When The Child Was A Child

I saw this film when it was new, beside a beautiful young woman with whom I did not yet realise I was in love.

She was also a German speaker, and afterward, shuffling through the autumn leaves of Northwest Portland, she taught me to say „Als das kind kind war“ properly.

Or any road, as properly as someone who doesn't speak German can say it.

I served her tea in my apartment, her eyes imprinted on my soul, and we parted without kissing.

Re-watching this opening scene almost 40 years later, it's like prophecy – the filmmaker's patina of memory, the palpable Zen in the poetry, and the young man as yet too distracted to be awake to it.

At least I had a better excuse in that place and moment.

WW: Giant Pacific signal crayfish

(This is the giant Pacific signal crayfish [Pacifastacus leniusculus]. Individuals can reach 7 inches – at which point they're real lobsters – but this one's only four.

Oddly, few eat these here, though they're the both the biggest and best-tasting crawdads in the Western Hemisphere. Commercial licenses are available, and some folks are already making a tidy living in a developing market. [My grandfather, born in 1900, made pocket money in his first decade by catching these in Portland creeks and selling them to Jake's Grill.]

The signal crayfish is now threatened – mostly theoretically, to date – by invasive species from elsewhere. Ironically, it's also wiping out native stocks in Europe, having been introduced there last century to replace the fishery in some of those very species, which had been greatly reduced by an epidemic.)

WW: Screamin' Eagle

(Emphasis on "screaming".)

WW: Wires

(Cell phone artist Dannon Raith strikes again.).

WW: Fremont Bridge

(Further insight from cell phone artist Dannon Raith.)

WW: Portland manhole

(Cell phone artist Dannon Raith strikes again.)

WW: Union Station, Portland

(Because that's how we roll. 'Nother brilliant photo by Zen droogie Dannon "The Robert Doisneau of the Cellphone" Raith.)

WW: Morning TriMet

(Photo by Zen droogie Dannon Raith. With his cell phone. Yeah, he's unfair that way.)