To be a Paige: place and people of kin

I am a member of a family that has coalesced around one name, Paige. No matter that many of us were born with non-Paige surnames – we all consider ourselves Paiges. (We’re like the Kennedys — except for the Irish Catholic part, the political dynasty part, the dogged-by-tragedy part… oh, and the money. If you’re a Joe Kennedy descendant you’re a Kennedy, even if your name is something like Schriver.)

Right now I’m paying my annual pilgrimage to our family home, Pine Haven, on Cape Cod. My great-grandfather Timothy Paige bought Pine Haven in 1911 as a summer home when he came into some money from his uncle who had earned a bundle during the California Gold Rush selling pickaxes to the miners. Tim and the other Paiges had been farmers in central Massachusetts (Hardwick) for generations, so the inheritance was quite a shock.

Pine Haven -Paige haven since 1911

Some of the money went for infrastructure in the village of Hardwick and some was spent on Pine Haven, the house next door to it and the house across the street. Pine Haven’s current owners are my second cousin Patty, who was born a Paige, and her husband. The house across the street also remains in the family and other cousins have bought or built homes within a block or two, so you could almost say we have a family compound – although it’s hardly grand.

Patty has taken it upon herself to organize family reunions every few years. We come from all across the country to participate and celebrate our Paigeness. We make a day trip to Hardwick to see the Paige Library, the Paige pew in the Universalist church, the modest Paige Agricultural Center, the statue of gold-rusher Calvin Paige.

Paige Library, Hardwick MA

About ten years ago Patty’s husband instituted a suitably fake-solemn ceremony when their daughter Paige married. With a ribbon, certificate and pompous pronouncement, he inducted the groom into the “I married a Paige” clan. Since then, whenever a member of the extended Paige family marries, their spouse is inducted at the reception, witnessed by growing numbers of the in-law clan, and cheered on by the “birth” Paiges.

So here’s the question: why am I a Paige, and not a Kimball, Bachrach or Keyes? Although my dad’s mom was the Paige, I carry equal shares of genetic material from my other three grandparents. I’m just a quarter-blood Paige by that reckoning.

But if my grandpa had been the Paige instead of my grandma, my Dad would have carried the name as a full Paige and I’d be a half-blood. If I was my dad’s son my name would still be Paige and I could also consider myself full-blood.

At each generation, the blood of one family line is diluted by each new family into which the children marry. Over time the dilution of a particular family’s genes could be considered only homeopathic in strength. And yet, if the family has sons at each generation who pass the family surname to their sons, the name continues at full strength, no matter how many generations have passed.

When does a bloodline begin then? Who is the most essential Paige, or Smith, Jones, Epstein, Kennedy?

Why am I a Paige? Because we say so. Because the Kimballs, Bachrachs, and Keyes never got their familyness acts together the way the Paiges did.

The regular gatherings of the clan and sub-groups of the clan reinforce our Paigeness. Patty’s collection of Paige photos going back more than 100 years and her unstinting hospitality to family members reinforce our Paigeness. The wedding ritual certainly celebrates Paigeness. And finally, we are blessed with a connection to Place. Pine Haven is the place we’ve been coming to for a hundred years, and there are more of us across the street and down the road. We can also go back to a village in central Massachusetts and see our name on various plaques on buildings, headstones in the graveyard.

We are literally grounded, and in today’s quickly changing world I find this solidity comforting.

Poet’s prescience: pleasure takes a vacation

Prescience: foreknowledge of events

The poet Billy Collins has a droll sense of humor and often mirrors the pulse of the people. He wrote “Consolation” several years ago when America was flush, gas was cheap, and the dollar was strong against the euro.

Now he seems prescient. We don’t know why he didn’t travel to Italy that year, but we know why we‘re not going to Italy. We’re poor, fuel and fares are costly, and the dollar is in the doldrums. So enjoy:

Consolation by Billy Collins (enjoy him reading it on YouTube)

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon’s
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

Plastics pandemic

From “The Graduate” 1967.  Mr. McGuire’s career advice to the young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman):

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

Oh how right Mr. McGuire was.  From various websites I’ve culled a few of the dozens of terrifying facts about our love affair with plastic.

When I was in Vietnam and Cambodia this spring I saw what happens when everybody uses plastic and plastic waste management is virtually non-existent.  This photo is from the Phillippines, but I saw the same thing in Cambodia:

Plastic Bags

Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

Plastic water bottles

Americans bought 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water in 2006.

Producing PET bottles uses more than 17 million barrels of oil and produces over 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.  For each gallon of water that goes into a PET bottle, two gallons of water are used to make the plastic bottles and purify the water . 462 million gallons of oil are needed each year to transport water bottles from the factory to the point of sale.

Plastic residues

In the North Pacific, an enormous gyre (slowly circulating spiral of water) is now known as the “Eastern Garbage Patch. The currents here tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre where it stays in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton.  This tower of trash covers an area the size of Texas. This is only one of several gigantic gyres in the world’s oceans.

Larger plastic items are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.

This poor albatross must have had a horrible stomach ache before he died.

