Mug and Thistle

Doing good on the bus and writing poems for strangers

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Three words

• Agency

• Authentic

• Authoritative

Agency 

You are in control. You are in charge. You make things happen.

That’s what “agency” means to me. It works hand in hand with “authentic” and “authoritative” to round out the powerful in our personalities. 

I so like this word. It connotes strength of purpose, activity. In today’s imploding world, with democracy in danger, not to mention the planet, it’s worthwhile to remember we still have power.

What we do matters. And we can choose what we do. 

Some circumstances are forced upon us, some bear us down, and some we can overcome. 

Agency helps us sort through our options. To take a stand. To assert.

Authentic

We all have our different personality outfits. Some of them are less appealing: an insincere smile, pretending to like that hideous dress, going with the flow when we should resist it.

But so much more often, we are true to ourselves. Our inner compass points us—and we go. 

Authoritative

Authoritative is the natural outcome. We know who we are—authentic. We know how to be that—agency. Now we are authoritative. What could be a negative in other circumstances is just what we need.

New review

A review I wrote of The Tigers of  Lents is live on Oregon ArtsWatch, where the editors say it’s gotten thousands of hits. 

I enjoyed Mark Pomeroy’s novel almost as much for its immersion into Portland life as for its tale of three sisters on the edge of poverty who are working through the loss of their high school. The story begins in 2010, when the Portland School Board voted to close Marshall High School beginning in 2011.

Subsequently, one sister gets a soccer scholarship to the University of Portland, where she’s never sure she belongs. Another leaves the family for her abusive boyfriend, and the third feeds her anxiety with food but is also careful of her clothing and the jewelry she has culled from Goodwill.

The girls cruise Southwest Broadway, ride the Max Green Line and wonder whether they should let their father, newly released from prison, back into their lives. Their lives and experiences are bittersweet as they discover their agency.

I recommend The Tigers of Lents. The library has dozens of holds on 10 copies of the book and seven of the ebook. Better would be buying a copy to support a local author. The paperback is $19.95 from the University of Iowa Press or at Powell’s, and the Kindle version is $9.99 on Amazon.

Thistle 

Fran Gardner photo

This plant is a cardoon, a group that includes artichokes. It doesn’t have the prickly stems and leaves of the thistle that is the symbol of Scotland. That armored plant is credited with alerting the Scots when the invading Norsemen, who, seeking a more salubrious climate than Scandinavia, tried to sneak up on them in the night. Their howls of pain alerted Scots, who were then able to overcome them.

I have some Scots-Irish ancestry, and the thistle is my plant, too. I am prickly, ask anyone.

But I also think I have a brilliant purple flower inside me as well. It helps me write poems, like these.

Poems for strangers

I set up shop at the Hawthorne Street Fair last week, offering to write poems for free. After a slow start, a lot of folks asked me to write for them.

I enjoy these sessions, even when the sun is hot. Spirit moves my pen, and I glory in the world that opens for me. These poems are mostly as I wrote them, word for word.

Bonnie from New Deal Distillery asked me to write about marigolds

Marigolds

Gold and yellow and sometimes maroon.
Planted out by the garage.
They keep away bugs—
But I forget which ones.

Flowers for frill lovers,
Gathered and tucked.
Put one in your hair,
Spicy scent around your ears.

Patricia said to write about love

Love, love, love

It doesn’t come easy.
Sometimes not at all.
Never what you expect.
But often what you wish.

Push love aside, a bit.
Let breathing take over.
Isn’t it easier now?
To admire the flowers?

Oh, to be in love.
With life, with death, with wishes.
Be careful what you love
Especially when it's easy.

Elinor said to write about the first thing that comes to mind

The first thing that comes to mind

Okay, what about eggs?
That thing before the chickens
Crack one too many for that omelet,
Feed the leftovers to the cat.

Or, how about heartache?
Poets love that topic
All the pain, working through time,
Everything all right in the end.

Nah, let me write about poetry.
The best way to translate.
The language of the Universe—
That language is love.

David wanted a poem for Grace, his daughter who is 11 and likes to read

For Grace who likes to read

Books are your passports
To wondrous lands,
Sunshine and ribbons,
But also dark corners.

You know Harry Potter,
Darker and darker,
Yet always with hope,
Like your lifetime to come.

You will do great things.
Just ask your dad.
Reading and dreaming.
And sketching a life.

Heather had four children in tow: Bella, Wyatt, Isaac and Isaiah

Children

Such a nice family
Tell me they’re readers,
Lovers of summer,
Of swimming and sun.

Childhood is fleeting—
Well, duh, that’s a given.
But freshness of children,
How can we forget?

My children are grown now,
Their summers have fled,
But in your children’s eyes
I find summers ago.

