Errol Creek

Today I joined 8 other volunteers to plant in the marshy areas of Errol Creek. This nearby park contains a magic spring which  emerges from the side of a hill to run down and join the larger flow of Johnson Creek.

I planted 20 red ossier dogwood "live stakes" which will root on the edges of the pond, and 45 plugs of Sedge grass. Other volunteers were planting the same or removing garbage.
I can't wait to come and watch the dog woods leaf out next spring.

Happy holidays to our watershed community.

Election Day 2018 Prayer

Monica Blackdog, who are you?
To me, you are a name on a voter list.
A name to which I write a letter.  Please-
  please vote

I think of the "black dog of depression" - but your name must be
much older than that analogy.
Maybe your name is
 a powerful spirit animal, a protector.

I imagine you, a Souix, or Blackfoot,
about my age, 60's, an extended family that relies on you.
I wonder what Anaconda, MT is like.
I wonder what your life is.
I hope you accept my humble plea,
hand written paragraph about my grandmother and voting rights for women.

We, maybe both grandmothers.

Accept my humble plea.

Being Mary Poppins

Halloween 2018 is fun because I have 2 little girls to take trick or treating, my nietas. The neighbor girls, Esme her and baby sister go with us. The two Dads follow along, watching their girls make memories.

While getting ready, Kaitlyn , 4, asks me what I am dressing up as. She and her sister have very dramatic black and purple witch costumes. I, who have never bought a costume, have nothing particular in the closet. I don't buy pre-made costumes not because it wouldn't be fun, it just wasn't how I learned this dressing up skill when I was a kid. Not because I wouldn't have liked cool, beautiful princess ball gowns but because it wasn't in the family budget.

After dinner we dress, and the girls decide I should wear a little pink hat with a rose on it. I throw on 'the raspberry coat" named for it's color - a mid length velvet coat, very fetching. My winter boots come out of the closet for the first time since last spring. It looks like it might rain, so I bring along my wood handled blue-green umbrella. As a last effort I don a little purple cape from the dress up basket.

We gather in the street with our neighbors, there is the admiring of costumes. Kaitlyn and Adlelyn are witches, Esme is a female comic super hero, little baby Izzie has a warm pink and blue unicorn suit. They look at me and I say," I'm not sure what I am, maybe super Grammy."

Six year old Esme says, "You look like Mary Poppins!"

That felt like the sweetest thing anyone had said to me in some time. After a long day of child care, house work, trying to get dinner into everyone before trick or treating, making sure the kids had naps, etc, I thought being Mary Poppins was a wonderful notion. All I needed, maybe, was "a spoonful of sugar."

The kids proceeded to gather a boat load of candy. Little 2 year old Adelyn keeping up with the older girls. I got to watch my own kid watch his kids enjoy this quite old fashioned tradition, going to strangers doors and knocking confidently.

So another Halloween has come and gone, the leaves fly about in the windy wind. I write this on All Souls Day, or Day of the Dead, if one were in Mexico. I cut some marigolds and bring them in to grace my kitchen. The flowers of remembrance. To all those who have gone on to the other plane, I remember you today as I harvest the last of my summer beans.

Eight Days A Week

I just finished watching Ron Howard's incomparable film, "Eight Days A Week". By the time I'd reached the very final credits which had a voice over of the Four Beatles doing a little note to the fans at the end of 1963, I could do nothing but burst into tears.

Do you remember Beatle bubble gum trading cards? My girl friends and I played with them in  1965-66. There was Beatle magazine, which we were mad for. I was 10 in 1966. I recall telling someone that 10 was the best year, that I loved being 10 years old. Part of that had to do with the Beatles. We were deeply infatuated for Paul and john were our first loves.

As I watched the fpour grow up in the film footage so artfully interspersed with interviews of some of my favorite people who also loved them, I felt keenly again my own youth as well. In those years we were all so young, and we loved love. Idealism was taking hold in a visceral way for me. I was forming myself in relation to the world.

The movie never went further than their last rooftop concert in  London, before they disbanded as a group. How wise of Ron Howard, how terribly, sadly wise. For what happened later to John and George is a sickening commentary on mass culture and the collateral damage of fame. 

But, back to my tears, for my first loves, for the guys who refused to play to a segregated audience in the 1965 American South. To the guys who grew their hair and gave a generation of men the invitation to break out. To the young men who smiled with such authentic good will and treated their fans with courtesy and easy humor. 

My gut reactions to the film - still teary eyed. Not sure what to do next. Not sure where that love and art has gone, not recognizing the world I thought it was when I was 10.

Walking Meditation

Late May this year is giving us warm days with that soft moderating touch of Marine air. Sitting inside to meditate makes less sense than going to the Springwater Trail to walk and clear my mind.

The small shortcut trail is becoming obscured by wild clematis and blackberry vines trying to reach in even after I performed some snipping a month or more ago. 

The sides of the ravine explode in blackberry and clematis, not the pretty garden kind. I let me mind release judgement about that condition as my first practice. Then I begin noticing. 
I see a mile post sullied by graffiti stickers. I bend closer to determine that I can remove them with my fingernail. Yes! I am able to remove 2, leaving the marker looking again as it should. I decide this is part of my practice.

