slowly she turned

Portland, Oregon: July 13-14, 2022

July 22, 2022

Focus on Book Arts was canceled in May. I cried. It was probably the last time I would have gone, since I’m planning to retire within the next year. I suspect it was probably because they raised the prices of the classes so much, but my guess is that they raised prices because they had no choice. They weren’t trying to make a profit. Regardless of the reason, they canceled it for low enrollment.

Not only that, but I chose to attend Focus on Book Arts instead of Convergence in Knoxville, Tennessee, which my tapestry guild was heavily involved in and it was a driveable distance away. Not to mention the art retreat in Ireland that I had laid down a deposit for in 2020, but I would not have been able to do Portugal and Ireland in one year anyway. All scheduled at the same time this year.

The three of us, although we bought travel insurance, had non-refundable plane tickets. Travel insurance didn’t cover the cancellation of an event. One of us was able to get a travel credit to use in the next six months, which was good because she unexpectedly got a new job. The other two musketeers, Susan and I, went to Portland anyway. We had the refund from FOBA and we used it to rent an AirBNB in Portland and have a good time.

The plane trip went incredibly smoothly. I guess I used up all my bad luck on the Portugal plane trip. On the flight between Chicago and Portland, we got lucky and sat next to a woman whose job was to transport puppies from the seller to the owner. That’s how we got to cuddle with Miss Bonnie as we flew west. She was so soft and so gentle and quiet…and didn’t pee on us once!

^^^Miss Bonnie sleeping on Susan’s heart.

We rode the Metro and a bus most of the way to our AirBNB, which was between Mississippi Avenue and Williams Avenue in NE Portland, within a short walking distance of both streets with their restaurants and shops and the bus stop. Our place was in the basement of a Craftsman bungalow, cute but so, so cold. We closed the vents and made the best of it. We spent time in a sweet little garden on the side of the house, because the weather was absolutely gorgeous the entire time we were there.

Susan and I were both mobility challenged. She has a partial knee replacement coming up and I have my bone spur pressing against my Achilles tendon. We took a lot of breaks from walking but we did fairly well, considering. We ate out for every meal. On the first evening, we ate fish tacos at a bar called The Rambler, and drank local ciders and ales. They asked to see our vaccination cards before we could sit at the bar inside. Luckily I had taken a photo of mine and had it on my phone, because it wasn’t the only place in Portland that required proof of vaccination. Then we went “home” and crashed. We were still on East Coast time.

The next morning we went to Gravy for breakfast and I was surprised that it was not crowded and we were able to get a table right away. Susan got a fried egg sandwich and I got smoked salmon hash and eggs and hashbrowns, not knowing that I would be served about five pounds of food. The waitress brought us a takeout box so for some reason I thought it was a good idea to take the leftovers back. The leftover salmon hash in the fridge became a running joke until I tossed it in the compost bin (as instructed!) on the day we left.

^^^The infamous smoked salmon hash.

On our way back, we stopped at a very unusual light bulb and lighting store, Sunlan. I picked up a couple of very cool light bulbs for my antique floor lamp.

Then we walked to the bus stop and took the Metro to Washington Park, where we got on the park shuttle to visit the International Rose Test Garden and the Portland Japanese Gardens.

This was my third time at the Portland Japanese Gardens so I tried to focus on being in the moment instead of taking lots of photos. If you want to see past photos of the gardens, I blogged them here and here. I also looked up a lot this time at the reflections of light through leaves as well as the shadows on the ground. My favorite photo this time was of the shadows that the water bugs cast on the bottom of the pools as they walked on the surface.

We had tea and appetizers at the Umami Cafe. This fruit and nut cake was so delicious!

After a break at “home” we went to a Thai place on Mississippi Avenue, split a bottle of vinho verde, and ate more appetizers. A little bit of Portugal on the U.S. West Coast. We bought a few non-alcoholic drinks and a 12-pack of assorted ciders to have during our stay at “home.” That night we sat out in the side garden, told stories of our lives from way back when, and laughed a whole lot.

That’s the first two days of our trip!
Sunday Rainy Morning Coffee Pot Post

July 10, 2022

While Portugal and other places in the world burns, we have a sweet reprieve from the oppressive heat since a cold front with rain came through last night. Diego and I are sitting on the front porch. The rain is pattering and gurgling, wind is wafting, a cardinal is chirping, and a train horn is blowing. Now a mockingbird sings. We have many mockingbirds in the area.

