Monthly Archives: July 2022

Capturing summer sun

28 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by in creativity, Making it home, Random

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Oregon’s embarrassment of agricultural riches (cherries! grapes! hazelnuts! pears!) includes the most luscious blueberries anywhere ever. In order for July to feel right to me, there has to be some blueberry jam creation. This is a labor of sweaty joy, from the trip to the farmer’s market for a flat of blueberries, to the inspection of canning jars and the filling of the big pot for the water bath processing. Small-batch production takes a while. I can only do 3 pints/6 half pints at a time. This year, we rocked 9 pints and 30 half pints. Can a couple of sweets-loving people such as Craig and myself consume all that jam? No. These delicious reminders of Oregon bounty will migrate out to friends and family sometime in the winter when the skies are heavy and we all miss the sun.

Water bath canning isn’t difficult but its rules must be respected. If you haven’t tried it, check in with your local county extension office for guidelines. Oregon State University’s extension office is a good place to start. And if you want to check your local public library for good recipes and guidance on the topic, check the books out in later winter or early spring. By July, there’s a waiting list for the best books.

My recipe for blueberry lime jam comes from the standard Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. You can find the recipe online.

Ups, downs, etc.

26 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by in creativity, learning, Random, writing

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I stumbled on a couple of concepts that deserve mulling: performance goals vs. learning goals, described by Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, and willpower as emotion, described by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Dweck’s work notes that learning goals help us work beyond mistakes and failure while performance goals can stop us before our efforts can lead to improved outcomes.

Inzlicht’s research, or my understanding of it, suggests that willpower comes and goes, much like happiness, anger, etc.

This week, I’ll keep learning goals in mind, as I work on the things that have challenged me lately (writing a successful query letter to an agent, for example). Also this week, I’ll recognize that in the face of ebbing willpower (sometimes it’s really challenging to reach for the fizzy water and not the glass of wine), there are strategies to deploy and keep me on track until the willpower circles back around. In other words, not a failure of character, just the normal cycling of my feelings.

For help with the agent querying, I’m delving into the great advice of agent Janet Reid, whose web site is really helpful and whose Query Shark blog is harsh but good education.

Voluptuous summer

25 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by in Dirt, Making it home

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Tomatoes growing like crazy. Grapevines out of control with their hidden clusters of fruit. I get up in the morning and step outside to take it in before the sun gets too serious about things. Here in the southern Willamette Valley, we are about to turn the corner into the hot sharp days of August, when the tomatoes will get fat and red, and the afternoons will send us to the river for relief.

I call this blog “Exquisite Now” because I am prone to procrastination. (I used to just crastinate, but then I turned pro!) The blog title reminds me to do things rather than just to think about doing things. We planted the tomatoes in April. Craig cut back the grape vines in February and weeded in May. That was then. And this is the exquisite voluptuous now of summer.


What is it the the Zen Buddhists say? “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Horse latitudes of writing

20 Wednesday Jul 2022

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I am becalmed. I know this spot from previous long writing projects. Nothing like the exciting beginning when the ideas cascade and occupy most of the mental bandwidth. Nothing like the surprise at the end when you type a sentence and as you look at it, it dawns on you that you have arrived at the denouement.

No. The mid-latitudes of a book force the writer to deal with the early creative decisions — in character development, plot, setting, voice — that now midway through reveal the many ways in which they constrain the story. It’s like building a box around yourself and hoping you have an exit strategy.

The horse latitudes describe a grim reality of sailors in the region 30 degrees north and south of the equator where the winds die to nothing and can stay that way for weeks on end. I have always hoped it was apocryphal, the story that New World explorers becalmed in this zone threw their horses overboard to conserve drinking water for the humans. It’s here where some of my best big creative ideas may need to be jettisoned to make the story better.

Me and my writer friends, we commiserate about this stage. We acknowledge the tedium. We affirm our dream to finish the project. We assign ourselves word counts. We don’t have to like every word. We just have to get the next sentence on the page.

I am at 33,000 words of a book that may go to 80,000, best guess. At first my excitement buoyed and carried me. Now it’s time to bring some discipline to my game, knowing from previous projects that creative winds will return.

