Veterans' day

Our director, John Baker

At the concert

   When the director of the North Clackamas Community Choir said we were going to do a Veterans' Day concert, I didn't hesitate to sign on. My resident veteran is proud of her years in the Air Force, and I have great admiration for the way Judy has lived her life.  However, I suspected that it would be difficult to sing our planned program.
     I spent many years brushing off patriotic music, not wanting to stir any martial feelings in my teenage boys.  The era when I came to political consciousness had an influence on my music preferences, too.  We sang This Land is Your Land, but never, ever God Bless America.  The national anthem was confined to baseball games. ( I still automatically shout the O before "say does that star-spangledangled banner yet wave," in support of the Baltimore Orioles.)

With malice toward none...

      At our first rehearsal, I was stumbling and mumbling.  Finally I blurted out to the conservatively dressed Milwaukie matron sitting next to me, "It's hard for me to say these words." I expected that she would just look at me with polite wariness, but she replied, "Me too!  I'm glad I'm not the only one!"  I concentrated on one selection, called A Just and Lasting Peace, which uses the reconciling words from Lincoln's second inaugural address.
   At the concert, though, I was singing every piece with gusto.  The hall was packed.  I could see Judy rocking and singing along with the medley of Motown tunes that we sang especially for the Vietnam-era vets.  Toward the last, we sang the signature songs for each of the armed services.  The veterans from each branch stood when their anthem started, and the crowd clapped and clapped.  I had a hard time with the very easy alto parts, because I was so focused on the proud faces of the veterans.
    A few veterans come to the free food pantry where I occasionally volunteer.  They wait patiently for an hour or two until it is their turn to "shop" the aisles of canned beef stew and tuna helper.  My favorites are Stan and Red, who served in the Korean war.  Each one is "shopping" for two; I assume they have sick wives at home.  They tease and joke with each other about who makes the worse selections of groceries, and who is the worse cook.  Another vet was a pilot. He's had a stroke; his son pushes his cart around the aisles.  He wears a jacket on which his daughter-in-law embroidered the planes he flew.  What's that medal on your pocket?  I asked.  A purple heart.

Government surplus

House blessing

Bianca

Cole

      John and Rose and Judy and Mutt Leigh and I rode the ferry over from Sequim to Seattle to visit   my nephew Cole and his wife Bianca in their new house.  They have just moved from Boston in order to take positions at the University of Washington.  Bianca teaches theoretical math.   Cole runs a lab that maps genetic code and works closely with the Hutchinson Cancer Center about glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer.   Cole's mother Siobhan and her husband  Ernie were visiting from Maryland.  The wind was blowing fiercely outside, but Cole and Bianca have made the house warm and light and bright with stylish furniture.

A respite for Vonnie

Rose beams at Cole

    Mutt Leigh glommed on to Ernie.  John and Cole tested the wine. Siobhan is being worn to a thin frazzle by her work in infection control. ( How do you train 1600 employees to deal safely with
Ebola?) Judy sat on a chaise lounge in the sunny corner and watched Ernie pet Miss Mutt Leigh.  We all tried to figure out just what "formal wear" means on the invitation to niece Abby's wedding.  Cole made a good beef bourguignon, which we ate at the elegant, glass-topped table.  We talked and laughed for hours, never tiring of one another, while we tried not to be too obvious about beaming at these great young people.

6 hours of petting

Judy in the window corner

John beams at life

    When my father died ten years ago, we closed up the house on Duke Street,  where the family and practically- family had gathered  for dinner every Sunday.  My son Paul wondered how we would  all continue to meet.  "What will be the new Duke Street?" he asked.  Hanging out at Cole and Bianca's felt like old times to me.

My guys in Evanston

   "Come in October," Paul said, "before cold and flu season."  He is mindful about Judy's health.  So I went to Evanston for a long weekend in the bright Midwestern autumn. ( We here in the Northwest insist that we have fall colors, too.  Around Lake Michigan they have the whole gestalt.)

Jack's campaign poster

    After Tina picked me up at the airport, we went directly  to the boys' school to hear Jack's campaign speech in the race for student body treasurer.  Jack was the 26th of 29 children to speak.  He was poised and confident, and gave a straightforward but clever speech.  "Vote for me for treasurer, and I'll treasure your vote.  Remember, Jack's got your back."  It was a fine moment when he found out, via e-mail to his parents, that he had won.  I was relieved to see Jack looking healthy and upright and energetic, full of plans with his friends, after his awful 6-month siege with Norovirus last year.

