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
In 1972, I drove across the country with my grandfather’s third wife Genevieve to a sheep farm in Kansas. I had never been over the Rockies before that. Vietnam was at war, I learned to spin wool that summer, and when I got back Gary and I moved in together on the 4th of July. We would both be Juniors at the University of Washington that fall.
But in June, Gen and I crossed the plains. It felt foreign-strange to me to see no mountains on the horizon in any direction—no mountains at all in the last days headed to Kansas. All around, open sky. At one point, we pulled over to the side of the highway while a storm passed overhead.
I spend a lot of time looking at sky, have done for most of my life. When I was young, I didn’t want what my dad teased my mother about: Five secluded acres in the middle of town. I wanted to be far away in forest. But then we moved to the edge of the continent, and I began watching the sky.Continue reading →
Heroes aren’t my thing—I resist heroics, but I do have a few people I hold in my heart. Sojourner Truth is always the first. Many authors. Many people I’ve never met. And Kylene, who I met and then followed online for thirty years. She was an inspiration to me and many other teachers—the only academic I’ve ever met who gave precedence to actual teaching.
Over the years, I took too many education classes and workshops from people who failed to practice what they were teaching. Kylene Beers continued to teach kids while teaching teachers and serving as editor of an NCTE publication. It can’t have been easy.
Kylene Beers was the real deal. She practised what she preached. All honor to her life. She died yesterday. September 16, 1957 – June 20, 2025
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.*
Years ago, our son’s orthodontist commented to me that our sons were similarly handicapped when applying to college because they were white boys. He smiled, a virtual nudge-nudge, we’re in this together, right? His son’s application to dental school had been denied, he said, to make room for Black students. So he said. I generally had walked away from such comments, and I didn’t want to annoy the man fixing Alan’s teeth, but I didn’t walk away that day. I turned back and told him off with calm reasoning. [Should his son be advantaged in admission to dental school because his father had gone? Because his father was white? Was my son unqualified as Salutatorian for undergraduate study? Had this man looked at the numbers? Who did he think he was? I was angry and it was a long time ago. I don’t remember exactly what we said to one another. I am angry thinking about it now.]
It’s true I am inclined to worry. My mother was a worrier and actively taught me all the tricks and habits of an active worrier. I worry about my husband dying, about the welfare of our sons and their eventual retirement, the grandchildren and other family members. I worry about friends living in red states and my friend who just sold her last floor loom because I have never known her not to have one. It worries me.
I didn’t bother this seal. We noticed one another almost simultaneously, and I was fully zoomed with an actual camera and fifty yards away to get this photo and then I backed right off out of this pup’s sight. Continue reading →
The 1923 elevation drawing by architect Carl L. Linde, a copy of which is hung opposite the elevator on the first floor, does not indicate the colors for the entry facade. The drawing does seem to show the surround as somewhat lighter than the tinted concrete and the doors as quite dark. Dark, varnished “Philippine Mahogany” was used throughout the building and survives on the back of the outer doors and the inner entrance doors, and the hall side of each apartment door. Though somewhat damaged, this woodwork remains beautiful and original. The outer doors have, aside from scratches and gouges, rot at the bottoms. Ideally, the doors should be taken down and repaired or completely rebuilt to the original design, which would be very expensive.
This B&W photo from WW2 shows the contrast between the very pale-painted surrounding woodwork and dark mahogany doors. The iron grillwork on the doors was removed years ago, but the Association has one as a model that could be used to replicate them.
The more recent colors fail to match the values of the doors and surrounding woodwork.
LEFT: This is how the entrance looked four years ago. Many residents loved this. The painted black and gold surround and green doors were cheerful and distinctive. Nevertheless, the color choices are totally out of line for the period (1924) and had detractors who viewed them as inauthentic. RIGHT: This is the way the entrance looked yesterday. The value of the surround is closer to the original facade, but in a pale cream and a putty that’s darker than the original. The brown chosen for the doors themselves was also wrong—too light and the hue is not close to the originals of this building on the National Historic Register.
The aim was to approach with paint the hue (color) and value (darkness or lightness) of the original doors. At a local paint store someone color-matched dark-stained Philippine Mahogany, a mahogany-like color. It’s a couple of steps darker than a paint color original to the building and still found on the inside of the storage room doors, so there was some historical consistency.
That same someone prepped and put one coat on the doors. The first resident passed while walking his dog right at the start of the repaint. “What are you doing?” “Painting the doors.” He said, “Not good.” By the time it was half done, several passing people complimented the new color. A resident loved it. Another resident was expected to yell, did at first, but then said thank you.
The cost of repainting the doors and surround in green, black, and gold has been bid at least $6k. Here is a stylish upgrade for no cost to the Association at all.
The goal was to take the front doors back close to their original appearance. The very dark red-brown shows up with elegance against the putty and cream of the surrounding woodwork and plays to the color of the hundred-year-old brick.
