Local plants

Ocean views.

Houseguest.

A new way to sniff out bad people.

Sniffing out bad science. Also see Wikipedia, my favorite encyclopedia.

Stairs.

Whole chunks of knowledge have vanished. It's a truism that when languages or indigenous tribes go extinct, their specialized information does too. There are also smaller things that are pretty much gone.

For the graduation skit, I wore panniers as fine ladies once did. There's an art to turning around in small spaces and reaching for things to one side or the other that I had to re-invent.

Last night the Spink was the Lady Catherine deBourg in the school's production of Pride and Prejudice. An old school aristocrat at the end of her era, she gave no quarter.

Lording it over others like that with nothing but birth to back you up is not part of West Coast culture. Most of us don't even find it irritating, it's just weird.

A recent Science News article on genetically based violence says that there are genes that can be triggered by environmental circumstances: if the circumstance isn't there, the gene doesn't switch on.

I've often wondered how much of human behavior, stuff like Lady Catherine's birthright arrogance, is innate but we, in our particular culture, don't even know about it.

We're looking forward to a crowd of houseguests. Vruba will move back for the summer at least. The carpenters are on red alert.

A few weeks ago, the house remodel switched from the sledgehammer stage, where we were removing walls and stuffing black plastic bags with moldy insulation and rotten studs, to the impact driver stage, where new walls are taking shape and the air is full of drywall dust.

There's a logical way to do this stuff, where developments on all fronts should be pretty much at the same stage so that, for example, one can simply spend a week insulating and vapor barriering everything and be done with it. But on the other hand, we are still living in the space and need floors, access to clothes, and all those details. So work proceeds in illogical lurches, where whatever part of the house has the best chance of remaining empty for a while is worked on most intensively. The consequence of that is that the areas we use the most are the least finished.

This week, however, we're trying to get the areas we will use this summer up to a functional, if not finished, stage. There's probably some kind of life lesson I can wring from this. Maybe later.

The shopping list was a little too long for the length of day that we had. We ended up with a pair of gloves, a striped skirt, dried mushrooms, Pocari Sweat, a parking ticket, and lots of photos of the Space Needle.

I've revived Thalassa, where you can see bigger photos and make comments.

We had artichokes for dinner and were talking about who we enjoy having conversations with. That would be just about everybody, for me.

But as for who's an excellent conversationalist, the names could be counted on the thumbs of one hand.

An excellent conversationalist, in my exacting view, has no "radioactive zone" where their brain disengages and they become some kind of oozing, peeling pustule, or a zombie who's said the same thing in the same way just yesterday and the day before as well. Have you ever tried to talk to a recently divorced person about their ex? It may be emotionally necessary (even interesting) but you know you're not going to walk away without some hair loss.

An ideal conversationalist, in my view, would be able to recognize their feelings but not be ruled by them. You could discuss sex, religion, or anything else and explore as far as either of you like.

It seems like you need two ingredients (at least) for that. First, each thought should have room to be fully expressed. Interruptions? Of course, go for it, just not until you are sure the other person has completed their thought.

And secondly, the spirit should be one of exploration. What do you think/experience? How can I express my own insights, whether developed fully or not, in an elegant way? Winning points in an argument should not enter into it.

Getting ready for the art show is fun. The classroom had been painted red, purple, and tan, and today I covered the purple with orange. It makes a bit more sense to me. Took all the junk off the windowsills and replaced the big bookshelf with a smaller one, now that we only have a few weeks of school left and don't need all of them anymore. The question is, where to put all the stuff that we are still using but not for the show? So much of the house is filled up with stuff that has been moved out of the construction areas that there really is no logical place left. Few illogical places, either.

Things are galloping along. I think I thrive on that pace, but in the midst of steady, decades-long chaos, I keep thinking of silence and repose as the default mode. It isn't, of course.

Today, I got up early after a very late night with the kids. I have this theory that my drowsiness and exhaustion have to do with caffeine rather than menopause or lack of sleep, mainly because I don't seem to be able to keep asleep for very long. So, I stood there in front of the cooler, trying to figure out what people eat if they don't include coffee or tea.

Laundry. Dishes. E-mails. Tidy up the carpentry area.

Then everyone gathered to try to figure out how to run the little business card printing press, now that we've gotten all the parts in the mail. It took most of the day.

Several consultations with the carpenter. A sketch session. Chocolate carrot lime cake.

What used to be a portion of the east wall of the house is now gone.

Yesterday I paid the head carpenter $3,500 for 100 hours of work. Today, I went to visit the District, where they said that up to $2,000 could be available for teaching my daughter during the 2006-07 school year.

I don't begrudge the carpenter his $35 per hour. But, if I were to design the perfect society, I'd bump the value of education a couple notches up.

Three days ago, David said, "I think we should change the purpose of the addition. Instead of putting the bedroom, office, and library there, we should put your studio there and put the rooms that would have been there in the existing house."

Being a rather ploddish sort, my first, very mature reaction to this, was to freak out.

Then, I decided to look at it as a logic problem rather than an emotional one. "Let's move furniture and boxed-up books around to form walls where you think they should go, and we'll see if it's doable," I said. So, we took all the boxed books out of the long bookshelf and stacked them up where the new stairway landing will be - that represents a half-wall separating the library from the passage to The Spink's and Tycho's bedrooms. Then, we moved the bookshelf across the room to represent the division between David's office and the library. We stapled plastic sheeting up along ceiling joists to make other walls, shoved the three armoirs here and there to make the final wall, and voila. We slept in the new location two nights.

