Stress List....sometimes it is helpful to just lay it all out!

 

It’s been kind of a stressful week, so far….partly, it is the change of seasons, knowing that I have to move inside soon, back to a classroom, out of a garden and trails. But, this year, it feels bigger, like I am carrying so much more.  And it is hard to see what I can impact and what I need to let go.

1.       Climate Change. Even in the middle of pandemic, climate change is still happening. In April, emissions decreased by 17%, but it will not stay there—probably has already climbed back up. This is a huge threat to our lives and our planet.

2.       The elections. If they are close, especially, I am very worried about a national crisis. I’ve never been worried about the sanctity of the vote before, but I am this year.

3.       Systemic racism and violence, exacerbated by #2.

4.       Pandemic:

a.       OSU students returning, bringing more cases of the virus to my neighborhood. Constituents are afraid for their health and lives.

b.      Campgrounds are packed, as are other gathering places. We are not practicing social distancing, as a society.

c.       The economic fallout from this pandemic, which will impact both school and the city budgets. I get to make difficult choices in the next two years.

d.      This winter. We have made some adaptations because it is sunny and warm out. Stone Soup eats on the porch. What happens when winter comes? What happens to the homeless then?

5.       School starting.

a.       Online, which is so not my style.  School works because we bump into each other all the times. Online, we do not.

b.      Health concerns—mine and my students and colleagues. My eyes were giving out in the spring, when many students were not working hard and we were not required to be online 80 minutes at a stretch.

c.       No schedule yet. Although school is starting very soon, I do not know what I am teaching or when. I have five distinct preps that I teach- -which ones this year? Which semester? I would not care, but see point 5.a….

d.      All of the issues around school…. Access, equity, engagement…..they have not gone away. And I don’t think there is enough bandwidth on the planet for us all to be online at the same time.

6.       Fire season is about to begin. I saw lots of people with campfires in the wilderness a few weeks ago.

7.       Loss of community input because of changes at the city level. I am getting the fishy eye from people who are concerned that their voices will not be heard.

8.       Rogue councilor, because the concerns of my ward are unique in the city. We worry way more about some things—OSU, Climate Change—and less about others.

I know that I am healthy, I have a job that is stable and provides health insurance, that I can go outside and be in the woods in 20 minutes if I need to, that there is a community that surrounds me. I am lucky. But I am also deeply concerned about the health and welfare of that community, looking towards the future.

 

August

    

 I believe we all love the time around when we were born the best…it resonates deeply in our bodies. This is what the world should look like. For me, that time is late August, the time when the light shifts down in the sky and the end of summer is near. There’s a beauty in the aching sadness of ripe fruit, dry grass, and golden light tinged by dust and distant fires that brings my life to a standstill every year. The cat and I sit in the back garden, moving with the sun, soaking up the light for the long grey winter ahead.  

Mark and I pressed apples yesterday, using our new press. I wandered the neighborhood with my picker, harvesting apples from several abandoned trees that lean over rental housing fences. It’s a good year; I can feel the trees breathe a sigh of relief when I remove the fruit and the branches can reach upward again. In half an hour, I had two laundry baskets full of fruit, including some of our own. It took a while to figure out the new system, as we did not have a pre-pressing chopper, so the first round of just quarter fruit went nowhere. After I realized that the food processer could chop quartered apples quickly, we made progress. Juice flowed from all of the cracks, gushing into the bowl below. After two and a half hours, there was fruit pulp everywhere and a full professional kitchen pasta pot of juice. 14 quarts! And still lots of fruit in the neighborhood!

The house is painted and the tool bucket is unpacked, brushes and sandpaper returned to the basement shelves. In early mornings, the house glows against the deep blue sky—yellow and green, with dark red gutters and storm windows. We also repaired windows, and posts, and cracks in the bathroom. I painted bookshelves and the bedroom trim…if the pandemic keeps me in all winter, I will take on the kitchen.  If you add in a closet clean-out, reorganization of a the shed, and a purge of the lost space behind the shed, the house is in much better shape than it was last winter. According to the salesperson at Miller paint, I am not the only one tackling home repair this summer.

