Visitors

  

Kathe

Lisha

Secretly  happy to be sitting

City goat

   Our longtime friends Kathe and Lisha left their sheep ranch in Colorado to visit us here in the rainy Northwest.  They are superb shoppers, so that's what we did.  They scoured the antique shops of Sellwood for brooches, while I peered over their shoulders and Judy pretended to wait impatiently.  Even though Lisha is a real farmer, they were interested enough in urban radical homemaking to visit the Portland Homestead Supply store with its equipment for making cheeses and soap and canned fruit.  Judy played with the resident goat.

New clothes

   They insisted that I needed new clothes, and made me try on many new styles that stretched me out of my Land's End comfort zone.  I was not allowed to look at the housewares until I had found something new to wear.   We took up residence in the dressing rooms. I was in one room with too  many garments, Kathe was seated in the doorway of one opposite room,  and Lisha in the doorway  next to it.  They played What Not to Wear, making comments and laughing and judging  everything I tried on.  A woman looking for blazers modeled several for them, and asked their opinions.  Then a young teenager wanted their help choosing from among three scant black sequined prom dresses.  When we finally emerged from the fitting rooms, the attendant was still laughing, and told us we had made her job fun.
     At home, Judy and Kathe played ukuleles.  We had long meals filled with conversation and laughter. All the while, our other house guest sniffed about, looking for opportunity.

Lexie

     Lexie is living with us for a month while her owners travel.  She had come to Ruth and Ed as a rescue dog, who cowered under the sofa whenever company visited them.  When Ruth's  living room was crowded with musicians,  Judy was the only one who could lure Lexie out from her hiding places.  For about a year she would stick only her head out to be petted.   Then she began to sit on the couch next to Judy.

Friends for life

      The first time Lexie stayed with us, she didn't eat for three days, and  hid under the hearth.  This time, she gobbled her food right away, and spends her time wedged in next to Judy in the rocking chair. She wriggles all over, tail wagging, whenever Judy comes into the room.   She demands to be let out to protect the back forty from squirrels, and barks ferociously at anyone who comes to the door.  She yaps at us to tell us that it's time for the whole family to go to bed, and rolls  over insistently  to have her stomach scratched.  She is turning into a real dog.  I think that she and Judy have a dog and foster mother resemblance.

Life in the Ninja Castle

Ninja Castle from creek side

   Maxine's new house is so big and so dark at night that she calls it the "Ninja Castle."  I visited the castle last week to help David take care of Maxine and Simone while Courtney was  in Vermont with her college girl friends.

1950s kitchen design still works

Spectacular dining room

     The new house is a mid-century modern rambler,  designed in 1956 by the head of the architecture school at Texas A& M.    It's big, but the rooms are all in good human proportion, and the flow still works smartly for a family in 2012.  There is a creek at the back of the property. A group of boys next door have made swings and forts along the banks. Maxine can run across the back lawn, wade the creek, scramble up the other bank, and be at a playground.

Maxine busy with Aunt Mary Beth

Maxine outside her new room

    Maxine's new room sports a bed with purple sheets.  (After I slept in them she wanted to know if I felt purple. ) All the bedrooms open up to a deck, with views of the woods and the creek.  Maxine danced on her deck in the fairly wings and tutu I gave her.  Then we walked around the neighborhood, Maxine waving her fairy wand at the Halloween decorations.  We knocked on the door of the one person she knows, and walked up the driveway and introduced ourselves to a family sitting on their porch.

Simone not unhappy

Simone happy

     Simone was  all smiles, gurgles and squeals until about 9 o'clock the first night, when she woke up  in her crib and realized that her mother was gone. ( I hadn't learned yet the delicious truth, that Simone falls asleep in my arms and then needs to stay on my arms or next to me all night long.  None of this sleeping in a crib stuff.)   When I finally got her calmed down and tried to lay her in the crib again, there was  a roll of white silk on the sheet.   I was not surprised to discover Tibetan texts inside the fabric.

Thinley

Khempo

     David and Courtney have two Tibetan lamas living with them.  Thinley has been with them for three or four years.  Khempo, a retired teacher  and scholar from a large, thousand-monk monastery, has just arrived in August.  David arranges  for the monks  to speak at university religion and anthropology classes.  He interprets for them Buddhist meditation sessions and retreats. He also helps to translate some of Khempo's books into English.
     While Simone was crying, Khempo was consulting his books.  He chose certain texts to comfort a baby whose mother is gone, and placed them quietly in her crib.

