last day in London

For the first time, we have a sunny day, with temperatures flirting with 60 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a Saturday, so the streets are crowded with weekend wanderers. Over breakfast, Joyce and I discussed spending the morning packing (flight tomorrow at 10am, we leave the hotel at 6:45am, we have dinner at another very fancy restaurant, this time with the director of the play we'll see tonight, so preparing now is pretty much unavoidable). After that, we were going to ride a bus over to the parks near Buckingham Palace to spend some time people watching.

But alas! it was not to be. Joyce, despite her cane and years, is absolutely fearless and full of energy. I, on the other hand, am a wuss. The pace and variety of London mostly makes me feel overwhelmed and lost. I canceled on our park outing, crawled back into bed, and pulled the covers over my head, which had exactly zero effect on how overwhelmed and frightened I felt.

Finally, maternal guilt dragged me out. I promised Lizz, the older of my two daughters, that I would bring her back refrigerator magnets.

One of the reliable delights of this trip has been Ed, the concierge. We tell him what we want, and he guides us to the best way to do it. Today, I needed low-budget tourist traps, and Ed sent me off three or four blocks to the vicinity of Leicester Square, where I found just what I needed. Mirabile dictu, I even found my way back. Usually my sense of direction is great, and my internal navigation gets me from here to there and back again almost without a thought. Not in this neighborhood, where streets do not meet in right angles if they can avoid it.

Plus I've had no stamina whatsoever walking around, with the exhaustion inflicting itself suddenly causing a torrent of sweat along with the weariness. It's probably something I should discuss with my doctor when I get back, but meanwhile it has given me a great excuse to take black cabs everywhere. When I'm not succumbing to London overwhelm, that is.

why haven't we heard about this?

This morning's London Times leads with a story about a joint British/US task force headed to Syria. Lede: 'The largest US air and naval strike force since the 2003 Iraq war was heading towards Syria last night as Theresa May won the backing of the cabinet to join in military action. US-led strikes after the suspected chemical weapon attack in Douma which left as many as 40 people dead are expected within the next three days."

Later in the story: "The US is amassing ten warships and two submarines in the Mediterranean and Gulf region. The mobilisation will give Mr. Trump the option for a significant military campaign against Assad. The USS Donald Cook, a guided missile destroyer with up to 60 Tomahawk missiles, is already within range. Three other destroyers are also close by. In addition, the USS Harry S. Truman, a nuclear-powered carrier with 90 aircraft and five escort ships, which set sail from Norfolk, Virginia on Wednesday, could be included in any action by the end of the week. ... The fallout from the Douma attack has the most dangerous standoff between Russia and the West of modern times."

I'm a news junkie. NOT ONE OF MY US NEWS FEEDS HAS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. Why do I have to be in London to find out we may be heading into war with Russian and Iran in Syria? Is the American press focused so myopically on Trump's twitter feed that they can't see a major military operation underway? If it were one of the British tabloids, I'd figure it was just typical hype, but The Times of London?

If my head weren't so stopped up with this cold, I would be seriously freaking out right now.

Thursday

You know that feeling when your body is deciding whether or not to succumb to a cold? That's what I've got today, which is why I'd huddled in my hotel room, drinking lots of water and sleeping when I can.

Yesterday, I spent seven hours in the Young Vic, a wonderful theater, watching the two parts of "The Inheritance", a play by American playwright Matthew Gomez, about the experience of gay men in the 21st century, structured around E. M. Forster's novel "Howard's End". The first half was dazzlling -- a magnificiently coordinated chorus of excellent young actors on a nearly bare stage that was mesmerizing for three and a half hours. Joyce and I spent our supper telling each other how great it was and anticipating the second part. Then the second part was talky, a little unbelievable, and kind of clunky. You know a play is not doing well when Vanessa Redgrave (no, really!) comes onstage to play a grandmotherly figure caring for a magical house, and you wish her speeches were shorter.

So I'm tired and snurfly and trying to rest up so I can enjoy the play this evening.

