Category: Uncategorized

Going to See the Hops!

Dear Liza,

Did you know that the Portland area has a professional baseball team? Well, it does!

And last week we drove west about 11 miles to Ron Tonkin Field in Hillsboro to see our Hops play the Vancouver Canadians. It was a lively night out.

The Hops are the High A level farm team for the Arizona Diamondbacks, an official professional team, and it shows. The playing was great, and so were the amenities… Scoreboards, food, drinks, restrooms, all very up-town.

Grandpa Nelson had gotten us tickets along the first base line so we would be in the shade for the evening game. Our weather has been in the high nineties and he didn’t want us to get roasted! We were warm, but not uncomfortable.

As the game got started, we saw that the Hops players had chosen their own ‘walk up’ music (that plays as that player comes up to bat), but the visiting Canadians walked up to music chosen as a play on their name. A Canadian player named Spain walked up to Robert Goulet’s “Red Ships of Spain”, and Cade Doughty walked up to Julie Andrews’ “Do Re Mi” from “The Sound of Music”.

It was delightful, these odd snippets of music coming around with the batting order. During the evening we also heard bits of “Uptown Funk”, “Zorba the Greek”, “Sugar Sugar” and “I Love Rock and Roll”.

Besides following the game, there were other diversions, like a bus tire rolling race, karaoke sing-along, and air guitar contests. These were video-broadcast to the big screen so everyone could enjoy the fun, even if it was happening across the stadium.

The sun went down, and the Canadians’ Cade Doughty made their only run in the 9th inning. By then, the Hops had scored 11. It’s always fun when ‘our’ team wins, even if we just met.

We gathered our things and joined the flow of folks out into the parking lot and Auntie Bridgett drove us home through an orange sunset.

Summer in Portland is amazing, active, and wonderful…. If you have the stamina!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Tempest in the Park

Dear Liza,

Summer is Shakespeare season here in Portland, and last week Laurelhurst Park got a few. First, Original Practice Shakespeare performed The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play. Grandpa Nelson and I headed over.

In this production, Mikki Lipsey played Prospero the Wizard. Prospero has been stranded on a desert island for twelve years with her daughter Miranda. She has enslaved two magical creatures, the lovely Ariel and the monstrous Caliban, to do her bidding.

Prospero conjures up a tempest which causes a ship carrying her old rivals from Milan, including the Duke’s son, young Ferdinand, to crash on the reef. Of course, Ferdinand falls in love with Miranda !

As the play goes on, two different sets of underlings decide to kill their masters and take over, but drunkenness and foolishness get in the way. By the end of the play all is well, and Prospero casts aside her staff and her magic books. This was Shakespeare’s way of saying farewell to his own magic of playwriting and retiring to Stratford.

Watching plays in the park is always interesting. Since the actors are dealing with airplane noise, dogs and other distractions, the audience has to work harder to suspend our disbelief and get into the story.

But we also enjoy the parade of happy humanity as it passes through the park. Cyclists, dog walkers, families and skateboarders keep things lively!

And as the sun went down and the play came to a close, we packed up our chairs and popcorn and head home. Another summer evening well spent!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Tiny Cookies and Fairy Folk

Dear Liza,

Your cousin Kestrel had her 12th birthday party the other day, and it was delightful. She invited friends to a Fairy Tea Party at Laurelhurst Park, just a few blocks from our house.

I made tiny fairy cookies to help celebrate. Sugar cookies were cut in hearts about an inch long and made into sandwiches.

Chocolate chip cookies made with 13 grams of dough were sufficiently delicate, and pink pinwheels felt like they fit right in with the elves, fauns, and other fairy folk.

Auntie Katie and Kestrel made the foresty cake and even some cucumber sandwiches, as well as tea…. It was a tea party, after all.

It felt sort of like glamping in Rivendell.

Kids and Moms all worked together to set up, serve, celebrate, and finally break camp.

It is always interesting to see Kes’s circle of friends as they grow and change. They are all becoming such caring, gentle, interesting people. Happy birthday, Kestrel!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Making Botjoys with Gary Hirsch

Dear Liza,

You have seen these delightful murals when you visited Portland….you even had your picture taken with one, years ago when you were a tiny Liza.

Well, last Saturday, Auntie Bridgett and I got to make some tiny bots with the fellow who started it all, Gary Hirsch. Gary was running a bot-making workshop at the SideStreet Art Gallery and we were offered two spare spaces. Yes, please! SideStreet Arts is the only gallery that offers his bots and other artwork for sale.

