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The Kenton Library opened at last today, officially and ceremoniously. The place has been packed all day as residents pore over the library's shiny bookish bling.  The library is around the corner from the Sentinel's office and I literally stopped in this afternoon only because I had to return some Terry Pratchett audio books. Today was a great day for the neighborhood and North Portland, and one that will be well covered by the mainstream press.  If you as a resident have photos you'd like us to post here or link to, please comment below or email them to pub@portlandsentinel.com. -Cornelius Swart

UPDATE: I stopped in as well, and it was packed to the gills with people - and, of course, books. City Council candidate Ed Garren was there, as was Multnomah County Commissioner candidate Karol Collymore and a host of other local luminaries. In the storytelling space, women used puppets to act out Dr. Seuss stories as enraptured children looked on. People perused the shelves, marveled at the extensive DVD collection (which pulls out, file cabinet-style, from the wall) and noshed on mini-cupcakes and lemonade provided by nearby Posies Cafe. The library is shiny, spacious and state-of-the-art (well, at least by Portland standards), and brings Kenton one step closer to being a gentrified destination neighborhood. YEAH literacy! -Rebecca Robinson

We know, we know..this video is  "like, like soooooo posted-last-week"- but still fresh in some minds. This is another logistical bit of brilliance from OK Go.

In today's Oregonian, columnist Steve Duin offered a thoughtful view on Portland Public Schools imminent high school redesign.  I recommend reading it.  Most of his comments align with our recent editorial. But we do differ in one area. The Sentinel recommends that Jefferson become a vocational special focus school.

Duin seems to believe that the redesign is on the right track, but doesn't go far enough. He makes the case that PPS is not looking into the future with it's vision. His case, perhaps, being that the redesign is, at it's least, triage rather than transformation.  Duin does not argue against PPS logic that a reapportionment of students to fewer and larger high schools would level some of the playing field. But he does say that's not good enough for a forward looking school system.

FROM THE OREGONIAN: BELOW THE CUT

In my five years with The Sentinel, my favorite story was “Crack in Kenton” (November 2006 article not available online).  An ex-pimp and drug addict named Lionel Scott walked into The Sentinel offices in St. Johns one evening in September. He said that he was seeing a lot of drug dealing in Kenton, but he felt that police and neighborhood activists weren’t taking him seriously. 

The newly installed community policing office on North Denver Avenue was not in regular use, and at the time, there were few businesses on the street that could keep an eye on things. Scott street mannerisms might have lead some to be dismissive or suspicious of him.

Scott appeared sincere to me.  He worked as a case manager for True Dialogue, a nonprofit that worked to keep kids off the street.  Scott’s references checked out, and distinguished people in the community such as the Reverend John Tolbert vouched for him.

Over the next two months, I followed Scott and his wife, Stephanie, as they told me of the remarkable turnaround Scott had achieved in his own life, and of criminal activity they saw in the neighborhood around them. 

In 2006, The Sentinel dedicated considerable coverage to the effort to rename North Portland Boulevard after civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In October 2006, Sentinel Publisher Cornelius Swart wrote an editorial in support of the name change.

But by the summer of 2007, as the first new Rosa Parks signs began going up on Portland Boulevard and became visible, a small backlash against the name change began to arise amongst residents. Little did they know that another street-renaming controversy was waiting in the wings.

In August 2007, The Sentinel street edition expanded on earlier online coverage about a campaign to change the name of North Interstate Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. The Sentinel reported that several neighborhood associations along Interstate Avenue had given initial support for the idea, but businesses were unaware of the proposal.

The efforts quickly grabbed citywide, statewide, and then national headlines as a determined activist group met with increasingly vocal opposition. Accusations of racism on one side were met by allegations of back-room deals at City Hall.

To those who invested their passion, energy and precious time to this paper, and to whom I am indebted for the rewards of this endeavor: Michele Elder, Will Crow, Theresa Rohrer, Colleen Froehlich, Roger Anthony, Rebecca Robinson, Jason E. Kaplan, Vanessa Anthony, Laura Hutton, Todd Anthony, Dave Johnson, David Sharp, Alex Blackwood, Yvette King, Charlotte Johnson, Dave Trabucco, Steven Ye, Connie Summers, Colleen McDonald, Chelsia Rice, James Yeary, Peter and Donna Bogdanov, my daughter, family and devoted creditors. Thank you.

~ Cornelius Swart

Any journalist will tell you that a good lede is elusive. The first sentence of a news or feature story, the lede must hook readers with irresistible brain bait that lures them into the next paragraph and beyond.

We’ve pored over thousands of articles here at The Sentinel, so many that after a while stories of brownfields and Business Boosters and Bachelor’s Clubs and brouhahas blend together, regardless of an individual piece’s quality. There are some stories, however, whose ledes lift them from interesting to instantly memorable. Mara Grunbaum’s lede for “Grand Masters from Astor” is a prime example.

The very first story The Sentinel printed when publisher Cornelius Swart came on board in September 2004 was about a day in the life of a neighborhood police officer who was leaving the beat.

