Meet Edie Rieken

Here at this place I call home, I have about 150 neighbors, most of whom I've never met, a few of whom I nod to and say, "Hi," and another, smaller group, of whom I've become acquainted and now call friends. One of them is Ethel (Edie) Dorothea Plaep Rieken. Unlike 99% of my other neighbors, Edie is a gifted writer and she is the author of a book to prove it: "Growing Pains: A Childhood on Bear Creek"

We met at lunch one day when I saw she was alone and invited her to join me (that's how we do things here at Russellville Park) and she did.  I learned Edie had a life-long love of writing (an interest we had in common) and that she was the chair of a group who share that interest every week.  When she told me she had written a book and had it self-published, I asked to borrow her copy.

Read a self-published book and the first paragraph usually indicates why that volume didn't come from Random House. Imagine my amazement as I turned page after page to find that this was a brilliantly crafted narrative about the life of a girl growing up on a dairy farm snuggled into a small forested canyon 15 miles inland from the town of Florence on the Southern Oregon coast in the years 1924 to 1937.

Edie was born six years after her nearest of six siblings to parents who were immigrants from East Prussia in Germany. She tells the story of her mother, Henrietta Dorothea Kahlhaw Plaep, to whom she dedicates her book. Henrietta, at 25, was living in East Prussia in terrible circumstances.  Her father had died leaving the family impoverished; in desperation she agreed to go to America with a family that had earlier immigrated to Coos County on Oregon's southern coast.  This was in the early 1900s and part of the agreement with this family was that she would marry a son whom she had never met. The drama is darkened by her cruel future mother-in-law.

It's a wonderful story about that little girl who attended a one-room school where nine students were taught by one teacher and who, in her eight years of grade school, never had a classmate.  Here is a sample of Edie's lyrical prose when early in the book she writes of that Childhood home.

"The forested hills that watched over our valley, the fields surrounded by solidly built, straight wooden fences, and the meandering creek with its own mini-universe of marine life created a background of peace and serenity.  The morning songs of many birds and the chorus of a thousand frogs croaking their welcome to springtime evenings complemented the constancy of our lives."

The lady has a way with words.

Edie's book is shelved in Portland's Oregon Historical Society but is otherwise out of print.

You Get the Popcorn, I'll Get the Seats

CNN is running a new six-part series every Sunday featuring movies from the Golden Age onward;  Tom Hanks is one of the producers.  As someone who loves movies, I took a look but then gave up in despair. I thought they would select a few outstanding movies from the different eras and perform in-depth examinations of the film and its stars.  I was looking for nostalgia on steroids. That's not what this treatment is about and, to be fair, I think it is well done for what they are doing.

The CNN presentation is a sociological exercise showing how the movies of particular decades reflect the culture of those times.  So you have a scene or two from a movie with voice-over comments and then a cut to another movie and the continuing theme of that era. And it is loaded with commercial breaks (eight minutes of entertainment,  five minutes of ads).

I would view scenes from a movie such as Chicago and then, SLASH, it was gone and scenes from another movie appears. And on and on.  It was like those annoying informercials that come on in the cheap time-buys for people selling music from the past: Country Western, The Fifties, The Sixties, and on and on by decades. Listen to "Autumn Leaves" by Nat King Cole:  "The falling leaves, drift by the window, the autumn leaves of red and gold." SLASH "I wonder who's kissing her now" Hey, damn it,  I'm singing here...go back and pick it up, "I see your lips, the summer kisses, the sun-burned hands I used to hold. Since you went away, the days grow long, and soon I'll hear old winter's song..."  I'm not buying your freaking music because you cut me off from Autumn Leaves.

Same with the movies.  I would have wanted a "60 Minutes" format with 15 minutes segments devoted to great movies.   Important scenes could be shown with appropriate comments as you remember the magic of the film and its stars.  For the truly great films you could focus a half hour,  such as Godfather I & II.  But Tom Hanks never called to ask my opinion.

I will digress to tell you I believe the Godfather I & II combined to be the greatest movie ever made.  The writing, the casting (every character dead on), the location shooting, the theme music, (la da da da da da da da, da, da, oh, my).  If you don't agree with me on this it doesn't mean your judgment is suspect or you're a bad person; just don't ask me to go to the movies with you.

Sometimes a Great Notion

The late Roy Paul Nelson taught journalism at the University of Oregon where I met him during my association with that institution in the 1960s and '70s. Roy Paul was an authority on print typefaces  and taught classes on the subject. Writers, he instructed, should select a type face that is appropriate to the subject of their narrative. He was also a cartoonist and his editorial cartoons were used by the local Eugene Register Guard newspaper. I once told him I had observed that his distaste for smoking often showed up in his cartoons by his drawing any negative character with a cigarette held in his fingers. A book he wrote for his cartooning class was titled, "How To Draw a Straight Line".

