Pandemic postcard #37: 'We are still here'

Eight miles west of Highway 101, I had a decision to make: Continue straight to La Push on Washington 110 or turn right to Mora. I had a reservation at the Mora Campground near Rialto Beach, but check-in was many hours off, so I thought I'd spend the morning at Second Beach near La Push. As I neared the intersection, I saw the choice had been made for me: The temporary road sign flashed "QUILEUTE RESERVATION CLOSED."

Good for them, I thought.

As the pandemic took hold last spring, tribal governments up and down Washington's coast closed their lands to visitors. When summer came and the spread of the virus slowed, many adjacent areas in Olympic National Park opened to stir-crazy Americans seeking outdoor relief from isolation. I saw license plates from all over at Rialto Beach and cars parked a half-mile down Mora Road. But just across the Quileute River, its eponymous tribal nation remained off-limits to outsiders, as did the Makah reservation at the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States and the Quinault Indian Nation in southwestern Washington.

I applaud tribal nations for doing whatever they can to keep the coronavirus at bay, especially given the long history of indigenous people dying from diseases brought by outsiders and the high COVID-19 toll some Indian nations are facing in 2020. The closures are a reminder that the 574 tribal nations in the United States are sovereign and have the right to self-determination as well as the right to receive benefits from the federal government.

At least most of them do. Here in Seattle, we live on the unceded land of the Duwamish people. Our city was named for Duwamish Chief Si'ahl, who famously said, "The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know: all things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected." 

The Duwamish are a federally recognized tribe under the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, but they are not currently on the list of federally acknowledged tribes. According to the Duwamish website, in 1978, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs basically amended the treaty by adding seven new rules with which the Duwamish must comply to receive land, benefits, and services. The case has been under review by the Interior Department's Board of Indian Appeals for more than five years. 

Meanwhile, despite being in the heart of one of the wealthiest areas in the United States, many Duwamish people cannot access health services, nor can the tribe profit from tourism and gaming, as so many others do. (Seattle is surrounded by high-end resorts run by the Snoqualmie, Puyallup, Suquamish, and other neighboring tribes.) Even if the Duwamish prevail, I'm not sure how likely I'd be to hit a future casino. But along with more than 10,500 other people--half of whom have signed up in 2020--I've decided it's time to pay a small, symbolic amount of rent to the Duwamish people in recognition of the centuries they've spent caring for the land where I live today.

In last Sunday's online service, my minister Rev. Beth Chronister advocated for Real Rent Duwamish, and she also acknowledged that our physical building is on Duwamish land. I am part of a faith tradition that is grappling like never before with our nation's history of settler colonialism and enslavement. But Rev. Beth cautioned us against absolving ourselves with what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace." We can pay token rent and say a land acknowledgment and call it good, or we can go deeper, into real relationship and covenant with each other. 

I can think of two ways beyond church that I will try to do this. Early in my freelance writing career, I authored two guidebooks that explored the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark Trail. I know I tried my best--given my body of knowledge in the 1990s--to offer a nuanced view of how the United States expanded westward, yet I am sure I fell fall short. As I get future opportunities to write about history, I will do better.

Second, I recommit to living as lightly as I can. I retain a small footprint by American standards, dwelling in 400 square feet, yet like Henry David Thoreau, I need to leave my cabin now and then. I usually go on foot, but I have a car, and I occasionally use it to visit nature that's not within walking distance. A paradox, I know. So when I go into the woods and walk beside the waters, I want to be as mindful as I can of what I find there. "We rarely care for that we cannot name," says British writer Robert Macfarlane, who has worked with artist Jackie Morris and musicians to re-animate lost words from the natural world, just as many Americans seek to authentically connect with indigenous wisdom.  

This is not wisdom from the past. Its practitioners are here now, seeking the right to harvest salmon and protect their water from oil spills. As best I can as a 21st century urban creature of comfort, I want to know plants by their names and birds by their songs. I want to invoke spirits and spells and "sing the things I see," perhaps gaining a tiny fraction of the knowledge possessed by the people who have lived here for millennia and who still live here today. I honor their wisdom and would be grateful for a small measure of it, if I am worthy. Spirit of life, let me be worthy of these gifts, and let us share them widely.

_____

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the new version of the blog here.

