By chance we discovered a one-woman show soon after our move here in Fall 2009. Print junkie that I am, a promotional postcard, "The Bridge Lady: inspired by a true story," intrigued me. This city is alive with bridges--eleven of them criss-crossing the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
Sharon Wood Wortman, whose one- woman performance was the card's subject, has been leading school tours and writing about Portland bridges for a number of years. But a note on the card indicated this one was not for kids.
Hardly. Announcing that she'd never done anything like this before, Sharon told her life story of growing up harshly in the city. Not a pretty story but a strong sense of survivorship and delving into the history of the bridges--plus a few good supportive friends--had led her beyond that to her current self at 65 years. Joined in celebrating with her.
In connection with the 100-year birthday of the Hawthorne Bridge, she was giving her final tours for the general public, as part of an incredible extravaganza for the bridge planned with the guy pictured next to her. The bridge's calendar is gorgeous with artists' views of it. It has been on our wall but I stopped turning to the next month when the drawn image to the right appeared.
As part of Sharon's tour, we trekked to the bridge traffic control room with 70 other bridge enthusiasts to see how it all worked. But it began so late that Ron and I left partway through--before actually crossing the Morrison Bridge, being on it when it lifted. It was the end of an exhausting couple of weeks.
Back to regular pedometer use, I'd racked up two days over 7,000 steps. Walked every day to a Portland State summer class, "The Sociology of the Bicycle," which was terrific and met 8 afternoons over two weeks. We managed a full week on foot: no car! Toward the end, Portland became summery and the air-conditioning in the classroom was a killer.
And so, I came down with another cold--several of these and/or allergy stuff since our move. And I've been low energy. It was a message: having fun, moving fast is swell, but old ladies need to chill out a bit more than some of us are ready to accept.
Here's the Hawthorne, oldest vertical lift bridge in U.S. and maybe the world, draped with fabric that gets lighted at night (Willamette Week ran great photos)...keeping missing that and only three days left to see it. Oops, slow down, I tell self once again.
At the top of this post a view from an early evening walk toward the Morrison Bridge. You cannot see us and our friends dodging the bicycle riders whizzing as we tried to take a leisurely walk along the Willamette.
Though it seems I've been a blogging dropout, it is not the case. Many wonderful adventures to relate in future posts--bike culture as religion, meeting Vincenza Scarpaci and reading her book about Italians in America plus discovering an unexpected PDX gem, diPrimo Bakery and Restaurant.
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.]
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.
We thought the flowers would begin to fade, but Portland florals hang on to please us. Iris, wisteria though fading hangs on, and an very, very deep blue bush. Do you know what it is?
And the lilacs, everywhere. We heard we could have an especially
intense encounter with them a half hour away in Woodland, Washington. We arrived just in time for the last week the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens were open.
Beautiful as the many varieties of lilacs were I was fascinated by the tour of this 19th century farm. Hulda Klager (1864-1960) was the daughter of German immigrants. Farming, raising a family, in 1903 she was recovering from an illness and read a book by Luther Burbank. The result was her interest was piqued by the notion of plant propagation. First she produced a larger apple to make one that would be easier to peel. In an early magazine interview, she described using a crochet hook to do her hybridization.
In a couple of years she had created 14 new varieties of lilacs. I was reminded of a late 19th century woman photographer I'd reasearched, Mary F.C. Paschall of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It was illness that gave her time to study how to develop her own film. Guess that's what it took for a woman to give herself time to think outside the dailyness of life.
The gardens are owned and maintained by the Hulda Klager Lilac Society. Members, all wearing purple, are docents; the woman with the scarf is a second generation Society member. A recent video that shows some of the 100 lilac varieties that populate the Garden.The docents did a fine job of telling how hard life was on the farm and Hulda's strength as a survivor of flood and personal loss. This side door was only used for bringing in and taking out caskets.
I would have liked to know more about how Hulda herself. Someone needs to write about her, other farm women of that period in the 1920s when she began to hold yearly open house for the public to visit her gardens. And buy plants. She was honored by many organizations including the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard but there was not as much about her online as I expected. She is in Lilacs: A Gardener's Encyclopedia.
Though not a purple flower, I found in the Garden a name to go with a plant I've admired--Viburnum. So much to learn, so little time. [A little more history on the lilac in Oregon HERE.]
If you live in Oregon, here are important measures to say "YES" about on May 18--for Safe and Healthy Schools...go to this important link yes on 68 and 69 for the entire scoop.
About
On the May 18 Primary Election Ballot, Oregonians will see two
ballot measures that correct longstanding obstacles to providing safe,
healthy, and cost efficient schools for Oregon’s students,
from K12 through community colleges and universities.
Vote YES on Measures 68 and 69.
Protect K12 students by allowing local
communities to make decisions about funding repairs and maintenance in
their school facilities. It will also help keep costs to local
communities low by allowing the state to issue matching funds for
voter-approved bonds.
