Round things and double-o's

Where “spokesperson” is the new word of choice

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From the back of my business card:

Do less, live more
Know that you are loved

Half the cards say that. The others have a different message.

What’s between is what’s real

Round things round-up

I keep noticing things. Today it was circles. A five-minute tour of the Rose Schnitzer Manor grounds turned up at least a dozen round things. Here are a few of them.

Doesn’t it look like this light cap is smiling at you? I see eight circles.

Circles within circles, including the screws. And a nice grid in the background.

The top of a fire hydrant has rings like a tree and appealing, peeling paint.

This letter is like an oblong circle. Note the textures, the lines. It’s so muscular.

Oddly, once I went indoors, I couldn’t see anything round. It was all squares (signs, carpet tiles) or rectangular (windows, air vents).

Rectangle v. oblong

The term “rectangle,” meaning right angle, applies to both squares and oblongs. Oblongs have adjacent sides of different lengths, so no squares are oblong.

“Oblong” is a cuter word than the upright-sounding “rectangle.” It comes from Middle English. Other “obl” words, like obligation, trace straight back to Latin.

The point being. . .

If you keep your eyes open and your mind receptive, you will start to find patterns in everything. It will make your life richer.

Tragedy

These last weeks brought to me the deaths of four people, young and old, all of them leaving before their time should have ended.

Two longtime colleagues from The Oregonian suffered the passing of their sons, one 38, the other 43.

At Rose Schnitzer Manor, a resident lost her son, age 62. And another resident, with many good years in him, died suddenly after a fall in his apartment. He was beloved. They were all beloved.

Death is a given in assisted living. After all, folks here are in their 80s and 90 and 100s. But it is never easy to bear. Life is, and then is not. We cannot reconcile or resolve death’s presence. And so we mourn.

Mourning

I don’t know how to mourn. Do any of us? I’ve lost my parents, that’s the usual way. But the pain of losing a child is incomprehensible. If only I could take your grief and replace it with my many blessings.

What’s left in my poor quiver: Prayer. Reflection. Remembrance.

And being present with those who survive.

Empty

Too early, too early
The Fates wail, neither consoled
Nor comforted.
The thread was cut before
The life had knitted out.

There is no rightness in this.
Nothing is straight.
Grief soaks up all our juice;
The seeds are dry in our mouths.
We mourn.

Evens so, our mourning— 
As we know so well,
Being human— 
Can never be enough,
Can never pluck out
The thorn from our hearts.

Sir Walter Scott says it better, in “Coronach”:
Like the dew on the mountain,
    Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
    Thou art gone, and for ever!

Who spoke that?

It used to be that, in a news item, someone referred to as a “spokesperson” was invariably a woman.

But now, in The Oregonian, I’ve noticed the term “spokesperson” applied to spokespeople of both genders.

In an email response to an inquiry,  Oregonian Editor Therese Bottomly clarified this policy for me:

Yes, AP has moved to spokesperson as preferred. Part of its trend toward gender neutral terms such as actor/actor not actor/actress.

I guess that means words like “chairperson,” “handyperson” and “milkperson” are in it for the duration. AP helpfully suggests that “search” is better than “manhunt.”

Maybe there could be a less ugly, less polysyllabic word for “spokesperson,” like “mouthpiece,” or “flak.” Flak is just one syllable, short, concise, a good headline word.

“Actor” is another concise, concrete word. I’m glad it’s not “actingperson.”

Trix-y business

Some female words used to end in -trix, like “aviatrix.” But they went out before they were even in. Amelia Earhart may be the sole person so described.

I have sometimes styled myself an editrix. Not as good as the word Robert dug up from his extensive study of German. That would be Schlagzeilverfasserin—literally, (female) headline writer.

Robert writes:

But I believe this term would also apply to (female) copy editors more generally. “Redaktorin” would be a simpler and less zany term for this.

Back to Kaiser

Thanks to friend and fellow Berkeley alumna Virginia Nelson for pointing out there are more ways to enter a Kaiser number than “one digit at a time,” as I wrote May 20.

Using the sequence 2 – 4 – 6 – 8 – 9, you could say (if you aren’t poking buttons):

“Twenty-four, sixty-eight, nine” or “two hundred forty-six, eighty-nine.”

Kaiser does it again

I saw a poster in my doctor’s office that said:

The choice is clear
Drink water every day

As opposed to, say, once a week?

News from Florida

This just in:

The governor of Florida has proposed banning all words containing double o’s.

Words like book, look, cook, oodles, doodles or ooze are on the list of banned words provided by the governor’s office. It has helpfully provided alternatives: bok, lok, cok, odles, doddles and ozz.

Everyone is in the game

The ban affects newspapers, textbok publishers, websites generated in Florida and government agencies, among others.

Some words, like “bazoomers,” are so laden with breast imagery that no alternatives are suggested. That word is kaput.

However, “bazooka” is exempted because of Second Amendment considerations. An attempt to at least ban that word from materials children might read was rejected. Children are, after all, citizens, and they have Second Amendment rights, to.

Also, porn sites can continue to use “oo” words, as they are less likely to be viewed by children. You might take this as further prof that Florida officials are living in Cloud Cucko Land.  

In an addendum to the original announcement, “headlights” is also forbidden. “Headlamps” is a perfectly fine substitute, after all.

Words like “melons” and “coconuts” may be used only if the context is clearly about comestibles or tropical paradises.

The Anarchist Cokbok will continue to be banned in libraries, no matter how it’s spelled.

The word police insist that making changes won’t be two onerous. That is what “search and replace” and spell check are for.

