iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Brian Libby

Dean Frey @dean.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

A remarkable Jane Bown portrait: Bob Hope & Anita Ekberg gelatin silver print, 1962

The two sit uncomfortably underneath movie lights, waiting for the next shot.

Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sal Mineo's performance is one of my favorites among Columbo victims. He's not onscreen that long, yet he quietly brings substantial emotional depth to the character. Plus every time I watch this episode, set at an embassy, I get fixated on the otherwise alien phrase "the legation."

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My book received an incredible two-page spread in the print version of The Oregonian today. Pretty cool!

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Watching Satyajit Ray’s The Hero tonight I paused the film several times to photograph the screen. Great cinematography.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Returned to the Unseen Portland exhibit this morning for a second look at unrealized projects I’m writing about for my next architecture column.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What a nice surprise! Morphine is still one of the nineties bands I listen to most. So thankful to have seen them play, back in NYC in ‘94. And this new song, made with the late Mark Sandman’s vocal tracks, sounds really good.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I love this 1903 design for what was known as the Spiral Elevator, designed Daniel E. Condon for Portland's Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. At 180 feet, it would have been taller than any present-day local building. Alas, it went unbuilt. (As seen in the current exhibit "Unseen Portland.")

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thank you to the KBOO radio show Art Focus and host Joseph Gallivan for having me as a guest. We spent a half-hour walking through downtown Portland and talking about Mark Rothko, Mel Blanc, architects Michael Graves and Pietro Belluschi, and Pioneer Courthouse Square. kboo.fm/media/135637...

kboo.fm

Brian Libby

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 11.30 a.m., Joseph Gallivan interviews Portland writer Brian Libby as they walk around downtown Portland looking at the architecture. His new book, “In Search of Portland: Exp...

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A return visit with one of my favorite album purchases of recent years.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

An interview I did with Portland TV station KPTV about my new book... www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxY...

youtube.com

'In Search of Portland' walking book tour

YouTube video by KPTV FOX 12 Oregon

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sometimes I still marvel that this beauty (a German shepherd coyote mix) was my childhood dog.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I don't normally like posting (or looking at) photos of myself, but Powell's Books just sent me this pic from Tuesday's reading and conversation, and it was such an extraordinary night — standing room only and a sellout of books — that I'm happy to share.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Mel Blanc: one of the truly great Portlanders. I was just saying earlier today how much I love that Blanc and Mark Rothko attended the same high school here in the 1920s. I want to write a dual biography called, “Of Color Fields and Cartoon Voices.”

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

WHAT A NIGHT! We had standing room only at @powells.bsky.social and they ran out of copies with 20 people in line. I'm gobsmacked and grateful. Thank you so much to everyone for coming!

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Oregon State University Press @osupress.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Happy Publication Day to Brian Libby (@brianlibby.bsky.social)! "In Search of Portland: Exploring a Transforming City" is now available from your favorite booksellers and directly from OSU Press! beav.es/YJJ #PortlandOregon #PortlandArchitecture #PortlandHistory #PortlandWalkingTours #ReadLocal

Walking tour featured inside of In Search of Portland.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Appearing on the Hello Rose City TV show this morning. Thank you KGW and host Lacey Evans!

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Portland Mercury @portlandmercury.com · 15/09/2026

In Search of Portland, the new book by local journalist and architecture writer Brian Libby, reveals the stories behind the built landscape, the people, and the history that have created modern Portland.

portlandmercury.com

In Search of Portland Reveals an Evolving, Ever-Changing City - Portland Mercury

A new book leads readers through local history via walking tours of Portland's downtown.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You know it's a weird day when you do two different local TV news interviews in the morning and afternoon. Thank you KATU (that's channel 2 on your dial) and KOIN (channel 6)! Tomorrow I'm going for the hat trick (of ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates) with KGW.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thanks so much to everyone who came to my gallery show opening yesterday! What a wonderful time. Huge thanks to Weedman Design Partners.

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The Way We Laugh Now, a special section of New Yorker cartoons from November 12, 2001

Two cartoons: The first is a woman with a cat in a pet carrier at airport security and a guard is telling her, “We’ll have to declaw the cat.”

The other is a collection of thought bubbles from people walking down a street:

AFGHANISTAN IS THE SAME AS ALL THOSE OTHER "STAN" COUNTRIES. BUT IT'S GOT A WHOLE Different stump.

WASN'T THERE A MORTHERN ALLIANCE
IN THE FIRST STAR WARS MOVIE?

JALALABAD.
I REALLY ENJOY SAYING JALALABAD.

AL QAEDA IS SPELLED WITHOUT A U. What’s up with that?

ANTHRAX! AMTRAK AM EX! FED EX!
FEEDBACK! FONDUE! MY CIRCUITS ARE OVER LOADING!

KANDAHAR!
DIDN'T HE RUN IN THE BREEDERS' CUP?

Three cartoons: One of two people walking

into a restaurant. One is being checked for weapons and saying “The food is just so so, but the security is fantastic.”

Another: two men at a bar and one says, “I figure if I don’t have the third Martini, then the terrorists win.”

A couple watching TV and one says, “I liked the theme to the Gulf War better.”

Two cartoons: one of a line of people. One person Says to the other, “It’s hard, but slowly I'm getting back to hating everyone."

The other cartoon shows a rich couple in opulent surroundings being served by a butler. One says, “We should consider ourselves fortunate. At least we have food and shelter."

Three cartoons: one is of a couple. One says to the other: "You can't expect to get back to normal if you never were normal."

Another cartoon shows the FBI visiting a couple’s door and saying: We’re from the FBI, going from home to home making sure that everyone is scared shitless.

