The Best Of Portland

June 13th, 2009's Cirque du Cycling in the Mississippi neighborhood, presented by Laughing Planet Café, is part circus, part bike street race & a benefit for Self Enhancement, Inc. - Portland, Or

Cirque du Cycling, presented by Laughing Planet Café, is part circus, part bike street race and a benefit for Self Enhancement, Inc.

It's a day filled with bike watching and riding fun!

• Art bike parade
• Criterium-style street race (with two-way racing!)
• Free three-mile family ride
• Live entertainment
• Beer garden
• Exhibitors

Watch live entertainment and music all afternoon, and an evening criterium street race with a two-way racing right down the middle of Mississippi Avenue.

Relax in the beer garden, bring your bike, settle into your lawn chair, peruse the shops of Mississippi Avenue and prepare to be awed by spectacular bicycle tricks and riding feats.

Click Here for a link for more detailed information regarding the event.

Besides oil & watercolor painting, writing and palmistry, Fairy Consultant Cindy McGonagle brings a whole new kind of "Magic" to the great outdoors with a series of fun summer art projects for kids ages 5-8 & the adults who accompany them!

Cindy McGonagle has been fascinated with plants and flowers since early childhood. A move to Hawaii gave her a chance to take care of the tropical garden surrounding her home. Growing up in a military family allowed many opportunities to visit exotic foreign countries like Brazil and the Philippines where Cindy experienced new cultural traditions and explored many tropical botanic gardens.

After graduating from the University of California Santa Barbara, she went to work for the Denver Museum of Natural History as a foreground preparator. There she learned the art of reproducing botanical specimens for diorama exhibits.  After eight years Cindy created her own company "Botanic Reproductions". For the fifteen years that followed she worked as a private exhibit contractor reproducing three-dimensional plants and scale models for various museum and government clients.

Cindy returned to college to study ornamental horticulture in San Francisco. This knowledge led to lobby design opportunities working with live plants in the hotels of San Francisco.

A move to the Pacific Northwest offered her opportunities to grow flowers and plants she had only read about. Cindy's intuitive creative urges pulled her into the realm of the mystical. She began to receive "information" on how to garden in ways that are in harmony with the seasonal rhythms of a year. Her notes of these experiences became the basis of her books. Garden Notes ('93) is a journal for working with the Nature Devas and Nature Spirits of your garden. Queen D’s Fairy Recipe Book ('94) a collection of teas, bath formulas, perfumes and oils given to Cindy by a Fairy Queen. Sacred Places Sacred Plants of the Columbia River Gorge ('04) is based on her work for the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center.

To share her love of flowers, plants and the magic associated with them Cindy has arranged "Fairy Art Classes" in order to share her knowledge of the mystery and powers plants hold and the magic that surrounds them!

Fairy Art Classes in a Magical Garden for Children (ages 5 to 8)

Join Queen D and Fairy Consultant Cindy McGonagle for a series of fun art projects for kids and adults.

2009 Dates & Times (Wednesdays)

Magic Mirrors, June 17, 3-4pm, (working on building self esteem).

Fairy Diaries, June 24, 3-4pm,(working on gratitude).

Drawing Flower Fairies, July 8, 10am-11am,(working on learning about flowers and nature).

*All participants will need to be accompanied by a parent or grandparent. Class Fee $10 per person + $6 materials fee.

Summer Classes Include

Magic Mirrors, Fairy Diaries, Drawing Flower Fairies

Fairy Picnic & Photographing Fairies of the Falls

July 11, 10 am - 12:30 Fairy Picnic in the Magical Gorge

We will meet at one of the wonderful homes of the fairies in the west gorge to photograph some of the fairies of the falls and to enjoy a picnic.

You will need to bring a sack lunch and a camera and a blanket to lie down on. *Drinks and dessert will be provided.

All participants will need to wear walking shoes and be accompanied by a parent or grandparent, $10 per person. (8 children + adults)

For more detailed information and to book you and your child's class click here now to be redirected to Cindy's website or summon her and the fairies by calling them directly at | 503-531-2758.

"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

"the most fundamental fiduciary relationship in our society is manifestly that which exists between the community (the people) and the state, its agencies and officials."

—Paul Finn

"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.."

—Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948