My Headache Is Better

She doesn’t wear goggles because she’s too cute. What with the helmet and all and riding the motorcycle zooming along as she jumps it and takes her hand off of the throttle to reach for a balloon. She grabs the balloon and come to a smooth stop right in front of a young woman and her baby. She holds the balloon out for the baby to grasp the string and make all right with the word. I saw all of this on a Taiwanese video on Netflix. Oh garsh! It was so perfect. I left my wife to type this while she, my wife, works on her language skills. She , my wife, is a bit confused by one, or maybe a few, videos conversing together in different languages. Mandarin and Korean speakers going sack and forth as af: they were speaking the same language but they are not. She, mostly, understands the Mandarin completely.

The Korean is a work in progress.

Like all fiction pieces, we ask each other “why do you question anything about this stuff?” I know that I do not question anything I see because I suspend my disbelief completely.

We are watching “Ridley Road” a story about Jewish people infiltrating a Neo-Nazi group in 1962. It-is part of what PBS has produced and is airing. My only real question is will it meet a good enough reception to have season two produced. It is presented as being based on real life events. I hope, like I did for the first season of “Cowboy Bebop” which Netflix has cut off no season two no completing of the animated version, that they do complete. I hope.

The muse does not come to visit if you are not typing and sometimes she stays away even as you type, or do other things. It is the 18th! 1 am one month away from a family reunion. I am the oldest of all of the cousins being the first child of the first family. There is a healthy herd of cousins, they spread from one that is 6 years younger to a woman who will turn 16 this year.

I need to practice typing on whatever I decide to take to Montana.

-— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-05-15

Our Racist History

Andrew Jackson, were you aware that there is no recorded reason for why he appears on a twenty dollar bill? It might be due to the 100th anniversary of his election as president but golly, we have had lots of 100 year anniversaries. Ron A brought this subject up. Wondering hwy, why Jackson? Because we are collectively a bunch of rasists. racisesest whatever. We are them or unable to work out way out of it.

But he also talked about Susan B Anthony. Someone we can look up to. He suggests that she would do fine on a $20, but that honor, if we get around to it, goes to Harriet Trubman. Well deserved.

Do you remember the one dollar coin minted for Susan B Anthony? It was first minted in 1979. That is a time I will not, not ever, forget. One of the tallest buildings in, home at that time, Boise, Idaho. They, it, had a bar on the top floor. Great views of Boise. It was Summer time. The owner announced that he would run a special. Any drink for one one dollar Susan B Anthony. We had to go! My boss, Kim Day, head salesman Kelly Suigo (sp??) met there. Kim and I had picked up a roll of dollar coins. We unrolled the coins and spent them on … well, it has been a few years since then. Other friends Showed up. We toasted Susan B. According to Kim, one of the things I ordered was Cointreau. They did say anything they served for $1 if it was a Susan B Anthony coin. In a time of 25 cent beers this was still a great time.

I am going to go off and recall, at least what I can, those days.

Though first, yesterday sparked some discussion about abortion. Leo’s comment piece is a fine read. You should. I have a hard time addressing the issue. I do not have the agency to speak out on the issue. But I do not wish to remain quiet either. I can and will go stand quietly in support. I cannot condone with silence. So I will not.

—— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-05-17

Wandering

Walked to the post office today. There is a bit of a hill right when I start out. It is tough for me. Thomas, while I do not enjoy reading about people’s health issues I am interested in them. And shit oh dear, you had quite the scare. Please do not be hesitant to talk and type about your continuing issues.

Keep on Truckin’ Mike, your wheat beer sounds interesting. I suggest that you give it another tyr try when you have your first hot spell. Here in the pacific northwest we just have not had the right weather for wheat beers – yet. Yes, an erasure would be nice. But then you all would not hear about ummm what? You all would not read about my mistyping, would that be more fun?

Along with an erasure, it would be good to write down whatever it was I was thinking about writing today. Or any day. Getting used to, accustomed to this typewriter would be nice also. It certainly is nice to have a pair of typewriters that both feel so comfortable. So very comfortable.

Boy, that love note to him from her was so very special so very special. You are a lucky guy.

“Make it or Take it” that has a nice rhyming to it but it lacks ##% in the meaning. Do you make something or take it from someplace. Bread – do you make it or buy some stuff? Stuff to read? You all are makers there, with your One Typed Pages. This page is #276. At least according to the counter of the place where I copy these daily, well not quite for me, Sometimes there is some good stuff there. Other times there is this wandering around like today. like today. Now to go cogitate and come up with “Make it or …” with a better tail end of the saying. I will let you know when I come up with it.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-05-16

Digressions

You’re maybe thinking “what is up here?” And you would be right. Not much is here. Like yesterday when I went to the Final Fred Fest. Fred Fest has changed quite a bit over the years. Fred Fest was set up to honor Fred Eckhardt, a famed Beer Writer. Portland was very lucky to have Fred as a resident. He died in 2015 and we all still honor him. Where honor means to get together and drink beers. I joined in yesterday.
But I digress…

