News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 82
I tend to rhapsody. I know it. Please excuse it. Forebear. It is Spring and the sky is grey and the wind has come up again and the dogs have stood maliciously in my tulip bed. But I have see the ravens are returned to their summer skyway where, in their observance of morning, they churn up in invisible warm tunnels without choreography or any heeding to mankind. I have caressed the greening grass and dug up the resplendent weeds in my garden. My daughter has picked me daffodils. I am happy. I have noticed, to my great joy,... Full story
I like bellies, generally. I photograph navels for the sake of art as well as for my own amusement. My little portrait gallery, with its quiet, though cyclopean theme and tone, gives praise to the diversity, the expressiveness and symmetry of the American breadbasket. One volunteer subject has registered the claim that two quarts of catsup will fit into the cavern which, in close-up, resembles Copernicus Crater on the moon's surface. He is a scientist and this would be, I assume, testable data. However, fat is not a social... Full story
Every once in awhile I feel wicked. Not only that, but I must do something wicked accordingly so that a subtle, internal realignment might be accomplished. Perhaps it is the high winds. They make the cats race hurly burly across the yard, wildly thrashing their tails, spinning, dashing up tree trunks, leaping down, ears pointed backwards, eyes wide and delirious, mindless. zany. all reason and savoir faire gone, caught in an exuberant impulse that is like the one impelling the wind itself. I cook every day. My bread labor is... Full story
Long ago is far away. Time, the poignant, irretrievable element of matter, holds us always in its little pockets, right here, mercilessly. We cannot go back and do any of it over, take anything out, add anything that now seems more clever or appropriate. With luck and certain advantages, we can do most things so that the consequences of our actions are tolerable. Always there are things we wish would have gone differently. My son's first dentist, I wish I had choked him. I have carelessly lost an address or two I wish I had... Full story
Sometimes food glows. Still vibrant from the vine and stalk, from the root and tree and out of the black soil of the garden, good food has color and snap and life in it -- and it is life giving. It is the art we eat. With its lovely forms and transient beauty, it is preceded by a luxuriant olfactory forecast, and then consummated with its own disappearance into a hungry face whose wan and innocent expression is transformed from anxious to relaxed, the gaze turning outward again and resting contentedly on companion faces. The... Full story
Many systems of logic govern football. For the armchair devotee, the first order of business is to learn to watch and interpret the unfolding drama between the players on the field. If this is not accomplished, and if questions are not appreciated, the potential fan tends to drift on in to other activities. I like football. Not as a devotion, but as a nostalgic ambiance so reminiscent of many hours of my childhood, spent in my father's den, watching the burly boys smash and crash into one another, that upon hearing the rush... Full story
Haste addles the brain. Haste introduces chaos to an orderly day. Messages between mind and body become jumbled, twitchy, and both suffer the indignities of frenetic bumbling and the accompanying gross oversight. I deplore haste. I feel that it impairs the more natural rhythmic quest for tranquility and contemplation that is our right and obligation, as humans, to pursue. Haste is a consequence of overload. Life among avid, thankless, accurate, often heartless machines creates peculiar and complicated tensions which are,... Full story
My family lived, for a time, just beyond nose distance, from a catsup factory. When we drove east through the magnetic industrial section of town with its mysterious metal-sided buildings, the heavy, red, vaguely scorched aroma of enormous vats of spiced tomatoes, overrode all the other senses. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a little tired house under its inescapable veil, as many families did, spending every day under the deep blanket of cloying, sweet, aggressive, sticky steam. My sister liked it. And... Full story
Time. We cannot control it or take it apart. Nor can we start it up, stop it, harness it, see it or get around it. We are stuck, riding on it or in it as it takes us where it will in its quiet, devastating way, toward the circle of our years. I am intrigued with the sciences which attempt to simulate time, especially the going-backward people whose experiments focus on the first instant that time poked its way into this place, loaded with pure, prodigious energies which have brought us all, inexorably, through the long, unfol... Full story
A low, rosy slant of afternoon sun lights the bare legs of several children as they construct and reconstruct a large muddy basin in the backyard. Since it is located immediately at the bottom of a queasy set of stairs that I personally built out of leftover two-by-fours and plumbers' tape years ago when the front porch of our house was upright logs and a sheet of plywood, you can easily step off the last riser and right into the water. So convenient. One of these intent young laborers takes fluffy dry dirt and drops it... Full story
Of all the kitchens it is possible to construct--beautifully appointed, state of the art, spotless environments--I think the most lovely ones are outside under the great sky, in the prow of an old blue boat, in a deep hole randomly dug by big boys long gone off to other enterprises, at the edge of the wooden porch steps, out yonder where no one sees. Wherever the good rain pools and the dry dust turns gently into thick and splooshy mud. Anywhere the hose and buckets reach. Anywhere. Children are unanimous in their penchant... Full story
If cookies have a raison d'etre beyond pure self indulgence, it is to carry various related messages. Benign, independent, cheerful, self-contained little morsels, they are articulate in the languages of love: We know you like chocolate, they say. We love you, too. You are not forgotten when you are away. On the home front, they are swift and easy mediators, inclined to preaching at times: Stop fighting, be quiet. Here, share these. Come in, they can coo, your presence is joyfully welcomed. Sit down, let's talk this over... Full story
