Whoosh II

Whenever I post a catch-up entry like this one, I realize that I'm channeling my mother. She felt compelled, whenever we spoke on the phone, to enumerate everything she'd done since our last conversation. I could picture her standing in her kitchen, talking and talking, glancing for reference at her copiously annotated wall calendar. In her last few years it was all about bus connections, doctors' appointments and old friends' infirmities and deaths. I love(d) her dearly, and I'm fully cognizant that her kitchen calendar is the functional equivalent of my Sierra Club datebook, and that I've inherited some of her other compulsive behaviors, too. I'd like to think I'm a much better editor, but perhaps it's just that my life is more interesting to me, day to day, than hers was.

So, yes; it's been another insanely busy couple of weeks. For the record once more, some highlights:

Saturday of Labor Day weekend, we attended a lovely wedding in far northwest Portland, on the happy couple's farm, where we also got to spend time with several good friends from Sea Ranch. Zoë and Matt's dog Olive, in true border collie style, made herself a central part of the ceremony.

We met another pair of California friends, in town for a "let's check out Portland" visit, for Sunday brunch at Mother's Bistro. After saying 'bye to Carla and Scott, Jer and I strolled a few blocks to Art in the Pearl, where I spotted this very cool recycled-trash salmon.

We made it home in time to greet Rose, another Sea Ranch friend, who was en route south from a college reunion in Washington state. We showed her around the neighborhood and, Monday afternoon, took in the closing performance of Shakespeare in the Park's Taming of the Shrew on the lawn at Reed. She left Tuesday morning. On Thursday, we picked up our good friends Rob and Jackie at the airport. Jackie used to be our next-door neighbor at Sea Ranch. She's the former director of the UC Berkeley art museum and a full-time curator, consultant and writer on artsy matters. That afternoon, I took them on a long walk through Reed campus and the Rhododendron Garden, a.k.a the duck pond. An amusing moment: We were starting down the long, sloping lawn toward SE 28th Ave. when a security guy drove up; I thought at first he was telling us to keep off the grass, but it turned out he was warning us that an archery class was in progress and that, if we continued on our intended course, the three of us would be right in the line of mis-fire. Oops; an arrow escape!

Thursday evening, we went to the opening of Jackie's colleague Darren Waterston's exhibit of paintings and prints at Lewis and Clark College. I love this man's work. It sparked in me dozens of ideas about what I'd like to try in fiber arts, assuming I can ever get myself back into the studio.

Starting Friday morning, Jer and I plunged into E-ticket tour guide mode once more: The Japanese and Rose Gardens, lunch al fresco at Southpark, the Art Museum. I made a "kitchen sink" salad for dinner, including fresh corn, tomatoes and other goodies from this week's CSA veggie box.

Saturday morning we walked the Springwater Corridor trail as far as Three Bridges and back. The path was lined with these beautiful orchid-like flowers, which my wildflower book tells me is Cape Jewelweed. Later, while I attended to another obligation, Jer took our guests to the Chinese Garden (where they had tea, which I have not yet experienced; sob), Powell's Books, and, briefly, Saturday Market. That evening, Jackie and Rob treated us to a super-indulgent dinner at Fife's.

Sunday morning we dropped our friends at PDX and had a few hours to relax and put together a roasted potato dish and tomato-mozzarella-pesto bruschetta as Jerry's and my contributions, respectively, to the Rural Street block party that evening. Besides delicious food, home-brewed beer, lots of catching up with neighbors we don't get to talk with very often, and the traditional piñata for the kids (I wish I'd gotten a picture of the dozen or so of them lined up according to height, waiting to take their respective whacks), this year's featured non-trivial water balloon fights and a string quartet playing works by Vivaldi and Haydn. The same kids participated in both, though not at the same time. Also, Jay and Ellen opened the gates to their new bocce court; I'd never played before, but I actually got off a few good shots (which are probably called something else in bocce) and did not disgrace myself overall.

This week is shaping up to be very busy, too, with commitments every morning as well as three or maybe four nights out of five. After that I think life will calm down for a while. No houseguests on the schedule for the foreseeable future. As I implied at the outset, these "whooshy" blog posts aren't my favorite, nor are they yours, I'm sure. I'd much rather slow down and focus in on some interesting details. Like the jar that sat midstage during the entire uninterrupted 2 hours and 20 minutes of Richard Thompson's show last night, labeled Big Dick's Speed Dust Trouser Treatment. WTF? I Googled it in various combinations and you can imagine the results.

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.