6000onions

Anticipation

Posted on April 12, 2026 by mygothlaundry

A deer on the side of a sidewalk on campus — Sunday, April 5

Hello! Another week has passed without a global thermonuclear war but don’t give up! There’s still more weeks to come.

Last Tuesday, as we all know unless you are hiding under some kind of rock, in which case I would like to know if there is room for me, the slime mold masquerading as president of the US threatened to end a civilization. Ha ha! Too late, sucka! You have already effectively ended what passed for ours! In the weird time dilation reality that we enjoy on this greatest of all possible timelines, that seems like years ago and also, yesterday. It has been five days. I personally spent most of Tuesday in a kind of a fugue state of stunned post traumatic distress. I grew up dreading nuclear war. I was maybe 10 the first time I woke up terrified and convinced that the Russians had dropped the bomb, specifically on Darien, Connecticut. As I got older I stayed afraid. I protested. I marched. I did a die in on the Charleston SC courthouse steps that was supposed to demonstrate how we would all die if the navy base was bombed. I suspect that mostly it demonstrated how college students can drape themselves limply almost anywhere, which turns out to be no real surprise to everyone over 30.

I got older. And then, you know, new fears supplanted the old. It seemed as if that particular terror at least had been put away in favor of climate change and famine and pandemics; tsunamis and car accidents and homelessness: the very specific fears we all share for ourselves and our families and friends. Well! Look at that! Everything old is new again. It’s like the Night Bird and the Marsh Monster, two fears of my childhood, came back with a dreadful orange son. In other words, even if it hasn’t happened, a terrifying door has been reopened, one of those doors that are stone and metal and wood and locked around with spells and ropes and chains and signs in 100 languages saying Don’t Open This Door You Idiot – and we are all in trouble now.

a reflective photo of a framed photo with a plaque under it

OK! In slightly more upbeat news my photo is up at Sisu Brewing with a plaque on it proclaiming it the winner. The gorgeous framing job was the prize and it is indeed one hell of a prize! Thank you Astoria Downtown Historical District Assocation!

I went over there last night and met a couple of my fellow prizewinners who were all very nice. I also went to a bunch of other galleries, where I met a local photographer who I admire tremendously, chatted with another great artist who is also a communist like me, and saw some wonderful art, so excellent artwalk all in all.

Anticipating! I got my tax money back – I am conflicted about this because I do not really want to be paying taxes right now. I believe in taxes but I also believe in using them to, you know, help the citizenry with such things as food insecurity, health care, infrastructure, public media, weather predictions, trips to space (OMG ARTEMIS that was AMAZING) scientific research, PBS and the occasional arts prize. Pretty much, in other words, all the things that have been dismantled and destroyed in the last 18 months. Still! I am happy to have this money and I promptly spent it on 1) new glasses and 2) a new to me lens from ebay. It is not the lens that I actually want, which is some variant on this one (if the link goes away it’s to a used 100 – 400 mm Canon EF lens.) I cannot afford that lens no matter how often I look at it, and I am too suspicious by nature to order one for $350 from Japan even though I could, barely, afford that. Oh well! I ordered a 90 – 300 mm ancient lens instead for around $130 and we shall see. Maybe it will be great! Next year, if there is a next year, I’m going to buy a printer. So I am anticipating new glasses with my new prescription – prepare to be recognized, populace! – and a new lens – prepare to be photographed, pelicans!

The photos and the week that was! On Sunday as previously discussed we dyed eggs on my daughter’s porch in the sunshine. Monday, this campus deer greeted me on my way to work. Tuesday, I left early so I could go spend 2 hours at the T Mobile store on behalf of my brother’s new phone and also walk the dog at the Fort Stevens historical area where, amid the broad daylight and the crowds of frisbee golfers, I encountered this completely nonchalant and well fed coyote. Wednesday I was in my office where this tiny vase, a gift from a colleague, was making me happy with a tiny flower plucked from the college grass. Thursday Harvey and I went for an early walk on two of my favorite parts of the Warrenton waterfront trail – we had to beat a hasty retreat from this part, due to of course other dogs. Friday morning the daily deer were in my yard and yesterday, Saturday, I took this over by the other side of the airport and I really like it. I like photos that are essentially stripes, because if you think about it, most landscapes are stripes. There are elk behind those trees by the way but you can’t see them from this angle. And if that isn’t a metaphor for life these days I do not know what is. Hope to see you all again next week!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daily-life, lens-artists, life, nature, photoaday, photography, politics, us-politics | Leave a comment

Easter

Posted on April 5, 2026 by mygothlaundry

the view from El Tapatio mexican restaurant — Sunday, March 29

a tradescantia or inch plant in a sunny windowsill — Sunday, March 29

Today was Easter and it was a gloriously beautiful July day. This is the sort of thing where you know it’s wrong, it’s completely wrong, it’s a harbinger of doom if ever there was one, but also, fuck it, let’s day drink and dye eggs. How often, in the Pacific Northwest, does one get to sit outside in the blazing sunlight all day in early April? Not often, is the answer, and so that is what I did. I started my outdoor journey at 7:30 this morning at the beach with Harvey and then by noon I was just in time to catch the end of Four discovering her Easter basket in the shower. In an extreme pinterest moment, by the way, I ran several shades of green and some hot pink paper through the office shredder to create truly fabulous Easter grass for the basket. Highly recommend. Although it is my daughter who will have to deal with the fact that it’s now covering most surfaces in her house.

We dyed eggs on my daughters porch and drank canned margaritas. Then I went home for a bit, went back with all the ingredients for pasta primavera and my brother and the dog, and we had a lovely Easter dinner on the porch. We even said grace, which, um, we do not generally do, not being strictly Christian. I mean, my brother was properly raised Catholic and so was my daughter, more or less, or at least when she was with her dad’s family. My parents, however, broke with the church by the mid 60s. I’m culturally Irish Catholic but I was baptized and that was it. I have been making up my own religions ever since. I’m buddhist. Or wiccan. Or something like that. I was if not a child of hippies than at least the niece of hippies and somehow, hippie adjacent. I read Be Here Now and Siddhartha at a tender age and then in my teens I discovered Robert Anton Wilson and then the church of the Subgenius, but also Sybil Leek, so, you know, it’s a rocking late hippy mishmash in my head. I was a Quaker for a while in the 90s and that came close to sticking. But tonight grace felt right, so grace it was. And lets hope it works and the gods grant us some, because if I allow myself to think of it, between climate change and fascism and the stuff the orange creature was saying late last night, I am scared as hell.

