Isabella Bird Miscellany

a place we've road tripped to - pike street market, seattle For all of you intrepid spring break travelers, road trippers toting children, stopping for more “I-need-to-go-pee” breaks than you can even remember, only to be followed by, “I’m thirsty,” I tip my hat to you, smirking to myself.  Are we there yet? I’m not really laughing at you, well, I kinda am, but only because I’ve been in your shoes and car.  It’s packed with books, a pile of toys, the favorite of which will inevitably get left somewhere along the way, DVD’s that you swear if you ever have to watch again you might just claw your eyes out.  And what about the snacks that are now permanently ground into the seats and carpet.  You’ll be smelling beef jerky, Capri Suns and the spilled pintos and cheese for days, pleasant, huh? In the spirit of levity and well-wishing and happy travels, I give you a little fish tale … Hey, ho it’s a grand day for a sea cruise; sand at my fins, water in m...

sweet-tart raspberries I love words and I’m mad about raspberries.  I know it seems like a really odd connection to make.  What in the world do thorny canes that ramble everywhere, growing blissful rosy, I’m-in-heaven berries have to do with words; made up of letters, syllables and sounds?  Uh, nothing except a very sweet memory. he pronounced the p There are many words in our language that have extra letters stuffed in; a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that actually belong somewhere else.  These spare jots have no voice, they don’t make a peep.   And what’s more, there are oodles of words like ...  know - crumbs - wednesday  champagne - island - gourmet - raspberries Why we do this is a conundrum.  I don’t get it.  Why not just spell everything phonetically?  Life would be easier and we wouldn’t make language faux pas – there’s two more silent letter words. From time to time, those quirky pronunciations become...

says it all - the grotto It sticks to your clothes and shows up splendidly on black, it gets caught on the screen in the dryer and socks elaborately decorate your toes with the stuff.  Yep, lint:  the fuzzy, ravelings of fabric that cling to everything; like Velcro, only different. Lint actually has a purpose.  By scraping it from linen it can be made into a soft, fleecy fabric.  Cotton staple – lint fibers – are spun into yarn.  While all of this is riveting, especially while staring at the lint in your belly-button, there’s more to Lent than its sound doppelganger. lint: fluffy, minute shreds of yarn lent: a season of preparation These two tiny words sound similar in our vernacular, but have massively different implications in our lives.  We clean-up lint and toss it in the trash.  Lent, however is a prepping time for us to realize we’re not great at cleaning up our own stuff. Lent was originally a season between winter and...

i do adore sweetly scented unpredictable yellow roses Ah, crap!  Valentine’s Day is Saturday - gotta make the reservations, grab the expected red roses, obligatory frilly box of cheap chocolates…dress-up, suck-it-up, put on the happy smile.  Sounds more like work or a sentence than a communication of feeling. Why do we think we have to perform to the beat set by media, the norm, the predictable?  I, personally find that a phrase of soppiness that is made exclusively for me, is sweeter.  The tagline, “it’s the thought that counts,” is spot-on. Let me give you a dirty example from a few remembrances back.  I enjoy being outside and wanted to create a new sitting garden.  It would be surrounded by heady lavender with a small gazing pool in the middle – and of course a bench to sit and well, gaze at whatever.  This was all in my mind’s eye, because the area was just straggly grass.  There were no pieces of muted slate marking a path, no s...

coffee cupping at Thump I have a dilemma of almost epic proportions.  Having moved to a new town means finding a new coffee joint to frequent.  My go-to spot in the Portland area was Wind Horse in Milwaukie.  They served up a honey latte that was crazy awesome – you know just the right amount of creamy foam and honey all swirled with robust coffee. Local roasters like Stumptown, Blue Kangaroo and St. Johns each have a different persona, much like establishments that serve their electrifying brew.   Coffee houses have their own vibe and beat, so it’s hugely crucial to find the perfect sweet spot.  I must admit, in my search I might have been slightly over-caffeinated recently, but somehow, that hasn’t translated into more productivity.  Wondering why on that one… So, here’s what I look for in a good coffee hang-out:  Of paramount importance is that they serve really good coffee; none of that freeze-dried, stuffed-in-a-can and drug out ...

green in concrete For the last lot-of-years I’ve lived in urban areas.  I’ve become a city girl with hints of a flower child mixed with hipster nuances…translated I like to wear skinny jeans.  This is the total opposite of how I grew up, which was on a farm.  My paternal grandparents grew, raised, caught and hunted for everything they ate – radical organic, free-range stuff.  On my Mom’s side of the fam tree, there were green grocers and orchard growers.  Heck, I was in 4-H raising feeder calves and a small flock of wooly sheep.  Gardens, canning, freezing and preserving everything was the ordinary. I carried on the gardening-preserving, saving the spoils piece, until I found myself in fresh veggie-at-a-farmer’s-market heaven!  The foreign city I found myself in had a temperate climate where fruit and vegetables could be grown year ‘round, and … it was sold at a giant open air market every week.  Yippee!  I no longer needed to ...

an imbroglio to untangle To say the least, this last year has been a crap shoot.  Massively cool things have happened, but there’s also been the stuff that takes you out at the knees and kicks you while you’re lying in the dirt crying like a baby.  Am I looking for sympathy, trying to make you feel bad?  Nope, think polar opposites.  This past year was a life of “Re.” Re, the little prefix we attach to words has a grand meaning:  do again and then again, or to do something you’ve already done.  Awesome, huh? In order to have a life of re, you first need to have some “de” (removal, out of or opposite.)  Before this starts to sound like a clever Dr. Seuss story, let me explain.  Sometimes we need to take things apart, deconstruct and edit. Keep in mind, deconstruction differs from demolishment.   The first salvages, carefully saves and reuses.  It’s time and labor intensive, but you end up with a sweet stack of bits a...