The Shadow In the Corner

 Here in the Russellville Green Room where I await my call to appear in that biggest of all shows, the subject of death is never discussed among my assembled neighbors.  But it has crossed everyone's mind.  Just as it did for Woody Allen:  "It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it happens."  Sorry, Woody, get in line.

The earliest human beings caught on to Nature's cruelest trick and came up with a counter-dodge by positing an afterlife where everybody could keep the good times rolling. That proved to be a comforting concept.  If that actually is part of the Master Plan, one of the people (spirits?) I will track down is Herb Lewis, a teacher I had my senior year in high school.  Herb's class was called Social Studies but what he taught was a profound respect for the life of the mind and the responsibility of every citizen to contribute to a humane society.  I never thanked him for being a great teacher.  Maybe it's not too late.

One day Herb took a hack paddle and walked down to the desk of a student who had just given a smart-ass reply to the teacher's question.  Then Herb brought the paddle down on the top of the wise guy's head.  Not hard.  Just a tap.  I think I know what Herb was thinking: "This little nose-picker is going to graduate next June and immediately start breeding.  Time  for a modest brain adjustment."  Herb's teaching toolbox held many wonderful aids.

So we might consider death one more blessing from a benevolent master clockmaker but I think Woody Allen had the right insight.  I'll wait and see.

Sam's Club

                                                                                          Samantha Gast

Samantha Gast is the best thing to happen to Russellville Park since Chef Ken invented the prime rib French dip sandwich.  Ask any of her mature clients who show up for her exercise classes three or five times a week to follow her conducting that orchestra of creaking joints and screaming muscle stretches.  Like a compassionate mother delivering tough love, Sam (rhymes with BAM) brings on her rapid fire drills that in 30 minutes manage to address all your body parts as well as your mental agility.  Her mantra is, "Use it or lose it."

       And the lady does everything she asks you to do (only better).  With her Golden Oldie music playing in the background, she is laughing and saying, "Rotate your right leg...other direction...now the left leg...other direction," as she works her way through the glossary of Grey's Anatomy reaching all your lazy muscles no matter where they may be hiding.

       Sam was hired seven months ago to help residents improve the quality of their lives.  She was born with an insistent dancing gene that has been an active motivator in her life since taking those ballet lessons while attending Monett High School in Missouri.  After graduating from the University of Missouri with a degree in Wildlife Management, she went to a school of dance in Oklahoma City that included jazz dancing.  An accident that injured her leg ended that dream and she found employment that was in harmony with her Wildlife education by becoming a game warden, protecting wild turkeys and other denizens of the Missouri forests. Poachers should be aware that the lady in the Smokey Bear hat is packing heat.

       Sam got involved with physical training when the Missouri Conservation Department (including game wardens) started training for physical fitness by in-house trainers.  She found her niche.  Sam was working as a Club Manager and trainer in a Portland exercise gym when the Covid-9 pandemic torpedoed that business which led her to send a resume to Russellville Park.

       What are the four memory words today, Sam?          Stance.   Ants.    Pants.    Dance.

  

Things Go Missing

A reporter once asked Willy Sutton why he robbed banks and Willy replied, "That's where they keep the money." Makes perfect sense.  So why not go to the retirement community where I live, for the exact same reason? Hundreds of apartments filled with people who are the dream of Big Pharma's executives, to loot medications that sell for big bucks on the street along with whatever cash and other possessions might be available. Willy may be long gone but his replacements are alive and active.

One of my friends plays high-stakes poker once a week and consequently keeps large amounts of cash on hand.  Two weeks ago somebody made a $600 withdrawal from his apartment.

Another friend was once a warden at a high-security prison and had a set of expensive keys in his apartment, a prized possession from his life's work,  Gone.

Another friend's wife lives with severe pain that requires expensive medications.  They recently received a three-month supply of a pain killer that went missing after only three pills had been used. 

Those are just three cases I know about because they are my friends, but what about all those other hundreds of medicine cabinets and under-mattress bank vaults in all those other apartments that have had valuables looted that we never hear about?  Report it to the police?  Good luck with that.  Report it to the management?  They deeply regret that it happens.

The problem is that too many people have keys that open exterior and interior doors.  Dozens of staff members come and go daily as well as all the service people who arrive to maintain the equipment that keeps this place operating.

