Pulling a Marcia

Several months ago my friend Adele invited a mutual acquaintance to join her for lunch at an Indian restaurant she'd discovered. Marcia met her there and announced offhandedly that she'd actually been there the day before to check the place out. Adele was nonplussed: You didn't trust my directions? Or, worse yet, my taste? Not a big deal, but I sympathize; there's something vaguely galling about spoiling a friend's incipient delight by pre-empting her introduction to a new place or experience she thought you'd enjoy and was hoping you'd enjoy together.

Last week my friend Jackie and I found ourselves in Chinatown, hungry. I'd parked on 4th just off Burnside, by a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant I knew (thanks to Adele, coincidentally) and figured would do just fine. As we entered Jackie caught sight of a sign up the block. "Ping!" she said, simply delighting in the name. She's from out of town, and had no way of knowing how hot and hyped Andy Ricker's new place is, let alone that several of us, Adele included, were planning to meet for dinner there the following night. Later, I emailed Adele saying "Hey, I could've taken my friend to Ping for lunch, but I didn't want to pull a Marcia." She replied that she was proud of me.

Today I pulled a Marcia. Adele is a thrifting buddy as well as a restaurant pal, and we'd talked about including Village Merchants on SE Division in our next lunch-and-cheap-shopping tour. But I happened to drive by the shop this morning en route home from a dim sum breakfast with Libbi, and stopped in, spur-of-the-moment-like, just to check the place out. The first item that caught my eye was a book that, almost literally, had Adele's name on it, along with a $2 price tag. I confessed my transgression, and I think I am forgiven.

In the grand scheme of things, pulling a Marcia is a mere peccadillo, I'm sure. Especially when it's not premeditated, and you discovered the venue, and you bring your friend a prezzie. I wonder, though, if other, more subtle and advanced cultures, have a phrase for this vaguely awkward social situation, or if we're the only civilization neurotic enough to care.

Mother's Day at the Duck Pond

Surely spring has arrived in Portland. Last weekend there were plant sales all over town. I hit three in the immediate area on Saturday, and came home with four tomato plants (please oh please let this be a better season than last), yet another ornamental grass I'll stick somewhere out front, a hardy begonia and an epimedium, both ostensibly shade-lovers, for the dim recesses of the back yard, plus a sweet little birdhouse-on-a-stick garden sculpture/ornament thingy.


The Eastmoreland Garden and Woodstock sales were low key, laid back, and laden with bargains. Not so the one at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden; cars were parked up and down 28th Avenue, and the Reed lot across the street was filled. On Sunday, I dragged Jer back there, along with our friends Jen and Drew, who were visiting from the Bay Area. This time I took my camera, because the rhodies and azaleas were just about at their peak.


Crystal Springs Lake, a.k.a. the duck pond -- a marvelous understatement -- is a year-round waterfowl habitat. This time of year, the duckling and gosling population is blossoming as well. I especially love the wood duck chicks, which are as exquisitely marked as their parents.


Jen's lovely daughter Laura, who goes to Reed, came over for Mother's Day brunch. Jer made strawberry and toasted-almond pancakes, and champagne was poured.


So, here's to moms, including mine, who was very much in my thoughts last weekend. She had an incredible green thumb, and I've inherited her love of gardening, among many other things. Yes, that's me in the picture; it was cold in Chicago in December 1947.

Wired

Our friends Jen and Drew were here last weekend. This is what it looks like when they, or some of our other WELL pals, visit.

Jen's daughter Laura is a Reedie, and had a major role in a theatrical experience, a senior thesis project involving the Cinderella story played out in the rave scene. Prince Charming was DJ Strange Boy, and there was a reason, pharmacologically speaking, why they stayed up way, way, way past midnight (in this household we call it "Pumpkin Time"). Parts of the production worked surprisingly well.

Speaking of wired, I've been remarkably industrious the last couple of days. Yesterday I scrubbed down the little deck off the kitchen, railings and floor. It made some difference, but a coat or two of paint would really help. This morning, I polished several pair of silver earrings, then brushed varnish on the badly-neglected kitchen picture-window-sill, lemon-oiled the table, and made a preliminary effort to clean the hardware on the Hoosier cabinet. Tomorrow, if I still feel like it, I'll wash down the wood and then apply some lemon oil. I've been a total slug about housecleaning all winter, but now I've got the bit between my teeth, as the expression goes.

