Clean Sheets Every Monday

Editorial note: This blog and all others to follow, will be published in a new type face: "Georgia", from the Time Roman family. My friend Roy Paul Nelson, Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon back in the day, taught his students that it is important to choose a type face that is appropriate to the subject of the narrative.  Since my blogs are written to give the reader my take on whatever it is I'm writing about, Georgia just seemed a perfect fit for my views.

Late last evening after the TV pontificators had called it a night, I was reflecting on the change that has come to my life as a lone ranger.  The culture change is shocking.  From
living with your life's companion in a big house with wonderful neighbors and a terrific shower, to living in a commune with many nice people connected to you by long hallways and occasional group gatherings, it shivers your timbers. It is not what you would prefer but it is what you've got and if you can slip by that boogey-man then you can deal with it.

The people who run this place do a nice job of providing a variety of activities to appeal to different interests. They run excursions to everything from shopping tours to destination travels to particular road side attractions. Fortunately, we are never required to hold hands and sing as we side-step around tables.

Conversations tend to focus on: Ailments. Weather. Food.  Everyone avoids politics and religion in group settings, and that is good.  If I was to be slammed against the wall by some truth-seeking vigilante and forced to confess my favorite part of my new situation, it would be this:  It's when, from time to time, I grab my rail pass and haul ass.

Get on the bus, Gus; make a new plan, Stan...

Those Were the Days, My Friend

Was that a school bell I heard ringing?  With September sneaking in and the autumn leaves starting to fall, it probably was.  Causing my wandering mind to drift to the fall of 1947 when a couple of Grants Pass High School students became a pair to draw to: Mary Joyce Smith and Bill Landers.  A line in the song, Summertime, from the opera Porgy and Bess goes..."Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'."  That was us (who says you have to be modest in a blog?) The top girl, blonde, head-turner and the student body President/football Captain styling in their senior year.

The important take away from that scenario is, after high school, and through the years that followed, Josie and I remained good friends.  Along the way she hit the ball out of the park when she married Jerry Larson. He was a handsome, charismatic, funny, professional warrior who would rise to the rank of General in the United States Air Force.

A number of years ago, Josie and Jerry flew out from D.C. to meet Georgann and me, along with Larry Aschenbrenner (another classmate) and his wife in Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl where Oregon would play football against Colorado.  At one of our social hours,  Jerry asked me if I had ever been to the Air Force Academy and I told him I had.  When the Academy dedicated Falcon Field in 1962, the University of Oregon was their opponent for the game and I was there as a member of the Oregon athletic department.  I told the group that while I enjoyed the fact that Oregon won the game 35 to 20, my most awesome memory was being in the press box at half time and seeing two Air Force jets come screaming in from opposite ends of the field, about 12" above the stadium.  They were trailing smoke, and then they shot straight up with one hell of a roar, leaving their smoke trails crossing (swear to God) precisely over the fifty yard line.

Josie laughed and said, "It might make your story more interesting to learn Jerry was flying one of those jets."  (Sound of jaws dropping) Jerry said, with a grin, "I tried to talk my partner into doing the stunt flying upside down but he didn't like the idea."  Larson was actually in command of the Air Force Demonstration Squadron Thunderbirds at that time.

At one of our class reunions, we had a bon voyage Sunday brunch in the city park.  As the Landers and the Larsons were leaving, a number of Josie's and my classmates came running over and asked us to stand together for a photo op.  We, of course, modestly consented and as we moved into position, Jerry leaned into my ear and said, "Try not to look too guilty."

Fun to revisit the fall of '47...Summertime "So hush little baby, don't you cry."

Laugh And the World Laughs With You

OK, everybody off the train.  We're going to get serious about funny.  I never liked Bob Hope because he just told jokes other people had written for him.  I found exploding laughter watching Johnathan Winters.  He could just stand there doing nothing but moving his head and shifting his eyes and I was on the floor.  My search for laughter has been a favorite pursuit all my life.

When I was 10 and 12, like every other kid in America, I loved  the comics. Who knew if I had kept that original Superman in pristine condition, it would have made my declining years more comfortable? But my favorite 'zine was a monthly called 1,000 jokes. Ten cents for a collection of one- or two-liners that actually counted out to be about 100 basic jokes told in a hundred different ways.  Fine with me. But an incident in the sixth grade really did put a notch in the tree of my life- trail regarding humor (I wonder if my sister Mary will remember this since in the little country grade school we attended, two grades were in each room so that every other year we shared a class room?).

One day our teacher, Miss Hensley, introduced an exercise she must have picked up from some Sociology class in college.  She had every student in the two grades take a sheet of paper and write down three qualities they would look for in the person who might become their husband or their wife.  She then collected the papers and had a boy and a girl go to the black board and list the results as she read each paper.  Then she had a class discussion regarding the answers.

My take on the exercise was that every single girl, without exception, listed a variation of "sense of humor" or "funny."

Oh, look...I think I've found a key to the candy store?

What's Playing On the Blue Line?

For those of us in a continuing search for reasons to get out of bed each day, the MAX lines (Metropolitan Area Express -- who knew "Xpress" would need an "E"?) offer a never-ending source of entertainment if you look without staring.  Corner-of-the-eye shots.  Or, better yet, window reflections. Avoid eye contact. Eye sweeps with head swivels work. It's all in 3-D with surround sound and you can choose the extent to which you want to get intertwined in the action.  Bold voice involvements must use the Kathleen McNeal technique of friendly assumption that you and the other person have been pals for fifteen or twenty years.  "Hey, nice shirt.  It goes with the color of your dog." The person's response will let you know whether to proceed or STFU.