Charlie on the field
   

   On Saturday, we watched Jack's flag football game and Charlie's soccer game, and then went to the local ice rink for Sammy's 6th birthday party.  Sam skated and fell and got up over and over again, never losing his game face as some of his buddies whizzed around him like ice hockey speed demons.  He blew out the candles on his cake and sang Happy Birthday to himself with gusto.  Sam loves to do art and crafts; Tina has set up an easel in a studio for him in the garage.  Sam and I painted peace symbols in various color combinations and taped them up on the walls.

Grandmother park, no guns allowed

   Evanston has a park every two blocks.  The ice arena is a part of the public park system, and is surrounded by soccer fields.  On Sunday, when Sam's team played, there were ten little-kid matches going on those fields.  I took a walk through  the nearby neighborhood and came across a pocket park dedicated to grandmothers.  The boys can walk to the end of their street to Mason Park, where Charlie's team got soundly outplayed (except for Charlie) at soccer.  Jack can meet his friends there to ride bikes, and Sam can find playmates on the swings.  At the park, or wherever he goes, Charlie becomes the center of a pickup basketball or football game.  In  summer Paul and Tina organize neighborhood cookouts at Mason Park.  Everybody walks.

Dewey school garden

School paper

    Early Monday I walked Charlie and Sam to school for their before-school chess club.  On Tuesday, they went early for chorus.  Charlie was talking about the special classes they have each day:  Monday is library, Tuesday music, Wednesday art, Thursday drama, and Friday something else I can't remember.  They have a young writers' club before school,  a school newspaper, and a garden.  I thought about the old song, Them that's got shall get.

Tina coaches Sam's team

   Jack does not walk to Dewey Elementary in the mornings.  He goes to the middle school for sixth grade math for the  first period, picking up three of his buddies along the way.  I was rejoicing in this Leave It To Beaver way of life, where an 11 year old can be the master of an expanding part of his kid world.  Then I saw the enormous, heavy backpack that Jack carries on his one-mile walk, and observed the amount of math homework he faces every afternoon.

Sam plays soccer

   On Monday Sam's kindergarten class had its first field trip, to the public library.  The library had three children's librarians on hand to greet the kids; one to take them on a tour, one to perform a story time for them in the private, dedicated story room, and one to do a craft with them.  After the story and the crafts, Sam sprawled on the floor reading a book to a classmate.  "His name is Owen, so I read him a book called Owen.  He didn't like it, though, so we read an Elephant and Piggy book."

Jack concentrates on his recipe

    There is a whole separate area  devoted just to children's crafts.  It has  low counters with built-in bowls and a long wall of storage cabinets and sinks.  As someone who struggled to staff children's programs with one children's librarian, and to set aside the library's one common meeting room for their story times, I was agog.  Such riches! There is wealth in Evanston, to be sure, but also a solid 150- year history of investment in the public good.
    I loved the quiet times I had with the family.  We played charades one  evening after one of Tina's delicious, creative dinners. Another night Paul lit a fire and we talked. Jack made his signature coffee /chocolate chunk cookies.  I played cards with Sam.  Jack and I read quietly by the fireplace every evening after the other boys had gone to bed.  I had surprising conversations with Charlie, who is curious and interested in other people in a way that I have seldom seen in a 9-year old boy.

Mutt Leigh and her lamb

   When I arrived home, Mutt Leigh greeted me.  She celebrated by fetching one of her toys and racing around the house with it, then settling at my feet and making the toy squeak.  She squeaked her lamby for twenty minutes straight (I looked at the clock.)   It was a better reception than a brass band could have given me.
   

Goldilocks

Metolius River, Camp Sherman

Judy at Camp Sherman store

Account books behind counter

    October has been a month of traveling.  We stayed in a cabin at  Camp Sherman, Oregon, a small town 3 hours away in the high desert east of the Cascade Mountains. It's dry country, where we smell the scent of Ponderosa pines rather than the heaviness of Douglas fir.  The light is different, too, shining on the reddish bark of the pines.  The Metolius River, a fly-fisher's dream, runs through Camp Sherman. When she was a young surgical nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital, Judy rented a house in from a couple who owned the Camp Sherman store.  Judy spent many of her free days helping out at the store.  The store looks a lot like it did 35 years ago, with cases of fly-fishing lures, and a cabinet of notebooks containing the accounts of locals who buy on credit.  It houses the community's post office and gas station.  From the bridge over the Metolius just in front of the store, we watched salmon and steelhead  trout migrating up the river below us.

