A month in the chips

Tony Huggins-Hayes Gallery, Kelso, Scotland

It’s been a long and scattered month featuring chips on every side: British style, banking style, and lifestyle. Much of the time was spent outside Portland, outside the US, and in places where debit and credit card transactions have used chip technology for more than 15 years. And for a decade of those 15, I’ve been coping, when abroad, with the American reluctance to enter the turn of the past century mark, swiping and signing while all around me can handle restaurant tabs without letting go of their good names.

This time, I had what I came to call my mutt of a card, which does feature a chip…and requires a signature instead of a PIN anyway. Okay, fine, whatever. When I returned home to my pile of accumulated mail, however, lo and behold, there was a spanking new card in the stack. With chip and PIN technology! And a two-page missive explaining to me that this is the technology of the future and I need to become comfortable with it. My eyes rolled and fell onto the floor as, of course, the rest of the world has moved on to tap.

My first forray to the supermarket with new card and need to restock what passes for my larder, the cashier looked at my gristled hair and decided I probably needed to be walked through chip and PIN in steps designed for the antique and dementia addled. I was kind; I let her.

The new chip technology I met abroad this trip was of the domestic tech type, rather than the financial. And it ain’t new, just new to me. There came the day in my travels when transit connections had gone belly up and my own belly was hollering for a refill before I could think my way through reasonable alternatives. The appearance of a Chinese takeaway–one with clean windows and a menu card both expansive and inexpensive–got my custom. And the kung pao shrimp with mushrooms was excellent! Good spice, fresh and plump shellfish equal to the litter of forest fruits. And all served up on a bed of…chips. As in fried potatoes. Equally well preapared and surprisingly harmonious with the kung pao.

The other chips have been less harmonious, as in the chips are down. But hey, cycle of life and all that. Spring has arrived, and with it the sweetly smelling cedar chips in flower beds. So things will either look up, or I’ll just concentrate on looking between the chips and the sky…at the flowers.

Identifying logic

My capacity for irresponsibility runs in fairly limited circles that involve failures at vacuuming, spur of the moment sight seeing, and keeping a fully stocked larder. A couple of weeks ago, I twigged to the fact that my California state identification card expires on my next birthday, so obtaining a Maine one, before that expiration, seemed a good step.

I set off yesterday with a variety of duplicate official forms showing both my signature and my picture, others showing my legal presence in the US, my current Maine address, and all of the above my birthdate. Solid, right? Huh. Yesterday’s attempt was thwarted by the arrival of 37 older teens (that is, great big guys) who planned on boarding the same bus I needed and since I wasn’t precisely sure of where I would be getting off, or when, I decided I’d skip the post-gym class aromadome.

So I set off again this morning, mindful of when that phys ed class apparently takes a bus ride and avoiding their schedule, fully stocked with all the relevant documents. Ha.

Passport acceptable on all counts except in-state address. Health insurance bill acceptable as proof of address. California ID unacceptable for proof of anything including birthdate, signature, or picture. Nothing else in my wallet acceptable as proof of signature, although every last piece of it bears my signature. Instead, what was in order, the very Maine-polite female staffer explained to me, with her backup chorus of the very Maine-polite male staffer, is that I need a copy of my birth certificate. Or a note from my doctor verifying my birthdate. That neither of these have my signature on them seems irrelevant (to them).

Now, my doctor, here in Maine, has not once asked for proof of my birthdate and all of the various medical offices I have dealt with here seem to use one’s birthdate as the sole means of proof of identification. Apparently, however, I can go to the doctor, say I want a note saying that my birthdate is what I say it is (yes, the passport backs that up, but apparently that is used only to prove my signature and that I am in the country legally).

The lack of use for the ID issued by the overly scrupulous state of California kind of floored me. It was explained (with backup chanter) that it’s a matter of security, that other states’ official ID’s are somehow less than sure bets. Okay. That seemed odd but not wholly illogical until we got to the next part:

I asked how long it took once the application is accepted to have the ID in hand (Crazy me, although this arrival happens in the same visit as the application in California, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio, I somehow doubted this would be the case given the local distrust of other state DMV officers). It would be within 30 days that it would come by mail, they assured me, the length of time allowing for the ID material to be sent to the state of Washington for processing and then back to me. I looked mystified enough that I didn’t even need to ask before the explanation continued: it seems that a company in Washington has been determined by the state of Maine to be the only trustworthy resource for ID production. And the US mails. Both directions. Oh, yeah. Sing it, DMV.