This weekend so far I have not left the house except to pick a couple of hot peppers for our chili last night. An ancho and a poblano. They didn’t seem so hot after I did a test nibble, but after I minced and seeded them, soap and water did not clean my hands and I wiped my itchy face with my hand. I remembered a tip from my sister and dabbed some sour cream on the stinging areas. (Cream cheese works too.) It worked and the chili turned out perfect.

I’ve been concentrating on finishing “Cathedral.” I know that I have been saying that for years. But I actually have the top edge of the left side finished and it’s a matter of weaving up the right side and middle to match it, then weaving a hem. When it is cut off, I’ll ask Sandy to make a video. Standing at this loom is not good for my body and I will probably sell the Shannock loom when I finish Cathedral. I have many looms to choose from, mostly small tapestry looms. I have reworked the section on the right of the top photo several times. It is time to let it go now. I’m content with it.

Last weekend I needed to do something that was easy on the brain and would give me a dopamine hit, so Susanne and I did a couple of natural dye pots and rolled up paper with various leaves on copper pipes to make prints. This time we dipped the paper in an alum/water solution first. I experimented with three different papers and I had no expectations. We didn’t have much in this particular dyepot other than some rusty iron bits and a few old pecans with hulls that I found. It was also still dirty from the same time I used it. Susanne also did a dyepot with avocado pits but I haven’t seen her results from that one.

The first papers were Susanne’s handmade “dream” paper, speckled with herbs. It didn’t hold the leaf prints as well but I think that the yarrow leaves that I put in one of the bundles dyed everything a brilliant yellow. The texture is very nice.

The second paper bundle was a thin commercial paper that may have been too delicate for the dyepot, but I was experimenting. I did get prints and one section near the top of the bundle that was torn is so pretty that I’ll do something with it. This paper will be good for collage.

The last set of papers just floored me. I was so pleased and surprised when they came off the pipe bundle. These were heavy cream colored watercolor papers that I had torn down to make book signatures with. They turned out so beautiful and vibrant that they will have to go on covers, I think.

Leaves used were sweet gum (called liquidambar in the rest of the world, I think), black walnut, pecan, redbud, oak, willow oak, swamp bay, and the black/purple areas were from dried petals of black hollyhock flowers. I grew one several years ago and it didn’t do well, but I dried and saved the petals. There are a few strawberry and rose leaves in there too.

People always ask about the lines. Those are the string marks from tying the paper bundle tightly. It is on the outside of the bundle so that part picks up the dye in the dyepot – in this case, the iron bits and probably residue from the last time I dyed with black walnuts.
Dream of Kali

July 8, 2022

Early this morning, I dreamed a vivid dream of performance art. I was in school and painted a large image of Kali on a clay slab, but I couldn’t find a place to hang it. Finally I placed it in the middle of a dirt road going through a field, and I scooped out the sandy soil to create basins and mounds around it, with some ancient symbols of Ireland drawn into the mounds. A path led you into it and out, with the painting of Kali on the ground inside.

I heard a couple of teachers complaining about the ugly structure that had appeared overnight in the field, so I led all the students and teachers in a line to walk through it. I didn’t explain. I marched like a soldier about ten feet ahead of the line, and I may have been dressed like a general.

After leading the way through I went back to the school without stopping, without explaining the installation, did whatever, then I walked into the lobby of the building, where the people who were in line were drifting in. There was a table with a sign with a petition to remove my art installation, and a couple of sour faced women standing to the side of it. Underneath the petition to remove it, someone had added an area to sign in support of it. The signatures in that area slightly outnumbered the signatures who wanted to remove it. All were women.

I said to the women, did you realize that it is only sand and clay and after a couple of hard rainstorms nature will destroy it for you? They stood like stone.

