Just a Little Bit Famous

I found out today that I get to do an itty-bitty reading at Powell's Books! I have had a poem accepted by Honoring Our Rivers, which is an annual anthology of student writing related to the rivers and watersheds in Oregon. This year, when I badgered my students to submit their writing, I promised them that I would submit something, too.

Haha - I thought HOR was accepting submissions from teachers this year! Oops - that was another writing anthology I was encouraging my students to submit to. But when I submitted my poem to Honoring Our Rivers, they liked it so much that they decided to include it anyway. Usually they only have adult writing from famous authors like Barry Lopez, so I think this might make me a little bit famous by association, no?

And three of my students had their writing accepted, too! Woo hoo! On Sunday, May 22, I get to do my first-ever reading at Powell's City of Books, the largest independent new-and-used bookstore in the world. I'm excited about that.

But wait...there's more...

Tonight I went to a little ceremony hosted by the Portland Council of the International Reading Association, for their annual "Celebrate Literacy" awards. One of the other literacy leaders from the middle schools in Oregon City had nominated me to receive this award for the work I do as Literacy Coach at Oregon City High School. For the last six years I have been teaching part-time, and the other part of my job has been to work with all of the 100 or so teachers at OCHS to improve reading and writing throughout our school.

I mean, I certainly can't take all the credit for this, but it is pretty impressive that in a school of over 2200 students, just an average middle-class school, not wealthy or anything, 92% of our juniors have passed their state reading test, and nearly 80% have passed their state writing test. So it's always a little embarrassing to be in the limelight, but it was kind of fun, too.

Mark came along to cheer me on, and he brought the camera. His brother Greg, and his mom LaVerne and his Aunt Alice joined our table. There were 3 other honorees, but I had the biggest fan club because my principal also came, along with the Literacy Coaches for the elementary schools and the middle schools in the district.

 Maureen Davis, the middle school Literacy Coach, gave the little introduction speech for me. 

Hoo boy, she laid it on pretty thick.

 And then she said some more...

 They gave me a nice certificate...

 ...along with the other three literacy leaders who were recognized. 

(Left to right: Amy Thibault, 3rd grade teacher in West Linn; Nancy Utterback, Clackamas HS; me; Jane Koivisto, Concordia University)

Here are the three Literacy Coaches in Oregon City School District: 

Phyllis Hines, elementary; me at the high school; Maureen Davis, middle schools. 

So now you know just how famous I am tonight: a little bit.

P.S. I know you're dying to read it...I'll post my poem soon. It's more fun to spread the fame out a little.

Color My Weekend

 Becca in blue

 Doting parents at the rhododendron garden

 Sky colored with new maple leaves

 LaVerne (Mark's mom), me, Aunt Alice with purple rhododendron

 What can I say? We were at the rhododendron garden.

 "They don't grow like this in California," she said.

Reflective moments

Ramona, Henry, and Ribsy

We had a fun family visit last weekend. Katie, Seth, and Rebecca came for a visit with their parents. 

Katie has been reading a number of the "Ramona" books by Beverly Cleary, a wonderful Oregon author. We scheduled a visit to the "Ramona Statues" at a park in north Portland while they were in town.

Becca, Seth, and Katie get acquainted with Henry. 

Ribsy was just the right size for Becca - and he didn't bark or jump up on her!

Katie said that Ramona's statue didn't match the way she imagines Ramona, 

but I couldn't help but notice a similarity in the joyful spirits of Katie and Ramona.

It's always nice to have a big friend...

After playing at the statues and the nearby playground, 

we drove a few blocks north to the real Klickitat Street, 

which is the street where Henry lives in the books.

And when Polly noticed a real lemonade stand, of course we had to have a sample.

We never did figure out what the "and stuff" was...

More visitors!

We also had Mark's Aunt Alice and his mom here for the weekend.

Rats! I didn't get a photo of his mom...

but the sweet ladies will be back again next weekend for Mother's Day, so I'll be sure to get more photos then.

