An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
The signature CALYX image celebrates fifty years of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women+ founded in 1976, on the 200th anniversary of our nation. It served as a reminder of the great ambition of readers and writers, makers and thinkers, a reminder that we have not yet reached our ideals.
Last weekend, Saturday the 14th, I was in my hometown, Corvallis, Oregon, for the 50th anniversary of Calyx: A Journal of Literature and Art by Women. Gary doesn’t care for events (to be honest, neither do I), so I would have attended alone. Fortunately, I was joined in the day’s events by my friend, once-writing partner, former student, and current popular college professor Rebecca Olson, author of ARRAS HANGING: The Textile that Determined Early Modern Literature and Drama (2013) and Early Modern Reading and the Imagined Self (2025), as well as numerous articles on Shakespeare, early modern textiles, and inclusive pedagogy.
In the first episode of the new series, Scarpetta, a scene from “28 years earlier” (1996?) had “The House of the Rising Sun” playing. Good cover. Gary would know the group, the guitarist, and the guitar the lead guitarist was playing*, but I’m not so knowledgeable. Absolutely everyone performed that song in the 1960s, mostly men and boys. I sang it too, when I was playing guitar and singing, because it has—what?—3 chords, 4? The fingerpicking is simple too, though I don’t remember any of that now. There’s a violin on the wall in that show, and I have to say that people do put instruments on the wall. It’s a show-off thing to do. But no one who really loves their guitar or violin or gold flute, leaves it out, not even to show it off. Displaying your instrument is about yourself.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about those days, about guitar lessons and singing. Candy Mack taught me to play “The House of the Rising Sun” out of The Joan Baez Songbook. When my mother heard it, she insisted it made more sense for a woman to sing it. “It’s been the ruin of many a poor girl…” works best, I’ve always thought. Men change the words to make it work.
Everything comes with a story. Every porcelain ornament, every basket, and everything hidden inside—pieces gathered, gifted, and made. That’s my two-headed dragon in the middle of the top shelf. The stories only matter to me, but I’ll admit that basket-weaving is one craft I’ve never tried.
I love a stormy sky, and I surely got wet on the day I took this photo. We often are rained on during our walks. I know what it feels like to have gloves and rain gear soaked through, to feel my fingers stiffen. It’s why I understand the bits of rope we find onshore, usually with a knot, often only a knot cut from a working line. The man who cut that plastic twine or rope (maybe the woman) could barely feel their fingers. There was no chance of untying the knot. It drifts in the salt water until it’s cast onshore, and my husband and I gather it and toss it along with other bits of plastic and foam—all the pounds of litter we gather from the shore.Continue reading →
In the UK, what we call private schools are called “public schools,” and they cost many thousands to attend. In the US, a private education can cost four times what a public college education costs, even more than Harvard costs, in tuition and fees. When people complain about failing public schools, it’s well to consider that you get what you pay for. It’s well to look at what wealthy people have tried to convince the rest of us about public education. The insistence over the past fifty years that public education is failing is a self-fulfilling prophecy promoted by wealthy people who feel have no stake in quality education for other people’s children. The rest of us do have a stake, because we care about our children, and maybe we should care about all children as future citizens. I won’t pretend the issues are simple.
Yes, a rainbow right down onto Castle Rock, and just the other day. We could see both ends, north and south.
This is not my day to post, but today, just now, a frighting event.
That is a young bull Roosevelt elk on the sand, what is called locally a spike because he has his first antlers. The orange object to person’s left (your right) is a bucket belonging to the woman. The elk is interested in that bucket. Whether she was aware of it or not, she challenged that elk. The person is texting and taking photos. Do I need to explain that getting this close to an elk, even one that is on the low end of 700 to 1100 pounds, is what we would call “dangerous.” Stupid comes to mind.Continue reading →
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.Continue reading →
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.
The scenario I detailed in class was based on a true story. It happened in the last century in a city back east. Baltimore, maybe. Brooklyn?
A walk to the park. Daphne blooming outside the Washington Park Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon..
A single mother has kept her sick child at home for three days. The little boy has the flu with a fever and coughing and listlessness. She’s fed him soup and crackers, whatever he would swallow and could keep down. He seems a little better this morning, the fever has dropped, but is not well enough to go to school. She has no one she can call to watch her child, but her boss has warned her that if she fails to come in today, she will be fired. Maybe he’s had to cover for her and is desperate for time with his own family or maybe he’s being a heartless jerk. I don’t know about that.
Mom sleeps on the couch in their one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up apartment. It’s payday and the rent is due. She can’t afford to lose her job, so she tucks her son into bed, warns him to stay in his room. She’s left him water and juice and crackers—all she has in her kitchen until she’s paid and can get to the store. The child seems sleepy enough to stay put. She rests her hand on his forehead and tells him she loves him. “You be good.”
Mom goes to work. She will run home at lunch to check on her boy.
I began writing fiction in 1990 as a result of a week-long summer class for teachers teaching writing. I had three art degrees and had taught art at an elite prep school but had been hired to teach English and Yearbook at the local public high school. On paper I was not remotely qualified for that position teaching English. The department chair urged me to apply because I’d subbed for her and she said i was better read that she was.
Over that long-ago summer of 1990 I prepared by passing the NTE exam, which granted me certification and taking graduate classes in English, writing, and computers. A writing-for-teachers class with Sandra Dorr offered assignments we might then use with our students. I did go on to use what Sandy suggested. Also, at the end of that intensive week, I went home and wrote my first short story, “Baptism.” Eventually, that story was published in Stringtown. I was teaching English part time to high school juniors and made it my policy from the beginning to write everything I asked my students to write. I stood by that policy for the next 25 years, despite a colleague telling me it was “ridiculous.” I’ve been a strong writer since I was a girl, but essays and poetry, not stories. That changed.
The gulls often rest onshore near Asbury Creek just up the beach from us. I don’t know why there were a thousand or more the other day. We are careful not to disturb them.
In the 1990s I began writing with a student over the summer. We met weekly to share progress and intended to each write a novella. But before mid-summer, it was clear we were writing full length novels. Hers was better than mine, and today Rebecca Olson is a tenured professor with many publications including two books. I am proud that two other former students have MFA degrees.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 