You can look up Fred Eckhardt on Wikipedia. I checked with a pair of friends to find out when Fred Fest started. That was on Fred’s 80th birthday year. So that puts it at 2006 The event has been hosted by Hair of the Dog, a famous, well to beer people, brewery. That place is closing down this year when its founder Alan Sprints retires this year.
But, I digress again…

He also hosted “Chocolate and Beers” in the late 90s. It was an event that my wife, heck even my in-laws went to. It was a delicious night. Or evening of “name that beer” where Fred would have a beer delivered to all attendees and we had to figure out what beer it was. We were given three questions that we guessed to narrow the scope. “is it an Oregon beer?” or “is it European?” I do not recall the number of guesses we had. Maybe, but one time i& was Old Crusteanean (sp) a barleywine with a very distinctive hop profile that IDed the beer right off. Old Crustacean (sp right).
But I digress again….

Fred would ramble a bit when talking to an audience. Which we loved. He would often digress.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-15

I should, perhaps, digress some more.

Letter and A4

It does not seem like too much of a difference. Unless, you want to hang your head in shame or disgust over the local continued … wait I looked it up. It is not just something confined to USA, like our lack of metric sizing for bolts and nuts and all those things. Letter, the size, is the standard in 10 countries, mostly the Americas. A4 is the stand is the west of the world. I am familiar w with this issue because … well I do not remember why I got interested enough in the matter to have both sizes in stock . IF you want to have an “Office” sized paper the Letter or A4 are both nice sizes. If you want something nicely sized for notes. Then you want A5 and whatever they call the notecard size in the letter sized range. But here is the nice part of A4 and A5 sizes – an A5 is one half the size of an A4. So I can take the A4 nicely trim it in a paper cutter (of which we have a couple) and we would have two A5 bits of paper. Which I intend to do for the letters I hope to send out someday.

Is there a point to all of that? Nah, I just started to type on my first Letter sized bit of paper and this came tumbling out of my brain and onto the paper. And I am eyeing the sight of One Typed Page things that I have done on Al) paper and I have to run them through the paper cutters in order to have them fit in the 8 1/2 x 11 , shucks run them through the 8#x11 binder I keep them in.

How did our country come to keep the standard of Europe for musical notation, well mostly?

I think I will indulge in some Ted Lasso for, to steep in, some good old American and UK differences.

—- MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-13

Friday the 13th? So far so good.

News To Challenge

Listening to “The Gist” and I had to stop that in order to write this. “The Gist” like “The Unspeakable Podcast” and at times “The Jordan Harbinger Show” are news oriented talk shows that depart from the normal pablum you get from Fox, NPR, the evening news shows. These things have meat to them. So much meat that they are no longer welcome on the normal outlets. So you need to look them up. “The Gist” is especially fascinating. It was aired by The Slate from 201) until 2021 when he and they had a falling out. Mike P¢x¢ (when, oh when, am I going to get an erasure or eraser??) Pecsa has the longest running news podcast and he has been featured on, it seems, all the places you have appeared on This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money, he has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian, GQ, and on and on. Right now he is interviewing Jeff Nussbaum — the guy who was a speechwriter for President Biden. He was deeply involved in the last six Democratic National Conventions. Ahh enough, go dig out a copy of “The Gist” and give it a listen for some news that is not filtered.

“The Unspeakable” is run by Meghan Daum and when I say run by she does everything for the podcast. What a worker. Her most recent interviewee (??) was Frances Kissling who ran an abortion clinic in 1 970 and she has been called leading philosopher for the abortion movement. She is Catholic also. Fascinating talk between the two of them.

Now these two are examples of news that is ignored by mainstream news folks. Not to say you won’t, will not, hear either of them on those outlets. But what you will not hear is a deep talk with them. Great stuff to listen to for challenging yourself.

—— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-12

Food and Uke’s

Nuts. Cashews, raw cashews, organic raw cashews, roasted organic raw cashews, There was a bowl of them at the table. They went with some sliced apples and tea, Assam tea. A friend had, was visite ahhh visiting friend who came over just to visit. Where “visit” means you talk a bit about anything for as long as you have time in the day to talk. I started with a couple of caswers, cashews nibbling them down and then more and more. Damn, were they delicious, I did not talk a whole lot. Wife and friend kept the talk, the conversation going. They did a nice job of it too.

Yakisoba noodles for dinner tonight. Were you aware that soba does not refer to the buckwheat noodle? No, the soba in yakisoba refers to Chinese noodles or wheat noodles.

It is time for me to play, well practice, some Ukulele. There is a lot of practicing to do before I will appear in public. Even a group of Ukulele players that get together to learn how to play. Lots to do.

