Saturday, 19 January 2019
Astoria, Oregon


Posted in journal, tagged Astoria Oregon, Indivisible North Coast Oregon, politics, Women's March on Jan 21, 2019| 9 Comments »
Posted in journal, politics, weather, tagged Astoria Oregon, March for Our Lives, politics, Rally for Our Lives, weather on Mar 28, 2018| 3 Comments »
Saturday, 24 March 2018
Astoria, Oregon
Indivisible North Coast Oregon partnered with area students and their families in a Rally for Our Lives on Saturday, March 24, noon to 1:30 pm at 8th and Commercial in Astoria. We took to streets to demand that student lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools now.
Allan’s photos:
Some photos from Indivisible:
my photos, till my hands got so cold from 38 degree weather that I had to stop!:
The rally got many and many honks of approval from passing vehicles, more than I have ever heard here.
As the crowd began to dissipate after an hour because of the weather, I thought of a recent video that I saw about whether protests work. This article explains how weather can affect a protest and subsequent votes by Tea Party (right wing) sympathizers. “We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.”
The weather aspect is especially interesting to me today. Imagine, if we had at least 250 folks turn out in Astoria in pelting rain and 38F temperature, how many would we have had on a clear and slightly warmer March afternoon? I admire everyone who stayed to the end; on this occasion, we departed half an hour early when my cold hands could no longer click the camera button.. I believe that those who endured bad weather to march and rally today were especially effective in their display of fortitude, and I have so much hope in the young generation as it reaches voting age.
Posted in journal, politics, reading, tagged books, politics, poverty, reading on Dec 22, 2017| 2 Comments »
Sunday, 17 December 2017
The cats and I had a rainy reading day.
Whose Names are Unknown by Sonora Babb could have (and in my opinion, should have) been published around the same time as The Grapes of Wrath. It was rejected (after initial enthusiasm) because publishers felt that one book on the topic of migrant farmworkers was enough. I am glad that Ms. Babb did live to finally see the book published decades later. She wrote from experience of her life on a farm in the Oklahoma panhandle…
…and what she saw after the Depression and the Dust Bowl drove many residents to California.
I found the story to be more real than Grapes of Wrath because the Oklahoma years were personally lived by Sonora Babb. Her writing about poverty came from experience. Here is one of my favourite passages:
That reminded me so much of my favourite song of all time, This World by Malvina Reynolds:
Baby, I ain’t afraid to die,
It’s just that I hate to say good-bye to this world,
This world, this world.
This old world is mean and cruel,
But still I love it like a fool, this world,
This world, this world.
I’d rather go to the corner store
Than sing hosannah on that golden shore,
I’d rather live on Parker Street
Than fly around where the angels meet.
Oh, this old world is all I know,
It’s dust to dust when I have to go from this world,
This world, this world.
Somebody else will take my place,
Some other hands, some other face,
Some other eyes will look around
And find the things I’ve never found.
Don’t weep for me when I am gone,
Just keep this old world rolling on, this world,
This world, this world.
Back to Sonora Babb, here is a passage that captures the reality of being poor and watching the ways of the moneyed folk:
An old woman, facing foreclosure, gives the bank a piece of her mind. Why hasn’t the world moved beyond this? It is still happening today.
In California, the farmworkers’ children were sneered at in school and called “Okies”.
Poverty, cotton picking, fruit picking, broken strikes for a decent wage, and another glimpse into the contrast between the poor and the privileged:
It is a great book and a quick read, being much much shorter than Grapes of Wrath. I intend to read (through interlibrary loan) Babb’s memoir of life on the Great Plains, An Owl on Every Post.
I had time for another book, and Calvin joined me for this one.I found this excerpt the most interesting:
I must admit that I skimmed some of the stories of losing jobs that did not grab my interest, probably because staycation reading days have been few and I have a large stack of books waiting for more rainy days. Tomorrow is supposed to be dry-ish in parts, so I have a feeling I will be back out into the garden.
