Dear Friends: Fall might be my favorite time of the year in Portland (summer heat waves over; winter rains not yet here), but it is also the time to make plans to leave. We have booked flights for Ecuador from November 1 to May 1. So now my job is to rent our house for six months. Which I’ve done over the past 20 years, but it’s always a nail-biter, as once I put out the information I have to stay al tanto –  prepared –  to respond to queries, update notices, and so forth. So forgive me if I begin this chronicle with an “advert.” Feel free to forward the link below to your friends and networks. (And for those who have already received this as an email, doubly forgive me.)

Our house in Portland, Oregon Available November 1, 2024 – May 1, 2025

Light-filled, two-story furnished Victorian with large master suite, second bedroom, home office, 2.5 bathrooms, cook’s kitchen, daylight basement with laundry and guest quarters. Fully renovated, energy-efficient, off-street parking, mature garden with deck and patio. Great location in lively Southeast Buckman neighborhood, ten minutes driving or biking to downtown Portland, easy walking to 28th street shops, restaurants, pubs, and theater. (Just listed as one of the coolest neighborhoods in the World! (I know – pretty crazy)

Owners live in Ecuador for six months every year. This house is ideal for those needing a move-in ready home for a limited time, with everything provided for daily living. Not appropriate for pets. $3000 monthly, all utilities included. To see more information and photos go here.

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In other news, I’ve just returned from visiting my sisters in Santa Fe, New Mexico and no, that is not a fire, but a sunset on my first night there, followed by thunder, lightning, rolling dark clouds, and a rainstorm. The second night we had a clear view of a lunar eclipse. All this reminded me why Santa Fe has forever drawn plein-air artists for its skies, landscapes, weather, architecture, and wildlife (photo of the tarantula by Anne McClard).

So I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to my two sisters and tell you a bit of our history. I am the oldest of three, born in Nebraska, my mother’s home state. Charlotte and Sherry, three and four years younger, were born in Pueblo, Colorado, where our father worked during World War II. Originally from the South, he fell in love with Colorado for its wide-open spaces and hunting, camping, and fishing. So after the war, we moved into the “wide-open spaces” of a small town of 3,000. Isolated by mountains and long distances to anywhere, Craig sat in the state’s far northwest corner, 34 miles from Wyoming and 79 miles to Utah, elevation 6185 feet, population seven souls per square mile. I love this image of our town because it so perfectly captures its modesty, plainness and middle-of-nowhere ness.

So picture three girls coming of age in the 1950s, with no TV, Internet, or social media, but a radio station – KRAI – that played western music non-stop, with an occasional Elvis. To us, it was a magical small-town world where we were free to roam, and we knew no different. Added richness to our childhoods came from well-grounded family life with lots of camping, fishing, wild horses (just kidding), and ballet (almost kidding).

As a teenager, I learned of the wider world through Mad Magazine and movies at the West Theater (my first job). My escape came after high school graduation, when I narrowly escaped death in an open-air jeep accident but made it to the University of Colorado in Boulder, two mountain passes away. But that is a story for another time.

As adults, we three sisters have lived all over the western hemisphere – Guadalajara, Toronto, San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia, Vermont, and Ecuador  – but we’ve always remained close. Now we get together at least once a year to view one another’s projects (we are all makers), brainstorm ideas for Three Girls from Craig collection, and tackle the perennial question: What are we going to do with all this stuff??

Birthday book made by Sherry for Charlotte. (Note my halo.)

Best wishes to all for this lovely September of 2024. I’ll be back with a chronicle in October as we prepare to leave for Ecuador (IF we rent the house).

The Cañar Book Club will be back then too. Meanwhile, please send me your favorite books of late.  Love to all,  Judy

Dear Friends: Many of you have asked about my sketchbooks, so I thought I’d try something different and dedicate this chronicle to the watercolors I did this summer of ’24. It’s been a glorious season in Portland, one of the best I remember, although that impression might be influenced by memories of the terrible winter of ’24, when a January storm brought down hundreds of trees and left 200,000 homes without power for days.
But let’s forget about winter!  During the spring Michael and I made a short visit to Ecuador to feel out our future in Cañar.  We left there on June 29 to be back in Portland for the summer. The (weird) map below shows our route to Guayaquil (why is the Pacific Ocean heading into the mountains?), with the same detour around the same broken bridge down, as it was on our way up.

