Author: Michael Witbeck

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

It’s been a frustrating month for M, who has faithfully tracked the ups and downs of the pandemic in Oregon for almost two years now. To do so, he has depended on daily and weekly reports from the Oregon Health Authority. OHA reports on such things as number of tests given, number of new cases, number vaccinations given, number of hospitalizations, and of course number of deaths. These OHA reports are published on the web for all to see. Nice and clear. Except  that for the past several weeks things aren’t so nice and clarity is out the window. Let’s look at some recent examples: 

Here are the opening sentences of three consecutive OHA daily press releases:

1. Issued on Nov 22 showing data for the period Nov. 19-21:

There are 103 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 5,016, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) reported at 12:01 a.m. today. 

2. Issued on Nov 23 showing data for Nov 22:

There are 51 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 5,067, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) reported at 12:01 a.m. today. 

3. Issued on Nov 24 showing data for Nov 23:   

There are 50 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 5,116, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) reported at 12:01 a.m. today.

That seems pretty clear, does it not? Doesn’t it seem that the OHA is reporting that 204 (103+50+51) Oregonians have died in the last five days? Well, you might think that, but you’d be wrong. Because the real number of Oregon COVID deaths in those five days was 27. 

How, you might ask, does the Pandemic Diary know that these reports are not what they seem? Do we have a confidential source inside OHA, a honest and courageous individual whose identity we would never reveal even under threat of prosecution or torture? No, thank goodness, that’s not it.

All we did was read the finer details of OHA’s own data, which can be found way down at the end of the same press releases. That’s where we find that 177 of the reported 204 COVID-related deaths actually occurred in previous months, mostly September and October but also as far back as December of 2020. These deaths are only now being reported as COVID deaths and thus only now being added to the Oregon COVID registry. Or, as a different OHA weekly report puts it:

These recently recorded deaths reflect, in part, ongoing efforts to address a backlog of suspected COVID-19-associated deaths identified by matching death certificate records to previously reported cases of COVID-19. 

Okay, but why not report these adjustments separately from current deaths? Why do they instead suggest that all of the 204 deaths are new? Tsk-tsk. More on this another time.

Thursday, November 25, 2021

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with our friends K and J in Salem. The Andees were there too, having come down from Vancouver. Good food, fine décor, and good group of people. K has started a run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is now focused on figuring out who his rivals will be in the Democratic primary and also, of course, on how to raise money. A and E have known K for many years now, ever since he was a friend of Becca’s back in their college days. We’re rooting for him. 

Friday, November 26, 2021

Good as it was, the K&J Thanksgiving dinner lacked pecan pie. So we’re on our own for that vital nutritional component. We have all the ingredients–except pecans. Well actually we even have pecans, but we have pecan pieces, not whole pecans and that’s not satisfactory. E strongly prefers whole pecans because whole pecans are much easier to pick out and discard. Yes, E loves pecan pie, but she goes mostly for the filling. As for the pecans–yuck!

Saturday, November 27, 2021

So we got ourselves a Christmas tree and went home and strung some lights on it. Turns out we don’t have quite enough lights. We remember this problem from last year. Now we must find time to buy another string or two. Can’t do that right now though, as we have other priorities, such as finding some whole pecans.

Sunday, November 28, 2021

M got up and made a pie crust. E filled it with the necessary ingredients for pecan pie. Later M went outside and put up Christmas lights. It was a beautiful day to be out, 63º and mostly sunny. Also, we bought some more indoor tree lights. Haven’t got them on the tree yet though. Ho-ho-ho.

Boy, that was good pie.

Monday, November 29, 2021

The opening sentence of today’s OHA press release reported 27 “new” deaths. Near the bottom of the same document, the details of each death show that just 19 of these occurred in November.

We here at the PD have no problem with people who make mistakes or omissions and who then correct them. In fact, we like those people. Making mistakes is how people become competent and we surely have a need for as many competent people as possible. So the fact that OHA is making adjustments is not the issue. And all in all, their messaging shows that they want to be transparent about correcting the omissions; unfortunately, they just can’t quite get to the point of being completely transparent, which is of course another mistake. But there’s more to it than this. We’re not talking about one person here, we’re talking about a complex system of many, many people. The reporting of a death begins with the doctor who signs the death certificate, which includes the date and cause(s) of someone’s demise. The data then goes to county health officials who collect the local data and forward it to the Oregon Health Authority. At OHA the data is further inspected and then becomes part of the official registry. So the process involves a lot of people. Now we’re just speculating here, but it’s just possible that not all of those people see things in quite the same light. Specifically, they may not all agree on just what constitutes a COVID death. In fact, it is virtually certain that some disagreement will occur. (See M’s essay on the nature of reality.) Quite possibly, we are not really talking about mistakes or unintentional omissions related to the death count. Instead, if we ever get to the root of why these adjustments are being made, we may find a host of long simmering conflicts about just how COVID deaths should be counted. 

In the evening we tried putting the new tree lights onto the tree. Failed. We bought the wrong kind of lights…the stupid kind.

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Breakfast today at Bodhi’s. They make a pretty good decaf americano. They have great croissants too–if you like them burnt on top. (Surely that’s a little peculiar!) But breakfast gave us the strength to go on. First, we went to the chocolate shop and got a few little items. Then we got another set of tree lights at Fred Meyer and then a couple of takeout sandwiches from the Vietnamese Baguette. Then we took a walk; then we prepared presents to send to the faraways; then E met a friend for coffee while M worked in the yard, then we put the new new lights onto the tree; and finally we had spaghetti and salad for dinner. Whew! We’re tired now.

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Another sunny day. M got the Boxster out again and went zipping around the countryside on those new sticky tires. He stopped to eat his sack lunch at the Thompson Mills State Heritage Site. 

