Community Resources

August 11, 2025 by

Community Resources 2025

Intersection Repair
SE Clinton and 38th
Summer 2025

Hello there,

I’m often sending people in Portland some subset of what’s below. These are local links to some of the online resources I know about or have created. I’ll update this list from time to time. Feel free to bookmark this post if it’s useful to you and share it with others. This should be very useful to anyone who is new in town!

Albert’s Portland Resource list 6.30.25

Portland Resource Guide – Where to relocate things to so they stay out of the landfill.

Healthcare: https://albertideation.com/directory – a list of practitioners I have personally experienced the work of and recommend

Shared Housing – a couple of resources that I send out often

Panda Pads – https://www.facebook.com/groups/372152173448765
Friends living with Friends https://www.facebook.com/groups/169828903191950
Collective Living PDX https://www.facebook.com/groups/182331551827320
Sacred Circle Dance: Email list: https://sacredcircledance.org/Community
Portland Roommates FB Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/456375858478727/

Fruit and Veggies – Regional groups for gleaning/sharing what you harvest

If you have extra fruit or vegetables consider offering it to your neighbor

For news on some of the projects I’m leading/organizing, there are newsletters for some of these

My General Newsletters Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/3N5w7gs

1. Efforts to ban gas-powered leaf blowers and other tools
2. Tree/Canopy Protection and Planting
3. LED Lights and Friends of the Night Sky, Portland
4. Woodsmoke Free PDX
5. Left Leaning Humor once in a while – Best Laughs

1. http://qcpdx.org and a FB group @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/344190516434960
2. We Keep Trees Standing FB group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1601176590145214
3. Friends of the Portland Night Sky: https://www.facebook.com/groups/659624779846461
Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/GETBaV3/friends
Friends of the Night Sky Portland
4. Woodsmoke Free PDX FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/449451649375997

Entertainment

Unofficial Beloved FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/623879204309339
Sacred Circle Discussion List and FB group @ https://www.sacredcircledance.org/Community
Sign up for the Portland House Concert Newsletter @ https://bit.ly/pdxhouseconcertinfo
Join me and others for trips to see movies – this is a Text list – ie, you get texted when a movie/date/time/location is chosen.

Flip Breskin on House Concerts – how to throw a great house concert

For Fun – I send out a birthday email on people’s birthdays – sign up here.

http://bit.ly/happybirthdayU

Hidden Portland for the Curious: https://www.facebook.com/groups/478242150061

My YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/albertkaufman – where you will find…

How to get a better night’s sleep: https://youtu.be/6braVghOiP4?si=ci1BbQXJBxr0K4iB
My Marketing Training videos – https://albertideation.com/videos

Albert Kaufman, 8.11.25

 

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Sisters Folk Festival 2024

September 30, 2024 by

Lizzie No

Sisters Folk Festival 2024 – What a Hoot!

I’ve been hearing about the Sisters Folk Festival for years. Back when I attended Burning Man religiously – I’d usually come back to Portland and then consider – heading back out for the folk fest and then forget where I left my mind for a couple of months 🙂  So, this was my first year, and what a fun surprise. What a delight! Shades of the Vancouver Folk Festival (which is generally my gold standard for this type of music event) + Central Oregon + high desert = cowboy boots and saloons. Women in dresses – grass growing where it doesn’t belong.

Pics

We started our adventure (Eecole and me) with a sweet visit to my friend Kieran (great picker and good friend) outside of Bend – you can see from the pictures that we got out into a couple of nearby parks and saw some sweet scenery.  We arrived at our weekend home (a parking lot in front of a high school) on Friday, parked Eecole’s camper and then headed into town. Our first venue was The Open Door – an intimate setting – we stayed for 3 acts: Lizzie No, The Pairs (shades of The Wailin Jennies), and San Miguel Fraser – all wonderful and we lucked into front-row seats for the evening! It was a cold night of off-and-on sleep for me – outside in a tent.

Saturday morning Kieran, Erin, Eecole, and I had breakfast and played tunes until it was time to go into the fest. Saturday featured some more intimate workshop-style offerings, so we got to hear more about the background of the performers. I think for me Saturday night was a big highlight – I stood in line to get good seats for a showcase type of performance. That was well worth it as I just loved what we saw Saturday night at the Dave Carter Songwriter Showcase. Everything that followed was equally stunning, too – Especially Kittel & Co. and Vasen.  Vasen, a group from Sweden featured a guy playing an instrument that he built – something ancient. I spent the whole performance watching him play and just wondering what I was seeing. This:

The instrument is bowed. The two men playing also just sent us all into a dreamland and when they were done it was time to bike back to the parking lot (about 2 miles away) in the chilly and windy night. We were battered by a cool wind all night and I didn’t sleep that great.  But hey, you’re at a folk festival, right, so you roll with it.  But boy do I need a new sleeping bag and possibly it’s time to buy/rent a van for these events!

