Portland Needs Archaeology!

('Mars Needs Women!'--- I know, I thought it too)

Whilst all of Portland was returning to their work stations from lunch yesterday, they had no idea that a brain trust meeting was being held in an office at PSU that would be gathering steam to completely change the future of urban life on the Willamette as we know it!

No, not free Cirque du Soleil tickets to all.

Some students and members of the Anthropology Department were discussing a new class being offered for the Spring 2008 Term on Community Archaeology, and how this can be a great threshold for educating and encouraging the people who live in an area (Portland, for the sake of this idea) to get involved in preserving the cultural resources surrounding them. No mere coincidence that I was there, seeing as I wholeheartedly believe that this is just what Portland needs, as well as being encouraged that one of the organizers is Wendy Ann Wright, a volunteer in the office of Sam Adams. The focus of the class will be creating an annual hands-on event, that brings together local land history with ways to investigate and preserve it, and ideally get attendees interested to get involved at different levels. There can be fun things for kids and their parents to do, as well as some more involved things like foraging skills, tool-making, indigenous plants and how they were managed by native peoples, techniques of archaeological digs, the devastation of site looting, before and after depictions of how the Portland waterfront was developed---and as dedicated as we Portlanders are about our city's well-being, I think we can accomplish some good things by getting started with an event like this.

Looking out over the Portland skyline, I see all these mega-cranes, new towers under construction for new Portlanders, 4 foot trenches in the roadways exposing old brick, holes the size of a square city block 50' deep near the river, restored 19th century homes with abandoned urban lots behind them, and I see all this hidden history. No where do I feel that this developing of places should be made difficult, but there are all these lost chances to know more about our town and the brave people who wound up here long ago when this was the frontier, and the thousands of years before all that. There was a creek through there? Really? This family had an orchard there, that bend of the Willamette was an early refrigerated warehouse (no way!) that shipped fresh seafood to Denver, that site was where native peoples from all over the Pacific Northwest came and harvested obsidian. Sitting in that meeting yesterday, I knew that there are hundreds if not thousands of people here who would love to know this, especially if they're walking over it everyday or live in the neighborhood built on top of someplace so important back then. Back in my book retail days, we had one of the most heavily shopped local interest sections of any store I'd ever seen, and we had to put a display table up, so the big Photographs of Historic Portland coffee table book could be left out for browsing over, and the Portland Streetcar book, and the Portland Baseball teams book, and the Portland Gardens book, the Hill Walks of Portland, Underground Tunnels, Portland Jazz and Blues, Portland Confidential, end of the Oregon Trail. We sold hundreds of these books.

So how is this going to change life on the Willamette as we know it? I think it could, I really do, because we can create a source point for further work going forward, create a living history of a place, a block, a neighborhood, a building, a shore, a bridge, a house, a street, and ultimately, a community. It's fascinating to hear the story of a place you know, who doesn't like a good true story?

Everyday Anthropology

Here's a perfect example of the essential usefulness of knowing some anthropology...

Setting: backyard hot tub at dusk, sneaking in while neighbor is out of town.

Cast: half-buzzed sneaky neighbor in hot tub; one resident of house of said hot tub;

Scene: Roaring hot tub jets, growing twilight, just as a chilly sprinkle starts, house resident tentatively approaches occupied hot tub, saying name of sneaky neighbor repeatedly so as not to startle her. Finally she hears him---

Sneak: He-e-e-y, neighbor! Wow, hope it's okay, I called---

Resident: I didn't want to scare you, it's cool, did it warm up yet?

S: Yeah, it's gettin' there, almost 100 now.

R: Mind if I join you? (climbs in, resets jets, louder roaring and churning)

S: Nope, just relaxing after a long week of classes, I brought a beer, TGIF! (they laugh)

S & R don't really know each other well, they each know the owner of the house pretty well, the one who isn't there. A few moments of loud but awkward silence. They discuss Portland, other places they each used to live, until suddenly---

R: Like that place in New England, where they found that ancient place with the rocks and the coins---

S: ---and the petroglyphs---

R: Right! Like before Columbus and the Vikings!

S: I saw that show on the National Geographic channel where they think it may have been the ancient Phoenicians or even post-ice age Europeans that followed the melting ice shield to North America---

R: Yeah, I saw that, and the native peoples had European DNA before North America was colonized---

S: Like Kenniwick Man had Altaic or Ainu DNA, not recent DNA from more recent peoples in the Pacific Northwest----

R: So what about the Nazca Lines? I took one of those classes where the teacher said none of any of it was true---

S: Yeah, 'The Pseudo-sciences' myth-busting thing, like 'NO, the Aliens did NOT build the pyramids!'

R: Exactly!

R & S go on, getting redder and redder in the face in the 106 degree water for another 30 minutes.

S: (feeling faint) I think I have to get out---I'm poached. (sloshes out, grabs towel)

R: Yeah, me too, right after you. (climbs out, covers hot tub)

They stand there steaming in the dim evening, bi-pedal lobsters:

S: Great chat!

R: Yeah, good soak, this is easy to get used to.