Back in Corvallis, it was time to update our long-term tracking of the severity of the pandemic in Oregon.  As mentioned, the Oregon Health Authority has reported many “new” deaths that aren’t really new. Once these are filtered out, the November numbers show a very significant decline compared to September and October.

Of course all the numbers reflected in the chart are provisional. It’s funny how hard counting can be.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Tertulia today with J and R at Coffee Culture. We sat outside in the cold, but one of the staff came outside to the big tent and lit up the propane heaters, which made it pretty comfortable. J and R have a new houseguest, a high school age exchange student from Hungary. 

Friday, December 3, 2021

E had her first ever Zoom embroidery session with friend S in New York. Although not many stitches were made, the meeting was a resounding success. In the afternoon we had tea time with P.

Saturday, December 4, 2021

E made trucha a la Navarra for dinner. Our friend C was here to share it. We met C when we were all teaching at the monastery in Thailand. C is an inveterate traveler and he’s at it again, this time going up and down the Pacific coast by train. He’ll stay with us a couple of nights and then be off to his next stop. 

Sunday, December 5, 2021

We took C down to the Finley Reserve to see the waterfowl–hundreds of trumpeter swans, Canada geese and ducks fo various sorts. We had a sunny day for it and the view from Bruce Road, with sun low in the sky behind us, was very fine. From there we went up into the Coast Range to see Alsea Falls.

Next, we dropped down into the Alsea Valley to see if we could find any Coho salmon in the river. We’d been told they come up to spawn at about this time of year. But the only thing we found was this sad reminder that once they spawn, the salmon die.

Monday, December 6, 2021

We took C back to the train station today. We had been thinking of a nature walk in the morning, but the rain was pelting down, so instead we headed for Albany early and stopped on the way at Margins coffeehouse. Good stuff there. C is on his way to Eugene where he’ll stay with another friend. C has friends everywhere and it’s not hard to see why. 

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

We are still working on decorating the our Christmas tree. Progress has been slow, but we think we’re about done.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Had a bit of adventure at lunch today, in the somewhat peculiar town of Philomath. This little town (whose name is pronounced with a stressed long ‘o’ and a schwa ‘a’) is partly a bedroom community for Corvallis and partly a rural lumber town with a very different flavor from Corvallis. We went to a restaurant called the Tap House, which opened recently in the space that used to be the town hardware store. (The hardware store has moved into larger quarters where the food market used to be.)

We walked in to find that the place was crowded and that there was nary a mask in sight. Of course masklessness is normal around here for restaurant customers once they have taken their seats. We’re used to that. But this was the first time in a coon’s age that we’d seen staff without masks. We’re pretty sure that’s a violation of state rules. On the other hand, the staff were friendly and efficient; the whole atmosphere of the place seemed upbeat; and the food was not too bad. Staff masking and table spacing make a difference though. We won’t be going back there.

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Another adventure today, a drive up to a mall near Portland. E’s favorite shoe store was having a Ziera sale. And what a sale it was! And even more amazing was the great variety of shoes in stock in E’s size. The final haul was three pairs of Zieras for a total of $116. In the reckoning of the friendly shoe salesman, that was a savings of $400. But wait, how can you save by spending?

E then celebrated having saved so much money by spending some quality time at J Jill, where she also found items of interest. M spent this interval in the Bridgeport Barnes and Noble, which is really quite nice.

Friday, November 12, 2021

E has decided that she wants to have oak trees in our front yard. She has been told that they are the single most important species that one can plant in support of other native species of all types. She has also heard that they grow best in groves. So an oak grove we will have. This raises many questions. How many oaks constitute a grove? We’re thinking three. Must we use acorns or can we plant oak seedlings or saplings? The latter. Where do we find these? One seedling is already growing near the house in an inappropriate place. We’ll move it to our grove area. That’s one. We’ll have to go to Garland Nursery to get two more. What kind of oaks exactly? Oregon white oaks, of course, Quercas garryanna. Are we sure that the volunteer in the yard is a white oak? No, but it’s an oak and it can’t stay where it is and we can’t kill it, so it has to go into the grove. Really? Yes. So are we going to the nursery now? Yes. But if we go to the nursery, won’t M be tempted to buy more bulbs even though he is running out of places to put them? Hmm.

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Morning: We marched out and finalized the location and design of the front yard oak grove. E dug holes at selected spots and discovered a couple of pieces of plastic that had broken off of the lawn mower. M went around to the back and planted bulbs. 

Afternoon: M enlarged the holes and planted one volunteer seedling, one purchased seedling, and one purchased sapling. Oh boy. We’re going to have oak trees! There will be a majestic mass of foliage that from a distance might look like just one tree but when you get closer you’ll see that it’s actually a whole grove of oak trees. Yes, we can see it already in our mind’s eye…which is good because oaks grow so slowly that there’s no way we’re going to live long enough to see them with our real eyes. (But as a good book says: The Land of Illusion and the Paradise of Truth are one and the same.)

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Partly sunny and 63 today, a good day to rake a few leaves and mow the back yard grass. Plus, we had raspberry coffee cake for breakfast. For dinner aloo gobi, raita, and naan. We’re planning an excursion to the town of Prineville. We’ll stay there tomorrow night and, weathering permitting, we’ll hike on Tuesday. 

Monday, November 15, 2021

It was raining as we left Corvallis at 1:30 and headed east. The trip took a little more than three hours and the rain was with us almost all the way, sometimes just a little, but usually quite a lot. The storm was moving from west to east just as we were, so we had time to get to be friends. The drive through the mountains was beautiful–the low gray sky, the dark green trees covering the mountainsides, the few remaining spots of fall yellow from the understory plants along the road. It’s never really fun to drive in a hard rain, but on this day the road was almost empty and the blanket of clouds made everything quiet, insulating us from the rest of the world. After two hours, as we got out of the mountains and onto the high plains, the storm broke apart and the rain lessened. By the time we entered Prineville it was hardly there at all. 

