Columbia Gorge Museum exhibit documents more than 150 years of Black family history through quilts

The exhibit "Ms. Molly's Voice," shown here in a provided photo, features quilts made by an enslaved woman and her family, carefully preserved for more than 150 years. It will run at the Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington, until July 31.
The exhibit “Ms. Molly’s Voice,” shown here in a provided photo, features quilts made by an enslaved woman and her family, carefully preserved for more than 150 years. It will run at the Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington, until July 31.

Courtesy Columbia Gorge Museum

An exhibit currently running at the Columbia Gorge Museum features a collection of quilts made by an enslaved woman and her family, carefully preserved for more than 150 years.

The exhibit, “Ms. Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken in Fabric,” is the first time the full collection has been on display for the public.

It encompasses more than a dozen quilts, the first of which was made when Molly was just 13 years old. She had recently been sold to a family in Tennessee, where she was raped by one of her owners.

“She saved that quilt for her family to understand the challenges that she was going through,” said Jim Tharpe, Molly’s great-great-grandson and the current caretaker of the quilt collection.

Tharpe said his great-great-grandmother continued to intentionally save quilts whose patterns carried messages of perseverance, freedom and hope.

The most recent quilt in the collection was made for Tharpe himself as a high school graduation gift. It was made by his grandmother, who was his last ancestor to receive quilting lessons directly from Molly.

Jim Tharpe, shown here in an undated provided photo, poses in front of one of his great-great-grandmother's quilts. Tharpe is the current caretaker of the quilt collection, which encompasses more than 150 years of his family history.
Jim Tharpe, shown here in an undated provided photo, poses in front of one of his great-great-grandmother’s quilts. Tharpe is the current caretaker of the quilt collection, which encompasses more than 150 years of his family history.

Courtesy Jim Tharpe

“It’s unbelievable,” Tharpe said. “Every day that I get up, I look for a way to save these quilts and find a way to … say, ‘This is what my people achieved.’”

“It’s something that I cherish and I carry with me daily,” he said.

“Ms. Molly’s Voice” is also one of the first new exhibits the Columbia Gorge Museum has put on in many years.

Executive Director Louise Palermo said the show has attracted a fair number of quilters, as well as community members.

“Their first reaction is to be amazed by the quality of the work – the artistry that has gone in every quilt – but I’ve watched people with tears in their eyes when they read the story,” she said. “The impact of what that means has been visual… and it’s been wonderful.”

“Ms. Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken in Fabric,” runs through July 31 at the Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington.

Jim Tharpe and Louise Palermo spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. To listen to their full conversation, please visit opb.org

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Yes, Portlanders Are Growing Tiny Forests Next to Their Homes

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Goodbye, plant beds and street view. Hello, woodlands.

Why wait for other people to solve the climate crisis when you can create wee woodlands right in your own yard? Enter the tiny forest movement, which took root in Japan a couple of decades ago and is now jumping the pond to Oregon.

Just ask Andrew Millison, who grows 30 trees and native berry bushes in his tiny forest. His one-third-acre corner lot in suburban Corvallis looks like a rainforest from above; from the street, trees and foliage completely block the house from view. Millison founded the permaculture design program at Oregon State University, and he aims to show neighbors the possibilities of abundant foliage on small lots, and to provide passersby with a browsable, edible landscape. “Permaculture is a road map to making your home and garden paradise,” he says. Or at least very leafy.

Less Is Mori

Portland’s reverence for forests is shared by the Japanese, so it’s little surprise that the concept of creating pocket-size forests emerged from Japan. The concept was born in the 1970s by plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki, who noticed that the small, undisturbed forests surrounding Shintō shrines, called chinju-no-mori, looked healthier than the tree plantations commonly installed after logging. Miyawaki developed an approach to reforestation that involves restoring soils and then planting very densely. How densely?? I hear you asking. A robust 20,000–30,000 trees per hectare is the Miyawaki method; this comes out to around 8,000–12,000 trees per acre, which is 8–12 times denser than the norm for reforesting timberlands … or roughly one tree for every 3–5 square feet. 