Sign on the door of  Camp Sherman store

     We have been attempting to make this trip to Camp Sherman for two years. Twice we have had keys to the cabin in hand, and cancelled at the last minute because of wildfires in the area.  This time there were no fires reported, but we kept a careful watch on the sky. While driving the ten miles back from a side trip to Sisters, we noticed wildfire smoke to the south.  Judy, from long practice, could tell that the fire was on the other side of the Three Sisters mountains, and that the smoke would be likely to dissipate before it reached the road we were on.  It did.  However, Judy still struggled with her breathing, because of the altitude.  Camp Sherman is only  3000 feet above sea level; we were surprised that it was high enough to affect Judy's breathing.

At Camp Sherman

     I was eager to get her down from the mountain and on to our next trip, to Manzanita.  The ocean air at sea level will be just the thing, I thought.  We stayed home for 24 hours and then headed for the coast.  Judy and Mutt Leigh stayed at a motel while I participated in the cleanup weekend of the library cottage.  On Monday evening we moved into the cottage.  John and Rose joined us.

John and Mutt Leigh

The hated halter

     It was Mutt Leigh Mae's first visit to Manzanita, and the first time we needed to take her for walks.  (At home the fenced backyard is her territory, which she faithfully keeps free of squirrels and other monsters.)  We bought her a halter, which she hates, and a leash, and planned on taking her out into the front yard of the cottage.  John and Rose, however, took her for long walks up the driveway and around the neighborhood, poop bag in their hands.  Mutt Leigh pranced on ahead of them, eager in spite of the hated halter.  On our last morning at the cottage, I got up to take Mutt Leigh out.  John was eating breakfast at the table.  Miss M allowed me to put her halter on and attach the leash, but she balked at going outside with me.  She dug in her heels and put her whole 13 pounds into not moving out the door. Instead, she scrambled over to the breakfast table and practically attached herself to  John's feet.
     There was heavy fog rolling in from the ocean; it blanketed Manzanita most of the time we were there.  The moisture in the air caused Judy to cough and struggle for breath.  She need oxygen even more that she had at Camp Sherman.  When we got home to the Willamette Valley, the altitude and the relative humidity were what Judy is accustomed to. We were hopeful that her struggles were the result of environmental factors, rather than  marking a step downward to a new, more difficult plateau with her pulmonary fibrosis.

3:33. Fast for me

  Herta, our implacable strength training  leader, now presents us with a challenge every month.  In July we aimed to increase the time we could hold a plank position.  In August, we tried to increase the time that we could sit against a wall.  September's challenge was to decrease the time it took us to walk/jog around the quarter mile of Milwaukie High School track.

Not what I look like

Really not what I look like

   I am not a fast walker; in fact, I describe my preferred pace as regal.  My first time around the track was 4 minutes 37 seconds.  I improved by 15 seconds the second time, and began to think that maybe I could break four minutes.  Two sessions later, I had still not walked around the track in less than four minutes.
     I did notice that some women in our group jogged part of the way around the track. I  don't believe in running; it's really an  unnatural act, unless a wooly mammoth is chasing you.  However, when Sheila asked if I wanted to jog part of the way, I said yes.  "Do you want me to pace you?" she asked.  She walked with me, and, when I was ready to jog twenty paces, she said, "Do you think you can do twenty-five?"  So I did thirty, with Sheila right beside me cheering me on.  Walk, jog, walk, jog.  I completed the quarter mile in three minutes thirty-three seconds.  What a  difference a coach makes!

Me (tall one) in softball days

    From ages ten through fifteen, I played softball.  My father and Mr. Nelson were our coaches, teaching us girls the basics of how to throw, catch, field, and hit.  Our early CYO games had scores such as 46 to 0.  Sometime we were the 46, sometimes the 0. I was not a natural.  I could never throw far, but I was fast in those days.  Over the years, with lots of patient practice, I learned to be accurate. I developed into a good fielder and a dependable hitter.  I won a trophy, called the Ellen Mueller award, for overall athletics.  Our softball teams became a force to be noticed, and I loved the feeling of team play.

Linda ca. 1963

    One of my teammates, Linda, was a natural.  She was very strong, could beam the ball into home from center field, and was always our clean up batter.  She kept playing on regional teams after the rest of us had diminished ourselves into more feminine pursuits.  Forty-five years later, when my father was dying, Linda wanted to come over to see him.   She told him what playing softball had meant to her. "Thanks, Coach," she said.
     After Linda had said goodbye to my father, she and I caught up.  I told her about Judy, and how happy I was to have found her.  Here's the one question Linda asked me about my new love:  "Is she generous?"  Not the usual polite queries about a sense of humor or hobbies or shared interests, but "Is she generous?"
     I'm thinking now about the generosity of coaches, and I am grateful for the time they took to create a girls' softball league at a time when organized sports were the domain of boys.
   I had to boast to my kids about my breakthrough time of 3:33 around the Milwaukie High School track. David called me a speed demon, and Paul wrote, "Somewhere, Ellen Mueller is smiling."
 