The shadow doesn’t do justice to the beautiful millwork and neither does that putty color, but it works better overall with the newly darker-colored doors. Someone would like a second coat, but maybe best to see who yells.
28 September 2025: My intention in this post was to explain what I did and why. Because I have recently been called out for failing to apologize for breaking “the rules we all agree to” I will confirm that I immediately apologized to the Board months ago, in writing, and now add to everyone in the Embassy: I am sorry for offending community standards and breaking rules.
We’ve been having an exciting spring so far, which reminds me of that Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. It’s an English translation of a genuine Chinese curse, but I heard it when I was still quite young, perhaps in my 20s. Wikipedia reminds us of the obvious that the “expression is ironic: ‘interesting’ times are usually times of trouble.” I would add complication and challenge. Today’s interesting times mostly seem concerned with graft and bullying and self-aggrandizement. Alas, I am not the one profiting, gaining power, or advancing my image.
My best time was eight minutes and some seconds per mile (maybe more than thirty, but not much) over highway hills in the rain. I was a lot younger then, had been training for a half marathon in Seattle, and that fast run on steep hills resulted in injury.
But that’s not what we meant, is it?
We want my best time on vacation or during sex, or whatever. My best time as a writer. My best time writing or weaving or knitting or playing with my children.
Sunsets are always pretty. We like the magenta and orange ones but also the palest gilt edges under horizon clouds.Continue reading →
I have been thinking a lot about housing during the past twenty-five years. My husband and I moved to the family home in Oregon in 1979 and started a family. It was what my grandfather’s third wife and her second husband hoped we would do when they left the home to us. It was a two bedroom, one and a half bath retirement home when we got here. We removed the half bath and added a bedroom and second bath. Two sons and six hundred square feet. My husband worked long hours and I stayed home with our children while they were small, which was financially challenging but also temporary. [We lived below the poverty line for some of those years, and I will never recover the lost income from remaining out of the workforce for those years. That’s another issue—instead of “affordable daycare” how about making it possible for parents to parent their own children without taking a crippling and permanent financial hit?]
Then my mother began a downward decline, a process that went on for years. Her driving was dangerous, she couldn’t see to read, never did like cooking, and my husband stopped by every day on his way to work to make her coffee. [If she’d taken better care of herself with a healthy diet and exercise… well, she lived to be 82, and most young people would see that as a ripe old age.] She was in pain and unsteady on her feet, would not take the suggestions of various helpers, and was in and out of assisted living for those last five years. It was crushing for her to live with the assistance of cooks and nurses and others, but she could not live without it.
There should be no shame in accepting what we need. There is no honor in taking more than we need. Yet we judge others by their living situation. I admit I do it myself.
Gary misses caring for our garden when we’re in the city, but this is where we walk. We have the whole of Forest Park, the Portland Japanese Garden and the Rose Garden within a mile, and we walk miles most days. When we are no longer able to do that, there is a small courtyard garden and the local front yards to enjoy.Continue reading →
Yesterday, we marched with thousands locally, and with millions worldwide. I wish I could verify a number, but the government offices that used to do that aren’t allowed. There were babies strapped to a parent, children in strollers, others holding hands, young people and people with white hair. In the background of the photo is the Burnside Bridge. If you look closely, you can see it’s lined with more protesters waving and holding signs.
Idealism serves us now not in the achievement of it but in the striving toward it.
Most of the time, the crowd was too dense for me to take any photos at all. Some people turned their heads when I photographed their signs. I have protested every war since and including Viet Nam. I do believe I was photographed during those protests. Men in the iconic dark suits took my photo during the Seattle marches. But after Kent State, men in 3-piece suits and women in business attire and wearing heels walked out of downtown office buildings to join us.
This afternoon, we are having neighbors over for a meal. To that end, I started cream of mushroom soup yesterday (I still need to add the cream and maybe sour cream). First thing this morning there was a false fire alarm, probably someone burning sage? Not everyone evacuated. I’d done my Wordle and got “genius” on Spelling Bee with both pangrams [Wordpress thinks I’ve misspelled both focaccia and pangram—how to tell a computer to look the word up?], read an article about Beethoven’s aging genius, and searched without much luck for confirmation of number of the millions who protested yesterday. I got to pet the building Greyhound and talk to neighbors. Fire trucks came and then declared us okay to reenter. I have black olive focaccia in the oven.
I suspect the answer to that question is that too many of us want someone to blame. Someone who is lessor than ourselves. Someone to look down upon.
I found a meme on my Facebook feed claiming that LGBTQ+ people were asking that everyone else abandon their core values so that they can feel not alone. Nonsense! The purpose is not to force everyone to agree with a small group of people but to prevent a small group of people from forcing others to remain invisible. Some people seem to find the notion of allowing others to go their own way deeply offensive. Some seem to find shouting their bigotry as their god-given right.
Here’s what a former student had on his page. Some days I just feel like pissing some people off, but I hope you find this meme more ridiculous than offensive:
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 