I’ve been working on the French Map Quilt for a couple of months now, and I think I’m almost done with the top.
My problem is, I can’t look at the WHOLE thing at once, except when I take a picture of it. At about a meter across, it’s a lot to focus on. Below, I have broken it up into four photos.
Looking here, I can see that I need more ‘grazing’ icons on the Massif Central and heading up into the Alps.
Here, the Pyrenees Mountains look a bit bare. And should there be something at the shore? Wavy lines to show the foam and dunes, maybe?
It’s hard for me to be objective… what do you think?
For now, I’m going to fold it up and let it sit. I’ll get back to it when I can see it fresh.
I have been looking forward to the 2024 Presidential election for quite some time now.
I have followed all the debates and news stories; I have enjoyed the beautiful signs placed in people’s yards. I have looked forward to having a smart, optimistic woman in charge of our country.
But Election night began with snacks and ended with tears. It was hard to fall asleep.
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And now it is over, with an ending I can’t begin to fathom. I am disappointed in my fellow Americans, and concerned for the future.
Not just our country’s future, either. I think having Mr. Trump as President makes the whole world less safe. And since I have people I love all over the world, I worry.
What will I do now? I’m not sure. I need to think. I want to fight the fear that Mr. Trump has created with courage; the resentment he has stirred up with gratitude; the anger he expresses in every speech with joy and love.
When I figure out how to do this, I will let you know.
I love the forest in Fall! Besides the beautiful colors, the fermenting leaves give of a sweet, almost beer-like smell. Well, part beer, part bread… and all good.
Auntie Bridgett and I walked out the other day, with jackets on over sweaters, to enjoy the season.
Mushrooms are popping up as the heavy drizzles encourage them, looking like fairy creatures. Getting right down in the ground is bad for my knees, but good for my pictures!
Fallen trees become mountains of moss, with fairy cities of shelf fungus perched on their sides.
We discovered this amazing fungus in someone’s lawn by the park. It sure looks like the Death Star to me!
Even ordinary trees get a soft, starry green upholstery as the dormant moss wakes up in the rain.
I know the grey weather will become commonplace soon. But for now, I will marvel in the changing seasons.
After the fun spookiness of Halloween comes the more reflective holiday of All Souls’ Day. In Mexico it is called Dia de Los Muertos, and it is a day for remembering, celebrating, and, weather permitting, even picnicking with those who have passed on.
So today I am thinking of your Great grandma Billie and Great grandpa Lowell, my parents. They were hard working, happy people who could make just about anything fun.
I am thinking of your Great grandma Mona, Grandpa Nelson’s mom, who raised three kids on her own while teaching inner city middle schoolers about literature and history. She introduced me to live theater and political activism.
My brother Jim loved his wife Christy, son Kyle, and having fun whenever he could.
My brother Tim survived several tours in Vietnam and loved his wife Bridget, kids, camping, and fishing.
I don’t like to focus on their deaths, but rather on their lives and all they taught me about how to live. But that’s too deep a pool to swim in right now.
Last Thursday, also known as Halloween, was wet and chilly. I expected that we’d be inside for the evening.
Grandpa Nelson was happy to stay inside, but Auntie Bridgett wanted to get out and do some “Reverse Trick or Treating”, where we walk around the neighborhood and hand out candy. It’s always fun seeing kids in costumes and chatting with folks.
We got to see all the houses lit up in their spoooky glory, looking shinier with the rain.
We met Cindy, who had a heating pad under the blanket on her lap, so she could stay warm while handing out candy. She even had a tube on her banister, so folks could catch candy as it rolled down to them!
On the way home, we stopped for a ‘mocktail’ at Eris, our buddy Tony’s bar. We chatted a bit, then headed home to watch some classic horror. For me, Bêla Lugosi in Dracula is a Thumbs Up, but the older, silent “Nosferatu” is a Thumbs Down.
We are having lots of rain here in Portland, so I imagine the evening’s Halloween activities will be mostly inside. It is the beginning of “Doing things inside” season, after all.
Cold outside, good food inside. Yummy salmon quiche!
Grey outside, bright inside.
And we just keep getting up, cooking, making stuff, reading, learning and taking care of each other … whatever the season.
It’s nearly the end of October, and we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in a very long, rough election season.