Planting trees in a clump is not unlike sowing a vegetable garden bed with a few seeds per hole. Once started, tiny forests fill vertical space fast. Think of the scene in My Neighbor Totoro, when Satsuki and Mei look out the window one moonlit night to see Totoro and friends marching around a small garden where the girls have planted acorns, coaxing the soil to spring forth. Within moments, seedlings sprout and magically burst into a thick grove of giant trees. It doesn’t happen quite that fast in real life, but that’s not much of an exaggeration. A tiny forest usually goes from bare earth to lush copse in just a couple of years, substantially faster than on tree plantations. Some keep growing beyond one property. In Southeast Portland’s Sunnyside neighborhood, Evrim Icoz shares a property line with Esther Lev, a retired executive director of the Wetlands Conservancy, and their unfenced, naturescaped yards blend into one contiguous habitat. His plants are “really happy, so they tend to take over a little bit sometimes,” Icoz says. “The bleeding hearts and the Oregon grape escape to my neighbor’s yard.”

Yet even wayward tiny forests have many benefits. At a small scale, thick patches of trees sequester carbon and improve air quality, slow stormwater, and cool the air. They also look really neat. But they do function differently than typical forests. Survival rates are initially fairly high—85 to 90 percent for the first three years—though that number drops precipitously once you cut irrigation (you’re supposed to water for three years), and dips again as the trees grow and begin to self-thin, which happens when trees compete for sunlight, soil, and moisture. And trees alone do not make a diverse forest: in wild forests, a diversity of tree, shrub, and herbaceous species occupy distinct vertical niches, called strata. Free-growing forests rotate through sequences of ecological communities over time, while tiny forests mostly maintain the species that you plant. Adding shrubs and flowering plants from the beginning will bring that I-am-a-jungle-dweller feel.

Tiny forest planting day at Catlin Gabel in 2022

Image: courtesy catlin gabel

Stumptown, Eh?

Why go for tiny forests in a tree-loving town like Portland? It’s easy to assume all is well with Portland trees. Our darling (yet unimaginatively named) Forest Park is one of the largest urban greenspaces in the world. And walk around beyond downtown and you’ll see very average-size lots randomly dotted with massive trees, like the three 150-plus-year-old giant sequoias in Save the Giants Park, or the odd forested natural area that isn’t a designated park (we’re looking at you, River View Natural Area). But tree canopy in Portland dropped between 2015 and 2020, losing 823 acres. Though that’s a less than 1 percent loss in total tree cover, it’s the wrong direction. We also have some of the smallest backyards in America, so tiny forests might be all we can muster. Small collective actions have big benefits.

Patches of mature trees still exist, left standing by housing developers of yore, especially in the West Hills, to facilitate scenic views and better bird-watching. Drive through pretty much any suburban subdivision and you’ll doubtless see what appears to be a tiny forest—and is actually a compensatory mitigation site, replanted by requirement, after developments impacted wetlands or waterways.

But classic, Miyawaki-method tiny forests are rare here, especially at companies or organizations—in fact, Catlin Gabel School has the only one in the city, and it was planted two years ago. Portland has largely had to rely on homeowner altruism (and the hypothetical lure of increased property values) to prioritize trees. It’s 100 percent legal to grow a tiny forest at your house. No permit is required to plant trees on private property (unless you’re planting designated nuisance species like holly or English hawthorn, which you wouldn’t want to do anyway). The city provides a helpful official list of suggested trees and shrubs. Tiny forests don’t need to include food plants, but Millison appreciates edible tiny forests, which can also support wildlife corridors and pollinator habitats. He shies away from native-plants-only ideology, especially in urban and suburban settings. “We don’t just eat native plants,” he says. “If you’re buying food from the grocery store, then you’re displacing native plants from somewhere else.”

