Author: janpriddyoregon

WE MISS THE CAT

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One of our sons just adopted two kittens. They are adorable and I got to hold and pet them the other day.

We are in the midst of “Swedish death cleansing” known as döstädning. “It’s what people are doing before somebody passes away so that the relatives don’t get left with the big chore of sorting out their personal things.” Except we do not plan on dying soon. 

Perhaps this is “Oregon reverse gathering”. I am 65 and I do intend to live another twenty or thirty years. It is not an unreasonable expectation. What I do not expect to do during that time is use all of the hundreds of spools of thread I inherited from my mother and grandmothers (also my aunt and my step-grandmother’s second husband’s brother who is responsible for an oversize spool of heavy black cotton thread). The four baskets are shown midway in my sorting and contain only about a half dozen spools of handquilting thread that I actually purchased. The rest found their way to me through no effort on my part. The effort is in using or disposing of them. The sewing notions are taking me longer than anything else. Elastic, zippers (when was the last time I put in a zipper?), thousands of needles and pins. I found two darning needles I had been looking for. I found all the missing pincushions. Too many pairs of scissors. Sewing machine parts I do not recognize and that may not fit the 1940s sewing machine I use. Just separating all these into sorted containers has taken me a week. And I am not done.

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No worries. I have a plan.

The sewing notions will be used or donated. The car is presently stuffed with other items for Goodwill. There will be more drives north to the donation site. There will be projects organized and stashed. I will compile sewing kits for each grandchild, and I will restock the drawers of my sewing machine and the little sewing chest downstairs. Both were emptied while I sort. I will find places to donate the rest. Perhaps each of my writing students would appreciate a sewing kit to take away to college?

Clothing, because I keep everything, has been a challenge. I finally researched Eileen Fisher’s program offering $5 in credit for each used EF garment. To think of all the Ebay purchases I wore for a time and then donated to Goodwill! I went through my stashed/binned clothing and garment that have hung in my closet for years without being worn. I held back the burgundy velvet skirt and two silk tank tops for the fabric. The rest goes. I plan a trip to an EF store. I hope to half pay for a pair of shoes. In the mean time, what had been three large bins is now just one, and I have space to hang something new. (I will resist that last temptation.)

The furniture is more of a problem. There is still plenty that needs an exit strategy. Chairs, a low cabinet with sliding glass doors, an Ikea desk, a farmer’s dining table with a drawer, a 4-drawer file cabinet. These are all free for the taking unless we can find a way to load and take them to a charity. None will come to collect them, not even for a price.

We still have a plan.

All this work will not all be done in time for our family reunion this weekend, but enough will be sorted that the five children can safely play and that two cars can park in our garage. It will be done soon enough, the attic is completely empty, bins await delivery to family, and then I will sort other gatherings of clutter: the desk, the linen closet, the Kitchen Queen. There is a still a great deal to go. I have a list, and I assume that once I have ticked off all that I know to sort, I will begin again.

Nest week we are rewarding ourselves with a night at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. We are staying in the Shakespeare room. There is no WiFi, no phone or television. We have our reading planned. We will eat dinner out and Gary will have Guinness at the Irish pub down the street. Maybe, just maybe, I will take along some knitting. There will be no hurry about getting home as there was when we had pets.

Our cat suffered when we were gone for more than a few hours, and as a result, we are only now becoming accustomed to the freedom and leaving for overnight stays. Clearing the house lightens our lives, provide a freedom of some sort, a mental decluttering along with the physical decluttering. Letting go is not only a human problem.

But still, we both miss the cat.

CRUEL & UNUSUAL

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Love is love. [This was written but not posted many weeks ago.]

From The Hill, a primarily political newspaper in Washington DC. This is not how I want my home state to appear in the national news:

An Oregon school district reportedly forced an LGBTQ student to read passages from the Bible as a form of punishment

The World in Coos Bay, Ore., reports that the student’s allegations were detailed by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) in a March 6 letter to North Bend School District Superintendent Bill Yester. 

The ODE is investigating claims that an LGBTQ high school student was forced by a school administrator to read the Bible while they were being “disciplined,” according to The World.

It reported that ODE officials are investigating whether the forced Bible reading violated the student’s First Amendment rights, including the Establishment Clause which recognizes the separation of church and state.

The district, about 200 miles south of Portland, initially denied the allegation, but the administrator ultimately admitted it in an interview with the ODE, The World reported.

On a separate occasion, a different teacher reportedly equated same-sex marriage to marrying a dog during a lesson.

Do I believe this happened? Of course I do.

