WHO TO THANK?

November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

I was still teaching when I reposted an old blog: WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A TEACHER. That post arrived on my old Blogger site in 2011, then here in 2019.

***I think black oystercatchers are my favorite bird. They make a noise like a squeaky toy, are protective of their babies, and have red beaks and legs and eyes of brilliant vermilion enamel.***

Thousands of people read the original posting about why you don’t want my former job. At least two college programs assigned that post to students training to be teachers.

I’m grateful for the years I spent in education. I loved teaching but I enjoy other things, and I understand why teachers last, typically, just four years in the profession. There are people who think I’m a fool to have done it at all.

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BIRDS and MEN

November 21, 2025November 21, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

As I began writing this on Wednesday, I was reading Helen Whybrow’s memoir, The Salt Stones, which focuses on her family, her ninety-some Icelandic sheep, and how as a pastoralist she lives within the rhythm of her animals, the trees and grasses, blueberries and shrubs, the soil microbes and those in our gut, and all that lives in and on, over and above that soil and makes of her two hundred acres a thriving ecosystem. Her husband is kind, her step-daughter has gone off to live her life, and soon her daughter will follow. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t always know her daughter, but is the same kindly person for all that. I read the final chapter yesterday. I felt grateful for the beauty she shares.

On our beach walk, we found bits of litter on the sand and tangled in the rocks, enough to half fill our trash bag. Mostly this was bits of plastic and plastic foam smaller than my thumbnail, but also a comb, a sturdy mesh bait bag, several lengths of reusable plastic twine. We admired the local bald eagles scavenging onshore. This photo taken at a distance—the bird flew as a wave washed in.

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BLAME, again

November 15, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

“This is what makes the myth such a great lie!” Gary says. Shoulda-coulda-woulda. It’s always someone’s fault, not ours.

We tried to watch the right/left overview of the our political week on The New Hour on PBS. We’d previously vowed not to watch it anymore, but today I backslid, found it on my computer a day late, and was sorely disappointed. Two journalists talked about the Epstein files and decided that was a big nothing. [Really?] The more astonishing thing, to me, is that both Brooks and the democratic-journalist-of-the-week totally blamed the Democratic party for ending the shut-down. The Democrats should have stuck with it until they got subsidized healthcare, since it’s what people want. Brooks said that and the other person said it too. They were so disappointed.

I was thinking about a man, smiling and thankful for the gift of a few spoonfuls of honey.

It’s not my day to post, but this happened a few hours ago—the homeless vet and the arrogant journalists so sure about what others should have done.

***Maybe I used this image already. It’s only a week or two old, and the rainbow on Castle Rock is such a hopeful thing.***

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‘DO THE MATH’

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

THE MARTIAN (2015) is one of my favorite movies. Even though it’s romantic nonsense, even though, even though I barely care about a space program, even though Matt Damon. As I write, it’s playing on Netflix, and at this moment I am playing hooky from cutting and sewing my quilt border in order to focus on the ending. Every time his character Mark Watney follows the science, every time he goes to the numbers, I want to cheer and laugh. That determination to find a solution in listing what he has available to work with, to calculate how long till this or that runs out, and every time he recognizes an opportunity, my heart sings. Mark Watney, Space Pirate. “Everywhere I go, I’m the first.”

They are always bright and silvery, brighter than shows in this photo, even though “the little silver fish” are dead when we find them on the sand. Maybe this is a tiny bit of a missed pelican meal. There were still six pelicans fishing offshore that day.

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WHAT I KNOW

November 7, 2025November 7, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

The storms come, no stopping them. They also pass.

The wind had been blowing since midnight, and the rain coming hard not down but sideways, off and on. Mostly on. I could see the ocean waves blowing back over themselves and sea and sky are both soft grays with a hint of green in the surf. Two and a half hours till high tide, but all the sand wet from the rain, and we did not get our morning walk. We got out the door for our three miles and had to turn straight back. We don’t mind a light shower, but this was a serious weather front. Storminess predicted to last without a break until Friday, which is not at all unusual for November. I used to count on a solid week of rain in this month—all day and all night without a break. But recently all bets are off. (The days in January of warm east winds and a burst of termites and carpenter ants drowned in the surf has not been predictable for years.) We average about 90” of rain a year—sometimes a mist or drizzle, in a storm sideways like a firehose, not usually coming “down,” and a hundred and fifty inches of rainfall isn’t unheard of. People new to the area are unprepared, friends naively suggest rain gear to walk the sand. Weather reporters in NW cities are alarmed by 45 mph gusts; we are accustomed to 65 mph. There is no rain gear that will keep you dry and safe in a full gale. Stay indoors!