Make sure Oregon’s colleges and
universities can expand for more space by using low-cost bonds to reuse
existing buildings, not just for new buildings. Measure 69 will
conserve our state resources and environment while still making sure
that our colleges and universities are prepared to train students for
the jobs of tomorrow.
Broad coalitions of education advocates and business communities are
supporting YES votes on these measures because they
protect local control of our classrooms, save precious state funds, and
provide Oregon’s students with the education they need.
Copyright 2010 Yes for Safe
and Healthy Schools (above copied from website)
Today was another of our ongoing swell times in Rose City. Walked to market with our old red Zabar cart. Made lunch from a Fresenden roll, Farmhouse Country Style Pate from CHOP, and just-bought green. Shortbread cookies from Two Tarts. Have to bring containers next week for free water; lines too long for tea and coffee. Everyone, like me, buying rhubarb. Found recipe the other day that uses it with chicken!
Toward the end, Ron and I became transfixed by Chef Kathryn Yeomans with biz card: Sage Culinary Advice. The most diverse cross-section of Portlanders I've seen yet crowded around to watch/ listen/inhale. She was the Market's Chef-du-jour aligned with the mushroom people next door.
In these photos she poaches salmon--with ingredients from vendors in the Market. "Nobody poaches anymore," Kathryn noted. I have to agree. Seeing/tasting her results though makes it more of a possibility in our own kitchen.
She began with broth from a bit of salmon ( vendor who is actually a fisherman), carrots, celery, other stuff. Then the broth was used to slowly poach the rest of the salmon, so, as she explained, the result is tender fish. At the end there's bok choy, mitake mushrooms...the bone lifts easily from the fish. For the finish--a chance to taste--a splash of olive oil, a bit of spicy chevre. Great performance with delicious outcome.
This post is a stretch; LRH here is not a cooking blog. All because Ron announced to the crowd that pictures would be on my blog--and named the blog! Right there in Portland, home of so many smarty-pants bloggers. Mortified.
Complaining weekly about the whiteness of Portland (and Oregon), I have nowhere to go with this thorn in my perfect little life here. All week I've been handing out postcards about a local theatre production of "Radio Golf," the last of August Wilson's ten-play chronicle of black life in mid 20th century Pittsbugh.
Every man, woman, and child over 15 ought to be required to troop on over to the Portland Playhouse (small church converted to a performance space). Sit down on a couch or chair, open up to Wilson's picture of the pain and pleasure African Americans have always known in their own settings. People keep asking if we miss New York. No, we mostly miss living in a coloredworld. Asians running ethnic restaurants, Hispanics cooking in most eating places--but not living in my West Hills neighborhood. What's with all these white people? How did they conspire to be so cut apart from the America I've known--Baltimore, St. Louis, Oberlin, New Orleans, Louisville, New York of course.
But I get in the way of celebrating last Sunday in Albina, an historically black residential neighborhood.** Decided to wear this pretty little hat bought from its maker at a local Saturday market many years ago. "Oh, it's Easter," did not occur to me until we were halfway there. Influenced by the dominant culture here or feeling my hair continues to whiten so consider again little caps to hold back my fading from view?
We arrived early for the play and sat in the car in front of a house with a wreath, "Happy Every Day." As I knit, a woman drove into the driveway, got out of her car. Her shoes were bright pink. We exchanged hellos and I held up my mauve gloves, "These match your shoes!" She nodded and chuckled on her way inside.
Five minutes later a man came out of the house, got into a car parked in front of us. Soon the woman reappeared, wearing black shoes now, opened the passenger door and asked, "You hear from Johnny?" Her voice had a cadence Ron and I know so well. We never hear it in Portland--the way a voice sounds in a question from one black person to another. You had to be there--and be us to--understand our pleasure and sadness.
The Oregonian went all out to promote "Radio Golf" on the cover of its entertainment section. There is an excellent slide show of the set and scenes from the play. Also, the story of the two young white Weaver brothers (Michael at right in photo) started Portland Playhouse only last year. The "campaign poster" in the photo is of Harmond Wilks, played by Lawrence Street, a real estate developer planning to run for Mayor of Pittsburgh.Notable too was that this is a co-production with BaseRoots Theatre company, also a recent addition to Portland's performance scene with a mission is to "showcase the unique African-American experience."
We enjoyed the play--especially the outstanding acting. Two of the five actors are members of BaseRoots. Kevin E. Jones who plays the oldest character, Elder Joseph Barlow, and Victor Mack as the fast-talking neighborhood deal-maker, Sterling Johnson, struck us as the men August Wilson felt closest to in this play. As a black man on his way up and ready to change the old rundown Hill District neighborhood, Bobby Bermas is Roosevelt Hicks. He swings his golf clubs with bravado and determination that had us believing that playing the white man's game would bring him success. The Willamette Week review reflects my own reservations about the play while also calling it "...the best show in town."
At the last minute I'd changed our tickets when I learned there'd be talk-backs at Sunday performances. Most of the audience stayed, asked questions, and listened to the actors' describe differences they'd experienced as black performers in Portland compared with other places. We missed more of an African American presence among us and I think they did too. Kimberly Howard (far right) from the Oregon Cultural Trust, one of the sponsors, moderated and told of Portland Playhouse efforts to bring in more black audiences, particularly from public schools.
