a little red hen

Hey, Powell's Books, the woman just received a MacArthur...a little respect, please!

It has been a very long, very wonderful day in the City of Roses.  So fine that I regret to say:  PDX showed its provincialism.  

Behind on my New York Times reading earlier in day (one day late) I was carefully perusing the article about the 23 new MacArthur Fellows, known as the "genius grants," in Tuesday's paper.  Already had noted, buried on page 2, of yesterday's second section of the Oregonian, that two local women scientists had won awards.  (This Portland paper reserves its enthusiasms for a new beer, oddly named music group, or latest police shooting.)

In the Times, I saw that Yiyun Li, the writer we were about to hear tonight at Powell's, had just won a MacArthur.  Gold Boy, Emerald Girl (NPR review with writing excerpt) is her third book, a collection of stories. Her debut novel, The Vagrants, called "grieving and unremitting" by Pico Iyer when it appeared last year, was much praised.

We'd thought there would be a big crowd now that Li's award had been announced.  There was not--only 30 people in this very writer-focused town.  I have never heard an introduction of such smallness as the one delivered preceding Yiyun Li's presentation.  Who was this desultory woman?  She hurried through her few sentences with an odd disinterest and did not mention Li's having received a $500,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation only the day before.

Yiyun Li seemed not to notice, greeted us sweetly and read from  "Kindness,"  one of the stories in her new book.  It is an elegaic tale of a solitary woman in today's China--a novella.  I could see the spare room of the woman's childhood home, her unhappy mother's pile of Chinese novels. I was reminded of women, friends from the past who never could move beyond their anger with family and the limits their origins seemed to prescribe.

Where did she get her ideas?  "I love to eavesdrop!"  Her notion of listening in was different from what I'd expected:  she reads Chinese newspapers on line. The stories she finds pique her imagination as she writes their endings and beginnings because "I want to know more about them." 

She told us about herself, a girl growing up in Beijing, daughter of two scientists.  "I was a math prodigy.  My life was chosen for me at eight or nine."  She came to the U.S. to college at the University of Iowa to study immunology but learned that "everyone else in Iowa City was writing a novel."  About to receive her PhD, Yiyun "panicked and instead became a writer," became a student at the Iowa Writers Workshop with all those other novel writers.

Her own story is a wonderful one too, happier than those she writes but wistful too.  Her responses to questions were straightforward and thoughtful about the personal price the Chinese people experience from the many changes over the last fifty years.  She spoke of her two young boys, eight and nine as "free range chickens," neither Chinese nor American, who will have to sort it all out for themselves in the years ahead.

When we spoke with her at the end, as she signed our Gold Boy, Emerald Girl (which means the "perfect couple"), I was surprised to hear that she had served in the Chinese Army as a young woman.  Ron congratulated her on the MacArthur recognition and she acknowledged how amazed she was to receive it. 

I'm sending a link to this email to Powell's:  every writer deserves respect--with or without a MacArthur grant.  If there's no one on staff, this old lady or one of my friends knows how to do it with enthusiasm.  Call me.

Missing Rhubarb

"Grandma, what are these?" she asked.

It's always good to be reminded how much of a repository we old people are.  I find this especially useful on a day when it seems the technology is so far ahead and I am so behind, that maybe it's just as well to lie down so it can wash over and beyond me.

Not being tidy has its rewards.  My granddaughter Zoe, newly five, came upon the vintage white gloves with the tiny white buttons that lay on top of a group of things I'd left out for reasons unremembered.  Are these ones that I'd truly owned or bought in a vintage store?  There was a need for a pair in my 1995 performance, "Moonsnail Saves Planet," evocative of the 1950s.  I recall searching around music stores for tapes of doo-wop performers to play in the background.

"Zoe," I expl  ained, "ladies used to wear these.  I wore them to work."  Not entirely  accurate but it would have made it too complicated that white gloves were only summer wear.

"And they would wear hats and go to lunch in restaurants."  She liked the idea and we worked at putting the gloves on her small fingers.  She kept them on for a visit to the laundry room.  Next, I found a  funky velvet hat purchased at Portland's Saturday Market a few years back.

About to eat lunch, we became lunching-ladies in a department store.  We inquired of the chef, her  grandfather, about when our sandwiches would be ready.  She took off her gloves. We sat down and encouraged the chef to join us.

Afterwards, Zoe noticed a pair of my sandals, put her feet into them.  "You're Zoe and I'm Grandma."   After lunch she wanted to put the gloves back on and go with me to a meeting  I had elsewhere in our retirement community.   Though she agreed to stay in the apartment, Ron reported how she stayed "in character" as me on the car ride back to her home.

He was surprised by her ability to imitate my voice inflections, "Now, Ron, we have to go to the store."

Harvest Moon & Venus Briefly

    

Corvallis Peace Vigil reminds us...

That would be Ron and me.  Driving to Philomath, Oregon for dinner on a farm, with extra time before our 7 p.m. reservation, we made a slight detour  to visit Corvallis, home of OSU (Oregon State University).  Another new Oregon city for us; we noticed a large bookstore still open after five.

Parked the car  in front of  a beautiful courthouse** and immediately saw a station wagon filled with NO WAR signs.   We had chosen the right time--five to six every evening  different community members stand tall for a peace vigil. 

 Every day for the past nine years. 

People in cars waved, honked in a friendly way.  Were the students at OSU active in anti-war efforts?  No, we were told they are a conservative group.

As usual, we fit in age-wise: most of  us gray hairs.  Except this young engineering grad student from Saudi Arabia.  He brought a sign made for the vigilers to show support in another language.  Often they are joined by the local Veterans for Peace chapter.

