Empty bedrooms

The Seattle Times "FYI Guy" does a neat service--he'll investigate to find the answer to a question sent in by a reader.

On Dec. 16, he reported the results of the question, "How many empty bedrooms are there in King County homes?"

He counted 3 + bedroom homes that a single or married couple owns and lives in, with no kids or extended family living with them. He used census data to come up with the figure of 144,000 homes in King County that have empty bedrooms.

Starting with the third bedroom of these 144,000 homes, that was 200,000 bedrooms with no one sleeping in them.

Yes, empty nesters, mostly, peaking now with the Baby Boom generation. But it makes you think, doesn't it? Makes me think about sprawl, for one thing, as young families move outwards to new construction, while a single older person in a five bedroom home in the city stays put due to a tax break.

What I want for Christmas

1. I want for a well-off liberal to find any six Midwest Jerry Springer fans and bring them to New York City for a couple of nights at the theater. Because they must not get out much if they mistook this past election for theater.

2. I want a half-dozen local people to join me in writing thank you notes to anyone and everyone who does the difficult, good, and necessary work that we depend on, particularly work in the civic arena that most of us run away from.

3. I want us all to start a composting habit, if we haven’t already. Besides the regular reasons you can easily find to do so, it will help you to feel cleansed. It will help you get your head up and anticipate rich soil in which healthy things can sprout in this great land.

Wordless friendship

This has never happened to me before, and it tickles me. I put out food for a native Douglas squirrel, and within five minutes he was on it. I can’t say how many times I have put out seed for some ground-foragers, birds not squirrels, who seemed down on their luck, only to have to sweep up the seeds in a few hours so as not to draw rats.

Almost a month ago, when the Big-Leaf Maple dropped its seed, I watched through our kitchen window as a Douglas feasted on them. The little russet squirrel came back for days and ate its fill, showing me its perfectly groomed butternut-tan belly.

Then the rains came. I went out after a week or so and looked closely. Some of the leftover seed was now starting to rot on the ground, and the squirrel wasn’t coming around. I gathered up the seed that had fallen in clumps rather than separating, high up, to wing away. Oh, my husband said, the clumps didn’t just fall. The squirrels cut them by the clump and let them drop for easy later harvest.

Anyway, I tucked a bucket of them under the barbecue cover to dry off and keep. Today I pulled the bucket out and sprinkled the seed under the maple. When I saw my spunky friend so soon after I withdrew, I was more than tickled—'Doug,' I read your book! What I didn’t expect was that this would go a long way toward dispelling my feelings of impotence, post-election.

No, the squirrel is not in the photo—I didn’t think of the camera in time. But this is the seed, the tree, and on the tree a licorice fern like we get to enjoy at this time of year.

Heightened emotions

I'd like to think I can "compartmentalize" and set aside, at least for a Sunday, the emotions of the current, historic election season. But I suspect the glass was half full before I started on my weekend.

When one thing after another sends emotions running through me, how to respond? Should I rest, settle out? Or should I “use it,” as by writing. Yesterday the dedication of a painting at the library honoring the late Vicki Marshall, was emotional. Of course it was. The tributes paid to her memory moved the crowd, and I was proud to have known her. It also recalled my late friend Maureen, whose park dedication ceremony I didn’t get to, and so I made doubly sure to go to this local one. Then, inspired, I checked out two children’s books and went and read them to my ninety-five year old mother. That was emotional, because of the way she lit up, loving as she does everything connected with childhood. And the story of Vicki Marshall was such a perfect lead-in that any fears I had that I wouldn’t be respecting her mental capabilities were bypassed. These events of yesterday were followed by today’s Sunday sermon, a very tough message, but good, about violence toward women being far from over and done with, and in part flowing from our very language—the use of the “he” pronoun helping to render women invisible, dis-regardable.
    The pastor’s message was true, yet I also felt for the men in the stories of domestic violence, and the men and tender teen boys in the the pews who were hearing about a sizable portion of their gender implicated in power-poisoned actions. How trapped some disregarded mem must feel when they fail to negotiate contradictory cultural pressures and toxic definitions of manhood. More emotions. Followed by yet more, when I stepped across the aisle to visit with Lynn, a church acquaintance who is getting on and having some health problems. I knew I should have visited in depth years ago, but now I had a question I needed to ask for my writing purposes. She told a very affecting backstory about her late husband. I was touched.
    And then on to being asked at coffee hour by Nancy to help lead next winter’s Lenten discussion series, and then at home, discovering I’d forgotten to feed the neighbors’ cats while they are away this weekend, a reason for surprise and dismay. I’m flooded, such that just now I had to look up Nancy’s name for this blog entry to be sure it wasn’t Wendy.
    One thing I know about what’s next today—I won’t be going out for a big grocery shopping foray.

