On Tyranny and Advent Season

 My juniors are reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng; it is a dystopian novel written during the pandemic, thinking about what would happen if the chaos of the early months of that crisis were intensified. I like it because it talks about 21^st century examples and issues—Asian American hate, all of our information on computers and not books—as well as the old favorite of silencing dissent by, as Timothy Snyder would say, obeying in advance.  As we moved through the book, I handed them Snyder’s list of acts against tyranny and asked them to find examples in the book and, if they can not, then in the world. It was hard.  The language is challenging and the concepts are fairly abstract. I spent an hour and a half talking students through different actions. Corporeal politics? The frog outside of ICE. Professional ethics? Teachers can’t tell you what to think but they can present you with challenging assignments that make you think. We are not done with the assignment; each student or pair is going to pull one of the actions out of the hat next week and make a poster, using the graphic version of the book as an example, where they explore how these ideas play out in the book and in our world.

I’ve been thinking about this assignment and the list of actions for about a year now. Some people find Snyder stressful because you can see how authoritarianism, according to his work, is increasing all over the world. It feels both very close to home and very hard to stop. I find him hopeful. Grim, but hopeful. There are 20 actions we can all take to halt the spread of authoritarianism, they just need a bit of grounding in our daily world.

Every Advent, I try to take on a focus. Some years it’s big, like democracy or climate change. Some years, it’s small, like what do I love about my life or daily image in my notebook. The practice helps me get through this, the darkest time of the year, while we are all waiting for the world to shift and the light to return. This year, I want to attempt to ground On Tyranny in daily practice. I will strive to take action on all twenty of his points, but I will give myself a little leeway, because I hope I do not have to “be reflective if you must be armed” or “stay calm when the unthinkable arrives.” For those, I will substitute actions of my own—build community and participate in ritual—because I believe that will also counteract tyranny.  I start on the first night of advent and work until Solstice Eve.

This is the list. Please, join in. There is nothing more empowering than taking action.

• Do not obey in advance.

• December 8: Defend Institutions

  One thing I have been working on since I began to engage in local action is defining who’s responsible for a specific action. Landfill? County. Pothole? City—but it also depends on the street.  Report a Problem! Mental health for low income people? County. Tearing down Sunflower House? OSU. Knowing who to talk to makes you more effective. Spending hours at the wrong meeting is just..a waste of time. I try and connect people with the right person who can make the changes they want to see or explain, better than I, why not.

  On Saturday, I had Government Corner, where I sit in the library for two hours and talk with whoever shows up. It can be fascinating. It can also be exhausting; after the school shooting in Florida I had a woman who had lived in Sandy Hook right before the shooting, moved south right before the shooting there, and then came here. We were both a bit freaked out. Right now, we have an elderly man who loves Government Corner and asks about everything. He wanted to know what I thought about school closures.

  “That’s not my jurisdiction,” I told him. “I don’t tell the school board what to do.”

  He was puzzled.

  “I also can’t talk about the landfill. That’s the county. I have opinions, but not all of the facts.”

  “Other councilors (he named names) are talking about the schools,” he told me.

  “They can do what they want,” I replied. “But, as an elected official, I shouldn’t  talk about their choices here. I can talk about the city.”

• December 2: Beware the One Party State

  The last line of this statement talks about engaging in local politics as a way to maintain a healthy democracy.  Benton county has ranked choice voting, so I am a registered member of the Green Party—have been since Ralph Nader!—because I believe in a multitude of political parties, not just two.  Not everyone has ranked choice voting (it can be a challenging sell to voters) but we can all participate in local politics. Showing up is the most important thing you can do to work for change. Sit in the audience, look your elected officials in the eye, and dare them to vote against what you and everyone else in town has been asking for.  I promise you, it matters.

  I am about to head out to a meeting on downtown and economic vitality, if you want to come along. Madison Avenue room at four o’clock. 

• Take responsibility for the face of the world.
• Be wary of paramilitaries.
• Be reflective if you must be armed.

December 3: Remember Professional Ethics

Education around the country is struggling after the pandemic; students are not coming to school as well prepared to learn and we have been making adjustments. However, some of those adjustments are starting to fray in a way that is reminding me that I, too, have professional ethics. When I give students credit in my class, it means that they have made significant progress on their journey to become better readers and writers as well as thinkers. They don’t all start in the same place; they don’t all make the same amount of progress in the time allotted for many reasons; they don’t all go gracefully along the path. But, my professional ethics remind me that a credit means something—progress.  We have many students this year that won’t make progress. It’s not that they can’t do the work—I know what to do to help those students—or they don’t do the work because they are on what I call a Work Strike because they are making  statement to someone about control in their lives. It’s a softer action. Won’t.  They can, but they won’t. There is pressure to drop the bar and push these students over—but, where does that leave us? Their skills stagnate, then fall behind. I’m a grouchy old teacher—they have to show progress to earn credit. I’ll work with you, but I am not going to do it for you. Professional Ethics.

December 1^st: Stand Out.

Standing out means saying what you believe, even if it goes against the popular will or thinking of the group. I am getting good at this—last night, I was the minority vote three times. Once to not raise the city manager’s salary five percent after a 4 percent COLA; second to not send social service funding to the county to distribute; third to establish sanctioned camping spots in town so that people do not have to move every 12 hours. Each time, I was trying to remember the impact of my decisions on the people who have the least money and influence in our community. Not everyone has the “benefit” of being on the city council, but we can all urge our lawmakers to consider the impact of the decisions on the least powerful.

