FOOT by FOOT

June 27, 2025June 28, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

Everything is blooming here, other than things that are already nearly done blooming. In the front yard the wild roses and rhododendron and irises are done, but Pink Grootendorst is still setting new buds and so is my favorite double white rugosa. The honeysuckle and salal are still in flower, and the ceanothus is covered in bees, and the other flowers are getting close to opening. Lucifer looks like it will pop a week or two early this year. [I try not to notice the red lines under three botanical names my computer thinks I’ve misspelled.]

The northern half of the front garden. There is a massive lacecap hydrangea at the south that you can’t see. It’s covered in green buds that, in a few weeks, will open up to blue. The richly scented Blanc Double du Coubert and another highly scented pink single are out of the frame too. Three clay pots, two with herbs, and one with a volunteer viola that’s come back for years. We continually fight the ivy and the neighbors’ invasive single red rugosa rubra.

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SHOOT

June 25, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

In 1972, I drove across the country with my grandfather’s third wife Genevieve to a sheep farm in Kansas. I had never been over the Rockies before that. Vietnam was at war, I learned to spin wool that summer, and when I got back Gary and I moved in together on the 4th of July. We would both be Juniors at the University of Washington that fall.

But in June, Gen and I crossed the plains. It felt foreign-strange to me to see no mountains on the horizon in any direction—no mountains at all in the last days headed to Kansas. All around, open sky. At one point, we pulled over to the side of the highway while a storm passed overhead.

I spend a lot of time looking at sky, have done for most of my life. When I was young, I didn’t want what my dad teased my mother about: Five secluded acres in the middle of town. I wanted to be far away in forest. But then we moved to the edge of the continent, and I began watching the sky.

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KYLENE BEERS

June 21, 2025June 26, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

Heroes aren’t my thing—I resist heroics, but I do have a few people I hold in my heart. Sojourner Truth is always the first. Many authors. Many people I’ve never met. And Kylene, who I met and then followed online for thirty years. She was an inspiration to me and many other teachers—the only academic I’ve ever met who gave precedence to actual teaching.

Over the years, I took too many education classes and workshops from people who failed to practice what they were teaching. Kylene Beers continued to teach kids while teaching teachers and serving as editor of an NCTE publication. It can’t have been easy.

Kylene Beers was the real deal. She practised what she preached. All honor to her life. She died yesterday. September 16, 1957 – June 20, 2025

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JUNE NINETEENTH

June 19, 2025June 20, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.*

Years ago, our son’s orthodontist commented to me that our sons were similarly handicapped when applying to college because they were white boys. He smiled, a virtual nudge-nudge, we’re in this together, right? His son’s application to dental school had been denied, he said, to make room for Black students. So he said. I generally had walked away from such comments, and I didn’t want to annoy the man fixing Alan’s teeth, but I didn’t walk away that day. I turned back and told him off with calm reasoning. [Should his son be advantaged in admission to dental school because his father had gone? Because his father was white? Was my son unqualified as Salutatorian for undergraduate study? Had this man looked at the numbers? Who did he think he was? I was angry and it was a long time ago. I don’t remember exactly what we said to one another. I am angry thinking about it now.]

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WORRY

June 9, 2025June 9, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 9 Comments

It’s true I am inclined to worry. My mother was a worrier and actively taught me all the tricks and habits of an active worrier. I worry about my husband dying, about the welfare of our sons and their eventual retirement, the grandchildren and other family members. I worry about friends living in red states and my friend who just sold her last floor loom because I have never known her not to have one. It worries me.