a little red hen

Beautiful Yetta, a Jewish Chicken to love...

The city where we live, Portland, a northwest bubble, in the larger bubble, Oregon, is sunny and crisp today.  Summer seems to have taken time off; we wear light jackets.  We're sorry to have left high heat to our New York family.  We have also moved into an ethnically-challenged environment where all the women are white and the men are not bad looking and white also--to badly paraphrase Garrison Keillor.

Why a bubble?  Another glorious Saturday Farmers Market can distract from events that seem far away.  Issues with much traction  here revolve around the land and the environment--important, but what about threats to democracy?  

Terrible trouble is being brewed on the other coast by uneducated people blindly following a crazy fool whose cause is stoked by a woman who perverts feminism with every breath she takes.  I choose not to speak their names on this site.  Two blogs I read regularly for their insights Darlene's Hodgepodge from Arizona and  Citizen K from the state of Washingon enlighten readers on the dangers seeping from this execrable duo.  I thank them for doing the work. 

To celebrate the possibilities of diversity which might expand my own new city's bubble, I offer a children's book I'm about to mail to granddaughter Roxie in New York.  Each of my grandkids has been indoctrinated into my love of hens.  When they are older, I'll try to explain the reason behind this obsession.  I believe my maternal great grandmother in Poland must have raised chickens; this is an invention since no one was kind enough to share any of my ancestor story.

Ron, however, brings chickens closer to me via his paternal grandfather, the one who was brought to America from Bialystok, Poland by his sons who'd come before World War One.  The Blooms love to tell how this ultraorthodox Jewish gentleman, a ritual slaughterer (mostly chickens I assume) and scholar, arrived on the boat at Ellis Island with an explanation.  Wind had blown his professional certificate out of his hands and into the sea.  Now he could devote himself to religious study and be supported by his three American sons.

[Aside:  My sister-in-law, M.M., who reads my blog, is older than spouse Ron, will--I hope-- correct inaccuracies  in this story.]

Yetta, Jewish Chicken, entered my life through NPR.  Scott Simon of Weekend Edition Saturday has a long-running friendship with the writer, Daniel Pinkwater.  They entertain themselves and listeners by reading children's books together laughing as they go.   With four grandchildren (and on my own for suggestions),  I decided it was time to track down Pinkwater's books of which there are many.  Yetta is the most recent, a treasure even if you are not a chicken aficionado--lovable illustrations by Jill Pinkwater.  The text mostly in kids' book English plus much Yiddish, and a little Spanish too! 

Beautiful Yetta The Yiddish Chicken seems a timely addition to Roxie's (laundry helper on her June visit) poultry collection in New York; her family is about to move from the only home she has known for her first four years.  Tucked into its quirky, child oriented text about a lost chicken who lands in an unknown place is a message.  The book's flap, explains:

"Moving from city to country...appearing different from others, or adjusting to change...Jewish tradition teaches how we are to treat newcomers....From the Torah, 'The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.' "

Yetta, Roxie, and I want you to join us in hope that rises above and beyond what happens today.  I close my eyes and remember a conference in 1964.  Martin Luther King speaks of his dream to New York City teachers.  We rise to our feet; we are true believers.

"ella," lower case contraceptive pill, tip toes here

How far did I have to go to find this picture?  To the UK where ella, the new "You have five days to take care of your unprotected sex encounter" pill    is now available.  Approved this week by the FDA as available by prescription in the U.S., none of the stories about it showed what its packaging looked like.

Call me paranoid, but this seems just another symptom of how frightened officials here are about making this breakthrough contraceptive pill available.  If you don't see it, will it go away?  Please.

In a braver time for women who demanded control over our own bodies, there's  this heartbreaking pin in my jewelry box.  Every now and then it appears on my shirt.  Probably has no meaning for women with no memory of time before Roe v. Wade.   Each time I look at it, I feel the sadness of my own experience and exasperation about the unwon battle for reproductive justice.  A recent find of a hangar slipcover left from our son's wedding in New Orleans (the year before Katrina) moved me to think about writing a post, "Meditation on a Hangar." But celebrating ella is more upbeat and hopeful for the future of my grandchildren.