Posted in journal, our garden, politics, tagged Christmas Village, compost bins, composting, Dept 56 Christmas Village, gardening, gardens, holiday village, Hungry Harbor Grille, our garden, politics, rally against ICE on Dec 13, 2017| 2 Comments »
Friday, 8 December 2017
at home
We stayed up till 2 AM finishing season one of Stranger Things, and since I did not get to sleep till four, my idea of getting back to the compost project early did not come to fruition.
Noon! Allan is on the job, with the two new pallets that he got last night.
1:15: The new Bin One. Getting it installed involved shifting a heap of compost.
It took me an hour to shift most of bin two into bin one. Now that bin one is installed, the job entailed shifting compost sideways to make room for bin two. I longed to get the project done, but since we had a rally to attend a half an hour away at three thirty, I figured we’d be lucky to get two bins done.
1:40 PM: Bin One is full
Allan helps.
When the space for Bin Two was close to the bottom, it was possible to skoot the compost around in order to install the back and second side.
Two PM, with Bin Two installed. A long throw from Bin Three.
We were also moving the bins forward so that they would now be accessible from behind.
We had pushed hard to get that far before having to leave for the rally. I wanted so much to stay home and finish the fourth bin! I sternly told myself that there is no composting for people languishing in the detention center.
Ocean Park: Rally for “Rosas”
“Rosas was arrested when going to Okie’s early in the morning of November 27. When he asked why he was being arrested, ICE officers said “My supervisor asked me to come find you because of what appeared in the newspaper.” We want to speak out against this arrest and on the attack on his rights to free speech. Please join us!”
Background:
The original story in the Seattle Times (my home town paper) is here, and well worth reading.
The follow up, after the arrest of Rosas, is here.
He appears to have been sought out because he spoke (under his nickname) to the Seattle Times. ICE did not detain him earlier, even though he asked them why they took his family and not him.
This story has drawn the attention of the Mexican consulate and has been picked up by national and international news, including the Washington Post and The Independent, UK.
Here is a link to the gofundme where you can contribute, to help him and his family, who were deported to Mexico. (His children are American citizens, who went with their mother.)
We arrived to find folks on both sides of the street by Okie’s Market, mostly on the other side of the street because we don’t want it to appear that we blame the local markets for the fact that ICE uses them to catch Hispanic people who are shopping for groceries.
Another group had settled in three blocks east on the main intersection. Eventually, we walked down there to join them. As we walked, a man came out of one of the shops and said “Thank you so much. I would love to join, but I don’t want to be targeted.”
I suggested he put something warm and fuzzy on the other side:
We had enough people to be on three of the four corners of the intersection.
Someone who walked by the sign holders by Doc’s said something about people being illegal, and then went into Doc’s. A few minutes later, she came out and said, “You are right!” Something in there had changed her mind.
A woman paused her car to say she had just moved to Ocean Park and was pleased to see us, as she had no idea there were protests here. I want to meet her. None of us got her contact information.
I was heckled by a driver with a scowly face, something about “illegals” and “securing our borders” and “they should get legal.” “It takes years and costs thousands of dollars,” I replied, but he had driven on. That was the only heckling that I noticed. Mostly, we got some honks and thumbs up.
Lee Hogan Knott, local teacher at Sea School Cooperative and yoga instructor at Earthlight Yoga, joined us with her children.
m
Some black and white photos by Stephanie:
Two counter protestors showed up after sunset, just as we were ten minutes away from departure.
The counter-protest duo paraded back and forth on the other side of the street with their yuge Trump banner.
The rally ended at dusk, when it was too dark to easily read signage. Some ralliers went to a nearby pizza place. Allan and I had other plans. Since my goal is to not get out much during staycation, we combined the rally with our annual visit to the Hungry Harbor Grille to see their lovely holiday village.
Hungry Harbor Grille
Every year, Hungry Harbor sets up an ever larger and more elaborate village.
It is a coastal village with boats and lighthouses.
It’s odd that the flat with roof garden is my dream instead of a house with towers and room for a garden….
