Month: October 2021

Tuesday,  October 12, 2021

M got up at six, had breakfast and read the paper, and then went back to bed. He popped up again around nine and went out to figure out what to do with his corms while E did Better Bones and Balance. At about the time M finished his time in the backyard, E came out to put her cabbages into the ground. Here’s one now…

Having got word that its new shoes had arrived, M took the Boxster downtown to the tire place. M loves getting new tires, especially for this sort of car. The new ones are soft and sticky. They hold the road like blazes, but they won’t last more than 15,000 miles. My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night, But ah, my foes and oh, my friends–. it gives a lovely light!  

E took a walk in the OSU forest. Here’s what the Cronemiller Lake looked like.

For TV we’ve started watching The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston. Hmm. On the down side, there’s something off-putting about all these characters. But at least they’re interesting and the acting is good. We’ll probably watch more.

Wednesday,  October 13, 2021

We’ve become obsessed by the garage. We’ve been moving some things around and getting rid of others. E is sorting through her old work stuff. Yikes! What with one thing and another, we’ve decided to put one of our shelving units up for sale. Whoa. And as if that weren’t enough, M has decided to try and spiff up the place. He’s painting one wall that has never been painted before and is also starting to repair long cracks in the floor.

Following her work in the garage, E went out and did a nature walk down at the Starker Arts Park. She was remembering how she used to take dog Pepper there. There’s been some email discussion of having a celebration of life service for Pepper’s original owner.

Thursday,  October 14, 2021

We got a lot done today. E had two classes–BBB and Laughter Yoga–and she went to a hair appointment, plus she went out to see the coin man and sold her collection of WW2 zinc pennies. She had over a hundred of them; and since they’re worth a bit more than three cents apiece, you can just imagine how rich she has suddenly become.

M also raised cash when a couple of youngish type people dropped by and took away the utility shelf. He also put a coat of paint on the garage wall and then went after the long crack in the floor. He was heard to grumble aloud about the Nile River of cracks.

For dinner we went out south of town to Four Spirits. Four Spirits is a craft distillery founded by a former Oregon National Guard soldier who served in Iraq. There is a restaurant at one end of the big distillery building. The menu is fairly short and the food is good, simpler and healthier than most Oregon brewpub fare. The craft cocktails are also good; E was very pleased with her Harvest Mule. Also, the view to the west is lovely. We sat outside to get the full effect. The distillery sells whiskies, gin, rum and vodka in six western and mid-western states. Ten per cent of all bottle sale proceeds are used to fund veterans’ reintegration support programs in those states. For more of this rather nice story, see the link above. 

Friday, October 15, 2021

E went out early and fetched croissants for breakfast. Yee-haw! It was dim, foggy and cold at that time, but by late morning the mists had burned away and the sun was shining. M worked on his garage project, putting on a second coat of paint and washing some pretty dirty windows. In the middle of the day E went out to a meeting regarding a memorial for Susan. 

Later in the afternoon E baked brownies and then went to fetch nachos and virgin margaritas from Tacovore. All this was in honor of our friend P who came for a visit. P had recently had a birthday and after a snack of nachos and devirginized margaritas, she got a brownie with a birthday candle. In return Pat had some good information to share on some end of life issues. More on that later maybe.

Watched another episode of The Morning Show. Pretty interesting, maybe too much so. Do we need that much tension in the evening? 

Saturday, October 16, 2021

The COVID surge continues in Oregon. In the first half of October, the state averaged more than 20 deaths per day, which is about the same as the September rate. The state reports that both hospitalizations and new case numbers declined slightly. The positive test rate for the last two weeks is around 6.5%– quite a bit lower than the September rates, but still considerably higher than in June and July.

Sunday,  October 17, 2021

We made a long drive today, Corvallis to Brookings via Grants Pass, which took about seven hours in all. The weather was cloudy all they way with some intermittent rain toward the end. Our destination was Alfred A. Loeb State Park, where we had reserved a cabin for two nights. Loeb is a small campground that was created in 1948 in the middle of an old growth myrtle grove on the banks of the Chetco river. We’d visited it once before on a day trip. We’d been impressed by the three new-looking cabins at Loeb and had hoped that one day we might return in stay in one. Well, here we are, and it is indeed nice–a snug, heated shelter right on the riverbank.