—— MichaelRpdx :: rkmn :: 2022-05-11

Torta Cubanos, Art, and the Muse

Mothers Day (Mother’s ?? Day?) was this last weekend. It seems Reed College is having graduation now. Because of this our planned trip to the Crystal Springs Park, a haven for birds especially waterfowl, was way too crowded to visit. Instead we went to a mini cart pod a few blocks away. A mini cart pod is a place with just a couple of food trucks. In this case there were three of them. The devil of temptation took over my brain and I ordered a Cuban Torta, a Torta Cubano, and, well I think that is it for Torta Cubanos this year. Why? Because the things are so filling. Because they include breaded pork loin, pork hot dogs, sliced deli ham, fried eggs (yes, plural), queso cheese, avocados, refried beans, onions, and a tomato, and Mexican mayonnaise. Or maybe the meats are different. One source says this sandwich was invented in the 1950s on Calle Republica de Cuba in Mexico City. A cook served everything he had stuffed onto a torta. Torts are not small either. No, I did not finish this one. Maybe tomorrow, there is do much there. If you eat meat you really should try one of these Someday. Someday. Then again, I could have the second half for dinner. I would have enough food to put me to sleep and I could use a good, long, full night of sleep.

In other unsolicited advice, hop onto YouTube and watch the current VlogBrothers featuring John Green. He is in Cincinnati (sp checked there) for a filming of a book he wrote. He is staying in a BNB where he took art from home so it would be a nicer place to stay. Except for the “art” bought by the owners. One of the pieces is Wanderlust in large type with its definition. Wanderlust? In Cincinnati? I agree with John Green, it does not fit. But worse, it cost a lot, way more than they could have spent on art from students at a local college. We have art from locals, like the I am sorry about the reflections on it but this etching was available locally. I know the money went to the person who executed it. (OK, forget ¥ does talk about art and what it does for us. Worth the 4:00 limit.

All of this is what happens when You Sit Down and Type. This is a response to Keep On Truckin Mike’s response to someone about the subject of freewriting. it is what I do almost every time. If I wait for ideas or inspiration to | arrive you end up with what I had in One Typed Page over the last two days. I do like to say that the muse will come to visit and see what you are up to when you are busy typing or painting or drawing or taking a walk or cooking or doing whatever it is you do. Sitting around waiting for a visit Just won’t work. The muse doesn’t care about you then. Do something and the muse will come to visit.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-10

They Know It

It is not one of the 103 bits of advice from Kevin Kelly but it seems like something all of the One Typed Page people will do when they are sitting in front of a typewriter without, it seems, anything to write. It comes from Werner Herzog (is he someone who you have benefited from watching a movie from?) who is quoted as saying “When I don’t know how to continue writing, I just continue anyway.”

You do not need to know what you are going to type out for the, that, one page a day. You start to type and then you have something. Whether or not you know what you are going to say, type. None of us type gibberish. It may not make sense. But we all have the impulse, the habit of typing word after word to make words that make sentences. You can make art.

Art is whatever you can get away with. That is from Kevin Kelly. He also said “The biggest lie we tell ourselves is ‘I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it.” or “Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits.” There are 100 more bits of wisdom, or “103 Bits of Wisdom I Wish I Had Known” published for his 7Oth birthday.

Kevin Kelly also wrote “Better Than Free?” and “1,000 True Facts”. Find all of this at https://kk.org – damn, isn’t that easy?

I took my sister to a wine shop she introduced me to last night as a Mothers Day present. They had a wine tasting mostly Pinot Noirs, six wines to try. It was fun. We, my wife and I, reminisced about Eric Bogan and what he yd¢w knew about wines, our times at a different place that had tastings every week, not every month, once a week would be nice. The place we went to last night had tastings every week. They are recovering from two years of not having tastings thanks to Covid. We Went. The first time in um mumble gosh I do not know how long it has been. We went early because my sister had a 7:00 golf lesson. The place was Portland Wine Merchants. It was like being reborn. Afterwards we ambled up Hawthorne street or boulevard looking at the changes in who was open or gone. 3 Doors Down was among the survivors. We had not been there in years, decades?, years in any case. It is Italian. We decided we needed to go. Do you have reservations? Umm, no. That is fine, here, take this table. We stayed late and talked about how we used to do things like this all the time. Again!
Again we shall do it.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-07

Hotel Benton

CORVALLIS, OREGON

June 1, 1925 was the opening date for the Hotel Benton. It was located across the street from the county courthouse and a block from the railroad station. Civic pride made this seven story building a reality. Funded by the Kiwanis club and their work in getting people to subscribe to it and a bond floated. 954 of the work to build this hotel was done by local contractors and workers.

Popular for more than thirty years due to the sophisticated design and wonderful location. The termination of rail service in the 1940s coupled with the growth of automobile centric travel. By the 1980s the once splendid hotel was converted to being low income public housing.

Hooray for Linda in DC’s providing this stationery to get me to look up the hotel’s history on Wikipedia.

I had thought of driving down to Corvallis to view the building. Maybe take a photo of it. Maybe stop in at Luis’s Taqueria like Barak Obama once did and we did quit a bit when traveling to and from Salem. But, four hours of driving just to photograph and see a hotel? Ah, nah, this can wait. It will do fine for me to stop in when I am on my way to Gold Beach this summer to visit my Mom.

And the attached photo is truly a good print. Nothing like a 4×5 camera for perspective adjustment. That is what happened on
the photograph.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-06

Yay! again to Linda in DC for providing the stationery.

CORVALLIS’ LARGEST–FINEST HOTEL
CONVENIENTLY LOCATED