a little red hen

Cartopia Dinner with Zach

Thinking over why food carts, the outdoor food art-form here that I admire but do not engage with often.  It may be   they require the  stand-up-to-eat pose.   I'm similarly disinclined toward buffet dinners, cocktail parties.  Not much of a casual eater, I want a chair/bench and table!

We had found a place with great middle eastern food around 6th and Broadway (across from a Kettleman's bakery) but it disappeared.  We'd buy the very ample dish in the afternoon and take it home for dinner.

Between our place (it may be known as the  "West Hills") and our daughter's house in Hawthorne, there's a collection of carts known as Cartopia with benches protected by tents.  I learned their proper name not from a sign (maybe there is one) but a massive fact-stuffed blog, Food Carts: Portland. Driving home  around 11 p.m. after baby-sitting, we'd see all this action as we turned the corner from Hawthorne onto  12th.  All lit up, many young people.  What were we missing...we found out when  we visited closer to our old-fashioned foodtime, 6 p.m. 

El Bracero, a Mexican place, is the early bird opener, in fact hardly closed.  We've stopped by for delicious  vegetarian burritos--just one big enough to share.  A little later the Belgian fries cart,  Potato Champion with its Poutines via Canada, comes alive...excellent not-so-good-for-you food but you gotta do something risky once in a while.  And choices of things  to decorate the greasy things.

 I favor the remoulade but you might prefer rosemary truffle ketsup.

Knowing our grandson Zach is a burrito fan who loves to eat out, we took him there one mild evening.  Other families with kids are always part of the mix in the early hours.  But the pizza cart got his attention first.

 The fries worked for him too. He was very interested in the crepe-making (huge productions) at Perriera.  Turned out he'd had one recently and mentioned that the milkshakes were very good too.  What could we say?  We took two very, very rich Girardelli chocolate ones home to his Mom and Dad (his sisters were in bed) and split them among the five of us.

You could call our particular adventure Portland Cart-lite.  We have yet to try some of the other places at Cartopia.  One very decorated one, Yarp with its long message of mission, comes to life  after 8 p.m.  Of course, this scene is not here for our crowd; we are the outsiders and they are very polite in an offhand way.

Welcome to Portland, Oregon, Ronni & Ollie! 

NASHVILLE: How you can help in flood's wake

 One of the most satisfying aspects of blogging is making connections with people who support some of your more adventurous efforts and also live in places you might never visit.  That's the case with my friend the south, Rachel Walden in Nashville, Tennessee.  She posts both at her own site, Women's Health News and Our Bodies Ourselves.

Our virtual friendship must go back about three years, early in my bloglife.  Recently I mentioned her in connection with our shared alma mater, Oberlin, and the Condom Amulet created to honor it--so to speak.

Rachel is a medical librarian in Nashville.  I'm hoping that libraries there have mostly survived the recent flood.  These institutions took a terrible hit in New Orleans as a result of Katrina.   She has linked to this very thorough site for How To Help Nashville.  Those who live nearby can find many ways to contribute time--and others of us can post blogs reminding our readers about needs in the city--and organizations that need contributions for the service they are providing.

New Fridge and Immigration Madness

 Oh, there she goes again.  I hear you but can you blame me for trying a new way to get your attention?  Done it before and will do it again because older people, Elderbloggers, seniors, geezers--whatever you want to call us-- need to add immigration reform to the list of issues that need our attention as much as healthcare. 

And the fridge news?  A recent post at Time Goes By (moving to Portland, Oregon, next month) brought a comment from My Mom's Blog that she definitely should get a refrigerator with a bottom freezer.   Millie is so correct.  We've been bumping our heads on the 1980s model that came with our new apartment.  We like the way the door is a slide-out drawer.  We'd had a side-by-side in New York but no room for that here.

Much looking around and voila!  Sears has a perfect Kenmore to fit our 30-inch space; love the cheese drawer, easy temp controls.  Had to take out a cabinet to get the height but no loss since it's just about unreachable.  And what was it that we had up there anyway?  I do miss my former glass-front Ikea cabinets.  But that's the past and in this present the important issues are treating one another like human beings.

Which brings me back to immigration madness.  How sorry I feel for Darlene, Elderblogger with progressive leanings who lives in Arizona, home of the Hispanic haters, and God knows what else that does not belong in a democracy.  She posts in more detail under the title,  Arizona's Shame.  The majority of people there appear lacking in morality with their latest move to make it a state crime--in less than three months from now-- to be an undocumented immigrant  in Arizona.