Our burgers and onion rings were perfect comfort food.
Tomorrow: Barring calamity, I WILL finish the compost project!
Posted in journal, public gardens, tagged Anchorage Cottages, gardening, gardens, Geranium 'Rozanne', Long Beach (Washington), Long Beach planters, Othonna cheirfolia, politics, undocumented immigrants on Sep 27, 2017| 7 Comments »
Tuesday, 12 September 2017
Anchorage Cottages
We began the work day with our weekly visit to Anchorage Cottages.
Allan gave the viburnum in the center courtyard a flat top.
SorryNotSorry, daisy snobs; I decided to put in two clumps of shasta daisies on either side of Crocosmia in this messy little bed. To be done later this fall.
I think the verticality is important, and yet we hear that the Salvia is making the windows harder to open and close.
Long Beach
While driving the main street on the way to the Anchorage, we had been pleased to see the planters had not been sat upon too terribly much during Rod Run. This was especially good because we read later that the drivers downtown had gotten rather rowdy at times. Excerpts from an article in the Chinook Observer:
“The event resulted in one police chase and one rollover wreck, and some police officers said the atmosphere seemed a bit rowdier this year. But aside from those incidents, the Rod Run was safe and successful, authorities said.”
And: “As they pulled through the intersection of Pacific and Bolstad at sunset, one Jeep-driver peeled out, and jerked backwards, slamming on his brakes just as he was about to hit his buddy’s Jeep. On each pass through downtown, they revved their engines, surging forward and screeching to a stop again and again. Some observers cheered, others looked seriously annoyed.”
And “Early in the evening, a visiting officer from Castle Rock noticed a man in a black truck talking on his cell phone as he drove through downtown. When he signaled the man to pull over, “The guy dropped the cell phone, turned and took off. He went to Ocean Beach Boulevard,” Washington State Patrol Sgt. Brad Moon said. “The driver was headed north, accelerating to the point where he lost control of the vehicle.” Near Bolstad Avenue, the man crashed into a white SUV and jumped the curb, nearly hitting a woman in a wheelchair.
Officers from several agencies arrested him at gunpoint. Tests later revealed the man had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26, well over the legal limit of 0.08, Moon said.”
Memories of when the event used to be on Labor Day Weekend: “Fifteen years ago…. State Patrol would send as many as 40 troopers to help out, and they’d arrest 40 to 60 drunks over the weekend. For the last few years, they’ve arrested four to six people drunk drivers each year. This year, there were three DUIs….”
Our new method of discouraging sitting by leaving as much foliage as possible, tatty or not, hanging over the edge, seems to have worked. Today, it was satisfying to tidy the planters up.
I took the wheelbarrow all through town and filled it to the brim twice. With tourist season officially over, I had room on the sidewalk to maneuver my wheelbarrow through town. Allan watered the trees and three blocks worth of planters, more than usual for him on Tree Watering Day, because all my clipping slowed me down.
Our friends Captain Bob and Cathy had left their café to go on a celebratory vacation.
Geranium ‘Rozanne’ was the plant that created the most wheelbarrow debris.
I thought Allan had gotten way ahead of me and was pleased to see him still behind me, under the Elks sign, working on the two north blocks.
He caught up and passed me, going south, within a block, which is when I asked him to also water the planters on the southernmost block.
While watering a street tree, Allan found part of a cigar, which he put into his debris bucket, of course.
A man emerged from a restaurant and mournfully said, “You got my cigar wet!” Allan fished it out of the bucket and said, “It isn’t clean,” and the man took it and and walked off with it in his mouth.
a tree garden that did get very much stood upon (Allan’s photo). This is also the one that needs to be bucket watered because the faucet does not work.
in the Heron Pond (Allan’s photo)
While I was watering and clipping the carousel planter, a man stopped close to me and asked, “If I give you my address, will you come do my garden?” We hear this a lot; I gave my usual jolly reply of, “After I do MY garden!” Then he said he would pay $35 an hour, and I said, “That is tempting; we don’t make that here. Where do you live?” “Longview,” he replied, “and my gardener makes $35 an hour, and sometimes $42 depending on what sort of gardening she is doing.” I said that the big city does pay better. He then asked, “What are you having for dinner?” “I don’t know,” said I, “I don’t do the cooking.” At that point, he tried to hand me $20, saying, “This is to get yourself something good for dinner.” I demurred and told him he should to give it to someone who truly needed it. He insisted, I refused, he graciously accepted my refusal and walked on. As he walked away, I called out “You are a very nice guy!”
