June is ridiculously busy, which is not something I can say about most months. Most months my busy is entirely self-inflicted. I read, sew, knit, run, post online. Scrub floors. Gary and I drive to Portland and home from Portland, we walk across the city or walk five miles north on the beach. [We did this recently. Once. Ten miles round trip. Probably not again.]
I was reading an upbeat story about a species of dove native to a Pacific island that had become extinct in the wild since 1972 due to human activity and human-introduced species. Cats are often cited as the cause of the birds’ extinction, but the real damage to the birds’ survival had been domestic sheep that destroyed their habitat, explained a scientist with Mexico’s Institute of Ecology who is leading habitat restoration efforts on the island. The cats merely finished off an already decimated population. What is missing may be another cause, too often ignored: human-introduced rats.
When I cross the street I look both ways, even when I’m in a crosswalk, even with there is a light telling me I may, and I look both ways even at a crossing of two one-way streets where I shouldn’t have to look. Drivers in the early morning aren’t always paying attention to someone like me.
People like me are concerned about where our country is headed, but first: Safety while running.
My mother said those words to me hundreds or thousands, or perhaps only a few dozen times. They were the words that stuck, the instruction that carried over into my dreams where I routinely switch characters. I might be me for a while, but then the other person. I consider how the other person feels. This hasn’t always meant I was as kind or considerate as my mother intended. It did mean that I sometimes see another’s side so clearly that I feel what they feel. That is what I like to think she hoped for.
It was still dark the second time I woke this morning, and I remembered the screaming man. We’d walked to Portland State University to the Saturday Farmers Market. I was hoping to find organic rhubarb, which would go fast. We arrived just before it opened and walked all the way around, but only one booth had rhubarb and it wasn’t organic, so we went back to the south end to buy our favorite breakfast. Nathan smiled and asked, “Two?” because we always order the artichoke and cotilla cheese tamales with everything but the hottest sauce.
“More than 3,200 events took place across the country on Saturday [March 28, 2026], from New York City to Driggs, Idaho, a town of fewer than 2,000 people in a state Trump carried with 66 percent of the vote. Nearly half of the protests took place in Republican strongholds. Texas, Florida, and Ohio each had more than 100 events. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah had events in the double digits. Rural communities that have never hosted a political protest before, from Seward, Alaska, to East Glacier Park, Montana, showed up for the first time. The protests went international, with tens of thousands marching in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, and London, and in countries with constitutional monarchies, they called the protests ‘No Tyrants’.”
It is a newer expression, “Read the room.” It suggests that a person should have the sense of where others are emotionally and intellectually, how they view what is said and seen, and more critically, whether they agree or are inclined to wrestle with your words and actions and very presence, to be annoyed or even angered.
Reading the room when I’m not in the room isn’t a skill I often possess. I misunderstand or fail to appreciate the inclination of my audience. However did I manage a classroom? Zoom didn’t exist. Determination to do right, to accept that my understanding, experience, and knowledge might be shared.
Continue readingThe scenario I detailed in class was based on a true story. It happened in the last century in a city back east. Baltimore, maybe. Brooklyn?
A single mother has kept her sick child at home for three days. The little boy has the flu with a fever and coughing and listlessness. She’s fed him soup and crackers, whatever he would swallow and could keep down. He seems a little better this morning, the fever has dropped, but is not well enough to go to school. She has no one she can call to watch her child, but her boss has warned her that if she fails to come in today, she will be fired. Maybe he’s had to cover for her and is desperate for time with his own family or maybe he’s being a heartless jerk. I don’t know about that.
Mom sleeps on the couch in their one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up apartment. It’s payday and the rent is due. She can’t afford to lose her job, so she tucks her son into bed, warns him to stay in his room. She’s left him water and juice and crackers—all she has in her kitchen until she’s paid and can get to the store. The child seems sleepy enough to stay put. She rests her hand on his forehead and tells him she loves him. “You be good.”
Mom goes to work. She will run home at lunch to check on her boy.
Continue readingLike last week, this post is late. I mean to write early, but it’s been a week of strong wind, heavy rain, an 18-hour power outage, some baking and planning and writing, and exhausting work on our rental. A friend sent me notes on the novella version of my book and I began a new draft. Good stuff. It sounds like I’m complaining, but I have no business doing that.
I nearly didn’t post this week at all. But let me share a personal tradition that I miss while I’m sitting here on the sofa, the television paused. I had a writing assignment I shared but the most important thing I used to do this time of year, when I was teaching, was show episode 10 of season 1 of The West Wing. The entire series is playing on Netflix just now. A homeless vet dies wearing a coat that Toby Ziegler donated to charity. It had his business card in the pocket and for that reason Toby is called by the DC police to the Korean War Veterans Memorial in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.. They hope he can identify the body.
&PRIDE Press 