Three sentence movie reviews: The Lake House

This was one of those movies where I had to just go with it, because when I started thinking too much, the movie didn’t work.*  It’s also one of those movies where I like Keanu Reeves’ acting.** Overall, a lovely night at the Haus-cinema.

Cost: free from library (I had to wait. There were holds)
Where watched: at home.

*That scene from Looper comes to mind:  ” I don’t want to talk about time travel, because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.”

**God love him, but sometimes his woodenness gets to me.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2006/lake_house.html

The biking diameter

I’ve not been biking as much as I used to.  And I don’t love that.  But it’s so easy to take the car to short errands.  I’ve also learned enough about myself to know that if I decree “Must Bike Everywhere” I won’t do it.  So I’ve established a radius of one mile from my home.  Anything needed to be gotten in this area will be either walked to or biked to.

In a few months, I’ll increase the radius to 1.5 miles.

Why let ten-cent increments of money get away from me? The BottleDrop Green Bag program

A few things came together recently.  One is that my company did some work for OBRC, and I learned of the existence of the Green Bag program. The second is that the bottle deposit rate went from five cents to ten cents. (Since 1971, if it had kept up with inflation, it would be around $0.25 now).  Plus, Matt started drinking Propel, which is water with something in it.  Also, my company started providing bottled kobucha for its employees.  That also has a bottle deposit on it.*

Thus, I started looking at five kombucha bottles in the work recycling bin and thinking, “That’s like fifty cents.  That’s real money.”  In junior high, when we were introduced to the magic of vending machines (also known as: FuSESKiJuK Funding School “Extras” by Selling Kids Junk Food) candy bars were fifty cents and thus forever more fifty cents will always be my “real money” threshold.

There’s a lot not to like about redeeming bottles.  For me, the number one thing is the smell.  I’m not a hugely smell-sensitive person, but the combination of elderly beer/soda dregs really turns my stomach.  Plus, there’s the time it takes to actually redeeming, which is another step in my very full days.

Happily, the Green Bag Program exists.  For this program, you visit a BottleDrop center, open an account, and purchase 15 bags for $1.50.  Then, you fill them and drop them off at any BottleDrop center.  You don’t even have to go inside.  They have an outside drop place that can be accessed before and after hours by using your card. Then, employees at the center redeem the bottles and cans for you and credit your account.  This costs $0.25.  So for $0.40 (four bottles) I can avoid most of the problems I have with redeeming.  Plus, if you cash in your credit at specific stores (Fred Meyer is one) you get $0.12 per bottle and not $0.10.

I’m excited about this program, especially because I’m collecting bottle redemptions on items I haven’t paid the deposit on.  It’s free money for me!

*It turns out that kombucha has been ruled “juice” and thus should not have a deposit on it.**  I’ll keep collecting those bottles until the label changes and I can’t redeem them any longer.

**The weirdness of what does and does not have a bottle deposit bugs me.

Books read in July 2017

There was a little bit of nearly everything this month, including poetry!  I love months with poetry books.  Perhaps I should make them more of a priority.

(This was not the book cover picture I thought I was getting.  But it does give you a chance to compare and contrast the British/US covers.  I prefer the US cover, on the left.  But the British one is nice too.)

Picture books: A tie between Tell Me About Sex, Grandma, and Yours Sincerely, Giraffe, neither of which really fit the picture book label, but I can’t be having 15 different labels each month.
Middle grade: A Crack in the Sea
Young adult: The Pearl Thief
Young nonfiction: One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance
Grownup nonfiction: You and a Bike and a Road
Adult fiction: Attachment

Tell me about sex, grandma
A. Higgenbothem
Read for Librarian Book Group
Aside from having a great title that practically begs everyone to pick up this book, it’s also a wonderful conversation between grandmother/grandchild about that thing that all children are curious about.  The art is delightful, and I particularly appreciate grandma’s cool pants.

Blue Sky, White Stars
Baberhous, Nelson
Read for Librarian Book Group
Great illustrations of the United States we love.  Some of the text didn’t flow for me.

