Beloved and Brave (with some ritual draining of Blood) in Everyday Ramblings

Yesterday evening after returning from Salem where I spent an easy relaxing day with Kes and Most Honorable I still needed some activity so even though it was hot (we are ready for a break now thank you very much) the sun was partially obscured by the west hills and I ventured out with the camera.

I have decided as part of the “history project” to take pictures, portraits actually, of all the older houses in the area. At some point I will organize them but I want to make sure I have at least one shot of each of them. Most of them I have already in various seasons and moods and many of them are partially (or mostly) obscured by vegetation as you can see here.

Although the cats are three years old and this was not their first big firework day (we are very close to the fireworks here because we are near the river) it was their first big firework display day with me. I borrowed another small fan from Kes and Most Honorable and just at dark closed all the windows and got into bed with my iPad Mini and Diego.

He is a bit territorial with me until he totally relaxes and then he will let his brother join us so when the fireworks started he was hyper-alert (and then something he has never done before) he wrapped his soft little cat body around my neck and rested his paws on my collarbones.

After it went on for a time he relaxed and I got up and we all got on the floor in front of the oscillating fan in the big room and lolled around and played in a low key way with a piece of string.

And then it was over and we all went to sleep. They even let me sleep in until almost 6 AM this morning, which is almost unheard of here in nokoland.

On the train yesterday I started my first draft of the first poem in the cycle. There is a reading next weekend and I would like to have something rough to share then. The character in my first story is a former painter’s model at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and is now a butcher’s wife in Portland Oregon. I spent part of the day reading about how kosher meat is prepared.

It turns out I find out a little tiny bit more each time I dip my foot in the water.

“The men who brought the horses and wagons into the barn would go to the top area, leave the wagons and walk the horses down to their stalls in the lower level,” she said. “The peddlers paid three dollars a month. There were about twenty horses, and it was a big help.”

Where she is describing is where I am sitting as I type this. This is the first independent corroboration that I am, in fact, living on the site (for at least forty years) of a horse stable that provided drayage for the junk peddlers that thrived in this area. Nothing went to waste. Everything was recycled.

Her name was (Augusta) Gussie Kirshner Reinhardt and she just passed away about ten years ago and was apparently a force of nature in the local Jewish community. Her father, who owned the barn, was the president of the temple across the street that was consecrated in 1912. It says on her grave that she was a beloved woman of valor.

I like that.

Beloved and brave. What a lovely way to be remembered.

The first woman I am working with is completely fictional. I am calling her Esther. There were a lot of Esther’s in the hood at one time. The matron of the family that owned the grocery that was known as “Slim’s” (because her husband lost his whole extended family in the Holocaust and was tall and thin) that is now our local funky Bistro was named Esther Weinstein in the real world. That is half a block from the corner where the house that the corrupt mayor grew up in is now and where my first piece takes place.

Other than having plugged up ears for some reason I am actually feeling pretty good right now so I am enjoying the heck out of my holiday weekend on many different levels.

Hope you are too if you are here in the U.S.

Last updated July 05, 2015