Ben, armchair researcher, informs me Moscow has a Hemp Fest in April. Hmmm. Followed by a Renfaire. Might take a lonnnng time to come back to the present after those festivities nose-to-tail. Coming up sooner is the Hemingway festival; seems the old fellow spent some time here, so now a Big Deal is held every year in commemoration. Sounds fun. Maybe. Curt and manly.
I am reading an online literary journal entitled Blackbird in preparation for an essay about it for my poetry class. I don't know when I've read so much poetry at one time. I'm tangled in a taffy of words; I'm crossing a river of thoughts and images...each poem is a spongy rock underfoot. Oh, yes, lacking sleep too...Could you tell?
Blackbird is featuring 2011 Nobel Prize winner Tomas Transtromer's work this month. (His last name is supposed to have double dots over the "o." I forget what that's called--oh yes, umlaut. Don't know how to make it appear, alas. Let us squint at the "o" and pretend.) Anyhow, his work is wonderful. There's often a clarity and simplicity of expression found in translated poetry when it's well done, like this work by Patty Crane. I find it so appealing. Especially here in Mr Transtromer's selections from his book with the lovely name, Sorrow Gondola.
Today I sat in on Serendel's speech class to hear her tell us all how to make cheesecake, which she did swimmingly and with fierce competence. The sample cheesecake she brought for everybody was a big hit, too.
Now, off to bed, or finish the Laurie R King podcast? I follow her grand Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell books. No I don't, I hug them tightly to my chest. My eyes are giving way from so much happy reading.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Birthday points
Moscow is raining on us tonight, making me feel at home on my birthday. Ah, the moist air, the well-wishes of many friends online, a sweet fun poem from Roo, and a spot of investigative journalism for my informative speech in progress--a lovely day all around. Seri's gone to the store for cake mix (we're being lazy).
Here's my speech topic:
Yes. This is a giant bronze porcupine on a pole. I live in one of the apartments you see behind it. (There are more trees now, though.) Here's a closeup:
This talented beastie is also a weathervane. She can turn with a breeze in a smooth and terrifying fashion as we hurry past underneath her. (I say "she" because Ruby named her Harriet Vane, after another prickly character from the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.)
Why? Why does a 350-pound, seven and a half foot tall porcupine spin 26 feet above the married student and family housing, next to the campus childcare center? Well, I have some partial answers.
Walsh Construction, the Portland-based company who built the housing units nearly twenty years ago, has a habit of perching weathervanes atop their big projects. Kind of a signature. Their go-to guy for the sculptures is a talented fellow named Keith Jellum, who lives in Sherwood. (Seeing this last on the plaque at Harriet's base made me warm and happy inside, even as I prepared to run for my life at the least tremble of the pole.) You may have seen some of his creations in Portland; for instance, his "Sky Cephalopod" rises above the roofs of the Oregon Zoo. Check out his website; grand work.
Mr Jellum had a curious encounter with a porcupine on a walk out on the Alvord Desert once, and was fascinated enough to research and sculpt and cast his "Porc d'Espine," as she's called (French for "thorny pig"). I say "curious" because there's absolutely nothing living out on this desert, it seems, but for the two of them at that moment. They got close enough to check each other out, pondered for a while, then went their separate ways. And we lucky Muscovites got a permanent commemoration.
Honestly though, I enjoy Harriet. She's weathered to a bearlike brown now, but she's still breathtakingly spiky. The child care staff say the children don't even notice her. I guess only we new residents do. ~tremble~
All right. Enough with the prickly piggie for now. Pretty soon I'll try a first draft on my Imitation Poem for poetry class (based on Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition, by Wislawa Szymborska).
But first, Doctor Who! Hey, it's my birthday.
Here's my speech topic:
This talented beastie is also a weathervane. She can turn with a breeze in a smooth and terrifying fashion as we hurry past underneath her. (I say "she" because Ruby named her Harriet Vane, after another prickly character from the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.)
Why? Why does a 350-pound, seven and a half foot tall porcupine spin 26 feet above the married student and family housing, next to the campus childcare center? Well, I have some partial answers.
Walsh Construction, the Portland-based company who built the housing units nearly twenty years ago, has a habit of perching weathervanes atop their big projects. Kind of a signature. Their go-to guy for the sculptures is a talented fellow named Keith Jellum, who lives in Sherwood. (Seeing this last on the plaque at Harriet's base made me warm and happy inside, even as I prepared to run for my life at the least tremble of the pole.) You may have seen some of his creations in Portland; for instance, his "Sky Cephalopod" rises above the roofs of the Oregon Zoo. Check out his website; grand work.