Late August and early September are the most beautiful months in the high Cascades….I miss the solitude of mountains this summer, because the trails have been packed with people escaping tourists to their towns and looking for a safe place to be. We spent the night at Duffy lake last week—every site was taken in the middle of the week. We need to go further in if we want to find peace and quiet, or wait a few weeks until school begins again.

Meanwhile, the cat and I are sitting in the back yard in the morning, watching the hummingbirds dive around the flowers, the woodpecker check out the greenhouse—no bugs here!—and the light shine on the seedheads of lovage and mustard. Mr. Beezhold nibbles on the dried cherries on the ground. The chickens argue over who owns the nesting box. Late August.

 

Letter to OSU Trustees on school reopening

 

Dear trustees of Oregon State University,

 

I am addressing you today because of my deep concerns around OSU reopening in the fall for in person instruction.  As the City Councilor for Ward Five, which has the highest proportion of Oregon State students in the city, I was gathering signatures for my re-election campaign.  I talked with many of my constituents. The common concern—OSU students returning in the fall. What is the plan to keep us safe? How will we monitor and control for the virus and its spread?  What is the community testing schedule?  Is OSU coming back? Why?

We live in the heart of the student community, north of campus. We observe OSU student behavior every day. Many are very respectful, serious, focused, working hard, wearing a mask when they cannot maintain social distancing—ideal members of the community during a pandemic. However, others are not. We have regularly seen groups of students gathered in backyards, drinking, playing beer pong, lighting off fireworks, mingling and talking loudly, without masks, without social distancing.  We have seen large groups of students hanging out in front of townhouses, as if the entire block of five bedroom apartments was one quarantine pod. We have raised these concerns with Steve Clark and Benton County Health, and the response has been “Students live in congregate housing. That’s what you are seeing.” It is not. We know who are neighbors are—we know there is considerable mixing of households happening throughout the ward.  We also know that, because of the design of the infill “student” housing, many students are living five—or more—to a unit. We cannot monitor behavior in private homes and backyards and we should not.  It is nearly impossible to control the spread of a virus in these conditions.

Nothing has really changed about the pandemic since we closed schools in March. The county now has a plan for where to store the dead, if we have a spike in severe cases. We have some regulations in place that allow businesses to hobble along for the time being. But, we do not have a cure or a vaccine. We do not fully understand how the virus is spread, how long antibodies last—if they do—and how to test the entire community regularly. We do know that the virus load will go up in the winter, as people move inside with the coming of the rains. We also know that the virus load will rise much more dramatically if we add ten thousand new people, from around the state and the country, to the community mix.

Schools across the country are weighing their options and making the very hard choice to go online this fall. I understand the difficulty of that choice. As a high school English teacher, I would give up many things—eating out on Friday nights for ever—to be able to work with my students face to face this fall. I would much rather be speaking to you directly right now.  I have experienced the difficulties of working with struggling students online. I have seen many a meeting fall apart because of a failure of technology. I deeply believe the most meaningful teaching and learning occurs face to face, when you can build relationships through daily proximity. However, I am not willing to put the lives of our elders, the long term economic success of our small businesses, and the real education of our children—all of our children—at risk for the short term financial  and educational gains of a few.

Please make the right choice for the health of us all and cancel in person instruction for the fall term and longer, if needed.

 

Sincerely,

Charlyn Ellis

Corvallis City Councilor, Ward Five

Corvallis High School English teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary's Peak

Last week, we climbed Mary’s Peak, our local mountain—Connor’s Camp to the rock garden, then down via the Tie trail, if you want to know the route. We do it every summer, about this time, usually clutching a botany book or two. This year, we left the books behind, so we are only greeting old friends along the way: the phantom orchid right before the trail really begins, the senicio triagularis on the corner of a turn, the monkey flowers in the seep that tumble down through the woods so that you pass their relatives several times along the route. We paced ourselves up the hill, admiring the huge gallery forest of trees and the glimpses of the valley below. There were no other people on the trail; it was so quiet.