S: I owe _____ a case of beer, for all the kind lending of the hot tub goodness. (stops herself from launching into the brewing history of the Fertile Crescent peoples)

They each drip towards their respective front doors. S drinks a large glass of water, once again grateful for the ever-readiness of Anthropological knowledge to save the day and gloss-over faux pas of all kinds, remedy social situations, and claim common interests to make new friends. S frantically searches her freezer for an ice pack, to avoid the popping of the top of her head.

curtain

Leap Day

Back in the Ann Arbor days, the early 80s, when I was doing a lot more writing, I composed another front stoop poem, on a strangely warm, sunny day at the end of February. The house on Bath Street was perched next to a woody ravine on a dead end street, surrounded by bungalows with rampant herb gardens. Purple sage can survive a cold Michigan winter, shrinking under the snow and waiting for spring. I sat on the listing plank steps with my face to the sun, and waited for the clear sign of what to chose next for my life; go to Florida and a new life, or stay here and find another job. Re-reading the poem, I knew I had already made up my mind, I was going to go, and I'd never sit in the warm sunshine in late February on these steps again.

Waves of that day came back to me this morning, walking downtown and seeing clumps of drowsy purple sage next to gray lavender and blooming rosemary in a large planter. What was a complete anomaly in Michigan, is a normal winter's day here, and I much prefer it this way. I can sit on my stony concrete steps with my face in the sun in late February in this place, on these steps, and it all comes washing back. That I am finally back in school, dealing with the Biggest Incomplete of my entire life, but outwardly doing much of what I was doing back then in Ann Arbor, is kinda funny. Almost like the last 22 years didn't happen. More and more, it even feels that way.

To some, this may look like Being Stuck. As in, "Ma'am, it's done already, move on, get over it, drop the baggage!"

And I reply, "That's what I tried to do those 22 years." I did the Job Thing, the 'My Beautiful Career' Thing, the 'Serious Adult Relationship' Thing, the Survival Strategy Thing, and even the Not-Caring Thing. Years and years spent in the wilderness. One or two major choices I may have done differently, looking back, but if presented with the same circumstances, my path would probably look much the same. I mean, living in a condo on Highland Beach, Atlantic Coast South Florida for free for eight months at 24 years old---who is going to say, "Uh, no thanks, really, I much prefer my unheated room in a run-down house with flaky roommates in a Michigan winter, a chronic respiratory illness and being unemployed,"?

Today was the first time since that last day at the B-store that I walked past my old workplace downtown. It felt weird. Past the bank where I spent so much time each weekday afternoon waiting to make a bag of deposits, past the parked FedEx truck of my old driver, with a ticket on it (as usual). Past the mall, past the Russian 'kofe' place, smelling the Mexican lunch place; how many hundreds of times did I make that walk, but veer left to the wall of glass doors? Today, I was smiling and just kept walking past, towards the river, towards home in the middle of the workday with my class notes in my book bag. No big deal, I know, but for a fraction of a second I was time traveling, 22 years, then 13 months, but also into the near-future. Because Portland is the place to navigate from, for me, and no condo in a warm place could change my mind. PSU has no clue what mad power it has to change the stream of Deep Time.

Sunbreak Photographs

Wow---

Is this a great town, or what?

I took this from a bus roaring over the Morrison Bridge this afternoon, what an amazing view!

All the rain we had, I knew that the mosses would be peak with the sun sneaking out now and then, so I was disturbing the homeowners hanging out on a Friday afternoon, "Who is that taking pictures in our front yard?" But look at those pussywillow shots, can you stand it? Got the curly willow at Kath & Harv's, and the extreme plush velvet at Matt & Emily's. They weren't home.

Archaeology is a Contact Sport

Who knew? I thought it would be a bunch of wonks, Star Wars alumni, Tolkien freaks, time travelers, anti-Indiana Joneses, Outcasts of the Curious Anachronism Society and RenFest drop outs. Well shame on me, although I'm a tad disappointed to see that they seem to look alot like me, except for the manly men with earnest expressions and one or two with Merlin beards. At least here in downtown Portland, it isn't a Summer of '69 reunion either attending the Anthropology Department's "First Thursday" Lecture event at 4pm yesterday afternoon. Of course I was going to go, and it has nothing to do with the extra credit essay, because the topic was establishing a Cultural Resources Preservation Program for the City of Portland, to enforce the national, state, county and municipal historic sites' laws as well as bringing it to a higher profile in the community.


Honestly, I was stunned. You mean Portland doesn't have this already? I thought. You've got to be kidding me.

The presenter was Wendy Ann Wright, a PSU student in the Anthropology department, a Powells Books alumna, mom, and passionate member of Sam Adams' staff at City Hall. OMG!!
What better person to catalyze this idea in the city, and she had a great slide presentation of the research she's done in other cities nationally, to find models that are community-based and effective already. Again, I sat there looking at her slides of St. Mary's Academy Wall demolition that she may as well have downloaded from my blog, as well as hurried excavations of privies and Chinese cemetery graves with a row of bulldozers and backhoes hovering in the background.

Portland doesn't have this in place already? I can't believe this! When she concluded, my hand shot up. "Hi, I'm really uninformed about the whole City permitting process, but everyday I see the progress of the building project at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge, and they're already 50 feet down---before the contractor started digging, he had to find out about gas lines, water lines,
how strong the soil barrier is between the hole and the river---I would think historic maps of municipal locations are available to check this just like the gas and water companies survey and OK going ahead with excavating, right? Couldn't a City of Portland Archaeologist or Historic Site Manager Office be layered in here at this point so at least within the city limits sites aren't just plowed up?"

Well, she mentioned the standard fire maps, and archived city maps, but no, there isn't really anything like this in Portland at this time, it would be a budget issue certainly.

An older gentleman stood up. He was concerned that there was a punitive attitude coming off of archaeologists and site preservationists that would actually have the opposite effect of discouraging people from coming forward with asking for site assistance if an artifact showed up in a shovel of dirt or their basement bricks collapse and there's old bootlegger paraphrenalia falling onto the floor. Why couldn't the utilities and industrial corporations be asked to underwrite some of these efforts and also cooperate with the city in recovering some of their own industrial history and be seen as caring about the community preservation movement instead of being told to absorb the time and costs of investigating sites all over the city? He started out seeming a bit hostile to Wendy's anti-looting attitude that makes all collectors and antique markets suspect, but she was able to agree with him and turn his question into an approach almost everyone could agree with. She said there was an African American Art exhibit that Sam Adams' office was involved in that had had an antique bottle collector involved, but he pulled out after getting some flack from the archaeologists in town about his collection being "looted", which in strict trade terminology means removed from its historical context (or dump pit). It is a comment on we everyday townsfolk that most of us need to be educated that saving a cloudy antique bottle (it's blue and says 'poison', cool!!) from your backyard compost pile of 103 years ago constitutes "looting". But it is. Strictly speaking. Even if you own the property.

This is where the contact sport part comes in.

Needless to say, in Wendy's research to find a working preservation model that has widespread and cooperative community involvement, she finds that there are plenty of struggles with individuals' and commercial property rights when it comes to designating something 'historic' or a 'cultural resource' , and different cities have varying levels of success with this issue. She mentioned Alexandria, VA and Vancouver, WA as two cities with viable programs and great community involvement and support. These agencies get the kids involved with introductions to archaeology with a "kids dig"; artifact copies that the kids get to use methods of excavation to "find" and analyze. Also, many Native American Nations are active in community awareness and education to preserve sites and ways of life, often coordinating with municipal and county agencies to work with the public and commercial interests. Often, she said, there are laws in place already that are poorly enforced or thought of as arcane, and educating officials about these laws would be a place to start with raising preservation with the public.

There's already a faint sound in my head, "You should do this, you love Portland so much, what a great project this would be to get involved with and help launch!" I haven't had a huge ambition in a few months, it's about time to have a new one, isn't it? Halfway through my first term, after 25+ years out of school, and already I'm the department expert in my own delusional brain. Too funny, isn't it? And the fact that these "First Thursday" Anthropology lecture attendees are about my age, already have my interests, and go to a pub afterwards to eat and drink and talk shop would be the perfect arm-twister to get me to keep going. And earning extra credit. And blogging about it. Until maybe I finally dive in and present Sam Adams with a plan.

St. Mary's Wall

Back to the wall saga----

I didn't have my camera with me today, plus it was a snotty rain in the afternoon, almost freezing and never getting beyond about 7am bright. I'll bring it along tomorrow, but the scoop today is that they have left the huge deciduous (oak) tree in the center of the lot, while the large pine is gone, leaving a raw stump about 20ft in the air. Yeesch! The cracked corner is knocked down to the height of a knee-wall and it continues at that height along to where the quaint arched gateway cuts through. Above one gateway is a carved stone arch that says "St. Mary's Academy" in a gothic Victorian script, above a gray slat door, and the teardown stops there on the side facing East. Packed earth berms slope away from the edge of the wall up to the level of the carpark, covered with gray plastic membrane and sandbags, keeping the dirt solid and dry. The old flagstone knee-wall turns the corner and heads west up the hill for about 30 or 40 ft, until the second arched gateway filled with a gray slat door. The original height and capstoned wall continues to the corner as if nothing is happening down the hill. The little ferns and mosses are all still soaking up the rains and thriving, green as glow worms on the flagstones.

Today's Teardown

As pleased as I was to see the wall mostly still standing, I was then horrified to see what they were doing today to the huge trees on the lot. It seems they're removing the back fill that was put in at least 40 years ago to create a parking lot (by the size of the trees) and maybe leaving the wall intact? The backhoe operator is very delicate when digging near the wall facade, and is working on taking out the big slabs of asphalt and pounding them into smaller chunks that can be scooped up with a bulldozer. He takes out a chunk of the old concrete that's behind the flagstone with the vest guy guiding him, then he comes back for the soil. None of the rest of the wall is being disturbed (today) but since they're taking out the trees, maybe the wall is part of the preservation of whatever the future use the site will have.

This is what's on the other side of the street, facing the moss wall, the modern alternative.
Say it ain't so.

I know, why do I care, right? I don't work or live there, it didn't belong to my family or anything, so who cares? This wall is an historic part of the whole St. Mary's Academy & Church complex and is at least 100 years old, if not 175, and there's no replicating it if it's torn down. I mean, look at this gray nothingness---

The moss, the placement of each stone by human hands and mortared generously, the quality that has lasted this long, that's what I value in my urban surroundings, why I love Portland so much. If it's gone in a few weeks, someone noticed it happening, and took some last pictures of the beautiful stonework and inner-city mid-winter greenness of it. It's a living wall, it really is.

