Judy – Page 122 – Dear Liza

Unexpected Warmth in Winter Greys

Dear Liza,

This is a re-post from last winter. I don’t feel up to writing this morning. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

Yep, it’s still winter here… dark, grey, and drippy. Last night we needed to get out of the house, but it was too nasty to walk very far. Our first choice, the Suzette Creperie, was closed, so we stopped by a tiny place we have walked past a thousand times, called Rendezvous Vous. Since it was early, we were the first customers in.

There was interesting lighting and an appealing informality about the place… tables of different heights and styles, a few velvet sofas and chairs. A tall bookcase made of old doors held books and games, Star Wars Monopoly among them.

We were waved at by Nour, who seemed to be running the place by herself. She got us water, and got us some wine. I had a Bordeaux and Grandpa Nelson got a Chilean Pinot Noir. Both were tasty… really different from each other, but tasty. The Bordeaux had the dark balance of most Bordeaux wines, and the Pinot was sharp, like cider.

We enjoyed the music… Frank Sinatra, Pink Martini, and cool jazzy covers of old rock and roll songs. After a while an older fellow came in and sat at the bar, reading his newspaper and chatting with Nour. We got the feeling he was a regular.

We ordered our dinner. Manti, something totally new for me, and tuna poke for Auntie Bridgett. Turns out, Manti is a dish of small beef dumplings in a garlicky, tomatoey, yogurt sauce, and absolutely delicious!

I ate and enjoyed the combination of wine, spice, music, and soft lighting, and being in a new place.

When we got home, I had to brush my teeth three times before I could get a kiss goodnight! The garlic sauce, tasty as it was, had real staying power. I will remember to tread more lightly next time (burp.)

Love,

Grandma Judy

Finding Common Ground(s)

Dear Liza,

It is still chilly here, but we haven’t had rain for a few days. On Tuesday, we took advantage for the dry spell to get out for a walk. Auntie Bridgett wanted to spend some time in a comfy coffee house, Grandpa Nelson wanted a tasty snack, and I just wanted to get out of the house.

Eastside walkway between Taylor and Salmon

We bundled up with scarves and gloves, because it was only about 46 degrees. We wandered through the neighborhood, seeing the winter trees and noticing all the small, promising signs of spring on the way.

We walked a mile to Common Grounds down on Hawthorne near 43rd Street and found just the comfy coffee house that Auntie Bridgett was looking for. It was busy but not loud, and had an interesting variety of tables, chairs and sofas. People sat alone, reading or working on laptop computers, or in pairs for quiet conversation. The electronic music was at background levels and very pleasant.

We enjoyed coffee, Fire Tea (a spicy turmeric and cayenne blend), and a delightfully chewy Squirrel Bar. Grandpa Nelson didn’t see what he wanted, so he went half a block down to Zach’s Shack for French fries, and came back and joined us for coffee when he was done.

It was nice, in the dark chill of winter, to be out among our fellow Portlanders. After a nice long visit, we walked home to make dinner.

Love,

Grandma Judy

More Print Celebration!

Dear Liza,

I was happy to see so many people visiting SideStreet Arts Gallery for the print celebration!

There were so many great print artists at SideStreet Arts, I didn’t to visit with them all. But I have taken some photos and done some research, and can tell you about them.

Jessica Hartman and her mixed media strappo prints

Jessica Hartman , who displayed these intriguing multi-layered prints, been an artist for many years. She did print making for years, then took a break, and found that when she returned to it her work was much different. This makes sense to me. Art comes from who you are at a given moment, and we change, minute to minute. So of course your work would change.

Kristen Etmond is a print artist from Olympia, Washington, whose delicate, colorful work is just as sweet as she is. I got to visit with her, and her soft spoken ways are perfectly reflected in her work. Mostly borrowed from nature, her images whisper rather than holler.

Kristy Lombard is a ceramicist who is also a print artist. She creates the textures on her “wall pillows” by pressing slabs of clay into linoleum sheets she has carved with intricate patterns. Then she adds the delightful details, like ship’s portholes, and shapes the clay into “pillows”. I love the practicality of a three dimensional artwork you can hang on the wall!

While I was walking around the gallery, I got to see this fellow buy the last of Elizabeth Wocasek‘s standing crows. He said he even had a place picked out for it, beside his fireplace. I am sure they will be very happy together.

Such a wonderful, exhausting, artful day!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Celebrating Print Month with Poppy Dully

Dear Liza,

Saturday was drizzly and cold but there was lots of warmth in the SideStreet Arts gallery…folks chatting and smiling, having delicious snacks and drinks, and looking at the wonderful art.

This weekend the gallery celebrated January as Print Month, with a show featuring work from fifteen different artists. This is the gallery where Auntie Bridgett shows her work, and I love visiting it. I got to talk with some of the artists!

Poppy Dully creates her prints on actual old books. She noticed me walking around her display and we had a nice chat. I asked her about her work. She said she has made forty of these wonderful pieces in ten years, and her process for each is the same:

She starts with a book that interests her, sometimes recommended by a friend and sometimes the book just leaps out from the shelf. She looks for good vintage books and checks to see if there has been a film adaptation. She reads the book and researches the film. She watches the film to find the images she wants to illustrate each turning point of the story, photographing and sketching as she goes.

She then takes the book apart, applies her oil based monotype prints to the pages, and puts the books back together in an accordion fashion, using the original book cover. These can be displayed open on a bookcase, or read by flipping the pages.

Loving old books, movies, and prints as much as I do, I was fascinated. I kept walking around the display, reading Beauty and the Beast and Beckett and loving what she did with them.