Gary started the session off with some fun improvisation games, to get us thinking together and “outside the box”. It was fun to talk to new people.

The supplies are very basic. Classic, heavy dominoes and oil-based Sharpie markers make for a non-spilly sort of table. Gary asked us to think of someone who might need extra encouragement or recognition, and to keep them in mind as we made the bots.

Carol, a lady at our table, thought of her pets.

Auntie Bridgett thought about bees and people in her improvisation group.

I thought about Ruth, the lady who manages the Blair Community Garden. She works very hard and makes the world happier, healthier, and more beautiful. I will pass it along to her when I see her.

And, of course, whenever I have been making art or looking at art, I always find art out in the world. Look at how these tiny fragile tendrils growing around the gallery door go with the bright pink and green of the new sign!

Love,

Grandma Judy

The Art at Fort Vancouver

Dear Liza,

The Visitor’s Center at Fort Vancouver is small, but full of wonderful information and beautiful art.

Walking into the Center, I was struck by how this sign affected me. Growing up, when I saw this sign, I knew we were in for a treat. My dad loved the Park Service and always made our visits special. The National Parks were his Happy Place.

This picture of he and Momma was taken on our last outing together at Point Lobos in California.


The Visitor’s Center displays were full of the art and history of the place.
And since there was history, there was a chamber pot. This was from the Fort’s time under American rule at the beginning of the 19th century. It was found by archeologists who are still studying the fort’s past.

In the main part of the space was a wonderful display of contemporary Native art. Toma Villa’s imposing but inviting sculpture called Spirit Pole was made of one massive cedar tree which he cut in half longwise and hollowed out, making two tall, curved pieces. He then carved openings which he filled with cast glass pieces representing people, air, water, fire, and animals of the northwest.

The skill and vision this piece displayed was amazing. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

The unique glass and ceramic art of Lillian Pitt were also featured. I love that art by contemporary indigenous people is valued here.

These hand-formed glass pieces have air bubbles and textures that let the light play inside them, allowing them to come alive in my imagination.

What a great gift to all of us!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Fort Vancouver

Dear Liza,

After our delicious lunch at Twigs in Vancouver, we got in our cars and headed just a little out of town to visit historic Fort Vancouver. This was first founded by the British in the 1820s as a way of protecting their settlers in the area when this part of the Pacific Northwest was claimed by England, along with the rest of Canada.

The fort was home to hundreds of soldiers, merchants, and indigenous people, along with native Hawaiian craftsmen hired to keep the fort running. It was a very diverse population for its time.


In 1846, after a shift in the border between Canada and the US, the English abandoned the Fort Vancouver and American troops took over. They let the fort fall into disrepair and it eventually burned down under not-so-mysterious circumstances.

The Fort Vancouver we can walk around in today is a 1970s reconstruction, based in maps and descriptions from the 1820s. Still, it lets us see what life was like for all those folks so many years ago.

This thick, cool arbor made for fine summer shade and grapes to be harvested in the fall.

The bakery must have been kept busy all day making biscuits for travelers as well as bread for the hundreds of folks at the Fort.


The view from the bastion tower was very cool. I hope they never had to fire this one! It’s pointed into the fort!

Grandpa Nelson and I walked around the 1976 reconstruction of the old fort, which was enclosed by pointy wooden ramparts. It included a replica of First Factor Dr. McLoughlin’s beautiful house and buildings for the bakery, the jail, the infirmary (doctor’s office) .

On that hot afternoon, we could certainly sympathize with the soldiers who had been stationed here, exposed to heat and cold, rain and snow, with only thin wooden walls between them and the elements.

The gardens and livestock were outside the gates, where there is now a lovely, well kept flower and vegetable garden. I imagine it was a bit more rustic when every drop of water had to be carried by bucket. Still, the dahlias were gorgeous.

There are other sections of Fort Vancouver, including stately officers’ houses from the World War II era when General John Marshall was in charge here, but we didn’t visit those. We ran out of oomph and went for ice cream at Ice Cream Renaissance , then said good-bye to dear Julie and Carl and headed back across the river to have a nice rest at home.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Across the Columbia

Dear Liza,

Last week we visited Vancouver, Washington, for the first time since we have lived in Portland. I know that’s silly; it is only a twenty minute drive over the Columbia River, and we have gone PAST Vancouver on the way to other places…. But this time we crossed the river and spent the whole day!

