a little red hen

Bees, You and Me...Earth Week 2013

 

Bill McKibben narrates a short, mellow video, "Dance of the Honey Bees."  Planning an evening program for my retirement community about what's happening with bees, my search for resources turned this up on a Bill Moyers show.  Sadly it ends with the dark side about honey bee demise.  The link is from TruthOut, with transcript included along with a pledge you can sign to let Bayer (aspirin company) know you want them to stop killing bees. 

Recently a number of scientists have identified neonicotinoids, a pesticide produced by Bayer, as the major culprit.  Meanwhile, EFSA ( European food safety watchdog) has identified neonicotinoids as "an acute risk to honeybee health" but not to colony collapse.  Bayer and Syngenta, major producers of the pesticide, have suggested their own plan to avoid the ban of the product that many are demanding.

Environmental groups in England and some other European countries appear more public in their demand for a ban than those in the U.S.  In the past week, England has rebuffed this concern.  Since Bayer is a German company, there is more interest in protecting it as an important player in the economy.

In this country the XL pipleline and fracking currently take front and center in the media.  Speaking for the bees, the voices we hear in the U.S. are largely beekeepers and farmers and there are many in Oregon.  Tom Foster, a neighbor of mine, had bee hives, sold honey before he moved here.

 

We're working on a program for June.  Following his own deep history with bees--his father and grandfather were also beekeepers in the Northwest--we'll show a 20-minute excerpt from "Vanishing of the Bees."  We hope to stimulate bee-connected interests among our members to buy local honey, maybe consider a bee hive on the roof of our building (where we grow tomatoes).  Or, more modestly, borrow my copy of Foodopoly by the Wenoah Hauter, Exec Director of Food & Water Watch.

This informative and engaging 90-minute documentary, produced in the U.K., will be shown in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the next week.  For a delightful, funkier take, an American one, try "Queen of the Sun."  I'm hoping to find others as fascinated by bees as myself, an urban person moved to think more about the earth since connecting with a backyard in mid-20th century Baltimore.

"American Winter" Kickstarted to theater near you...

Were you with us when HBO announced the new film "American Winter"?  At the website there's more about it's producers, Joe and Harry Gantz, and their focus on social justice films. Maybe living in Portland, Oregon, where it was filmed gave it a certain immediacy for us.  Also that it was about real middle class families who have fallen into poverty since--what do you call it now--the economic disaster  of the last decade.

Seven of them white, one black, all doing okay and then...  When there is so much focus on the funny and forthy "Portlandia" picture of the city, it's crucial that more people see the reality of everyday life here for so many.  

 

At Lettboxd, reviewer Steve Pulaski comments:  

The staggering amount of people on unemployment begs a documentarian analysis, and American Winter provides the best one I've seen yet. High on reality, low on statistics, and often emotional, this is 2013's best documentary thus far. It is the third I've seen detailing the poor's struggle in an increasingly complex world, next to Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare and this year's limited/VOD release A Place at the Table. Needless to say that American Winter sores past the goodness of both films into gratifying greatness.

He brings up a secondary problem frustrating many of us.  Access to documentaries.  If you do not have cable, and HBO, you were dependent on the kindness of interested friends to see "American Winter."

That's why I was pleased to join their Kickstarter campaign (check out the site for a model of hands-on change at their Portland premiere) to raise funds to expand outreach for

"...a series of events around the film...bring together speakers, comics, and social theater to draw attention to critical needs of working poor and disappearing middle class...."Cirque Du Soleil" meets "Les Miserables" that will bring people together in an invigorating movement to create change."

Thrilled to learn yesterday we were among the 217 Kickstarters who made it happen!

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Writing this post, I discovered Mom Bloggers for Social Good--another to watch along with the quickly growing Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, seen here in the past week's "Stroller Jam" happening at various congressional offices around the country.  

Worthy followers of Gray Panters, Grandmothers against the War (see blogroll).  Personally satisfying for this grandma to hook onto the local Moms Demand group at demonstrations and on Facebook; my futile resistance to FB ended last summer. 

 

Portland, when it's good for old people

Oh, it is a challenge to keep batting away like summer mosquitoes our national bad news. Especially when I start the day by reading the local, daily newspaper.  The Oregonian shapes its content to appeal to dwellers on some far-off planet. Many of them live right here in oppostion to the trendy, very young and hip types celebrated on Portlandia.