This was the first time Katie got to meet Aunt Alice.

I stopped by Camassia with the three kids for a grandma hike in the wildflowers.

They seemed to enjoy this wonderful little nature area, and even Becca managed most of the hike on her own.

The weekend flew by, and now we're back to our normal routine.

Thesis Update: Chapter 4

I met with my thesis advisor at PSU again this afternoon, and I am feeling encouraged about the progress I'm making. There are days when I think, I'll never be able to do this. Sometimes I have to talk myself into sitting down to write just one paragraph.

But bit by bit it is coming along, one chapter at a time. Today my advisor and I went over Chapter 3, and he was encouraging. Yes. I think I can do this.

My goal is to work with the 200 pages I wrote last summer (rough, rough, rough...) and shape that material into 20-ish chapters. Last night I finished the next draft of Chapter 4, which I turned in today so he can read it prior to our next meeting. When I get feedback, it goes into a notebook with numbered dividers for each chapter. I'm not going back to do much revision just yet. I need to keep writing the chapters. If I can write one chapter a week, I will be wrapping up this phase at the end of the summer. Then I can start all over again, one chapter a week, to do the next round of revisions, which will bring me to February or so. Then I can quickly do one last polish to have the whole thing ready for the thesis committee's review a year from now, in spring term 2012.

Ummm...that's ambitious. We'll see if it comes together by then.

But it feels good to be thinking about Chapter 5 this week!

In another update, I've compromised about the photo wall at the house. The dining rooms are staying the way they were in this post, but I've put up a few old favorite family photos on a different wall, in the family room. This wall doesn't get as much traffic, so it doesn't feel as constantly cluttered to me as the dining room wall did.

There is something that pleases me about the mix of frames and faces. I like turning the whole wall into a collage.

(For those of you who were wondering, the photos that have come down from the walls have not gone away. They are tucked into an album, where I can enjoy them and share them with others any time.)

Easter on the Road

We left Provo yesterday afternoon, stopped for a delightful dinner with Mark's brother and sister-in-law, and then climbed in the car to begin the long drive home. About midnight, we stopped at Glenn's Ferry State Park in Idaho and camped for the night.

No snow this time!

A beautiful Idaho morning. It was filled with birdsong, and I heard a woodpecker tapping in the distance.

Our campsite was near the Snake River. What a handsome hunk I travel with!

We didn't really have our feet amputated...we were standing below a little hill...

We enjoyed learning more Oregon Trail history before we left Glenn's Ferry. This is a replica of the ferry the pioneers used to get their wagons across the Snake River in this area.

And here's a replica of one of the wagons that might have been on the ferry.

We were on the road for another 8 hours today, and reached home late in the afternoon. We had a wonderful family trip, but it sure feels good to be back in our own place again. We had a little rain in the Blue Mountains, and again in the western end of the Columbia River Gorge, but other than that we had glorious sunshine the whole day!

We celebrated Easter by singing Easter hymns in the car and reading our Sunday School lesson aloud. We were glad not to have to stop very much on a Sunday, and make others work on Easter. We had to buy gas once, but we had food with us. It is so nice to have cell phones so we could share our Easter wishes with family while we were traveling. We reflected on our testimonies of Christ, and how grateful we are for His Atonement and the plan of happiness for us here on Earth.

Happy Easter!

Family Time in Provo

Katie's husband Bryan graduated from BYU on Friday. He'll be heading to Ohio State to begin optometry studies in the fall. We are so proud of him, and it was wonderful to see the family for his graduation.

An added treat was spending time with Joshua, Hillary, and Ethan yesterday. They have just moved to the Salt Lake area with Joshua's new job. This was the first time Oliva and Ethan became acquainted. They had a great time playing together!

And here are a few more fun photos from our family trip. We had such a wonderful time!

What's that hitting our tent, dear?

