It gets more difficult with each passing season during this pandemic time, to come up with creative things to write about. I did not travel anywhere, I've taken very few photos. I read more than I did in the fall which was more than I did in the summer which is more than I did in the spring. In fact starting with the spring of a year ago I began reading more than I ever have. And now, I have read about 125 books since the original shut down of most normal services at the very end of the winter of 2020.
There was a certain jubilant the air at New Years 2021 at least in the mass media. It was if to remind us that anything was better than last year. I even felt it some but am too much of a cynic to jump on all of the bandwagons that the same mass media wants us to. Now nearly three months into this new year there are no apparent changes to daily conditions. There probably will be...I imagine...someday. We read positive news in between articles about a potential surge in cases.
One of the reasons that its hard to write about much is that everyone reading this has experienced the wider world nearly the same as I have. No one is immune (perhaps that is not so prudent a word to choose) from the shut down so I have nothing to complain about at least not as if my plight is worse or better than yours.
However I must write at least something. It is in my nature. For a variety of reasons I quit writing book reviews on my blog. The largest one was because I grew exhausted of that project. Secondarily because no one read them. I did the practice only for my benefit and just reading whatever book I did, was satisfaction enough. So my writing efforts have slimmed down to a seasonal update and maybe some topic that enters between my ears and between the seasons. So to address the former, the chronology and comments start below.
There was not much time left of December for much to happen. The last few years I has spent the holidays touring the Pacific coast and the towns, parks, oceans and restaurants there. I could have done that as 2020 ebbed away but the thought of buying some seafood renowned fin an area, and hauling it in its Styrofoam box back to a motel room with no amenities and eating it in front of a television set with a screen with such low resolution that it is like watching without glasses, just did not seem like fun in any way.
I did participate and a zoom lecture and did many times during the winter but I won't go into details about any of them here. They all were on topics that I have (or had) an interest in and were free.
I happened to notice while reading the Baltimore Sun, that 334 people were murdered in the city in 2020. I did a little computing, using conservative estimates and determined that at least 10,000 people have been murdered there since I moved there in 1981.
Here in Portland, end of the year commentaries remarked with alarm, that the city had 50 murders in 2020, the most in years. The ratio of homicides between Baltimore and Portland (cities with nearly identical population sizes) was about 6.25 to 1. Baltimore has its 50th murder before March 1st as a rule. In 2021 that goal was accomplished on March 10th in a slow year for Baltimore homicides. There were 2 that day making for a count of 51.
For Christmas dinner I made an Israeli meat pie based on a recipe in the New York Times and it was a pleasant spiced meal. I did take a picture of it for memory's sake but it is not worth posting here simply because the photo is not very good.
I started to use the grocery service, “Imperfect Food” (Imperfect Produce when I first used it) In January. They started out providing unsalable produce for its looks, not quality or condition. They have expanded into a lot of products that I'll never use and some like meats, that I will.
Since the libraries have been closed I haven't been able to exploit the publications that I did not want mailed to me. I simply read them during each visit. One that I particularly missed was the New York Review of Books. So I went ahead and subscribed to that and it started arriving here in December. Even though its consumption means more recycling, I am glad I did. I am trying to figure out a reasonable option for sharing it with others so that it is not simply used once and discarded.
As December waned there were a lot of loud noises coming from POTUS about the “stolen” election of 2020 and the smug assuredness that this wrong would be amended. Then January came.
New Year's day was less eventful for me than ever before but it has been years since I did anything to mark that event. It was a bleak and rainy day so I did not go out much at all. You already know that on January 6th at the urging of POTUS, a couple of hundred really stupid and ignorant “Patriots” stormed the White House, wrecking havoc and damage while threatening people inside the building in a variety of ways. I term it stupid because memorializing their antics was so important to them. It was if they were too feeble to understand that they were committing a crime and leaving specific evidence. Maybe they thought they would be pardoned on March 4th when their 19th president resumed office.. They imagined that they were given legitimacy by a demigod. Now there are legal prices to pay but at least their friends and the rest of the world got to see their 15 minutes of fame.
I use the term ignorant because they do not know or understand things like the Constitution or American history. They merely are doing and saying what their mass media heroes tell them to. They call people who wear protective masks during a pandemic “sheeple” while they do their provocation at the behest of imagined orders. They don't understand what any of this means, they just know that they are against it.
