Indulging Myself and Meeting Monica.

What's your favorite ice cream?  Did the taste of it just pop into your mouth, or are you intellectualizing and internally debating the merits of mint chocolate chip or rocky road?  To say I love ice cream would be an understatement.  Did you know that ice cream is different depending on where you are.  Oh, of course, there are the 'standards', but each location has an ice cream of which they are particularly proud.  Each region also has concocted favorites whose names usually involve the wild animal of the region:  "Moose Tracks", "Deer Tracks", or the local fruit or nut or condiment - "Maine Blueberry" or "Oregon Blackberry".  In Montana and Idaho, I hit huckleberry season, and there was huckleberry ice cream.  I never tasted better maple ice cream than in New England.  And to give the Aggies their due; the best ice cream EVER is Aggie Ice Cream at Utah State in Logan.  Yes, friends, as much as it pains me, the homemade USU Aggie Ice Cream is better than Texas' Blue Bell.  

Here, in Seal Rock, we have a sweet shop called "Indulge" that advertises evil brownies, fudge and ice cream.   The ice cream is luscious.  Tonight I had Brown Cow.  (It probably should have been called Brown Sea Lion.)   Think of the taste of white chocolate and milk chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate chunks.  If the ice cream isn't enough, the shop also has homemade fudge as well as chocolate candies.  I haven't eaten any of that stuff....yet.  The divinity is calling me, though.  And she has penuche, a cooked brown sugar candy similar in consistency to fudge.  OK, enough, enough.  I could talk desserts, ice cream, and candy until people run screaming from the room.

I started talking to the owner, Monica, tonight.  This wasn't our first trip into the shop and I ease dropped last time as she told a friend she had an upcoming vacation.  This is her first vacation in 10 years.  Understand, she runs a business that is open 7 days a week from 10 - 6.  And where is she going?  Paris, France to show and sell her doll clothes.  

Meeting interesting people is the best thing about traveling.  Monica confided if you live on this rural, Oregon coastline, you'd better have a hobby to occupy yourself when the rain blows sideways for ten days in a row.  I can already see this has to be true.  About ten years ago, she was noodling around browsing eBay.  Thinking she might want to buy some fancy jam, she came across a doll dress designer with name that popped her up on the eBay search.  Monica saw her first Blythe doll.  It was the start of a unique hobby.  

Blythe is a doll introduced to the American toy market by the defunct toy company Kenner in 1972.  It's an 11 inch doll, that has a Japanese anime look with big eyes and an oversized head.  It also has a string to pull which will change the eye color of the doll. It was a total flop, and was only manufactured and distributed for one year.  

According to Wikipedia:  In 1997 a New York TV and video producer, Gina Garan, was given a 1972 Kenner Blythe doll by a friend and she began using it to practice her photographic skills.  She began taking the doll everywhere and took hundreds of photos.  The result was in 2000 Ms. Garan published a book called This is Blythe and started a phenomena which resulted in Hasbro (who bought the defunct Kenner Toys) to issue a license to Takara Toys of Japan to produce a new edition of Blythe (Neo Blythe),  The re-issued doll was used in advertising campaigns in Japan and became an instant hit.  The Japanese success caused Hasbro to issue a license to Ashton-Drake Galleries in 2004 to sell Blythe replica dolls in the United States.  Alexander McQueen, the famous fashion designer, launched a fashion line for Target with an ad campaign featuring Blythe dolls.  These dolls are now collected and 'dressed' by a growing group of hobbyists.  Monica visualizes "Blythe" as a sweet, innocent 10 year old girl, but if you search the internet, you will see many incarnations of this doll.

