London Walk - April 26th

Conkles Hollow

Sausage Soup

My cooking is based mostly on what is available. This is the
general intent of the recipe. Minus the sausage it comes vegetable
soup. Feel free to modify as you wish.

- 28 oz can of organic diced tomatoes with juice
- 14 oz can of northern beans rinsed
- 2 cups free range chicken broth
- 1 or 2 cups of unsalted tomato juice
- 4 diced medium carrots
- Half a celery bunch diced
- One green/red/yellow pepper chopped
- Half a small head of cabbage diced
- Several spring (green) onions diced as far up as you dare go
- Several chicken sausages (optional as is everything really)
- Cumin to taste (I keep it in a 16 oz jar and shake it out of the open
top because you can never have too much cumin)
- Oregano to taste
- Fresh parsley chopped (dried will do)
- Course ground pepper to taste

Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for 30 to 45 minutes. Add some chopped greens. Kale is preferred as it retains texture better than spinach or chard. Cook for 10 minutes or so. Chop the sausage into appropriate sized chunks and serve.

Colin's Writing in 3000 WNW

Colin Rea, Director, Fern Ridge Library

Eight years ago, I became an Oregonian (not, as some muse, an Oregander or even an Oregonist). In moving from southwest Virginia to central Oregon, I left behind the lush, verdant forests of Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and entered the clear-cut hills of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. I already possessed the requisite love of micro-brewed beer and the right left politics, more blue than red, when I settled into a new region, a new state, a new home. What I found was a place and people teeming with pride and awash in contradiction. But don’t despair, fellow Oregonians, I offer that observation as high praise.

In 1971, then Governor Tom McCall famously told Terry Drinkwater on CBS News “Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live.” Conventional wisdom says Oregonians fancy themselves as New Englanders do. They take pride in the roots that they put down and slap ‘Oregon Native’ bumper stickers on their Subaru’s and Hybrid Hondas (yes, the greening of America has pushed aside the Volkswagen in favor of trendy Japanese bubble cars. Never mind that the new diesel VWs get better mileage…). And yet, seemingly everyone in the state moved here from somewhere else, especially from the somewhere else known as the upper Midwest. Badgers, Gophers, Buckeyes, Wolverines; all are well represented in the Willamette (rhymes with dammit!) valley and beyond. Travel south and you’ll meet Californians who cashed out 3 bedroom houses in order to buy bigger homes for half the price near our beloved Shakespeare festival. Up north, Portland attracts the young hipsters from colleges across the country who know that Seattle went limp when Cobain blew the lid off the grunge movement.

Yes, we Oregonians want you to come for a drink and a story, but then kindly head home and tell a friend. With 12% unemployment we need the tourism dollars. Dig a little deeper though, and remove the short memory of Americans that make 150 years seem like an epoch, and you’ll find that this state has few citizens living outside the reservations that can claim anything close to native status. While participating in a statewide read as part of Oregon’s Sesquicentennial celebration, University of Oregon Journalism Professor and Oregon Author Lauren Kessler demonstrated this each time she asked for a show of hands during readings. 300 hands became 30, then 3, and then none as these literary Oregonians were asked who was born in Oregon, and whose parents and whose grandparents were born here. A shocking revelation to a crowd gathered to read about a little known chapter in our national history when Japanese Americans were put into camps during World War II, a concept that took McCall’s sentiments to a frightening extreme.

Happily, an Oregonian becomes so with a driver’s license (good for 8 years! Make that picture count…) and the baptism of the first fall rain. And what of that rain? I have now ground through my first license and seen the sun go on sabbatical each October. I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., a child of the summer who lived at the pool and became a lifeguard the minute I was old enough to do so. My childhood was blessed with four perfectly balanced seasons. Not so in the Pacific Northwest. I was worried how my body and mind would react to 7 months of rain and 5 months of sun. Would I end up as The Shining’s Jack Torrance (filmed in Oregon, by chance, at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood)? Would I require massive doses of Vitamin D to survive the monsoon? Nope. The secret of the wet Northwest? It rarely rains in Oregon. Rather, it mists. There is always water in the air, but good luck trying to figure out where it comes from. Up, down, sideways? No, it really just hangs there. I found this a delightful way to go through fall and winter. Then, just when it seems to be too much, the sun comes out and stays. Months of hiking, camping, climbing, biking, canoeing, and canoodling in the outdoors tires us out until we anticipate the first cloudy day, the first hint of our mist. Sure, we’ll grumble outwardly about the humidity, but inside we’re delighted. We get to light a fire, settle back into a comfortable fire, and read.

And we read. Perhaps it is borne of our hippie legacy, but Oregonians (and our kith and kin up north in Washington) are a literary bunch. I’ve worked in bookstores and libraries for most of my life, in two very different parts of the country, and for the most part you’ll not find our favorite reads on the NY Times Bestseller list. If a book we love is there, we put it there. Think Snow Falling on Cedars and The Art of Racing in the Rain. Not only do we read, but we write. Visit your local (independent) bookstore and plant yourself in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. Start reading author bios and notice now many of them ‘Live Somewhere in Oregon’ or ‘Live on the Oregon Coast.’ You can’t swing your dreadlocks in my state without hitting a Hugo award winner. We also boast legends both dead (Ken Kesey) and alive (Barry Lopez), and a hero to all pre-teens (Beverly Cleary). For all that, though, independent bookstores here and across the Pacific Northwest fight for survival, battling chain-stores, home-grown internet juggernauts, and even a well-loved, independent legend in Portland that sometimes rolls like a chain-store.

Yes, life is not perfect in Oregon. A state that grew up on a steady diet of lumber mills and commercial fishing is living in a present that knows a blown housing bubble and depleted waters. Our schools need more money, and many Oregonians have no library service. As a state, we’re upside down on our mortgage. We have too much meth, too few jobs, and a reputation for putting spotted owls and spawning fish ahead of the working man. But we have the one thing that will always transcend these issues – a strength and diversity of people. Cattle-men in the high desert, aging hippies in Eugene, farmers outside Corvallis, business-minded folk in Portland, these are all Oregonians, and they keep this state balanced and their differences engender the need for cooperation, which makes living here a fine thing.

Eight years in the Beaver State and I feel right at home. When I travel east, I find the trees disturbingly round and I wonder why there aren’t drive-up coffee stands on every corner. I’m no expert though… in fact, I had to double check to be sure I had the state nickname correct for this paragraph. There are still mysteries to uncover. Why, for instance, does EVERYONE in Oregon either own or covet an RV that costs more than their home? Why do the grass seed farmers torch their fields each year, dotting the horizon with mushroom clouds? And ceiling heat… don’t get me started on that one. Eventually I’ll know the answers to these and other important questions. Until then, I’ll enjoy raising my own Oregonians on a steady diet of damp literature.

My Easter Eggs... Thanks, Alice!