I was, however, less depressed this week than last week although I did go get a shingles vaccine. There is a shingles outbreak in Clatsop County, or so I have heard, or so someone authoritatively said. Is this true? I have no idea. I personally know three people now who have had shingles, one of whom is my boss, so it behooved me to get myself over to Fred Meyer and get the first of two shots. I had chickenpox. I was 6 and I remember it vividly. I also had a broken arm, and I had chickenpox under the cast. We had a European nanny (yes, I do come from one of *those* families, but don’t worry, the money is long, long gone and all that remains are occasional bursts of etiquette) and she plopped us both (me and my younger brother, who was really small, less than two) into a baking soda bath and kept us there for hours every day. It was kind of fun. And my first grade class all wrote me get well soon cards that pretty much all mentioned chickens. So, bath, chickens, cast and fifty odd years later, I had to get a shingles shot on Wednesday evening.

That all seemed fine until about 36 hours later, when I was hit by an invisible mack truck. I was miserable from Friday morning until Sunday morning and truly, that sucked. I thought I was going to die until I did an internet search that included the magic word Reddit, thus discovering that I was not, actually, the only person who has had a bad delayed reaction to the first shingles shot. Reddit becoming a reliable source of truthful information was not actually on my 21st century bingo card but, here we are.

Anyway! To the photos! Sunday I was very depressed and decided to go get Mexican takeout because I could not face making dinner. Turns out that El Tapatio has a tiny tucked away bar and you can have a margarita while you wait for your takeout. I had no idea. On Monday I was at work all day and that is one of my work plants. Tuesday was another work and go home day with nothing to record except here is Mr. Binks being an orb in the clean household laundry. Wednesday, there was a rainbow on the way home from my shingles shot. Thursday, I took Harvey for a walk at our regular other side of the airport dike trail and had a brief chat with a very nice homeless couple. Then they walked on over the bridge with their groceries in a high piled cart and on the other side of the bridge was another homeless person with his stuff piled equally high going the opposite direction. It is getting like The Road already people and that was not, you know, meant to be an aspirational novel. Friday my favorite committee met at my favorite downtown bar and the bubble people were out in front. All hail the bubble people, they make life better. Then it was yesterday and the Fort Stevens historical park was full of elk. Also there was a complete asshole who refused to leash his dog but I am not going to go into details, although I am filled with righteous wrath and, fuck that dude: I feel sorry for his dog.

My dog, however, has it good and he clearly enjoyed his walk this morning.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, dailylife, easter, family, life, photoaday, religion | Leave a comment

Pictures

Posted on March 29, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Starting right off with the pictures, I just attached my old Canon 5D to the computer for the first time in a while – the first time in 2026 it turns out! – and was staggered again by how, uh, much better it is than the phone. I have been mostly shooting film lately and I’ve had some technical and other difficulties with my digital cameras – I will probably get to this long tale of woe later – so I sort of just haven’t bothered hauling the Canon around. Well. Um. Yes, it is true that my phone now has more megapixels than the old Rebel with which I started this obsession over twenty years ago BUT! It was true then and is true now that megapixels aren’t everything. My old Canon 5D with a fungus infected ancient kit lens, the trusty 28 – 135 mm that I call Old Faithful, takes, by and large, way better photos than my Samsung Galaxy S22. Not to diss my phone! I love some of the photos I have taken with it! But look at Sunday and Friday. You cannot get to that level with a phone. You just can’t.

The week in photos: Last Sunday, I took Harvey to the beach for the first time in way too long. This seal was sneaking around right at the edge of the beach and I wasn’t even sure she was there but lo! She was! On Monday I went to a work event at a very nice little distillery/bar/restaurant on the riverwalk and this is a not great shot from right outside. I ended up drinking too much that night – not at the work event, oh no, give me credit for some brains – and I must have needed it, because I’ve been less depressed this week than last. From Tuesday, here is the rainy stormy view from one of the college classroom windows. Never gets old. I am actually considering trying to set up a permanent camera in one of those windows to do an auto photo a day for a year. On Wednesday it was utterly beautiful by the afternoon so I walked home along a different route than I usually take and this is one of the two staircases down the hill that I passed. On Thursday I went to work and so on, but here is Harvey keeping an eye on the neighborhood. On Friday, Harvey and I went for a long walk at the Fort Stevens Historical Area and chatted for a bit with some elk. Here, for comparison, are those elk same elk taken with the phone.

Part of it is indeed the zoom lens. Can’t really ever get that close to the elk with a phone and phone zooms, while they have dramatically improved, are still, well. There is no substitute for real glass. But also, there is just depth and feeling in the real camera that there isn’t in the phone. I love my phone photos and the best camera is the one you have with you, but still. I need to start hauling the Canon around again.

And on Saturday and in other forms of picture news, I am rather pleased with my No Kings sign. It is a reference to a beloved small local ancient takeout restaurant called Custard King – here are the Google image search results so you get an idea of the referent – and while I should, in retrospect, have actually put in a surfing protest frog rather than a big hippie flower, I still am okay with it. Of course I painted the whole thing on Saturday morning while simultaneously helping Four paint and talking to my daughter and making breakfast for my brother and dealing with the guys I hired to come clean out the backyard and put up an actual dog proof fence around at least part of it. So it got a bit sloppy and also, rubber cement does not, it turns out, work as a resist with tempera paint, leading to a lot of last minute taping and subsequent ripping of the cardboard. This is why I was 45 minutes late to the protest and my hands were all painty. It didn’t really matter: we seem to have a Peoples Front of Judea vs. Judaean People’s Front situation going on here because Oregon: there were dueling No Kings protests in different places at different times. I only made the last 45 minutes of the second one, but many people laughed and took pictures of my sign and so, win. Another No Kings! The biggest protest in American history! I participated in the last biggest protest in American history too, and gosh that changed history. Not. Sigh. No, the patriarchy has proved horribly resilient and I wish I had more faith and hope but, unfortunately, I do not. But I will continue showing up with paint on my hands and, I don’t know, some kind of crazed magical thinking in my heart. Maybe this time it will work.

Tales of Photo Woe: My Canon 5D needs to be rehabbed, cleaned and fixed up and I’m just hoping against hope that that will do the trick. I have to call around to find someone who will even do that, given that this is now an old camera, not supported anymore and so, while not as impossible to fix as my beloved actually antique cameras, getting close. I switched a couple years ago to a 7D because the 5D had gotten sort of wonky, and also because lenses for the crop sensor 7D were so much cheaper than the ones for the 5D. It took some getting used to but eventually I grew to be fond of it. Alas, on New Years Eve my zoom lens and the 7D went ass over teakettle into the sand on the beach and fuck it, rather than try to repair them, I want my 5D back and working and some new lenses. Unfortunately, most of my lenses are gone. I am pretty sure they were stolen. I don’t want to talk about it. There still exists just a tiny, tenuous thread of hope that they weren’t, that they are just lost, misplaced during all the upheavals and moving / not moving of the last year or so. It’s a very thin thread, that hope, and it’s getting thinner all the time. So all I have now is the broken Tamron 18 – 400 designed for crop sensor – it vignettes way too much with the 5D – and my 24 mm, which I love for landscapes but is not super versatile, and my old Lensbaby fisheye which is also broken because I shoot at the beach and eventually, everything gets sand in it. And Old Faithful. This is a horrible state of affairs and I am sad. So I need new lenses and I might need a new 5D body and bah, hell and damnation, I need to win the lottery.

I also don’t have a good printer and this is causing me pain. The Canon TS 3720 that I bought in desperation as a stop gap to just have something is the absolute worst piece of shit printer I have ever, ever encountered. Really, absolutely terrible. Beyond terrible. The print quality is almost OK, or seems like it might be – IF, and it’s a big big IF, you can get it to print at all. It will not print from Photoshop. It will only print from, like, the windows photo print dialogue which will only print in certain sizes and dimensions and on certain media not as high res as I would like and then it will refuse to print because, I don’t know, Saturn is not in retrograde and then. . . anyway, I’m going to start screaming again so I need to stop. I need a good printer to make cyanotypes, which I love to make. I would like to try encaustic, too, like all the cool kids, and for that I need not just a printer but also some extremely expensive art supplies. And of course I don’t have any money. So that was this week’s long self pitying whine. See you next week, when hopefully both the patriarchy and capitalism will be overthrown and we will all have won the lottery.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged camera, cameras, canon, canonts3720review, photoaday, photography, politics | Leave a comment

Time

Posted on March 22, 2026 by mygothlaundry

a view of the confluence of youngs bay and the columbia river on a gray spring day — Sunday, March 15

a hollow tree in front of a green cemetery — Sunday, March 15

I don’t have a lot of time this weekend – I have, for one reason and another, been spending a lot of time with Four this weekend and in two hours, she will be arriving again for another overnight. School / work day overnights are a work in progress, sigh. Anyway! Some news!

I entered a couple of photographs into the Astoria Downtown Historical District annual photo show, not expecting much. This photo, however, won for Quirky category (imagine a whole row of hilariously laughing emoji here) and for Best in Show. I am somewhat chuffed. I took this on my old plastic lomo fisheye. Gods I love toy cameras.

It will be on display along with all the other winning photos at Sisu brewery starting at the April artwalk on Saturday, April 11. Come and see it! I will be there drinking! Say hello!

I am trying to remember what I called it. Revenge of the Cat People or something like that. It’s from the 2024 Regatta Parade and the Big Heads people, of whom I was one briefly in like 2020 or something. I made a plague doctor head but didn’t think the whole thing through very well and as a result ended up trying to walk around downtown while 1) blind and 2) wrapped in multiple yards of black fleece that kept trying to trip me. As a result I lagged far behind the rest of the parade and eventually, was just a lone plague doctor stumbling down the sidewalk. As one does.

And now, the photos. I forgot to do this part last week and I might go back and do it because this is, after all, a photo a day project. I swear. Last Sunday was a rainy day and that’s the obligatory dog walk at the sawmill trail in Warrenton.

Monday was one of those days where it was foggy and raining and then suddenly sunny and amazing, so I walked home from work by this hollow tree in hilltop cemetery. On Monday the palliative care nurse came by as she does more or less monthly to check on my brother and chat with all of us, so I woke up early and cleaned like a maniac. I need to have more people over; my house would be cleaner. On Tuesday it was foggy again and that’s the back parking lot at work. It was once a quarry, hence the looming cliff.

Wednesday’s dog walk was on what I call the illegal trail, which is the old road that runs along next to the nice trail by the airport. You know, the one with the No Trespassing signs which I have never, ever seen, officer. We can’t go to the nice trail because it’s lovely and fenced in and sane dogs often run loose there. Harvey is too obsessed by other dogs to run loose anywhere in these days of many many dogs, so we sadly march along the illegal trail. This is one of the things that depresses me. It’s not that he’s aggressive, exactly – it’s that, I kid you not, he is passive aggressive. He becomes completely obsessed and will not leave the other dog alone, just bugging him, bugging him, bugging him – until that dog finally snaps at him at which point he goes ham. It’s incredibly annoying for everyone concerned.

Thursday it poured and poured all day and Mr. Binks got to play with the old iPad. By Thursday Monday’s vacuuming was a just a dream inside an illusion, as you can see. You can also see that one of the rules of photography, foolishly broken here, is to never ever take a picture of your baseboard. My five year old iPad developed a cracked screen so, upon finding the cost of a new screen I ordered a new to me refurbished four year old iPad. My reasoning went something like this: I could get a refurbished same gen iPad for only $50 more! So I should do that! But wouldn’t it make more sense to get a newer one for only $100 more? Why yes! Why no. No it did not and this sort of thing is one of the reasons I’m so damn poor. However, it arrived, my son got it working, and thus I replaced the kitchen iPad, which is about ten to twelve years old, with my old one on the theory that being mounted on the wall would keep the cracked screen from fully disintegrating. And Mr. Binks got the old old one, which even Four does not want because it’s too old to run pokpok. Do you know when I was a kid we . . . didn’t have tablets but TVs lasted, essentially, forever. When I went to college my mom gave me a TV from my childhood and I suspect it’s still working somewhere in the back of a Charleston thrift shop even though we messed up the color turning Ronald Reagan bright green during some state of the union in the 80s. It was too heavy to ever move again anyway. It might still be in that apartment. Grumble, grumble, I am old.