It's hard to control but modern technology has given us security cameras that are surprisingly inexpensive, easy to install, and internet-enabled.  You need just one device, inside the apartment and pointed at your front door to capture whoever comes in.  The full-color digital recording is saved in the cloud.

My solution is to avoid owning anything worth stealing.  None of my drugs are high potent street-worthy booty. Nobody steals books and magazines. George Carlin had a great bit about "your stuff" (from memory) "Your house is just a place to keep your stuff...if you have to go someplace, somebody might come and take your stuff.  So you take your stuff with you..."

The sad reality here at Russellville Park is that some people do come and take our stuff.  And, apparently, will continue to do so while we all wring our hands.

Russellville Lives. DT

                                                                         Diane Thramer

Recent Russellville resident, Diane Thramer, has solid credentials as an Oregonian.  Her mother's family descended from early pioneers who came over the Oregon Trail in covered wagons and settled in the Wolf Creek area of southern Oregon.  Her father, George Rader,  grew up in Oklahoma leaving school early to work in the oil fields as a whistle punk. After coming to Oregon, George worked as a logger and was a true independent Oregonian who refused to participate in any of Franklin D. Roosevelt's depression era measures because he prided himself on not taking charity.

Diane is a talented artist who was blessed with that mysterious gift of genetic pass-down from both her father and her mother.  George was an accomplished painter who also drew cartoon strips with his creative gags that were published by farm magazines.  Diane's grand daughter received the family genetic gift and is herself a talented artist. Diane developed her talent with the encouragement of her parents as well as studying with school teachers.  She works primarily with water colors and many of her painting involve family members and friends.  The Rose Bud Bakery in Eugene, Oregon was a community favorite and as a young high school student, Diane attained modest celebrity as a cake decorator.  Her best creations ended up as support platforms for candles.  John Dix Thramer, who Diane would later marry, was a baker a the Rose Bud.  After leaving the bakery,  John spent the rest of his career with Eugene's Water and Electric Board (EWEB) until his retirement.

Those early family years were the among the happiest in the lives of Diane and John.  They personified the reputation of Eugene as a place that welcomed diversity and healthy living and that more often than not involved hiking and camping plus all things connected to the two rivers that converged north of the city: the Willamette and the McKenzie. On one memorable occasion the entire family, sons Allen and Darin along with their sister Patrice and led by John and Diane,  hiked the iconic Pacific Crest Trail (built by FDR's socialistic Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s) from the McKenzie Pass of the Cascade Mountains to the mountain's Willamette Pass. That is a lot of up mountains, down mountains that kept them on that high mountain trail for two weeks, creating a lifetime of memories. 

Diane Thramer is one of those people who look a dozen or more years younger than their biological tattletale.  Her easygoing style of being open to social situations that make her laugh, lightens the mood of any room she enters.  Include Diane as a candidate for the Russellville Park Hall of Fame when it opens on former Portland Mayor Bud Clark's 100th birthday on December 19th, 2031. 

Special Edition

  Today’s posting was supposed to be another profile in the Russellville Lives series but before the story train reached the station, it got derailed and T-boned an 18-wheeler flat bed truck stacked high with crates of chickens that broke open sending those cluckers flapping around all over the place while being chased by feral cats. This backup column could be a fortuitous replacement because it might save your life.

Rock-a-bye-baby

Been having a hard time lately getting a good night’s sleep.  Dr. Keith Saylor, a family member, sent me a book titled Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD. If you care about your health you will drop whatever it is you’re doing and immediately hit Amazon for a copy.  I’ll summarize the 339 pages for you: Next to breathing, sleeping is the second- most important thing you do.  Every organ and fiber of your body suffers if you don’t get adequate sleep (eight to nine hours a night). The book’s Appendix gives twelve tips for healthy sleep that will repay you the $18 you gave Amazon.

We spend the day feeding volumes of information and scenes into our brain and then we go to sleep (if we’re lucky) and the brain organizes all that new material and routes it to its assigned location in the brain.  Those who short-change Mother Nature’s sleep bank will pay a grim overdraft penalty.

My primary physician instructed me to go online and download an app titled Headspace.  Those people take you through meditation exercises which you can use just prior to welcoming sleep to your bedroom.  Another tip:  Kill the TV two hours before bedtime.  One more: Sleep with only one pillow.

