An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
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.Continue reading →
I had an idea of where I was going when I started Part 1, but that got lost. The most magical thing I do is writing—making a reality that hadn’t existed before I created it. I think it through. I trust the process to yield.
The dawn, the dawning of an idea, the beginning that is colorful enough to foreshadow an ending. All begins with the best of intentions for meaning, the hope that completion makes an understandable whole.Continue reading →
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.
I didn’t bother this seal. We noticed one another almost simultaneously, and I was fully zoomed with an actual camera and fifty yards away to get this photo and then I backed right off out of this pup’s sight. Continue reading →
The 1923 elevation drawing by architect Carl L. Linde, a copy of which is hung opposite the elevator on the first floor, does not indicate the colors for the entry facade. The drawing does seem to show the surround as somewhat lighter than the tinted concrete and the doors as quite dark. Dark, varnished “Philippine Mahogany” was used throughout the building and survives on the back of the outer doors and the inner entrance doors, and the hall side of each apartment door. Though somewhat damaged, this woodwork remains beautiful and original. The outer doors have, aside from scratches and gouges, rot at the bottoms. Ideally, the doors should be taken down and repaired or completely rebuilt to the original design, which would be very expensive.
This B&W photo from WW2 shows the contrast between the very pale-painted surrounding woodwork and dark mahogany doors. The iron grillwork on the doors was removed years ago, but the Association has one as a model that could be used to replicate them.
The more recent colors fail to match the values of the doors and surrounding woodwork.
LEFT: This is how the entrance looked four years ago. Many residents loved this. The painted black and gold surround and green doors were cheerful and distinctive. Nevertheless, the color choices are totally out of line for the period (1924) and had detractors who viewed them as inauthentic. RIGHT: This is the way the entrance looked yesterday. The value of the surround is closer to the original facade, but in a pale cream and a putty that’s darker than the original. The brown chosen for the doors themselves was also wrong—too light and the hue is not close to the originals of this building on the National Historic Register.
The aim was to approach with paint the hue (color) and value (darkness or lightness) of the original doors. At a local paint store someone color-matched dark-stained Philippine Mahogany, a mahogany-like color. It’s a couple of steps darker than a paint color original to the building and still found on the inside of the storage room doors, so there was some historical consistency.
That same someone prepped and put one coat on the doors. The first resident passed while walking his dog right at the start of the repaint. “What are you doing?” “Painting the doors.” He said, “Not good.” By the time it was half done, several passing people complimented the new color. A resident loved it. Another resident was expected to yell, did at first, but then said thank you.
The cost of repainting the doors and surround in green, black, and gold has been bid at least $6k. Here is a stylish upgrade for no cost to the Association at all.
The goal was to take the front doors back close to their original appearance. The very dark red-brown shows up with elegance against the putty and cream of the surrounding woodwork and plays to the color of the hundred-year-old brick.
The shadow doesn’t do justice to the beautiful millwork and neither does that putty color, but it works better overall with the newly darker-colored doors. Someone would like a second coat, but maybe best to see who yells.
28 September 2025: My intention in this post was to explain what I did and why. Because I have recently been called out for failing to apologize for breaking “the rules we all agree to” I will confirm that I immediately apologized to the Board months ago, in writing, and now add to everyone in the Embassy: I am sorry for offending community standards and breaking rules.
I took guitar lessons in my teens, and that was a long time ago. The late 60s. I still have the guitar, an unusually sweet Aria nylon-string that I haven’t played in fifty years. Gary cares for it. My lessons from Cathy Mack at Shoreline Music focussed on Childe ballads that Joan Baez was singing. I could finger-pick along with singing “The Trees They Do Grow High” and “The Cherry Tree Carole.” Anyone could play “the House of the Rising Sun” and pretty much every garage band of the day covered that one, though it really only made sense with a woman singing it.
Somehow, that brings me to “Jolene.”