Of course I wanted to ask if Washington state DMV credentials are accepted as valid in Maine’s DMV office as proof toward a Maine ID. I did not. I know when to cut bait.

The curious incident of the plow in the nighttime

As in yup, for the singular snowy night when this didn’t clatter and honk at all–let alone in its typical hourly fashion–through the parking lot just beyond my front bedroom… Oh the bliss of a honkless sleep!

There wasn’t all that much snow yesterday because the temp went so far down its mercury channel that snow simply couldn’t. This morning, every snowy footprint raised across a previously cleared paving patch is a frozen pond. And coming across any walkway that has been not only wholly cleared but also–wonder of delightful wonders–liberally sprinkled with grit, is like mana. For the grit sticks to the boot soles long enough to provide some traction across the next patch of ice.

As to the plow: it’s double-timing the honks and scrapes this morning.

Fisherman’s hours

No matter how early I walk into the neighborhood (save those occasions when I need to get to the Portland Transit Center before 4 am), warm lights glow from flats and houses and householders can be seen up and drerssed and either making coffee or doing what I have just come outside from doing myself, working away in front of a
computer screen. This time of year, of course, the world is dead dark naturally. However, all the glowing homes indicate that we are a neighborhood of predawn risers and workers.

The dog walkers don’t emerge on the street until about six and do then regardless of the weather, some somfully bundled that their ability to move at all is a wonder. Without holding a candle to the heartiness of Halifax joggers, there are usually a few runners in the predawn mix as well, unlike Halifax usually solitary in their pursuit of having run.

Mansard rooflines, skeletal winter trees, and the glow of what seem to be winter, rather than holiday, colored lights wound around trees and dangling from light poles give the scene a textured aspect. In Berkeley, this hour of the day is glum and softened, often, by fog. Here fog comes as an occasion, rather than a certitude, especially in winter.

This winter has been as remarkably mild as last year’s was polar. Already the snow that had mounded everywhere has dissipated into a few forlorn scabs and today’s forecast is for rain instead of snow. I don’t know how that affects the winter fishing, only that I appreciate the fisherman’s hours.

Lost gloves, moral failure, and batshit ideas about wasting money

The sky has turned that heavy grey that fairly screams: “Snow’s coming in!’ and I walk home from morning coffee wondering if this is a last trek on relatively firm pavement for a while. By the sand barrel nearest my flat, a singular black glove lies, still holding the shape of its (adult, probably a woman) owner.

Lost gloves make me sad, the kind of sadness that I recognize as close to shame, even though it’s not my glove, and for all anyone knows, the owner is glad to have lost it, wanted it gone and out of her life and whatever obligation wearing that pair might have presented. It’s the vestige of sadness, or shame, really, almost atavistic. It is ironed into my brain along with basic rules for the day: toothbrushing, clean socks, presentable facial expression.

Lost mittens were one of the several disasters with which my slightly batshit mother would not tolerate. A lost mitten was wasted money. Money was for (1) the mortgage, (2) books, and (3) minimal groceries. Replacing mittens or gloves that hadn’t been outgrown was right up there with taking a lighter to a dollar bill.

In many matters, I can be a fast learner. About the time I was seven or eight, she gave me a pair of doeskin mittens that I have to this day, although they are tucked up into the tapestry suitcase I bought for myself–with my own earned money–when I was 17. They live there, with snow pants made of heavy stuff in their Seventies-era way, and a somewhat hideous socket my mother knitted of variegated hues of green.

But every time I see a dropped glove, she’s back in my face again, wondering if I think she’s a Goldscheisser. Nope, not hardly. The double negative is purposeful. She would have rolled her big blues on that one.

Silver and gold

About the only things I retain from my brief sojourn as a Brownie Scout are a few song lyrics, including the Make New Friends ditty. And every time I move across several thousands of miles–which I’ve done a shameful number of times–it hums like a live wire in my collection of ear worms.

How I got to Portland in the first place involved a handful of friends. The first spark of the idea landed on a drinks table in Las Vegas, of all places, where four of us were closing out a conference episode. I had already decided to decamp from too-expensive California; the where to head, however, hadn’t gained any sort of shape. I threw down the question–right there among the beer, very pink cosmo, and glasses of wine being drunk–to my gangtlet of buddies, all of whom I’ve called friends for more than a decade. One lives in Ohio, another in Wisconsin, and the third in Rhode Island. And as though with one voice, the response was: “Maine!”

