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| View from the Oregon City elevator |
Bands/Artists I can't get enough of: The Watson Twins, Neko Case, Rilo Kiley, The Decemberists, Fitz and the Tantrums, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters.
Surprise go to Scent this Spring: DSH Perfumes Lush Honey, bought unsniffed and so loving that I will buy another bottle while I still can, before it is discontinued.
Houses I need to try more of: Dior, Hermes, Annick Goutal
Best scents I bought for under $15: A tie between Coty Stetson and Worth Je Reviens EdT.
On the "soon to be purchased" short list: Miller et Bertaux no. 3: Green, green, green and green (finally), Tauer L'Air du Desert Marocain (also finally), vintage Evening in Paris (go, go ebay bidding skillz), CB I Hate Perfume At The Beach 1966.
If I had a million dollars: A huge bottle of Roxana Illuminated Perfume GreenWitch, which is so amazing I can barely stand it. At $175 for only 7.5ml, is just sadly well beyond my price range, as my ideal would be to have twice that much at least. Carefully hugs her tiny 1gram $30 sample vial. Truly one of the most beautiful green scents I've ever smelled, and deserving of a lengthy review as soon as I can get to it.
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| End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center closed in 2010. |
Best newly discovered indie perfumer: I am so glad I found Ellen at Olympic Orchids Artisan Perfumes. Not only is she a really nice person, she makes great perfume and is doing us PNW perfumistas proud
Notes I’m weirdly over right now: vanilla, sweet florals, roses. I think I burned myself out.
Notes I can’t get enough of: weird fruits, anything green or herbal, moss, civet, cedar. If you’ve got recommendations in this area, please provide them.
Spring, in general and as part of college life: My least favorite season. Maybe it’s a time of adventure and renewal for everyone else, but for those of us who live on a college campus, it’s an ending time. This year is particularly difficult because, thanks to an early retirement program, forty-five life-long members of my beloved campus community are retiring. Yes, you read that right. Forty-five. So much for institutional memory. It really reinforces my feeling of not belonging here anymore; it’s strange to feel like a relic of someone else’s adventure in your own life.
Among those retiring is one of my favorite people in the entire universe, Stephen Dow Beckham. If there is a person in the world who inspires me to never give up or think something is out of my reach, to push myself harder and always believe I can do anything, it is this man who has done everything and still keeps on trucking. He is the first person in my collegiate career who ever implied my work was valuable, that my ideas were worthwhile and my voice, worth hearing. I had a lovely advisor before Dr. Beckham, who was a great and special man who believed in me, but Dr. Beckham is the one who took everything I did in stride as a matter of course and demanded more because he knew I was capable.
I’ll never forget the day after I did my radio interview as spokeswoman for a statewide campaign against parental notification for abortion. FN1. I ran into Dr. Beckham on my law school campus; he was there to interview dean candidates for the law school. He stopped me, and I felt this terror swirl though my stomach. Here was this educated, established, well-off white man who I loved and admired and wanted to think well of me, but whose politics I had never been all that sure of. “I heard you on the radio,” he said. I nodded, and said something perfunctory about the interviewer having ties to my alma mater. “ I heard your voice, and I thought, ‘I know who that is’” he replied, his eyes twinkling. He didn’t come out and say he was proud of me, but I could tell he was. Dr. Beckham knew one of the things I was most ashamed of in my life, and he was proud of me for standing up for what I believed in. That was the moment I knew doing the campaign was the right thing, and I felt, for the first time, we might win.
It was a huge moment for me personally, and I think it says evverything about how much a teacher can shape your life, helping you long after you've left them to know you're on the right path. I pity all the students who won’t get to have him as their teacher. He’s the kind that can change your life.
What about you, dear reader. How is your Spring going?
"I can't hear this anymore.
It's time to leave.
I've closed the door.
Did you ever believe in me?
In you and me?"
"U-N-Me," The Watson Twins
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FN1. Yes, I had an abortion. No, I don’t regret it. No, I don’t feel the need to justify that to you. Yes, I did radio(NPR)/television (all three networks; yes, even Fox)/newspaper interviews where I talked about my experience, which included a photo of me on the front page of the widest circulating paper in the state. Yes, people said things to me, good and bad. Ultimately, we won, thus keeping Oregon the state with the least regulation on choice. I know anecdotally that at least some votes were changed because of my story. I’m glad I did the campaign and would do it again.
Let me also say, that as a woman who had an abortion in Texas, I am appalled by the recent news that the Texas Legislature has passed a bill requiring a sonogram before an abortion can be preformed. This will not stop a woman who wants to have an abortion; it just adds unnecessary time and expense. Society spends a large part of its energy policing women's behavior through shaming, particularly around issues of sex. Well, guess what? You've already made your feelings clear about our choices. But they are our choices. And you won't stop us. You never have.
