Bring me to your Chef!

I am teaching 16 first and second graders which is why I am not blogging very often and why, in all likelihood, you will probably be hearing a lot of classroom anecdotes if you hear from me at all in the next months. Last week was our big Thanksgiving program at school followed by our Feast, even tho the Costa Ricans are not big fans of the pilgrims, or pil-GRAMS, as Alexa calls them with emphasis. But being an American school we pulled out all the stops and I ate three turkey dinners before the week was over. I love turkey and I am, after all, a living example of what the pilgrims were to become, twelve generations after they hit the rock. So I can never get enough turkey and can whip up a pilgrim hat with little prelude.

For the occasion and to honor my forefathers, my amiga and I wrote an original Thanksgiving play called, with great imagination, "Thanksgiving Play." I wanted to write "Thanksgiving, the musical," but Bono was busy on Broadway working on Spiderman. So we settled for something with less of a score. Like every other first and second grade classroom in America, and one or two beyond its pilgrim-loving borders, we enacted the whole story starting in England with the King as villain disallowing his subjects to pray as they please, then moving on to Holland where the children became naughty because, after all, this was the home of Amsterdam so what were they thinking anyway and they were praying freely but in Dutch, what?! In an act of linguistic desperation, the pilgrims hired the Mayflower and the ill-fated Speedwell which you may, or may not recall (I had forgotten it myself) which proved to be holier than thou and began sinking soon after they set sail.

The pilgrims limped back to Holland where their kids once again had to translate every blooming conversation their parents attempted which, incidentally, is something my own kids can relate to in our current cross-cultural living situation. When they had successfully crammed all 100 pilgrims onto the Mayflower they set sail for America again, take two. When given a replica of the Mayflower to color in class, many of my students chose to decorate the sails with brightly colored flowers - get it? - in a much-improved version of the dingy white ones which were impossible to clean and with which those plain folks grew quickly bored and which might have cheered them up on their two month voyage had they simply admitted that plain and boring was not necessarily the only pathway to heaven. There being no floating hospitals in the midst of the Atlantic, at least not in 1620, Oceanus was born at sea and he was a boy but in a brilliant stroke of artistic license coupled by a shortage of boys in our class, we cast he as a she.

Finally the pilgrims hit the rock, which is yet another brilliant stroke of artistic license by the history makers, as you surely know if you have ever been to Plymouth to see the famed Rock which sits in a cage and typically results in exclamations of disbelief and a vast sense of being both underwhelmed and somehow misled by both history books and first grade teachers everywhere even though you find yourself squinting at said stone as you are simultaneously blinded by the flash photography of busloads of Asian tourists who seem quite happy with this scheduled stop at the rock on their tour even tho the rock is really more like a pebble. But maybe the Japanese are used to things being a little smaller than previously imagined. Meanwhile, back at our story, the pilgrims hit the promised land where they see not only that they will be free to pray as they please but that they had better get started because it was November in New England and, as Rumor (brilliantly played by Bella) notes immediately, "There are no flowers here!" Which, in our play, is succeeded by similar sentimental expressions of surprise and dismay culminating in Rumor lamenting, "Who will help us?"

This is where Squanto appears to save the day by showing them how to use the very first organic fish fertilizer to plant their corn and pease (simple living somehow included adding an extra -e to every word), all of which leads to the following year when the stalwart survivors decide to forego hiring prestigious party planners from the island of Mannahatta and opt to plan their own simple and organic, yet humble, first Thanksgiving feast. In reading this part of the story in class, Camillo - a native Costa Rican who would ultimately go on to play Chief Massasoit - was supposed to say, 'I will bring my chief." Instead, with a slip of the tongue coupled by an inability to read, which is probably how most of history has evolved, Camillo said, "I will bring my chef." Which was probably a better idea anyway.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving,

K3

When trees fly...

Q: So where have I been?
A: Oregon.
Q: Doing what?
A: Building "high-quality overwintering habitat" for coho salmon which were listed as "threatened" species in 2008.
Q: What?
A: Have you heard about the ARRA? How about the Economic Stimulus Package signed by Obama in 2009? I like to think of it as the modern-day WPA and if you have driven across America lately you understand why. All across our wide nation are men and machines toiling away on highway and bridge projects being brought to you by the ARRA.

