No, Thursday's Out....

Before joining the Emergency Naked Bike Ride last week, my youngish friend called her HR department, just to be sure there wasn’t some policy against such things, and she wasn’t putting her job at risk. The HR person told her she was free to participate, but they would appreciate it if she didn’t wear any merchandise sporting the organization’s name or logo. She said Okay, will do! That’s because she has amazing self-control, and could somehow resist the urge to explain what “naked” means. She wore a helmet, glasses, and a mask, and when she showed me a picture, I couldn’t have identified her. She said the Ride was great except for two things: 1) she didn’t enjoy the rooftop guys pointing guns at them as they went past the ICE building, and 2) she hurt one nipple, can’t imagine how. Didn't see that coming, did you? Me neither. I know the algorithm sends each of us crafted info, so maybe you aren’t getting deluged, as I am, with ADVICE about what to do, or not do, for the No Kings ...

We’ve had helicopters over Portland for ten nights, counting tonight. No, they are not news helicopters. And yes, they do not appear on Flight Tracker apps, which means (say those in the know) that they have their transponders turned off, which means they are military. I complained about the noise to the FAA, and got a case file number, but right away I was told (by those in the know) that the FAA has no control over the military. (Well, that came from someone ex-military and in-the-know; meanwhile, my lefty friend said the FAA does not work for America, so I was getting discouraged from both sides. I Googled the FAA in case I’d missed some privatization, and was greeted with “The FAA works for YOU, the American taxpayer.” Seemed a little overeager.) I made a note of how to complain to the Port of Portland (as if they were to blame, ha!) and how to complain to the National Guard (might work, said ex-military, if I wrote someone by name).   So noise complaints didn’t seem purpos...

On top of everything else going down, this week appears to be Peak Fruit Fly Season.  I can throw out all fruit, but that doesn’t get rid of the flies that are already here.   This happens every fall. It will pass.   I know fruit flies are harmless. And they make me smile sometimes, because of an interlude back in college. My pre-med pal was taking genetics, and one day, when I was felled by a sudden panic attack (first time, no idea what had hit me), she swept in to my dorm room. “How are YOU?” she asked, and from my fetal curl on the bed I said, “I’m really bad, I’m… terrified…” Unimpressed, she said, “Oh, YEAH? Well *I* just spent all afternoon in the fruit fly lab with Bill Rosenthal!” And then she shuddered from head to foot, and pretended to wipe her hands, because a) fruit flies and b) Bill. In the small handful of panic attacks I’ve had since then, I’ve learned that, like the fruit flies, they always pass. It’s a matter of time. But that day, her Oh, YEA...

Act I: We have some new neighbors, and they are young (but everyone is younger than we are) and delightful. On one side, we’ve got Mitchell, who moved in almost instantly after that house went on the market. We met him and a friend in the alley the next day, carrying stuff in the back door, and we introduced ourselves, and said Wow, that was FAST. Mitchell said Yes, his parents had bought the house for him, and paid cash, and now he had to pay them back, and he had no furniture and how was he going to buy any if he was paying them back? We offered some extra chairs, and a bed in the attic, and he said, Text me some pictures, and we did, and he said, Um… Thanks, but that stuff is not my style. From all of which I realized that Mitchell is an open book, and he was going to make me laugh. It’s a big house for one guy, but Mitchell has a strong friend group, both local and visiting, and he and his big, sweet dog are rarely alone. Also, he throws parties, and decorates to each party’s t...

In the olden days, before our sneaky-leaky dishwasher slowly ruined our kitchen floor from below , and we fell into the abyss of renovation, my pal came to visit. The guest room in her house is lovely, so I asked her to let me know if there were small things I could do to improve ours. As she was leaving, she said, Yes, two things would help: a charging station for phones, and a better reading light near the bed. And then, casually, she added, “And if you ever decide to upgrade your kitchen appliances, you could get a new microwave.” I gasped at her effrontery. Did I ASK about anything but the guest room? I did not. And what did she have against our blameless microwave?   She said it was huge, took up too much counter space, and it was twice as slow as anything on the market today. I retorted that, being retired, we have sixty seconds to spare.  The microwave is 40 years old. It was a gift from my sweet mother-in-law, intended to help us heat up bottles when our daughter wa...

Maybe everybody does this, not just people who once marinated in the Greatest Hits of English Literature. But I sure do it: I blurt out a line of verse that seems to fit my situation. (“Seems” is key, here.) I can’t necessarily place it, but it becomes my mantra, for a little while.   Working up to my 70 th birthday last week, I kept chanting to myself: Now of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again. I couldn’t recall the poem, but I thought I understood the math: the narrator, like me, was turning seventy – three score years and ten! And, as a person familiar with the Psalms, he knew that turning seventy meant he was in overtime. Psalm 90:10                   King James Version The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Howe...

In December, I got an email from an extremely distant cousin, a person who signs her messages with her full name, followed by “Esq.” (From this I understand that she is a lawyer. Which is likely the point.) I’d heard from her a handful of times in my life, innocent little hellos, though we’ve never met in person. The email began, “Happy holidays, card coming soon, but first, we have to talk about a cranberry bog.” She was writing to let me know that I owned* one twelfth of a small, dormant cranberry bog in Mashpee, Massachusetts. She guessed this might be news to me, and she was right! And it was darned exciting news - I was, in the space of a few sentences, thinking about hopping on a plane and going to visit My Bog! But the story continued. It turns out that I inherited* my bit o’ bog in 2013, when my dad died. He inherited* it back in 1988, when his mother died Without A Will. (Cue tense violin tremolo.) *The asterisks above are there because, to be honest, I am not really sur...