Thursday, June 28, 2007

Seattle

It was raining by the time the race car was set up shortly after 1 p.m. The girls helped a lot, Sabrina got the winch jammed once but I showed her how the cable had to be wound from side to side to fit on the drum.

K.C. crawled under and undid the tie-down chains at the back of the car, and without direction placed them neatly to the side, and when asked she laid the fire suit out on the back of the car for technical inspection.

We passed “tech” and there was an afternoon ahead of us to explore Seattle. Off we went.

Caught James St. or Madison off of Interstate 5 and burrowed down through the business district to Alaskan Way, where we paid $20 to park for three hours or all night. Could have driven another 100 yards and found a better spot on the street, but I was in a hurry.

We wandered up from the abandoned rail road tracks under the freeway to the top of Pike Street Market, where we bought hot almonds and walked from the famous fish monger down the long row of produce and bright silver jewelry and flower stands that exuded fragrance from cut tulips and lilies and flowers I don’t have enough life left to learn all the names or even describe the colors, across from stands of Queen Anne and Bings cherries selling for $2.75 a pound. Taste the current jam.

We caught a cab to the Space Needle, Sabrina did not like the elevator ride up or down but we walked the compass points and stood at the telescope where she could see people walking the decks of ships and on islands far out in Elliott Bay. Then we took the monorail back toward the market, had a bite to eat at the food court and wandered down to the ferries.

Another hour and a half to Bainbridge Island and back. The girls stood at the front each way, on the way back there was another rain squall but they did not back down, they faced forward the entire way and toughed out the cold drops that drove me inside until nearly back to the dock.

We have done Seattle. K.C. knew which way Lake Washington lay by pointing without a map. Sabrina pointed from the ferry terminal toward Auburn without hesitation. The girls know the surface texture of another great city, they now have a center in San Francisco and Seattle and Portland. Vancouver B.C. is next, I don’t care about L.A.

The day will come when one or both will need to have a city that is their home town, for college or adventure, and then of course they won’t just hit the tourist spots. But they know how to “see” within the urban canyons.

Cities have color, and the great cities on the ocean and bays of the Pacific and the Northwest have a color all their own, different expressions of green and gray iridescence like oil on water in the late afternoon, fading to an evolution of neon sparks on wet pavement after the sun goes down.

I want the girls to be comfortable in these cities as well as the lovely lonely isolation of our 80-acre ridge top, facing mountain sunset silhouettes and sleeping in a tipi. I panic at times that there is too much to share, and so little time left I have access to their wonderment.

Even girls race

We are at the races. A day early.

It was the right decision, to come on Wednesday. When we arrived, the vast new parking lot at Pacific Raceways was nearly empty. Drag races were happening. The girls went down to watch the drags while I put the trailer in its designated spot. I found them still at the fence after about an hour.

“Dada, they go really fast.”
“Dada, one the the drivers of a motorcycle is a girl.”
“Two of the drivers on motor cycles are girls.”

And the girl on the orange bike, blond braid down the back of her black leathers, didn’t look much bigger than my 13-year-olds. She was hideously fast, I think she turned the quarter in the nines, at about 150 mph.

I explained to the twins that our race is a road race, that we would be coming around that turn there and dive down that hill there, up that hill and back to this stretch of road right here.

Okay, yes, this is one reason why it was important to me to bring the twins. Girls race. Girls work on cars. That doing is more fun than watching. I don’t expect the twins to race, nor especially want them to, or even to love cars. But I do want them to taste this from Dada’s world, to know that a ratchet is among their options.

They do not want to be “girlie girls.” On the bridge of adolescence, they don’t understand those who do nothing but talk about how they look or about what the boys are doing or thinking.

My twins demand to drive the truck up and down our half-mile driveway at home. They sleep in a tipi. They have come to the races after a six hour drive with one stop and not one complaint, not one video game, handing up almonds and Triscuits and cheese. Today, in a few hours, we will see the Space Needle and Pike Street Market.

And tomorrow they will see some of the most wonderful cars in the world making some noise.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Sen. Kate Brown is stepping down as Oregon Senate Majority Leader. She has had a remarkable run.

We met Sen. Brown on a couple of occasions, once when she came to the Board of Medical Examiners to see what that organization did, another time in Salem. She is a smart and caring Democrat. She also was lucky to have a term that ended coincident with the implosion of Republican power caused by the stunning arrogance of Dick Cheney and his sock puppet, George W.

