slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Ecola State Park


    Susanne said, “What an unfortunate name – sounds like a combination of E coli and ebola.” But it is one of the prettiest beaches on the planet, on the north side of Cannon Beach. We only went to part of it, because it was midday on Saturday and everybody was trying to get in. We didn’t mind waiting in a long line of cars in the cool shade of the woods, but when we heard it was another hour wait to get to Indian Beach, we stopped in this part and hiked down a trail that went to the edge of the sea cliffs and looked down on the beauty below and beyond. Later I learned that Indian Beach is where people go swimming.

    Looking back at Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock.




    See the fisherman near the bottom of that big rock?


    Yeah, it got a bit too steep at this point so we sat and enjoyed the view.


    As we were leaving we noticed the fisherman was scampering around that huge boulder near the top like a mountain goat. I took this photo of him at the halfway point down. We waited to make sure that he didn’t kill himself, and he sort of slid down with that pole still in his hand.


    We tried to go into Cannon Beach for a late lunch but the traffic and parking situation was so insane I nearly had a panic attack. So we headed south on the Pacific Coast Highway with its stunning views over the ocean and found Big Wave Cafe in Manzanita, where we split a fried seafood platter and I drank a Moose Drool ale, which was much better than it sounds. We loved it!

  • Focus on Book Arts 2015

    On Tuesday evening we left the beach to go to the Focus on Book Arts conference at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, about a 90 minute trip toward Portland. Pam arranged for us to stay with a friend of hers, Nel Rand, who lives in Cornelius, only about 15 minutes away. So not only did the travel improve, we had the privilege of making a new friend, who is a fabulous artist and writer as well.

    Our class, “An Intimate Atlas,” was a three-day map-making experience with Jill Berry. I’ve taken a lot of great book workshops, and this one ranks up there with the most enjoyable I’ve taken. The synergy of the women in the class and the instructor was perfect. There were no whiners and no neurotic meltdowns. Jill gave us techniques and prompts and it was amazing to see what a dozen different women did with the materials. I was already acquainted with some of these from Jill’s book  Personal Geographies, and had done a few of the exercises in a journal. In this class we each made six different maps and a book to contain them as pop-ups! I was surprised at how easy the book structure and pop-ups were to do. Therefore, I HIGHLY recommend this class to anyone who love maps and would like to do a bit of introspective play with watercolors, markers, and stencils.

    Jill has an excellent slideshow of all the different maps on her blog post, but here are some photos of just mine.


    This was my favorite, based on Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things,” which was copied on the white paper in white ink and then painted over with a grey wash.


    This hand map is about creativity and teachers, the past and the future. It is not quite finished in this photo because I have added names since this was taken.


    Here is a travel spread. On the left is my trip to FOBA in a game board format, spiraling into the center. I struggled the most with the heart map, because my heart has been hurting and closed for business lately. I made this “Hearchipelago” of islands places where I have lived and visited that I loved.

    A spread of the last two maps – At the left is a map of Marietta, my hometown, circa 1972 or so, of all my hideouts. At the right is a map of our house from Diego and Pablo’s point of view.

    The outside cover and spine of the book.


    Here are classmates dripping lines onto papers with walnut ink to make the back of our maps. I really loved doing this part.

    Susanne and I connected with Judy Strom, who steered us to FOBA in 2011. She is from Montana and we first met at Journalfest in Port Townsend, where we took two classes together. Judy is one of the main reasons I want to visit Montana, because I don’t get to see her enough. She was taking a class in the room next door.

    We made another new friend, Kathy Dickerson, who I look forward to spending some time with on another trip to the PNW. Here we are hanging out in Urban Decanter on Main St. of Forest Grove on our last hot (upper 90s!) evening in Forest Grove.

  • Fort Clatsop, Lewis and Clark National Park

    On Monday Pam ran errands so we hopped into our rented baby blue Beetle and headed north up the Pacific Coast Highway to Astoria. I like to visit any national parks nearby when I travel so we went to Fort Clatsop at Lewis and Clark National Park, and had a nice walk under the huge trees.