December 5: Be Kind to Our Language (read books)

When I read the extended piece connected to this action it became very clear—this one is easy! Read, rather than watch screens. He had an extended list of very serious books to consider, but, when I was done with this section, I turned to my other bedside read right now, one of Madeline L’Engle’s journals/ stylized reflections. It was a popular style when I was in college and I have been revisiting some of my old favorites this autumn.  In the pages I read last night, she was musing on how all of writing connects to the issues of the day and what the author is wrestling with personally and politically. And then I flashed back onto A Wrinkle In Time.

I checked A Wrinkle in Time out of the school library one afternoon in mid-March, when the world was washed clean and bright. I read through class, stopped for the bus ride home (car sickness is not fun), and finished it before dinner in the back yard. I remember just…inhaling the story.  It was unique, fascinating and deeply metaphysical all at the same time—and there was something about the very awkward Meg that I could relate to. It wasn’t until I reread it to Mark as an adult that I realized both how deeply strange it is, as a story, and how deeply it impacted my thinking. She is wrestling with the ideas of communism and total control of the mind and free will—the the analogy of free will and a sonnet still resonates with me.

Children’s stories are often deeply radical. In them, we learn to be independent and to work together, to love the world, and to stand up against tyranny. It may be time to revisit some of those lessons.

• Believe in truth.

December 11: Investigate

One of the most frustrating things about our news media is the short clip that everyone is fussing about. It’s a couple of minutes long, at most, taken from the middle of a longer meeting and it is almost impossible to track down the original video. I have spent an ridiculous amount of time trying to find the video, say from when the president of South Africa visited the White House and was shown something… but I never watch the entire meeting.  How do I know how accurate the commentary is if I cannot see the primary document?

This weekend, Robert Reich put out a video on Trump’s mental decline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQHLciC67V8

I like Mr Reich’s work—I have always found him to be thoughtful, well informed, and able to back up his thinking with deep details. And he has a sense of humor. So I thought I would do a bit of fact checking on the video as part of my Investigate action. He has a clip from a “recent” cabinet meeting where the president is musing on the décor of the Oval Office for 15 minutes. Seriously? Was this part of a conversation about the “renovation” of the East Wing? Because there was no date— Mr Reich, we need footnotes on your work!-- I scanned the most recent cabinet meeting using captions and time stamps—to find the conversation.  Not there. I looked at the first video again and noticed a gold tie, so I started searching for cabinet meetings with gold ties. It took about ten minutes, but I found one back in early July where the tie matched. I scanned that one until the end. Victory. There it was. Fifteen minutes of end of the meeting musing on picture frames and the presidents within them (that section could use its own fact checking, but I am not doing that today) and polling the audience about using gold leaf on the corner moldings. Mr Reich was accurate.

It is deeply frustrating to this trained historian to be unable to find the actual work that every pundit is riffing on. Because we are in such a divided and fractious state of affairs, I want to see the original, in context to understand the full picture. And that takes some serious googling. 

• Make eye contact and small talk.
• Practice corporeal politics.

December 12: Maintain a Private Life

In many ways, this one is easy for me, so I am using it on a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. I do not have a cell phone. I do not want to be traced everywhere I go and connected to the world all of the time. And, on Friday afternoons, after I check my home emails, I shut the computer off until Sunday and take a complete break.  We call it Technology Shabbat. It has made a huge difference in my sanity. This evening, I will be signing off for 36 hours.

• December 7: Contribute to Good Causes

• For people with a bit of money, this is an easy action, although I have long found that my poorest students are often the most generous when we are collecting change for Winter Smiles at CHS. I give money and time regularly. Today, I spent hours working to distribute the boxes of citrus for the League Of Women Voters fund-raiser. Mark and I have maintained the spreadsheet of orders then he manipulated it to organize delivery routes and email addresses to the purchasers. Today, most of the fruit went out. We’ll spend a few more days mopping up the mistakes before we rethink how to do it for next year.

  If you don’t know, the League of Women Voters has been round for over one hundred years, informing people about voter’s rights, candidates, and local and state politics. It is non-partisan, education focused organization. And you don’t have to be a woman to be a member. J

• Learn from peers in other countries.
• Listen for dangerous words.

December 6: Listen for Dangerous Words

Although I usually strive to hear or read an entire passage before passing judgment on what was said (context is everything!) I did not need to her all of the current administration’s rambling at the recent cabinet meeting where he referred to an entire country’s people as “garbage” to take action.

 December 11: Stay Calm When the Unthinkable Occurs

Last night I went to two hour training on ICE Watch that focused on our rights and responsibilities to our community. The room was packed and seriously silent—this felt like essential information.  I don’t feel ready to volunteer as an observer but I do feel better informed on how to act and what to watch for if I stubble into the situation. I hope to be able to remain calm and repeat the key phrases: “I wish to remain silent.” “I do not consent to this search.”  “I wish to have the search conducted by a woman.” And “I would like to speak to an attorney.” 

We also covered what to look for: a count of officers and vehicles, the location and direction of action, the equipment being used, the activity, and to record the entire action.