The accolades for Brown start with the fact that when she became leaders of the dems in the Oregon Senate in 1998, there were 10 of them, now there are 18.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Yeah, I know. Damn the effetes. But folks, it is a concept that has been around since Latin was the language of the civilized world, which is why it’s important that we remember we ain’t as smart as we think we is. Just because she was there then, and things are different now, does not mean she made the difference.

The second round of accolades center around what happened in this last session:

“increased funding for early education, K-12 schools and higher education; making health care more affordable and accessible; restoring 100 state troopers to protect Oregon’s highways; protecting consumers; investing in renewable energy; expanding the Oregon Bottle Bill; enacting landmark civil rights protections; and passing comprehensive ethics reform – Brown said she leaves her role as Majority Leader with a great sense of accomplishment.” (Salem-News.com)

Well, some of those might be accomplishments.

With a majority (but not two-thirds, required to pass some reforms) and a Democratic governor (we forget his name) the Democrats also failed to implement fundamental tax reform, bring accountability to teachers, failed to create a fair and comprehensive health system (sorry, Ben Westlund), failed to reform school finance aside from dipping into a pot more full of money, and failed to fix Measure 37.

They frittered away much of their session on “feel-good” legislation.

Kate Brown is a good senator, and a good Democrat. But credit where credit is due. Just because some things happened doesn’t mean they were all good, doesn’t mean she gets the credit if they were good. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Friday, June 22, 2007

The wind

Mike and I got the tipi up by about 12:30. Three, four hours. It is not a job I could have done alone, it is not a job I would do again. Practice would make it easier, but 60 pounds of canvas along a 22 foot pole is hard. Even following instructions, which is also hard, at least for a couple of guys who think they know how everything should work just by looking at it.

Jon stopped by on his motorcycle and carved down the ends on the stitching sticks. Thankfully, he did not offer suggestions.

We didn’t have enough cord to tie all the stakes to the ground, but I knew I would be going to town later and could pick up some more.

Yesterday I went to the seed company and bought four large packages of a slow growing bunch grass. I hoped to plant it and let it grow a little thicker than some of the local fescues. After the tipi was up, Mike went over to move rock with the track hoe, and I spread the seed over the new drain field. The seed was light and flew gently in front of the spreader. Along with 8 oz. of wildflowers.

It isn’t going to be a lawn. Even though the girls would like a lawn, I made myself a promise 10 years ago when we moved out of the log house that I would never mow a lawn again. I haven’t so far. And the goal of this concrete and steel barn on an 80 acre ridge hill top is to not be pinned by household chores.

I put the seed down in a crisscross pattern to spread it evenly, and ran with the spreader when I mixed in the wildflower seed to get some coverage. Mike came over with the track hoe to “walk it in” to the dirt. The powdery dust flew up, I tried to water the soil a bit to keep the bit of wind from carrying the dust and seed away. Mike pointed out that wet dirt would just stick to the tracks of the hoe so I stopped.

At about 2:30 I took the spreader back to the rental store, Mike was going to call it a day, too. We had had a good week. The rough plumbing is in the mostly graded subloor, packed and ready for the concrete guy to come wire for the slab on Monday. The heating guy can come tie his radiant tube to the wire, then we can pour the slab, and start framing the walls. The septic is in. We have power, we have water. It has been a good three weeks, and next Thursday we take off to go race in Seattle.

I was still in town when the light breeze of earlier became a howling wind. There was a big build up of clouds over the mountains to the west, a storm surf of clouds held at bay by Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Washington, the Three Sisters. But though the clouds were pinned, the wind howled in, angry it seemed. It made the trailer shake and feel insubstantial.

It buffeted the tipi, but even without all the stakes, it held. Inside, the poles creaked against the rough rope. I quickly cut cord to finish tying stakes down, but with its respectful conical shape, the organic weight of canvas, the tipi seems impervious to the wind.

Not my drain field. When I walked out to move the sprinklers, my $80 of seed, two hours of spreading, and an hour of Mikes time pressing the seed down, were pretty much gone. The wind had taken the flour-like soil, the feather like seeds, off to my neighbor’s place, abraded the surface right down to the crust of the last watering.

At my frustrated suggestion, the girls and I lit the smudge stick that came with the tipi, I was hoping to perhaps buy us a little grace from the wind. It didn’t work, at least not yet. It was obvious hubris anyway. The ancestors could tell lighting the stick was a bribe, not thanks from a pure heart.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Rush on the job site

“You are one of the only guys I know I’m kinda friends with that doesn’t like Rush.”

