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!  

Dear Friends: Someone commenting on my last chronicle asked where I was in the story.  So this one is mainly about me. However, later on, you’ll get a glimpse of Michael with his giant langoustine and soup recipe.

As seen above, the book Cañar: Desde la Mirada de Rigoberto Navas, 1940-1960 (“From the View of Rigoberto Navas, 1940-1960”) will be launched in Cañar on June 28, one day before we return to Portland. Five hundred books are being printed right now in Cuenca and won’t be ready until one day before the big event. Eeek! After the usual slow and complicated buildup, everything happens at the last minute. But the print job is gorgeous, and I couldn’t be happier to see this project come home.

The Navas project goes back to 2010, when two members of the family approached me to ask if I could print some of their father’s glass plate negatives in my darkroom. Although I didn’t have an enlarger adequate for 4″ x 5″ negatives, I was happy to make contact prints – where I laid the negatives directly onto photographic paper, exposed them to light. and developed the paper in my chemicals. Here’s an example of a contact sheet:

You can imagine my excitement when I saw the quality of the images. Rigoberto Navas (1911-2001) was the Cañar town photographer for over 50 years, and also a professor at the technical high school. Over the years I’d been curious about the Estudio Navas sign hanging outside the family home in town, but I knew nothing more. When I returned the first batch of glass plates to Marta and Paul Navas I asked if I could come to the studio and look at more negatives. They said of course. Truth is, I was looking for images of the Indigenous Cañari communities  – people, places and events of a culture that was hardly documented during the 20th century. In my next few darkroom sessions with the negatives, very few Cañari images turned up, but something else happened. Here, from my essay included in the book:

It was the portrait of a young couple that had me hooked. Posed in Navas’ studio in what may have been a wedding portrait, given the seriousness of her gaze into the camera, the woman was barefoot, while the man wore ashotas– rubber sandals. His arm is around her shoulders, and next to them on the studio wall is a cardboard advertisement for a 1951 Ford car. Who were they? Where were they from?  Why doesn’t she have shoes? Why the cardboard on the wall? As a documentary photographer, my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to know more.

I realized that the Navas negatives—images of schools, sports, baptisms, buildings, civic events, studio portraits, and more—offered a window into daily life in a small market town in the southern Andes of Ecuador. Who could resist? Thus began a slow cycle of printing a stack of glass negatives and returning them to the Navas studio (really just a large dusty closet) in the home where Rigoberto’s wife, Luz Maria, still lived with three of their fourteen adult children. I’d have afternoon coffee with the family—other Navas siblings from around town usually showed up—and take home another box of glass plates. (Photo: my darkroom circa 2018 below)

This went on, hit and miss, over several years during the six months I lived here. At one point I tried to create metadata system to record names and dates, consulting with Marta, my main contact in the family, but it was nearly impossible. Señor Navas left no records and, in fact, almost no photos except in family albums around town – only thousands of negatives!

One day in 2020, confined by the pandemic and in a burst of activity, I printed around 150 photos on my home printer, and with paper, scissors, and glue I spent several days assembling a sample book. Very crude. I used an existing photo book I liked and simply pasted in the photos and created a mock cover. I took to carrying it around in my backpack whenever I had meetings with municipal or cultural authorities. Everyone loved the idea of the book but no public institution had money to publish it.

Finally, a couple of years ago, I met a woman from the Catholic University in Cuenca at a meeting at the Casa de la Cultura in Azogues. At an opportune moment, I pulled out the sample book. She looked at it and said, “Hmmm, we have a new Culture Department at our university; I’d like to show this to them.” The rest, as they say, is history. Well, perhaps a rather rocky history, with personnel changes at the university and lots of delays. In the meantime, I was determined to find the names of the few Cañari folks appearing in the book. While it was easy to identify townsfolk – Marta would take one look and say, “That’s family so-and-so; the grandson is the pharmacist down the street,” it was harder to locate Cañari names from faces of seventy years ago.

I turned to an old friend, Tayta José Pichizaca, who came to look at photos on my computer and was able to give me a few names for photo captions in the book.

Once I returned to Ecuador this May, the culture folks at the Catholic University finally puse las pilas, as they say here (literally, “put in the batteries”). They hired a talented designer and a copyeditor, I loaded and edited the photos, and we all worked non-stop to get the book ready to print.

In the photos below, from just last Friday, we are getting a first look at the proof printed book. Pictured are the book designer Sebastian Egas; the head of the Culture Department Gemma Rosas; the in-house print technician; and two of the Navas sisters.