My English friend Gillian who lived downstairs in my 4th apartment in Manhattan in two-year span and the one I returned to after my own illegal 1957 abortion, would  entertain as she described the dime store wedding band almost slipping off her ring finger during her visit to the NYC Planned Parenthood (link not historical indicates the ongoing struggle).  Why were we laughing?  We had cried so many times.

That was New York City in the 1950s when the only way a woman could get a diaphragm was visit to a gynecologist for a prescription.  Expensive.  The cheaper alternative was PP.  Gillian developed a complicated story for the doctor there.  At the time, the gyn would ask the patient supplicant to see if she could use the device properly.  And so the ring began to slip.  Her story became more hilarious when she returned to PP for a new diaphragm the following year and saw the same woman doctor who remembered her.  Gillian was seriously challenged to update her marital story.

All this to say, I wish the organizations that support CHOICE would spend some of our support bucks on powerful imagery.  Then get a couple of those "girls" on the TV show "Mad Men" to appear in national advertising with one on their breasts. From what I can see here of the ella pill, that would be a fine design, surrounded by the message, "Five days to Choice."  Sure, you can think up a better one but will the orgs listen to old ladies?

UPDATE:  The one place that gets my money in this never-ending struggle is the Center for Reproductive Rights.  Check their site for all their important legal work that could use your support .

Ancient Woman looks like my mother...and her shoes are more comfortable than mine!

Before you know it, I will look like this too. Known as La Mujer de las Palmas, she seems familiar,  "short, spry, slightly graying hair."  Kind of  like the dress, her big stick--the slightly curved staff, could be helpful any day now.  The shoes look like a leather version of my green (Iguana) canvas Keen's.   All together it is  a smart and comfortable ensemble, with a pair of fused glass earrings, and a NO WAR patch.  That's why bumper stickers read, "Stop Endless War."  Might qualify for a special edition of Advanced Style.

Links to Ancient Woman and her story offered here along with another recent discovery, oldest leather shoes for your consideration on astounding progress made by modern man (yes, we ladies had nothing to do with urge for "betterment"--bras and high heels).

PIETOPIA, update and backdate

Once upon a time I dreamed of being a pie-maker.  Unlike just about every other old lady blogger I never had a mom or grandma whose luscious pies would sit on a country window sill and tempt the neighborhood.

Aside:  At  a 1990 conference, a drama therapist and I did a performance on "The Idea of  "Home."  It began with my opening the oven, removing a baked good, raising the window described above, placing the pie.  Very powerful fantasy enhanced by 1930s and 40s children's books and print ads.

When Ron was on the faculty at Oberlin, we went to dinner at the psychology chair's house. In the kitchen I was spellbound as  his wife (those were the days) made a pie with such grace and ease that the memory is still clear forty years later.  Would have been perfect to learn from her but did not happen.  "Crisps" are my forte, as the rhubarb one pictured above.

Three pies were winners in the recent Pietopia event.  Most striking was the text for Margit Beerli's "Rinky Dinky Pie."

 "My life is simple right now because I choose to live uncomplicated and because I am in the third third of my life."  [italics mine]

Love that phrase. Perfect addition to my recently developed  employed (not retired) life script.  Comforting too that someone over thirty entered the contest.  If you lived in Portland, Oregon, and hung around food, you would get this.  Margit lives in Seattle which I'm told is more big city than PDX.

To remind readers once again to take notice of what is happening in the big world, here's Pietopia-innovator Tricia Martin's "Rhubarb Custard Pie:  The Pie of Unemployment II."  She did this one in 2009.   She, like my 20th century self, like many women and men all around us every day, has had her own frequent experiences with joblessness.  And uses her considerable creativity to get through the days.

Unemployment in America: Where's the rage?

  Searching, as my life script has determined, for my own possible employment--useful work suitable to pensioned, Social Security enabled, Medicare granted old lady--I believe it is here.  Every day I pin this small NO WAR patch to my outfit.  This is my job:  end the wars--current and future.  

Button highlights the word "employee."  Such a relief to say farewell to "retired" and retrieve my proper identity.

[Thanks to Sunday Oregonian "Business" section for the article that led to above graph at the blog, Calculated Risk.  An investment adviser in Oregon notes, "The disturbing notion is that the slope of the line is now headed back down."]