The last cartoon is of a long haired man walking barefoot on the sidewalk with a huge sign in his hands that says: EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I love that I’m actually getting social media ads this week for the show I’m curating, using my own photo. It’s pretty trippy seeing a shot you took in an Instagram ad.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

My photographer-friend Patrick Smith, who has a side business digitizing others' archives, often from estates of deceased photographers, recently posted a cool series of late eighties/early nineties Portland shots by an unknown artist. I like these, and am curious to see if I can learn more.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Just finished my second Iris Murdoch novel (after The Bell — superb) and was ultimately quite moved. There was a moment midway when I briefly lost faith as it became almost over-the-top farcical. But by novel’s end I was hooked again. A profound exploration of mortality, hubris, regret and love.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Fun little milestone: Although my book officially comes out on September 15, I just sold the first copy from my private supply. It begins!

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This shot of our beloved Ruthie (2003-2020) popped up on Facebook this morning, and I got a kick out of a comment at the time from my sister-in-law: "Cat Mona Lisa!"

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Returning again this evening to my favorite jazz album. I actually have its first track stipulated in my will as my funeral song, although to say that may be more dour than I intend here. It’s really such a magnificently JOYFUL record.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Someday soon it’ll be cool outside and I can close my windows to the cacophony of neighborhood and traffic noise: the wood-sawing, the weed-whacking, the backup-beeping and the car-speaker throbbing.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Jenny joins the Caturday parade.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The kitchen-table view from a cabin at Cape Meares, Oregon I've loved staying at. @valarie.bsky.social and I might go back there next summer, and when I randomly saw this photo today, I smiled.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

My latest architecture column for @orartswatch.org unpacks how an irreplaceable industrial landmark that should have been the centerpiece of a riverfront park instead succumbed to demolition by neglect across a quarter-century. www.orartswatch.org/learning-fro...

orartswatch.org

Learning from the Centennial Mills tragedy • Oregon ArtsWatch

It was the fire this time, destroying the possibilities of what began in 1910 and what little was left. A lack of civic imagination led to a textbook case of demolition by neglect.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Just finished The Bell by Iris Murdoch and really enjoyed it. Decided I was overdue to read a novel after several film and jazz books and some Ross Macdonald rereads. It’s a fun multi-character narrative about seeking spiritual and romantic equilibrium, and likely not from traditionalist sources.

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Kierkegaard “argued that a human self is a synthesis of necessity and possibility. He likened possibility to oxygen; without it, we feel ‘unable to breathe,’ spiritually suffocated.” - Clare Carlisle, Transcendence for Beginners

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Someone remixed a scene from my favorite Columbo episode and I may never stop laughing. youtu.be/VOEPetqjX4w?...

youtu.be

Noiselund - Mahjong

YouTube video by Noiselund

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Michael Warburton @michaelwarburton.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Love this sequence from ‘Death Lends A Hand’ — where the killer’s (Robert Culp) dispatching of the body is reflected in parallel split-screens on his glasses. Wild stuff, and almost 2 minutes long! COLUMBO (1971)

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A fun short doc about artist John Baldessari, narrated by Tom Waits and produced by LACMA. youtu.be/eU7V4GyEuXA?...

youtu.be

A Brief History of John Baldessari

YouTube video by Bonjour Supermarché

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I just randomly thought about the red early-seventies Opel GT my dad owned when I was a little kid. One of my earliest memories is him opening and closing the eyelid-like operable headlights as a parting goodbye as he drove to work. The guy was cool back then.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Definitely in the top 100 favorite movies list I’m currently compiling. Total masterpiece.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Thank you @jonathanmbach.bsky.social for interviewing and quoting me in this @oregonian.com story about the tragedy of Portland's historic Centennial Mills. “People like to see things go boom,” he said, later adding, “I was just cringing.” www.oregonlive.com/business/202...

oregonlive.com

RIP Centennial Mills: From international flour supplier to ‘demolition by neglect’

Decades of failed redevelopment plans and neglect culminated in a blow to Portland's cultural heritage.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

After seeing many top-100 movie lists yesterday, I started making notes for my own. But at a certain point it becomes hard to quantify, and difficult to weigh movies I've loved recently against ones I loved decades ago. That said, the top slot remains an easy call.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Any Oregon Ducks football fans out there? Yesterday I was interviewed for a podcast about my experience as an author (20 years ago I wrote a history of the team) and as a lifelong fan of the team, beginning with my first trip to Autzen Stadium in 1980. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Qj...

youtube.com

Brian Libby talks favorite Oregon memories and the long memorable climb of the program

YouTube video by Oregon Fan Show

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Reposted by Brian Libby

Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

DYK that Little Richard fired Jimi Hendrix on stage at the Crystal Ballroom, Powell's Books got its start with a loan from Saul Bellow and Pioneer Courthouse Square was almost cancelled because downtown biz owners, fearing crime (lol), wanted it to be a PRIVATE atrium with paid admission? 🧵

This is the book cover for In Search of Portland: Exploring a Transforming City by Brian Libby. The cover image is of the Portland building, which has a huge statue of a woman with a trine pointing down at the entrance of the building. But the title and author info is written in a black band near the bottom of the photo, so it looks like she’s pointing at the info instead of the entrance.

Also, what can be hard to realize at first is that the Portland Building’s windows, located behind the statue, are quite a warm, golden color, but that’s because a photo of fountain steps have been overlaid on the windows. It’s very discreet and hard to see at first, but significant because both images are Portland landmarks.

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Brian Libby @brianlibby.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I had to pause one of my favorite Columbo reruns (“Now You See Him” with Jack Cassidy as The Great Santini) to take these three shots of actor Thayer David in the episode’s best cameo.

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