On Friday it was horrible in the morning and lovely in the evening. Harvey came to work with me for the afternoon and after work I took him for a quick jaunt on the riverwalk before buying frozen pizzas for dinner at Safeway. I swear to god I don’t know how much longer I can make dinner every night for a 77 year old with no teeth, a four year old with extremely specific tastes – she likes french fries, pizza and chicken nuggets – a radical anarchist vegan and me, who will eat basically anything except meat. I am so over it. I am so tired, y’all.

Saturday, which was yesterday, I tried yet again to do an image transfer on the gelli plate and I failed yet again, but I did manage this weird little monoprint, so I feel it was a success all in all.

The frozen pizza was amazing although somehow the kitchen still got trashed. See you next Sunday!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dailylife, dogs, family, life, photoaday | Leave a comment

Fear

Posted on March 15, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Hello from Sunday. I am calling this week’s blog entry Fear because I have a couple of pieces in a show downtown at AVA that is called Courage. It’s called Courage because that is the theme of this year’s Rain Magazine, which is the literary / art magazine at the college where I work. I used to think it was only for students but then I realized that actually, staff and faculty and community members also contribute, so this year I pulled up all my courage and submitted two pieces. Whooo. They are below.

So the one on the left is called The Swing and it’s part of a roll of double exposed Lomo Turquoise that ran through first the Praktica and then the Chaika, my two manual Soviet era cameras. I am over the moon about this roll of film. The swing is something somebody built over near the beach at Ilwaco and you would have to be completely insane to even sit on it since it’s made of driftwood, beach flotsam and air – I love looking at it but yeah, art not playground equipment dear god – and the other one is a cyanotype (toned in coffee and black tea) of a smaller Four in a puffy jacket heading intrepidly into the low tide river. I am quite proud of these two pieces. I am mostly proud of most of the stuff I make – even this faboo print that Four and I made last weekend after Harvey and I found a lovely little fish dead on the sand, as pictured.

Anyway! Artwalk! It happens once a month on the second Saturday and for seven years now I have been trying so hard to sort of break in to the arts here and to make artsy friends. When I first arrived I tried to join Lightbox, the photo gallery downtown, but their darkroom access was so limited and so expensive, I couldn’t do it. At that point the owner lost all interest in me forever. Then I joined AVA, and I have mostly been a member since 2018, managing to submit one or two pieces a year to the members show and being mostly completely ignored by everyone associated. I have tried to volunteer a couple times and been soundly rebuffed. The AVA people I have told this to look shocked and they murmur something about how that can’t be right and they will absolutely find a spot for me and then. . crickets. I hear nothing. By the third time this happened I got the message and stopped trying. Astoria is tough as fucking nails and that legendary Seattle Freeze extends to the Oregon coast.

There is a piece in the Courage show that is made of mirrors. There are markers hanging by the mirrors and you are supposed to write your fear on the mirrors with them. This, if you dabble in witchcraft or horror novels at all, is clearly a supremely bad idea. I mean, might as well call it How to Summon. So because I am small and petty at heart, I drew a small cartoon rat and wrote RATS above it in shaky lettering. I am, in fact, terrified of rats and mice and, I guess, rodents in general although I reserve judgment about capybaras until I encounter one. They seem nice. There are other things I am afraid of, though, which I am less willing to write on a mirror. And one of them is being trapped and alone and unseen and unheard. Which, funnily enough, is how I always feel at Artwalk.

Granted, I looked at my own Fear selfie and I thought, oh my god, I would not approach me either, not in that hat.That hat is supposed to flop over but, like all my hats, even the store bought ones, they stand straight up, turning me into an even more bizarre figure than I already am. Still, can’t they see that I am wearing my Crappie Commie Camera Party t-shirt that says Resist Late Stage Capitalism on it? Doesn’t that along with the lens diagram make you want to be friends with the weird lady? Huh. Go figure. One does try.

So I was there, and I talked briefly to the two or three people I do sort of know and went on, as one does, to the other galleries in town who were participating. Nobody spoke to me at any of the other galleries. I wafted in – I’m too solid to waft, really, but you get the idea – and wafted out. If it was on offer, a plastic cup of cheap cabernet wafted with me.

There are several really good photographers in town right now who are doing the kind of work I wish I was doing. Actually, it’s the kind of work I am doing, but (this is going to sound whiny and horrible and I am sorry, but my bootstraps fucking broke) I don’t have the money or the time that I suspect they do.

In other words, my utter failure as an artist and at life isn’t all my fault. I get depressed easily at ArtWalk and I think it is entirely my fault and I should just go crawl into a cave and never come out. I feel like that a lot. But – and this is important – it really isn’t. I don’t have a good printer. I don’t have darkroom access. I don’t have much extra money. I do have a demanding full time job. I am taking care of my 77 year old brother with dementia. On weekends I take care of my four year old granddaughter for at least one night and often more. I have a dog reactive dog who needs to be walked, but only in places where there aren’t other dogs, which narrows the field. I have a crippling Minecraft addiction and a Libby app that allows me to drift off into fictional worlds that are vastly better than this one.

The important part – it comes back to politics, hon. It always and forever comes back to politics. – is that in this country we are conditioned and trained to blame ourselves for everything that is wrong with our lives. Not the state, not the world, not the economy, it’s all on our own heads. But it isn’t, you know. There are so many other things at play, here. Some of it is my own fault – I don’t work enough, I had children, I didn’t marry the right man, I drink too much wine and I am bone lazy. Some of it is not – I’m either the last baby boomer or the first Gen Xer, depending on what you read – and for my age cohort, options have narrowed fast and scarily. I don’t have a huge retirement account. That’s not entirely my fault. I’ve had to jump jobs to advance. I moved to Asheville for 20 years, which was a career disaster. Social security keeps getting pulled further away and Republican tax cuts for the rich somehow equal tax increases for me, even though we don’t get anything for our taxes but war.

So I’m trying to remember that. I’m trying not to be sad about going to artwalk and feeling smaller and sadder with every step. I’m trying to find some artsy friends who want to go to artwalk with me. and in the meantime, have Harvey in the daffodils to cheer you up.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, art, astoriaor, life, mental-health, photoaday | Leave a comment

Outing

Posted on March 8, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Two crows in a tree by the Columbia river. — Sunday, March 1

A cat curled in a ball on a blanket — Sunday, March 1

Last week was eventful in the sense of yes! There were events! Which is a wonderful change from eventful in the sense of dear god, what now? On Wednesday we – my daughter, granddaughter and me – went to Portland. It was mostly pretty great. Now I am having a bad case of city envy and can’t remember why I thought it would be such a good idea to live way out in the sticks. (Isn’t that a weird phrase? What the hell, the sticks? Who came up with that? I mean, yes, it is accurate: there is much we do not have, like a really good middle eastern market, but sticks? We got sticks.) I keep reminding myself that I am more of a country person than I am a city person, but sometimes, oh, it’s hard.

We drove to Portland on Wednesday. I went to the camera store in St. Johns, where it turns out that fixing a Praktica is not practical since there isn’t an East Germany anymore (it’s just the light meter, thank the gods, it’s fine otherwise or I would be in mourning.) I ordered some prints although not the one that I actually need to put in a show by Tuesday because reasons (money.) After a spirited debate about lunch choices, we went to a food truck pod called the Heist, which has a full bar and a fishtank and also quite a decent Indian food truck. This again reminds me that we don’t have that here but, then, it was insanely expensive, which we do have here, so maybe it’s better to be untempted, if still broke, in the sticks.

We stayed at a hotel in the Pearl district with a kid friendly pool and my daughter’s lovely friend babysat Four, who basically would have just stayed in the pool 24/7 and been happy. Daughter and I walked a few blocks and took the green line to the Moda Center for the concert, like city people! We did, you know, used to be city people. It is a bad testament to Asheville and Astoria that we are so unfamiliar with public transit.

I had never been to the Moda Center before. It turns out it is a giant stadium where they have professional sports. OK, look, I don’t do the sports thing. I can count the number of stadiums (stadia?) I have been in on the fingers of one hand. So I bought the tickets without, somehow, quite comprehending the scale of what I was looking at. That’s not too bad, I thought when I bought them in December. Surprisingly affordable. Well. We went up. And up. And then up some more, in the dark this time, following a spry for his age usher up what felt like a concrete ladder while the flashlight wobbled about and the opening band rocked. We stopped when we could practically touch the ceiling, turned around, sat down and looked down, and down and down. So far down and it felt as if I leaned forward, I would fall eternally. Or, well, for a long and horrible time.
“I can’t do this!” hissed my daughter, “I’m panicking!”
“Well we can’t leave!” I hissed back. “We can’t go down those stairs! We have to stay here forever!”

I still love Brandi Carlile, even if she is the size of my thumbnail, and thus I survived, thanks in no small part to the strengthening properties of cheap – expensive, but expensive feels cheap to me now – red wine in a can. Thank you Moda Center for the many efficient watering holes. Took the light rail, or streetcar, or whatever you call it, back and saw a rat. My first Portland rat! It was tiny and almost cute – a New York or Baltimore rat would have laughed its ass off. It ran away from us, something else an east coast rat would not do. The west coast is so much more chill than the east coast; it’s amazing. Even the rats are less threatening.

Thursday, I walked all over the Pearl district in a vain attempt to get my iPad screen replaced. It will cost as much to do that as it would to buy a refurbished identical iPad, sigh. But in good news, I went to the downtown library and got a Multnomah County library card! This is very exciting! I am already using it and my libby experience just got so much better, you have no idea. All the ebooks that I had on hold from the Astoria library were actually available via Multnomah county and thank you, thank you Oregon.

Then we went to Hopscotch, which was really the main event of the trip. We had such a great time. If you have not been, go. It’s kind of like a tiny Meow Wolf only more, somehow, lit up? More lights. And cocktails. All hail the cocktail in the art installation; excellent innovation. Four had the best time ever. She went back and back to this one DJ type installation: a big table of buttons to hit which all made a different sound and lit up different parts of the wall sculpture that filled the room. I liked the mirrored room with the dangling chains of lights but really, all of it was great. Although I’m not getting back in the ball pit any time soon. Laying down was easy but getting up? Less so.

And now we are home – have been since Thursday evening. Coming home is, well, coming home. Harvey and Mr. Binks were pleased to see me, once they got over their snit. I still haven’t finished cleaning the kitchen and, well, blah. I have the blahs. The March blahs. I want to retire and go live alone by the ocean but instead, I have to clean up my kitchen, put away the laundry and go to work tomorrow. But at least for two days I ignored the news. Which meant I missed Kristi Noem getting fired and that’s too bad, as is the fact that nobody seems to have gotten around to the tarring and feathering yet. But all in all, who needs the news when you have the vast catalog of Multnomah county ebooks at your fingertips?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged books, family, kids, life, oregon, photoaday, portland | Leave a comment

War

Posted on March 1, 2026 by mygothlaundry

A color photo of a small purple flower surrounded by thorns — Sunday, February 22

A vertical color photo of many wet stones — Sunday, February 22

I thought I’d talk a little bit about politics since we are, I guess, at war now. Well of course we are. As someone somewhere in the Discourse – the constant clanging chatter of social media that takes up all the space where the collective unconscious used to go – noted, that’s what Republicans do: they trash the economy and start wars in the middle east. When I was young they used to mostly do it in middle and south America – but really, anywhere that has brown people in it. (that’s a good and prescient George Carlin clip; listen to it.) Since the orange bag of shit that is currently desecrating the oval office seems to basically still be stuck in the 80s, I figured when he started in on Venezuela he’d stay on that side of the planet. Remember Venezuela? We’re doing a regime change there too but it was uh at least 3 weeks ago so, yeah, old news. But no. Of course he could not resist Iran. After all, Obama got a nuclear deal going with Iran, and everything Obama did must be destroyed. One thing you must always, always remember about Trump is that the racism is the core. The grift is very important, the mob is important, the rape is important, but the racism is the center, the core, the most important thing and the prime motivation for that horrific collection of nightmare fuel masquerading as a member of the human species.

