Log trucks are a fact of life in this part of the country. They rumble down the interstate, career along twisting mountain roads, and trundle through town. I see loaded log trucks pass each other headed in opposite directions, and I wonder: Instead of hauling logs from harvesting points in the north to a southern sawmill and vice versa, why not take the logs cut in the north to a nearby northerly sawmill and those cut in the south to a southerly sawmill and avoid the expense of crisscrossing Corvallis? Maybe I could be a consultant.
Another thing about log trucks: Seeing those loads of just-cut trees summons images of the ugly clear-cuts that mar the hillsides hereabouts and brings a pang sadness. However, a truckload of milled lumber going down the road does not elicit the same feeling. Instead I'm likely to think: Hum, those are some nice two-by-sixes. I guess it's similar to the difference between seeing a cattle truck on its way to market and seeing a meat purveyor making a delivery to a restaurant.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
About Our Abode
We live in a cohousing community, and Wikipedia and other sites provide good general descriptions of that concept, so I won't go into it here. There is much to say about our particular community, CoHo Ecovillage (not a very original or evocative name, but there it is). Unfortunately our CoHo Web site is way out of date, still featuring a lot of pre-move-in info. Construction was finished last October, and all 34 units were sold at that time. These units are distributed among nine two-story buildings. There is also the Common House, Bike Barn, and a large workshop. Some of the units are two-story townhouses, others are single-story flats. Whoever picked out the drab, earth-tone color scheme for the buildings did not share our sensibilities, but Leela and others are doing everything they can to bring some vibrancy to the place.
Our unit is an upstairs flat. With four bedrooms and two baths (just under 1,300 sq. ft.), it's the largest floor plan available at CoHo. We like it very much, although the kitchen is rather cramped. Leela and I each have an office. The fourth bedroom is a guest-meditation room, where we meditate on all the guests who will be visiting us. We also have a nice balcony, which Leela has festooned with flower boxes and hanging baskets.
Leela on our balcony entrance (sunflower shown actual size). (Click photo to see enlargement.)
The Common House has a big, commercial-grade kitchen and dining hall, where we have the opportunity to participate in four or five common meals a week, though with schedule conflicts and all, we only do about one every two weeks. The Common House also has a guest room, a children's play room, a living room, and a laundry room. Some residents have washer-dryers in their units. We have a washing machine but no dryer. So we either dry our laundry on racks or use the Common House dryers.
Our property is very nicely situated, with an old cemetery to the north, a huge city park and semi-wilderness area to the east, and residential neighborhood to the south and west. The buildings are connected by paved pathways, and there's usually a lot of activity out there -- especially kids. We have lots of gardening going on, and our common property also contains its own little wilderness preserve. A giant old oak tree used to stand at the east end of the path, but it fell just before move-in.
Lots needs to be done -- landscaping, building maintenance, paperwork, etc. In a cohousing community, the residents take care of a lot of stuff that a normal condominium would hire out. Everyone's supposed to put in four hours a week on community projects. This is a challenge for some. Yes, we have a lot of meetings and some disagreements. The upside is that our neighbors are a bunch of very intelligent people dedicated to improving their communication skills. Everyone moved in here because they wanted to make something like this work. It was about a decade in the planning. We joined right at the end of a long process, and I'm in awe of what these people have accomplished.
Our unit is an upstairs flat. With four bedrooms and two baths (just under 1,300 sq. ft.), it's the largest floor plan available at CoHo. We like it very much, although the kitchen is rather cramped. Leela and I each have an office. The fourth bedroom is a guest-meditation room, where we meditate on all the guests who will be visiting us. We also have a nice balcony, which Leela has festooned with flower boxes and hanging baskets.
Leela on our balcony entrance (sunflower shown actual size). (Click photo to see enlargement.)The Common House has a big, commercial-grade kitchen and dining hall, where we have the opportunity to participate in four or five common meals a week, though with schedule conflicts and all, we only do about one every two weeks. The Common House also has a guest room, a children's play room, a living room, and a laundry room. Some residents have washer-dryers in their units. We have a washing machine but no dryer. So we either dry our laundry on racks or use the Common House dryers.