Morality aside, for those that can go there, how do they imagine their infrastructure will work without all the workers from across the borders.  Like the two excellent movers who seamlessly delivered our new fridge and took the old one away.  Spoke very good English too.

Boycott Arizona (link is to the number one Hispanic website, Hispanic News)  is the only thing that may stop clueless, vicious Arizonans.  Today I had lunch with my new friend, Elizabeth, who lives in the apartment right under mine.  With her family she had to leave Austria in the late 1930s.  They went to Mexico, were not able to come here till 1950.  Perhaps many readers here have forgotten that the U.S. would not open its doors to Jews trying to leave Europe: 190,00 000 - 200 000 Jews could have been saved.

There are stories in all American families about what it was like to be the first immigrant Irish, Italians, Japapanese, Roumanians....where does it end?  We are all immigrants, many of our forebears came here legally.  But it did not matter to many who'd had some years to Americanize. We need to get it together around just what it means to be American whether you speak "perfect" English or still have a Latino accent.

***UPDATE:  Saturday, May One, there will be a May Day Rally in downtown Portland, Oregon. 

Hattie's Web arrives in real time...

Last night Marianna, of Hattie's Web, and I had our third Portland encounter.  This time, however, she and spouse Terry could visit us as voting Rose City residents.  No more Powell's or Pearl Bakery--lovely as those sites are.  Ron and I revealed life in a retirement community, Dagen/Bloom style.

It has been a very, very hectic week.  After dropping out for a bit for low level illness, I'm back to Water Aerobics twice a week, with the glamour of my new bathing suit (partial view)--a tankini as Marianna once suggested from her superior experience as a water baby in Hawaii.

Tuesday school started again at Portland State--two classes back to back.  The quarter system is more intense than the semester one of my past; two hour sessions with no break.  And there's Blackboard to learn--more life in the electronics lane.  When the men separated from the women last night, Ron tells me that Terry was intrigued by this online approach to class readings and assignments. Thursday much cooking for a delayed Seder, first time for us, at our daughter's.

Marianna showed me her much-loved Kindle and I countered with a favorite old book, the beautifully illustrated temperance autobiography, Frances E. Willard's Glimpses of Fifty Years, published in 1889.  This is a good a time to begin my long-planned project of writing about the temperance movement and its contemporary relevance.  [We enjoyed a bottle of Beaujolais-Villages brought by our guests.]  As I pointed out, Willard was known to drink a little wine. That's the true meaning of temperance,  a concept with little currency in the U.S.

We talked about making changes to blogs over time--whether they are a very new concept that will continue to evolve stylistically or on their way out as some recent reports claim.  Marianna has recently changed her blog's look--impressive effort.  When I said my instinct is to write more about food, her right eyebrow raised.  I sensedalarm in her plea, "Please don't become a foodie blog!"  Ah, I answered, you must read The Blog that Ate Manhattan (doctor who cooks and talks about women's health) and another with much more than recipes,  A Chicken in Every Granny Cart.

Using her Kindle, Marianna attempted to alter my recent dismissive attitude toward Michael Berube's writing, expressed in a comment at Hattie's Web.  I warmed to his idea that the CIA influenced European attitudes about American art produced during the years of the cold war.  But he goes on too much in a certain academic style that is very familiar to me.  

   Attempting to memorialize our evening, we passed around cameras.   Marianna models one of Ron's growing collection of knit hats and inspects my latest knitting pattern for an elephant toy...the two Elderbloggers examine my lost art of neckpiece-making and demonstrate the lost art of  talking with hands sans electronic objects...the men explore nuances of Yiddish vis a vis German.  It's unlikely we will get to Hawaii but  I forgot to mention this idea--that we meet up on Marianna's  next Seattle trip with that other blogger/thinker/grandma, 20th Century Woman, who like me admires chickens (scroll down).

Super Bawl* Sunday: Ads a Feminist Could Support

Much chatter* about this year's TV ads accompanying today's football event, the yearly display of testosterone with accompanying rise in spouse abuse.  Women's Media Center has coordinated shout-outs to  CBS to dump the ad.  And been ignored.  Everything more you'd want to know appears in the blog,  The Reclusive Leftist.  She rightly nails patriarchy as the true source of the problem.

For image, I offer one  saved on my desktop for a couple of years--a poster on bus kiosk around New York City.   I'd support variations on it year round.  Living closer to the ground, so to speak, these days in Portland, Oregon,  I now start the day with the  local Oregonian delivered to my door in contrast to the national NY Times (read later when picked up at the front desk of my retirement community).