Pandemic postcard #23: The suburbs

This week's post comes from my 2017 book Surely Joy, for which it served as the final, then-unpublished essay. I've never posted it online, but--over the past two weeks, listening to the disparate visions of America presented by the two political conventions--I started thinking about my experience growing up in suburbia, which I captured in this essay. I live in the city again, but my recent time in a Seattle suburb showed me how much things have changed since my childhood.

I'll be taking a break from posting until after Labor Day. Please be well and enjoy the fleeting days of this weird summer. -- Julie

My parents were two city kids who’d hailed from Chicago, a Cubs fan and a White Sox partisan who somehow got together. Like most white folks of their generation, they moved to the suburbs after Dad came back from the big war. Unlike many, they never became afraid to venture back into the city: for ball games, traveling Broadway shows, and even to see Billie Holiday sing in a little club on the South Side.    

Dad’s company transferred my parents to Pittsburgh when I was four, and while I grew up in a suburban subdivision so lily-white it was actually named Plantation Place, I knew people of color. My favorite memories are of Zola, the woman who ran the inner-city preschool where my fair-skinned mother volunteered once a week, where Mom was known as “the brownie lady” for the pan of treats she brought along every Tuesday morning. One time, Mom and Dad invited Zola and her husband to dinner.  We all ate on the side porch of our home, and the four adults laughed there late into the night. The next day, I learned from a neighborhood friend she would not be allowed to play at our house anymore. 

I loved the woods and meadows and creeks of southwestern Pennsylvania, the same landscapes that inspired Rachel Carson. But I was drawn to the city, and as soon as I got old enough to travel on my own, I’d take the trolley to downtown and a bus to Oakland, where the colleges and museums and rock clubs were. I’d wander for hours on foot, up Forbes and Centre, imagining what it would be like to have an apartment in a neighborhood full of people who didn’t necessarily look or think like me. 

It took decades, but I finally had that experience when I lived in Oakland – the California city, not the Pittsburgh district – just before it became nearly as unaffordable as San Francisco. I hit the apartment jackpot in Oakland, with a quiet place near Lake Merritt where I rarely saw or heard my neighbors. Yet my daily life was rich in diversity, from my commute aboard the packed buses and BART trains to the shops and bodegas along Grand Avenue. 

From there, involved in a long-distance romance, I followed my heart to Washington state. I didn’t want to live with my sweetheart, both because I like my own space and because he lives in the suburbs, so I chose a gritty section of north Seattle where recently arrived refugees live amid university students who can’t afford anything near campus. Sirens wailed and homeless people howled into the night beneath my first apartment. After two years, I found a quieter place to live a few blocks away.

But as soon as I moved to Seattle, I began spending many nights at my sweetheart’s home. Without a car, this involved a short bus ride, then a mile walk … alongside a creek, up winding roads, with blackberries ripe for picking in late summer and tall trees everywhere. Although it was mere miles from my address in the city, it felt like a world apart. 

Circumstances evolved and I ultimately moved in with Tom. By then, I’d noticed something else about his town: Although white people are the majority, this is a place of many languages, colors, and faiths. Families of all kinds are here, some fleeing oppression abroad, others rejecting Seattle’s rocketing rents. Our town is home to shopkeepers and hair stylists and ride-hail drivers from all over the world, living among folks – not all of them Caucasian – who’ve been here for generations.

All across America, the lines between the big city and the suburbs are blurring. Mosques and churches and synagogues and Zen centers are on the same stretch of road. Kids who are learning English sit in every classroom. My neighborhood has a block party every year, and everyone comes: lots of new young couples, many of them mixed-race, their impossibly beautiful little kids chalking up the street. The tattooed-and-pierced community college prof running for city council. The middle-age-guys’ garage band. The sailing ship captain who serves as the MC. His wife, a traveling volunteer nurse, who wrangles the kids’ activities. 

The Asian-American woman leading a drive to save a local patch of undeveloped forest. The Latino guy from a few blocks over who recently moved to town and just happened by. The white lawyer-singer-songwriter and her black bass-playing husband, who’ve had Tom and me over for dinner. 