The Catlin Gabel tiny forest today

Image: courtesy catlin gabel

Potential Snags

It’s worth mentioning possible drawbacks. First, anyone who loves gardening knows that plants are expensive. However, you can get free (or nearly free) permits to collect native plants under two feet tall for personal use in many of Oregon’s state and national forests—you just have to drive out and dig them up yourself (and follow the rules about which species you can take). You’ll probably need to amend your soil, and newly planted areas will require irrigation for years, so factor that into your cost estimate. (On the plus side, it’ll be too shady for you to grow many vegetables, so you’ll save on tomato starts!)

Densely planted areas can also create an “if you build it, they will come” situation. In my decade working as a wetland mitigation specialist, almost all the urban restoration sites and natural areas I monitored faced anthropogenic impacts, from illegal dumping to camping. And hungry deer and rodents can annihilate a freshly planted site with a merciless quickness.

A final consideration: your neighbors might think it’s ugly. My own have griped about my trees along their property line; I simply remind them that  birds need a place to hide from their cats. And a bit of neighbor tension is a small price to pay for living in leafy paradise. “The world could be a garden of Eden,” says Millison, “if we choose to make it one.”

How to build a tiny forest of your own

Read up on Miyawaki. Start with Mini-Forest Revolution by Hannah Lewis.

Pick the right plants. If you’re envisioning a haven where birds hide from outdoor cats (or you fancy heavy metal naturescaping), think about a thicket of spiny plants like black hawthorn, Nootka rose, Oregon grape, devil’s club, and stinging nettle. Hot and dry spots aren’t ideal for moisture-loving Pacific willow, red alder, or western red cedar; in shady sites, keystone species like Douglas fir and Oregon white oak will suffer.

Add zones. Put edible or fragrant plants closer to human paths, and native plants further away, where they can sit densely and provide greater benefit.

Team up. The Facebook group Friends of Backyard Habitats for greater Portland (11,000 members) is where many neighbors partner up to maximize efforts.

Get certified. The Backyard Habitat Certification Program, a partnership between the Bird Alliance of Oregon and Columbia Land Trust, offers on-site guidance and coupons for native plants, and you’ll even get a little yard plaque to lord over your neighbors.

Don’t forget a rain garden. Tiny forests slow down storm runoff before it enters sewers and streams. Check with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services for information on creating a rain garden. The city even provided free native shrubs and groundcovers when its team installed my rain garden back in 2018, and let me choose the species. Planting trees also earns you a discount on your sewer bill.

 

For this and related articles, please visit Portland Monthly

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How Much Does It Cost To Build a House? Is It Cheaper To Build or Buy?

How Much Does It Cost To Build a House? Is It Cheaper To Build or Buy?

From building to buying, home prices across the country have soared to new heights. The national average cost to build a house is about $329,000, not including land. That’s for an average-sized house of 2,594 square feet, which boils down to $126 per square foot.

This may seem high, but the price to buy an existing home has skyrocketed recently, too. Currently, the median home price in the U.S. is $425,000. While the median list price is down 1% compared with the same time last year, the median listing price per square foot increased by 36% compared with September 2019, while the price per square foot grew by 50.8%.

In short, it may cost you more today to buy an old house than build a new one.

The coronavirus pandemic’s impact on new construction

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the pandemic’s disruption of supply chains has caused lumber costs to remain volatile, though prices have stabilized somewhat compared to previous peaks. Framing lumber that once set builders back about $1,200 per 1,000 board feet is now running around $850, still a significant increase but lower than the highs seen earlier.

“The pandemic has been a big source of unexpected shifts in supply and demand for all kinds of goods,” says Danielle Hale, chief economist of Realtor.com®. “As a consumer, you’ve likely experienced this in the form of empty shelves that didn’t have toilet paper or yeast or chicken.”

Given that a house is much bigger (and more expensive) than rolls of toilet paper, it’s understandable that new-construction homes, and the materials to make them, are suffering from an unprecedented price increase that has many homebuyers and builders reeling from sticker shock.

