Good news! You can assist in saving/ruining Monday morning for the classroom orphans of Marysville Elementary, the Southeast school that burnt up in a three-alarm blaze yesterday, by helping to speed their return to class. They won't be going back to Marysville any time soon (it's a charred mess), but luckily Portland is scattered with abandoned schools, "understudies" if you will, just waiting for their chance to perform. With a little elbow grease, you can ensure hundreds of impressionable minds are sticking chewed gum to the undersides of desks by the weekend's end. Some day they'll thank you for this.

• C'mon, these kids aren't getting smarter

Note: actual Marysville students not pictured. Above image is swiped from a Google image-search for "bored children"— highly recommend.

Via Hands On Greater Portland:

"Urgent need for volunteers THIS SATURDAY MORNING!

A tragic fire Tuesday at the historic Marysville Elementary in Southeast Portland has left 435 students without a school. You can help these schoolchildren by volunteering Saturday to prepare Rose City Park School for them [located at 2334 NE 57th Ave]. Marysville students will be transferred to Rose City Park Monday. The work party takes place from 8 am to noon Saturday at Rose City Park. Volunteers will help district officials by cleaning, moving furniture and otherwise sprucing up Rose City Park School, which closed two years ago."

You just have to sign up here. (You'll also have to register for Hands on Greater Portland if you're not a member.)

Help a kid. Plant a school.

The unofficial caretaker of Portland's oldest and largest pioneer cemetery is a young guy named Frank Schaefer whose hair is bleached blond, whose nose sports a thin silver ring nose and whose license plate reads "SHRIEK". That license plate, by the way, is attached to the back of a vintage hearse whose backseats are currently full of zombie baby mannequins.

"People are afraid of cemeteries because they're full of death, but look, there's trees in bloom. There's birds and bees," says Schaefer, gesturing the the red and yellow leaves covering Southeast Portland's Lone Fir Cemetery on a crisp Saturday morning. Though Schaefer spends his free time poring over files stuffed with death records and newspaper clippings, this morning he turned up at Lone Fir to lead a dress rehearsal for the graveyard's busiest night of the year: Halloween. Nealy 1,000 Portlanders lined up outside Lone Fir's chain link fence last Halloween to take the bloody-but-educational Tour of Untimely Departures. This year, Schaefer's thinking big. Instead of just one tour, two tours will head in opposite directions, each stopping at a mix of historically-relevant and satisfyingly gory graves. Lone Fir houses the bones of some of Portland's most well-known founders, as well as dozens of unmarked graves whose residents who remain nameless both in death and in the history books.

"It's pretty gnarly to hear the story. There were apparently body parts all over the docks," says Schaefer, stopping at the grave of the creators of Lone Fir, James and Elizabeth Stephens. The couple, who ran ferry service across the Willamette back in the 1830s and 40s, owned a giant eastside farm (stretching from the river to SE 28th and Stark to Division) and turned a few acres into the graveyard after the tragic steamboat accident Schaefer described. The couple stare out at cemetery-goers from their tombstone, facing the tall fir tree for which the cemetery is named. The back of their stone is carved with a poetic but chilling paragraph: "Here we lie by consent after 57 years, 2 months and 2 days sojourning through life awaiting nature's immature laws to return us back to the elements of the universe of which we were composed."

• Frank Schaefer and the founders of Lone Fir.

Nearby, a white stone obelisk rises to honor Dr. Hawthorne, who ran an insane asylum on the site of the current southeast Lucky Lab back in the 1800s. Though he was renowned for taking good care of his patients, according to Schaefer, who combed newspaper archives for information about the doctor, the patients' families did not always give them too much thought. When families would not claim their bodies, Hawthorne buried 132 of his patients in the cemetery on his own dime. No one knows exactly where the 132 forgotten souls are buried, but Schaefer believes some were entombed in what's known as "Block 14"—the southeast corner of the cemetery where the unmarked graves of Chinese railroad workers also lie.

So did you know that tomorrow marks exactly 38 years and 11 months since someone set off a bomb in Portland City Hall? True!

Here's how Wikipedia tells the tale:

In the early morning hours of November 21, 1970, a dynamite fueled bomb exploded underneath the portico, doing $170,000 in damage. Though no one was injured, windows were blown out, the Council Chamber (located above the blast) was damaged, all of the columns of the portico were damaged and replaced, and the Liberty Bell replica was a complete loss. A new bell was purchased for $8,000 and later moved to Terry Schrunk Plaza. No one was ever arrested or claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The city archives even has this crazy photo of the so-called "Liberty Bell Bombing."

• City Hall Under Attack!

And 38 years and 11 months later, the bomber is still out there. No arrests were ever made, despite spying and investigation by a secret police squad. Who could it be?!

OMG. What's the weirdest part of this updated Oregonian story about the Portland stabber (that we briefly mentioned in Good Morning News a couple of days ago):

• 1. That it is about Mr. Fite stabbing his ex-girlfriend's betta fish, DeLorean, in a jealous rage?


