Centennial Mills building

This building - which made quite an impression on me as the train pulled into Portland, OR on September 27, 2024 - was determined unsafe and so was demolished on August 17, 2026.

strangely beautiful

There's something strangely beautiful about this.

farmers market, part 2

Of course, this was the day I rode to the farmers market on my bike.

Hungarian bell pepper

 

It took me 63 years to encounter a Hungarian bell pepper but it finally happened at the local farmers market.

spilling latte

The one day I decide to have something different and get a caramel latte is the same day I mysteriously am unable not to spill it multiple times. Was my body trying to tell me something? With thanks to Cajé Coffee for helping clean up.

inherited field guides

 

Sometimes when you inherit field guides from your late naturalist aunt, there is plant material found within the pages. Sometimes even feathers.

Joan Didion

I like Joan Didion and relate to her while at the same time insist on describing her as disturbed and neurotic. In some ways I'm surprised that hipsters embrace her the way they do. Although this collection of essays is in some ways dated - a product of the nineteen sixties - there is plenty I could relate to. Like mine, her life mainly takes place in California and New York - but in reverse. I liked the essays about her upbringing in Sacramento, Joan Baez in Monterey County, the effects of Santa Ana winds on the Southern California psyche, as well as others. The title comes from a W.B. Yeats poem.