"Water, he no got enemy" -Fela Kuti

Lets face it, some things are just funny... even when they lack class or sophistication. Farting yourself awake is funny no matter how old or well-educated you are. Oregon State University, at some point, made the questionable decision of choosing the beaver as their mascot. This of course means that you can go to a football game and scream "Beaver!" at the top of your lungs for hours and not get arrested. Leagues of eager college girls walk around in sweatshirts with things like "Beaver Believer" and "Go Big Beav!" on them. On the edge of town a billboard advertising a new condo reads "Live among beavers!". The strangest example we have seen of the blurry line between team spirit and downright naughtiness is a hair salon and spa that has a sign in the window that says "Get your beaver waxed here". If I was making this up I would be embarrassed, but I'm just reporting the facts. As much a I enjoy living in a town where I have to swallow a laugh every time someone tells me they root for the beavers, I think a more appropriate mascot would be a jellyfish. Corvallis is essentially an aquatic environment this time of year. It rains for days at a time and I fully expect that come spring we'll have to knock the barnacles off the airstream and shoo off an octopus or two. The winter temperatures are nice enough and the evergreens knock the edge off the dreariness, but squishiness is definitely in abundance. Our solution to being pushed indoors has been to put up a tipi, and so far, having some extra space has been a nice change. The trailer has about 75 square feet of space, the tipi has 243 with a middle height of 20 feet.


After laying in the tripod with a clove hitch and some rapa-nui technology, we layed the circumference of the tipi out on a gravel pad with the door facing east.
Here, Nala and the goats shows the canvas laid out prior to being rolled and lifted onto the frame. This part was a bit gruntier than expected.
This is the final product, minus the rain cap. The floor is a waterproof tarp covered with closed-cell foam and a carpet.
Stella shows off the faux-hardwood floors before we put up the inner liner.

The casserole is the true symbol of the holiday season. Any concerns about its questionable contents are quickly dissipated by its kitchen-given warmth and seemingly endless portions. Jesus may have done well with the loaves and the fishes but, let's face it, if he'd had a decent casserole to ladle around, all of Israel would have needed a nap on the couch that afternoon. The casserole is a melting pot, the grandmotherly equivalent of a witch's cauldron to simmer and blend a mad concoction of bizarre relatives, poorly made travel plans and holiday traditions. The shared casserole is a communion spooned onto the plates of those who believe in the value of family.

She waved the box of cheez-its accusingly from the curb and wailed through her missing teeth "You won't even roll down the window to find out what I want!". It's true... I wouldn't. Most of the time I believe in opening the door to any knock, just in case opportunity happens to have dropped by unannounced, but in Portland, the urgent vapors of the city seem to have coalesced with the foggy depths of the pacific northwest to produce a level of crazy that I'm not interested in messing with.

We were packing up the van to leave for Portland when Tiffany reminded me that we could take the trailer and avoid the issue of packing all together. So we hitched it up and pulled it out of the trailer park like a wooly mammoth out of a tar pit and headed to the city. Feels fantastic to look in the mirror and see our silver house humming along behind us. We spent a week in a real house with friends and family checking out the city, catching up, and eating well. A nice change of pace from the Corvallis Mobile Home Park for sure, but it still didn't leave us wishing to be homeowners again.
We're now parked on a 5 acre farm 3 miles outside of Corvallis. The tipi is done and ready to be picked up in Bend, but were trying to get some prep work done on the site and figure out exactly how to do the floor. We're all looking forward to having some more space. The rain and waning daylight hours are making the trailer a smaller and smaller space. Our move to the country also heralds a new phase of trailer life....we are now using the the bathroom and shower in the airstream. The bathroom, of course IS the shower and having a toilet and sink in the shower presents some unusual opportunities for efficiency. So far, its going pretty well and it is nice not to have to walk across a trailer park to pee in the middle of the night.


(the following my best attempt at a tribute to Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. "blow man blow!")

the mad swirl of the rain-soaked city snakes back and forth across the river until we end up down town with all the wild lights, incongruous architecture and pulsing humid vibe that is portland. time and money are short tonight but kinship and familiarity are running over and the six of us puzzle-piece our selves into the formerly swank hotel room with it's turn of the century dimensions and over-abundance of furniture. babies and bottles of beer make their way through the room as the king of trees shouts "you simply must try the coffee! the crabcakes are wonderful tonight!" while leslie takes off her boots and sits on the bed unperturbed like a motherly tree pleasantly buffeted by the winds of her mad family. tiffany is swinging her arms to tell the story the right way and tiny stella sumo-toddles into the padded headboard on the bed and giggles when it knocks her down. we all pile out of the room into the elevator and you can hear the feathers ruffling in the lobby as we navigate the noisy toddlers towards the street and continue talking over top of one another from the elevator to the street. this is family and time is running out and we know time. outside the air is cool and sweet and the rain holds long enough for us make it to the store for snacks and drinks. sprite for leslie and beer for the rest of us. someone has to stay sober or all this craziness will go unappreciated. calder leans over his crib like a friendly neighbor and points something that has caught his eye. Stella pulls a beer bottle out of the trash and wanders around with, embarrassing and amusing us at the same time and then the conversation dies and the babies loose their love for life and begin to scream in chorus and the night is over and its back to the interstate and our friends have to go to bed to make the plane and oregon might be beautiful but there's no family here and no one knows time anymore.

