No, Thursday's Out....

We had one of those FedEx struggles, where they didn’t come last Friday, as they said they would, but didn’t admit defeat until about 5 pm.  I spent the day in the front room, reading a book, (but sitting where I could see anyone coming up the front steps), and that’s a nice day, I know. But I would have liked to run a few errands. Then they said it would be delivered Monday, so of course I came home Saturday to find another “We Missed You!” sticker on the door. Sigh. Rick and I had begun speculating, grumpily, that perhaps FedEx pays as much for attempts as for successful deliveries. That would explain why it sometimes seems drivers must have snuck silently up to our door, affixed a “We Missed You!” sticker, and driven away. But I have now done my homework (Googling), and discovered that when other people ask this same question, they get highly conflicting answers like:   No, no, the drivers are paid hourly; No, no, the drivers get ten times as much for a delivery as for ...

I walked around the farmer's market today buying food and flowers from the stands that had no customers, dropping a few bucks in musician tip jars, feeling all Lady Bountiful for spending my custom keeping folks afloat. Then on my way to my car, a man stopped me and asked for a flower.    My hands were full, I was determinedly Off to My Many Next Things on a busy day - a COVID shot, a funeral, a rehearsal and a concert - and gave him an “Are You KIDDING??” reaction, as if he had asked me to go on a date.  He pivoted quickly to pathos, saying, “My dad died!” I figured he was making that up. Then I was mad at myself for being so ungracious.  He got his flower, but it was a complete Lady Bountiful fail. I marched off, and was unexpectedly visited by the stray comforting thought: Oh, well, Jesus got crabby too.  Let me just say, I do not regularly compare myself to Jesus. Also, I know that “Jesus got crabby” is not the approved lesson to take eve...

I've been home almost two weeks.  It's funny to see the things I keep thinking about. *MY FAVORITE LINES from the painting workshop: 1)       (The teacher, describing the rules of still life) - Everything has a light side and a dark side. (Beat.) Just like people. 2)       (A student describing past teachers whose admonitions were unhelpful) – He said, “Just paint what you see!” Then he looked at my painting and he said, “See faster! See better!”   3) This exchange:          Painting student A:   I don’t like arugula.      Painting student B:   You like arugula. A:   I don’t. B:   You’re a lesbian. You live on Vashon Island. You like arugula. (Actually, both A and B were lesbians. Maybe you had to be there. It brought the house down.) *LINES THAT BOMBED: We ate every lunch and dinner together, family style. It became a joke that I had a tendency to ...

One of the women in my Italian painting workshop was an architect. She would turn out crisp streetscapes in no time, while I gazed in admiration and envy. I assumed the drafting skills she’d learned as an architect were helping her, but she said she was struggling, because Everything Was Crooked, and All the Steps Were Uneven. She said, “I want to fix it.” Everything WAS crooked. She was right. Crooked, narrow, and unpredictable. If you turned into a tiny, unfamiliar passageway, you didn’t know whether it would intersect with another, or just end at someone’s front door. Here's the Via Nicotera, in Antonimina. Even in real life, as a space, it doesn't quite make sense - the archway looks too small, but then turns out to be reasonable when you get to it. I don't know what the porthole is about, but I love that it's there.  I learned a lot on the workshop. I could have learned more, or concentrated on improving a particular skill, but there were too many options and I...

It’s not a great article, but the HEADLINE for the article about an upcoming play at Portland Center Stage - “ Directing Dracula Takes Guts ” - has been making me smile for days. I realize it’s not perfect – directing Dracula ought to take something like bloody-mindedness, or even (if one wasn't afraid even to pronounce it) sangfroid, right? Or maybe STAGING Dracula. But regardless, I still liked it. Willamette Week has always had good headline-crafters. In other cheerful doings, I took a very long one-day drive in a big loop from Fulton Canyon (on the Columbia) up through Wasco, Cottonwood Canyon, Condon, Fossil and Spray (aren't those great names), and all the way to the Blue Basin trail in the John Day National Monument.  (As my friend Julie observed of the Grand Canyon, "it defeats the camera." Blue Basin is like that.) Then I circled back via Mitchell, where Tiger Town Brewing had good beer and excellent pub food. Part of the good news was that it was absolutel...

Scene: Alternate universe/timeline (dreamscape, natch) wherein Oregon has undergone a terrible Floridification.  Teachers are no longer permitted to teach Sex Ed. However, in an odd loophole, students can teach Sex Ed, so long as they say all the forbidden words backwards. Thus: YAG-YAS-T'-NOD! I am a high school senior, assigned to teach the 9 to 11 year olds.  It's my first class. I  don't want to get extremely graphic, but I believe it behooves me, as a caring teacher, to give them a heads up about Y-TRE-BUP, which is barreling their way. I am struggling to craft my lesson, because of the backwards rule, when it occurs to me that if I say I am teaching them under the laws of our county, HAM-ON-T-LUM, it might clue them in to what the terms are that I'm saying backward! I wake myself up laughing. HAM-ON-T-LUM!! Sounds like a foodie sandwich! I'm blaming the New York Times Games section for this problem. I've gotten in too deep lately. Gonna take a vacation.

I am going on a painting retreat to Italy soon - no excuse, as the teacher lives on Vashon Island, and I could have taken a class from her in Bremerton, but I wanted to go AWAY, as apparently many of us do in these lesser-pandemic days. The organizers set up a group thread on WhatsApp, and invited all of the participants to join. I think there are about twelve of us. Anyway, last week I found a fortune in my studio (I had a stack of them, and now there are three, just another one of life's mysteries), and it seemed to me to be making a nice "perspective" joke about travel and art. I took this evocative shot of it, complete with paint smudges, and sent it to the group.  I got a few ha-has, and a thumbs up, and a response from one person with "Who are you and why did you send me this, and stop now!"  One of the organizers wrote back to her and explained.  I'm looking forward to meeting her, and all the others.