Threads in the Social Fabric

 August 20, 2016

“How do you think you made him…or her…feel?”

I heard this statement frequently when I was little. Often it was about bossing my little brother. Or refusing to share my toy with a friend. Or insisting things be done MY way. As I grew up somehow I did learn that my behavior could hurt someone. Selfishness hurt. Calling names that I heard on the playground could hurt: “wop,” nigger,” “heinie,”  “polack,” were to be never used. It hurt feelings and was impolite.

Nowadays word calling is rampant. Even when the words aren’t directed at me, they hurt. They are rude. They make me feel the world is changing for the worse. Columnist Nicolas Kristoff talked of hate rending the social fabric, an old phrase meaning society’s ability to work and play and govern together.

An old Greek myth tells of a hero on a journeys finding three women in a market square weaving a large tapestry. They told him they were weaving the threads of every person’s life, in and out, over and under. When the thread was cut, or ended, it left a hole.

Our early settlers made fabrics out of scraps. Even when I was a child we had a “rag bag” filled with worn out pieces of clothing. My mother didn’t sew and I don’t remember anyone quilting, but we had some “crazy quilts” handed down from previous generations. They were made of odd-shaped fabric scraps sewn together by large black stitches. Each scrap had a story, but I only remember the blue velvet piece from a dress my grandmother wore when she met my grandfather. I loved the way it felt when I rubbed it.

Last week one of my recent Portland friends mentioned a lovely little indie bookshop in Newburyport, Massachusetts he had visited recently. It turned out to be one near my son’s home that I also knew and loved. As we shared our memories about this far away bookshop, we created another common thread. My life now is full of these threads. I treasure each one.

The Olympics show people from different backgrounds who have a passion for the same sport. Who can forget the athletes smiling at their competitors after a tough race? Those participants are connecting with each other-- and with us who have these same passions but lesser abilities. Watching them, and sharing the events with others, weaves different threads into the social fabric. They make us feel good.

Last winter a Wisconsin friend wrote me that a neighbor freely plowed their entire street—one too small for the city plows to bother with in a huge storm. It seems to me it was about the same time that a Wisconsin dentist shot a prize lion in Africa.  Two Wisconsin men. Which one improved the  social fabric?

A friend’s daughter has been taking part in an international scavenger hunt, where the participants take a selfie doing an assigned task. She has read stories to people who can no longer read to themselves, given doughnuts away on the MAX train, and dressed up as a pirate bringing a “treasure” to a shut-in. One of her colleagues pretended to be a butler, and gave coffee away down town. How many people did they make happy during their scavenger week? How do you think they felt?

I don’t know if these little individual projects, one by one, can ever make up for the many leaders who call names and demean others in the name of free speech. I’d like to think they do. So, like Ben Franklin, when we get up in the morning let us think about “what good should I do this day?” At the end of each day, he asked himself about his actions.

Other threads are ideas, and a friend shared this with me. When promoting my Walking Portland Oregon books at book fairs, I sometimes put out a box of individual snapshots used in the book, asking passers-by if they can identify what and where it is. He suggested I post one on my blog pages, asking readers to identify it. At the moment I have no ideas of prizes—it will be just for fun. Let me know your opinion, as well as the answer to this picture # WP 1.

PORTLAND # 1

A Wonderful Day

 

WOW! What a wonderful week it was.

A few weeks ago I received a call telling me that I was being awarded the Evelyn Sibley Lampman award for my years as a school librarian. I was about to race out and do cartwheels in the hall (unfortunately I really can’t) or at least knock on my neighbors’ doors and scream loudly! Fortunately for them, the next call said I could tell my family but no one else, especially anyone who had any relationship with libraries. That one phrase wiped out about 80% of my friends.

So I kept quiet. Not easy for me. Especially when I have GOOD news to share. (Bad news is something else.) I did keep busy rereading some of Lampman’s books, and was pleasantly surprised to find how she was able to hook me into the story in the first chapter. Good writing. And they were surprisingly up to date for the most part, although The Shy Stegosaurus of Indian Springs seemed like a book set in the last century. Well, come to think of it, it was! However, children still love dinosaurs. The portrayal of a Rogue River Indian boy captured by another tribe, and of Yolanda, a migrant girl whose schooling was constantly hampered by the family travels during growing seasons, are both heroes that anyone—even grown-ups--can understand. I wish someone would reissue the books with modern covers and use the set when fourth graders study Oregon.

