CLEANING HOUSE, pt. 1

A few days ago I ran five miles and began sorting boxes. Gary emptied the attics last month. Six months ago I began running again. Two years ago I decided enough was enough and I would eat better and lose some weight. We began isolating from Covid in March 2020. All the boxes stored in …

CALM DOWN

Maybe I should keep it to myself. But no, that would not do. I read most of it aloud to Gary. Then I composed an email, but kept adding to the Bcc. So here. Here it is. It's unlikely that any (none?) of my family will read it, but sending it as a link in …

QUIET QUITTING

[intended as] First post in over a month. Retirement, running, carving, canning, Facebook, and reparations, in no particular order. And the skink. Many teachers retire with hundreds or even thousands of hours of unused sick pay. It's not that we have not been sick, it's that preparing our classroom for a substitute teacher and then …

BLUE DOT

A friend of mine, someone I know only through our mutual blog posts and a handful of emails, the exchanges of notebooks and weaving... lives in a deeply red community of a deeply red southern state, the one blue dot in a red sea. She has found herself in situations where people say what seem …

Every. Other. Day.

I meant to write this post the other day, which was the one-year anniversary of receiving the keys to our Portland Condo. Instead, I baked, worked on a manuscript for a friend, napped, ran two miles and walked another. About running at nearly seventy... The view north from Hug Point. The milk wagon came around …

ROSE CITY

for Ruth It's an oriental poppy, not a rose, and on the coast, not in Portland. Roses, choosing a home, The Flight of the Mind, and walking, in no particular order. I had been thinking about my last face-to-face conversation with Ruth Gundle, who has lived in Portland for many years, is deeply involved in …

ANNIVERSARY

Next month is our 48th wedding anniversary, but today is the 50th anniversary of living together. I announced our intention to my mother via a letter sent from Kansas where I was traveling with my step-grandmother. (It was cowardly. While I was old enough to move in with Gary, I was too young to tell …

HERO

In her essay, "We Don't Need Another Hero," Roxane Gay quarrels with labeling Cassidy Hutchinson a hero for her recent testimony: "It took courage, I suppose, for Hutchinson to do the right thing. I can imagine she was facing a lot of political pressure, and perhaps even danger for coming forward to share what she …

WORTH MENTIONING

Some things are worth mentioning: the freedom to marry the person you love, food, clean air, water in streams, the compassion of people you know and also of the people you do not know. Children, uncles and aunts or third and fourth cousins, the devotion of grandparents, the expectation that if I fall someone will …

FOOLED

We could say we are looking for sea glass, but we never do. We could say we are looking for agates, which is also true, but what Gary tells people is: "Rocks." This is also true, though not completely true. This posting concerns gathering treasure from the beach, reviewing promises and lies, and a fictional …