Yesterday afternoon we left right after school and headed east, to Utah. Our son-in-law Bryan is graduating from BYU, and we were anxious to attend his graduation. We planned to drive until we got too tired, and then stop for the night.

We figured we would probably stop at a motel along the way...but we put the tent and sleeping bags in the car, just in case we found a convenient campground. It's always nice to save a little money. And we love camping.

We stopped to eat a late dinner in Pendleton. By 9:00 pm we were on the road again. We figured we could make it as far as La Grande. Or maybe we'd find a campground in the meantime. No rain, a little overcast, but nothing to worry about. We had our warm camping gear with us.

Eureka! We found Emigrant Springs State Park just a short way out of Pendleton. We pulled off the freeway and followed the signs to the camping sites. What was that under the trees...snow? Yes, it was, but the road was clear, and many of the campsites had non-snowy areas big enough for our little tent. It was in the 40s, not too cold out.

We circled the loop and selected our spot. Close to the restrooms, not too close to neighbors, just enough space for the tent...perfect!

We had brought double thermarest pads, and two sleeping bags each. So cozy! We slept well all night long. Our bladders woke us up at 4:40 am.

"What's that hitting our tent?" Mark asked.
"Ugh, I hope it's not rain," I replied. "I don't want to have to pack up a wet tent."

Mark unzipped the tent and found...SNOW! About 1/2 inch!
We were really surprised. We had been so toasty warm all night, we never would have guessed.

Well, we were camped at almost 4,000 feet, near the summit of I-84 in the Blue Mountains, so we shouldn't have been all that surprised.

Since we were wide awake, we decided to pack up and get underway. By 5:30 we were back on the road, headed to our sweet family. After a long day in the car, we arrived in Provo about 4:00 this afternoon.

Here are a few photos to make you chuckle. I have no idea what our campsite looked like in the daylight. We arrived and left in the dark.

Good morning!
Mark snapped a photo of me sticking my head out of the tent.

Mark loading gear into the car.

Snowy scene.

Almost ready to go.

Did I mention how much I love having adventures with my sweetheart? We'll be reminiscing about this for a long time, I am sure. Tonight we're in a motel room in Utah, with the tent spread out near the heater...it's almost dry...

Before and After

Before: The dining room picture wall

After: The dining room picture wall

Before: The dining room picture wall (right)

After: The dining room picture wall (right)

Before: The dining room picture wall (left)

After: The dining room picture wall (left)

Hmmm...In theory, I prefer the concept of clean and uncluttered.

In practice? I'm not quite sure yet. My family IS large and cluttered, and I love to have lots of photos to remind me of my wonderful children and grandchildren.

What do you think?

The Summer of the Bees

Bridget's post took me back to one terrifying summer here on Laurel Lane...the summer of the bees.

It was probably the summer of 1994, a drought summer for Oregon. Mark and I were still newlyweds, having just married in May of that year. We had a houseful of teenagers and pre-teens, and I was in college full time while Mark looked for work. We here happy and in love, but life was a little stressful.

Then the bees came...

Actually, they were yellowjackets, which makes it even creepier. We first began noticing a yellowjacket here and there in the kitchen. A little pesky, but no big deal. Then we were plagued by several critters in the kitchen every day. Then there were lots. Eeeek!! We finally noticed that they were coming out through the cupboard doors under the kitchen sink. The cupboard doors (dating from the 1950s) had little metal vents, I guess to make sure the under-sink area was nicely ventilated. We saw yellowjackets crawling out through the metal vents, into the kitchen.

Mark braved the crawl space under the kitchen and found a drip in the pipe that was attracting the yellowjackets. I forget what he did to fix the problem, but it involved manly dirty scary work. My hero.

By now the kids were pretty jumpy about yellowjackets, so when Polly and Kendra, who shared the attic bedroom, began complaining about bees in their bedroom, I didn't pay too much attention. The girls insisted that they kept finding yellowjackets up there, and they began sleeping on the living room couches at night. They only went up to their room to get a change of clothes, and they made those trips as fast as they could. It was hot up in the attic during the summers, so I didn't blame them for wanting to sleep downstairs.