The last point covered was to Not Spread Rumors. Fact check statements before reposting. This is just good social media practice but reposting something that is not true can cause real harm to people in our community. Stay calm. 

• Be a patriot.
• Be as courageous as you can.

 

December 4: Work Together

I’ve made a few changes—or additions—to the list. Work together is one because I feel like the list is to heavy on individual actions, rather than collective. Together, we can make change. Alone, it is harder.

Last night, I went to a potluck for the Corvallis Sustainability Collation, which has been working on climate education for 19 years. It has been an umbrella organization for dozens of projects and plans in our community and many of the people there have known each other for 20 years. My life has woven in and out of the circle over the years, but it has always been a touchstone of friendship and advocacy. Sitting in the circle last night, I thought of all of the moments when we—people all over the world—have sat in a circle, plates on laps, and worked for change.

December 13: Rituals

This is one of my additions. Rituals ground us in place and community. On Saturday, we are heading to Bald Hill to celebrate Lucia Day with hot cocoa, buns, oranges, a walk, and our friends. It starts at eight AM during the darkest time of the year so it is not for everyone. But people show up, year after year. Ritual ties us together.

 

Basement shelves

 

                My friend Mark says, in total seriousness, that he moves piles for a living. The idea resonates with me. His piles are big, mostly wood and lumber for work, while mine are smaller—books and papers—but they are rooted in the same trees. And, as winter comes in, I move more piles. Winter stores and outdoor furniture need homes inside out of the rains; our books and laundry both hang out inside rather than out; food precessing tools that lived on the edges all summer need to return to their homes on shelves. Meanwhile, books, leaves, and cats pile up inside.  Ours is not a minimalist, pure white house.  Everything has its place, but it  requires constant pile moving to keep it there.  I have spent years building shelves. Even now, I eye a blank wall, especially in the basement, hopefully. Can I lift up a long board and stack something there, out of the winter flood zone?

                My favorite little shelves hang out half way down the basement stairs. I got the idea from a friend who removed the sheetrock from a wall and built little shelves between the studs to hold his canned roasted tomatoes, all neatly packed in half pint jars.  I don’t want to take plaster off of our walls, but, after we transformed the garage into the dining room, there were exposed studs on the stair side.  One afternoon, I built a bunch of little shelves and filled them with the useful debris of living—cleaning supplies, sidewalk chalk, water bottles, and trash bags. A few days later, I returned to the project on the other wall and added shelves for candle holders and vases, along with a very sturdy bench that I found by the side of the road as a step to the highest shelf. Some hooks for rags and candle wax scraps, and we were good to go. A cleaning station worthy of Martha Stewart!

A few years later, we thought it would be good to bring Mark’s college graduation present into a more useful spot, so we built another series of shelves at the top of the stairs. He used some slats from a futon frame (also found by the side of the road) to create the floor and let them project out over the stairwell. When his father was here that summer, they wired a plug for the microwave and our toaster oven, so that we could pop out of the kitchen door and heat up our lunch or tea.  We hung all of our canvas grocery bags off of the extensions.  I keep several potholders right by the oven and a couple of gnarly old towels that we use to clean up floor spills below them.  On the other wall, I used the metal shelving system with brackets to hold the extra serving bowls and water pitchers, as well as my bean pot and big pasta pot. Underneath are the three bags that hold plastic and recycling.

The back hall is probably full—even a little tight at times. But, because everything is right there, it’s not a big deal to move it back to its rightful place (even if it migrates out again the next day).

               

                 

Rainy Sunday Morning

 The rains have begun. We hung the storm windows, brought in all of the garden art and chairs, made hazelnut pancakes for breakfast, and read the New York Times by the dining room stove while laundry dried around us and the cats napped.  We are not sure we are really ready for the Rainy Season, but it is ready for us.

Back Pain

 

                My back hurts. Right where all of the moving parts come together at the base of the spine. It’s stiff. I can walk and cook dinner, but not bend over or turn to far either way.  I am not really complaining, although it is annoying. It has been worse—a few winters ago, my entire pelvic ring seized up, compressed some nerves and arteries, and took five weeks to settle down. I didn’t sleep through an entire cycle of the moon and could barely walk. This is not that. I am grateful. And I have an appointment already with the woman who undid all of the tightness two years ago on Tuesday.

 But I am wondering, why my back, now?

I’ve had reoccurring pains before. Urinary tract infections that lingered and flared up for four years, until I knocked it out with a nasty sulfa drug that made me so ill I had to leave work in the middle of a Saturday rush.  I lost my voice regularly for years when I first started teaching, once for two weeks.  I’ve had neck pain that made my hands go numb and a weird shoulder clicking that I finally cleared out by lying on the floor and making snow angels over and over. Migraines have knocked me out while back packing  or when I did not get enough sleep.  All of these pains feel related, in some deep way, to stress on that part of the body and all have moved on to bother someone else.  This will, too.  

 But why my back, now?

Is it sitting too much in chairs that are too big for my frame? There was a six hour council meeting last Monday night and then four late afternoon meetings of an hour and a half to two hours each, after several days of conference in Portland.  Am I sitting the wrong way in my chair, where my legs dangle above the floor sometimes?  Was it the grand tug of two huge pieces of black plastic mulch off of the school garden so we could begin to prep the beds for blueberries in the spring?  My book bag banging into my spine? I do not know.  But, as my actions are limited for this week, at least, I’ll be spending some time considering the problem.

