The Best Of Portland

"Beat the Heat" by beating it to a Portland Parks & recreation swim center near you!

Portlanders can find relief from unusually hot temperatures by taking refuge in the city's parks and pools. Click Here for a link to Portland Parks and Recreation's website for details and information on a park near you! 

From a shady walk in Forest Park to a movie or concert in your neighborhood park, from a dip in a community pool to a splash in a spray feature, Portland Parks & Recreation offers many free or inexpensive opportunities to escape the heat.

In addition to PP&R's thirteen public pools, there are free spray features in several parks to help children have a safe and cool summer. For those that prefer parks and trails to pools, there are also thousands of shade-providing trees and over 10,000 acres of parks and natural areas where you can catch a breeze.

In addition, PP&R is offering free summer entertainment in many Portland neighborhood parks this week, including Movies in the Park and the Summer Concert Series. 

"FREE" is a great word! And it doesn't get any better than summertime in the park with Portland Parks & Recreations "Movies in the Park".

Movies begin at dark. pre-movie entertainment begins at 6:30pm. Pack your blanket, fill your picnic basket and head-out for some "free" fun with your entire family!  Click Here for a link to the schedule of showings.

August 7-9, 2009 Fun's going to stink at The Elephant Garlic Festival in North Plains, Oregon

  

Stock-up on your garlic and have a stinking good time! Check-out the "Battle of the Bands", food and beverage vendors, a parade, arts and crafts and more. Click here for a link to the 12th Annual Noth Plains Elephant Garlic Festival's website.

Fun really can stink!

The Best of Portland | 2008's Adult Soapbox Derby on Mt. Tabor was a colossal success.

   

Once a year brave souls make the annual pilgrimage to Mt. Tabor in Portland, Oregon in order to test the strength of super glue and their courage. 

 

Bodies to the left...bodies to the right.  Maximus from The Gladiator could have learned a thing or two from these plywood warriors.

Click Here for a link to SoapboxRacer.com's fabulous online album.

Photo Credit: Portland Ground of Portland, Oregon

"the growing power of transnational corporations and their extension of power through privatization, deregulation and the rolling back of the State also mean that it is now time...

to develop binding legal norms that hold corporations to human rights standards and circumscribe potential abuses of their position of power."

—Jean Ziegler

"The universal nature of human rights and freedoms is beyond question."

—2005 World Summit, paragraph 120

"To say that freedom is Western or unAsian is to offend our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices."

—A Ibrabim in his keynote speech to the Asian Press Forum title Media and Society in Asia, 2 December 1994

"All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and related. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis."

—Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, World Conference on Human Rights, 1993

"The ideal of free human beings enjoying civil & political freedom & freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil & political rights, as well as his social, economic & cultural rights."

—International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, 1966

"Human rights law, applied to a State's own citizens serves the interest of states, by, for example, minimizing the risk of violent resistance and protest and by keeping the level of dissatisfaction with the government manageable."

—Niraj Nathwani in Rethinking refugee law