People spoke of 2009 as being a terrible year – a year when everything was going wrong for everyone it seemed. And 2010 seemed to have change in the air, but no one knew what. I felt that way too, and felt both nervous and excited at what was around the corner. For Posies, though we’re only halfway through the year, 2010 has been a time of major life changes, and growth, and renewed focus on what we want to bring to the community.

As many of you know, our dear Judi passed away suddenly from terminal cancer in May of this year. It was a devastating blow to our staff and community, but with Judi’s voice ever reminding us to learn from the hardships, and never stop growing, we continued forward with a renewed bond between us. Within the shop there have been major life events that individuals have been living and learning through, the Posies family with them every step of the way. One of those events was when our manager, Libby, told me that she was offered an incredible opportunity to serve as general manager at the acclaimed Masu Sushi in downtown Portland (owned by one of Posies’ regulars), and that she would be leaving us. While sad that she was leaving, I was so happy and proud of Libby for having the courage to pursue a profession she has long known she wanted. She stood by her values, and her talent was noticed and rewarded.

Amidst all of this, two well-loved North Portland businesses also closed: Little Red Bike Cafe and Ladybug Coffee Shop. While it does not impact me directly, it really shook me. I think because it can feel a little isolated way up here in north North Portland, and so I always felt like at least I had those two businesses to look to. And then suddenly they were gone. Customers came in and would literally say, “so it looks like you’re the only kid left on the block.” And that’s kind of how it can feel, though I know there are many, many other wonderful businesses way up north here with me. It’s just that I knew their story, followed them, compared myself. And now there was nothing left to know or follow or compare myself to.

At the same time, I’ve felt the need to revisit the evening identity of our shop, and figure out a way to reinvent what our evening hours could/should be like. After a lot of brainstorming and talking out loud to my friends and fellow Kenton business owners, I think this fall we will be introducing a new concept for the evening… think beautiful French bistro evening atmosphere, soothing music (maybe live), and dessert flights and wine pairings… offered once a month and by reservation only. It’s not yet perfected in my mind, but I’m close to figuring out just how to rewrite our story for the evening. Ideas welcome!

So many changes in such a short time. The adjustments feel uncomfortable, but I know it’s because it’s what growth feels like. We’re growing, as people, as a business and as a community. There is such a unique energy that is felt when so many things start changing at once – but I don’t think I would change being in the position I’m in at all. I love being in the middle of all of these lives, and experiencing their life changes along with my own. It feels good, and I think feels like living, because we are experiencing life face first – and we are taking what comes and not throwing it back or brushing it under the rug every time.

My head feels like it’s spinning, but in a way that I can handle. Or maybe it’s the heat. But I’m pretty sure it’s the changes.

Jessie

Unlike most children, though, I didn’t get to live with my parents until I was ready to leave for college. I didn’t get to come home to meals and family every night, or argue about whether or not to do my homework… or even get grounded (I don’t think I’ve ever been grounded). I left home when I was 12 years old to start fencing in upstate New York – 8 hours from home in Washington, DC. So while I am very close to my family, we had to work hard to remain close. I think it was during those times of being away from home, be it just training in New York, or calling from around the country or overseas, that I saw my parents love and commitment to me. Day or night, at any hour, I was allowed to call home collect, and no matter if he was in the dead of sleep, my dad would ALWAYS answer, and would talk to me for as long as I needed to talk… even if we were just breathing on the other end.

While I know this doesn’t make much financial sense when calling collect to just be breathing on the other end, sometimes as a kid you just need to know that your family’s in it with you no matter what, and the money doesn’t matter. It can be such a lonely existence growing up pursuing something that seriously at such a young age, and it helps knowing your family are standing by you, understanding why you’re doing everything you’re doing. I remember spending countless nights in Bonn, Germany, in the basement of the boarding school where we always stayed during world cups, at the one payphone in the entire school, sitting on the steps in the dark, talking to my dad about nothing… which meant everything.