It's Gone Now

This morning I went by the wall and activity on the block had picked up noticeably, now a trailer with a backhoe was being unloaded above the corner here. I had to rush to my 10am Bio Anthropology class, and hoped for the best.

After my last class let out, after 2, I walked down the hill with the sunshine on my back and stopped behind the flagger on the corner and just took it all in: this corner was gone. The backhoe was directly above where the ledge had been, piles of the flagstone heaped next to the equipment, retaining walls of crumbling concrete falling away towards the street, stony earth being scooped out and away into a dump truck. What will be?

Are they shoring this corner up to preserve the wall? Or is this antique remnant of St. Mary Academy's playground garden being replaced with the battleship gray concrete panels found across the street? With no moss whatsoever. I'm going to hope for the best, shore it up, re-pour the retaining wall behind it, then put the stones back. The moss will take a few years, but I have a buttermilk recipe that can accelerate the re-colonization. I know what the odds are, but it can be fixed, just that iffy, cracked and bowed out corner.

Ay, Carumba!

...I can't put in the Spanish inverted exclamation point, but it's implied, okay?

Semana Numero Dos is now history, and I have a legal holiday long weekend to spend like a student. 'Cause that's what I am! I had some beer, and watched the last episode of my telenovela "Amar sin Limites" last night, with every woman of child-bearing age either about to pop or holding a newborn, the single women having weddings, and the people over 50 holding their grandchildren and smiling. And the evil characters living a life of shame or dead, the bad always get punished, and forgiven before they die. Now I'm down to only one show, 9pm on Univision, the costume epic of colonial Mexico, with amazing estates, horses and carriages, gowns and pirate attire, aging conquistadores and their willful children...Pasion. Pretty much sums it up, really.

School so far is amazing, I'm keeping up on the reading, and I had a chance to meet with one of my professors who is the head of the archaeology dept. for 30 minutes of course advising, she was very helpful. She was trying to encourage me to take the two statistics classes, but honestly, it's not likely, not when there's two alternatives in the Linguistics dept. that have a lot more interest to me. Math? NOW? I shudder to think. Aren't there Excel programs to crunch those numbers by now? We were seeing slides of her and her team in the 80s excavating a site in eastern Washington, and they still had to use survey equipment and plumb lines from 500 ft away. She even had to concede that GPS is the greatest tool ever, technological updates from other fields are being grabbed up in archaeology and anthropology as fast as they come along. More support for my position, I say. Excel all the way.

After class yesterday, I gave myself a thorough tour of the library, got into the PSU student access websites, found the extra material my art history prof posted for us to access, and then found the Chinese and Japanese literature in translation sections and checked out two titles from 18th century dynastic eras. Ever since I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" in 1997, I love to read these type of stories of long-lost cultural eras in Japan and China, I just get lost in the beautiful imagery and genteel mannerisms. Like I don't have enough reading to do right now?

Last Saturday I had a chance to catch up with my pal from the B-store days, Linsey, and she had a new laptop, bitemarks from a Doberman puppy/piranha, and had enjoyed her first non-retail Christmas in forever. We met at a very busy Zell's, kept a table occupied way too long chatting, and left smelling of really good homefries. Smoked wild salmon omelette cannot be recommended highly enough, so so good. She's all in Career Chick mode, which is great, she's got a great gig right now, but I wish she'd get back to writing her blog. Now that she has the new laptop that doesn't overheat and crash, the world is waiting...

Betty finally got herself another dog, my brother and I heaved a huge familial sigh. Since she quit working her part time job after Christmas, she's been cooped up in her condo and going sour fast, she didn't have anything to take her out of her deeply grooved rut. Of course, any step forward is good in this prolonged grieving process for her old dog, and I know he'll be his own little personality and eventually she'll bond with him as much as the other one. Already she sounds better on the phone, she's getting some exercise again, spending more time outdoors walking him a few times a day, seeing her neighbors going around the block, all of the fringe benefits of dog ownership. The puppy sounds like a mix of some boxer, shepherd, shorthair, tawny and about 50 lbs full grown. I told her to get some new running shoes and check the non-slip strips on the tiled stairs to the condo, he'll be a handful for a few years, pulling her around on a leash. My brother and I are so relieved.


Wild weekend, right? Maybe a trip to Best Buy to play with the computers, maybe check out the new Apple "Air", see a movie. Save the homework for Monday...such a slacker.

more moss

Just in Time

Since I've been walking back and forth each day to class, I keep going past this wall, and thinking, "I really need to bring my camera and shoot this wall, one of these mornings, these stones will be on the sidewalk."

Today, the entire block south and west of this corner was barricaded off, yellow police tape, cones, detour signs, the works.

So after I finished class, I went back there and filled the memory card, getting yelled at by guys in reflective vests and hard hats working on the other side of the street re-directing traffic. Some change is pending with this wall, and tomorrow it maybe started.

This wall was the main impetus for the Moss Project, although I've been thinking about it since November while leaf raking and noticing the amazing moss specimens glowing in the low sunlight. I felt like I was in a magical Welsh forest, here come the primeval wood sprites.
So, this is my newest garden in winter project, and saw all these camellias in bloom, and a trail of what I swore was jasmine. I had to track it down, and found this: below









So while I'm doing all this urban trekking, and in the barest time of year in foliage and bloom terms, this city is full of winter color and growth.
And the Moss Project will go on for a while...



This giant auger was getting placed as I was catching my homebound bus this afternoon...I'd have kicked myself for catching this amazing image but not having my camera with me. The antique steampunk pile driver was resting as the crew was smoothly landing this screwdriver from hell. I love this picture.

Here's another one, looking south:


So this huge build is at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge, and all this rich brown earth is being loaded onto double trailer trucks, hundreds of years of Willamette River floodwash and wharfside debris, clinking red bricks and crusts of old asphalt paving slipping down a thousand years into the pit. Welders, crane operators and hardhat conferences going on around the perimeter, and the rain starts coming down in a mist. Climate is a constant, and I get onto the warm dry bus. Will the wall be there in the morning?

Porch Season Exhibition Day

By noon, the icy fog had burned off on the east side of the river, and the air warmed from 28 to 55 degrees, because the sun broke through and won the day.

What's a Wicked Woman on the Porch to do? HIT THE DECK!

No shorts and tank tops yet, but I turned the gold chair south into the sunshine, and cracked open the Sunday New York Times, a POM peach tea, and some Fred Meyers sushi, whereupon the bontemps de soleil laissez roulez. (bad neworleanese for let the sunny good times roll)

All the dogs and their owners were out, gradually sporting shorts and t-shirts as Oregonians tend to do when it's over 49 degrees, the neighbor on the corner was doing some pre-spring gardening. The daffodil shoots are showing already, and the birch catkins are out. I love love love this 6 month spring thing here.

Of course, there will be snow, when the Pineapple Express hooks up with the arctic blast coming down the Gorge, and we get hit with some February Freezing Sleet. But that melts so fast, it doesn't really make for a full season of Winter. Under the snow will be crocuses and hyacinths coming up already. Gentle, easy river valley winters are wonderful.

The extremely low sun position does make for a short spell in the full sunshine, and the shadows are still in chilly January mode, but the first pre-season Porch Day was successful. I'm hoping it carries over into tomorrow a bit, because I'm taking my camera to campus for some winter in the park shots, and to start the Moss Project. (teaser)

Schlepping Towards Portland State

Oy-vey, vas gibt es nach kockhen?

(oh bloody hell, what's screwed up now?)


First of all, I just love Yiddish. One of the biggest things I miss about South Florida. Hearing it and knowing people understand it when you use it. Totally missed Hannukah this year, gibt mir leid.
(bummer)

Anyway, the end of last week consisted of me on the phone at 5am calling Massachusetts and Michigan at the beginning of their business days, to see if I could straighten out what appears to be the dropped ball here at PSU Admissions Office. PSU kept emailing me and telling me on the phone that they hadn't received two of my three transcripts yet from my old schools, la dee dah, sit on our hands, glad you asked. Both Smith College and University of Michigan showed they had sent them out within two days of receiving my request letter the second week of November, and they generously agreed to re-send them without a new request letter mailed to them from me. (I don't know the obscene Yiddish for how I felt at this point, the old men would never tell me this stuff in Boca)

Helpfully, I forwarded all of these back and forth emailing threads to PSU Admissions Office, along with a note from me about my concern with getting enrolled for January, BTW the Financial Aid is essential to my being able to go, hello Houston, is there anybody there??

And then I torqued my back lugging my antique trunk around and schlepping books to Powells to sell. Ice then heat, repeat. Anglo Saxon will have to do here : Son of a fucking bitch, and god fucking damn it.

You see, if I was admitted now, like I should have been over two weeks ago when my transcripts got lost, then I'd be able to register for my classes, receive my financial aid grants and loans for January 2008, know what my open hours are, get a job to start immediately, not have to schlepp heavy things around to sell, have so much less stress, and know what is happening from day to day and hour to hour. Es geht ganz hodgekeposchge. (its all f-ed up)

Trying to take the higher Zen perspective, my being a bitch will not fix this or make it flow easier, so I won't. Each fiber of my being wants to revert to Royal Bitch mode, but I will not stoop to it, no I won't. But I need to take a day or so not-schlepping to get myself set to rights with the She-Beast known as my lower back. Futz!

PS--get "Yiddish With Dick and Jane" to learn some basics and laugh your tuches off, or read "Born to Kvetch" and "Disco Bar-Mitzvah" if you want to die laughing.

Jasmine Tree Girl

Oh, the sudden surprise, to see that name in my inbox this afternoon...

Jasmine Tree Girl sent out an exploratory jingle, anyone still out there? Hope you're well, want to sip tea and talk?

Funny, I was thinking of her yesterday afternoon while washing dishes. A picture of her with very short hair is in a funky sage green frame on the wall above the sink, with a splendid blue Hindu god in the frame next to her, and I mused about how it had never occurred to me to take the picture down, not ever. I hoped she was doing well, and thought how happy she'd have been to know I was going back to school. Lala la la la, back to the Mrs. Meyers and sponge.

I didn't really hesitate to reply, but I did marvel a bit and wonder what would happen next. How will it be now, is this a touchpoint only? Or a new era of our friendship? Will we just start again from here, or go over what happened two years ago?