A teacher at my high school once told me over the lunch table that she could se no difference between homosexuality and bestiality.

Was the person serious? Yes.

Did the person teach Health? Yes.

Did I respond? Yes, I did.

As if speaking to a child, I explained that bestiality was sex between species, which is not found among wild species. Homosexual behavior, by contrast is found in most species. It is perfectly natural.

WEAVING

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I won the July Make-It-Koigu! (Mine was the only entry.) Above are the skeins I laid out as I was figuring out the warp below. All but one handspun skein is Koigu.

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The final blanket was woven in four strips on two warps.

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NAKED

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I made salal muffins yesterday morning. The berries grow wild in our hedge and ripen over a period of weeks or months. The muffins were made with organic flour and eggs, butter and some maple syrup for sweetening. I had two with butter for my breakfast. That’s about 400 calories, which is allowed and also delicious.

A couple of months ago, I glanced at myself in the mirror. Then I looked at myself. Naked. I was taken aback. I see myself in the mirror every day, and I got over my cellulite decades ago. But I had intended, in February, to lose 11 pounds, and instead, I went the other way and gained 11 pounds. I had simply refused to see it.

My feet hurt and my lower back and many of my clothes no longer fit. It was one of those seeing-without-seeing periods. I would like to blame this inattention on someone else, but, you know, I just ate too much. Then I refused to see.

Last summer we went to the Oregon Country Fair for the first time. We went early on the first day, and much of what we saw was colorful and wonderful, but mostly we noticed it was hot, dusty, and insanely crowded. I caught only the end of the belly dance demo, which I would have wished to see. I found a doll-maker who turned out to be a good friend of one of our oldest friends. I bought two leather masks. An owl mark is probably destroyed by now by our grandson. I wore the plain red mask for several hours, forgetting completely that I even had it on. I just didn’t notice.

What Gary failed to notice was the nakedness at the Oregon Country Fair, which is well-known for people walking about with only body paint and glitter, at least on the upper half of their bodies and sometimes just the glitter and no clothing at all. It was warm enough. Gary insists he did not see any naked people because he was overwhelmed by the general chaos.

Life is naked chaos.

Since the first of June I have been paying attention to what I eat, and I have been drinking more water. We usually walk for over an hour each morning, and we emptied the attic and I have put a couple of gallons of paint on walls and ceilings. I have read 40 books so far this year, had 6 essays and a story accepted for publication, been rejected by 62 literary agents and a couple dozen literary magazines. I attended the memorial for Ursula K. Le Guin and in a couple of weeks we will have 13 people in our house for the annual summer reunion.

By the reunion I might be back where I started in February. I am nearly back to that weight. Not quite, but it’s been pretty painless. I can stand to look at myself naked again. My back still hurts, but now it’s because I am not sitting properly in my desk chair.

And I have begun rereading Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin (1968), a book I have read ten times already. Panshin describes an insecure girl looking for a way forward and challenged by her study of ethics—and many more dramatic events I will not attempt to describe here. It is my favorite book, probably of all time. I enjoy each reading.

It seems I never quite let go of some goals and habits, like reading books, while others, like noting how many glasses of water I drink in a day, are acquired through time, and some, like looking in antique shops, fall away.

Just now I am close to done sorting spools of thread by color and fiber. The polyester thread will be given away. I have at least four shoeboxes filled with thread, sorted into war colors, cool, neutral, and black and white. Some are nearly empty, some full. Many are on wooden spools. It is notable that aside from half a dozen spools of hand quilting thread, I did not purchase any of this thread. My step-grandmother’s color pallet is clear as I stand over the boxes. I will probably find a way to keep the cotton and silk.

I have become less sentimental about most other accumulations. We gave away and sold the gatherings of generations. Our garage sale netted a few hundred dollars, mostly items sold for a quarter or a dollar. My one sale was two scraps of cloth for a dollar-fifty. In the next week, we will have a charity come and pick up the furniture and other reusable items. What has been moved out and now fills our atrium will not be welcome back into the house.

After purging my home of so much stuff, I am not eager to fill the vacancies. I like the slices of nakedness on my walls, the space between objects, gaps on bookcases, the way I can sweep all my clothing to one side of the closet, because there is somewhat less of it.

There are riches elsewhere.

Two little pound cakes came out of the oven. I made stock yesterday or the day before and made a lentil soup with coconut milk, vegetables, and spices. We had friends coming for dinner and a couple of nights. There is homemade ice cream in the freezer and local salad greens in the crisper. Gary vacuumed and mopped most of the floors downstairs.

