southeastmain

A Notice

Hi all:

We are abandoning Typepad for a Wordpress blog.

You can find us at http://southeastmain.wordpress.com/

We are keeping the same name -- new service. We've already got a post or two up for your perusal. We'll hang onto this blog for a month or two so you all can make the switch.

We are also rearranging the furniture on Wordpress and adding new stuff. So if there's something you would like to see (a link, perhaps, that I've forgotten to add) please let us know. We think Wordpress will be a bit easier to make comments on, and I (June) am hoping to comment back to you all -- online rather than with private messages. So on with the game, family fussball, kin work, and all that..... --June

Again, here's the new link

Kin work

In one of my former lives, I wrote a paper that contained the then-feminist term "kin work." Kin work was seen as the work of maintaining ties within a family or set of friends, providing the connecting activities -- letters, phone calls, casseroles, and cupcakes -- that bring people together. Kin work connects people informally and gently into the essences of the worlds of other people. Kin work isn't necessarily a female activity, at least not any more (Jer is very good at it) nor is it strictly among "kin." It's really in large part what makes living worthwhile.


Now, it seems to me,  blogs have become an integral part of our kin work.
                       
Ah, you see where I'm going.

I've been under the weather (literally as well as metaphorically speaking), having an upsurge in an old tiresome medical problem. The problem is not life-threatening, and mostly requires taking time out, going to bed, reading lots of useless murder mysteries (good because the writer keeps repeating basic elements of plot)  and letting the world -- and my kin work -- disappear for while. Until this year, I hadn't had a resurgence strong enough to interfere with southeastmain, but it was inevitable that this would happen at some point. And Jer has his mind on other things -- mostly editing Wikipedia, but also on maintaining house and home while I lounged in my bed of ease. And so the hiatus at southeastmain over the last week.

 

Now I'm upright again, and discussions are afoot about what will happen to southeastmain. We've been blogging since March 25, 2004; we have done 1496 posts, and have had 105,795 views (almost 70 per day) of the blogs. We hadn't realized that it had become part of our kinwork, but comments from Del and Sheila and Terry and Jay and Janet as well as Linda and others made us aware that we have kin across the world that the blog serves to maintain connections with.


So, we shall continue. We may move to a more friendly commenting blog site, where you don't have to prove you are a human being before being allowed to make comments. And we'll probably shift some responsibilities -- I have an unfair advantage with photos, since I can always dredge up another draft of some painting or a work in progress among the baskets of unfinished textiles. So I might be doing more of the entries, while Jer does some fewer. And he might even be talking a bit more in text, particularly during these rainy days when photography becomes more difficult.

 

In the meantime, the clouds (metaphorically speaking) seem to be parting, good friends keep coming back, and small visions and revisions occur. We'll be around tomorrow. -- June

Silly person

Thank you for the kind words. Perhaps it would help if I operated in silly mode for a while. That is me to the left, preparing to meet the green trolls. I'm sure they must be frightened. -- Jer

Drifting off to one side

Well, suddenly after almost three years of never missing a day on this blog, we're not keeping up. We're discussing how to proceed, and it might take a few days to decide what to do next. My enthusiasm for the blog began to wane after the Basin trip. I'd had all sorts of new things to photograph in Montana, and I've already photographed the things that attract my attention close to our house. We may move to a format something other than daily.  -- Jer

Poppies

  -- Jer

Dinner out

I know a lot of people virtually. And once in a while, I get to meet them in reality. So yesterday Jane Davila, Terry Grant, Rayna Gilman and I rendezvoused at the Quilter's Market in the Convention Center and went off to dinner at the Harborside.

I teased Terry, who parked downtown and took the MAX to the eastside  (that's all backward, believe me), but she proved more than equal to the task of getting us to Riverplace, safely ensconced at a big table in the bar.

Terry and Rayna exchanged dueling career paths (they careened rather than strolled down their respective paths!) and Jane entertained us with the tale her exotic artistic history, culminating in being a quilt artist -- and a fabric shop proprietor.

The obliging waitress took photos of us all, using each of our cameras in turn. Alas, a stranger seemed to appear in the photo where I was sitting, so I had to crop her out. That's her fingers on Jane's shoulder at the right. Rayna is at the left, and Terry is in the center, taking care of us all.

And behind us is the Hawthorne Bridge and the waterfront on one of Portland's fair evenings.

What a good way to start the summer season. --June

Oh yes, Rayna got some photos with that stranger included in them -- eyes wide shut! I may have been trying for the sultry look -- or maybe I just didn't get enough sleep the night before.

Greenway Park

Greenway Park in Beaverton, Ore.

-- Jer

That a moment will reverse...

There was this:

which became this:

I am so very fond of revising! Or maybe it's just doing what I should have done to begin with....

I am off today to an Art Walk, a wedding reception, and dinner with Jane Davila and Terry Grant. At the end of the day, I may have to be carried off to this kind of resting place. --June

Azalea

Azalea

-- Jer

Visions and Revisions

Your English teacher always told you to revise your essays, right? Well, it turns out that for some people the same adage applies to paintings. Remember this Not-Duck?

Early Wednesday evening, turned on its side and worked over a bit, it looked like this:

Late Wednesday evening, that vacant lower right side was beginning to take shape.

 

And the moral of that story is -- you can't turn an essay on its side.  But you certainly can revise it beyond recognition. --June