There is an old rotting Douglas Fir beside the path. It fell in a storm and the Forest Service cut it so that it no longer blocked the trail. You can see inside, watch the wood slowly decay, leaving only the roots of the branches behind, because that wood is the strongest of all. Looking in, it is a dragon’s maw of teeth, circling down the trunk, lit from the other end. Riverteeth, David James Duncan called them—what is left of your memory when all of the details are gone, the emotional core of the experience.  What are our Riverteeth? What is left behind, as we grow old?

As I climb the mountain, Mark falls behind to examine a flower. He is, always, a stop and start hiker, his eye and mind pulled to and fro by the natural world. How does that bent branch happen? Is that the same penstemon as the one I just passed?  Why is the rock changing here?  I am a steady state hiker, letting my mind wander, but my feet keep going. My stride matches the rhythm of my mind and heart. I remember the riverteeth forming below, the roots upthrust from a tree blown down, and consider my own roots… and how the pandemic reveals our emotional roots and our core selves.

Steady up, nodding to the familiar flowers, roots, and rocks that mark our trail. Steady. We emerge into sunlight, bright blue sky, fields and open space, skirt the meadow, and join the old road to the top, passing the rock garden’s deep red Indian Paintbrush, Blue Gilia, and Oregon Sunshine, the late blooms, as we circle upwards. At the top, we pause, eat our lunch, and name the mountains. Is that Hood? Ranier?! Yes. A line of cloud marks the ocean. We are rooted. Perhaps this trail has become a Rivertooth, ingrained in our spirits, a yearly ritual of return.  

Pandemic Potato Harvest

Last January, I ordered seed potatoes from Johnny’s, because they have the best price and selection; I have deep suspicions that other companies don’t want to mess with the home grower trade any longer, when it comes to potatoes. All Blue and Yukon Gold were on the purchase rotation this year. Usually, they arrive in early April, which is a little late for me because I like to raise them with as little water as possible, so I plant in mid-March.  I deal.

This year, I planted my saved seed potatoes on time and prepped the other bed, and waited. No potato box. And waited.  No box. The weather was perfect for potato planting.  And waited. “It’s the pandemic,” I thought. “They are behind.” Finally, I emailed. We had a bad potato year, they told me. First a freeze, then the pandemic. We don’t have your potatoes. This is Bad News for an Irish potato eater!  It was mid-April.  It was too late to order from anyone else—and they were not the only company in potato crisis—so I dug into the last sad, small All Blue potatoes in my basement storage. Wrinkled. Sprouted. Small—the rejects of a winter’s rummaging in the bag for the right sizes for that dinner. Oh well, I thought, let’s toss them in. Can’t hurt. They filled about two thirds of a bed. I added a couple of extra tomato plants to fill it, allowed a volunteer pumpkin to grow on one side, and let it grow.

The vines never grew huge, unlike the other bed of potatoes, planted back in March. They died back early, too. I did not have high hopes, but I let them be. Today, I looked at the bed, at the fall starts sitting on the potting bench, waiting for the potatoes to come out so they could have a home, and decided it was time. I pulled back the straw mulch and started digging. Several small hills were cleared out and then I hit a Big potato. Not bad, I thought. More Big potatoes, mixed in with the usual small and medium sized tubers. I tossed them into the waiting paper bag, which filled up quickly.  When I was done, I carried them inside to the scale. Eighteen pounds. Not the best All Blue harvest—we’ve gone up to about 40 pounds on new seed stock—but not too shabby, either.  And knowing that you never get them all, there might be a few surprises underneath the fall crops that I planted out afterwards.

 

The Heroic Journey: Painting the House

We have embarked upon the Heroic Journey of Painting The House.

 

1.       The Call: Bubbling paint. Cracked windows.  Weird brown seeping through some paint—is that water damage? It is time.

2.       Gathering of Allies:  The pandemic. After all, what else do I have to do? I am not going anywhere, so I may as well do something useful. I bought the paint in March.