Here are the skeins for the next warp I’m winding. The “Rose Petal” warp is Koigu, which, despite my efforts to find something else, works best as warp and fringe. I’m not sure where that leftover bit of bittersweet orange will land. The weft will be almost entirely handspun. My goal over the last couple of years has been to weave down my stash. I had eight medium bins and a large one. I now have just two medium bins left plus handspun, and I am highly skilled craftsperson in my weaving, not an artist.Continue reading →
I had thought I would stop running after last year’s Bridge run—a 10k over the Columbia River. But even before I completed that run, slower than I’d hoped, I knew I wouldn’t stop. I love running and I’ve missed it terribly in the past when injury kept me walking. Then, after nearly four years of perfect health, Gary and I went to a movie in a theater last month and caught Covid. Coming back has been tough. So I began to wonder if quitting was coming up on me, like it or not.
I got my regular 2-mile Friday run last week in Portland. More than half that run is downhill, but though my route varies it generally begins and ends on an uphill slope. That was the second time a homeless Black man has paused long enough to tell me “good job!” He said he’d run marathons and missed running but had injured out and most recently been told he would be able to run again. I hope he does.
The poet William Stafford made a 3-mile run part of his morning writing routine. He’d run, come home to write, including an aphorism and a new poem every morning, and then use the rest of the day to revise and do whatever we people do all day. I used to hold out his example to myself. Stafford didn’t write a good poem every day of the year, but by the end he had 365 drafts to choose from and the odds were in his favor that he’d find good ones worth revising. It’s one reason he was as productive as he was with 20,000 words of daily writing and a truly astonishing list of publications. Wikipedia: “The morning of his death he had written a poem containing the lines, ‘ “You don’t have to / prove anything,” my mother said. “Just be ready / for what God sends.” ‘ ” Have a look at his book about writing, Writing the Australian Crawl. I have it somewhere here or there and first read it in 1990, three years before his death, which reminds we that I wasn’t yet running in those days.
Running is easier than waiting, and right now I am waiting to hear about my novel submissions. I reordered and revised that novel three weeks ago, six years on since I began writing it. I informed two presses that I had a new and better draft to share. One promptly wrote back: Yes, please! Then I withdrew all the submissions I could find a way to withdraw. A handful are still out there. I have a half dozen presses on my to-submit list when they open to submissions. One of those opens in January of 2025 and it is a favorite small press from way back. Another closed to submissions for this entire year and I don’t know when or if they will reopen next year. A friend in Seattle is a few months behind me in the same process.
It all takes time.
On April 1st, a crew is coming to tear out a wall of our bedroom condo as part of the process of repiping our entire building. The work won’t be completed before summer. In the mean time I should be knitting but I have recently spent hours completing the “Dusk” warp in two distinctive shawls.
Here is the most recent work from my loom: Two shawls woven on the same hand-dyed Canadian Merino warp. The one on the left has a weft of handspun alpaca and handspun wool with some silk. The one on the right has a particularly delightful hand-dyed yarn with a handspun/hand-dyed that provides the color shifts. Both are soft, but the one with alpaca is more subtle in color and thicker and it blocked out wider than the other.
I should never have mentioned that very popular pop star. It led to frustrating exchanges until I took the post down. Today began with positive covid tests. I am not in the mood.
Ten handwoven wool shawls folded above. I have these ten and six others elsewhere and the ones I use: three blankets and an afghan made by seaming lengths together and the three shawls I use myself—one because it was flawed and (honestly) the other two I just grabbed because they were handy to use on a cold day and they became mine to keep.* Continue reading →
When you live more than five miles from the nearest small and overpriced grocery store, fifteen miles from the nearest full grocery store (also overpriced), and thirty-five miles from Costco, shopping during the pandemic simply played on your habits of shopping rarely and large.
Shopping locally in our tourist economy meant the our monthly drive to a large city farmers’ market and even the city stores considered overpriced were relative bargains for us. Whole Foods prices were in line with or lower than what we found locally and better quality and more variety.
Now that we spend nights In Portland, we have three or four favorite grocery stores within easy walking distance. We love New Seasons, Fred Meyer is cheaper for some things, and there’s always Zupans when we want something special. But the habits of nearly forty-five years without easy access to such stores are still a powerful influence. The toughest to overcome is the most recent: ordering online.
