Just when you think you’re all caught up with the latest tech innovations, someone develops something newer, better, faster, cheaper. Well, probably not cheaper.

Somehow technology has a way of always leaving me behind. I’d upgraded to the latest operating system on my computer, downloaded all the latest apps onto my notebook, and bought a newer (if not THE newest) smart phone. Then a friend showed me a word processing system that boasts an incredible array of features. 

As a writer, this whole idea of “word processing” already has me on edge. At what point did we stop writing and start merely processing words? And when did words alone begin to fail us? It’s not as if we don’t have enough of them. The Oxford English Dictionary requires some twenty volumes to list the 171,476 words in current use plus 9,500 subentries of “derivative” words. Derivative? As in LOL?  Apparently that’s not enough. Now, as we process words, we insert little cartoon pictures—smiley faces, frowning faces, sad faces, hearts, light bulbs, what ever.

That’s what’s so cool about this word processing system I just bought. It’s quintessentially modern, what purists strive for—lean, mean, and green. No goo-gaws. No clutter. No features to distract me—no text messages and emails showing up in the corner of my computer screen while I’m trying to write, like the one a friend just sent me with a photo of her new nose job. That led to several hilarious texts back and forth. Now, where was I?  Oh, yeah. Impulse buy. When it comes to new technology, usually I wait, let the price come down, let the bugs get worked out. This baby? I had to have it the minute I saw it.

The first question everyone asks about new gadgets is battery life. How long will it operate before requiring a recharge? Hah! This little beauty will continue working well into eternity because: There. Is. No. Battery. It is solely powered by ambient energy. All I have to do is press my fingers onto its keys and it’s powered up, ready to go.

There’s more: no separate printer required. Everything you  need comes in the box. No set of confusing directions printed in tiny type in twenty-seven different languages explaining how to synchronize your word processor with your printer. It’s factory synchronized. The instant you write—excuse me—process a word, it appears on paper, ready to read. What’s more, your words never mysteriously disappear. It doesn’t matter if a lightning strike short circuits your surge protector, or if you forget to save. This puppy never locks up, never mysteriously restarts, and always provides you with a hard-copy backup.

Don’t worry about the learning curve. Everything is intuitive. No cursed cursor. You can move up, down, back, forward—wherever you want to be on the page, it lets you go there directly.

My dream machine? The portable Olympia De Luxe, circa 1960. Old just keeps getting better.

News Item No. 1: Americans will collectively spend $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets this year. That’s more than twice what was spent on pet costumes in 2010. The increase is attributed to people sending photos of costumed dogs and cats on social media.

No, Daphne. No, Tawny. I will not be spending one thin dime on canine costumes for either of you. Yes, I know Daphne was, in her youth, selected to be the Christmas portrait poster pooch for a Tacoma pet store. It was the beseeching look in her eyes underneath her fake reindeer antlers that won it for her. And I promised myself never again to pretend that my dogs are anything other than dogs—which is more than enough for them to be.

But what the heck. Yeah, I’ll post their photos on social media. Without costumes. They’re just going to have to look furry, not funny.

News Item No. 2: Americans now consider the official age for being “old” is 74, which just happens to be my age. Nine years ago, Americans thought “old” began at age 68. You might call that creeping ageism. We’ve gained six years in a little less than a decade. No wonder I haven’t been feeling old, until, maybe now.

A few years ago I bought Roger Rosenblatt’s small book, “Rules for Aging.” In his introduction he explains the book is a guide “intended for people who wish to age successfully, or at all.” Then he cautions: “Growing older is as much an art as it is a science, and it requires fewer things to do than not to do.” Which may be why I haven’t got around to reading the rest of the book yet. I will when I’m six years older—a decade or so from now.

News Item No. 3: The New York Times reported that Jared Kushner paid almost no federal income taxes during at least five of the past eight years despite his net worth of nearly $324 million. All of this nonpayment by the President’s son-in-law was perfectly legal, the newspaper acknowledged. For example: in 2015 Kushner reported $1.7 million in income and investment gains but $8.3 million in losses, based on depreciating value of his buildings.

