. A friend of mine titled a recent book of his about loyalty to friends, family, and country The Limits of Loyalty, and I liked his sense of aesthetics--call it what it’s about.
B: Describe what your book is about in three sentences.
C: Physics or science tells us that our environment is filled with disturbances and pressure waves that travel through the medium. The end result is that we hear sounds, music, pitch, timbre. The book is really about how it is that our brains and our auditory perceptual systems translate information about pressure waves and vibrations into auditory experience.
B: What is one of you favorite Bayside sounds? What is one of your least favorite Bayside sounds?
C: A favorite sound is hearing the plows move throughout the night in the winter. My least favorite sounds are heard in the summer, when the windows are open, and the f-bomb drops all throughout the day. That gets old surprisingly quickly.
B: Are sounds different in any way in Bayside?
C: As with any built urban environment, with few trees and little vegetation, it’s a highly percussive and reverberant neighborhood.
B: Are you drawn toward those types of sounds?
C: Yes. I live here. In fact, you can get more information about your environment in these surroundings. They’re complex, information-rich, acoustic environments with little sound dampening. (Some would say “sound-polluted.”)
B: What’s the easiest way to dampen sound and sound pollution in Bayside?
C: Trees and other absorbent, non-reflective materials, many of which are organic. In short, soft things. For example, notice when we have snow in the winter, how much quieter it is in Bayside.
B: Where did you compose most of your book?
C: In a third-story room in my home on Portland Street. I don’t look out the window, though--I face away from the window.
B: Give Baysider readers some advice on how to best listen to sounds.
C: Depends on what kind of sound. For music or when you’re trying to abstract from the source and listen just to the sound, close your eyes. But if what you want to learn is what’s going on around you through listening, trying to hear what someone’s saying, or when you hear the start of an engine, listen with your eyes, too. You’ll hear the sound with more detail.
B: Why did you decide to philosophize about sounds?
C: I’ve always had an interest in music. I’d say music first drew me to sounds.
B: Are sounds better than smells?
C: It depends on which sounds and which smells.
B: Who is the main audience for your book?
C: Cognitive scientists who are interested in perception as well as philosophers interested in understanding how perception depicts or represents the world as being.
B: I’ve heard one unexpected Baysider made it into the acknowledgements section?
C: Yes. My dog, Jackon. He’s got much better hearing that I do--very attentive to sounds. (He’s pretty good at smells, too.)
B: What will your next book be about?
C: The senses.
B: What about the senses?
C: How we distinguish different sense modalities from each other and how this discussion has been impacted by recent empirical discoveries dealing with exotic sensory phenomena like cross-modal perceptual illusions, synesthesia, and alien or nonhuman sense modalities. It deals with things like echolocation, electrochemical senses, neural plasticity, and sensory prosthetics.
B: Anything else you’d like to mention to the readers?
C: See you around the Bayside neighborhood.
B: Thank you for speaking with me.
C: My pleasure.
Community Partners for Protecting Children
By Victoria Szatkowski
Community Partners for Protecting Children (CPPC) is an initiative that came out of the Children’s Advocacy Council and is now a coalition of numerous stakeholders, chief among whom are the Department of Health and Human Services, the City of Portland, Youth Alternatives, Casey Family Services, PROP, and our very own BNA. The focus of this initiative to keep children safe is to strengthen families in their own communities so that they have better success with their children and do not have to become involved with the child protective system.
As part of this initiative, we at BNA want to help strengthen families here in Bayside, and so we started a group for mothers. BNA has been convening the Bayside Breakfast Club for more than a year now. We meet every Wednesday morning, 9:30 – 11 usually, though we often go over. Some of the things we have done in the past are organize a pot luck and give-away, go visit Women, Work and Community, share our recipes by cooking for each other, provide some child development information, and now we are working on learning how to knit. Linda Trott is making a pair of slippers! We were very fortunate to get our knitting supplies donated by some area shops. Portland Fiber and Knit Wit on Congress St. and Seaport Yarn on Fore St. gave us some beautiful yarn and needles, and now we are all inspired to create gorgeous things to wear!
We talk about everything and share our strategies for keeping sane while raising our children. Some of us are grandmothers and are helping to raise children a second time around. Some of us were born in another country and are still learning what the culture is and what to do about children who want to assimilate more or less than we do. Some of us are single mothers and are struggling to raise a child with little other support. By meeting together, we can share our experiences and help each other to cope. Much of the time it is just important to listen and to provide a space for this sharing, to let us all know that we are not alone and that we can support each other.
At this time, CPPC has these activities going on:
Parent groups are thriving in both Parkside and Bayside. This includes the Bayside Breakfast Club ,which meets every week, and the Parkside Super Club, which meets every other week. For information contact Victoria at BNA (415- 0769) or Sara at Parkside Neighborhood Center (874-1023).
Parents as Partners has been launched. Rosemary Whittaker (DHHS) and Deb Dunlap (Youth Alternatives) are bringing together parents to help develop a Parent-to-Parent child welfare mentoring initiative. Contact Rosemary at 822-2252 for more information.
Prevention efforts to support parents and link with needed community resources continue to be developed. Advocacy and coordination of available services to address identified neighborhood needs include childcare and substance abuse services.
Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services now has two Child Protective staff (Mary Ellen Welch and Suna Shaw) working with families within the Parkside, Bayside, and East End neighborhoods. This move has supported closer working relationships with families and other community members as well as more direct knowledge of the strengths and needs of children and families in the neighborhoods.
Youth Alternatives, Family Intervention and Support Program will be hiring a new worker for Bayside and Parkside. Susan Simpson, the initial CPPC FIS, worker moved on to a new position, though she still maintains connections with CPPC through her current work in Children’s Case Management
CPPC is expanding to the East End. A growing group of community members, including several life-long East End residents, have been meeting over the past few months to define CPPC in their area and are working actively to help establish a neighborhood leadership group that will span the three CPPC neighborhoods. For more information, contact Elise Wilson @ 773-2625 or Rosemary Whittaker @ 822-2252.
The Bayside and Parkside CPPC Neighborhood Team includes Victoria Szatkowski, Bayside Neighborhood Association; Zoe Miller, PROP’s Parkside Neighborhood Center; Cyndi O’Leary, Preble Street; Maryellen Welch, Department of Health and Human Services; Rebecca Smith, Portland Police Dept. Midtown Community Policing; and Michelle Lauture, Portland Police Dept. Parkside Community Policing.
Community Partners for Protecting Children (CPPC) is an initiative that came out of the Children’s Advocacy Council and is now a coalition of numerous stakeholders, chief among whom are the Department of Health and Human Services, the City of Portland, Youth Alternatives, Casey Family Services, PROP, and our very own BNA. The focus of this initiative to keep children safe is to strengthen families in their own communities so that they have better success with their children and do not have to become involved with the child protective system.
As part of this initiative, we at BNA want to help strengthen families here in Bayside, and so we started a group for mothers. BNA has been convening the Bayside Breakfast Club for more than a year now. We meet every Wednesday morning, 9:30 – 11 usually, though we often go over. Some of the things we have done in the past are organize a pot luck and give-away, go visit Women, Work and Community, share our recipes by cooking for each other, provide some child development information, and now we are working on learning how to knit. Linda Trott is making a pair of slippers! We were very fortunate to get our knitting supplies donated by some area shops. Portland Fiber and Knit Wit on Congress St. and Seaport Yarn on Fore St. gave us some beautiful yarn and needles, and now we are all inspired to create gorgeous things to wear!
We talk about everything and share our strategies for keeping sane while raising our children. Some of us are grandmothers and are helping to raise children a second time around. Some of us were born in another country and are still learning what the culture is and what to do about children who want to assimilate more or less than we do. Some of us are single mothers and are struggling to raise a child with little other support. By meeting together, we can share our experiences and help each other to cope. Much of the time it is just important to listen and to provide a space for this sharing, to let us all know that we are not alone and that we can support each other.
At this time, CPPC has these activities going on:
Parent groups are thriving in both Parkside and Bayside. This includes the Bayside Breakfast Club ,which meets every week, and the Parkside Super Club, which meets every other week. For information contact Victoria at BNA (415- 0769) or Sara at Parkside Neighborhood Center (874-1023).
Parents as Partners has been launched. Rosemary Whittaker (DHHS) and Deb Dunlap (Youth Alternatives) are bringing together parents to help develop a Parent-to-Parent child welfare mentoring initiative. Contact Rosemary at 822-2252 for more information.
Prevention efforts to support parents and link with needed community resources continue to be developed. Advocacy and coordination of available services to address identified neighborhood needs include childcare and substance abuse services.
Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services now has two Child Protective staff (Mary Ellen Welch and Suna Shaw) working with families within the Parkside, Bayside, and East End neighborhoods. This move has supported closer working relationships with families and other community members as well as more direct knowledge of the strengths and needs of children and families in the neighborhoods.
Youth Alternatives, Family Intervention and Support Program will be hiring a new worker for Bayside and Parkside. Susan Simpson, the initial CPPC FIS, worker moved on to a new position, though she still maintains connections with CPPC through her current work in Children’s Case Management
CPPC is expanding to the East End. A growing group of community members, including several life-long East End residents, have been meeting over the past few months to define CPPC in their area and are working actively to help establish a neighborhood leadership group that will span the three CPPC neighborhoods. For more information, contact Elise Wilson @ 773-2625 or Rosemary Whittaker @ 822-2252.
The Bayside and Parkside CPPC Neighborhood Team includes Victoria Szatkowski, Bayside Neighborhood Association; Zoe Miller, PROP’s Parkside Neighborhood Center; Cyndi O’Leary, Preble Street; Maryellen Welch, Department of Health and Human Services; Rebecca Smith, Portland Police Dept. Midtown Community Policing; and Michelle Lauture, Portland Police Dept. Parkside Community Policing.
An Exit Strategy from the Procrastination Superhighway
by Kevin Donoghue
Back in 1993, Portland adopted its Transportation Plan, A Time for Change, against a background of growing concern for suburban sprawl, traffic congestion, air pollution, global warming, and even fuel costs. The plan had understood itself as a necessary corrective “to something fundamentally wrong in how we as a government and as citizens make decisions about building and using transportation systems.” (p.1)
A Time for Change imagined our city through lenses of a utopian and a dystopian transportation future, the former a place where children could walk to school and parents could shower after biking to work and the latter a place where families have fled to the suburbs and the city has become but a parking garage.