This sort of scene makes some people anxious, eager to return to a mythical, monocultural America that never really existed. But many, probably most of us, like it this way. Across our differences, we want to strive for that more perfect union because we know life is better when everyone feels welcome and everyone belongs. I miss the thrum of the city sometimes, but if I can live in a suburb – a village, really – where neighbors can eat and laugh and sing together well into the night and look out for each other by day, that is a place where I want to be.

Pandemic postcard #18: Beacons in the dark

Have you been able to see Comet NEOWISE? It is visible in the Northern Hemisphere for a while longer, rising in the evening sky and coming closest to Earth on July 23. I haven't seen it yet; I was up before dawn trying to catch a glimpse last weekend, when it was close to the horizon, but city lights and hills precluded a view. (A rising Venus was amazing, though!)

I'll never forget seeing Comet Hale-Bopp in the spring of 1997 on a drive home from Salt Lake City to Twin Falls, Idaho. Motoring north through dark high desert skies on Interstate 15, then Interstate 84, I had the comet in my view for several hours, nearly the whole way home. That evening ranks with the 2017 total solar eclipse as one of the great natural phenomena I've experienced. How fitting is it that Comet NEOWISE seemingly came out of nowhere in late March, becoming visible to NASA scientists during the first pandemic surge? We need all the bright lights we can find in these dark times, and I hope to see this new comet sometime next week.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I've been "at camp" this week. It's all been online, of course, but it has been wonderful to reconnect with my Eliot friends, even over Zoom. We've been hearing timeless tales of many cultures from talented storyteller Will Hornyak. We've had a talent show, games, (including a fun offline scavenger hunt), TED Talks, worship services, small-group discussions, and much more. I will be sad to see it end. I may even sign up for the August camp, which I've never attended--but I continue to have lots of time on my hands. (More on that below.)

Camp meant a lot of screen time, but I've managed to spend this entire week away from social media, and I took in only a bit of news each day. I'll be sad to see that end, too, but as Will related in one of his programs, a vision quest can't go on forever. Ultimately, people need to return to their daily lives. Of course, this is something we're all wrestling with now. As people go back to their routines of in-person socializing, many people are getting sick and sickening others. It's an unsteady dance we're doing, and it seems we'll be doing it for another year or so, until a widespread vaccine is available. I know this is especially hard on families, as well as on people experiencing homelessness and people with little social contact of any kind.

Will told a story this week about two villages. (You can watch an earlier performance of it below.)  A natural disaster had brought the villages to the brink of war, but with imagination and creativity--and some wise grandmothers--the villagers solved their problem without bloodshed. As Will says, we need new steps, new dances, new songs, and new stories in times like these. Stories can break the spells we weave around ourselves, the narratives that sometimes keep us feeling like change is impossible.

With the end of July nigh, I am among the millions of Americans who face the end of enhanced unemployment benefits next week. Although I've freelanced much of my life, I'd love to find a full-time job that I can dig in and do until it's time to retire. I applied for one in late May that would've been perfect for me, finally learning just this week that although my resume made it through several "cuts," I will not be a finalist. I know it is no easy task to find work in one's late 50s, but I still believe something good will emerge in due time. I'll keep looking for the beacons in the dark, and I will try to be one, too. My superpower is helping people tell their stories, after all, and there's a big need for that these days.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to spend some more time away from screens next week--to go camping, look for the comet, and hopefully see my daughter (who lives 500 miles away) for the first time in 2020. I'll be back with another dispatch in two weeks. Until then, be well...and be the light.

 

Pandemic postcard #12: Fresh air for everyone

For a few days this week, life felt like normal. I heard late last week that some Washington State Park campgrounds were opening June 1 and I immediately reserved three nights this week at one of my favorites, Twanoh State Park on Hood Canal. Fresh air, beautiful views, a chance to hike and paddle and escape the news for a bit. It was all good, and I was grateful to see many families out enjoying themselves, too--at an appropriate distance, of course. Camping is perfect for that.

Twanoh State Park day use area

Twanoh State Park's day use area was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and I thought I might write this week about how I hope Joe Biden and Congressional candidates are thinking of a 2020s version of the Works Progress Administration to create jobs for people whose work has disappeared for good in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then I heard about another family that went camping in my state this week. The Peninsula Daily News reports that a multiracial family of four from Spokane was harassed after they stopped to buy supplies in the community of Forks. Some yahoos apparently accused the family of being "Antifa" as they emerged from a sporting goods store. Several vehicles with armed occupants followed them and apparently cut down trees across a road to trap the family in their campsite. (Cheers to the local high school kids who fetched a chainsaw to remove the trees.) The Clallam County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident, and the Forks Chamber of Commerce executive director apologized to the family.

