Shoes

Abandoned, lonely, unwanted, singles and pairs

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Which one’s Flopsy-Mopsy?

My mother is reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit. There are four rabbit children: Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter.

I’m looking at the pictures. 

“Which one’s Flopsy-Mopsy?” I ask.

Mom patiently explains that there are two rabbits, one named Flopsy and one named Mopsy.

“But which one is Flopsy-Mopsy?” I persist.

And I never got past that idea, that Mrs. Rabbit had only three children, and that one of them was Flopsy-Mopsy.

I’ve had many other set ideas like that in my life. I can’t remember any of them exactly now, but I do recall the feeling of release when I didn’t have to believe one anymore. 

So here’s to all the wrong-headed notions we carry about with us. The truth will set us free, eventually. Meanwhile, we just potter along, ignorant of our ignorance. 

Now I am a writer!

My first day in the Sterling Room for Writers at the Multnomah County Library was Monday, September 9, 2024. You have to apply to write in  the small wood-paneled room with four oak tables. Somehow they bought my story (that I was a writer) and I was in.

Okay, yes, I am a writer, but it’s nice to be formally acknowledged.

I’ve been writing steadily since at least the early ’90s, when I had the enviable job of writing about people for the West Metro Bureau of The Oregonian. That job ended too soon as I was roped back to what we in the burbs called the Death Star, the hulking building at 1320 Southwest Broadway, to write about personal technology. That was a subject I was adept at, but it wasn’t exactly warm. 

That rose granite-faced building, designed by noted Portland architect Pietro Belluschi in the late 1940s, was abandoned by the newspaper in 2014, when it decamped to rented offices down on Southwest First Avenue.

The room

The Sterling room is named for Donald J. Sterling and Adelaide Sterling, and funded by their son, Donald J. Sterling, Jr.

Don was a colleague of mine at The Oregonian, having been the editor of The Oregon Journal before it merged with The Oregonian in 1982.

His wife, Julie, was one of my best friends.

Julie met Don while she was working at The Oregonian in the 1960s. She was the clubs writer—there was such a thing then. She covered all the social organizations women belonged to in those days before married women worked much outside of the home. She herself stayed home to raise the couple’s three children, but she still had time to do freelance writing and to coordinate with Linda Lampman to write The Portland Guidebook in 1981. Some yahoo at Abe Books is trying to sell a copy for $250. I’ll bet many copies are lurking in bookcases all over Portland.

I often work on my writing at the library, and it is nice to be able to write in the serene Sterling room. I feel the comfort of my old friends, and I appreciate the quiet and lack of distraction. 

Shoes

In my travels around town, I keep coming upon abandoned shoes. Some are singles, inexplicably resting under trees or on gravel. Others are pairs, possibly left for others to forage. 

Here are some of the dozens I’ve photographed.

I’ve run this photo of a boot before. It is the epitome of loneliness.

Though perhaps not as lonely as this single child’s shoe.

Resting behind the box containing these stiletto heels is an upside-down sneaker.

Sneakers, trainers, tennis shoes, running shoes. Here are some others:

Singles

And pairs

All photos by Fran Gardner

Tying shoes

Watching my hands
Tying shoes.
How do they know
When to twist sideways,
When to push down?

Who knows? We just do it.
So much of our living
Just moving through time
Without knowing why,
Or thinking about moving.

Complex yet unthinking.
Our body knows how.
We follow along.

The end of summer

The last of Portland’s big street fairs, on Belmont, was Saturday, September 14. 

I went to other fairs, Kenton and Hawthorne, but I skipped Division-Clinton and Multnomah Days this year.

By the time Belmont rolled around, I was pretty sick of displays of earrings, overpriced vintage clothing, expensive new clothing, shave ice and loud undifferentiated music. At least the dogs were well-behaved.

Attendance was a bit skimpy Saturday, perhaps because of the cool weather. It rained lightly as well.

I enjoyed meeting some City Council candidates, as well as Martin Ward, a candidate for mayor, who passed out fliers but didn’t engage passers-by in a discussion of his platform. Look on the website, he advised me.

