Walking to work

Some days, walking to my office feels like the best part of the day. Overhead, the bluebirds and seagulls call to each other, while the scent of alyssum and lilac fills the air.

Ahead of me on the sidewalk, early morning shadows form angular lines, pulling me foreword.

From behind, I hear the pleasant rippling sound of two bicyclists coming up the street.

“Wait for me!” the young girl calls out to a man (her father?) as he bicycles ahead.

I’m still several blocks from my office where, in my mind, the day will officially start; but, in fact, I’ve already edited an essay while sitting in my living room and drinking a cup of coffee.

As a result, I feel as if the day has started before it started, as if my work is done before I get to work.

Writer's bouquet

Parade day

Fred Meyer Junior Parade in Portland, Oregon. -- Photo by Nancy Woods

It all starts with the tweet of whistles and the shout of hawkers ― the annual Fred Meyer Junior Parade, a kids’ parade that rolls through Northeast Portland each June as part of the Rose Festival. The parade passes right by my office, within just a few feet of my desk. My second-story office windows look down on the parade route, sidewalk and street.

Every year, I forget about it until it’s too late. I’m sitting at my desk, working away, often under deadline, when I start to hear signs of a ruckus outside.

What’s that?! I think. Oh, no! The kids’ parade!

By then, city employees would have blocked off all the streets, so I wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere. There was no getting away from the noise.

Peering out my window, I would see hundreds of people, many of them with smiles on their faces, many of them adults with young children, setting up camp with their blankets, towels and lawn chairs, some using sidewalk chalk to mark their spot.

A pink stripe painted earlier by a city crew lines both sides of the street, an attempt to keep the youngsters from stepping too far out when grabbing for the candy that will be thrown from the floats.

The parade forms about five blocks from my office, where the marching bands, Boy Scout troops and bicyclists get into formation before strutting their stuff. By 10 a.m. the noise starts to ramp up, as police cars, with their sirens blasting, clear the parade route. By 1 p.m., when the parade actually starts, the sound is deafening.

Whatever article I’d planned to work on that day is a lost cause. It’s too noisy to think.

So I give up and enjoy the parade, which includes the Sherwood Middle School students in their blue shirts and black pants playing a song from a 1970s movie I can’t quite remember. James Bond? Then it’s the Cascade Middle School, in red-and-blue outfits, playing “76 Trombones,” followed by a bob-haired girl on a bicycle with tiny U.S. flags fluttering from her bicycle handles.

After her, a troop of Brownies in their patch-festooned brown vests passes by, followed by middle-school unicyclists, some holding an adult's arm, some peddling on their own, one wearing a helmet covered with fresh flowers, another wearing a clown jester-type hat.

Then it’s more drummers followed by hoops and hollers from the appreciative crowd, one band fading away to make way for another. A man pushing an ice cream cart passes by. After him come jugglers, jump ropers and joyful bell ringers (high school-age girls wearing black outfits with gold sequins). Underneath it all, the steady beat of drums and shouts from the crowd.

A young girl carrying a bouquet of bright yellow balloons struts by. Then it’s a squad of girls in red shirts and black skirts doing a River Dance kind of number down the middle of the street. The cops are everywhere in their blue uniforms, making sure no one interrupts the fun. The Fowler Middle School Band from Tigard, in white shirts and blue jeans, plays the theme from Star Wars. Girls from the Evergreen School District twirl gold flags. A blonde girl, who appears to be 3-4 years old, dressed in a pink dress, pink sweater and pink tennis shoes, walks down the middle of the street, a gold crown perched on her head.

Another school band marches by, the music dying down only to give way to another whistling band leader or another hawker selling ice-cream bars or balloons in the shape of monkeys.

And then, just as suddenly, it’s over, an annual reminder that life isn’t always meant to be quiet and peaceful, that sometimes it’s important to let the kids take over and for the rest of us to go home with the sound of “76 Trombones” ringing in our ears.

Book

Hollywood Hank

(Hollywood Hank photo by Judy Nelson)

Last week, I received a request from an advertiser of the newspaper I edit, asking if a photo of Hollywood Hank, a five-year-old standard Boxer (yes, a dog) who writes a column for the newspaper, could be used in an ad.