Kushner reportedly has interests in lots of real estate. So do I. With property tax payments due on Halloween, I was thinking about the various kinds of real estate I have a share in: schools, lovely parks, a dandy library within walking distance, paved streets. I don’t blame people for paying no more taxes than the law requires. I qualify for the senior citizen discount on my property taxes, and you’d better believe I take it. Mr. Kushner can have his depreciating buildings. Schools, parks and libraries that my fellow citizens and I invest in have a value that only increases.

(Note: All of the above items were reported in the news magazine “The Week” Oct. 26, 2018. No fake news here.)

 

“I’m not rooted to this place.”

It’s the first line of a poem I wrote a while back. I rarely face up to the challenge of writing poetry, but every year the Okanogan Land Trust nudges me to give it a try. The Trust, through the efforts of Walter Henze and Grant Jones, invites residents to share poetry and songs about the Okanogan at an annual potluck.

In a kind of mission statement, the men explain: the poems “celebrate the

nature of the American Okanogan, giving a voice to its scenic landscapes seen through the eyes of poets that inhabit or regularly explore the hidden valleys of this sequestered region.” A few poets from the Canadian Okanagan (note spelling) have filtered into the collection from time to time.

This year, Okanogan poets are getting special attention. A half-dozen who read at the potluck last January will be featured next week during the “poetry moment” on Spokane Public Radio’s KPBX FM station at nine a.m. (right after the weather). Doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can listen. Over the air, KPBX is at 91.9 in the south Okanogan Valley, 88.5 in the mid-valley, 90.9 in the north valley, and 91.1 in the Methow Valley. You can also stream it at spokanepublicradio.org. If the time’s not convenient or you miss any of the days, wait about a week and you’ll be able to hear the poems on the station’s podcast page.

Thanks to our local broadcasters—Becki, Chris, and Joe at Okanogan Country Radio—for recording the poets at their studio. And, of course, thanks to the poets: Carey Hunter on Monday; Grant Jones, Tuesday; myself, Wednesday; Victoria Jones, Thursday, and Walter Henze, Friday. The readings began this morning (Oct. 12) with Bob Goodwin, Omak, reading “The Land Does Not Care.” If you missed it, do wait for the podcast. It’s worth the wait.

This spirit of community throughout the Okanogan is what helps me grow my roots a little deeper every year.

ROOTS

I’m not rooted to this place.

Born amidst Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes,

My soul demands water.

Uprooted, I found my bliss at last on a coastal island.

Then I met a man who smelled of inland sagebrush and pine.

I could never live there, I told him.

The Okanogan is like an island, he told me.

Distant, detached, land of the disaffected.

He planted my thirsty soul by the river,

Where I found not bliss but blessings.

Years later, I planted his ashes in the earth

That nurtures sagebrush and pine.

I wandered, seeking a place to plant myself.

Still rootless, I returned to live among people

Whose roots are millennia deep.

Roots deep enough to withstand theft of their land.

Deep enough to reconcile my rootlessness.

Some day my ashes will mingle with his

In earth that nurtures sagebrush and pine,

Where my roots will grow eternally deep.

The Okanogan Valley, where I live, is an over-achiever at this time of year, producing an embarrassment of riches. My kitchen teems with pears and apples, squash and onions, peppers and potatoes, corn and chard, even a purple kohlrabi. More food than I can eat, freeze, or dry. As for canning? I can’t. Still, I revel in the guilty pleasure of abundant harvest.

When I first moved here nearly forty years ago, I was a frustrated locavore before the word was even invented. The Okanogan was about as close as you could come to a monoculture. Orchardists raised just two varieties of one crop: Golden and Red Delicious apples. Yeah, there was the occasional stand of cherries, peaches or pears. But the Red Delicious, perched on its distinctive, four-pronged pedestal, was Queen. (Until it wasn’t.)

I was living in a rural, agricultural community but had to buy food that came from everywhere else. Farmer and venerated writer Wendell Berry speaks for me: “I like to eat vegetables and fruits that I know have lived happily and healthily in good soil, not the products of the huge, bechemicaled factory-fields.” If you’re Wendell Berry, you get to make up words like bechemicaled.