I've read it said that we are in a pandemic within a pandemic. Many people have been gathering to protest the murder of George Floyd and ongoing racial violence. Others have been congregating at stores and restaurants that are opening up again. A few weeks from now, we'll know whether being in closer proximity to one another brings new spikes in COVID-19 cases. We'll also get an indication whether the present indignation that people feel over police brutality is going to last, or whether it will fade again, just as it has so many other times. But the ferocity of this near-fortnight of protests--set in relief against economic uncertainty, government ineptitude, and a growing realization of long-term inequity--may make the issue stick this time.

I want to keep living my life as best I can, and I want to remain conscious of the privilege I have as a white person. This week, that included camping and stopping at a couple of small-town businesses--and avoiding one that I know has been inhospitable to outsiders of all kinds. I hope to see more families of all kinds camping this season, especially since many longtime youth camping opportunities are on hiatus. A change of scenery and new perspectives do us all good, and camping is an affordable way to get away, even if just for a night or two, in uncertain times. It might be a long, hot summer, no matter what the thermometer reads. We need nature's cure now more than ever.

Pandemic postcard #6: Thank you, world

... and the sun is my alarm, and the moon, she makes me dream ...

Hello again, happy 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and happy 30th anniversary of one of my all-time favorite albums, Goodbye Jumbo by World Party. As I grabbed the code to post the video of "Thank You World" below, I saw that the album was released on April 24, 1990. Serendipity ... and dig how songwriter Karl Wallinger sings his hymn of thankful praise to the Earth while seemingly sheltered in place, but dreaming big indeed.

On Earth Day morning, I headed out early to beat the rain. I have some standard walking routes within a two-mile radius of my home: one that takes me to Maple Leaf Park, another that threads through the Pinehurst neighborhood, but I am prone to wandering, especially now. That's how I wound up across the street from a house I had never seen before, with a brightly whimsical sun shining over shingles of inlaid clouds, birds, and fish. When I got home, I looked it up and found this article about the last time it was for sale, plus a better screen capture from Google Maps.

Discovering this house was delightful enough, and the rest of my Earth Day walk was chockablock with Seattle's riotously wild spring pageantry. For every semi-manicured yard, there are countless examples of barely tamed urban landscapes, with flowers spilling out of street-side rock walls and Seussian cypress trees shamelessly flirting with Douglas firs. The Emerald City is absolutely crazy with color and boisterous with birdsong right now, and it's all the better because there is almost no vehicular traffic.

Once the pandemic subsides, I hope the cars mostly stay parked like they are now. I want people to be well and I want children to get back to school, but perhaps people who can work from home will continue to do so, at least some of the time, and people will find ways to get around that don't involve burning up our beautiful spaceship home. These are challenging times, no doubt, but they are making us all more creative in everything we do.

Until next Friday, be well and enjoy your neighborhood, wherever you are.


 

Pandemic postcard #3: Reality sets in

Hello again. How are you this first Friday of April? Wasn't it interesting that April Fool's pranks seemed in short supply this year? We definitely need moments of levity, but foolishness seems out of order in these very weighty times.

For me, this was the week when the reality of the pandemic--and its accompanying economic crisis--really hit home. As I write this, the world COVID-19 case total has passed one million and people are dying at an alarming rate. I was especially sad to learn we have lost songwriter Adam Schlesinger, whose smart work with Fountains of Wayne and snappy title tune for That Thing You Do! have brought me lots of joy over the years. If I need a smile, as I did when I got this news, I need only watch this scene of a band hearing its song on the radio for the first time. Talk about joy. Thank you, Adam. (And please hang in there, John Prine.)

I mentioned last week that a longtime magazine client of mine had abruptly shut down. This week, I confirmed the not-unexpected news that my top editorial client--another travel company--has no work for me for the foreseeable future. I haven't yet joined the official jobless roll; my state's jobless benefits site says it hopes to have information on how self-employed people can apply by mid-April. Meanwhile, I plan to start volunteering at my local food bank next week. They really need help and I have too much time on my hands. They are having people work six feet apart, and you can only volunteer one week at a time to limit any possible exposure to COVID-19. It feels a little risky, but I am healthy and it is a way I can be useful.

