YOU MIGHT BE LIVING IN OREGON

 Or know someone who does. Personal observations are in bold. 

From my old Street Atlas program. The blue roads are freeways, the red lines state roads. There are some light blue county roads. Most of are either closed during the winter or posted be damn careful. A lot of maps don't show the logging/forest service roads. It can be easy to get lost during bad weather. 

THIS IS WHAT JEFF FOXWORTHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT ‘LIVING IN OREGON’…….


If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you live in Oregon.

If you’ve worn shorts, sandals and a parka at the same time, you live in Oregon.

If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Oregon.

If you measure distance in hours, you live in Oregon. (It's not so bad in the valley. However miles doesn't always compute to time. The roads to and along the coast are curvy. The roads east of the Cascades are straighter but there are a lot of miles between where you've been and where you want to be. And if you have a touchy bladder, you will also know where all the rest stops are. Note: it's eighty miles from Boardman to the next rest area. Be sure to make a pit stop.)

If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Oregon.

If you switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ and back again in the same day, you live in Oregon.

If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both doors unlocked, you live in Oregon.

If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you live in Central, Southern or Eastern Oregon. (Also the same sections of Washington State.)

If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over 2 layers of clothes or under a raincoat, you live in Oregon.

If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow and ice, you live in Oregon.

If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction, you live in Oregon.

If you feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash, you live in Oregon.

If you know more than 10 ways to order coffee, you live in Oregon.

If you know more people who own boats than air conditioners, you live in Oregon.

If you stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal, you live in Oregon.

If you believe that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is not a real mountain, you live in Oregon. (the Rockies also have mountains with snow so yup, they're real.)

If you can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Dutch Bros., you live in Oregon. (That’s coffee, folks)

If you know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon, you live in Oregon. (Especially if you know that fish are being discussed without salmon added to the description)

If you know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Clatskanie, Issaquah, Oregon, Umpqua, Yakima and Willamette, you live in Oregon.

If you consider swimming an indoor sport, you live in Oregon.

If you know that Boring is a city and not just a feeling, you live in Oregon.

If you can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food, you live in Oregon.

If you never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho, you live in Oregon. (Actually after watching episodes of So You Think You'd Survive I'd say matches, poncho, whistle, compass, decent knife, water, ace bandage and a walking stick. Ok so  you'll need a small back pack. Best laid plans and all that.)

If you have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain, you live in Oregon.

If you think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists, you live in Oregon.

If you buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time, you live in Oregon.

If you actually understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends (Oregonians or otherwise), you live or have lived in Oregon.

 

MEMORIES

 

Daffodils and Easter eggs and no snow. It rained/snowed yesterday but it didn't stick around. 

Haven't thought about this in years. Our Easter eggs weren't fancy. There were little kits with color tablets and little wax crayon you could use to draw on the egg. 

We usually ended up using food coloring. The box came with directions. So many drops of red, so many drops of blue. We'd make our own green, our own purple. Sometimes I think more color got on my little sisters than got on the eggs. That was part of the fun. Easter baskets were do it yourself and ran to jelly beans and those foil covered Hershey chocolate eggs along with a chocolate Easter bunny for my sisters. And maybe some of those gold foil covered chocolate coins. Easter, Halloween and Christmas those were the candy times pretty much. 

We never made it to church that Sunday. The Methodist church in Oakridge was so "Protestant" that in my memory we didn't do Advent and we didn't do Lent. I was in college reading Rumer Goden's In This House of Brede before I even heard of liturgy. The liturgy: the great yearly retelling of atory from the Nativity to Easter. 

Nope, Easter was one of the times everyone got together at grandma and grandpa's. Everyone who lived within driving distance of Eugene anyway. One Sunday grandpa was bound and determined to use that electric knife to carve that ham. I seem to remember that mom handed him the carving knife with a "the food is still hot, let's go." He went. 

Funny I haven't remembered that in years. Also that we got together for family because, to be honest, grandma wasn't that great a cook. Perhaps it wasn't that she was a bad cook; she just had trouble getting everything done at the same time. I don't know how mom turned out cooking the way she did unless it was a born in the bone talent. 

Well, this entry certainly went in another direction. 

