Proud Parents Push Daughter's Book

As I was perusing books at Powell's bookstore in Portland Sunday, a couple asked me if I had read Landfall by Ellen Urbani.  No, I hadn't.  It's very good I recall them saying.  Then they revealed it had been written by their daughter.  I asked if they were in it.  No, but they were in a previous one.  And this one is dedicated to them.  So I asked them if I could take a picture of them holding the book.  Here it is.

But, in answer to my question, they showed me the dedication:

"Along with virtually every other good thing in my life, this book is a gift from and for my mother, whom I adore.

And with her, my father, who each day gives everything he has for his family."

And clearly, Mom adores Ellen back.

The book takes place post Katrina.  As I looked for info about the book I found several sites saying it comes out August 29 this year, but it was already at Powell's - maybe because Portland is her home town.  Her first book, it turns out, was about her experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala 1991-1992,  I didn't mention to her parents that I was in Portland for my Peace Corps group's reunion.

 Other Books

Powell's is an enormous bookstore with room after room of books.  Here are a few books I looked at near the entrance.   The first three reflect my always burning curiosity about what makes people tick.

The Man In The Monster is a book about a journalist who befriends a serial killer on death row as she seeks to understand the man and his actions.  This gets directly to the basic theme of this blog - how do you know what you know?  Why is a man's life summed up by something he spent, perhaps three or four weeks on in total, rather than everything else he did?  Is it accurate to forever label him a murderer when, as the parts of this I scanned suggest, it was hard for the author to imagine the man she grew to know as the man who had killed?

Mark Ruthman, Chicago in a First Read review of the book writes:

"This is a very well-written and soul-searching peek at an unexpected relationship that develops between a brutal killer and a pacifist journalist. While this seems wildly improbable, the journalist has an amazing sense of compassion and the killer is well-educated and legitimately or convincingly remorseful and highly functioning and medicated by the time she meets him, so that she only catches glimpses of the "monster" that on a handful of occasions took control of him and caused him to stalk and sometimes rape and kill women and girls. As time develops and she sticks with him through his retrials and appeals and sentencing, all the while fervently trying to keep him from being executed, her compassion wins out and she has to be reminded by him of his horrific actions. She pieces together the story of his childhood and early relationships where parents, family, and others skewed his notions of how to treat other people in relationships and general. His family history suggests both nature and nurture went awry and contributed to his desires to commit horrible crimes. .  ."

There are a number of reviews of the book at the link.

Another book that tries to bridge communication among people by getting them to share their stories with each other.  This was particularly poignant on a weekend when we were meeting up with friends we'd share Peace Corps training and teaching in Thailand with and learned more of each others' stories since the last time we'd seen each other - in some cases 45 years ago. 






What's Your Story? was put together by Brandon Domon who sat in a public space and gave people a blank page to write their stories.  The rules are spelled out in the book, which, like the stories in it, is all handwritten.

Click to enlarge

 Straight To Hell is a disturbing book, by a young banker who describes his high flying days and ways.  If you don't already question the enormous salaries in banking, then this book should at least raise a few.  Like whether the market is the best way to determine salaries. The chapters I looked at were about his life in Hong Kong.

Again, a sharp contrast to the life I led for a year in Hong Kong teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

This book reminds me of pale version of John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman.   But it seems to focus more on the sensational than the structural forces that allow this to happen.  But both are exposés of corporate greed behind the facade of respectability. 







And finally, this last one combines two stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

I was hoping you could read the staff recommendation at the bottom, but it's too small.  It basically says these two first books of Murakami have long been out of print in English, but now they are back, that they are coming of age stories for the characters, but also for Murakami.

I found this note on his beautiful website:

In 1978 Murakami was in the bleachers of Jingu Stadium watching a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that he hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized that he could write a novel. He went home and began writing that night.

A bookstore is a little like an airport - each gate offering you a different destination.  Except a bookstore offers an overwhelming number of options.  I bought two books.  Americanah,  a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian-American.  The other is The Larouse Book of Bread, by Éric Kayser.  It's time to take my bread making to another level.  Can I bake 50 different kinds of bread in the next year?  That would be nearly one a week.  Maybe I should aim for 25.  After all, I may want to repeat some of the best ones. 

