ONE THING or the OTHER

/ janpriddyoregon

My 50th high school reunion is coming up in less than a week. It is actually our 51st graduation anniversary, but there was that pandemic. Actually, the pandemic is still raging, and locally it’s worse than ever with more cases daily than we saw in a month last year. I live in a tourism destination and we routinely see license plates from Texas and Florida, Georgia and Tennessee, not to mention plenty from Washington, Idaho, and California. Sometimes there are more cars from out of state than Oregon on the road. Who can blame them for coming?

Almost the entire PNW is suffering from fire or the smoke of blazing forests. Air quality was so bad in Portland last week, it was labeled “hazardous” to health and people were advised to stay indoors. The one grace is that smoke-polluted air makes for glorious sunrises and sunsets. The dawn and late afternoons have shown peach-colored suns. The color in this photo is not what my eye saw, which was quite red. Yet tourists persist in lighting beach fires, even in wind. The air is fine here, but you might think that people would consider climate change?

Tourism might be one reason we are currently seeing dozens of new cases in my county every day where last winter we might see one or two or none at all. People come here from all over. Some of them wear masks. Most do not.

So. My reunion. It is scheduled in a county in Washington that has almost three times as many cases per capita compared to where I live. The event is scheduled for an indoor venue at a country club. This is irksome because a) I dislike country clubs, b) it’s indoors, and c) the food will be not be memorable, which I have reason to know since Gary’s 50th was held there a few years ago. So. Do I go masked (as we’ve been asked to do) and then remove my mask to eat (as I would have to do)? Or do I sit in a lawn chair outside the entrance, greet my classmates in the open air as they arrive, and skip the meal altogether? We could sit in the shade and knit. I could venture masked into the ballroom briefly to see if there were any photos of interest. Or I could simply attend.

(I am very eager to attend because there are people I want to check in with. I was relieved to see one classmate on the “Who’s Coming” list because that meant he was still alive; I have not seen another, whom I tutored in Algebra, in 30 years; another high school friend is writing SF and I didn’t even know; and a fourth only became a friend on Facebook ten years ago, but I have not “spoken” to her since I left social media two and a half years ago.)

I missed the ten year reunion because I had just given birth. And I’ve missed most of the other reunions for one reason and another. This one I was determined to attend. But now?

What am I willing to risk and for what goal?

Another sunrise. It was, again, redder than it appears here to my camera’s eye.

In the mean time, there have been hundreds of new red-orange jellyfish beached during the past few days (they are the stinging species), I ran one and a half miles without much effort yesterday morning, baked baguettes for the first time—success!— and we ate them right off, a deer was in our yard in the middle of the night a few days back and left us fertilizer, and the three-man crew etching the new cement drive next door began spraying hydrochloric acid without masks or gloves. (Eventually, they all figured out they were dealing with a highly corrosive acid and put on protection.) The cloud of acid blew all over the neighborhood and my neighbor took all her bird feeders indoors and washed them.

I was reviewing a marvelous catalogue of textile art but found a curious typo. One artist credited “Pete Seger” with lines from Ecclesiastes that Seeger used in “Turn, Turn, Turn.” If you know the song, it’s probably the Byrds’ version you hear in your head (Gary and I both saw them back in the day). The editor in me could not let the errors go—despite my own frequent typos in this blog.

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,
And a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain,
And a time to lose;
A time to keep,
And a time to throw away;
A time to tear,
And a time to sew;
A time to keep silence,
And a time to speak;
A time to love,
And a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace.

—Ecclesiastes 3

Thanks to the yearlong “Bible as Literature” class I took some time ago, I know the Bible contains genealogy, narrative, history, parable, and most notably, poetry. The above is from the King James translation, which was created, we now know, with input from scholars all over Europe and was deliberately crafted to be beautiful because the translators believed that the word of God should be beautiful.

FUN FACT: My neighbor Mary Jo knows a lot about bees. She told me the other day that male bumblebees sleep outside on “platters” because they are not allowed into the hive at night. That explained why I’ve been seeing bumblebees first thing in the morning, seemingly comatose on the wide flat flowerhead of dusty miller and also in the salal. I actually picked one up while picking salal! Scared heck out of me at first, but the bee did not seem to wake. Later, once the world lit up and warmed, the bumbles went about their business.

We are fond of all the wild, willful, wonderful life around us.

Forgot to mention the wedding that happened yesterday next door.

UPDATE: The fire this couple lit last night was still burning the next morning. Unattended. It would have burned till tomorrow but Gary put it out.

Another unattended fire also burned all night a few hundred yards away while most of the state suffers hazardous air quality. They burned everything they could find, including the pretty drift that Gary used to line our path in the spring.

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25 thoughts on “ONE THING or the OTHER”

  1. Go. Create an impromptu outside alternative. The people worth talking to will join, might even be glad. $0.02. Feeling pessimistic. This is not going away. Change, reduce (crosses fingers)? Yes. Go away? No. Gonna have to figure out how to live with/around it.

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    • Go away? No, since too many people fail to vaccinate, it will become endemic. I read an essay in The Atlantic by an OB/GYN, and he was so discouraged that people are allowing this to happen, actually causing it to happen. Three teachers just died in Florida (?) within a 24 hour period. A father beat up a teacher because he was angry the school had masked his child. All of this is unnecessary if not downright stupid-crazy.

      Now, children are showing up in Texas ERs with a double whammy of covid + another virus, RSV: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/12/texas-rsv-covid-19-childrens-hospitals/

      Either of these alone is not usually too serious for a child, but together they are very dangerous.