Euro-americans first entered the area in the 1800’s. They found a land of abundant grass and year round water. It struck many of them as an ideal place to raise cattle and make a home. Of course there were some non-Euros already living there. Accordingly, in 1855, the U.S. government decreed that 500,000 acres of relatively poor land would become the Warm Springs Reservation while 9,500,000 acres of the good stuff would be open for settlement. By 1877, when the city of Prineville was incorporated, there were dozens of ranches in the area–and plenty of conflict between cow people and sheep people.  

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

We woke up this morning to find the sun shining with the temperature in the high thirties and rising. We’d been a little worried about the idea of going hiking in this area in November, but it turned out to be the perfect day for it. (Masterful planning on our part….or luck. Whatever.) After a leisurely breakfast, we set off to find the trail to Chimney Rock, which we had picked out from M’s new hiking guide. Chimney Rock looked to be a short and fairly easy climb, not too far from town. Getting there is easy, just go south on Main Street, which turns into Oregon Highway 27, which follows the Crooked River up Crooked River Canyon. The canyon is lovely and the river is small and placid at this time of year. This is high desert country, so most of the rivers are small. It’s 17 miles from town to the trailhead and for most of this distance the road just meanders along beside the river. At one point, though, the canyon narrows and the road rises up above the river and runs along the top of a palisade. 

Once we were through that stretch, the road descended back to the river level and we found Chimney Rock campground on our right and the trail head on our left. It was just a little after 10:00 at that point and the hike was only three miles long, so we decided to leave our lunch in the truck and have it when we got back. (A foolishly optimistic plan, but it worked out okay.)

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

The skies over Prineville stayed mostly clear overnight, and the temperature dipped into the twenties. When we went to breakfast, it was up to 31 and we had to scrape frost from the windshield. We hadn’t done that for a while. We were headed home, but first we did a short walk around Prineville. We found that there is a nice multi-use path along a creek that runs from east to west through the length of the town. We saw two big herons along the way. One was shy and flew away from us. The other regarded us silently from the top of a pole as we passed.

Lastly we took a look at the Bowman Museum, which is located in a very nice old stone building at the corner of Third and Main. There were a series of displays on various aspects of the city’s history, including one on the rags-to-riches story of Les Schwab and his tire store empire. Schwab was born in 1917 and went to primary school in a boxcar parked at a timber camp. At fifteen he was orphaned and had to go out on his own. In 1951, at the age of 34, he scraped together enough money to buy a tire shop in Prineville. By 1971 there were 34 Les Schwab tire stores and by the time he died in 2007 there were 410. Schwab’s management policies were notable for their focus on employee loyalty and included full health benefits, a generous profit-sharing plan, and a policy of only promoting from within. Schwab’s maketing focused on fast, enthusiastic service and free flat repair. 

Schwab outlived both his children. The eldest, a son, was being groomed to take over the business when he died in a car accident at the age of 31. In the end it was Schwab’s daughter, Margaret Schwab Denton, who stepped in to run the business when her father retired from day-to-day management in the late 1980’s. This she did very successfully until she died of cancer in 2005 at the age of 53. Her father passed soon after.

There is of course a lot more to the Bowman museum. We especially noted a long glass case with a collection of at least two dozen vintage and antique mouse traps. We regret not asking the person at the desk how that particular exhibit came to be there.

Oh, and one final note, the City of Prineville once owned a small railroad, one that was so profitable that for a period of years in the middle of the last century, city residents paid no property taxes. 

In the middle of the day we stopped for a nutritious lunch of donuts from the Sisters bakery, then retraced our route over the mountains and back to the Willamette Valley. In the highest parts of the trip the rain-soaked forests that we had driven past two days ago were now dusted with a bright layer of confectioners sugar…or something.

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Tertulia this morning at Coffee Culture. It’s not as cold as Prineville, but we still got a little chilly sitting outside under the big white tent. 

These are somber days. A long-time friend has died. A family member is in difficulty. Spouses are being forced to somehow get by on their own. You wonder how you can help. You wonder about your own demise.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

Sometime way back in the early summer E picked blueberries in her friend P’s back yard. Some got eaten, some got frozen. Some got used today making blueberry pancakes. Later on, M took advantage of the weather–cloudy but dry–and took the Boxster out for some exercise. There are some nice country roads out east of I-5, where he saw lots of bright green fields covered with shoots of new winter wheat and seed crops. Green fields in November are a normal sight in these parts, but every year they still surprise us. While M was out, E worked on the family gift exchange, figuring out who gives to whom and sending out messages informing the givers of their recipient’s snail mail address–quite a task. She took a long walk in the middle to clear her mind. 

In the evening we watched the Season 1 finale of Velvet, a Spanish series on Netflix. Such drama! Such beautiful clothes! Such complete lack of politics. There are even some beautiful cars. 

Monday,  October 25, 2021

Tuesday,  October 26, 2021

We watched the final episode of S1 of The Morning Show. It was pretty good, but we’re taking a break, possibly a long break, before approaching Season 2. 

Wednesday,  October 27, 2021

Did some fall gardening today and had a nice lunch, sandwiches from the Vietnamese Baguette.

E invited our friend H to dinner and served up minestrone soup, green salad and dinner rolls. H brought some fresh ciliegine mozzarella plus a small brick of reggiano. A very nice evening, talking about times old and new. 