Peace Corps Reunion Portland

This is just a quick filler post.  My Peace Corps group is together for the second time since our official tour of duty ended in 1969 (though some of us stayed a third year and others lingered in the Peace Corps or in Thailand other capacities).  I did manage a break yesterday morning - the hotel has bikes for guests to use - and road along the river and some old routes from when we lived here in Portland in 2003. 


It took me a bit to figure out what Greenland was, but I stopped to snap a picture of Alaska's future.  I think Oregon's ahead on this because they've had more organized medical marijuana sales.

I really haven't had my camera out that much.  I've been enjoying reuniting with old friends, some whom I haven't seen in close to 50 years as well as meeting their equally interesting partners. 


And we're living out the reality of how unreliable memory is.  Some of us remember things that no one else does.  Others remember some parts of our training and others don't recall them at all. 






We talked in the bar, at breakfast, on the shuttle, at the Japanese garden.







Here's a sloppy group picture from our dinner Saturday night.  Some folks are totally recognizable after all these years and others not at all. 

There's a few more than half of the original group who went to Thailand to teach English together in 1967. 

And this morning a bike event is happening outside our hotel window.  I haven't had time to process all this.  Maybe there will be more later. 

Gonna Be Hard Going Home - The Beach, Then Spanish Lessons [UPDATE: Fire and Film]

LA weather isn't helping me prepare to go back to Anchorage.  The picture is from yesterday afternoon at Venice Beach.  The temperature was back in the low 80s again.  The air was clear.  And on Monday, the beach wasn't too crowded.  The surf was much lower than it was Saturday when I biked with B. 

It was a good chance for J and me to relax a bit and catch up after her quick trip to Seattle to see our daughter and Z and the others.

On the way home we stopped at La Fiesta Brava to pick up some Mexican food for

Spanish Teacher and Chef

dinner.  The chef wouldn't let me speak English.  And forced me to dredge up my 50 year old junior high school Spanish.  I could tell him that "Mi Español es muy malo" and I could understand most of what he said, but the one saving grace of Thai and Chinese is that you don't conjugate the verbs.  I couldn't remember how to do past tense or future at all.  Another employee there said that the customers who come every day have learned to speak enough Spanish to do all their ordering and chit chat in Spanish.  I believe it.  As bad as I was, I still am surprised at what still lives in my brain.

As I juggled the bags of take out on the bike ride home, more words began to emerge - things I could have said.

Here's the card - for good food with free Spanish lessons.  



I'm hoping we can find a little more time at the beach this afternoon, though  so far I'm inside prepping for class on Friday in Anchorage - my first for credit UAA class since I retired.  I'm looking forward to it.  It's the capstone class, so it only meets six or seven times over the semester, but there is lots of consultation with the students.  In the past I've always known the students, but not this time.  There will be other faculty helping.  We also have some errands to run before we leave tomorrow.  But it's too nice a day not to hit the beach once more, even if just for an hour. 


UPDATE Tuesday 5:30pm (PT)  - After doing our errands, we biked back to the beach about 4pm today in time to see smoke billowing up somewhere north of the Santa Monica pier.  Two planes were bombing it with water then turning around and going out to sea to get more water.  We never saw them getting the sea water - they disappeared at a certain point - but from maybe two miles away we could see the water being dumped.

The fire was to the right of the photo from yesterday.  The plane disappeared from our sight against the mountains where they start to go down to the lest.

Right near us on the beach was a film crew.  A guy was standing in trunks with a gal in front of him.  She'd put out her arms and move like she was falling.  I couldn't figure it out as they did it a couple of times.  But then the last time someone threw a bucket of water on the woman as she was 'falling.'  That's when I saw they were standing on a surf board on the sand.  I'm assuming they were getting them and the sand in the background.

I forgot my camera at home so my fire shot - below - is from Santa Monica Patch which seems to have gotten it from KCAL - 9.  The report says it was just a brush fire, but if they hadn't been bombing it every three or four minutes, it would have been more.  From our vantage point much further away, there was lots of brown smoke that was blowing out to the ocean.  The temps were in the 80s today and the humidity down below 10 percent - with red flag fire warning for all around the LA area. 


