FAMILY

BECOMING

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Our tenant, Greg, brings his cactus outdoors when it blooms, a rare semi-yearly event.

One day my favorite design teacher, Hazel Koenig, saw me walking to a metals class in the Art Building. She stopped me to ask if I would be willing to help out at a state art education conference. That would have been about 1974. Later, she got me my first teaching job. I thought of myself as an artist, and I still do. My work space where I write and make things is not a “craft area” as someone recently called it. It is studio space, work space. Calling myself a writer was harder somehow that calling myself an artist. I was exhibiting while I was still in high school. It took years to become a published writer of fiction. I had many articles published in dog magazines, I didn’t count them.

Calling myself a teacher also took time. I came to teaching relatively late in my arts education. I had avoided thinking too much about how I would make my living. I was in a five-year BFA program, most of the way through a BFA in Ceramic Art, when I “moved up the hill” from the Fire Arts building to the great facility in the Metal Arts wing of the Art Building on the Quad at the University of Washington.

From 1970 to 1976, I was a student at the UW. By 1974 or 1975, I was thinking about my future in a more realistic way. I toyed with transferring to a Botany major. I considered the law. I had wanted to be a an architect since I was no more than 11, but somehow failed to pursue it, though I took the non-major architecture history series from Gustav Pundt and then finagled my way into the majors-only series. Later I would make a decent supplementary income drawing plans for clients and for an architect.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, I realized that I was always teaching. Maybe I liked telling people what to do. Maybe I was good at explaining things. Maybe teaching was the creative and professional outlet that I needed. Maybe I was still under that favorite delusion that I would have “three months off every summer” and time to do my own art. That last one for sure, and even working half time as an art teacher, I never got “my own work done.” Teaching is more than full time work.

Even as a student, I knew classroom management would be my greatest challenge. Part of my educational preparation was brief field assignments in classrooms from Kindergarten through high school. When it was time to begin a longer term field placement, I asked for middle school. It was the hardest assignment and the right choice. I earned a k-12 certificate and later taught Art at a girls’ prep school for three years.

Then I moved back to Oregon and my husband and we began our family. For a few years I drew plans for clients and Jay Raskin. When I looked at teaching opportunities on the Oregon coast, I chose Social Studies as a second subject endorsement. I learned to write essays in my SS classes, how to reason and think. I began coursework, but then took an NTE exam and was awarded Social Studies certification.

I subbed for teachers all over the school district, our children were born and graduated and went off to make their lives. After substitute teaching for 11 years, I taught English for 25 years, earned an MFA in writing, and now I teach only two college classes, Writing 121 and Writing 122. I have my 10 weeks of summer and then another 12 weeks in the fall without teaching. In November, I write a novel. I am not inclined to do nothing. I will be busy Winter and Spring with my two college classes.

All this summer, Gary and I have been sorting possessions. We are each of us the end of the line. I have personally cleared the possessions to my parents, aunt, step-grandmother, and even my step-grandmother’s second husband’s brother. People gather unto themselves. Going through tiny professional pins with my son, Ian, I found I had no explanation for the pin from the carpet business in Portland, the mysterious Mason’s pendant from a hundred years ago. I know how they came to me, but there is no one to ask why they exist or what they mean.

Today, we went through the “treasure chest” and the linen closet together, and eliminated a great deal of “stuff” we didn’t need. Blankets and sheets and linens, bits of wrapping paper and ribbons from past holidays. The habit of my mother and her mother before her: keep what might be useful in the future. But I do not think I will ever want that rest of the red eyelash yarn I used to wrap packages a dozen years ago. There is also the joy of finding things I’d forgotten I possessed, the occasional gift I do not remember ever having.

Then I sorted my jewelry. The small jewelry box is completely empty, while the other is neatly sorted. The ladies in my family are going to do well this Christmas.

A necklace I used to wear every time I flew needs to be restrung. I have been putting that off. It is a luck piece, plain elephant ivory beads. I like to think the ivory did not come from a slaughtered elephant, but that is not a story I possess. I only know the beads are nearly 200 years old and when I was in a plane, I folded my hands over their smoothness and stroked them for comfort.

I finished the last of the blackberry crisp this afternoon. I sipped a half glass of wine as a reward for my industry. I feel enlightened.

When I go looking for something, I will know where it is, but I also know the greater value I possess. I know myself to be teacher, writer, artist.

WEASEL TRACKS

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The brown pelicans are here. We found a shed flight feather on the sand.