We became friends and I take a modicum of pride in having something I wrote included in a textbook Roy Paul used for a class he taught in satirical writing. Imagine that; a wannabe famous author getting something he wrote included in a real college textbook.

My contribution was titled, "The Passing of Gas".  It made the case that new advances in the automobile industry had created energy generating technology that would eliminate petroleum as a necessary ingredient for the internal combustion engine.  The revolutionary result included parts that would create a vacuum that would suck air into a pipe protruding from the rear of the vehicle and send it into a chamber where multiple jets of high pressure air programmed with alternating blasts would move pistons up and down causing the drive shaft to turn which would make the wheels go around. All of the technical jargon, of course,  was strung together as a means of supporting the title.

Someday when my time comes to depart this mortal coil, one line in my obit must read, "His published writing included manuscripts for college text books. Also he predicted electric cars."

Chop Sticks For One

AUTHOR'S NOTE: All prestigious journals must have a restaurant review from time to time and for this publication that time is now. Full disclosure:  It is my favorite Portland restaurant without cloth napkins and Greorgann would never go there with me because of something she called, "ambiance" (they don't serve wine).

                                                      Chen's Good Taste Restaurant

Chen chose the spot to open his restaurant in a section of Portland where tour groups do not visit.  If you go by train, as I do,  get off at the Skidmore Fountain under the Burnside Bridge and climb two flights of metal stairs to street level on West Burnside, then walk three blocks to 4th Ave.  It will be necessary to walk around various citizens who are sleeping, some face up, on the sidewalk but your passing will not disturb them.  Chen's window to the street is covered with pictures of various offerings along with a menu and a favorable newspaper review that is starting to yellow with age.

The room seats 35 or 40 people and if you arrive around noon you"ll find it filled with diners,  90% of whom are of the Asian persuasion  --  a good sign you've made a wise choice.  It'll be best if you avoid visiting the restrooms, which are through a door that leads to a long hallway. Turning left you pass a view of the kitchen where deceased poultry hang from hooks. Then you pass small rooms filled with disorderly stuff.  The restrooms are, well...  Finally, as you try to re-enter the dining room, a sign reads, PUSH DOOR.  If you pull instead of push, the handle comes off in your hand and you must reinsert it to get back into the room.

Now about my favorite dish, which is the only item I've ever ordered over the years: Dumpling noodle soup.  $7.50. Four large dumplings in a delicious broth with those tiny Chinese noodles and one small sprig of boc choy.  The dumplings are stuffed with something I could never identify but consist of black lines intermingled with something white and kind of puffy.  To quote Chen, "good taste."  Really, really good taste.  I suppose I might have asked what exactly the filling was but, hey --
what's the difference?

Over the years I've watched other menu items being served and they all looked terrific.  From time to time I've been tempted to order some of them,  but those dumpling kept drawing me in.

Chen wouldn't lie to you.  Good taste.  $9.50 with tip and endless tea.

Be Still My Heart

When is the last time you had an experience that made your heart race?  OK, some things are best kept private but life gives us plenty of opportunities to make that personal pump surge into motion and sound the alert to all the valves and switches to get ready for some serious action.

Let me share a recent event that got my heart pumping in moon-shot velocity.

Three or four months ago when I moved into my lodging at Russellville Park I was issued a small name tag that I was told to wear whenever I was moving about in the public areas.  It would help the servers at the restaurants to charge my account for meals and also help fellow residents to get to know me.  I always tried to remember to wear my name tag.  It was an attractive gold plate that attached to whatever I was wearing by a magnetic bar lined up with the name bar from inside the garment.

After doing my alternate day workout at the gym and returning home I discovered I had forgotten to remove the name tag from my shirt before leaving home and as I took the tag off I noticed the magnet bar bore this inscription: "DO NOT USE WITH PACEMAKER".

YIKES!

I have been wearing that thing directly over my implanted pacemaker ever since moving into this place.  So I called Dr. Davies, who implanted the pacemaker, and his nurse told me he thought no harm had been done to the device or to me but to definitely keep it away from the pacemaker.  He said he would contact the pacemaker company and they would call me, which they did.  They reviewed my data records and found definite signs of the magnet affecting the device and sending my pulse rate well over 100 many times.  God knows what it did this morning after my pulse-raising workout and then slapping the magnet on top of the pacemaker when I donned my shirt.

The Russellville office apologized for not telling me about the pacemaker issue.  Thanks.

I think I'll light up my Sonos and see if I can find some Lawrence Welk music.