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.

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.

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.

A (Portland) Bridge Too Far

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. 

And a well known blogger is coming to town!

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.

FEMINISM...Hers & Mine

Elena Kagan, old enough to be my granddaughter, sat before this daunting crowd of Senators and media and held her own.  Personable, engaging.  Yes, that's what I have wanted. 

Would she self-describe as a feminist?  Don't care:  I know, she knows, and that's what counts.

Many women like me, political ones, the women who angst about the future of the planet, really  needed an American event that we could  feel good about this July, just before the fourth. 

Now I have had an excellent month.  Personally, it's been my actual granddaughter Roxie's visit; politically, the possibility of a  third woman on the Supreme Court. 

Emma Goldman-- reassurance, 1917... a question, 1919

 

Keep the spark of liberty alive,

the night cannot last forever.

A bookmark from The Emma Goldman Papers, University of California, Berkeley.  On the reverse side, a contemporary message about the importance of remembering our history of struggle,  "Stirring the embers of the past to inspire the future. 

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and Alexander Berkman in a "Farewell, [to] Friends and Comrades," wrote this line before serving almost two years in prison for opposing the conscription of young men into the First World War.

Partial to her feisty spirit, I once bought a 1916 issue of Emma's publication, Mother Earth News.  It includes a reminder of the upcoming "Mother Earth Ball" to celebrate the publication's 11th anniversary (Admission 35 cents, Hat Check, 15 cents). Somewhere in my photos, there's one of me standing in front of a brownstone where she lived near Union Square in New York City. 

In the Portland Red Guide, I learn she came here in 1915 to speak, was arrested for distributing birth control information. A Portland Circuit Judge dismissed the case with the words, "There is too much tendency to prudery nowadays."  She also spoke at the Portland Public Library on "The Sham of Culture." A local blogger last year named her Portland's Fairy Godmother. Her spirit lives on!

A few years ago, the bookmark on the right arrived in the mail.  I've saved it for its message and its different, gentler view of Emma--feminist, anarchist, immigrant--to share among ourselves.  In these days when it often feels as if the forces of evil have taken over reasonableness, I offer her words to recall that we have survived narrowness of thought in earlier times.  Her message, as always, is pertinent to 2010.

"Sooner or later the American people are going to wake up.  --Emma Goldman, Detroit, Michigan, 11/26/1919, on deportation to Russia" reads a cup (mug)  on my kitchen counter.  Make sure you click on this image from her  1901 arrest, a frequent happening.

Celebrate her birthday on June 27, with a contribution to the Papers so you too can be a part of the ongoing effort to write women back into history.

Elianna, the baby, loves chickens too

Being the third and youngest child in my daughter's familly, Elianna, has been photographed less than her brother and sister.  Now that we've moved here, our goal is to add photos as she moves toward age two.

Until recently Elianna was often carried or sitting on a parent lap as in this one where she has just discovered earrings as a style possibility.  Or about to go to bed (with pacifier) as her parents are about to go out.  This was April when Rachel  was named "Volunteer of the Year" at the annual dinner of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters. 

In the last couple of weeks, her walk has moved into stride mode; she is more on her own.  Sunday the entire family came over for pancakes.  (I'm a fan of Stonewall Kitchen's Pancake & Waffle Mix.)  Elianna, like her older sister Zoe, is a fan of chickens.

Now she has discovered most of my collection--fiber, metal, and ceramic while behind a close door, Zach and Zoe watched cartoons.  No TV in their house so it's an occasional grandparent-visit experience. 

     

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! 

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.