Yours Sincerely, Giraffe
Iwasa Takabatako
Read for Librarian Book Group
I’m a great fan of epistolary stories, so of course I would be delighted by this story of Giraffe, who writes a letter and sends it off.  Penguin writes back and so their delightful correspondence begins.  This early chapter book is funny.

Town is the Sea
Sydney Smith
Read for Librarian Book Group
Beautiful picture book which takes place in a Cape Breton mining town.  I suspect this will win many awards, due to the librarians going ga-ga over it at book group.

Clayton Byrd Goes Underground
Rita Williams Garcia
Read for Librarian Book Group
There was so much to love about this story:  the frustrating and unfair way his mother dealt with Clayton’s grandfather’s death; how a child grieves; love of jazz music; the grandfather/grandson relationship; the mother/son relationship; the father/daughter relationship.

And then it seemed like Garcia had filled her allotted amount of pages and things wrapped up much too quickly.  It was as if a living, breathing story was hurried to its ending before it could come to its natural conclusion.  This was disappointing.

A Crack in the Sea
H.M. Bouwman
Read for Librarian Book Group
Combining the middle passage experience of slaves brought to the US, with the post-Vietnam War boat people experience? No problem.  It totally works in this tale that mostly takes place in the Second World, a place that can only be accessed once in a great while.

This is not only a story full of tales, it’s also a brother/sister tale of adventure and exploration.  I loved this book.

The Pearl Thief
Elizabeth Wein
Read for Librarian Book Group
A prequel to the stellar Code Name Verity, this takes place several years prior and features Julia Beaufort-Stuart’s summer adventures.

I have a friend who loves to read British mysteries set at boarding schools between the wars.  This nearly hit all of those preferences, just missing out on the boarding school aspect. Although the miss was a close one.  Julia is home for the summer from boarding school.  Also, her home is being turned into a boys boarding school, as her grandfather has died and his estate is being liquidated.

This book begins with a wallop to the back of the head (Julia’s) and a summer of trying to unravel who hit her, and why.  As with all of Elizabeth Wein books, there are a treasure trove of details packet into a tightly woven narrative including freshwater pearls, the history of the Travelers/Tinkers, and general class injustice.

Now that this exists, I’m not entirely sure which book should be read first. If one begins with Code Name Verity, this book will have an emotional resonance it wouldn’t have had.  But maybe it’s best to start here, and tread slowly into the Verity waters?

 

The Lines We Cross
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Read for Librarian Book Group
I’m not familiar with Australia’s anti-immigrant movement, but the sentiments are not very different than what is expressed in the USA anti-immigrant movement.  In this book, the son of a prominent “anti” becomes friends with a girl who is a Muslim refugee from Afghanistan.

I found the prose to be clunky at times, but this is worth the read, both for the aspect of a teenager’s awakening (my parents believe X, do I also believe X to be true?) but also for the refugee perspective and the many hard places refugees find themselves in.

The Whole Thing Together
Anne Brashares
A brilliant and engaging premise.  Sasha and Ray share half sisters, but have never met, due to the terrible divorce between Sasha’s father and Ray’s mother.  They also share a bedroom at the beach house the divorced couple continues to occupy.

There are a lot of mid-chapter point of view shifts in this book that I found distracting.  And I wasn’t fond of how Brashares chose to wrap up the story.  It seemed too convenient, as in: “I’m tired of writing this story and need to be done.”  Still, the idea of two kids more or less the same age occupying the same space year after year, and yet never meeting was a winner.

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance
Nikki Grimes
Read for Librarian Book Group
Grimes pairs poems written by Harlem Renaissance authors with new poems written using the Golden Shovel method.  In this method, the author takes a line (or lines, or sometimes an entire poem) and writes a new poem using each word from that line as the end word of the line.

My brain boggled that such beautiful poetry could come from this method.

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up
Atkins, Yogi
Read for Librarian Book Group
Graphic novel true story of one man who refused to go to the “relocation” camps during World War II.  Great for people who might need to be reminded about the United State’s shady history with justice.

You and a bike and a road
Eleanor Davis
Davis chronicles her bike ride from her parents house in Tuscon, Arizona to her home in Athens, Georgia.  Quick drawings and spare text are employed for maximum benefit.  There’s a bit in Texas that deals with border crossing that was done remarkably well.

