John Callahan Garden

John Callahan (1951-2010) was a cartoonist with a bleak, intelligent sense of humor. When I moved to Portland in 2008, he gave sessions for quadriplegics at the hospital (the one with the little free library where the children and I take our books to be recycled) two blocks from my apartment block. Callahan seldom smiled. I’d see his thin red hair billowing around him as he rode his electric scooter at full speed on the sidewalks near me, very nearly mowing down unsuspecting old people and dogs on long leashes. 

He died two months after I started blipping in 2010, and his family and a number of donors hired some imaginative architects and landscapers to construct this eccentric little park studded with his cartoons at eye-level of people in scooters and wheelchairs. I’m featuring my favorite of the garden’s cartoons in this blip: it’s called “A Level Playing Field.” It’s a graveyard, of course. My extra shows my second favorite, “The Disillusionment Café,” in which the waiter says, “your order is not ready, nor will it ever be.” The extra gives a better idea of how the park is set up. If you’d like to know more about Callahan or see the trailer for the movie about his life and work, you can click on this video.