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Long thoughts
I’ve always loved these lines by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
When I first read them, as a youngster, I thought of myself as a boy. Girlish things, in the 1950s, were not for me. I saw myself standing on the deck of a ship, enthralled by “the magic of the sea,” in the poet’s words. Again and again, thinking those long, long thoughts.
Now, today, long thoughts are difficult and hard to find. We think short thoughts, distracted always by the glitter and glibness of our tablets, phones, laptops, televisions. Hardly have we tossed an anchor than it’s wrenched up as we sail to a fresh port, leaving the prior one only partially explored.
Left behind are our long thoughts. We can still find them, but we need to look elsewhere. They are the domain of books, of solitary walks, of deep and involved conversation.
“It’s not so easy writing about nothing,” Patti Smith writes in introducing her 2015 memoir M Train. No, sometimes in the gloss of things, writing about nothing is too easy.
As an antidote to my weekly writing, which is getting too comfortable, too easy, I need to stop now and to burrow into my books.
I need to uncover long thoughts. I need to sit quietly, put my feet up, find the magic—the magic of the sea, and oh, all the special places writers make with words. Cozy places, cheerful places. Scary, disturbing, mystical places. Places that, once visited, you never leave. Nor do they ever leave you.
Italo Calvino writes in Invisible Cities about places such as these:
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
Or, as Emily Dickinson tells us,
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away.Don’t let’s forget books, and time spent on a single purpose. Let’s rediscover, and celebrate, and sing of what we read.
I want to rediscover my long, long thoughts. I hope you do, too.
Bus dog
Is this dog I encountered on the bus a shih tzu, the breed I mentioned briefly last week? I didn’t think to ask the human, although I did get the dog’s name: Fiona.
Poetry break #1
Mellow
My sheets caress me, soft. Eggs in cast iron, soft. Days with soft rain, Easy-chair days. Try a day without television; Scratch the dog’s ears instead. Pick two crayons and draw— Choosing more, too much trouble. A day to eat leftovers In your pajamas. Then, Pull on some sweatpants Take a walk. . . . Watch for color. . . . A walk going nowhere, A walk of receiving. Your senses are open, Not seeking, just present. A day for deep breathing— If you happen to remember. Feel the air pulsing into you While you count your toes. Take the children along. Just listen, just listen. Let concerns spread and chuckle Like water around rocks.
Milk in glass
I woke up thinking about a half-gallon glass milk bottle. It had indentions on the sides to make it easier to grasp and pour.
In the old days, 30, 40 years ago, I’d motor to Senn’s Drive-In Dairy, a little cinderblock outpost on an otherwise vacant lot where I could pass back my empty bottles and acquire another week’s worth of milk.
This milk was delicious. Fresh from the cows, in the days before bovine growth hormone. Portland History.com has some rudimentary information about the operation, which ceased in the late ’90s, as I recall. Senn’s Drive-In Dairy has a Facebook page, too, with posts about ice cream and milk in glass bottles.
I thought I remembered a location over by Emanuel Hospital, although it isn’t listed on the placard I saw at Portland History. Sometimes I’d drive to Northeast 42nd and Killingsworth, especially during the brief time I lived in that neighborhood.
Glass is back
You can still buy milk in glass bottles. Garry’s Meadow Fresh All-Jersey Creamline Milk in Glass Bottles in Mulino supplies milk to several groceries: New Seasons, Market of Choice, Whole Foods, People’s, Alberta Co-op, Barbur Foods, Basics Market and Cutsforth’s Market in Canby.
Garry is Garry Hansen. He also offers beef and pork, butter and cheese at his Lady-Lane Farm.
Butter days
Garry’s milk is not homogenized, so the cream is at the top. Time was when I would skim off some of the cream from bottled milk and freeze it. When I had enough saved up, I’d make butter in my Cuisinart. I would work the buttermilk out of the final product with a wooden spoon, although you can also use cheesecloth to strain it out.
I stopped making butter because my local Zupan’s stopped selling milk in bottles. The dairy may have gone out of business. That Zupan’s, on Southeast Belmont, closed in 2017. The space is now occupied by H Mart, a Korean grocery that has dozens of stores nationwide.
Being keto, I don’t drink much milk, so I’m unlikely to use the cream on the top of the milk. I could make butter from Garry’s cream, which also comes in glass bottles, but where’s the fun in that when you can buy good-quality butter? You can even get butter from Ireland and France these days, right in your local market or at Trader Joe’s.
Failing
I took a new way home from Kaiser’s Interstate facility. I crossed the I-5 freeway on a massive concrete overpass and emerged on North Failing Street.
I used to think, why would anyone live on a street named Failing? It was named after Josiah Failing, a businessman and Portland mayor in the 1850s. There’s a former elementary school in South Portland named after Failing, too. It’s now part of Portland Community College.
These days, though, I think it would be cool to have a Failing Street address.
M-iss-iss-ipp-i
I tooled down Failing Street to Mississippi Avenue, hoping to find a new coffee shop. I didn’t ask the old man in a wheelchair who was nursing nursing a quart of malt liquor, but I did stop a couple of women. They couldn’t help, having just moved there themselves.
Mississippi is gentrifying fast, with tony bars and shops selling cute things like vintage toys. New apartments crowd all the way to the pavement.
A second duo of women said “right there!” when I asked, pointing to a building with a vintage Phipps Rexall sign that now houses a coffee shop. Not for me, though.