Sunday, breakfast (a hot shower in the High school!), and a few tunes before we packed everything up and drove into town for a couple more performances. I felt lucky to score a great seat at the Open Door where I’d begun the weekend. I watched The Lowest Pair and Peter Mulvey. Peter is someone from whom I want to hear a lot more! What a character.

So, that’s a little bit of my trajectory, but I have to say that the volunteers and organizers really thought this event through in a lovely way. I always felt welcomed. Also – the sound was delicious. I tend to gravitate towards the smaller stages, knowing I’ll get to hear a more intimate experience – and that the sound was so dialed in – I can’t remember a time where I’ve heard such a well-dialed-in mixing. If you’ve ever read my revues of other festivals – I usually complain that the sound is too loud – I’m looking at you Pickathon, Beloved, Strummit – pretty much everything I attend these days – the volume is too loud. This was not that – and I am so so grateful. I might even return just for that aspect. The fact that they also curated a collection of musicians from all over the place that were new and delightful – icing on the cake!

Also, the lighting was lovely. At every stage! The daytime weather was delicious. And though we drove through a fire on our way to the festival, the air was clear all weekend. OK, time for a couple of improvements:

The festival could do more outreach before the festival happens (via an email newsletter) to encourage attendees to:

  1. Be super careful not to have car alarms ready to kick off – this happened a number of times throughout the weekend and was a noticeable disturbance. This could be improved through education.
  2. Learn how roundabouts work – they are yield situations – not necessarily time for stopping

Lastly, I suggest the festival ask the local municipal airport to see if planes can take off and land – not over the town (this didn’t happen often, so I imagine they have a choice). I mean I think they should do this always, but esp. when you have thousands of people outside listening to intimate music. Something tells me the right letter could make this happen. This festival obviously has some presence in town and I bet for one weekend small planes could avoid flying over the town.

Otherwise, wow, kudos to the festival organizers. It was very well done. I had a great time and I learned about a bunch of new musicians I hadn’t heard of before.  Next year I might even come to the songwriter camp that leads up to the festival.

Thank you! Albert Kaufman, 9.30.24

 

If you like photos, here are some of our time there. And here’s the Spotify playlist of all the artists.

MC Mike Meyer welcoming us at the Open Door

If you’d like to try out my writing further, pick a newsletter and hop aboard!

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Love Your City

February 2, 2024 by

If you’re Single (or not), Love Your Home

Love

I’ve been pretty much single for the past 6 years.  I had a thought yesterday while out running errands, that for those of us who are single and seeking, we might as well offer some love to our hometown. I’ve been doing this ever since I moved to the Pacific Northwest (Seattle in 1995 and Portland 2002-present). This region is pretty easy to love and has caught many peoples’ eyes and hearts. I’ve never lived anywhere in the world (maybe besides NYC) where I’ve heard more people say “I love Portland”. My previous partner and I used to say this out loud frequently, and it’s still true. I love Portland. I also love Portlandia 🙂  Feel free to comment below. One day I’ll write an article on that, and perhaps it’s all related.

As someone who has chosen ideation as a profession, I think in concepts a lot. Sometimes I consider myself an amateur sociologist. An inventor. Here are some of my ideas over the years (feel free to borrow from this list in any way you choose – my work is Albert-source 🙂  The concept I want to share here is the value of loving your place. We all hear the message on repeat that you have to start with loving yourself. I believe that is true and it probably makes our lives go better and makes us more attractive for prospective matches. But perhaps we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can love myself (eat well, rest, hydrate, exercise, etc.) and also spend time loving my town.

Ways to Love Where You Live

My version of this has been this list of ways to make my neighborhood and region more livable. I use my marketing skills to share these ideas with anyone who will listen. The result has been a quieter, sweeter slice of paradise than I envisioned when I started.  A friend once offered to bring me to his town to teach his town council what I was putting out into the universe. That didn’t happen (yet – looking at you, Antioch, CA), but maybe one day. And that’s left me to keep trying to make where I live better and better. It’s worked. My neighborhood of Richmond, Portland, Oregon is kinda dreamy. Maybe it always was. Maybe what I did didn’t have the effect I think it did. There’s no easy way to quantify what I’ve done/said/activated towards. But I have a hunch that even lessening the amount of gas-powered leaf blowers has been a huge help to our community.

