WHAT’S CHANGED

October 31, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / Leave a comment

I read a meme the other day that claimed we could no more give up AI than an addict could give up meth. Ptht!

The world is changing. Already a generation is growing up in a country where the President ridiculing his political enemies is normal. We see daily name-calling in the news and the way so many of us were bullied on the playground is normalized among adults. Behavior that would have led my mother to express her disappointment and send me to my room is now acceptable. Among adults. Overt racism and all the other ugly -isms are allowed, even encouraged by some. Speaking out for poor and disadvantaged people is suspect. Apparently, the strategy of keeping our heads down in order to avoid the bully in the schoolyard has followed some of us into adulthood. I won’t name the boy who made grade school a misery for me, but we seem to have elected his doppelgänger president.

***I call them “the green meanies.” They’re the remains of fireworks—I don’t know what sort. You don’t want to find them by stepping on them barefoot.***

I made the relatively innocent comment that I’d never felt comfortable with payments made under the table. A reader chewed me out. Had I always reported my babysitting money? I babysat once, as I recall. I was rubbish at it. These comments were in response to a campaign promoting the use of cash—after all, if paying babysitters was done entirely with a digital system, the teen saving money for college would have been adding to her Social Security account from the age of 14. My grandmother would have had to add $5 to my account instead of slipping a bill into my birthday card. People working a second job under the table because their retirement income didn’t quite make ends meet would be paying taxes. Imagine the horror.

Or we could ensure an actual living wage, socialize medicine, make college free, and fund the IRS so wealthy people cheating on their taxes would be caught and the rest of us would be better off.

Anyway, yes, I’d miss all the advantages of cash payments listed in that Facebook post. The argument is a distraction, though. Like so much of what we are being taught by powerful people to distrust and hate, the point isn’t to make our lives better; the point is to make their lives richer.

It’s bigotry and anger that we need to disappear.

I already miss things that disappeared from my childhood. I miss thank-you notes—seriously. I hated writing them as a little girl, but I have two friends who still send thank you notes and each one about brings me to tears. I miss landlines. I don’t wear my cell phone, but I know plenty of people who freak out if they are separated from their phones for any length of time. I miss phone booths. I miss wandering off to places where no one knows where I am and they aren’t even worried about it. I miss calling the doctor’s office and speaking to the person at the from desk in order to make an appointment. The person at the dentist’s office calls me back… so far. I miss paper magazines since I gave them up for Pinterest and each costs what I hesitate to pay for a printed book. I miss holiday dinners and cards and the rare long distance call to the friend I couldn’t afford to talk to for more than three minutes. I miss closeness between grandchildren and grandparents since two of mine avoid me.I assume that’s my fault and not simply a generational divide and that make it worse.

I am tired of Zoom and my “trash” folder filled with vulgar emails clearly intended for a sick-minded person of the opposite sex. I am tired of hearing about people’s sex lives. My podiatrist’s input forms asked me about my gender identity and I wrote: why? Why does my foot doctor care? Pronouns are useful once in a while when I talk about someone who isn’t there, but what business is it of mine how you self-identify or what you do and to whom? Honestly. [If I wanted a personal relationship with my podiatrist, I would rather he know the title of my favorite novel or my favorite color, but he told me several times during my fifteen minute appointment that he “doesn’t care” what I do.] For my evening entertainment, I don’t want to watch a rape scene and I don”t need a candid sex scene. I know how it works. Like most American adult women, I’ve been harassed and at 74, and I want those abusers punished but I really do not want to know the details others’ ordinary experiences.

I don’t want to watch films entirely consumed by violence or battles or violent attacks on people. A cozy mystery that ends with the criminal identified works fine for me. A Japanese series, Midnight Diner, is back with a new season on Netflix. Quiet and tender. Just what the doctor failed to order.

HOUSEWORK

October 23, 2026October 19, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

The algorithms have figured out I am a perfectly sensible woman with self respect and a functioning brain. i.e. a feminist. As a result, I find a lot of reels about gendered injustice. Women’s health hasn’t been properly studied, ever; men don’t do their fair share of work in the home.