What taking a two year break has done for me, is to have undergone what always was my greatest fear about her, losing her, and I survived quite well. I lived through losing her, and all the part of my life that we had shared for 25 years being lost, and I'd consciously changed some perspectives I'd had for so long. There were major life transitions for me that I had walked and cried through without her, and I'd still been able to keep going, without her understanding and emotional support. I hadn't regretted what made the break happen, but I did miss her less and less than I was always afraid I would. She was the sister I had never had, and I lost that sister, and it broke my heart. But I managed to keep going, and that is good, a realization I may never had been able to make without this separation. So---that is good, too.

The daydreams we both had, about what living in Portland at the same time would be like, never really became real, and I wish it could have happened. It was a beautiful life, and real enough to me living miserably in Boca Raton to propel me out here with my cat, books and music. I thought about the best days when we were housemates in Ann Arbor, when we first met, living in the funky sage green bungalow on the cul-de-sac called Bath St., doors and windows open wide all summer, communal living and herb gardens. I brought that all with me out here, intact like a relic in amber, thinking it would all just come back to life. She was not such a preservationist, and doesn't remember those bungalow days with as much fondness as I do, and is usually much better at working from where she is now. The daydream fell apart.

We always complimented each other well, her Aquarius to my Cancer, but I had a lucid moment once listening to her, when I realized she had matured so much more than I'd noticed, she'd become a real 'grown-up', which I resist more and more as I get older. When we met, I was more mature than I think I am now, and she was whimsical and romantic---now we've flipped sides somehow, she's gotten really good at maneuvering in the grown-up world, and I want to get back to simple as much as possible.

What is next? Tea, a chat, weird silences? A long hug, tears, babbling brooks for hours?
Stay tuned.

Here Comes the Fog

The fog each morning since the storm is comforting, healing to the ravages of the wind, and wraps me in a cool woolly shawl I didn't have to knit to enjoy. I think many of us are feeling a bit raw these days after the thrashing of the weekend, and feel fortunate when we glance outside hopefully and don't see splintered branches on our cars or upended root balls yawing like the threshold of Hell in the yard.

Ai-yi-yi I think, being on the side of a hill, how did we wind up with 6 inches of icy water in our newly finished basement? We thought that was all taken care of with last year's giant foundation shoring project, drains installed, weather-proofing. Not so. Only last night did I find out that there used to be a creek that flowed through the neighborhood, which didn't just disappear with homes and sidewalks, and our water table is higher because of it. The winter hurricane that screamed through here brought down the Sitka Spruce, velvety with glowing moss, the tallest in the world, twisted and shattered and pulled down to only a 70 ft trunk surrounded by spines of raw wood. The coastal flooding, power outages, the trains halted, the Interstate closed, airports shut down---everybody stop. Everybody just stop.

The indigenous people would have stopped and hunkered down and waited it out. Don't endanger yourself by pretending this storm is just a little rain, and insist on making a long trip.
Many of us made soup while the power was still on, I think it's in our DNA to do this. Make soup, gather around the hearth and stay warm together. Tell stories, mend something, doze off, find another blanket, stoke the fire, conserve your energy for the work of cleaning up after the storm blows through.

December is here with it's holidays and manic energy, the whole Christmas Machine whirring and grinding away, and the weather seems to be the only element that can slow it down. For a day or two, then it's back up to speed inhaling dollars and time and high expectations. I keep thinking "simplify, simplify, simplify" like a mantra, bring the circus down, keep your dollars and take care of yourselves, be in tune with the December Elementals of cold and wind and rain or snow. Be snug. Stay home. Don't be foolish about Nature and high waters. Mend something. Make soup and share it with people you're fond of. Tend your home fire.

Since You Asked

Thanks for the support, the waiting game is tough.

Still no word from Portland State University on my admission status.
My transcripts are all in, and I've already gotten a letter that had a student ID number on it, but it may have been regarding another student with my name and some previous PSU term grades. Of course, it arrived on a Saturday, when the office is closed, so I sent off an email asking them to please look into this ASAP so it doesn't hold up anything for me.

Classes start in 5 weeks!
Aaarrrrggghhhh!

Anyway, that's where I am with school, and will probably be able to meet with someone this coming week to get going with Registration and Orientation, etc. Then get a campus job and get going with my new life. Yesterday I talked to a woman close to my age who had her nursing school books spread out all over her workspace at a shop on Hawthorne, her anatomy final is this coming week, and she was cramming. We talked a long time about Life, and the timeless what-happened-during-my-20s-and-30s, and how it's pointless to regret past choices and what got in the way the first time. She said her hardest problem is wanting to be too chummy with her professors, being her peers, and not being a stand-out too much by answering all the questions out loud in class. I didn't ask her about the Mrs. Robinson Issue, maybe she's happily hooked-up, so she didn't mention it either. I'll have to just behave myself.

Speaking of... Consistent Mr. Torso sightings at the gym have me doing laps like Aqua Girl. He's in training, I overheard him saying the other day to the only other person under 60 with him near the pool besides me. Whatever gets me into the swimsuit and the water, whatever it takes. He's got to be under 30, which means I really need to get a grip and just admire the scenery.
Whatever. Like I told my pal Jolie, lucky for me he has a cheap hobby like swimming, all he needs is the goggles and trunks, unlike some people I know who have to own horses, rent the barn, buy the chaps and hat and gear, pay to show the horses, and you never get to see them (legally) smiling and relaxing in the hot tub almost naked. But she does have the hunky ferriers...

