[/caption]GHN News Ed - The City of Roses has initiated its annual Rose Festival event with the unveiling of crafts and carnival fun along Portland, Oregon’s Willamette River, but the color and variety of beauty is as evidenced by the Portland people as in any single ideal that Oregon might profess.
A sunny afternoon well spent includes a walk along the river, as those rays of warmth linger on the water before tucking in behind a cloud or two. But Portlanders pay no attention to the ever-present rain when there is so much appeal from beauty all around.
On the Memorial Day weekend, Portlanders were out in force to celebrate the annual opening of the Rose Festival, a series of events that culminates in the Rose Festival Parade and the crowning of the Queen, something that has been a part of Portland for many decades. The Queen is selected from high school seniors throughout the City of Portland and is the highlight of high school life to be among these chosen few.
[caption id="attachment_5389" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Beauty and love at Rose Festival Event"]
[/caption]
That beauty in the Portland green, coupled with a festival’s appeal, is reinforced by watching folks just amble by or sit on benches with their peers, enjoying the events. The cosmopolitan community of a city on the move is no better shown than photographs that reveal the many racial and ethnic groups that predominate the Portland scene. Whereas Portland was once considered in the 1950’s a fairly provincial town, that small town look and feel is gone to be replaced by miniature neighborhoods, each with its own cultural stamp, that weave together to make the whole fabric of Portland one of color, vibrancy and styl lie.
Watch the Portland people in their unique, special ways, a visual memory that will last for time to come. See a young man kneel and make his love and lifetime wishes known, surrounded by folks who smile and wave to see young love in bloom.
[caption id="attachment_5391" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Proposal at Rose Festival carnival"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_5390" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Rose Festival crowd"]
[/caption]Those who seek a holiday somewhere beauty grows are apt to stand and wonder at Rose Festival time in Portland, when the town unveils its best before the world, as it is doing over the first few weeks in June, to declare to one and all its prominence as the city that values green as well as all the colors of the rainbow in its flowers and its folks.
