Today was the big celebration for the new "Orange Line" which is the latest Portland light rail line. On top of this that same new train crosses the "People's Bridge" - Tillikim. We rode our bikes with the first cyclists to cross this pedestrian, rail, bus and bicycle only bridge. It was so lovely and quiet!
Masses of humanity rode the trains all day. We crammed into trains later to see the route. What an experience to see thousands of people come out to celebrate a project which had received huge opposition while it was in the planning stages. My thought: naysayers to public transit are a loud minority. The majority was out partying on a sunny Portland late summer day, appreciating our city and the leaders who have vision.
Thank you to all who were part of bringing us the orange line. It is 4 blocks from my new home, so exciting!
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Gravenstien Apple Pancakes
Knowing where to get free windfall Gravenstien apples is my specialty. There is an amazing little saved orchard in Tacoma, not far from where the PGA Golf tounament was this summer. I don't do golf, but gleaning fruit will make me more excited than any game. It is a kind of game, to see how much food I can harvest that would otherwise rot lonely on the ground.
Recipe for pancakes:
1 med sized Gravenstien, red or green, slightly ripe, peeled and cut into small pieces
1/3 c. fresh Gravenstien applesauce
1/2 cup yogurt
water to consistency
1 1/2 c Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour
1/3 c minced dates
2 tablespoons oil
3 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Mexican cinnamon
Mix the egg yolks and the oil, add the yogurt and dates. Mix salt, baking powder and cinnamon to flour, and add to the main batter with water to create the right consistency for pouring. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter with a spatula, keeping the mixture light and bubbly with a soft touch.
Cook over medium on a lightly oiled pan, sprinkle a few apples onto the pancake after you pour it.
Caution!
Use only real butter and real maple syrup when eating them warm off the stove.
My love to you in the season of gleaning and harvest.
Recipe for pancakes:
1 med sized Gravenstien, red or green, slightly ripe, peeled and cut into small pieces
1/3 c. fresh Gravenstien applesauce
1/2 cup yogurt
water to consistency
1 1/2 c Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour
1/3 c minced dates
2 tablespoons oil
3 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Mexican cinnamon
Mix the egg yolks and the oil, add the yogurt and dates. Mix salt, baking powder and cinnamon to flour, and add to the main batter with water to create the right consistency for pouring. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter with a spatula, keeping the mixture light and bubbly with a soft touch.
Cook over medium on a lightly oiled pan, sprinkle a few apples onto the pancake after you pour it.
Caution!
Use only real butter and real maple syrup when eating them warm off the stove.
My love to you in the season of gleaning and harvest.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Looking Back
I started this blog 5 years ago this month, July. July is the month of my tragedy. It is the month of the big family reunion, the fireworks, the heat and the light.... and the center of summer.
I started to write about things in the title - yoga, food and love - yet instead I believe I've wandered a great deal. It is an exercise, this writing for the public, ( all 10 of you....:). It is not like keeping a journal in the sense of just writing whatever, which is why I have written so few entries in the past 6 months. It takes clarity of thought, a time set aside, nothing pressing me with obligation. John Lennon best captured the dilemma of the writer/artist :
"I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping - Still my guitar gently weeps."
It is a challenge to ignore that dirty floor for the frivolous pursuit of writing just because.
I look back on my 5 years of offerings both wistfully and critically. It is a review of a specific time frame in my life. I am continually amazed that when I read old work I feel like I am reading something by another woman. She is a person I remember well, yet one who I no longer resemble in quite distinct ways.
When I was a child and the adults asked me what I wanted to "be" when I grew up, I wish I had known. I wish I had known that we reinvent ourselves every day and that "being" is fluid, evolving, sidetracking and relatively unpredictable.
I will continue this blog, with thanks to google and you, dear reader, who venture to share my wanderings. One day it will be an archive.
"Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection,
The lovers the dreamers
and me."
I started to write about things in the title - yoga, food and love - yet instead I believe I've wandered a great deal. It is an exercise, this writing for the public, ( all 10 of you....:). It is not like keeping a journal in the sense of just writing whatever, which is why I have written so few entries in the past 6 months. It takes clarity of thought, a time set aside, nothing pressing me with obligation. John Lennon best captured the dilemma of the writer/artist :
"I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping - Still my guitar gently weeps."
It is a challenge to ignore that dirty floor for the frivolous pursuit of writing just because.
I look back on my 5 years of offerings both wistfully and critically. It is a review of a specific time frame in my life. I am continually amazed that when I read old work I feel like I am reading something by another woman. She is a person I remember well, yet one who I no longer resemble in quite distinct ways.