Tomorrow we visit an old friend in Portland for a few hours before continuing on back home.

AIFF 2012: Mormon Missionaries Fall In Love, or . . .

"East High student returns to Anchorage as an actor in Anchorage International Film Festival film, or . . ."

"Sometimes Skype really sucks."

These were all potential titles for this post.  

I got an email from Harold Phillips saying he was in "The Falls" which would be showing at the Anchorage International Film Festival  

Tuesday Dec. 4 at the Bear Tooth at 8pm

and he and one of the two main characters would be coming to the festival if I was interested in talking to them.

Local Boy Returns Triumphant is a great story line.  So we arranged to do a Skype interview.

Bad Skype connection

This was one of the worst skype connections I can remember.   Here's a screenshot.  This wasn't even the worst part.  The audio kept going in and out.  We tried recalling several times with only marginal improvements. 





They even moved to another room, which was a little better, but the audio and video were not synched making conversation difficult. 


Harold Phillips, one of the actors (not one of the two missionaries), moved to Anchorage when his father was transferred to Ft. Rich.  He's a 1989 East High grad and when his father was transferred away, he liked Anchorage enough that he decided to stay on his own,  spending two years in the UAA Theater Department  before going off to finish his degree in Bellingham, Washington.  He eventually ended up in Portland, following a woman, whom he eventually married.

While he does some part time work, he sees himself as an actor and gets most of his income through acting.  He hasn’t been to Anchorage in five years and is looking foward to the trip and to seeing friends and spending some time over at the Theater Arts building at UAA the day after the Tuesday night screening. 



Jon Garcia graduated from film school at Portland State University in 2009.  He was already working on this film at the time.  When I asked him what parts of film making he liked the most and least, he quickly responded, “I like the writing.”  He actually started out as a singer/songwriter and got involved in a movie, and one thing led to another.  He really couldn’t think of any part he didn’t like.  The film was made on a tiny budget - $7,000 I think for the filming and then some more for post production work which took him two years. 


This is a movie about two Mormon missionaries on a mission in Eastern Oregon who fall in love, with each other.  Jon’s not Mormon.  And the Mormon setting just sort of happened as he was working on the script.  It wasn't what he started out to do.  He spent about six months intensively researching the Mormon church, including talks with some gay ex-Mormons whose stories provided some of the scenes in the movie.

 The video  improved a bit in another room, but not the audio

He’s hoping Anchorage Mormons come to the showing.  He and Harold emphasized that it was not offensive.  Mormons who have seen the film have told them that, and that it rings true.  Though in a YouTube interview he says that people have pointed out some things that wouldn’t have happened - like someone working without a partner.  That, he said, had more to do with lack of funds for another actor.

Of course, anyone can be offended by something that seems innocuous to others.   I understood that most of the Mormons who’ve attended showings of the film were lapsed Mormons including some who discovered their sexuality in their missions like the two main characters.  That group, apparently, have given Jon lots of positive feedback.  I’m sure for many devout Mormons, having this subject matter in a movie, no matter how well intentioned, will be offensive.

On the other hand, I also understand that lots of Mormons have gone to see the Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon" and The Salt Lake Tribune's headline on its review was

'Book of Mormon' musical called surprisingly sweet

They acknoweldged that

"Many believers — especially older viewers or those easily offended — would see it as a blasphemous assault on scriptures . . .

"[b]ut the satire and tone were not as hostile as many Mormons feared . . .

 "I was expecting to be offended," said Anne Christensen, a 22-year-old LDS New Yorker, "but was pleasantly surprised by how incredibly sweet it was."

"Her mother, Janet Christensen, added: "It's not G-rated, but they treated us with affection. And they did their homework."

After watching the trailer for "The Falls", seeing a 20 minute YouTube interview with director Jon Garcia, and talking to him and Harold tonight via Skype, I suspect they've gone for the sweet too, but without the South Park sarcasm and profanity. (The Broadway musical was done by the folks who bring you South Park.)