Free will is the burner upon which all of our watched pots sit quietly beneath our eyes. When we first drove into Corvallis 2 months ago after 3 months of traveling, we had no idea where we would live. We optimistically assumed there would be a beautiful and affordable state park close to town or just some place where a trailer full of Kentuckians could hide for a few months until we got our bearings. These assumptions made the subsequent acceptance of actual reality a bit prickly. We found out that the closest state park was over an hour away and booked through spring. The only RV park in town was closed for the county fair for 3 weeks and trailer parks (something we had NEVER considered) were unkempt and skeptical affairs. We ended up at the Blue Ox RV resort 15 miles away in the middle of a record-setting heat wave.(for those analogically inclined, RV campground is to camping as dental chair is to hammock) After a week of baking our brain-potatoes in the campground, we moved into the somewhat dismal but tree-covered and breezy Corvallis Mobile Home Park. We've been there ever since having a damn fine time and have enjoyed the reality check. Lately things have been changing really fast; we've found a farm that we can rent some space on, we've ordered a tipi to set up on the farm, we restarted music lessons, joined a gym (the gym has a locally brewed IPA on tap and a daycare. awesomeness indeed), found a baby-sitter we like, and started going to a weekly pot-luck with some other breeders . It's starting to feel like we live here a little and we both like the way things are shaping up. The last couple of months have been a mystery to me, honestly. Having been born one of the luckiest people around, I'm used to things just sort of working out the way I expect them to and I distinctly did not expect to live in a mobile home park and argue with my insurance company about what constitutes a "permanent address". Now that things seem to be swimming along in the giddy coincidental way that I'm used to I realize that I needed to get my priorities straight and that the trailer park was the shoe-horn that my brain needed to fit into it's Sunday shoes. It's too easy to get hung up on how your life is perceived by others and trying to be the director of the musical you also happen to be starring in. Knowing exactly what you want is infinitely more difficult than acquiring it.


A popular piece of cocktail trivia holds that sharks cannot live unless they are constantly swimming. I have it on good authority that the only sharks ever studied were toddlers.

the sherpa and the firefly giggle and wander by
blues skies moon-pies and railroad ties
the fox on the trail shivers his tail
leaves his socks on the rocks
and wrinkles his nose at the smell of his toes
the squirrels hurl pearls
as the silver girls whirl and twirl
free as they please, the trees rattle their knees
the train whistles through the thistles like a missile
as the grass laughs a crass laugh
and bends in a windy spin with its friends

Tiffany and I are fully aware that the rains are coming. Every time I mention how much I'm enjoying it here, some naysayer tells me, "just wait 'til it starts raining" the same way bitter parents used to tell me "well, just wait 'til you have kids". Apparently, unhappy folks get some sick satisfaction from predicting unhappiness for others. I'm gonna start predicting happiness for these tedious little tree sloths. I'll tell 'em "just wait til' thursday, it's gonna be awesome!". Nonetheless, we have felt some pressure to figure out how to deal with the impending precipitation. 5 mammals in a 23 foot aluminum can for four months could be a violent disaster. I think Sasha and Tiffany would probably survive, but I wouldn't dare chance a guess on the outcome of Rottwieler versus psychiatrist. ("But how do you FEEL about biting my leg?") So we've remodeled the trailer a bit, taking out the dinette and replacing it with a single bench and side table which seems to double the space for hanging out and gives Stella more room to run around trying to put swim goggles on her cabbage patch doll. As if poor Reggie didn't already look a little "special".

The good things about the trailer park are really good. Our neighbor Larry lost the use of his right hand from a stroke but can still take apart his Harley and show me how the clutch works. His wife, Lolly, is sweeter than a honey-covered christmas card and always brings blueberries and soup bones over for Stella and the dogs. (the dogs, of course, politely refuse the berries) Our neighbors across the street bring Stella hand-me down toys and fresh plums. The location is unbelievable; on the edge of a forest, 2 miles from downtown on the bike trail. And, best of all, someone else cleans the bathrooms. The bad things are not that bad, but tend to get to you after a while. Our trailer is apparently a miraculous cure for canine constipation and all of the older dogs in the park take advantage of it's healing properties. There are a handful of folks here that I have deputized as honorary kentuckians for their ability to make an entire street look bad by scattering fast food containers, broken appliances, and ill-mannered children around their yard.