      During my 40 years as a high school teacher, I had a chair (twice) and a padlock thrown at me, and I was bullied, yelled at, and belittled (at length by parents unhappy about a grade) simply for doing my job. I cannot imagine being a teacher today and suffering attack (verbal or otherwise) for trying to keep students alive and healthy.

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  3. I think sitting outside is a wonderful idea. Bring chairs that have a little folding table with it so you could get your food and bring it outside. Does the room have high ceilings and good ventilation? The way I understand it is to avoid the COVID-19 clouds. And it is recommended to leave a store within 15 minutes to reduce exposure. What will the chair spacing be inside? Once you go in there you could tell within 15 seconds if you want to sit outside or not.

    Bumblebees are cavity nesters. The female bumble bees create their colonies in pre-existing cavities underground or cavities in trees. They prefer abandoned rodent burrows or sheltered areas underneath piles of brush, rocks or logs and locally overwintering queens have been found in the Sitka tree duff near the base of the tree. A neighbor of mine found a bumble bee colony last year in his abandoned bird house. A queen will start the colony and once she has enough workers she will stay in the nest and lay eggs while her workers go out to forage for pollen and nectar. Male bumble bees cannot sting!

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  4. My grandfather from Finland used to say if it’s not one thing—it’s the same thing or the Althing.
    Reunions are difficult when there wasn’t cohesion to begin with.
    Glad to go happy to went—next to
    last line of Turn, Turn, Turn
    I hope it’s not too late!
    thank you, Rickenbacher!!!

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  5. Perhaps I have mentioned before that I went to four high schools. In my senior year, I was uprooted from a school I really liked. So back to Chicago to a school I detested!. I don’t do reunions, but it must be nice for those who do. I wanted my kids to grow roots in Bryn Mawr and love where they were. I think it worked.

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    • It is very hard on kids to change schools at any age—harder at some ages than others. Though moves are generally unavoidable, children have reported that moving and changing schools was harder for them than their parents divorcing! That may be because parents recognize the impact of a divorce, but might not realize how other social changes affect their children.

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  6. If it were me going to that reunion, I’d opt to stay outside. Bring comfy chairs, a folding table (as someone already suggested) and your knitting. But what about fires and the heat? Maybe being outside won’t be comfortable, but I can’t imagine being indoors with a lot of people even if they were all vaccinated and masked. No doubt Florida residents are spreading COVID here, there and everywhere. It sure isn’t the immigrants coming up from Mexico. The Miami Herald had a heartbreaking story of two (?) young mothers dying from COVID, one just hours after giving birth. Governors like Abbott and DeSantis are requesting federal assistance but can’t bring themselves to mandate mask wearing. Such hypocrites. It’s also perplexing since it’s their own political base that’s getting sick and dying.

    I’m still surprised that there isn’t any kind of code enforcement at the beach given the current fire risk. Is there any way to shame people into putting out their fires or just not starting them at all?

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    • The last time I tried to get someone to put out a beach fire (during an actual burn ban) the tourists laughed at me. I called the police and the out-of-state owners have never forgiven me. (It was the owners’ job to be aware and tell their tenants about fire regulations.)

      Nowadays I do not feel safe telling anyone anything.

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      • When we had a rash of burglaries thirty years ago, or so, the local sheriff’s deputy suggested in a community meeting that we arm ourselves. It was astonishing advice given the worst a burglar had done was break a window to get into a house and steal a radio. (And everyone suspected a local teenager.)

        When I was followed down the beach by a man threatening: “I’m going to f–k you up”, people wondered why I did not call the sherif. The answer is simple: there might be only one officer on duty, and that person might be patrolling on highway 30, more than an hour away.

        When we first moved here, our immediate community was either full time resident or a few weekenders. Now, many of the houses are becoming rentals, often with out-of-state owners who only want to make a profit. Three bedroom homes are rented to twelve people. They are not allowed to rent to more than one party in a seven-day period, but that requirement is generally ignored, so the turnover can be pretty overwhelming. And they are not held to the same standards that an actual motel- or hotel-owner is required to follow.

        …but I am whining again.

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      • Good grief! Perhaps time to take a refresher personal defense course? Perhaps a good rock to the idiot’s knee or another part of his anatomy…should he get too close to you. Scary =^..^=

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      • The guy liked bullying a woman forty years older and considerably smaller than he was. (Also fair to add that I started it by knocking on the door about their beach fire during a burn ban.) I will admit, the experience damaged my faith in people’s good will. Fortunately, when Gary doubled back to see what was going on, he told the guy to clear off, and he did.

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  7. Since you want to go, you should. I wouldn’t drive 25 miles to my 50th reunion (we didn’t have one so it’s a moot point), because I have no connection with the 50 or so who remain from the Class of 1970. But, that’s me. I hope you go and you tell us how you connected with those people from long ago.

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    • Thank you for this. I’m sure you’re right, but it’s a long drive (4+ hours). Instead, I’ve messaged the people who entered a profile on the website and even heard back already. Some people have remained in contact all these years, but a few have died, and several I thought I knew well once upon a time have vanished. Several friends, like me, have decided it’s not worth the risk and decided not to attend after all, even after paying for tickets.

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    • My class was the largest ever with over 600. Barb was gone years ago and I still don’t know how, Tom in our first couple of years of college (and I do), and maybe Randy is gone because I can’t find any trace of him . . . and AIDS. But yes, drugs, accidents, disease, wars. The last time I did an internet search for Randy I found his name in the news—shifting emotions from Wow! he’s alive, to No! he died in a car accident, to Sigh, it’s a different man with the same name. Anne and Janet and Ellen are not on the list at all. Bob in in Texas and isn’t interested in looking back. I fear the people who show will be all the people I barely remember or who are unvaccinated because . . . you know.

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