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We think we found weasel tracks in the sand. Not dog or cat or rat or raccoon. Little weasel tracks. By the time I got them with a camera, the sun was up and the tracks had begun to fall in. You will have to take my word. A weasel. There has been a weasel in the neighborhood at least since the 80s when I first saw one dart across the front yard. A weasel watched the electricians replacing a rusted out meter box. Our cat Leakey had an on-going feud. Then it was gone, but maybe it is back again, or more likely a cousin after all this time.

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The tide scrubbed cold water up from the bottom of the ocean and dozens or hundreds of aged dead crabs were tossed on the sand, many of them 8 inches across and nearly all males. The other day as the sun came up during our morning walk we could see odd color in the sky, a gilded haze from the fires elsewhere in the west.

Our family came for the weekend and we had 8 adults and 5 children between the ages of 2 and 6. There was a bit of chaos.

And then Gary and I picked blackberries. They are early this year. I meant to gather only a handful to combine with nectarines, but there were so many!

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My mother always said you could tell a pie was done when it began leaking and bubbling over.

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A good month so far.

SOCIAL SECURITY

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As a child, I thought I would one day have many horses. This is one of my horses.

When I was a teenager, my mother was buying and selling antiques. She reported the income as coming from both herself and my dad because, having worked for the feds and before that for a college, he did not have many years in the Social Security system. In other words, he qualified for a federal pension but not for Social Security benefits. Mom wanted to ensure he could have both so my dad was a partner in the resale business of antiques and collectables. Today, she would have done this via Ebay; in those years, she attended flea markets and antique shows.

This was a good lesson for me as a teenager, to see someone planning ahead.

Talking about money is uncomfortable. I get that. It is for me too.

Some in my parents’ generation were diligent about preparing for retirement. They may have been particularly motivated if they faced particular challenges related to race or religion or divorce, humble upbringing or handicap. There was also the fact of growing up in the Depression, which tended to instill a sense of monetary insecurity and need for preparation. And the G.I. Bill had sent a generation of Americans to college who would not have had that opportunity in previous decades.

The G.I. Bill was initially conceived primarily as a home-buying incentive for returning veterans. The educational portion was tacked on at the end, but it might have created the most dramatic shift in American culture.

Don A. Balfour was “the first recipient of the 1944 GI Bill.” Veterans Administration letter to George Washington University.

On June 22, 1944, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, was signed into law.

During the war, politicians wanted to avoid the postwar confusion about veterans’ benefits that became a political football in the 1920s and 1930s. Veterans’ organizations that had formed after the First World War had millions of members; they mobilized support in Congress for a bill that provided benefits only to veterans of military service, including men and women. Ortiz says their efforts “entrenched the VFW and the Legion as the twin pillars of the American veterans’ lobby for decades.”

Harry W. Colmery, Republican National Committee chairman and a former National Commander of the American Legion, is credited with writing the first draft of the G.I. Bill. He reportedly jotted down his ideas on stationery and a napkin at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Ernest McFarland, (D) AZ, and National Commander of the American Legion Warren Atherton, (R) CA were actively involved in the bill’s passage and are known the “fathers of the G.I. Bill.” One might then term Edith Nourse Rogers, (R) MA, who helped write and who co-sponsored the legislation, as the “mother of the G.I. Bill”. As with Colmery, her contribution to writing and passing this legislation has been obscured by time.[Wikipedia]

Like slightly more than half of World War Two veterans, my aunt (Marines) and my father (Army) used the G.I. Bill to gain a college education. Both went to the University of California at Berkeley. They were first generation. My mother was too young to have served during the war, but she lived with her sister and after the war also attended UC Berkeley before her marriage.

The Bill was not perfect. It suffered from the bigotries of the day, stumbled, lapsed, but has been renewed in recent years. It still looks like opportunity for many young people seeking to serve their country and find a better life.

There used to be a popular fiction, the Horatio Alger myth, that encouraged a belief that in America anyone can rise. Indeed, many have come to our country to find a better life. Many have found that better life, but actual wealth tends to run in families. We do not live in a fluid society. Children born into affluent families may achieve actual wealth (Gates), but the rags-to-riches story is rare to nonexistent. (Riches-to-rags is an easier move. There is plenty of research documenting how a single generation brought up in privilege can squander wealth.) Most people shift slightly up or down in class, work and earn slightly more or less than the generation before them.

