No, Thursday's Out....

 Along the Columbia River, where US Route 97 crosses Interstate 84, lies the “unincorporated community” of Biggs Junction, Oregon, population 5. Biggs is a truck stop at the junction of two major routes (N-S, Yakima to Bend and beyond; E-W, Salt Lake City to Portland).  It boasts gas stations with fried chicken, and an old, low-slung motel. Other than the motel family, the workers of Biggs must live somewhere nearby – maybe 5 miles down the old Oregon Trail Highway in Rufus (pop. 258), or 20 miles west in The Dalles (pop. 15,711).   Biggs is the nearest settlement to where Rick fishes, at the mouth of the Deschutes River. We make runs there to Dinty’s Market, a convenience store augmented with fishing gear and a tremendous ice cream counter.  I’ve patronized Dinty’s since when it was festooned with signs (signs you could purchase for your own home or camper!) threatening to deploy My Dog, My Gun, and My Wife against intruders. The signs are gone, but there are still ...

My friends took me to the Museum of Illusions, in Seattle, and it was both cool and slightly sickening. The (well-curated) illusions start off with textbook classics, like: Oh Look, These Two Lines Are the Same Length, Amazing! They move on to mirror stuff and color stuff, and then they start to spin, and it gets more intense. By the time we left, we were a bit weak in the knees and the lobby floor, which had been  stable when we arrived, was rolling, gently. So I woke up at 2 am thinking, “For a grandly-named Museum of Illusions, those were just OPTICAL illusions, or Optical that set off Vestibular. Are there illusions for the other senses? Are there taste, touch, smell, sound illusions? Or are those called hallucinations?”  And I noodled on that thought for a while, because why sleep when you can ponder in the dark? And then I moved to: Are there illusions that aren’t sensory at all? I vote Yes, as exemplified by the common illusion “Other people have it together.”   ...

We hired a guy to install a handrail on our stairs back in February, and ... long story, but it is now July, and the project is not done, and the guy had nearly stopped returning my texts or calls. But I got ahold of him yesterday, finally, and when I asked him when he might get to our project, he said, "Can I be honest with you?" He is abandoning the project, which I think is for the best. I was VERY GRUMPY about it yesterday, but today I'm finding it funny because "Can I be honest with you?" is SUCH a dumb question. It belongs in that list of Things You Shouldn't Say, next to "Don't hate me for saying this, but...." and all its friends. Also, I'm laughing (wryly) because I'm remembering an even better home improvement failure/great line. My friend hired a guy to extend the heating system to a side room of her house that had no heat. Came the cold months, that room still would not warm up. So she looked into the crawl space, and there ...

In December, I volunteered for an Alzheimer’s study at OHSU, where they are gathering data on aging, both in people with no diagnosis (yet, haha), and in those who have been diagnosed with dementia. All participants are over 65. A bunch of my friends volunteered too. The study involves baseline tests in ten areas – verbal, memory, visual, spatial, organizational, and daily-life financial, bureaucratic, attention, and problem-solving skills.   Participants are tested once, then a week later, and then a year after that. If you did better after a week, will you also do better after a year? If you did worse, will you do worse yet, a year later? The comparison is only to one’s age mates. So I might decline in some ability, but if most of my age mates suffer that same decline, my score will stay the same. I could start the year being better than 57% of 68-year-olds, and if we all slip in parallel, then we all do worse than before, but I can STILL be better than 57% of 69-year-olds!...

Steve Bannon began serving his sentence for contempt today, said contempt being his failure to show up when summoned by Congress.   In my ongoing quest to enjoy every small win, I'm savoring this tidbit of justice. (I broke open a nonalcholic G&T in a can  in celebration, and I'm here to tell you - it's awful. But I didn't know that when I bought it, and now I do. So there's that!*) I've never envied Steve Bannon anything, but after reading this BREAKING NEWS short, I began to wonder if my supporters would show up for me, waving flags and ringing cowbells, should I have to go to prison.  I don't want to appear needy and greedy, nor to impugn my friends' devotion, but I'm not sure they'd do it. And I really don't think it's asking too much.  Just please bear this in mind, should the occasion arise.  * "That" in this case is just new information - now I know to avoid at least one brand of canned, nonalchoholic, G&T. You mi...

Today wasn’t ot or humid in Portland, and all the flowers were glowing, that perfect, overcast-June day. I missed my late friend Mary, a Midwest transplant, who used to complain whenever we had cool and cloudy days during what she thought should be summer. She would have complained, and I would have rolled my eyes.  Today was gorgeous. On my unambitious neighborhood stroll, I saw a tree that “IS CLIMATE ACTION.”   I know that, because it said so. It’s the tree-owner’s version of those “IN THIS HOUSE WE…” yard signs! Congratulations!Your t ree is doing what trees do, and in your house, you’re doing what decent folk do. These are not accomplishments that must be announced, or bragged about. (But then again, thanks for being decent in your house, and thank YOU for your contribution, little tree.) Things are reminding me of things a lot just now, like the climate action tree and the IN THIS HOUSE WE yard signs. Loose-association brain always happens when I haven’t had enough s...

School goes a few more weeks, but today was our last day for my volunteer reading gig for SMART. We always end before school does, probably because classroom activities peak at the end of the year.  My reader was a kindergartner we'll call Olympia (not her name, but it works). Olympia was a nice human, but she didn't particularly care about reading. She did have a lively inerest in art, which meant she noticed telling details in picture books. (She strongly objected to books without pictures, would sometimes pick one because of an intriguing cover, and then put it back, annoyed.) Mainly she liked to talk about colors, and to keep a straight face while detailing her unlikely escapades, for instance, riding bears. This is a picture of me waving excitedly to greet her as she comes into the room each week. As you can see, she favors dresses with large skirts. She's a twirler. And this is us reading together. Both drawings were on her Thank You card to me at our final session to...