PIETOPIA...PDX Food + Thoughtfulness

At the usual risk of writing too long a post--including this and that from the piles of paper to my left/right/sideways and all the images too compelling to ignore, and then tying together visual impact with social issues till the poor thing can hardly lie steady on the page, I have found something unexpected to ease my struggle.

It began with my obsession with reading newspapers.  Every day.  Two of them--New York Times and The Oregonian. The Times gets less of a close read as our year anniversary in Portland approaches.  Never our "local" paper, only all that we had in Manhattan.  The free ones--Village Voice (sadly degraded from 1960s), Free Press even worse--are no match for the local (WW) Willamette Week. The latter gets high marks in usefulness for movie reviews, things to do, and a wry perspective on city politics.  If  the NYT had got their noses out of the desperate effort to appeal to younger and younger demographics,  it might have occurred to them:  develop small, local papers for different parts of the city, provide some genuine service.

Pietopia, the idea+event,  was mentioned in both locals.   Utopia as a pie?  Maybe better than as a commune.  It was to occur on my birthday, August 5, at Buckman Farmers Market, one of many around town this time of year.    We stopped by and met Tricia who has asked,  

What does it taste like to be unemployed, starting a new job, just married, divorced, a new homeowner or desperately searching for housing? What kind of pie would describe the way you are feeling right now? Could you imagine your thoughts, concerns or joys transformed into the All-American Pie?

You are looking at first place prize winner from 2009. Hard to outdo its heartfelt text by Sabrina Miller:

The ingredients in my pie are both tart and sweet . . . similar to the recent events in my life . . . and when combined, the result is unexpectedly sublime (and a force to be reckoned with, according to my husband)!  [The rest and the recipe is HERE.]

Since the winter of 2008, two photos have remained on my desktop.  Posters in the NYC subway as the recession began.  Their intent was to reach out to people unemployed and needing support.  In a much earlier life I was among them--often.  Once around 1963, I was unable to find a new job for so long that I sublet my apartment, moved into a residence hotel.  No longer had a telephone--only a service that I'd call to see if there were messages about my next interview.  Just like, but not nearly as much fun,  the musical "Bells Are Ringing."

A frequent job-seeker, the only one I had for more than two years was my own psychotherapy practice.  Twenty!  In the 1950s, I worked for New York State Employment.  Counseled women and men under 21 as they looked for jobs.  How old was I?  Twenty-four! But I already knew much about the search, loved connecting people and jobs. 

There is a special place in my heart and psyche for job-searchers.  I've been wanting to do something since the latest meltdown.  It pulls at me.  In 2008,  Claude who was then at Blogging in Paris  must have thought I was crazed when she received a long email about my concern about jobless New Yorkers.  Did Tricia realize that all the support groups are not enough?  Some kind of doing is what's needed:  make pie, ask the cook what it represents. 

Maybe the approach that would work for other causes of mine:  MAKE PIES NOT WAR.   I'll share the outcome of the 2010 Pietopia challenge.  Meanwhile, read the winners from 2009.  Portland is a very special place when it comes to writing. I hope I catch it.

Blogging: Untapped Possibilities Envirowise?

My June 21  post elicited more comments than anything since my last picture of an adorable grandchild.  Thanks to all of you who validated my sense that there's an urge for each of us  to tell our environmental stories to one another and find validation that what we're doing is meaningful.  We are everywhere!

Jaykaym in Washington, D.C. suggested I watch the a documentary, "No Impact Man."  I read about the filmmaker in the New York Times  couple of years ago when we still lived there.  "Guy is writing a book," I said to spouse.  Otherwise why would you challenge your spouse to climb four flights of stairs in an NYC walk-up and schlep a two-year old, a dog, and packages at the same time.  Too much hubris.  I want to know how the family's no-impact efforts continue in their everyday life.  He does have a blog  by the same name.  It's worth following for its detailed focus on possible citizen environmental actions.

Hattie at her web acknowledges that some times ideas from another culture, Japanese soapdish from berry box, may not work elsewhere.  Readers in exotic lands like Hawaii now have a new way to grow orchids!