A week later, I was talking to my longest term friend. She had lived in Boston since we ended our teens. I ran Maine up my flagpole of potential next stopping places. “Have you ever even been there?” she demanded. Once, about 30 years ago, I reminded her, I had driven through en route back to Boston from New Brunswick. That taste of the state had involved an unprecedented overnight at a whorehouse, lodgings taken due to a serious fog that made the backroads too invisible to get through before daylight.  My friend suggested she take me for a quick gander in the 21st century, en route to Nova Scotia (where we were both headed two summers ago, for two different purposes).

My first visit to Maine, then, with an eye toward decamping here, lasted about 18 hours. I was sold after four of them. One niece made certain to provide introductions to her friend who lives up the road a piece, and that has been a budding friendship from the start. On my own, I’ve developed friendly associations with a few folks who are in my daily life of walking and imbibing from coffee to the occasional gin.

In the past week, I seem to be attracting potential friends at the rate of a Powerball winner, which I can assure you, I am not and never shall be (as winning the lottery involves buying a lottery ticket). On Thursday, I did a favor for a California friend of some 20 years who needed a guest speaker for an online class. The group turned out to be chatty and smart and the hour was mildly exhausting as I covered the prepared material and also handled–or at least recognized–the participants’ many and diverging ideas on the topic at hand. I had neglected to eat lunch and by the time all was said and done, starvation seemed imminent. Outdoors, the streets were already dark as well as solidly iced so I didn’t get as far as I might had I patronized one of my habitual watering-and-bread holes.

Instead, I parked on a bar stool at strange little place that should have great food but never quite seems good enough and tucked into passable pasta. An older woman fairly tumbled through the door and took a neighboring seat…and then began to chat so volubly and engagingly that I forgave the cook his enthusiasm for cream. She was’t close to my cup of tea, this woman, but she was friendly and exhausted from a day spent minding her husband through some hospital procedure, so I listened and “my my-ed” at all the proper places. And it was easy because she was just so darn friendly.

Saturday was way more promising on the new friends’ front. I was perched in my regular spot at my regular midmorning coffee shop when a small herd of very short women arrived. There were half a dozen, all somewhere between 4’11” and 5′ even. My barista buddy knew them well–one was his best friend–and he promptly introduced me. And in the way that friends find each other in strangers, one of them–a cellist newly returned from a musical jaunt to Cuba–and I couldn’t get enough of chatting with each other.

Friday, between Thursday and Saturday, of course, included the gold in all this new silver mining. One of my California friends and I continue to talk weekly, just as we have continued to talk through 25 years or more (except when we don’t). And that is the beauty of gold: it doesn’t tarnish, regardless of the miles you put on it.

The physics and geometry of walking in winter

Although I spent my childhood, as well as part of my third decade, in very wintry places, and they, too, were hilly landscapes, it is only with this third round of icy sidewalk life that I appreciate how correct my grammar and secondary school teachers were when they noted that certain math and science studies could play a providential role in daily adult life. Portland’s sidewalks are generally brick and, as such, given to generous stretches of unevenness creatd by both frost heave and tree root push.

Added to that year around menace for the less than sure footed, sidewalk clearing seems to be very low on the list of post-snowfall clearing efforts. We have had a week of interspersed snow with subfreezing temperatures that render any slight softening underfoot into various icy forms, some so slick that just by looking at them, I find my muscles tensing for the gentle and rapid steps needed to cross them. The first fall of the season is always the worst, just by dint of its anticipation, and that is well out of the way for this winter.

Now it is a matter of taking deliberate measur of every slope and choosing the path that is both least slick and just at enough of an incline that the drag of bodyweight is slightly backward, rather than headlong. Keeping angles clearly in mind, evaluating the surface tensions created by passage, the occasional blessing of sand, and the moment’s ambient temperature, windchill, and base level evenness of the bricks beneath the snow-and-ice cover, and also staying alert for the year around dirctional interferences of careless drivers (minimal here, thank goodness) and leashed dogs who keep as far from their walkers as possible (and thus create ankle or knee high trip lines) does keep one’s head buzzing as one’s feet move forward.