It has never been easy to shift social classes, and there is deep resentment among the wealthy, hence derogatory terms such “Nouveau Rich” and “social climber.” Research suggests that active resistance has grown. Social mobility is less likely today than is has been in the middle of the last century.  My mother’s mother had hoped to attend college and according to family stories was accepted to Reed College, but was unable to attend when she and her sister were forced to support the family due to a strike. Later my grandmother was an office manager in a shipping company, a single mother supporting her daughters. My own mother attended college only until she married. I have four college degrees, and my sons have four between them.

What we are given is ultimately less important than what we assume we are entitled to pursue. I assume my grandchildren will attend college, and because of such assumptions about their futures, they likely will. My parents assumed as much for me. My husband attended college only because I did, not because anyone in his family had ever attended college or because anyone in the educational system encouraged him. He graduated in 1974 with honors and Phi Beta Kappa. His work has rarely relied on that education directly, but a look at his bookshelves reveals a man still interested in his own education. I am proud of him—he is interested in knowing.

Assumptions about my own life have also flexed. I thought I would teach till I was in my 70s, but a year of lingering illnesses forced me to retire at 62 when there was “no money” to offer me a half-time teaching position. I have not been sick since, though I do still teach two college classes each year.

My husband and I have three pensions between us, none of them enough to pay rent, but adequate together with Social Security, which we each paid into since the 60s.

My mother was determined that she and my father would enjoy a secure retirement. In practice, life did not proceed in the manner she hoped for. My father was forced to retire early due to rheumatoid arthritis. He died of lung cancer before reaching my age. My mother moved alone to a coastal town in Oregon, and her contractor underestimated the cost of her retirement home by a factor of three, so she went back to work part time for a few years.

We do what we can and hope for the best.

The BLANKET

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The yarn above is from the blanket I just completed. The warp was 8.5 yards, and I wove three 82.5″  lengths and then seamed them to make a blanket of 75″ x 88″  including fringe. One of the lengths used weft very like the warp and the resulting fabric is warm-toned and reddish. The other two used neutrals, dark blue and purple and green, as well as a scattering of sparky contrasting colors. The neutral weft lengths went on the outside and the reddish one in the center.

The pattern I wove is called “log cabin”  that is quite different from quilter’s log cabin. Weaver’s log cabin starts with alternating light and dark warp threads; the weft threads also alternate dark and light. You can see how I set darks against lights in the photo at top. The color contrasts reveal a pattern of horizontal and vertical bars. The three strips (each 25″  wide) on the same warp are seamed together in the two photos immediately below.

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The pattern sounds simple, but I am fond of it. There is a bit more to it than that, of course, but that’s the gist. You can see how the pattern varies in the four woven lengths stacked in the photo below. This is a different warp and shows four different approaches to weft. The one on the left is blue/purple. The one on the right used a handspun yarn in gradually shifting dark hues. There’s a dyed-in-the-wool skein from Washington state, shown up top, third from top on the left. Everything else on this page is woven of Koigu, a Canadian hand-painted merino yarn.

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Years ago, weaving my first project, I played with a classic balanced coverlet pattern called “Snow Ball and Pine Tree to make a weft faced rug of Swedish cow hair. You could say that I took a pattern from one tradition and used it in another. I did that with weavers log cabin, too, stitching a quilt in alternating vertical and horizontal bars. One creative effort feeds another.

Some days feel abandoned, wasted and lost.

Other days feed the soul. A friend just became a grandmother, and I sent her a baby blanket for the little boy, the one at left below.

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Some days pass without incident or accomplishment. Some days there is kindness in the air.

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.

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.

LOST and FOUND

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There was fog and some low clouds in the coast when we went out just after 6 this morning. We walked north, as we usually do, picking up trash and hoping for beach glass. I found three pieces in three colors, but my husband had no such luck and thought he would be skunked again.

On our way home, Gary saw what he assumed was a clear jelly fish cast onshore. As is his habit, he gave it a nudge with his foot. Instead of wobbling, the clear object spun around on the sand. Gary had his sea glass. A huge piece found.

In the mean time, fog closed in and as we walked further south toward home, both the waves to our west and the houses fronting the shore to our east became mere suggestions. This reminded both of us of a time my old dog show partner, Bonita, was here with her husband and children. We went for a walk and fog closed in so thick that visibility was reduced to perhaps ten feet. It was extraordinary!