We spent the night at our usual hotel in Guayaquil, took our usual American Airlines flight through Miami to arrive at PDX at 2:00 AM on July 1 – no taxis, no Urbers, no Lyfts, but a friendly pirate offered to take us home for $60. (Reminder: do not arrive in PDX in the middle of the night. It is not Guayaquil!).

Ah, Hello Portland! July brought a “historic” heatwave that saw me spending a lot of time in the hammock in the garden, reading books – “real” ones – not on an iPad or Kindle. So why does the world need bookstores? Louis Menand asks in the August 26 New Yorker. “One is the obvious benefit of being able to fondle the product. Printed books have, inescapably, a tactile dimension. They want to be held.”

Michael ate a lot of ice cream at Stacatto Gelato, a favorite place on 28th Street. Here, one hot day, he’s trying to finish a cone before it melts.

We frequently dined al fresco at the carts, everything from southern BBQ to Cuban fare. And I kept trying to sketch my favorite subject (though he didn’t always look like himself).

We enjoyed celebrating Beethoven’s 200th anniversary with friends at our favorite chamber music concerts.

And had lots of beers in pubs before movies.

Son Scott and grandson Zane came for a visit from San Francisco, and we took a big walk in the Columbia Gorge.

Saw six waterfalls! Later I met Michael for yellow curry with tofu at Paddee, our local Thai place.

In August visitors came from Whidby Island on Amtrak. When Amtrak canceled their return train they traveled home by bus (watercolor in progress).

In late August, we had dinner with friends and a walk in the new natural area by their house. On the way home, a huge harvest moon rising on the horizon reminded us that this wonderful summer would soon end.

But Fall is nice too!  We plan to be here until November 1 and then return to Cañar. By the way, we will be renting our house again for six months (Nov-May). Let me know if you’d like to help put the word out to your friends and networks. I’ll have an info sheet with photos that you can forward.

Until next time, dear friends, when we’ll get back to the Cañar Book Club! Meanwhile, stay in touch and let me know what you’ve been reading!

Dear Friends: Although we left Cañar at the beginning of July, I want to write one more chronicle this season to report on our brief two months there, as we made decisions that will determine our future in Cañar and that of the Cañar Chronicles. (Spoiler: we will continue to live in Cañar half-years and I will continue to write.)

But to go back. As many of our friends know, Michael has Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative condition that affects movement and other physical functions. In Michael’s case, the onset was late (about 4 years ago) and progression is slow. Nevertheless, at 86 years (this month), he shows more signs of the disease in his posture, walking, and energy levels. There is no cure, but symptoms are controlled with a standard drug taken three times a day. Last fall, when Michael ended up in the hospital for two weeks with a complicated type of pneumonia, we realized that the dependable body he has enjoyed up to his 80s will never be the same. This wonderful body that built two houses – one inside out, the other outside-in – renovated three houses for resale, and did countless kitchen and bathroom remodels around Portland in the 30 years he was a contractor. (He painted our front porch the week before he went into the hospital). He recovered slowly, and once we got the OK from his doctor that his lungs were clear, we made plans to go back to Cañar for two months as a sort of trial run. First, we wanted to see how he would do with the rigors of travel – from Portland to Cañar is a two-day, tiring trip through at least three airports – and second, how he would do in our hilly town at 10,000 feet without a car and few of the immediate luxuries we enjoy in Portland.

It went well for the most part. We were welcomed back by the taxi/truck drivers available on five-minute notice to take us anywhere in the area for $2.00. Over the years they’ve become friends and sources of information, as well as dependable transportation. When I developed a bad flu in May, a driver took us into town to a doctor whose name we’d be given (our previous one retired). When we rang the bell, we could hear the doctor clomping down the stairs from the family house upstairs. He sat at the desk in his tiny office crowded with photos and artwork by kids and grandkids, then checked me out, gave me a shot and an Rx, and charged $20. When Michael developed something similar he did the same for him. So just like that, we have a doctor in Cañar. (Later, someone said, “You didn’t know that most of our doctors come to your house?”)

