a little red hen

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New Jersey from Manhattan

The Last Time I Saw Portland...

Unexpectedly, it was snowing here in January.  Now Portland, Oregon's  weather is sunny, the envy of our friends in New York drenched with rain over the past week.  The two cities seem to have exchanged climates.

It's been too busy since we arrived to think about blogging.  But today I read the last two posts at TimeGoesBy.  Reading her responses to the prevalence of Blackberries on her visit to Manhattan was timely.  My daughter's Blackberry was next to me at the breakfast table.  Left there as she took the baby up for a nap.  I never get over how tiny the keys are.

But I have seen it's utility.  Last week a call from a broker while we were on the playground with Zoe.  Nice to have a cellphone.  Needing to make arrangements for her to show someone our apartment, we were impressed by how she could receive call and email on her little device.  "Now I get it," told my daughter.

Of course it's all so speeded up--faxes for contract exchanges were added to the mix.  I guess these innovations are more appealing when they facilitate something important to me.  But no Black or Blue or Redberries in my future--too much to keep track of along with my knittng.

Today's TGB, a tidy listing to terms around the healthcare debacle plus concise explanations of what is at stake, sparked an "Aha" moment.  Here is why we will not get a single payer plan or even a very useful "public" option.  It would mean that all Americans would be joined in a way that would threaten what is so important in our political system today:  how to keep groups of us at odds with one another.

Think of it.  Medicare for all, for example, reduces the conflict between  older and younger people.  Our energy might be directed toward making a better national health system rather than setting up old people's entitlements versus those of children. 

What would keep the Repubs and Dems going?  They'd have to be thoughtful--finally answer why only Congressmen and Congresswomen were entitled to the best healthcare benefits.  And that might lead to, oh you remember the term, Democracy.

Ron Bloom Celebrates Another Birthday!

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived,  children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

  All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

A Sweater, A Village, A Question

Alternative title for this post:  It Takes a Village To Make a Sweater, or Can This Marriage Be Saved?  This colorful cardigan for Eliana, our most recent grandchild, became a joint project by chance.  I was having difficulty using size eleven needles to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous "Baby Surprise."  At the height of the past year's shoulder discomfort, I could not manage 100+ stitches on a circular needle.

Why not encourage Ron, happily knitting hat after hat, to try an easier sweater pattern with the same yarn, a product of his own spinning.  He was cautiously agreeable; pattern-reading has not been his thing.  But I would help!  Here's Eliana in a sweater I made for her mother forty years ago.

An added complication was that the blue and red yarns were spun very early in his learning this craft.  That is, they are not too amenable to being knit.  We got some great help from Betty Balcomb at Knitty City (wearing one of her own glorious productions).  A bit of input from Close Knit in Portland when we were there this winter.  But the project kept slowing down.  Would we ever complete it in time for use before summer?

Biggest problem was the awful instructions for this medium-complex, cuff-to-cuff cardigan.  I guess to keep the cost down, it was printed on both sides of one page--sort of a run-on style.  Also, the designer is British and, though we speak the same language... knitters know what I mean.  Finally, I had to give up certain knit niceties to accommodate Ron's distinctive style, although he was ready to rip and redo at several junctures.

With many stops and starts,  we finally finished, sewed in our respective labels,  and mailed it to Portland this week.

Handmade wood buttons down the front are from Russia via Peace Fleece. Even if you're not a yarn person, it's an inspiration to read about Peter Haggerty's  successful experiment, started in 1985, to bridge cultures through commerce.  From his farm in Maine where he and his wife raise sheep, he travels to connect and partner with shepherds in Russia, central Asia, and the Middle East. 

The little yellow buttons at the collar points come from a trip to Toronto some years ago and are actually made in Canada.  Rachel, Eliana's Mom, says there's still a chill in Portland, so our funky production should get a bit of use this season.