One note I need to enter: we find ourselves surrounded by handsome, attentive, solicitous young men, many with French accents, who comprise the wait staff at most of the restaurants we've patronized. I suspect it is a side effect of Britain's fading connection to the European Union. Another handsome, etc., young man, a Croatian this time, pedaled Joyce and me home on his pedicab from the theater where we saw the Olivier Award winner for best play, "The Ferryman". Magnificent in some ways (I'm talking about the play now, not the handsome Croatian), a bit clunky in plot structure. A couple dozen characters, all speaking in Irish brogue that left me struggling to understand the dialogue at times. There was lots of livestock on stage, including a live rabbit, a live goose, and a live baby, all of whom turned in convincing performances. It was set during The Troubles, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants that is again hanging over the Emerald Isle as the Brexit negotiations stumble against the  question of Irish borders.

And every play we've seen so far has featured actual flames -- Monday night, we were at a theater lit entirely by candles; Tuesday night, a lampshade caught fire (deliberately -- it was in the script); and last night, a crucial document was burned to keep an intended heir from getting a property. It sure focuses the audience's attention.

A Cold, Wet Monday

Yesterday, it was very Portland here in London. It rained on and off, it was chilly and grey, and Joyce and I spent four hours riding a tour bus around London seeing buildings and neighborhoods and parks and bridges. It was astonishing, then it was interesting, then it was overwhelming. London is so much bigger than Portland, not only in space, not only in population, but also in history. References in the narration on the bus ranged from "this is where Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday"" to "this is where the Romans founded Londinium shortly after Jesus died". We got on assuming there would be a round trip of a couple hours, and when we hadn't gotten back to our starting point (Trafalgar Square, within sight of the Nelson Column and St. Martin-in-the-Fields) after almost four hours, we disembarked at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and caught a cab back to the hotel.

Black cabs are wonderful. You can get one with an iPhone app like Lyft's -- say you want a cab, the app finds you by GPS, and offers you several sizes of cab within single-digit minutes. The drivers are courteous without being servile. They navigate the maze of inner London streets with calm and The Knowledge, an intimate familiarity with how to get from point A to point B without having to consult a map or tune into a GPS. They calmly offer assistance with eveything from entering and exiting the cab (most black cabs have modestly higher thresholds than I'm used to) to convincing the credit card reader that we are indeed able to pay the fare. And, if asked, they can provide guidebook information about such things as the nose carved into the marble of a gate outside Buckingham Palace that has been rubbed smooth by horse guardsmen rubbing it in passing for good luck. (Its original purpose was to provide backup for sculptures whose original nose might by knocked off. That's what the cabbie said, and I have no reason not to believe him. Why else would there be a nose carved ten feet up the side of a marble arch?)

Last night, we saw a play presented in a low-tech theatre (candlelight only) with magnificent wood work. It was vaudeville plus exquisite puppetry based on four Hans Christian Anderson tales -- "The Little Match Girl plus Some Happier Tales". I was lukewarm at best about seeing it -- "Fairy tales? Give me a break! Where's the dark complex insights into the human condition?" -- but it was excellent. And the discussion afterward ranged all over the place -- great exchanges of insight and understanding.

Tonight it's the winner of the Best New Play Olivier Award, "The Ferryman". We'll have dinner at the Savoy Grill by Gordon Ramsey. And afterward another discussion session. Ain't life grand!

timing

My daughter points out that I saw Hamilton on the night before the show swept the Oliviers, the British equivalent of the Tonys. The show won best musical, best actor in a musical (Aaron Burr, who was competing with the guy who played Hamilton), best lighting (which recreated the Battle of Yorktown onstage), best choreography, best sound, best supporting actor in a musical (King George), and a special award for outstanding achievement in music for Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton, and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire.

In case you're thinking of seeing the show over here, the next available tickets are for a Thursday matinee in November. Plan ahead.