What is my back telling me?

 

Portland

          

      When I first moved to Oregon, I lived in Portland. It was a good time for many—the tech industry was booming and food lovers were flocking to town—but I struggled to make ends meet and find affordable housing, several times leaving my cats with a friend and sleeping in my van in the city so that I could get to work on time (5AM some days…). The local papers wrote many articles about the decline in SROs as the old weekly hotels were torn down and replaced by high rise, expensive, apartments for hipsters. Street Roots was starting up; I interviewed for the cook’s job at Sisters of the Road Café; the number of people living on the streets was growing. But the city did not feel unsafe to me.

                One night, I was waiting for the bus on the downtown transit mall. Because I had no money, I had started carrying a loaf of bread from my job at Great Harvest in my backpack.  If someone asked me for money, I gave them the loaf. It had been a long day—I worked for nine hours baking bread then came downtown to teach an adult education GED class in the basement of the Pioneer Place Mall. My timing was off—I just missed the bus.  It was winter but not too cold and not raining.

                A man sidled up to me, holding a sign “Spare Change?  Anything helps.”

                “No,” I said, “but I have a loaf of bread.” I held out the round, whole wheat loaf. He smiled.

                “We thank you,” his next sign read.  As I nodded, he reached into his collar and brought out a white pet rat. We smiled at one another and he slipped off into the night.

                I was in Portland last week for a conference. My room had a beautiful tree right outside the balcony; crows woke me up the first morning, gossiping with one another about local food services. I walked the downtown streets for several hours—it is not a Hellscape. It is not a War Zone. It looks a great deal like it did that night, thirty years ago, when I handed over a loaf of bread to a homeless man and his companion.

 

Bits of the Past

 

                My friend Maureen hunts down old Fine Gardening magazines, reads them over afternoon tea, and then sends them my way. (I send her our New Yorkers.) I got a bunch on Friday afternoon and was poking through one from about 2000. There, in the Northwest section, was an article on Cracked Pots, an arts fair full of garden objects made from recycled materials. One photo caught my eye. The two pieces looked…familiar. Like I had just seen one and helped move the other, back in the day. I looked closer. It was a stool and an insect, both made by my friend Anne Hart. The insect did not sell that day and it now sits on my front steps. Her name was not in the article; I wonder if her work would have sold better if it was.

 

                When I was in grad school in Boston, I had a job at a Jewish bakery in Newton, Massachusetts, where we lived. It was a small place—served coffee to commuters in the morning, bagels and cream cheese to the high school students from down the street at lunch, and loaves of rye and challah to the Jewish mothers who came in during the day. I started in September, right before Rosh Hashanah. Women called all day, ordering bread for the holidays.  “I want three round challies,” they would say, “two plain and one raisin.”  “Challie?” I asked one of the people I worked with. “Challah,” they explained.  All righty, I thought. Challie.

                When I moved to Portland, I called the loaf “challie.” “Challah,” my west coast Jewish roommate corrected me. No pet names here.  Last night, I made a rather huge braided challah with fig paste rolled in for a potluck. My friend Leah, from Brookline—right next door to Newton—reached for a piece. “I want some of the challie,” she smiled.  

 

Equinox Earth

 

Every six weeks, I pull on Tarot Card, asking for guidance in the coming time.

 Last night, it was the Equinox, the day and night when light balances and the world pauses before shifting into the dark time of the year. We had gone for a walk out at the wildlife refuge, stopping to look at the hazy sunlight in the dusty ferns and oak trees and gathering acorns.  When we came home, I made pesto from our basil plants and cooked corn from the market. After dinner, while Mark did the dishes, I started  a small fire in the back garden and held the cards.

For these moments, I use an old deck. It was once Mary Jane’s—the older woman all of the Ceres bakers consulted for readings. She introduced us to the Mother Peace deck, round, with images of women in power for her readings, preferring the ambiguity of a circle to the clarity of upright and reversed. This was an old deck she handed  on to my friend Cheryl, who gave it to me when I drove across country for three months. It lived in the Ark for years coming inside when we bought the house. I have put it down to rest once or twice, but I keep coming back. The edges are frayed, the colors subdued, the silk wrapping cloth in tatters.  

It was just twilight. The kittens were still out, stalking each other around the garden beds, rustling in the leaves. The chickens chatted for a bit as they settled in. In the distance, muted traffic and college students shouting at one another.  But, close at home, wind in trees and creatures settling down. The fire shot sparks into the sky and swirled around the chimney pot. The light from the kitchen reached as far as the outdoor table, but not to the back.  Sitting cross legged on the ground, I held the cards: what will help me in the coming weeks?

The Ace of Pentacles replied, “How is your spiritual treasure dispensing wisdom?”  Is it? I wondered.  Pentacles are about material abundance—maybe all of the fruit we have brought in for the winter? Maybe a successful grapefruit sale?  It didn’t seem like good response, so I waited and looked further in my two books.  Sitting in front of the fire, watching it swirl, feeling the warmth on my face and stomach, the ground beneath me, the answer came. Pentacles are also Earth cards. Return to the Earth.  Return to the earth again, I thought. I can do that.