Meanwhile, I have also opened an online bookstore through Bookshop.org, a new venture that just launched in January, primarily as a way for small independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores to have a website, but also for authors and other lit lovers to buy and sell books. I have named my shop The Optimist, and its featured selections are books that I have personally enjoyed over the years--"timeless books and books for these times,"as I put it. I'm also featuring some of my photography on its pages. So if you are looking for a good read, please have a look. Your purchase will help me weather these tough times and it will benefit indie bookstores across the U.S., too.

Here are a few other things that got me through this week:

Long walks, as always. I average four miles a day.

Plenty of sleep

Lots of time to read (and spending a little less of it on the news and social media)

Mariners classics baseball, often accompanied by a solo game of Bananagrams

A concert-from-home by Josh Ritter

Online church each Sunday

Watching the classic movie Groundhog Day (An aside: It's only been a month or so, but I miss movies in the theater.)

I mentioned above that reality hit home this week, but here's something else we all know: As bad as this pandemic is right now, we will get through it. Stay safe, be well, and be kind. See you next Friday.

Another kind of food pantry. Pinehurst, Seattle, March 2020

Belonging

One of the things I like best about my part-time job at the ballpark comes into full flower now in midsummer, when I get to talk with people visiting us from all over the world. Many are in Seattle at the start or the end of a cruise to Alaska. Others are here to escape their hot weather back home. That's a roll of the dice--it can be warm and sunny here one day, as it was yesterday, or rainy and coolish, but there's always something to do on those days, too.

Earlier this year, I felt like running away--from the long, dark Seattle winter, and from a house that never really felt like home after Tom was gone, because Tom was my home. I soon realized that I needed to stay in Seattle to tie up loose ends here, anyway, and it would take most of this year--so I signed a short lease for the place I'm living now, nearly certain I would move on this fall. But now I'm nearly certain that I won't.

For one thing, I have moved five times since 2012, and I'd just like to stay put for a while. I like my apartment a lot, and I may well have to move again in a few years as urban renewal proceeds all around the low-slung 1950s courtyard complex I currently call home.

Mostly, though, it's the trees and the sea telling me to stay put. In June, I drove to a special place on Hood Canal, Harmony Hill, where Tom and I attended a stem cell transplant survivors' weekend just two months before he died. As I walked the labyrinth around an amazing old tree, I heard myself or someone or something tell me, "There's a reason you're here."

I heard the same thing last week while at family camp on Seabeck Bay, as I took communion with the herons and seals and my human beloveds--and again yesterday, my birthday, as I treated myself to an afternoon spent looking for (and finding) more seals, orcas, eagles, and other neighbors from the wild world. The truth is, I was just happy to be out on the Salish Sea on a glorious summer day; the animals were a bonus.  And today, it is raining, which I've come to feel is just fine, too, especially if it keeps our forests dry after two summers aflame.

This post is, yet again, about allowing myself to change my mind and about being a work in progress, even well into my sixth decade of life. It's partly about connecting to a place I didn't necessarily choose when I first moved here to be closer to Tom, but a place that apparently has chosen me.

There's a reason I'm here. Maybe it's to be an unofficial ambassador to the people I meet at the ballpark, or in line as we wait for our boat trip. Maybe it's to help new neighbors learn English--something I plan to do as a volunteer once I earn my TEFL credential next winter. Maybe it's even to take a full-time job at the company for which I've been freelancing for a couple of years, or at the university or the library. Maybe it's something I've yet to discover. More will be revealed, I'm quite sure.

PS You can read more of my writing about Seattle and nearby here. And if you're an editor looking for a feature story or essay about the Pacific Northwest, it's your lucky day because I'm your huckleberry.

Enough

I bought a salad spinner yesterday. It wasn't an impulse buy; I'd thought about it a few weeks. Now that I live in 400 square feet, I think harder than ever before adding anything new to my store of possessions.