When I was in college at Penn State, on a fencing scholarship, I fell ill unexpectedly with Crohn’s Disease. I called home and told my dad I was going to the hospital. After we hung up, he packed some underwear, told my mom it was urgent, and drove to State College, PA… a 4 hour trip from home. By the time I was admitted to the hospital, my dad was walking in the door. He stayed with me for the entire week I was hospitalized and then some, sleeping in an armchair (he would have stayed forever if I didn’t tell him to go once I started going back to classes).

And now my family is here with me, for the first time in 18 years. I get asked a lot if my parents living across the street is fun or not… I can understand that question – a lot of people have parents they wouldn’t want to live near. They’ve spent a lifetime living near them. But for us, we’ve spent most of my life trying to be close when all we ever were was apart. It was an unusual life, but it was a sacrifice we were all willing to make for a common goal (travel, culture, college scholarship, etc.). So in short, no, it isn’t weird living so close. Yes, my father can be strange, with his deep love for statues and everything gaudy, how he raises pigeons in the backyard, how much he loves cigars, but never smokes them, just chews on the end. Yes, my family is quirky, and funny, and sometimes my dad is downright weird… but they are good and kind and love people unlike I’ve ever seen. And so the quirk becomes endearing, and the funny makes you laugh… the weird stays weird, but you love them anyway because of how much they’ve always loved you.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I’m so glad you’re here, and that I get to spend every day with you.

Jessie

May 2008:

Before baby, I thought Mother’s Day was a rather lightweight holiday – and barely a holiday at that. More of a day in May that needed a special meaning assigned to it because May was running short on holidays. The cards I would send to my mother were thoughtful, but more selfish in my understanding of the day… I would thank my mother for being such a good mom to me, making growing up such a memorable experience for me, for loving me in spite of my being such a pain, etc.

This year, Mother’s Day’s meaning became almost overwhelming to me.

In reflecting on life since baby, I thought back to when Anouk was first born, and how I was on the verge of tears many days from the lack of sleep; how when Anouk had her ritual evening fussing, I walked the streets with her for hours singing to her until she fell asleep; how when Anouk decided one morning to get up at 4am, wide awake, to play, I was the one playing with her; how when Anouk went into shock after her first immunization shots and cried uncontrollably for hours, I didn’t put her down for an entire day; how I can recognize and/or hear Anouk’s cry anywhere – be it when I’m in the shower, or when I’m having a massage and I hear a baby cry outside (I once was having a massage and my mother-in-law walked by with Anouk crying and I knew it was her); how I’ve called the doctor in a panic on more than one occasion; how I’ve taken the bus for months because when I drive, Anouk cries in her carseat because she can’t see me facing backwards; how I’ve made so many choices because there is nothing I want more than to see my little girl smile.

And after all of that reflecting, and thinking, “Wow! I do a lot for this kid!” I realized… my mother did the same thing for me – and that all mothers do the same things for their kids. And it’s only after you’ve made the same sacrifices, and felt the same love for your child, can you possibly understand.

Since this realization, I have been taking close to an eternity to write my mother her Mother’s Day card because I can’t quite put into words just how important she and everything she has done are to me – I bought her a card that says on the cover “I Adore You,” because at this point, that is it in a nutshell: I adore my mother. I loved her before, and I adore her now.

So Mother’s Day and its purpose has come full circle – it is a day of reflecting on mothers and our relationships with them… and appreciating what we now know they have done for us, but maybe never really recognized. So Mom, this year, I get it.

Sadly, Judi passed away Tuesday morning in her home surrounded by her family. She has asked to be cremated, and so her family has decided to have Celebration of Life service at the end of July. They are currently seeking a location that is large enough (yet intimate enough) to hold all of the people that would like to attend the service. More details to come…

And if there is anything that I think Judi would have wanted us to learn from her life, it would be to not hesitate to tell people you love them, whether it be friends, family or a stranger, because people only regret not saying it enough. And that in her mind, we were all 10s… on a scale of 1-5.

Judi – you were an 11.

