COVERS

July 3, 2026July 3, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 11 Comments

cover yourself I’ve got you covered that’s a great cover you’ll need cover

June was an eventful month, and I have a few photos to prove it. My MFA residency happened in Forest Grove and I went by a few times. We both caught a cold (tested) which caused us to miss our dental appointments, but we were healthy for our yearly medical. I am eating better. So is Gary. Both of us lost a couple pounds.

It was hot in Portland, mid-90s while we were there. It was also unusually hot at the beach for a couple days, high 80s. The heat at the beach is troubling. We’ve lived here since 1979, and hitting 80° used to be an extraordinary event. We prefer the cooler temperature. This past week makes me feel things how are changing.

An elk ate apples in the garden across the street and then I ran past it twice yesterday on the beach, a rabbit grazed the yard, and the raven couple have a youngster big as them.

***That’s a young bull elk. He probably weighs over 800 pounds. His antlers will continue to grow for two or three months.***

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CHOOSING THE BEAR

June 26, 2026June 27, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

It is widely reported that given the theoretical choice of meeting a man or a bear in the dark, most women will choose the bear.

Men are justly offended by this report. Women take a breath and nod.

White marble with inlaid semi-precious stone. The romance of the Taj Mahal was ruined for me when I learned that the adored wife it was built to commemorate died in childbirth with her 14th pregnancy. I’ve been pregnant twice, the second unmedicated, and cannot imagine surviving thirteen unmedicated childbirths. Image by ***Muhammad Mahdi Karim, Stitching assisted by Benh***

Last Friday morning, Juneteenth, Ron Charles (former WaPo book editor) wrote about the exploitive relationship of Thomas Jefferson with Sally Hemings, who was 16 years old in Paris and younger than his daughters when he got her pregnant. Yeah. Awful. There is no evidence, no signed contract or other document, that she chose to begin her relationship with the much older Jefferson, but that is the story. [DNA testing of her descendants proves the relationship.] As a free woman, why would anyone have chosen such a relationship?

Was Jefferson the bear?

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WILL BOB FOR AGATES

May 15, 2026May 16, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

On beach runs, I cannot resist the amber agate, striped limpet, or rare bit of glass. I circle, bend to pluck them from the ground, and bring them home. I pile stones on the coffee table, line limpets on the kitchen counter, and upstairs too, beside the sink and on either side of my computer—the irregular translucent quartz and smooth flat ovals of jasper and agate. The baby sand dollars. Eventually, they find their place in bowls and jars. A couple of decades ago I collected more than a dozen Coach bags by bidding on Ebay. I carry a flat red bag on weekends. I pack another large bag for overnights. But there is also the brown bag I bought for my first teaching job. The rest were pointless accumulation. My mother would have understood.

***Do you see the eagle at the headland a mile and some north of our home? She used to rest in a snag, but lately she’s chosen a higher perch.***

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CROSSING TO SAFETY

May 8, 2026May 8, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

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.

On our way home from the Farmers’ Market,last Saturday morning, I noticed my favorite rose was already blooming. This pink climber is a “volunteer”—that is, no one deliberately planted it in the narrow crevice between sidewalk paving and concrete building. However it sprouted, it’s grown to be enormous! It is also gorgeous, as is the woman at right. Gary called out that I wasn’t taking a photo of her but the rose, and she laughed. She’d moved out of the frame by then, but I wish I had a photo of that grin!

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BABY SAND DOLLARS

May 5, 2026May 7, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

Coming back from my run on this morning, I saw a crow standing well out on the shore in about an inch of water. I gave the bird a bad time about that. “What are you doing out there? That’s not your place. You don’t belong there.” The crow was indifferent to my chiding, but I went on a bit more. “Get in here!” Then the crow turned her head and I saw her red beak and realized she was a black oystercatcher. I had to apologize.

I arranged my finds on the railing of what we call “The Cat Deck” though we no longer have a cat. Most of what I found this morning plus four spices of limpet, scallops of two kinds, a round button of rust (iron, rusted clear through), “Ugly clams,” and the back shells and one head shell of chitons that we call “butterflies.”

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HOPE

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / Leave a comment

“However ill-founded, however misguided, hope is the basic stratagem of mortality. We need it, and an art that fails to offer it fails us.”

—URSULA K. LE GUIN, ”Facing It,” from Dancing at the Edge of the World

LAB RATS

February 20, 2026February 21, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

Years ago, as a “starving student” who worked every hour I could get, I also participated in psychology experiments that paid volunteers. I only did the safe ones, the sitting-in-a-sound-proof-room and repeating back numbers sort of experiment. I had thought I might major in Psych but Behaviorism was big, and behaviorists were very big on animal experiments and generalizing behaviors of animals in a lab to judge human behavior. I saw flaws in their logic. But I took classes and paid attention.

***Winter finally arrived with temperatures in the high 30s. It was 37° on our walk yesterday. We’ve learned from our experience that our 4-mile morning walk leads to a better night’s sleep.***

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RESTORE

February 13, 2026February 18, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog or my Facebook page, you might know that we have been restoring our rental, a duplex attached to our home. It’s just off the beach at the end of a dead end street, and the only long-term rental that I know of locally.

Just now we’ve been at work on the downstairs unit. Renting long term makes it possible for us to afford to care for the property and pay taxes. It’s why my grandfather first constructed the building in the mid-1930s. My family had a summer house then, dating back to 1911. We’d hoped to replace our dysfunctional garage door this year and take a few days on a vacation, but life had other plans.

This is probably 1954 before my brother was born, and Castle Rock behind me is 0.6 nautical miles offshore. My mother spent all her summers here and my grandfather retired here in the 1940s. Some of my earliest memories are from this place and Gary and I have lived here full time since 1979.

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cancer invading our garden

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

Seeking Beauty

LUCY and ME

December 5, 2025December 7, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

This week I got started painting our rental and completed my quilt top and three submissions.

I was researching something the other morning that I don’t remember, but Gary and I got to talking during our walk about the people we still knew from high school after more than fifty years. I thought I would blog about that when I got home, but did my chores, and then forgot completely what I wanted to say. I titled this post “Lucy and Me” but can’t remember why I did that either. I might be losing my mind, but mostly, I’m busy.