As Monica and I started visiting, I learned that she has a background in tailoring. She brushed off those skills and translated them into designing and making Blythe doll clothes.  These are individually designed and sewn.  They are 1/6th the size of adult clothes.  Now, I've made Barbie clothes for my daughter and for sale in the St. Paul UMC Fall Festival.   I can tell you that my best friend was Velcro.  Monica is in a whole different class; she's a haute couture doll clothing seamstress.  She is making cuffs, and button holes and doing hand embroidery using a single thread to create a Trompe L'Oeil  effect.  She's hand knitting sweaters and vests, making wool felt coats and trimming all of her creations.  While she downplayed her skills, I suspect you don't go as an exhibitor to a show in Paris, France unless you have major talent.

Monica prefers the original 1972 Kenner dolls, and she owns three of them.  She'll be taking and exhibiting two of them (wearing her creations) to Paris.  I was disappointed not to see some of these dresses, but as she put it,  "I don't have any fabric in the candy store".  Smart.  That would be disaster waiting to happen.  I wouldn't want to risk a smear of inadvertent chocolate on something I had spent hours making under a magnifier.  

This evening's visit was fascinating.  Here's a woman running her own business, and in her limited spare time also has an unusual hobby that is largely self taught.  I can hardly wait to get to know her better.  Oh, and if you are driving down Coastal Highway 101 in Oregon between Newport and Waldport, stop in Seal Rock and INDULGE yourself.           

Thinking of Beaches

What is it about beaches that attract people?  They're messy.  Bits of sand cling to you even if all you do is look at it from the scenic overlook.  The water is sticky with salt.  There's weirdo seaweed, and if you are unlucky, there are those plastic bags that sting you when you aren't looking.  Then there's the hidden pieces of glass protruding from the sand waiting to cut your foot.Ugly reminders of last night's illegal beer bust on the beach.  Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello fueled my early teen beach fantasies with their beach blanket movies.   Reality is in the hot sun, the dead fish, half eaten crabs, and dead plastic bags AKA jellyfish all stink.

Even so, I could hardly wait to rent this house overlooking the beach at the Seal Rocks in Oregon.  I relish the slog down the path, the sliding struggle through the loose, powdery, shifting sand to the hard packed water's edge to begin combing.  Beaches are the world's biggest garage sale.  You never know what you are going to find.  True, some of it is icky and stinky, but every prize needs to be won to have value.

Joey Lucas, Margie McIntyre, and Rick Graves at Galveston

 Beach combing and collecting started the very first time I saw the ocean:  Puerto Penasco, Mexico, December of 1971.  I have those shells today; and I can still visualize my 21 year old self so excited and thrilled at the goodies free for the finding.  I have shells from Galveston as a result of our first out of college jobs in Houston.   Galveston was a quick weekend get-away.  One of my favorite shells comes from those beaches; found with a dear friend as we walked along the beach during one of those weekends.  While I love the beach, my dearest friend thought beaches were as close as one could get to heaven.  She was known to take her china and crystal to the beach and serve a semi-formal dinner to friends on blankets on the sand.  While we teased her without mercy for doing this, secretly we were so pleased to be included in her beach dinner parties.

Drake and Jan, age 24

In 1974, we went to Acapulco, and Drake parasailed at that beach.  At age 26, our first cruise vacation included a visit to the Cayman Islands, and I saw my first turquoise waters.  I still have the conch shell I haggled for on a rickety dock.  My clothes from that trip smelled from my shells when I opened my suitcase back home.  1983 we went to Puerto Vallarta and stayed in a villa on the beach with our closest friends.  That was the first time I saw four foot waves and glimpsed the real power of the Pacific Ocean.   

The shells of Sanibel

Even our miracle child happened at the beach.  Drake and I waited a long time to make up our minds about having children.  I don't know any other couple married 15 years before their first child.  Our mothers had given up on us.  In 1984 I was down two strikes - two miscarriages, and the ob/gyn was not encouraging.  While trying to come to terms with a probable childless life, we decided to emotionally risk one more try for a baby.  We took a Christmas vacation and drove from New Orleans to Sanibel Island.   Sanibel is a beach lovers paradise.  There were seashells the size of my hand laying everywhere on the beach.  What a delight!  I spent days strolling the beach doing the Sanibel Stoop, and nights conceiving our precious Sarah Lynn.  I've always thought the sounds of the ocean provided the charm needed for a full-term pregnancy.  The large shells from that visit are brown and white speckled.

