Portland Blues Fest extravaganza

Dawn Welch and her son, Josh, rockin' out to Little Feat, Portland Blues Fest, July 5, 2010.
Click on the photo to see it full-sized.

Yahoo! Four days of music, dancing, and carrying on. In the meantime. My mind wanders to home. To my mother, age 93, who, I hear, has called my sister five times in one day to inquire about my whereabouts. To our sons, one a proud new and sleep-deprived father, the other an insane kayaker who appears to be on the cusp of making a living as a professional athlete. To the new (one and only) grandchild, Mr. Noah. To the garden, the cat, and the summer that is half gone. Even deep into a separate reality, the mind wanders.

Percussion and bass are at the heart of Little Feat. Here's one of the ban's two drummers rockin' out.

But great music, as usual,  takes me away and twirls me around and around and around. I'm not at all alone. Portland is vibrating with great dancers,  and they have inundated the Blues Fest, especially the Front Porch stage, which is pretty much devoted to dance. For the first time ever, I lose confidence in my own dancing and become self conscious—a shocking development.  I learn that Portland has a rich dance culture. Not "on the stage" dancing, but people who go to clubs or to dance classes or music festivals to do their spectacular thing. They have arrived en mass and are a joy to watch. (I actually got to dance with two fancy dancers. I guess they sensed my longing.)
I regret I didn't get photos. I was too in awe. Too jealous. Too old. And not in possession of the camera or the will or the ability to capture the moment. These were magnificent young people (for the most part) full of intricate rhythm and fancy moves and throbbing with life.
I soon got over it. Great bands like Little Feat and Galatic and Curtis Salgado (wow!) restore life force, and I was soon one with the musical moment. Isn't that what live music is all about? I'm am restored now, back to the elderly mother and writing deadlines and the overripe peas and the blueberry plants stripped of fruit by a "well meaning" neighbor, and the bigamist cat that has deserted us for his other home and more accommodating mother, who lets him sleep on her pillow and lick her hair.
I'm way better off for having been immersed in rhythm and dancing and friendships for a brief but renewing getaway.
A few more photos from the weekend.

Roses and rental hell

Summer finally kicked in, and the rose bush in front of the house responded exceedingly well to the long wet cold spell that passed for spring and early summer. With the exception of the pinkish blooms on the right, all these roses are on one bush. Eye candy indeed, and it also pumps out the perfume like a room full of Red Hats. It is good to have this, and other garden delights, to enjoy because right down the road is our one and only rental property that looks like this—and be glad you can't smell it.

Inside and out, a stinking filthy mess. Long story short. We're inept landlords. Too nice. Let them stay too long after failure to pay rent. Gave them 30 days, knowing they had tons of stuff to move that we didn't want to deal with. They didn't budge. Extended a week, after court mediation. They're still roosting. Finally cut over the sheriff's department to order eviction. Another seven or eight days and a pile of $$. Finally, they're outta there! PK's has spent several days dragging and sorting and making piles for give-away, hazardous waste disposal, and the dump. Then comes all the renovation and maybe in a couple of months, it'll be ready for other tenants. Or to sell. If rented again, one thing's for sure: we'll be contracting with a property manager!

My favorite fathers - and a quote from T. Roosevelt

The father of the year in this family is son Quinn, pictured here with his week-old son, Noah, our first grandchild. Ahhh. The impact of seeing our son with his son.....gob-smacked emotional. I teared up when Heather opened the door and there they were. "See," Quinn said. "I told you she'd do that." I'm so predictable, I will say that an unexpected pleasure of having a grandchild is watching your own "child" perform so beautifully as a parent and husband. But he had some good role models.

A young and gorgeous PK with baby Quinn and Pop Pop Korbulic, 1978. Like father, like son.  Isn't that just what babies need? To be surrounded by people who love them? Pop Pop is gone now.

My father Floyd Strube enjoying a laugh with our youngest son, Chris, 1987. My dad is gone, too.

It isn't just how fathers love their children that makes them a force for good in the universe. It's also how they conduct themselves as individuals, the example they set for their sons—and daughters.  A friend, Jose Marroquin, sent the following quote around this week in honor of fathers, and it resonated. It makes me proud of the fathers and sons in my life.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
Teddy Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.

More whining about weather

This is the scene beyond the garden this evening around 8 p.m. Cool, dark, foggy, and raining HARD.

 

 

 

 

Usually during the long days of June, we're dining happily outside around 8 p.m. with birds swooping and garden plants straining toward the sky. Not this year. This year we've had the wood stove fired up nearly every night, and although many plants (notably asparagus, potatoes and onions) seem none the worse for constant water torture, others languish. Those would be the peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. I'm almost embarrassed to look at them. Sorry! I want to say. But how do you make amends to plants that you've babied from seed and set out with the best intentions only to have them pelted and  pummeled with rain, and sometimes hail, and also subjected to unseasonable cold? Well,  there's really nothing to say because there's nothing to do. I remember, years ago, as a callow youth, scorning elders for their weather chatter. Who cares? I thought. Don't they have anything better to discuss?  Now I understand.

Meeting morels

Odd as it may seem, old as I may be, I had never cooked a morel mushroom until yesterday. That's despite the fact that these exotic forest delicacies are apparently profuse in Oregon woods and are ripe for the picking. Two problems. Didn't know where to find them, and am married to a man who's fungi phobic. Why bother? It would be like traipsing to the woods to harvest a Christmas tree with no place of honor for it in the home.
Thanks to friend and fungi lover Dr. Mike Amaranthus, PK was included in a spring morel hunt in the forests shadowed by Mt. McLoughlin, southern Oregon's most prominent peak and site of frequent mushroom sweeps by the Ammo clan. Success!

According to Ammo, as he is affectionately known, there are 25 morels in this photo, which he took. Right. It takes a trained eye. So PK returned home with a jog in his step and a bunch of grimy looking shrooms in his mesh bag. Here's what they looked like, absolutely fresh. Not more than a day emerged from the fragrant forest duff, according to Ammo.

Most are considered "black" with a "blond' or two thrown in. PK was convinced this paltry amount  was sufficient for two meals. That was his mushroom aversion speaking. I could see maybe one meal just for me, despite my morel inexperience. I rushed to Google to see what the hell to do with them, starting with cleaning.

Directions ran from "never, ever get them wet - just clean with a soft brush — all the way to "soak them overnight in salt water to drive out the insects and worms." We went the middle road with a quick rinse in a sieve and then a shake to scare out critters, which we did not notice, if they were present. I chopped them coarsely, and sauteed dry, as friend Gail suggested. They released a copious amount of fragrant liquid.  Our first morel-centric dinner went something like this.

RECIPE - STEAK & MORELS
Saute coarsely chopped morels in a dry pan until liquid releases. Remove morels from pan.
In another pan, quickly saute in butter thinly sliced steak. Season with salt and pepper and remove from pan. For two people I used about a half a pound of top sirloin.
Add more butter to the pan and pour in mushroom juice. Careful not to get any of those bugs or pieces of grit in the pan! Reduce mushroom liquid by half.
Add a slosh of dry sherry and a couple cloves of minced garlic to  the mushroom juice. Cook a couple minutes til fragrant. Mix in a couple tablespoons of sour cream. When well blended, add the cooked mushrooms and the steak until warmed.
Serve over steamed rice or noodles, or if you're a carb nut like me, a pile of cooked spinach.
It was DELICIOUS!
I'm now a morel fan and I think I'm not the only one in the homestead.