Our property is very nicely situated, with an old cemetery to the north, a huge city park and semi-wilderness area to the east, and residential neighborhood to the south and west. The buildings are connected by paved pathways, and there's usually a lot of activity out there -- especially kids. We have lots of gardening going on, and our common property also contains its own little wilderness preserve. A giant old oak tree used to stand at the east end of the path, but it fell just before move-in.
Lots needs to be done -- landscaping, building maintenance, paperwork, etc. In a cohousing community, the residents take care of a lot of stuff that a normal condominium would hire out. Everyone's supposed to put in four hours a week on community projects. This is a challenge for some. Yes, we have a lot of meetings and some disagreements. The upside is that our neighbors are a bunch of very intelligent people dedicated to improving their communication skills. Everyone moved in here because they wanted to make something like this work. It was about a decade in the planning. We joined right at the end of a long process, and I'm in awe of what these people have accomplished.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Return of the Geese
Great numbers of Canada geese like to overwinter in the farm fields around Corvallis and at the nearby wildlife sanctuary, but during the summer, they fly off to reestablish their Canadian citizenship. Now over the last couple of weeks, they've started returning -- at first in small low-flying groups. At first their calls seemed tentative, as though they were asking each other if they were sure this was really the place and would we be okay here. Maybe they were just tired after the long journey. Now they're settling in and flying higher on their daily rounds. They're still not all here yet (sort of like me).
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Blackberry Blues
Although the Willamette Valley gets a lot of rain in the fall, winter, and spring, there's normally zero precipitation from May through September. The past couple of weeks, however, have brought some unseasonable showers, and I guess the blackberries have suffered.
About a week ago I started off toward my favorite blackberry patch with an empty pail and heart full of good cheer. There were still plenty of ripe berries, but up close things didn't look or smell so good. The pungent, fermentatios aroma reminded me of vinegar. The berries had lost their luster, and mold was overtaking them. In places whole clumps had just turned to masses of gray. The few that looked good enough to pick seemed to come off too easily and partially fall apart in my fingers. And the taste wasn't quite right. I groped for a while among the aura of decay and returned home with only a couple dozen berries in my bucket.
"Everything in its season," I told Leela, who likes to amass large quantities of various berries and freeze them so we can enjoy them year round. I've tried to convince her that if we go without them for most of the year, then we'll appreciate them all the more. Maybe. Or maybe the season isn't over after all. Yesterday I went for a walk in the park and found plenty of good blackberries in another place, with more green ones on the way. So goes the season.
About a week ago I started off toward my favorite blackberry patch with an empty pail and heart full of good cheer. There were still plenty of ripe berries, but up close things didn't look or smell so good. The pungent, fermentatios aroma reminded me of vinegar. The berries had lost their luster, and mold was overtaking them. In places whole clumps had just turned to masses of gray. The few that looked good enough to pick seemed to come off too easily and partially fall apart in my fingers. And the taste wasn't quite right. I groped for a while among the aura of decay and returned home with only a couple dozen berries in my bucket.
"Everything in its season," I told Leela, who likes to amass large quantities of various berries and freeze them so we can enjoy them year round. I've tried to convince her that if we go without them for most of the year, then we'll appreciate them all the more. Maybe. Or maybe the season isn't over after all. Yesterday I went for a walk in the park and found plenty of good blackberries in another place, with more green ones on the way. So goes the season.
Grackles and Crows
One thing I miss about Austin is the grackles. Here in Corvallis we have crows in great abundance, which have their own charm, but their grating caws can't quite match the marvelous electronic car-alarm call of a male great-tailed grackle strutting his stuff. (I once saw a tourist during the SxSW music festival trying to photograph a grackle.)
Now you might be excused for assuming that Corvallis takes its name from the crows, which are of the genus Corvus. In fact the name Corvallis was cobbled together from Latin roots that describe its position in the heart of the valley.