Off my usual route

16 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in outdoors, Random, travel

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If you visit the Wikipedia page describing the Palouse, you get a much better picture of this voluptuous landscape than my little image, snapped from behind a windshield at 60 mph. It’s an experience to visit this area of western Idaho/eastern Washington in spring and I don’t think pictures can do it justice. To see these unique undulating hills, covered with wheat and the bright blooming canola fields had a profoundly gentling impact on my usually busy brain. We traveled through on our way home from southern Alberta, which also features rolling hills and lovely farms. But not like this.

We normally take a more spectacular route to get home to our little corner of the southern Willamette Valley in Oregon. We cross the jagged Rockies in southern British Columbia then run down through Bonner’s Ferry and Sandpoint Idaho. This time we dropped southeast of the Rockies, skirting Glacier National Park in Montana and then coming down the east side of Flathead Lake (who knew the ameliorating effect of the lake means a huge cherry-growing region in Montana?). We drove down to visit friends in Moscow Idaho, which is not on any of the major east-west or north-south interstate highways. It’s in the heart of the Palouse.

I have lost count of my road trips to southern Alberta to visit family in Lethbridge and wander the trails in Canada’s best but perhaps least known national park, Waterton Lakes. I’m so glad we detoured off the quickest-there-and-back highways to see more of the region. I’m a western woman. Born in Saskatchewan. Lived 50 years in Utah, Washington, Alaska, Oregon. Not dissing the rest of North America or any of the other glorious continents. But I love this vast region. And I love getting more intimate glimpses of it.

I’m reminded of William Least Heat Moon’s moving book “Blue Highways”. So amazing to get off the screaming multilane interstates, slow down (though in Montana they don’t shy away from 70 on two lanes). With family ties in Canada and the United States, I’ve found myself thinking of the region not so much as two separate countries but as one salmon nation, a term coined by people who know much more about biodiversity than I ever will.

Nowness

05 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by in Exercise, learning, outdoors, Random

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Last month Craig and I camped and hiked at Humbug Mountain State Park, which, though close to the highway, has a secluded feeling. A fine trail winds through big trees to the top of the mountain and while its elevation gain is 1,700 feet over three miles, the switchbacks make it seem less arduous than I’d expected. We hiked at the right time for flowers: wild iris, rose, rhododendrons, bleeding hearts, and many others I have no names for.

Being in the moment on that hike proved easy. The periodic views of the Pacific Ocean through the fir trees, the spring flowers, the sound of birds. So much visual and audio stimulation to keep the mind in the present.

Day to day, I find myself stuck in thoughts of what has happened and what may be about to happen. I’m not dissing the past and the future, but I have this feeling that savoring now shouldn’t be reserved for special times.

I wonder if my daily activities can include the kind of nowness of the hike. Maybe there’s value to paying attention to the folding of the laundry, the doing of the dishes, the weeding of the garden.

Change is hard, strategies are required

01 Friday Jul 2022

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I like the strategies in “How to Change” by Katy Milkman, particularly because the University of Pennsylvania professor shares the research behind them. My previous blog noted one of those strategies, pairing something enjoyable with the less enjoyable habit currently under construction — Milkman calls this “temptation bundling”.

I used other techniques when I set a goal to take a monthlong break from drinking alcohol, like picking a start date connected to the beginning of the week and the beginning of a camping trip. Milkman calls this the “fresh start” effect. I also had a plan for meeting the moment in the day when I typically have a glass of wine in my hand.

But I decided not to use one of the book’s strategies, a punishment for failing to complete a goal. With this strategy people commit to a financial penalty for failing to follow through. I considered, then discarded the idea. I need encouragement, not fear of a negative outcome, to help me with goals.

This book doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that making changes is challenging. In much of the research that psychologists considered successful just 20 or 25 percent of subjects sustained change. That is humbling.

I don’t recall now if Milkman said much about this but for me taking a moment to let myself be gratified by the small steps I’ve taken — written my 1,000-word daily quota, spent my half hour weeding the garden, practiced my guitar, etc. — often fuels me for the next day and the next small steps.