The older I get the less confused I am about the American urgency to be stupid. There are enough of them and they are louder than others so they just turn on propaganda news and obey the incredibly filtered understanding of reality including the routine utter lie.
We survived the inauguration and while the reality of Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer Group and the large number of other democracy hating patriots linger in the wings for the next event that they can be filmed at occurs.
I did go on a few birding hikes throughout the season but none memorable. Both of my daughters told me they would be coming down for a visit along with my grandson
once the weather was improved do I wanted to scope out a location suitable for a visit. I thought that Sauvie Island northwest of Portland so on January 23rd I scouted it. Since it was sunny and in the upper 40s I thought it would be a good trip. It was a good trip too. I had to go through many neighborhoods that I had never seen before. There are no light rails in this region so I had never been there. The first 80% of the ride out was through an incredibly articulated path through residential areas and then across the St. John's Bridge.
Being fascinated with bridges as I am this was a treat. It is a beautiful historic one. Once on the other side of it I had only a few more miles to go, mostly through rural areas. Being an island I had another bridge to cross but this was a little one and while attractive, less memorable. I still had about 5 miles to go in order to reach the park. It took me through farm land mostly but there were some houses that did not seem to be attached to farms. There were wetlands filled with winter water birds to spot as well.
Housing there was interesting. Most of the homes were fairly new and clearly priced out of any league I've ever been in. More interesting were the occasional older dwelling. The scene evoked memories of many places around the country I have been to. Some of the older homes were neat and well kept and others clearly lived in but in poor repair. I imagined without fact, that these were surviving land owners who were bent on preserving their homes from the efforts of land developers to sell out. Their land was most likely worth quite a bit. No matter the reasons, I admired that they were there.
Finally I got to the park only to find out that it is closed during the winter months. So...my kids and grandson will not be visiting there in the next few months. Still the trip was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon in January.
I saw my first flurries of the year on January 26 but they melted upon reaching any surface. Thus far this particular winter had been pretty normal. Mostly gray and ugly days with rain and mist the routine being upended every 3 weeks or so with some genuinely pleasant weather.
Every January I wash away holiday thoughts (should I actually have those) by imagining what I will grow come spring time. It was no different this year as I scoured catalogs for the seeds I would plant and this year I added a small green house to aid in the nurturing of those seeds. So one cold night I assembled it and left it in my living room for several weeks.
I bought seeds for Serranos, Greek Oregeno, Genovese Basil, Cilantro and Morning Glories. I decided this year to frame the peppers and herbs with morning glories in order to see how pollinators liked them. In Mid March I put the seeds in potting soil. The green house has a heater and grow lamps so things ought to work out well for the seeds. That is if the breaker doesn't snap every time I turn it on.
As you already know, February occurred on the 1st. Every year on that date I am about .02% happier than the day before since I no longer have to imagine that it is January. In 28 days I would be about .03% happier still.
On the 11th of the month we began to have the first serious snow flurries of the season. By the 13th we had something like 8 inches of snow, significantly more than I have experience out here. In fact 8 inches is about what we accumulated collectively in my first three winters. Since they do not plow or salt out here, driving remained a mess and walking treacherous for several days. I even used my spiked over shoes while walking. I have not donned those since one big snow fall in Baltimore several years ago.
Somewhere around February 16th there was no sign that we ever had this storm. There some piles remaining in the corners of large store parking lots but otherwise no residue for cars of pedestrians at all. It did not even get that warm. It just stayed at about 42 degrees for several days and nights.
On February 28th we had a very spring like day and people got out of their homes and took to walking everywhere. We were all in a good mood too. Then for about 4 days it remained spring like even climbing to about 62 degrees for an hour in the afternoon. Then more typical winter weather returned as was expected. The sun was gone for several days and the rains returned. The spring respite was a good thing to have. Spring was clearly looming.
During the month I decided that I had to get rid of some the weight I've gained during the last year or so and decided that I had to plot my eating with more circumspection than I have been practicing. In the few weeks since I began this endeavor I've lost about a pound in each of them. So I only have about 25 weeks to go.
The plan has been to make some routine items like bar cheese with crackers a semi annual treat rather than three times per week. I also stopped eating anything after 7:00pm and have my main course around 3:30pm. In its early stage this plan appears to bring some success so I'll keep doing it until it doesn't.