I had gone to sleep thinking of chaos. Of the many consequences of the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, including the news that some pharmacists are refusing to prescribe methotrexate because it can be used to induce abortion. Methotrexate is one of the few known effective treatments for my husband’s rare auto-immune disease, polymyositis, and it is prescribed for other auto-immune diseases as well. It works well for him and it is keeping this incurable muscle disease in check.
My Body My Words My Choice

June 27, 2022

Photos from a Pro-Roe rally in downtown Greensboro today. There were speakers of several genders, sexual orientations, races, and ages, including our U.S. representative, Kathy Manning. It was organized by a handful of young activists. I was seated near the front so there were many more people behind me, especially considering the time and day.

I shared an abstract portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsberg today on Facebook with the quote: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

This is something that these organizers need to think carefully about and take to heart.

God knows I have a habit of letting the fucks fly, especially when I am angry. And I have morphed over the years into a solid atheist, although I have a lot of respect for the teachings of Jesus and follow several Christian ministers and writers who pay attention to what he taught, not to what will make them and their churches richer or more powerful. My mother was a devout Christian who was compassionate and advocated for peace and helping the poor and the immigrants. I have friends and relatives who are Christians and run the political spectrum, most of them progressive. But wherever these people are on the political scale, nothing good will come from by running them down or making jokes about their religious beliefs.

If your cause is about human rights, make your words about that. Choose your words carefully. I had a lot of good photo ops that I chose not to take because someone positioned a sign with offensive language behind the speakers. There were several news cameras there. What video do you think that they will choose to promote? What photos? Whether you support that person’s freedom of expression or not, or believe it was vulgar or not, it did not help further the cause that we were all there for.

This woman could have chosen other words to say what she meant on her sign. She could have carried that sign in a less prominent place. Another speaker’s joke about a certain Christian religious belief only had the purpose of her trying for a laugh. It wasn’t necessary.

By all means, express yourselves, but have some common sense about what helps and what hurts. Figure out your goals and tailor your language toward that goal. In this case, we need to unite people toward regaining our human rights and not losing more of them. It might seem that Christians are your target, but there were many Christians in that crowd that support abortion rights. There are Republican women who support abortion rights. Save your fucks and your religious jokes for your own circle of friends.

I also heard that the earlier rally this weekend turned a lot of people off when a speaker(s) urged everyone not to vote because it was useless. I’m not saying that you can’t voice your opinion, but consider your audience and what you want to accomplish. Do you want to express anger and despair or do you want to rally people to action? That is a choice too.

There are plenty of words to choose from to get your point across – think about your listeners and readers before your words leave your head.
Saturday Mid-day Coffee Pot Post

June 25, 2022

Warning: much angst in the following post.

Well. It’s hard to know how to begin this morning. I was advised to stop reading the news on Tuesday because I am “fragile.” That obviously did not happen. How can I not read or watch the news? I am an INTJ, an Enneagram One, the planner, the mastermind. I naturally focus on what needs to be done and form contingency plans for when plans A, B, C, etc. go awry. That is what I do. But I’ve been advised to focus on what I can control, which I know is good advice, so I’m doing the best I can, considering the realities of my situation.

I was already crying at my desk at work yesterday morning when the news popped up on my screen from two different state newspapers. I need to figure out how to cut those off. It’s not like it was a surprise, but I guess that I hoped that two out of the five justices would come to their senses. Find some compassion.

I was crying because I am overwhelmed. I don’t have a plan, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I can’t know what is going to happen. Nothing makes sense any more. I am a logical person. I am woman. I am human. All humans are affected by this. Pandora’s box has been opened in the United States.

I was already crying because I am deeply depressed and anxious. I have big decisions to make. Whether I can retire a year from now. Whether I can move out of the country. Whether my husband is willing to come with me, which is not in my control. And he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t even want to go back to Portugal on vacation. I tried to remind him that he was in pain from day one and that colored his view of it. That he had options other than Portuguese style food.

I met with an HR retirement benefits staff member on Thursday to discuss my options and get some hard numbers. He was very helpful and created a spreadsheet for me in which I could change dates, etc., to see how it affects my monthly pension when I retire. Hopefully I will get a bigger raise this coming year, but that is now up in the air since our state legislature is again making noises about not passing a budget.

The bottom line is that I could retire in a year, and it is likely that I will. I will have to be even more frugal and cut out some of the art travel stuff, maybe get a part-time job. I can’t move to Portugal unless I take my Social Security early, and I’m going to try to wait as long as I can for that. We’d have to sell the house, or clean it out and arrange to rent it, and as long as Sandy is against moving, that won’t happen anyway.