Sorry, my middle-aged lady got loose again, got to do something about that.

And I'm not going to Florida for the holidays, since Betty and I do the weekend 3 hour phone calls, we're pretty much caught up I think, and other than getting her computer set-up working at optimal level, there isn't much reason to fly me out there. Earlier this year I had thought about it, but that was so long ago, and now all I care about is getting into classes and arranging a job around that as best I can so I still have a life, time to study and write papers, and make stuff to sell. I'm going to get a portfolio of my stuff together, take photos, and shop it around the Portland Craft Mafias and see who wants to hook up with me, to supplement the Etsy site and focus on some local interest, too.
The Oregonian did a nice article on the hand craft movement here in town, and how high-profile it is becoming nationally, encompassing re-use, reduce, recycle and how to support local shops and craftsters instead of going zombie-like to the mall to have your brains and wallet sucked dry. One December night a few years ago, I came home zombie-like from my store at the mall, poured a tall tumbler of Merlot, and spent about 90 minutes being Santa and took care of Christmas all at one sitting. Didn't even need to refill my wine glass. What a relief that was, all shipped, all done. Ho ho ho.
This year I took the hand-made pledge. Hopefully they'll forgive me.

Regroup Again, With More Feeling!

There was one entire sad day last week when I discovered I didn't get any of the jobs open at the Glorious Stained Glass factory. Not the manager's job, and not even the sales job, and the "thanks but no thanks" letter must have been mailed within 24 hours of that last interview, when they had another four days left until their deadline for making a decision.

Blue blue day, a half hour of stunned silence, then the rest was the swamp of dejected shadowy disappointment.

However, by the end of that day, I had circled the wagons and then set off in an entirely new direction, left the paved roads completely and blazed trails towards ----going back to school.
Started the online part of it, and the next day got the Portland State course catalog and schedule for January 2008, and sent off for transcripts, test scores retrieved from the electronic bowels of the ACT and SAT (skip PSAT) warehouse of students of the 1970s, and felt so much better.

By Friday I had had many of my questions answered by Jane Sproul at the Women's Resource Center Continuing Education Office, and I now have a sensible chronology of what to do when and what's next.

I get so psyched I can't fall asleep the past few nights, until I haul out the course catalog one more time and go over the requirements (Freshman Inquiry??? WTF???) and the tagged pages in the Anthropology and History sections, skimming Business and English/Writing, and what the different Masters' programs look like. Then I doze off thinking of studying and sitting in class again and taking notes....zzzzzzzzz until morning.

This does have a huge impact on the job search, obviously. A high-powered manager's job for only the next two months is not so hot of an idea, unless I can't get admitted until Spring or Summer Term, then that route is the way to go. If I can get admitted in time for the January 7th 2008 start of classes for Winter Term, then that $12/hr temp office thing is the way to go.
Or the mindless holiday cashiering job at any local retailer. If I'm starting school in 8 weeks, I don't care as much who's nametag I'm wearing, suddenly my Sense of Meaning is strung to a very exciting comet of finishing my degree, a solid gold Get Out of Jail Free Card, $200, Pass GO!!

Monday morning (right after Pet walking and feeding) I'm hitting the admissions and financial aid office to sign in for appointments to get more answers, and hopefully by the end of the afternoon have a rounded-out idea of a "YEA" or a "NAY" on a January start. If I have to wait a term or two----not my preferred choice, but at least I'll know and set my teeth on the bigger bone. Head down, make cash happen, stay focused on deferred gratification, still good.
If I can start in January, my neighbors will think I won the Powerball lottery, I'll be running around and screaming until the police arrive.

Winter in School, it's been 25 years since I've done that, but all intuition lights are full on green for it, all reaction by friends and family has been positive, and Jane Sproul was optimistic. I could work in the PSU Bookstore---who there would be more qualified than me?

I Miss Radio

You know, real radio, without 10 minutes every half hour of amped commercials, chatter heads filling every nanosecond of non-vocal intro and fadeout with inanities, overgrown adolescents trying to be Howard Stern in the morning, or the new dentist's office soundtrack of "smooth jazz".

Help. I thought I was alone out here. With mp3 players and portable CD players, a whole generation watching videos never needed radio, it was that talking crap their parents listened to when dropping them off and picking them up at school, "EN-PEA-ARR" holy holy holy. Or the right-wing-nut AM guys shouting at each other about family values and football. Obsolete.

For years, I had this idea of resurrecting radio theater, with sound effects and background music, character voices and serial stories, 30 or 60 minutes each week of pure audio adventure and movie in your mind. People gave me weird looks and shook their heads. "How would that make any money?" they asked dismissively. I was thinking how it would be great fun to introduce middle schoolers to it, with the whole "studio" experience so there would be some unknown territory for them to be awed by and then learn to master, grow confident, and have some secret swagger to take to high school with them. "I know how to mike sound effects and shrill character voices," she said a bit smugly to her guidance counselor. Kind of like Steamboat Punk, leaning back onto older technology and see what it can do now, make it do new things now, revive it for a new generation.