———————

As spring is slowly turning into summer, and our thoughts are moving to spring cleaning, activities for the warmer weather, and ways we can enjoy our time with our loved ones, things are also changing at Posies…

Many of you know Judi, our storytime reader on Wednesdays, biscuit maker on weekends, and loved by all who walk through our doors. Judi has a very raw love for people, especially children, that cannot be described – only felt. And it is because of that unconditional love that she has exuded to so many of our children that I felt it important to share, though so very difficult for me to even write, that Judi has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tears are splashing on the keyboard as I tell all of you, our loyal friends and customers, that Judi’s condition is rapidly declining, and as she has been getting weaker over these last four weeks, she no longer has the strength to come to Posies for her ever-energetic stories, songs and dancing that she does with the children. Nor can she do her magic with biscuits, or run to the front to ask anyone if they’d “like anything from the showcase…” My heart has broken seeing her normally busy-bee of a body with an “oh, frick…” whenever she dropped something, now hunched over in pain, with tears in her eyes. I didn’t know if or how to share it with everyone, but I’m also realizing the importance of allowing others time to process, so here we are.

I promised Judi that I would share with all of you just how very much she loved being a part of your lives. She has always felt it a privilege to be able to get to know you and your children and each of their little personalities. And if we had allowed it, she would have delivered all of your biscuits on roller skates while singing. She has long said that her family at Posies came into her life at just the right time, and that she found more joy being with all of you each day than anything else. And finally, her brother Sam asked that I share with you that if all of her wishes were to come true, she would get to be at Posies and do storytime forever.

Judi has been apologetic, even in all of her pain, with the idea of abandoning Posies, or storytime, or even biscuit making. But, Judi, if you read this, I wanted to write this to also reassure you that while you are completely irreplaceable, we all want nothing more than for you to rest easy and assured knowing that the love you felt for all of us is returned ten-fold to you, and you are not abandoning anything or anyone – you’ve been a light in our lives, and we only wish to wrap you in our warm embrace of unconditional love and comfort for as long as you need.

You cannot know what you’ve meant to me, and the community at Posies.

I love you, and we love you,

Jessie

During the time that Scott (McPherson) was talking about booking the shows, we always chatted about the possibility of some really big names dropping in given Scott’s music circle. I used some of those potential names to talk to the Mercury and Willamette Week and get our name out there as a music venue. Frankly, I don’t know much about the music world, but M. Ward has always been a name that was dropped while we were planning this. I would always say it to people who asked, but only half believed myself.

Tonight was the second to last show that Scott was booking before he goes on tour with She & Him, and then he hands the booking baton to one of his friends. It was expected to be another clockwork evening – Katie was working the show, a veteran at Posies, so I wasn’t worried. I put Anouk to sleep, sat on the couch and started checking emails. Katie texted me and said it was really busy… We exchanged a few more texts. Then Mr. Ben texted me the following message: “Are you aware that M. Ward just got done playing a set at your packed cafe?”

WHAT?! Let me repeat… WHAT?!

Please understand, while I’ve admitted I know nothing about music, and that I am not easily starstruck, the build-up to this possibly happening, and then it ACTUALLY happening was almost more excitement than I could handle. Yes, I am excited that really famous people are willing to perform at my shop, but I think what I’m even more excited about, and what I’ve become so overwhelmed with is that Posies has become so much more than I ever expected. While I’m proud of what it has become (becoming?), I’m so much more proud of what I’m seeing our little neighborhood can do when neighbors work together for the greater good of the community. It’s community-building at its best, and reminds me of just how much can be accomplished when folks work together with a common goal of goodness and offer themselves out of kindness. Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone!

And for those of you who haven’t made a show yet, stop in sometime, cause, hey, maybe you’ll see an intimate M. Ward show.

Jessie

I posted something about Walt on Facebook one day, and a friend wrote that she knew someone with a heartrate detection monitor going down to Haiti – the same one that found that elderly woman alive under the church. I told Walt’s contacts in Haiti, and they put me on bloodhound duty of finding who this person was and where they could find him.  For three days I frantically called and emailed everyone I could, even speaking with a coal mining executive at the company where the guy worked to try and track him down.  No luck.  During my frantic search, I read. And the more I read the more I realized the devastation that had hit in Haiti; This earthquake killed over 250,000 people (just under 3,000 people were killed on 9/11/01), and I saw the images of the buildings… they looked like cement pancakes. I couldn’t even fathom the search strategy, much less if it would be fast enough to reach survivors before dehydration kicked in.

