I think I am like most folks, lately, in that I am living on a seesaw. I alternate between reading every word of the news, needing to understand and make sense of the politics, economics, and natural disasters, and just needing to NOT. To NOT read. To NOT analyze.
Dahlias tall enough to look you right in the eye!
My walks are a good time to NOT. Instead of analyzing, I notice. I photograph. I appreciate. It gives my brain a short focus lens that is very restful.
It is just past sunflower season, as I’ve talked about before. But the dahlias are getting taller than my head.
The nasturtiums are playing nicely with all the other flowers.
And the onions, like me, are dancing beautifully while going to seed.
I know I am a grownup, and I need to Pay Attention to the world. But I can’t let it suck me down. Flowers help put me back in balance.
We woke up this morning to some really cool air wafting though our windows! Fall is definitely on its way, and I am happy for it. With this endless summer finally ready to pack it in, I am assured that time is passing.
And if we keep moving forward, eventually we will get somewhere else.
So I celebrate the sunflowers. These magnificent beasts spend the spring shooting into the sky and the summer tracking the sun. And come fall, they lay their heavy heads down and make a feast for birds. One could do worse.
I know your world in Salinas is very smoky just now, from the fires in the hills west of town. I hope you have some sunflowers in your neighborhood, and I hope you get some nice rain soon.
With all of us staying in our houses, chatting with folks has become a much rarer thing. We can chat with neighbors for a minute or two when we sit on our balcony, but they are all in their way somewhere.
Conversations with strangers, which is one of the best things about living in a city, have almost come to a complete halt. Folks scurry by behind their masks, not wanting to give or catch the virus.
But people need to communicate. It’s part of our nature and it leaks out all over the place.
Advice from neighbors…
And, on my walks in the neighborhood, these little things make my heart smile.
……making sure we know that their Naked Ladies are for us to enjoy…Love Wins is a big theme here, one I thoroughly endorse
We have places we go, knowing which hours are best to find them uncrowded. Zach’s Shack, the HobNob, and Rendezvous all have outdoor seating, tasty food and friendly folks.
It IS special. Life IS short.
We have recently learned that another favorite haunt, The Rocking Frog, will be closing down and moving somewhere else in a few months, when their lease is up. With so many businesses closing and other changes happening so fast, we truly need to remember to show signs of Love while we can.
We haven’t been to the Portland Art Museum since early February. That’s when we visited the Volcano! Show, about art and science from the Mt. St. Helens’ eruption. Then we got sick, then the city shut down, then the riots started, and we haven’t been downtown since.
Our beautiful Willamette
Saturday, we went. We had booked an hour time slot (They are limiting visitors to maintain social distancing) at PAM for the three of us, got the car out of the garage, and crossed the bridge. The river was bright in the early Fall sunshine, and I realized how much I have missed being out in the city.
We drove through downtown, noticing some damaged and boarded up buildings, mostly high-end shops, but also a lot of open businesses. Killer Burger and the food carts were doing a good business.
There are more homeless folks than before, napping in their tents. Many streets had a sort of down and out vibe, and it made me sad. I feel bad for the folks who have no other place to be, and also for the folks who are scared to walk down the street where they have lived for years.
As we walked to the museum we saw construction cranes and buildings making progress. When we had used up our hour time slot we sat outside in the plaza for a while. We heard flash bangs and chanting from down toward the Willamette River, and knew enough not to head in that direction. We drove north to cross over a different bridge to head home.
Seven blocks that direction, people are throwing rocks at each other…
I checked the news on my phone and found that we had heard (And just missed) a clash between a far right group called The Proud Boys and an anti-fascist group, who were throwing rocks and insults at each other. This has become a common theme here in Portland, and it also makes me sad.
Violence only begets violence, and people seem to be aiming their hatred at each other instead of the powers that be, who have created this mess.
Patient, happy lines at Powell’s.
But don’t get the idea that all of Portland “is in flames”. People are jogging, eating, and visiting. Our iconic bookstore, Powells, opened up for the first time since March, and there was a line around the block to get in. To buy books! Sizzle Pie Pizza had folks waiting for their goodness.
The funny thing about making art is that you never know exactly what a piece is going to be before you finish it, and you don’t know when it will be done until it suddenly is. The artistic process, if you let it, causes you to make choices about ‘what comes next’ that are surprising.
Splodges to paintings….
My ‘ Islands’ are a case in point. They started with watercolor splodges, and evolved into painted, intentional pieces. “Tim’s Island” , for my fishing-loving brother, was one of these.
Paintings to embroidery…
Then, because of a misunderstood suggestion from Elaine, I painted Hawaii’s Big Island on fabric. I liked it, but needed a little something more, so I embroidered a bit. I liked it even more.
Tom Sawyer’s Island in topo form
My next island, Tom Sawyer’s, also got painted on fabric, but in a more abstract, topographical style. Besides the stitches to show trees and peaks, it also needed something extra, so I added waves.
When will it stop?
I think my next island will be bigger, so I can show more detail. I am hoping to paint Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, complete with Billy Bones’s hideout.
It is almost Autumn. School has started and leaves are beginning to change.
Fall color…
But in the bizarre world of Covid-19, it still feels like March. That’s when things closed down. That’s the last time I hugged Auntie Katie or the cousins. That’s when I sat at The Rocking Frog with Misha and chatted about regular life. As someone on TV said, during Covid, it is always sometime between breakfast and dinner, it is always NOW.
Visiting the dead people at Lone Fir Cemetery always puts things in perspective for me. These folks saw difficulties that make ours seem small. In the days before sanitation and vaccines, hundreds of babies died before their first birthday. Typhoid Fever, Spanish Flu, World Wars I and II took folks in their infancy or prime and there was nothing to be done for it.
