Cascadian Dreams: PALS Nursery: Back at Capacity

Cascadian Dreams

PALS Nursery: Back at Capacity

Our roomies are home. After a month of travel, they have returned home. They brought their baby with them. Our roomies are great. I guess I'll just tell the story of the neighbors turned roommates and the foundation of PALS Nursery.

Leah, Chris, and baby Ira.

The House

Perhaps it is best to begin at the beginning. In mid to late Summer 2011, Kelly, Our friend Tom and I moved into a house. It's in the industrial district of the Hosford-Abernathy neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

The PALS Nursery.

Here's the house. At first we wanted to call it the Eagle Hut, but that was way too close to the Eagle's Nest.

So the poor house remained unnamed. But after we moved in, we heard sound coming from our neighbors and decided to investigate.

Our neighbors were rad! They had big parties, and the police never showed up because the houses were too close to the train to really justify a noise complaint. Plus, all the neighbors were down with having these parties happen.

One of our neighbors was Chris, who seemed to be the driving force behind PALS Clubhouse. A sometime venue for local bands, a place with a fire often burning, and not a bad place to play Risk.

The clubhouse was happy that we weren't shitty neighbors and many days were spent enjoying each others parties and getting to know each other better.

Much of the connection culminated at PALS Fest in 2012. Chris was nice enough to host a Cascadian SpeakUp during his yearly event. It was really, really fun.

Micaiah speaks about Cascadia. That's me holding up the tarp.

A SpeakUp is a place for people to talk about issues that they care about. The Hawthorne Hostel SpeakUp was the first, and the Cascadian SpeakUp was the second. We should probably have another one.

At the end of PALS Fest 2012 I was sweating and dancing in a sea of incredibly blissed out people. That was a good night. The Bevellers played, The We Shared Milk, Fanno Creek, Animal Eyes, and many more.

But the show being awesome isn't important. What's important for the bigger story is that Leah was pregnant, and although the PALS Clubhouse was awesome, it probably wasn't the best place to have and raise a baby. At that point our roommate Michael, who rescued an old lady from a burning house was feeling the wanderlust, and we had a room coming open.

During a conversation at PALS Clubhouse, the idea that Chris and Leah could move in with us and everyone would be happy came up. It was a good idea and caught on. That was in fact what happened.

Leah with our cat Skookum

One day, it came to us that our house should be called PALS Nursery. Now, with two babies, four parents, two turtles, and two and a half cats, we are back at capacity.

We are blessed to live in a house with such love and general cooperation.