Cycles of Life

 

                                We moved the bed inside this afternoon, after spending one thunderstorm under Mark’s plastic sheeting—it was loud! We stayed dry and it was very cool, but the season is changing and we have to move in reluctantly. I am already dreaming of how to build an outdoor bed platform that would protect us further into the season. This evening, we will move the chicken coop onto the garden beds. One of the young chickens I indicating a desire to lay an egg and I don’t want to play hide and seek the egg with another flock of hens.  And I spent four hours yesterday roasting tomatoes for the winter and then running the half pint jars through the steam canner.  Seasonal cycles.

                We are working our way through another cycle of life—the young pets. For seven years, the chicken flock has been stable. We brought on three chicks one spring—a Rhode Island Red, and Americana, and an Austrolorp.  It was a really pretty mix—red, black, and gold. They got along pretty well in general, but somewhere early in the game they all decided that the coop was not the place to lay their eggs. One hopped the fence every day, deposited her egg in a nest right on the other side, and wandered the back alley until someone tossed her back over. Another liked the old bee hive I tipped on its side and lined with straw, the other searched out spots all over and kept the eggs hiden until there were over a dozen. When we brought on our three new chicks, I worried about them picking up bad habits. But, before the two flocks mingled, two of our old ladies died and the last stopped laying—until today, when I found her egg in the bee hive nest box. First in four months! I am hoping to head this behavior off early but putting the coop on the garden beds and limiting their range before they learn about free range nesting.  We shall see.

                We also have kittens, about four months old. Our fluffy orange beastie, Kayli, died back in late March, after long and happy life in and out of the back yard. We took some time off and brought the kittens home a couple of weeks ago, before school started, so that we could have time to adjust to one another before I went back to work. For a couple of weeks, they rumpused about the house, ignoring us.  Then we opened the back door so that they could explore the backyard. Mark was worried—“How are we going to keep them on the farm once they have seen Gay Paris?” he asked. Whenever one crossed a boundary—climbed the tree and hopped on the roof, for example—he muttered “Gay Paris…” But it has gone pretty well. They prefer keeping each other in sight, sleeping on the couch in the sun, and eating far more kitten kibble than I thought possible. They do not come when I call yet but they do come to the rattle of the food jar.  They too, as slowly developing their spots, rituals, and personalities as well as acknowledging our existence beyond the hand that feeds them. It will take a long while for them to become fully part of the household, talking back and coming when called, sleeping on laps and, hopefully, bringing down the rodent population a bit in the backyard.

                The days are shorter. The rains are coming. The squirrels have hauled away every hazelnut from the tree and buried them all over the neighborhood.  School is back in session. Tonight, we will go watch the full moon rise. And, before we leave, I will chop up all of the cherry tomatoes in my basket into the crockpot to cook down for sauce for the winter.

End of a Season

 

 

A

h, when to the heart of man

   Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

   To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

   Of a love or a season?

 

            Robert Frost was thinking about November when he wrote this poem, but, really, it fits perfectly into the end of August as well. Going back to school, moving inside, losing the long light of July—it’s all hard on the psyche.  Monday was my last day without school work so I decide to embrace the day.  We woke up a little after six and spent a few minutes gazing at the light  and the clouds moving across the dawn sky. The blankets and ground were damp, but we were buried under the blankets. The chickens had just been let out by their automatic door and the rabbit was contemplating the sunrise from the hutch. Mark got up, opened his door, and Mr B hopped out to graze. I could hear my neighbor greeting his granddaughter and laughing. Inside, the kittens were thrilled to see us—ants had found their food. We cleaned that up, moated their dish, and ate breakfast.

            After I finished the house chores, I gathered my backpack and notebook and headed down to Finley. On the west, over the coast range, ocean mist was pushing through. On the East, there was haze from fires across the Cascades. The road felt like it was right in the middle of the two elemental forces—which would win in the valley? The refuge was empty—Monday morning, right before school starts? All of town is empty. I was not surprised. I climbed the hill to the new pavilion, looked out over the valley, and headed back into the woods. The pool that holds newts in spring was dry. The trails are dusty. But it is quiet, and still, and a beautiful walk. After the last ice storm, so many thin oaks came down that they opened up the forest floor. I looked at what was coming back in the understory (a lot of blackberry, native and not, and Indian Plum). I  stopped to admire the meadow where we heard a huge swarm of bees last spring, peered through the trees at the beaver dam, and took about two hours for the entire loop.  My mind cleared as I walked.

            I came home, had a good lunch, read from a while, wrote a brief bit of testimony for the state on transit funding, and met with people to discuss Ward Five issues in the park, talking until the bats came out. The sky was clear—neither smoky or foggy. Maybe things balanced out in the high sky.  

I love the rhythm of these summer days when I barely go inside.  I do love my work; I love cozy nights by our fireplace; eating winter squash and greens rather than zucchini for dinner every night.  But, right now, my heart clings to summer.

 

The Walking Stick

 

                Mark and I went backpacking on Monday night, heading south on the PCT near Diamond Peak. It is a remarkably empty section

of trail, considering it’s location (2hours from Eugene) and the fact that you do not need a permit to hike there.  There are some thru-hikers moving fast but that’s it. We were heading down the road to the trail head when a pretty chatty hiker caught up with us.

                “I love you walking stick,” she said to me.

                “Thanks, I’ve had it…” I paused.  “Forty years. It’s covered a lot of ground.”