Harry, His Mom, the White Peacock

Up and down  weather, fooling us with spring then turning cold.  Thursday, April 2, was a spectacular day all sun and flowers.  Walking along Amsterdam Avenue, we saw the white peacock who lives in the garden that surrounds the famous Episcopal cathedral,  St. John the Divine.

I began taking pictures from across the street, soon realized the peacock would not be leaving soon.

We  crossed 111th Street for a closer look. She (Ron's guess) seemed to be doing a "preening performance."  We began to talk with Harry, the fiftyish son of the woman in the wheelchair who lives in a nearby nursing home.

An unmarried man who works as an elevator operator, he visits her every day.  She has dementia. The toy dog she holds on her lap, very real to her, is one of two always with here. 

They provide so much  comfort, Harry explained, that when she refused to eat after her leg amputation, the dog provided a solution.

In much detail,  he told how he demonstrated that the dog was still eating-- fed the dog as his mother watched.  She began to eat again.  He also washes both dogs to keep them clean.  The one on Momma's lap looked pristine.  the one she holds in the photo is the $60 one he found to use while the $20 dog is drying.

Our time with Harry moved us into another world, the one where a grown child dedicates most of his or her time to caring for a declining parent.  My sister-in-law did that for her mother.  Usually it is the daughter who takes the responsibility.  My own instincts have always moved me to believe I'd never want to burden my own children in this way.  But even using the word "burden" indicates how far my world is from Harry's.  His comfort with his role moved both of us, let us feel that we, in turn, were adding to his pleasure by taking time to talk about his family and ours. 

Japanese tourists had just come off a tour bus to visit St. John the Divine.  They joined us for their own excited photo shoot of the white peacock. 

When people ask if I will miss New York when we move to Portland, I think about these kinds of moments.  Harry's mother enjoys the sensory stimulation of the City.  I do too.

People, You Elected Him for Change & It's Happening

Yes, yes, it's very dark out there on the economy landscape.  But so much has already happened since Obama took office.  Remember, we said (back in the "good" days of August) that he was inheriting a landfill's worth of problems.

How about some rage toward the fool in office before him? 

You think I do not have some complaints?  Certainly--more troops to Afghanistan, too much nodding toward the religious.   Of my gosh, he's not perfect.  Much less perfect is the shallow  media?  They could back off on the bankers for a moment.  And the annoying (to me) too-much-information, known in my family as TMI, about every dress/school/meal detail in the Obama family.  Actually I would like to hear from Marian Johnson, Michelle's mother about her friends on Social Security, what it's like to go from her former life to "retirement" in the White House.  Not going to happen because that might bore men and women under 50.

A worthwhile newspaper might focus on how close we've come to something like  single-payer health insurance.  Or that the administration has made moves that upset the Catholic Church and religious right who believed they had a won the struggle to make  abstinence, that bogus sex education notion, the law of the land.    Things undreamed of as within our reach  only a year ago.

The top image here was drawn on the a sidewalk at 111th and Broadway last summer.   Hani Shihada is the artist; I once watched him work  on a dark street in Greenwich Village.  By October it was still there, maybe touched up.  In January, I saw the black and white sketch  on a sidewalk at 13th and Spokane S.E. in Portland, Oregon.  Coast to coast we were very enthusiastic about Obama.  Now we live with him day by day as he tries to clean up multiple messes, some decades old.  I make mistakes so I assume he will too.

This is my kitchen in Manhattan & it's for sale!

Yes, that long winter visit in Portland, Oregon,  even with its unseasonable snow, confirmed our decision.  We'd gone with the idea of  re-locating.  Call it Second Stage Retirement.  In the first one we were in our early sixties, had two unmarried children. 

Fifteen years and one quadruple by-pass later, we're ready for  a place slower than New York.  The subway steps are more of a challenge these days.  Both children are married, have their own kids. The idea of being with the three in Portland as they grow is very appealing.   It is, we believe, our last move until the very final exit or Third Stage.