As an aside, I have this idea of creating a postcard that says – here are 11 ways to make your paradise a little more paradisical. I know there are great challenges in our midst – homelessness/drug addiction/mental health problems. There are people working on these issues and everything I’m suggesting in this article will just make that work go better. Do you think people who live on the streets are helped by glaring LED lights or gas-powered leaf blowers? No, it just makes their lives even worse.  So, back to that postcard.  There are thousands of places that could be improved by easy changes that people can make – see the article I link to above.  Now back to loving our City.

If you’re single and seeking – by loving your home you’re exercising your heart. You’re possibly being out in the world picking up garbage; planting a tree; starting a new community garden; removing graffiti – and who knows who you’ll meet while you do that. Maybe you’ll decide to serve on a neighborhood council or run for office as a way to share your love. Maybe it could be through mentoring a small business on how to improve their lighting or helping paint a wall.

And just like everything in life, you may make a mistake. Or two. Not everyone is up for receiving help. Not every offer you make in the world is received in the way you’d hope. Don’t give up. Write back if any of this resonates or if you have ideas to add. Thanks!

For a better world,

Albert

PS – I’ve been adding songs to the end of my newsletters and so … here ya go!

PPS – I’m going to expand into ways to show your love to local businesses here.

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July 6, 2003 – Riversong Writing

February 3, 2022 by

July 6, 2003 – Riversong Writing

First time at Sola and Cosmo’s in Hood River, Oregon. It’s very pleasant. Jeff, Stay, Larry, Cosmo, Sola Michele, Deb, John Manns, Pam Hoke, a variety of locals and their boys, Bob & Maggi, Sarah, Brent, Winnie, Rick, and a black cat. Camilla of the flower essences – watching Larry and she cuddle was fun. Goat burritos on the way in. Storm stopped by yesterday with a sarong for Erica. Where is Erica many want to know? Good question. Part of me feels she should be here – her friends/tribe are here. Par to f me is very glad to get to do what I want to do without reservation, consideration of her needs. Pam just told me I was in her dreams last night. That we were being sweet with each other. She also shared a picture of Edie (Tierra del Milagro) and a poem on the internet. It’s nice that we’ve had that constant connection over the years – Breitenbush (she’s also done RC), Costa Rica, River Song I’m sitting at the end of a long row of picnic tables facing woods and a steep slope behind. Wind chimes in the breeze, people waking, hugging, breakfast being prepared in the communal kitchen. It’s a little rough and gritty here but also very beautiful. Lots of green, lots of birds. Last night we had a nice big dinner/potluck and a talent show. Yesterday being naked on the river, dunking.

  • the stationary I’m writing on has at the top: “To be truly free is to be bathed in nature with no boundaries”.

 

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The Timber Industry of Today Part 1-5 – Logging in Oregon

January 6, 2021 by


Here’s a 5-part series from Vernonia’s Voice.  Enjoy

VoicePt1Timber2020 – August 20th, 2020

VoicePt2Timber2020

VoicePt3Timber2020

VoicePt4Timber2020

VoicePt5Timber2020

And, from the wayback machine.

“I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a classroom full of young tree-planters as part of [Youth Acting for Our Earth’s youth climate training] at the Mittleman JCC in Portland, Oregon. I watched as the young people delivered a poignant and passionate report about climate change and how planting trees can have a positive impact going forward. It looks like everyone learned a lot that day and both the young people and their parents seemed pleased by what was learned and for young people to get the chance to practice their public speaking skills. In my talk I tried to cover some information about on-going efforts to keep Pacific Northwest trees standing – both in the countryside and in the City. I also talked a little bit about population growth’s effect on climate change as well as a personal passion – planting more fruit and nut trees everywhere when we’re talking about planting trees. Thanks to [Youth Acting for Our Earth’s] efforts to bring forward the importance of tree planting – may Governor Brown hear the call to plant millions of trees in Oregon.”

—Albert Kaufman, Environmental and Social Justice Activist and Founder of Farm My Yard

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My Great Ideas That Have Gone Nowhere

February 8, 2020 by

My Great Ideas

I have a lot of ideas. Here are a couple of great ones that I’d love to see in action. If you find value in any of them please take them and run with them.  Here we go.

