Tag: Reading

Bees and Birthdays

Dear Liza,

This past Friday was busy around here. It was Grandpa Nelson’s birthday AND First Friday at SideStreet Arts, where Auntie Bridgett was having a show.

The first part of the day was for presents and quiet puzzles. Grandpa enjoyed his refurbished clock and a gift card from Donna.

Later, we headed up to the gallery to see Bridgett’s art, along with the four other artists featured in the Love Buzz show. It was a chilly, drizzly evening, so the crowd was small. But the artwork was beautiful (and so was Auntie Bridgett).

She had paintings, moleskin sketchbooks, zines, buttons, and all sorts of adorable bits for sale. Her fellow artists Jackie McIntyre, Lea Barozzi, Michelle Gallagher and Brenda Scott and were showing paintings, ceramics, and collage works.

I think it is impossible to see bees and be sad. The colors and movement in the show even brightened the grey evening outside.

Grandpa Nelson and I visited with the artists for a while, then walked around the corner to Ankeny Tap and Table for his birthday dinner. Yummy sliders (my first actual beef in over a year… amazingly delicious) , French Fries, good conversation and a glass of red wine made for a fine celebration.

We waved at Bridgett as we headed home, walking quickly as the rain had started in earnest.
Love,

Grandma Judy

Yellow Line to Downtown

Dear Liza,

When Auntie Bridgett and I left the Quilt Show, we weren’t ready for our day out to be over. We knew two things… we needed lunch, and we wanted to see some new things. So we headed downtown.

For lunch, we got off the Yellow Line at Pioneer Square and walked up the curvy steps to the food carts. Nine dollars got us lunch at The Whole Bowl, with one bowl being enough for the two of us! We enjoyed listening to the waterfall fountain and watching people and pigeons enjoy the sunshine.

When we were full, we headed to the Main Branch of the Multnomah Library. I had visited with Cynthia a month ago, but Bridgett hadn’t seen it. Besides, there’s always something new.

For example, did you know that the library carries books in Danish? Two different staff librarians hunted for, and eventually Bridgett found, two of Portland native Beverly Cleary’s books translated into Danish, so I can use them to practice this difficult language.

In the map room, I started opening drawers at random and found this magnificent Trimet map of the light rail lines in Portland , shown as a video game! It was huge, accurate, and adorable.

And up on the third floor I found a large display of various interpretations of Shakespeare! T-shirts, comic books, and posters for movie adaptations filled glass cases. This poster is from a movie I had never heard of, (but will watch this evening, if it’s available.) Family friendly” versions, with the bawdy bits removed, were attempted in the 1800s, and have been carefully preserved.

I even had a flash of cross-reference bedazzlement when I saw this quote from Much Ado About Nothing and realized Lin-Manuel Miranda had used it in the flirting scene in Hamilton. (The rhyme is “I’m a trust fund baby, you can trust me.”)

By this time our brains were full and our feet were tired, so we caught the Magic 15 and headed home. What a day!

What a city!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Reading Matters

Dear Liza,

I have more time on my hands not that I am retired, and sometimes I wonder what to do with it.

I have always loved reading, and never had enough time for it. Not just ’get the news’ reading or history books, but a solid commitment to major chunks of literature. I have time for that now, and have been diving in.

My first book in this campaign was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Written in England in 1868, it was considered revolutionary because of its portrayal of the personal and moral growth of a lower-class woman. Though full of injustices, the story has a positive-tending heroine and I enjoyed it very much.

My next foray into Big Lit was Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits. This was written in Chile in 1982 and was the author’s first novel. It was heralded as a great work and made Ms Allende famous. It tells of three generations of a family and of Chile’s political revolution.

It has some lovely descriptions and characters, but halfway through, I had to stop reading it. The main character of Esteban Trueba is so hateful that spending hours a day with him (through reading) was depressing me. Just as I avoid such folks in my real life, I needed to distance myself from his greed and bad temper.

So I broke up with Isabel Allende. What next?

I needed a complete change, but it was late at night and my options were limited. Scanning my bookshelves, I found an old, old friend, a 1955 copy of Kenneth Graham’s The Wind In the Willows that had been rescued from the University Park Elementary School library. Hooray!

Elaine Marbach, bless her, always kept these treasures aside for me when they had to go out of circulation. It is a hard cover and has stamps showing that it belonged to the school where I spent 28 years of the happiest years of my life. It even has the original check-out cards, with initials and names of dearly departed colleagues and former fifth graders who are still in my life.

As I began the story of Mole and Ratty’s friendship, the sadness of House of Spirits fell away and I drifted into a happy place.

Reading is powerful magic. Choose it wisely.

Love,

Grandma Judy