If mine were one of those everybody-reads-blogs on Huffington Post, I'd run a contest to name the group of dailies across America that ignore/disparage all ideas sensible people hold dear...gun control, CHOICE, climate change.  I wish Rachel Maddow, an excellent "namer" would come up with something.  See her post "This Week in God" for the latest on a a favorite category she calls, "the God Machine."

However, in the tradition of  What Would Rachel Maddow Do? Let's turn to my good news.   As privileged old lady and man, we take advantage of our reasonably good health (thank you Medicare and Maryland retirement system) and disposable income to go to the theater often. [Too many disclaimers but often have company at Hattie's Web.  Especially today it turns out.]  Since we're drawn to what we knew in New York as "off" and "off-off Broadway," the cost of the habit is reasonable.

"The Road to Mecca,"  presented in a small space by Profile Theater was one of three we've seen in the last week.  (Overdosing due to baby-sitting schedule.)  Glorious photo by Jamie Bosworth; enlarge it to see the perfect set--worn rugs, many glass bottles on tables, hanging from above.

Made me think of Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, how many of us fill space, aloneness with  objects endowed with special meaning. Portland Monthly's useful, thoughtful review here.  

It was invigorating to be with actress Eileen DeSandre, who embodies aging perfectly as Miss Helen, the central character, has found her own bliss through non-traditional art-making.  Of course, I could very much identify with that.  Though South African playwright Athol Fugard writes about his own country, it could be mine. The other two actors played parts familiar to many of us.  There was Elsa, played by Amanda Solden, the young friend, both powerful and gentle, who wants Miss Helen to embody personal strength she seeks in herself.   David Bodin was an oppressive church minister, determined to convince  Miss Helen to move to an old people's home. He had more dimension than we'd expected as he ultimately revealed a softer side wrapped in his judgemental exterior.

Talkback.  As I've written elsewhere, Ron and I gravitate toward these.  How else can strangers in a city, women and men who may never meet again, share our pleasure, our questions about a theatrical experience.  Last night's included two of the actors, the young director (how do they have so much insight so early), and Katy Liljeholm, Artistic Director of Well Arts, an arts-in-medicine nonprofit theatre company.  "Voices of Elders" is one of their life-review projects at a local senior center.

We were a most suitable audience for her:  a mostly over 50 group, mostly women, with much to relate to about our own roads to Mecca.  Great evening...preceded by that other thing Portland does well: FOOD, delicious, moderately priced for happy hour (unknown to us in New York), a short walk from the theater at Accanto.

 

 

All fall down...me too

Malingering.  There is alway an excuse for it.  Why do several blog drafts await completion?  My nose gets in the way.

Yes, here I am in a wonderful ER at Legacy-Good Samaritan, accompanied by photographer/caretaker spouse, and administered by energetic male nurse we'll call Kevin.  I am wearing a device he invented for stopping bleeding--two taped-together tongue-depressors rather than something manufactured that could add $40 to my bill.

Moments before I walked too quickly down Prescott, in north Portland.  We were  on our way to a matinee of  "Bloody, Bloody, Andrew Jackson," at  Portland Playhouse where we've enjoyed several August Wilson plays.  Several ironies here.   One is that the Playhouse had requested playgoers not to park in the immediate neighborhood, residential  Albina, one of the city's few black communities-- now gentrifying.

Last year the group's tenure in an abandoned church there was seriously threatened. They had  to move out from the space they'd been using for three years ago, for their powerful version of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America."  (More on Kushner HERE.)

We did what we'd been asked. Stopped at a Farmers' Market along the way for some potatoes.  "Look," spouse warned, "Gigantic crack in the sidewalk... very dangerous. Watch out!"

Though I agreed, my right foot did not lift high enough (it's the one that has been tardy for a number of years) and I fell.  Hit my nose.  Bled generously.  

My retro spouse, thankfully, always carries a large handkerchief.  As I sat collecting the red stuff, he raced back to car.  There was not a soul around, and it was daytime.  It was an odd sensation sitting alone on the sidewalk.  Two ideas ran through my head: would  I stay alert till he returned and hoping I'd not have to talk to a stranger through my handkerchief, "Thanks, but don't need help." 

It was a short but dramatic interlude that has sent me to  physical therapy sessions for my walk style.  Final irony: days before my bloody event I'd attended a conference on "Healthy Aging" at the Portland Art Museum.  Studied a poster presentation about elderly and risks of falls, something that happens often among people living around me. 

Here's an overview of frequency and prevention from the Centers on Disease Control. Falls are a very important issue  if you're over 65.  The statistics go higher once, like me, you're over 75-- at which point fall-related fractures are twice as likely for women.   Lucky me, only a fractured nose and a big scrape on left arm!