There are a couple things I want to say about this war and politics in general. They are not happy things. You may want to skip the next four paragraphs.

First off , this war is not a distraction from the Epstein Files. Trump doesn’t actually give two shits about the Epstein Files because he is rightfully confident that absolutely no consequences will come to him. In fact, it looks like there won’t be any consequences for anyone except the Andrew formerly known as Prince (I stole that; I did not make it up. I will say that I thought maybe I would marry him when I was a little girl. He is a few years older than me and thus obviously the best candidate if one is to grow up to marry a prince – and I figured that I would likely do that. I mean, why not? I read a lot of fairy tales. Fortunately I never met the creature.) but most particularly, there will be no consequences for Trump. Nobody actually cares about young girls; anyone who did has long since been weeded out of the government. And honestly, and I can say this with utter confidence, having been one, NOBODY CARES EVEN ONE LITTLE BIT about young girls. Or young boys, for that matter, but they might eventually be powerful, so people pretend. The Epstein Files, like the Panama Papers before it, will change nothing. People will express regrets, maybe. A few people will quietly retire. Ooh poor them, have to stay home and sit on their millions and not go to work. Ghislaine Maxwell will probably eventually be murdered. But nothing will actually change. Nobody is bothering to distract from the Epstein Files. Get over it. They sure have.

The real end game here is Feudalism 2.0 – it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Climate change is accelerating and rapidly making swathes of the planet uninhabitable. In the next couple decades it will get worse. We could join together as a species and work together to fix this, to help the planet, to be actually decent stewards of the environment OR we could just kill everyone and everything ha ha ha ha! I will give you one guess what the oligarchs who run this planet have chosen. They intend to live in pleasure domes as absolute rulers of the few who remain in the smoking ruins outside. This is actually kind of great because – stay with me here – these people are otnay ootay ightbray. They have not quite grasped that smoking ruins do not produce food or clean water or clean air and even immortal techbro vampire war loving rapist podcasters with great Fox News ratings need those things. Or they figure that since the population will have been culled down to practically nothing, they can get slaves to produce, somehow, what they will need to survive. Or AI will figure it out for them. And they do not, actually, care, because they only need thirty or forty years of soylent green and they don’t give a flaming shit what happens after that. I have been saying this for years and years now but nobody wants to hear me. But I think it’s starting to trickle through the zeitgeist. After all everyone seems to have finally noticed that Israel is doing a genocide and nobody, but nobody, is doing a good goddamn thing about it. This is ethnic cleansing and it’s just beginning. Donald is fully on board. Naomi Klein wrote a pretty good article about some of this in the Guardian a few months back.

You must remember, they – the oligarchs, the billionaires, the Epstein Class, the overlords – don’t care. They don’t care about you, about me, or even about their own children. They don’t care about any children, actually, or trees or dogs or the planet. They care about profit and their own pleasure. Which is why when the revolution comes leaders will be chosen by lotteries, because anyone who wants to lead should be automatically disqualified. But actually I think that by the time the long overdue revolution comes, we will all be dead and the zombies will be ruling from their skull thrones. That is what they want and so far, they are getting what they want.

And in the meantime, the Trump empire wants oil, wants money, wants real estate in the middle east to build castles on and wants Netanyahu to owe him a favor. He also doesn’t want to fuck around with midterm elections even though Elon told him they were already in the bag. The war means emergency powers which means no elections, which will be easier for him.

Keep on going to work every day, kids! Maybe you could say, He can’t do that! It would be illegal! now and then. Or write your congress person. I do, all the time. We can all see just how much good it’s doing.

And now for something completely different, let’s talk about the photos! Or, as I have noticed, Where I Walked the Dog This Week.

Spring is starting and on Sunday I saw this tiny purple flower surrounded by thorns out at the sawmill trail in Warrenton. There used to be a weasel living in that little thicket; I saw her once or twice and the dogs would always go nuts around it, but she has been gone for a year or two. I lose track. On Monday it rained and those are wet stones outside the college. I could actually just take pictures of wet stones forever and be happy. On Tuesday we went down to the marina for a little golden hour dog and child walk and it was incandescently lovely. On Wednesday my best friend in Asheville called me up to tell me that her father had just passed away. I stood outside and these geese, hundreds upon hundreds, flew by and I thought of souls flying away into the air, how we are only here for a little while and then we go, fly away north, fly away south, but others come back. On Thursday at the other side of the airport dike trail the mysterious daffodils are blooming and Harvey and I looked at them. On Friday I emptied a box that was packed up “for four months” three years ago and found all the refrigerator magnets so now the fridge has returned to its former glory. And Saturday was yesterday; another day I didn’t get out much but we did manage a little trek on the trail behind the forestry department where they have trees like that one. And now it is March and yet again, I forgot to say rabbit rabbit. Probably why everything is going to hell in a proverbial handbasket.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blogging, doom, life, moredoom, Photo A Day, photoaday, politics | Leave a comment

Weather

Posted on February 22, 2026 by mygothlaundry

The gallery is still no good and that’s because I can’t just install a plugin. If I had a working brain, I would have checked on that before I spent $40 I don’t have on a gallery plugin I can’t install. But alas! Like so many of my fellow Americans, my brain done left the building a while back. Now I will either have to completely migrate and redo my site, which is daunting, or get my money back, which is also daunting. God I love the 21st century SO MUCH. In similar enshittification news, I bought two pairs of shoes in January using a thing called ShopPay which is basically 21st century layaway, or so I thought, until it charged me a $75 restocking fee to return a pair of $119 shoes. I am both completely furious and completely unable to face the process of fighting for my money back. Which is ridiculous, but there you have it. I really need that $75, too. I’m at the regularly visiting the food bank stage of brokeness, here. Like so many of my fellow Americans!