I live with a man who has always done his share in our partnership. Gary does ALL the laundry, most of the dishes, most of the yard work, and I never have to ask. This week he emptied my sewing corner (the bins are now in the middle of the space and stacked over my head) and scrubbed the floors. My turn to sort and choose what to get rid of. Have I mentioned that Gary should be cloned?

This photo was taken last week and you’ll note that her flight feathers seem a little ragged—she’s growing a new set. This eagle is one of the local nesting pair. She might be male, but the females are larger and I suspect this is the she. I had to crouch on the sand with my phone zoomed all the way out for over ten minutes while she ate the crab [in the sand at left]. I was at a respectful distance, and she didn’t seem to mind me, though she looked up when a seagull flew overhead, and acknowledged other interruptions. When she was done, she flew up onto a tree at the headland. Maybe that long crouch was what injured my foot?

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BORN LUCKY

October 16, 2026October 20, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

***One of the best pieces of luck in my life is Gary. He’d say the same. Yes, I’m certain.***

In 1971, when I left DJ’s Sound City, the only job I’ve ever been laid off from, I applied for work at the University Book Store in Seattle. It was, at that time, the largest of its kind in the world—it offered a huge selection of trade books, half the basement given over to textbooks, and other departments serving students at the University of Washington. I wanted to work in the Art Department since I was a studio arts major, but because of my experience in a record store, I was placed in the Music Department, working for Jess Burton. It was an essential part of my education.

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ADHD

October 9, 2026October 10, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

I was inserviced about ADHD. I recognized the behavior in my family and students. It was always male students. I was told that was because it was nearly always the boys who had ADHD and were often on meds. I’d seen it in my life among those I love. My husband might wake at 2am, drink a cup of coffee or two, and be able to get back to sleep. Think about that. He drank coffee to manage his overactive head—the stimulant allowed him to focus. That’s what Ritalin does—it seems a sort of backwards response to find that a stimulant allows the mind to slow down. [The way that the appearance of being laid back by smoking dope is countered by the reality that blood pressure rises with use. Yes, really.]

This flying goose is one of four we first saw a little over a week ago. Two pairs, we thought, smaller than the Canada geese. Then just two. Those two fed in our neighbor’s garden—no one was home. Then we found the remains of what we think was one of them, and geese mate for life. Since then, the other seems to fly north and south along the shore. Back and forth several times a day.

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ALWAYS SOMETIMES RARELY

October 2, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

When we’re at the beach we always try to go out in the morning; we’re not always at th beach but when we are we rarely miss a day. I usually run every other day, but sometimes, I skip a run or run short. Rarely, we stay indoor because the weather is punishing.

Visitors and even some locals most often praise the clear blue skies and mid-day. Gary and I prefer clouds. This many, at least, makes the sky more interesting. It’s the other reason we like to go out at dawn. The main reason is to avoid tourists. At dawn we are often the first to mark the sand with our footprints. Earlier than that, there might be elk, which are beautiful, sure, but not tame or predictable. Early morning is when I saw the black bear, the otter, the baby seal. Raccoons and deer leave tracks on the sand, but weasels and rabbits and chipmunks appear only in our front yard. Many songbirds, garter snakes, lizards, ***mice and shrews***, ***and the imported red squirrels and the rats.***

People who don’t live here year around rarely understand about the weather or wildlife. We might get only a handful of rainy days in summer, but we’ll get five or eight feet of rain during the rest of the year. There is always wildlife.

In addition to the deer, I’ve seen black bears and raccoons and weasels. Word is there are cougar in the hills, but I’m not in any hurry to verify that story. Recent encroachment by bull elk means I check the beach before going out for my runs. Bull elk are maybe a little insane during the rut. There are signs up all over Cannon Beach warning that the bull elk are dangerous this time of year. Tourists walk too close to get their photos. It makes us cringe.

