CURRENT EVENTS

‘scared to death’

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

Ralph Yarl is home from the hospital and recovering, “a miracle” considering he was shot in the head before the “terrified” gun-owner shot him a second time as he lay bleeding on his front porch. He’d come to the porch to pick up siblings but rang the bell on a Street instead of an Avenue—or was it the other way around? The shooter fired through the glass in the door. Ralph is 5’8″ and weighs 140 pounds. Perhaps he weighs a little less after hospitalization.

A fifteen year old girl in Georgia is taking birth control despite being a virgin because abortion rights have been ended in her state. She is scared to death that the law might require her to carry a rapist’s baby to term.

This month I have been thinking about whether a better world might be possible? I thought, maybe yes, and wrote a book to find out how. And I did not intend to write any of this post today. But there you are. We never know.

The critter on the right is what we call a sand flea. This is a big one, about a centimeter long. Sand fleas aren’t usually not around much except when it’s warm. The critter on the left is something else. The sun was out. Briefly.
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LIARS&ICE

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

Word count, dental visits, complaints about the weather, lies, and the lying liars who tell them.

I hope I don’t often complain about weather or climate, but any time the snow and hail wants to stop for the season is not too soon for me. It hailed off and on all day yesterday, and I am sick to death of it. A few plants in the garden are sick to death of it too. These are the hill back behind our house.
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AWP & writing and courage

/ janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

A review of my writing and plans for April. No kidding.

“Vogue Philippines released its April issue on Friday and its newest cover model is an 106-year-old indigenous Kalinga woman, Apo Whang-Od, also known as Maria Oggay.” It would have been more impressive (on the part of Vogue) if this had been the cover of the US edition.

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NUDITY

/ janpriddyoregon / 14 Comments

Years ago, the Art teacher at the coastal high school where I was also a teacher for thirty years asked the Biology teacher to pick up a special-order book for her while she was shopping at Powell’s Book Store in Portland. (I was not that Art teacher—I taught Art in Washington State—this was Sandy, the reason I went on to teach English.) Diane drove 80 miles over the coast range to Powell’s and was horrified to discover that there was a nude on the cover of the book. Yes, a naked man! Michelangelo’s David. She was embarrassed to be seen with the book. No, I am not kidding.

WARNING: This marble statue of David (the one who slays the evil giant in the Bible) is totally naked.

A massive block of Carrara marble was cut and transported to Florence in 1464. The famous work was begun in 1501 and completed by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni at the age of 29 in 1504. Intended to be placed high as one of a series of prophet images, the seventeen foot tall sculpture was too heavy to move to that location and was instead sited in a square where the biblical hero was visible to all and recognized as a symbol of civil liberties. In more recent times, the marble showed damage from exposure and was moved indoors, and a replica placed in the square. Another replica of the six ton sculpture has since been placed in the originally intended location in Florence Cathedral.
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SNOW

/ janpriddyoregon / 15 Comments

Snow days, eagles, red snapper (warning: the fish is dead), and symptoms I am old in no particular order.

Our local eagle pair were high up above the beach in a spruce the other day. We heard them first and had to search. They were agitated, probably about what turned out to be a beached and quite dead red snapper. Our local eagles are not aggressive.
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FAIR WARNING

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

Sneaker waves, white male privilege, assumptions, earthquakes. [Mine as well.] The terrible ironies we live with every day.

SNEAKER WAVES. I was working in the Library, a Wednesday when I generally stayed late to provide access to students until the evening. However it was the last day of school, and students were furiously clearing out their lockers, signing yearbooks, and on their way to summer vacation. E stopped to say hey. He had just completed his Sophomore year, so I hadn’t had him in class yet. But we chatted, laughed, and both managed to be clear about looking forward to spending time together in the fall.

My friend was at the coast for a graduate residency. She expressed concern that students warned about sneaker waves seemed to think it was a joke.

This is a photo from a week or so ago, but the beach looked exactly like this yesterday during my run.
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SHE IS NINE & FINE

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

Only invasive flies die in her story.

Three months ago a nine year old girl, a Fourth Grader wearing pink glasses and named Bobbie Wilson was collecting Spotted Lanternflies. She’d learned about the dangerous-to-trees invasive species and how important it was to stomp them out. That’s what she was doing on the sidewalk where she’d lived since she was a baby: stomping on huge flies. The man who lived across the street watched her out his window and became frightened. He called the police to report her.

“There’s a little Black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees on Elizabeth and Florence,” Lawshe told the dispatcher, according to a call obtained by CNN.

“I don’t know what the hell she’s doing. Scares me, though,” Lawshe added.

NPR, 3 February 2023
I feel certain that there is more brownish beer bottle glass on the beach than any other color, but we don’t often find it. Beer bottles are thin and their color is harder to spot, easily mistaken for rock, wood, or other debris. Old glass is thick. That big green piece is exceptional and probably from the base of a bottle.

Want to guess the race of the two people in this news story?

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PAWNSHOPS, STARBUCKS, and RUNNING

/ janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

When we were in college in the early 1970s, my future husband and I used to take the bus to downtown Seattle and walk through the city, visiting 5 and 10 Antiques sometimes, where my mother worked part time. I have a necklace from that shop. We always went to what Gary called the “Pubic Margaret.” Then we worked our way down First Avenue pawnshops, looking at guitars. That was our Saturday habit for ten years.

The Christmas Cactus clearly indicated it planned to bloom by Christmas—not on Christmas but soon. By New Years Eve, it had begun opening buds. It is still in full flower. Gary’s plastic dinosaur is Marc, named for Marc Bolan of the band T. Rex.
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CERTAINTY

/ janpriddyoregon / 14 Comments

I have opinions. I am sometimes overwhelming in assertion of my opinions. So I will tell you that sunsets are beautiful and so are sunrises. My opinion.

The Pacific University MFA program from which I graduated in 2007 is in Residency in Seaside this week for the first time in three years. The Winter Residency has been here almost from the beginning. The first Winter Residency was held on campus in Forest Grove, but since classes were in session, the program provided housing in the local McMinemem’s and what with bars and transport to and from, the program moved to the coast where rentals are inexpensive in the off season. January is clearly off season. Even the luxury short-term rentals in our neighborhood have been vacant for a few days each week.

Weather has been challenging since the ice storms in Portland during the week before Christmas. We did not risk the drive to Portland to see family until the morning of the 25th and we drove back west the next day. It has rained here every day since. With an average of 90″ of rainfall, this is nothing new for us.

All of this is certainty. Or most of it. What follows is about a memory. I pieced it together from what Gary and I remember, and we recall different details, so I am not at all certain I have everything correct. It’s a sad story regardless of how it’s remembered, so you might not want to read more of this post.

This is last night’s sunset. Molly Gloss commented at her brilliant reading that perhaps we locals took such color for granted, perhaps we were used to it. But the truth is that Gary called to me from downstairs to check the sky and I called back that I was taking photos. When the sky changed, he called up again, and again I had already taken more photos.
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