Earlier that same day I happened to photograph a disabled access sign outside the Pioneer Courthouse downtown, and here was a sterling example of non-access. I examined the side of the building; nope, no other entry. To be fair, installing a ramp here would be impossible. There’s no room.
Mississippi didn’t hold much interest for me after that, so I tooled over to the nearest bus stop. The old man in the manual wheelchair was waiting for that bus, too. He’d stashed the bottle.
I got off at the Rose Quarter, where I saw crowds of people massing like bees around the nearby Convention Center. You don’t see a lot of smiling people on the street these days, but the conventioneers looked happy.
No quiet coffee shop in that neighborhood, so I took another bus down MLK to Southeast Stark Street. There was Push x Pull Coffee, where I had a cuppa and did some writing. From there I traveled down to Belmont and took the 15 bus home.
Poetry break #2
Reaching
Beyond my fingers Another world Cobwebs trace A path to glory. Strong as steel, Taut yet spongy, Over the canyons And into the trees. What do I find there? Wishes and longing, Sun on my shoulders, Earth at my feet. I cannot tell you How wishes grow. That is my secret; You have your own. But these are wishes, Cravings and longings. Beyond our fingers, Riches await.
Double or nothing
I’ve been playing the New York Times Spelling Bee since it was print-only in the Sunday magazine. Τhere are six letters arranged in a hexagon around a seventh, and that seventh letter has to be included in any word you form. Each day there is at least one “pangram,” a word that uses all of the letters.
This game is mindless fun, but (as some of you doubtless already know) it can become maddeningly addictive.
Hiccup
Sometimes the pangram is tricky. This happened last week, when there were two pangrams, and the second was, in my opinion, dubious. The acceptable pangram was “hiccuped,” and the other was “hiccupped.”
The editors choose which words are admissible and which are not. My equibble with them here is that only one of these words is proper American English, and that is “hiccuped” with one p.
In a Becoming posting on January 16, 2023, I introduced readers to the Instant Spelling Dictionary, third edition, 1981, a reference for spellers and proofreaders that I used when I worked for the Tulare, Calif., Advance-Register.
Here’s what that book says about doubling letters when adding suffixes like -ed:
Rule 4. In words of two or more syllables that are accented on the final syllable and end in a single consonant, preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel. If the accent is not on the last syllable, the final consonant is not doubled.
Because “kidnap” is accented on the first syllable, newspapers clung to the spelling “kidnaped” for decades before finally throwing in the towel in the ’80s. Of course, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped was published in 1886. But he was a Brit.
Rule 4 explains why you should write “canceled,” but “cancellation.” “Corral” becomes “corralled,” “tranquil,” “tranquility.”
Nowadays, if you try to look up these spellings, grammar sites say the double-consonant words are chiefly British.
Whatever. Most variations, with or without the doubled consonant, are accepted by spell check, which doesn’t care if you write “canceled” or “cancelled.” Spell check does draw the line at “hiccupped.” It shows that word with the red line of shame under it, meaning it is not recognized as acceptable.
Take that, Spelling Bee.
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Stamped
We all have until July 15 to stock up on forever stamps at the US Postal Service. First-class rates are going up from 67 cents to 73 cents per stamp.
I’m old enough to remember when a first-class stamp was 3 cents (as it was from 1932 to 1958). Too cheap for that? You could mail a postcard for a penny until 1952, when the price was upped to 2 cents. You could buy postcards printed with the postage from the Post Office, which is what we called it then.
Because all first-class letters take “forever” stamps these days, best to order some before the hike.
Problem is, all the designs for stamps are UGLY. There are seldom any I truly like. So I just point the cursor at the overly cute winter woodland animals, the scenes of Mississippi River life, and another assortment of hearts and flowers that makes my teeth hurt.
What is it with the design of stamps? Okay, I could’ve ordered stamps with portraits of RBG or John Lewis, but I don’t much like the artwork. Nancy Reagan has a better portrait, and there is Betty Ford. . . . But I just watched a train wreck of a debate and I’m not ready to spring for any Republicans.
The last time I bought stamps, I chose a portrait of Edmonia Lewis, a 19th century sculptor of international renown. Her father was Black and her mother Objibwa.
Lewis, whose nickname was “Wildfire,” studied fine art at Oberlin College and later moved to Rome, where she worked in marble. You can see her work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum or at Wikiart. It is superlative.
I liked that stamp. It was meaningful and well-designed.
Remember to write
Every day, I hope you are doing something creative, even if it’s only cooking dinner or helping the kids with their homework.
Every day, remember to breathe. Remember who you are, loved and loving. Remember that you are authentic and caring.
You can forgive. It’s the way you let in the light. Give everyone and everything the benefit of a doubt.
If only I could do that.
One final poem
This poem is about moving home and getting comfortable in our cozy house on Main Street (not Wall Street!). No more sprinklers that threaten to douse candles or incense. My keto diet means no more baking. I miss that.
Secure space
Secure in a new space, I can have incense. Thoughts slip their leashes Before I can grasp Them. Waiting for wisdom, Feeding my flesh. I’m having an avocado, But I want a croissant. Goodbye to baking. Now I make stir fry, Or smear crisp tortilla With salsa and beans. Everything’s new now. Easy in summer. Deadhead the roses, Let the peonies blow. Secure in the new space With trees, crows, and sparrows. No frogs, no, nor owls, but Full moon at my window. —30—
Great poem & so far it has been a lazy summer in Sellwood.
Thanks for the heads up. The 6 year old decided that he wants to mail letters to family so it was perfect time to stock up. I thought the Lichtenstein and Tomie DePaola stamps were nice.