The salad spinner (ironically made of plastic) won out because I'm trying to use less plastic, so I've stopped buying those oh-so-convenient plastic tubs of pre-washed salad greens--yet I'd quickly grown tired of drying rinsed spinach on towels on my tiny countertop. Yet more irony: I've actually found in previous experience that these salad spinners don't work all that well. Maybe I add too much water? Let me know if you have tips.

Or maybe I should just look at a YouTube video or two ... which brings me to my point for this post: I have an essay in the summer issue of 3rd Act Magazine on "Just Enough Technology." When my friend, the magazine's editor Victoria, asked me to write an article on "Technology We Love," I agreed, as long as I could write a sidebar about bringing balance to our technological lives. It's the second in my series of "enough" essays for the magazine; I wrote about "Just Enough News" last year. "Just Enough Space" might be the theme I explore next. After five months in this little apartment, I am discovering like never before what it really means to live a simple, streamlined life, and I like it very much. 

I'll write about that some more another time. Meanwhile, I'm not trying to lifehack my way into getting "just enough" sleep, eating "just enough" food, or experiencing "just enough" love. Instead, I'm trying to learn how to live as intentionally and yes, as joyfully, as I can in a world where hundred-year floods are happening every year and Alaska suddenly feels like California.

My kitchen cabinet, new salad spinner up top

 

Writing down the days

This morning, I am grateful for the wonderful day Tom and I had yesterday (and for Tom's mindfulness in mentioning several times how wonderful it was).

This is a sentence from my journal a year ago today. I mentioned a while back that although I post infrequently here, I write every day in my journal. I'm grateful that I have this practice and I can revisit where I was--physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually--at times in my past.

I've been in a grief and loss group at church this spring, and one of the other participants asked whether I could have coffee to talk about journaling, something she'd like to do more of. We haven't had a chance to do that yet, and I figure other people may be interested, too, so I'm writing some thoughts here.

Although I've kept journals off and on most of my life, I've become much more intentional about it over the past few years. I don't think your journal needs to take any special form, and mixing them up is fine. Mine is often a gratitude journal; I often write first thing in the morning and recount what I was grateful for the previous day. I know other people do the same thing just before bed--write about what they loved in the day just ending, and that seems like a lovely way to finish one's day.

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron advocates for writing three free-form, loose-leaf "morning pages" first thing each day, basically as a way to get whatever's on your mind out of your head and onto the page so you can go about the rest of your day. I've done these occasionally, and I think they can be helpful as a creative exercise. For me, though, one of the best parts of journaling is storing my thoughts bound in a beautiful book, either one I've found that I love or one I've made. (I enjoy taking a plain old composition book and pasting stuff on it.)

Art by William S. Rice

Art by Hannah Viano

A trip journal

I have "home" journals for my everyday writing and "away" journals for when I travel; the latter are wonderful souvenirs. I always bring a glue stick when I travel so I can paste in ticket stubs and other mementos. I leave empty pages for adding other things later, such as photos or even an empty packet of seeds from Monet's garden in Giverny. (Here's a lovely essay from Rick Steves on why he journals as he travels.) I also have an especially nice journal in which I write only once a year, on or near my birthday.

Some people journal online, and if that's the best way for you, why not? Although I do most of my journaling on paper, I use my phone's notes app when I'm out and about and want to capture some thoughts. One digital journaling tool I especially love is the FutureMe website, which allows you to write a letter to yourself to be delivered via email in the future; you specify the date you'd like to receive it, whether a few months or a few years down the road. I've written about a dozen letters to myself via this site, usually when I am going through periods of transition and need to think about how things can and will get better.

Journals can be tools of optimism. In February 2018, Tom started on a clinical drug trial that we hoped would help him beat back another recurrence of cancer. That month, my Valentine's Day gift to both of us was a guided journal, One Question a Day for You & Me, with room for three years' worth of daily reflections. We only got a few months, but I treasure this book--both for what's in it and the memory of how, each night before bed, I'd ask the day's question and write down our answers.

A year ago, as Tom was caught in a swirl of medical procedures and I helplessly went along for the ride, journaling nearly every day helped me vent my fear and frustration and keep sight of what was good, even in difficult times. "I'm counting up the days and nights I get to spend with this remarkable man," I wrote a year ago today in my "everyday" journal, not knowing how much time we had left ... days, weeks, months, years?