 

                Noel made it for me on one of our first backpacks in the White Mountains. It’s just a stick, peeled, with a hole drilled through the top—done in camp one night with his swiss army knife—and a loop of cord drawn through. The cord was bound with dental floss (yes, he had dental floss in the tool bag) but that broke about 20 years in and it’s now just knotted together. The stick has a bit of a curve which means it works excellently with the left hand and a bit less so with the right, but it is the perfect height and weight. It quickly proved it value when I did not fall into a couple of streams during crossings and it helped haul my heavy pack up some pretty steep inclines. hmpshire

                We have covered thousands of miles together. It came north to Mt Katadin and the end of the AT; it clambered  over some huge rock piles in Northern New Hampshire; I brought it to the Grand Canyon with me twice;   it’s done hundreds of day trips to mountain lakes; we circumnavigated Mt Rainer, the Three Sisters, and Three Fingered Jack together.  If I have my backpack, I have my stick. It lives in the Ark, just behind the seats, nestled into the crack between seat and carpet.

  I almost lost it, once. We were on the last day at Mt Rainer and there had been a bad stream flooding incident that blocked the five miles of trail to the park entrance where the Ark was waiting.  We headed down the road—full afternoon sun, lots of tourists in cars—because…what else could we do. After half an hour, an off duty parks ranger pulled over and offered us a ride. We gratefully climbed into the back seat and rode downhill. When he dropped us off, we forgot our walking sticks (Mark’s is a rake handle) .  As soon as we got home, I called. “We’ll see what we can do,” the woman at the desk promised, “But I don’t know…” Six weeks later, a long thin package was on our doorstep. Both sticks, with “Do not throw out” written in black marker.

It’s in all of my backpacking  photos. It is either laying beside my pack, waiting patiently, or I am leaning on it, arching my back  bit to shift the weight and direct the breeze. And, aside from the black marker, it still looks pretty good.

Potlucks as a Political Act

 

                I am a messy cook. I know—this is no surprise to anyone who has worked in a kitchen with me and seen my apron at the end of a shift, but it has persisted well beyond my catering days.  

When I was six, my mother set me in front of a pile of potatoes that she wanted peeled for dinner. (Never mind asking why you need to peel potatoes that are about to be mashed….there it was.) She demonstrated with the peeler, dropping all of the scraps neatly onto the paper towel in front of her. “Get the eyes, too,” she instructed, digging out the sprouts. Then she turned her back, trusting me to get on with the job. I did. Potato peels went everywhere but on the paper towel. And I missed a bunch of eyes. She sighed. To her credit, she set me on potatoes—and many other kitchen tasks—for years, teaching me essential life skills, like cleaning up after yourself. But she never could figure out how I made such a mess with simple tasks.

                This afternoon, I have been making food for friends. We are hosting our monthly potluck this evening. It’s clear, warm and sunny, with a light breeze. I have trimmed back bushes, cleaned the house, and made a batch of tabouli with lemon juice and parsley, bulked out with tomatoes and cucumbers from the back yard.  And I have a container of blueberries that are crying out to be turned into a pie. It’s summer. The eating is easy. Bonnie Raitt is singing her way through her collection of hits, moving me back in time to other warm afternoons in kitchens. I love this time of year.

                I’ve been reading Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny lately; I prefer the graphic edition. He talks, very seriously, about how to spot encroaching authoritarianism and what people have done, in the past to resist, both in philosophical and practical terms. I try and apply it to my own life.  Do Not Obey in Advance. Be as Courageous as You can.  Beware of Paramilitaries. All pretty clear.  And then he says—Make Eye Contact and Small Talk, a skill I learned from my father, who knew everyone. A web of loose connections will catch you when you fall.

But I think he left out one—feed people. Eat together. Gather around tables and share a meal. When you want a meeting to go well, bring cookies. When people are stressed, feed them.  Breaking bread—literally, especially—brings people together into a community. And we need that community, now more than ever. So I am cheerfully making a mess—or two—this afternoon, which I will clean up before people gather around my table to eat, and talk, and be together, again and again and again.

Sleeping Outside

 

                On the third hot night of the year, Mark and I move outside. (It takes that long for him to give in; if it were up to me, I’d be out in mid-June…) We haul the bed from the back of the ark and settle it, on a tarp, near the greenhouse where a hefty block of wood creates a headboard.  I find three light blankets for layering purposes and then the Big Blanket—which a very stiff, very large, cheap comforter that Mark bought 30 years ago---covers it all. By morning, we will be under all of them. At the same time, I bring out a lamp for the table so that we can see to read while we wait for the sea breeze to cool off the night.

                Over the years we have been woken up by a couple of joyful, hairless dogs on a neighborhood romp, delighted to find people out to pat them at 4 AM; showers that came on quickly; a young possum wandering across our feet; and our cat, who was also delighted to have people outside in the night.  We’ve heard many rustles but have never been disturbed by rodents or raccoons. We’ve had owls in the big trees occasionally.  People walk by in the alley or on the street, but, because of the buildings, they can’t see us—I used to hang a sheet on the line to protect us from the back alley but everything is so thick back there now I don’t need to.

                It’s a beautiful way to spend the summer nights. We can watch the stars and satellites before we fall asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night to a garden bathed in brilliant moonlight. In the early morning, the sky is so blue and my house so yellow that I am stunned in wakefulness.  