I later thought that I could have said I would take it to add to my contribution for the October rent for one of the families whose wage earner has been taken away by ICE (immigration enforcement, which is targeting hardworking undocumented long time community members here). That probably would have involved more words than I could have managed to muster while watering. See the end of this blog post for some facts about undocumented immigrants.
I continued walking south till Allan and I met up on the last block.
I had forgotten to put a bandaid on my little toe, which began to scream two blocks before I was done, leading to my removing my special shoe insert, followed by a sigh of relief from my little toe and a screech of protest from my sore heel.
Ilwaco
When we got home, Allan went back out to water the Ilwaco street trees and planters, while I sat and read the news. He had made me a fine cup of Builder’s Tea.
That gave me the strength to rise again and empty the work trailer of the two wheelbarrow loads of good non weedy clippings, a good addition to my compost bins. I did not muster the energy to hobble back to the bogsy woods and haul out yesterday’s pile of cut salmonberry trunks and branches.
Thus ends today’s blog post. Read on, if you like, for some information about immigrants, a subject that is much on my mind because of the way that beloved local people are being taken by ICE.
Here, from the Stories from this week’s installment of the Stories from the Heart series by Sydney Stevens, are some facts about immigration. How does it connect with us? A bit of our gardening income right now is going to help these local families deal with the sudden crackdown instigated by the new national administration.
A Fact-Checker Speaks (by Sydney Stevens)
Falsehood # 1: They don’t pay taxes
Undocumented immigrants do, indeed, pay taxes. Like everyone else in the United States, they pay sales taxes. They also pay property taxes — even if they rent. As a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) points out, “the best evidence suggests that at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrant households currently file income tax returns using Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), and many who do not file income tax returns still have taxes deducted from their paychecks.”
Currently, in Washington State, undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $316,624,000 in state and local taxes.
Falsehood #2: They don’t pay into Social Security
According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), unauthorized immigrants — who are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits — have paid an eye-popping $100 billion into the fund over the past decade.
“They are paying an estimated $15 billion a year into Social Security with no intention of ever collecting benefits,” according to Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the SSA. “Without the estimated 3.1 million undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009,” he said. “As the baby boom generation ages and retires, immigrant workers are key to shoring up Social Security and counteracting the effects of the decline in U.S.-born workers paying into the system.” (An article in the Atlantic explains more about this, including “We estimate that earnings by unauthorized immigrants result in a net positive effect on Social Security financial status generally, and that this effect contributed roughly $12 billion to the cash flow of the program for 2010″.)
Falsehood #3: They drain the system.
Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and most other public benefits. Most of these programs require proof of legal immigration status and under the 1996 welfare law, even legal immigrants cannot receive these benefits until they have been in the United States for more than five years.
A Congressional Budget Office report on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 concluded that a path to legalization for immigrants would increase federal revenues by $48 billion. Such a plan would see $23 billion in increased costs from the use of public services, but ultimately, it would produce a surplus of $25 billion for government coffers, CBO said
Falsehood #4: They take American jobs.
Removing the approximately 8 million unauthorized workers in the United States would not automatically create 8 million job openings for unemployed Americans, said Daniel Griswold, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, in his 2011 testimony before the House Judiciary Sub-committee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement.
The reason, is two-fold. For one, removing millions of undocumented workers from the economy would also remove millions of entrepreneurs, consumers and taxpayers. The economy would actually lose jobs. Second, native-born workers and immigrant workers tend to possess different skills that often complement one another.