One more thought: Although social media has its downsides, it is a record of your life. Many of us now have a decade's worth of Facebook posts documenting our days, and that is a journal of sorts, too. I try to use my social media time in this way, so if Instagram still exists 10 years from now, I'll remember this beautiful flower I saw on my way home from work one May day in 2019.

Life can be a blur, but if you take some time to write every day, you can see a bit of the shape of your life--where you've been, where you are now, where you may be going.

Feet first

Giving walkers safe passage in Shoreline, WA

No, I didn't plan to walk six miles round trip to the movie theater yesterday. My intention was to walk there and take the bus back, but I stayed for all the credits and used the restroom afterward--and there was the bus I meant to catch, pulling away across the street just as I walked out the door. 

No worries. Having missed the bus, I decided to walk back a different way from the one I'd come--and on the way, I got to visit two new-to-me city parks and found and photographed some cool public art. (If you love street art, you might want to follow me on Instagram.) It was sunny and about 62 degrees. What could be better?

I'm currently researching a magazine article about people who are driving less to save money. There are so many options to forgo or supplement car ownership these days: transit, car sharing, ride hailing, bike sharing--and my very favorite (and the cheapest option), our own two feet.

After past experience in car-free living, I do have a car these days (thanks, Tom), but I go days without driving it. As a writer and editor, I mostly work from home, of course. I use my feet and the company-provided transit pass (thanks, Mariners) to get to my part-time job. I plan my ballpark commute and many of my errands around the five miles or so I try to walk every day, but the best walks of all can be aimless ones where I set off with only a vague idea of where I am going.

Plenty of factors keep people from walking as much as they'd like, but spring is a wonderful time to walk as much as you can, whether that's around the block or for many miles. The weather is wonderful and new life is blossoming everywhere you look. And yes indeed, I spent several hours of an ostensible workday going to a movie (the gorgeous Cold War) and walking there and back, but here's the thing about walking: If your work--or any part of your life--involves thinking, you can actually get a lot done on a walk. As I meandered, I mentally outlined the article I mentioned above, and I thought about contacts who can potentially help me find sources for several other projects. But mostly, I enjoyed the fresh air and the sunshine and the fact I wasn't stuck in a metal box on a glorious spring day. 

Walking is good!

The waiting is the hardest part

Fifth in a series for #UULent2018.

Today's UU Lent word is patience. Lord, it's a long, long road.

I had the privilege of seeing Tom Petty perform live twice: once back in the 1980s with Bob Dylan and again last summer at Safeco Field. None of us there for his concert last August knew that he had fewer than 10 shows remaining and that he'd be gone six weeks later. It was all about the moment and the power of music. I'm sure it was the same five weeks later for the people who saw his very last show at the Hollywood Bowl.

Petty's death, especially coming hours after the heartbreaking day in Las Vegas, was a wake-up call for many of us. That's a cliche, but it's true. Stop waiting. Start living.

I've been doing a lot of waiting lately. The client that gave me the largest amount of editing work last year won't need any freelance help for a bit (and even that's not guaranteed). Meanwhile, I've been sending out article queries and essays and letters of interest. It usually feels like these are going into a void and, given the amount of email most of us get these days, I rarely expect a reply.

I have exactly one assignment at the moment, and it's not going well. I need to interview a handful of people in their 50s or 60s who've moved to Edmonds, Washington, from beyond the Seattle area, and I've sent several dozen inquiries to people who might know of such folks. So far, I have found none. Fortunately, I still have about a month until my deadline, so I'll start walking the streets of Edmonds soon in hopes of randomly finding my people. It's not a big place, and wandering its charming downtown is a fine way to spend time, so this isn't exactly a problem--and my inquiries elsewhere may yet bear fruit. Still ... it's more waiting. (And if you or someone you know recently relocated to Edmonds from outside the Seattle area, please raise your hand.)

So my writing and editing work is a big ball of waiting right now. But many other things are just fine. Baseball starts soon, and I'll be back for a third season as an usher at the ballpark. I've had more time to meditate, read books, run errands, do spring cleaning, help my partner, and take long walks. I also have more time to do my favorite thing in the world, and that's travel. My sweetheart and I have a train trip planned soon, and I'll be going to the wild edge of Scotland a month after that, volunteering to get garden beds ready for spring and taking inexpensive room and board in trade for my efforts.