On the way across the river, we had a hazy but lovely view of Mt. Adams.
We went to see Auntie Bridgett’s oldest friend, Julie, and her husband Carl, who are visiting cousins in Kalama. Bridgett and Julie have been friends since high school!

They suggested having lunch at a place called Twigs. It was a stunningly great idea!

Twigs is smack dab on the newly developed Waterfront along the Columbia River, and is bright, modern, interesting, and great for people. The views of the river are beautiful.

Before we settled down to lunch, we walked along the promenade, caught up on news, and enjoyed the scenery. The Columbia River Water Feature (Yes, I wish it had a more romantic name….) has lots of places for kids to splash and lay in the water, which was perfect on such a hot day!

The Water Feature is an artistic interpretation of the river itself, and has beautifully rendered maps of the Columbia Watershed and bits of poetic history.

Further along we found a Peace Pole, with hopes for Peace in Earth expressed in many languages, including Braille, Russian, and Sign language.

When our appetites for lunch overcame the beautiful views, we headed back to Twigs for delicious salads and a nice, air conditioned respite before the next part of our adventure.

A nice waitress named Tabitha took our picture…. Aren’t we cute?

I’ll tell you about the rest of our day tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Thirteen Hundred Days

Dear Liza,

I have been a student for most of my life. I went to school, like everybody, then college. When I started teaching, there were constant classes (some of which I appreciated more than others) to keep my skills fresh.

When Auntie Bridgett fell in love with France in 2008, she decided to learn French, and I went along for the ride. We took lessons with Veronique Sepulchre and Shawn Quiane, and kept getting better at it. We felt very clever.

Then we returned to France and discovered that while we could read signs and plaques in museums, our lack of spoken language skills left us feeling tongue-tied and a little stupid. Clearly, more work was needed.

Enter Duolingo! This is a free (though you can pay and get extra lessons, if you like) on-line language learning site. You learn at your own speed and can repeat any lesson as many times as you like. There is even a listening component to help with grasping a new language racing by at conversational speed.

When you moved to Denmark, I decided I needed to learn Danish, and Duolingo had me covered. (This little guy at Tivoli is saying “We are building something new here.”) So I have enjoyed a double dollop of language.


And as of this morning, I have been on Duolingo every darn day for 1,300 days!

I thank Auntie Bridgett for being a good example and Mouse the cat for pinning me down on the couch until I finish my allotted hour.

And now I need to get this posted.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Just Some Fun

Dear Liza,

Today I just want to share some pictures I’ve taken lately that wouldn’t fit in the stories I was telling. So here they are.

We picked this pillow up at IKEA when we were replacing a broken bed. It looked so much like Mouse, we couldn’t resist! It sits in her chair. Don’t they look cute together?

This is some of the incredibly funky art at the McMenamin’s Barley Mill, their first restaurant, which celebrated its Fortieth Anniversary last week. The theme of the restaurant is the Grateful Dead and their leader, Jerry Garcia.

I made this piece of collage with Ruthie Inman last week. It shows how I feel, sometimes, when my head is so full of creative ideas.

Here is one of the flowers growing in my other friend Ruth’s garden; a delicate grey-lavender poppy, set against the bright green of the foliage.

And finally, these are the shadows that a few houseplants cast on my wall every evening at sunset. The low light turns everything a magical orange.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Nordic Fest

Dear Liza,

We spent Saturday at Nordic Fest here in Portland and learned a lot about your part of the world.

We learned (and I am going to try and remember) which flag honors which country. Here they are, left to right: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden.

We learned that there are many kinds of Mead, an ancient honey wine made by the Vikings. Those we tried were made by Oran Mor in Roseburg, and were all delicious, especially when served by a lovely young lady. We bought a bottle of Odin’s Eye.

We learned about making Viking Weave jewelry from Liane Lawrence. First you weave the silver thread around a dowel, then you pull it through different sized openings to gradually make it tighter and stronger. We were amazed at the delicacy and beauty of it.

We learned that handmade flower wreaths look good on any hat,

And any head.

We also heard (and got to join in on) lovely music, saw delightful dances, and ate yummy cheese sandwiches and aebleskivers.

AND, possibly most important, we learned that Nordic Northwest offers Danish language conversation practice groups! Maybe I will get up my nerve, hop on the bus, head over there, and learn some more.

Looking forward to more adventures!

Love,

Grandma Judy