I was looking for a bumper sticker with this message, and couldn’t find one that I liked.

So I made a couple myself.

From an afternoon at Smith and Bybee Wetlands in North Portland.

They don’t make ’em like they used to. I offer you Eartha Kit in apology for my use of the Stan Freberg version in my time lapse ship video earlier this week.

Si bon, si bon!

I’ve lived in Portland, Ore. for 19 years, North Portland for 8, but this is the first time I’ve seen a vessel leaving dry dock at Portland Shipyard.

This is a time lapse of the 627 ft. tanker Washington Voyager leaving dry dock 3. This is about 2 hours condensed into about 2 minutes, with music by Stan Freberg. Enjoy!

Sources have revealed that the Oregonian is preparing for a major round of cost-cutting, which will include closing all but two bureaus (south and west). Buyout offers are expected in the fall, with the goal of a cutting 50 positions company-wide, including 30 in the newsroom.

As the paper struggles with declining readership and ad revenue along with the rest of the daily print journalism industry, it is amazing that they still refuse to enter the digital media market in a serious way, as every other mainstream media outlet in Portland has. Blame it on their parent company, Newhouse, which has kept all of its papers at arms length from their family of sister companies (like OregonLive) that operate on the Web and publish selected content from the papers.

This kind of stodgy, tentative relationship to the changing media landscape is quickly making the O a living dinosaur.

Yesterday was a sad, sad day for our nation state. The Democratic-led Senate voted to completely cover up and excuse the Bush administration’s illegal wire tapping.

Leading the charge, voting for cloture (despite an earlier pledge to support a filibuster of such legislation) was Senator Obama of Illinois. Yes, that Obama.

Front-row seats — great view!

The opening act: personal fireworks all across Vancouver.

I never photographed fireworks before, so I experimented with shutter speeds of 1/4 to 20 seconds. The photo above was a 20 second exposure, which shows the drift of the barge (lights in the lower left-hand corner of the frame).

The finale, shot at 1/6 second.

We saw the touring version of the Tony winning “Avenue Q” in Portland Saturday.

Oh. My. God. Best Broadway show I’ve ever seen. Here’s a sample (poor video quality, but you get the idea).