Thursday,  October 28, 2021

Busy day today–tertulia, BBB, leaf raking, lawn mowing, napping, Laughter Yoga, and finally COVID booster shots. There was a drive- through clinic at the Benton County Fairgrounds. When you drive into the big parking lot, the first person you see tells you about how long the wait will be. We rolled in at around 5:30 and were told it would be about two hours. With some trepidation, we decided to proceed. It was indeed two hours. Oddly enough, though, the time passed pretty quickly. It was interesting to see how the whole thing was being run. E was at the wheel because she wanted her shot to be in her left shoulder. After about an hour and a quarter, we got to the place where they were handing out paperwork for us to fill out. They were matching booster vaccines with original vaccines, so that meant slightly different paperwork for each of us, since E was a Pfizer kid and M was Moderna. Finally we got to the head of the line. M got a new shot of Moderna along with a notation on his vaccination card. Wow! We were almost done. Except that we weren’t. They had just used up one batch of Pfizer vaccines and we had to wait while they prepared another. As you might expect, that seemed by far the longest ten minutes of the day… 

Friday, October 29, 2021

Cloudy day, mostly dry. M raked leaves for compost. He claims to have enjoyed the experience. His efforts were ephemeral, to a degree, since leaves were actively falling even as he worked and the yard was by no means all clear when he was done. He says that’s what made it special.

Later on, we had a salmon dinner at K and L’s house. They got their hands on a big salmon recently. We know the fish was big because when K cooked just a fourth of it, it came out to be way more than the four of us could eat. And we did try… Great food, great conversation, plus, we got to meet their new dog, Finn, an eleven-month old poodle mix. 

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Nice sunny day. M took advantage of it by mowing the front lawn. Will this be the last mowing for a while? Hard to say. Mowing is much less pleasant than raking.

Sunday,  October 31, 2021

Lunched on salmon and risotto, some of the extra from Friday’s dinner with K and L. Quite deluxe. For dinner E cooked a pumpkin, one of the eating varieties. After dinner we readied our hedge monster to greet the trick or treaters. We had a dozen of so different groups come to our door, some accompanied by parents. A happy evening. Strangers smiling at one another. You don’t see that in the news much.

Monday, November 1, 2021

Oregon reported an average of 19 COVID deaths per day in the month of October, the second highest rate since the pandemic began. 

This chart has been updated to show an extra 550 deaths in May, June, July and August of this year. The OHA has not yet released the actual data; this chart merely distributes the 550 equally across the four months in order to show at least some adjustment for the error. It will have to do.

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

E and M love to get comments or feedback of any sort. If you’ve never replied to the blog and would like to try, the way to go is to scroll all the way down the bottom of everything and look for the Leave a Reply area. There are spaces to put in your name and email address, but you don’t actually have to do that. (At least I don’t think so.) Just add your comment and post.

If you do leave an email address, then you can also request one or both of the check box options that show up at the bottom of the Leave a Reply area. The first option asks the system to automatically inform you if anyone makes a comment on your comment. The second option asks the system to automatically inform you when there is a new posting of the Pandemic Diary, which now occurs roughly every two weeks.

Once you post a comment, it would be nice if it immediately appeared in the blog. But, alas, it does not. There is a delay while the posting is being vetted by our hjghly vigilant Comment Approval Department. Is this to prevent hate speech or incitements to insurrection? Well, we haven’t actually gotten any of those. But we do get odd things. Here’s one that came a couple of weeks ago. This is the comment, in its entirety:

#B%$XC74M&8UW086*$97*5FVGD$HJHGW#NJ

The sender’s name was  T5$3HSP94#BK5GC

The staff of the our Comment Approval Dept admired the density of this comment and made no objection to its brevity. Nor were they put off by the sender’s unusual name. They gave the comment low marks for comprehensibility and relevance though, and it was rejected.

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

We have finally given up on our $189 Home Depot freezer. Why? Because it didn’t freeze anything. It did get things cold, but it never froze them and we had to throw a bunch of stuff away. We dragged the so-called freezer back into Home Depot and listened to their offer to replace it with an identical one, which they may or may not have had in stock. But no, we had lost faith. We wanted money. We wanted to be away from this freezer…far away.

That was in the morning. In the afternoon we bought another little freezer somewhere else. We set it up and put some water in it to see if it would actually get cold. It did. Good. You don’t want to have to spend all of your life dealing with appliances. 

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Dinner out at Sybaris in Albany. It’s still good. M had house made elk sausage with grits, acorn squash and jalapeño mustard cream sauce. The sausage recipe was passed on to the current Sybaris chef by his mentor, who himself learned it from its creator, Milos Cihelka. Now long retired and long out of fashion, Cihelka was a fifties era Czech immigrant. His Michigan restaurant once had a national reputation. You know, back when Detroit was one of America’s hottest cities…

Friday, November 5, 2021

A cloudy day with just a hint of rain. Went for a walk at the Finley refuge. Saw a huge, long procession of geese. They were flying low and turning this way and that. Looked like big ghostly snake gliding along in the air. Not easily photographable.

Trees, on the other hand, are more cooperative. 

Saturday, November 6, 2021

It’s salmon spawning season here, so naturally E dragged us out to see Salmon Watch Family Day. SWFD is an opportunity to see salmon in the wild and to learn more about their life cycle and their place in the forest ecosystem. It takes place at the confluence of the Alsea River and Seeley Creek, about 20 miles west of Corvallis and roughly 50 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Several species of salmon spawn in the river. Today we saw Chinook, who spawn in the main body of the river. If we were to come back in a month, we were told, we would be able to see Coho, who spawn in the smaller side streams such as Seeley Creek. 