The good news is that I would pay the same for my health insurance as I do now until I qualify for Medicare. Assuming that that isn’t taken away from us by then. I’d pay the same for my dental for 18 months under COBRA. Dental insurance is pretty much a requirement for me, since I was born with crappy teeth and have a mouth full of old dental work. The endodontist said that she was surprised that I didn’t need to have more root canals earlier because that you start having root canals that your other teeth tend to start pinging off so I have to keep that in mind. So far I’ve had two, and I am not going to wait in pain for months to do it the next time. I was waiting for my upgraded insurance to kick in then – not a good idea.

I am anxious about training my co-worker to do my job and I need to get over that. She is really smart and competent and can learn it. It’s just that I do so many different things and the rules and processes change constantly. I will have to stay positive about that. No good can come of me transferring my negative attitude to her.

The other possibility that made my head spin is that the HR guy said that it is possible for me to work from home. That it is not forbidden by the university, as I was told, but could be authorized by my department on a temporary basis, and by the department and higher offices on a permanent basis. He showed me the policy online. But after talking to my office manager, who is also one of my best friends and truly has my best interests at heart, this is not doable. That UNCG leadership says that we have to have the office open in person. Anyway, she is going to think about it, but I’m not sure that I want to do it. Maybe over next summer, so that I could work from the lake and be with my sister more. I did that before with no issues. I hardly ever see a student any more and when I do it’s always something that could have been handled over email or the phone.

Part of what I decided to do, and I’m already having second thoughts about, is downsizing my studio to just book arts and my small Mirrix tapestry loom and selling my big looms and most of my yarn. Get rid of all the fabric that I’ve hoarded. But I also love weaving cloth strips together. Sandy says that I should keep my big floor loom because I will want it after I retire. All my stuff is overwhelming me – there is too much. I have filled up the studio and half of my bedroom.

People talk about how their art saves their sanity at times like this. I wish that was so for me. I shut down. But I am beginning the purging process again a box at a time, mostly old books. A lot of the fabric and natural objects will have to go. I’ll work on finishing the big tapestry now that I bought a new lamp this week so that I can see the true colors again, and I’ll sell the Shannock loom and much of my weaving yarn stash. I’ll consider selling the Macomber loom since it is the biggest space hog. At least book arts will not take up so much room, and there are so many directions that books can take.

I finished the end bands on the papyrus book that I started last summer in Dan’s class, and now I can glue those covers together and it will be finished. I took apart the Pocosin book from my first book class down there to rebind it, and then realized my error – I had glued together all the page blocks so I’ll have to rebind the whole thing as single sheets. In a way, that is fine. It will give me a minor challenge and I can finish the pages that I wanted to put windows into.
Storm Over Scuppernong

June 24, 2022

This storm moved in from the west at sunset. Everyone headed down to the river dock to watch it move over the Scuppernong River in Columbia, North Carolina, until we retreated to the River Lodge to watch it from the balcony and porches.
Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft

June 19, 2022

This week I attended Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft to study again with Daniel Essig. This class was a second repeat of a class that I’ve taken with him before about wooden covers and mica pages. Every class has been a bit different though, with different tools available. I always learn new information. Too much information!

I’m going to post photos of my works in progress here, but later when the weather is not calling me to go outside (it is a rare cool breezy morning here) I will post photos of the finished books and some of the pages inside. Maybe a video if I can get it set up correctly.

Columbia is a tiny, beautiful little riverside town on the banks of the Scuppornong River, which empties into the nearby Albemarle Sound. If you keep going a little farther east on Highway 64 it will take you to Manteo and then the Outer Banks. It is home to the headquarters of the Pocosin Lakes Wildlife Refuge and a red wolf reintroduction and education center. There were at least two bear sightings while I was there and one was on the boardwalk that I walked on my first evening there on Sunday.

Monday morning we began class and we were able to use several power tools and hand tools in Pocosin’s wood shop. I pushed myself to get past the fear of the power tools, although I am pretty comfortable with a drill. I was more nervous about getting the diagonal angle on the spine edge of the wooden covers right. Turned out that I was pretty good at it after a little bit of practice. We also had access to some great woodburning tips that Dan brought with him. Dan provided milk paint in ten different colors, and we painted over our distressed and burned covers with layers of milk paint, then sanded and polished them.