So Anchorage Mormons should feel ok about attending "The Falls" here Tuesday, Dec. 6.[4]  [That's only a week from Tuesday.] Since it's part of the film festival's Gayla program, the gay community is likely to be there too.  It would be cool to have a discussion of the film afterward with the two different groups represented in the audience.  It's not an easy topic for many, but one that Anchorage folk across different political persuasions need to discuss. 

And East High grads - one of your alumni is in the film and will be there.  So you might want to cheer him.  Not sure the UAA theater students will have much time as they get ready to finals that week, but think of it as a good study break. 

Harold is definitely planning to be here.  Unfortunately the actor who was originally planning to come can't do it.  So now Jon is trying to get here as well, so there should be discussion with the film maker(s) after the showing.

People who know Mormons might want to let them know about the film. 

Here's the trailer.



The Falls trailer 2 from Jon Garcia on Vimeo.

Note, this film was invited to be the feature for the Gayla program and is not in competition.  

Between the Woods and the Water and Much More in the Catacombs of Powell's

The Catacombs of Powell's are filled with books.  New and used.  Chamber after chamber, up the stairs, down and around.  Red room, blue room, purple room. They take up a whole city block in Northwest Portland.  Powell's is functional.   Concrete floor, basic bookshelves of books and books and books.


As I wandered from room to room I thought of this as the last bastion of books as Kindles and iPads and Nooks become gain a foothold.  It's to Powell's people will come when all the other bookstores have long since closed.  Surfing for books online isn't the same as losing oneself in this cavernous bookstore.  Pulling books off the shelf, reading a few pages or more.  Here are some I paged through Sunday.

Randomly seeing titles or covers that call out to you.  What's that about?  And being able to pull it off the shelf, flip through the pages, put it back and do the same with the one next to it.  

 Books, that last for decades, centuries even versus data magically digitized. 

The one you can't read is The Fall of the House of Forbes

The back cover said, "Between the Woods and the Water" begins where its predecessor, A Time of Gifts,  leaves off - in 1934, with the nineteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor standing on a bridge crossing the Danube between Hungary and Slovakia.  A trip downriver to Budapest follows, along with passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania.   .  .
Patrick Leigh Fermor is a writer of inexhaustible charm, learning, and verbal resource who possesses a breathtaking ability to sketch a landscape, limn a portrait, and bring the past to life.  Between the Woods and the Water, part of an extraordinary work in progress that has already been acclaimed as a classic of English literature, is a triumph of his art.  For this tale of youthful adventure is at the same time an exploration of the dream and reality of Europe, a book of wanderings that wends its way in and out of history and natural history, art and literature, with the tireless curiosity - and winning fecklessness - of its young protagonist, even as it opens haunting vistas into time and space."

Maybe Powell's will be able to figure out how to keep it live and online at the same time.

"The beacon fires were burning for three months" - Calligraphy at the Japanese Garden, Portland

I asked a woman who turned out to be Judy the extent to which a person should be able to recognize the characters in the calligraphy.  As you can see, the Chinese characters are on the description of the calligraphy.   I tried finding some of the easier characters in the calligraphy, but it was really hard. 

 Judy said that was part of the art of calligraphy.  The art should express the mood what is written.*

But in this one I can actually find some.  If you look at the second row, left column of the Chinese characters in the description, you can see  ⽕  (fire) and ㆔ (three) and ⽉ (moon or month). They are in the middle column of the calligraphy.  Find the ㆔.  The ⽉ is below it.  The ⽕ is up two from it. 

 And you should be able to 'find them' in the English translation.

I can see a violet flower in the image of this character.  (I hope it's the right one.)

Clouds - Christine Schulbach

As I understood it, the calligraphers were guided by Fujii Sensei who led a workshop.  The website of the calligraphy organization - meitokai - has a brief bio:

"Master Calligrapher Yoshiyasu Fujii (b. 1963, Fukuoka, Japan) began calligraphy studies at the age of five, in his childhood home of Saga, Japan. He attended Daito Bunka University and studied under Master Calligrapher Shumpo Akashi, with whom he would continue to study until Akashi’s death in 1995. While studying with Akashi, Fujii studied sumie painting and pursued his interest in the history, not only of Japanese calligraphy, but of Chinese classical calligraphy in addition to all of the traditional calligraphy writing styles. Fujii is the recipient of many honors, including top award at Mainichi Calligraphy Competition, Japan’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious calligraphy competition, in 1990 and 1992. He has served as assistant judge at the Mainichi Calligraphy Competition and is the only calligraphy instructor in the U.S. licensed by the Japanese Ministry of Education."