The book is gorgeous!  I’ll admit I was surprised that the university print shop could do such a fantastic job. (Technical note: it’s laser printed using a four-color process but making it duotone using only yellow and black – creating a rich sepia tone.)

All my materials from this 14-year project will go back to the Navas family, who propose to create a Navas museum that would include their father’s photos, darkroom equipment, cameras, even a 16mm film projector (he brought the first cinema to Cañar).

OK, Michael’s been patiently waiting in the wings to show you his giant langoustine. A couple of weeks ago he bought a pound of shrimp with heads on at the Sunday market for $5. (Well, I’ve exaggerated in the drawing – but this one was 10 inches – we measured!)

Mike’s Monster Langoustine Soup

• Pull off heads and shells and put in stock of plain water or fish stock with a little white wine. Simmer up to one hour on low heat with lid on pot.
• Meanwhile, finely dice a small purple onion, 5-6 garlic cloves, and add 2 T of tomato paste.
• With a slotted spoon remove all heads and shells from the stock and add all above ingredientes.
• Add two medium-sized potatoes, cubed, to the stock. Cook about 15 minutes. Meanwhile cut shrimp into bite-sized pieces, and add to soup at the last minute. Cook for about 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve!

C a ñ a r  B o o k  C l u b

At last! We come to books, and I have a bonanza of recommendations this month. Thanks to all our faithful members who responded after May’s meeting.

• Annie in Portland:  “I’m reading Mighty Bad Land: A Perilous Expedition to Antarctica Reveals Clues to an Eighth Continent by Bruce Luyendyke, a geologist and friend of my husband Steve Tucker, who died two years ago.  It’s about the author’s first trip to Antartica when Steve was along as a mountaineer. I haven’t had the courage to read it until now. He mentions Steve a lot who I think helped keep a level-head when they faced adversity such as storms that delayed plane-drops of equipment. Bruce does a nice job of painting both the team’s work and the day-to-day life living on ice. His group went on to discover a large submarine  plateau resulting  from two tectonic plates colliding, a discovery that led to a mountain being named after him.”
• Pat in Oregon: I join the consensus with Hisham Matar’s last part of the triptych which includes In the Country of Men and The Return. A Month in Sienna is a meditation on Sienese art in the 1600’s and is elegant, as usual. Also, I read The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. A couple in their 50’s lose their farm and the husband receives a terminal diagnosis. They decide to walk the South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, a path of some 630 miles. In the end they make their way to peace and reconciliation. (Comment from Judy: I also read this and enjoyed this immensely. Based on the fame of the first book, Winn wrote a second (not quite as engaging) memoir, The Wild Silence.)

• Claire in London: I’m late to Colm Toibin. and am utterly enchanted by his writing. I’d read The Magician (the one based on the life of Thomas Mann) and really liked it. Next, I read The South (set largely in post-civil war Spain to which an unhappy Irish woman has fled and where she falls in love with an ex-communist fighter). I was blown away by the writing and was completely immersed in the characters and place (extraordinary to learn it’s his first novel!). I went straight on to another one – The Heather Blazing which I found utterly compelling even though I didn’t particularly like the main character. But as a study of small-town and rural Irish life in the mid-20th century, it was brilliant. (Judy’s comment: I also love Colm Toibin and can recommend The Master (about Henry James), Nora Webster and Brooklyn. Now everyone – including me – is on the wait list for his new book, Long Island, said to be a continuation of Brooklyn.)
• Claire continues: So after my Toibin-fest, I read An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris. Harris is a masterful storyteller though his prose is fairly pedestrian. But An Officer and a Spy is Harris at his best. It’s the story of the Dreyfuss Affair in France, something I’ve always “known” about but not really understood. He writes it like a thriller while also highlighting the complex relationship between Army, State and Catholic church, and the deeply rooted anti-semitism in all three. I could not put it down. 
• Joanne in Portland: Long Island by Colm Toibin is a great read. Straightforward language and dialogue but psychologically complex portraits. I’m glad I read Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck. At times, the characters seemed more allegorical than real, but the backdrop of a changing Germany is fascinating. I more admired than enjoyed it.
• Jeffrey Ashe, one of the first Peace Corps volunteers in Cañar in the 1960’s and later a pioneer in microfinance, recommends: We are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance by Mara Kardas-Nelson.

That’s it for now, dear friends. Keep your suggestions coming as I’m planning one more chronicle in July.