With the unstable real estate market we wondered, as we left in mid-December, whether we'd look to buy or rent an apartment as a temporary measure?  Few days before we left, I Googled "retirement communities" in Portland.  I'm still not sure how it escaped my eye before.  It's been around for 50 years!  Unlike most retirement places, this one is  right in town--we could walk to the center city, take a bus to our family's neighborhood.  Maybe a possibility?

 January 10, was our first visit to Terwilliger Plaza.  A non-profit  CCRC   (continuing care retirement community), it is designed for "healthy people looking for security.   When I stepped toward the reception desk to sign in, the pleasant resident volunteer (I'd say she was a bit older than I, maybe early eighties), looked at my Obama button, smiled, said "Isn't it wonderful?"

 That first  surprise was followed by the second:  it was much more affordable than Kendal on Hudson, another non-profit CCRC, that interested us earlier.  Plus the apartments were attractively designed, most with a  view of Mt. Hood.  Most important was that  Ron was very enthusiastic too.  The postings on the bulletin boards on each floor indicated that we would be comfortable with the social environment.  Of course we'll be a bit "different."  Always a bit outside the line,  I was amused when Ronni Bennett once described me as one of New York's  "typical upper west siders."  Yes and no.

Speaking of Ronni and selling our apartment, I called her last week to talk about the upcoming sale of our apartment. She left the City three years ago  after an extended effort to sell her much-beloved place in Greenwich Village.  Just like our visit with her in  Maine two years ago, our free-flowing conversation surveyed everything from blogging to bagels.  Great to hear her laughter again and get her input about financial stuff we'd face.

Leaving Roxie, our local granddaughter, is the sad part of this move (seen here with a pickle, one of her favorite foods).  We rationalize by saying that our daughter and her spouse are permanently (or as much as anyone can be these days).  Our son, Roxie's dad  has the potential for more mobility as a young academic. 

Many readers  had much to add on my December post, "Housing Ourselves in Late Life."  The dialogue continues today and in the months and weeks to come.  In my effort to include a PDF file for the first time on A Little Red Hen, this is how the link offers itself-- Download Co-op flyer NEW color.  If you know anyone who would be interested in our  two-bedroom co-op in Morningside Gardens, that will give you the photo above plus two others and details.   Our very special community with its six buildings around a beautifully landscaped central garden has a history of being unknown in New York.  Thanks to Wikipedia we get our due in their description of  the many sides of  the upper westside neighborhood, Morningside Heights.

[Visit Marlys Styne's Never Too Late! for another Elderblogger experience on a recent move to a highrise CCRC in Chicago.]

 

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!

We first noticed it earlier in the week...new guy named by Obama administration.  A mention on the Yahoo news.  "Who Is Ron Bloom?"  the Wall Street Journal's blog queried on Monday.

Time magazine called him "Obama's Car Non-Czar."  You see, this one is 20 years younger than mine, not from Brooklyn.  Similarities?  Both dress casually for meetings but my Ron Bloom likes to knit during his.

Yesterday there was more inside the front section of the ever-thinner New York Times.

I've always told him to be more formal about his name, really, it's Ronald. 

People in academe would ask if he was the creator of "Bloom's Taxonomy"  Not even close.

These are pictures of my Ron Bloom.  Top photo, ten years ago in Mexico--the other two as he appeared recently,  grandfathering in Portland, Oregon.

The knitter/weaver/spinner--formerly Chair of Home Economics (a very different sort of economy than the one in the news) at Morgan State University  And my feminist spouse.

He is not, I repeat, the one who has been appointed to save the nation from its car sickness.  He has been driving Toyotas for 20 years.

UPDATE:  Thanks, Hattie, links now working.

Goodbye PDX, Hello Again New York

You'd think it might be the other way around, that I'd be energized by returning to the Big Apple, its subway sounds and sights.  No, been very slow--not reading blogs much, not writing here.  In the week we've been back have  been housebound mostly.  Oh yes, to the doctor about persistent arm/shoulder pains...more later. 