Mr Jellum had a curious encounter with a porcupine on a walk out on the Alvord Desert once, and was fascinated enough to research and sculpt and cast his "Porc d'Espine," as she's called (French for "thorny pig"). I say "curious" because there's absolutely nothing living out on this desert, it seems, but for the two of them at that moment. They got close enough to check each other out, pondered for a while, then went their separate ways. And we lucky Muscovites got a permanent commemoration.
Honestly though, I enjoy Harriet. She's weathered to a bearlike brown now, but she's still breathtakingly spiky. The child care staff say the children don't even notice her. I guess only we new residents do. ~tremble~
All right. Enough with the prickly piggie for now. Pretty soon I'll try a first draft on my Imitation Poem for poetry class (based on Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition, by Wislawa Szymborska).
But first, Doctor Who! Hey, it's my birthday.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Vaguely newsy summing up of life in these parts
Fiona spots my phone, grabs it and presses it to her ear.
"WOE!" she says.
Things are not so bad.
A lot is ducky, actually. Here we are, the Jeffery clan (somewhat truncated), at the University of Idaho. Ben and I get to be students again. We have a low-maintenance little dwelling on Sweet Street (just, wow) we call Lavender Flat for the fragrant bushes out back. Jess and Luke are with us, Ruby...well, she's in L.A., but only a text away, and Serendel is down the grassy hill in another apartment with her hubby and two-year-old Fio.
My classes--this is embarassing--they are easy. Not because I'm a genius but because they are freshman-level. Little nuggets of learning I so far had passed by on the road to education. Oh, but important nuggets, so here I am faithfully picking them up and storing them in my backpack. My math class is Math 123. I enjoy that fact. Actually, it's been fun: we just finished a unit on methods of fair division, stuff every playground child ought to know for those troublesome three-friends-two-cookies occasions. But also helpful for inheritances.
Right now I am heading off for a study session for the geology lab midterm. Rock and mineral identification. Twice now I've mistaken chalcopyrite for pyrite on a quiz, rrr.
Yesterday in speech class we gave impromptu speeches. I was prepared to be serious and succint. What topic did I get? "Pretend you are a mad scientist. Tell us about your latest invention."
So I did. :)
We do have our troubles. There's the "missing you" issue I talked about before. Some of Ben's and Seri's tests have been tough, the timed computer science ones. Probably the main hurdle, though, has been finding work, which is going more slowly than we'd hoped. My best bet is the Campus Dining program--lots of food-related venues on campus, from the food court in the commons, to the bagel shop, to the campus Denny's. I shall keep bugging them till they hire me. And learn more about faith vs.worry in the meantime.
All in all, I guess we have our hands full.....
...but that's not so bad!
"WOE!" she says.
Things are not so bad.
A lot is ducky, actually. Here we are, the Jeffery clan (somewhat truncated), at the University of Idaho. Ben and I get to be students again. We have a low-maintenance little dwelling on Sweet Street (just, wow) we call Lavender Flat for the fragrant bushes out back. Jess and Luke are with us, Ruby...well, she's in L.A., but only a text away, and Serendel is down the grassy hill in another apartment with her hubby and two-year-old Fio.
My classes--this is embarassing--they are easy. Not because I'm a genius but because they are freshman-level. Little nuggets of learning I so far had passed by on the road to education. Oh, but important nuggets, so here I am faithfully picking them up and storing them in my backpack. My math class is Math 123. I enjoy that fact. Actually, it's been fun: we just finished a unit on methods of fair division, stuff every playground child ought to know for those troublesome three-friends-two-cookies occasions. But also helpful for inheritances.
Right now I am heading off for a study session for the geology lab midterm. Rock and mineral identification. Twice now I've mistaken chalcopyrite for pyrite on a quiz, rrr.
Yesterday in speech class we gave impromptu speeches. I was prepared to be serious and succint. What topic did I get? "Pretend you are a mad scientist. Tell us about your latest invention."
So I did. :)
We do have our troubles. There's the "missing you" issue I talked about before. Some of Ben's and Seri's tests have been tough, the timed computer science ones. Probably the main hurdle, though, has been finding work, which is going more slowly than we'd hoped. My best bet is the Campus Dining program--lots of food-related venues on campus, from the food court in the commons, to the bagel shop, to the campus Denny's. I shall keep bugging them till they hire me. And learn more about faith vs.worry in the meantime.
All in all, I guess we have our hands full.....
...but that's not so bad!
Sunday, October 2, 2011
And how are YOU?
"Dude!" says my friend Sally. "how are u?!"
Only she didn't say it, she texted it, and by the time I noticed it, I was blurry-eyed and heading to bed. How could I respond anyhow in a little text screen when the answer is so variable and complex and depends partly on what I've had to eat?
So I started a new blog.