Jeremy Brownlowe, the Typewriter Troubadour, was tapping out poems, as he does at most street fairs. He told me he makes a living doing that. I bought one of his books. 

I wrote a few poems of my own, but then the rain defeated me. Goodbye to street fairs until next summer.

Street fair poems

Megan and Brian are expecting

Baby

All anticipation—
It’s your first!
Wishes and hopes,
Plans for the nursery.

Growing in darkness, 
Soon you will leave
My body. Soon you
Will grow up and leave.

But now you are within me,
Nestled amid my hips,
Growing fingernails and hair,
The bones, the body, the baby.

Linda remembers a nice cup of tea

Tea

Black and green and chai,
Exotic spices,
Exotic leaves,
More than we can count.

Can you read tea leaves?
A picture in a cup.
Many pieces mean money,
Or maybe just some stars.

Such is the essence of tea,
Mysterious, dark, bringing out
What’s mysterious in you.
The tea reaches into your essence.

Sarah just lost her rabbit, Noora

Noora

We miss you,
Soft fur,
Wide eyes,
Strong toenails,
Ears akimbo.

But missed mostly is love,
Two hearts entwined.
Beating, hers rapid,
Yours, Sarah, more measured.

Times together,
Past now.
Just the memory.
The memories.

The roundabout way

Last month, I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I missed a bus stop.

I was taking a new route to the Kaiser facility on North Interstate Avenue. Trimet’s trip planner, which usually suggests I take the light rail, this time pointed me to the 35 Greeley bus. 

I was expecting the bus to drop me off outside Kaiser, even though I’ve taken this line before and should have remembered that it wouldn’t. I needed to get off a ways down the hill from Kaiser, and that is what I didn’t do.                                                                   

The bus veered onto Greeley on a trajectory toward Swan Island. Afraid I’d miss my appointment, I appealed to the bus driver, who knew what to do. He let me off at a lonely stop on North Going and told me to wait for the 72 bus. Ask that driver, he said, how to get to Kaiser.

The 72 bus came along within a few minutes, and I did ask the driver. But he had no clue. He didn’t know where Kaiser was. 

He was apologetic about his lack of knowledge. He said he filled in on many bus routes, and just relied on GPS.

Well, I said, take me to Interstate Avenue. He did that and also, to his credit, reminded me that the light rail ran down Interstate. Kaiser was two stops south of where I exited the 72 on North Killingsworth.

I made my appointment in plenty of time.

Clued-in and clueless

I’ve experienced two main types of Trimet drivers: Some are knowledgable and helpful. I’ve even seen one miss two traffic lights while explaining a transfer to a puzzled passenger.

Other don’t have a clue. I have stopped telling drivers where I was going as I board after getting so many blank looks. I mean, not knowing ordinary stops, like Sunset Boulevard in Hillsdale, even though a mechanical voice announces it every time the bus approaches it. Once in a while, a driver asks me where I’m going, but that is rare.

I once asked the driver of the 44 line whether the bus went to Hillsdale, although I knew it did. She said she didn’t know where that was. Her bus passed a “Welcome to Hillsdale” sign right there on Southwest Capitol Highway on every circuit.

I guess it wasn’t on her GPS.

Adventurers

You hardly ever see kids taking chances anymore. Here are some intrepid explorers climbing onto the portable classrooms at Sunnyside Environmental Middle School. I used to do things, like climbing 30 feet into trees and venturing on my bike into woodlots, that children really can’t do these days.

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Moon talk 

Our friends at timeanddate.com report that the full moon on Wednesday, September 18, is special for a few reasons:

• It’s a Harvest Moon, the moon closest to the equinox, September 22.

• It’s a Super Moon, being at its perigee, closest to Earth, so it will look bigger.

• It will feature a tiny eclipse, about 4% of the disk, from 7:17 to 9:47 PDT. Look for a shadow on the top left of the moon.

One more poem

Soon the fall rains will be upon us.

Measurement Time

One final chance
To count the raindrops
As they race down the window
Back, back to the river.

Somehow, somehow,
The rain makes return.
We go back to dust,
Our elements exhausted.

—30—