There is space in our lives now that we are retired, and because both of us spent most of our adult lives working and caring for children and pets and indulging in hobbies and muddling along as best we could. There was hardly time to look around.

Home now feels a little like we just stepped out of the shower, all clean and new. Naked.

 

FLOOD WATERS

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We live right onshore, just a few bare feet above sea level. Every day we watch the Pacific Ocean wash in and out just beyond our front yard. Since 1979, the ocean has slid through the path in the hedge and onto the grass just twice. The Cascadia Fault is a concern, but like most coastal residents, we are in deep, deep denial. (Not that the rest of you are not.)

When it inevitably comes, the quake will be strong enough to knock me down, unless I am already lying or sitting. It will be vigorous enough and last long enough to topple trees and drop buildings. Some areas with sand instead of soil will liquify and what was supported a moment ago will sink—quicksand. Our garage and other doors will go out of plum and refuse to open ever again.

My running shoes are beside the fireplace, where there has been a masonry pile for over a hundred years. It is the only part of our house that has not moved, not even a millimeter. I put on my runners.

I will head out what we call the front door, assuming it opens. Or perhaps the other door just twenty feet further east. Either one takes me into the atrium, a long roofed area with fiberglass far overhead. Normally I would go out the garage door, but the electricity is out and the shaking has caused enough damage that I assume the garage door will not open manually. I pull Gary’s maul from the workbench, close my eyes against flying glass, and bash the sliding glass door. The gate on the side of the yard will be hard to open, but I will manage. The shortest route would be north and then south, but that would take me through fifty feet of dense underbrush and wetland. I will run two hundred feet south, turn left, and then head for the highway, north to St. Peter the Fisherman, and then straight east and up hill.

Somewhere along the way, and aftershock will strike.

CLASS WARRIOR

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“When even the unpopular girls are rich, if not always pretty, how will they attempt rebellion and nonconformity?”

I haven’t read this new satirical novel about an elite private school in Australia. I probably never will. When I got to the line above in The New York Times review, I thought, “Why would I care?” and decided I should stop reading.

I know, I know, rich white kids have problems too. Their lives are not perfect just because their parents have money. Sure. Sure. I get that. I still don’t want to read about them struggling to find a way to rebel when . . . what? They aren’t overcoming racism, finding their next meal, moving every six months? So sad for them.

I say I don’t care, but the truth is I am merely annoyed.

“Ziggy makes friends with the social outcasts Lex, who was adopted from Bangladesh by aging white Australians, and Tessa, who lost an arm to cancer and wears a prosthetic.”

So I get it, her friends have a tidy assortment of struggles.

There was no getting around it, I had to read the entire review. Being a teenager is miserable for most. Even those who are popular often have something terrible going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the shallow work involved in maintaining their popularity. It doesn’t help that people are still lying to high school students about “the best years of your life.” Trust me, it gets better.

““Inappropriation” is certainly intelligent and has its finger on the zeitgeist of the Instagram and Tumblr generation, but it also paints the worst possible picture of teenagers trying to understand themselves. Who is the book’s intended audience, really? Those of us who understand our own complexities and nuances, and can laugh at the book’s exaggerations of them? Or those who think that all identity politics is nonsense? Surely both groups will enjoy it, but for very different, and in the latter case perhaps troubling, reasons. In satire as in life, there’s a difference between laughing with people and laughing at them.”

The teenagers I taught came from a wide variety of backgrounds. All of them had struggles. Even the most together, confident, and consistently cheerful person in the world genuinely suffers in his or her life. None of us get by in perfection, at least no one I ever taught. I never found their pain and confusion entertaining, much less funny. There have been any number of novels making best-seller lists while focusing on a narrow demographic. This seems to be another one.

I just finished reading the post-war utopian novel Walden Two by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner. Skinner honestly believed he was creating a (fictional) cultural paradise, a utopia where everyone could achieve a pleasant life regardless of gender or race. Big, big fail, not to mention many of the details about child rearing and eliminating envy, competition, and jealousy are naive at best, downright abusive at worst.

Childhood is tough. Shows like Jimmy Kimmel find entertainment in causing kids to cry. It’s okay, because it’s only a joke? Because the kids’ parents lied? Because no one should cry over candy? Why not tell them their dog died?

Kimmel is just crass exploitation. The novel review suggests Frieman’s novel has very little more to offer. Skinner’s novel is a trainreck in many ways, but at least he had an objective. If you believed you could make everybody happy (not cry), wouldn’t you try to do it?

I still don’t think I will read the book, but I am glad to have read the review.