Here in Oregon, we have mail-in voting. If it’s hard for you to get around, you just fill in your ballot and mail it off.
But if, like us, you enjoy the feeling of delivering your ballot safely to a protected place, you can walk it down to a ballot collection site. That’s what we did, at the temporary home of the Belmont library.
We walked down between drizzles, deposited our ballots, chatted with the librarians, and then headed across the street to Seven Virtues Coffee for snacks. Pastries and coffee are a fine way to celebrate Democracy, don’t you think?
Now we just sit tight and hope for the best come Election Day, November 5th.
Since Portland is built on both sides of the Willamette River, we have lots of bridges. There are ten traffic bridges, one railroad-only bridge, and one just for pedestrians and public transit, within the city limits.
And within a few years, we will be down to nine. Starting in 2027, the Burnside Bridge, which has spanned the Willamette since 1926, will be closed and replaced by a modern, “earthquake ready” bridge.
This is important because Burnside Street and the Bridge are a major transportation artery through the city, running 18 miles east to west. Three bus routes cross it, and 45,000 cars, 2,000 pedestrians and 4,000 bicycles are estimated to cross it every day. It is predicted by geologists and engineers that if a magnitude 8 earthquake happens along the Cascadia subduction zone, none of the current bridges will survive, cutting off much of the population from water, help, and supplies.
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We went to McMenamin’s History Pub to hear Sharon Wortman tell us about it. Sharon gave a wonderfully educational talk on the history and future of the Burnside Bridge.
The new bridge is estimated to cost 900 million dollars and take four years to complete, re-opening in 2031. It is an inverted Y designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. With good fortune and good healthcare, Grandpa Nelson and I will live to see it finished.
Here is a still shot I grabbed from the video on the website, showing how the new bridge should look.
Sharon’s talk was part history, part engineering, and part personal memoir. She is a great speaker with a real emotional and intellectual connection to her subject, and the audience enjoyed every minute of it.
I know this blog has only scratched the surface of this enormous subject. If you want to know more and get all the nitty-gritty information, a good place to start is the website https:// http://www.multco.us/earthquake-ready-burnside-bridge.
The Friends of Lone Fir is a non-profit, volunteer group who help maintain and educate folks about our wonderful local pioneer cemetery. They put on tours of the Women in Lone Fir, symbolism and architecture of tombstones, and headstone cleaning workshops.
And this year, the Friends hosted a five Saturday series of tours called Twilight Tombstones. On each Saturday in October and one in November, guides lead four groups of twenty through the cemetery, telling stories of the folks buried there.
It was sold out in minutes!
This year, Auntie Bridgett volunteered with me. She greeted folks at the gate and steered them in the right direction.
My job was “tour support”, which means I made sure our group, lead by Peregrine and Paul, stayed together. I also answered extra questions from the folks in the group. It was a delightful, educational, exhausting evening.
The fun began even before the tours started! A friendly group of Zombie Carolers came by after serenading the Dead, and shared their songbook with us. Their songs are not for the squeamish, featuring such delightfully gruesome tunes as “Rudolph the Undead Reindeer” and “Good King Wenceslas Tastes Great.”
Years ago, during one of University Park’s magazine drive fundraisers, we subscribed to a magazine called Mental Floss. We loved the smart, funny articles and illustrations, and we kept receiving it until it went out of print in 2017.
Here’s a little history of the magazine, as found via a Google search. Mental Floss was launched as a print magazine in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2001, by then-Duke University students William Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur. The pair wanted a magazine that was fun, interesting in the way that their favorite professors’ lectures were.
The magazine grew rapidly, becoming enormously popular. Pearson and Hattikudur sold it to other folks in 2012, but have continued their success-via-fun/smart with a podcast called Part Time Genius. Besides the online e-zine, there are also games, t-shirts, and books available.
This past Christmas, Auntie Bridgett gave me a “Fact a Day” Trivia calendar, and I have been enjoying it so much. Sometimes, days will go by when I forget to look at it, and then I get to pull a bunch all at once and have several good chuckles.
Today’s pull included an explanation of how the Unabomber got his name (because he targeted UNiversities and Airlines) and that H.A. Rey and his wife Margaret, authors of the “Curious George” children’s books, escaped occupied Paris in 1940 on bicycles, taking their precious first manuscript with them.
Dear Liza 