After a couple of weeks of yellowjackets in the attic, Mark and I finally did a more careful investigation. We discovered that there were, indeed, yellowjackets coming through the fluorescent light fixtures in the peak of the ceiling. The fixtures had little holes at the end, near the ballast gizmo, and we actually saw a yellowjacket come crawling out.

Mark said he had done his share of manly dirty scary work, and he wasn't going after these bees. This is when I found out that he feels certain he has an allergy to bee stings. He has never actually been stung by a bee, and these weren't technically bees, but he still wanted nothing to do with this project.

Many years prior to this, my first husband had kept a hive of bees in our backyard for several years. Though that hive was long gone, I still had the beekeeper veil and long leather gloves down in the basement. Mark fixed up a tube of caulk into the caulking gun while I suited up. The kids watched with big eyes. Then I grimly marched up the attic stairs to do the deed.

It was hot sweaty scary work. It seemed to take hours, but I was probably up in the attic for all of thirty minutes or so. I was no expert at caulking, but in all these years, Mark has never criticized the sloppy application of caulk around those fluorescent fixtures. I laid it on thick and goopy. Three or four yellowjackets buzzed in the attic that summer afternoon, and I actually caulked one of them in place coming through the hole while I was doing the job. That'll teach 'em, I thought.

It took several days and a thorough vacuuming of the attic to convince the girls that the room was safe again. Trauma like that takes time to heal!

Thankfully, we have never experienced such an insect invasion again since then, but to this day, no one in the family likes to remember...the summer of the bees.

Other bee notes: Another time, when Mark was doing some electrical work in the attic crawl space above the kitchen ceiling, he shone his flashlight into a corner near the eaves and saw a huge paper-wasp next hanging from a rafter. It was about the size of a basketball. He freaked out for a few minutes until he was able to figure out that no one was home; it was an old, dead nest.

In 2005, when we gutted/remodeled the house, I was tearing out lath and plaster from the angled part of the ceiling in our bedroom. I ran into a whole section of honeycomb in between the studs. No bees, no honey but the scent of honey still lingered. It was a lovely discovery, and I actually relished the thought of that small hive of bees hidden in the walls. I wouldn't have felt the same way about it if the bees had still been home! They must have lived there pre-1980, when we had the vinyl siding installed. I was fascinated that the beeswax--it was old and dark--could retain the scent of honey for so long.

MUCH Better

Mark is feeling much better. He went back to work yesterday. He expected to be tired, which he was. In the morning. By yesterday afternoon he was actually feeling better than he had in the morning. And today he felt better still!

This afternoon he went back to the eye doctor, who gave him a clean bill of health and told him to come back in a year for a checkup.

Whew! Mark and I are both grateful that he (mostly) dodged the shingles bullet. Talking to others who have suffered through "normal" shingles has filled us with gratitude that his case seems to have been fairly mild.

Our thanks to so many who lent their prayers and love...you made a difference.

Sunday Reflections at the Salt Lake Airport

Miracle: it's only been about 100 years since the Wright brothers coaxed their flying contraption to briefly skim the sands above Kitty Hawk. And here I sit this morning in a sprawling glass and steel complex, waiting to board a jet plane that will whisk me back to Portland and my home. For all my conflicted feelings about the ways I participate in overusing energy and other resources, I am nothing but grateful this morning for the miraculous gift of airfare that allows me to travel so quickly, so easily, to see faraway family. I take 21-century miracles so easily for granted.

I am sad to miss church today. I love my church family. Our ward boundaries were reconfigured a little over a year ago, and now I am settling into Sunday worship with these people who are becoming more and more my spiritual brothers and sisters. Today is Fast Sunday back home, when the congregation will share testimony and sweet experiences and struggles. These testimonies let us inside one another's hearts; they bind us together, and I am sorry to be away.

