Spring is Sprung

Calloo Callay! It's spring, and we know it because the Farmer's Markets start this week. The first Saturday Market will be next Saturday, April 17th and the first Wednesday Market will be next Wednesday, the 21st.

It's been a very strange winter. We read many stories about unprecedented snowfall in other parts of the country, but here we had a lot less precipitation than usual. We looked up at the not-white hills and mountains, and thought, It's gonna be a dryyy summer. The past week or so we've had a lot of rain, and snow has appeared on the higher places visible from the valley, but it doesn't seem like nearly enough. We'll see.

We're still struggling with the too little money and the too many bills, but now that John is training for the census, we can expect a temporary improvement at least. And in Kathe's work (she's a peon in the foreclosure industry), she thinks she sees signs of things getting better in general, although her personal income is down.

It will soon be time for one of our favorite holidays, Fuchsia Day, when we buy a fuchsia plant (or maybe several) for the front porch. And the daffodils we planted to replace the ones destroyed by the Big Street Project of a few years ago are up and looking very jaunty! Roll on spring!

Sequin Spill

We have been tracking (double meaning) with interest the progress of a spill of sequins. "A spill of sequins?" you say, with an upward intonation.

Yes, at the Jefferson Avenue entrance to an alley between 4th and 5th, someone spilled a package of sequins of mixed colors and sizes, and since we go downtown fairly often, and pass this corner most times that we go down, we have been able to observe the sequins spreading gradually up and down Jefferson, and north and south along 4th and 5th Streets.

[Update 1: Yesterday, we saw someone bending over the site of the sequin spill, apparently about to take a photograph of it. We'd have stopped to compare notes with her, but we were pressed for time.]

[Update 2: Today, we observed our first sequins west of the railroad tracks -- they are getting around, like animal-borne seeds.]

Priceless Moment

We went to the Winter Market this morning, and saw a group of people out front holding signs reading FREE HUGS. Naturally, we took them up on it, and were happy to accept their cards, inviting us to join them at Northwest Hills Community Church for their young couples' ministry (nice of them to invite us, in spite of not being in their target demographic :-).

By the time we left, John had rubbed all of their shoulders, and we had bought them a plate of crepes from the crepeurs who were selling them by the door.

We talked with the huggers briefly about Ernest Mann's "Priceless Economic System", which proposes that people give away as much of what they produce as they can give or can bring themselves to give -- we're totally in favor of a revolution, especially one that does not involve shooting people, taking over the government or even organizing a movement.

Mystery Meat: The Mystery Deepens

I have bad news, and possibly-less-bad news, about domestic American meat products.

And the bad news comes with bad news and worse news.

The bad news: fast food retailers are extending their regular ground beef, with all its attendant horrors, with a product known cheerfully within the trade as "pink slime": beef leavings mixed with ammonia in the hope that this will kill the bacteria that swarm in it, as well as the bacteria already present in ordinary ground beef.

The worse news within the bad news: purchasers complained about the latrine stench of pink slime, so the manufacturers reduced the quantity of ammonia, thereby reducing the (possible) bacteria-killing effect.

But despair not, there is some hope for your meat habit: there has been recent progress in culture-growing animal muscle tissue. True, it's squashy and low in protein, but no animals suffered in growing and harvesting it, and it will be a lot cleaner than meat from a slaughterhouse (provided the vats the cultures grow in are kept sanitary, and surely that will be the case).

We still aren't vegetarians in this house, but news like this isn't helping.

Besides, we know where this sort of thing can lead.

Airborne Terrorism: The Shocking Truth About YOUR Chances of Becoming a Victim

http://gizmodo.com/5435954/the-true-odds-of-airborne-terror-chart

Contact Light 2009

[If all goes well, a slightly different version of this newsletter will accompany our year-end cards]

Contact Light 2009
A Blackberry House Production by John M. Burt, 960 SW Jefferson Avenue, Corvallis, Oregon 97333 USA
john_m_burt@hotmail.com // katheburt@hotmail.com // burtfamily@live.com // john_m_burt.blogspot.com // thesweater.blogspot.com // johnandkathe.blogspot.com //

It's been a pretty good year, over-all. We're living together and having fun, in a variety of ways. Kathe continues to work as a process server. John continues to work as a caregiver and massage therapist, and hopes soon to be working as a phlebotomist (that's the person who draws your blood when the doctor sends you to the lab for a test). He took the course and passed with outstanding grades, but hasn't yet landed a job. We are continuing to work on one of our long-term project, the Coffee Shack Book, a task which is made easier by Kathe's job, which allows scouting the entire mid-valley area for new coffee shacks, and also allows John to ride along when he's not otherwise occupied,

Our son Walden and our grandson Richard Loy Gentry are both living in Corvallis. We don't see a lot of Walden and even less of Dick, but they both seem to be doing well.
Our daughter Asnakech is living in Portland. Our daughter Mestowet is living in Georgia near Atlanta. There is more we could say about family matters but...they are family matters. Here and now, let it be enough to say that there are other people we hold in our hearts, also.

We have no pets unless you count the elderly cat we feed in the shed. We inherited her from a former neighbor, and I don't think of her so much a pet as a feral animal we feel sorry for. It's hard not to, looking at her. She's more or less friendly and appreciative, but she will never be a house cat. Last winter she disappeared for several days and returned minus her tail. We think maybe the local raccoon ate it.

John's father remains in poor health, but his mother looks after him diligently and with energy. John helps out a lot, and is grateful for the opportunity.

As always, we continue to work on the house. And, as always, it is not finished. The roof, foundation and exterior walls are sound, though and those are the most important parts.

The community art theme for da Vinci Days this year was fish. We disdained the precut fish patterns the organizers offered, opting instead for our usual contribution, a collage, assembled on our usual schedule, atthelastminute. We've done worse. http://www.davinci-days.org/

After years of hearing compliments on our "signature" sweaters, and telling people as much of the backstory as they would hold still for, we decided we needed to have cards printed up telling the tale. We still don't have the cards, but at least we can give them the Web address of the sweaters' blog: http://thesweater.blogspot.com

We are so sorry we missed the chance to pick up the "Rude Hippy" story from Craigslist; it would have been an excellent addition to the sweater blog.

Oh, you haven't heard it?

Apparently, we offended someone by not talking to them long enough when they commented on the sweater (there was just one, until last year), and they posted on the Craigslist rant page. A wonderful rant, about how we were probably liberals, and self-centered, like all liberals, and didn't have time to be polite to someone who stopped us on the street to comment on the sweater (described as "technicolor barf"), and besides, I was too thin and John was too fat, and so on and on. Probably they said "That's an ugly sweater" and we replied, "Sorry you don't like it," and walked on, entirely unaware that they wanted us to stay around for further derision. Rude us. Actually, the community appreciation seems to be picking up.

We didn't really observe Christmas this year, but we did mark New Year's with, among other things, a new digital camera, with which we took the attached photo.

Well, here's hoping next year will be even better. Especially that health-care thing.

From John to Kathe, With Love