Big thanks to Medicare (it's sign-up time) for my coverage! 

"It's the little things..."

When the that phrase runs through my head, the song from the musical, "Company" comes to mind. It is, however,  a less positive take on the words.  A youngish Elaine Stritch (in white hat) sings rehearsing for  the original 1970 cast recording...    

In my old lady life, the good small stuff is an email with picture plus short note from daughter about our 7 year old grandchild, "Zoe learns to tie her own shoelaces."  To avoid turning it into not-so-good stuff, I gave into iPhoto's refusual to rotate the image.

Or, the two women, encountered in recent months. Both resonated to the message of the 17% button, pleased to take and wear one. At left, a much decorated checker at a local Whole Foods store; right, a dedicated Planned Parenthood petitioner at Powell's Books.

                       

Happy find while searching for Stritch performances.  Isotop Films is raising money for "Elaine Stritch:  So Shoot Me," a  documentary of this funny, bawdy, show-biz survivor, now 87 years old.  Clip has song bits from her one-woman show, "At Liberty"  in 2002. Living in NYC then, saw her at youthful 77!  [Click on red letters for video] 

 

"I've got money, I've got fame...if I could drive, I'd really be a menace!"

"HE is John Gault!"

A Moment ago left a comment at "Ryan/Romney - The Upside Down Presidential Ticket," today's excellent post by Ronni Bennett at TGB.  Please note the order of names which reveals, if any had missed it, whom this election is truly about.

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

To make her point about the devious nature of Paul Ryan, she includes a clip from 10 years ago that appeared Sunday on Chris Hayes' UP! program on MSNBC.  

When we watched on Sunday, spouse and I were stunned.  Remarkable that we can still be amazed by these wretches.  But when I described Ronni's post to him, Ron shouted, "He is John Gault!  Only instead of going up the mountain into isolation, he ascends to the White House."  And changes America's democracy as we have known it.

Never having read Atlas Shrugged myself, thought I'd insert a link to the book here since Paul Ryan in one of his personality changes (see my comment at TGB) held up the book as the major influence on his politics.  Discovered there is a movie (!) I'd never heard of based on the book.  Comments there rather chilling in their celebration of narcissism.

Also available as iPad app "a timeless book for our times" plus results of an essay contest for high school seniors, college students as proclaimed by John Stossel, the conservative Fox commentator.

Are we ready?  An antidote to the above and this week's extreme anti-feminism by those men in black suits, an upbeat YouTube sent me yesterday by a young woman friend.  I know you support her hopefulness.   

"Why I Am a Feminist" Simone de Beauvoir, 1975

Noted last month at the end of the post, "Adrienne Rich Celebrated Here" was a notice that I'd been invited to participate in the above event. 

A fund-raiser for In Other Words, Portland's feminist community center, the film will be followed by a panel.  Judith Arcana, poet, literary biographer of Grace Paley, will moderate.  I look forward to meeting Judith, a "Jane," from Chicago's underground abortion counseling service (1968-1973).  

Like many in the pro-Choice movement, I've always been in awe of the courage of the Janes and wonder if we are headed back to those times.  Read more about Jane HERE, listen to a link  to a recent radio interview with Judith about it.

Alice King, board member of In Other Words (now famous for a quirky take on "Portlandia" ) is on the panel.  At their site is more detail about July 12 and how we will  reflect on feminism--1959, 1975, and today.   I believe there is one other woman on the panel--and moi, the outlier old lady feminist from the east coast.

Much territory to cover...I'm intrigued to discover how we do it!

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addendum:  Here's a link to a different interview with Simone de Beauvoir, also in 1975.  John Gerassi is the interviewer. 

 

WILD FLOUR Bread, a California happening

Remember the talk of "happenngs" back in the 1950s?  My own intro to the idea, (according to Wikipedia a concept "difficult to describe") was in the spring of my last semester in college, 1955.

My friend Sylvia Cary often had leading roles in Oberlin Drama Assocation presentations.  She'd challenge me to try out for one.  In our last semester, she reminded me again, told me something new had been selected by the less official, student-run group, Finney's Follies.*  None of us knew anything about the very old idea, commedia del arte,** which was being re-discovered around the country.  "Improvisation," I recal saying to her, "I can do that, have always been able to talk my way through stuff."  I'd also been sent to drama classes in New York when a pre-teen, co-produced our junior high graduation show in St. Louis.