 

GARAGE SALE

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We gathered. I gathered some of it, not counting what my mother, aunt, grandmother, and other relatives failed to deal with. There were unsorted boxes in the attic that NO ONE wanted to deal with. We tried to give away a lot of things that were immediately useful—to someone else—but much of that stuff has been weighting us down for decades now. Some family was resentful about selling, but I feel they should have, and would have been welcomed to, deal with it themselves.

Some people deal with objects immediately. When I gave a gift to a friend recently, she immediately disposed of all the packaging in the restaurant where we eating. I suspect she does that with everything. She will say she lives in a small house, but it’s more focused than that. She has set some sort of internal line and chooses in every moment not to cross.

Our garage sale has many, many beautiful, useful, and valuable items. It’s not that we do not appreciate them, but we have other valuable and useful items already in use. These lived in boxes for too long. It is time they found a more appreciative home. Time for them to be used.

READING SCIENCE FICTION, pt. 1

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I could pretend to love The Left Hand of Darkness, but I never did. I could acknowledge that I do love many other novels such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Vonda McIntyre’s Dream Snake, and Molly Gloss’s The Dazzle of Day. But my favorite science fiction novel is Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. Above are a few of the covers of this science fiction novel title.

The first time I read it, I was in college and about the age of the main character as she tells her story.

Rite of Passage is a science fiction novel by American writer Alexei Panshin. Published in 1968 as an Ace Science Fiction Special, this novel about a shipboard teenager’s coming of age won that year’s Nebula Award, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1969.—Wikipedia

This is the dystopian coming-of-age novel people should be reading, what is known as “hard” science fiction because there is no magic, no fantasy, only scientific possibility. There are also no clear villains, just people doing the best they know how to take care of the themselves and their own. The “heroes” are flawed, the ethical choices are not clear cut and tidy, and no one is shot with an arrow.

Mia Havero is a “little black-haired, black-eyed girl” of about 12 at the start of the story she tells of her rite of passage. Few of the covers I have seen indicate that the designers had actually opened the book, much less read it. Upper left and middle are solid. Sometimes what you see is not what you get.

I was reminded of this a day or two ago when I found a meme in my feed with a misquote of the Constitution of the United States. The meme contended that if the President were impeached, he and all his people (VP on down) would be forced from office. A lot of people liked the meme. People who have college degrees and should know better. And I will admit that I would be happy to see the back of Pence and the rest of Trump’s minions, but that is not what would happen.

That so many people accepted this meme as true was disappointing. I was left wondering if no one else remembers anything from our Constitution?

Does no one verify their sources anymore?

The left has been eager to throw up their hands at the ignorance of those supporting Trump. I have witnessed this again and again. Sadly, there is plenty of evidence that those on the right believe exactly what they want to believe. It is so much easier than actually finding out what is true. Those on the left do that too sometimes.

There is this simple black-and-white view of the world that is not the least helpful to accomplishing anything. It’s comfortable to discard another’s viewpoint just because it differs from our own, to ignore the demands of people we do not identify with. Working to hammer out solutions is messy compared to simply “laying down the law.” The Russian interference in our national conversation has done further damage to thinking that already viewed “compromise” as a dirty word.

We seem unwilling to understand that the world is not a YA dystopia with an evil force (them) fighting to take down those fighting purely for good (us). Reality is a whole lot of people with different ideas about how to achieve justice and liberty. When we acknowledge that complexity, we will get farther as a nation. There are times when the only solution is an imperfect one, when you get a little of what you want and I get a little of what I want, but no one gets buried in the process.

I read science fiction to find a laboratory for possibility. I already know how things can go wrong. I am interested in how things go right without the intervention of comic book heroes. Plenty of science fiction and fantasy is just another world struggling for power, but some science fiction and fantasy looks hard at difficult ideas. Not the dark lord or evil empire, but really people struggling to do their best.

Mia Havero is a Latina name. The author is American, and his book is back in print.

“The Nebula Award-winning novel, back in print at long last!

“In 2198, one hundred and fifty years after the desperate wars that destroyed an overpopulated Earth, Man lives precariously on a hundred hastily-established colony worlds and in the seven giant Ships that once ferried men to the stars.

“Mia Havero’s Ship is a small closed society. It tests its children by casting them out to live or die in a month of Trial in the hostile wilds of a colony world. Mia Havero’s Trial is fast approaching and in the meantime she must learn not only the skills that will keep her alive but the deeper courage to face herself and her world.

