WRITING

WHAT’S CHANGED

/ janpriddyoregon / 1 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.

BORN LUCKY

/ 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

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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

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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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VIVALDI

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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

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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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WILL BOB FOR AGATES

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

On beach runs, I cannot resist the amber agate, striped limpet, or rare bit of glass. I circle, bend to pluck them from the ground, and bring them home. I pile stones on the coffee table, line limpets on the kitchen counter, and upstairs too, beside the sink and on either side of my computer—the irregular translucent quartz and smooth flat ovals of jasper and agate. The baby sand dollars. Eventually, they find their place in bowls and jars. A couple of decades ago I collected more than a dozen Coach bags by bidding on Ebay. I carry a flat red bag on weekends. I pack another large bag for overnights. But there is also the brown bag I bought for my first teaching job. The rest were pointless accumulation. My mother would have understood.

Do you see the eagle at the headland a mile and some north of our home? She used to rest in a snag, but lately she’s chosen a higher perch.
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SAFETY

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments
The white lacecap hydrangea, above, was near where we entered the south end of massive Forest Park in Portland (more than 5,100 acres). The Rose Garden is within Forest Park and the extensive Japanese Garden, the zoo, second growth and old growth forest trees, and more than 80 miles of trails. A former coastal neighbor has a bronze plaque in the Rose Garden. Sometimes I run up to the roses—a hard uphill route, run loops up and down through the garden past thousands. of roses.

It’s May Day. I hope you find an opportunity to walk near a garden, into a garden, a place a little bit untamed, wild, and a place to find a quiet place to feel safe.

When I was a teenager, I used to sneak out of the house at night. I suppose a lot of teens did that back in the day. Maybe some still do. I didn’t sneak out to be with a boyfriend or any friend. I didn’t go to parties or score drugs. I walked to be alone and think. I went walking in the dark entirely by myself because I was miserable most of my high school years and walking in the dark was a comfort. I’d walk a few miles on the gravel shoulders of suburban roads and go home to bed.

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REVIEW

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I missed this past Friday’s post. Apologies.

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.
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RESTORE

/ 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.

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