So, one door closes, another door opens.  Until the next posting, Put your dreams away for another day…

                                                             

Russellville Lives MS

Marianne Stokes is an artist. Do you prefer your portrait in oil, water color, charcoal, Rodda’s paint? Or how about a sculptured head for your mantel? Ms.Stokes does it all. Wait, there’s more: Say you wanted to pull your neighbor’s chain a little bit.  Have Marianne paint your garage door to look like a pig pen with a few porkers standing around. 

Marianne and Herb, her husband of 38 years, have recently taken residence on the fifth floor allowing Marianne to immediately merge into the social life of the Russellville community.  She conducts weekly free model drawing sessions working with live models for wannabe artists (can you draw a straight line?  You’re an artist.) at Russellville as well as free model sessions at two other locations in Vancouver.

As Frank Sinatra came to the end of his career, Paul Anka composed a song for him that  was his mega hit: My Way. Paul could have written the song for Marianne because from the time she was a little girl she was doing things her way.  When she was seven or eight, her drawings went unnoticed by her mother and father. By the time Marianne was in high school she had evolved her drawing skills to an advanced level of excellence so that she delighted classmates by doing their portraits.  She was also a top academic student.

While she earned a BA degree in fine arts from Hofstra University on Long Island, Marianne found little in the arts classrooms that she hadn’t already discovered on her own.  After graduation she taught art in the public school system on Long Island but the routine life of reporting to school administrators was a giant turnoff for her and she dropped out of public education to offer private art classes.  

Marianne taught herself calligraphy to use in a sideline she was attracted to by the large prices sign painters charged for their commercial work.The art schools offered no classroom instruction for sign painting which they considered beneath their calling so Marianne scouted around to find an apprentice position. There she could learn the ropes of this unique profession (an early assignment from her master sign painter was to paint letters on to a large glass door and then, when it was dry, scrape it all clean with a razor blade). She soon left her trainer and opened her own shop. As the only woman in a niche occupation filled by good old boys, (no traditional education required) Marianne built a lucrative business painting signs and murals that stood out because of the artistic flair she introduced to mundane assignments. She was untroubled about using her exceptional artistic talents to mine gold in lowbrow shafts.  Once it’s in the bank, all money looks the same.  Marianne’s artistic touch with signs brought her many commissions in boat yards lettering transoms of yachts using gold leaf.

Marianne has three sons who live in New York.

On a cold, snowy, Christmas night in 1976 while with a Catholic singles group, she was introduced to the greatest guy she had ever met. His name was Herb Stokes.  Herb turned out to be her favorite Christmas gift that keeps on giving.  She and Herb enjoy the relaxed pace of life in Russellville where she still pursues her interests as an artist, whatever the form it takes. Because, like old Blue Eyes, she does it her way. 

...Man, What Are You Doing Here?

Once, a long time ago, my wife, Georgann, and her lifelong friend, Lois Battleson, left on a jet plane to New York City to visit Georgann's brother, Dick Johnson and his wife, Maureen, who lived on Long Island.  Just a couple of country girls on a mission to find out what was moving in the Big Apple.  Brother Dick would take the girls with him into the city each morning, riding in a private railroad car Dick shared with a number of other commuters who enjoyed the special accommodations.  Dick was a partner with the Price Waterhouse accounting firm.

Georgann and Lois spent the days learning how to be New Yorkers, adapting to the rhythms of the city.  One thing they found difficult was knowing which railcar to enter at the appointed hour for returning home. Dick would spot them moving down the platform, eyes cupped, looking into the windows of all the cars and with brotherly patience herd the laughing strays into his car.

On a Sunday before their return to Oregon, Dick drove them on a tour of the Hamptons at the east end of Long Island.  At noon they spotted a quaint small cafe and decided to stop for lunch.  They were alone in the small dining room except for two other couples who were sharing a table across from them. One of men from the other table was sitting at a piano in the corner of the room playing beautiful melodies with effortless grace.  The three new arrivals looked at each other with instant recognition:

Billy Joel.

He played all through their lunch.  They made no moves to intrude on the Joel party letting Billy be Billy. Imagine that.  Flying coast to coast to have the Piano Man deliver an intimate concert for the price of a tuna sandwich and a glass of decent wine.

 Editorial note: Billy Joel goes into the city once a month to perform sold-out concerts.  He returns to the Hamptons with one million more dollars than he had earlier that day.