MUDDLING ALONG

January 24, 2021January 28, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

It is raining this morning, not hard but hard enough to provide an excuse for staying in. We walked long yesterday morning and the world was cold. There is snow at the summit of the coast range, but we aren’t driving anywhere today. We’ve had a fire in the wood stove every day for weeks. Rain means cloud cover and cloud cover means the temperature is up but there will be no gorgeous dawn or appaloosa sky.

Everyone I talk to seems to be apologizing for forgetfulness and mistakes. The entire country might be on high blood pressure meds from the tension, or something to address depression, moodiness, forgetfulness, errors, confusion, and general stress. Zoom, FaceTime, phone calls, and email are temporary fixes. Our drugs of choice are only coffee and alcohol. Last night Gary and I shared sparkling wine that sent us off to bed in good spirits. Literal and figurative, emotional and physical good spirits. It was a celebration of nothing in particular, only that we are still here, still muddling along.

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CELEBRATION

January 22, 2021January 22, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

Born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California, on 21 October 1929.
Died in Portland three years ago today, 22 January 2018 in Portland.

Gary and I attended this memorial on 13 June 2018. Listening to Molly Gloss talk about her early work with Ursula made me cry all over again.

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THE SKY THE SKY THE SKY

January 20, 2021January 20, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
—The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

My intention was to write a post complaining about two important Zoom meetings, scheduled on the day of the Inauguration. What were they thinking?

Instead, there is hope in the sky, the light, the love I want to wrap around myself like a cloak of hope and beauty. Look up!

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GOOD DOG

January 13, 2021January 14, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

Our first dog was Oranje Anisette, Ann Ann, who was a year and a half old when she came to us in 1973. She had been owned by a Saluki breeder who found her character too gentle to be a fit for him. I had flown to Arizona to look at a bloodline I first met through magazine photos. I wanted to show Afghan Hounds. I was flexible aboust age and color, though I had been to enough dog shows by then to know that black dogs disappear in the ring. Ann Ann was black.

Ann Ann had hunted jack rabbits in the desert. She chased a squirrel twenty feet straight up a tree on the University of Washington campus. “Squirrels can climb trees?” Another time she actually caught one but spit it right out unharmed when I shrieked. Rain completely mystified her. “What is that stuff?” I walked her all over a wealthy Seattle district during breaks from my long studio hours, and she napped on my workbench in the Fire Arts Building on campus. The first time she saw a lure she was thrilled. It took her a couple of minutes to figure out she was chasing a shredded white plastic garbage bag. She stopped mid-course and trotted back to me. “That was kind of silly.” She finished her Canadian Championship. A sweet girl.

Our second Afghan Hound was Onika and I had driven with Canadian friends from Seattle to Colorado to see her as a puppy. There were five puppies in the pen when we arrived outside Fort Collins and the breeder was not yet home from work. The one girl who caught my eye over and over turned out to be Onika. Her mother was BOB at the first Colorado Grand National Field Trial—seeing that trial was the reason my Canadian friends made the trip. Onika later won both her majors owner-handled, but she died when she was chased onto the highway by a well-meaning neighbor in 1980. I sat in the garden and cried and cried.

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PAINTING STONE

January 12, 2021January 12, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

A remodeling website showed a house with an entire wall of pinkish-sandy fieldstone, probably installed in the 1940s or early 50s, painted over.

We hung no stocking over Christmas, but our beach coats and shoes live near the stove.

We have identical stonework halfway up the wall of the living room, installed by my grandfather in the late forties along with other MCM details. He was a retired engineer and had built two houses by then. He tore down most of the family summer place to rebuild it as his retirement home. The living room and fireplace stayed but the kitchen and a former dining room moved forward. Over the objections of his new wife, he remade the house one story and lowered ceilings to less than eight feet, intending to make heating easier. That was the house I inherited in 1978.

Yes, lucky.

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DENIAL?

January 10, 2021January 12, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

Gary is downstairs listening to a CD from The Searchers, his favorite group from the 60s (they were still playing a year ago). I have spent several days working on a poem for a local event. (With my luck they will not like it, but honest, I couldn’t write a cheerful “pandemic” poem. Others will.) As I sent it off as an email attachment I had word that the gallery is taking down the show the end of the month. They did not sell anything of mine (or from two other people). Yes, disappointing. But the poem . . . here’s the first stanza:

 Birds fell from the sky this past
 summer, a warning as defiling as riots 
 and bloody marble, the risk of living 
 in dangerous times when all times 
 prove dangerous.

Waves washed up into our hedge this morning, but it settled back for our afternoon walk.

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MY COUNTRY…

January 7, 2021January 7, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

Don’t most Americans feel that violent thugs do not represent the best of what our country has to offer? Don’t we believe that reason and fairness should rule over tyranny and violence?

Again, may 2021 lead us all to rediscover the virtues of hope, charity, faith, compassion, justice, temperance, and courage.

Simple courtesy and ordinary civility would be welcome. Truth, justice, and the American way? Surely. we remember all of that?

Our country is better than this.

REGROUP

January 5, 2021January 6, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 9 Comments

For days the rain has been heavy and steady. Air slides into the edge of the sea without making a line. White sea foam piles up at the rocky edge of our walk and even at low tide the sand is swept by high waves every few minutes. A bluff slid away up the beach because run-off has been so heavy. We try to go out for a daily walk anyway. A wave caught up with us once, wetting our running feet and splashing up the backs of our legs. We laugh about that. Even though we are careful and keep a close eye on the surf, the ocean is tricksy. We have come home rain-soaked almost every day for a couple of weeks. One day it took me two hours to get my hands warmed back up.

I keep trying to make resolutions for the coming year. What do I want to accomplish in 2021? What are reasonable promises might I make to myself?

I believe in keeping my word.

Last year about this time we decided to try giving up all seafood. It was not quite a promise, but we thought we might try for a month. We hadn’t eaten seafood more than once or twice a week, but we considered that might be too much. What was happening in the oceans prompted us to give eating fully vegetarian a try, just to see how much we’d miss the flesh.

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WE’D LIKE TO SAY HELLO-GOODBYE

December 31, 2020January 1, 2021 / janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

Little bowls of tasty somethings, flowers from the garden in December, and red beeswax candles gifted by a friend. A better year coming, more hard times, but better.

Instead of having dinner at Ove’s (not that that would ever be on the program this time of year) we decided to spend the money on Oregon blue cheese. Seriously, our dinner tonight is all snack foods, but tasty good ones. Our cocktail napkins have beautiful roosters. Cock-Tails—get it?

On our final walk of 2020, we worked up and down the rocks to get there and found sea glass, agates, rounded pumice, and two of the little stones Jan calls “pinkies,” turned back south at the metal stairs, came home on the road, met a neighbor, and it rained most of the time. We were both wet from our walk, but that was hours ago. We have showered and washed our hair, and dressed in nice clothing we nearly forgot we owned in order to celebrate the end of this terrible, no-good, rotten, lousy, inept, appalling, no-holds-barred-we’re-glad-it’s-nearly-over stinking year. Can we say putrid?

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