“This unprecedented price surge is hurting American homebuyers and home builders, and impeding housing and economic growth,” said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke. “These lumber price hikes are clearly unsustainable. Policymakers need to examine the lumber supply chain, identify the causes for high prices and supply constraints, and seek immediate remedies that will increase production.”

Still, the pandemic alone isn’t to blame for the high cost of building a house. Here’s more on why new construction costs so much, and how it compares with buying a preexisting home.

The main costs to build a house

Wondering if it’s cheaper to build a house? First, it’s important to understand that there are a few main costs involved in the construction of a home, says Andy Stauffer, owner and president of Stauffer and Sons Construction. Sure, each time you build a home, costs are a little different, but here are the biggies:

  • The shell of the house, which includes walls, windows, doors, and roofing, can account for a third of the home’s total cost, or $99,000.
  • Interior finishes such as cabinets, flooring, and countertops can eat up another third of the budget, averaging $79,000.
  • Within the interior, kitchens and bathrooms are the most expensive rooms to build, with the average cost for cabinets and countertops alone at $14,000.
  • Mechanical—think plumbing and heating—runs around 15%, or $49,000.
    Architect and engineer drawings will run about $4,800.

Also keep in mind that the cost to build a home can vary widely based on where you live.

Additional costs to build a house

Now you know the basic cost to build a home, but the expenses don’t end there. Here are a few extra costs you’ll need to be aware of that aren’t factored into the above price:

  • The cost of a plot of land to build on averages $3,500 per acre. That said, the average home is built on only 0.5 acre, so unless you want a lot of space in a highly desired neighborhood, that alone won’t break the bank.
  • Excavation and foundation work can be the most variable cost when building a home. In other words, you never know what you’re going to find until you start digging—be it bad soil or massive boulders. If excavation and foundation work go relatively smoothly, the average cost for both is $35,000.
  • You’ll need a building permit, of course—it averages $5,500 nationally.
  • Other costs you’ll incur before you hammer even one nail include inspections ($4,600) and an impact fee, levied by the government to cover the costs a new home will incur on public services like electricity and waste removal ($4,000).

The current state of the new-construction industry

“When the pandemic began to unfold, builders faced the prospect of buyers disappearing,” says Hale. “And while buyers did pull back early on, the housing market quickly did a 180 with buyers coming out en masse to find a better fit at home.”

Now, as the economy has opened back up, builders are struggling to balance strong demand with supply chain crunches beyond lumber that are leading to higher prices, causing some homebuyers to hold off on moving forward with new construction. But it’s not all doom and gloom.

“I expect that we’ll see new home sales eventually pick up in a more gradual manner as builders work through supply chain challenges and the development pipeline normalizes,” Hale adds.

So, which is cheaper?

Although it may cost you more today to buy an old house than build a new one, you save yourself the headaches that inevitably come with construction, along with the long wait before you move in.

On average, the time it takes to build a house is about six to nine months.

Still, building a house does have its advantages. Everything from pipes to the heating and cooling systems will be new. That means no costly repairs in the near future—and so a newly built home could end up costing less in the long run.

Buying vs. building

All in all, it’s smart to weigh the pros and cons of new versus old construction—and the price you pay for construction costs versus an existing home is only the beginning. Here we lay out everything a homebuyer needs to know about buying an existing home compared with building one from scratch or having it built by a general contractor.

There are actually two things to consider: the upfront costs of buying versus building, and the ongoing maintenance costs.

The upfront costs

If you buy an existing home: According to the latest figures, the median cost of buying an existing single-family house is $355,000. For the average 1,500-square-foot home built before the 1960s, that comes to about $237 per square foot. That said, the exact price can vary widely based on where you live. (Go to realtor.com/local to see the price per square foot in your area.) (Go to realtor.com/local to see the price per square foot in your area.)

If you build a new home: Building a house will set you back an average of $296,652, plus about $35,872 due to the pandemic-related uptick in material costs.

But you may get a lot more for your money. For one, new construction is usually more spacious, with a median size of 2,594 square feet—so the cost to build per square foot is actually lower than the cost per square foot of existing homes.

