Lost gloves in situ

There's a certain poetry to a lost glove. It wants to tell a story, like it is capturing a moment in time to mark where someone was distracted or lost in thought.

Below are some quick pics of gloves, mostly along bike routes, as they were found before they were picked up. Is there a secret sign language in the gestures, how the fingers are placed and where they are positioned on the ground?

The Glove Tree, an inspiration for the gLove orphanage

The following was taken from a blog from one of the gLove orphanage's volunteer gnomes. It describes an effort that appeared in Portland on NE Alberta Street in January 2010. It helped inspire the gLove orphanage.

Throughout the winter I've noticed many orphan mittens and gloves along the bike lanes and streets of Portland. Maybe this is because I lost my own long-used and much-loved polyester "Miller Beer" fingerless gloves? (I don't remember where they came from. They were probably found on the street as well. Still, I'd had them forever and they'd served me well for spring and fall biking.) In a vain hope of finding mine, all the other dirty, soggy flattened ones caught my eye. Wouldn't it be nice if these gloves could be reunited with their owners?

The other day I noticed that some community-minded stranger(s) implemented an idea I've long considered. There is now a "Glove Tree" on a corner of Northeast Alberta Street and 20th.

The sign says it all:


This weekend while cleaning up the street in front on our house, I found a solitary red glove. Since the glove tree was nearby, why not make use of it? I grabbed a few extra clothes-line pins (to donate to the cause) and took a neighborhood stroll to hang up the glove. Oddly enough, on the way home I found the matching half about a block away! Sadly this other hand was pretty threadbare, having spent the last month or so in the gutter of Alberta Street getting ground up by car tires and muck. It's heartening to know some lonely owner may be reunited--and now with the complete pair. At the very least someone else can make use of a pair of gloves.



If you're biking in NE Portland and see a stray glove, you now know where the lost and found is.

The Glove Tree didn't last very long. Probably the managers of the apartment building it was adjacent to took it down after a few weeks. We don't think there is much hope of consistently reuniting lost gloves with their original owners. Instead these and other gloves should be paired up and introduced to new owners. Still, the spirit of the Glove Tree lives on in the gLove orphanage.