According to Griswold, immigrants, regardless of status, fill the growing gap between expanding low-skilled jobs and the shrinking pool of native-born Americans who are willing to take such jobs. By facilitating the growth of such sectors as retail, agriculture, landscaping, restaurants, and hotels, low-skilled immigrants have enabled those sectors to expand, attract investment, and create middle-class jobs in management, design and engineering, bookkeeping, marketing and other areas that employ U.S. citizens.
Falsehood #5: It’s just a matter of following the law.
Under current immigration laws, there are very few options for legal immigration, the costs are increasingly prohibitive and the wait for any kind of status can be long and frustrating. According to the State Department, that imaginary “immigration line” is already 4.4 million people long and depending on the type of visa sought and the country of origin, the wait can be years to decades long. In some countries, such as the Philippines and Mexico, people have been waiting over 20 years for approval of a family-sponsored visa.
Posted in journal, our garden, tagged cats in the garden, gardening, our garden, politics on Jun 4, 2017| 3 Comments »
Monday, 29 May 2017
Just as I was having my, um, breakfast (more like a very late brunch), I found a text from J9 asking if she could bring a friend to see the garden, someone who would not need “a tour”. Because I had two friends coming at four, I said we would have to be mowing (Allan) and planting (me) during said visit because I still did not have my three days of modest garden goals completed. Thus, there is not photo to record J9 and her friend walking through the garden. Neither Allan nor I had organized having a camera in a pocket till after the lawn was mowed and the last of the at home annuals…the painted sage…were in the ground.
Allan tore off to water the Ilwaco planters in order to be home before Yudy and John arrived.
watering the Ilwaco post office garden
What is that weed? (lower right)..plus my Eryngium x Zabelli ‘Neptune’s Gold’
4 PM: Yudy and John arrived as planned. We had met when their small, artistic garden was on the Edible Garden tour and then recently reconnected through Indivisible and the political postcard parties.
I showed them some plants I had dug up to share with a local new gardener.
John was taken with the soft, tall, native fern and we gave him this one that had volunteered under the water boxes bench.
I think Allan took this photo to show the nicely mown lawn and the weeded boat garden.
I love the way the elephant garlic looks like tall grasses next to the boat.
Yudy noticed the bright thorns on Rosa ptercantha (which also has its small white roses now).
Smokey keeping just in front of Yudy.
John heads into the bogsy woods.
Skooter on the bridge.
buttercups looking rather charming
Maybe there is nothing wrong with a haze of yellow buttercups in the right place.
This viburnum got everyone’s attention.
Smokey keeping tabs on us.
John and Yudy’s dog, Lily, had to wait; she would have chased the cats. (Allan’s photo)
After an excellent walkabout and plans for a campfire later in the summer (with a promise of Yudy’s ukelele!), I got back to my garden tasks.
I was disappointed in myself that I had not finished weeding this smallish area….
even though it did look better than on Saturday.
I went on with the planting of sunflower and some assorted mustard seeds.
While planting sunflower seeds in the middle of the west bed, I found a tragedy. My Ghislane de Feligonde rose is dying.
one big stem all wilty and the other all dried up: WHYYYY?
the big old trunk…It was an own-root rose. Maybe there is still a piece in my old garden that I could take cuttings from.
I love this rose, and have had it for years, after the man who ran an antique rose nursery near Snohomish said to me “Buy this one.” I moved it from Seattle to the Sou’wester to Shakti Cove to my house behind the boatyard to hear and it was doing well. It had gotten pushed around by a vigorous Fuchsia magellanica and I had removed the fuchsia to give it more space. It looked fine last time I saw it. (And later, googling proved that this rose seems to be not for sale anywhere in this country that I could find.)
As the mustard seeds went into the garden between us and Devery’s driveway, a car pulled up in front of her house and someone called out, “Your garden is amazing!” Because the woman looked so friendly and had opened her car door partway, I replied, “You’re welcome to come on a tour!” Four people tumbled out of the car and what ensued was one of the most delightful walkabouts I have ever experienced.
meeting Frosty
All they saw was the good and they noticed pretty much everything special to me, all on their own. Except for one hidden fairy door; I pulled aside fern fronds to reveal it.