The peril to ourselves if we let extinctions happen

Cleaning up my desk just now, I found a 2012 Sierra magazine. You think that's old? I've found way older things in my work area. It seems I saved it due to one small article. And didn't know what to do with it, because, you know, it provides only one example of something I've been thinking about.

As we carry on toward greater global warming, and shrug at warnings that a lot of species are already going extinct, we occasionally hear of a huge reason not to shrug. Some species, and we don't even know yet which ones, have enormous medical uses for us humans.

We've seen it with species that we've abused, thinking they were of low value. The magazine points to the horseshoe crab.  It has BLUE blood. A blood that has special ability to clot quickly around bacterial contaminants. So now we've put protections in place on this declining creature. Maybe no longer will we casually grind it up into fertilizer, or use it for eel bait.

News report about air conditioning

News report out of the Washington Post. Yet another way we divide ourselves--we can be either pro-air-conditioning and hear the hum, or anti and turn into non-moving slugs. But here's my thought.

While we in Northwest Washington are weather-fortunate, several young people have told me their homes uncomfortably warm in summer. I’m grateful for my tree-shaded house, while they have fully exposed apartments.

Wouldn’t it be great if developers, and the bankers who set profit standards for financing the building of apartments, were to make an allowance for the reasonable comfort of their tenants, without resorting to air conditioning? Room in a project for shade trees would be so helpful. Desiduous trees which would let in light in winter, and provide cooling shade in summer. Making space for trees may provide less profit, and more need for roof and gutter cleaning. So what? Getting satisfied tenants that stay longer, that's gotta be worth something, too.

Air conditioning is not the answer to a warming world.

Always thought so--Reading is good for us

"Reading books is tied to a longer life.”  So it was reported in the New York Times (Science section) last Tuesday, and I love it. The study, published in Social Science and Medicine, of 3,635 people over age 50 followed them for twelve years. And controlling for education, income, and other factors associated with longer lives, the study found that those who read more than 3 1/2 hours a week were 23% less likely to die in those twelve years. 

Cool! So, does that mean we writers can say, “Here, read my book and live longer!”   ? 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/read-books-live-longer/

Erma Bombeck was right

The late humorist Erma Bombeck wrote a column in May of 1990 titled “Older People Only Talk about Food.” The joke was that older people, going somewhere remarkable like Yellowstone, only want to report on the food they ate on the trip. The main reason, she speculates, is that, “after a certain age, food is one of the few vices left that you can enjoy.”
    This gentle slam now has me in its sights. I’m one of them now, the older folk who talk talk talk about food, and not only at vacation locales. I’m like the army, which famously runs on its belly. I can’t seem to even do my shoulder therapy exercises without a food break. “I need a treat for  doing these awful reps!”
    Food is even what I first recall about movies. My favorite scene in “My Cousin Vinnie” is where  our bickering couple, who have traveled to the South to provide dubious legal skills to a nephew, in the morning get their first look at the menu of the nearby diner, which states their choices simply--Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. "I don't know, what do you think, Hon, Breakfast?" she says. They order breakfast and aren't done yet. The cook asks how they like their grits. A new food they can't even guess the food group for, as you can see on their faces.
    And last night a movie came on that Bill remarked never gets shown on TV--the Altman brilliance known as “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” He came upstairs to call me to watch with him, and mentioned that it was not every day you hear the phrase “butternut muff diver.” Of course I laughed, but you know which scene the movie cued up for me? Why, the food! Not every day will you see people in life or in the movies ordering food like this pair: two raw eggs and a whiskey for McCabe, and for Mrs. Miller, a meal for someone who hasn’t eaten in awhile, an astonishing list of about two days worth of dishes, ending with, after you were sure this thin person was through ordering, “and some stew and hot tea.”   
    For me now food isn’t only a fascination with flavors and treats. I just put a new finished batch of  kombucha into the fridge after five days on the counter lying under a slimy, ugly “mother.” I lovingly picked out the mother, which looks like something the ocean washed up, and returned it to its jar until time for a new batch. I am acquiring a taste for this sweet-tart drink. But when I add the, let’s face it, vinegary amber liquid to a glass of water I’m hoping it is a health tonic. I want to be around for some time to come, to taste life’s sweetness. Which has more to do with the people I love than with sugar. Anyone want a kombucha mother? I have an extra.