    We drove into Astoria, which has an interesting Finnish heritage that I’d like to learn more about, and a place where I’ve been researching real estate on daydream days. However, given the charts of projected tsunami damage from the overdue big earthquake they expect, I think that I’ll seek higher ground.  I like the idea of being near or on the Columbia River though.

    Then we had halibut sandwiches at the Screw and Brew in Cannon Beach (a combination hardware store and pub). They were delicious.  We did a little shopping and found a wonderful fabric store, Center Diamond. I had to force myself to have some self-control there, and I will budget with it in mind when I go back. (Oh dear God, I now see that they have an online store.) When we came back, a group of people were pointing at our car and I feared that it had been damaged, but they were talking about it sparkling in the sun because of the resin that had dripped on it from trees. The pine needles stuck to the resin stayed there throughout several days of driving. Fortunately it all came off at the car wash later that week.

  • I do love a hole in a rock

    I wanted to explore this hole last year but didn’t have the courage. I tend to be clumsy and the rocks are covered with sharp mussels. When I saw a little boy come out of this “cave” I wandered in and found that the rocks were not slick but it was still a challenge to keep my balance. Anyway, I came out unscathed which is pretty good for me, and it was totally worth it. It is between Arcadia Beach State Park and Cannon Beach.

    The strange teal to grayish green blobs are sea anemones which blossom underwater.

  • The latest trip to Oregon – Pam’s Place

    My friend Susanne and I went to northwest Oregon for a fabulous ten days, where we rented a sweet retreat from our friend Pam Patrie, who also stayed with us and cooked for us and taught us tapestry techniques and helped us build copper pipe looms a la Archie Brennan and went to a book arts class with us and arranged for us to stay with a friend of hers that lived near the conference and was generally the FANTASTIC host that Pam always is.

    Lush greens, wild foxgloves and other wildflowers were in abundance.

    While everyone on the east coast was suffering in a major heat wave, we had to wear jackets on chilly Cannon Beach. This is Susanne looking at the famous Haystack Rock and its marine garden. We enjoyed Pam’s woodstove in the cabin when we returned.

    The wind was whipping the sand at low tide into beautiful dry waves as we walked back toward Arcadia Beach State Park and Pam’s cliffside cabin. Every day the beach looks totally different.

    Susanne gets instruction from a master tapestry weaver on her new loom.

    Pam made us a tasty pizza. We also visited her community garden plots in Seaside, which provided us with lettuce, onions, and chives. I brought some Old Mill of Guilford yellow grits, which I cooked with garlic, Tillamook sharp cheddar, and her chives. We ate well!

  • Let Freedom Ring

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    (In memory of Terrilynn, who posted this on her blog every July 4.)

  • Back in Dixie

    And boy, am I glad that I didn’t pay attention to the news much while I was on my great Oregon adventure. The only good news I saw was from the Supreme Court, which was, of course, AWESOME, but the news of the Carolinas was just plain awful. I can hardly stand it here any more. My plan to move to the Pacific Northwest looks better all the time.

    I’m about to blog the trip, but wanted to warm up by doing a little brain dumping.

    We ate well in Oregon, but also we ate a lot of sugar, junk food, fried food, cheese, bread, and of course I sampled the local beer and ale rather liberally, so I came home with five extra pounds. I finally got up the courage to look up my blood test results and my cholesterol is still way too high but it came down 13 points. After my trip I’m guessing it went back up too – BUT – I’m starting over. I’ll get it going in the right direction again.

    When I left North Carolina we were in the beginning of an intense heat wave, which triggered a lot of thunderstorms so my garden was watered naturally. The woodchuck finished off the pea vines and most of the parsley and all the flowers, but left the rest alone. At the UNCG garden I picked three yellow squash and saw that squash borers, the bane of my squash growing existence, had gotten into the vines so I pulled two of them up. Tomatoes had ripened and unfortunately three of the Brandywines had rotted. I brought home one big green one that had started to turn yellow home so that I can ripen it in the kitchen, and harvested many Sungold and Roma tomatoes. Hopefully I will have okra soon. Zinnias are blooming and the sunflowers are gorgeous!