Gone With the Tide

Ephemeral as a sand painting or a sand mandala. I guess you could caall this a sand etching on the beach at Seal Rock on the Oregon coast. Orig.inal image is on Oregon Coast Photography on FB. I believe Karen Chalmers is the photographer

Seal Rock is basically a wide spot on the highway. The rock outcroppings extend about two miles north towards Newport. The owl carved into the sand is a soon to be gone with the tide example of Oregon Beach Sand Art. I've seen shots of dozens of labyriths but few as elaborate as this wise old owl. Here now. Gone with the high tide, only a memory with the low tide.

Darn the brain is not working smoothly today.  But how odd. When I opened this entry to check the results my eyes almost ignored the sand art and were pulled to the horizon. Not much to see. Just the  almost emdless sea.

SEASONS IN OREGON

Yeah, we're in third winter right now. Last week we had temps in the seventies. Might make it to sixty on Easter Sunday. We are even being threatened with snow showers tonight. Portland got buried this weekend. Whoever made this left out Construction Season. That season basically overlaps everything from third winter to the end of fall. If there is a chance it will be dry you will run into "one lane only for x number of miles." 

Could be worse. Could be living in Tornado Alley. Now that is a scary place to be right now. 

 

LEAVE THEM A FLOWER

 This song came out in the early seventies. Before the EPA was created. Back when the Cuyahogo river in Ohio caught fire every few years. The river was so polluted it was effectively dead.

A small reservoir near Springfield is has a sign that basically says "go ahead and catch the fish just don't eat them." Especially if you are a child or an expectant mother. The run off from a failed mine makes it to the lake and contaminates it with goodies like mercury. 

So at the very least Leave Them A Flower. And everything else you can. 

I speak on behalf of the next generation
our sons and our daughters, their children to come
What will you leave them for their recreation
An oil slick, a pylon, an industrial slum

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

You plunder and pillage, you tear and you tunnel
Trees lying toppled, roots finger the sky
Building a land for machines and computers
In the name of progress the farms have to die

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

Fish in the ocean polluted and poisoned
The sand on the beaches stinking and black
And you with your tankers, your banks and investments
Say, Never worry, the birds will come back

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

When the last flower has dropped its last petal
When the last concrete is finally laid
The moon will shine cold on a nightmarish landscape
Your gift to your children, this world that you made

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

Author Willie Whyton. version I know covered by Ed Ames

NO ROOM IN THE INN

 Well I can't make up my mind so here are some cats and dogs. Too bad there's no room for dad in the bed. And mom doesn't seem to mind. 

Been working on a book about the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl back in '86. Incredobly dense. And very, very scary. 

THE SINGER AND THE SONG

The sun is shining. The birds are singing. And I have all the ambition of a fire cracker dumped in a pail of water. So I went searching though some old entries and found this. 

This picture was posted on my FB page through a link with Spiritual Ecology's page. I like to think my Singer might look a little like this. This piece was loosely inspired by the hymn God of the Sparrow God of the Whale.* Very loosely. Because when I tried to rework it into prose this was the result. And I'm not entirely sure I was working alone. This happens sometimes and I've learned to just go with it when it happens. Actually it happens a lot. I've never been sure that I wrote some of my best (in my opinion) work all by myself. 

You are the Singer and all of Creation is the Song. When You sang the Song of Creation there was a part for twittering sparrows and for the songs of the great whales. There was a line for the apple trees and another for the dogwoods. Towering oaks can sing a duet with daylilies. Redwoods may provide harmony with the songs of spruce and pine. Rippling brooks provide the soprano to the bass of waves crashing against the basalt headlands of the Northwest. And oh, the songs of the stars. Those dancing stars are a symphony by themselves. As they should be since the elements that built the world were born in the hearts of blazing suns.

You sang a living world into being. But we are reminded that life means change and once power is unleashed we may not be able to stand against the storm. Rolling fields today may play hosts to earthquakes tomorrow. Skies that are peaceful and blue today may be filled with rain, sleet or snow next week. The spring breezes that filled the air with the whisper of pine branches yesterday may be replaced by a tempest that rips the branches from their trunks when winter blizzards howl. Protect us all, from sparrows to whales when the winds rage and the earth shakes.

Your Song has verses not only for the rich, but for the poor. For the hungry as well as for those who are filled. Help us to care for those who need it. Help us to be thankful for what we have. For a song filled with harmony, not discord.

