Meandering on the Way

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.

Monday, August 23, 2021

A busy Monday, what with E having both a yoga class and an exercise class in the morning, a dental checkup in the middle of the day, and her friend PF coming for a visit at tea time. Tea consisted of ginger lemon drop cocktails, maple sugar candies, and blackberry cobbler. M thought that it was only polite for him to participate. Beyond that, he was occupied with yard maintenance issues and such. 

Our cleaner, who has not been vaccinated, has texted to say that she won’t be able to come tomorrow because she had been exposed to COVID and is quarantining for two weeks. We were glad to see her taking things seriously at least in this way.

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Eve worked for a couple of hours in the garden this morning. M was also outside, installing new roll-up sunshades on the south side of the house. 

In the early afternoon E went to a meeting of her HEPAJ group at J’s house. She was smartly turned out a lightweight wool jacket and her new denim skirt. Alas, no photos were taken. In the late afternoon, both M and E were busy filling in for the absent cleaner. No photos of that either. 

The Oregon COVID spike continues to worsen. COVID hospitalizations are at an all time high and many hospitals are reporting zero available ICU beds. Over the last ten days, the average daily death toll has been 13.5, which is the highest level since January. The daily toll could be even higher over the next ten days.

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

We’ve learned that an old friend and colleague of ours has died. We both met Edith more than forty years ago when we first started working at OSU. Although she has not been able to attend in recent times, she was one of the original members of E’s HEEPA group (which has since morphed into HEPAJ). She was smart and unsentimental, but always kind. We’ve been missing her since she moved to a care facility in Portland. We miss her still.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

This morning we had just a few drops or rain. It’s been a while, seems like a long while. 

We’re feeling very unhappy today as we wrestle with a COVID-related dilemma. In the spring of 2020 the son of our good friend F was planning to be married. Because of the pandemic, they had to defer their plans and wait for a better time. This year, in early July, when the virus seemed to be very much in abeyance, they decided to proceed with the wedding and scheduled it for August 28. They live in Boise, just a day’s drive away, and we immediately told them we’d be there. Now, alas, the virus situation is much worse than it was in July and is not expected to get better anytime soon. There are a lot of factors to consider here, but we’re thinking that maybe we shouldn’t go. It’s hard.

Friday, August 27, 2021

We discussed our dilemma early this morning, in what M called the ‘cold light of dawn.’ After breakfast we spent an hour composing our regrets. We sent one message to F and another to the bride and groom. Now we’re depressed. 

We need to plan something else for the next few days, can’t just stay home and mope.

Saturday, August 28, 2021

We took the Porsche down to Eugene today. Eugene is home to the Euphoria Chocolate Company, a really good Ethiopian food truck, and the M. Jacobs furniture store, all three of which we visited with good results.

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Drove the Mazda up to Hood River in the Columbia Gorge. Three hours from Corvallis, Hood River is home to Full Sail Brewing, makers of M’s favorite beer. You don’t have to go to Hood River to get Full Sail beer, but you do have to go there if you want to visit the Full Sail brewery pub and get some of their Caesar salad, which is one of E’s favorite things. Fortunately they offer curbside pickup, which wasn’t as much fun as being in the pub, but was a safer alternative.

We stayed overnight in a motel where our car could spend time with others of its ilk.

Monday, August 30, 2021

Eventually we did get up and after breakfast we crossed the Bridge of the Gods and wandered around Washington for a while. Then we recrossed the river and went for a hike at Wahkeena Falls on the Oregon side. We hiked steeply upward until we got tired and ate the last of our chocolate. 

Monday, August 16   

Alas, M and E have separated. M returned to Corvallis a couple of days ago, while E remained in the east. She’s just got back from a visit to see MB in Maine. This week she’s staying with Mrs H and making some day visits to see her brother and sister-in-law. She is scheduled to fly back to Oregon on Thursday. M has been home since Friday. He has watered the yard a couple of times but otherwise has done nothing of any significance whatever, at least as far as we can tell. He is, however, planning a Porsche outing for Tuesday. 

Tuesday, August 17  

M took the Boxster on a modest southern loop today, going down the center of the Willamette valley on the back roads through the farms, out where it’s really flat. A mile south of Coburg, he found what he was looking for, a little road that ducked under the freeway and headed east along a route just a scant few miles north of Springfield, the working class neighbor of Eugene. It took him out of the valley  and north into the foothills toward Marcola. The area is sparsely settled and the road has lots of ups and downs and curves and such. All good things come to an end, of course, and soon M and the B had to turn west and head home via Brownsville and Halsey. 

After some months of improvement, the COVID 19 situation in Oregon has worsened. So far in August the death rate is more than double that of July. Hospitalizations and new case numbers are up sharply. An indoor mask requirement has been reinstated across the board. In total, Oregon has now recorded 2,964 COVID-related deaths, which comes out to 69 deaths per 100,000 of population. Here is how that level of impact compares to a few other places. Numbers are from the Johns Hopkins COVID monitoring site.

United Kingdom   (196)

United States   (189)

Spain   (179)

Germany   (110)

Canada   (71)

Oregon    (69)

Denmark   (44)

Thailand   (11)

Australia   (4)

New Zealand  (0.5)

Wednesday, August 18

Another drive today, this time in the Frontier. M went into the forests north of Willamina, the same general area where he had fled from the demon pickup truck. This time he wanted to take it easy, enjoy the scenery, and follow the road that leads east to Carlton. Wednesday is a work day, so there was some logging traffic. As he was climbing into the mountains M came across four loaded log trucks coming down–three of them at spots where the road was wide enough for the two vehicles to pass relatively easily, and one at a spot where the road was narrower and both trucks had to slow down and take an inch or two of the very narrow shoulder in order to squeeze by. On the narrowest stretches of road there were no shoulders at all, just a deep ditch on each side, but he didn’t meet anybody in those places, which was fine. Later on, going down the other side, M passed two empty log trucks and four big gravel trucks heading up. The road was wider by then, so these encounters were uneventful. Along the way M also saw two motorcyclists, one bicycle rider, and one small white SUV with a big black cargo container on the roof. The white car was going recklessly fast. That seemed a little strange; perhaps it was a demon problem of one kind or another. One of the motorcycles was also going very fast, but that made more sense. 