Then last Thursday some of my family and friends took me to the Oregon Library Association conference in Bend, Oregon where I received this lovely plaque. I am mentally walking on air-- and only wish I was literally doing so! I am also telling everyone I can to make up for my previous silence. Anyway, it is VERY nice to be thanked for working in some wonderful schools with terrific students, many of whom I now follow on Facebook.

I was told the main reason I received the award was for bringing Battle of the Books to my small school in tiny Glide. It was picked up in nearby Roseburg and has now become the statewide OBOB. Strictly volunteer, it has remained popular, even with all the cuts in school programs over the last score of years. One librarian referred to those who take part as “academic athletes,” who learn to work together in the schoolroom, as others do on the playing fields.

The library and teaching communities are team players above all, sharing ideas, tips, and inspirations. None of us can do it alone. I am really honored by the list of all the people who received the Lampman award before me, including both Walt Morey and Eric Kimmel who actually cared enough about kids and reading to make author appearances in Glide...a far piece from Portland. It’s a terrific list of people.

I am lucky. Thank you all.

Solstice!

Knowing the sun is returning and the days are getting longer really brightens my heart. It gives me hope that the world is still revolving—and evolving--toward a brighter future. 

They lengthen incrementally: minute-by-minute. Here, curled up in my cozy apartment, I don’t notice the changes at first. Back when Martha and I were running on the Umpqua Community College track after work, they were really noticeable. The track is high above the river, and we always ran at the same time. Each day we’d trudge up the hill in increasing light. I loved that.

Another surprise in city living is never seeing stars. Back when I was a camp counselor in Vermont, we had our cots just outside the tents that housed our charges. Sleeping under the stars that summer was a revelation. It made me feel so small in relationship to the entire universe above me. The stars were so bright I rarely needed a flashlight to go down the path to the bathrooms. That was where I saw my first Northern lights.

A long time later, when we lived in the country just outside the Chicago suburbs, my husband and I liked to take a nightly walk down the driveway to chat away from  our children’s ears. It was a quiet time to talk. There were no streetlights around, and our background was the sky with the various configurations of stars. It was easy to think of the long ago shepherds who whiled away their nights seeing and sharing pictures and patterns in the skies. Of course they were the first to become aware of a new star blazing in an unexpected spot in the sky!

One August night, we went for our nightly stroll and the sky was bright--but there were no stars to see. A large shopping center had opened about ten miles away, and had turned on all their lights at full force to celebrate. The mall illuminated the entire sky. We were not happy about the encroaching city, but I had never realized it would take away my stars! Now I read that one of the big draws in our national parks is night camping, with rangers showing and explaining the stars to those who have never seen them. Imagine growing up without that sense of immensity around you!

The city lights from my window are beautiful. The sidewalk trees are wrapped in twinkling white lights. There’s a Christmas tree on top of one building with a red blinking light on top. The Moda center glows in various colors, depending on what’s going on inside. The towers on the new Tillicum Bridge, somehow activated by water height and speed and temperature, are a beautiful shade of green now and look like giant Christmas trees. And the river reflects all the lights, adding to the ambiance.  I’m very lucky—but I miss walking under the stars, and having the moon shine in my bedroom window. Still, the long nights are still lit…and companionable when I wake up in the middle of the night.

But they don’t make up for dusky evenings sitting on my balcony and watching sailboats and kayaks, people and  dogs.  Or the delight of waking up early in the morning and having the sun—not electricity-lighting the city. The light makes the future seem full of possibilities. We cower and cringe in the darkness, keeping tightly to ourselves and fearing strangers and dark looming things. In the daylight we find the strangers can be friends and the dangers were mostly shadows. We can cope.

So bring on the solstice! Brighten up the days. And a happy New Year to all.

Cleary and Kimmel and me—Whoopee!

Janet Fisher, an author I knew when I lived in Roseburg, wrote A Place of Her Own, a neat historical story about an ancestor who bought her OWN farm (imagine that!) in Oregon back in the 1800s, even though a mere woman. Another excellent example of the overlooked stories of pioneer women who came out on the Oregon Trail—not always willingly! (Coincidentally, we have the same publisher: Globe Pequot of Connecticut. Who would have imagined that?)

She just wrote in her current blog about her book signing at Annie Bloom’s bookstore, which reminded me once again that I should bring my blog up to date. I did see Janet at Annie Blooms, but my big event was at McMenamin’s Mission Theater earlier this week. The program was an Oregon Encyclopedia History Event on Beverly Cleary’s Neighborhood, and the speaker was Eric Kimmel, one of my favorite children’s book authors. He taught children’s literature at Portland State University, before writing a hundred picture books of his own.