“Published originally in 1968, Alexei Panshin’s Nebula Award-winning classic has lost none of its relevance, with its keen exploration of societal stagnation and the resilience of youth.”—Fairwood Press

HEDGEBROOK

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Today I applied for a Hedgebrook residency. I have applied ten times before for this residency, which is limited to women. My first experience at a women’s writing residency was The Flight of the Mind in the 1990s. The first time I attended, I completely failed to anticipate the impact of spending a week with eighty women who were concerned only about the written word. That initial week was life altering, and I was fortunate to attend several times. Each time I was terrified at the start and came away brimming with hope.

It frightens me to ask. The last year I attended The Flight of the Mind, I carried the acceptance letter home from the post office and stood sobbing in my garage. I had not admitted to myself how much it meant to me. That was also the last year Flight was held.

Hedgebrook is on my bucket list, and occasionally I threaten not to apply again. But then I do. This year because I have a challenging concept for an SF novel that requires slow work and contemplation, I want the residency very much. But many others need this opportunity. At the least, my application fee will serve a good cause.

CAN YOU HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS?

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I saw a meme on Facebook the other day. The wording was something like: “I decided I needed to lose 10 pounds last year, and after six months I am doing great—12 pounds to go!”

That is the irony when our best intentions go backwards. I have some personal experience with that. I have been watching my eating, drinking, and walking for the past 7 weeks and have lost the 8 pounds I gained since last December after deciding I needed to lose 14 pounds. I sleep better and my feet feel better when I weigh less.

During that same time, I taught two college writing classes, read 38 books, completed weaving three 82″ lengths and seamed them into a 75″ x 82″ blanket + fringe, planned a quilt, submitted stories and poems and essays, several published pieces and a story due out next month plus an essay out in September. (I will inflict links to these publications upon you once they are live.)

We walk the beach most days for at least two hours. I have picked up a few hundred pounds of trash since January, and 98 bits of sea glass so far just in July. People ask Gary and I all the time what we are finding. “Do you find agates?” they invariably want to know. We always find agates. We don’t even gather most of the agates we find, not even a quarter of the agates we find. What we carry away is mostly plastic trash. You knew that.

I watched the second season of the Netflix series, Anne with an E, which I loved from the first episode and this second season more than ever with challenging issues of sexual orientation and race. The novels are pretty “safe”, but the series takes chances and flashes back to the early years not only in Anne’s life but in Marilla’s and Matthew’s lives. The characters are thus more well rounded and meaningful, more real and less white-washed cardboard characters. The Irish actor playing Anne really is not “pretty” by the standards of those days, but bursting with energy and imagination as she should be. Green Gables is depicted here in the same way that Wicked seems to portray a genuine Oz. All the magic, but a grown-up and serious version—charm without flinching.

My own flinching is mostly about too much stuff.

My goals for the year, my husband’s and my goals for the year, include gutting the house. Going leaner, you might say. We are emptying out closets and shelves, the dozens of pretty pictures that have no walls to hang upon. Gary took everything out of the attic which still had things from my mother’s house, unexamined items from her sister’s home, boxes of ceramics I made in college decades ago now.  Nothing goes back in the attic. I am about to empty four bookcases of nonfiction and poetry. A lot of the books and at least one bookcase will go out the door. We are preparing for a garage sale and major gifts to Good Will in the near future. I keep going through books and moving stacks out of the house.

Despite all that, I ordered a book the other day. I ordered three towels on sale and I ordered two skeins of yarn, even though I have SO MUCH YARN! Too much. Too many books. Too many Christmas ornaments. Too many family pictures in frames. Too much stuff. The greatest appeal about moving into a smaller house—something we fantasize about from time to time—is the need to divest.

More important than divesting is the imperative to stop accumulating. It is possible to stop. I believe it is possible, but I have to skill in that direction.

The Green Gables house in the new series is sparse and clear. The table is set for dinner in a dining room that has no other purpose but dining. The meal is eaten, the table cleared, the ceiling is the primary decoration. Beautiful unpainted boards.

No cell phones, no music but what people made for themselves. I am not so foolish and as wish myself back in that era. Dentistry. Vaccinations. Voting rights. I know what I would lose.

But Anne’s daily walk through the woods. Writing with pen and paper. A fox in the forest. People who make immediate use of nearly everything, or they do not keep it at all. Anne has little, but holds so very much. She is creative and imaginative and loving and kind. Her ambition is generous and heartfelt. She asks for little, but the best of everything. Her best is not about gilded rooms or extravagant praise. She might enjoy those things, but there is something precious and few about her longings. More does not mean better, as I was warned in childhood.

May I at least have more of Anne? And maybe a few pounds less of me.