This summer, I had this vision of "Old Fashioned Porch Nights", with some strings of icicle lights glowing, a bunch of neighbors sitting on a wide porch after sunset listening to some old radio show recordings (mp3 or CD) and old big-band music, and talking, sipping cold beer or wine, knitting, mending, reading the paper or even laptopping, no agenda, no plan, just folks and some low-key leisure. People I shared the idea with nodded and said they thought it was a great idea, kinda odd but weird in that Portland-kind of way, "You should do it!" they said. Remember the whole Utne Reader magazine "salon" thing from the 90's? Great idea, no legs.

The other day it hit me that having no real radio in my world has left a huge gaping hole in what I have always considered my foundation identity. Ye-gads, why has it taken me this long to realize it? I don't know really, having OPB and 89.9 and KBOO just wasn't exactly hitting it for me. For all the years working for the Big Book Store, we had new music coming out our ears, and played a revolving playlist every open moment and the really good stuff before and after hours. You got to hear music from co-workers you would have never found on your own, and the best of local heroes who play around town. I took it for granted, completely.

Now that I solved the puzzle, I took immediate action. Not willing to sell my soul and remaining self-employed dollars to iTunes, I started searching for the best of what had to be on Internet Radio, and I found one that has pleased me very much. The name implies its philosophy, and I'm not endorsing it for any reason other than it has served me nicely so far, and I hate to keep secrets about something this inalienable-rights-ish and easy to share: Slacker.com Rules!

No, they don't have old radio shows, I'm still on my own there (for now) but they do have a pretty broad assortment of music and the gadget to make your own list of stations and play any version of the Way-Back Machine you feel the need to indulge. And unlike playing a stack of your fave CDs or iPod playlists, you get to hear random songs by random artists so the whole tedious predictability of spinning your own tunes is blasted out of the water. WOW---the randomness of Real Radio, and no videos to distract you from what you're doing or supposed to be doing, leaving you free to work or whatever. The magnitude of that alone made me feel as if I had rediscovered electricity, and after a whole energized afternoon of productivity, I emailed my pal Jolie that it felt like a blood transfusion, "This is the missing element, why did it take me so long to figure it out??"

"That's what kids are good for, I get to hear it in the car everyday, happy you're back on it," she laughed, "I'm downloading the Slacker desktop player right now, thanks!"

So there's the feeling silly part, that it took me years to figure this out, but there it is. Fixed now. And no pesky commercials and robot DJs or idiot un-comedians. My productivity has quad-rupled, making the inner Boss Lady very very happy. "Back to work, slacker!"

No Shame and No Apology

NYTimes Dining Letters Re: Portland Restaurants: Golden Age of Dining and Drinking 9/26/07

Well, you know I have to run off immediately and buy copies at 7-Eleven and Fred Meyers so I can mail off the Dining section to Betty in Florida. I have to. Small and petty though it may be, I need to show her this, even though I can hear her comment from here--"What? It's not like you got paid for that."

And it is so abbreviated, and they left out the "See you at Pok-Pok!" which I thought was friendly and a genuine sentiment. Oh well.

More later, you know it.

Falling Water

Five pm and it's dark, blowing, rainy and cold.

Sorry to state the obvious, but I just needed more time to bid summer good-bye, and I'm not going to get it. There's some leaves stuck to the street, anything yellow glows supernaturally, and everyone is wearing their shoulders in the "up" position, total defense. I begin hearing the sawing of the strings in Vivaldi's Four Seasons, audio shadows, abandoned porches.

The grass looks great, as do the remaining dahlias, chrysanthemums, and the tawny gold hydrangeas. How about some snapping fresh-crop apples and a few caramels? That's much better.

The last two days I have spent in the belly of the bureaucratic beast, three hours one day and almost three the next, remembering a time when people grew or traded for most of their food and material needs, and wondering how to get closer to that myself. By the second day I was almost in a trance from the noise and frustrated hostility of the workers and their customers, and watching so many toddlers running around with circles under their eyes and gray skin. There were five people I saw reading the Jon Krakauer book "Into the Wild" which is a new Sean Penn film also, and the irony of it made me smile. Surreal bureaucracy and eccentric survivalist meet in the Oregon Job Search offices. Unexpectedly my caretaker instinct rose up, and I wanted to sit all those little kids down to a good hot nutritious home-cooked from scratch meal. No nuggets of any kind. There's my Mid-west again...

The change in weather has brought an abrupt end to the "outside on the porch" season, and for the distraction I find such weather to be, and it's all scrub-a-dub-dub indoors. Sewing, posting items on my online site, writing, going to the booth with more stuff, putting on a pot of rice and beans, start some soup. 'Portland Rain' is a scent you can find at 'Escentuals' on Hawthorne and also on NW 23rd, and it has that subtle fresh smell with a hint of spice and wet leaves, not too heavy, and perfect for this early Autumn time of year. What they don't (and can't) manage to capture in the scent's complexity is the occasional wave of thai wok from down the street and the chimeria in my neighbor's back yard, and the wet mulch from the garden. Or whatever else you smell in your part of Portland---pizza, headshop and fried chicken? Bio-diesel, burnt toast and coffee roasting? I'm not going to go into what the waiting room at Job Search smelled like.