Monday,  October 18, 2021

After breakfast we got back in the truck and headed east on the river road. The plan to was to follow the road for 20 miles or so to where it ended at the edge of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area. The first ten miles were paved and went by pretty fast. Then, as we crossed a bridge and came to a tee junction, the pavement ended. The route we wanted was to the right. Alas, a large sign announced that that route was closed due to a landslide. After a bit of exploring, we figured out that the trailhead was still accessible, requiring only a five mile detour around to the left. Hmm. Well, let’s see how it goes. As we gained altitude the road became narrower and rougher, sometimes running along the edge of slopes that plunged down hundreds of feet. We might have turned back, but the sun had come out, the recent rains had settled the dust, and the scenery was beautiful. And the roads were mostly smooth, with only the requisite minimum of potholes, washboard, and partial washouts. On we went until we found the trail to Mount Vulcan. 

We knew that we were going into an area of relatively recent fire activity. A giant fire called the Sour Biscuit Complex burned much of the Wilderness Area in 2002. Large fires also occurred in 2017 and 2018 on the west side of the Chetco Divide.

Tuesday,  October 19, 2021

Early to bed and early to rise. By nine we had had our breakfast and loaded all our gear into the truck. E gave the cabin a good sweeping and again we were on the road. We only went three quarters of a mile, though, because we wanted to take a turn through the Oregon Redwood grove. These are the northernmost redwoods on the continent. A one-mile trail loops through the grove, which is located on a southeast facing mountainside. A lovely stream bisects the loop. We’d done it before, but it was worth doing again.

After the redwood loop. we had to get moving again. We planned to spend the next night at an Airbnb just outside of Glendale, Oregon. From where we were, over near the coast, Glendale is only about 55 miles northeast as the crow flies, but getting there by car is complicated. We of course chose to go directly across the mountains, skirting the northern edge of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and passing just south of the Rogue River Wilderness. Fifty-five miles by air turned out to be 102 miles by truck and it took more than three hours, but it was quite a ride, especially the section between Agness and Galice, known as Bear Camp Road. Bear Camp Road climbs to 4,700 feet and provides spectacular views. (Click the link to see some stories about people who tried to cross the BCR too late in the year and became stranded. Several of the stories are tragic, but one has a somewhat comedic ending.) We’re not likely to drive Bear Camp Road again, but we won’t forget it either. 

We arrived at our rural cottage at about 4:30 and decided to use its nice-looking kitchen to make ourselves a dinner: ravioli, caesar salad, pinot noir, and chocolate chip cookies. Again we went to bed early.

Wednesday,  October 20, 2021

The provided breakfast consisted of eggs, turkey bacon and croissants. There was coffee in the fridge and three options for brewing: a French press, a traditional drip maker, and an espresso maker. M decided to grind some beans and make expresso. That turned out to be a bad decision–not as bad as taking a wrong turn off Bear Camp Road just before a big snowstorm, but still not very good. We will spare you the details of this comedy of errors and move on to a video from our post-breakfast walk around the property, which was quite lovely. To best hear the birds, turn up your volume. To enlarge, click in the arrows in the upper left.

Departed Glendale around 11:00 and flew up the freeway toward home, making just one essential stop at the Rice Hill Ice Cream stand for a nutritious lunch. Arrived home about 2:30 and started unpacking. 

Thursday,  October 21, 2021

Tertulia with J and R at the usual place. They’ve just been in San Francisco, where they saw the San Francisco Opera production of Beethoven’s Fidelio. 

Friday, October 22, 2021

In local COVID news, the Oregon Health Authority has announced that a “technical glitch” resulted in large scale underreporting of Oregon COVID deaths in the months of May, June, July and August of this year. During that period, OHA previously reported 529 deaths; now they say that the actual number was 1,079. This means that they somehow missed 550 deaths, which seems like rather a lot. 

In local plumbing news, we have drain problems. Yuck. Someone is coming tomorrow. 

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Rain overnight and now a rather pleasant overcast day, bright enough for the fall colors to show their stuff. Our own young flame maple is doing just fine. Drain problems solved thanks to efficient work by energetic young plumber.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

A quiet morning followed by major winds and rain that started just after noon. The OSU Forest is closed due to possible danger from falling trees.