   

Canary in the coal mine

   

Pit 36 fire

   We live on the wet west side of the Cascade Mountains, not on the dry side where the Pondersoa pines go up like kindling in summer wildfires.  But in this hot and dry summer, we have had a fire burning for 10 days along the Clackamas River in  Estacada, just 21 miles northeast of us.  The heat loosened boulders on the cliffs above the  road, and they rolled down.  Fire burned away all the vegetation from steep cliffs; landslides will be likely when the rains come.  Large trees with smoldering embers inside have fallen across smaller roads.  The fire is called the 36 Pit Fire, named after the abandoned gravel pit where the spark from target shooters' pistols ignited it.   It covered more than 5400 acres,  jumped the river, and closed a major road before the 1200 firefighters could get it under control. It is still smoldering.

Tree feller fighting fire

Animals in peril

  Our good friend Sally lives near Estacada; she was on high alert, ready to evacuate  with her horses and donkey. For the first few day of the fire, winds blew smoke an ash to the south of our house; then the wind shifted.  Ash fell on us like softly falling snow, and we wiped it off the cars  and patio furniture. There were two days when the smoke was so bad that my throat burned and my chest felt funny.  Judy did not dare step out of the house. We closed everything up tight and turned on the air conditioning.  Judy struggled with coughing and shortness of breath, and used her oxygen more than usual.  A week later, she can tell long before I can when the wind shifts and there is a faint smell of smoke in the air. The increased work of  breathing has worn her out.  She who never complains talks about exhaustion and sleeps for hours many afternoons.

The air we breathe

Homegrown tomatoes

     The extraordinarily hot and dry weather has been great for growing tomatoes.  Many years, tomatoes do not get red here before October, and gardeners hope they ripen before the first frost.  When I moved from Eugene to Newport,  my favorite parting gift was the one perfect tomato that my friend Izzy had managed to coax from her garden.  She presented it to me as the rare, precious thing that it was.  This summer neighbors and friends press tomatoes on us as if they were zucchini. Sheila brought fat red ones to distribute at exercise class.  Gail brought us rare heirloom types, Indigo Rose and Chile zebra and Cherokee purple.   Katie showed up at a women's dinner meeting with boxes of tomatoes, "Take more!  Take more!"  We came home last week to find a bag of large tomatoes and a bag of cherry tomatoes on our doorstep, stealth courtesy of our good neighbor Janet.  Even Holly, visiting around the Northwest in her RV,  had a spare tomato  to pass on.    I skin the tomatoes and freeze them.
    Be sure to visit us this winter.  The air will be clear by then, and we'll have stew.

Gardens

Gardener making patterns

Roxie, MJ, and Gene

    We were walking through the Japanese Garden, Roxie and MJ and MJ's mother Gene and I. Every blade of grass and patch of moss is attended to there, and every tree is lovingly shaped.  We watched a gardener drag a big heavy wooden rake across an expanse of shining white gravel.  She made patterns that would reflect the moon.  Roxie told us about tea ceremonies, and how the tea house becomes a sacred space.  "The labor is what makes this place sacred," said MJ.

Perry's raised beds

Lots of garden art

      Another kind of garden, also built by intense labor, graces a former dump in Sellwood. A man named Perry who mostly lives outside has worked over 4 years to clear the land.  He builds stone

Path through blackberries

pillars from the river rocks that he unearthed up when he tilled the soil for raised beds. Residents in the apartment house next door use the space as community gardens.  Perry has also  made a horseshoe pit and many seating areas.  He cleared blackberries (he calls them "stickers")

My feeble efforts

 into an arch leading to a long entrance path, and made an enclosure out of blackberries for the  more unsightly equipment and spare garden art that he collects. Called "Perry's garden" by the locals, and claiming pride of place on garden tours, this garden is a welcoming, evolving place.  When Roxie and I walked into it one of the community gardeners offered us jars of iced tea.  Every time I visit, Perry is eager to show me his newest project.

Perry

       Lisa has worked all summer to resurrect our garden.  She weeded and pruned and planted and set up a watering system for us.  She began to feel us out with some suggestions, "Maybe you could get some annuals for color out front and I will plant them."  She progressed to buying  plants on sale and putting them where they will look good.  Our garden has not looked so tended and beautiful in the fifteen years we have lived here.  This is the first time I have not felt both embarrassed and harassed by the huge amount of undone work in the yard.  What a joy, and what a relief!  Lisa will be back in the fall to plant and transplant.  Meanwhile, I hope we can maintain the garden with our level of involvement; minimal weeding, attentive watering, and buying plants.