Author: Judy

Dear Liza,

The other day I got to go make cookies with Cousins Jasper and Kestrel. I took some sugar cookie dough and some frosting, and even a few piping bags.

Auntie Katie has about a hundred cookie cutters, some of which I used when I was a little girl, because they belonged to my Momma. Auntie Katie loves using them, she says, because she gets to think about Great Grandma Billie every single day.

Kestrel chose four cutters (Jasper said he wasn’t particular) and we rolled the dough out on a split plastic bag to protect the table. We couldn’t find the rolling pin, so an empty wine bottle worked just fine.

As Momma always said, “It will all work out. Maybe not the way you thought it would, but that’s okay.”

It was wonderful seeing the cousins get so good at piping frosting! It can be frustrating but they did a fine job.

As we rolled and cut Kestrel started naming the cookies, and when they cooled enough to frost, she began creating their story.

“This is Sally and Sam Squirrel, and they are getting married. Susan is officiating at the wedding, and Fred and George reindeer are the witnesses. The wedding is in a forest because they love the forest.” I love that she figured out that she needed to turn one of the cookies over to allow Sam and Sally to face each other!

We needed to scoot off to an event at the Hosford-Abernethy School before we were completely finished, but before the cousins went to bed, Kestrel assembled everyone for a wedding portrait. Isn’t it wonderful?

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

Grandpa needed some medical tests done the other day, which of course meant it was time for another adventure.

The lower part of OHSU (Oregon Health and Science University) is in an area of town called the South Waterfront. In the early 1900s, this area was lumber mills and other industry. Then, for years, it was an abandoned, polluted chunk of riverbank. Now, it was been re-built as an ultra-modern ‘village’ of glass tower medical offices and condominiums.

We took the Magic number 15 downtown, then transferred to the streetcar. There is a lot of very noisy construction downtown, and we watched as a tall crane swayed ominously in the wind.

After Grandpa Nelson’s five minute appointment, we started our walk back. The Tilikum Crossing and Willamette were beautiful in the bright fall sunshine, with some brave folks boating on this chilly day.

We walked to find lunch at Ladd’s Taproom, but it was closed. Heavy sigh of hunger and disappointment.

Walking up the hill on Hawthorne we found Burgerville, which was a less than stellar experience but kept us fed. As we continued, we found some retro decor in the outside of Lounge Lizard, these stylized lava lamps.

Then we stopped at Farina, a pricy pastry shop that mostly smells $2.50 macarons. I knew Auntie Bridgett had been wanting to sample them, so we bought three to take home. They were delicious. I don’t know if they were $2.50 delicious, however.

After a rest, Auntie Bridgett and I walked down to The Nerd Out where the owner, our friend Mitch Gillan, wanted to buy some of Auntie Bridgett’s Squirrel buttons.

While we were out, we had a walk around the neighborhood and then a before-dinner drink back at The Nerd Out. Moose Drool Ale for me, absinthe for Auntie Bridgett.

Feeling very indulged, we went home for dinner and ended the evening by watching The House if Wax, a silly old Vincent Price movie.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

At our house, we start getting ready for Halloween as soon as we turn the calendar page over from September.

Auntie Bridgett brings down the decorations from storage, and we get to say hello to old friends we have collected over the years.

There is The Assistant, who hangs on our balcony and turns in the wind. We got him about ten years ago. He has graced parties and yards and always gives me a start.

But some of our spooky goodies are much older. This wonderful light-up witch was painted by Auntie Bridgett’s Mom Donna about forty-three years ago.

Our taste in Halloween decorations is not gory. We don’t go in for blood or guts. We like ghosts that are cheerful or at most pensive, not tormented. We like the notion that spirits hang around at this time of year, but not that they have evil intentions.

I guess if I thought ghosts could be evil, I wouldn’t love visiting cemeteries as much as I do. Lone Fir never feels sad to me, although there have been many sad funerals there, I am sure.

But the dead are past all that. If they do watch us, it must be from a philosophical position of “well, that’s interesting,” or “those poor people, they just can’t understand.”

Maybe that’s why I love Halloween. Besides the pretty colors and cooler temperatures, costumes and candy, it lets me play with the ideas of living and dead, here and gone, timely life and the timeless beyond. It thins the veil, as they say, between worlds.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

When we visited London years ago, Grandpa Nelson and I saw lots of streets torn up, and the dirt that was being dug smelled bad. Stinky bad. Poop bad.