"It's a better plan," said Wayne. "So, would you please move everything out of this area so we can build the walls, finish the taping, and put in the stairway?"

We took the ladder and 6 x 6 lengths away and put the bookshelf along the wall dividing the addition from the existing house. We put a small rug under each of the three armoires in turn so we could drag them across the floor, hoist them over the door jamb, and array them in front of the bookshelf. We took the bedding off and stored it on a swept-up pile of drywall screws, insulation tags, sawdust, and sheetrock dust, and dragged the mattress and the box into the far end of the addition, on the other side of the scaffolding and ladders. We took all the socks, books, weaving looms, frames and matting, and what-not from the edges of the room and stacked them up at the foot of the bed. Finally, we plugged the night lamp into one of the heavy-duty extension cords and clipped it to the weaving stool.

I'm looking forward to sleeping there tonight.

In Born that Way, William Wright follows a twin study which shows that many personality traits and abilities are strongly genetically influenced. He opens his discussion with the Jims, identical twins raised apart who both married a Linda, divorced her to marry a Betty, drank Miller Lite, had a dog named Toy and a son named James Allan, built themselves a basement woodshop where they made picture frames and furniture, and bit their nails.

He says "identical twins reared in different homes are closer in I.Q. than fraternal twins reared in the same home."

I remarked on this study to a visitor, who said, "I.Q. doesn't mean anything, anwyay."

That's a political, not a logical statement.

As a high school teacher, I have developed a fairly reliable ability to predict student IQ's, at least relative to each other. It has something to do with attention to detail, with logical thinking, with a quickness and pleasure in academics.

My visitor, I think, was trying to say two things. First of all, that I.Q. is not the only measure of what a person is like, or even what they are good at. Relying on a single number to quantify a person is a harmful oversimplification. Fair enough. Some of my favorite students have had a loopy perkiness that perhaps they couldn't achieve if they had the more measured, careful personality that generates high IQ scores. Musical ability, charm, athletic grace aren't touched on by IQ tests. We already know that. But ability to solve differential equations, intuit analogies, or write a cohesive essay are.

The second thing he was getting at, I think, is that admitting a genetic component to IQ opens the door to nutcase eugenicists who might use IQ tests to further a racist, sexist or other -ist agenda. That may be so. I do think that what crazies might do shouldn't stop us from discussing about what being human means.

Rain. Naturally, this was the day we'd scheduled for walking. 23rd Street. Pearl District. Hawthorne. Powell's again. Pleasant enough but a little too diffuse for my taste.

It's a constant balancing act between the constraints and satisfactions of micro-managing every moment and the chaos of surfin' the wave ... assuming that you even notice the wave as it comes roiling in from the deep.

OMSI.

We started the day at the Portland Art Museum. My favorite piece there was an Inuit mask; a goose with a face in her belly, surrounded by feet, flippers, and fish. It's worth a visit.

Uwajimaya, as always, was eye-popping.

8:00 David boat from home to Deer Harbor. The kids sat in the bow but after the very squishy experience on the way home from the art show closing, I concluded that three is enough.

As soon as we got to the mainland, we went to Costco, of course. Then down to the Frye, gnawing on garlic bread, Brie, sushi, and grainy apples. I liked Candida Hoefer's photos of empty auditoriums.

I remember traveling with a toothbrush and money for gas. Somehow, that seemed virtuous.

Now, planning for a trip to Portland involves school supplies, art supplies, walking shoes and fancy shoes, Goodwill donations and books to exchange. Surrounding ourselves with stuff is bad, right?

I have an overarching goal to my life, a theme that needs an orchestra to be played fully. For me, that includes teaching, art, and family. Each of those needs a set of tackle and gear. How can one visit Mom without bringing flowers? Or draw daily without notebook, pens, and extra notebook?

The simple life is a goal for a lot of people but not for me. Not that I want my life to be chaotic, but that complexity to me seems to be another word for textural richness.

We watched "Russian Ark." The whole movie was filmed without turning off the camera, inside the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Magical realism. Reds, creams, chocolate browns. I want to see it again.

I rushed up to the school to copy the klezmer and contradance music for tomorrow's art closing. Ran down the school hill to wake T up and help milk the goats. Back home to finish priming and start painting the niece's bedroom. Three walls in sorbet, one in tan, and the ceiling in ... well, I ran out of paint. In the middle of that, Ed showed up.

Ed is an old hippie with a vouptuous Dutch accent. He's an orchardist who is trading fruit tree installation for boat rides with David. I felt like an intruder as he caressed the saplings, exclaiming over their lovely buds and encouraging them to respond to his cuts. His theory of pruning is to cut about six inches above last years' growth, just above an outward-pointing bud. If an apple, the three buds below the cut will grow into branches; if a plum, four. You keep doing this until you have an umbrella-shaped tree. In the middle of that, Tony showed up.

No, he could not come back at any other time. So, we had our final klezmer/contradance rehearsal. We'll speed up on this one, repeat that one three times, change the cadence on the other. In the middle of that, David showed up.

He dropped the ant-ridden cedar by the cabin, a feat of lumberjacking that has me in awe. That sucker was 30 inches in diameter, leaning slightly wrong, and just generally intimidating. Now it will lie across the driveway for a month until the local miller returns from England and hauls it away to make lumber for his future house. In the middle of that, T showed up.

We worked on school stuff, did Latin, and then watched "El Brujado de Shanghai," a Spanish Civil War film noir. Highly recommended for its texture and cinematography.

My niece made this movie.