Salem-News.com Your City articles

Your City USA visits Thomas Kay Woolen Mill at Mission Mill

To see, to learn, to understand takes time. It's the job of the photographer as it is the painter to slow the eye down, to highlight what might otherwise be missed.

(SALEM, Oregon) - I've spent a lot of time in factories. I worked five years at U. S. Steel in Gary, Indiana, and I know what hell-on-earth looks like.

Belching fires, choking vapors, behemoth machines and rough men. What wasn't painted safety-yellow was encrusted in orange rust. The mills were so vile that weeds wouldn't grow.

Your City USA Visits the Maryhill Museum of Art

The overall feeling is one of elegance and grace by all the exhibits.

(Goldendale, Washington) - I checked my GPS. About 150 miles--three hours driving if you didn't stop (we planned to). Still it was exciting. Driving up the Collumbia Gorge was like entering a different world. An amazing world with beautiful landscapes and unexpected treasures. Our destination was one such treasure: The Maryhill Museum of Art.

Your City USA visits The Elsinore Theatre

The Elsinore may seem a paradox, but for all its grandness the theater has an intimate feel.

(Salem, Oregon) - Historic Elsinore Theater is a treasure. It's not a towering cathedral nor is it made of granite and marble, but it is not less a treasure for it. The Elsinore is a piece of Salem history and a place where many kinds of events continue to take place: weddings, musical acts, magicians, dancers, and of course movie showings. In the beginning the Elsinore was a movie palace.

Yes, there was a time when you dressed up to go to the movies because movie palaces such as the Elsinore were places of luxury.

Your City, USA Enjoys Summer

An amazing set of images celebrating summer in Oregon's capitol city.

(Salem and the surrounding areas) - As I grow older I enjoy summer more and more. It's not just the longer days. (I must have light.) It's all the different activities that our community sponsors. These past weeks there have been so many.

Your City USA Visits The Aurora Colony Museum

Step back in time with a little help from the The Aurora Colony Museum in Aurora, Oregon.

(Aurora, Oregon) - As much as I enjoy and use technology I can't say that I've ever heard of, much less seen, a computing scale.

That's because the technology (believe it or not) is a bit before my time. I still don't exactly know what it is or what it does. It looks incredibly steam-punk, but in a way that steam-punk only pretends at.

Your City USA visits Zena

For all of our technology, we can do no better than etch our names, our dates of birth and death as deeply into stone as we can.

(Zena, Oregon) - It lies about ten miles northwest of Salem. There are those who call it a ghost town, and I'd have to agree since there are few remaining inhabitants in Zena.

The Spring Valley Presbyterian Church graveyard remains, however, but to my knowledge it isn't a place of ghosts or horrors of any kind. It's not really about death either. It is a place of memory.