Walla Walla Sweets

In Seattle, it's Rachel, the Pike Place Market pig. Five years ago, in Vienna, I photographed life-size models of Lippizan horses, fancifully painted and decorated. In Chicago, Mrs. O'Leary's cow appears on the streets from time to time.

Here in Walla Walla, they've incorporated their iconic onion into the art scene. Not pictured here is my favorite - decorated to resemble Blue Willow chinaware, complete with a picture representing pioneer life.

Music camp races along, as everyone prepares for "sampling" on Saturday morning (60 groups, each given a very brief time to perform) and the final orchestra, band and choir concert on Saturday evening. Adult music camps are full of the same people you knew at music camp in high school - those who practice all the time, some who never practice, the ones who would rather do ANYTHING than practice (but do it anyway.) At music camp everyone plays all day, and some stay up to play half the night.

"Best week of my life," said someone this morning.

Now I have to go practice.

Famous potatoes?

The Palouse is wheat country, not potato fields (those are in Southern Idaho, or the Columbia Basin of Washington) but at this time of year the Saturday farmer's market is filled with vegetables and fruits of all sorts.

The market has been going for about 30 years now. From a handful of farmer stands, it has grown to include arts and crafts, fruit and vegetables from a wide geographical area, local honey and preserves, and food cooked on the premises.

For breakfast last Saturday I had a fruit kebab and a borek from a Turkish food stand, followed by espresso and an Egyptian pastry. If you had suggested, 50 years ago, that such food would be available anywhere in the area, never mind an open market on Saturday morning, I'd have been astonished.

Some things in the old home town never change. Hollyhocks still flourish in alleys.

The dog ate my WiFi...

Not really, though the hotel connection was down all day Saturday. On Sunday, after the final event of the reunion (a well-attended brunch) I decompressed with a long nap.

Fine reunion. All the work the committee did was worth it, and those attending were lavish with praise. Having the Friday night gathering at our former junior high school (pictured above) was worth the cost just to see the building. Although it has been extensively renovated, there were just enough reminders of its former self to bring out the junior high stories.

Best memorabilia award goes to the committee member who brought his collection of every single issue of the high school newspaper, saved through who knows how many moves. He and a couple of others also brought high school dance pictures, for an unexpected nostalgia trip.

"Remember corsages?" one man said to another, miming the tricky job of pinning a corsage onto your date's strapless gown, with her parents watching.

Amber waves ...

Driving across Washington state on a summer Thursday is 300 miles of widely varying landscape. You start from the city and its suburbs and exurbs, drive through the forested coastal mountins, and come out on the other side at the beginning of the dry country. There are ranches and small settlements, with distant vistas of rocky peaks, and then, on the way down to the Columbia, the huge dry hills begin.

Across the Columbia is basalt country - bones of the earth, left after huge prehistoric floods scoured out this path to the ocean. Now the bones protrude from grass and sage-covered plateaus, their columnar structure speaking to ancient lava activity. High pasture land alternates with irrigated farms. Now and again a smell of mint fills the car (the reward for previous whiffs of skunk or feed lot!)

From the Columbia on, the road is 2-lane (there is a freeway, farther north, but those heading to the Palouse use Highway 26.) Yesterday most of the traffic seemed to be trucks and huge harvesting equipment moving from place to place. On an infamous 26-mile straight stretch from Othello eastward, the road sometimes disappeared into wide shiny mirages, the exact color of the sky.

In the Palouse, harvesting hasn't quite begun, and the hills are every color from pale green to -- honestly -- amber. If you grew up here, no one ever has to explain "amber waves of grain."

I brought two cameras. This morning I went outside a bit late to take good pictures of the hills, but there will be other opportunities.

A number of classmates arrived last night, and more are coming in today. Many of us are staying at the same motel/convention center, and we all walk around looking at likely groups of 60-somethings, wondering...

What I like best is remembering someone's name a split second after they have enthusiastically recognized me!

Greetings from Moscow

Just one of the many "other Moscows." There are at least seven in the US - but only one in Idaho, fortunately.