Spring comes rolling in like a giant sternwheeler, finally reaching our port and we tend -- with the exhilarating warm air, inspired by bits of brave, early greenery and occasional rampant birdsong, our hearts loosened by squeaks and friskings of lambs and rotund puppies--to jump aboard with abandon. Sweeping decisions are made in the early bright mornings. The sun peeks in the back windows in the afternoon and we dash inside and clean, at long last, the messy closet. The anthills glitter with their little roadster bodies... Full story
The season of loose dirt has arrived. Odd little boot-sculpted things that travel readily indoors to crush and crunch underfoot, happily prove that the earth's crust is indeed on the move. Primary agents in this particular migration are children in the thrall of early spring, faithfully drawn to the spongey, gritty masses of awakening topsoil that hover magnetically outside all the meticulous landscaping we might have carefully planned specifically to prevent the literal and random sanding of our floors by the old waffle... Full story
The season of loose dirt has arrived. Odd little boot-sculpted things that travel readily indoors to crush and crunch underfoot, happily prove that the earth's crust is indeed on the move. Primary agents in this particular migration are children in the thrall of early spring, faithfully drawn to the spongey, gritty masses of awakening topsoil that hover magnetically outside all the meticulous landscaping we might have carefully planned specifically to prevent the literal and random sanding of our floors by the old waffle... Full story
My children play stone golf. It is their own cross-country rendition of the regular game; it zigzags and flies loudly across the pasture under the late slanting pink sunlight. This is an easy game. They clout the stone with the yard sale clubs, then follow it and clout it again if they find it. If they don't, they reach into their pockets and get another one and proceed on through the various hindrances inherent in golf without a course. With no recessed holes, no flags, no numbers, the game is reduced to its essence, which... Full story
I love car trips. When I was a child, my family took three weeks to drive to Philadelphia and back west, attempting to visit all points of historical import along the way including the relatives. My father drove. My sister and I rode in the back seat and attempted to make the car fishtail with our rhythmic, chanting, animal-cracker-swaying until my long-suffering mother, finally out of patience, reached behind her seat and trounced us with the map. I loved the capsuled feeling, the rush of changing air, the hum and tap of... Full story
$SOUP2 We are in the curve of the oval. Tidily, we have mapped out time and changes with our calendars and clocks and linear projections, confirming what we already apprehend in the oldest areas of our brains: that the long days are turning back again toward darkness, toward Christmas and the other turning. We can lie flat in the green grass where the dirt sparkles and explore the low dense jungle where it feasts on the sun and rain; it is the edge of the sky, I tell my last little one. We can take our magnifying glass to... Full story
The mundane fascinates me. I enjoy watching people in their in-between moments. Brushing their teeth. Napping. Talking to the pets. Searching the phone book. Sewing buttons. Completely disarmed, their hair may be out of place, their tongue quirked into their cheek, lips pressed, or faces relaxed into unusual, uncomposed beauty. Now, with the altered state of war on our minds, and the awful, distracting undercurrents of dread and foreboding, and the world seeming to teeter on a few fine points of the map, we need things to rem... Full story
One of the greatest adventures in life has got to be raising children. It is a quest for truth in the company of small, clear-eyed, spunky, dear fellow students, who are linked inextricably to us like successive ideas in a great theorem. We are not separate; it would make no sense. Most children are born with strong affinities for accounting and law. They know what is fair, what is good, what is going to be gooshey, what is scary, what looks correct and expensive, what looks phoney. They are aware that they are learning. A us... Full story
Suddenly, the tilt of the planet is discernible. A pale crack in the night sky is visible by six o'clock. By the time one is perfunctorily refreshed and inspected and knocking on doors, the broad blue veil of dawn is bathing the sagebrush, coming in windows, cleanly, full of portents. With this early light, summer is invented most surely in the mind again. It becomes real and we are heading toward it. Windows are cast open in the afternoons, the porch is tidied and swept, the tools assembled, and the flowerbeds are apprised... Full story
I love to sing. It is an expression of gladness that enhances almost any scene. It opens, I think, the brain cells, and airs them out. Spontaneous trilling is my form and it is generally reserved for private moments when there is no one around to point out flaws. The truth is that I have a tinny, child's voice which is inclined to wander vaguely from the prescribed tune, out beyond favorable harmonies into the tonal realms of the lone honeybee shopping in crabapple blossoms. Preoccupied usually. Off-key. Far from home. The... Full story
The late rising moon, freshly out of eclipse, moving through billowing, steamy clouds in the great long distance, bringing us the sun's cool aura still at midnight, inspires the neighboring dogs. As I slide into bed in my sweet country abode, an absurd orchestra is tuning outside my window. Frogs, crickets, june bugs, sprinklers, cats plucking the screens, a howling canine chorus, and suddenly, from the left a earsplitting male human roar brings a quick crescendo, and then silence. Then the long falling into dark and quiet... Full story
Racketing through the dusty city-town with young adults, surrounded by and saturated with music that has begun to sound like an asylum full of whining inmates armed with drums and chains, everyone who is actually in my company is lost in their own sphere. Silent beneath the din. Excess noise, of which there is plenty, pours out the windows, attracting the attention of our companions on the road. I must appear to be extremely patient. In fact, I am on a mission. In the capable hands of our driver, we park grandly. We... Full story
There is a dividing line between childhood and the rest of life. I have perceived this since I was on the other side of it, gazing up at my parents who were free to choose their own shoes and knew how to drive, who made fabulously affecting decisions, and took care of my earaches. The very structure of the universe is a different state in the mind of a child; they have their own set of physical laws. A damp blue towel dragged from the bathroom down the stairs, across the carpet, around the kitchen with an awakened cat riding... Full story
