Month: September 2025

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

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I may be repeating myself here. I found this essay on my computer, and it’s mostly about my novel, which I’ve been writing about too often and will remain my obsession until I start another one. I’ve finished three book reviews and two short stories recently, found a draft of one that is a long way from being finished but I’m working on it, and two collections of short stories that I might send out. And the novel.

For the first couple of years she lived with us, our dog Yeti, a Saluki, never barked. And then one predawn, she “boofed.” She was standing on her personal oversized ottoman at the front window looking down at the garden. Outside the gate, a coyote was looking up at her. Since then we know the coyotes are around, but they are generally hidden. We recognize their footprints in the sand. [Larger and light and the toenails rarely make marks.] We saw her [the coyote in the photo] on our walk. Our friend said, “Whose dog is that?” No dog.
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AUTUMN

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We are a couple of hours into the new season. Each of us woke this morning and thought: “We need a fire.” Friends were just here for the tail of summer, but each fall there is a morning when the cool damp weights our chest and abruptly makes us want a fire in the wood stove. It’s a day not to worry, but to hold moments before us, remember trust, and revel in the reliability of the world. Today was that day.

Only gulls this morning during our walk. We choose our path so as not to disturb resting birds.
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WHEN I WAS A KID

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Be aware, I’m going to write about firearms. It’s going to take a while, but I’ll get to it.

A tax code revision allows some teachers to deduct some [more] of their school supply purchases. In response, an engineer announced: “When I was a kid, we were responsible for our own school supplies and if you didn’t bring them to school, you did not participate in the activities.”

When I was a kid, learning disabled kids were left out of school entirely, and even then the wealthy sent their children to absurdly expensive private schools, most people could afford to live a one person’s salary, Russia’s Soviet Union was the ultimate enemy (okay, that hasn’t changed much), and we hadn’t put a man on the moon. Oh! And teachers could deduct everything, EVERYTHING! including travel, because travel is educational. Teachers were treated with respect, and though their pay was poor, the working conditions were better and the perks were substantial, and they were never sued. Most were overqualified first-generation college grads thanks to the GI bill or women with few employment options. Times change.

I took this photo thirteen years ago. Since then, the elk have gotten out of hand. A bull visits the local garden apple trees and then rubs his velvety antler on the Fatsia japonica across the street. There’s been a bull around since a town north of us (Gearhart) shot around eighty of them they considered a nuisance. There isn’t necessarily a connection between the shooting of all those cows and the wandering bulls (several) we have seen since. Just sayin’ this didn’t happen when I was a kid.
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WALKING

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Through June, July, and August, we missed our early morning walks, but this week, we’re back.

There was a full moon earlier this week, a lot of fog, but not the heavy fog that feels magical. (Sometimes the fog’s so thick, there is a magical band where we can walk north, hear the ocean on the left, know the houses line the shoreline to our right, and see nothing but the sand under our feet.) This was a tame morning with color wrapping all around the sky. People kayaked during the week.

I meant to write about distance today—how far, how fast, where we arrived. Instead, mostly what we found.

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INSTEAD, A NEIGHBORHOOD

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments
We’ve seen many orange jellyfish [west coast sea nettle, Chrysaora fuscenscens] stranded onshore in the past week. This is one of the half dozen largest from yesterday, about two feet across that center section, another 20 inches wider if measuring the splayed “arms'”, and yes, these sting. The colorless to blueish ones, moon jellies [water jelly, Aequorea sp.], don’t sting—just don’t touch any jelly and then put your hand in your eye or mouth. I’ve never been stung, but I’ve known to be careful since I was little.

I walked more than three miles yesterday and I wasn’t even sore when I got home. Miraculous! Gary and I went north to our “Turnaround Rock” a mile and half, up and down the beach, backtracking and noting how high the sand is. It was the furthest we’d walked since April. We met two local people we hadn’t seen in months. Earlier this week, we met a friend we hadn’t seen since last year! They all said they’d wondered what happened to us. It was my foot.

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