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I’m back…
I just processed a few photos I took a week or two ago down at the foot of the bridge that crosses the Mighty Big river (call it Columbia if you will). Mark and some friends had gone out to surf the clapotis (no, it’s not just a scarf) and I wanted to see if I could capture some of the fun with my new camera.
now there’s a happy Mark.
more on my flickr.
I do think I will start in on the 365 days diary. I have been enjoying pictures that much.
We just had a beautiful tremendous storm that has our power out even now, several days later…
an “extratropical cyclone,” they say. The flash that I saw sunday night (and thought, “no, there shouldn’t be lightning”) was one of the transformers blowing out. I love to see transformers blowing…
I am in the country now, basking in the world of electricity, woodstove, brought some stout in from town so I’m good to go!
This is the first storm season that I have been living totally dependent on grid power, and it is a bit humbling. My new house has electric cooking and sans electricity, there’s no hot food, but I’m not complaining. The owners of my work establishment (shall I call them bosses) were so generous to open up their doors to all off us “in the family” who needed a place to cook and so forth. It has been a bonding time.
High points of the storm: heading up to Paul’s 8th floor apartment on sunday afternoon to listen to the wind, thinking about environment=instrument, and my question was, “Is one environment or instrument?” and Paul’s answer was “both?”
Maybe it didn’t go quite like that but something… (the stout is getting in the way)
Walking Monday morning with the girls in the 80 (or higher) mph gusts, learning how to keep from being blown over (back to the wind and squat down).
Sitting for an hour in a line for gasoline, not that I really needed gasoline, but I wanted the experience. Why was this a high point? (especially as the pump I was in line for ran out exactly when I got to it)
Humans here don’t seem to have many outlets for their wildness, and this kind of event brings people to their edge, the edge of their comfort zone. It doesn’t take much to push them, and I spent the hour waiting for fuel listening to the human storm raging around me… like a carnival, but more frightening.
Community. How many ways can I count my appreciation for the informal family I have stepped into and helped to create on our small block in Astoria? My heart goes out…
So, a snippet of video that Mark shot standing on a porch on the mouth of Skamokawa creek on Monday morning. Looking away from the river. The wind combined with an ebb tide made for some high drama. I was several miles downriver from where this was filmed.
Speaking of film, between the time of this post and the last, I had flash moment in which my fear of taking photos was diminished if not erased. Thanks go out to soph of stitch blog for her diy camera school. It pushed me over the edge into understanding.
Sadly, I left the camera in town, but you will have photos. Oh will you ever, I promise.
Hello, this is Shannon’s husband, Mark. Shannon asked me to make a post on her behalf, as she is not able to access the internet for awhile.
Monday morning at about 3:00AM, her house and most of the contents were destroyed by fire. Shannon and the girls escaped unharmed, although it was a close call. The cats and the parakeets however, did not survive. Shannon and the kids were rescued by the Astoria Fire Department off of the front porch roof, while they could hear the windows breaking on both sides of the house behind them. Hooray for the Astoria Fire Department!
Shannon and the kids have lived at the Holiday Inn for the past couple of days, but she found a housesitting gig for a little while that starts today, so they can at least get out of the hotel room. The girls made it back to school Tuesday, with some new clothes that were bought with help from the Red Cross.
I spent Monday afternoon going through the remains of the house, searching for salvageable items, and giving the poor cats a funeral. Yesterday I went back with a truck and a friend and we spent the day salvaging some more. It looks like a great deal of Alice’s vintage clothing will survive, since her room did not get very burned or much smoke damage. Most of Shannon’s clothes are gone though, and only some of Opal’s look retrievable. Not much else made it out: a few pieces of furniture and books from Alice’s room, a couple of kitchen items, and a few other treasures, like Shannon’s purse, keys, passport and things like that. Computers, stereo, digital cameras and so forth were all destroyed completely.
In the shock of dealing with this near tragic happenstance, I learned a few things:
One of the very facts that made that old house so beautiful, and so of this place, is one of the reasons it was so completely damaged. Those thrifty and sensible Scandinavians of Astoria in the late 19th century sided the interior walls of those old houses with Douglas Fir 1×6, of which they had a lot, and then covered it over in wallpaper. This house still had just wood and wallpaper interior walls like that, except for a couple of small portions. Those small portions covered in sheetrock did not burn. The wood and wallpaper however, burned like a torch. As much as I don’t like the aesthetic of drywall, nor do I like to work with it, it is obviously a far safer wall covering than what was there.
Again, beautiful and practical balloon framing, of which I am very fond, is what those Scandinavians framed the house with, but they did not put in fire blocking, so when the fire got inside the walls downstairs it was able to very quickly travel to the upper floors and attic space.
from the Wiki entry: “Balloon framing has several disadvantages as a construction method:
1. The creation of a path for fire to readily travel from floor to floor. This is mitigated with the use of firestops at each floor level.”