Attachment
Rainbow Rowell
Read aloud with Matt
I enjoyed this re-read. This makes our second Rainbow Rowell read aloud.

Portland Hill Walk re-routed

We took another Portland Hill Walk, but I did not know the Lower Macleay Trail was closed for renovation.  Instead of taking that red line back to where the car was parked at 29th and Vaughn, we took the very long detour which is the blue line that runs below the solid red line of the Lower Macleay.

However, it did take us by this building, the Historic Fairmount Apartments.  I’d been wondering if anything had changed with this building.Back in 2002, when I first moved to Portland, I secured a job with a company.  I’d been living with my aunt, which made it much easier to get established in Portland. With a job in hand, I started looking for studio apartments and I toured the Fairmount Apartments.

It was great!  For $275/month (or maybe even less?) I could get a studio with a shared bathroom in a building that was built as part of the Lewis & Clark Exposition. (!!!!Cheap!!!!Alternative living arrangements!!!!!Historic!!!!!) I was about to put in my application when the company rescinded their offer. By the time I found another job, an apartment came open in a co-worker’s building and I ended up in the more expensive ($500/month) and also delightful Rosefriend Apartment (now sadly gone.)

But I wondered if such cheap lodgings were still available in this building. When we walked by, I guessed that they they were no longer for rent.  I crossed my fingers that the chain-link fence didn’t mean the whole building was coming down.

Good news!  According to UD+P’s website, this building will be renovated.  To quote:

Over the next year, the property will be overhauled with new plumbing and electrical, a new roof, and new landscaping—all while preserving the historic charm of the Fairmount’s beautiful brick exterior. The renovated Fairmount Apartments will have approximately 80 modern units, all with private bathrooms, with street-facing entrances for many first-floor units.

The smaller-than-average square footage of the units will allow for cheaper rent than is typically found in comparable downtown Portland apartment buildings. This will help to set up The Fairmount Apartments as a viable choice for those who wish to live in a well-appointed historic building without the expensive rent associated with larger, similarly located apartment units.

Score and score!  While I remain skeptical that “cheaper rent” will translate into “amount of rent I could afford to pay today” I really appreciate what they are attempting.

Estimated date of completion is Summer 2018.  I wish them good luck.

Also, here’s a quote from a DJC article about the situation when the building went up for sale in 2011

The apartment complex has about 80 units – 26 with either one, two or three bedrooms on the first floor, and 54 studios with shared bathrooms on the second floor. The studios start at around $300 per month, a near rock-bottom rent for Northwest Portland.

So it seems that yes, until 2011, the super cheap rent was still available.

Portland Actor’s Ensemble: A Winter’s Tale

We traveled to Concordia University (not far from our house) to take in our second PAE outing this summer.

The jealous King Lontes

There’s always good people watching at outdoor Shakespeare

A very pregnant Hermione talks with her ladies.

I was obsessed with this audience member’s perfect summer sundress.

I also noticed that the Hermione on the program (sitting in the middle) did not match the Hermione in our production.  I wonder what happened to her?

As with most Shakespeare plays, the “rustics” were fun to watch. It was a good season of outdoor Shakespeare.

Postcard from Niagara Falls

Regular commenter Sara went to O! Canada! (and many other places) on her recent vacation. She sent me this postage-paid postcard, telling me of her great surprise and delight at Niagara Falls.  It’s dated July 1 and just arrived today on the 28th.  I can’t decide if it’s an international thing, or perhaps the wrong zip code.  The last two digits written are crossed off in inky black and re-written.  Perhaps some postal employees went the extra mile to make sure I got this?

Song of the month July 2017

Don’t Take the Money
Bleachers

It’s very 80s, in a good way.  And there’s some romance.  From random googling, it seems that critics don’t much care for Bleachers, but I sure do.

Here they are on the Tonight Show.  I was a little amused by several things during this performance. Namely: why two drummers? the odd silos of keyboards framing Jack Antonoff; the fact that Mr. Antonoff maybe doesn’t need to wear that guitar during the performance of this song, given how little he plays it.  Still, I did like how he seemed to be connecting with the Tonight Show crowd, and it was interesting to see how something that sounds very studio-produced translated to a live performance.