Many people don’t realize that Beverly Cleary, the author of Ramona the Pest among others, set her stories in the Hollywood district of Portland where she grew up. (As a school librarian in a Chicago suburb who loved sharing her books with students, I’d thought the setting was imaginary.) Years ago Eric, who also lives in the neighborhood, helped raise money for a Cleary splash pond in Grant Park, with three wonderful statues of Henry Huggins, Ramona, and Ribsy. Mrs. Cleary had shown Eric all the places where she had lived or that were in the book, so when I was writing Walking Portland and wanted to include her neighborhood, I asked him to show me around. So he did, for both editions, and then asked me to share his stage.

 He had a great slide show, and his commentary was fascinating. The Cleary books about everyday kids are now almost as historical as Janet’s story about pioneer days! It was fun. One of the audience questions was about the differences between children who grew up in the 1930s and those of today. Children today don’t have paper routes (would any parent ALLOW their child to get up at 4 in the morning to go out on their bicycle?) and could play freely with each other in the street and all over the neighborhood. They learned from their peers, and their parents trusted neighbors would tell them about any problems. He also pointed out that children were nicer to each then. Otis Spofford (the title character in one book) was a pest, but not a bully.

Children’s lives didn’t used to change so drastically between generations as they have in the last thirty years or so. I grew up a couple of decades or so after Cleary, and wasn’t quite as free. I always had to say where I was going, but I went there on my own. The one big rule, in the summer when we could go out after dinner, was to always come home when the streetlights went on. When I became a parent I could count on my neighbors watching the children as well—I remember once when a neighbor called me to tell me my son was walking to school—in the road—backwards.

Perhaps it’s a side effect of cars being so common now. It’s dangerous to walk backwards on the road! And no one knows who is behind the wheel—we live in neighborhoods of strangers. Adults now run most outdoor activities. As Eric pointed out, the children of today will sometime grow up to write about their own childhoods. Wonder what they will say?

FYI, my next “gig” will be at the Eugene (Oregon) Public Library on July 17th. This time I will be with Joy Rich, Karen Tolley, and John and Judy Waller; the authors of Berta and Elmer Hader, A Lifetime of Art, which just received the Benjamin Franklin Silver Medal Award. The Haders were Caldecott Medal winning artists and authors who wrote and/or illustrated a hundred books in the 20th century. It’s a full-color book showing and commenting on their art, ranging from Berta’s miniature portraits to Elmer’s impressionistic paintings, and of course all the charming illustrations in their children’s books. A hard act to follow! My new book on Berta and Elmer Hader, Drawn Together, is far more about their actual lives, and I am finding them fascinating. They were happily married, were surrounded by talented friends who helped them build their own house on a hill, fought to save their neighborhood from demolition, and adapted to the myriad changes in publishing and in life. Like Henry and Ribsy, they found solutions for most of the problems they faced.

So, add a children’s book or two along with the beach books. Ask your children’s librarians for good new ones, but don’t forget the old. They’re fun, easy, and most problems are solved by the end of the book. Perfect summer reading!

POST-THANKSGIVING

It’s only a few days after Thanksgiving, but you might not even know it existed. One of the most overlooked holidays around. Christmas is modern and speedy, with huge to-do lists, and lots of spending. It forgets that it was based on the bonding of a brand-new family a couple of thousand years ago. Thanksgiving celebrates family, not feasting, and is quietly old-fashioned, by loving hands. Most of us have good memories of our Thanksgiving meals, when family and friends gathered and shared each other’s bounty.

When I was little the holidays were at our house, where a great many relatives showed up for the occasion. Since in those days my parents’ friends were either Mr. or Mrs. or had a courtesy title of uncle or aunt, I never did figure out our relationship to many of these and still don’t know where many of them belonged on the family tree. It didn’t matter. Without the distraction of Christmas presents, we children paid attention to the family talk—at least after we were old enough to sit with the grown-ups. We didn’t learn much, but we gained a sense of our extended family, beyond the four of us usually at home.

Over the years the family waxed and waned. War intervened, but I don’t remember Thanksgiving being any less festive. Then I went off to college, spent Thanksgivings with friends who lived nearer to campus, met a local guy, and married into a new family with their own traditions.