You can choose which theatre to visit: the Red Line will offer international fare as it freights people to and from the airport, and sizing up the luggage of the travelers invites speculation about what's going on with them. The out-the-window scenery along the Red Line from Gateway TC to the terminal is dull-minus.

 You can't miss on the Green Line coming from and going to Clackamas Town Center.  So-so scenery but a good rolling zoo.  Twenty minutes from the Gateway TC.

The Blue Line comes in two flavors: East and West.  Blue Line West moves through a lot of  high number real estate and gets a favorable rating for scenery but a thumbs-down for people watching.  The tattoos are pedestrian at best and wardrobe fashion is high-normal.  The most interesting part of your ride will be the long, long tunnel under the West Hills.  There is a station partway through where you can get off and take a long, no-stop lift to the Portland Zoo (animal kind with lions and tigers and bears) or stay on the station platform and check out the core sample that was drilled from the top of the mountain to the tunnel level.  It's in a long, long, long, long glass tube where you can examine the strata the engineers had to deal with in this big dig.

 But Blue Line East is where the fun is: Going to or coming from Gresham (part of the challenge is figuring out where the town is) presents the opportunity to immerse yourself in the human comedy.
Lots of dumpster divers with their dirigible-size can and bottle collections. Next week's blog will cover some of the others: the guy ahead of me to the left whose head looks like a Kansas wheat field in the tenth month of drought. The dude in a wife-beater top (Gresham proud).  Bike people.  Stay tuned.

Who Sees You?

 In 1943 George Orwell came to see the corruption of his vision of socialism and started writing his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-four, that would shake the world when it was published in 1949. I took a course in college titled: Ethical and Political Theory three years after that book came out -- it, along with Emile Zola's Germinal and Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon, were the assigned texts for the term. Digression: The miners in Germinal who brought the coal to the surface were "landers."

Orwell saw the future America 35 years later as being a dark autocracy led by Big Brother, who maintained control with formulated lying and camera installations that recorded the activities of all citizens 24/7.

What's left of my memory of the actual 1984 tells me George was off a little on his timing; like 70 years.  Of course, "Two Thousand Nineteen" just doesn't have the punch of Nineteen Eighty-four and is irrelevant to the theme of the narrative. Count the cameras mounted on buildings in our cities and camouflaged as telephones in the hands of our citizens.  Or in the trains and busses of public transportation. Let me tell you about that.

Last Saturday I went to Sellwood to get a haircut from my stylist, Lo-Lo.  Everything above my shoulders that sticks out, Lo-Lo mows with a #1 guide slapped on her electric clippers.  Whatever Lo-Lo sees, Lo-Lo clips.  It's a two train, one bus journey to get to Lo-Lo and the second train I transferred to was lightly peopled as I took a single window seat right next to the train driver's compartment.  We're rolling along when suddenly the train stops and the door to the driver's compartment flies open.  The lady driver leans out (about 12" from my face) and pointing at some rider behind me, screams, "Hey, you, get your hands out of your pants or I'm going to call the police."  WHOA! The miscreant apparently complied with her wishes because she slammed the door shut and we were soon moving down the rails.  I didn't look behind me.

But here's the thing:  Some people read to pass the time on their commute and most people focus on their iPhones.  But some, apparently, find other ways to pass the time.  If we could somehow contact George Orwell to ask him his thoughts on this incident it is likely he would say, "Didn't you read my book?"

What's Your PR?

I'm looking for investors to join me in a can't-miss scheme to fill a need that no one has ever recognized: the calibrated flag pole (pat. pend.).  Let me explain.

The almost unbelievable capabilities of our computer culture give us the means to measure  the popularity of individuals in our society at any given moment.  Most of us have a popularity factor of zero because other people don't know us and don't care that they don't.  But as time passes, some individuals begin to stand out from the herd and become recognized by large numbers of people who tend to make judgments about them.  We call them "celebrities."

It's a fact that sooner or later everybody dies, and when they do, someone must make the decision: do we lower the flag to half-staff, or do we leave it up there? I say it is time to take it out of the hands of anonymous deciders and leverage Technology to reveal the the deceased person's PR (polling popularity rating). That is, an instant national Poll (P) of Americans, run through a sophisticated algorithm to arrive at the departed's total popularity rating (R) or PR. We the people would vote on whether and how much to lower the flag (in sadness), keep it as-is (signifying who cares?), or--here's my twist -- raise it even higher, proclaiming: "good riddance." This is where the calibrated flag pole comes in,

Every person at birth starts with a PR factor of 0. If the kid never makes a blip on the public radar, the flag stays at full mast. But say the kid grows up to become famous, then kicks the bucket; now his/her PR will dictate the movement of the flag on the pole, up or down.  If it is up, a smaller pole rises out of the top of the main pole to accommodate the extra altitude. The calibrated flag pole lets us pin point the degree of downess (sadness) or upness (joy) we're feeling for the loss from the formula programmed into the polling exercise.. Example: Charles Manson would have gotten a maximum pole extension; Mr. Rogers, a half-staff or lower.
                          
 It's a bit complicated but if you're not too dim I think you can see how it works.  When I've worked out a few minor details having to do with setting this idea into actual motion, I will let you know where and when to start sending serious money.

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.