The fish we saw were black with a white dorsal stripe and were very thin, seeming much worn down from their trip up from the ocean. Once they reach the spawning area, a courtship begins as female salmon look for acceptable males to pair up with. Females then choose the best spot they can find to lay their eggs. For Chinook, at least, this will be a gravel bar or riffle. The females use their tails to dig a depression in the gravel, into which they deposit their eggs, which the males then fertilize.

After spawning, the salmon die and the bodies come to rest along the sides of the river. Much of the meat is eaten by animals such as black bears, raccoons, or coyotes. Other parts of the fish nourish various smaller organisms. Eventually, nutrients from the dead salmon parents make their way into the soil and then into nearby plants. Scientists know this because riparian fir trees, for example, have been found to contain certain types of micronutrients that are only created in salt water environments.

We got a couple of videos of the action.

(video 4606)

The docent said that the kerfuffle might have been a male-female conflict or a conflict between females, one of whom has claimed this spawning spot and is shooing the other away. 

The World Salmon Council is especially interested in educating children about salmon and their habitats. There’s a nice little video here.   

Lovely fall day today, if a little chilly. At the Salmon Watch event we had both rain and bright sun, plus a small rainbow. Later in the day, back in Corvallis, we had to make a run to the market for a raspberry coffee cake and it was more of the same…

Sunday, November 7, 2021

We walked in the OSU forest today and noticed how the understory really shows up these days.

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. 

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

M spent the day adding a new irrigation line to our hodgepodge sprinkler system. He reports that it was tremendously exciting.

E had to prepare for the Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting. Lots of work there, especially trying to make the patio and yard presentable. In the end all went well. The group members were well-behaved and the weather cooperated nicely. The pie was sourced from the 37th Street Grill, which is not really a grill and isn’t on 37th Street either. But they do make a nice pie.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

M had coffee with his friend R this morning. They met at Susan’s coffeehouse and garden supply store. Susan’s has some nice outdoor tables that have rain protection. Good thing. M and R talked a little baseball and shared some memories of living overseas. The time flew by.

E was busy preparing to host her second gathering in two days, this time a 1:00 p.m. potluck with HEPAJ. All went well, but after the party and the clean-up E was tuckered out. We had a simple dinner, watched some TV, and called it a day. 

The COVID surge continues in Oregon and there have been many fatalities in the last week. The numbers for new cases, test positivity, and hospitalizations, however, are again trending slightly downward.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Tertulia today with J and R at their house. J made asian pear ginger upside down cake. We also got a tour of their 99.9% completed addition. They’ve added a sort of dream master bedroom with 21st century closet space, a glorious walk-in shower, and a sliding door out to the back garden. The shower is the only thing not complete; it’s lacking its glass door.

Later on M went up to Salem and paid a guy $423 to pull out one of his teeth. Well…to be absolutely accurate it wasn’t a whole tooth, it was only half a tooth. If it had been a whole tooth, we suspect that Dr. H would have charged more than a mere $423. But the other half wasn’t there to pull. Another guy beat Dr. H to it about 20 years ago. The idea now is to replace both missing halves with one whole implant, but that won’t be for a while. Dr. H says it’ll take four months for the affected area to settle down. The missing tooth is in the back, so we won’t be able to show any photos of M with a gap-toothed smile. Dang it. 

Friday, September 24 2021

In the morning E went for a walk in the OSU forest while M stayed home slaving over E’s iPad Mini trying to clear up a family plan subscription mystery. Poor M. On her way back, E got him a latte. 

Saturday, September 25, 2021

M has been having a lot of ice cream and chocolate pudding. Are these the only two things he is allowed to eat? Hmm. He isn’t sharing the actual instruction sheet that the dentist gave him. At least he is no longer using his tooth problems as an excuse not to exercise. We took a walk up the hill on 13th and were coming down Angelica when we saw a family group standing in their driveway. One of them had a black and white dog on a leash. The dog was young and nervous but friendly. It looked like it might be a pit bull mix. The guy holding the leash asked us if we knew of anyone looking for a lost dog. It turns out they had just returned home to find a strange dog loitering around their front door. They’d leashed it and found a metal ID tag on its collar. They called the phone number. They didn’t get an answer, but they left a message. We chatted with them for a while. When we left they were considering what to do next. But they didn’t have to wait long. After we’d walked just a block or so farther down the street, we saw a fellow with a leash in hand come out of his garage and start striding up the hill. Sure enough, he’d gotten the message and seemed quite relieved.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Today we had a short hike and picnic at a place called Gordon Lakes. It’s up the Cascades in an area that M has been exploring lately. It turned out to be a very fine place. There are two lakes, an upper and a lower, separated by just a hundred yards or so. The nicest thing was that it seemed to be an old growth area, a real forest, where there were no stumps, where trees die only from natural causes and once they succumb, they just lie where they have fallen in all their glory. 

Monday, September 27, 2021

Some serious rain today, beginning in the night at around 3:00 a.m. and continuing on and off throughout the day. At around 2:00 p.m. a small flock of doves visited our back yard, giving most of their attention to Hummock #3. We hear doves often, but rarely see them walking around, pecking at the soil. They were a couple of smaller birds, each one following a larger bird. If the smaller ones followed too closely, the larger birds would turn around suddenly and bat them away. 

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

E had her annual visit with her primary care physician today. Dr. L said that her test results were great. She was really impressed by the cholesterol numbers. We went out to lunch downtown at the food truck place to celebrate. Later on, E went to a meeting of the knitting group, a largish monthly gathering of old friends and colleagues. The meeting was held outside in a park. She had a chance to catch up with some people (and their dogs) that she doesn’t get to see very often.

E finished a Maisie Dobbs novel yesterday. M started it today. This one is called A Lesson of Secrets. We have also been watching a Turkish series on Netflix called Love Me As I Am. It’s a dramedy about a couple of college students who fall in love and decide to get married without having a clue about what they’re getting into, especially in terms of family pressures. It’s a little silly, but the couple is cute and lately their brightly colored knit sweaters have been awesome. 