In our little neck of the woods up Canal Creek we just flew 312 massive fir trees via chinook helicopter (no relation to the fish) which strategically placed them in designed structures across the creek to build coho habitat. Functioning rather like larger, more expensive beaver dams, these structures will create "stream complexity" and deep pools where the wee ones can hang out for a year or so without being eaten or flushed out by heavy winter rains before they are ready to make the transition to bigger and better and brackish and saltier waterways.

If you have never seen a 23K lb. tree fly, believe me when i tell you that it is a sight to see. We only managed to get a portion of the 1000 trees planned for four different waterways before the rains began and the fish moved upstream but we will hopefully continue where we left off next year flying trees and spending almost a cool million ARRA dollars. I thank you, America, and you, President Obama, and the coho do too.

Here is another photo from my trip. And no, these are not coho, these are chinook. This is Andy and I celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary by catching the first legal salmon of his life. (You will have to ask him about the others.) IN the two weeks I was there, we went to an 18-year-old birthday party, a 50th wedding anniversary, the Governor's Gold Awards in Portland, the laundromat (where I folded my clothes while eavesdropping on an interesting conversation about channel catfish in Arkansas), the pool, and Target where I erroneously got in the 10-item lane with over $300 of stuff (including a tropical-scented deodorant that I think I bought after smelling way too many because it reminded me of Costa Rica but ultimately made me walk around smelling like a bad candle) and where I instantly made several new enemies in Eugene, Oregon. Lo siento.

I got my hair cut, co-hosted our monthly writing workshop featuring my favorite pen pal and funny tween author Dale Basye and a Conversation Project for our town to help decide what Waldport wants to be when it grows up. I opened my first business checking account for my first business--Coho Consulting--and ate the best chocolate creme brulee EVER at Panache in Newport, don't miss it. We had dinner with friends at their house and at our yurt and in general had fun playing yurt without the kids around and ate so much salmon I am afraid I am now, absolutely, part fish. We saw a dead stellar sea lion on the beach, purportedly from leptospirosis, and I came upon a smaller California sea lion resting at the tide line who looked very hungry. Hopefully he will have more salmon to eat soon.

K3

Go Ask Alice

Fifteen months ago (a lifetime for some) we met Alice. That's her there on the left. Although you can't tell in the photo, Alice has no tail and was raised at Capitan Suizo, a hotel on the beach in Tamarindo. At the time we were renting a house two doors south of the hotel and now we are living in a tree house two doors north where the local gang of howlers wake us up at 530 every morning--who needs an alarm clock? Some nights they sleep in the tree over the house and have their coffee klatch directly overhead, flinging their noisy news and bits of breakfast onto the roof and pooping, well, you get the picture. When the gang moves through the 'hood, one male consistently stops to peek at us over the edge of the roof or to otherwise come closer for a chat. We finally noticed that he had no tail but was clearly a male, the dangling white cojones not leaving much room for speculation.

Last week Bella and I stopped by the hotel to check on the progress of a lora (olive ridley sea turtle) they were rehabilitating and on Friday at sunset we stood on the playa and waved goodbye to her. (I am certain she was Maude or Mildred, but that is another story blogged about earlier.) Talking to Hector, the hotel wildlife guy, I asked about the overtly friendly howler hanging around the 'hood and he informed me that our tailless socialite is none other than Alice, herself! Turns out young howlers are rather amorphous in their private parts and that Alice was a bit of a misnomer. The good news is that the local gang has accepted her-m because it also turns out that a tail is a critical component of howler attraction and so, alas, poor Alice is not considered much of a threat in the mating department. The bad news is that Alice's lack of a tail will probably preclude him from getting any. So, Alice must be content to hang around as best he can, socializing with distant relatives, and generally making a life for himself.

Pura Vida.

Con Mucho Gusto!

One of the more endearing terms used by Costa Ricans with frequency is, "Con mucho gusto," which is often shortened to simply, "Mucho gusto." Any time you try out your amateur Spanish by thanking someone with a "gracias," or really showing off with a "mucho gracias," the automatic response will be that simple phrase--Mucho gusto. It is a lovely retort and I prefer it to our standard, "you're welcome." Whether you are in a restaurant or the grocery check-out line, any time you find yourself giving a perfunctory thanks to someone they will respond, "with pleasure," or "with much pleasure."