So brilliant was I in try-outs (seriously) that I was asked to direct the production. Sylvia was one of the judges.  As a performer, I was assigned the stock role of the "worldly older sister."  Masterful type-casting but halfway into rehearsals I had to morph into ingenue when that student performer dropped out.  It was a challenge for all of us, and our trouple had a great time.  

I have memories of practicing how to stay on my feet when given a push by the old woman  character and struggling not to laugh when we did bits intended to provoke hilariity in the audience. The review in the student paper was mostly complimentary and a bit arch as written by a faculty member from the philosophy department. I had barely passed my sophomore year class with him.

Bread, what does this ramble have to do with the staff of life in California? The pictures on this page, mostly Ron's, were taken at Wild Flour Bread in Freestone, California.  Our friends Toni and Al who live partly in Portland and Santa Rosa, CA., were our generous hosts in the latter. They responded to my interest in discovering artisan bakers.  A bumpy ride took us near Sebastopol, sort of a 21st century style hippiedom (more affluence than the 20th) to Wild Flour.

Bakery as a happening.  From the hand-carved sign at the entrance to the limited hours and days open for business.  "We want to meet our customers," the message reads on their website.  Friday through Monday, 8:30 to 6 but you better get there before noon because there is a very, very long line coming out of that door and into their pretty garden.

Cannot find my notes to name the delicious loaf we took back to Santa Rosa from this hardworking brick oven that produces about 900 loaves each day. There was the biscotti like none I've ever had, two kinds--one with hazelnuts, six inches long, $2.50 each and worth every nickel.  Why do I remember something as inane as the price and forget to take a photo?  

Right behind the door was one long customer table.  People related and not sat there and attacked the pecan sticky rolls.  The next time.

The art on the walls enhanced the bakery's Happening feel.Their poster looked as if it had been adapted from a production of "Angels in America."  Alongside the bucolic paintings of cows and my personal  favorites: chickens.

A woman who worked here told me there is a plan in the works to open another in Portland.  Could it be...that would be wonderful.   

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*Irreverently named for second president of the college and the chapel named for him, Charles Finney (1792-1785), evangelist of the Second Great Awakening. 

**In searching Oberlin archives for the influence of commedia on other graduates I discoverd Elena Day,late 20th century graduate, who developed the college's "...first comedy improv group, was rebuked by the great Jacques Lecoq, and developed a real cute character for Cirque du Soleil."  Perhaps our paths will cross.

Seattle, bigger city in the Wild West

Readers of Hattie's Web will know that the traveling grandparents convened in that bigger place than Portland.  We learned of a certain self-consciousness here in Rose City about that home of Microsoft--faster cars, bigger museum, more famous sites (Bill Gates' home, Pike's Place).  Our former home in Baltimore was kind of that sort, second city to Washington, D.C. (until its murder rate soared).   

But now, Portland, Oregon, is firmly on the map of the cognescenti.  Began with anointment by the New York Times in very regular stories--food, music, sustainability awareness.  It seems to have reached its apotheosis with the new IFC series, "Portlandia." In the interest of "real reporting," that stuff political blogsites claim we'll get when print disappears, I was going to watch the entire first program.  Too elusive (had to sign in and thought I'd be tempted to leave a comment), so chose this one about a feminist bookstore.  Watching this scene sent me down memory lane to Baltimore in the 1970s.   John Waters, the filmmaker, gay man whose movies have put funky Baltimore on the map, plays a straight guy here.  Could have been the long-gone feminist bookstore, 31st Books in Balto.  For a moment in time, yours truly was the token straight woman on their board.  [Never, never agree to be "the one."]  And I'm embarrassed to confess, swept up in the fervor of those promising days, outfitted in my Indian blouse/jeans/cowboy boots,  I stood behind the counter and indicated to the man standing before me that he was someplace he was not welcome.  The fervor remains; the behavior is mellower.

But why?  Because 90 per cent of me no longer believes that I can be an agent of change in troubled, patriarchal American society.  On the drive to Seattle, we listened to a program on Canadian broadcast about competition among young girls, bullying,  and its effect on their grown-up lives.  If you have granddaughters, "It's a Teen World" could be startling--unless you know it already.  [I've only heard the first of the three so far.]

Seeing Marianna and Terry in suburban Seattle was delightful as always.  We treasure those few with whom we can have intense conversations about ideas.  And we laugh a lot thanks to Marianna.  This trip she walked us to closeby Ballard Locks.  Always entranced by both rolling and still waters, the views in the dying light were perfect.  And keeping up with Marianna's stride was a boost to the body's system--10,000 steps that day on my pedometer.