• 2. That he told police "If she can't have me, then she can't have the fish?"
  
• 3. That the ex-girlfriend didn't show up for his court hearing, but requested that the man pay for a memorial tattoo of the fish?


• 4. That The Oregonian calls him a "hipster" in the headline?

Have we finally found the definition of "hipster?" Does it mean "fish-stabber?"

Fite's attorney said that stabbing the fish was “a very low point” in his client’s life, and that Fite is "absolutely mortified and ashamed about what he did to the fish."

This was a very low point, but not the lowest. Rumor has it that Jeremy Fite once dated a marine biologist and karate-chopped a shark when she broke up with him. Fish beware!

(Thanks to Natasha Stoudt for the link)

Tomorrow marks the grand opening of another shopping option that addresses These Tough Times, the Foster Indy Mart at 7916 SE Foster Rd. The "community based shopping" experience is meant to connect shoppers with great value on goods and services while generating income for its un- or under-employed vendors. Looks worth checking out:

When North Carolinian Ben Aubin moved to the West Coast last summer and bought a short schoolbus for $1000 off Craiglist, his plan was to park the bus in Portland and turn it into his home. But when he got to our town and found out it's illegal to park the bus on public streets for days at a time... well, then he was stuck with a bus. Just after Labor Day he got a new idea: turn the bus into Portland's first free store. Now the free store is up and running in a food cart lot on SE 11th and Clay and because the bus gets six miles a gallon, it's probably staying there for the time being. But what remains to be seen is whether Aubin can actually make a living running the entirely-free operation.

"I really wanted to see what kind of free culture existed. Back in North Carolina, I was living what is called the 'freegan lifestyle,'" says Aubin, explaining why he decided to head west six months ago. "I've never seen a city where there's so many things for free, all these freeboxes out on the street." Aubin hopes that people will stop by the colorfully-painted shortbus to drop off items and pick up whatever they want, too.

• Creepy dolls? Red lampshade? Yours for free!

"Many businesses feel that because it's a free business, then our clientele would be low income people who wouldn't patronize them anyway," says Aubin, who estimates he needs about $4000 a month to pay rent on the Free Store's parking spot and keep its fleet of messengers in business. Right now, five bike messengers are delivering for the store, two of them as their only job. Aubin is also asking people to become "Rainmakers" who donate $10 to the store each month. Since the store opened a month ago, 15 people have signed up as Rainmakers. "The free stores I've heard of running on nonprofit models don't last more than six months," says Aubin.

The small bus is packed with an eclectic mix of items. Women's clothes line one wall and assorted dishes cover a table in back, right next to a large and mysterious machine apparently used to enlarge small images. Next to a bookshelf containing worn copies of John Grisham and Twilight, a VHS rack holds a Madonna's Immaculate Collection, The Best of Elmo and a video about Yiddish. Aubin picks over all donations and sends the items he thinks won't "sell" over to Goodwill.

• Harry the hot dog vending propert manager (left) and former Freegan Ben Aubin outside the Free Store.

The property manager, a man named Harry who sells hot dogs from his stand next to the bus, is surprisingly enthusiastic about the store. "This cat is actually giving away stuff for free! And I'm talking about good stuff!" says Harry, who invited the free store to rent part of the lot despite some initial skepticism, "People think if it's free, you're gonna get poor people coming by. But no! You get all kinds of people."

Between 20-50 have stopped by the store every day so far, 90 percent of them women, according to Aubin. This Saturday the store is hosting a grand opening party, with Ninkasi kegs and DJs from 7-11pm at its home on SE 11th and Clay. Check out the free store website to request items for yourself.

That's right, no fresh hamburgers in the Coliseum. There's no venting system to the area outside the bowl, so that means no heating, A/C or set-ups to cook food. I learned this and nine other curious facts when I tagged along on the Rose Quarter Development citizen advisory group tour of the historic building yesterday morning:

• Mayoral spokesman Roy Kaufmann covets the MC's fountain.

Photosynthesis has a new best friend.

• McDonald's wrappers, now denser than ever

Funding for the garbage cans of tomorrow comes mostly from private businesses, but also quasi-public groups like the Oregon Zoo and Portland General Electric.

From the most recent press release:
"The Portland Business Alliance facilitates the donation of BigBelly units to the City of Portland. Once the units are installed, the city maintains them. The units will help [the] city cut back on trash pickup and prevent overflow of waste. These effects also lead to better air quality for the city; if all trash cans were converted to BigBelly units, the city could reduce CO2 emissions by at least 25,000 pounds per year."

As far as I can tell, there's nothing stopping an individual from sponsoring one either. All it takes is a donation of $3,975 (tax deductible, of course). Plus, you get to adorn the can with the logo of a non-profit of choice, your favorite generic Portland streetscape, and your very own personal icon! I mean, can you think of a better place than the side of a trash can to proudly display your company name??!! I sure can't.

If you are eager to incorporate futuristic waste-condensation into your daily routine, the press release also lists the locations of the newest garbage-stomping receptacles. 15 more are slated for November installation.