Buying too much and ordering online are hard habits to break. Yesterday I made a vegetarian lasagna that turned out really well. I’m not pressed for time as I was when I was teaching and I am not cooking for two growing boys as well as ourselves. That lasagna will provide meals for Gary and I for three days…
During the recent perilous weather in the Pacific NW, we stayed home and I cooked from what I had in freezer, fridge, and pantry. I also ordered the organic whole wheat noodles I used for the lasagna. I have five more boxes of flat noodles in my drawer and six pounds of whole wheat angel hair pasta. I’m set for a while.
I finished a warp this month and plan to begin another this week. The overall goal is to use up much of my yarn stash, but then I ordered a skein of yarn a couple weeks ago. That gorgeous bright handspun fits in with a warp I was planning, but interferes with the important goal of cutting back my yarn stash.
406 yards Handspun SW Merino/Silk (75/25) in “Color Blast Fun Run” colorway from Etsy. $49 from MimiHandspun and worth every penny. I don’t make money weaving with yarn like this, but it is a pleasure nonetheless.
I need to buy less.
It feels like I’ve done this before. Haven’t I vowed to cut back on purchases? Haven’t I actually done that from time to time?
February needs to be a no-purchase month. Food is okay. No clothing, no yarn, no fabric, no books. I have plenty of everything. I can afford to swear off all unnecessary purchases. It’s a short month. My pantry shelves look leaner and tidier from not shopping much this month. My beach closet is very lean from a recent culling. I need to continue making progress with the yarn and quilting fabrics. I can resist Liberty cottons and batik’s for a month. I can. I probably can.
I’ve had almost everything here for several years—not at long as what is shown right which dates back decades.I wear only the black dress on left and the purple velvet dress (for special occasions) but love the kimonos/
Cutting back on purchases is like cutting back on food. I can recall eating as a child until my stomach hurt. And I was a thin child because I walked and ran everywhere. It’s different as an adult. It’s different as a retired adult in nasty weather where I go out but for an hour instead of three hours, and I eat because I cooked too much. I learned when I shifted over my diet to a healthier balance in 2020, that feeling a little hungry is a good thing.
There are projects waiting for my attention, and I really could learnt to cook for two if I troubled to do it. I have more books in my to-read stack(s) than I ever have had in my entire life. I can cut the shawl to make a pillow cover. I can put on the neutral warp. I can cast on the sweater I promised myself a dozen years ago—the yarn is right there. Ideas for quilts swimming about in my head do not require any fabric other than what I have stored.
April will be Camp NaNo and I will work on short stories. Between now and then I can make progress on projects: three more warps if I am quick, a knitted something, and two sewing projects. With discipline, I can avoid purchasing anything other than food for four weeks. That’s what I’ll do.
I will not buy yarn, a rosebush, black wool pants, more socks, food in bulk, magazines, books, fabric even though it love it and it’s on sale, a new chair or two, a used table for Gary’s coffee (he’s using the window-ledge in the new living room configuration), knitting notions, or anything I cannot consume within a week. I promise.
Sunrise here.Sunset there.The shift and play of colors…
I am sitting up in bed as I write, and before me is an abstract expressionist painting by a friend of my aunt Marcie (Marcia Smith Aron). Marked 1959 and “Floral Growth” on the back, it is tied to memories from my aunt’s house in Berkeley when I was a young child, and later to her San Francisco house. Bright with egg yolk yellows and intense pastels. Mom said the painting had been held by her sister for safe keeping. After my aunt died and the painting came to me, I traced the artist. By then, she lived just a few blocks away from where Gary and I first lived in Big Pink in the U District of Seattle. She had turned to calligraphy, become famous for it. Midori Kono Thiel was sorry to hear my aunt had died, delighted her painting was still alive, but no, she didn’t want it back. So that colorful oil, flush with memory, hangs across from our bed in Portland.
I got in a couple of running miles this morning. We have pretty much nailed down our weekly routine but I still have to think when I first wake: Where am I?
We found nineteen pieces of sea glass yesterday, seventeen the day before.
This photo isn’t from yesterday, big pieces but representative of the colors we most often find: colorless, pale greens, brighter greens, and brown. There are colors we each particularly rejoice to find. Gary once found a large cobalt blue piece. I love a peculiar intense and old blue-green.Continue reading →
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 