Out with the old year
But not before some farewells
Bubbly
Drink water, not Champagne
The open fountains known as Benson Bubblers in downtown Portland were shut down during Covid. Now many of them have been turned back on.
This one is outside Portland City Hall at Southwest Fourth and Madison.
The inscription reads: “Presented by Simon Benson 1912.”
Benson was a teetotaling timber baron who donated the fountains to give citizens an alternative to drinking in bars.
He lent his name to a famous Portland hotel, but there are no streets named after him. There is a high school, Benson Polytechnic, home to KBPS radio (AM 1450).
The house Benson built for his family was moved from its downtown location a few blocks to the campus of Portland State University, which now owns the building. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and it presides over the corner of Southwest Park and Montgomery.
Portland water
About those bubblers: Readers who are not from Portland are missing out on some of the best-tasting municipal water in the nation. It comes from the Bull Run watershed in the Cascade foothills, supplemented by some ground wells when the weather is dry. The Bull Run water is remarkably soft, that is, free of minerals, and it has a pleasingly bland flavor.
For a while, the city was bottling and selling Bull Run water as Portland Water. Why they stopped, I don’t know.
Renewal
We are at the end of the year. Time to turn the page on 2023. Do you resist, as I do, looking back? As always, I fear regret, but what about regard?
It was a year of small triumphs. Synchronicities, some meaningful. Forward steps, backward steps, sideways step.
Regret—I can’t escape it—at time wasted. Bemusement at time used for pursuits I would never have imagined, like piecing together wonky blankets from mismatched knitted and crocheted squares.
Regret and regard
I mull over the many things I could have done better, then counter with the things I did well. I made people smile. Sometimes I consoled them.
I reached for the brass ring, again and again. Sometimes it came off in my hand. Sometimes it crumbled into rust.
But still, I had some taste of victory.
Looking at the year in terms of success and failure—I don’t want to do that. So what was it, then?
I see it as another romp around the sun, days that passed too quickly. Nights that crawled from one sleepless moment to the next.
What was left
If I knit all the moments of this year, what a strange garment would result! The sleeves would go on backwards, and I know that collar would never lie straight.
So what? We know that perfection is overrated. Humanity is what’s left when we remember who we are.
We turn up, we get out of bed, we strive, we win. We step into manure and patiently clean our shoes.
Then we put them back on, and set them on the road, and we walk into the next thing. The massive carved doors of 2024 open before us.
Ice hotels
Beginning January 4, if you happen to be in Quebec, you could check into the only ice hotel in North America. That is, if you can get a reservation. Sadly, it’s too late already.
I discovered ice hotels when I worked a brief stint as a fact-checker for a travel magazine.
A popular and recent Scandinavian innovation, they are inns made of ice, like igloos.
I like the room to be cool when I sleep. Ice hotels take this to the next level. Everything really is made of ice, but there are pads and blankets between your body and the ice.
The luxury suites at Quebec’s Hôtel de Glace have fireplaces and hot tubs, and there are hot tubs and saunas outside, too. The hotel is at a resort, Valcartier Vacation Village, in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, near Quebec City.
Ice hotels became a thing in Scandinavia a few decades back. They feature walls and furniture made of ice. Even the glasses in the bar may be ice. Ice sculptures abound, with themes that change year by year, and sometimes art hangs on the walls.
Guests have to bundle up, but the effect can be quite cozy. Several hotels are listed here: https://indagare.com/article/best-ice-hotels
From the Hôtel de Glace site:
Even if the Hôtel and its furniture are entirely made of ice and snow, you will be getting a very comfortable bed. Blocks of ice make the base of the bed, topped a solid wood base and a comfortable mattress.
The Valcartier website further explains that “when the time comes, a cozy sleeping bag, an isolating [sic] bed sheet, and a pillow will be delivered to your room. Even though the room temperature stays between -3°C and -5°C (27°F and 23°F), no matter what the outdoor temperature is, the sleeping bags are built to resist temperatures between -15°C and -30°C (5°F to 22°F).”
Sweet dreams, and may choirs of reindeer sing you to your rest.
Synchronicity corner
One of the subscribers to Becoming, Elaine Holland, shared the synchronicity of meeting her former husband, Bruce Trachtenberg. They had been high school classmates at one point, then lost track of each other. But 20 years later, they got back into contact and were astonished that they were working across the street from each other in Manhattan, at 250 and 245 Park Avenue.
All the way across the country, ending up a stone’s throw away.
Ukulele synchronicity
Several years ago, I took a ukulele class at St. David of Wales, an Episcopal church in my Southeast Portland neighborhood. A newbie, I was sent to the beginner’s class, where I met a woman named Ruth Frankel. We fell into conversation. She was from Brooklyn, like Robert. And her sister went to college at Brandeis, like Robert. At about the same time.
I asked Robert that afternoon about Ruth’s sister, Joan. Had he known her at Brandeis? Yes, he did know her. She was a friend.
She was Joan Wallach then, and is now Joan Wallach Scott, a professor of history emeritus at Princeton. Her son A.O. Scott reviews movies for The New York Times. Joan and Ruth are the nieces of Eli Wallach, the actor.
We privileged to know Ruth Frankel and her husband, Herman, a pediatrician, until his death in 2018.
Confirmation
One synchronicity this week wound like a worm through several layers of blog.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about
. . . these moments of otherworldly clarity, when my surroundings seemed to crystallize. Everything was, for a long instant, shiny and perfect. . . . Is there a term for such moments? Not deja vu; the impressions weren’t from the past. They were intensely present.
Only once have I read of another having such a vision, and I have forgotten where.
Then, this week, the Universe introduced me to someone who shared this experience.