And yet, it works, perhaps in large part because Mr. Chrifield and Sr. Joyce were right to warn me that those school studies could have a practical purpose.

Or was it Elizabeth, a children’s librarian friend of mine who, about 15 years ago, asked if I too (like her) had come belatedly to appreciate algebra? “Every day it’s about solving for X, isn’t it?”

Weatherproofed by the home of the Maine adventure

 Reny’s is a Maine institution that seeves as a cross between Woolworth’s circa 1957 and a general store of even more gilded vintage. Every small town seems to have one–and the smaller the town (if one considers only towns large enough to have a public library AND a street of shops clustered near it), the more prodigious the Reny’s. It’s tag line appears as the back third of this post’s title.

Among Reny’s stock on any given day, one can choose among coffee filters, excellent dill pickles, bath towels, Woolrich sweaters, jigsaw puzzles (from 100-piece to those crazy making 1000-piece ones), post cards (40 cents a pop), toothpaste, watchcaps and 27 other styles of caps and hats, sunscreen, extension cords (multiple lengths, both indoor and outdoor), paper doilies, and rice. There are various candies made in New England (squirrel zippers as well as NECCO wafers and other sorts familiar to the rest of the country), wooden clothes racks (made in Maine), and at nearly a dozen variant versions of Raye’s mustards.

I realized this morning as I set off into the snow and ice world left behind by yesterday’s snowstorm that lighted on Friday’s rain and windstorm that my outerwear was entirely Reny’s acquired. And, more to the point, there wasn’t a cold spot on me and my feet were dry. Coat, hat, boots, and gloves, variously made by Columbia, Turtle Fur, Boggs, and Thinsulate, and acquired now over the course of a winter and a third for less money than any of my previous (realnotcalifornia) winter coats probably cost going back 30 years (or three coats). And none of these things, except the boots, weighs more than a few ounces! A Maine adventure, indeed, in high tech winter wear at Reny prices!

Yup, sound an advertisement. Just calling it like I see–and feel–it.

Changes…and echoes

Two and a half weeks away from my new hometown showed a couple dramatic changes upon my return: of course, the seasonal decking of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s monument had been retrieved, so again he sits all stone at State and Congress Streets, bereft of his gilded packages and the red ribbon tracing through his slightly outreaching right hand.

Joe’s Smoke Shop (1945-2015) had closed earlier in December. Now it is a ghost, a growing pit in the ground on Congress at Avon. Across the street, the derelict-turning-upscale row house pair that has seen more work in the past five months than the previous eight, looks nearly ready for high priced occupancy In constancy, the sex shop remains next door, as does the barber who seems to have been doing business long before Joe opened his smoke shop across the road.

My time away was filled with changes and echoes, too. I pulled ancient treasures from drawers and boxes in preparation for a house changing ownership in April, in Halifax, and then, down the road to Boston, ate dinner with my longest-time friend before she decamped for the weekend I stayed in her flat while doing my longterm business of “professional activities,” to whit, committee work and all kinds of grown up stuff that I never have learned to handle without feeling like a rube who just fell off the virtual potato truck.

Feeling homesick came as a good sign: I have transferred my heart and soul to Portland, owning its changes more deftly than those in my longterm life. I didn’t kiss the ground when the Concord Coach redelivered me to the Fore River…but I came mighty close.

Aesthetics unbounded by aesthete snobbery

An unanticipated perque of Portland is the abundance of casual conversations to be had with visual artists and crafts practitioners. At 7:30 this morning I bought a handbuilt and handsome yellow painted bookcase and less than 10 hours later got to be party to the musings of a young anatomy illustrator who had enjoyed her first taste of graphic novel composition.

The lack of posturing and openness to interactions based wholly on shared visual enjoyment and proximity of participants to both each other and the object of gaze is my version of aesthetic heaven. The environment itself provides so many extraordinary canvasses: sunrise glowing on red brick, skies that seem to sport only true blues, frosted whites, or warm greys, all the shades and tints leaves can assume with the passing seasons.

There’s ugly to be had, of course: the occasional vinyl siding that mocks clapboard rather than echoing it; the weirdly sterile–and happily isolated–protrubences of brutalist architecture. The contrast serves to heighten the majority of sightings, however, rather than overwhelm or negate their fine lines, palettes, and whimsy.

That I didn’t anticipate all this visual richness only makes it more delightful. My eyes haven’t had a bad day in state yet.