Dutch scientists have counted around 110 pieces of litter for every square kilometre of the seabed, a staggering 600,000 tons in the North Sea alone. These plastics can smother the sea bottom and kill the marine life which is found there.

For more information see Green Sangha - Lots and lots of good stuff, including a Powerpoint presentation  you can use to spread the word.

Also see Reusable Bags

Best of Life magazine on the ocean gyres.

I’ve been using cloth bags when I shop for a long time. Now I’m washing and re-using the plastic baggies that I seem to accumulate regardless.  Your ideas welcome.

In Peshewar, Pakistan: public speaking with Toastmasters

Toastmasters is an amazing organization with clubs in 92 countries around the world. Apparently a new club is being birthed as we speak in Peshawar Pakistan.  Map here.

The name “Toastmasters” is quaint (the organization has been around for more than 80 years), but their mission is thoroughly modern: helping people learn the arts of speaking, listening and thinking – vital skills that promote self-actualization, enhance leadership potential, foster human understanding and contribute to the betterment of mankind.

In a society like Pakistan this is tremendously important work –people who can speak, listen, and think constructively will be invaluable citizens.  I am going to follow this group with great interest. I send them all best wishes.

Pedestrian

Pedestrian: a person traveling on foot; a walker, esp. on city streets. Undistinguished, ordinary, dull.

The two main definitions of “pedestrian” are at odds with each other, in my experience. Sure, the most ordinary way human beings move through space is on foot, walking. We walk from here to there all day long, not even thinking about it.

But walking is hardly dull. How better to move through a neighborhood than on foot? You see and hear and smell things you miss at a faster pace. You meet other people face to face, maybe even have a little chat.

Compared to a car, biking is more experiential too, but you move pretty fast and need to keep your eye on the road.

Portland is designed for walking. Most neighborhoods have a central area with shops that provide basic services within easy walking distance. You feel safer on the sidewalks because they’re nicely separated from the street by planter strips - often with trees.

Perhaps because Vancouver, WA (where I live) was primarily rural until quite recently, sidewalks are rare except for downtown. On some of our lovely country roads cars may be occasional, but they go fast and a pedestrian often has to dive for the ditch to stay alive.

For years developers ruled in Clark County. They didn’t want no stinkin’ sidewalks because it added expense they couldn’t easily recapture. Furthermore, cars rule in rural and suburban America - only fools and poor people walk.

Now the county planners are wising up and requiring new developments to incluede sidewalks, but the result  is still a mishmash. You’ll have 100 feet of sidewalk along the roadway, then 1/4 mile without, then another couple hundred feet with sidewalk, etc etc. Maybe ten years from now it will be continuous, but meanwhile these pathetic little strips only emphasize our lack of foresight.

On Monday The Oregonian ran a front page story on the Sunday-Parkways car-free streets event. Interestingly the photo was of a mob of assorted human powered wheeled contraptions - mostly bikes, but also strollers and tricycles. My pedestrian friend and I started early enough that we weren’t run over. But for that couple of hours, this pedestrian loved being king of the road.

Powells Books: Portland’s pride

Visitors to Portland with the teeniest smidge of intellectual curiosity must make a pilgrimage to Powells Books - a behemoth store that takes up a full city block but feels like a rabbit warren of intimate spaces instead of the vast space it really is.

Aside from being able to find almost any book on almost any subject, they also BUY books. What a great service to the community (and a profit center for them, most decidedly).

So I loaded up my car with FIVE boxes of books culled from the eight bookcases in my house and hauled them in to sell this afternoon. They took half of them and gave me $120 cash (could have had more if I’d taken store credit…). As far as I am concerned it’s a win-win situation.

Now I’ve got to go over the remainders to see which to try to sell on Half.com and which to donate to Friends of the Library for their annual sale.

Portland for pedestrians

This morning, as a culmination of the Carfree Cities Conference here, 6 miles of street in North and NE Portland were closed to autos so that people could walk or bike or skate or whatever around several neighborhoods. The organizers hope to make Sunday Parkways a regular event.

A friend of mine and I came over from Vancouver to join the fun, and fun it was. Not to mention good exercise. What I loved:

First, this is a gorgeous time of year in Portland. Everyone’s gardens were at their baroque best, with roses at their peak on every block. The Rose Garden at Peninsula Park is a true gem.

Second, it was a treat to explore neighborhoods that were new to me, mostly of modest but well-kept older homes, front porches, trees.

Third, to live in a neighborhood where public transportation and grocery shopping is within an easy walk on real sidewalks (Vancouver has a shocking dearth of sidewalks), means you really could live most of the time without a car. Bringing the MAX light rail line out Interstate has transformed North Portland.

Everyone was so happy and friendly. Serious athletes, little old ladies, dogs, kids, couples with strollers or kids in bike carts, policemen.

Oregon’s income tax rate is 9% (Washington has none), housing prices are steeper than in Vancouver for comparable properties, and their property tax is pretty high. But if I didn’t have to drive everywhere? If I could hang out on my front porch and meet my neighbors? Truly I am ready to move over there.

the Pull of Place

While I love getting away, seeing new sights, meeting new people, I am firmly anchored at home. Home is where my heart is. Home is where I center and rejuvenate myself.