Locally Portland would seem to harbour more women abusers than back east (I doubt this) because the "small" incidents here are reported by the media.   In NYC only prominent men receive notice by journalists.  Coast to coast, however, they are always lightly punished. 

Writing to promote the "Geezers' Crusade" , David Brooks on the Op-Ed page of the Times, wants us to do more on behalf of younger people.  Would he support a movement by older people that demands  more visible signs of respect for women in every American city--bold ones like this poster? 

Could it happen in  your city?

What I Did NOT Wear...till Portland

Have you read "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" by Ilene Beckerman?  An east coast woman, middle class child of the 1940s/50s, she speaks to how we once thought about clothes.  Her New York City life was much tidier, more elegant than mine yet there's a resonance.  Similar to the sense I've always had when meeting Jewish women around my age in different cities:  a vibe, often brief, that we share until I learn she's a Republican.

"I wore this black bathing suit when I went to Florida with my grandmother.  I was fourteen," Ilene reports.  The drawing on the facing page--I wish that were a skill of mine--tells me more.  While I never had a Florida grandma nor a black bathing suit till now, the pose is familiar.  Second position, the one we learned in ballet class.  That came along with the expected piano lessons that other first generation Jewish mothers like mine understood as required for our upwardness in America. 

Here then is my first black bathing suit.  Bought it maybe 15 years ago to wear to the beach, a place enjoyed by the rest of my family.  I have a purple one that is equally sensible and unused.

On our 1970s and 80s summer  vacations in Cape May, New Jersey, or on Cape Cod, I was comfortable under our generous green and white striped umbrella with my knitting.  Sometimes Ron coaxed me into the salt water which I reluctantly admitted enjoying.  He had been a lifeguard at Coney Island in his youth.  At the same time, after years of summer camp and beginner swim class, I was a day camp counselor (no water required) in St. Louis.

Yet, this very month I have dipped my toes in the excellent warm water of the pool at Terwilliger Plaza.  Four times so far in "Gentle Water Aerobics."  Chlorine not too strong.  Still have to master/mistress the dressing room thing.  Afterwards I put in some minutes on the treadmill, conveniently located on the way back to our apartment.

The first time into the pool, I recalled a suggestion sent me by Hattie when I mentioned my reluctance to take the water.   She likes trim Land's End  ladies' swim suits minus the skirt.  That would be my nod to the 21st century and thinking beyond how black makes me look thinner.  After diving into color and pattern in my Baltimore life, going back to New York City edged me toward, as Ilene B. would say, "...black is always chic--and makes shopping choices much easier."  Third stage retirement requires shifting...more to follow.

I'm not in Manhattan any more. 

Women's Health Still Hostage to Healthcare Reform, but...

They checked their Blackberries last night, my daughter and spouse.  They'd gone out for a walk as we stayed with the kids.

"Nothing yet," was the 10 p.m. (PST) verdict.  No, our foot-dragging, drama-loving Congress would make us stay up late to find out would they/wouldn't they.

Earlier, when the House Republicans used women's bodies to stall the healthcare bill, I was angry--once again.  More frequent Elderbloggers Darlene and Ronni posted timely rants.  Amanda Maracotte* at RH Reality Check posted a stronger response  in line with my own feelings on the relationship of Stupak amendment to men's wish to control women and their bodies as result of their "deepset fear of women's agency."

My family tried to calm me with reminders that reform was so crucial, that the abortion restrictions would never last, that we needed to support this shaky bill.  Made an effort to let go of disappointment but had less heart in sending more emails, small donations to the "good guys" in Congress.

While we waited, surprising new guidelines were issued by the U.S. Prevenive Services Task Force on mammogram testing.  As an old lady who has had two "false positives," one at 52, the other at 64 which led to a biopsy, I take this very personally.  Who of us does not? 

[Aside:  Is  Politics Daily, not a feminist blog, the only one to picture the mammo machine?  Did any of the mainstream media stories show that dreadful invention, now marginally improved since my first one in the 1970s?  I have a couple of paper  "gowns" saved from these visits--blue, pink.  These combined with the eerie sounds of the X-ray machine have always seemed ready-made for a dance performance or a scene in a play I'd write.]

This morning I had a little relief with the post at Our Bodies Ourselves, New Mammogram Guidelines Are Causing Confusion, But Here's Why They Make Sense. It is a long, thoughtful post that acknowledges the complexity of  technology that gives us information but has the potential for harm.  The comments with reactions from women, researchers, doctors are worth reading too.

