Thursday Night in Klamath Falls

Last night was Third Thursday here in Klamath Falls. During the summer on the third Thursday of the month we have an arts festival downtown. Businesses stay open and provide snacks for visitors, musicians play, and people set up tables to sell items. Loads of people come out – it’s a great way to spend a Thursday evening.

The public library always has something set up. Last night they were signing up both children and adults for our summer reading program. They close off the street by the library, and provide a safe place for children to be. There were several child-friendly organizations in that area.

I saw painters, jewelry, a woman doing weaving outside the local yarn shop, and other things. Non-profit organizations have literature. My church, Klamath Falls Friends, sponsors Quaker Bakers. We sell baked goods to support some worthy cause. This year we are raising money for a new university in Kenya that one of our members helped build last summer. He will be going back this summer.

The restaurant where we set up – the Daily Bagel, a wonderful place – had musicians playing Irish music last night. Across the street were The Old Time Fiddlers. Farther up, a woman was playing a harp. In the other direction was jazz.

It was a wonderful combination of people, food, and good energy. Great fun!

I’m going to post the recipe for the cookies I made for the bake sale. These are nice light cookies, which are prefect for tea, and good anytime. I took some to work yesterday, and they didn’t last long!

Ricotta Cheese Cookies

Ingredients
1 C butter
16 oz. Ricotta cheese
2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
3 C flour
Add any other goodies you’d like. I usually make them with dried cranberries and almonds, but they are also good with chocolate chips and/or coconut. Use your imagination.

Instructions
1.    Mix ricotta and butter until creamy,
2.    Add sugar. Add eggs. Add vanilla.
3.    Mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add gradually to the other ingredients. Add any other goodies you have chosen.
4.    Spoon by teaspoons onto cookie sheet.
5.    Bake at 425° for 10 minutes.
6.    Makes 4+ dozen.

What’s In a Name?

I’m a namer. I name everything. I’m just not happy until something has a name – and when it does, I talk to it, whatever it is.

I name plants. My Christmas cactus is called Della after the woman who gave the plant to a friend many years ago. I inherited her, and she is beautiful. The tiny philodendron I baby at work is called Little Fred. The big plant that arrived there last fall is called Phyllis. Her owner looks at me strangely when I refer to the plant as she. Not to mention when I apologize to Phyllis when I bump into her. At a college where I worked, there was a tree – or huge bush, I never could figure out which – shaped like a big artichoke. I still greet Artie when I go back there for meetings.

Stuffed animals, of course, get names. From my Woodsey the Owl, whom I call Wimsey, after Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’ suave detective, to my favorite (shh, don’t tell the others!), the white mouse puppet Mattimeo, after one of the Redwall mice, to the moose I got at Christmas named Noel to my newest addition Hedwig the snowy owl, they all have names. When my friend got a beautiful stuffed wolf, she said, “Name him anything but Fred,” He promptly became “Not Fred” forever.

I have two meerkat twins named Suri and Kate. As you may know, another name for meerkat is suricate. My other meerkat is named Kip, after a character in an unpublished fantasy novel. I had described him in the novel and was astonished at seeing the meerkats in the Seattle zoo. “There’s Kip!” I cried. Of course Kip (full name Ankiptis) is much bigger in the story.

So why do I do this? I think it must be my way of establishing order on my world. At any rate, I feel happier surrounded by Ollie the Otter, Worzel the Scarecrow, Oren the bouncing orange bird, Intel the Spaceman, Gundersen the Polar Bear, Digger and Jena the Hedgehogs and all the others, rather than just a bunch of nameless things. Besides, it’s just politer!

Spring in Klamath Falls

It’s spring in Klamath Falls. Our four feet of snow is gone, and everything has turned green. Hogsback, the hill I can see from my home is developing an emerald cover, which will only last a month or so. The rest of the year it is brown.

We are at 4100 feet above sea level, which means we have a relatively short growing season. We don’t plant until after Memorial Day, and often the first killing frost comes in late August. I planted my tomatoes and peppers and lettuce on Memorial Day weekend – over a week ago. And now, in the first week of June, we are scheduled to have frost every night for a week. Aargh! I’m going to have to cover and uncover as much as I have sheets for, and hope the rest can survive on its own. After our horribly long and snowy winter, this just seems to be adding insult to injury.

Well, sigh, here I go to tend to my garden…

Yesterday When I Was Young

My library recently got in the third season of The Muppet Show, which I promptly checked out. The Muppets inspired brand of silliness makes me laugh.

Roy Clark was the guest star for one of the episodes. He sang the song “Yesterday When I Was Young,” which I have always liked. Part of it goes like this:

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life, as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

…

There are so many songs in me, that won’t be sung,
I feel the bitter taste, of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young

I was singing along with him and when we got to the end, I was crying – not because the song was so beautiful, but because of the words. “No way!” I shouted at the screen. “No way am I going to get to the end of my life and not have lived.”

Then and there I reiterated my vow to make my living with my words. I’m not quite sure what that is going to look like yet, but I know I have to follow my dream – or else I will end up like the young man in the song, regretting the years that are gone.

And I am not going to let that happen.

The Power of One

I didn’t write this – I don’t know who did – but I love the story. Enjoy!

“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.

“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.

“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal-mouse said.

“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow – not heavily, not in a raging blizzard – no, just like in a dream, without a sound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off.”

Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.

The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”