More serious medical stuff has been around Ron's lingering Northwest cough (see Marianna at Hattie's Web; visiting grandkids in Seattle was her source).   He was helped by going to one of  Providence Hospital's Urgent Care sites.  Great views from the parking lot!  But then a nasty side effect of leg pains.  Turns out antibiotics  depleted his potassium.  He's fine now, vitamined-up.

  We had such a good time with our grandkids.  What a treat to live right across the street from them.  So much so that I will refrain from details of the challenges of the house where we stayed.

Instead, here's a view of some of their shell collection under a tub.  Folks who own the place have spent many years working in southeast Asia, like us they have run out of places to store shells.  There were gorgeous baskets too.

 Back to my lethargy in the City.  Finally have one idea:  I was employed!  Yes, life with our daughter, Rachel, means you are in her system.  For seven weeks, we retired from retirement.     Found this perfect button at a cute store in her Portland neighborhood, with its cute name, Noun.  They take pages from discarded dictionaries and make  $1.00 buttons.  Wore mine pridefully, along with Obama buttons.

Though it had warmed  in Portland the day we left--and did so periodically during our visit--it was very cold as we stepped off the plane in New York.  

Our son was back to wearing his huge, fur-lined hat. The style he wore as an undergrad at Wisconsin, then again in grad school at Brandeis.

He finally got a Visiting Prof gig at Tulane in New Orleans (before Katrina); very hot summers.   Ron tried the hat, then Roxie, of course!

Now all in our extended family in the City have colds--not restricted regionally.

Postscript:  You wonder why button appears upside down?  Me too!

Obama Begins, January 2009: Reflections from a Singular Week

Much as I loved the inauguration, it was odd to be viewing it from the west coast rather than east.  This sense of distance from Washington, gave me some insight to something I'd noticed as we've visited Portland over the past ten years.  Events that are powerful for us in New York, often do not have equal impact on people out here.Except for 9/11/01.  We came here the month after and often were asked, "How was it?  Do you feel anxious living there?"  All the intensity around security seems to have been directed toward the anxiety of those living outside New York City.  We had a better idea that we are no longer safe.  We have to live with it, go on with our lives.  Forget taking shoes off at the airport.

Tuesday, January 20, I could forget the things that do frighten me-- the dedication of the far right to shift all I valued.  We had pushed them aside for the moment, enjoyed our power to elevate to the Presidency an intelligent, humane man. And not-white--remarkable for aging people like me who had sat-in at segregated lunch counters in the late 1940s, been a summer school student at the University of Kentucky in 1954 during its first moments of integration.

At the last minute my grandson's elementary school gathered kids into the auditorium to watch the inauguration in the auditorium on a small TV with rabbit ears borrowed from a first-grader's family.  On the other coast, the momentous event would be less improvisaional.

Barack and Michelle Obamas sang the national athem.

What must they have been thinking?  We heard the thoughts of Reverend Joseph Lowry, my own connection to last century's civil rights struggle.

Charming to have it all end with "old school dancing."  Even as I know how very difficult the years ahead will be.  Like them, I want some simple pleasures.  Theirs was this glorious day with its two million on-site participants.  For me, it was feeling more hopeful for my famiy.

By the end of the week, I was ready for the two women pictured at the beginning of this post.  Melissa Harris-Lacewell, historian at Princeton and Patricia Williams, Columbia Law School and columnist for The Nation appeared on Bill Moyers' Journal.  The link leads to the transcript which I urge you to read.

The two have much to say about many sides of this historic event.  Their exchange on why it is  important to see  Obama as our first black president, not bi-racial, needs to be required reading around the nation.  They point to his selection of Michele as partner--a smart, tall, educated black woman--is significant to Obama's claim to his own racial/cultural identity.

A similar impatience with  "bi-racial" was blogged about by Betty Reid Soskin on the same day.  She had just returned to California from the inauguration. (By the way, Betty is an older Elderblogger than I'd recently written--87 years.) A valuable by-product of Obama's campaign has been the chance to hear thinking from more educated black women and men than before he ran.  Who knows what new learning is ahead?