Hank doesn’t really write, of course. His column, which is accompanied by a photo of him in front of whatever local restaurant or shop or farmers’ market he visited that month, is actually written by his handler, a volunteer for the Oregon Humane Society, who takes Hank for walks around the neighborhood while his owners are at work.

Although spending any time deciding whether or not to release a photo of a dog to an advertiser might seem silly, in fact, the decision raised a significant journalist question.

After thinking it over, I decided to turn down the request. If I did, it would have blurred the line between the editorial and advertising departments of the newspaper. Then I posted this blog, along with Hank’s photo, to point out one of the issues editors face while blurring another line ― the one between work and life.

Natural-born Storytellers

I come from a long line of storytellers known for relating funny anecdotes about themselves and everyone else. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where, during cold winter nights, we spent much of our time indoors, entertaining each other with stories that were, funny and sad, true and made-up.

“She didn’t want to stay down,” my brother said, laughing. Roy was telling me the true story about Aunt Helen who, even in death, found it hard to be left alone. I was sitting in Roy’s living room in Fairbanks when he told me the story. I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon, for many years now, but I occasionally return home to visit.

According to Roy, Aunt Helen, who lived near us when we were young, wanted to be interred next to her parents in the old Pioneer Cemetery downtown. Special arrangements had to be made, though, because officially the cemetery was full. Meanwhile, Aunt Helen was cremated and her ashes put in a steel cylinder that Roy, a sheet-metal worker, made and kept in his shop all summer.

“Nobody picked her up,” he said with a smile, referring to the family’s inability to deal with Aunt Helen’s death.

Eventually, though, one fall evening, they decided it was time for a proper burial. Aunt Helen’s son Bert, along with Roy, Roy’s wife Brenda and their son Rick did the honors. Armed with shovels, a pickax, wheelbarrow, cement mix and Aunt Helen, they drove down to the small cemetery, where a hole had already been cut in the cement slab between Grandma and Grandpa Wilbur’s headstones. The four grave diggers poured in some cement and then inserted Aunt Helen’s remains, but the cylinder immediately popped back up. They pushed it down again but it refused to stay put.

That only made sense because Aunt Helen hated to be left alone. I loved her dearly, looked forward to the nights when I was a kid and she’d stop by our house to talk. We’d have just finished our dinner of moose burgers, moose pot roast or moose stew but would still be sitting at the dining-room table when we’d hear this certain jingle jangle and, sure enough, it was Aunt Helen wearing her silver bangle bracelets and walking up the front steps. We’d offer her a seat at the table, pour her a cup of Hills Brothers coffee and listen to her stories, our elbows deep in cake crumbs.

She entertained us with anecdotes about her day at the post office where she was postmistress. She told us the story about the man who was fired for having B.O. and the one about the employee who got caught with his hand in the till. During the telling, Aunt Helen would, one by one, kick off her dress pumps and remove her clip-on earrings before helping out with the dinner dishes. Often, she would leave a piece of jewelry behind, which was comforting, because it meant she’d be back.

Unlike some members of my family, Aunt Helen openly expressed affection. It was her shoulder I cried on when my father died. In contrast with the other members of my family, Aunt Helen also had a sense of style. She wore nice clothes, dyed her hair and ― after she and Uncle Ken split ―lived in an apartment, which seemed so exotic.

"No one understands how lonely I get,” she told me when, years later, I visited her at the Pioneer Home, a nursing facility at the south edge of Fairbanks. So it wasn’t surprising that it was hard to get her to go underground, even if it meant being close to her parents.

That night in the cemetery, Roy and the rest of the burial party eventually had to break a branch off an overhanging chokecherry tree and use it to poke the metal canister containing Aunt Helen into the ground. Then they slapped a board on top of everything to keep her in place until the cement cured. By then it was dark and starting to snow. They wondered if the snow would prevent the cement from curing and allow Aunt Helen to pop back up. They were laughing really hard but forced themselves to get serious before taking a few minutes to reflect on how much Aunt Helen would have enjoyed their company and closing with a reading from the Good Book.

Compare and contrast

Last Wednesday night, I attended a poetry reading at Blackbird Wineshop here in Portland, Oregon. At times during the evening, I found myself noticing the men in the audience more than the women reading their poems; and more than once, while stroking the stem of my wineglass, I felt how delicate it was and how it contrasted with the solidity of the cement floor.