The World at a Picnic Table

Elliot is still at that malleable age
at which she does not know
that her elders--even her old elders--
are already thinking about selling her
into indentured servitude
by encouraging her to attend the university,
and take out large loans.

In the meantime, she is learning to eat from a spoon.
She will, of course, go on to a spork, then a fork, and a dull plastic knife,
after which there will be training courses in all kinds of things,
followed by pre- and graduate-school.

She does not have a chance.
Both of her parents know the way.

But first, that spoon.

"Orange crap!", she thinks.
"Milk is never orange!"

"The last time we tried this,
Mom started with bananas--not bad--
then switched to sweet potatoes!"

"Yep! Half-and-half.

Even so. . . ."

Portland is Craftsman-style,
except where the four-story
advocates for affordable housing
have tacked up milky-glass boxes,
sometimes with stainless steel
just to show that this is the last century.

In the last century,
the craftsmen did better,
but honesty demands the admission
that when growth is wanted
and sprawl is not, space and style
will be brutally battered.

The food is rarely battered.
Portland rewards in food
what it takes away in parking.
It is evidence that when neighbors and cultures meet,
both neighborhoods and restaurants thrive.
When there is not space for whole restaurants,
the food trucks gather like bees trying trees
and serve the nectar from their last home.

It is wonderful!

No pureed sweet potatoes disguised as bananas!

"This," they say, "is what happens where the world meets at a picnic table!"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog