Reed

Reed campus report

  • a mallard hen with a batch of five tiny beeps! It seems late for this. And, further down the canyon, one beep on its own, ignored by all the adults. I hope that has a happy ending.
  • ripe salmonberries in the canyon. Someone else had been at the thimbleberries up by the track, so I just smelled the roses.
  • the swingset has shiny new chains. Putting the seats at adult height is easy on the legs but makes for a short pendulum.
  • a CSO riding a Segway!

My four-mile run felt awesome. I’ve been running in NB790s, a minimal shoe I bought on super-sale when New Balance quit making them and then let sit in my closet. So far so good. Low mileage is fun. I think I’m going to enjoy every stage of my running comeback. Maybe that’s why it took me about seven years to get to a 50-mile event? Who knows how long it will take me to get to 100. But the scenic route is better than guilt and frustration, for sure.

Here’s something I never would have believed as a child: I’m seldom tempted by garage sales anymore. I have enough stuff…even books.

Reed is 100 and I am 41

I shared my birthday this year with Reed College, which put on its 100th Anniversary reunion celebration this weekend. I actually set foot on campus three times yesterday. My run in the morning was through the canyon, where quite a few older alumni were walking in ones and twos on the trails. Just since I was a student in 1992 there have been a lot of improvements and added trails, so I gave directions more than once. They all seemed like people I would like.

Sang and I did a walk-through in the early afternoon to see what was going on. A small Ferris wheel, tethered ballon, and ring-toss stalls were set up on the lawn with a few art projects; families were playing on the grass and the vibe was low-key picnic. All very…nice. Why do alumni not set up the naked slip and slide? Why is all the music so very inoffensive? It kind of depresses me how sanitized alumni events are compared to what goes on when the students are actually there. It feels a little fake, like a simulacrum of Reed.

We went back for the fireworks, where we met up with our friend N and also finally ran into people we knew from our freshman dorm. Up til then neither of us had recognized anyone. The fireworks at Reed are awesome! I hadn’t attended for years and forgot how close up they are. I kept being surprised I wasn’t showered with burnt paper, as I have been at Reed fireworks in the past. It was fifteen minutes, but a very full fifteen minutes. I was lying on the ground and could feel all the thumps as they went up. I am grateful that I haven’t been traumatized by anything explosive and can thoroughly enjoy fireworks. As a bonus, the dog has lost enough hearing so they don’t traumatize him anymore either! (He was at home, of course–but he used to hear them going off at Reed or the waterfront before they had even registered in my awareness.)

I also happened to read yesterday about two kidlit writers whose work didn’t take off until they were about my age. That’s always encouraging. The first was E. Nesbit, who published various things from age fifteen on, but suddenly around age 40 took quite a different tack and came out with her classic children’s stories. I found this out as I finished off The Enchanted Castle yesterday. To my commenter who recommended it after I was so disappointed by The Treasure Seekers, thank you so much! I felt wholly different about the authorial asides in this one. They didn’t seem condescending at all. I liked the book.

The other author is Patrice Kindl– I looked her up after seeing on the children’s literature listserv that she has a new title coming out soon. Owl in Love was her first book, published when she was in her early forties. It is wonderful and I want to read it again soon, but The Woman in the Wall is even closer to my heart, because I am shy and because its matter-of-fact surrealism suits me exactly.