Hamilton -- side notes

I can't say anything meaningful about "Hamilton", which we saw last evening.  It is at least as good as you've heard, and probably better. The largely British crowd whooped and hollered in spite of being "the bad guys" in the American Revolution, and everybody sang along with King George's 'da-da-dah da da" in his first song, and everybody stood and cheered and clapped for minutes at the end.

I wish I could have gone from seeing the show to talking about the show with the Brits and Europeans, for whom it was not (a) familiar history and (b) our side winning. Maybe it's just testimony to what a marvelous work of art "Hamilton" is, such that its art overcomes its historical setting. But I'd like to hear what a Brit saw and experienced, what a European saw and experienced. I was often moved to tears by the recreation of familiar history in a mode and medium so much of the present. Damn, that show is SO GOOD!

On our way in, we had another "kindness of strangers" episode. As we walked toward the theater, we saw a line stretching for about a block from the entrance. I wasn't sure what it was for -- maybe people hoping for released tickets? I saw a gigantic man -- over six feet tall and bulky like a wrestler or mafia enforcer -- in a suit coat clearly posted to control any unruliness in the waiting crowd. I asked him what the line was for. "Tickets", he said succinctly, his eyes never leaving the people in line, as if he was expecting to have to enforce the rules at any moment. "Oh, we have tickets, so I guess we should join the line," I said. "Is she with you?" he asked, looking over at Joyce, standing with me, leaning on her cane. "Yes," I answered. "Oh, no, mother, we can't have you waiting in that line, come with me," he said, and led us to the front of the line, clearing the way before us like an ocean liner with two row boats in tow. He was so big and so intimidating and so unexpectedly kind, and I loved being called "mother" in that British usage that I only knew from BBC dramas.

People over here are much more soliticous of the aged than I'm used to. When we got into the black cab to go to the theater, I slipped and fell back onto the sidewalk. Fortunately, I landed on my backside instead of my head -- I put it all down to the fact that I was wearing a long skirt (believe ir or not) in a vain attempt to "dress up" for the theater. It was my first outing in the skirt, and I wasn't used to the odd binding effect of the loose material around my knees. (Joyce says it wasn't that, it was my inability to find grab bars inside the cab's back seat, and she asked several times if I was sure I hadn't hit my head, probably fearing a potential concussion. Me and professional football players.)

So as I lay there on the sidewalk, a guy from the hotel, the cab driver, and two random passers-by, one east Indian and one with a French accent, helped me to my feet, inquiring after my well-being.
Repeatedly. I guesss I actually am obviously a little old lady.

London: the kindness of strangers

I jumped onto the departing Heathrow Express as the doors closed. But my friend and traveling companion Joyce, walking behind me, didn't make it onto the train, and the conductor was unable to re-open the doors. I had both our tickets, and she had no phone (yet). The conductor instructed me sternly to find a seat. The train pulled out, fully loaded on a late Friday afternoon, headed for downtown London.

"Don't worry, we'll take care of your friend. She was the one with the walking stick, is that right?", the no longer stern conductor asked me in a pleasant African accent. A passenger on the train helped me find a place to sit.

The conductor made a phone call. A staff member back at the heathrow train station found Joyce, told her there was no problem, that she should just take the next train and "tell them Vernon said you can ride without a ticket."

Meanwhile, I had arrived at Paddington Station, dragging my luggage behind me and wondering how I would find Joyce again. A woman and her daughter, leaving the train when I did, told me not to worry, she was sure things would work out. The African conductor left his train to wait with me, paying to rent me a luggage cart, checking schedules to see where I should wait, telling me how to get to the taxi ranks without having to drag my luggage up a half flight of stairs, and, when he had to reboard his train, connecting me with a colleague who babysat me until Joyce emerged from the next train, having successfully invoked Vernon's name to get a free ride.

The driver of our black cab to the hotel was young, conversational, and very well informed about American politics, though he confessed to having no idea where Oregon is. We rode through dense traffic on London's narrow non-rectilinear streets discussing gun control -- his idea was that we should limit guns to what the founders knew of when they wrote the Second Amendment, breech loading muskets. He said following American politics is almost as good as watching "Dallas" for sheer entertainment value.

We are now happily ensconsed in pleasant single rooms at one of the points of Seven Dials. Now if we can only adjust to the time difference, and if I can only get unpacked!

Squirrels (2)

Someone (I suspect Merry Emlaw because the clipping refers to Oregon State) left me a news clipping about squirrels attacking tomatoes. The Master Gardener in the newspaper responds, in part, "I do know a number of people are submitting complaints about squirrel activity this year, and also that squirrels are opportunists. Those juicy [tomato] stems are one of their water sources."

Watching a squirrel build a leaf nest on the hillside is one thing, but if they start plotting against my Jaune Flamme up on Tomato Alley on the roof, they stop being cute little furry scurriers and become alien invaders. I see no signs of assaults at present -- just about everyone's plants seem to be doing fine. Not, perhaps, as fine as mine*, but not showing any rodent toothmarks about the main stems. There are no trees overhanging the roof, and, even if they coveted our tomato stems, I'm not sure a squirrel could clamber twelve floors up the side of the building to reach them. I certainly hope that is the case. Apparently only limited means of defense are available to gardeners whose tomato stems are less securely situated than ours. Squirrels can reach through chicken wire and "you can trap them," the OSU Master Gardener says, "but it is illegal to transport them elsewhere." I can fantasize about Bryan, the groundskeeper, sitting in wait on the roof with a pellet gun, but I suspect a lot of people, certainly including Bryan, would find that objectionable.

*Since I have no responsibility for the plant other than to converse with it now and again and to twist the ripe tomatoes off, and since I therefore cannot claim any personal credit for its flourishing, I feel I can brag about it without fear of giving offense. If I'm wrong about that, please let me know and accept my apologies in advance.

Squirrel

OK, so here I stand, at my window, midday, looking across at my hillside, now attractively bedecked with foliage (big-leaf maple, blackberries, English ivy, and an unnamed vine that covers about half the view), when what should I see but a squirrel. It's running horizontally from maples to vines just about across from my sixth floor window, a big leaf in its mouth, its bushy tail gesturing as squirrel tails tend to do, probably to help keep balance, but perhaps to express poetic thoughts to the universe.

Hmm, I think. Squirrel. It disappears into the vines. About a minute later, I see a squirrel, probably the same one running from vines to maples with nothing visible in its mouth. About a minute after that, I see a squirrel, by now almost certainly the same one, running maples to vines with another leaf in its mouth. This happens three or four times while I'm watching.

OK. When I think of squirrels, I think of acorns. I always assumed squirrels were acorn-eaters (and, of course, acorn buriers). But now that I think of it, they must eat something besides acorns or they would become very hungry about now, with no new acorns to harvest and all old acorns either sprouted into aspiring oaks, eaten by other acorn-eaters, or rotted in the ground.

I can think of two things the squirrel might have been doing: gathering a picnic or building a nest. Does anyone reading this blog have enough expertise to enlighten me as to what my squirrel was doing running maples-to-vines with big leaves and vines-to-maples without?

Gladys

Gladys Owen, my daughter's new mother-in-law, is 96, a small, round woman. She has arthritis severe enough to make it almost impossible for her to walk without help. Tom, the oldest of her six children, a retired bricklayer, spends most of his time helping her with the normal tasks of everyday life. There is not even a whiff of self-pity about either of them, no sense from Tom that he is burdened with his mother's care, no sense from Gladys that she resents being dependent and in pain.

They are warm, hospitable people who made me feel welcome with cups of tea and gentle curiosity about who I am and what my life here is like. They speak with musical accents that are probably a stew of Shropshire and Wales, easily understandable to me and echoing a bit of Ireland through long-ago Celtic roots. I shudder to think what my flat American accent sounded like to them.

In Gladys' front room, there are two green recliners. Gladys sat in one, and I took the other. "That one you're in was mine," she told me, "and this one where I'm sitting was Bill's (her husband of 64 years). I got sad looking at his after he died, so I moved over here so I wouldn't have to look at it."

Gladys has had both knees replaced and recently had the second of two cataract surgeries. She's got six or seven books of popular fiction piled up beside her recliner awaiting the arrival of her new glasses.

Gladys' routine: after she wakes up and has breakfast, she takes her "tablets", 11 or 12 prescription pills, which "knock her out" for most of the rest of the morning, after which she stays up sitting in the green recliner until mid-evening visiting with Tom and others of her children who drop by, watching TV or looking out her window into the back yard. Just beyond the window is a young tree that grew from a "stick" she took from a flower arrangement and stuck into the ground. Neither she nor Tom knows what the tree is, but both are delighted that it grew from a random decorative "stick" into a substantial and healthy young tree.

In her younger years, Gladys was "in service", working as a cook in the home of a local aristocrat. (Yes, just like "Downton Abbey".) Then World War II came, and she went to work in a munitions factory mixing ingredients for explosives. "We were lucky," she told me. "When the Germans flew over to bomb us, they dropped their bombs a mile or so away."

A few years back, Tom realized that Gladys was becoming more and more confused. After some investigation, he realized that the medications left in the bottles didn't match the days they were supposed to cover. "I had let her count out her own pills because I wanted to leave her as much independence as I could," he said, "but I didn't realize how bad her eyesight was getting. 'Can you see the pills?' I asked her. 'Not real well, I just guess the best I can,' she said."

The last time I saw her, after Tom had driven me around north Wales so I could see the countryside, she gave me some parting gifts: three little scented soaps about the size of small eggs and three embroidered handkerchiefs. As Tom drove me to the airport the next day, he said he had seen some tears on her cheek because of my departure.

after-travel hangover

I got home Wednesday evening, slept well last night, have no unavoidable demands on my energies today or tomorrow. But I am definitely feeling the after-effects of the trip.

My brain keeps going into loops. For a while there, it was playing big band dance tunes from the 40s sung by smarmy, anonymous crooners.

In the Seattle airport, I had to ride the inter-terminal shuttle around its loop twice because, although I knew I wanted the C terminal, I kept "aiming" for the B terminal. And I kept confusing "being home (in my home country)" with "being home (in Portland)", thinking the Seattle airport was the Portland airport and trying to orient myself to the layout at PDX.

My IQ is definitely down today around 50 points, as thoughts meander in and out of focus like butterflies. I've started a checklist of tasks to be done, but I keep forgetting which one I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment. Establishing priority ordering is completely beyond me. I tried meditating, and I suppose any effort in that direction has its benefits, but my attention swooped in and out of dream sequences, probably due to sleep deprivation.

I'm writing this in hopes of exorcizing all this disorientation.

It isn't working.

OK, let's just write off Thursday and hope for improved clarity on Friday or Saturday. There are at least three blog posts about the time in England that I've got started in my head. Such as it is.

British humor

I just saw this in this morning's Daily Mail.

George Osborne, the current Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent of Secretary of the Treasury): "We look forward to working with the next US President, whoever she may be."

Saturday morning in downtown Oswestry

So here I sit in downtown Oswestry at a three-way intersection with cars on two arms and a pedestrian mall on the third, lots of folks doing their shopping. The bench looks toward a small, aged, dry fountain of worn stone. On the steps at the base of the fountain stands a middle-aged man with a not awfully loud portable microphone singing Christian songs in a high, clear, pleasant voice. No hat at his feet for contributions. No signs to warn sinners to repent. Just the music, much of which I recognize. Passers by greet him with occasional smiles and handshakes. Now he's singing "Oh! What a Beautiful Morning!" from "Oklahoma".

I would prefer to sit here listening, but it's started sprinkling and I don't want to tempt fate.

Hotels

Last night I slept in the Stratford Inn in downtown Stratford-on-Avon in England. My son-in-law Elwyn says he thinks it was remodeled from an old hospital. "Old" means something different here, but I could see the lines of a Dickensian Victorian hospital behind the garrets along the roofline of the third story (second floor over here because they count the ground floor as zero). But it was a clean, light, airy place with smiling staff who responded "Not a problem!" or "Of course you can!" to every request. It had a big yard out front (patient exercise area maybe?) with tables and chairs under the big deciduous trees. Parking was a bit idiosyncratic, but parking in a town that was laid out long enough ago for Shakespeare to have been born there is going to be a challenge at the best of times. (Not that I was driving, of course, which is a topic for another blog entry.)

Tonight, I will be sleeping in the Wynnstay, a hotel in Oswestry, Shropshire, where El's 96-year-old mother lives. Meeting her is the main purpose of my trip, about which I'm sure there will be yet another post. The Wynnstay started out in the early 1700s as an inn for people traveling by horse and carriage. Historical material on my desk lists owners' names back to 1727. There is a building behind the main hotel that used to be the stables and has been remodeled into a spa and beauty suite for hotel guests. The Wynnstay is not as cheerful as the Stratford was. The receptionist who checked me in seemed tense, her carefully middle-upper class pronunciations feeling like she was desperate not to err. She was unable to be of much help when it turned out that my room overlooks the outdoor tables of the pub next door and will provide music and pub chatter for most of the evening. "We gave you our best single room," she kept saying, and "We're booked full for the weekend." My room is probably where the humblest of staff slept in 1750 -- tiny, airless when the windows are closed, and reachable only by a flight and a half of stairs up and then half a flight down (the Wynnstay is a "listed" building and cannot be altered to install an elevator.) My suspicion is that this really is the last room they had. 

I could move to another hotel, but I can't find one with available rooms, plus today is when I meet El's Mom and attend the dinner celebrating El and Anne's marriage. So I guess I will buy some earplugs and settle. And think about all those 18th century barmaids and stable boys with whom I'm sharing historical space.

governance by breathtaking optimism

Now that I've been elected to the Terwilliger Plaza board of directors, it strikes me what an amazing idea it is for a facility like ours to be self-governed. Do you know what kinds of things boards of directors do? They hire the person who will be in charge of the place. They issue bonds. They purchase property and plan for the future. They are responsible for investing money held in the reserve fund totaling over $25 million. MILLION! All this is deeply important and sunk to the gunwales in legal complexity. And yet we, a community of aging bodies and minds, think we can find people among us with the wisdom and knowledge to plot out the best path through mazes set up to confound the wiliest of corporate intelligences.

And dang if we haven't done it. I make no claims for myself as a brand new board member, but look at us. We've been around running like this for over half a century. We're deeply financially stable and running a 95%+ occupancy rate. We're looking ahead to expansion of both residential and assisted living facilities. And all with us amateurs running the place.

A mid-twentieth-century writer said, roughly, "Democracy is the worst of all possible governing systems, except for all the others." (E.B. White, maybe?)

Clematis

The view out my window during the winter is grim.

In certain spiritual or poetic moods, I can find beauty in the tangle of last year's blackberry vines and crumbling grey-brown basalt, but generally, I look and all I see is the tangle, a reminder of mortality and entropy.

Which makes the blooming of the clematis vine such a delight. It's been in place since I moved in two years ago, but only this year does it look like somebody's planning a wedding down on the back driveway. A climbing vine, it seems ecstatic to have the wall of crumbling grey-brown basalt and the rockfall containment fencing to clamber up. Its highest bloom-bearing tendrils are at about the fifth floor level, so I have to stretch my neck a bit to see them from my desk chair, but they are well worth the effort (which is probably good for me anyway, since I tend to get kind of hunched over as I sit peering into my laptop screen.)

I will now go downstairs with my phone and attempt to photograph the clematis in all its glory. Oops.  No I won't, it's raining. But it won't be raining in a few minutes, so I'll do it then.