It turns out that in 2004, London was just pulling out the last of its 1906 WOODEN sewer pipes. “Things in Europe are old-fashioned.” I noted.

Last month on the Seattle Underground tour, we saw an example of one of these wooden pipes that had been used in Seattle for many years. Since sewers and water systems were invented before steel or plastic, pipes to carry water IN and poop OUT were made by drilling two inch holes in logs and joining the logs together with wooden pegs.

Yes, they leaked. Yes, they rotted. But that was the best folks had, and compared to no pipes at all, they were a modern revolution.

This week, our neighborhood in Portland is getting dug up for new drains and sewers, as well as new bioswales. Bioswales are the little street side gardens you saw here, that help clean the street water before it flows into the river.

As our population has grown, we need bigger sewer pipes. As our respect for the Willamette River has grown, we are diverting more street run-off to bioswales. I am happy to put up with some noise and street closures to keep our water system up-to-date.

And I am very glad that I haven’t seen a single wooden pipe come out of the ground here!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

A big part of our Halloween celebration is watching movies about spooky things. Like our choice in decorations, our tastes in “horror” movies is very tame. No guts or blood ( or at least, not much).

A few years ago we bought a boxed set of Classic Universal “monster movies”, most directed by Carl Laemmle or James Whale. Dracula, Frankenstein (and the Bride of...) The Wolf Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, Phantom of the Opera and The Mummy, are featured with short documentaries about the directors, actors, and other background details.

The first ghost movie I ever saw was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I probably watched it because the leads, Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, were two of my mother’s favorite actors. The story of a widow being befriended by a ghost (who helped her write a novel!) let me wonder if spirits hang around, and why, and what if we could talk with them?

Last night we watched a more recent movie that plays with this idea of talking to ghosts, 1999s The Sixth Sense. It is scarier than our usual fare, and has some grab-the-person-next-to-you frights.

But it asks the same questions about spirits. What happens when we die? What would keep a person from “moving on” into a peaceful afterlife? Can the living help the dead? Can the dead help the living? I like it for its hopeful answers to these questions.

To get back to our collection of Classic Monster movies, my favorite is The Mummy. Why? Well, it feels mysterious rather than scary, and the Egyptian sets and costumes are pretty to look at, even if not accurate.

But mostly, I like it because the Mummy came back to life, and did all he did, for love. Misguided, a bit over-reaching, but love, anyway.

And love is all you need.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

We got back from really wet, cold Vancouver and Seattle to slightly drier but cooler Portland. We have had rain, thunder showers, and that wonderful dry, clear cold that people call “crisp”, I guess because breathing it is like biting into an apple.

The leaves are changing, too. The colors that have always meant “School’s Starting!” now mean “Time to get to the pumpkin patch!” and “What should I be for Halloween?”

It is also mushroom season. The owners of SideStreetArts building, Michael Pratt and his wife Rita Larsen brought the artists a whole bunch of Chanterelles that they hunted in the forest. I don’t hunt mushrooms because I haven’t been trained and might accidentally get a poison one. But Michael and Rita KNOW, and we enjoyed the bounty. Delicious roasted with veggies.

Of course, the prettiest part of Fall is the leaves changing colors. This year, I have my own private show! The Hundred Acre Wood, the trees I am growing as a bonsai forest, is changing like all the other trees.

The seeds I grew them from came from a tree only a few blocks away, so they feel like they are home.

I look forward to seeing the whole cycle play out on my balcony. Life is sweet.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

Tonight is First Friday at Auntie Bridgett’s Gallery, SideStreetArts. Since there are lots of flowers and dots in the paintings by Gary Hirsch and the ceramics by Scot Cameron-Bell, I wanted to make cookies of dots and flowers.

But frosting makes cookies too messy to be around art…

So I tried a different way.

Instead of frosting the cookies, I made the cookies into the shapes. I used a new recipe with cornstarch, so the cookies keep their shape better and don’t turn into ‘globs’. This was important for the “shape inside a shape” cookie I had in mind.

I mixed the dough, divided it, and colored each part. I wrapped and chilled the parts, then started rolling out and cutting.

The first batch was rolled too thin, looked like weird fried eggs, and took way too long.