Much of the class was spent on preparing the mica covered pages, but I concentrated more on getting some other wood covers that I had bought from Dan in the past beveled on the sander and drilled. My mica covered pages were pretty simple affairs, and I will photograph them best I can later for the blog. They are shiny.

My work area did not stay this neat:

Pretty papers to choose from:

Covers before binding, and spine bound before the endbands were added.

The original idea was that I would nail the mica windows down with tiny nails. It makes a really elegant finish and I was excited about it. However, when I tapped in the last nail at the top of the window, the board cracked. Dan repaired it for me with wood glue, but it meant no more hammering on the cover. So I changed the mica window to a thicker piece at his advice, and anchored it down with double-sided tape and blue Lofta paper. I will probably rework this cover because I have some other ideas now. I did get the end bands on it, although I need more practice.

The first book we made was paperback with a small concertina fold to sew and glue the pages onto. Later we attached light wooden covers.

When I had spare moments, I worked on the covers for the next book, which I am pretty excited about. I didn’t really have a plan for it except that I knew that I wanted to sew this piece of dried greenbriar vine to it. On the back in a mica window is half of either a hickory nut or a butternut that I found washed up on the shore of Lake Waccamaw. My plan is to leaf print handmade paper pages for this one, but I’m also tempted to make some mica encased page blocks that are thick enough to hold some of the tiny treasures that I collect at the lake. I could do both.
Saturday Morning Coffee Pot Post

June 11, 2022

I feel so lazy. Sandy and I talked about all the things we want and need to do today but my urge to drink coffee on the porch instead is strong.

This has been a rough week. Not for work…that is light in June. My brother-in-law had a great cancer scan two months ago and that gave us all a lot of hope and he got a reprieve from chemo. Now it’s back and he has to do heavy chemo again. We both think of him as our brother and we love him very much.

I talked with a university sponsored financial advisor who strongly advised me not to retire at 62. He said that there would be a worsening recession and if I lived a long time my money would run out. However, I didn’t have Sandy’s financial information and I don’t think this guy understood how frugally we live. I have an appointment with a university HR person in a couple of weeks who will be able to give me more exact figures and help me understand my choices. It may be that I will search for another job and try to put off taking Social Security a little while longer. I heard that this employee helped another staff member find more retirement funding so that she could retire earlier.

My main focus is that I am leaving tomorrow for a book class with Dan Essig for a week at Pocosin Arts School in the tiny town of Columbia, NC near the Outer Banks. I’m gathering up a bunch of book art and collage supplies and I’m really going to try to focus. A friend talked me into doing another weekend class with Leslie Marsh in October at Topsail Beach. Having these in person classes to look forward to has lifted my spirits. Then of course I am still flying out to Oregon in July with my friend Susan. If I hadn’t paid for that Portugal trip beginning in 2019 I’d be in debt, but I am not. It may not seem that I am frugal, but I save and prioritize travel and art classes over car payments and new clothes and furniture. It helps that I don’t have children.

The weather is still nice today so I might get a little more yard work done. The guy who mowed my yard told me that he was interested in helping me with my garden, so I have hope that this will work out. Last weekend I did a lot of pruning and I think that I got into fire ants. I have a lot of bites on the back of my neck and trailing down to my boob. At first I thought spider bites but there are too many. I joked on Facebook about a vampire bite because of two on the side of my neck. Hydrocortisone has taken care of the itching so far so I hope to be over that soon.

Now I need to take a home Covid test, because Pocosin requires proof of vaccination and a booster and an honors based Covid test. I’m happy about this. It will make me feel much safer.
Tavira to Lisbon, May 25

June 6, 2022

^^^Bye street.

Today was the day I had sort of dreaded – the day that we would have to get our Covid tests to meet the “day before” or 24 hour time limit before leaving for the United States. It ended up being easy, thanks to our host who arranged the appointments for us at a clinic in Tavira. Afterwards we hung out for a while at Pastelaria & Padaria Venezuela and had pastries and orange juice, then sat at the train stop a couple of blocks away.