Besides art, we talked about being women of a certain age, of needing to reinvent yourself after retirement, and of finding new wrinkles in literature. It was a great conversation and I feel like I have made a new friend.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Diversions

Dear Liza,

it is still rainy here in Portland. If it isn’t raining at any given minute, it has just stopped or will soon start. Such is winter here.

The neighborhood is full of things to see…like this tiny frozen pond up on Ankeny.

Fishing frog and his frozen plastic friends

We get out every day for a walk. But these aren’t the five mile leisurely strolls of summer. Yesterday I put on four layers plus a coat, gloves and fuzzy hat to walk to the market. Grandpa Nelson bundled up to get a haircut. Auntie Bridgett shivered to and from the gallery.

But I keep busy. I am falling back in love with my story. I am making Gingernuts from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible for a brunch at the SideStreet Arts Gallery.

And yesterday I played a Scrabble game all by myself. Not a regular game, but one where I set out to make a pattern on the board. It was inspired by our accidental, real-game situation where we used only HALF the board. “What other patterns could I make?” I asked.

Each turn is a legal turn and the words are all real words. I had to shift a few letters, but otherwise played by the rules. And I got this .

Like I said, the fun never stops.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Progress is still Progressing

Dear Liza,

Now that you are almost seven, you can read real words all by yourself. Yesterday I wrote you some stories that are based on our time together…. cooking, building a playhouse, and going on an adventure with the stone Panther at Hartnell College. I hope you like them.

In my bigger story, the story I have been working on for more than two years now, I have been frustrated. I was having doubts. It felt like it had gotten too big, too complicated, that I had tried to show too much about Portland in 1903.

I set it aside and started a lighter version, one that leaves out the broader context of the city, its history, and its people. It was just about a little girl. But I don’t like it. So I am walking it back.

Do all writers go through this? Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed, but never done anything with, because when I get to this point, I give up and put the story in a box. It’s too hard. It feels pointless. I should do something else with my time. The self-doubt and backtracking are exhausting.

For support, I went back and read Anne Lamott’s essays on the difficulty of writing, of pulling her novel apart and laying it on the floor, bit by bit, and re-organizing it to make it better. Yes, this is something writers DO. Maybe this is what writing IS, after all.

I’ll keep you posted.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Snow! Well, Sort of…

Dear Liza,
Yesterday afternoon, after many false predictions, it snowed!!

Well, it was precipitation and it wasn’t rain, so we will call it snow. It bounced when it hit, making steep pitched roofs and driveways look like Pachinko games. And of course, Grandpa Nelson and I walked out in it! (He said we were really going down to Zach’s Shack for lunch, but I know better).

Before we got to Zach’s, there was quite a crunchy layer of little ice balls (okay, it was hail) on the sidewalk and covering roofs. It lay on hoods and hatchbacks and surrounded fearless daffodils.

It was cold and lovely, like all winter beauty is when you have a warm, dry place waiting for you. Which we did. At Zach’s we ate some fries and watched the weather change, from heavy hail to damp grey skies to blinding sunshine. Then it was time to head home!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Winter Fibonacci

Dear Liza,

Snow has been predicted a few times this month, and we always end up with rain instead. Don’t get me wrong, I like our rain. After years in Salinas with just barely enough, our raging downpours make me very happy.

But snow would be special. This morning we saw a few flakes, and I bundled up to go out….by the time I had my pants on, it was over. Sigh.

Still, I am still having fun with Fibonacci syllables. Here’s the latest:

Cold

Wet

Outside

Not for me

I can hibernate

Discover my inner grizzley

Nap with the cat, eat bread with jam

Until spring makes good

Her promise

Of sun,

Warmth,

Light

Love,

Grandma Judy

Grey Skies

Dear Liza,

January is always a hard month here in Portland. The bright, food-and family filled holidays are past, but spring is months away, and it can feel like a very long road.

We had a thumping rain storm the other night. It actually woke me up! But come morning the rain had stopped. Since I am mostly over my cold, I got bundled up and went to the park.

I wasn’t alone! There were dozens of folks walking around….some with their big fluffy dogs, some with kids on tiny bikes or babies in strollers, some tossing handfuls of frozen peas to the ducks. Everyone was chatty and seemed to be celebrating being OUT among their fellow humans. January can feel a bit like a jail sentence to be waited out.

The fellows who seemed to be enjoying the day most were these two, working on their j’ai alai moves. The older fellow stood pretty still, flinging the ball in all directions, while the younger played the part of a Labrador retriever, dashing and catching. It seemed the perfect cure for the January blues.

I spent an hour at the park, looking for bits of color. I found a few of these signs of the coming spring, but I am not fooled. It will be a long, wet, chilly haul. We will have to make our own sunshine.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Political Poetry

Dear Liza,

This post has some poetry in it, but also some comments about our President and (therefore) some bad words.

Thinking about the Fibonacci Poetry sequence I learned the other day, I started writing about world events that are on my mind. I like the way the syllables in the lines can get longer and longer, then shorter and shorter, making a sort of thunderstorm of words, starting slow, building to a crescendo, then tapering off.

I like how the number of syllables make me concentrate on finding exactly the right word for the space.

Auntie Bridgett’s cartoon from Election Day 2016

Here is my new poem:

Fat

Trump’s

Shitstorm

Continues

Bringing us closer

To a future we saw coming

When he bluffed his way to power

How can he be stopped?

We must vote

Him out

Vote
Him

Out

Sending you hope for a better, fairer world for when you grow up.

Love,

Grandma Judy