If you liked this blog, you're goina LOVE my new one!

Yes it's true. I've come back. In another life form. Like you, faithful readers, I was sorry to see this blog wind down to the end of its life span. But I knew I wouldn't last long without my old friend Blogging  -- an art form which I'm pretty sure was invented specifically for me -- so here I am at Room for a Pony -- with all the energy of a newborn baby. I am uncontainably excited!

You'll see that I've graduated from Blogspot and have moved on to Wordpress -- and not the easy one -- dot-com -- but the sophisticated one -- dot.org -- that you custom-design yourself, with all the bells and whistles you could ever want to play with!

Ok well I haven't played with them all YET. It'll be a work in progress as I learn to do more cool stuff. But those photos you'll see in the banner? Those are mine -- real live photos of my own actual junk!

I'm playing with the big kids now, baby!

Go there at roomforapony.net   [Not dot COM, but dot NET]

And if you've ever watched that British sit-com, Keeping Up Appearances, that's where the name comes from. Remember? Hyacinth is always bragging about her high class sister who has a Mercedes and "room for a pony." She doesn't actually have that ultimate symbol of the good life, but she's got room for it when the day comes. That's what I'm doing. Making room. Figuratively speaking. (I'm not aiming for an actual pony, but perhaps some sort of spiritual equivalent.)


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Chocolate? Are you there? It's me, Kate.

Here I am in corn land -- Iowa and Minnesota. Got to ride on the hay baler. Stayed in a log cabin containing 8,006 knot holes and 27 items made out of antlers. Despite all the advantages, you can't find a decent piece of chocolate in these parts to save your life. And by that I mean that the highest cocoa content in the land is 55%. I brought some along, but miscalculated horribly.

Note to self: You need more chocolate when you're away from home, dummy, not less.

Ironing board follow-up

Oops. I realize I should’ve followed up on the ironing board story. Sorry to leave everyone hanging like that.

When I rode by there two days later it had vanished. The U-lock remains. What does that mean? Will it be back? Usually when people leave an expensive U-lock behind it means they plan to return and they want it there to lock up with.

On the other hand…. might the ironing board have managed to wiggle out of it somehow and escape? Could happen. Especially given the way its foot was bent up already. Easier to slip it through, maybe.

So you see, I’m left hanging too. I can’t give you a definitive answer. But here’s a shout-out to the library staff of the Hollywood branch: Hey ho! If anybody there knows what happened to it, could you write in and let us know?

Wheels do not a shopping cart make

I saw the saddest thing on the train to Gresham this morning. I caught the MAX at the Hollywood Transit Center, as usual. It came at about 9:30. I forget which stop it was -- maybe as far up as 182nd or so -- when the loudspeaker comes on and the voice of the driver, a woman, booms out: "The lady trying to get on with the shopping cart? Shopping carts are NOT ALLOWED on the MAX. You may NOT come aboard with a shopping cart!"

I pictured one of those homeless people trying to bring their huge, overloaded, steel grocery-store cart onto the train, and I thought, wow, someone is actually trying to do that. I always wondered if they ever tried to get on, and what would happen, and now I know.

I looked down the platform till finally I saw a woman get off with..... a cart, yes. But hardly what you would call a shopping cart. She pulled behind her a nylon net pull cart, the kind you might take with you on a walking trip to the grocery store. She looked like she's been on the planet for about fifty five years, and not the easy kind of years.

Good Grief, Trimet!! Get your rules down! It reminded me of the bus drivers not letting me onto the buses with my "bike." For crying out loud, that is obviously NOT what is meant by "shopping cart." Clearly this was a new driver, who'd remembered reading "no shopping carts" somewhere in the rule book and didn't think it through. People get onto those trains every day with suitcases and strollers the size of her pull cart, and bigger.

I really felt for that woman. She was only trying to go to the store -- using the public transportation, like we're always trying to get people to do, right? Except that she probably wasn't using it to be noble, but because she didn't own a car. The cart was empty (you could see through the netting) and she could've collapsed it down flat, but she was too tired, and probably too embarrassed at having been made into a public spectacle, to do anything but trudge away, looking downcast. I hope she tried again and had better luck with the following driver. Anyway I'm going to give Trimet a call in her behalf, because she seemed much too trodden down to even think she had a right to complain.

My Other Broom is an Ironing Board

If you had to choose a household appliance as a means of transportation, wouldn’t you tend to reach for a broom? Who wouldn’t think of that, first thing?

But someone has had a much better idea. Why not an ironing board? Much more comfortable. A plethora of possible riding positions. As good as surfing, if not better.

There’s one parked outside the Hollywood library. It’s locked to the bike rack with an expensive U-lock, so obviously someone cares about it. The landing gear is a little bent, so it’s been around. Clearly not something grabbed in haste for a joy ride and then dumped. Surely the owner will be back for it. But when? It’s been there for several days……

I know it doesn't belong to one of the library employees because I've seen it there early in the morning and late at night.

Another one of mankind's nasty habits infiltrates the animal world

Here's the promised Crow Trying to Smoke a Cigarette essay. This was last October, hence the scruffiness of the grass and the dead leaves in the gutter. Been meaning to post it ever since. I hope you appreciate it because it made me late for work. This seemed more important at the time.....

Hey!

Lemme see that a sec!

I know what's in there!

Got to get the damn thing open....

Come ON, dammit! God I hate the packaging industry!
Grrrrrrrr!
I have so HAD IT with this. Enough already!
To hell with it, I quit.

Oregon summer is here at last

good grief, I can't bear that grey picture another minute, it seems so inappropriate now that the weather is gorgeous.

No time right now, but I've been preparing a photo essay of a crow trying to smoke a cigarette. Don't believe me? Just wait....

The Candle Method

Today was the kind of day that everyone should know about before they do something rash like move to Oregon. Keep in mind that it’s mid-July and this picture was taken at 4:30 in the afternoon.

OK I’m lighting a candle for all the people out there who’ve moved to Oregon by mistake, for whom this kind of weather is Sylvia Plath on a plate.
There. See? When you can do nothing else, you can light a candle. For example if you’re desperate about something and it’s beyond your control and you can’t pray because you don’t believe in it or you don’t know how or you’re not in the mood, or if you’re so mad that you would knock the head off anyone who made such an annoying suggestion, you can light a candle and the candle will do all the work. It’s a Catholic thing, but anyone can use it. The Tibetans have something similar. Tibetan prayer flags. Every time the flag ripples in the breeze, it counts as a prayer.

Stick a candle somewhere, light it, and then you say who or what you’re lighting it for. Even the most avowed heathen can do that. At least it’s something.

PS: Like it says on the box: Never leave a candle unattended: no telling what the cat will do -- burn your house down. If you have safety issues, maybe you need to buy one of those little battery operated candles and just turn it on by the little switch on the bottom.

Here’s a bit from a poem/song by Leonard Cohen called Anthem:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.