Temperatures rose well over 100° in Portland yesterday (105-107°) but we are at the coast, and I am reminded of why my mother’s childhood was spent at the beach in her great aunts’ home. Portland is hotter in summer and colder in winter, and now the heat is higher. Temperatures here are stabilized by proximity to ocean. During the past forty-four years we have gone entire winters without frost, enjoyed summers with temperatures that never rose over 70° (that has changed). There was no electricity or running water during my mother’s childhood at the shore in the 1920s and 1930s, and the house was surrounded by mature spruce. Now we are surrounded by rental home.
Last night we were fussing about a daytime high in the eighties and the internet being slow.
Times change.
Other weather has changed, but ordinary standards of behavior are changed. Bragging to someone about violation, bragging that we could commit an act of violence without altering voter loyalty, threatening violence—these are the acts of schoolyard bullies writ large. In my mother’s lifetime, such behavior on the part of a public person in America was unthinkable. In my own youth, even accusations of such behavior was enough to force resignation and shame.
Times change.
…[Trump] set out to defraud the United States of American and the citizens of our nation. He used tactics of harassment, intimidation. He made threats. He and his allies went after state officials, local officials responsible for conducting elections. Now we know they even went into voting machines in order to determine whether or not those voting machines had somehow been breached when they were the ones actually doing the breaching.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton responding to news of the most recent indictments on the Rachel Maddow Show
She described the former president being embroiled in legal problems as a “terrible moment” for the country.
“The only satisfaction may be that the system is working,” she said. “All of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies, and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light and justice is being pursued.”
In the privacy of their own heads, most of us think terrible thoughts from time to time. We are selfish or angry or spiteful. A child in a fit of pique might tell a mother “I hope you die” or “I hate you.” Such statements are to be forgiven. They come from a person too young to recognize the hurt and indeed the untruth of their own words. Among adults, there is less excuse for violating ordinary standards of decency. We might think evil, but keep it to ourselves. Most of us do not voice those thoughts or act on them, I would like to think, because we know it would be wrong. With money and power and influence, most of us would still not act on our most selfish and cruel impulses. We do not brag about them. We actually believe we should be good, better than our worst impulses.
I would like to believe that.
Most of us would recognize we are being lied to and judge the person making absurd or unkind or otherwise vile statements. We would judge that person. We would find that person wanting in common decency. Those of us who profess faith might sorrow for that person’s sins.
We would not vote for them.
It is disheartening to me that anyone still supports that … person.
Most Americans didn’t, haven’t, and won’t.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
It is easy to find good things, good people and goodness when we look for them. Eyes and ears can see and hear what we choose and we can choose not to listen to those who delight in trading in lies and disinformation. Shutting them down and out, not giving them press and oxygen would be my preference but bad news travels fast and sells. I fantasize the press having to balance the bad news with good news instead of one heart touching story amidst so much pain and suffering. OK, enough already. Keep up your good work and writing and sharing, much appreciated.
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Thank you, Gary! [I thought at first you were “my” Gary.] Yes, let’s move that good news to the top of each news cycle.
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Great idea to start with good news first instead of ending although there’s value in leaving with a good taste rather than bitter. Wonder what better choice is when someone says, I have good news and bad news, which do want first?
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Ah! There you got me. I always want the bad first. Deal with the hard stuff, then rejoice in the good.
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Not really on the same changes you are discussing in your post, but a change nevertheless in my tiny world. The Baskin Robbins ice cream store on the corner in our neighborhood, the one that has been there for 40 years, the one where I bought ice cream birthday cakes for daughter and husband, the one where we took our tiny granddaughter and she ate 3 scoops of ice cream. Gone. It appears to still be an ice cream store, called Scoops, but that’s not the same. Changes…
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I go out early for my runs wherever I am, nearly always. The most distressing change for me is the number of houses and people locally at the coast. When I was a girl, no one had heard of this community, now everyone thinks they know it. Even mid-week in winter, there are people trying to build fires onshore when the wind should have warned them not to try. Just now we have a red alert and there are fires, even though it’s too warm for a fire and dangerous to boot!
But yes, I get that about stores. I remember when I first heard of Baskin Robbins, when it was a new store to me (founded in the 1940s in California—I looked it up). Closer to home, I remember Frederick and Nelson at Aurora Village which was bought by Marshall Field, and then vanished altogether—my mom and I shopped there throughout my childhood; a good friend’s mother worked there; Fringe chocolates that we bought for Christmas; they sold fabric and I made skirts and dresses from their fabric (remember when department stores all had a fabric department?); and Mom and I laughing and laughing up and down the escalator—that memory especially.
The Seattle-based Jay Jacobs and Bon Marché (now Macy’s), and Portland’s Meier & Frank—gone too. I have treasured stories about each of those stores. My dad, who hiked the Olympics, had a two-digit membership number for REI. These were all locally-founded businesses in the PNW.
My husband and I accidentally drove into the Aurora Village parking lot just before the pandemic and it was unrecognizable. We didn’t know where were were till we left and found road signs. All the stores I loved and knew were gone long ago, but everything torn down and rebuilt… The little bookstore, caramel corn, Woolworth’s, Ernst Hardware—stores now completely gone. My grade school shoes came from Nordstrom (which now occupies the original flagship Frederick & Nelson building in downtown Seattle) when it only sold shoes, then bought Best Apparel (1963) and sold clothing and that was my very first credit card when I was in college. “Give the lady what she wants.”
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Sigh. All so true! Thanks for the pretty photo! Good to keep aware of the beautiful too in all this.
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And document it all. Ha!
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I remember Anatevka—at least I think I remember
as long as we remember,, the village lives
the garden grows, and from the doors and windows
flows love and hope
perhaps this will see us through
we will see—hold on to your hats
toda-tevye
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