When I was a child and the adults asked me what I wanted to "be" when I grew up, I wish I had known. I wish I had known that we reinvent ourselves every day and that "being" is fluid, evolving, sidetracking and relatively unpredictable.
I will continue this blog, with thanks to google and you, dear reader, who venture to share my wanderings. One day it will be an archive.
"Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection,
The lovers the dreamers
and me."
Friday, July 10, 2015
Rat - Ratero
Besieged this week, by invaders, me in my little home in the city.
Country girl, I leave my windows open because it is 95 degrees outside, and I opted out of an Air Conditioning system to be energy conscious.
A ratereo, (perfect Spanish word for "thief") entered my home while I was spending the July 4 holiday with my family up on Chehalem Mountain. I returned home to an open door, swinging in the hot breeze. I live on the Springwater Trail which attracts many homeless people. I refuse to believe it was a purely homeless person. I think it was a drug addicted, heartless thief well practiced.
My cabinets and drawers were ransacked, my little outdated Microsoft Notebook and speakers gone. That small bit represented four years of photos and my method for playing music when I care for my grand daughter so we can dance. She calls it "moosic". Today when I began to sing she asked for moosic. I tried to explain that is was gone, and that soon I hope to find it again.
I had thought my outward presentation to the world was of a person with nothing to steal, a person with a simple life.
They took my cheap but essentially useful watches, earrings that are worth nothing, my wooden beaded peace bracelet... if you see someone on the street with that, you might think of me.
My passport and social security card are in the hands of this/these cretins. I have gone about the business of reporting and changing numbers. There is nothing to use, and I suspect it will mostly end up in the garbage somewhere I will never find it.
I spent this week trying a Zen attitude. I tried to forgive, and to move on. I have a good life, and I know it is better than the life of the heartless cretin thief who left the contents of my underwear drawer strewn across my bedroom. The person who by-passed my Dali Lama mantra :
"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain -
May I, too, abide, to dispel the misery of the world."
then mercilessly dumped out my bags and files but, expediently, left my bicycle.
That and the photos of my baby grand daughter along with the obvious fact of simple furniture, sparse and well used makes me wonder how a person can do this. Ah, what do I know? Maybe it is exciting to be cold and angry, merciless, even as you steal ice cream from my freezer to cool you on a hot night.
My week progresses and by Thursday evening I have a neighbor come to my door to ask if I would like to help in the project to paint our intersection in the style of City Repair, to slow traffic, build community and give the neighborhood cohesiveness. Cosmically, her name is "Angel". This makes me think of my Mom, who always recited the angel prayer before we went on a trip, even a little drive to the store. Despite icky slimey rateros, there are also Angels in this realm. This is the dichotomy of existence in a complicated world. Divine Mother sends me an Angel, after the heartless people world has sent a ratero.
Later in the week, as I enjoyed a quiet dinner in the fresh evening air, a rat walked through my yard, plain as day. It has been rummaging through my compost. I go the next day to buy a trap. During my babysitting day with my nieta, the rat found its way to my trap.
On this Friday evening I buried the intruding rat with ceremony, as I bury my fears and uncertainties that humans are a crummy lot who mimick the most dirty of animals, the worst of whom are very rich and live a life infinitely far removed from my modest home and little fenced yard. I read again the mantra of The Dalai Lama, and vow, even as I secure my windows and doors, to not be closed of heart.
Country girl, I leave my windows open because it is 95 degrees outside, and I opted out of an Air Conditioning system to be energy conscious.
A ratereo, (perfect Spanish word for "thief") entered my home while I was spending the July 4 holiday with my family up on Chehalem Mountain. I returned home to an open door, swinging in the hot breeze. I live on the Springwater Trail which attracts many homeless people. I refuse to believe it was a purely homeless person. I think it was a drug addicted, heartless thief well practiced.
My cabinets and drawers were ransacked, my little outdated Microsoft Notebook and speakers gone. That small bit represented four years of photos and my method for playing music when I care for my grand daughter so we can dance. She calls it "moosic". Today when I began to sing she asked for moosic. I tried to explain that is was gone, and that soon I hope to find it again.
I had thought my outward presentation to the world was of a person with nothing to steal, a person with a simple life.
They took my cheap but essentially useful watches, earrings that are worth nothing, my wooden beaded peace bracelet... if you see someone on the street with that, you might think of me.
My passport and social security card are in the hands of this/these cretins. I have gone about the business of reporting and changing numbers. There is nothing to use, and I suspect it will mostly end up in the garbage somewhere I will never find it.