Help us to see a neighbor in an enemy. Help us to see that swords can be plowshares and lances can be made into pruning hooks. Help us to realize that love must replace anger in our hearts before it consumes us and Peace is more than just a word we use when "we're not shooting, shouting or trying to put anyone down right now."

*Number 307 in the Episcopal Hymnbook BTW. 

STARLIGHT

 

Photo by Joy Ko in 2019. The Milky Way over Coquille Lighthouse taken from Bullards Beach State Park. The bright streak is a meteorite and she identified the bright object as Mars. 

The lighthouse is located at the mouth of the Coquille River north of Bandon on the Oregon Coast. With a depth of thirteen feet in the channel I suspect most of the traffic is fishing boats and similar craft. The lighthouse is open to the public from mid May to September and is maintained by the Oregon State Parks. Actually part of Bullards Beach State Park. Fantastic shot. The shot is on the Oregon Coast Photography FB page. There is some really remarkable work on the page.

WITH APOLOGIES TO GILBERT AND SULLIVAN

With some apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan. Sung to the tune of A Modern Major General  I'm not  totally sure who the author is but it is a hoot. I suspect Putin forgot or chose to ignore how hard the partisans fought during WWII. Partly patriotism and partly the Ukrainians discoved that if Stalin was a borderline insane tyrant the Nazis were turning out to be worse. 

Note the reference Afghanistan. No one including Alexander has ever been able to conquer her. Alexander was smart he basically gave up after three years and moved on to India. Wasn't really able to conquer India either.

 

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

One of the poems by Langston Hughes a voice from the thirties to the sixties. 

 Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!       

Or finally make the nation we all dream of. Dreamed of.

IRISH BLESSING

 

And a non traditional ending that I picked up I forget where. "And may you be in heaven a half an hour before the devil knows you're dead."

I guess you have your pick. Officially it's Saint Patrick's day. Or if you aren't cool with the guy who supposedly chased the snakes off an island that never had any you can go with Saint Gertrude. Patron saint of gardeners, travelers and cats. Among other virtues. 

Nivelles is in what is now Belgium. A beautiful garden and pussy cats. Looks like a little bit of heaven to me/ 

STAR SET

 From NASA's Astronomy Picuture of the Day website. The Milky Way setting over the Pacific. Shot was taken from Point Reyes, California. 

CAN'T THINK OF A TITLE RIGHT NOW

Or your dog, your pet bird, or heaven forbid your children. Or someone you hate, or even folks you just don't like very much. 

Hell it's just about three generations since the Wehrmacht sliced though the Ukraine like a hot knife through cold butter. I suspect there many families with stories to tell of that invasion.

I'm in my seventh decade. This isn't the world I thought I would be living in when I was say in my very early twenties. But, after wars, rumors of wars, children attacked by police dogs, several assassinations, pure political idiocy...amd so on I'm a hell of lot more cynical. 

I have absolutely no idea what is going through the mind of the current president of Russia. I do suspect that at least part of the blame of for what is happening leads right back to the office of our last president. Still can't say that SOB's name without wanting to spit. As much as it pains me to point this out the last time this country was invaded was during the War of 1812. And the Brits didn't stick around for very long.

Russia has been invaded three times since 1800. Each time from the west. This nation has a privileged position. Two oceans, a friend in the north and a country we bought off for generations to the south. 

As for those big ass pickups? I've heard there is a saying in Alaska comparing the size of the truck to the size of a piece of male anatomy just south of the belt buckle. Especially those trucks with the big, jacked up wheels. You need that truck for workor to do business? I might hope you didn't buy more power than you need. There are ads for electric pickups just check out where you can charge one before you buy one. Near as I can tell all the stations in Oregon are on or near the freeways. 

It's been slow, I know. I'm working on something that I can't quite figure out which direction to come from. 

FRUSTRATION MULTPLIED

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. It's just, well a lot of reasons and I guess that's enough. I'm up here chuckling, a little ruefully. There's a buck seventy five word for you. 

Precription gets sent in. Message comes back "insurance won't cover it." It would save a lot of time and. frustration on everyone's part  if the computer generated message included a reason such as "insurance won't cover it because the drug doesn't come in the form you ordered." So instead a half dozen extra phone calls we could maybe cut it down to two. And I wouldn't be up here chuckling ruefully. 

And that shot pretty much describes how I feel right now. 

I like that little guy.