Eventually, like a welcome rain on a dusty landscape, the farmers’ market phenomenon reached the Okanogan. Most of the farmers were backyard gardeners, selling their overabundance. Gradually full-time farmers emerged, offering a variety of crops and even CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) packages.

Then came farm stands. My car is hard-wired to pull in.

“This is probably the last time I’ll stop before you close up for winter,” I told Gene as I emerged from her stand last week carrying two bulging sacks of produce, including her sweet corn, famous countywide.

“I don’t want to hear that,” she answered. “You gotta come back for your pumpkin.”

I’ll have to add it to the two already decorating my front step. The day after stopping at Gene’s, I’d joined a gathering of women at a friend’s house. Before we even made it to the front door, one opened her tailgate, enticing the rest of us like a shady character luring children with candy. She offered pumpkins, plums, melons, squash and tomatoes. I demurred at the tomatoes, then watched longingly as another woman carried them away. I had more than enough tomatoes already but oh, gosh, it’s the last of the season and we won’t get fresh, local tomatoes again until next year—only those bechemicaled, plastic-like imitations in the grocery stores.

I accepted a pumpkin. She handed me a second. Aggressively. She’d had so much fun planting pumpkin seeds with her toddler granddaughter last spring, she got carried away. One hundred fifty pumpkins and counting. Most, she says, will go to the food bank.

I grow only one cherry tomato plant (because I love the scent) and a variety of herbs. The rest of my garden is flowers. For eating, I know I can count on the largesse of Mother Nature and her local gardening kin.

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to bring out some kind of perverse competitiveness in the best of us. Thus I smiled (weakly) when my town, Omak, was riding high with some of the world’s largest cities in this week’s Washington smoke blog. People were complaining that air pollution across the state—the result of mega fires throughout the Northwest—was “worse than Beijing.” That’s comparing apples with oranges, responded the Department of Ecology’s Ranil Dhammapala.

If you look at a global map of this week’s air pollution, Washington state “probably has the ignoble distinction of being one of the most polluted places” in the world, Dhammapala admits. Yet we in the Northwest suffer smoke pollution only a few weeks out of the year, while cities such as Beijing and New Delhi have unsafe air year-round, especially in winter months. To demonstrate, he posted a color-coded chart detailing air pollution in Beijing, New Delhi, and three Washington population centers: Seattle, Spokane, and Omak.

Omak!? How the heck did this usually ignored, dusty little eastern Washington town (population 4,833) get onto a chart with the likes of Seattle and Spokane, not to mention Beijing and New Delhi—two of the world’s most populated cities?

Here enters perverse competitiveness. New Delhi’s gray stripe and Beijing’s mint green swath show a consistent high level of bad air throughout the year. Well beneath those swaths are three squiggly lines—black for Seattle, blue for Spokane, and a kind of pale cerise for Omak. The lines demonstrate how lovely and clean our air usually is from January until—oops!—August, when the black, blue and cerise go screaming upward like a Cape Canaveral rocket. Seattle makes it a third of the way up, Spokane two-thirds, but only Omak reaches the very top of the chart, right up there with New Delhi.

Well, not quite.

“Delhi records concentrations higher than Omak’s spike, for three months of the year,” wrote Dhammapala. “Omak’s air is unlikely to remain ‘hazardous’ for several months.” 

The past three weeks felt like several months. Nonetheless, we stubbornly ignore health warnings to stay inside, to avoid strenuous activity outside. My neighbors painted their house, I walk the dogs and weed the garden every day while watching people kayaking down the river. Last night I attended an outdoor fund-raising event. I probably would’ve skipped it, but I’d already paid for my ticket, and I wanted to see how many other idiots would attend. There were many of us, including several doctors. Even as we chatted and sipped wine, the air quality monitor was rising from “unhealthy” (red) to “very unhealthy” (maroon). Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow …

Landing in the same league with Beijing and New Delhi probably won’t cheer the Omak Chamber of Commerce. Imagine our slogan: “Why fly halfway around the world when you can simply drive to Omak and breathe the air?”

For long minutes stretching into eternity, I stared at the grocery store shelf, paralyzed by indecision, conflicted in a war of values. Finally I grabbed a bottle of apple cider vinegar and fled to the next aisle, where my dilemma would only deepen.