For years I had believed that grackles were also of the genus Corvus, along with jackdaws and ravens. In fact birds commonly called grackles are of several genera, none of which is Corvus. The great-tailed grackle that inhabits (or infests, depending on point of view) Austin, Texas, is of the Quiscalus genus. You have to move two steps down the taxonomic tree to the "order level" to find the common linage of crows and grackles in the Passeriformes, which includes most songbirds.
Although Corvallis has plenty of crows (there's even a watering hole downtown called the Crow Bar), the big black birds don't exactly darken the sky, as do the great wheeling flocks of Austin grackles. I've often thought that the grackle, rather than the armadillo, should be the animal emblem of Austin. One would be hard pressed to find an armadillo within those vaunted city limits, but grackles probably outnumber the human citizens by more than ten to one. Their very ubiquity likely causes them to be overlooked when people are considering names for things. They're so common, they're invisible -- or at least irrelevant. On the other hand, you see signs everywhere promoting Armadillo Wrecker Service, Armadillo Pest Control, Armadillo Tattoo Shop, Music, This, That, etc. -- but nary a commercial or civic mention of the loathsome grackle, which (along with the bats) actually contributes immensely to pest control. Yet atop of the signs and above the doors of those very businesses honoring the lowly armadillo are perched the gleaming black birds, ever watchful, always ready to swoop.
One time Leela was in an Austin boutique when a male grackle happened to fly in the door. The young lady in charge of the shop became very upset -- not because the bird might poop on her merchandise, but because she was afraid that black birds brought bad luck (they do have a rather menacing countenance). In complete sincerity, the woman wondered aloud if she should have the place exorcised. Leela tried to disabuse her of such thinking, saying: "Grackles -- they're party birds! They bring good luck."
And that's how I think of them -- party birds. While the city works hard to perpetuate its image as a good-times music capital, the grackles are living that lifestyle day and night, whooping it up in the trees and parking lots at all hours. Yeah, I miss that mess.
Now you might be excused for assuming that Corvallis takes its name from the crows, which are of the genus Corvus. In fact the name Corvallis was cobbled together from Latin roots that describe its position in the heart of the valley.
For years I had believed that grackles were also of the genus Corvus, along with jackdaws and ravens. In fact birds commonly called grackles are of several genera, none of which is Corvus. The great-tailed grackle that inhabits (or infests, depending on point of view) Austin, Texas, is of the Quiscalus genus. You have to move two steps down the taxonomic tree to the "order level" to find the common linage of crows and grackles in the Passeriformes, which includes most songbirds.
Although Corvallis has plenty of crows (there's even a watering hole downtown called the Crow Bar), the big black birds don't exactly darken the sky, as do the great wheeling flocks of Austin grackles. I've often thought that the grackle, rather than the armadillo, should be the animal emblem of Austin. One would be hard pressed to find an armadillo within those vaunted city limits, but grackles probably outnumber the human citizens by more than ten to one. Their very ubiquity likely causes them to be overlooked when people are considering names for things. They're so common, they're invisible -- or at least irrelevant. On the other hand, you see signs everywhere promoting Armadillo Wrecker Service, Armadillo Pest Control, Armadillo Tattoo Shop, Music, This, That, etc. -- but nary a commercial or civic mention of the loathsome grackle, which (along with the bats) actually contributes immensely to pest control. Yet atop of the signs and above the doors of those very businesses honoring the lowly armadillo are perched the gleaming black birds, ever watchful, always ready to swoop.
One time Leela was in an Austin boutique when a male grackle happened to fly in the door. The young lady in charge of the shop became very upset -- not because the bird might poop on her merchandise, but because she was afraid that black birds brought bad luck (they do have a rather menacing countenance). In complete sincerity, the woman wondered aloud if she should have the place exorcised. Leela tried to disabuse her of such thinking, saying: "Grackles -- they're party birds! They bring good luck."
And that's how I think of them -- party birds. While the city works hard to perpetuate its image as a good-times music capital, the grackles are living that lifestyle day and night, whooping it up in the trees and parking lots at all hours. Yeah, I miss that mess.
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