 Occurred to me that we need a younger women's consciousness to focus on useful health education in middle and high schools.  All the controversy around "sex ed" may have left us with nothing!  Bring back those plaster human bodies we cringed at in my freshman college gym class, the ones that come apart to reveal our insides. Young people need to learn more about how it all works--and more about ways to evaluate health info that comes toward us.

*Maracotte has another post, "Less boob squishing seems like a value add to me" on her own Pandagon blog.

We Broke the Code at PSU!

Yes, we found our way to the pot at the end of the rainbow:  free classes at Portland State University.

In the rain!  It took two cellphone calls with Susan, the very patient administrator for the Senior Adult Learning Center.  "Explain again where you are because nothing looks like the 'hi-rise' you mentioned; I'm from New York."  While Ron parked the car a few blocks away, it was my job to find it first--the building with a number on the website but unmarked in real life.

"Maybe it's under 'Aging,' or ,  'Senior' on the directory," I told Ron on another cell call as we worked to reach the same place.  "You have to walk up three flights, then find your way to another stairway to get to the fourth floor."  Suddenly an elevator door opens behind me and there he is--arriving from an entrance on the opposite side of the building.

In our search for lifelong learning opportunities in PDX,* everyone mentioned this good deal at PSU--undergraduate classes at no charge.  Old-fashioned, educated American that we are, first effort we looked for  a catalog of courses.  No.  It's all on their website.  Even in this SALC office there was no hard copy; we have to go to the library for that--and now that we've been sanctioned as participants, we hope to gain entrance to it.

Since much of the semester has gone by, we decided to do a flip through the available classes roster that Susan offered, take our chances on selecting a class by title only.  Ron found Medieval History, mine is Women and Politics.  A half-sheet of yellow paper certifies us.  On the back are instructions for auditing-- wave the paper toward the instructor be "...considerate of students taking the class for credit by not dominating class discussions." Useful advice for old people, always garrulous as we are.

I just realized there are only a few sheets of yellow in our colorful collection brought from NYC.  Enough to make copies in case we lose one--or it falls apart from folding and waving, or gets wet.  Now have back-up in a plastic sleeve.  Going to school offers many challenges in the 21st century.

Over my three years of blogging, I've been curious that other Elderbloggers have not written about their experiences with what is known as "lifelong learning."  It's something that has interested me since before I retired when I designed a program titled, "Creativity in the Third Age."  Described the idea on my Cityworm website.   So, Lifelong Learning lengthens the list of categories here as Ron and I explore what's offered to seniors in Portland.   And what about your experiences?

On Saturdays from March to December the center of the PSU campus hosts the Portland Farmers' Market, both are walking distance from Terwilliger Plaza, our new home.  Surprising unknown, locally grown vegetables appear to challenge the adventurous.

This week we noticed  Ficoide Glacial, slightly tangy French green.  Always free samples to try and consider for next time.

*Department of Clarification:  In this post I'm referring to  programs designed specifically to meet circumstances and schedules of those over 55.  Sometimes they're free like PSU, or have fees like the IRP at the New School in New York City and ones supported by the Osher Foundation. 

Elderblogging 2.0 Begins in PDX Retirement Community

Ten days into our altered lifestyle in the northwest.  Besides the physical part of getting settled, accepting that we really did not reduce our possessions enough, there's much to experience--in addition to our family.  Last week we went to  orientation for SSI, Senior Studies Initiative,  sponsored by the local community college.  We'd enjoyed a couple of their "Current Events" meetings last winter on our "deciding" visit.   There are six sites around town, only one close by. 

It took place in Lake Oswego, very leafy with big houses; I wondered how people get there without a car.  Intrigued that one of the groups has a presentation scheduled on Emma Goldman.  Looking forward to that.  Today, after a trip to an ENT doctor (nose-bleeding is my dramatic response to the move), I mentioned to Ron that our time so far has felt very suburban.  Must get out of the car soon, take mass transit buses and light rail which are very available from our place.

Saturday we stopped by the Belmont Street Fair, an annual explosion of  hippie-dom plus eviro and neighborhood consciousness.  Not the only one, of course; the city is filled this time of year with celebration, fruit festivals.  Young people come to several parts of Portland for the lifestyle of music and tatoos, live alongside young families who sort of like that atmosphere.  This is the world we know from visiting our daughter in a nearby neighborhood. 