Chew on That

Working the jaw is tied to memory and thought. So said a New York Times article reporting recent scientific research.

If that's the case, why do I get my best ideas while showering, or while driving, rather than when eating? Maybe I chew at more times than I know. One of Mom's aunts worked her jaw constantly, with a small smile. And then she would say something. And then return to silently working her jaw around. Mom spoke ill of this aunt, calling her the family conniver, the trouble-maker. I guess to create her schemes she had a lot of extra thinking to do.

I hope I'm not like her. Mom doesn't seem to think so, thank goodness,

The young are alright with me

Today, stopped at a busy intersection, I had a front row seat to this scene: On the opposite side of the intersection from me, two young men pushed a stalled car around the corner, headed for the nearest driveway that would get it off this road that would soon be buzzing with traffic when the light changed. To the corner the slope had been slightly downhill, but after the corner, it was clearly getting tougher as the slope shifted uphill. I watched to see what would happen—my light was still red—and I must have blinked, because I missed where she came from, but a young woman who had not been anywhere on the scene came running up, smiling, and joined in to push without anyone missing a beat. Slowly they succeeded in getting the car, an indistinct model with faded paint, to the driveway of the shopping center. My light turned green and I followed and saw them push the car up the driveway and safely to rest. Then I was past and they were gone from my sight. Must have been one grateful driver in that car.


    Earlier, in the morning radio broadcast of Weekend Edition, indie-rock singer-songwriter
Mitski Miyawaki was interviewed. Should I confess at this point that I don’t have a high opinion of current music? What I’ve heard are tuneless wails inexplicably fascinating to young pedestrians. So much so, that, earbuds in, they stride through intersections without so much as a glance at traffic.

    But I was hooked upon hearing the description of Mitski’s music and stayed by the radio. Her  definition of happiness has been “skewed more towards ecstasy rather than contentment.” But clearly she is thinking and feeling deeply in her art. “I've been learning that I can use many different things to try to chase that feeling, but the most unhealthy thing is the chasing itself.” Sounds like wisdom to me. Not that I have anything against ecstatic moments and trying to make them last. She was asked about the track called “Happy.”  She said, “When I was writing this song, I just wanted none of it. I didn't want the happiness and I didn't want the sadness that comes after it. That's kind of what the song is about: not wanting to go up or down anymore.” She described the kind of happiness she feels now with her career, and it’s contentment. Not the end of the story, but she is clear-eyed, and is writing music that sounds like something very cool. And it has tunes!

    There is a koan that speaks of many eyes and hands and seems to be talking about great  compassion in the universe. I saw happiness today, easy fellow-feeling, and the gifts in musical arts. All in the young. And it makes me content.

Blow it up? Are you sure?

When I was a college freshman, and that’s going way back, WWU students elected a pig, yes, an oinker, as homecoming royalty. It was the 1960s. We were in the midst of a youth-led cultural revolution fueled by, among other things, Vietnam war protests, by the seeming blindness of “the establishment” to what we feared we were heading into on a number of fronts.