I left full-time work again just over two years ago because I value time more than money. It's a hard way to live at times, and patience has never been my strongest virtue. I get better at it all the time, though, and I'll keep practicing--and living like there may be no tomorrow, or thousands of tomorrows.

A good time and place to think

Late fall is here. It's getting dark early. This is the season where, up here in the far left corner, in America's most well-read city, many of us get ready to burrow into our books.

My sweetie and I started an Airbnb space a few months ago, and it was booked solid from summer into early fall. Fewer people travel to this part of the world in the rainy season, so we have lots of dates open on our calendar for the next few months.

Our place is close to Seattle but it feels far away from the city. It's modest but comfortable; my goal is for it to mirror the philosophy I write about here on Surely Joy, and for it to be a welcoming spot where you can rest, reconnect with nature, and hear yourself breathe.

Right now, we have a couple staying while they're in town on business; they have two weeks in our space for the cost of about three-and-a-half nights in a downtown Seattle hotel. But we also welcome people staying for long weekends or even just a couple of nights. And although no one but me has used it as a writer's retreat, I have a feeling others would enjoy it for that purpose, too.

Check it out if you need a place to stay near Seattle, or a place to rest and rejuvenate. If you're a first-time Airbnb user, use this link and you will save $40 on your first Airbnb stay of $75 or more. Thank You Gracias Merci Dank ~ Julie

Fall housekeeping

Last spring, after Seattle's rainiest-ever winter, I was done with rain. I never wanted to see it ever again. But then we had one of our driest, hottest summers ever.

So yesterday, when it rained much of the day, it felt sacramental. And especially at a time when people in other regions are suffering the after-effects of forest fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes, I will not begrudge whatever weather comes our way.

As much as spring always feels like a fresh start, so does fall. With our smoky skies cleared and our streets washed clean, with a new school year underway and baseball season winding down (giving me a little more free time since I am a seating host), autumn is one of my favorite times of year.

Today, I say farewell to two young women who have been staying in our Airbnb these past few weeks as they (successfully) looked for an apartment of their own. It's a challenge and an adventure to move to Seattle these days, so we were happy to give them a launchpad. We'll welcome our next guests in a few days -- but first, I'll enjoy the quiet of the space myself for a while.

Tonight, I begin a new session of the UU Wellspring curriculum I enjoyed the church year before last. I look forward to Wellspring as another opportunity for personal spiritual deepening, as well as the opportunity to walk now through next spring with a small group of kindred spirits.

I find that I blog a little more often during Wellspring, and I now have a little email subscription widget at the top right corner of this blog, if you'd like to see everything I write on here. (Don't worry; it'll still only be a post or two each week at the most.)

One more housekeeping note: I've been compiling a book-length collection of things I've written here and elsewhere over the past 25 years. It'll probably be out before the holidays, so watch this space for more news on that.

Wishing us all a lovely fall ...

Take time for the sublime

Eastern Oregon during the total solar eclipse, August 21. Photo by Rebecca Hom.

I keep thinking about the corona, a shimmering white ring around that perfect black disc. It looked like the eye of the universe, and afterward I wondered: What if eclipses like this happen every day somewhere, in some galaxy, but no one is there to see them?

Eyewitness. I'd seen photos -- and I'd made drawings -- of solar flares radiating from behind the moon's mask, but it was nothing like that. I'd read Annie Dillard's essay about the fearsome, fast-moving shadow she saw during the 1979 eclipse, and I was expecting something out of an end-of-the-world movie, but it was nothing like that.

Instead, we were draped in a blanket of incredible blue-violet, a shade I'd never before seen, which my friend Rebecca thankfully captured in this photo. (I didn't even try to get any photos during totality.) The corona shone over Eastern Oregon for a minute-and-a-half or so, then the show was over. It was amazing how fast it became daylight again, even with only a crescent sliver of sun.

Compadres

Of course, I want to see another one. Argentina in 2019? Texas in 2024? Who knows? But even if I never get to see another total solar eclipse, I'm grateful I took time to see this one.

I also know that for every grand spectacle, there is some small moment of Zen available to us every day. I'll remain watchful for those, too.