One of the women had moved to Corvallis from Queens, New York, a few years ago.  She agreed that nothing like this could take place back east, especially in front of a government building like the Benton County Courthouse.  Unlike the Corvallis group who do not have to get police permission for their vigils, in NYC the smallest street gathering with a sign (not to include any holder more rigid than a cardboard tube)  requires a permit.

We talked about Grandmothers Against the War HERE and HERE with whom I had vigiled at Rockefeller Center.  Recalled with the former-Queens grandmother how each of us had stood on the steps of the 42nd Street Library with Women in Black some time in the 1990s.  I told her that their behavior code was too militant for me.  Called me out for speaking to my neighbor.  Violated their rules:  wear black, do not talk. Wearing all black was a stretch for me, not talking even more so.  As in the familiar, often misquoted (see link)  Emma Goldman sentiment, If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

  I hung out with the women, a couple of them knitters who were surprised to learn about the prevalence of HIV in women over 50 and my other blog about the   Condom Amulets project.    Later I realized that they would have appreciated that there was an OSU amulet in the school's colors that proved too political (?) for a Portland yarn shop.

Ron stayed with the men  near the station wagon.  He learned about their rocky times as former professors at OSU.  We both did sign-hoisting and were grateful to the group for the opportunity to relieve a bit of our current-events-in-America angst on September 10. 

** Calvin Beale Senior demographer at USDA photo, one of a series of courthouses around the U.S.  

Walker in a City Crazed for Two-Wheel Transport: One

Favorite mode of transportation: Walking and public transit. “I don’t think it’s mandatory to ride a bike. In fact, what I am is very pro-pedestrian. I don’t think pedestrians get enough attention.” -Amanda Fritz, City Council, Portland, Oregon,  Willamette Week

I was pleased to read Amanda Fritz' comment the other week.  The relentlessly youthful vibe of Portland, celebrates all sorts of bike events--naked and clothed.  All the members of our PDX family have one of these--even the two year old.  What are old people to do?  We've seen some over-fifty riders--quite impressive.  We, however, are foot bound when not in a car or on public transit.  Ron was once a big-time cyclist, not I. 

At 14 I asked my father for a sewing machine.  He bought me a bike.  When I went to college, the one where everyone was always cycling, I can only recall the one I had  freshman year at  Oberlin (North Professor Street, 1950s).* The next three years, I walked.   Yet here I am in Portland, Oregon, a city brimming with bikes.  What to do?

A reasonable question might be, and some have asked, why did I sign up for the course,"Sociology of the Bicycle"?  Its seductive notice on a flyer-filled wall at Portland State was irresistible: I am a sucker for late 19th century imagery of newly-empowered women.  My email to Alon Raab, the professor, received a fulsome reply--and a huge bibliography for a two-week summer course.

A favorite of mine was on the list,  Frances E. Willard's "A  Wheel within a Wheel:  How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle."  In a short treatise, Willard, famous temperance leader,  hoped to encourage women to regard the bike as a metaphor for their lives and discover how engaging with the new invention would lead to empowerment.   Radical notion for 1895.

Wasn't it time for me to go beyond a certain fear of bikes which seemed my nemesis as a walker--along with the auto...to find out more about bike culture in my adopted city?  Well, yes, though I told Alon that his scheduled bike rides would not be an option.  How about if he loaned me a bike?  I demurred and admired his spirit.  Imagine,  he believed that all this 77 year old woman needed was a loaned vehicle to engage in her own 21st century, latelife metaphor.

  The small class met for four days for two weeks.  Alon was surprised, along with me, that there were no other women.  Curious since there are so many of them speeding along the avenues. Two men came in to show "Veer," a film they have produced about PDX bike culture.  One highlight was the Sprockettes, a wild and crazy local group of women who are daredevils on bikes.

 Our days were packed with spirited presenters.  John Benenate, who began B.I.K.E. (Bicycles & Ideas for Kids' Empowerment) 18 years ago, arrived with a three of the program's members, very self-possessed young men.  There are also women in the group. All of them could be described as "at risk" and most are transformed by John's program as he works from a whole-child perspective.  Bicycle racing and discipline make a difference in their lives.

Engaging and direct, John was a competitive cycler before an accident left him parapelgic.  The Portland Tribune's August story, "Ride of His Life," reflects his energy and enthusiasm for his work.  For a moment I saw a good video on his site of John coaching but it disappeared.  Maybe I can reconnect with it later.

Ted Buehler was another visitor, also intensely bike-centered.   (Ted on right talks with another student, Eric France, an MD, MPH, from Boulder, Colorado, on sabbatical to study the wonders of the local bike culture to take back to his work with Kaiser Permanente).  First Ted showed a film about fifty years of bicycling in Davis, California.  Davis was THE center of two-wheel transport beginning in the sixties.  But Portland has edged Davis into second place now.  Ted is a bicycle planner who came to Portland two years ago.  As he saw traffic and incompatibility with cars increase, Ted pulled together an advocacy group--the Bike Temple.

I wish my writing could do his presentation justice.  He was charismatic, a "true believer," a younger version of Alon Raab.   To get more people using bikes, Ted declared, an evangelical approach was needed.  A former Mormon, he led the class to identify the characteristics of a religion-- community/instruction/rituals and pot lucks.  As he explained, both the environmental movement and religion are trying to get us to heaven: either everybody gets there or nobody.  He gave each of a copy of his zine.  Powerful stuff; felt I'd been to church.

More on "The Sociology of the Bicycle" in subsequent posts...

*Seventeen years later, 1968, I returned to North Professor Street as a faculty wife and pregnant.  Ron decided I should have a bike since I was not driving.  Wheeled vehicles of all sorts are not my preferred mode.  Pretty green Raleigh, 3-speed.  Hardly used, it was still in excellent shape when I gave it to friend as we left Baltimore in 1995.