Tiff and I have been trying to figure out how to make the impending rainy season a bit more livable. I argued in favor of buying a bus, she leaned towards sharing a house with some like minded hippies. My favorite thing about our relationship (well, maybe second favorite thing really) is our mutual intuition. Anything that we both immediately agree on is always the right idea. in an effort to find some common ground we went to look at a 1987 airstream bus as a possible option for increasing our livable space. Very cool indeed, but neither of us had a gut reaction towards it. Finally after a full day of bouncing ideas around we both saw a picture of a tipi online, and looking each other in the eye, we knew, without speaking, that we had found an answer.

(picture: Stella learns the joy of the camelback and clif bars)

Coincidence is a trail sign for the enlightened wanderer. We had planned to take a few days to head over to Bend and check out the mountains and found out that the finest tipis are made there by a company called Nomadics Tipis. We loaded the smaller mammals into the van and headed out for a few days of camping, hiking, eating and late-night campground merriment followed by a trip to tipi-land to order our new addition. We hauled our "healthy" daughter up to ten thousand feet and back, swam in a beautiful lake, and ate some fine food. I have to laugh every time we wake up in the van with Stella and the dogs; there is truly no space unused. If one mammal moves, so must another. It's the epitome of family for sure. We're back in town for a while until the Martin and Short clans unite in Portland in a couple of weeks.

(picture: the summit of south sister outside of Bend; about 10,000 feet)

Adaptation is the key to survival. Stella, like all her proto-human peers, quickly melds into any given situation with a level of grace and casual aplomb that clearly must have skipped a generation. Here she is in the trailer park, installing some 10 ply lugs for winter. Who knew that a 15 month old could be so handy with a lug wrench?
Here's the latest incarnation of our sardine can. As dreary oregon weather begins to creep in, we are realizing that our frolicksome experiment with small-space living has been successful because the weather has been downright courteous. Recently, our late night bickering has been focused on moving further into the country, buying a bus, or renting a house. The summation of motorcycles, skateboards, dog poo, and a sketchy dude named randal has begun to erode the silver lining off of trailer park living. we'll see...
Stella has taken to toddling like slime on a slug. I swear we have three daughters now; every time I turn around she's 50 feet away from the last place I saw her. If anybody has any leads on a design for a baby magnet; email me immediately.
The bathroom key is the small hinge upon which our comfort swings in the trailer park. The bathrooms here are clean, airy, and well stocked with toilet paper, soap and towels. But woe be the full-bladdered midnight pilgrim who has forgotten his key. The double trip from trailer to lavatory is a punishment for the forgetful on these cool oregon nights.
Charming and persuasive conversationalist that I am, I'm still managing to get worn out on hearing what I think about things. We're really statring to feel the absence of our friends and family. If you're out there, look at your schedule and figure out when you're coming. There's no friends like old friends.

How to make a burning man milkshake: 1)Take a family reunion and throw it in the blender with a full-moon pagan freak-out. 2) Pour in 50,000 half dressed monkeys and drop a Miami nightclub on top. 3) Serve warm, very warm, and drink it every night for a week with 15 shots of tequila for a chaser.
Burning man is not for the faint of heart. Pounding rusty rebar into the desert in the middle of a 40 mph sand storm at night after being awake for 48 hours makes you feel like you've earned the right to drink and dance a bit. Dodging flames, lasers, and poorly driven couches while keeping the beat takes a mixture of fatalism and reflexes that guarantees that your fellow attendees are not only sincere but charmingly insane.
Our lives are defined by the events that sucker-punch us out of our routines. The weddings, car-crashes, and birth-screams that rattle our cage with the chill breath of real living deserve prayers of thanks. Last week I ate a bologna sandwich in fishnets to the conflicting soundtracks of Neil Diamond and norwegian heavy metal. I saw my daughter charm the smug calm out of a yogi in a desert tent surrounded by fire-spinning jugglers. I watched new friends succumb to the riptide of freedom and wander home in green fur hats telling red furry stories.
No, burning man is not for the faint of heart, but neither is love and more that any other whiz-bang collision of light sound and sweat, I found joy in the friends and chosen family that was Kentucky Friend Camp this year. 1700 bologna sandwiches, 20 gallons of bourbon and relentless hospitality surely brought a taste of the bluegrass state to the west coast.