I spent this week trying a Zen attitude. I tried to forgive, and to move on. I have a good life, and I know it is better than the life of the heartless cretin thief who left the contents of my underwear drawer strewn across my bedroom. The person who by-passed my Dali Lama mantra :
"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain -
May I, too, abide, to dispel the misery of the world."
then mercilessly dumped out my bags and files but, expediently, left my bicycle.
That and the photos of my baby grand daughter along with the obvious fact of simple furniture, sparse and well used makes me wonder how a person can do this. Ah, what do I know? Maybe it is exciting to be cold and angry, merciless, even as you steal ice cream from my freezer to cool you on a hot night.
My week progresses and by Thursday evening I have a neighbor come to my door to ask if I would like to help in the project to paint our intersection in the style of City Repair, to slow traffic, build community and give the neighborhood cohesiveness. Cosmically, her name is "Angel". This makes me think of my Mom, who always recited the angel prayer before we went on a trip, even a little drive to the store. Despite icky slimey rateros, there are also Angels in this realm. This is the dichotomy of existence in a complicated world. Divine Mother sends me an Angel, after the heartless people world has sent a ratero.
Later in the week, as I enjoyed a quiet dinner in the fresh evening air, a rat walked through my yard, plain as day. It has been rummaging through my compost. I go the next day to buy a trap. During my babysitting day with my nieta, the rat found its way to my trap.
On this Friday evening I buried the intruding rat with ceremony, as I bury my fears and uncertainties that humans are a crummy lot who mimick the most dirty of animals, the worst of whom are very rich and live a life infinitely far removed from my modest home and little fenced yard. I read again the mantra of The Dalai Lama, and vow, even as I secure my windows and doors, to not be closed of heart.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Liberating Grama's Butterflies
She kept them in a little box, with saved postcards
and flower decals from the 1920's
neatly pressed butterflies, encased in a plastic sleeve -
Much to the opposite of her cluttered, musty house.
I found them in my father's stuff.
Her dutiful son who couldn't throw her things away,
so they were interred in a box, on a shelf, which
slowly becomes buried by the next box
Until there are no more shelves.
Then begin to fill the corners of the room, the floor,
Until, like James Bond movies of the shrinking room
the walls seem to close in slowly, ready to crush the person
inside.
I slipped the butterflies from their plastic,
careful to keep them intact.
I think I could hear them start to breath
I set them on a little bush,
where they absorbed sunshine
newly beautiful to the world.
She kept them in a little box, with saved postcards
and flower decals from the 1920's
neatly pressed butterflies, encased in a plastic sleeve -
Much to the opposite of her cluttered, musty house.
I found them in my father's stuff.
Her dutiful son who couldn't throw her things away,
so they were interred in a box, on a shelf, which
slowly becomes buried by the next box
Until there are no more shelves.
Then begin to fill the corners of the room, the floor,
Until, like James Bond movies of the shrinking room
the walls seem to close in slowly, ready to crush the person
inside.
I slipped the butterflies from their plastic,
careful to keep them intact.
I think I could hear them start to breath
I set them on a little bush,
where they absorbed sunshine
newly beautiful to the world.
Monday, April 27, 2015
James' Birthday
If you were born in 1954, on this April day, the 27th
and you had lived past 35 years
today you might have a cake with 61 candles
celebrating with Kaitlyn
your little grand daughter
She would be
the apple of your eye,
she would be your best little friend
who you (secretly) knew was smarter than any other toddler
and the cutest.
Since you will never meet her here
on the physical plane
I take her to the big trees and we touch the old bark
one tree
I call "Big Jim"
The cosmic grampa tree
She is always a little quiet when we
approach the Big Jim Doug Fir
She listens to the stories I tell
and
When we go to the bath tub in her parent's room
we pass the photo, when you were 35
Always 35
While grammy gets gray hair
Dear Grampa Jimmy, who we miss
Happy Birthday.
and you had lived past 35 years
today you might have a cake with 61 candles
celebrating with Kaitlyn
your little grand daughter
She would be
the apple of your eye,
she would be your best little friend
who you (secretly) knew was smarter than any other toddler
and the cutest.
Since you will never meet her here
on the physical plane
I take her to the big trees and we touch the old bark
one tree
I call "Big Jim"
The cosmic grampa tree
She is always a little quiet when we
approach the Big Jim Doug Fir
She listens to the stories I tell
and
When we go to the bath tub in her parent's room
we pass the photo, when you were 35
Always 35
While grammy gets gray hair
Dear Grampa Jimmy, who we miss
Happy Birthday.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
why people write
"Half the reason people "write" is so they can have a reason to tell everyone not to bother them."
me - 7-26-95
me - 7-26-95
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)