Tuesday,  October 5, 2021

Drove over to Newport today, starting out at 9:00. Once we got there we went to South Beach State Park and walked a couple of miles from the park to the south jetty and back. The path leads through an area of sand dunes that has gradually formed over the years. There is now a mile-long beach backed by a range of twelve to twenty foot high dunes anchored by beach grass. If you climb the dunes and move inland, you see that the dunes give way to a forest made up of shrubs, grasses, and trees, many of which are specialized to this kind of environment. The trees hunker down and grow out sideways, perhaps because it helps to help them survive the high winds of winter storms.

Having worked up an appetite on our walk, we stopped at the Rogue brewery for lunch. Pub food, not very healthy, but pretty good. And the beer was awesome. We shared a half pint glass of what they called Imperial Pilsner. Sublime! We then headed home, taking the bayside road from Newport to Toledo, a route we’d never been able to find before. Got back home by 3:00. A nice treat to change environments without packing a suitcase.

Wednesday,  October 6, 2021

E called Nebraska to inquire about the condition of her yoga teacher and friend S, who is in a care facility in North Platte. She spoke with a social worker at the facility. The news is bad. S is in hospice care and is expected to pass very soon. As noted previously, our old colleague Edith also died recently. Death is in the air. The eerie thing is that both Edith and S. were born in Nebraska and ultimately moved to Oregon.

Thursday,  October 7, 2021

Took a walk in the OSU forest today. Another lovely fall day. We had lunch in a clearcut so as to catch the warmth of the sun. While we sat on an old log eating leftovers and bits of Dove chocolate, we noticed that there were lots of yellow dandelion flowers in bloom and that hordes of bees were taking advantage. We think we see bees in these photos, but it could be just our imagination. 

Friday, October 8, 2021

E had two Zoom classes, Better Bones and Balance and Laughter Yoga. In Laughter Yoga, it was one person’s birthday. As part of the festivities, the discussion turned to games remembered from childhood birthdays. E and one or two others remembered playing Huckle Buckle Beanstalk, though they couldn’t say exactly what the rules were. The internet knows.

E also got word that her long-time teacher S has died. She’s wondering if there will be a memorial get-together. Susan lived in this area for many years and E had the impression that though her family was in Nebraska, most of her friends were here. She was someone that E learned a lot from and looked up to, as did many others. 

M busied himself with matters automotive, ordering a new set of tires and securing a garage storage unit where the Boxster can spend the winter months. He also scheduled an oil change for the Frontier.

Today is the first day of the Greek Fest put on by the Greek Orthodox Church. The three-day Fest used to be held at the church and featured Greek food and drink, real Greek coffee, and lots of Greek music and dancing. In these pandemic days only the food aspect remains, but still, what an event it is, a giant drive-up take-out extravaganza with cars lined up for nearly a mile. Accompanied by our friend H, we spent over a hour waiting in line and then, having had enough time to work up an appetite, we drove quickly back home to chow down. Delicious.

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Started rearranging the garage to accommodate a small chest freezer. As we cleared shelves and moved things around, we found a number of items we could get rid of. Fall is a time for rearrangements inside the house too. Summer clothes get put away, winter clothes are pulled out of hiding, and in the process you now and then ask yourself “Why on earth have I been keeping this?” And thus the donation boxes fill. 

In the evening we listened to the last part of Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult. We won’t be going back to her any time soon. Picoult seems to think that what she writes is real and that she can thus change it into something else real if she chooses. But what any novelist writes is by definition fake, i.e., fictional, i.e., not true. That in itself is not a problem. But changing one fake thing into a totally different fake thing undermines the whole enterprise. The two realities cancel each other out and the novel flatlines. Whoop-de-doo.

Sunday,  October 10, 2021

Lots of activity today, starting with a walk up Angelica Street and down 13th. There was bright sunshine as we walked out the door; the rain started when we had gone about 50 yards. We were ready though; our weather app had warned us. Once back home we continued with the garage project and took some boxes over to the storage unit where the Porsche is staying. We brought along its car cover to make things cozier. 

Then it was off to Shonnard’s Nursery, who had just got in a selection of native plant seeds and corms. They have to be planted now as they need to winter over in the ground in order to pop up next spring. M got four corms each of Harvest Brodiaea and Ookow, a.k.a. Dichelostemma congestum. (M’s plant choices may be getting out of hand.) E got two ornamental cabbages, one white and one purple. 