Kay in Ohio joins the keep-using-them club around plastic bags.  Have to find out what Freda in Scotland means about "the 50mls round trip."  Berry box as bath toy might work with grandkids who, unlike mine, enjoy low key bath times.

Darlene in Arizona wonders if her efforts are enough.   It's not "tiny," Darlene.  Only seems that way because the environmental movement, the U.S. government, your neighbors have not discovered ways to form community around small, individual steps.

How I envy Anne in Washington (the state).  I live in an apartment; outdoor clothes drying not an option.  Sigh.

Beth Reid, a neighbor of mine here in Portland, Oregon, offered a good idea about buying the net bags--much less spendy than mine from Whole Foods!  Another neighbor wondered if our retirement community might not buy biodegradeable bags in bulk that residents could then purchase at modest cost.

Interesting  "papier-mache/wooden berry boxes" idea from m.e. (Xtreme English)  in Washington, D.C. environs.  Could only find these wooden ones which could take a lot of re-use.   Maybe Beth knows where we can get a dozen of them...talk our neighbors into  starting a mini-trend at nearby Farmers Market.

Why does everything seem more sensible in Canada?  Marja-Leena Rathje in British Columbia reminds me how I always wonder why the U.S. is not more open to what we might learn.  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation long a favorite of mine.

Surprise from Joared in Southern California:  she's blogging again!  And takes the prize for being a "do everything" approach to improving the universe through personal effort.

Two days later Carrie Sturrock in the Oregonian seemed to be reading my mind.  She writes a Friday column, PDX Green.    "Changing Minds, One Step at a Time" was her theme.  Her model was the impressive effort made by Portland's Williamette Pedestrian Coalition to move its office on foot (by foot?) via an informal parade of walkers.  Yes, this city is a great place for those of us not on bicycle...more later.

[Food poster at the top of the page from a link at Marion Nestle's blog, Food Politics.  Pennsylvania promoted these ideas during World War One.]

Not doing that again--sustainability in real old life

My neighbor B.P. (not to be confused with the infamous oil company) suggested at a community meeting that we needed to stretch our recycling efforts.  She demonstrated her suggestion by holding up plastic berry boxes that she stated could be washed and returned  to the store.  Audience exchanged dubious glances.  "You could also," she continued, "take them to the Farmers Market and put your raspberries in them."

I thought that was hilarious.  Then checked myself.  Wasn't it my idea back in 1998 that New Yorkers could kitchen compost with red wiggler worms?  Didn't I use similar little plastic boxes to create the "world's smallest kitchen composter."  Many laughed,  suggested it was undoable.  Challenged, especially now a resident of the most sustainably-conscious city in America, Portland, Oregon, I would try out her idea.

More than that, Saturday, June 17, 2010, would be my uber-effort on the container front.  In keeping with the local ethic and encouragement in stores, we've become more dutiful carriers of canvas bags.  Still find it a bit uncomfortable to simply drop the unwrapped aspirin bottle into my purse and not wonder if the "Thief!" electronics will sound as I leave the drugstore.  But the Farmers Market at PSU is the place to feel righteous about dispensing even with canvas:  I have seen people  do it.

You know how everyone is very polite in PDX?  That's how it was with the young man at the blueberry table.  Explained that I was just going to transfer the berries from the little green paper box to my plastic one.  "Think they will fit?" I anxiously asked Ron.  "Sure."  He's patient too.  Well, they fit but it's a trickier maneuver than I'd imagined; quickly gathered up wandering berries as the line behind me grew longer.

Lost a few berries, felt womanly righteousness.  Spent more time than usual in figuring out how to arrange food.  Took along a shoe box in the Zabar cart...yes, there is one plastic bag for the apricots/peaches.  Ran out of canvas...gets more complex around items that need to be held while selecting, then weighed on purchase.    

My message to B.P. is that the effort was informative for my future.   But  the berry-box-reuse notion is history in my house.  

Maybe B.P., a former elementary school teacher, and I (once one of those too) could do is design a class, "Transformative Sustainability," a/k/a  "Right-thinking Bagging Techniques for the  Older Person." Respectful, conscious of age-related limitations. 