One of the sure marks of an amateur writer these days is the use of what we were taught to call the exclamation mark or point. Fairly soon into your writing career or your MFA program you will learn to indicate all forms of excitement and horror along with all adverbs by simply choosing a better verb to denote the exact extreme emotion you are attempting to convey. (Thus, the blurb at the top of my blog.) I freely admit that I, myself, am a formerly-frequent user of the now-dreaded and tres-gauche punctuation mark I used to put at the end of almost every sentence of every email I ever wrote to denote my happiness and excitement to my friends and family. Then I had a friend tell me her husband says reading exclamation marks makes him feel like he is being yelled at. This was certainly never my intent and thankfully I have never written to him or he would have run from the room, hands over eyes, screaming with a trail of periods following behind. And then I had an editor tell me you are allowed maybe three exclamation marks per book. What? Well, admission is the first step and I trainable. So I am well on my way to being the writer formerly known by her profligate usage of the exclamation mark. Not to mention those pesky adverbs...

Now without further ado, let me put these two seemingly disparate paragraphs together with a little Memorial Day tale. On Sunday we had a brief break in the rain here on the coast where a 3-day weekend fills every road and all vacant spaces with campers and I don't mean tents. I mean enough equipment to duplicate all the comforts of home BUT you are "camping." Seeing a bit of blue open up in the heavens above was all we needed by way of encouragement and we headed for the beach which was uncharacteristically packed with people, many of whom actually thought that frolicking in near-freezing water was great holiday fun. Until they did it. We had a nice long walk to the "big stump" which is a huge redwood remnant that has been sticking up out of the sands since Andy can remember and that is something on a beach where full-length trees are tossed about like match sticks by the waves and tides and nothing stays put. Except that stump. Bella packed snacks and books and we took a stump break and the five of us generally enjoyed ourselves to the point where we even stripped down to one layer for a moment or two.

Our journey yielded not even one intact sand dollar, given the hordes combing the intertidal zone, and upon our return we sat down to put on our shoes because in spite of the fact that the weather is worse now than in the winter, we bravely marched forth in our bare feet in deference to the calendar more than anything else. As we sat collecting ourselves Isaiah began to write a B in the sand with his stick. "Look, a "B," I noted to Bella sitting next to me, "I wonder what Isaiah is going to write?" "E," I continued, I guess he is writing "be."

She laughed with the assurance of a 6-year-old, "No, he's writing Bella." (Note: Here my natural inclination is to end her sentence with the exclamation point that follows almost every sentence of a 6-year-old with all their enthusiasm for even the most mundane aspects of life, all of which, of course, are still new and exciting to them. But I have learned to slap the little finger of my left hand when it wanders too close to that now-rarely-used key which can only be touched when typing the number 1.) And sure enough, Isaiah continued to write two L's and an A. "Bella," Bella exclaimed period. But then Isaiah continued to draw another line.

"Hmmm, now what is he writing?" I asked her, "Kittel?" But just then he lifted his stick and then poked it back into the sand with a flourish and finality, to her delight.

"A Gusto Mark," she exclaimed. (Again, see note above.) We all looked at each other and at her with curiosity and laughed. A gusto mark? I have no idea where she got this name for the punctuation formerly known as an exclamation something. Did she learn it in Kindergarten, as she said? Or did she hear the teacher wrong and put her Spanish and English vocabularies together in a cheerful new Spanglish punctuation term? Either way, it is a very fitting name for the much-maligned sentence ending which has fallen from grace. But I think Bella could well be on her way to changing that. (Or her middle name is not...)

K3

PS The photo is of the very-excited Bella at her dance recital which was akin to Christmas with the counting down of days and everything.

Dear Emily,

Happy Belated Birthday. Tuesday was your big day. On that afternoon I sat in my van at the Nye Beach parking lot overlooking the endless progression of Pacific waves while Bella practiced for her ballet recital. Isaiah sat in the back seat behind me watching a movie. It was a sunny day but the wind had come up, strong, and a kite flyer struggled to hang on to his wings which threatened to abandon their tether and take him for a ride. And then, Emily, your mom and your grandparents arrived. They parked their silver sedan in the row in front of me and I watched your mom's back as she struggled to unfold herself into the elements, her fists clutching four balloons filled with helium and hope. Before I had even read the Happy Birthday messages printed on their bubblegum backgrounds, I knew it was your birthday. And I knew you weren't here.

