Posts Tagged ‘Autumn in Oysterville’

It’s Friday the 13th! Again!

Friday, October 13th, 2023

Hand drawn Halloween icon with a textured black cat vector illustration.

Most years have one  Friday-the-13th but this year we are curse —  or blessed if you happen to be Taylor Swift with two.  Today is the second (and last) one of the year.  The first was in January and, truth to tell, I don’t really remember noticing.  Some years, apparently there can be as many as three!

That seems a big potential for bad luck, unless of course (as mentioned above) you are singer/songwriter Taylor Swift.  According to the hype about her:  She was born on the 13th (though it didn’t happen to be a Friday) and she claims that whenever she is seated in row 13 or row M (the 13th letter) at an award show, she always wins. When she ‘Tay-lurks’, she goes to a fan’s livestream and comments 13 emojis. If she sees a 13, it’ll bring her luck, but if she sees no number 13 that day, she’ll lose.

Hmmm.  Where the Friday part fits into all that, I have no idea.  (Truth to tell, I don’t really understand any of those last two sentences about ‘Tay-lurks’ and emojis…  I’m definitely the wrong generation.)

What I do understand is that the Friday-the-13th superstition has evolved over time and across cultures. It is difficult to pinpoint its precise origins.  Both Friday and the number 13 have been regarded as unlucky in certain cultures throughout history —  unlucky 13 ia traceable back to Norse mythology, when Loki, the god of mischief, gate-crashed a banquet in Valhalla, bringing the number of gods in attendance to 13 with disastrous results.

Well… whether or not you are superstitious about this day and its portents I think it’s only sensible to avoid breaking a mirror, placing a hat on the bed, walking under a ladder or letting black cats cross your path.  After all, why tempt the fates?

A Visit From The Deer People

Monday, October 9th, 2023

Mama Deer is just out of sight, no doubt waiting patiently…

Somehow, I felt their presence.  I was working in my office — no windows here, only book-lined walls, so it wasn’t a matter of movement catching my eye.  Nor of sound.  Just… a feeling.

I went into the bedroom and had a look out the bay windows to the north.  And there they were, a doe and her young offspring standing statue-still over on the Croquet Court (or what is probably more rightly called the Cannon Grounds these days.)  By the time I had my camera ready, Mama Deer was on the move, by then out of sight beyond the rhododendrons,  but her youngster was still foolin’ around.  “Kids will be kids!” I thought and felt a bit of motherly sympathy for Mama Deer.

Mom Checks Out Her Offspring’s Sore Leg

I rushed to the front door, went to the gate and looked up the street to see if, by then, they had both jumped the fence and were on their way.  But, no sign of them.  So I trotted up the road, past the house and looked into the Canon Grounds from the west side… and there they were!  Mom appeared to be tending to the youngster’s left leg and I wondered if this was the same little one that has been limping around town lately.  (He is definitely a young buck, as revealed by the antler buds visible in the photos I took!)

Scoping Out The Garden Goodies

They spent a while cruising the garden.  I could almost hear Mom telling her youngster about the pears that would appear on the ground after the next big windstorm.  They then ambled by both of the camellia bushes and scoped out the roses and geraniums, as well.  But, they weren’t doing any nibbling right then.  It must have been just a reconnaissance mission.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be back…

“…To see oursels as others see us!”

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

Robert Burns 1759-1796

Rabbie Burns certainly got it right in his famous poem “To A Louse, On Seeing one on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church.”  You probably remember the first two lines of the last stanza as well as I do:

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

And now, of course, through the magic of photography and video and computers and other technologies we take for granted, we can indeed see ourselves as others see us.  And, speaking for myself, at least, it’s always a shock!  And not especially pleasant.  I don’t think I want to be a movie star when I grow up!

Eric Wiegardt at Pacific County History Forum, October 4, 2023

I’m referring just now to my latest appearance on YouTube in Michael Lemeshko’s video of The Pacific County History Forum.  Granted, there are still some technical  problems that Michael is working out, but I fervently wish that we could re-do last week’s History Forum in its entirely — at least my part!

Couldn’t we just eliminate all my uhs and ahs for starters?  And what about my rubbing of arms and legs as I sat listening to Tucker and Eric?  It took me a moment to realize that this was an unconscious response to being cold.  There was no heat in the schoolhouse and though it was a pleasant day outside, it was not especially warm.  (Granted, as a “California Girl” at heart, I’m seldom comfortable if the outside temperature falls below 75° which is was, for sure, that October morning.)