Conversation pit

Altar

     The Ninja Castle has one very large rectangular  room, designed as a combination living-dining room.  The end with the built-in china cabinets is now an altar and meditation space.  Khempo works on his texts sitting on the floor at a small table.  Although he and Thinley share the fourth bedroom and the guest bathroom, Khempo sleeps on the meditation rugs in this large room.   Wooden folding doors  shut the room off from the rest of the house at night, and on Sunday afternoons when the Buddhist group meets there.  The rest of the time, Simone  can wriggle and twist on her play mat on the thick carpet, and Maxine can romp in the Mad Men-era conversation pit at the other end of the room.  We put the great spaces of the new house to good use.

Simone at 5  months

Farm wife time

Michelle's pear tree

Michelle's pear jelly

     It was October when I first moved to Oregon.  I walked down rural roads crowded in on either side by vines heavy with ripe wild blackberries.  "Why doesn't somebody pick them?"  I asked my landlady.  "Make pies out of them and market them back in DC as Marion Barry pies--that would be a clever joke."  She didn't even try to stop herself from laughing.

      I learned early on to check my gee- whiz wonder at trees laden with apple or pears, not even in orchards but in somebody's yard or leaning out over  country lanes.  It took me years, though, to quell the urge that arises every year at this time.   I think that I should Do Something with all that delicious fruit.  My inner farm wife threatens to put on her apron.

Michelle and Eeyore

Even her driveway  overflows

     I have a good model in my neighbor Michelle, who raises the chickens that provide  us with eggs.  Michelle named all her girls, long before Portlandia made jokes about the provenance of chickens.  When Eeyore broke her leg, she sported a cast until it healed.  Michelle's hens have won blue ribbons at the Clackamas County fair.  So have her jams and jellies and quilts and pumpkins.  Every week when I pick up eggs I see Michelle's  solid and confident happiness with the steady, demanding art  of producing  food and useful household goods.

Berries have soaked for 6 days

       But can I really do much of that?  Are you kidding?  I learned to can under the tutelage of my friend Karen, whose high school Home Ec teacher recognized her as a great domestic talent.  After  that summer weekend  of canning with Karen, I tried it on my own.  The blackberry jam didn't jell and the peaches were much too sweet.

Boiling with sugar

Raspberry vinegar

    These days I limit my ambitions. I make  applesauce in half-pint Mason jars,  because it's difficult to find organic applesauce for sale in anything but huge glass containers. I bottle  a batch of raspberry vinegar every five years or so.     Everything else I buy from Michelle.

Church lady outdoors

Not even close

Stones for grinding logs into pulp

     I  admit it; I am probably a church lady.
     I joined the small choir at Atkinson Memorial Church this year. Our director is a former opera singer, a superb teacher of voice, and a great soul.   She is relaxed but exacting in rehearsals.We sing songs from all over the place, geographically, topically,  and musically. (It is a Unitarian Church, after all.)  I like the diversity, except  the practice of  encouraging white people to clap in church.

9 lenses on the world

     I started an Enneagram discussion group at the church last  year, which will continue monthly beginning in October.  Enneababbling is one of my favorite pastimes.   I hope the sessions  will someday take on a life of their own, so I can enjoy them.  In the meantime, running any kind of group is daunting --I am a good guide but not a teacher, and group dynamics feel like a runaway train to me.  This year, my friend Skyler, who is a certified Enneagram teacher, will co-lead with me.  
   I also agreed to help plan some of the services, to choose readings and entrance prayers, to give sermons occasionally, and to write opening words   that will support and blend with the minister's sermon.  For this coming Sunday, the topic of her talk is, "A Foolish Consistency," about the religious values at the root of being able to change our minds.  Now, what am I supposed to do with that?

Whitman

Beautiful Willamette

     For a month, I have been mulling it over.  My new background music is Walt Whitman's line, "Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large, I contain multitudes."