As newlyweds, we always had the dinner with my husband’s family. His mother was a marvelous cook. Relatives came, the best linens were brought out, we used the prized Art Deco china bought early in their marriage, and the table was always beautifully set and stocked. Listening to the chatter, I learned the ins and outs of my new family.

Although I was used to the washing up after meals at home, I hadn’t realized how much information could be shared over the kitchen sink. That was when I really learned to know and value my mother-in-law as our hands kept busy. She washed, I rinsed and wiped, and we chatted with no interruptions from the menfolk who were occupied with the football games in the living room.

When we started making friends and doing things with other couples, washing up conversations were common among us young wives. After a potluck meal, we gals gathered in the kitchen, cleaning up and chatting about everything that interested us, and developing bonds to last a lifetime. As we entered into motherhood, with varied backgrounds but a common determination to do it right, we traded tips and stories and passed on the collective wisdom from the different communities and families we came from.

The dishwasher, marvelous invention that it is, effectively ended this type of casual bonding. But Thanksgiving has so much that a machine can’t handle: the Art Deco trims on the dinner plates, silver knives and crystal glasses, not to mention the large platters and pans that were brought out for the feasting. This past Thanksgiving my adult granddaughters and their mother and I bonded over some of the family china that now reside in my son’s house, while the girls chattered about one’s new job in Detroit, the other’s life as a new homeowner, and shared some of the memories they have taken with them from home. The conversation grew naturally while our hands were busy, and there was a closeness in that kitchen that is missing when we are all sitting together while engaged in games, or the television or the bulky holiday newspapers.

As a child I would have hooted if anyone suggested I would once be thankful for washing dishes. I remember how thrilled I was when we got our first dishwasher; I am still very thankful to have one. But, like so much else in life, there are trade-offs when the machines save energy but replace one of the little synapses that keep us human.

Let us all keep Thanksgiving as a family tradition. To use a new-fangled term, it’s bonding time.

A NEW WALKING DISCOVERY

A few days ago the publicist at Globe Pequot emailed me a five star review of Walking Portland Oregon that had appeared in the Portland Book Review. I was thrilled! This came out of the blue from people I did not know, and the book was judged solely on its merits, not because anyone knew me. I’d worked hard with friends and family to make it the best book possible, but I always feel I should have done more.

It takes a village to make a book, I discovered—at least a non-fiction one. I never could have maneuvered through the bewildering maze of modern publishing and map making without help from the more “with it”  friends and family. Daughter-in-law Carolyn realized I couldn’t talk modern “map lingo,” so she took over with her urban-planning-understanding of what the terms met, and then used her smart phone to drop “pins” at every intersection. Somehow—I still don’t know how—it worked! Maps were created. Other friends lent their skills and their companionship to every walk in the book.

At one of the book signings, a woman asked if Walking Portland had been influenced by my volkswalking. I was surprised at the question, but then realized that of course it did. Volkswalking is strictly a volunteer activity, started as a “people’s walk” in Germany, which came to the United States after World War II. There are volkswalk clubs in almost every town, small or large. Most walks are 3K or 6K—five to ten miles—in length, and usually there is no time pressure. The national American Volkssport Association has a national office, so it is easy to find walks wherever you want to go at www.ava.org/

Local groups usually plan walks to show off their area, choosing routes they have enjoyed over the years. Some use new trails developed on old railroad routes; others take you through farmlands, or areas of old houses, or past lovely gardens, as well as in various parks. They are always a surprise. It’s a fun way to fit in rest breaks while traveling—you see communities, rather than rest stops. The Cub Scouts in Spearfish, South Dakota, created one as a Cub Scout project, and told us about the town.

What I learned from these walks was that the ones I enjoyed most was when the map handouts included a bit about why this spot was important: a building’s history, a well-designed park with multiple uses, a piece of scenery developed by a far-sighted resident. So, when asked to write a guidebook to Portland, I tried to find out as much as possible about everything seen on each walk. Looking up to the top of buildings, or down at the sidewalks, yielded surprising bits of architecture and history. My walking companions got used to seeing me dart down an alley or side street to investigate something interesting.

Another question is, “are you going to write another one?” Probably not. Fifteen years from now people may use phones instead of guidebooks. But, as a compulsive librarian, I can’t keep from making a file of new tidbits and items that I run across. Just in case.

One recent discovery was the Weinhard brewery 100th birthday time capsule, which celebrated the founding of the brewery. Once, it was near the front door of the Weinhard brewery and mentioned in their handouts. I had referred to it in my first book. Since the building was torn down to create the Brewery Blocks a few years ago, it had disappeared, and no one at Henry’s Pub seemed to know. I couldn’t seem to get through to anyone else, and a search of the Oregonian files turned up nothing. Since the brewery itself was gone, I dropped the search.