The planning horizon for each future had been fifteen years, and clearly one has been chosen for 2008.
Notwithstanding the sizable benefits from the leadership of Trainriders Northeast and Portland Trails, the interim has seen decisions to shutter neighborhood schools and open several more parking garages. METRO has converted its fleet to natural gas, but after we have built a new highway in the West End. In a paraphrase of Jane Jacobs: “This is not the rebuilding of Portland. This is the sacking of Portland.”
While implementing our transportation plan has stayed the course on the procrastination superhighway, citizen activists are signaling for an exit strategy ahead. When traffic engineers recommended doubling the automobile traffic capacity of Franklin Arterial in the essentially discredited Peninsula Traffic Plan, neighborhood leaders reclaimed the public process and redirected it consistent with A Time for Change.
While the city has indeed corrected course and is moving forward with its new Peninsula Transit Plan, a new highway project is coming over the horizon. MaineDOT is announcing its plans to widen I-295 through the peninsula and is aggressively seeking federal earmarks through our delegation in Congress, included among whom is former mayor and the father of A Time for Change, Congressman Tom Allen.
MaineDOT will invoke alternatives to widening as obliged by the Sensible Transportation Policy Act but is unlikely to recommend against widening and even less likely to identify funding for alternatives. The most meaningful alternative, commuter rail, remains but a mere twinkle in the eye of the governor.
Meanwhile, the only thing between the sand and gravel folks and a lucrative fait accompli is the public.
February 12 at 7 pm, there will be a crucial public hearing at the Clarion Hotel on 1230 Congress Street on whether we should seek federal earmarks for highway widening or for greater public transportation. The hearing will be hosted by the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation Study group (PACTS), a federal transportation planning committee on which I serve as the one and only local elected official.
February 21 at 7 pm, there will be a public forum at the new Ocean Gateway on the Eastern Waterfront on our priorities for work on the Peninsula Transit Plan. I am chairing the planning committee, whose outcomes are expected to include recommendations for the new bus routes for METRO.
A Time for Change was back in 1993. Now the time for action has been established: 2008.
Please tell me your thoughts on transportation planning in Portland: kjdonoghue@portlandmaine.gov
Back in 1993, Portland adopted its Transportation Plan, A Time for Change, against a background of growing concern for suburban sprawl, traffic congestion, air pollution, global warming, and even fuel costs. The plan had understood itself as a necessary corrective “to something fundamentally wrong in how we as a government and as citizens make decisions about building and using transportation systems.” (p.1)
A Time for Change imagined our city through lenses of a utopian and a dystopian transportation future, the former a place where children could walk to school and parents could shower after biking to work and the latter a place where families have fled to the suburbs and the city has become but a parking garage.
The planning horizon for each future had been fifteen years, and clearly one has been chosen for 2008.
Notwithstanding the sizable benefits from the leadership of Trainriders Northeast and Portland Trails, the interim has seen decisions to shutter neighborhood schools and open several more parking garages. METRO has converted its fleet to natural gas, but after we have built a new highway in the West End. In a paraphrase of Jane Jacobs: “This is not the rebuilding of Portland. This is the sacking of Portland.”
While implementing our transportation plan has stayed the course on the procrastination superhighway, citizen activists are signaling for an exit strategy ahead. When traffic engineers recommended doubling the automobile traffic capacity of Franklin Arterial in the essentially discredited Peninsula Traffic Plan, neighborhood leaders reclaimed the public process and redirected it consistent with A Time for Change.
While the city has indeed corrected course and is moving forward with its new Peninsula Transit Plan, a new highway project is coming over the horizon. MaineDOT is announcing its plans to widen I-295 through the peninsula and is aggressively seeking federal earmarks through our delegation in Congress, included among whom is former mayor and the father of A Time for Change, Congressman Tom Allen.
MaineDOT will invoke alternatives to widening as obliged by the Sensible Transportation Policy Act but is unlikely to recommend against widening and even less likely to identify funding for alternatives. The most meaningful alternative, commuter rail, remains but a mere twinkle in the eye of the governor.
Meanwhile, the only thing between the sand and gravel folks and a lucrative fait accompli is the public.
February 12 at 7 pm, there will be a crucial public hearing at the Clarion Hotel on 1230 Congress Street on whether we should seek federal earmarks for highway widening or for greater public transportation. The hearing will be hosted by the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation Study group (PACTS), a federal transportation planning committee on which I serve as the one and only local elected official.
February 21 at 7 pm, there will be a public forum at the new Ocean Gateway on the Eastern Waterfront on our priorities for work on the Peninsula Transit Plan. I am chairing the planning committee, whose outcomes are expected to include recommendations for the new bus routes for METRO.
A Time for Change was back in 1993. Now the time for action has been established: 2008.
Please tell me your thoughts on transportation planning in Portland: kjdonoghue@portlandmaine.gov
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