Remember those fire escape ladders that they talked about in school safety classes? They meant it. Shannon and the kids were trapped on the second story of a burning house with no safe way to the ground. They were Very Lucky that the room that was the safest was also the only one next to a porch roof, and that the fire station was only a couple of blocks away.
Apparently, not only should you keep good batteries in your smoke detector, and test them frequently, you’re also supposed to replace the whole smoke detector at least every ten years. Who knew? Well, the fire marshall, that’s who. And then me, and now you, too. Shannon was awakened by the sound of the flames and the smell of smoke; the smoke detector upstairs went off after she was already up and only a couple minutes or less before the space was no longer a safe place to be.
Fire is amazing stuff. It is totally capricious in what it consumes and what it leaves behind. In the living room, where all was charred black, I turned over the upturned firewood caddy by the woodstove and found a bright, clean and unburnt piece of firewood. However, the “junk drawer” in the kitchen (everybody has one of those, right?) was practically a work of art, wrought by fire. Sally, we thought of you. In Alice’s room, in all the chaos of torn out walls, water damage, and wet, old-fashioned cellulose insulation, I found an unbroken and unscathed vintage bevelled mirror, a recent gift to Alice from friends. In Opal’s closet, in Opal’s very smoke damaged room, all the way at the bottom of a pile of smoky, charred and soggy clothes and toys, was a totally unscathed and like new piping chanter. This is like a pipe off of a bagpipe with a reed and everything, but you blow directly into it with your mouth. I wish I had a picture, but a quick websearch did not yield what I was looking for. Anyway, Andrew and I tried playing it and were cracking up laughing on the way home with it.
If you want something to withstand smoke damage, store it in a suitcase. Every single suitcase that I opened had undamaged items inside, even when they were found in totally smoke filled rooms. That smoke damage is nasty stuff, too. It was fortunate that Shannon had thinned her lifestyle down to such a small plastic content. The place mostly smelled like a wood and paper fire, not a bunch of toxic, melted and burned plastic. For the job of working inside the house after the fire, this meant the difference between wearing a respirator or not. I was thankful that I didn’t need to wear one of those all day.
People can be very generous. The outpouring of support and offers of help have been almost overwhelming. I know that there was an account set up yesterday at the bank, and I don’t know what is going on with that yet, or what the number is, but amongst the spectators and looky-loos, a total stranger walked up to the house where we were working yesterday, talked to Shannon for a bit and handed her a hundred dollar bill. Everyone has been offering replacement goods and help of all kind.
Until we figure out what the next housing will be, goods are something that Shannon can’t really take a lot of right now. She asked that I direct any blog-land donation offers towards the Red Cross office in Astoria, or your local Red Cross. They have been so helpful, fast and efficient it’s hard to believe.
Enough from me for now. I will relay any blog stuff Shannon asks me to do until she has computer and internet set up again.
My life is intensely social, now I am in town. Still, my creative side has been pouring into relatively slow-moving projects (read: socks). I sometimes find myself hankering after a more dynamic element, collaborative undertakings. For inspiration, I can visit such sites as that of the Yard Dogs Road Show, a group of performers whom I met 8 or so years ago when they were still putting on shows under a different name…
Their aesthetic is pretty exciting to me, given a certain story I like to tell about myself, although I do have issues with the burlesque (and that’s another story, dear reader), and I strongly suspect that my next phase of life is going to contain its fair share of stage moments.
Collaboration is occurring, sneaking up on me, perhaps, or rather, flowing unplanned out of my new found friendships, and also out of the theatrical/performance-oriented swirl of activities that surround me here. Some of these collaborations are not mine, but those of the kids. Last night was another Acoustic Junction at the Blue Scorcher Bakery, and a raucous scene it was, with one song in which almost all the performers sat in, Opal included, not to mention the three year olds winding their ways around the space in impromptu dances, and spilling out onto the sidewalk after whooping adults… I even sang a song, which was a bit of a leap for me. (And subsequently I received a beautiful compliment on my voice, thanks Paul Hoskin.)
I know, too, that there are going to be as many costuming opportunities as I am willing to let into my life. I am opening the door slowly, it is creaking ajar, somewhat reluctant, needing oil perhaps, but I imagine that once I get a taste of the party that is going on in the room behind that door, my enthusiasm will provide the needed lubricant for those rusty hinges.
In the meantime, today, I will work on socks, but also spent a couple of the hours before work setting up the sewing machine and making a little something for myself, not telling what, yet, not ’til I’ve done it…
Off to costume!