The second batch, using more specific directions and learning from experience, was better. They are toothy, lemon-y and pretty. I like the marbled look better than flat color!

The cookies are just a tad too thick.

Now I just need to have another chance to make them, and they will be perfect!

Maybe we could make some when I see you later this month!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

Of course we had to see the Seattle Art Museum! It had our attention as soon as we got into town, but we only had two non-rainy days to do “outside” stuff, so we put it off. It was worth the wait.

Inside we found innovative, thought-provoking art. “Middle Fork”, a sculpture by John Grade that hovers over the main lobby, is actually a re-creation of a 140 year old hemlock tree that is still standing in a forest east of Seattle. Mr. Grade and hundreds of volunteers built a frame and made a plaster cast of the standing tree, then shaped thousands of bits of re-purposed cedar to echo the interior and exterior contours.

I was fascinated by both the work itself and the process. Once again, my father’s reverence for forests tickled in the back of my brain.

On the four floors of the museum was a lot of what I think of as “regular” art. Bronze statues, oil paintings of women and children, religious icons, these are traditional subjects treated in traditional ways. They are lovely and show great skill.

The art that captured my brain and sent me spinning down rabbit holes, however, was unlike anything I had seen before.

First there was a gallery devoted to Dorothy Napangardi, an Australian Aborigine. She was born the same year as I was and died six years ago, after creating dozens of large abstract works in the style of her people.

To me, they felt like aerial views of imaginary cities, or a bustling hive of thoughts jostling in someone’s mind. I stared and stared, until a distractingly loud group of students arrived.

Further along was an exhibition of the photography of Zanele Muholi, who lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Muholi goes by the pronouns “they/ their”, neither male nor female. Their pictures, all self-portraits, are meant to make us see trans people and our own concepts of beauty differently.

The works, all done in black and white and in very large format, pulled me in as I examined the lines where black met white and the traditional met extraordinary.

The last gallery of out-of-this-world art was “Lessons from the Institute of Empathy”. This was a multi-media presentation, including video, fabric sculptures, costumes, and written work.

The statement on the wall says “Three Empathics have moved into the Seattle Art Museum and established a virtual space where you can step outside your normal, routine self and improve your ability to understand others.”

It goes onto explain that these works are here to help you feel what others feel, to increase your empathy. There were some silly bits about ingesting minerals and fungi in order to re-mix a person’s personality traits, but I appreciated to idea that these costumes and masks might get a person out of their rut about what is “us” or “them”.

Since art is meant to allow you to see things differently, this was a successful exhibit.

Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I had all been wandering the museum on our own, but we got together for lunch downstairs. Our feet were sore but we weren’t ready to quit for the day just yet. We returned to the Library and found comfy seats to read, learn something new, and just enjoy the space.

I didn’t know that!

I will tell you about out evening’s adventure tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

When we were finally able to pull ourselves away from the Seattle Library, we walked along Fifth Street until we found the Monorail station on the 4th floor of the Nordstrom department store.

The Monorail, as the name implies, is a train with only one rail. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair to carry visitors from downtown to the Fairgrounds, and still runs today.

The centerpiece of the World’s Fair was the 600 feet tall Space Needle which represented America’s fascination with space travel. It is sleek and beautiful, with elevators that whisked us to the top in about 10 seconds. Our heads were spinning!

At the very top is an observation deck that goes all the way around, so you can see everything in the city. The thick glass walls lean out just a tiny bit, so your selfies get a view of the city below. It was dizzying.

On the lower level was a restaurant surrounded by a glass floor that rotates. The rotation is slow, just one time around every hour, but the glass floor was hard to get used to… it was so far down!

When we had our feet on the ground agin, we headed across the Seattle Center to the Chihuly Glass Museum. 78 year old Dale Chihuly has been a glass blower for many years, but he works differently than most glass artists.

He lost his left eye to a car crash when he was only 35 and has no depth perception, so he had to develop a team to work with him. He designs the works and teaches his team, then coaches them as they blow the glass and assemble the pieces.

For a while I didn’t like this method, thinking it was a “Here, go make this” sort of operation, but Mr. Chihuly leads every part of the process…he just can’t do it himself.

By the time we had seen his museum, I admired him very much, as well as enjoying the play of light, space, plants, and even the Space Needle.

Love,

Grandma Judy