We followed officer Cliff Bacigalupi as he walked the street, talking with neighbors and trying to track down a local counterfeiter.  Since then, we’ve made police coverage one of our primary focuses:  We’ve devoted an edition to crime prevention almost every year and provided what seemed to be day-in, day-out updates on the various moves to close or consolidate North Precinct over.

Many newspapers run with the adage “If it bleeds, it leads.”  However, our readers made it clear they did not want that kind of coverage from their community news service.  We set out to cover crime from a prevention- and solution-oriented angle, with an occasional story of truly exceptionally strange crimes (a bomb found at Peninsula Elementary School, January 2009) and coverage of what sadly seems to be an increasing number of cases that raise questions about police misconduct. Tension between the police and the policed has been a constant tightrope.

Consolidation is difficult but necessary, new investment should follow
Photo of Charlene Williams, Principal at RHS's POWER Academy from Sept 2009

Over the years, The Sentinel has  attempted to cover schools in North and Northeast Portland. We profiled public, private, and charter school options in North Portland (Sept. 2006). We opposed the merging of Jefferson High School and Harriet Tubman Middle School (2005), advocated for school uniform dress codes (Dec. 2007), and highlighted the rise of Roosevelt High School’s new alumni association (March 2006). We followed the successes and defeats of a half-dozen charter school start-ups and dozens of triumphs at public elementary and middle-school programs.

"When eight low-wage, Spanish-speaking workers at the Del Monte food processing plant in North Portland requested safety gloves on December 30, 2004, the manager of their employment agency shouted, “You have no rights.”  All were fired on the spot.
They could have chosen, like so many, to walk away and remain silent. Instead, they fought for their rights and carved a historic path that ended in Oregon’s largest class-action settlement for farm workers.  The settlement will affect 1,800 employees who worked at Del Monte. The class-action plaintiffs will receive $5,000 each; the settlement agreement totals  $400,000."

From “El Del Monte Matador” by Ansel Elkins, The Sentinel, Sept. 2006.

The Sentinel’s coverage of the workers’ class-action lawsuit preceded a May 2007 undercover exposé by Willamette Week reporter Beth Slovic about undocumented workers at the St. Johns Fresh Del Monte plant and their abhorrent working conditions. The class-action suit was mentioned in Slovic’s piece.

Hayden Island is North Portland’s hidden resort community. Fringed in floating homes, furrowed with townhomes, its eastern residential areas are quiet, beautiful and in the perfect location.  However, the center of the island — I-5, the Interstate Bridge and Jantzen Beach SuperCenter — has been at the crosshairs of traffic and development controversy for years.

For a river/island community of roughly 2,100 people, Hayden Island has seemed overpopulated with woes these past few years, perhaps due to its place at the center of the bi-state metro area.

[Photo of 2005 St Johns Bridge Rededication ~ from offline archives]
In one of my editorials for The Sentinel, I wrote, “St. Johns is always on the verge of nothing happening.”
This area has seen decades of revitalization schemes and big plans floated by developers. The brochures and a trail of defunct newspapers were once laid out for me in the offices of the St. Johns Boosters.  “The only thing that changes is the date,” said then-Booster President Gary Boehm.  But I think history has proved us both wrong.

St. Johns has historically been the commercial and communal center of the North Portland peninsula. While given to insularity at times and dismissed as remote at others, the businesses there rely almost exclusively on customers from North Portland and far Northwest Portland. North Portland and St. Johns residents have a stronger connection to the merchants and the daily life of the town center than any other part of our coverage area.

From email from Will Crow, on Feb 25th, during the Sentinel's last online print editorial production sessesions in which stories are vetted, edited and fact checked online before going to copy editing and layout.

One of my best memories from my days at The [Indianapolis] Star:  There were three of us assigned to the second-shift, general-assignment patrol one night, and all hell broke loose.  Flying saucers over Olathe!  Plane crash in Cass County!  Shootings everywhere!  And there we were, three reporters (and one harried assistant city editor) working the phones, taking one another's calls, filling in bits and pieces of stories (or non-stories -- no flying saucers, damn it), and gradually piecing together the next day's paper.  No bylines were involved.  No Pulitzers were on the line.  It was just THE WORK -- getting the sh#t right, and getting it in on time.  Which we did.

That memory fills this moment.  I hate nostalgia, in general terms -- but the fact is, we at The Sentinel have done our very best as journalists right down to the bitter end.  Long ago, discussing the failure of newspapers world-wide, I said I had new sympathy for loggers in rural Oregon who couldn't log any more.  That was then.  It's different now.  Now I have a new and very special sympathy for the band that played on the deck of the Titanic as it went down.

When I joined this goofy operation, all I wanted was to make certain The Sentinel was a real newspaper.  And that's what it is, right to the last.  I am proud to watch it sink with all flags flying.

Will Crow was a reporter for both the Indianapolis Star and the Kansas City Sun. He was the Sentinel's news editor in 2006 and 2007. He is currently a member of the Sentinel Editorial Board and resides in Colorado Springs, Colo.