One of Bonnie’s children became lost and searching for the child was impossible, like search for a penny on the floor in absolute darkness. Moments later, as best I recall though it seemed like hours in frantic effort, the child was found. The father began to yell, a reaction I remember from a day long before that when Alan went missing in Lower Woodland Park in Seattle. Gary and I were both nearly hysterical. My mother was with us and commented mildly that Alan had probably gone to the bathroom. But his parents were panicked and running everywhere to search. It was my mother who strolled over to the public restroom and returned our toddler (perhaps he was 4?). Our immediate impulse was to yell at him, but my mother calmed us both.

When we lose those we love, even for an hour or a moment, the adrenaline and sorrow can overwhelm good sense.

That is what we spoke of on our way home. We recognized the faint rooflines silhouetted against the brighter eastern sun.

A friend and his wife have lost a baby at 20 weeks gestation. They are handling this with grace, from what I can see. Hundreds of miles away, I am not there to offer physical comfort. Is there any comfort to be had? I cannot imagine. What they have lost will not be found again. Perhaps they believe in another life and reunion then, but for now, that child is gone as if never was. Lost in fog.

When we have fog like today in summer, this is generally a sign that Portland will have a 100° day. It is what is forecasted. It is a best guess, but only an educated one, not a certainty. There few things certain in life other than morning and loss. We all lose people we love during our lifetime. It is rare to survive to adulthood without gathering ghostly memories of people we will never see again on earth.

Just now, I want to remember the little girl walking out of the fog, my son grasping the hand of his grandmother. Those children are grown now. They, like my friend who lost his baby, will experience the entire range of human losses. They will also find courage and companionship. They will find meaning where they can. They will create and consume. They will share good intentions and make mistakes. And sometimes what they most love will seem lost.

Like all those before them, they will take their losses in hand and search for meaning. And they will, sometimes, find what they need to walk on in the fog.

“Father, Son, and the Holy Spigot”

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Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine. My title is a line from Four Weddings and a Funeral, otherwise notable for the use of an elegy by W. H. Auden, listed as “Funeral Blues” but also known as “Stop All the Clocks.” It is a poem of friendship and devotion and love.

But I mean to write about not partisan or political tolerance, but about the actual support for Donald Trump. On most levels this supportive base completely mystifies me. The man disrespects nearly everyone, including what might be considered the conservative base. He is a friend to our national enemies and an enemy to our friends. He has been married three times, and committed adultery while his most recent wife was in childbed. He has used language on tape that the men I admire would never use. He has insulted a Gold Star family, a POW, and the men and officers of his own military. He admires dictators and autocrats and seems indifferent to nations struggling to achieve what we have in the way of freedom. He is a hypocrite by both claiming religious faith and failing to evidence any knowledge of Christian teachings.

So here’s my understanding of why some still flock to his message:

  1. Money. Despite the fact that he was born wealthy, was handed wealth, and apparently had squandered more than he actually possessed at election, Trump is filthy rich. We admire money, don’t we? Money is power. Money is success. Never mind the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, the man is selfish and mean. But he’s rich and America loves a rich man. “Wealthy”, by the 19th century, was used as a girl’s name. In that case, of course, the meaning was not about wealth in terms of money, which the Bible and Jesus absolutely condemned, but “wealthy in the sight of the Lord.” It was that much-denied group the Puritans who preached that monetary success was a sign of God’s favor, despite an entire book in the Bible designed to refute that notion. Americans gave up Puritanical notions about sex, but decided we liked money. So some like the man because he’s rich.
  2. Vulgarity. He says exactly what he thinks and what many Americans apparently also think. He’s rich enough not to care if some object to his racism and sexism and bias against compassion and humility. They like that Trump attacks the poor for being poor, that he supports religious freedom so long as that religion is the one he pretends to follow. It is a cynical view of many Americans that everyone, or a majority of people, would speak exactly as Trump does, that they would ridicule a disabled person if they could get away with it. They like him for spouting hatred they dare not spout themselves, and for providing an opportunity for that venom to achieve acceptance.
  3. He is Everyman. Trump proves that anyone can be President. We don’t have to know the Constitution or pay attention to the news, study the complexities of international and national events, or even vote in elections. Certainly, if we are smart, we avoid paying taxes. We can brag that we “know more than the generals” and belittle those who have devoted their lives to the public good. Seriously. Some like the idea that a President can be as ill-informed, perhaps even as stupid, selfish, and self-serving as they are themselves. They genuinely believe no one is nicer than they are themselves. And they are not nice.
  4. Government. There are individuals in the world more powerful than small governments. There are companies more powerful that most nations. Yet, paranoia about government control is rampant. Children raised in strict, top-down households, particularly households with a strong authoritarian father, are often fearful of government. The psychological theory explaining this well-documented tendency postulates that when a child’s initial introduction to control and power is cruel and arbitrary, the child often retains distrust of governance throughout life. Trump removes government controls, and many do not seem to mind that those left in power are now the ones more concerned about profit than people. It’s the money again. Some will forgive most anything if a profit is to be made, even at the cost of health, safety, opportunity, and futures of others.