That was a “blow it up” moment; in that instance, blowing up the old beauty-popularity contests traditionally offered to us young people.  At first glance, it might seem to provide a parallel with the Trump and Sanders followers’ passions for upheaval.

But along the way, in the decades since in 1960s, cultural currents in the U. S. have reflected a complacency that has morphed into a blindness of its own, a blindness that believes that all of the good stuff of our society and country is safe from change, like it stands on its own steel and concrete foundation, and all we have to do is demand, from whichever leaders happen to be in office, selected revolutionary leaps forward. When we are not making demands, are we even voting, let alone organizing for change? I fear we have treated our citizenship as an antiquated sentiment, and have settled instead for being consumers and entertainment junkies.

Did the blow-it-up zeitgeist begin in the business world? We’ve all seen the new thing in business, “disruptive” change. If all the basics are assumed safe, including basic transaction trust, we can applaud those who can selectively take a company or product and blow it up. Or start a new thing, like bitcoins, and ride on our shared trust. It’s just the way the game is played now. Business as a game, right?

Who knew that a game approach to everything, business and life, would one day bite us? Evidently it is starting to. In a New York Times Saturday story, (page A11) one Bernie supporter was very insightful. He’s in the camp of “Bernie, Or else blow up the Democratic Party.” Victor Vizcarra of Los Angeles, is 48, is old enough to have some perspective. Yet he plans to vote for Trump if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, not because he agrees with Trump’s positions, but like a gambling man, and having watched “The Apprentice,” he feels a Trump presidency would be more exciting, a Clinton presidency more “boring.”

Now here’s where his insight really comes in. Mr. Vizcarra says, “A dark side of me want to see what happens if Trump is in. There is going to be some kind of change, and even it it’s like a Nazi-type change, people are so drama-filled. They want to see stuff like that happen. It’s like reality TV. You don’t want to just see everybody to be happy with each other. You want to see someone fighting somebody.”

Tremendous insight. He’s not particularly proud of his insight. He’s not driven by desire to improve Flint’s water, or halt the ocean’s rise, nor does he even appear passionate about Bernie’s signature issue, reversing giant corporate power and rising economic inequality. But he clearly assumes that it’s all a show we can enjoy. That it doesn’t matter beyond the show. That, for instance, presidential appointees to the Supreme court don’t matter.

How many are like him, either openly, or fooling themselves that they have no role as citizens to set right what goes wrong in our messy society?—beyond blowing something up, that is. In a sense, he is right. If we sit back as consumers to a great big show, we’ll get drama, alright. But why would we want to gamble that the upheavel will be confined safely to our TVs and little back-lit screens?  Why would we want to assume that the consumer will control the outcome, rather than the already powerful?

first two weeks in a sling

ahead of shoulder joint surgery, you bustle about, secure in your project planning moxie. going to have the use of just one arm for six weeks? okay you think, get ahead on some things—start with short fingernails and toenails, check. sweep the floors, check. get laundry all caught up, check. select a roomy cardigan to go over an arm in a sling, set up an easy chair as a temporary sleeping spot, as everyone says you’ll want. elastic pajama bottoms—drawstring isn’t going to work, requiring, as it does, two hands.  lay in supplies, from dry shampoo to meals into the freezer. and most important of all, be nice to the fella who is going to get your shirt and shoes on, cut up your supper, and get you in and out of your sling for your few passive exercises. oh, and go for what wasn’t anticipated, like one- handed dental floss gizmos.

then, like a sign that all will not be controllable, a couple of days before the surgery, the special-size cabinet microwave goes out. kaput. Dear husband handles it. the surgery goes well, and you come home the second day, doped with codeine for the pain of all the grinding, cutting, and sewing.

within days you have stumbled on the stairs, ouch, and touched a scalding water kettle to your slung hand, not once but twice. no way would your hand normally be in front of your belly while you hoist a kettle, but there it is, tied into place.

you get hip to the danger of carrying anything up or down stairs, because of course the hand you have for carrying needs to be on the handrail instead.