You never know how much you miss something until it’s gone. Only after I heard The Sentinel would close its doors was I finally forced to take stock. The grief came in waves.

At first my heart went out to the man, publisher Cornelius Swart, who’s been pounding these streets around the clock. For years, he has forgone the big money that ad agencies would love to throw at him for creating spots for Pepsi and Walmart. Instead, he’s been thanklessly fighting the good fight in North Portland.

At many large papers, technology has advanced to the point where obituaries are now being written through an automated process so sophisticated, so digitally crisp, that the work doesn’t even need to be outsourced to the Philippines.

In the spirit of Citizens United, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that businesses are people too, let’s punch out a modern obit notice for The Sentinel's Street Edition:

The Sentinel was born in the early 21st century.  It was a newspaper about North and Northeast Portland.  Survivors include The Oregonian, Portland Tribune, Willamette Week, The Mercury, Northwest Examiner, The Skanner and the Portland Observer. It was predeceased by The Portland Telegram, the Portland Reporter and the Oregon Journal.

 
In most issues, The Sentinel was the guy at the party who talked too much.  It had something to say about a lot of things going on in St. Johns, City Hall, the high schools, the rec centers.  The Sentinel had already tried out that new restaurant on Interstate Avenue.  That freak-folk band playing at the White Eagle?  The Sentinel heard the CD last week.

When I wrote for you, you were known as the St. Johns Sentinel and you offered me my first introductions to that quirky, northern neighborhood. I covered the opening of Proper Eats and attended meetings at the Sentinel offices when you were located in the back of a tattoo shop. For the Halloween “Nightmare” issue, I got to find out more than I might have wanted to know about what Portland would look like after a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake, another eruption of Mt. St. Helens or a giant tsunami on the coast.
My most challenging assignment for you was not as a writer but as features editor for the DIY issue. I really got a window into what your editorial staff goes through with every issue and it made me appreciate your hard work all that much more.

This little paper has grown and changed in so many great ways and I can’t believe you are going away. I know that the creativity and vitality that have kept you going all these years cannot be squashed and I’m excited to see what you do with your increasingly innovative web presence.

Julie Sabatier is host and creator of the radio show/podcast “Destination DIY” and associate producer for OPB’s public affairs talk show “Think Out Loud.”

What does it mean that the last edition of a small paper like the Sentinel should evoke the statement The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. This comment was made by Finley Peter Dunne, in 1902 and was ironic at the time. Dunne was a newspaper humorist and writer who wrote for many newspaper in his day. Mr. Dooley, was a alter ego he used.

In SMV's humble opinion this is the finest show on TV (even it if only really speaks to "liberal coastal urban types". They've managed to keep up the manic pace of short turn around, hyper referential jokes, mixed with elitists satire tinged with absurdist spectacle without getting cancelled. Normally only cartoons can get away with that. These guys are funny even when they screw up. Keep on 30 Rockin' in the free world guys! (eew..that was bad..)

From today's Oregonian: a call to convert St Johns's long-dormant and fully servicable Wapato Jail, owned by Multnomah County, into a state prison. North Portland's county Commissioner Jeff Cogen and newly installed State Representative Lew Frederick have both promised to get the albatross that is Wapato off the ground, so far with no results. The jail has been a national joke for years. Now, the Oregonian weighs in.
[Image right, from OregonLive]

Turn Wapato into Oregon's next prison
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
February 23, 2010, 5:36PM

In 2004, we wrote that it would be short-sighted -- the word we actually used was "nuts" -- for the state of Oregon to build any new prisons while Wapato was sitting empty.

Six years later, the $58 million jail still has never been opened. And the state is still looking, primarily, in other directions. Since 2004, in fact, the state has opened prisons in Lakeview and Madras, and expanded two in North Bend and Wilsonville. But, admittedly, these plans were already in the pipeline.

A few weeks ago, however, the state Department of Corrections made a new decision with the net effect of steering away from Wapato, at least until the 2011 legislative session, and ultimately pointing more perhaps toward Junction City.

And that doesn't make much sense. Few prisons are sited, of course, strictly for reasons of sense or efficiency. If they were, most would wind up in the metro area, because that is where most prisoners are from (and where they will return).

No, the reality is that prisons equate to jobs, and small towns in Oregon are hungrier for state jobs than the metro area seems to be. The result, thus, is a farflung state prison system -- from Tillamook to Ontario -- that imposes cruel hardships on inmates' families if they hope to visit. (It's "a nightmare," several corrections officials privately acknowledged this week.)

READ THE EDITORIAL

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Northeast Portland businessman and community activist Gary Marschke is looking for people who can help a former St. Johns resident. The email below and photos above were submitted to Marschke by someone who claims her life has been ruined by a meth-addicted family member. The names in the email below have been changed to protect the individuals involved. If you wish to help the woman in question, contact Gary Marschke gmarschke@comcast.net

EMAIL BELOW THE CUT