He talked to us a bit about the exhibit and the calligraphy on the floor which he had done the other day in a demonstration.  He's put some pictures of this exhibit on his website too.

The card with this calligraphy offers a haiku:

"Leaving Japan.  Just as the Persimmons finally ripen.
(A Haiku by Judy's Mother)"

Judy told us that her mother wrote haiku for over 50 years and they have all been published.  Judy is, I believe she said, an artist rather than a calligrapher.  So her calligraphy reflects that artist's eye.





We got there not too long before closing - and watched them take photos before taking down the exhibit.







It seems I got a picture (not sharp enough to post though) of one card, but I seem to have forgotten to get the scroll with it.  It's one of Fujii Sensei's work:

A person can claim to drink the first cup of liquor.  But by the third cup, it's the liquor that swallows the person.  I can't recall who said this to me, but I wrote it on my waist band as a warning.

I thought it a profoundly simple and universal truth.



*A website called Beyond Calligraphy has this on the deeper meaning of calligraphy:

The Art of Far Eastern (mainly Chinese and Japanese) calligraphy is a universe on its own, sewed with passion, soaked in love, painted in stunning beauty, sparked by raw emotions, and secluded under a translucent veil of ancient mystery. We find it as fascinating as the miracle of life itself. Our intention at beyondcalligraphy.com is to reveal and share secrets of this vast world by bringing it straight to your home. 

The art of writing Chinese characters is often misunderstood for many reasons. One is that not many people realise that in calligraphy, kanji (漢字, i.e. Chinese characters) are to be felt long before they are being read. Another is that the word “calligraphy” in western understanding means nothing more than a craft of writing in a beautiful manner, whereas here in the East we refer to it as “way of writing” (Japanese: 書道, shodou) or “laws of writing” (Chinese: 書法, shufa), which is to be understood as a “chosen life path”, a sacred knowledge, far beyond the definition of “art”.

I'm not sure how much Japanese calligraphy I've seen.  Mostly I've seen Chinese work.  For those unfamiliar with Japanese writing, they use a combination of Chinese characters - Kanji - and two phonetic alphabets.  One is for native Japanese words and the other for words borrowed from other languages and scientific terms.  You can learn much more at linguanaut.

Portland's Japanese Garden 1

Drops of water everywhere.  Then inside to warm exhibit hall.  Calligraphy post coming soon.  Portland's Japanese Garden.

Good to Run, Even if Wet

We're staying in NW Portland, not far from our apartment when I spent six months here on sabbatical.  We're not in the section I ran most often. Today I got to go run.  It's all familiar, but the details of which roads dead end into paths into the park are fuzzy. 

It turned out to be uphill most of the time (coming back was much faster) and I knew there was a trail somewhere through the wooded park.  This on the left is that trail, but going the wrong direction.  I just couldn't find the trail connection on the other side of the road. 

 So I turned around and went back pretty much the same way I came, varying the streets a little.  I haven't run for about three weeks, but shoveling snow has kept me reasonably fit, but it just doesn't compare. 

On the right is a runner/biker by-pass for a tunnel.  

I think we're headed for the Japanese Garden later.  It was one of our favorite nearby destinations.  I used to run by or through it regularly.  It's beautiful rain or shine. 

Portland Wedding - Kennedy School, All Saints Parish, Two Brothers, and Pearson Air Museum

We're in Portland for a wedding.  Wednesday I got a call asking if I would serve as the best man.  I've known M for over 30 years and we're the kind of friends who may not talk often, but when we're together it's like we haven't been apart.  We went to his first wedding in Anchorage many years ago.  When I had sabbatical in Portland for 6 months in 2003-2004, we spent time with M and his wife who was seriously ill with cancer and needed dialysis. 

We've had several other trips to the Portland area in the last five years and stayed at M's place.  One time he banged on our door about 10am and said, Hey, Alaskans, get up and see what's on TV.  It was McCain announcing Palin as his VP choice. 