Your mom wore a black leather jacket, its wind-driven fringe whipping her onward while those balloons pulled her closer to you. I know she would have gladly abandoned herself to the lift. Your three loved ones wrapped their arms around themselves against the weather and the missing you as they proceeded down to the hard-packed sand with I, and perhaps you, their only audience. When they reached the darker shades of sand they huddled together as your mom patiently unwrapped the desperately entwined ribbons. I wondered if it had been so when she was forced to say goodbye to you. Had she simply, helplessly let go of you, all wrapped up and twisted together with parts of herself? Or had some stranger peeled her pleading fingers from your blue skin, one by one, prying her loving warmth from you on that cold day and leaving you covered with only her fingerprints? What had happened to you, Dear Emily?

Finally your mom succeeded in her grosgrained task. She distributed your enthusiastic balloons to the helpless hands of her parents. The three of them busied themselves taking photographs of each other holding your gifts. And then they just stopped and stood there a minute. Maybe they spoke. Maybe they had already said all there ever was to say. On silent cue, they let your birthday presents go, sending them soaring to you, Emily, wherever you are. We all watched, desperately straining our eyes as your balloons ascended on an upward current--up, up, and away. We lost sight of them as they disappeared over the rooftops of houses built too close to the eroding cliff sides which the sea will shortly claim as its own, just as perhaps you were doing then with your birthday balloons.

Your mom found a stick and began to write to you in the dark brown sand, packed hard and cold by receding salty water. I knew without looking what your mom was writing--the same thing I would write were I down there with the wind whipping my face with my hair and my jacket fringe instead of wrapped in the warm cocoon of my car, watching. We bore silent witness, your grandparents and I, with your grandmother bending in to help her bereaved daughter as best she could, lengthening a letter here and there. I, in turn, kept silent pace with your mom in my head, slowly, painfully learning your name. While your mom scratched with the hard, brown stick that had once exhaled soft, green leaves, so I, too, engraved each character in my head, etching H's and A's into the pink tissues of my brain.

When at last we ceased inscribing the happiest and saddest words a mother can sing, your mom straightened her weary spine and your loved ones took their final photos of your big day. Wanting only photos of you, Emily, laughing and smiling so pretty while blowing out your candles and opening your presents, they settled for snapshots of themselves waving bye bye to balloons and inscribing sandy birthday cards with forced smiles on bewildered faces. The three of them fought the wind back to their car and I watched them climb back in more easily now, unfettered by some of their heavy burdens. They drove away, your mom clutching a dead stick with a damp and sandy end--one more thing for Emily's baby book.

I started my own car but before I left to collect my ballerina, I asked Isaiah to run like the wind down to the sea's edge and learn your name. "It says, Happy Birthday Emily," he panted upon his return, "5-11-88 to 3-5-09." So it was your 22nd birthday, Emily. You were born the year we were married and the year before Hannah, our firstborn, who just turned 21. You, Emily, did not quite make it. Today is her brother Jonah's 12th birthday. He was born three days after your tenth birthday but he has only that one date, 5-14-98, as his birth was also his death. I won't be buying any blue balloons and any messages I send will be invisibly transmitted from my heart to my heart, which holds him still. And besides, my brain is now permanently scarred. But, Emily, I might prevail upon you to share your balloons and your spirit with Jonah. I like to think of the two of you laughing and playing tag with his brother, Noah, and all of your too-many friends in the warmer, friendlier waves of your home. By now the selfish Pacific has claimed your birthday card. That is bittersweet. Like so many things in life, the words were only temporary. The message, however, is eternal.

Yours,

Jonah's mom

PS Happy Birthday Jonah. Mommy loves you. As your sister, Bella, said yesterday with a heavy sigh, "I wish he was real."

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers Day all you Moms out there in cyberspace. Good work if you can get it, as my Mom would say. Like most of you, I cleaned yesterday so I wouldn't have to do it today. Woke up with just Bella, the rest of my kids and Andy currently scattered around the country. So sweet receiving her Kindergarten gifts--a book about "My Mom and I..." with great illustrations and a cute pink teapot card that says, "Here's a card for Mother's Day, I'll try to be my best each day. But if you get upset with me, Relax and have a cup of tea." It has a tea bag inside. Decaf. I'll probably never need it. Right.