Plus, no doubt, the sluggish circulation of old age was a factor.  It puts me in mind of my complaint to my doctor some years ago — probably 7 or 8, for I was still in my 70s.  I told him I was always cold and his response was “it’s just the perception of being cold.”  Well… yeah!  That’s what feeling hot or cold or well or sick is all about, isn’t it?  But I knew that he was trying to reassure me that my temperature was normal and I didn’t have some dreaded condition or ailment.

Tucker Wachsmuth at Pacific County History Forum – October 4, 2023

But back to that video.  I also vividly recall what Marta’s dad said to me after I had been in a bad automobile accident:  “And what did you learn from your experience?”  What I learned from seeing the video was to try to avoid being filmed in the future and to bundle up no-matter-what when outside my comfortable 72° household and to work on not umming and ahhhing when I talk.  And, in a worst-case-scenario, just don’t watch the video.

On the other hand, our Moderator Dayle Olson and the other two speakers, Tucker Wachsmuth and Eric Wiegardt were terrific.  No hesitancies.  No extremity-rubbing-to-encourage-circulation!  No problems.  I suggest you just watch their portions of the viideo which can be found by searching on Pacific County History Forum YouTube.

 

 

Where the deer and the antelope play…

Saturday, October 7th, 2023

At Surfside, August 10, 2023 – by Tucker Wachsmuth (Could this be Limping Deer’s dad?)

Except there aren’t any antelope(s)* here in Oysterville and the current resident deer has a painful-looking limp so “play” may not be an option for her.  She (or he?) is small, maybe a yearling though it’s difficult to determine.  She walks slowly around the village, sticking to the verges when she can and usually not too far from the schoolhouse.  Perhaps her home territory is in the woods behind the school.

Yesterday I watched her limp east along School Street and turn north, continuing at the same slow, steady pace past Lina and Dave’s. It seemed to me that she was walking more easily than a few days past, and I wondered if walking is helpful to her. She seems very thin to me and her forelegs and ankles look as fragile as matchsticks. I don’t wonder that something has strained or cracked.  The other day I thought the trouble might be with her left hind leg, but today I couldn’t tell if she was even favoring one over another.  She was just walking oh- so-slowly!

The Little Deer’s Mom? — Eating pears in our yard a few years ago.

I had the fanciful thought that she hoped Lina and Dave would be home and would see her slow progress past their place. They are both great with animals and the idea flashed by that maybe the little deer knows that.  I’m not even sure if she has met them but, if she has, my fanciful thought might have some basis in reality.  After all, how many times have you encountered a situation where a wounded bird or animal  just seems to “know” that a human can help?

In any case, my heart goes out to her (or him) as it does to any animal that appears to be hurting.  They always seem so stoic and so brave.  Or maybe that’s just my human urge to have them see a professional and get help!  I do hope I haven’t simply imagined that this lovely little neighbor is doing better.  I hope to see her soon in my garden, eating the pears that the wind has scattered over the lawn especially for her!

*The dictionary tells me that ‘antelope’ is plural with or without an ‘s’ at the end so… your choice.

“One by Land; Two by Sea” on Wednesday!

Saturday, September 30th, 2023

Tucker Wachsmuth, Storyteller, 2014

Did you mark your calendar?  The second-ever History Forum will convene at the Oysterville Schoolhouse at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4th.  Speakers will be three of us “old ducks” — Dobby Wiegardt, Tucker Wachsmuth, and yours truly — and we’ll be talking about a subject near and dear to our hearts!  In fact, if it weren’t for what we’ll be telling you, we might not have been here at all!

Dobby with his grandfather’s hats, 2019.

We hope that you’ll have questions about our presentations — and, of course, hope even more fervently that we or someone among those gathered has the answers — or at least suggestions of where to find out.  Even more fervently, we hope that there may be some others among us who can share stories about their own ancestors who arrived in this area in the last half of the nineteenth century!

There are absolutely no prerequisites to attendance at the History Forum beyond an interest in Pacific County and Southwest Washington history.  And, whether you come to listen or to question or to share, you are bound to take away at least some new understandings about our past — maybe even some aha moments that illuminate the present.  You never can tell when the old-timers get to telling their stories!

 

 

Dianne Feinstein

Friday, September 29th, 2023

Dianne Feinstein (nee Goldman) in the 1950s at Stanford — a Stanford Magazine Photo

I was surprised at the tears that came unbidden when my morning edition of the New York Times announced that Dianne Feinstein had died.  I can’t say that I really knew her, though we went back a long time, Dianne and I.