This week’s installment of Amy Cowen’s Substack, Illustrated Life led me to listen to one of her famous Creativity Matters podcasts (no. 457, from Dec. 14, 2021). And in that podcast, this quotation:
Fortunately, we are given these moments where our boundaries suddenly disappear and we are nowhere and everywhere, color and light break through, and eternity is revealed once more.
That’s it! That describes the phenomenon! The woman who said that was the Rev. Sue Ann Yarbrough, a minister in the United Church of Christ who lives in San Leandro, Calif.
Just when I was searching for confirmation, the Universe provided it.
Vocabulary corner
Epistemic humility
Charlie Munger, longtime associate of the financier Warren Buffett, shares my birthday. He would have been 100 on Jan. 1, 2024. I will be less old on that day.
Jason Zweig commented on Munger in the Wall Street Journal shortly after Munger’s death on Nov. 28.
More than almost anyone I’ve ever known, Munger also possessed what philosophers call epistemic humility: a profound sense of how little anyone can know and how important it is to open and change your mind.
Munger described another trait of his as “destroying my own best-loved ideas.” Writers know that as “killing your babies”: letting go of characters, of phrases, of metaphors that don’t work.
“I’m pleased when I can destroy an idea that I’ve worked very hard on over a long period of time,” Munger said.
It isn’t what you know, it isn’t what you don’t know. It’s that you have the self-knowledge to know you don’t know.
Poetry corner
This poem seems appropriate to the end of the year. It’s about deconstructing and building back up
Time warp
Trust rust Flakes and dust, What was once And is no more. Ravel, unravel, Both the same. Unknit the stitches That led you here. Take out the basting That held you together, Shake out the sheets, Bleed out your veins. All of this matters, None of it does. Just, you must take apart To be ready to build.
Month by month
Every year, I set a new list of themes to remember each month. The one for January is the same every year: buy nothing except food and supplies. And I’m going to continue making August “remember to see” month.
These the topics for 2024. I’ll write a bit about them each month.
January: Don’t buy anything except necessities. Videos, for example, are not necessities.
February: Remember the history of the other. Farengi are a race in Star Trek, yes, but the Farsi word “farenji” (spelled various ways) means “foreigner.”
March: Saints. Obvious ones like St. Patrick. Obscure ones like St. Kevin. Saints of other cultures. The saints among us. How I intuited a saint.
April: No fooling. Untaxing, relaxing, rebooting.
May: Forgotten flowers, and twins. Gemini begins May 21. I want to explore twin books, united by topic or title.
June: Water. Cancer comes in with the solstice.
July: Forgiveness. The hardest and best thing you can do.
August: Remember to see. All about noticing.
September: Get uncomfortable. Why?
October: Tricks and treats. Recipes! Magic!
November. No, no, no. yes, yes, yes.
December. Steaming toward the new.
Check out
It was tougher than usual to write this week’s posting. I’m getting whiplash from staring back at 2023, then scanning the horizon for 2024. Research turned into little rabbit chases. I kept ending up far from where I thought I was headed, disoriented and unsure.
Please remember, I tell myself, it’s all good. It’s all okay. Stop obsessing about Measurement Time.
All the little boxes of my imagination are aligned. All I have to do is fill them.
Or ignore them. Or crush them. As long as I remember: I control—everything! I’m dancing around on my toes like those Raider guys in the Chiefs-Raiders game last week who just made their second TD in seven seconds. I’m back from the rabbit holes. I can’t wait to write. I can’t wait to live. I can’t wait to see what comes next. In the next minute. In the next year. Over the next hill. Down the next ravine. Don’t wait for the rabbit, The time is now. The diving board awaits. Plunge.
What matters
Here is how Amy Cowen sees the beauty of journaling, from the vantage point of her Illustrated Life Substack. She keeps her journals fresh with drawings.
Putting oneself out there—in essays, in lists, in sketchnotes, in graphic novel or diary panels, in journal pages, in podcast episodes and spoken word—is an act of vulnerability and trust. It also requires believing, again and again, day after day, week after week, that it matters. This believing is whimsical, the bell you tuck in your pocket or hang on a tree, a symbol. But believing also requires strength and toughening. No matter how vulnerable it can be to expose whatever tumbles out of the sharing, there is an inner core of conviction, of strength, of self.
Two resolutions
I’m not much for resolutions. Too easy to break. But these two things are reminders. They are important.
The first is heartfelt listening.
Those of us of a certain age can remember the anticipation of letters in the mail. That’s all gone now. The best we can wish for is a heartfelt email.
I got one of those this week, from a friend, an artist. She wrote from her heart and made my heart sing in responsive harmony.
Let’s take time to listen to our friends. Listen deeply. Listen with compassion. Keep our own mouth shut and our “top this” responses at bay.
Just. Listen.
And another one, most important
Many women who were my friends are gone now. One, Judy, was cut down by cancer in her 40s; others—Julie, Winnie, Millie, Helen, Helen, Helen, Ginger, Betty, Doris, Olive, Janet—were older than I.
I think of these women with such gratitude for our friendship, and I have one big regret. I never told them I loved them.
It wasn’t a thing, a decade or two ago. It never occurred to me, or to them. But now it has become so important.
I don’t say “I love you” just to my family now. I say it to all my friends, over and over, whenever I say goodbye or hang up the phone.
“I love you.”
I will keep doing that.
And to you, reader, also:
I love you.
—30—
Synchronicity indeed. I wrangled with my newest post, filling a bucket of blood, sweat, and tears. I finally managed to plunge a dagger into it and see what I was really trying to say. Thank you for this, Fran. If Substack as given me anything, it's practice in dragging my ugly babies to the trash bin.
I enjoyed reading this post, and your Time Warp poem, as the year turns. These are wonderful stories of synchronicity. Thank you for mentioning my recent post. I hope you have a peaceful birthday … forward-looking.