The Porch, for Nov. 28

WELL DONE: The unofficial-looking doggy-cleanup bag dispenser hanging on the parking meter at Fourth and Columbia, next Cannery Square pocket park. It’s an increasingly popular little spot, located as it is next to two breweries, and now that you find an Art of Community sculpture in the park (banner photo, A1). As to the bags, taped to the pole: there’s a patch of untended slope next to the sidewalk, inviting, no doubt, for dog-owners who come unprepared to dispose of Bowser’s leavings. There are many such dog owners, and only one Cannery Square Park.

SEEN AND HEARD: More than once, accordion-ed by the wind, the vinyl sign at 13th and May in Jackson Park … now advertising Drive-Through Nativity at Hood River Church of the Nazarene … Chamber of Commerce ribbons are back on Oak again, the first reminder of the Dec. 4 holiday lighting ceremony … “Oh Barb” sticker on the railing of the stairs connecting Columbia Street and Industrial Way: a promo for an indie rock band, or tribute to the “Ketchup Advisory Board” skit on “Prairie Home Companion”?

BUMBERSTICKER of the week: “NOT A LIBERAL,” on an Idaho pickup, parked on Oak Street.

VELI KETTU: Here’s hoping the many locals of Finnish background will enjoy this story from my cousin Mike, writing from the family cabin on a lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — like Hood River Valley, a place with deep Suomi roots. Mike wrote on Facebook of sitting alone outside the cabin one November evening and hearing a strange “cough-like bark” coming from the trees, an animal sound such as he had never heard. He sat quietly and waited and out of the woods emerged the source of the barking — a fox. Mike watched it for a while and it kept cough-barking in a way he felt as “more indignant than anything.” Foxes are rarely seen in those parts, lending to a mystical connection between Man and Beast. And Mike, full name Mike Kettu, added, “The ‘coincidence’ that my last name means ‘fox’ in Finnish might figure in.”

CATALOG LOG: Discarded catalogs in Post Office recycle bin: Scully and Scully (Park Avenue), Wood and Steel, Made in Oregon, Ross and Simons, Shutterfly, American Girl, Athleta, Hammacher Schlemmer, Anthropologie, Harry and David, Signals, and Lehman’s “Simple Products For A Simple Life.”

WHY’S GUY: Why does the above matter? It is refreshing to see all these online slicks cast aside, on this Nov. 28 — “Small Business Saturday.” Holiday shoppers, please buy local.

MIGHT BE a first for The Porch — a correction. Abe Stevens of Volcanic Bottle Shoppe (and the band Smudgepot) corrected me on a “musical” misquote in the most recent Porch sitting: That reference to Little Bit Ranch Supply’s sign should have read, “We like big mutts and we cannot lie” — again, paraphrasing rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot, in promoting the store’s selection of products for dogs large and small. And that is likely the last time Sir Mix-A-Lot will appear in this space.

— Kirby Neumann-Rea, kneumannrea@hoodrivernews.com, 541-386-1234