In contrast, it is an essential part of the American character to respect the needs of each individual, so long as this does not trespass on the needs of others. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is at our core. To this end, we live together as human beings have always lived in community. There is evidence of this truth.

I offer Dr. Salk.

“On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952—an epidemic year for polio—there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, which is known as ‘infant paralysis’ because it mainly affects children, Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.”

Both my husband and I were spared this disease when we were children because Dr. Jonas Salk invented a vaccine that protected us and he gave it away for the public good. Both of us knew people who had polio, were confined in iron lungs for weeks or months, and spent the rest of their lives struggling to walk. Dr. Salk made an adequate living as a doctor, he claimed. “His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, ‘Well, to the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ ”

There is irony throughout my explanations. It is ironic to trust Trump because he is “successful” and “says what he thinks” and is as petty as the worst of us, because our life experiences should tell us that success is rarely gained only by those who are deserving. Surely, some people are kinder than others, not out of any selfish motive, but because they sincerely care about being good.

I am genuinely grateful that there are people willing to sacrifice for the common good, that some people are smarter and more generous than I am myself, and that consideration of the needs and feelings of others is not a conservative or liberal notion, but a humane one. And I am grateful that the majority of Americans feel as I do.

My hope and the hope of a majority of Americans is that we will soon inoculate our government against the current virus infecting our nation.

Yet, there is good. There is good in each of us. We fear and are comforted. We hunger and are fed. We are homeless and are housed. We join together to maintain the common good, because as human beings that is what we must do to survive. It is what we have always done. A strong nation protects weak from strong, the vulnerable from powerful, and small from the great. That is, ultimately, our greatness.

NEVER TURN YOUR BACK

/ janpriddyoregon / Leave a comment

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“Never turn your back on the ocean,” we were warned as children.

Most people think of the “front” of their home as the side facing the street. What we call the front faces the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful view.

The hummingbird above—can you see her?—she has her back to me. I was fifty feet away when I shot this photo and she was at least 15 feet in the air, sipping nectar from a semi-tropical plant in the neighbor’s yard. Perhaps it is from New Zealand? The hummer was not alone. We counted at least four hummingbirds feeding a couple of days ago.

Just now, I spotted a hummer in our own garden, checking out the lavender and pale thyme, before settling to dine on the royal purple blossoms of our butterfly bush. The dark pink escalonia pulled her away for a few seconds, but then she was back hovering over the purple. We also have purple hebe, pink geraniums, glistening red-orange “Lucifer,” and white rugosa roses blooming.

In the front yard, the wild roses and ceanothus are done, the honeysuckle past its prime, but another pink rugosa hydrangeas are in full flower. The native salal, which flowers and fruits simultaneously, will feed bees with nectar and us with berries for months. Soon the montbrecia will begin opening while the salal and hydrangea go on to September.

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She seems to have turned and looked at me in the photo above, but I was deliberately distant. I did not want to disturb her.

There is always something blooming in the garden.

This is a deliberate choice. Most of the garden is evergreen plants, shrubs and bulbs and other flowers were chosen each season to ensure we could feed local bees and birds throughout the year. Even in winter, we have blooms.

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On the beach we also avoid disturbing the birds, though Gary and I both talk to the crows, and sometimes he pretends to want to pick up a seagull. Gary goes straight toward one saying, “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” The gull doesn’t mind him much, but walks away if he gets too close.

My strategy is different. I do not walk in the direction of gulls resting onshore, I do not look at them directly. They seem to understand that I have business of my own that does not involve them.

Yesterday morning an osprey was right out in front. Later one of the four eagles passed overhead. We saw a Cooper’s hawk just a few months ago when it rested on our garden gate. It’s leaving was too fast to see.

The ocean is always in front of our house. Before our house was here, there was spruce forest right down to the beach. Before that, the beach itself followed a different line. The water washes and washes the shore, sweeping up from its basalt basin onto the edge of the continent. It is not only water but the shore that moves. One day the Cascadia fault line will give way and a wave is likely to take not only our home but the land now under it. Everything I recognize as front or back of our house will vanish in an hour.

But the ocean? The ocean will remain. I expect the birds will too.

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