Once out of the forest, M meandered around on his way home. He avoided the main highways and drove through farm country, some of it boringly flat and some of it lovely rolling hills. Between Bellevue and Perrydale, he passed the Brigattine Monestery, where their sign still advertises their candy for sale.  And then, since he’d just spent a week in the environs of the famous New York State town of Ballston Spa, he decided to swing through Ballston Oregon. Here’s a photo of the main intersection. 

It’s called the Ballston School now, but it was built in 1855 and the town did not come into existence until 1880. Before that time, it was called Lawn Arbor School. 

And finally, here’s a view from the edge of town looking east. M is guessing that the old truck is a Mack and that it was born around the same time he was. 

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Tertulia this morning with J and R. We were only three. Eve is returning today but will arrive very late. J and R’s house addition project is nearing completion. Despite a few hiccups here and there, it has stayed on schedule. The major event recently was the application of the oil finish to the new hardwood floors. The penetrating oil takes a day or two to cure and the fumes are dangerous, so J and R had take a trip down south along the coast to Port Orford and Gold Beach.

In the evening M went to Portland to pick up E at the airport. Her flight arrived at 11:40, but the airport was crowded and it took another 45 minutes to extricate her from the terminal. Traffic was light though, and they were back in Corvallis by 2:00 a.m.

Friday, August 20, 2021

After having gone to bed at 3:00, E was up by 7:30 and went off to get pain au chocolate from Le Patissier to have for breakfast. What a gal. Later in the morning M went off to get a haircut and E spent a few hours in the garden. It was a nice day for it, with temps in the low seventies. Though cooler, it’s still very dry here, such a contrast to the rain and humidity of upstate NY. 

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Grocery shopping today, E to the Co-op, M to MofC. M came home with a roast chicken. E came home with a giant peanut butter cookie and a couple of potatoes. Those two, along with three smaller potatoes from our garden, got mashed for dinner. Yum. After dinner a crisis ensued with it became known that there was no ice cream in the house. Yikes. E went out to forage while M cleaned up. E returned with a tub of vanilla–a very small one–which we ate while watching The Cook of Castamar.

Sunday, August 22, 2021

The weather was cool and cloudy. It looked almost like it might rain, but not quite. Good day for a hike. We went into the OSU forest at around 10:30. The forest newsletter has announced that masks are again required on the trails, but there was little sign that anyone had read it. The forest is dry everywhere and we noticed especially that the poison oak looked parched. Some of it was still green, but lots of it was turning to either dull brown or its usual brilliant red. No shortage of poison oak out there. M’s phone counted 5,900 steps and 25 floors in 2.1 miles. E’s watch gave her over 6,000 steps, which was fine, but only 19 floors, which she found very annoying. She was also dismayed by how dry the forest seemed in these days of global warming. We neither saw nor heard any birds and E suggested that they were probably all daid. Even though M admired her pronunciation, he thought that her assessment was too pessimistic. He thinks there could have been lots of birds in the forest. Might not they have been napping at this time of day like sensible beings?

After M took a nap, he went out and picked blackberries. Are we talking about the famous Oregon marionberry? You know–Rubus L. subgenus Rubus–the hybrid berries created by the USDA and Oregon State University, the ones that are large, thornless and delicious? The blackberry that anyone with half a brain would grow? Uh…no. M, having only four tenths of a brain, instead grows cut leaf evergreen blackberries and also tolerates a few canes of Himalayan blackberries. Both the former, Rubus laciniatus, and the latter, Rubus armeniacus, are obnoxious weeds–highly aggressive and very thorny. But the berries are good.

Presumably, Oregon has been a good place to grow berries for thousands of years, but the native blackberry species, Rubus ursinus, is a trailing plant with very small fruits and no commercial potential. So, at some point, possibly as early as 1830, someone brought some cut leaf evergreen blackberries from Europe. They were thorny and aggressive but also had large and tasty fruit. Over the next fifty years more and more of them were grown. They of course quickly escaped from the fields and began popping up everywhere. Fifty years later, enter Luther Burbank, who was dissatisfied with Rubus laciniatus and believed that American growers could do better. He thought he had found something better in the form of Rubus armeniacus. He called his plants ‘Himalayan Giants,” although they are actually from Armenia. Starting in 1905, Burbank hyped them up big time and the USDA also got on board and recommended them. The plants were so obnoxious, however, that they never really caught on. .

They grow very fast and propagate like crazy, not only via seeds but also via ground runners as well as by stem tip propagation. (That’s where a cane curves downward and bends over to the point where its tip touches the ground and roots grow out of it.) They form really nasty thickets. In 1906, one nurseryman put it this way: “They would turn a mad bull or a scared cat. I sold a few plants, but I have apologized to all who bought them and gave them something else.” Despite this commercial failure, armeniacus are now extremely widespread in the wild where they seem to be very gradually crowding out their laciniatus cousins. The wild is where M got both of his varieties. He has a vicious mass of lacininatus and tolerates a few canes of armeniacus. He devotes a considerable percentage of his gardening life to hacking away at them to keep them in check. And seems to like it.

By the way, the cultivation of Rubus armeniacus is strictly prohibited in the state of Wisconsin. You heard it here first. Probably.