3.       Guardian of the Threshold:  Should I hire help? In the past, I have hired a high school student to help out. They needed to be reliable, reasonably tidy, trustworthy over my head with a can of paint, and entertaining. No one wants to be caught on a hot wall with a kid talking about a video game.  But, with the pandemic, it seemed dicey to try and hire someone, so we are on our own.

4.       Road of Trials:  Where to start?

a.       The Very Wet Wood by the bathroom window required the replacement of four boards.

b.      The cracked windows have been both difficult to remove—why is the glazing so tight around broken panes and so loose around solid ones, every time?—and replace, as we clearly cannot measure correctly.

c.       Dead caulking everywhere. I have pulled out long pieces of dead caulk above the windows and under some clapboards.

5.       The Gift: Going wall by wall to completion. I started on the front wall behind the grape vines in early April, so that was completed before the vines grew out. Having an area done and back in order was so gratifying that I decided to use that plan all along. I pull part a wall, trim back the plants, wash, scrape, glaze and caulk, paint, and reassemble. It glows. Then I admire for a day and move on. The mess is contained, too.

6.       Transformation: Will come, with a house that, once again, glows like a nasturtium in November.

7.        Return with Glory: House done. Time to move onto the shed. Or maybe the rental windows? And the process begin again….

 

The Fourth of July

When I was young, I loved the Fourth of July. My uncle, aunt, and four cousins lived on Sunset Lake in what was a essentially a summer cabin, and, every summer, my parents parked the camper in their driveway and my mother and I settled in. My dad came up on weekends. Between my father, uncle, and grandfather, they scraped together enough money to buy an old wooden motorboat, which they docked beside the metal rowboat I would take into the swamp early in the morning. It was heaven.

The Fourth began the night before, with the bonfire in Kingston Commons.  Every year, they built a pyre out of old railroad ties, mounted a car on top, and set it on fire. As a small child, the sight of the flames reflected in the revolutionary era houses that line the common terrified me, but I came to love the event. There was a carnival, with rides and games, nearby, and, as we grew older, our parents would let us roam free, as long as we showed up at the bonfire spot on time. Nine, eight, and seven, we reveled in the independence.  We stayed up late to watch the car fall in a shower of sparks and cheers, then piled into my aunt’s station wagon for the ride home. The youngest fell asleep. My aunt and mother belted out popular tunes: “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “The Green Berets” were popular.

On the Fourth itself, we swam (nothing new there), begged my father to take the boat out and steer it in tight, fast circles so that we leapt the waves of the wake and screamed “Do it again!” over and over, and ate macaroni salad and grilled hotdogs for dinner.  The radio played tinny songs all afternoon—“In the summertime, when the weather is fine, we go swimming or go fishin all the time.” After dinner, we pulled rough sweatshirts over sunburned shoulders, and went back to the carnival for the fireworks.  Everyone sighed after each burst of color in the sky…a unified delight.

When I grew older, I read the Declaration of Independence to my mother as she made the potato salad, considered what I knew of history, and how many of the references I understood. Growing up in New England, I caught most of them and explained them to my mother, as a trapped audience.  My mother and aunt still sang together, although they preferred “I am Woman” and “United we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we will be together, you and I” with dramatic arm motions.

So I am dismayed, now, that I really dread the Fourth of July. It’s not that I understand more about our complex history and the slow, painful struggle that many have endured in their own search for freedom and independence in our country. It is not that I no longer believe in the words of the Declaration—I do.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” ring as true now – if you replace men with people-- as they did over 200 years ago. It is not that we are so fractured as a country that we no longer even sigh in unified wonder as each firework bursts overhead in a public display.

The Fourth of July has become one more reason to drink, bellow, light off more fireworks every year, turning our neighborhoods into “war zones” for hours, terrorizing dogs and vets with PTSD, along with the rest of the populace, in the name of patriotism. We have lost our reverence for our history, for the founding of the country we all claim to love, for our neighbors. Somehow, we have to bring that back.