And of course, Michael’s famous woodman Chirote showed up immediately, plaintively yelling “Mikito” from the road – “I’ve been crying and missing you!” – his usual routine. One of Michael’s great pleasures in Cañar is building a fire at around 3:00 every day, when he sits with a tall beer and “muses” until it’s time to make dinner. For that, he needs a constant source of wood and Chirote is his man. But when Chirote made the next delivery without telling Michael how much wood he was bringing and how much he would charge, Michael refused to pay and they broke up.  I was there to capture the moment…

…and again for the make-up a few weeks later.

We also had the good fortune to meet gardener Marco Verdugo last year when we hired him to mow the lawn and tend the garden once a month while we were In Portland. He would send beautiful videos of our garden and his work on Facebook Messenger. So when Annie Tucker and I went to Cañar in February this year for a relampago visit. I messaged Marco and asked him to help take down the shutters. I saw then how efficient he was. So before we arrived in May I asked him to help Michael take down the front shutters that require a ladder, and to wash the windows…  …then to help me with the gardening and heavy pruning……and again to cut and stack the woodpile. You get the picture: we now have found a dependable person to help us with the heavy work around the house. 

But perhaps the most significant moment came the day I was due to go into Cuenca for a press-check of the Navas photo book – the last possible moment to make any changes before a final printing – in this case, 500 copies. At 3:00 that afternoon I was to meet the designer, the printers, the project team, and the Navas family to see the first sample book. But Michael had not bounced back from his flu, and that morning he was so light-headed he could not get out of bed. I was reluctant to leave him alone all day, but he insisted I go, saying I should lock the gate and he would stay in bed. I worried and dithered, and finally left a couple of hours late, but before that, I’d run through several scenarios – some shared with Michael – that contributed to my thinking about our future. IF I needed someone to come stay with Michael, I could call Patricia who cleans our house and works nearby (F-no! says Michael). IF he needed a ride to town to see a doctor he could call one of our taxi-truck friends who would even help him from house to taxi, taxi to office, and home again. (“Never!” says Michael.) IF he needed a doctor urgently, he could call one to come to the house. (“Won’t happen!” says Michael).

Still, I left the padlock on the gate open and checked with our neighbor next door who was out in his garden if he would look in on Michael should I need him. I did call Michael several times while I was gone, and when I got home early evening he was sitting by the fire with a beer, as though it had been an ordinary day. On June 28 – the day before we left Cañar, I presented the Navas book at the Centro Civico with the Cañar mayor beside me, along with the Navas family, the Catholic University team who had published the book, and an audience of townsfolk and friends.  Everyone who came was given a book. (The law in Ecuador says public institutions cannot sell books but must give them away.)  And so I’m happy to give you all a digital copy of Desde de Mirada de Rigoberto Navas: 1940-1960 here. _LibroNavas

We left the next morning for Guayaquil-Miami-Portland. Our travel worries? Who needs Global Entry when you can breeze through immigration, customs, and TSA with a wheelchair (and a partner who trots alongside pulling a carry-on)?  We plan to go back to Cañar on November 1 for six months. If anyone is interested in renting our house in Portland, please get in touch! And, of course, you are always welcome to visit us in Cañar.

The Cañar Book Club

I’ve been reading promiscuously this summer, as I tend to do when I’m in Portland and have access to many sources of books. Following the recommendation of a member who described her “Tóibín-fest,” I went back and read Colm Tóibín’s first novel, The South, which I liked very much as it is about art and artists in post-Civil War Spain and in Ireland. Then I moved on to Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, which put me off a bit when I realized novel was about Mary he mother of Jesus in the last years of her life. I let it expire from the library, but rather regretted it when I read this review comment: “The Testament of Mary is a reminder that Jesus indeed had a mother, and she was nobody’s fool.”  Now I’m on safer ground with his The Blackwater Lightship, set in Ireland in the early days of AIDS, with flashbacks that  I see from reading Toibin’s Wikipedia site, cover the ground of his own lonely childhood in Ireland. (I’ve also read many of Tóibín’s later travel and fiction books, so I’m a certified fan.)

Beyond that, I’m immersed in a memoir about a world I knew nothing about: How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair is the extraordinary story of a young woman growing up in a Rastafari family in Jamaica in the 1980s. I first read her in a New Yorker excerpt and kept the book on my list. I’m about halfway through and find it fascinating.

I won’t bore you with the books I put down without finishing, or finished with the thought, that I’d wasted my time.  But hey, it’s summer and hot, and I have a hammock, and I’m entitled to some rubbish reading. 

Let’s hear what you all have been reading, rubbish or not!