As if that wasn’t enough, we also did some weekly meal planning, went grocery shopping, cooked fish, green beans and rice for dinner and watched two hours of very satisfactory television–one episode of Ted Lasso and one of Call the Midwife.

Monday,  October 11, 2021

Zoom yoga plus more grocery shopping and other errands, on another lovely, cool day. Before dinner we did another walk in the neighborhood. Also, M solved a mystery! For several weeks we have been finding little rubbery black blobs on the floors of our luxurious abode. We found several in the kitchen, several in the study and a few others here and there all around the town. What could they be? When you first see them, they’re ugly looking–yuck– and you don’t really want to bend down and pick them up. But when you do pick them up, they’re fairly inoffensive, just dry black rubbery blobs. In fact, after you’ve seen a whole bunch of them, they start to remind you of fragments from the sole of a really soft shoe, like a men’s Sorel slipper that you’ve been wearing for five or six years. You know, the ones where when you turn them over and look at the bottoms; the right slipper looks okay, but the left one has a big patch where something is definitely missing. (Don’t try this at home, kids. The underside of an old slipper is not a pleasant sight.)

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

E had her first exercise class of the term and we went for a walk up the big hill on Garryanna. After lunch E spent an hour or three working in the yard and M spent some time inside at the computer and then, for balance, spent some time outside trying to figure out our patio light problem. The yard is more lovely for being a little less parched. We have early fall tidying up to do and also a a few bare spots still to fill.   

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

A busy day today. Early on we did a walk in the forest. It’s the height of the season for poison oak viewing. The vines grow high up the trunks of the fir trees. The leaves are dark green in the summer but they’re bright red now.

As we were walking past this one, a gust of wind blew up and we had a gentle shower of urushiol laden leaves drifting down around us. E did not appreciate it.

After the forest we visited a nursery and got plants we needed for our various projects. M got pearly everlasting and Oregon geranium; E got Russian sage, a white mum, and some other crazy thing with blue flowers. 

In the evening E went to dinner with her friend D, while M dined at home. Later, between 8:00 and 11:00, we worked our way through a bunch of episodes of Love Me As I Am (Sen Böyle Sev.)Today is the last day that the series is available on Netflix, so it was now or never. We skimmed the last three episodes of Season 1 and several episodes of Season 2, just to see if anything ever actually got resolved. Well of course nothing ever did; that’s not what these shows are about. Like lots of soap opera drama, it’s more about suffering. Chances for happiness do arise, but they are always ruined, sometimes by the machinations of the evil characters, and sometimes by the insecurities and general emotional incompetence of the good characters. Whew. Thank God this one is over.

Which is not to say we didn’t love it, because we did, and we should try to figure out why. First, the acting was good. Sometimes the lines the actors had to speak were a little dumb, but the actors were able to use facial expression, gestures, and body language to make the scenes work anyway. Mediterranean cultures communicate a lot by facial expressions and gestures. They do it more than most Americans do, more than Northern Europeans, more than most Asians. Good Turkish actors can do it especially well and it’s fun to watch. The Turkish directorial style takes advantage of this by focusing in on gestures and expressions and also by not being afraid to record relatively long stretches of silence, which allow non-verbal communication to develop depth and nuance. (And also drive you crazy, but that’s another story.)

We also came to really like the supporting characters. Several of them were really interesting in funny and off-beat ways. This is very common in rom-coms of all kinds; but trust us, off-beat Turkish characters are really off-beat. The fact that the English subtitles are not totally reliable just adds to the fun.

Another thing was the location shooting. They do lots of it. You get to see the exteriors of real houses; people meet for coffee in real cafes (usually really nice ones next to the Bosphorus); people say goodbye to each other at the real bus station of the real town where they are supposed to be. There are lots of transition and establishing shots and they’re usually quite nice, often featuring scenes of either the Black Sea coast or the Bosphorus, which are two beautiful places. The series also shows specific customs and styles. We really enjoyed seeing the wedding celebration because it included some very specific Black Sea traditions, songs, and dances. We really enjoyed it when the rich young man had to move his bride into an unused ‘kapacı’ apartment in the basement of a very nice apartment building. In this case we didn’t learn anything new. Our joy came from already knowing exactly what that meant because the kapacı (super) of our building had invited us down to see his place and meet his little girl.