We were at Stanford together back in ancient times — the fifties.  She, two-and-a-half years my senior, was in the class of ’55; I, in the class of ’57.  Her last name was Goldman; mine was Little.  And, though our paths may have crossed more than once in the two years we shared at Stanford, I only remember her (and vaguely, at that) as on the Women’s Senate at Branner Hall, one of two dorms for Freshmen women — which meant that she was a sort of a dorm assistant there.

However, I was at Roble Hall, the other (and much larger) dorm for Freshmen women (and where Dianne, herself had been as a Freshman.)  I don’t know how I would have come in contact with Dianne Goldman unless some of our dorm meetings were combined…  And, even so, that would have been “quite a many” young women as my mother would have said.  So I probably only remember Diane in retrospect — perhaps teaching us the appropriate Freshman behavior at our first pep rally at Lake Lagunita.

Entrance to the History Corner of the Stanford Quad

I suppose it’s possible that I ran across her going to a Western Civ class in the History Department (for I believe she was a history major) but it was years before I really had a chance to speak to her and now I don’t remember what we said.  She was living around the corner from a good friend of mine — a fellow-teacher in Hayward who happened to  live in San Francisco.  It was during the early 70s and though Dianne was not yet running for mayor, she was surely a mover and shaker in the City by the Golden Gate.

In 1979 Mayor Feinstein leads 15,ooo marchers in a 1st anniversary commemoration of the Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassination.

I say this only because the entire block around her house (actually, a mansion in my eyes) was cordoned off.  Always.  No parking.  And parking in that part of the city was at a premium — only on-street parking even for most of the residents whose old-fashioned apartment buildings didn’t have garages.  I remember going around and around and around the blocks looking for a place to snuggle in my VW bug.  It never occurred to me to go up to Dianne’s door and plead, “For old time’s sake…”  Especially when we didn’t really share any of those old times!  But once, as I walked by her house, having parked three blocks from my destination, we did come face-to-face and exchanged a few words.  I wonder what they were.

Nevertheless, I was definitely a Dianne fan and her death saddened me in many ways.  Mostly, it was yet another wake-up call that my generation is fast disappearing and Dianne Feinstein was one of the best of us.   We are all impoverished by her passing.

The Hardest Part…

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

Bethenia Owens-Adair — Teacher or Doctor?

I really am having so much fun researching these “Saints or Sinners” stories!  And, every once in a while, a reader tells me how much they are enjoying them and that makes it even better.  And then just today, when I called Pete Heckes with a question about the name of the slough near the Moby Dick — it’s “Paul’s Slough” — he straightened me out on few errors in my story about Peter Jordan — you know, the guy who was so badly hurt when he and a buddy overloaded the cannon they had in Oysterville in the olden days.  Blew it to smithereens. And very nearly themselves along with it.

Well, we got to talking, and when all was said and done, I never used the Paul’s Slough information as I intended and I turned in my story without it.  Oh well.  If I ever find a publisher for these gems, I hope I remember to fine tune a few things!

But finding the details of the stories isn’t the hardest part.  It’s finding the illustrations — preferably photographs of the characters I’m writing about.  When you get back to stories before 1900, it gets harder.  Today, I was looking for a picture of a man who died in 1877.  “Fat chance!” thought I!  After all, he’d come west in the 1830s and just how many photographers do you think might have been doing studio portraits around here over the next 40 years?

John Edmunds or John Pickernell?

However — wonder of wonders! — I found one!  Or at least it purports to be the very man I was looking for — on the Find a Grave site which, besides photographs, contains a storehouse of wonderful information.  Is it all true?  I think as true as any information that comes to us over the years.  The people I’ve met who gather information for Find a Grave seem diligent to a fault.

And while I’m at it, if you are a “Saints or Sinners” reader and have additional information for me, don’t be shy.  If I use the information and find that publisher, I promise I’ll give you full credit!

Not Since The Civil War

Wednesday, September 27th, 2023

Senator Foghorn Leghorn

Nothing much in the news  surprises me anymore — mostly because I seldom pay much attention to anything beyond our local area.  (As in what’s the use?)

But there was a paragraph  in this morning’s NYT article on Menendez which did catch my eye: When politicians are unlikely to be removed, they rarely quit, and Menendez faces little risk of removal. Only the Senate can expel one of its members. It has not done so since the Civil War.

Really???  Not since the Civil War?  Not for 161 years?

