With much love, medical expertise, and support, I successfully made my way through health adventures in 2019, and started to resettle with my daughters in our new family compound, an old house in the historic Portland district of Irvington. Below is a gallery of 2019 images; click on any image for more info and a slideshow.
I mark 2019 as the year in which I celebrated, and attended to, health!...with advanced treatment for myeloma now in Portland. Here are some wishes for 2019 from fellow Portland patients.
The big health event for me was a stem cell transplant in April. Here we are at Joy and Bongani's place with the Eisen-Proctors, celebrating our good health just a few days prior.
The first step of the transplant involved harvesting my stem cells!...a relatively painless—though, as you can see from the photo, somewhat woozy—procedure.
Once my stem cells were safe they dosed me with melphalan—a sort of medieval treatment that basically kills all fast-growing cells in your body—then put the stem cells back in. While recovering for much of April, I had a lovely view of Portland!...and good company (thank you, guests).
My treatment, all part of an advanced clinical trial called MASTER ("Monoclonal Antibody-Based Sequential Therapy for Deep Remission in Multiple Myeloma"), continued into fall. Many a morning I'd stop by on my bike en route to school and get blood drawn. Eventually, after six months of remission, I became a free man! And so I am today—so very grateful for good health and to all who cared for me this last year.
Now on to my loving family. Here are daughters Elise (L) and Joy (R) thoroughly enjoying the balmy Columbia Gorge in February. As you'll soon learn, they now live together in our new Proctor family compound, 2230 NE 12th Ave in Portland (get that address change, all!).
One of our family's first post-transplant ventures into the world with me was Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm east of Woodburn, a lovely place run by the lovely Iverson family. We put a breathing mask and a big hat on me, and I dosed my hands with antiseptic treatment every few minutes, and it all went just fine.
Joy and Elise's mom Bongie visited several times in 2019. Here they are in September after Elise's birthday. Joy generally put Bongie to work when she visited, sewing curtains (for our house) and wedding things (for Joy's work)! Thank you, Bongie.
And here is sister Mary and her Marshall clan adopting me for Thanksgiving at her new home in Tacoma, all part of her retirement plan to live closer to grandchildren in Seattle. Vivian is expecting a little sister soon!
For several years, I and daughters have been talking about sharing a family compound somewhere in Portland, to save money among other things. It finally came true in late May, when we purchased this old home in Irvington. (I am building a tiny home in the back yard for me.)
To buy the new/old home I had to sell my condo...which closed the very day of Melphalan treatment...slightly crazy timing but it all worked out. Here's the Proctor family upright piano finally moving into its new permanent home in Irvington.
When you buy a 1906 house you get all sorts of special things for free!...like an old knob and tube fuse box exposed right behind the shower. (Joy is remodeling that bathroom; we'll put the fuse box on display at some point.)
The old lath and plaster walls in the house are beautiful in their own labor-intensive way.
The bathroom remodelers found a few old things hidden in the walls, including this Ghirardelli's movie star trading card from the 1920s.
Now, our land and nonprofit in southern Oregon. A big storm brought down a lot of trees, including this giant old black oak. The downed trees, combined with the large salvage harvest of dead trees in 2018, made much of our 3.5 mile trail network impassable and shut down the site to visitors. We're slowly getting it back in order, and hope to reopen for school groups and public events in spring.
Our forest still has its odd beauty. I've stared at this snag, near the high point of the land on Front Ridge Trail, for years and pondered its strange twistedness.
Our good friends—and fellow Alder Creek Community Forest supporters—Bub and Phil Rich at one of many get-togethers at the local El Paraiso restaurant. They have, time and again through their own health journeys, shown how wisdom is most plainly manifested in resilient humor...agreed?
Here's Phil with his fancy classic truck, and Bongani, Elise, Joy, and Bongie on our land in May.
I tell people that Kojosho proved itself as my well-being bank in 2019: having invested in this soft karate style now for over 35 years, I leaned into Kojosho postures and forms daily in the face of multiple myeloma. Here we are at Kojosho headquarters in Apple Valley, in the mountains above Albuquerque New Mexico.
Our Kojosho chief instructor, Mr. Frederic Absher, visited Portland last summer. Here is Mr. Absher with my fellow Kojosho instructor John Knight and me...still hairless in July after the April stem cell transplant, but so happy to spend time with them.
Mr. Absher and his partner Dona visited Portland again in fall for our annual West Coast Kojosho camp. Here are some other advanced Kojosho students from New Mexico and California—and a few menacing family members—along with our Kojosho students from Lewis & Clark College.
It was not a big travel year for me, obviously, but I did get to Florida for the annual Association for Environmental Studies & Sciences conference in June. Here is a beautiful wetland fed by Orlando effluent!
I did several hikes this summer to Cliff Lake, a wilderness lake in southern Oregon that has long been a family favorite. Here I am, so happy and still so hairless!
A few images of Cliff Lake...
...what a beautiful place to be!
Joy and Elise know Cliff Lake well, and so do other family members and friends we bring with us. Here the sun is slowly setting over the lake and cliff behind it.
A few things I look forward to in 2020: first, more field adventures with students, many on the theme of engagement across difference. Here is an abandoned home at CBarC Ranch in Powell Butte Oregon, where owners Bob and Ty have sponsored several events over the years bringing together urban and rural folks, ranchers and environmentalists...so very important in these divided times.
I'll end with something else I look forward to daily: my morning bike commute up the Willamette River to Lewis & Clark College...so beautiful. I hope you can now see, from this brief slideshow, why I am so filled with gratitude! And more beauty to come in 2020. I wish this for each of you.