The view looking north to the house was commented on with enthusiasm, as was the fire circle.
Frosty, and later Smokey and Skooter, all got pets. (Allan’s photo)
One of the women stopped and read aloud the writing on the house walls. It is so rare for someone to do that, I can only remember one other time.
As I gaze upon the garden, my heart grows peaceful, still. From its colour comes my being, from its spirit comes my will. -Ryan Gainey
The garden flew round with the angel,
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round
And the clouds flew round with the clouds.
…That things go round and again go round has rather a magical sound. -Wallace Stevens
The old lamp with shells in it got noticed.
They even admired my bamboo poles that have lost so much of their colorful paint over the winter.
As they departed, and because I had found out that one couple at least comes to the peninsula often, I asked them to re-introduce themselves if they see us working in Long Beach, because both Allan and I have face blindness. One of the women said she totally understood that and will talk to someone thinking, “I know I like you, but who are you?” and I said, “Yes, I have such a warm feeling about you even though I cannot remember who you are!”
It was just grand.
my cool heather from Pam Fleming (Allan’s photo)
Chickadee-dee-dee (Allan’s photo)
Tomorrow: Back to work.
PSA: The darling house three doors down from us is for sale. It has a small yard, which might be good for someone who wants a small garden, and a partial view of the port.
reading
For those who like book reports, I read a book (and this short one took me over a week because it is planting time):
*****************************************************************************
*****************************************************************
Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, 1994:
Ursula Le Guin:
Rebecca Solnit. I love her, and she must be a gardener.
‘
Posted in journal, reading, weather, tagged Ben Aitken, books, class, Dear Bill Bryson, politics, reading on May 5, 2017| 6 Comments »
Monday, 1 May 2017
WHAAAAT?
I was taken aback by completely unexpected cold rain and 20 mph wind. No! What happened to our five nice weekdays? Ok, maybe the beach approach garden won’t get done before the Sunday parade. After all, the parade takes place downtown, not the beach approach.
I decided that I would enjoy a reading day, as did Allan. I returned to my wonderful birthday present book; Allan had discovered and acquired it for me from the UK.
Smokey loves a reading day.
I was pleased to finish the very funny homage to Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island, in which author Ben Aitken retraces Bill’s route 20 years later. While much of the book is humorous, I also appreciated Aitken’s occasional serious comments on class.
An amusing passage:
In Lincoln:
More much appreciated (by me) musings on class:
Later, in the north:
I gave the book five out of five stars and I highly recommend it. There were just a few moments when Aitken suggested Bryson did something that made me think, surely not. When I cross referenced my copy of Notes from a Small Island, I was right, and now I intend to re-read Bryson’s book while Aitken’s is still fresh in my memory.
I still had plenty of time to read a rather short book that I had somehow missed by one of my favourite authors.
An interesting digression that had little to do with the plot:
And after that, I had time to start (but not finish) a third book, another birthday present from Allan.
I have some reservations about this book, particularly my thought that if you are going to travel from Lands End to John O’ Groats starting off in just your skivvies, begging along the way for clothes, bikes, food, and lodging, it will go a lot better if you are young white men. These two chaps are the sort who insist on making it quite clear that they really don’t want to share a double bed. And it does not seem to occur to them to examine why their journey is not especially dangerous. My feeling when I read Dear Bill Bryson is that I’d love to be friends with the author. These two…maybe not. However, I am very much enjoying the descriptions of England and I wouldn’t mind another rainy day to finish the book…if it were not for the fact that we are behind on work. (Edited to add…I am almost done with the Free Country book and have enjoyed the travelogue but am AWFULLY tired of being constantly reminded that the two young men are not gay. They need to grow up!)