Since my ex and I separated six years ago, my home has been a 3,000 square foot house on a one-third acre lot framed by trees and nestled into a gentle slope overlooking a lake. In feng shui, this fortuitous placement is called “the belly of the dragon.”

Even though I’m just a couple of miles from downtown, and pretty close to my neighbors, it’s quiet and private. Out of every window I see something lovely.

This is the most wonderful home I’ve ever had - and people who visit are immediately enchanted by it as well. Not because it’s grand - because it is anything but (built from a plan-book in 1972). But it’s cozy, colorful and quirky.

So why did a single woman of modest means buy a house this big?

Three reasons: it was cheap (needed a lot of work), the setting was fabulous, and it was the only house I could find within my budget that had a dining room big enough for my grandmother’s dining table, and a living room large enough for my mother’s Steinway baby grand (which I’m keeping for my still-peripatetic son, 24).

The fourth reason: ohmigod the yard! All the previous owners were skillful gardeners who left behind shrubs, native plants, sheets of color from spring bulbs, rock walls, five prolific blueberry bushes, a grape arbor and an asparagus bed! A chestnut tree on the southwest corner to keep the house cool in the summer, and a couple of towering black walnut trees in my neighbor’s yard that framed my view to the northwest.

I refinanced and plowed a lot of money into remodeling. And more into simplifying the yard. If the economy and housing market hadn’t plunged, the investment might have been wise. But now the moths in my purse are looking hungry.

Walking around the yard this spring, I’m seeing not just beauty but bondage. The yard work is unending. And it’s more work than a single woman of my age wants to do.

I need to make some serious changes. My options as I see it: find a new mate (someone who loves to garden or has enough money to pay a gardener); write a best-seller and become rich enough myself to afford the gardener or; down-size.

At the moment the first two options are in the realm of fiction. That leaves me with down-sizing.

It’s so easy to be blithe about down-sizing when it’s my feng shui clients’ stuff. But the shoe is now on MY foot and it hurts. Yesterday I sat in the yard and wept just thinking about letting go of this place.

It took me months to find my home - and now I’ll be fighting the growing horde of down-sizers who are also seeking a smaller, charming home within walking distance to shops and public transportation.

I hope I can maintain some shred of equanimity during this process. For sure I’ll be a better consultant after I’ve done it myself.

Perseverance #3

I went for a walk along the Salmon Creek trail this morning. In the month since I was last there Mother Nature has been hard at work. She hath made the plants to grow tall, the trees to leaf out, the creek to rise to new heights and the beavers to get very busy.

The creek conservation team had planted a slew of baby trees along the streambed to improve habitat for fish, carefully encasing each one in a plastic sleeve because the beavers were chewing them down as fast as they could plant them.

The beavers have obviously refused to take NO for an answer. The heck with saplings, they’re going after the big guys. As you can see, they’ve felled quite a few and are chomping away on a really big one (nearly 2 feet across, though it’s hard to tell in the picture) like it was nothing.

This is perseverance. Which I also wrote about here.

Provincial, parochial: the anti-Portland, anti-tax, anti-light railers

Provincial: from the provinces; having local or restricted interests or outlook

Parochial: confined or restricted as if within the borders of a parish; limited in range or scope

I live in Vancouver, Washington – a city of 170,000 just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. (No, we are not in British Columbia.).

Many people in Clark County work in Portland, and vice versa. Many of us also like the cultural and shopping opportunities in Portland.

Our two communities are linked by two interstate highways that cross the river . I-5 is the main west coast interstate thoroughfare – running from the Canadian border to the Mexican one. I-205 is a 40ish-mile by-pass a few miles east of I-5. Both highways cross the big river on bridges.

The I-5 bridge is old, narrow, and not earthquake safe. And with the rapid growth in the region, traffic on the bridge at peak hours slows to a crawl, and the crawl times get longer every year. It is also a draw bridge: because of its low profile any tall boat traveling up or down river means the bridge is raised and traffic stops completely for about ten minutes.

For all these reasons a bi-state task force has been studying solutions to this problem for years. They call themselves the Columbia River Crossing. At this point they’re about to release their recommendation and are taking public testimony.

Last night there was a hearing in Vancouver and all the anti-Portland, anti-tax, anti-light railers were out in force. They fear that our taxes will sky-rocket, that all the Portland riff-raff will ride the rails to Vancouver in order to rape our girls and steal our cars, and they think that light rail is a socialist plot. “We don’t need no stinkin’ Portland…”

The challenge is getting the pro-light railers out. So tonight I went to the second hearing to testify – this one in Portland. Not surprisingly most of the speakers were in favor of the project and of light rail.

I love my town, but sometimes I just want to shake my neighbors. With gas prices going through the roof, oil only getting scarcer, air getting more foul, and federal money available for this project now it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Having lived in the Bay Area before and after BART was built, I know how fabulous light rail is. But these folks haven’t left the provinces to experience it for themselves.

Sigh.