Watch for an announcement in the Oregonian where a major grocer's  anti-plastic-bag  initiative hit today's front page. [Be sure to read the online comments following the story...are they what you'd expect?]

Meeting Ehren Tool, "war-awareness artist"

Ehren Tool, veteran of the first Gulf War and a potter, was "installed" at Portland's  Museum of Contemporary Craft in June.  A museum member, I'd heard earlier about his work, looked forward to his "durational performance."

 Exchanging with Ehren was all I could hope for-- an old political activist encountering a  young one.  He was the first Marine I'd ever met,   had to adjust my stereotyped expectation of  what he'd be like. Ehren surprised me with with an open, gentle manner.    I am challenged by his attitude, different from mine, not anti-war rather focused on raising general awareness of war.

Three years ago, Allison Smith, posted a long, thoughtful interview with Ehren.  He spoke of what drives him:

"It's this freaky thing. To me, it's like there's a siren going off in the background all the time. There are so many veterans and refugees who've seen war firsthand, but then they don't talk about it when they get back to the States. So what regular people know about war tends to come from toys and pornography and video games. I give away the cups because, it's like, 'Drink out of the cup with skulls on it.

Drink out of the cup with bombs on it.' We don't have money for schools, we don't have money to make the corrections system a corrections system instead of a penal system, for any of that. But we do have money for million-dollar Tomahawk missiles and $13,000 cluster bombs.

 And every single one of us is part of that system whether we act like we know it or not."  

Ehren threw his cups at his wheel in a windowed, first floor temporary studio in a  corner of the  Museum. Passersby could watch him from the street.  Our three visits were uplifting for Ron and me, a powerful reminder that there can be hope in a time of darkness.

  One of his porcelain cups sits on our windowsill.  I hope you will enlarge the closeups to see the images; they are instructive, not pretty. Better, closer ones are HERE .  But this one is mine, a reminder of  how  "lifelong learning" is more than sitting in classrooms. 

Without my usual note-taking of our conversatons, my memory of Efren has a kind of purity.  It is hard to describe my feelings about this chance to be  with this young man,  a soldier in the war I'd energetically protested.  He had lived the life reflected in the images on the cups--now close to 10,000 of them are out in the world.  The NO WAR  patches Sally Mericle and I  rubber stamped in 1991 Baltimore, while Ehren was a young marine in combat,  only numbered one thousand.  Something other than the difference in scale has been on my mind since my time with him. 

His ability to put values and craft together in a sustained way are a lesson for me.  He continues to throw more and more cups, to look for venues that will bring others to join him in cup-making--war veterans, communities of caring Americans.  With all his intensity around his craft and message, he is a very gentle man with a delightful sense of humor.  When Ron and I spent time with him on the final day of the installation, we learned that where he is now is miles away from the 18 year old who joined the Marines, wanted to be a policeman.  After his military service Ehren went to college, then art school.   He was very even in reflecting on gallery visitors who glanced at his work and withdraw from its directness-- or did not respond at all.  I'd like to be  as balanced about responses to my own creative efforts.

Ron promised to mail him one of his knit hats; I enclosed  a No War patch.  Ehren sent an email "thank you" with this somewhat elfin photo attached.

Talking about him has made July 4th a more meaningful day for me and, I hope, for you.  

Too Far North for Our Attention?

On June 27, Hattie's Web posted a powerful You Tube clip.  I do not usually sit  through an eight minute online video.  But three days later, when Roxie and her family had just returned to New York, I  slowed down enough to watch/listen to Naomi Klein in an interview on  Amy Goodman's  Democracy Now program.

Klein illuminated the background on the police reaction to demonstrators at the recent  G20 summit in Toronto.  Canada, our always low-key neighbor with liberal politics, now has  a very conservative prime minister.  Like here, seismic changes are happening to the north.   Were you puzzled about the police shift from their initial no-reaction to over-reaction?  She explains the convoluted situation.

Next, in response to a question from Goodman, Klein connects the Gulf oil crisis with G20 inaction. I hope you will watch.  It would be transformative, as in the universe shifting, if more people could watch/listen to more thoughtful political commentators.  Women speaking instead of the ubiquitous men in dark suits.