I also returned to doing daily exercising for flexibility. I also am walking around 3 miles about 5 times per week. To make that interesting I keep going down different trails located within about ten miles of here.
Lacamas Lake
On February 21st LawrenceFerlinghetti died. He was 101 so it was not sudden. I'm never saddened by someone with a long life has died since it is natural, even extra natural in this case but the news brought up lots of fond memories.
As a teenager I became first aware of then intrigued by the “Beat Generation”. I read much about it both in historical contexts and then in some prose and poetry from that era. Many seemed to occur in San Francisco but mostly New York City with Greenwich Village being front and center both fictive and historical. Ferlinghetti was often mentioned in both. His San Francisco bookstore (City Lights) was an iconic vista for travelers.
In the early 1980s I worked with a few others editing a magazine of prose and poetry. Each of its three productions were published in numbers around 300 but it was widely distributed. We were contacted by people across the span of this country. After the first issue had been released for a few weeks, Ferlinghetti actually wrote us. The main intent was to congratulate one of our fellow editors, Mark H. on the poem he contributed but each of us five, were pretty impressed that he would see to contacting us. It was our 6 degrees of separation from the Beat Generation.
In 2019 I visited San Francisco for the second time the previous trip around 1980. It was fairly likely that I visited the City Lights bookstore in 1980 but I have no clear memory of it. In 2019 it was an imperative on my visit. My friend Frank C. and I did a day of pedestrian visiting of as many sights as possible including Ferlinghetti's store. When I got home I was curious. I had never seen that the San Francisco bard had died but I knew that he at least had to be quite old. I looked him up on line and discovered that he was alive and with a centennial birthday approaching. We were a week off from the gala at the bookstore but that is probably just as well since the very cramped bookstore would have been claustrophobic for the likes of me.
Well, RIP Mr. Ferlinghetti and thanks for the memory. I played Mingus while reading the tribute in the Paris Review and now you can too. If you are so pedestrian to not possess any Mingus, you can find him on Youtube.
Like always I attended three Zoom lectures all at the end of February.
Since the last few days of February, spring has pretty much arrived. We have lots of pleasant days and a few that have been well more typically spring in the PNW. Today (3/18) it has been blustery and rainy with a half an hour here and there of respite including even a bit of sun. Spring is always a time of hope as buds shoot from the soil and on the limbs of trees.
Opening day is in early spring and predictions and renewed hopes flower earlier that the flora in any of our neighborhoods. Standard time makes way for daylight savings, porches and decks get their spring cleaning and the wafting of barbecue memories saturate the air-at least in the congested areas that I have always lived in. Dreams of vacations and travel enter the whimsy of those hopes endemic in spring time. Even this year when no one knows when safe travel will be available again.
So I am hoping to go to Michigan to see my ultra geriatric father (not quite the 101 years that the icon mentioned above attained, but getting there). Being only of simple geriatric age myself, at almost any time (perhaps the last one) the visits will be over. I'm hoping to combine that trip to Michigan with one to Baltimore. In the fall I am hoping to get to Galveston to see the bird migration.
During much of February I was awash with emails and newsletters exhorting me to get my vaccine for Covid 19. Locations were provided where they could be scheduled. I filled out applications etc. many times but while the flurry of vaccine news gained a life of its own, there were no vaccines to be had. Finally I found a location that was first come first serve with lines beginning at 6:00 am. I was expecting the worse. Conditions as they were I was concerned that at 6 I would still not be in the first 100 persons for the day (they were limited to that number on a daily basis). However on March 10th at 6:00 am I was number 12. That fortune did not get me the vaccine however, merely the ability to schedule (sort of) my shot. So I went home and ate a huge meal of huevos ranchero and waited for a phone call with my time slot. This came at about the time I was burping the refried beans that were a part of this breakfast. I headed back to the clinic and finally got the first of two doses. The second is to come on March 31st. A few friends and family are refusing the vaccine but they also think Trump won the popular vote so you get an idea of their critical thinking skills with that data alone. If they are wrong I guess that we will have a police state and then I suppose we will all be forced to imagine that there are Americans in existence other than our selves.
Today, the first day of spring, the local Farmer's Market opened and I was there. I haven't been downtown often during the winter but today I saw flowering trees. One of them looked like it was planted by the people at Imperfect Foods.
Until Next time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5STaUWmh9bw
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