Dawn of a new day

OK, so it's trite... Still, I couldn't help but think of the phrase as I was out getting my exercise this morning. As I completed my neighborhood run, dark was turning to light, street lamps were flickering off and I was reminded of a sweet little ditty from a local writer, Brian Doyle, that we published in today's Sunday Opinion section. Titled "The February Thaw," I thought it provided a nice respite from the political clatter and online shouting that characterize most weekends. Notice how Brian's words evoke the senses:

I had been told, upon arriving in Oregon nearly 20 years ago, about the Thaw -- a magical week in February, an island in the ocean of winter, when the rains ceased, and the roses bloomed, and the temperature rose sometimes into the 70s, and Oregonians emerged from their holes, blinking and scraping off the moss. But it was hard to believe, those first few winters, that this was possible, the silver drumming of the rain being so insistent, the moist ceiling present day after day, the gray mornings chased by metallic afternoons, week after week; but then it happened!

And the next year it happened again! And over the years I have learned not only to crave it but to savor it: the sunlight pouring clean and crisp over the steaming earth, the tree frogs roaring, the citizens stumbling out of their homes into their gardens, the first thrum of lawnmowers, the murky thuck of children running across playing fields that look dry but most certainly will not be until probably August for heavenssake but let us not carp and cavil.

For a while this month, a great gift arrives, and it would be a shriveled spirit who would complain, perfectly logically and correctly, that the rains will return, washing back over Oregon until Independence Day (really, has there ever, ever, been a dry Rose Festival?). Yes, the tide will rise again after the February Thaw, and we will shuffle along mooing in the mist, umbrellas jostling, until that long weekend we call high summer here; but for a moment in February there is a week of broad friendly light that thrills the wet mammal inside each of us. A salute to the Thaw!

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland.

© 2010 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

photo: Richard Stebbing

First day of winter

Wasn't it just yesterday I was writing about the first day of spring?

Whew! Time does zoom by when you're busy. No need to rehash the specifics, so I'll just launch into a late-year Quick Takes entry.

-- It's 44 degrees and dry at the moment, a far cry from the frigid weather (highs in the teens) of two weeks ago and the thorough soaking we got last week. A year ago, we had a white Christmas -- actually, a little too much snow for most Portlanders' taste, as it ground things to a halt in this snowplow-averse city. I wouldn't mind a light dusting this year, but the forecast is partly sunny with a patch of morning fog. I'll take it.

-- We hopped on the bus at mid-day yesterday and bought a lovely photograph for our new place at Saturday Market. It had been a couple of years (shame on me) since I'd been down there, so it was a pleasant surprise to stroll through the booths under a clear covering just south of the Burnside Bridge. You can smell the market before you see it (a generic greasy smell, comingling the scents of elephant ears and various stir-fries) but it's always fun to see the characters on both sides of the artists' booths.

These last few days at the market are called The Festival of the Last Minute, but there was plenty of elbow room yesterday. Hmmm...Does that mean people had already done most of their shopping? Or is it a sign of the still-weak economy?

-- Today's top headlines are all about what I'd come to fear would never happen: The Senate moved incrementally closer to passing a universal health care bill. Yeah, yeah, yeah...it's far from perfect. But as Obama has said, "Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good." **

We'll see what happens next when the Senate and House conference committee members try to resolve differences in the two plans.-

** Evidently, the quote originated with Voltaire. (I'm not in the habit of quoting 18th century French philosophers, so how was I to know?) Anyway, I learned of that when I clicked on this Web site: The Happiness Project.

From it, I'm sharing author Gretchen Rubin's Twelve Commandments below. Not a bad list...

Twelve Personal Commandments

• Be Gretchen.
• Let it go.
• Act the way I want to feel.
• Do it now.
• Be polite and be fair.
• Enjoy the process.
• Spend out.
• Identify the problem.
• Lighten up.
• Do what ought to be done.
• No calculation.
• There is only love.