The show is also built around contemporary Turkish social issues. There is a rich boy/poor girl thing going on, but the bigger issue is that the two young people fall in love, decide to get married and announce to all their friends that they are getting married before saying anything at all to their parents. That extreme may not be very realistic, but that’s not the point. Its function is to provide a dramatic opening to a general conversation about how much say your parents should have in the selection of your life partner. In the U.S. a lot of parents have had to cede a lot of control–but not quite completely and certainly not in all families. In other parts of the world, India and South Korea being two examples, the issue is still very much up in the air. (The producers of Sen Böyle Sev surely know this and that’s probably the kind of export market they’re aiming at.) It’s a universal human issue and for us, listening in to a conversation about it in another cultural context is interesting, partly because it illuminates our own context. It’s hard to analyze your own culture from inside; it’s a little easier from outside. Whatever it is that we have come up with concerning parents and children in our culture, how is it working out for us?

Thursday, September 30, 2021

After tertulia we did lots of gardening, planting some new things and moving others from the wrong places to hopefully better places. Also cleaned up the last of the pumpkin vines. Cloudy all day but no rain to speak of. 

In terms of the number of reported COVID deaths in Oregon, this past month was the worst ever, averaging more than 19 deaths per day. Oregon’s COVID history now looks like this:

Rural areas are now showing higher percentages of infection than urban areas. (During the Dec-Jan surge, the opposite was true.) The Pendleton Roundup rodeo seems to have been a significant spreader event, but rural counties in general have relatively low vaccination rates and hence are vulnerable.

The Oregon Health Authority has published some numbers concerning COVID case severity in the state. At the time of the report there had been 324,569 confirmed or presumptive cases. Of these, 17,582 were serious enough to require hospitalization, a rate of 5.4%. Of all of the hospitalized patients, 3,709 have died. Overall, 1.1% of Oregon COVID cases have resulted in death. Patients 60 and over account for 87% of all deaths. Ages 40-59 account for 12%, ages 20-39 for 1%, and ages 0-19 for 0.1%.

Friday, October 1, 2021

At S’s suggestion E got us a Jodi Picoult novel called Leaving Time. It’s a library CD and we’ve been listening to it sporadically in the car. But we don’t drive enough lately, so we had to pull the old CD player from the back of the closet and get serious. This is our first exposure to Picoult and we’re pretty much liking it. But we have to say, as interesting as elephants are, sometimes the human narrators ramble on too long.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

The Andees are coming for breakfast tomorrow, so E went quiche shopping today. This turned out to be challenging. Le Patissier let her down, producing a tiny individual sized quiche rather than the pie sized one she thought she was ordering.  She was forced to fall back on the Mother of Markets for a large one. Ooof. Still, it should be good.

We also decided to rearrange our living room back to more or less what it was before we rearranged it the last time. This involved unplugging and moving our Homepods and made Siri very confused. For a while we had one song playing from the left speaker and a different song playing from the the right speaker. This is not, M says, a good way to listen to music. To solve the problem. M pretty much had to kill Siri first, then gradually bring him back to life. (M’s Siri is a male voice.) As far as we can tell, Siri is now fine and no worse for the experience. M celebrated by listening to Syd Straw. E is having trouble accepting Siri’s sex change without an accompanying name change. She doesn’t think it’s right.

Later on, E went out basket shopping and M made a mess in the kitchen.

Sunday,  October 3, 2021

The Andees were here for breakfast, along with their pal Frankie. 

After breakfast we went for a hike in the OSU forest near Tampico Road, about three miles all told. Beautiful day. After a quick lunch at our place we all went out to B and B’s house in North Albany. Bobbye gave us some of her inari sushi and raspberry iced tea on their deck. She and Andrea hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It was nice for them to be able to catch up. 

Later in the evening, when our socializing was done, we watched an episode of a British TV series. We’re having trouble remembering the name of the show. Call the Milkmaid ?

Monday,  October 4, 2021

Shopping day went as usual, except that M went to Winco instead of MofC. We had some thoughts of a camping/hiking/moteling trip to southern Oregon this week, but it’s supposed to rain, so we’re astayin’ home. This afternoon E went to the eye doctor and afterwards was really bothered by having had her eyes dilated. She lay down in the living room and listened to Dame Judith Anderson reading Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

We got an estimate today for a new garage door and opener. Seems high, like COVID pricing or something. We’ll see.