                Every summer, I dream about creating some sort of lift for the bed so that we do not stress the grass underneath us when we stay out for long periods of time. A futon frame would be great—and I could find one easily. Maybe I could build little frame around it to hold curtains like a tent? That would be cool.  But then I think, where would I put it all winter? I’ve considered using plywood and old picnic benches (which we retired to basement shelves because they would not hold our company safely…) but they are not big enough, or sturdy enough. Cinder blocks? Maybe…if I found a couple of pieces of plywood being thrown out somewhere….I will keep my eye out.  Until then, what we have is lovely.

Free Camping

 

                When my parents bought their camper and hit the road in 1970, they quickly established a camping rhythm. We would spend several nights in low cost or free sites, like rest areas, and then swing into a fancy campground to empty the septic system, fill up with water, and do laundry.  My mother was a sucker for significant campgrounds; our favorite was on the edge of the Badlands, looking back over the landscape.  When I took the Ark across the country thirty years ago, I followed the same system—I had a KOA campground pass and map—and quickly developed a knack for finding cheap camping through close readings of the map, coming into civilization once or twice a week for the amenities.

 It became a game.  Driving back to New England for a wedding with my friend Sherrie, we didn’t intend to sleep free every night. But….one night up a back road into National Forest land…the next at a rest area in Death Valley….a third at a fisherman’s camp…and then, it was over. No paid camping heading East. We made it, so, no paid camping on the way West. It was more challenging because the Ark was full of furniture. I spent one night in the ditch of a gravel road across from Little America; the last morning, we woke up to the sprinklers on the lawn of the city park in Hood River. Roaming the American West, sleeping free in the back of a van, waking up at dawn to move on down the road to the nearest small café for breakfast—it’s a classic story.

When Mark joined me on camping adventures, he bought into the story early on. We traveled out to Eastern Oregon on Memorial Day weekend, camping for free on the gravel roads around Paulina Crater. He explored the lava tube caves.  I cooked him a real dinner on the camp stove in the van. He was smitten.  We traveled this way for several years, sleeping in the parking lot of Mt Rainer one crowded summer weekend, at trail heads to get an early start on a hike, and in fisherman’s camps. Then something happened and he decided that this was NOT OK.  He refused to camp anywhere that was not an official campground. It was not legal. He did not want to be woken up by the police and hassled.  Our camping world shrunk.

                Last weekend, we went out to the Klamath area, a huge, marshy lake surrounded by rugged dry mountains. It’s beautiful but not a popular tourist destination—too far from Portland. Too chilly, then too hot. We wandered around the logging museum at the Collier State Park, rode on a model train designed to carry people around a track through the scrub brush, and watched for pelicans on the lake. One night, we stayed in a Forest Service campground that was ten dollars a night and a third empty  on Friday night—unheard of closer to the Cascades! The next night, we ran late in finding a space and pulled into a fisherman’s camp (also known as the parking lot for a boat launch that has a few tables and an outhouse) around eight. It was free.  We watched the wind whip up froth off of the lake and ate dinner in the front of the van. There was one other group camping at the other end of the lot.  Another car pulled in after dark.  It was dark. It was quiet. It was free. I felt at home.

 

Brain Rot Summer

 

It’s summer. And, if my stress levels after a quick perusal of email this morning are any indication, not a moment too soon. My patience is shot.

On Sunday, The New York Times had an article on the merits of just letting kids “rot” over the summer, rather than scheduling them for camps, lessons, and constant enrichment. The fear—they might just do…nothing.  Hang out. Stare into space—or on their phones. Mess around. Be bored. It sounded like most of my summers growing up. My cousins and I spent long hours balancing on inner tubes in the lake, toughening up our feet to walk across the spiky gravel in the driveway, tying willow branches together to make “houses” and begging my father to jump the wake of our old wooden speedboat he had purchased with my grandfather. I also spent hours reading, wandering the woods, watering my small garden, and imagining whole worlds.  Days talking just to the dog. My mother and my aunt had a running game of Rummy; the loser had to buy the winner a drink when they went out for the weekly shopping on Friday night. Sometimes, they took one of us along. Usually, they did not. It was clearly a Brain Rot type of summer. I loved it.

For the past seven or eight years, I have used the summer as time to learn everything I need to know to make good decisions on council this winter. It is a slow time for council—we shut down for a couple of weeks and, because staff is gone on vacations, the work load is light. I volunteer. I talk with people. I observe and organize meetings in the park. I read about economic inequality and homelessness.  I also stay pretty close to home; we had an elderly cat that I was reluctant to leave for more than overnight and it has grown more difficult to camp and hike in the Cascades, between permit systems and wildfires.  It has always felt like a good use of my summertime.

This summer, I am rethinking that plan. I am on my last nerve more often than I should be. The chaos at the federal level, the fiasco and its aftermath on council, and AI cheating at school have all worn me down. If I want to make it through next winter, something has to shift. This is my plan:

1.       Schedule all of the volunteering and meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, leaving long swaths of time open for Brain Rot and long walks.

2.       Potlucks. More sharing of food. Every fourth Saturday—except in June, when it will be the fourth Friday.  

3.       More camping in the Ark—two or three night outings, plus an overnight or two at a trail head. I am laying the dates out today.

4.       Hiking and walking. The most restorative thing I can do is a long quiet walk and sitting in the sun, staring a trees or rocks.