Then—and this is what is so fun about walking—one day I stopped by the Vera Katz Sliver Park on NW Davis Street, and noticed a little brass circle in the sidewalk near the street. And there it was. It was installed in the original brewery in 1956, then buried here, and is scheduled for opening in 2056. Put the date on your calendars and plan a party! Want to bet there will be some well-aged bottles?

I’m still having fun meeting new people and finding out new tidbits about my adopted home. Feel free to let me know about all the things you know or find that should be shared with others...I can always add these to a later blog to keep you up to date. Walking Portland Oregon is, like the city itself,  “A Never-Ending Story.”

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If you want to see the book in person in the next few weeks, I’ll be at:
1) the Oregon Historical Society book sale, HOLIDAY CHEER: A CELEBRATION OF OREGON AUTHORS, on Sunday, December 1, Noon-4 PM. 1200 SW Park Avenue, Portland. (There will be about 80 authors—check the Oregon Historical Society website for a list.)

2) SOUTHWEST WATERFRONT HOLIDAY BAZAAR in the Mirabella Retirement Center two blocks from the base of the tram. I’ll have Walking Portland Oregon and a Cup of Comfort for a Better World anthology at an authors’ table with some friends. Irene Tinker’s Crossing Centuries, is about her adventures and observations driving across colonial Africa in 1953 with her new husband; Diana Bailey Harris’s Reflections of a Civil War Locomotive Engineer: A Ghost-Written Memoir  is based on her great-grandfather’s letters and diary. He delivered the troops and supplies needed to fight the Confederates. One or more of the authors of Joyful Productions will also be here with Berta and Elmer Hader: A Lifetime of Art --a  great browsing book about Berta and Elmer Hader, fine artists who became beloved children’s author/illustrators during most of the 1900s. The book has full-color illustrations displaying his Impressionist art, her ivory miniature portraits, and many of the paper toys and books for children they created together. The bazaar will be held at 3550 SW Bond Avenue, Portland:

Friday, December 6,  3:00 – 7:00 PM, 

Saturday December 7, 10 AM - 5 PM, and 

Sunday December 8,  10 AM - 2 PM

.

3) The ANNUAL AUTHORS’ FAIR in Douglas County is always an informal fun affair, with a surprising amount of authors and books. It is December 14, Saturday, 10 AM-4 PM. At the Douglas County Library, Roseburg. 1409 NE Diamond Lake Blvd., Roseburg, OR 97470  (I-5 Exit 124)

Fortunately, Unfortunately

OCTOBER—UPS AND DOWNS AND CRASHES

October began well. My friend Mary and I had a lovely week at the Elderhostel/Road Scholar event in Ashland--saw 4 plays: Midsummer Nights Dream, My Fair Lady, Taming of the Shrew, and Streetcar Named Desire. Loved two, didn’t much care for the others, but they were all done fantastically well.

Unfortunately, we both came back with colds.

Fortunately I was pretty much over it before I had good friends from the Hader Connection come to stay here while we spent 3 glorious days at Wordstock and the Northwest Publishers Association Convention--fun schmoozing.

Fortunately the Berta and Elmer Hader Lifetime in Art book was well-received at the convention, making a great lead-in for my biography--which Concordia University will publish next year provided the writing comes up to their standards!

Unfortunately as I was riding high and celebrating with my friends that evening, my computer turned black and beeped in a very irritated fashion until we managed to turn it off.

Fortunately the nice folk at Aloha Computer Tutor came right over the next day to check it out.

Unfortunately they discovered the motherboard was shorted out.

Fortunately my son Hal (my family’s computer guru) arrived from Providence and immediately got me a MiniMac that still uses my nice screen and keyboard.

Unfortunately the Apple Store said the broken MacAir had to go somewhere in the Midwest for repairs and they didn’t think they could find my data.

Fortunately I had discovered a year previously that the old backup wasn’t working and purchased a new one from Aloha. And it worked well. All the data on the Hader book is saved.

Unfortunately my calendar has lost all the data except the regular events programmed in it.

Good news is that means I have NO coming events to attend!

Bad news/ good news is that I am checking all my emails to see what I have promised to do and when. (They are, of course, a mess.)

So if I don’t show up or seem extremely confused, my good news is---

I FINALLY HAVE AN EXCUSE!