What? When I already have one dying of neglect? Eh. Just couldn't bring myself to veer from the format I'd chosen for that one, of essays I'd put more thought and care into. So here is my brave new blog, home for all the blather no one but my dearest f & f (friends & family) would bother wading through. If I manage to have Real Thoughts worth recording, I'll stash them in Roller Derby with the Saints and trot them out before the eyes of Facebook and the world at large. But mostly I'll probably write in here and sort of slip it under the table for you guys to read. IF you want to. Gracious and generous souls that you are.
Truth be told, I am highly influenced/motivated to write here because of a blog Ruby privately keeps. She lets me read it, yay, and if I can inspire a fraction of the enjoyment in you that her writing gives me I will be very happy, and so will you. (Don't bug her to make hers public, though. Maybe she'll let me publish little excerpts from time to time...)
It would be foolish and futile for me to emulate her style. I will probably try anyway, at least unconsciously. Even when she's just venting, I'm glad to hear about her highlights and lowlights because she's dear to me, so I figger you all might not mind hearing about mine. Hope not.
I miss you! That lies under so much else. At first the thought of each one of you would come easily bidden to mind, and it was almost as if you were in the room, with the memory bright and moving; and you were in the room, in my heart. (Aww.) Now time's passed enough so that I'm coming to be aware of the space around me where you used to be...space in the room, in the week when we used to meet, and of course, the absence to me of those places I used to inhabit and you still do, I hope: CVP, The Cottage, the parks, the library, Freddy's. (There is No Fred Meyer in Moscow. Auuugh.*)
Don't tell me I'll make new friends! Well, I might. I might even try. But the thought of you still gladdens me enough that the lack of close company nearby, even the lack of you, is bearable. Does that make any sense? You linger. Because I love you, and I'm pretty sure you love me too, I can relax and feel my soul expand and Good Cheer arrive when I remember you.
Great Scott. I hope you have your boots on...you're wading through a lot of goopy gush.
So how am I, besides the squishy sentiments? Well, that will have to wait for another post: once again, it's bedtime. Good night!
*Very oddly enough, I started not one but two new blogs today. I sort of bungled one attempt, then decided to divert its focus a little so that it is more about Place: what I miss from home, what I'm learning to appreciate here. I will prolly post its address too, but not yet.
Only she didn't say it, she texted it, and by the time I noticed it, I was blurry-eyed and heading to bed. How could I respond anyhow in a little text screen when the answer is so variable and complex and depends partly on what I've had to eat?
So I started a new blog.
What? When I already have one dying of neglect? Eh. Just couldn't bring myself to veer from the format I'd chosen for that one, of essays I'd put more thought and care into. So here is my brave new blog, home for all the blather no one but my dearest f & f (friends & family) would bother wading through. If I manage to have Real Thoughts worth recording, I'll stash them in Roller Derby with the Saints and trot them out before the eyes of Facebook and the world at large. But mostly I'll probably write in here and sort of slip it under the table for you guys to read. IF you want to. Gracious and generous souls that you are.
Truth be told, I am highly influenced/motivated to write here because of a blog Ruby privately keeps. She lets me read it, yay, and if I can inspire a fraction of the enjoyment in you that her writing gives me I will be very happy, and so will you. (Don't bug her to make hers public, though. Maybe she'll let me publish little excerpts from time to time...)
It would be foolish and futile for me to emulate her style. I will probably try anyway, at least unconsciously. Even when she's just venting, I'm glad to hear about her highlights and lowlights because she's dear to me, so I figger you all might not mind hearing about mine. Hope not.
I miss you! That lies under so much else. At first the thought of each one of you would come easily bidden to mind, and it was almost as if you were in the room, with the memory bright and moving; and you were in the room, in my heart. (Aww.) Now time's passed enough so that I'm coming to be aware of the space around me where you used to be...space in the room, in the week when we used to meet, and of course, the absence to me of those places I used to inhabit and you still do, I hope: CVP, The Cottage, the parks, the library, Freddy's. (There is No Fred Meyer in Moscow. Auuugh.*)
Don't tell me I'll make new friends! Well, I might. I might even try. But the thought of you still gladdens me enough that the lack of close company nearby, even the lack of you, is bearable. Does that make any sense? You linger. Because I love you, and I'm pretty sure you love me too, I can relax and feel my soul expand and Good Cheer arrive when I remember you.
Great Scott. I hope you have your boots on...you're wading through a lot of goopy gush.
So how am I, besides the squishy sentiments? Well, that will have to wait for another post: once again, it's bedtime. Good night!
*Very oddly enough, I started not one but two new blogs today. I sort of bungled one attempt, then decided to divert its focus a little so that it is more about Place: what I miss from home, what I'm learning to appreciate here. I will prolly post its address too, but not yet.
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