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

M worked in the yard for a few hours in the morning: a little mowing, a little raking, and a lot of cutting back old irises. One of the sunflower plants, a volunteer if we remember right, has shot up to a ridiculous height and now contains more than thirty open flowers. It’s about eleven feet tall. The Turkish word for sunflower is ayçiçeği, which literally means moonflower, which has always seemed a little odd to us. Anyway here’s a picture of ours, posing in the late afternoon with a half moon.. 

Today was pie-for-dinner day and it was again strikingly successful. The first course was a cup of soup (Amy’s quinoa, kale and red lentil) and a small tomato and lettuce salad. This was served at the kitchen table. The second course was served outside at our small table way at the back of the yard, next to the crepe myrtle and the compost bins. The slices of rhubarb pie were cut Chambers style, which is to say that each piece was one sixth of a pie. So as to protect the purity of the rhubarb experience, no ice cream was served. 

Today was also the day we said goodbye to our old red armchairs. They were noticeably worn and the style had never looked quite right in our current house. But we had loved them dearly. At least we found them a good home. (And made enough money to go out to dinner at Sybaris tomorrow night.)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tertulia with J and R this morning. The coffee shop was busier that we’ve seen it in months. Summer is quiet in Corvallis, but in the fall things gear up fast. The K-12 schools have started, so the school buses and parental taxis are both out in force. OSU classes haven’t started yet, but students have started arriving and the whole great university machine is rumbling into life. 

We are still in mourning for the chairs. E says that selling them was sort of like selling your pet pig at the auction. Speaking of which, dinner at Sybaris was very fine. E had trout; we won’t mention what M had.

Friday, September 17. 2021

We talked to a concrete guy this morning about replacing our driveway. That was depressing. We’ll have to think about it. Bad news in the back garden also. The great mutant sunflower has fallen. On Wednesday it was fine. On Thursday it was leaning. Today we find that its main stem has buckled under the weight of those 35 blossoms.

In the afternoon we went with J and B to Brigadoon Winery, a lovely place in the foothills of the coast range about twenty-five miles south of Corvallis. We tasted a pinot blanc, a dry riesling, a semi-dry riesling, and two pinot noirs. Wonderful weather, warm and bright with a sky full of thin white clouds that let the sun through most of the time. Rain is forecast for ten or eleven o’clock tonight. We’ll see if that pans out. We haven’t had any real rain here for a really long time. Everything is bone dry.

Saturday, September 18, 2021

This is a melancholy date for us, twenty-four years now since Becca passed. It’s funny how sad events can recede into the far distance and yet remain forever new.

We picked apples on Thursday and E has been making applesauce, quite a lot of applesauce. Today she wanted to give a couple of jars to R and G, so we walked over that way just before lunch and dropped them off. It’s the time for year for giving away produce–we got some nice grapes from P a while back, and L dropped off a box of plums, pears and apples. Our own apples are sort of okay, but hers are really good. And so, despite E’s sauce making, we still have plenty of apples. 

The rain did actually show up late last night and came down heavily for a while. Today the world is damp and refreshed. More moisture is expected tonight and tomorrow, though it sounds like it will be mostly drizzle.  

Monday, September 20, 2021

We did our usual grocery shopping today and had smooth sailing at both stores. No shortages noted. It’s a beautiful early fall day, and E enjoyed her walk over to the Co-op. After lunch we did some furniture arranging. We just got some sliders to put under the legs of the couch. They make the process a lot more fun. E also had her Zoom yoga and then went out looking for a tablecloth. She is hosting two gatherings this week. On Tuesday the Lemon Meringue Pie Society will be here; then on Wednesday it’s HEPAJ. E had long planned on hosting the former. She’s only doing the latter because A’s well pump is broken and she cannot promise water for Wednesday. As to why the two groups have their monthly meetings so close together, that is a mystery. It’s no problem for most of the members, but E and her friend H are in both groups and have been known to grumble about the scheduling.

M spent the afternoon updating and backfilling his COVID database. He tries to keep up with it daily, but sometimes things get in the way and days are missed. Every once in a while he has to go back and fill in the blanks, which he finds soothing.

We’ve been watching a lot of our Turkish series Love Me As I Am (Beni Böyle Sev). Omer and Ayşem fall in love while they are students at a university in Istanbul. Ayşem’s mother died four days after she was born, so Ayşem has been raised by her father, who operates a modest restaurant in a small town on the Black Sea coast. She is a scholarship student at the university. Omer comes from Istanbul and is the only son of rich parents, the source of whose wealth is never mentioned. Ayşem is played by Zeynep Çamci and Omer by Alper Saldiran. Do they look like young first year college students? Uh….no. But that’s what they’re supposed to be.

Love Me As I Am is a little odd. It sounds like standard rom-com fare and that’s sort of how it goes. When the two young people first reveal that they love each other and want to get married, both Ayşem’s father and Omer’s parents are aghast and firmly opposed. But the two lovers persevere and in time Ayşem’s father comes around. He hates losing his daughter, but he appreciates Omer’s sincerity and recognizes true love when he sees it. Omer’s parents are another story. Omer’s mother, Nadide, is appalled that he would even consider marrying a girl that she had not chosen for him, especially one who was out of his class. She is devastated by this betrayal and that’s pretty much all she talks about. Are we saying that Hadide is a depthless stereotype? Yes. Are there any characters in this series who are not depthless stereotypes? Not really.