5.       Kittens. Soon, but not yet.

6.       Read.

7.       Can jam and pickles. We are getting low!

This is where others can help:

Send an early adolescent my way to house sit-- it's just checking that the chicks haven't kicked over their water.

1.       Come to dinner! Eat pie. J

2.       Join me on walks! We can ban all political conversation.

3.       Share the harvest.

4.       Post happy photos. I don’t want to be a bliss ninny, but a constant barrage of political chaos does not help anyone.

5.       Work locally for change. It is the first place you can make a difference. More people need to take up the work.

We are all in this world for the long haul. We have to learn to balance inner and outer selves.

 

 

 

Bee Lights in the Evening

 

It’s been warm this weekend—about 90 degrees in the mid afternoon and no sea breeze clearing the air on Friday evening. It’s ok—I watered all of the gardens on Friday afternoon and we completed our outdoor work before one today, so I can sit in the shade and read. All of the chickens are panting softly or standing in water. The rabbit is tucked up somewhere under the artichoke where he has dug down to cool ground. We even have some ice ahead for drinks.

When summer comes, we move outside and evenings are the best. We’ve hung solar powered lights in the shape of bees on the garden arch and they glow late into the night.  After we have finished dinner, dishes, and putting every beast to bed, we head out to the Bee Lights with our sleepytime tea and books. The lights are not bright enough to read by, but we have small book lights that clip onto a paperback or notebook, glow with blue, yellow, or soft white light, and can be adjusted to point at the text.  I found one for Mark a couple of years ago so that he could read better when we were camping and it worked so well I ordered one for myself. The hold a charge for days and charge quickly. They are perfect.

And so, we settle into the night, cool air breezing in from the ocean through a gap in the Coast range, rustles all around us in the brush (Probably rats….), books in hand. The moon rises over my left shoulder. It is half way to full and casts enough light to create a shadow. The air is warm and  my shoulders to drop. We can hear cars and frat boys in the distance, but neither is loud enough to disturb the night. We will read until our eyes are tired, and then, head inside to bed. Summer is here.

Irrigation

 

                For the last three weeks, I have been having irrigation part dreams. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night to images of fine soaker hoses, plastic parts that allow sprinklers on stiff tubing, and tangles of garden hose, worrying about the mess. It’s not for our backyard garden; that system took about ten minutes worth of work to become functional this month, when I did the first test run before laying down mulch. It’s the school garden that has been haunting my three AM moments.

                When I inherited the garden back during the pandemic, the three sheds were full of stuff that we did not need. There were boxes of third grade garden curriculum. There was an entire outdoor kitchen with three washing sinks. There was an oversized potting table or two, buried in blackberries. There were old seeds. There were more shovels than any garden could use, but just one pitchfork.  And there were three different styles of irrigation systems with all of the parts. I’ve been slowly finding homes for all of this excess stuff. Last week, I sorted through the weird irrigation parts and put the full bin by the shed. Two emails later, it was claimed by another school garden.

This spring, the Green Club had just enough money to invest in six raised beds- -wood and soil. The plan is to reign in the amount of garden in annual crops that need water, and expand the drought tolerant flower and herb beds, as well as berry and tree fruit crops. Lower maintenance. More beauty.  Better snacks. After we built and placed the beds, we planted and it got warm and dry, quickly. We needed water.

                Last fall, we pulled the entire system from the beds so that we could do a heavy leaf mulch and rework the spaces. I’d set the system  up three years ago from parts left behind by the past garden keepers, added  automatic timers, and been able to walk away from the garden for several weeks at a time. Here in the dry summers, weeds don’t really grow unless they have water, so a focused system is excellent weed control. But it leaked and extended into beds that did not need the moisture.

                 Setting up the irrigation system is a fiddly, one or two person task, especially if you are trying to reuse as much of the old system as possible. It involves laying out the heavy tubing, finding the pieces that will fill in the gaps and trying not to cut the few remaining long sections. It also (should, but does not always) involve an inspection of the tubes, because one was clipped by the lawn mower last year.  This also involves finding the ends— one to attach to the faucet or hose and one to block the water from flowing out of the end of the tube. There are now four rows of beds, so  this happened four times

Once the tubes were laid, I had to find all of the T pieces with the knobs to turn the water on and off for each bed—two per bed—and shove it all together. This is best done on a hot dry afternoon when the plastic is warm and flexible.  I spent several hours alone on a quiet afternoon, working on this task.  Once the heavy lines are laid down, I had help and we attached all of the tape lines into the beds, pushing them onto the knobs and then holding it all together with hose clamps. Instead of leaving the tapes twice as long as the beds (the old practice) I cut them all down to size. Then, we turned the water on, bed by bed. Geysers. I marked each problem with a piece of painted rebar and went back to class  for the day. It’s hard to fix a wet system.

Saturday afternoon, I went over to finish the job. All of the hard work was done. It was time to fix the punctures. I replaced some nicked, leaky, tubing with NEW tubing first.  I found a hose for each row of beds, the two manual timers from the far back corner of a shed, and two splitters so that everything was attached to the spigots in the garden. Then I worked on the tapes in the beds, replacing one row’s problems, then starting the water for that space and moving on. It was cool and quiet. Slowly, the garden went from a dry space to one quietly whispering that all is well. The plants are getting water.