Conservative legislators are eager to start drafting new anti-double-o legislation son.

Another artistic challenge

For the thirteenth year running, Tammy Garcia, the proprietress (or it it proprietperson?) at Daisy Yellow (a sweet site all about art projects) is hosting Index-Card-a-Day from June 1 to July 31.

She writes:

As the world continues to go bonkers, I continue to use art as my scaffolding. Creative work gives us a little escape hatch and a chance to find some balance.

The ICAD challenge is about doing a tiny creative project each day for 61 days. You do NOT need to consider yourself an artist to participate.

 We do this together as a community and cheer each other on. Don’t worry about composing or preserving or archiving or framing or making perfect things. Just focus on the activity of doing a little project on paper each day.

Many artists STARTED their art journey during ICAD—yup, without any experience—and simply kept going—people who are now painting & journaling & creating all sorts of things! Start where you are. There is no magic formula.

But is it for me?

I love this idea, and Garcia’s enthusiasm, but I don’t think I can do it. Not because I can’t draw—everyone can draw, and everyone will get better with practice. But I’m not sure I could commit to another project in an already full day. I have so many words to write! So many books to read! Shows to binge! Quilts to quilt!

This is the point where the philosopher Alan Watts raps on the window of my mind.

“Ahem,” he says, “don’t you know that the purpose of life is not doing. It’s being.”

He is right. Life is not about fulfilling a to-do list. We are our best, most authentic selves when

We
Just
Be

Lost causes

How do you find things that have gone missing?

Traditional methods include thinking back to the last time you had the object in hand. Where would you have set it down or placed it for safekeeping?

I don’t know about you, but I often find a new safe place for something and then totally forget where that place is. It often takes quite a bit of backtracking, and sometimes pure coincidence for me to find the object again.

I just have to have faith that it will turn up.

One friend of mine, Reva Strasfeld, has another technique. She mentally askes the object where it would be, were she it. For example, she imagines she is her purse and thinks about where her purse might find itself.

Wisdom from Bubbe

Then there is the Yiddish bubbe mayse (sometimes spelled meise, and pronounced “mice-eh”), which could be translated as “old wives tale.” Bubbe is Yiddish for grandmother.

One bubbe mayse for  finding an object is to turn a glass over (from right side up to upside down). I learned about this custom from my friend Esther Dickstein, who also tosses spilt salt over her left shoulder to spite the devil.

I would be curious to know if you have a foolproof, or even half-proof, method for finding things. I use my intuition, and I am pretty good at it. I’ve returned reading glasses and hearing aids to their owners after “guessing” whose they were.

Meanwhile, I’m letting the Universe guide me to things that were misplaced in my recent move. Every few days, something turns up.

Fran Gardner photo

Bus story

In 2002, after I sold my three-bedroom, 2-1/2 bath home in hilly Southwest Portland and moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the flat grid of inner Southeast Portland, I was able to stop commuting to The Oregonian by car (what a relief!).

Soon, I started keeping track of life on the No. 15 (Belmont) bus, which linked The Oregonian and my apartment on Southeast Morrison.

So much was happening on the bus! I chronicled daily interactions, strange coincidences, people I met waiting for the bus—little stories, sometimes synchronistic.

WWJD

In those days, evangelicals who cared about the environment were asking, “what would Jesus drive?” Various cars were suggested—small, hybrid, whatever. But to me, it was obvious. Jesus would ride the bus.

I wrote an opinion piece in 2003 about that, using many of my observations. That was the first time I got comments via email from across the country. The story had been picked up by transportation wonks, and folks wrote to praise it. You can find the story (titled “You meet the nicest people on the public bus”) here, but you may need a Multnomah County library card to access it.

I had thought to write a book about the secrets of the 15-Belmont line, but this article scratched that itch, and I moved on.

Bus line Gestalt

Now I live in Southwest Portland, where the buses serve the suburbs.

I recently acquired a power wheelchair, and it has has opened vistas. It’s so easy to board a bus, turn around on a dime. No tie-down needed. And off we go!

There are far fewer passengers on the bus these days, thanks to COVID. But I’m still finding stories and themes.

How’s your hair?

This week, a Trimet* hair day.

• Beautiful dreads, lovingly curated.

• Long, curly dark hair on a guy letting it grow out, blonde at the tips.

• Young man in a wheelchair, blue hair under a raspberry knit cap, all tangled up with bluetooth earpieces.

• More bright blue hair on a chipper Millennial woman.

• A baseball cap, bill facing forward. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen many backward ball caps lately. One guy had a man bun sticking out the back of his cap.

• And the bus driver was bald.

I couldn’t help noticing.

Thank you, Trimet.

*Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties are in the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon. The name was shortened to Trimet years ago.

Check out

May was the month in which we resolved (okay, I resolved) to think about our bodies: To get comfortable with them, to accept what we might consider imperfections. I’ve done some of that, written a poem or two. On to June.

The calendar clicks over

Memorial Day is the “traditional” start of summer. But, as noted in earlier posts, Beltane, May 1, is a pretty good substitute.

Everyone knows that the solstice, the astronomical start of summer, is too late. Not for nothing is it referred to as “midsummer.”

June resolution

June is coming right up, and with it another resolution. This one is:

It’s not about me.

Let June be a month when we choose not to be offended, when we don’t filter everything through the “me” sieve, when we move beyond assumptions.

And the best way to put these ideas into practice?

Write about them.

Please try it. Just 10-20 minutes daily at the keyboard or three pages longhand. It’s a ticket to a higher plane.

Yours in authenticity,

Fran