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STEPPING BACK

September 11, 2026September 16, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

Every once in a while, not every year, maybe every few years, now and again, here and now, it all feels like too much. Not enough. I lose focus and passion and a sense of purpose. What’s it all about, Alfie? I resign positions, slow down, and step away from obligations. Some wonderful things have happened recently, but other things have caused me to stumble and lose focus and confidence. This is one of those times. Time to step back and wait for energy and possibility to return.

*I made 78 leaves to loop onto bookmarks for* Daughters. gave away 18, sold nearly 40. I can run two miles with hills, our sons brought their families for a few days last month. The weather finally broke, with nights even in Portland dropping into the 50s. A few months ago I found a piece of sea glass that is pale violet—the first ever—and last week Gary found blue. I have baked and cooked and sewn and woven and pieced and counted sheep. I have written many thousands of words this year, and run hundreds of miles, walked further, and struggled to face what is happening in the world.

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METAL SHOP & Art for Art’s Sake

September 4, 2026September 3, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

A couple of years ago, I took a class at the Portland metal studio, Ninety-Twenty. I wanted to recreate a sterling ring I’d made for Gary while I was still in high school in the fall of 1968 or maybe 1969. At the University of Washington, I would complete two studio art degrees by 1976. When we married after Gary’s graduation in 1974, I borrowed back Gary’s sterling ring to add a gold bead for the wedding. On our wedding day, my mother accidentally flushed our rings—the two-color gold bands and his updated sterling and gold ring. (She absolutely denied doing this.) I remade the gold wedding bands the following fall but not the sterling one. I don’t remember why. Gary suggests, “Maybe we were too busy.” Gary was working full time after graduation and I was both working and in school pursuing a teaching degree, my third degree in six years.

Gary’s rings at left, top to bottom: the remade gold band from after our wedding; a folded gold, copper, and sterling band made by George Sawyer to celebrate our twentieth anniversary, and the remade forged and chased sterling band with three “nuggets” of 14k gold and two of sterling—five in honor of our fiftieth. At right, on the ring finger of my hand, are the four gold bands I was wearing in 2024 to celebrate 10, 20, 30, and 40 years of marriage. (My wedding band is on my little finger—I was barely able to shift it from my ring finger because it was always too small.)

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VIVALDI

August 28, 2026August 28, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

I found Vivaldi when I was a teenager.

Vivaldi – Summer from The Four Seasons | Netherlands Bach Society. These are the original instruments that would have been used in Vivaldi’s time. No director; the soloist, Shunske Sato, is the director. The entire sound is far more startling—a shocking break in weather! You can hear it HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8TFQFQeL0o

In my teens, I attended a lot of concerts. Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, The Beatles, Country Joe and the Fish, the Kinks, the Birds, Ravi Shankar, Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel (acoustic at the HecEd), Moody Blues, then Laura Nyro and my favorite Joni Mitchell. I’d had guitar lessons from Candy Mack and played a number of folk tunes from The Joan Baez Songbook. Then college.

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IN FOUR YEARS

August 24, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a reel from “Toby-the-Neuro-Scientist” about maybe not quite failing his A-levels. He failed to achieve a score that would get him into the University program he wanted. So he worked for a year waiting table and pissed that away on clothes and drinking, but got serious about maths and got into uni, but his first year was “rubbish,” and then tried to be better the second year and was hit by a car. His third year was Covid so he graduated “alone in [his] bedroom.” He took a year off waiting table again and entered a dementia program to graduate the top of his class, researched Parkinson’s disease for two years. Ten years after those disastrous A-levels, he has his PhD from a prestigious university. Who woulda thunk it?

In four years, who might you become? In ten?

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SMOKING GUN

August 14, 2026August 14, 2026 / janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

“Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em,” They told my dad when he was training in Arizona for WWII.

In January of 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States announced in print that tobacco smoke was dangerous to health. Cigarette caused lung cancer. The announcement was a political risk to the SG, and a blow to a valuable American industry, which had known of the danger for decades and kept that to itself. The warning was timed for a Saturday so that the stock market would have a couple of days before shivering, and to allow for Sunday newspapers to cover the story in detail. People read newspapers then.