Admittedly it was odd to grow up here in the 50's, during the cold war, and go to Moscow High School, whose mascot was a bear and whose colors were red and white.

Now that we're here to make that 50th reunion happen, here's the latest incarnation of the mascot. A committee member suggested the medallion as a reunion souvenir, and found the design and a manufacturer that produced this highly satisfactory result.

Reunion? What reunion?

It happens this week (I hope.) So far we have only the usual glitches - confusion about the dinner, revealed Friday night, when one organizer called another (on the other side of the state) to ask where on the registration form people could make entree choices.

"It's a buffet dinner," said Organizer 1.

"When did we decide that?" (about 6 months ago.) "We aren't charging enough to cover a buffet dinner" said Organizer 2.

After a few deep breaths and more cross-state telephoning, all concerned decided there IS enough money and we CAN have buffet. (No more "prime rib" the consistency of shoe leather.)

Tomorrow I take the book to Kinko's, then it's on to Office Max to buy name badges that I'll print here at home. In the process of putting the book, a cover, and a design for name badges together, I've learned a lot about page formatting in Word - thanks to a clever & patient daughter-in-law.

(Who is also a terrific singer. Yesterday she left us cheering and a bit weepy after she sang "Summertime" in the finale of a voice studio recital.)

Call me curmudgeonly...

...but what IS it about summer?

Today, in the same block, less than three minutes apart, I was asked, "Do you have a minute?"

The first person wore a red shirt that said "Save the children." Instead of asking, "What children? Where?" I smiled and moved on.

Next came three young women.

"We're from Camp (somethingorother.) Do you know where you would go if you died right now?"

The question was so unexpected that I laughed, then said, "I have absolutely no idea!"

Fremont gets its share of clipboard wavers and promoters of good causes, but they're unusually thick on the ground just now. Must be the nice weather.

If I die right now, someone will find me in front of the computer, where I hope I will have had time to publish this post and sign out of Blogger!

What's really turning me into a curmudgeon is that I just picked up three new books from the library (Another Day of Life, and Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski; as well as a new novel by Penelope Lively) and have no time to read any of them until I finish the class reunion record book. It's coming along, slowly.

Today my major recreation was to pack up papers and computer and walk to Stickman Coffee, in Fremont, where the coffee is smooth and strong, the wi-fi is free, and the table is the right height for serious computer work. Want more? The shop sells fabulous chocolate, and the owner has won international prizes for his skills as a barista.

Great-grandchildren? The New Yorker?

More gleanings from class notes:

While some still wait for a grandchild, other classmates have several great-grandchildren. (And, as you suspect, one or two of these great-grannies will be among the best-looking women at the reunion.)

I haven't seen the New Yorker cover in full color yet, but the picture in today's paper was disturbing enough. David Remnick, in last night's NPR interview, suggested it is elitist to think that people (read: "red-state people") won't get it. I think those who won't under any circumstances vote for a black man with an ominously Muslim-sounding name will be delighted to see the cartoon.

At coffee yesterday, a friend shared his literate, well-written, blazingly angry letter to the New Yorker. The magazine should be prepared for many like it.

Back to real life?

For the past couple of weeks I've been coasting - blogging about the trip, shamelessly posting photos, or talking about fireworks.

Now that it's just about two weeks until that high school reunion, with its various responsibilities, I have to concentrate. Today I made some useful check-in lists for various events - making sure to print the information in good-sized fonts. Aging eyes and all that. I also recruited another classmate who is more than willing to help with last-minute arrangements.

What still has to happen is the reunion book. I have all the information, but must put it into readable form. Just last night I received an e-mail response from a classmate who probably isn't going to be able to join the gang in Idaho, but who articulates her musings and memories in a way that makes me wish others could do the same.

Tonight, at 9:30, it's actually beginning to get dark. While this may not be a surprise to you, it's a clear sign here that mid- summer is over - we're headed down a slippery slope that will end with days in December when the sun sets at 4:20 (if it has been out at all.) It's no wonder we all go a little nuts in May and June.