Great blue heron

     In February and March I will be glad that I set up these activities that get me out of the house and among people.   Meanwhile, I hate to be inside. All I want to do these bright blue fall days  is to  be outside  soaking up the last of the sunlight.  September and October are the months for short trips around the Northwest, when I greedily look at all the colors before they dim out under the gray sky.

Canby ferry from the water

What kind of bird?

     These days are glorious. I took a boat ride up the Willamette River on Saturday from West Linn to Newberg.  We saw great blue herons and a bald eagle, and groups of geese just beginning to rise from the water to  form their Vs .  We had geologist  aboard, who talked about how the Missoula floods created the Willamette Valley.   We saw the Willamette Falls from the river, and the locks from the upstream, and the sites of log ponds and grinding stones that served the now-closed paper mill at the falls.
     Next week I will go  to Texas to see my little granddaughters.  At Halloween, I will be in Evanston with my grandsons.  Beats the open road, I think.

Forward

    

  
    
    


  

I spot a coyote

Judy at Maryhill

Heron sculpture at Maryhill

Barge and tug

Wind power

      We drove  a hundred miles up the Columbia River last week to the Maryhill Museum of Art, where  Judy played her autoharp along with twenty people strumming lap  dulcimers.   They serenaded  the museum-goers in the hub of the wheel-shaped  Native American exhibition.  They played all morning and half of the afternoon, while I sat on a bench in the shade and watched the barges of wheat being pushed by tugs along the river.

    The trip to the dry side of the Cascades Mountains was a homecoming of sorts for Judy.  She lived in Goldendale in the  1980s, when she was the medical/safety officer for a big aluminum smelter.  She also served on the fire crew that put out brush fires stated by sparks from passing trains.   The velvet browns  of the hills looked the same to her,  but the windmills along the ridges were a disconcerting sight.
  

Judy's cabin

Barn decoration

   We found our way through the Ponderosa pine woods to  the cabin Judy had  built, and the current owners graciously invited us in.  I admired the blue pine paneling.  Judy kept shaking her head and saying,  "Every nail.  I put every nail in there."  She showed me the pipes she'd laid to bring water to the cabin, and the insulated, cedar-lined outhouse.   She was gratified to find that the horse she'd decorated the barn with was still there after 25 years.

Judy and Lipizzan

    When Judy lived at Goldendale, she helped her friend June Boardman with the foaling and training of June's Lipizzan horses.  We visited June, and Judy got some good horse time.

Can you see it?

 Usually it is Judy who spots wildlife when we are out in the country.  She pointed out a juvenile bald eagle in all of his brown and white glory.  She spied deer in fields a quarter mile away.  She stopped the car in time to allow a covey of quail to cross the road in front of us.  But I was the one who saw the coyote.

Klickitat River

  

    We drove though the hills and up the Klickitat River, where the salmon were running. We passed a street sign for Fish On Lane. Judy explained that the fishermen stand either below a rapid, where the salmon pause to gather her strength to fight their way upstream,  or just above the rapid. The salmon  wait there to catch their breath before continuing.  "Like me, "  she said.

Celebrating

Mary's kitchen

Grocery in Klickitat

    We stayed two nights at the our friend Mary's vacation house in  Klickitat, Washington.  Mary, with her artist's eye, has turned a millworker's house into a bright and homey getaway.  Klickitat is small, three blocks wide and seven blocks long in the shadow of the lumber mill that shut down in the 90s.  Over the back fence Mary's neighbor told us with satisfaction that their high school  could field a football team this fall, while some of the nearby towns could only play a form of nine-man ball.  On Saturday evening the local grocery store celebrated its fifth anniversary in business  by putting on a free barbecue  for the whole town.  They offered us grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, homemade potato salad, rhubarb pie and chocolate zucchini bread.  A band played country music in the tiny grass park next to the rails-to-trails hiking path.  They were big enough to fill the whole town with with music: 5 electric guitars, a dobro, a mandolin, a fiddle,  and not one but two accordions.

Simone, 4 months old

     On Sunday morning we drove back downstream.   When we got  home we found that Courtney had sent us a photo of Simone at 4 months.