This train trip was uneventful except that I had filled a water bottle with tea and put it in the side pocket of my backpack. Sandy put my backpack up on the rack, the cap to the bottle came off, and tea poured and sprayed all over the place, including on some of the passengers. So we got some paper towels and cleaned the mess up best that we could. Damn Americans!

I was not monkeying around with walks uphill any more so when we got to Lisboa-Oriente station, I got a taxi to take us a short but steep uphill walk to our next place. It was a converted over-garage studio apartment in a cute neighborhood and was one of the cheapest and most comfortable places we stayed. When we headed downhill to find a place to eat dinner, Sandy asked a passerby her advice. It turned out that she was the cousin of our landlord and she recommended nearby Restaurante Alegria and walked along with us, showing us walking paths that were shortcuts. So friendly and helpful!

Here’s where I talk about the wildflowers in Lisbon – what many people would call weeds. I was so pleased to see an appreciation for letting them grow everywhere. Most of the time I saw them growing in the cracks of the streets, on walls, and on roofs. This lovely path took us through a small meadow of grasses and wildflowers Most people in the U.S. would have seen this as an overgrown vacant lot.

Alegria was a small rock music themed restaurant – they used 33 rpm records for placemats. Sandy had a beef dish and because I was not very hungry, I decided to try the fried codfish balls that you see in snack bars everywhere. I didn’t particularly like them, but what I loved was the rice and beans that they served with them. I could have eaten just that side dish and bread and have been perfectly happy.

We got our negative results through email and hit the sack early during our last night in Portugal.

And the less said about the trip home the next day and the next the better. Let’s just say that we made it home to Greensboro via Dublin and Boston and Newark by Friday night. So many flights were delayed and canceled that we were lucky to get home as soon as we did. I wrote a bit about it here: https://slowlysheturned.net/2022/05/28/saturday-morning-post-portugal-coffee-pot-post/

We both eventually got our checked luggage. Whew!

And that concludes the story of our 2022 trip to Portugal.
Tavira, Tuesday, May 24

June 6, 2022

This was our last full day in Tavira. We considered going back to a different beach on the back side of the island, but instead we had lunch at an Indian restaurant across the river and then went to a couple of museums. We talked to the people seated around us – two were sisters from Newfoundland, although one of them lived in Texas. The other couple talked to Sandy about the health care system in Portugal and the process of applying for the D7 visa.

We spent part of the day at the Museu Municipal de Tavira, which included the Palácio da Galeria and the Museu Islamico. We were able to see more of the Phoenician archeology sites that were under the palace that had been converted to the art museum. They were ritual pits, and you viewed them from glass panels over the floor.

Gabriela Albergaria was the featured artist in the contemporary art exhibit named “A Natureza Detesta Linhas Rectas” (“Nature Abhors a Straight Line”), and I adored her work with and about trees.

There was an exhibit about the Mediterranean Diet in Portugal, which I’ve come to understand through experience is quite different and complex. The Portuguese are known for their cuisine, and it varies from region to region in this small country. Language varies in different regions too. For example, I tried to interpret “prego,” which I assumed meant sandwich, on a menu in Évora. It translated to “nail.” Nowhere in my two Portuguese to English dictionaries did it list this word, even in Rick Steves’ food lists.

^^^Now I know what pigeon holes are. I think that there were pigeons in every hole in this wall.

When Sandy was taking a nap in the late afternoon, I walked around by myself and did a bit of shopping. Then I wandered up the hill to check out the walk to the clinic where we had covid tests scheduled for the next morning, and the train station nearby. I loved this solitude, and I discovered some streets off the tourist track. This is when I thought, yes, if we could find a quiet place we could afford away from the tourists, I could see living in this area.

^^^An antique and a view from our living room window.

I bought a handwoven bag at a local gift shop, and I was conflicted about giving up my old bag. I loved the outside pockets on it, but because it had a black interior, everything that went inside was hard to find. I called it “the black hole.” Then I remembered that I had brought a sewing kit with me, so I cut the outside panel with the pockets away from the black hole and stitched it to the new bag, all while polishing off a bottle of wine. As you might guess, I was pretty hammered by the time I finished.

Around 9:30 we walked to a corner restaurant/bar where there was live music. There we had appetizers of bruschetta with cheese and honey and dried fruit outside. It was the perfect last dinner in Tavira.