I fall back on reading. Anna Karenina is unexpectedly fascinating. Years ago, I couldn't get past Anna's self-destructiveness (behavior that was perfectly understandable given the time and her situation.) Now I am enchanted by the novel's expansiveness - its many parallel stories, offering so many views of life in Russia in the 1870's.

To read on the plane, I did take along a book called The Age of Revolution. It's polemical but well-written history, that really catches the attention when the author points out the main triggers for the French Revolution: (1) the drain on the treasury caused by French participation in the American War - i.e. our Revolution; (2) a series of bad harvests, and (3) a resulting precipitate rise in the price of basic foodstuffs.

219 years later, has anything changed?

At a Schipol bookshop, I encountered a Penguin 3 for 2 sale, where I scooped up enough books to keep me occupied for the rest of the trip. Best find was a book about Africa called Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński. The book is intensely depressing, but so beautifully written that you can't stop reading. While I was in the middle of the book, the news on CNN was all about the non-election in Zimbabwe.

Towers seen from a distance...

...are everywhere in Europe. These are in Prague, as seen from the Charles Bridge.



Towers are particularly attractive when seen from the water. This one is in the Wachau Valley, between Linz and Vienna.



Here's the Golubac Castle, in Romania, once a watchtower perched high over the Iron Gates section of the Danube. A huge dam project begun in the 1970's eventually raised the river about 100 feet, and turned what had been the fastest, most dangerous part of the Danube into navigable waters.

A little farther along this stretch of the river we saw Trajan's Tablet - a marble tablet placed by the Roman emperor Trajan, to commemorate a bridge he built over the Danube. Before the Djerdap Locks were closed, engineers moved the monument high up the cliffs, above the new water level.

Memories of incandescence -

Poof!

Day after fireworks is like the end of a fairy tale where the curious servant boy wakes up in his hut after following twelve princesses through hidden door and witnessing a glorious ball. Only the shiny golden rose petal clutched in his fist convinces him it was real.

On the 4th it's all action and noise around here - cars driving down our narrow street in search of parking (dream on!); parties in every unit in every building; boats clustered at end of the lake; the fireworks barge filling the middle, steadied by two police boats and a huge green and white tug. All day there is music from the park, where an unbelievable crowd fills every bit of the hillside. If you can see any green, it's too early for fireworks.

Then darkness falls, about 9:45, and soon comes the "whap whap whap" of a giant Huey circling the lake, carrying a huge flag that is illuminated by a spotlight mounted at the park.

After that, the fireworks. Noise, light, color, magic, reverberations that shake balcony railings. At the end, a huge cheer erupts from thousands of watchers.

On the 5th - silence. The barge is gone, all but a few boats have disappeared. There are parking places on the street, and only a few empty amateur fireworks to commemorate the night before. Park crews come out early to pick up tons of trash.

A good day for reading. I picked up a used copy of Anna Karenina, in the latest translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky - a nice fat 19th-century novel, excellent reading for quiet summer weekends. Even if you have never read the novel, you know its opening sentence: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Fireworks!

The barge is already moored in the middle of the lake, steadied by two police boats. The giant green inflatable replica of the Statue of Liberty (25-foot head only) is up, and yesterday the Huey flew around the lake, practicing for its star role - carrying the flag before tomorrow night's fireworks celebration begins.

July 4 is a very big event in this neighborhood, because of its proximity to a really splendid fireworks display. If you live here and have an extra parking place, you are instantly in demand.

Just now the rumbling is from a thunderstorm, which has been happening off and on since about 7:30 p.m. yesterday. Although we get a fair bit of rain here, thunderstorms are unusual.

Spare a celebratory thought for Ingrid Betancourt, freed yesterday after 6 + years in the Columbian jungle. Although she was not imprisoned nearly so long as Nelson Mandela, I have the same feeling about her release - I thought it would never happen. A few months ago Paris Match ran the complete text of a hand-written letter, in which Ms. Betancourt sounded absolutely at the end of all strength and hope.