Before I got heavily into the cleaning jag this morning, Jer and I walked to Sellwood to check out the Garden State food cart. Nice guy, tasty vittles. For various reasons he was out of the two items I really wanted to try, the arancine and the grilled chicken, but the chick pea/squash sandwich was tastier than it sounds. I'd call it not worth a detour in the Michelin sense, but worth keeping in mind if you're in the nabe and hungry.

Whoosh

The last couple of weeks have flown by. How, with no regular job obligations and precious few fixed commitments of any kind, can life possibly be so busy? Just for the record, here's a blessedly brief summary of what's been going on:

--A birthday party for a friend who volunteers at a homeless shelter downtown. He requested socks for his clients in lieu of gifts for himself. You go, Richard.

-- The Woodstock neighborhood picnic, featuring lion dancers and belly dancers. Pictured is Grace, who sunlights as a master gardener and (our) landscape designer.

-- A "Chef in my Garden" benefit for Growing Gardens hosted by "Tomato Bob" and his wife Marilyn at their home in Oregon City. The chef was Adam Sappington, owner of The Country Cat restaurant. Perfect weather, delicious food, copious wine, interesting dining companions. Bob grows four dozen varieties of tomatoes, and we all went home with a few.

-- An Underground Portland walking tour featuring glimpses of the so-called Shanghai Tunnels and other aspects of the city's seamy past and present. I've wanted to do some of these walks since before we moved here; we're signed up for a couple more, with different itineraries, in the next few weeks.

-- A visit with our friends Mona and Rob, whom we first met when they moved to Sea Ranch. Mona and I bonded immediately over our mutual homesickness for Berkeley. They've since relocated to Sebastopol, though in retrospect it's clear that they should have moved to Portland instead. We did the full-out tour guide number: The Chinese Garden, Contemporary Craft Museum (with side excursion -- Rob's a copper-lamp artisan -- to our friend Larry's lighting store, Lumen Essence, on the North Park Blocks), Powell's, windowshopping in the Pearl, the Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden, and the farmers' market, plus dinner at home one night and dinner out the next.

-- Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray in concert at the Zoo. The music was fine, the crowd mellow, and the weather, again, was perfect. I spotted one friend in the crowd, and Jer ran into another; an increasingly frequent indication that we're getting to know more people around town. But the highlight of the evening, as far as I'm concerned, was the pre-show raptor fly-by. I was standing in the concession line at the time, and almost dropped my noodles along with my jaw. The experience of a bald eagle zooming by at eye level was, in itself, worth the price of admission.

Reconnecting

The friends we've been staying with in New Mexico have so many visitors that they've put a B&B-style comment book in their guest room. The first several pages are filled with fond farewells, including Jerry's and mine, from when they left Sea Ranch several years ago. Now we've moved on as well. Among the more recent messages, we recognized the names of many mutual friends. I added our own thanks this morning, before we left for the airport.

Yesterday's outing was a long, scenic drive, the ultimate goal Los Alamos and the enthralling little historical museum there that several friends had recommended. The photo is a replica of an "atomic cake" that someone baked in "celebration" of, I think, the bombing of Hiroshima. Los Alamos has streets named after explosion sites. Just after we crossed Trinity and Bikini Atoll, Linda pointed out the local wellness center, an amusing juxtaposition, we thought. En route home we meandered through the Jemez mountains and some spectacular red-rock country. We had to stop for a while to wait out a fairly intense hailstorm.

We also got to see and share a couple of meals with Cynthia and Jim, another pair of Sea Ranch transplants, including dinner at their cat-filled (four) rancho-style house one evening. And we reconnected with Mary and Gary, who relocated to Placitas from Marin some time before Floyd and Linda made their move. I introduced the four of them via email, and they've since become good friends. Mary and I had breakfast yesterday at Home at the Range, a restaurant/bar in Bernalillo that's a favorite local hangout. She and Gary hosted us all for brunch the day before. They have a spectacular home with a thousand-mile view, endearing kitties (that's The Mook in the bowl below one of Mary's many chicken-themed paintings), and intriguing artwork everywhere you look. I'm so glad I had the opportunity for some gurl-schmooze with Mary, whom I met on the WELL years ago.

Last night, after our long day on the road, we went back to the Range for dinner. Our visit wound down with a couple of hours of quiet conversation back at Casa Floyd e Linda. We're more than ready to be home with our own kitties. But the change of scenery was good for us, and the reconnection with old friends even better.