just as you graduate from nights in the downstairs recliner to your upstairs bed, the downstairs sitting room loses its useability anyway—the ceiling can lights go dark. Turns out you did this to yourself when in another of your green initiatives, you replaced the lamps with LED.  the existing dimmer worked for months, then chose this time to decide it really wasn’t compatible.

while you and the fella step through an electrical lesson at Hardware Sales in installing a compatible dimmer, other problems await. the almost new weed whackery wand quits, and requires a trip to burlington.  the circulating ice water device likewise doesn’t serve the shoulder (seemed a poor imitation of the kind we heard recommended). other glitches shall remain nameless in the interests of  preserving dignity.

but you find you are going for lovely forest walks, including a first-ever sighting of a ring-necked duck on Geneva pond. seemingly mis-named, but with striking white markings ringing its bill, and high-crowned iridescent black head, it was captivating.

no longer in need of anything stronger than acetaminophen, you are now a third of the way with the sling, and ready for the next two weeks.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

Through all the election season noise--jolts and umbrage, hopes for a candidate to lead us out of this mess--we are finally getting somewhere. Somewhere, where we can see we need to lead the leaders.

We are finally getting beyond parsing the words of the candidates to get a close look at big groups of their supporters. And as Eduardo Porter pointed out in his column in Wednesday's New York Times, "Reviving the Working class Without Building Walls," our current economic system has left in the dust our once-proud-to-contribute blue collar white men.

It hasn't hurt only them, to be sure, but they perhaps have been the most ignored in recent years. Now that we're finally getting serious in examining our drift away from equality, we're being reminded how many of us are stuck, mired in low incomes with no economic mobility in sight. It wasn't always that way, and doesn't have to be that way now.

Yet the political right has succeeded so well in demonizing the poor and the struggling, that now we see too many of the poor ready to vote against themselves if instead they are offered the bone of pride, and the chance to stick it to others.

But columnist Eduardo Porter, though he lists some steps that could begin to relieve and improve the economic lives of the working class, is himself mired in an economic meme that goes unexamined at the national level:  early in his column he speaks of the "global economy" as if it is a good thing to put all our eggs in one basket.  Have we learned nothing from "too big to fail?" If trade deals put us all in the same boat, in a bath tub subject to tsunami waves and dislocations, how can tweaking things help us?

The answers are being found at local and regional levels, in such structures as worker-owned cooperatives. The big global corporations do not have to own us. We can still choose to put some of our eggs in a safer basket, nearer home.

Through the Floor (Excerpt)

A once in a lifetime experience--a dangerous accident on a mountain in 2014--left an indelible mark on me and made me question some of my fundamental underpinnings. And I wanted to write about it, explore it. Now the story is in the new edition of Cirque Journal.

Here is an excerpt, from "Through the Floor" telling what happened a few seconds after I decided to give up on snowshoeing in a blizzard:

. . . A few more steps down the east side of the knoll and I reached the firmer snowpack of the trail. I turned right and lengthened my stride, keeping track of thin reddish trail markers jutting up every so often through the whiteness. I wished they were closer together, but I was pretty sure I could stay on the trail. My thoughts shifted indoors—maybe I’d get out my sketch pad, fix a cup of tea.
     Then without warning, I felt a funny yielding. Not just different, wrong. My stomach thought faster than my mind, clenching in alarm. A second later, my left foot was standing on . . . nothing. In disbelieving horror I watched the path in front of me come apart—all slow motion and soft sounds, the surface ripping zigzag, inch by inch ahead. Like the very earth opening to swallow me. Further shocked that I could watch this instead of being overtaken by the blind chaos of a tumbling fall, I thought I must be dreaming. But no, my right foot was still on the ripped edge of the trail even as the snow under my left foot slid outward from under me. Like the moment a person with one foot on the dock and the other on the moving boat realizes she can no longer jump to one or the other. My arms flung out, still clutching poles. Helpless to make any other response I sank, all but my right leg, in exquisite slow motion, remaining surreally upright. Rising into my view was the old trail surface, my right foot still attached to it, while below a crevasse-like cleft appeared, all newness creating itself in perfect pace and tandem with my descent.




For more, Cirque Journal is at http://www.cirquejournal.com/index.php.