Perspective
In comparison, being stuck at home is pretty small. Not going to camp is doable. We just need to get through this year, this election, this political and national health debacle, and come out the other side with our humanity intact.
Chestnuts are falling already….
So, remember to love each other, hug who you can. Pet dogs and smell flowers. Help those in worse situations than yours. Be your best self.
Well, I finally got the Big Island of Hawaii the way I liked it. Using paint, embroidery and quilting, I found the texture and shapes I wanted to remember.
The Big Island, as remembered
Yes, I know I didn’t give enough room to the emergent volcano in the south east corner, and little red sparkly beads, to denote flowing lava, have been suggested. But for now, I am happy with it.
And now my mind has wandered to another island. This one is located inside a certain theme park in Southern California, and is named after title character in Mark Twain’s most popular book.
Sketches for my next island
I started with sketches from my memory, then went on websites to see the lovely hand drawn maps from 1955. I realized the three-quarter view that showed the buildings skewed things a bit.
Photo credit, Disneyland and Walt Disney Corporation
So I cheated. I went to Google maps, found Anaheim, and zoomed in. The satellite setting shows right where everything is, and it isn’t as I remember it. The cove we crossed on the pontoon and suspension bridges are tiny compared to my memories.
Satellite view…
The “fort” that sold pickles from a barrel felt and as though it was at the end of the world, alas, was not. But my memories of joy and adventures are intact. The feeling of rocks under my sneakers and dust in my nose is there, waiting to be called up.
My version of this island will be a compromise between my childhood adventures and the actual place they happened, between the illusion and the reality. And that’s okay, too. Off to paint now!
Our family likes words. We make them up, rhyme them, put them in the ‘mouths’ of cats and hands, and play games with them. Scrabble, limericks and puns are sort of our family tradition.
The beginning….
Since the corona virus shutdown has been keeping us home more, we are finding new ways to play with words. Crosswords.
It started with the printed puzzles in the Willamette Weekly newspaper, but that’s only one puzzle a week! We needed more. Grandpa Nelson found online sites with daily puzzles, which grow in difficulty from Monday to Sunday. Monday’s can be done in under ten minutes., while Sunday’s can take more than an hour and require extra cups of coffee.
We also discovered that some puzzle creators are more fun than others. It’s not enough to ask for a river in Eastern Europe. We love puns. (Tiny sounds from the sheep pen? Bopeeps)
Merl Reagle, king of crosswords
Merl Reagle’s puzzles are our favorites. He was actually famous for his puzzles, which he created for The Washington Post, the New York Times, and other magazines and newspapers. He was even on an episode of The Simpson’s! Merl shared our silly love of words. He passed away in 2015, and I am grateful for the internet that we can still enjoy his good work.
I was enjoying the crosswords so much, I wanted to make my own. It’s harder than it looks! I found grids online, but couldn’t get the printer to enlarge them. So I drew one. Ten squares in each direction, each square being two centimeters, will just fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper.
Rough draft
Once I had the grid, I wanted some clever words to be “the long ones”, the theme of the puzzle. Given the era we are in, I chose “viral video” and “corona beer”, and started making the words to connect.
This is where it got challenging. Words that fit one direction resulted in unworkable combinations of letters in the other. I found myself googling weird collections of letters to make it work. AOLA? Association of the Locksmiths of America. Solved!
My first puzzle…
Since my puzzle was only ten by ten, I was able to get it done in just an hour or so. Auntie Bridgett did the tidy numbers in the corners. Creating the puzzles takes longer than solving them.
And the clues….
Now, I get to give it to Grandpa Nelson and see if he can solve it.
Between the political unrest and the pandemic, people are feeling very stressed these days. The big signs of this are protests and violence, which can overwhelm the small goodnesses that are happening in corners of neighborhoods.
Lots of little signs of love and hope…
When I go out walking, I look for these small signs and take comfort in my fellow humans’ capacity for kindness, cleverness, and joy.
Sharing delicious apples….
And yet, amid the apples and sweetness, we need to remember that the fight for fairness isn’t over yet.
It’s not time to stop yet….
We need to keep those who have been killed and brutalized in our mind as we make decisions about who will run our cities and our country.
Since I retired from teaching, my brain is like a kid in kindergarten, always finding something new. I opened a cupboard and found things to write about, so I wrote… for months and months.
Writing and writing..
Then I opened another cupboard and there was fabric, so I sewed.
Sewing and sewing…..
And now I have found the paint cupboard. First gouache, then watercolors. And, like a kindergartener, I have friends with ideas that feed my ideas. “Come join my painting group,” said Ruthie. I did, and it has been wonderful. Art, silliness, and learning all come together in the magic proportions that teachers strive for.
Painting little crabby friends….
I posted the islands I was painting and dear Elaine said, “I’ll bet you could put those islands on fabric, and maybe even quilt them.” Well, it turns out that you can paint on fabric with regular acrylic paints if you add a bit of “gac” paint medium. Auntie Bridgett had some, because of course she did.
I spent a day looking at maps of all the islands I love. The Big Island of Hawaii. Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland. Treasure Island from Robert Louis Stevenson. Tiny Gabriola Island in the Strait of Georgia. Neverland. Sketch, reconsider, sketch.
Pencils first….
And finally I started painting my first fabric island. After smooth gouache and watercolors, the acrylic and muslin felt heavy and clumsy, but I kept at it.
The Big Island of Hawaii, as I have it so far…
I am still not totally happy with it, but I will get better if I just keep practicing. It seems a bit flat. Hmmmmm… Maybe I can add embroidery or even some beads. Maybe my friends will give me some good ideas.
Dear Liza 