Jordan Room at the Kennedy School

So, when his original best man was unable to come at the last minute, I said yes.  M said that the other guy had even written a speech.  So I said to be sure to send it to me.  (It served me well.  Thanks Reb.)  And M told us we should be at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner Friday.  Unfortunately, we weren't due in until 4:40 and the rehearsal was scheduled at 4 with the dinner at 6 at the Kennedy School.  I just assumed the Kennedy School was a Catholic School that was big enough to have rooms where for events like this dinner.

Kennedy School Hallway

We got to Portland half-hour late.  We checked in bags - something we almost never do, but we got so much mileage last year that we qualify for free bags and we'll be in LA a while and we had gifts to pack.  Fortunately as I headed for the rental car J said, don't we have luggage to pick up?  Well, the Kennedy School isn't far from the airport and we arrived at this jammed parking lot about 6:20pm.  There was a parking attendant who said we could park in one section if we were staying at the hotel.  Hotel?  At a high school?  We found a parking place and walked in.  There was a bar near the entrance.  What kind of school is this?  We wandered the halls til we found the front desk and where we were supposed to be.  The Jordan room.  We passed some restaurants and other parties.  We got to the Jordan room.  There were only a few people there.  The rehearsal had run late. 

It turns out the Kennedy School is an old Portland Elementary School that had closed down and was bought and converted into an entertainment place, but as you can see, the blackboards are still up in the rooms.  With chalk. 


From the Kennedy school website:

Since its 1915 opening, this historic elementary school has been a beloved fixture of its Northeast Portland neighborhood. McMenamins renovated the once-abandoned scholastic gem and turned it into Portland's most unique hotel. Here you'll find 35 comfy guestrooms fashioned from former classrooms (complete with original chalkboards and cloakrooms, private baths and telephones), a restaurant, multiple small bars, a movie theater, soaking pool, gift shop and a brewery (just wait until the principal hears about this!). Extensive original artwork and historical photographs cover the walls, ceilings, doorways and hallways.

Fascinating example of recycling.  I enjoyed having my brain teased like that.





Today we went to All Saints Parish for the wedding mass at 1:30.   I wasn't the only one whose flights didn't get them to the rehearsal dinner and I'd had detailed instructions on what was going to happen and what I was supposed to do and it went off well.  If I messed up, no one said anything to me about it.  I didn't lose the rings.  (The seven year old had one tied onto a pillow, but the priest said that children were less predictable than adults.)

And after the wedding was over, the sun even came out and brightened the stained glass windows. 

The wedding had been at 1:30 and we hadn't had lunch so on the way home as we passed Two Brothers Grill - a Croatian restaurant - we decided this looked like a good place to eat.  It was.  And this being Portland, they even had a vegetarian section on the menu.  J ordered some Turkish coffee along with her meal.  






I had the vegetarian stuffed cabbage with corn meal. 



And we had time to stop at the hotel and get ready for the party at the Pearson Air Museum in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River.  About ten minutes from our hotel in NW Portland. 


The museum is in what we were told is the oldest still standing hangars in the US.  I couldn't find that on the Fort Vancouver website, but there was this (and more):

"Vancouver's Pearson Field is one of the nation's oldest operating airfields. Aviation first came to Vancouver in 1905, when Lincoln Beachey flew from Portland in a lighter than air craft and landed on the polo field at the Vancouver Army Barracks. Continuous fixed wing aviation made its debut in 1911, and the facility, dedicated as Pearson Field in 1925, played host to a number of aviation milestones over the years. It remains to this day a busy general aviation airport. The Pearson Air Museum and its Murdock Aviation Center are part of Fort Vancouver National Site."

The reception was a lot of fun and the kids had plenty of space to run around and to make and fly paper airplanes.  I met a lot of interesting people including a former Peace Corps volunteer (one of only a few groups in Yemen), a former special ed teacher, a former Attorney General of Oregon, and a Chinese calligrapher to name just a few.

And while I thought the cake looked like it was cardboard, it was a delicious combo of white and chocolate.  


A long and eventful 24 hours.  And the start of what I expect will be an interesting and happy marriage.