Each of us makes dozens of consumer choices daily. Arguably, the smallest choice can represent a large difference. Note the current kerfuffle over plastic straws. My struggle as a consumer is rooted in the thrift that I learned as a child from my late mother. A daughter of the Great Depression, Mother held two ironclad shopping principles: (1) Buy only what’s on sale; (2) If you can’t buy it on sale, buy the cheapest. Every week, Mother pored over the grocery ads in the newspaper. Armed with her list of sale items, she and a friend toured a half-dozen or so grocery stores. Grocers offer loss leaders in hopes that shoppers will also fill their baskets with non-sale items. Didn’t work in Mom’s case. With military discipline, she stuck to her on-sale list. 

I, too, do a pretty good job of sticking to my list—except at Farmers’ Market, where I go kinda crazy. Farmers’ Market represents my own No. 1 rule as a consumer: shop local. I’m a daughter of Earth Day followed by climate change, so rule No. 2 is shop organic, paying special attention to the environment. My crisis of conscience over apple cider vinegar was exacerbated because I’d already abandoned value No. 1. I was at Safeway, a chain operated by a bigger chain, Albertson’s. Usually I shop at the locally-owned Gene’s IGA, but every once in a while I need something not available at Gene’s, like the brand of coffee without which I cannot start my day. See how slippery the slope when we abandon our values?

My mother’s thriftiness reverberated in my soul as I considered my vinegar choices. The price spread was not insignificant: the sixteen-ounce Safeway organic: $2.69; Bragg organic, $4.99. Bragg, of course, boasts that homey, family label that’s been around for a century. A twinge of sentiment there. Further confusing the issue, for just ten cents more than the Safeway organic, I could buy Safeway’s non-organic thirty-two-ounce bottle. That’s nine cents an ounce versus seventeen.

It would take me years to use up a quart of apple cider vinegar. I grabbed the Safeway organic and rounded the corner to pick up a can of tuna, thus jumping from the frying pan into the ocean. Tuna labels tout their brands as saviors of the very species they’re canning. The “Sustainable Seas” brand promises its fish are “100 percent pole and troll caught.” Other labels boast that contents are “Certified Sustainable Seafood” by the Marine Stewardship Council,  “dolphin safe,” and one—“Wild Selections”— had the WWF panda logo. Pandas promoting tuna?! Prices ranged from $1.79 to $4.49—all for the same size can.

I gave up. No tuna sandwich was worth this agony of indecision. Just as well. Later, while checking out the various claims, I ran across advice from the Environmental Defense Fund. Considering the amount of mercury in tuna, says the EDF, buy the can labeled “salmon.”

I could have taken a luxury cruise with deluxe stateroom instead of spending the same amount of  money to tote concrete blocks, watch dirt fly, and avoid snakes in my backyard.

As I inexorably roll through my 70s, I’m recognizing a certain waning of agility. Maintaining my backyard—a gentle slope leading to the river—required crawling through a forest of entrenched junipers. Each year, I’m less inclined and/or able to do so. Reuben, a sympathetic landscaper, designed an alternative for an aging gardener: terraced plantings minus the junipers.

The transformation would require heavy digging and lifting, so I hired a contractor. A Viking Cruise brochure arrived in the mail the same day he handed me his bid. As I flipped through the glossy color pages, I noted the similarity in cost. Oh, well, I thought. I’m at sea most of the time anyway.

It was to be a five-day project, but even Eden was six days in the making. This job required seven.

Day One: Demolition. The flooding river had receded just in time, leaving behind a considerable layer of mud in my lower yard and a lingering stench. The four-man crew dug in and revved up chain saws. As a life-long tree hugger, I couldn’t believe how happy I was to see the venerable junipers disappear.

Day Two: Sculpting. Reuben adapted his paper plan to fit the naked ground, drawing a shovel to line out terrace walls like a sculptor pulling form from clay.

Day Three: Blocks. Stacks of retaining blocks magically appeared on my patio in early morning. The stack slowly diminished as Leon, working solo that day, erected walls. By afternoon, as the walls stretched further from the block piles, I watched Leon walk up the steps, retrieve two blocks, descend the steps, place the blocks. Over and over. I picked up one of the blocks, decided I could heft and deliver them one at a time. That would keep him building instead of walking.