Write about the future, Tess said

What comes

We don’t know the future,
But sometimes we suspect
Things might not turn out
The way that we’d like.

It’s human to hope, though—
You could win the lottery.
Find that four-leaved clover,
Have your candidate win.

The flag of the future,
Unfurled and flapping.
Don’t bother to salute it,
It changes with the wind.

Corinna loves rivers

The river

Splashing and rushing,
Or quiet in curves,
Making its bed wherever it wants.

Minnows float in pools,
Frogs jump in the shallows
Salmon or alligators lurk in the depths.

Rivers are lazy, except when they’re flooding.
Choose which most suits you—
That river is yours.

Alejandra seeks a peaceful place

A peaceful place

Lions and lambs lay down together.
Flowers bloom in the desert.
A sinful city repents of its misdeeds.
Inside your heart, a joyful little imp.

Peace when you wake.
Peace on your house.
Peace in the market,
In the shadows of your garden.

Peace is a huge cloud
The size of a poem.
Drop in a quarter
And play a new song.

Another poet

There’s a guy, Jeremy M. Brownlowe, who styles himself the Typewriter Troubadour. He sets up shop like I do at street fairs, and he taps out his poems on an old manual portable. I love that idea. Wish I had thought of it.

Mug

In another reminder of how old I am, I cherish a coffee mug from 34 years ago. It’s a 10-year anniversary souvenir from The Broadway Coffee Merchant. The crest reads “Caffe par excellentia” (I think that’s Latin for good Joe), and the dates are 1980-90.

There were two Coffee Merchants, one on Northeast Broadway and the other on Southeast Hawthorne. They served coffee and sold beans and offered pretty mugs and accessories. 

When I came to Portland in 1974, there was no expresso to be found in town. No coffee beans at the grocery. My then-husband and I traveled to Gresham to buy beans at the Boyd’s roasting plant. We’d been spoiled in Berkeley, where we lived three blocks from the original Peet’s Coffee.

Things were just starting to pick up coffee-wise in Portland in 1980, and Coffee Merchants was on the cresting wave of interest in Arabica coffee. So was a wonderful business called Coffee People, home of the Velvet Hammer mocha, which started in 1983 and grew to dozens of outlets before petering out. Starbucks wouldn’t appear in town until 1989. 

Long ago in 1990

Thirty-four years. Wow. I was 40. That September, my children were 9 and 12. 

I was working out of the West Metro Bureau of The Oregonian, traveling all over Washington and Yamhill counties and writing stories about people. They would write me thank-you notes about how I had captured their essence. Best job I ever had.

I hadn’t been diagnosed with MS yet. I still remember how I could step into my trousers, left leg first. 

In 1990, the first George Bush was president. The Internet was birthing but Craig’s List hadn’t yet destroyed the classified ads that were the newspaper’s chief source of revenue. If you are younger than 34, you weren’t born yet.

Wow.

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Easy to do good

There seems to be plenty of space in the front of a Trimet bus for more than one wheelchair. Except on a recent day, when I was in my wheelchair and there was a woman with a black walker. At 18th and Hawthorne, a man in a wheelchair was late to an appointment. I offered to get off the bus and give him my place.

It was easy to be magnanimous. I was just six blocks from the stop where I would transfer to another line. As I was tooling in that direction, the bus sped by me, the driver tapping the horn and waving. He had called me a “hero.” Nah. ’T'warn’t nuthin’.

I got on the next bus and headed toward Milwaukie. Another woman with a black walker was on board. At Center Street on Milwaukie Avenue, a man wanted to board with a mobility scooter. Scooters are harder to maneuver on buses, as I know from experience. They don’t have the great turning radius of a wheelchair like mine.

Anyway, I had wanted to take a photograph here at Center Street, and this was my chance. I got off and let the jolly fat man on his red scooter have my place. The lady with the walker stayed on the bus.

This is the photo:

I was struck by how the dangling vine looks like it could be a long braid for the dancer in the photograph. This billboard is on Southeast Milwaukie Avenue at Bush Street. Fran Gardner photo

I caught the next 70 bus and then transferred to another bus to visit Maple Street in Milwaukie. But that excursion and the reason for it are for another posting.

The week ahead

Well, there’s this holiday. Then everything gets frenetic.

Goodbye, summer and easy living. Hello, school and seriousness. Put away the barbecue; crank up a presidential debate. There’s always a hot spell in September, but the days will get crisper after that.

Next week, I plan to write about maple: maple trees, maple syrup, maple bars, streets called Maple.

Are you creating?

Do something creative every day. That’s what makes us human, keeps us human. It occurs to me that prayer is a form of creativity: creating a space for you and the Divine, laying a groundwork of gratitude.

Make new things. Love what you have created. Cherish and share.

—30—

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