Anyway, the week that was was a week of weather. The weather was mostly foul and when I say that you have to understand that this is a high bar to clear on the Oregon coast in February. It was kind of drastically either horrible or great, as illustrated here.

That is Tuesday on top and Thursday on the bottom and all in all the changes have been fast and jarring. And yet, did we get a snow day or even a snow delay? No. No we did not.

Let’s see, on Sunday, Four and I went clamming as pictured here. We caught no clams because we got caught by a sneaker wave. I am ashamed of myself for allowing that to happen; for allowing Four to get too close to the water and for generally playing at the beach like the ocean is a benign thing, even at a dead low tide. I know better. She faceplanted, got rapidly covered by water, dragged to her feet by me and rushed in screaming tears up to the car, where I stripped off her soaking clothes, drained a cup or so of water out of each boot, rubbed her dry with blankets, wrapped her in more blankets, strapped her and the blankets into the car seat and zoomed home being really glad the car heater works. This is why it’s always a good idea to have a lot of blankets in the car.

The rest of the week was peaceful (*cough* boring *cough*) Monday was President’s Day and it poured rain all day, bucketing down. Tuesday it snowed in the morning and rained in the afternoon with interludes of hail. Wednesday it rained some more and was cold and raw as hell; that’s the view from one of my office windows and my weird climbing succulent. Thursday it was cold but utterly gorgeous; I went for a walk on the Riverwalk after work and saw a bunch of sealions. Friday it rained on and off but I was tired, so Four and I watched the Olympic women’s figure skating on replay from the night before. Now she wants to learn to skate but alas, the nearest rink is two hours away, so I don’t think that’s in the cards. And Saturday, which was yesterday, it poured again all day, so Harvey and I went for a very lame short walk to where the salmon hatching pens are, around the corner. Right now it’s gorgeous again but I am filled with rage at the moment and so can do nothing. I’m filled with rage kind of a lot lately and I wish I wasn’t. I might have found a therapist. Or I might not. We’ll see.

On Saturday morning I woke up from a vivid dream and was absolutely sure that an old boyfriend of mine was dead. This is the boyfriend of whom I famously said “I’m datin’ Satan” so one would think I would not be sad, but I kind of was. I put on a playlist of 80s music even though our relationship was from the early 00s – and every song was meaningful. Time! Sorrow! Then I googled him. He’s fine, or he was two months ago: a little video of his band in some bar surfaced immediately. You shit, I said, immediately changing my mind, you lied to me again.

A boyfriend from my teens however did die – a decade ago. I only found out the other day when I was googling him at 4 am, as one does. I was sad because for some reason I had always assumed that he had a nice happy normal, even successful, life but reading between the lines of his briefish obit, I think that was not the case. Damn. I always thought he was pretty stable; stable for my cohort anyway, which is to say, um, only slightly yikes. So I guess I was primed to think about death when I dreamed about Satan.

Time gets weird as you get older and so does music. The music I played to mourn Satan isn’t music we listened to together; it’s the stuff I listened to when I was breaking up with quite another person or two, back in my loose twenties. My breakup album is Genesis, Duke – and it has been since my teens. They say you stop listening to new music when you’re in your thirties but for me at least that has not been the case – I was at least in my forties or fifties, LOL. No, I’m still always looking for new music but the newer stuff doesn’t really hold the emotional resonance that the older stuff does. And Satan? Linger will forever be his song and that’s because I walked into the Haywood Road Shingles when it was playing and I started crying in produce and had to beat a hasty retreat without, if I recall correctly, even a six pack of PBR to comfort me.

And people wonder why I gave up men.

Permanently single and happier that way, see you next week!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, life, mental-health, photoaday, weather, winter | Leave a comment

February

Posted on February 15, 2026 by mygothlaundry

A marshy landscape with clouds and a river in the distance — Sunday, February 8 dog walk

a foggy morning road with a red house on the right — Sunday, February 8 dog walk

Hello from the other side of Valentines Day, or, as I like to call it, National Making Single People Feel Like Shit Day. Actually it has been years since that national agenda affected me much: I’m not even nostalgic for the coupled state anymore. It’s been too long and I hate the patriarchy too much nowadays. Also, I have a grown son and a brother who I take care of and the shine, as it were, is off the rose. No offense, reasonably decent Y chromosome holders, I know you’re out there, but: WHAT THE FUCK? What, in general, The Fuck is wrong with men? I read too much Reddit these days as my beloved Metafilter dwindles itself away into the great world wide series of tubes in the sky and if you, like me, read any of those R/relationshipadvice or R/AITAH posts you too will come away going, WTF? The AITAH stuff is supposed to be Am I the Asshole but, although I remember a couple years ago when that was sort of accurate, nowadays it’s more like, Am I the Asshole for crying gently to myself while my husband and all his friends and relations pelted me with empty beer cans, stole my children to sell and buried me up to the neck in a fire ant pit? They say I’m overreacting. It’s like History’s Greatest Martyrs and, gentle reader, you will start off being appalled and then horrified and then, eventually, get to, where TF did you FIND this monster and WHY did you stay with him past the first date? And the answer, sadly, is often that the bar is so low it is in hell, and the monsters outnumber the men.

The Epstein files are, of course, front and center of the national consciousness despite the nation in question having apparently not even the slightest intention of DOING anything about them. It’s like, OK! The entire government is composed of rapist assholes from the 10th circle of hell and, hey, get back to work! Shut up and smile while the government lies, steals and builds more concentration camps. But Imma let this go, as the kids say, because I too just can’t anymore. I am going this afternoon to hold a sign on the street again, which is basically my weekend routine and, what the hell. I supposed that it ensures I will end up in the ovens faster, since my name is by this time on all the lists. I hold by the lists being a place of honor and if everyone is on them the logistics get staggering when they go to take us away, so let’s all be on them, but. But, yes, but. Oh well!