In fact, I will worship with these dear friends only one time this month. Last week we worshipped at home, viewing General Conference via the internet. Today I am in Salt Lake, and in two weeks--Easter Sunday--Mark and I will be in the car, driving home from another trip to Provo for son-in-law Bryan's graduation from BYU. That will mark the end of an era, our last child to graduate from BYU. We have been making trips to Provo via auto and airplane several times a year since 1996, when Angela enrolled at BYU.

Two wonderful highlights to this trip: the first was 15-month-old Olivia. She is such a sweet and darling little girl. Very much her own individual. Katie and Bryan are wonderful parents, and I was thrilled that Olivia warmed right up to me, even though I hadn't seen her in person for a year. (Thank goodness for video-chat conversations to fill in some of the gaps!)







The second wonderful highlight: I went with a large contingent of family and friends to see Anna's play, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) last night. The play opens with the premise that Jesus, if he were to show up at our homes, would be a genial and down-to-earth guest, lending a hand and participating with us in the activities we enjoy. In the play, Jesus helps wash dishes, goes skateboarding with TJ, plays miniature golf with the roommates. He is a kind, helpful, friendly savior.

Anna's wry humor comes through beautifully in the script, which is by no means irreverent. I think the laughter in the audience happens because we recognize the humor in ourselves--the inherent comedy of our human lives--as we watch the story unfold.

As the play progresses, tensions in the characters' lives come to the surface. Can Jesus fix things? Will he? Should he? The plot turns to the frustrations the characters experience as they address the ways their expectations of Jesus don't always align with their experience of him. Ultimately, it is his gentle and generous ways, which bring the characters to understand how they can reach out to others and help them heal--to truly be Christlike, as in being like Christ--that bring the play to it's conclusion.

I found the play to be thoughtful and thought-provoking. The actors brought Anna's script to life. I had read the script on the page ahead of time, but it was fascinating to watch it unfold in 3-D. One of the features of the script is that Jesus doesn't speak. He uses facial expression and hand gestures to communicate, and it really worked. I had wondered ahead of time if it would.

This small theater company specializes in producing new plays, so after the final applause, the actors seated themselves on the stage for a "talk back" session, in which questions and comments from the audience are welcomed. Since Anna was in the audience, she was invited to join the actors. Of course I didn't take photos during the play, but here are a few photos I snapped during the talk back session.

Homeless Guy, Anna, Jesus

The little girl on the Homeless Guy's lap might have been his daughter. 

She came up to sit with him after the play, during the "talk back" session.

Anna, Jesus, Tom, Max (girl named Max), theater company manager (standing).

Seth, TJ, Stephanie

Jesus. 

By this time, later in the Talk Back, the little girl had moved to his lap. 

So maybe she was his daughter? Not sure.

Anna, the play's director, the theater company manager.

The set in the black box theater.

And here are a couple of photos from the "author's party" Bryan's mom hosted for Anna prior to the play. I hope these photos will help satisfy Bridget's desire to know how the play went. Bridget and Anna were roommates back in their BYU days, and I enjoy following Bridget's blog.

Anna and college friends:

Jacob, Shelley, Jancy, Anna, Becky

Another shot of college friends:

Jacob, Shelley, Becky, Jancy

Now we're about to board the plane. I'm anxious to be home again. When I talked with Mark yesterday, he said he is feeling much better. The shingles seem to have "turned a corner," he says, which is a relief to both of us. It appears that he may be coming away with a fairly mild case, for which we are both very grateful.

PS - Now that you've seen some of the actors in WWJD, if you are curious to read the script, you can find it here. Along with the script of the play itself, I think Anna's reflection that follows the script, on what the play means to her--part of the thesis process for her M.F.A. degree--is fascinating to me as a writer and uplifting to me as a person who seeks to know Jesus better in my own life.