That’s a hard one. It’s meant as a compliment. Mike and I have been working side by side for a few weeks. I owe him more than a couple beers. He can do more in three seconds, and with more finesse, with a backhoe than I can do in ten minutes with a shovel.

But he listens to Rush Limbaugh while driving the backhoe, and Country music. My music, heavy guitar licks by Roy Buchannan or Pink Floyd, just don't cut it under the noon day sun. But I can’t stand the smooth new country, “Men in boots whining,” and I can’t stomach Rush. There are just so few ways to respond.

“Rush is just a mouthpiece for the people who want to own you. If you like your government telling you what to think, you are welcome to it.” When they were trying to sell us on a war, it was abusing patriotism to get us into Iraq. Now it is the jingoistic pitch against immigration. Being sold to a nation founded by immigrants.

But it is not the hypocrisy of bitter and sordid talk show hosts like Limbaugh or O’Reilly that is so offensive. It is the blatant manipulation. The subtle name-calling. The smirking, superior, “I am SO getting away with this,” lack of conscience, that is so galling.

30 years ago there was a TV show that featured Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker. Archie was laughed at by the left, his bigotry held up for ridicule. The thing is, Archie won.

Now we have a nation where about 45% of the population idolizes the politics Archie Bunker used to create laughs. We have a president who smirks like Archie, who came out in support of creationism, for crying out loud, and who manipulates hard working men and women who should be supporting labor rights and equal rights and supporting the individual over monopolies charging us to breathe clean air.

The Archie archetype himself got some polish and has radio stations and TV stations and employs Rush and Bill who spoon feed us hatred and bigotry right out of Karl Rove’s White House.

Not because Rove or Bush love war or hate Mexicans, but because by fanning hatred, outrage and bigotry, they control the discussion, they get reelected, and they can serve Pfizer and Exxon and ConAgra and all the others who buy them power.

Mike is a good man who knows how to work hard and takes care of his family. So am I. We have more in common than we don’t, but I sure wish he didn’t get his politics from talk radio.

Tipi

The underslab plumbing is in the project. We may actually have a slab poured before July. The girls will be back on Friday, we go racing in Seattle next week -- the ZL1 is locked and loaded.

And this week the tipi has to go up.

The tipi will sit right by the trailer, and will more than double our square footage. The girls and I will end up fighting over it, but in this case, they get double my votes, plus veto power. I just hope they let me use it when they are at their mother’s house.

It is going to be an odd amalgam of living, the tipi. Aboriginal, wired with electricity for heaters and lamps, in the middle of hilltop rural acreage yet with highspeed internet, wireless laptops and wireless printer, adjacent plumbing, two futons, a raised firepit and Afghan carpets.

An adventure for the summer I don't think we will forget. Set up right, the tipi may serve for that first month of school, if the house is delayed.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Power to the people

On Saturday I moved the generator away from the trailer to a spot over by the pump so we could put water on dirt that will support the concrete slab. Which meant that the trailer would be on batteries for a couple of days. The generator is a 30 year old Honda and weighs about 400 lb. Not easy to move.

I debated getting another generator for the well, borrowing or renting or even buying one. Costco had a 5.5 KW unit for about $895, Honda motor. Then I realized I could move the trailer over by the pump to be by the generator. It is pretty scabby over there though, well slurry hardened on the ground and construction pieces left over from an effort years ago.

I decided to hold off. The power company could come to hook us up any day. The batteries in the trailer were new and fully charged. The electrician came on Sunday night and wired the generator to the well so we had water. It was great not having to wash pots and pans out of a gallon jug.

But I left the furnace on in the trailer and the batteries were about dead that night. And it was very, very cold. The furnace would not fire Monday morning with no power for the fan. The girls were cold. It was cold making breakfast before school. Not more than a peep out of either of them.

I figured we would have to move the trailer, or move over to Jon’s for a few days. I didn’t want to do either. I only have the girls through Friday, when they go back to their mother’s house. I wanted continuity in our first stay on the ridge.

Just before 3 p.m., I was on my way to pick up the twins at school. Four white trucks from Central Electric Co-op were coming up our road, trucks on their way to hook us up to the grid. Power for the well, power for the trailer. No more cans of gas in the back of the Excursion.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

A true conservative

It’s easier to be conservative living in a trailer, to be a conservationist, to conserve.

Interesting how the meanings of those words diverge through twisted politics. But there is nothing like having to haul your house for an hour to refill it with water, and dump the sewage, to turn one toward “living lightly.”

It isn’t the money; it’s the time, the effort, the risk, the hassle. A 31 foot trailer wants to go its own way when it’s really windy on the highway, even at 50 mph.

We turn off the propane water heater at night: water heats quickly in the morning and there is no need to keep it hot all night long. The tanks are bulky to refill at one of the local stations, but propane seems like a bargain.

Gasoline for the generator is bought in $5 units, which just fills the small can. That’s a little less than 1 1/2 gallons depending on price. Each purchase will last a few nights, unless we are using the generator all day for construction. I don’t leave the generator on if we aren’t uploading or downloading or needing to recharge the house batteries.

Water. Water. Water is the hardest. I can’t haul enough for thoughtless use. Five gallon jugs for drinking and cooking fit just fine on my large cooler. But it is warm water, and lots of it, that separates living from camping and we come in just under the wire. I wash the plates outside sometimes and rinse with cold water. I shower less often and have forgone the luxury of a long soak with steaming streams running over my head and down my shoulders.

Ironically, I think the girls are showering more often, since I demand they shower whenever they can, at Elizabeth and Jon’s, or at their mother’s house when we go there so they can practice piano for the recital this Sunday.

The twins are into this conservation lifestyle. “Does this burn, Dada?” K.C. asks, holding up an empty peach cup from her school lunch. No, I tell her. We don’t burn plastic. Actually, we don’t burn paper yet, either, not in the open in this tinder-dry climate, but I wanted to start life here on the land in the trailer making that distinction. I hope someday to capture the energy of waste paper to heat the house and reduce the use of propane, trips to the dump.

But that kind of conservation is a luxury. Right now conservation is driven by the necessity of the space in which we live. Turn down the heat. Boil water for coffee on the stove. Don’t let the faucet run. Clean up after yourself and do it now, don’t accumulate, because the unnecessary is sure to get in your way, or in someone else’s way.

Living in 260 square feet demands a certain discipline. Good practice for our transition to the boat, someday.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Just enough

My coffee table is a charred juniper log. The tree was killed in a fire 30 years or more ago. It’s just flat enough to keep the cup from tipping, if I am careful enough. The log/table works if I move slow enough. If I pay enough attention. Making it work is not high effort, just slow effort, attentiveness.

I thought about laying in boards to make it easier to put down the cup without thinking, but in some ways it would be more effort to make it easy. It would also deprive me of the need to pay attention, in the moment, to how the cup sits crooked on the log.

The twins and I are up here at our new address, living in a tin tent of about 260 square feet with snowcapped and pine clad mountains outside the door. At 13 they still fit in their bunk beds at one end, I have a pseudo queen bed at the other. We have a kitchen. I let them choose which seat they each own at the table, back packs for school on the bench next to them and against the wall, lunch boxes on the table flanking a rack of newly purchased silverware.

The landlord turned our home of the last year into a vacation rental. I thought we had it worked out for the rest of the summer, but nothing is good unless it is in writing and when the FedX’d agreement arrived from San Francisco, there were terms not discussed. The strain on our blended family had become cataclysmic, Lauren and her two boys have gone one way, the girls and I another.

There is wonderful closeness of living in the trailer. I am never far from the girls as they are doing homework, I watch them draw and hear the rustle of turning pages in Manga books they read backwards. They have their iPods, of course. We will have a tipi next week.

My living room is outside, acres of living room. A lawn chair 50 feet from the trailer looks out over the Cascades. Move the chair and see different mountains, the Three Sisters from one point, Mt. Washington from another, Mt. Jefferson from beneath the tree over there.

There is more quiet than I’ve had in many years. It is a lonely, lovely, healing quiet, often quite full. Last night the girls’ godfather came over for a steak. We sat out there in a thunderstorm booming over the mountains and to the north of us, pummeling Black Butte. Jon looked out through juniper to mountains 20 miles away but in our lap, then he looked up at clouds roiling overhead.

“Love what you’ve done with the ceiling.”

Pheasant wander through the sage with double hollow clarinet call, escapees from the nearby hunting preserve. A snake track disappears under the contractor’s outhouse, I look very, very carefully before sitting down. Breezes brush the pines.

Choices are often hard. Rewards hard to see. There are days when sadness clings like humidity. But two beautiful girls read books and do homework, I have a project in concrete and steel 20 yards away. We don’t have TV. We have cell phones, and high speed internet is pumped to us wirelessly from an antenna three miles away when I choose to start the generator.

It is enough. And if I pay slow attention, it is more than enough.