Grizzly Man and Grisly Men

We went to OMSI to see Bodyworlds, the controversial exhibit of partially-dissected and "plastinated" bodies, the day after it opened. I thought it was beautifully done and emotionally affecting as well as educational. I hadn't known, for instance, that the left lung is considerably smaller than the right, with only two lobes. That's how they get the heart to fit in; duh.

There's nothing grisly, really, about these men (and a few women). But we'd seen Werner Herzog's bizarre and wonderful film Grizzly Man a couple of days before, and I couldn't resist the juxtaposition.

Now that Jer and I are both retired, several days can go by without any official obligations on the calendar. That makes the moderately "busy" times seem downright hectic by comparison. Here's some of what's been going on the last week and a half:

A Willamette River cruise on the sternwheeler Rose with Mike Houck, Bob Sallinger, a bunch of Portland Audubon members, plus some politicos and media people. Mike is co-author of Wild in the City and the go-to guy, locally, for urban ecology issues and the politics associated therewith. Bob is deeply involved in preserving the peregrine falcon population, especially the families that roost on and under the bridges of Portland. The focus of our trip was Ross Island, which may or may not become a city-managed park/wildlife preserve. We saw a bald eagle nesting, several ospreys, and two or three great blue heron nests, one with four young in it. It was a glorious day on the river, and a perfect way to celebrate Great Blue Heron Week (the heron is Portland's official city bird). Here's Mike doing, perhaps, his Great Blue Heron impression.

A Slow Food potluck in the wilds of North Portland. Once again, a location that looked remote and improbable on the map turned out to be a charming pocket o' Portland that we wouldn't have dreamed existed, less than 20 minutes away. About a dozen people attended, all smart, articulate, progressive, and passionate about food. One woman turned out to be an acquaintance from Sea Ranch whom -- this is going to sound so jet-setty -- we last ran into in Athens, at the Acropolis. (Coincidentally, our friends Rich and Dean, whom we were traveling with at the time, are visiting Portland now; we spent last evening with them.) We're going to try to do these potlucks monthly; everybody had such a good time. And of course all the food was delicious.

A walking tour of midcentury modern architecture, including buildings on the Reed campus and homes in the adjacent Reedwood neighborhood. The outing was one in a series of walks sponsored by the city transportation department; the idea is to get us out of our cars and onto our feet or bikes. It was semi-interesting, although many of the buildings struck me as undistinguished and occasionally even tacky. Gerrie and Steve, who live in their own mid-century modern, walked with us, and Gerrie did a great job with photos and descriptions of some of the better stuff.

The Northwest Quilters annual show downtown, near Portland State. I entered two older pieces, A Few New Sushi (Like, I Know Sushi) and Bamboo IV. I made Sushi for my California guild's challenge, "Something Fishy," several years ago. It also fit this year's challenge theme, "It's What's for Dinner," so I figured why not. Bamboo IV is the latest in a series inspired by the calligraphy of Toko Shinoda; I worked on it during a semester-long workshop with Jeannette Meyer, and it was juried into last year's OCAC student show.

The Columbia Stitchery Guild exhibit at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center. The show runs through next weekend. I'll refer you to Terry's and Gerrie's blogs for photos and more complete descriptions. Two of my pieces are on display. One, Occasional Sunbreaks, looks great. The other, Crop Circles, doesn't. It looked fine pinned to my design wall. But suspended from a hanging rod, the lovely hand-dyed wool sags where it's not heavily quilted, and the merciless overhead lighting emphasizes each bump and wrinkle. Oh well.

A house concert in NE featuring our friend Zoe Kaplan and three other talented young singer-songwriter-musicians. This is a monthly series that's been going on for several years. The ticket price ($25) includes an ample and well-prepared buffet dinner. We've been to several, but this was the first one that Libbi and David were able to attend; it was good to see them there, to hear Zoe perform again, and to meet some more nice people.

Dinner with our Sea Ranch friends Dean and Rich, and their Portland friends Juanita and Dale, who live just a few minutes from us. It turned into a small birthday celebration for Juanita; Dale's son Tony and his fiancee Amy showed up, as well as an old family friend. Everyone was delightful company, the food was terrific, and the conversation flowed like wine, which also flowed. We'd missed Rich and Dean a lot, and it was great to spend time with them and their old friends.

The next couple of weeks are also studded with events and obligations, including -- oh joy -- jury duty. Sometimes I worry about becoming one of those old ladies for whom postal delivery is the high point of the day: "Oh look, the mail's come!" But I don't think I'm at that point quite yet.