“Don’t tell your boss,” I advised. “He’ll want to charge me extra.”

Day Four: Rocks. The morning began with delivery of rocks the size of July Fourth watermelons. I did not even consider picking one up. Toting the rocks one by one down a full flight of stairs, the men meticulously created my lower terrace wall.

Day Five: Shifting sands. At least we didn’t need fill dirt. The river had left more than an adequate amount of sand to fill behind the terrace walls. Did I mentioned the snakes? Dislodged from their hidy-holes, the harmless garter snakes slithered about, futilely seeking a little peace and quiet.

Day Six (after a weekend off): Planting! Shrubs and grasses were carried in their pots to the lower level, where Reuben stood, eyeballing his empty canvas of dirt, placing the pots so the rest of the team could dig in. Irrigation lines were functioning by day’s end.

Day Seven: Perennials. We began in Reuben’s garden, a glorious oasis of color amidst the Okanogan’s sage and sand. He generously donated perennials from his abundance.

Seven days—plus a few years. Reuben’s dictum for new plants is, “Year one they sleep; year two they creep; year three they leap.” I’m calling it my 20/20 garden. By year 2020, it will be a vision. If I’d gone on a cruise, I’d have beautiful memories. My garden promises a lovely future.

 

Normally the Okanogan River is the Rodney Dangerfield (“I don’t get no respect”) of Northwest streams. This spring has not been normal—no surprise in this era of new normals. Usually lackadaisical as it flows past my home, the river has pushed hard against its banks with a force that’s been hypnotic to watch.

For much of its 115 miles, the Okanogan has an identity crisis. It begins as a series of lakes and can’t even get its name spelled consistently. Its source, in Canada where they love their “Ays,” is spelled Okanagan Lake. It doesn’t begin to take shape as a river until it crosses the border, replaces an a with an o, and is joined by its primary tributary: the Similkameen. The beautiful, tumbling Similkameen is longer by seven miles and fed by snowpacks in Canada’s mountains. This year’s snowpack was 200 percent above normal.

In the early 1900s, the Okanogan was a life line for the small frontier towns that situated themselves next to it. At high water, stern wheelers would transport goods, passengers, and the first fruits of a brand new apple industry. Then the railroad came, followed by highways, and our towns have pretty much turned their backs on the river. Except for people who fish, occasional rafters and tubers on hot summer days, and farmers who have water rights to irrigate, the river is ignored.

Then we get a spring like this one. Throughout May, everywhere you went—grocery store, post office, gas station—everyone was talking about the river. I attended the county emergency services meeting, where we heard that in seven days we’d have the third highest crest in recorded history. Two days later it did crest, the third highest crest on record but nearly two feet lower than originally forecast. When you’ve got water creeping ever closer to your home, a mere two feet can give you space to breathe.

I wasn’t worried about my home. Neither it nor the house next door where I lived for thirty years has ever flooded. Not in 1972, the worst flood on record, nor in 1948, the second worst.

A number of homes and businesses were impacted—usually not from the river spilling over its banks or topping levees, but from the surrounding water table seeping upward. The home of my friend Rochelle Riling—an educator, artist, farmer and wise woman—was threatened. She described the feeling: “We were standing on a river that was rising up through the earth right under our feet, and you could feel it, especially when you tried to sleep on it, and it was intense. But that’s what life does, yes?  Rise up under our feet and force us to rise up with it and figure out how to handle wherever it takes us.”

Her home escaped and the river has receded to normal run-off levels, leaving behind a mess of mud and sand. As Rochelle advises, we’re figuring out how to handle it.

There was a whole lot of toe-tapping going on in heaven Friday night. I could feel the vibrations while I enjoyed a jazz concert at the bandstand in Civic League Park. This little park in the center of town holds the legacies of several generations.

The bandstand is the legacy of the most recently passed generation—folks who had a dream of concerts in the park. A few decades ago they donated money and labor to build an impressive, professionally-designed, concrete structure. Their dream was destined to come true, even after they’ve left us: Dick and Don, Bill and John, Wayne and Ella, Marge and Dave, and others. Their spirits were fully in attendance as music filled the park.

At the south end of the park is the previous generation’s legacy, a thoroughly modern library and cultural center for our small town. Libraries are so much more than just books these days. There are internet services, arts and crafts lessons, read-aloud sessions for tots, book clubs, summer programs for kids, lectures and dramatic presentations.

The legacy of an even earlier generation sits quietly between the bandstand and library: a somber memorial stone for those who gave their lives in World War II.

All around the park is the legacy of pioneer women who settled in a scrappy frontier town little more than a century ago. They envisioned a place of shade in a harshly sun-baked desert. Now we sit under giant trees that grew from seedlings they planted. It was an impossible dream yet they persisted. They pumped water into buckets, then hefted the buckets from their homes to the nascent park. I was told this story by an elderly woman, the daughter of pioneers, when I first moved to town.

I was told another story of an even older generational legacy. About a quarter-mile from Civic League Park, on the other side of the river, East Side Park is a larger and more active expanse with swimming pool, ball fields, rodeo grounds, small museum and RV park. I’ve been told it was originally an Indian allotment, incredibly donated to the community for use as a park.

For many years I held the belief that our parks and public structures should be named for people who contributed to the community, who gave time, talent, and property for the benefit of all. Certainly, I thought, East Side Park should be named for the Native American who gave the land, not for its location relative to the river. But in my town—in pretty much any small town—so many people have given so generously, we’d have to affix a name to every light post and fire hydrant to honor them all.

The sound of high school vocalists improvising scat with convincing skill brought me back to the present from my mental meandering. What, I wondered, will be the legacy of this new generation? They’re already laying the groundwork by keeping the dreams of past generations alive.

One benefit of aging is selective memory loss. Nearly thirty years ago I vowed I would never again play in the pit orchestra for a live stage musical show. I clearly remember that vow. My memory of why I made it is vague at best. Consequently, I’m back in the pit, playing for this year’s musical produced by the Okanogan Valley Orchestra and Chorus (OVOC).

The show is “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a breezy comedy with a jazzy score and sensational costumes, poking fun at 1920s show biz. The show that led to my long-ago, semi-forgotten vow was “The Music Man.” It was the first musical to be presented in our brand new, then state-of-the-art theater. We’d previously put on community musicals in other spaces but never had an actual pit for musicians. I was thrilled to descend the concrete stairs and settle into the snug space beneath the stage. Then it dawned on me. One of my favorite musicals of all time was unfolding overhead, and I would never get to see it. Ever since, I’ve relished my seat in the audience while sympathizing with musicians in the pit.

Musicians aren’t the only one who don’t see the show. The backstage crew is limited to occasional peeks at the action. They’re all volunteers who love theater so much, they’re willing to miss out.

Last fall, OVOC’s concert coordinator asked if I’d consider being rehearsal pianist for this year’s show. She added in a quiet voice—quieter than a stage whisper—“and maybe the pit orchestra, too.”  I agreed to play for rehearsals even though the music was beyond my technical ability. The rehearsal pianist plays all the orchestra parts, but since it’s only rehearsals, you don’t have to worry about clinkers. You just have to keep the beat.

Community theater is as much, if not more, about community than about theater. A bond develops among volunteers who find energy after their day jobs to devote evenings and weekends to rehearsing, bringing a script to life. In this case, hilariously alive. After months of watching the actors develop their characters and master complex choreography, I was too invested to back away. I wanted to go down to the pit.

That’s where I was opening night with a dozen or so fellow musicians who would play the notes I couldn’t find. House lights dimmed, audience settled in, curtains parted, a funny line delivered, a shy titter from the audience, more lines, heartier laughter, and  we were rolling. By  midway through Act One an ambitious tap dance that’d required extra rehearsals had the audience screaming and shouting—a bonus when that’s all the pay volunteer actors get.

I was reminded. It’s the audience that strikes the match that lights the fire of live theater. Even down in the pit, I didn’t need to see the show to feel the flame.

(If you’re in the neighborhood, you have three more opportunities to light that fire: May 11, 12, and 13.)