Thank goodness for teachers. Without them we would not get these lovely momentos of our kids early years. Certainly the Georgetown professors are not sitting their students down with glue sticks and markers to make gifts for their Moms. I wonder what they would produce if they did? Certainly they are good with scissors by then. Ditto for Jrs and Srs in high school. I guess by the time they reach these advanced grades the teachers figure these kids can work independently, however misguided that may be. Ahh, but the day is young yet.

By nightfall I hope to have heard from DC that Hannah can come home to visit later this month. By this afternoon I hope to see Andy and Christiana's smiling faces as they arrive home safely to sleep in OR, having woken up in RI. I am sure Micah will call from his island perch at some point. And Isaiah will be home from his sleepover at the Pankey Pit. Everyone will be back in their proper places and we can give thanks once again for the blessings of each other. Which is all I ever want from my mother's day. Altho a kitchen sink would also be nice.

K3

Lonesome Larry

It is Friday afternoon. I am lonesome. I know lonesome sounds more like a Friday night, or a Monday even, but it is one, the loneliest number, etc. Maybe I am just unsettled but there is no segue to my story from there. Waiting on news of the weather, as in whether or not Isaiah's baseball game will be rained out or not so we can travel east today over the mountains to the desert, to Sisters, to visit friends and escape this incessant spring rain. He is playing the other red team, the Siletz Indians, again, having already been beaten twice by them. How much restitution can one team make? Waiting to hear if the heater guy is coming or not. Waiting for school to get out, for the clock to strike two, for another sighting of that black bear, or that humming bird, or for, as always, some good news. Bella has her first loose tooth, which is exciting news. Now I want more. So, speaking of lonesome, while I am waiting, let me tell you a fish story. See how that worked?

In one of my past lives as a fish biologist, I managed a variety of projects including a program to save the critically endangered sockeye salmon of Redfish Lake in Idaho, the offspring of Lonesome Larry. You have probably never heard of Larry but he was a pretty famous fish in his day. In 1992 Larry was the only sockeye salmon to successfully make the journey of over 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean to Redfish Lake, a lake named for the symbolically passionate color of its water when it historically filled with some 30,000 red fish like Larry every year. Sockeye turn bright red when they are ready to spawn and develop a hooked jaw that makes them look quite fierce to other males and oh-so-desirable to the females they entice, red representing either anger or amour in the eye of the beholder.

Larry's ancestors made this journey for thousands of years, but Larry had the additional challenge of navigating past eight dams starting at sea level on the Oregon and Washington border, turning up the Snake River in Washington and on into Idaho, climbing up to the almost 7,000 foot elevation of that deliciously cool Sawtooth Mountain lake. The intended reward for his perseverance on this perilous feat of endurance was, however, conspicuously absent when Larry arrived that year, exhausted yet exhilarated.

Larry's excitement at reaching his manifest destination must have quickly turned to disappointment as there was no attractive female wagging her tail provocatively at him with whom he could co-mingle his genetic material on the gravelly bottom of that pristine lake. Larry found himself all alone in the lake. Well, not quite alone, but not with the lovely lady he had hoped to dance with. In her stead, there were some not-so-sexy scientists waiting for him in the cold, clear water, excited in their own way to see Larry. They captured him and milked his sperm, then froze and stored it in their laboratory.

Larry’s sperm lived on to become the basis for a captive breeding program for his progeny, the most endangered salmon stock in the Pacific Northwest. Each year it is carefully dispensed to artificially fertilize the eggs of the future females who manage to show up, eliminating that nasty little variable--timing. His offspring are reared in captivity instead of in the lake where they are ultimately still released with the prayer that they will successfully negotiate the dams and return some day.

As for Larry? Well, they stuffed the poor guy, mounted him, and hung him on their office wall. Not a very auspicious ending for a legend. Although I am sure he draws an admiring glance every now and again from members of a species he never intended to attract. Larry has been preserved for perpetuity. His offspring may not be so lucky. Our days of telling tales of the ones that got away might include his whole species some day. Now that would be lonesome.

K3