The Ink-Pot and the Palette

It's been a weird 50-something days here in Stumptown. The teargassing doesn't affect me directly. It's all confined to a small area downtown, about four miles from where I live (but exactly where I spent my whole working career). If not for Twitter, I'd probably not be aware of it, except to wonder about the nightly sound of helicopters.

I fall out strongly on the side of the protesters. I love my town, and I hate to see graffiti at the best of times, so it disturbs me to see it sprayed all over downtown buildings, layer on layer. It's ugly and it's hard to remove from stone.

But you know what? It's just paint. And this is a historic moment, and if those protest markings linger for a while to remind us that even here in lily-white Portland, Black Lives Matter and the police are corrupt, and we didn't ask for federal troops, well then, so be it.

As someone with a couple of "co-morbidities" and a healthy belief in science, I've elected to stay well away personally. I'm honestly terrified of getting covid, and I'm able to stay the fuck home, so that's what I do. If I have to go out, I wear a mask.

Boring as hell some of the time, but mostly I'm getting by. Latest foray into Chinese-language drama: Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which I'd describe as more adorable than brilliant, but fun and pretty.

How's everyone?

As ravurian pointed out when I sent it to him in the UK this afternoon, this picture might have been taken almost anywhere in the world.



( Spoiler: it's in Portland. )

As the Rebuilding Center's bumper sticker says, "I love that place!"

It's a sprawling warehouse space on North Mississippi Avenue filled with, basically, used house-parts. If you're remodeling or demolishing, you donate the lumber, windows, doors, plumbing fixtures, appliances, flooring, hardware, cabinets--anything, really, that would have otherwise wound up in the landfill--to the RBC, and then they sort it out and sell it.

Besides employing quite a few people from the neighborhood, the RBC is the financial backbone of community services organization Our United Villages.

The RBC also runs a deconstruction contracting business, which you can hire to take down your structure in a way that conserves most of the materials and responsibly disposes of the rest.

It occurred to me this morning that The Rebuilding Center might have the 2x2 lumber I need to (start to) finish my Roman shades, so off I went in the blowing snow and the suddenly-it's-winter east wind to see what I could find.

( I love that place! )

I've never been able to stick to an "exercise program," (bleh) so changing my transportation mode from passive to active was perhaps the greatest stroke of genius I've ever had.¹

For the last four and half years, my daily eight-mile bike commute to and from work has been what gets me off my ass--the only thing. I was a little worried that retirement, in removing my biggest transportation need, would find me slowly melding with my armchair, never to budge again.

Instead, I've discovered that I'm riding my bike more than ever.

First of all, I have time to bike to destinations that, when I was working full time, would have taken too long. I have time to figure out a safe route to a new place, to get a little lost², to go in daylight, to choose my weather.

And second of all, I don't have to get everything done in one go on Sunday. I can make multiple trips, any day of the week. Whoops, forgot toilet paper? Four miles round trip to Fred Meyer. Return a book? Branch library across town. That fabric store that's out in the semi-urbs? Worth a shot.

Today I rode clear out past the ring of freeways to an acupuncture appointment that has always previously been a train trip. From there, since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by my sister's--the one I don't see as much of because she lives "out there"--and pedaled home again in the gathering dark, for a 19-mile day.


View Bike to Lynne's in a larger map

¹ Selling my car was an important part of everything. Side note: my driver's license has expired and I should probably do something about that. I could ride my bike to the DMV. :D

² Sometime since I first starting biking, Google has added voice navigation to the bike layer of its maps, and it's awesome! Now I just need an app that has Paul Bettany's voice saying, "In six hundred feet, turn left onto the I-205 Bike Path. No, left, madam. The other left. That's it..."

The very pleasant, cheerful bureaucrat who helped me fill in all the blanks in my retirement paperwork this morning shook my hand when we were done and said, "Retirement is such a different thing today than it used to be. You have a whole new life ahead. I wish you the best."

I walked back to the bus stop in the October morning, looking at the perfect sky and the yellow trees, thinking, "I want to remember this day." It was a big occasion. I felt like celebrating, but it was 10:00 on a Monday morning and I had to catch a bus back in from the suburbs and go to work. So I texted a couple of "Woo hoo"s to people, then rode downtown and got myself a four-shot mocha. Then I went to work.

Only 63 more days.

After being an absolutely vile human being yesterday (mood swings of a sort) and kind of hating myself for it, I was grateful to put in twelve hours at work today. Less time to dwell on my vileness.

The long workday was broken up by a couple of walks. It was gorgeously autumnal, and Eleanor needed work, so I rode her to the shop on the east side before work and walked across to my office on the west side, then back to the shop in the afternoon. The altered route took me past one of Portland's stranger and more charming features.

( Go figure )

I think at least an inch just fell. Smells wonderful. Not sure where the cats hide when it does this, poor boo-boos. This was very sudden.

Ah, the winding-down time of year. I love the approach of autumn--even though the rainy season has made an early appearance here in Puddletown. Oh well. Time to get back in the habit of covering up my bike saddle. Ugh--white jeans + wet leather saddle = embarrassing stains.

Some miscellaneous day-brightening:


Dog parking at Whole Foods


Meet Ivy, who has been hanging about lately. I think she has several homes, but I like to be a reliable source of food. Graydie puts up with her.


Handlebar phone mount. One of my better recent acquisitions. Took me a few rides to learn to trust it but now I wouldn't be without it.

Just got an email from Portland Fire and Rescue, urging us to have a safe 4th of July holiday.

The message points out that all but the most modest fireworks are illegal in Oregon, concedes that anyone can cross the river to Washington and buy as much explodey goodness as their little heart desires, then begs us all to consider the following, which seemed worth sharing:

Illegal fireworks cause:

• Countless injuries including trauma and burns from unplanned explosions
• Reoccurring trauma to many of our returning veterans suffering the effects of their service to our Country
• Emotional trauma and anxiety to many small children and animals, who are especially vulnerable
• Enormous property loss each year by causing fires to residences, landscape, and wildland
• Environmental pollution, measureable in both air and noise

"Given the physical, emotional, environmental, and economic costs, as our population becomes more aware about these real consequences, it will become increasingly clear that illegal fireworks in the hands of amateurs is no longer a 'patriotic' act."

Hallelulah.

Just got in from the late showing of Much Ado. It's playing at Cinema 21, an unapologetically crappy old movie house in a neighborhood that was hip when I lived there in, like, the Reagan era, and seems, after a period where it started to feel a bit corporate, to have been re-hippified.

I picked up my ticket, wandered across the street to a bar I'd never heard of, and had a mojito and a really good spinach, strawberry, goat cheese and hazelnut salad. Since I almost never drink, I was a wee bit tipsy when I crossed back over at showtime.

( I honestly don't think the rum was solely responsible for my delight. )