And meanwhile I will brag on Terwilliger Plaza because the groundskeeper maintains a web page listing and depicting what's currently blooming. Without Brian's page, I would have no way of knowing that this plant is clematis -- apple blossom clematis, to be specific. So nice to be able to address my plant friends by name.

joining the Board

About ten days ago, I won an election to the Terwilliger Plaza Board of Directors.

Dear God, is that statement true? Yes, I think it must be, people keep stopping me in the hall to congratulate me or to tell me what they think the Board should be doing that it isn't. My actual term doesn't really start until March 24, when I will attend my first meeting as a Board member and may actually be able to take action, if only to vote "aye" on the motion to adjourn.

Meanwhile, it is amazing to suddenly be recognized by people I haven't met. (The Terwilliger resident who got me to come here seems able to remember not only the name but the personal history of every single person here. I would ask her for tips on how to do that, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those gifts granted to the few and envied by the many.) One person scolded me for being unserious about my new job because I cracked wise about it. But I think I get these few weeks before I have any actual responsibility to enjoy the giddy sense of incredulity at the content of my opening sentence.

Whee!

So there was this alpaca in the lobby ...

One of the pleasures of Terwilliger Plaza is that it is a place where unexpected things happen. I was walking back from my parking place in the north end of the Tower to my apartment in the south end of the Tower, expecting to pick up my mail en route, when I noticed an alpaca walking in front of me.

No, really, an alpaca, with thick red-brown fur and that long, camel-like neck and hooves, looking, as all alpacas do, as if he were peering down his nose at the world. Turns out he is a therapy animal and had been visiting the Terrace. The young woman leading him invited me to pet him, which I did, looking up into his eyes, brown with the rectangular pupils of a goat. He didn't feel as smooth as cloth woven from alpaca hair feels, but he was warm and woolly like a good blanket. His breathing involved a somewhat wheezy sound that could have been mistaken for a growl, but the young woman assured me he was not trying to warn me off. He had a very benign aura -- a little alien, because how often do you encounter random alpacas in the course of normal life, but none-the-less well-meaning.

I continued on to my mailbox and he and his handler continued on to the front desk, where they were probably going to check out so the records would be clear that no unknown long-necked woolly red-brown beasts were left wandering the halls. I hope whoever was the recipient of his visit found him reassuring. I know I did. And he inspired a rather smug inner grin because I live in a place where wandering alpacas are not beyond the realm of possibility.

snow

It's snowing. Apparently, it is due to snow all day. Since I am fortunate enough to live in a warm apartment, I can enjoy watching it. It's several degrees below freezing out, so not only is it snowing, it's staying snow after it hits the ground. This means my hillside is magnificently highlighted in bright white. This means I can look down on the driveway and see tracks showing how my courageous neighbors took their cars out of their outdoor parking places. This means the snowflakes trapped in the spider web outside my window stayed there until a passing whirl of wind tore it away.

Other passing whirls of wind hold back a few random flakes, as if they were tourists looking in at me on their way past. Snow makes the air visible: I can see where the main currents of wind are, where back eddies and even updrafts make curlicues against mostly-gently-to-the-left.

The Power of Roots

When they cut down the big-leaf maple trees outside my bedroom window, I thought I would be without anything but crumbling basalt to look at until next spring at the earliest. Not so! Dozens of maple leaves are festooning the hillside around where the old trees were chopped down. They lack the grandeur of the plate-sized, deep-green leaves of the prior generation, but they show no hesitancy in bursting forth and multiplying.

I am, of course, delighted to see them, but it makes me wonder about the efficacy of the clear cut. The roots are clearly still flourishing, finding minuscule weaknesses in the hillside to push new tendrils into, continuing their gradual disassembly of the rocky cliff-face. True, they lack the weight of the branches and leaves that responded to the pull of gravity before. But the roots continue to assert themselves.

Oh heck, I'm just going to enjoy the new sprouts. According to the  recent  New Yorker article, we're due for a 9.2 earthquake and tsunami any day now, at which point a few big-leaf maples more or less will be the least of my worries.