If the first trip to Sanibel was a welcoming of a new life beginning, then my second trip to that island was farewell to a life ending.  The island was the last roommate trip for me, Patti and Margie.  Patti and I spent that trip both laughing with Margie, while privately crying over Margie's all so obvious upcoming death.  My shells from that trip are delicate flowers, pieces of art that are a permanent memorial in my house to Margery Lynn and her love of the beach.     

Sarah's first beach were the white sugar sands of Alabama.  She was only about 14 months old, and starting to walk when she discovered the softness of the sand and the tickling ocean.  Twenty five years later, SL and her Dad are still enjoying the ocean; this time on a boat in Hawaii getting ready to jump in for a snorkeling adventure.  We've done family beach vacations down through the years from the day at the Antigua beach in the Caribbean, to the driftwood beach on the Northwest Coast, to the beaches on the islands of Nova Scotia and PEI.

I'm eager to see what memories and memorabilia this Seal Rock beach will attach to us.  These beaches are different.  Full of tidal pools and rocks rather than smooth sand covered with shells.  There are rumors of agates for the picking on some of these beaches.  There are birds and animals to watch.  On view from our living room, Drake checks the seals everyday that lay on the rocks exposed by low tide, and I am constantly watching the gulls, cormorants, terns, and pelicans that live here.   There are already little bits and pieces of shells and rocks being carried back in my pockets from our strolls on this beach.  

Here's the pictures....https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012OregonCoastAndSealRock?authkey=Gv1sRgCKGYjJek9smMcg

The City of Gardens

Rather than write about Portland, Oregon, I have decided to tell the story of our quick visit in pictures.  They start with our visit to Lan Su Gardens, a garden designed and constructed by Chinese artisans who came to Portland from their sister city in China, Suzhou.  This city in China is famous for its gardens.  The Lan Su Garden is their gift to Portland.

Onto the Portland Art Museum which was rather forgettable, but they had a few nice pieces.  We had lunch at a restaurant, Jake's Crawfish Restaurant, which has been in business since 1882.  We took public transit all over Portland; we never moved our car from the motel parking lot the first day we went downtown.  We rode both the train and the streetcar.  After lunch I went to the Button and Ribbon Emporium.  At least there was a chair for Drake. 

Next morning, on our way out of town, we visited my favorite place - The Portland Test Rose Garden.  This rose garden has been there since 1907, and there are some very wonderful stories associated with this garden.  The Royal Rosarians - a group of rich rose fanatics who are nominated to this society which is based on the English parliamentary system.  They call their leader a 'Prime Minister'.  This elected official of the society gets to chose a rose to be planted in his/her name in the garden. 

Skip the pictures of the places you find boring, but don't miss the rose pictures.

 https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012OregonPortland?authkey=Gv1sRgCO-54b-n5Z-XTg 

A Man with an Obsession; a Museum in the Middle of Nowhere

This is the Maryhill Museum.  It sits on the Washington bank of the Columbia River in middle of nowhere.  There are literally no buildings within sight of this 'house'.  That's what it was built to be by Samuel Hill, a man with an obsession over two women.  Sadly for his marriage, neither one was his wife.  Yes, this place is as huge as it looks.  In the reviews I read about this place, it's described as 'eclectic' and 'eccentric'.  I would also add unexpected and creepy.  