  1. 2.1.24 – The first couple of businesses or radio stations that play all Taylor Swift music and announce that to the world will gain a lot of attention and visits! 
  2. 2.21.23 – Philadelphia puts up a red strip of reflective red on their stop sign poles – let’s copy that!
  3. 2.9.23 – A way to turn social security off when you want to pause the flow.
  4. Weight Loss idea: Wear in 1lb weights the # of pounds by which you’re overweight for that many minutes per day.  Lessen weight as you lose weight. Keep going till you’re done.
  5. Berm Portland
  6. Retree the planet with this cool device (1.14.2020 – something like this has now been developed)
  7. Defragging everyone’s commutes.  For every job that can be done anywhere in a city – 3rd-grade teacher; plumber; <most service jobs here>: create a database of all of the workers, swap people by their home location or where they want to land. Thus, bringing people closer to home = less commuting. Thank you to Mr. Money Mustache for the inspiration on that one.
  8. Where Does the dirt go: Database of all earth being moved in an urban area. If I am about to remove 2 tons of earth, let the grid know and someone nearby who needs the earth can have it vs. trucking it to the ex-urbs and back. See the chip drop program in Portland.
  9. Moving everyone who shares a similar job role closer to home via a database that local employers participate in. This could also be used by tradespeople so that they are working close to home, perhaps using Nextdoor to guide their work sites.
  10. All popsicle sticks should come with a tree seed in them so one could plant a tree after eating the popsicle. Idea progress: I have submitted this idea to Larry Kaplowitz, one of the founders of Coconut Bliss. He said “great idea”. – Feel free to take this idea and run with it.  Dannon? Good Humor?
  11. License plates should have QR codes or some way that a person can text a person who owns a car to let them know: a) you’re blocking my driveway b) you left your lights on c) your puppy/child/ice is overheating….. A way for this to work could also be that the person types in the State and License # and then is able to text msg. to the owner without knowing their phone # or other contact info.
  12. How to be a better neighbor – an email series. Our lives could be enhanced so much by people doing some little things better. Better outdoor lighting. Not using the fob to lock and unlock your car and set off the horn of your car. Saying hello. I’ve been wanting to create an email series that teaches some of this and I’m stuck at #2 right now – someone, give me a nudge 🙂
  13. Turn the OHSU lawn at 42nd and Division SE in Portland, Oregon into a giant sunflower patch. 
  14. Trying to get the Air National Guard base in Portland, Oregon near the PDX airport to stop flying F-15s over residential parts of the City. Ideally, I’d love to see the base either shuttered or moved to Eastern Oregon.  I’m not alone on this one.
  15. Street signs: They could be metal and wrap around telephone poles – so easy to display and possibly simple to manufacture.  The street on 2 sides, cross street on the other two – written vertically.
  16. Portland, Oregon Road Scholar program. (ed: 10.22.2020 I reached out to them again with the idea, perhaps it could at least happen virtually).
  17. 9 years ago in 2011, I had the idea to turn the SW corner of the Lone Fir Cemetery into a community garden as local organizations continue to fundraise to turn it into a memorial. I gave up pushing after running into organizational disinterest. Meanwhile, the spot remains a huge vacant lot – a perfect spot to grow food. Sign this petition, perhaps we can reignite interest in the idea 🙂  https://www.change.org/lone-fir-community-garden
  18. More of these ideas I once posted on a site called WhyNot?
  19. 1.6.2020 – T-shirts with “massage here” printed on the top back (shoulders) – perhaps more info on pressure and directions on how to massage on the back of the shirt. 
  20. Social media support pages – See for yourself. 

Great ideas that have gone somewhere

  1. Farm My Yard – https://farmmyyard.org and on Facebook over here. And Twitter… The idea is a way to connect urban farmers with homeowners who’d like their yards farmed.  I think it’s also a possible business for teens or young adults to support themselves – by providing produce to the community and local restaurants. Check out the website. I feel the idea could really take off if one neighborhood decided it wanted to be a pilot project. Or, if I decided to invest in 1000 yard signs and found people to put them in their yards 🙂
  2. After the Phone Book: I was part of a nationwide effort to get rid of phone books to some effect. Here’s the FB page and here’s a page on my site that explains the problem and some of the moves I and others used to stop the cutting of trees for no good reason.
  3. Putting music at the end of newsletters and blog posts – see below 2.2.24

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