Omer’s father is short, balding, absurdly selfish and hot tempered. If anyone thwarts him, he immediately plots revenge. Omer is an earnest young man in love. He is determined to be with Ayşem and will not give her up. Ayşem is a very conventional good girl who really likes looking into Omer’s green eyes. In her mind, she refers to him as ‘Grass Eye.’ At least that’s what we think she calls him. There was that one scene when she was musing to herself about how wonderful he was and the subtitles referred to him as Glass Eye. But we think that was a mistake. Anyway, when Grass Eyes proposes, she finds herself saying yes and once she says it, she sticks to it. After that the writers don’t give her much to do except to look cute and be nice to people. 

The episodes are an hour and a half each, which is way too long, and the action often proceeds very slowly. Every episode features a musical interlude, which consists of out-takes and shots from previous scenes, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring love songs from a particular genre of Turkish traditional music. These last only three or four minutes, but they seem to go on forever. So is there any reason to watch this series? Well, the odd part is that it is really rather fascinating. Maybe someday we’ll figure out why.

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

We are packing up for our trip to the Wallowas. It’ll be a long drive tomorrow: 418 miles, mostly freeway, much of it along the south bank of the Columbia. We plan to trade off drivers every hour and a half. The Wallowas are in the extreme northeast corner of Oregon, with Washington to the north and Idaho to the east. On the map below, the red pin shows where we are in Corvallis near the coast. Wallowa Lake is at the other end of the blue line. That straight horizontal line just above it–the one near Walla Walla–is the border between OR and WA. The wiggly line just east of our destination is the Snake River, which forms part of the border between OR and ID.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

After breakfast, E did some last minute watering while M packed us a lunch. We set out on our journey at around 8:30. By 11:30 we were past the Dalles and starting to think about a place to stop for lunch. We wondered if there might be a little park in the town of Rufus. The Internet said there was, but in fact there was not. We did find a place where a park might once have been. We’re not criticizing or anything, but if you ever plan to visit Rufus, do not do so with high expectations. We ended up having our lunch a little farther on at Lepage Park, near the John Day Dam. Nice spot. Did we mention the smoke in the air? There was some. 

Arrived at the campground around 5:00, just in time to set up the tent and make dinner. Not impressed with the tent camping area of Wallowa Lake State Park. The showers and restrooms were nice, but the sites were narrow and jammed together with very few shrubs or trees in between. The setting was incredible, however, with steep forested peaks jutting up on three sides and a big lake on the other. Only the smoke marred the scene.

Thursday, September 9, 2021

M wanted to explore the road to Hat Point, and so–following a leisurely breakfast–off we went. Navigating to Hat Point is simple. First you drive to the town of Joseph, which is named for Old Chief Joseph. (More about him later.) You turn east there and drive 31 miles to a village called Imnaha. From there it’s just 24 miles to Hat Point. That doesn’t sound very far, but the road is a really slow one: very narrow, very steep and very rough. To go up and back would involve hours of bumps and jolts along the edge of precipices and other assorted discomforts. We didn’t want to do that. Instead, we went just to the four-mile mark, where there is a nice view and–very importantly–a space wide enough to turn around. The blue line below shows the full 24 miles of the Hat Point Road. Those who go all the way are rewarded with stunning views, or so the guide book says. The red line on this map is the Snake River, which is 5,600 feet below Hat Point. 

Our four-mile jaunt provided this more modest view of a side canyon that leads down the Snake.

After our Hat Point turnaround, we went back to the town of Joseph and visited the grave of Tiwi-teqis, who is known as Old Chief Joseph. Born c. 1785, Tiwiteqis was the leader of the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce. He was an early convert to Christianity and worked to maintain peace with the arriving whites. He supported an 1855 agreement in which the Nez Perce gave up a portion of their tribal lands in return for an assurance that they would retain their most sacred land in the Wallowa Valley. Eventually the whites realized that these”most sacred lands” were also “really, really nice lands.” So in 1863, the federal government tore up the 1855 treaty and imposed a new treaty that required the Wallowa Band to leave the Wallowa Valley and relocate to a small and much less nice area on the other side of Snake River. Tiwi-teqis refused to sign the new treaty and is said to have destroyed both his American flag and his bible. He also refused to move his band from the Wallowa Valley. He died, still on his ancestral lands, in 1871. 

Tiwi-teqis was succeeded by his son Hinmatoowyalahtqit, known to the whites as Chief Joseph. The young Chief Joseph became much more famous than his father because it was he who had to deal with the federal government’s attempt to forcibly move the band to Idaho in 1877. The Nez Perce responded with a campaign of armed resistance and eventually the band attempted to flee the U.S. in hopes of finding asylum in Canada. The wikipedia entry for this Chief Joseph is here. It’s fascinating, not least because it reveals who really wrote the words that Chief Joseph is supposed to have uttered on the occasion of the Nez Perse’s final surrender–which occurred just 40 miles from the Canadian border. But enough of these rather sad events.

We had dinner at the Terminal Gravity Brew House in Enterprise. E had a Caesar salad–pretty good, but not nearly at the level of the Full Sail Brewery–and M had a jalapeño pepper bison burger–the best (and only) one he’s ever had. We ate outside in warm but blustery conditions. One wind gust blew one of M’s tortilla chips off his plate and onto the ground. Another blew a small yellow leaf from off its tree and onto E’s salad. A few brief rain showers came along as well. We appreciated their brevity, but not everyone felt that way. In the parking lot we passed a fellow just getting into his truck. He was muttering to himself about the weather, something along the lines of “Come on and rain, dammit. Rain!” 

Friday, September 10 2021

Back at Wallowa Lake we heard raindrops hitting our tent in the night, but there couldn’t have been very many of them because when we came out in the morning everything seemed just as dry as before. A few more drops fell during breakfast and as we were packing up to leave.