Another advantage of having a builder construct a custom home is you pay for only what you want, whereas an existing home may have interior and exterior features (e.g., a finished basement or a basketball court) you’ll pay a premium for, even if you don’t want them. But if an older house happens to be your dream home the way it is, that may be the more bargain-friendly route.

Last but not least, by building your own house, you get to design it to your exact specifications. If you have very clear ideas about how you want your home to look, this blank slate could be worth every penny.

Maintenance

If you buy an existing home: Older homes have more wear and tear, which means certain things may need more maintenance—or, if they’re on their last legs, replacement, points out Michael Schaffer, a broker associate at Keller Williams Integrity Real Estate LLC.

Naturally, the cost of this upkeep isn’t cheap, so make sure you know the age of the main items. For example, the average furnace is expected to last 20 years and will cost $5,000 to replace. The typical HVAC system lasts 15 years and costs $8,000 or more to replace.

Another biggie is the roof: The average shingled roof holds up for about 25 years. If you need to replace roofing, you’re looking at a bill starting at $9,000. Plumbing and septic systems can go for some time without a problem, but when something goes wrong, it’s an emergency.

With an existing home, unless you step into a high-end home with everything you want, you may want to start changing things, even if they are still functional. Home improvement shows make it seem simple to change countertops and flooring, or even overhaul floor plans. When you’re paying for material that’s shot up in price recently and labor costs for plumbing and drywall work, you may start to think your total cost might have been less paying a builder for a custom home in the first place.

If you build a new home: Considerably less upkeep is one of the primary reasons to build your own single-family home, because everything from major appliances to the HVAC system is new and under warranty. In fact, sometimes the entire home is protected for up to 10 years because a builder generally offers a construction warranty “for any problems that arise,” says Schaffer. Your interior and exterior maintenance outlay for a decade is potentially zero dollars. That can make up for some home construction costs per square foot that you paid by opting for a custom home.

Landscaping

If you buy an existing home: A major perk of older homes is mature landscaping with large trees and established plantings. That may not seem like a big deal until you consider that the U.S. Forest Service estimates that strategically placed mature trees can add tens of thousands of dollars to a property’s value and save up to 56% on annual air-conditioning costs.

If you build a new home: Builders often do little or no landscaping to new construction. It may take thousands of dollars—and many years—to get the yard you want. For instance, one 6- to 7-foot-tall red maple will cost about $99.95 (if you plant it yourself), which will then grow 2 to 3 feet a year. According to HomeAdvisor, the cost of adding completely new landscaping ranges from $1,400 to $5,700-plus.

Energy efficiency

If you buy an existing home: The latest U.S. Census found the median age of American houses to be 46 years old as of 2020. Older construction means dated windows and appliances—dollars flying out the window on wasted energy expense.

If you build your own home: Recent construction almost always beats older homes in energy efficiency, says Kyle Alfriend of the Alfriend Real Estate Group Re/Max in Ohio. Homes built after 2000 consume on average 21% less energy for heating than older homes, mainly because of their increased efficiency of heating equipment and building materials. This translates into reduced energy expense every month, even with the higher square footage in many newer homes.

“However, often the regulatory requirements on new construction are stricter than existing buildings,” says Hale. “This can mean you enjoy better energy efficiency, but these requirements can also drive up the price of new homes and mean that they take longer to build.”

Appreciation

If you buy an existing home: The nice thing about old homes is that there’s context to your purchase: You can research the home’s previous sale prices, as well as prices of similar homes in the area (known as comparables, or comps) to get a feel for whether prices are rising or falling in your area. If the prices for your home and others in the area have been steadily rising, odds are decent that the trend will continue, which bodes well for you if you decide to sell later on.

If you build a new home: New house construction, particularly in up-and-coming neighborhoods, can be more of a gamble. Without a proven track record of lots of comps, there just aren’t enough data points to really know what could happen down the line. However, some buyers in hot markets are seeing incredibly quick jumps in their new-construction property value.

 

For this and related articles, please visit Realtor.com

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