Our Anniversary

Today, twelve years ago, John and I got married in a small, very small, wedding ceremony...

The grand event took place at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson center—what used to be the college president’s residence. Wilson’s wife, during their tenure there, had a beautiful garden planted that is preserved to this day. Very lovely, and a grand place to begin our lives together. We spent today really looking at our lives, what we are grateful for in our union, what is working, and where our challenges lie. Primarily the latter consists of making our career dreams come true and living a kind of lifestyle that right now is still a dream. Not a rich one in terms of having lots of money, but rich in terms of experience, lots of time to spend together, plenty of traveling, visiting with our dearest friends. And life work that fulfills us and matches up with our deepest values and passions.

On that note, John continues his career quest while I work feverishly (not hard in this heat!) to complete this monster of a dissertation! 279 pages and counting, though hopefully not too much more than that after clean up and revising. I hope to have my final chapter completed by the end of this month and revisions completed by the end of August.

In any case, we have spent the day on such reflections and plan to end it with a candlelit dinner at home and envisioning what is the next stage in our journey together. Very exciting indeed!

My hummingbird

I’m watching ‘my’ hummingbird right now (see earlier post for more on the hummingbird). She comes often to my feeder, which is about two and a half feet from where I sit all day. She feeds deeply, not like most hummingbirds, who feed, look around, feed a bit more, look around again. This little one just sticks in her beak through the feeder’s opening and drinks and drinks. Yum! Now she is sitting, as she has for about the past seven minutes, relaxing and resting a bit in a place she feels safe. And that has an endless food supply! She is the smallest, most delicate looking thing, with dark brown little eyes and markings that make it look like she has eye makeup on. Very lovely little eyes. I think she may be the sweetest thing on the planet. Now she drinks more nectar. And rests, looking around in her alert little manner. I’m gifted with a hummingbird friend who likes to sit for a nice long while.

I think we definitely have a connection going here. Whatever it is, I hope she never leaves for good! Hummingbirds around here tend to stick around all year. I’ve had these two little girls, this one and another more slender and tall female hummingbird (who also seems quite un-shy during her stays) visiting since last spring. I haven’t seen the male for quite a while, but occasionally he comes around. He’s more cautious and shy.

Off she goes, onto whatever it is she does the rest of the day when she isn’t keeping me company as I pound away on this keyboard! I’ll miss her, until the next time...

Heat wave!!!

Well, when we first moved to Portland, we thought about getting central air conditioning but decided against it. Who needs it, when Portland normally gets a few hot days in the summer—usually averaging in the low 90s or so—and then it’s back to a moderate summer, low humidity, pretty near perfect weather?

We do! Can we say ‘global warming.’ We have had our second wave of 100+ temps in just over a month. Today it reached 105 degrees! Unbelievable. And it’s not going to cool for another two days in any significant way. So, it’s almost 6pm and we are sitting our living room, fan going, dog panting. It’s only 87 degrees inside our house. Oh wait, it was 86 just a half hour ago. It’s going the wrong way!!! We will likely sleep in our basement tonight. It’s a lot cooler down there.

So when you come to visit us in Portland, we’ll be sure it’s not in the middle of July or August! I don’t know if this will continue every summer, but it could be a sign of things to come for sure, especially in light of the global nature of this increase in temperatures. And we’ll be sure to install air conditioning for the few, well obviously less few, times we’ll need it!

At the Park

There is nothing new to report regarding John’s job search, but it’s progressing well. He’s chomping at the bit to get back to work into something really meaningful and fun. Me, I’m writing away. I want to turn in my final chapter draft by the end of July, and hopefully have all revisions completed by the end of August, with a defense of the thesis sometime in October. I’ll see how things go, but this is the plan! In the meantime, here’s a picture of the Weinbrecht family at one of our favorite small parks. There are so many of these in Portland! This was taken Sunday evening, July 16th, a very lovely evening indeed.

Correction on hummingbird

The picture I posted below of the bird I saved is of a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird which doesn’t even live in my area! The hummingbird's we have in this area, and the one which I saved, is an Anna’s Hummingbird. Here is a picture of a male Anna’s:



And a picture of a female, which is the bird I ‘saved’:



She looked exactly like this little cutie! I get both male and female hummingbirds at my feeder, and in fact I'm pretty sure one of the most frequent is the saved one, which looked a little worse for the wear at first but seems quite healthy and eats a lot of nectar!

Hummingbird medicine

Yesterday, July 6, 2006, I saved a hummingbird. I don’t know if it lived after I helped it, but I do know it flew away afterward. I was in the backyard to put out some peanuts for the squirrels and scrub jays, and I saw our friend “The Cat” playing with something. She put it down and then played with it again. I looked more closely and just saw a small clump of feathers, thinking that’s all it was. That was until it squeaked! I went over and pushed the cat away and there was a very tiny bird, a hummingbird, still breathing very rapidly but stunned. I gently picked it up and it squeaked again and I put it into a small terra cotta colored plastic flower pot. The little bird clung to my finger and I had to gently push it off to get it into the pot. I set the pot down inside the garage and I finished feeding the birds and walked back, watching The Cat, who had turned back to find its prey gone. She looked very puzzled and kept picking up clumps of grass and dropping them, as if to say, that’s not it! Where did I put that thing?

I took the bird back into the house and found a small box that had holes in it. I lined it with paper towels and gently put the tiny bird inside. It was breathing very rapidly—normal for a hummingbird—and was pretty limp. I closed the box and put it in my room, thinking that I was probably giving the bird a quiet place to die. About a half hour or so later I suddenly heard fluttering coming from the box! I yelled to John that the bird was very much alive and recovered from its trauma. After checking carefully for The Cat, I took the box outside and opened it. The hummingbird was in the corner, its wings splayed, very alert but also quite frightened. I told the bird it was okay and it could fly away now. I tilted the box a bit, and it moved and then took off, shooting through the leaves of a tree and then kind of dropping a bit before grabbing onto some branches. That was the last I saw of it. I went back there later and no bird. When I looked back into the box, there was a single, very small feather inside, tinged with a hint of green. I didn’t think much about it at first, but a few minutes later it occurred to me that it was an offering. It had left that single feather for me. I went back and got the tiny feather and put it in a very special place. My memory of that shimmering, vulnerable little life in my hand.

I hope it is thriving and healthy and enjoying lots of sweet nectar. I believe it is.

The photo below is a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, which is what I think it was:

I wanted to share one my favorite songs. The words are powerful and are given from the heart. It's performed by the Black-Eyed Peas and is called Where is the Love?. Enjoy.