Market Days

   Janet's annual garage sale takes weeks of preparation.  First Janet cleans out her garage to make space for the merchandise.  Then her daughter and her mother and her sister and her friend Donna the antique picker all sort thought their households and storage areas to choose items to sell.  They make lots of trips to our cul-de-sac in order to store things in Janet's garage.  Judy and I add a few giveaways  to  the pile.  Janet and Donna spend hours pricing the jewelry and clothes and furniture.
    The night before the big opening, Robert and and Rob and Randy gather to set up tables and string tarps over them.  We hear laughing on into the wee hours as Janet and Donna finished up the pricing.  The early birds come very early, so this year  I headed over with my coffee to help a little and to grab my choice find:  a tent for Maxine to play in when she visits.

Janet's garage sale

     For three days Janet's mother Wauneta sat at the cash box.  One of her elderly friends spent an afternoon sitting there with her.   Janet's sister came and went, her husband and in- laws brought supplies and food, and Kelli and Donna talked to customers.  For Judy and me, there was always someone next door to visit with, anytime of day or evening.
     I hooted with laughter when Janet told me that she never made money on her garage sale.   Between the cost of advertising and the price of the pizza and drinks she feeds everybody each day, she just about breaks even.  "Why do you do it?"  I asked
    "It's a social thing," Janet insisted.

Jumble of donations

     The following weekend I worked at the church rummage sale, this year dubbed the Pink Elephant Bazaar.  This sale also took weeks of preparation by 40 or 50 people. We sorted and priced mounds of donations and displayed them by category.   We had a children's room and a room full of clothing all on hangers and a vintage and Christmas room.  Outside along the sidewalk  were stations for furniture, household items, and books.    As Bob Smith wheeled a donated toilet onto the sidewalk he joked, "We aim to please, and please aim."

Marion working at bazaar

     I find big events with lots of stuff confusing, so I asked the organizers to give me one simple job.    I stuck to the book sale.  I watched in awe  as Sheila and the other leaders made it all work.  Sheila,  who was a Keno runner in Las Vegas in a former life, circulated with her money belt to make sure everybody had just enough cash for change and not too much extra.  Alanya, the collector, kept an eye out for shoplifters.  The men of the church  were poised to move things on request. They became a well-oiled machine during the breakdown and clean up phase on Saturday.

Katie with kids' stuff

    As I struggled to keep the books upright and the customers' money straight, I ran the old screed about stuff through my head.  Just look at all this junk!  Who needs it?  Obviously, we didn't.  We work and work to keep our houses clear...  at this point I remembered the bag for Goodwill that my mother kept in her front hall closet.  She would try to pass the bags off on her five daughters.  The top of the bag would have things we might be interested in--dishes, scarves, blouses, etc--but we each learned to feel the bottom of the bag first.  My mother would try to sneak in books that way.  "No books, Mom, I don't need any more books!"..We work so hard to keep our houses clear, and still it accumulates!  Think of all the cheap female labor it took to produce these things, and all the free female labor it takes to pass them on!

Book sale

      I took a break from my inner rant to help a young woman who was exclaiming over a sewing book from 1972, with clear instructions and stylish black-and-white illustrations.  I looked at a copy of Cowboy Small with a grandmother, and reminisced with her about how much we loved to read it to our children.  I steered a big man who was interested in the Gnostic gospels to a book by Elaine Pagels. 
    Then I remembered  the quilt on our bed, the portable crib for the baby, the pinball game, the Disney Princess puzzle book for Maxine's visit, all bought at the rummage sale over the years.  OK, maybe these sales are one good way to recycle, to help people find useful objects at a low price.  But all that hauling and moving and cleaning!  Surely there's a more efficient way?  There must be a better way to raise money for the church...
    In the  evening people streamed from six  directions to the hill in back of the old Carnegie Library across the street from the rummage sale.  They set up their lawn chairs and blankets and broke out their picnics.  A band played oldies and bluegrass. There was free barbecue for the teens who help at the library, along with just a few speeches.  Children  scampered through the fountain as the sky turned pink in the west.
    I thought about market days in old Europe, and farm families who drove their wagons into town on Saturdays.  I know how important it is to me to leave the house sometime every day  beginning in  September, when the daylight  changes angles and no longer shines into our windows.  Honey and chocolate, stamps and coffee filters, dahlias and bacon rolls, all pull me  into the groceries and flower stands and bakeries to shop.  It is a social thing, and thank goodness for it.