Thanksgiving, holiday memories, oystercatchers, Pilgrims, and my Thankful story about a small child. Sea lions, and giving thanks.
WHAT I SAW
CURRENT EVENTS
HOMELESS
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.“
CALM DOWN
Maybe I should keep it to myself. But no, that would not do. I read most of it aloud to Gary. Then I composed an email, but kept adding to the Bcc. So here. Here it is. It’s unlikely that any (none?) of my family will read it, but sending it as a link in an email probably wouldn’t change that.*
I am calm in desperate situations, sometimes passionate in discussion, but quiet at my core under stress. Pressing down fear, anger, frustration, and other emotion in fraught situations is almost automatic. (Most people who think they have seen me angry have no idea.*) I learned to suppress those emotions when I was being teased, bullied, and otherwise harassed in childhood and adolescence. It is a skill I have fallen back on throughout my life when dealing with mentally ill relatives and grief. And injustice every darned day.
BLUE DOT
A friend of mine, someone I know only through our mutual blog posts and a handful of emails, the exchanges of notebooks and weaving… lives in a deeply red community of a deeply red southern state, the one blue dot in a red sea. She has found herself in situations where people say what seem such outrageous things that she is too flabbergasted to respond and in situations where she knows she is being deliberately baited. Walking around blue becomes an act of courage.
I get that.
This is probably not the best way to come back from a month of silence. I meant to write about wood carving and jam jars and a train ride, our bivalent booster and books. I’ve started that post. Instead…
ROSE CITY
for Ruth
Roses, choosing a home, The Flight of the Mind, and walking, in no particular order.
Continue readingANNIVERSARY
Next month is our 48th wedding anniversary, but today is the 50th anniversary of living together. I announced our intention to my mother via a letter sent from Kansas where I was traveling with my step-grandmother. (It was cowardly. While I was old enough to move in with Gary, I was too young to tell Mom face to face.) I learned a lot about wool on that trip.
HERO
In her essay, “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” Roxane Gay quarrels with labeling Cassidy Hutchinson a hero for her recent testimony:
“It took courage, I suppose, for Hutchinson to do the right thing. I can imagine she was facing a lot of political pressure, and perhaps even danger for coming forward to share what she knew about the January 6th insurrection. … Let me be clear. Cassidy Hutchinson is not a hero. The bar for heroism must be higher than doing the bare minimum before it’s too late to salvage what remains of one’s future. … Let us not forget how she is perfectly fine being part of a party that demands the surrender of her bodily autonomy and is also fine with that circumstance for the rest of us… “
—Roxane Gay
Is Cassidy Hutchinson a hero?
Continue readingWORTH MENTIONING
Some things are worth mentioning: the freedom to marry the person you love, food, clean air, water in streams, the compassion of people you know and also of the people you do not know. Children, uncles and aunts or third and fourth cousins, the devotion of grandparents, the expectation that if I fall someone will help me rise to my feet. If I am bleeding someone will bandage my wound. I might travel north to another state to visit old friends. I may worship, read, visit a theater, and laugh out loud.
None of these things are mentioned in the Constitution.
Continue readingFOOLED
We could say we are looking for sea glass, but we never do. We could say we are looking for agates, which is also true, but what Gary tells people is: “Rocks.” This is also true, though not completely true.
This posting concerns gathering treasure from the beach, reviewing promises and lies, and a fictional story about “abused” kittens—no animals harmed in that story. Oh! And I will be selling my weaving at an event sponsored by the Cannon Beach Art Gallery. Note that I say “selling” but actually mean “offering for sale,” which is not the same thing. About ten skeins of hand dyed wool in each length…
LAND LINE
No one calls us. No. That’s inaccurate. We have friends in Canada who call sometimes to touch base and one of our sons often calls us during his breaks working from home, especially while he is on a walk.
Our younger son got us each a cell phone and pays our new phone bill, so the land line became a useless expense. Even so it took us months to cancel and unplug our big landline phones. We finally did last week. We dickered about who and how to alert this change. In the end, family. We figured most everyone everyone has my email.
Retirement, gray hair, gardening, beauty and telephones in no particular order—
Last week we saw this osprey land on the snag at the headland north of our home. Usually there is an eagle there, or a raven or crow. We had never seen an osprey there and my zoom struggled in the wind, shot from the north in the next beach. She flew right over us in a long lazy turn.
Continue reading
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