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.

Continue reading →

WORRY

June 9, 2025June 9, 2025 / janpriddyoregon / 9 Comments

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 →

My Blogger site had over 250k reads when I closed it, but here I am again.

I was born in Corvallis, Oregon, lived briefly in Portland, then spent the rest of my childhood in Seattle where I attended the University of Washington as a studio arts major. Since 1979 I have lived with my husband in a family home on the Oregon coast, frequently traveling these days to Portland where our sons live with their families.

After 40 years of teaching, Art in a girls’ prep school and then English in a small public high school and community college, I walk the coastal shore or Portland streets each day for as long as I like.

My writing has earned an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship, Arts & Letters fellowship, Soapstone residency, Pushcart nomination, and publication in journals such as Brevity and the Brevity blog, Catamaran Literary Review, The MacGuffin, CALYX Journal, Metaphorosis (with podcast), Liminal Stories, Raven Chronicles, The Humanist, and North American Review. An MFA graduate from Pacific University, I live and create in the NW corner of my home state of Oregon where I am currently working on my next project.

I taught college writing for eleven years, ran writing workshops, presented for the Oregon Council and National Council of Teachers of English, and published about writing and literature in Oregon English Journal as well as national journals. I am dancing as fast as I can.

https://www.podbean.com/player-v2/?i=fxx3q-13a7688-pb&from=pb6admin&square=1&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=1&font-color=&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=7&size=300