No, Thursday's Out....

A couple of weekends ago, I donated blood at the Red Cross, the first time since the pandemic. (One pal says we need an acronym for this: TFTSTP. I think FTS will do: First Time Since. We know the rest.) I was donating in memory of a dear friend who died a year ago. Her fierce and lovely daughter had organized a blood drive in her late mom’s honor, down in San Diego, where the family lives. I’d seen the announcement of the San Diego drive, and thought it was too bad I couldn’t participate. Then my own wonderful daughter wrote back to the friend’s daughter: Great Idea, I will donate from HERE (my daughter being in England). At which point I thought: DUH. Donate from HERE! It was Good Friday, and Holy Week is a singing marathon for my choir. I had an antic thought:   giving blood on Good Friday should be a thing! Being a liberal, non-toxic religious person (I identify as LN-TRP) is a bit … I don’t know, challenging? It’s like being a non-violent Portland Timbers fan, back in the da...

Everything is wrong with this shirt. To begin with, it’s a crime against design, where they used whatever font size they needed to plump out the line. It makes it seem the altos are booming away, when really both the word “altos” and the phrase “it was us” are just low on letters. Also, tenors are rare and precious creatures, but writing “tenor,” singular, is overdramatizing the scarcity issue. And sopranos are not snitches, and basses are sexy, brilliant, and possessed of highly-developed senses of humor. All these stereotypes are SO unfair. And as everyone knows, the different sections need each other, in order to make beautiful music. Not to mention that the entire premise is flawed. No director has ever said, “There was a MISTAKE!”   Please. Have these t-shirt people no experience in singing groups? Directors say, with whatever subtle overtones are necessary to express their underlying emotional state, “Let’s take it from the pickup to letter C, alto entrance.”  ...

 I don't know what you need  this FOR, but I trust you will think of something.

I’m starting a nine-hour Zoom class on Figure Drawing tomorrow– not because I like to draw, or because I want to become a master of figure drawing, but because my retirement goal is To Dabble, and I’ve never tried figure drawing before, and the class is being taught by someone whose work I love. Preparation for the class involved purchasing paper and pastels and two books, one on drawing and one on anatomy* for artists. I leafed through the anatomy book’s section on the skeleton, and started on the muscles, where I became entranced by the facial muscles. I couldn’t skim, even though I don’t think we are going to work on faces - I think it’s going to be all torsos and limbs. But the facial muscle section goes into wondrous detail about which muscles are tensed or relaxed in order to portray which emotions, and I found myself trying to exercise individual muscles as if I were doing isolation exercises. The levator labii superioris alaeque nasi , (the LLSAN, to its friends), for insta...

When we moved into our house, the neighborhood was rich in old people. There were the Amatos, and Mr. Purcelli, and Mr. Dodi, reminders that the neighborhood was once called Little Italy. There was taciturn Ray, with his ancient and weary black lab. They’d shuffle by every spring to harvest dandelion greens from our lawn – slightly embarrassing if you think a lawn shouldn’t be a dandelion farm, but Ray appreciated that we hadn’t used Weed ‘n Feed. There was Oz, with his far more cheerful hound, who insisted on coming in when I was heavily pregnant, so he could perform his never-fail “guess the sex of the baby” trick, using a ring on a string. (“It’s a girl,” he said, shaking his head.   “WHY are you shaking your head?!?!” I shrieked. He laughed. He’d gotten a rise out of me.) (It was a girl.) There were Mr. and Mrs. Hall, still in the huge house from which they had launched five kids, and Mrs. Russell, whose unmuffled, motorcycle-loving sons hadn’t launched, well into their f...

Pictured here, the Dean of our Cathedral, along with Cesar the No Drama Llama and Cesar's assistant, before we processed around the dentist's office with our palm fronds to celebrate Palm Sunday. Cesar is on the left. Why a llama? Group A answers: Why not a llama? Everything is a metaphor. Episcopalians. Climate change. God loves equids, camelids, arachnids, squids, you and your id, the whole menagerie. Donkeys are really expensive on Palm Sunday. Group B answers, aka “wrong”* answers: It is not for you to ask why a llama. Hush. If you question the llama, you can't come in.   *At least, wrong according to the Book of Common Prayer, where “an inquiring and discerning heart” is listed as a GOOD thing…. Answer C: The rumor mill says we had a donkey lined up, but it died, so Cesar kindly subbed in. If true, I am sad for those who loved the donkey, but glad that IF it was destined to keel over anyway, it didn't keel over right before or during...

It’s spring, it’s glorious, the air is thick with pollen, and I’ve spent most of the week in a drug-soaked haze (“extreme” allergy meds, Bridgerton, dopamine-stimulating word games, Moderna booster), having banal revelations, and weaving them into a long post – From Which You Will Now Be Spared!  You’re wecome! You needed to be similarly drugged to enjoy the rambling post, and I wouldn’t wish that on you.   Instead, here’s a highlight reel of Positive Things from the week, plucked without underlying theme or transition. Because I still think we need to make room for Positive Things whenever we can. SO –   mixing sublime and ridiculous…. A very sketchy outfit provided COVID testing in Oregon, except they didn’t really do the job. They left samples in garbage bags, they rarely reported results, and so forth. All reprehensible.   https://www.opb.org/article/2022/04/08/oregon-sues-covid-19-testing-company-that-allegedly-stored-samples-in-garbage-bags/ The Positive...