We drove east and then south, climbing first up to Salt Summit and then dropping down into the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area on a highway called Road 15. This is a slow and narrow route but very lovely. Eventually we turned east again, this time on Oregon 82, which took us to the Snake River at the site of the Oxbow Dam. From there we drove south along the Oregon bank of Oxbow Reservoir until we reached the bridge just below Brownlee Dam. (There are three dams on this part of the Snake, three dams in one thirty mile stretch of river. Seems a little excessive.) We crossed over the bridge and continued south down the Idaho side of Brownlee Reservoir. 

At around noon, our route turned east and started climbing up out of the Snake River Canyon. We stopped for lunch at a NFS campground. The camp sites were lovely and private, a world away from the tent sites at Wallowa Lake. (The restroom facilities were also quite different, but not a a good way.) 

Brownlee Campground is located on the route of the Oregon Trail at the site of an old mining town called Heath. Only a few traces remain of either the town or the old trail. One remnant are these decidedly unnatural clumps of mineral, slag from the Heath smelter.

Also remaining is the burnt stump of what was once one of the largest trees in the area. It is preserved as a memorial to a 7 year-old girl who died of fever while her family was traveling on the Trail in the 1870’s. The story goes that someone from Heath made a coffin for the child and that she was buried beneath this tree.

Saturday, September 11, 2021
We spent last night at a motel in Ontario, and left early today on the long road home. We stopped for lunch at the waterfront park in Arlington, Oregon. Lunch consisted of leftovers from the previous night’s take-out food. If you’re ever in Ontario, OR, one the best food options in town–unlikely as it may seem–is Japanese food from Ogawa’s. E’s rice bowl with eel was delicious and lasted for three meals.

During the last hour of the trip, we discussed the nuances of “feeling tired” vs. “feeling just a little dopey.” We think we got it cleared up. Anyway, we made it home.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Cleaned out the truck and finished putting stuff away. A bit of watering. Also sleeping. E went over to her friend H’s house and they went out for a walk. Daughter-in-law S and grandson R were there when they got back. They’d been crabbing at the coast and S shared some of their bounty.  

Monday, September 13, 2021

E had a nice phone talk with brother J, but mostly this was chore day: grocery shopping, yoga class, putting old chairs on Craig’s List, scheduling service for the truck, dealing with a failing garage door opener.  

For dinner E made her gorgonzola and spinach pasta , serving up the crab along with it. Wonderful. M caught up on his pandemic record keeping. The COVID surge continues in Oregon, but the numbers of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all down slightly, suggesting that the peak may be passing.  

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

COVID statistics in Oregon–including cases, hospitalizations and deaths–were all pretty discouraging in the first half of August. In the second half of the month, they got worse. Here’s how August 2021 compared to previous months of the pandemic. The Delta variant now accounts for over 98% of all new cases.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Tertulia this morning with R and J, then E had her final exercise class of the term. Now she gets three weeks off. 

We moved the old couch today to make room for the new one. You never know what you’ll find when you move an old couch. In this case we found not one but two unexploded cannon balls. We reckon they were fired from a Russian T-90 main battle tank, the one that was shootin’ up the place a few weeks ago.    

But now the old red couch is history. It was fine in the basement of the old place, but it never looked quite right in the living room here. Instead…

Friday, September 3 2021

E made pisto and ambled screggs for dinner. Nice. It’s the time of year for pisto; the weather is right and the local vegetables are ripe. In case you haven’t heard of it, pisto Manchego is a green pepper and tomato dish from La Mancha region of Spain. M cut up a little cheese to go into the eggs. As instructed, he made the pieces about the size of front teeth. Some people cut cheese pieces the size of molars, but that’s just lazy. Clearly, E should write a cookbook. 

We’ve been watching Ted Lasso this week. The first few episodes of the new season were pretty blah. Last night’s episode, however, seemed a little livelier. We’re wondering if the new couch had anything to do with it. 

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Watched two(!) episodes of TL last night. Either the writing is getting better or the new couch is really working. E has now watched 3 entire episodes without falling asleep.

Went back to Eugene today, dropping off fabric samples and picking up wine. We also stopped at the egg place on West Hills Road on our way back. Net proceeds of trip: 12 eggs, two bottles of Martin Codax albariño, and minus five fabric samples. We will count this as success. 

There are two medium sized forest fires burning in the region, the Bull Complex fire about 65 miles northeast of Corvallis and the Middle Fork Complex about 70 miles southeast. Fire officials are cautiously optimistic about the Bull fire; it’s headed for the same area that burned so intensely last year. It won’t find much fuel there.

Air quality in Corvallis has been quite good, just a little hazy at times in the morning. Every evening we get fresh breezes out of the west that clear things out. As we went south today, however, we very quickly got into a grayish haze that smelled of woodsmoke. Air quality was reported to be in the ‘unhealthy’ range from Halsey down to Eugene. We put this down to smoke from the Middle Fork fire.

Sunday, September 5, 2021

M went off on forest tour today. He did a quick and easy loop in an area of the Cascades that’s currently fire free. Of course that area happened to be directly between two areas that are not fire free, so the route was noticeably smoky. For more on this, see M’s Road Trip posting.

Monday, September 6, 2021

While he was out in the forest, M picked up an old log for the garden, which he installed this morning. It’s vintage and so has patina in lieu of its original bark. 

Inside the house, two new chairs were delivered today. (On Labor Day? Whose idea was that? Not ours.) They are not vintage; they are new and are a big change for us. They may turn out all right in our little room. Or they may be a hideous mistake. We don’t have time to decide which, though, because we are too busy planning for our camping trip to Wallowa Lake. The idea is to plan today, prepare tomorrow and leave early on Wednesday. So, no more blog writing, got to get planning.