 Meet Loie Fuller.  A nice mid-western girl, only able to speak pigeon French, who overnight became a dance sensation at the Follies Bergere in Paris at the turn of the century.   She was lionized by the press and became an instant European and American celebrity.  Her talent?  She devised a series of dance steps involving voluminous gowns she swirled about herself using rods and dowels to twirl the material.  She must have had 'something' because she managed to keep herself in the limelight for the next 30 years becoming the darling of the rich and powerful.  One of her conquests was the American entrepreneur, Sam Hill.  Sam, the builder of the above house was her lifelong friend.  The house, now the Maryhill Museum, contains photographs of her, posters advertising her run at the Follies, paintings, bronze medals struck with her likeness, the above statue, and a 1906 Pathe Company movie of Loie doing her dance routine.  She must have been compelling because she was friends with royalty, multi-millionaires, great artists (Rodin), and scientists (Marie Curie).  With Sam, she raised millions of dollars for post WWI European relief.  All fame is fleeting...nobody today remembers her at all.  

Entering the mansion you are confronted with bizarre furniture, clothing and accessories.  Behold Sam Hill's second lady:  Queen Marie of Romania.  

  Here she is surrounded by her children.  She is a relation of Queen Victoria (like who wasn't in European Royalty in 1900).  Somehow she and Sam Hill developed a relationship.  In the house she urged him to turn into a museum, I saw the coronation gown she wore to the crowning of Czar Nicolas II, two thrones, her crown, as well as various pieces of jewelry and trinkets designed and executed by Faberge.  The gown and mantle were the most fascinating.  I think it's less the material (woven with gold threads and embroidered with silver accented by rhinestones) as much as the 18" waistline.

  (No, she didn't wear tennis shoes under her coronation gown; those are my feet.  A trick of the reflection.)


The entire time I was in these exhibits, I kept wondering about the relationships between this wealthy man and these two women.  The all knew each other.  That much is obvious from the pictures scattered around the museum.  I couldn't decide is he was with them consecutively or concurrently.  I suspect he and Loie were the love match.  She never married.  I think the Queen and him became friends rather than intimates during his herculean effort to raise money for European relief after World War I.  Without the efforts of wealthy and influential men and women, a significant portion of the European population would have starved to death in 1919.   

  After reading about his personal history (very hidden; you had to find the small print), I don't begrudge him the happiness he found.  It turns out that his wife didn't like the West, and she didn't like either Oregon or Washington at all.  She whisked herself back to the Midwest taking their two small children with her.  The small print allows that they were 'estranged'.  I had to wonder - before or after Loie and the Queen?  Even sadder, Sam's two children:  his daughter developed paranoid schizophrenia, and his son totally rejected him and refused to communicate with his father.  There were certainly volumes not disclosed in the few short paragraphs I was able to find.

If this wasn't enough, the excellent portion of this museum took me totally by surprise.  Down in the basement was gathered an amazing collection of Native American artifacts from every portion of North America once inhabited solely by Indians.

I saw the Smithsonian Museum of Native America when I was in New York, and the Maryhill Museum collection was equally impressive.  Not only were there artifacts of significance, but they were beautifully presented together with amazing early photographs of vanishing people.  Here's my favorite one:

Tlinglit Basketmakers in Sitka, 1895 - baskets were already being made for tourists.  I couldn't resist taking pictures of the various artifacts that appealed to me as either unique or outstanding examples.     

Finally, Sam Hill was certain this area was destined to become a major economic player in the United States.  He gambled buying thousands of acres and trying to lure 'settlers' to immigrate and make his vision a reality.  He had enough pull to get a major bridge built across the Columbia within spitting distance of his new house.  Who knows why this didn't happen?  Perhaps the 10" of annual rainfall stunted agriculture which he envisioned as the economic lynch pin of his dream.  Perhaps he was diverted by the two women with whom he was obviously obsessed.  Or perhaps he lost heart after World War I as did so many others of that generation.  He left a mysteriously haunting museum which I'm glad I saw.

If you want to see more pictures of the Columbia Gorge as well as Sam's museum, click the link:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012OregonColumbiaRiverGorge?authkey=Gv1sRgCMrKo63Lv9SSqgE