    When I left Oregon, THEY were in the beginning of an absolutely insane heat wave with record-setting temps. However, we spent most of our time at Cannon Beach where it is so cool that we needed jackets and used the woodstove. At our class at Pacific University in Forest Grove I actually burnt my hand on the outside metal door of our classroom, but we were lucky because we had air conditioning. Much of the campus didn’t.

    Now it is a reasonable temperature here in N.C. and we are getting storms every day. I do love a good storm. I have recovered from jet lag and had two days of major catch-up to do at work. Now everything is back to normal. We had considered going to Lake Waccamaw to see my sister’s “new” house but there’s a bit too much chaos going on in their life right now, so we have that to look forward to later this month. I’m ready to stay home this weekend anyway.

    Because home is still home and as much as I badmouth this state, Greensboro is a great city to live in, and I know a good thing when I see it. I’m a lucky woman.

    But I’m still moving to Oregon (or somewhere to the northwest) when I’m 60. It’s where I belong.

  • St. Louis Zoo and Art Museum, Part V

    I really had no idea that the zoo and the art museum were so insanely good. My favorite exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo were the hippos, but the elephants and the Asian sun bears were very entertaining too.

    ^^^The Most Interesting Gorilla in the World

    Then there was the St. Louis Art Museum, with master artists on exhibit from all over the world in all time periods. I nearly missed seeing the Andy Goldsworthy installation – thank God I stumbled onto it looking for the coffee shop!


    We had a good St. Louis Italian meal, slept well, and drove all the way home on Saturday, getting home at about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, with one major stop in New Harmony, Indiana. I wish that we had spent more time there because it was a fascinating town for history and art. We had no idea; we were just looking for a diner.

    Laura Foster Nicholson‘s weavings at New Harmony Contemporary Gallery of Art.

    Okay, that’s it for that trip! On to the next!

  • The Gateway Arch and Party Night, Part IV

    After conquering my fear of heights at the City Museum, I decided to do what I had sworn I would not do. We went up in the Gateway Arch. You get a phobia two-fer at the Arch, because you ride up inside it in a little pod that seats five people. Fortunately I do not have claustrophobia. I managed to do it by pretending it was a simulation.


    It swayed ever so slightly at the top.

    Sandy stabilized it for me.

    He’s my handsome fella.

    Cardinal Field.

    Then we started walking to Soulard, a downtown neighborhood that had been recommended to us. On the way, we found a great place to eat seafood and listen to blues, Broadway Oyster Bar. After City Museum and the Arch, I needed a drink. We had serious fun.

    Then on to McGurk’s Irish Pub in Soulard, when the drinking continued but we switched to live Irish music.

    That was a helluva fun day in St. Louis.

  • City Museum, Part III

    After Cahokia, we took the Metro to downtown St. Louis and walked to the City Museum, which is kinda difficult to describe. It’s like this amazing playground, artfully built, for all ages. There were all kinds of ways to get hurt in this place. If I had been 12 I would never have wanted to leave. The 10 story flight of metal stairs to the top scared the crap out of me, so I chose to take the spiral slide all the way down. There were all kinds of tunnels and tubes to crawl through if I had been fit or could have actually fit into. We spent most of our time on the roof.


    Looking up from the bottom.

    On the roof. Sandy climbed up that wire tube. I took the stairs. We both slid down the slide beneath it. We were very pleased with ourselves.

    There is a third way to climb to the top of that slide. Note the kids on the sides of this dome.

    At the very top of the slide – two people climbing over the girl about to slide down beneath them.


    The praying mantis oversees it all.

    That’s me in front of the kid.

    Yes, that’s a Ferris wheel on the roof. I don’t even ride them on the ground, so no.

    Here’s one photo from the interior. We didn’t even see half of the place. I’d love to go back here.