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown with my friend for ArtWalk and checked out a bunch of galleries (like none of them give out wine anymore and, dude, change for the WORSE) and there was some great stuff out there. I feel that in the last seven years since I have lived here both the food and the art has gotten significantly better. Or maybe I’m just used to it now. Anyway, on to my own art, such as it is, the week above.

The gallery above! I hope you can open these photos. It doesn’t work at all for me on my phone or tablet and that is no good. Sigh. I swear I’m going to do some research and fix it.

On Sunday I took Harvey the dog to the trail by the airport, which is an awesome place to walk your dog and I wish I could actually go there, but since Harvey is a fucking wack job when it comes to other dogs, I can’t, really. I keep trying but I know better. We did that day and it was okay because the two dog owners we encountered had actual situational awareness and leashed their dogs when I waved my arms and shouted at them. This is not always the case. On Monday morning, back to work, taking a photo on the drive, a terrible rotten dangerous thing to do. On Tuesday after work I took Harvey down to the port for our walk – that’s the place where the reactive dog owners go, we all avoid each other like the plague we are and it’s great. On Wednesday it was beautiful and I walked home, encountering these limping deer – the Crippled Deer of Astoria Oregon is a thing I will write some day. It’s just kind of dark and sad – they’ve all been hit by cars. Like, all of them. All the deer in town. So they’re all lame. And it’s tragic and depressing and well, you’re welcome, now you too can have that in your head. But there are a LOT of deer here and somehow none of them ever internalize basic traffic safety. On Thursday I had to work late, which indignity is ameliorated somewhat by the view. On Friday it rained and rained, which is what it should be doing this time of year. And yesterday was Saturday and above is the view down Commercial Street and below is a “street” shot which I quite like, from the Astoria bistro where my friend and I sat for her to have coffee and me to have a really nice Cabernet and discuss the whole caregiving thing and how hard it is and so on. There’s a lot to say and unpack there and maybe, next week, I will! More good times! And now I’m off to hold a sign. Remember, boys and girls, the only good Nazi is a thoroughly punched Nazi.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dayinthelife, dogs, life, love, mental-health, photoaday, politics, writing | Leave a comment

Cranky

Posted on February 8, 2026 by mygothlaundry

A dog on the edge of a very reflective body of water — Sunday, February 1, Harvey at the sawmill trail

A huge bridge seen through a geometric web of power lines — Sunday, February 1, Harvey at the sawmill trail

I’m still working out the formats here, obviously. I do not love the captions as text because they really obscure the images, although frankly this week that is not a huge loss. It’s not great in mobile either and, given that we all read websites on our phones these days (except me. I read them on my iPad, haha! Looks terrible there too.) is a problem. Anyway, click through the photos if you can.

Photo a day! It’s an artistic praxis, arguably, and there is no doubt but that I have pulled myself out of the deeps of depression before this way. That’s a good thing, because digging through the archives of this blog has made me realize that hey! I’m depressed again! What a surprise!

One thing about getting older is everything becomes familiar. This depression will pass like the others before it. It’s going to have to pass without much chemical help though (small shoutout to caffeine, here) because I am now old enough to fear dementia with a white hot terror and I don’t trust antidepressants not to take me there. I have nothing to back this up except the evidence of my own brain, which has been on them on and off for over 20 years and which absolutely does not remember things the way it used to. Now wait, you say, could that be the result of your ongoing fondness for red wine and occasional espresso martinis? Why yes, yes it could. But many more serious drunks than I have passed into old age without forgetting everything they said they would do last Tuesday. Or at least I think they did. I forget. Anyway, I can’t quit drinking now while civilization or at least the US part of it is crumbling around me. It’s asking too much. And Costco’s very tasty red blend is 7.99 for a giant bottle.

So, this past week – I am starting to feel a little like Mary Chesnut these days; I’ll just complain about my vanishing lifestyle while the country falls into civil war, shall I? My lifestyle is indubitably crumbling, y’all, I fell out of the middle class again. And this time, I harbor no illusions that it’s entirely my fault. I think the tattered remnants of the rest of the middle class will be joining me down here with the terrified poor very soon indeed. Welcome to the food bank! – anyway, this past week. On Sunday I managed to take poor Harvey for a walk; it was a full moon and a very, very high tide indeed over by the sawmill trail in Warrenton. On Monday I dropped my car off for routine maintenance (holy shit, no wonder I’m poor) and on the way saw a different angle of the Megler bridge. On Tuesday I took this photo which I remember very little about; see above, re, memory. It’s clearly over by Tapiola park. On Wednesday I was over by the Port at lunchtime and captured this postcard scene. They used to have these hilariously terrible fake eagles over there to scare off the seagulls but I see they are gone. Ars brevis and all that. Thursday, I managed an early morning walk and was rewarded with the elk and the sunrise. Friday, I went to a committee meeting that meets in a bar, my favorite committee and about my favorite local bar, Inferno. The view, my gods, the view. And on Saturday, which was yesterday, we were returned to our regularly scheduled winter weather of pouring rain and howling wind, very nice. I got to stay home all day with Mr. Binks, who is disgruntled and Harvey, also disgruntled, and start a giant organizing project with the result that my living room looks even more like a bomb went off than usual.

I feel like I should say something about politics but honestly, at this point, I don’t know what to say. The Olympics started and apparently our horrific eyeliner wearing VP was vigorously booed. This booing was immediately edited out of all the recordings anyone could find. The “President” – that orange creature out of nightmare – quite literally, for many – posted an insanely racist image and screed on social media. He left it up, defended it and then took it down, carelessly blamed an unnamed staffer and that was, you know, that. The Washington Post is crumbling and the billionaire destroying it left all the newly fired staff stationed in the rest of the world without plane tickets back to the states (they are conceivably the lucky ones.) The Battle of Minneapolis rages on, but the media is not covering it anymore: they’re bored. The Epstein files came out with thousands of pages detailing horrific crimes for which nobody but the survivors will ever be punished. And the federal courts say it’s completely fine to build more concentration camps. There’s a theme here and the theme is walk carefully in this valley full of sharks and do not necessarily believe what you see.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged depression, Health, life, mental-health, photoaday, writing | Leave a comment