Then as if In reward I see a group of school kids, about 5th grade, down at the creek with little nets. They are studying bugs. Another group is removing shiny geranium invasive weed. I have pulled that weed here myself. It is very satisfying to see the difference. I am so happy these kids got out of the classroom today.

The springs bloom out of the hillside here and there. One of them was my grandmother's which we revered immensely as children. How absolutely rich to have one's own fresh water spring, cold and clear bubbling magically from the earth. 

Further along the trail I walk behind 2 young girls and one young adult woman accompanying them to the restrooms. One girl has dark curly hair and dark skin, the other has red hair and fair skin. The woman is yet another hue, not white. This makes me happy. They are having an easy conversation, a carefree saunter on a warm morning. I talk a bit to them at the restroom. The woman is a college student at PSU majoring in environmental studies. She is there volunteering to help with this elementary school field trip. 

One little girl asks her if people live here, where the picnic tables surround the restrooms. The woman says no. The girl points to a cart with blankets and a pillow stowed under a table. Explaining the homeless  situation to children is very weird. It reminds me of a walk downtown one day with my 4 year old grand daughter. She saw a tent set up in the middle of the sidewalk on a main street right there in our beloved "Downtown" which were we refer to from the Petula Clark song. Kaitlyn asks what it is, and I tell her it is a tent. I brace myself for the next question, but thankfully she hasn't gotten to that point yet. I wonder what I will say. 

I reach the busy intersection, where a bridge crosses Johnson Creek.  Right below the bridge still lies the big, clunky and now obsolete computer modem dumped there a few days ago. I use my practice to try not to be angry. Thankfully, there are hundreds of volunteers who show up for the Johnson Creek Watershed Clean-up every summer. I attended last year and found it astoundingly informative, as well as gratifying.

There is a huge peach colored rose bush visible on the edge of smaller Errol Creek around the corner. I wish I had a clippers, I would love a few of those blooms. Bushes left from the gardens of the homes which have been removed to restore the wetland.

I make a loop and begin the return home. Along the way I am able to remove 3 more stickers from signs on the trail. One said "There's no government like no government." Seemingly placed there by someone who certainly takes advantage of a beautiful trail which exists because of our government. It is stuck on too hard for my fingernails to do much, but I manage to remove the word like. Now it reads , "There's no government, no government."
I am pleased with the irony. 

The Way a Peony Opens

Watching the little round balls of peony bud
Just that slight glimpse of color between the green coverings
fuschia color mine..

 Today -  it began the slow burst.
The petals ruffling just a hint out of the tightly balled bud
The flower will slowly become 5 times the size of it's home
 voluptuous in it's excess - wet, feathery, fragile, short lived
heavy
hanging on it's stem wondering.
We watch for the bees to become enamored.

The way a peony Opens.

1962 - My Family Gets a Television

Our first TV was a living room grade console style.  I remember feeling grown-up because I could sound out the name 'Magnivox'  on the lower right hand corner, gold letters over the brown/gold weave of the speaker covering, like on the old radios. The whole thing was encased in dark stained wood, perched on little splayed legs which rested there on our gray wool living room carpet.

I was 6 when we finally got the thing that it seemed to me everyone else already had. It took a while for my Dad to make the move into this future, the likes of which none of us could know.  For the first few years it stayed in the living room until we all decided it should go downstairs in the play room. Probably after my brother read 1984 in High School, and we knew that this thing should never become the bad kind of 'big brother' controlling our house more than we could control it.

Before our own set I had gone to my friend's home to watch the 3 Stooges, Red Skelton, Bugs Bunny cartoons, Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room. I relished my afternoons at the Dickenson's, released from the oppressive tedium of Catholic elementary school. I loved the comedy, and I remember we laughed so much, in between shows or playing at applying DeAnn's Mom's red lipstick, or collecting pop bottles to take to the corner store to buy candy. That Rocky Road, unbelievable.

In these years my parents were preoccupied, over worked, over whelmed with their mission to produce and support as many little Catholics as "God chose to give us". That meant God chose to have me changing diapers as soon as my little hands could work a safety pin.

So, the TV. I digress. The really early memory of what we saw on the Magnivox was John Kennedy's Funeral procession. The hymn played was a dirge which made me sob at 7 years old. Even when I hear it now I choke up. The blow to us was like a sucker punch. He had kids my age. He was so young, handsome, articulate. Even as a little kid I could see that. We had met him in person when he was campaigning in 1960. He stopped into the Salem fairgrounds, which was 5 blocks away from our house. Our neighbor's sister worked in his press corps so our group got introduced. My mom shook his hand and he commented on her "lovely children".

Our sadness at his death had no words.

So when, on February 9, 1964, the Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I had a teen aged sister who was hip enough to know when that would be so that we were all sitting in that little living room watching history, well our hearts began to heal.  We thought, especially the girls, that we would explode with happiness. It wasn't until years later that I realized this was my 8th birthday. What a day, what a gift! Four smart, handsome, funny, talented young men with adorable accents singing us love songs and dance music. They were sent from heaven.

Fifty Four years later I can still feel the eight year old shy kid who saw the world begin to open up on the TV screen. I can still feel the sadness of loosing a man we loved, like a member of our family. I can still remember that sense of being so full of excitement at seeing rock music played by young guys so darling that I understood why all those girls were screaming. It wasn't for love, it was for letting go. It was for the enormity of the future opening up to mystery, and then it was still so full of promise.