Yesterday I went to the Terwilliger Users Group (TUG to insiders) and was amazed by how many people were there.  Must have been forty, men and women.  A woman gave a talk about Facebook which I was pleased to hear.  Each of our children, different as they are from one another, is now on it.  When I had dinner in New York before we left with Lisa Daehlin, the soprano/knitter, she told me I ought to consider it for the Condom Amulet project.  It's thanks to her that there's a group for it on Ravelry but Facebook does have some perks not available there. 

The staff tech person (how cool is that?) for Terwilliger Plaza had mentioned there were a couple of other folks with blogs living here, so I asked if the internal website might list them.  It's going to happen.  This is very different from New York City where I never met another blogger near my advanced age.

Tonight another Plaza activity, "Victory for Woman Suffrage in Oregon," a talk with great slides by Dr. Kimberly Jensen of Western Oregon University.  I have been too east-coast-centric about women's studies; was surprised by many western states voted to give women the vote ahead of the opposite coast.  Portland was a leader in moving the Oregon legistlature to do in 1912--on the sixth try and pioneered less ladylike approaches with mass advertising and public displays.  In  her recent book, Minerva, Mobilizing Women in the First World War,  Jensen has written about Dr. Esther Lovejoy, a Portland physician and local leader in women's rights, who was an Army doctor. 

For the coming 2012 centennial of woman suffrage in Oregon, here's a link to an active committee gathering ideas and material--particularly interested in finding photos and letters from the period. 

Zoe, our granddaughter, on a brief visit to our apartment, announced in her four-year-old way (birthday party last Saturday), "What a mess!"  One day we hope to present a better model to our descendants. If we can only figure out where to hang all the pictures, stow the books.

Knitting, Blogging, Leaving: the Gerund Review

Do you recall learning about  -ing words?  It was junior high,  1945, University City (suburban St. Louis).    Once again, I was in another new school-- the 8th one in my litany of public schools.  Having always been a good reader/speller, I was thrown off by having to learn RULES for grammar.

At the same time, I was required to take Latin and discovered the gerund.   With Latin as an organizing principle, I could now put together what came naturally to me and the RULES.  Present participles, however, are more elusive.

Since I began blogging three years ago, I've moved into "slow knitting," i.e., less production.  Finally completed the chicken sweater for Zoe in Portland (large enough to last through next cold spell).  Her mom and baby sister are in the photo background; her expression a result of instruction to stand still.  It's a match for the white one made for her cousin Roxie in NYC.  Pleases me that granddaughters will have "matched" garments.

Meanwhile, yarn from Close Knit in PDX (bought on our winter visit), vest for myself, finished last month.  Just in time to store in closet.  Imagine as worn by ample female walking into Powell's in October.  Noro Kochoran wool/angora/silk, pattern is Rowan Colorscape Clunky Collection.

 Then there's the other vest.  Takhi pattern looked easy.  Did not realize the cotton yarn had to be doubled.  Photos demonstrate virtual body it has become--only one of its "issues."  Much help from Knitty City here in NYC but will not be wrapped up before we leave.

Speaking of knitting, August 5, my natal day,  began with a long coffee  klatch with Kay Gardner of the blog (and cottage industry?) Mason Dixon Knitting.  Talking with Kay is always very special:  my fantasy is that I would have been sharper and kinder (you figure that out) like her if I'd been born 20 years later, gone to law school.  And a more independent knitter.  And funnier. 

Kay along with her blog and book partner, Ann Shayne, model a way of collaborating  we could use more among women.     [photo of Ann and Kay, left, introducing second book, "Knitting Outside the Lines,"   last Fall at Knitty City.]

Fiber has been an amazing community in the 15 years back in the City.  The other day a very sweet goodbye email came from Judi Seal of the UWS Knit Circle after my message to unsubscribe from their Yahoo group.  This Upper West Side gathering at a Starbucks carried me through many ups and downs in the early years of this century.  It was my introduction to  remarkable changes in knit techniques, styles, yarn  since my previous go-around in the 1980s.  I never would have thought fiber would fulfill so many of my needs.

Then there's blogging. Many thanks to all of you who wished me well on my last post.  Knowing you're out there, open to my not-very-regular appearances has been a boost during these months of  "the selling process."  Westward there are new friends from blogging-- a meet-up with Anne Gilbert of 20th Century Woman and more encounters with Hattie of the Web.

The mover has been here to assess the project,  gave us packing/leaving dates.  We close  August 28.     "Waiting," that power-filled gerund, never my strong suite, but it's feeling within reach now.