Author: janpriddyoregon

DISTANCE

/ janpriddyoregon / 18 Comments

Sometimes I lie to myself. For example, I promised myself a short run yesterday morning. I held out a single-mile run like a carrot. When I began running north, I was running straight into a 40mph wind and it was cold. The tide was going out and I repeated, “Just one mile.” I didn’t need to run all the way to what we term the Turnaround Rock, 1.5 miles north. I could stop at the metal stairs near my one-mile marker, turn, and walk a mile home. I was thinking there was a good chance that when I turned toward home the wind would be swinging around and I would still face a headwind. That happens sometimes as the sun rises. So I told myself: You can stop running after a mile.

I ran three miles.*

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THE MEAL

/ janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

My baking began on Monday with four loaves of cranberry bread and a chevré cheesecake (that last only because the goat cheese needed to be used and I wanted to strain Greek yogurt for whey to use in pie crusts. On Tuesday, I roasted Delicata squash for Gary’s “pumpkin” pie. (I have made pies with canned pumpkin, fresh sugar pumpkin, acorn, and other squashes. I find actual pumpkin to be nearly tasteless. Roasted Delicata has flavor.) I also roasted and mashed sweet potatoes—which are the exact same thing as what Americans call “yams.” (Actual yams are huge vegetables, a traditional Nigerian staple, and not sweet at all.) Yesterday, I made bread-free dressing, applesauce, cranberry/chili sauce, and two kinds of twice-baked potatoes, including without dairy. Today I hope to caramelize a honey, turmeric, and seed topping for the sweet potatoes, and roast acorn squash for Friday.

An unplanned flight, my adventures eating a Home Ec Thanksgiving dinner, and best wishes…

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ON THE FENCE

/ janpriddyoregon / 12 Comments

An internet friend announced on her blog that she has decided not to send holiday cards this year. Her habit was to send nearly 100 cards. Receiving about 20 in return last year has forced her to confront what seems a lack of interest.

I am wondering about the same thing.

Oden and Onika, brother and sister. The original was drawn on bristol with a 00 Rapidograph. It was printed on linen-weave cover stock using a heated raised-image commercial printing technique for which I no longer remember the name. It was probably toxic.

This is the season when in years past I would make a decision about sending cards.

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GENTLY USED

/ janpriddyoregon / 19 Comments

The tiny closet of our condo is already stuffed with clothing I rarely wear. I need to purge. This is the story of our times. We focus on gathering until we run out of room and have to wonder: Why do I need this?

This raven came closer to me than any corvid (I originally typed “covid”—which is also true). She landed on a drift log right in front of me and then took off before landing here again.
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SLOWER

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Before I thought of myself as a writer, I thought of myself as an artist—not incompatible identities. Among the many lessons I learned as a visual artist that also apply to literary arts: slow down. Wait. Wait. Wait. The eye (thought) moves faster than the hand on the page; you have to slow down so that the hand can keep up.

Thought is like that too. We can think 1300 words a minute. We can read a fraction of that and write even fewer. Everything jumps ahead of itself with the result that what we read or record skips like a pebble over a smooth pond. What we think we know and what is there, if we take time to look. All that water below… If we want to reveal it all, we must slow down to see it.

The gray gulls above are juveniles; the white-headed and breasted ones are adults. You might guess from this photo: there are a great many kids this year—more than half of those resting onshore. Forty-seven birds shown; seventeen are adults. Mist began yesterday on our shore and the air quality index began to drop. This morning the drizzle started and air quality became breathable throughout the western edges of the Pacific NW from the Willamette Valley north to Puget Sound, Portland to Seattle. I got my short two mile run this morning. Ballots arrived today. Our property tax info came in the mail and the RMV (real market value) of our home has been set at one and a third times what it was last year.
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FRESH BREAD

/ janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

This is what happens when you bake weekly for almost three years. A high rounded loaf just the way you assumed it would come out of the oven. Without support beyond experience, bread is the result of healthy ingredients and practice. That’s the way life goes, I think. We work at it, do the best we can, and we eat what we take from the oven.

About 10″ across and 5″ tall, I “wind up” the dough to shape a loaf without a pan. It was baked in the middle of a flat pizza pan. (Even the Haystack loaves had special pans with short sides providing some support and structure.)

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SEVENTY

/ janpriddyoregon / 26 Comments

Yes, today I am a septuagenarian, seventy years old. (Please don’t say “seventy years young”—I find that too sticky-cute and somewhat insulting. I’ve earned my years.)

I made myself an applecake yesterday evening so that we could have it for breakfast after my run this morning. I used heritage pink apples gifted by a friend and the green ones that were in the crisper. I love baking and rarely have an excuse to bake other than bread, so this was fun. I made lemon curd the day before yesterday for a lemon pie this evening. We are having Dungeness crab mac&cheese for dinner and Gary has put a bottle of genuine Champagne in the fridge! Yes, it’s all about the food.
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HOMELESS

/ janpriddyoregon / 11 Comments

No answers, but some observations.

I’ve been irritated since the other day when Apartment Therapy did a feature on a perfectly serviceable walk-in closet remodel for a mere $4500 (wallpaper, paint, cabinets), plus the two chandeliers that a commenter found cost $2k, each. Yes, the newly redone closet looks very nice, but it’s a closet and not even one of those bedrooms redone as a closet with space in the middle to sit down, just a fair-sized walk-in closet. Some people become creative in divesting themselves of too much money.

I bought art. Because artists need support.

So do others.

“Homeless” people and encampments are all over Portland, and Seattle is rumored to be worse. I had no idea Los Angeles considered itself the epicenter. “Sam Quinones traces the recent epidemic of homelessness in western states, the one marked by meth abuse and tents, to LA’s Skid Row.“

Gary took this photo of a seagull poop because he thought it looked like an egg, sunny side up.
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RUNNING A RACE

/ janpriddyoregon / 16 Comments

The Great Columbia Crossing, a 10k run mostly on the Megler Bridge, limited entries this year to 3,500. It filled last month. We started on the Washington side at Dismal Nitch, ran west a mile to the first suspension section on the north side of the Columbia River, over that and then south three miles on the flat portion which is really not a “bridge” by my reconning. It is an elevated two-lane highway. Then the highway tips upward for a killing hill (okay, killing for me—I could not run that hill 20 years ago and not today either) and over the suspension bridge on the Oregon side, down a long curved ramp and a final mile or so, west and east, at the Port of Astoria.

I’d run it before, meaning to take my time, but hustling in the face of the crush. I had much the same intentions of not hurrying this morning. I would not run that awful hill in the fifth mile. I would not.

Before the start at Dismal Nitch on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Andrew is a former student who graduated with my older son in 1998. He recognized me first. Another student Nora (SHS 1996) ran up and gave me a hug before the start. I saw each of them again on the Washington side in my last half mile! (Andrew’s photo with his girlfriend at right)
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