Posted in journal, our garden, reading, weather, tagged books, No Logo by Naomi Klein, our garden, politics, reading, weather on Apr 29, 2017| 4 Comments »
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
As predicted, we had a rainy and windy day. I felt a little restless about it. Views as I paced from window to window:
kitchen
north front
north front
east front
Allan’s study, east
Allan’s study, east
Skooter does not like to go outside in the rain.
south
This and one of the front windows is “blown”.
Just going out on the front porch to take this photo made my hands cold:
Allan did take a few photos on his way between house and shed:
and at the post office:
hesperantha blooming now instead of waiting till fall
one broken lily sprout
Fortunately, I had a big book to read with over 300 pages to go.
No Logo
I felt blessed that we live in a relatively advertising-free environment. Here at the “lost corner” of Washington State, we have only two chain restaurants (a rather gaudy McD’s and a low key Subway that blends in), and even though two of our three bigger grocery stores are franchises (IGA and, I think a Thriftway), they are still referred to by their old names (Sid’s and Okie’s). While we do have billboards advertising local businesses, all but two extra large ones (between Black Lake and Seaview) are gentle on the eye compared to most billboards, and just advertise local motels and resorts. This makes the Long Beach Peninsula a more restful place to live if, like me, you want to get away from advertising, brand names, and glitz.
Post script for those who are interested: No Logo by Naomi Klein
The book was excellent, even though somewhat outdated (published in 2000).
Some particularly interesting points:
How a certain McD restaurant went after any restaurant with McD in its name:
This reminds me of the local story of how Starbucks went after an Astoria coffee shop named SamBuck’s. The owner’s name was Samantha Bucks! (She had done a logo that was sort of a take off on the SB logo.) Read more about that case here.
A mention of community gardening:
A whole chapter about the Reclaim the Streets movement had this interesting story.
Of course, they lost…
Re child labor, the National Labor Committee, and director Charles Kernaghan:
About how sweatshops and child labor get so much more attention when attached to a brand name (Nike, for example):
More about the Zapatistas (Klein also wrote about them in The Shock Doctrine). I just very much like what Marcos had to say:
Note to those who care: From what I had read recently, some of the Romany people consider “the g-word” to be a racial slur and would prefer that we use the word Romany. If you care about that sort of thing, as I do, here is some beginning reading about it. Google will give you much more. I’d rather err on the side of politeness so have given up “the g word”.
Tomorrow more rain is predicted, and I have a book of light reading lined up for a change.
Posted in journal, politics, tagged Astoria Oregon, Earth Day Science Rally, Indivisible North Coast Oregon, politics, Science March on Apr 26, 2017| 4 Comments »
Saturday, 22 April 2017
The weather did not look good for our planned political activity.
out the window: wind and rain
Nevertheless, we persisted in our plan to go to Astoria. Maybe the weather would be better there, as sometimes happens across the river.
crossing the 4.2 mile long Astoria Megler Bridge
as we drove by to find a parking place
We parked and joined the others.
I’m pleased to tell you that during the entire two hours, even when the group dwindled toward the end, our ears were filled with a cacophony of vehicles’ horns tooting in approval, and we got many waves and upturned thumbs. I saw only one negative face, followed by two bumper stickers: One read “Trump Pence” and the other read “[something something something] GUNS.”
my photos:
I am slow with puns and just realized…There is no PLANet B.
My sign held up well, covered with clear adhesive shelf paper and edged with packing tape.
Some walked down to a traffic island down the block. There, they were visible to traffic coming east and turning toward Commercial, and also to traffic heading west on Marine Drive. I decided to join them, partly because I wanted a better look at the garden.
a well kept garden
My sign is a large one and the wind was strong on the traffic island. I decided to rejoin the others over by the post office.
That was the moment when my saturated camera said it had had quite enough of the storm.
I hope it revives!
Here are four photos taken by another attendee (I do not know who):
Someone got much better photos of my sign than I managed to get:
Photos by Carol Newman:
1:01 PM we were done!
And then the rain stopped!
PS. Here is an earth day oriented gofundme to save a local woods. https://www.gofundme.com/help-save-a-forest