Other Wilson plays have been have been more powerful for me ("Joe Turner's Come and Gone" for one) but none of them--in Baltimore or New York--have gifted me with as pleasurable a total experience as this one... at the right place and in the right 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).
Random photos on my way to PSU last week to register for Spring term. Walking decision followed this exchange with a guy waiting at bus stop.
"Think one's coming soon?"
"I've been here ten minutes; should be."
"Not sure whether I should wait."
[He smiles] "Need the exercise?"
It was, at that moment mild drizzle. Of the two routes available to cross the 405 highway overpass, my choice was the one without the quilt-covered homeless man striding in the same direction.
The decoration on the bridge fencing is something I've noticed before in Portland. There's a practice known as "guerrila knitting" (found at the Ravelry site) that favors random knit messaging without words. But these letters are not knit rather some knot technique. This particular one is more direct and celebratory than those favored by the guerrila girls and boys.
Waiting at a Chipolte restaurant for Ron, looking out the window, I wonder if about hanging out here between classes. Too much loud music. Probably no place in this universe is music-free. Library? Yes, I need to get earphones. We decide eating here would not work and walk toward the SALC office. Find other student-type, bad food place-- at least not fried.
The afternoon brightened on reaching Susan's desk, the tiny, very useful office where old folk register. She was the person who patiently answered my cellphone call as I wandered around campus on another rainy last Fall. Her insider view as an older student (grandma of four) led me to a department I would never have tried: Geography! "Sense of Place" has a description that fits my interests, "...explores meaning in landscapes and identity in regions and localities...through media images, scholarly writings, photography, and art..."
Meanwhile, Ron met a very intense man also waiting to see Susan. Robert Burco, who has a considerable past like the rest of us who have been in the world for a long time. He filled in some of our Portland, the city, recent history. His plan is to complete a PhD begun forty years ago. I am awed. He forwarded an email about his local efforts which will require another meeting to understand.
How will we locate him again on campus? We might need to form something, leave messages on the bulletin board near the SALC door. What would other old students respond to as a title--how about a periodic group, a cell? On the latter, see #3, the only one I could locate outside biology.
In response to my question to Susan about who might be a person at the Institute on Aging to discuss thoughts about the state of lifelong learning from those of us outside academe, Susan introduced us to Alan DeLa Torre, a doctoral candidate/research assistant in the department. Ah, we spoke the same language. Ron joined us; we learned more about his work in the development of affordable housing for older adults. And he listened to our questions about holes in lifelong learning for educated old people.
What an afternoon! We gave up walking in now-heavier rain and took the #8 bus home.
[Been not-so-well over the past three weeks--flu via grandchildren, maybe some allergic reactions to new flora in the environment. Beautifully spring here but we need more of that famous Portland rain! So will be catching up on the life-transposed in future postings.]
What was I expecting? Holocaust-focused art has always make me anxious. Guilt, one of my favored responses to many things, rises up. Why have I not cared more about the death and displacement of millions of Jews? But I did care, I do care. Somehow that does not seem sufficient.
As the play began on a mostly-bare stage, only cardboard boxes, my discomfort began. Eva, a young German Jewish girl, 9 years old, cannot accept what her mother tells her: she is about to be sent to England to live--alone. It is 1938 in Berlin and the Germans have agreed to allow ten thousand Jewish children to be sent to families in there. It was a strange bargain and must have been horrific for everyone involved.
Am I identifying with my own adolescent past when my mother sent me away to live with my father? Awful as that was, I had the luxury of believing I was going to a better life. Though Eva goes to Manchester, England with a concerned and loving mother, she is marked by her wish to conceal her origins. That one is very familiar to me; I spent high school denying my own past, though not my Jewishness, as Eva does.
Identity, is the dominant theme, and the one most identified in articles about the play. For me it was also about the struggles between mothers and daughters from childhood to adolescence and beyond. A dark play, I found it beautifully acted by the four women and one man in the cast.
It is playing here till March 21. Sacha Reich, the director, (pictured here) has done an excellent job and also coordinated the talk-backs following the play. The one we heard was by Dr. Aart Lovenstein, a psychologist treating survivors of trauma. Himself the child of Dutch Holocaust survivors, he added more to an understanding of the need for "forgetting" or denial by the adult Eva becomes.
In my former life as psychotherapist, one of my clients struggled for many years with her parents, Holocaust survivors, who refused to talk about their past. She was finally helped by connecting with other children of survivors who have created a worldwide movement to support one another and understand what is, ultimately, the un-understandable.
I hope that it will be seen by non-Jewish audiences (though the empty reviews in both the Oregonian and Williamette Week would not help) since its message extends far beyond the particular setting of the play to our own times. How do we allow ourselves, our country to stand aside as genocide happens far away? It was not hard for the United States to turn away in 1938.
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