Foghorn Leghorn Again

When I looked up more about it, it all became clear — and made me more disgusted than ever.  Basically, the ten senators who were removed at the beginning of the Civil War were from the southern states and they were removed for doing what their states had directed them to do.  In other words, they were doing their jobs.

Those opposed to the 1861 expulsion measure, argued that the southern senators followed the directions of their states and that no senator individually had conspired against the government.  They suggested that the expulsion rule should be reserved for individual acts of misconduct, since formal expulsion of the southern senators would only exacerbate an already inflamed situation. One of those in opposition to expulsion said he believed expulsion implied moral turpitude, a stain upon the personal character of the individuals that most would agree was unjust [in this case.]

And Yet Again

My mind whirls and twirls.  If I, as a teacher, had followed the directions of my principal, even though those directions were contrary to popular belief, should I have been fired?   But then, how can a lowly teacher compare herself to a high and mighty senator — one with gold bars secreted in the clothes of his closet.  No contest, folks.

We are so screwed up.  The mind boggles and the eyes overflow.  I KNOW BETTER than to read the news.  Shame on me!

 

 

 

Thunder! Lightning! Gullywashers! Oh my!

Tuesday, September 26th, 2023

It might have looked like this but it was too fast for my faulty eye-brain coordination!

Linda and I met for breakfast this morning.  It was nine o’clock — a civilized hour I thought.  It was raining, but not really buckets — although I did wonder if the puddle waiting outside my car door was going to go up, up, and inside my loafers.  It was a very close thing.

So there we were, I with my back to the front window, enjoying my first bite of hash browns and darned if a dancing sunbeam didn’t light up my life.  Followed in Nano-seconds by a KABOOM that completely disabused me of that sunbeam idea!  Good Lord!  The sky didn’t even look all that stormy.

And, just as I was getting to bite four or five (with a few bites of sausage patty in between!) here it came again.  Only this time the lightning and the thunder were as one.  No space in between.  No way to tell which came first.  But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the chicken OR the egg.

Nevertheless, we had a lovely time.  When we finally decided we should make a break for it, I noted that the puddle was now quite a bit deeper than it had been.  So I went on tiptoe as fast as ever I could.  BUT WAIT!  Someone was calling me!  I hadn’t paid, a voice called out.  Yes I did! and squelched into my car.  Doncha hate it when everything happens at once like that?

I’m pretty sure it didn’t look like this.

Well, I didn’t drive clear off and the waitress, bless her, figured that I was coming over to park on higher ground — which I was.  It seems she had forgotten to take my credit card and, after a time, I thought she had brought it back.  So… I scooped it up and boogied out of there.  I felt bad for being such a dolt.  She felt bad for not taking the card right away.

And do you think the Bard was right?  Will the rain it raineth every day??

Money, News, and Other Random Thoughts

Sunday, September 24th, 2023

At last! It’s time for my signature chapeau to make its reappearance!

I can’t decide whether that advertisement that prefaces the NYT Morning in my inbox each day is meant to piss me off or give me hope.  Usually, it’s the former.  “7 ways to Retire Comfortably With $500k” it says.  Well… duh!  In my world that wouldn’t take rocket science.

I ignore the ad and scan the headlines, looking to see if there is anything pertinent in the day’s news that could make a big difference to the reality of my own retired life — a life in which the words(?), symbols(?) of “$500k” have no substantive meaning at all.  Sometimes I wonder if the NYT news, itself is slanted toward those who fit the “retired on $500k” category.  On the days I think “yes, probably” I move on to other concerns.

It’s not news to my friends that I’m not very well informed on the “big issues” that are of current times.  Or even the smaller ones.  I try to keep current on local news — mostly so I won’t be arrested for burning during the burn bans (and btw, our current one has been lifted as of today) and know when to batten down for a big storm that’s barreling in on us.  (Actually, that last one isn’t rocket science as our forebears knew very well.)

Always at the ready in Oysterville.

It’s not that I have “given up” hope for effecting change toward a better world.  Not even that I despair of “setting an example” for others or “influencing” the way young people think.  It’s just that keeping abreast of the “news” seems an incredible waste of the time I have left, whatever amount that might be.

Mostly, I think it’s what  Confucius said: “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” And besides, I zoom every week with son Charlie and bonus-daughter Marta.  I can count on them to keep me up-to-date (whether or not I buy into that $500k thing.)  And it looks like rain is on its way to us in Oysterville right now.  Yay!  Life is good!