Yes, as M reported, we saw "True Grit" in a vintage movie house filled on a Saturday night.  Ron had been wanting to see it perhaps as a remembrance of all those many, many boyhood hours in a Brooklyn movie house known as "the Dump."  Among us, I was the one who unequivocally hated the whole thing:  violence through guns and fists and attitudes toward women.  Why wasn't the sheriff impressed with the 14 year old heroine's determination?  Why do I ask questions unrelated to screen fantasy?  Announced this was the final western I'd ever see! The only ones I can recall from the past-- unlike my spouse's rich repetoire--are odd ones from the 20th century, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "High Noon."  On "True Grit" Stuart Klawans nails it in The Nation:

"...the experience cancels itself even as you watch, given the indifferent curiosity with which Joel and Ethan Coen call up and then skim over the themes that have long haunted the western, as if they were mere outmoded superstitions to be ticked off a list. Finally the Coens have achieved the goal toward which their cinema has always tended: a perfect void."

Being resident now in the northwest, I'd like to shift away from my narrow view, much like that famous magazine cover,  "New Yorker's idea of the United States."  But it's hard, people, when Utah may have an official state gun by the time you read this.

"An Iliad," a rage-filled meditation for Veterans' Day

I could lie, you know, the way we've all learned how acceptable that is when talking about America and its wars.  Instead, here's the truth:  it was by chance that I'd bought tickets to see  "An Iliad" on Amistice Day.  Reading about it, my old childish self was distracted by memories of seventh grade Latin class.  Wars, men.

Something shifted. By Monday November 8, knew it was an experience I needed, would regret missing.   Only later realize  the day I'd chosen was November 11. Was it the anti-war revision of  "Hamlet in Love" seen last week in Silverton?

Maybe Sunday's presentation at the Holcaust Resource Center of the OJM (Oregon Jewish Musuem) by Miriam Kominkowska Greenstein, Holocaust survivor, about what led to her "coming out" to paint what she remembered, then recently write her book, In the Shadow of Death.  Ron and I wondered at our good fortune to have been born in the U.S.--if not for different family decisions we could have been young Jews in Poland like Miriam.

Rage...Was the first word from the Homeric storyteller's mouth as he staggered into our presence.  In his tattered, dirty clothes, Joseph Graves, the actor, became a mesmerizing presence who demanded our attention over one hour and 45 minutes--with no intermission.  By turns he delivered a drunk's litany--the endless names of Greek ships in Troy's harbor--why did my 1940s class avoid telling of the carnage?

Rage...Nine years the Trojan war lasted.  How contemporary for you and me.  Graves points to the ramparts of Troy where the beseiged citizens watched as if it were theatre.  Something like this happened in the hills around Washington, D.C. at the start of the Civil War.  He never let up-- wove into his telling names/places of world's conflicts, over the centuries.  Could I put pictures of cities to all of them?  Oh, those were the words of the muted graphics on the walls around us.  What happened to the picture book I had of beautiful  Sarajevo in the 1920s?

Who is this man before me:  he has stopped and looked me in the eye.  So close I want to ask him questions.  But he's gone as he races around the stage, throws benches, himself onto the ground.  He is not a young actor but has enormous strength and conviction.  The text of  "An Iliad" might be his but is not.  Another actor, Denis O'Hare, collaborated with Lisa Peterson, Resident Director of Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.  Their brilliant re-imagining weaves in the present to the war-marked history of centuries past.

Rage...Wandering industrial streets after meeting Miriam Greenstein at OJM, we found a door marked "Open."   Several male voices invited us in.   It was the studio of Ryan Birkland, former Marine turned art-maker.  Talking about how oblivious politicians seemed to the wars Iraq/Afghanistan,  we  discovered he too had met that other former Marine and artist, Ehren Tool, when his exhibition was in town.

Rage...People in England and Germany are in the streets as I write.  Am I living in Troy, waiting for...you.   Take four minutes to watch this YouTube video of Joseph Graves talking about the play plus a moment or two from  his performance.

Photo at top of post: the stage at the end.  Our storyteller has thrown the Eisenhower jacket to the floor covered by a pretty Oriental, somewhat worn, rug.  He has left us with an encyclopediac review of all the wars, begun for all the wrong reasons when reason might have taken another path--if the god of reason was not ruled by restless male warriors.