Last week Gretchen came to me and said she wanted to donate all of her tips in February to Mercy Corps for the relief effort in Haiti… The next day, Libby said she did too.  And from there, more and more staff and customers have been motivated to do what they can, no matter how big or small, to help in Haiti.  I know being far from places where these disasters occur, it can be hard for it to really hit home for us, myself included.  We’re numb to bad news; We hear about natural disasters all over the world all the time and barely blink.  I’m amazed that our staff are so eager and willing to help how they can, and thought maybe some of you reading this are wondering what you can do. Below is some information on what Mercy Corps is focusing on with their relief work right now in Haiti. Feel free to read it and do with the information what you will…

In recent days, we received the sad news that Walt’s remains were found in the lobby of the Hotel Montana.  While we, and so many others, are devastated to have lost such an incredible man that so wonderfully influenced our lives, I also know that Walt lived one of the fullest lives I could possibly imagine, and died doing the work he loved.  I dedicate this note, and any money raised, to Walt and his wonderful wife, Jeanne, and children Briana and Shane.

Jessie

Haiti Fact Sheet 2-2-10

This Saturday & Sunday we will have a corner of the shop dedicated to Valentines Day gifts.  We will have handmade lockets, darling cookies, and beautiful bouquets (posies) made by Solabee Flowers available for sale.  Sunday morning we will even be offering a special Valentines Day brunch of crepes and mimosas!  Come feel the love in the air.

Since I haven’t heard back from “C” or “Charlotte”, I can only assume it was a spammed email… and while I’ve been laughing at myself all day for responding so seriously to something that wasn’t even real, it did get me thinking about two things: blog posts and the way we say things.

I couldn’t agree more with “Charlotte” that my blog posts maybe aren’t as interesting as they used to be, and I’ve been feeling guilty about it for months.  What I wrote was true, though, that sometimes the criticisms make you feel that complacency or generic posts are maybe the safest route to take.  Interestingly, what has always inspired my previous “interesting” posts were issues that I felt needed a voice, or deserved sharing or giving a critic a different perspective.  So thank you, pretend critic, for getting me thinking about writing again.

The second thing this comment made me think about is the way we say things, or, more specifically, the phrasing, “Don’t take this the wrong way…”  Here’s a thought: Tell people the “right way” rather than putting the onus on them to not take it the “wrong way.”  People who have something to lose go to great efforts to say things the “right way” so that there is no misinterpretation of what they are trying to convey. Critics tend to come across as unkind because they have little to lose in being a critic, but in reflecting on this, I think the reality is that they aren’t so unkind as they are lazy.  It’s easy to say everything you’re thinking as you think it and not care about the person on the other end and how they might interpret it.  It’s hard to think through what you want to say, care about how it will be received, and then share it in the clearest way possible in order to get the outcome you originally intended.

So, “Charlotte,” maybe next time you could take a few more minutes to write your comment and say something like, “I really enjoy your writing style, and found posts x, y and z to be some of your best.  Any chance you could write more posts like these?”

I digress…

Jessie

UPDATE:

This comment may have been spam… but I can’t tell because she signed her initial.  I get lots of generic spam, but in case this is real, I responded.

————–

Today I received the following comment on our website, and wanted to post it on the main blog page along with my response.  I would like everyone to read through this and then please share your thoughts re: blog posts.

Jessie

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Comment:
Please don’t take this the wrong way. I think your overall ideas are fine but you might want to put a little more thought into your next posts. I say this becuase it seems like your writing style has gone downhill a bit as opposed to your previous posts. – C.

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Hi Charlotte,

Thanks for writing.  While it’s hard not to take what you said the wrong way (almost a guarantee when you write “don’t take this the wrong way”), I know my posts probably aren’t as interesting as they used to be, or maybe as well-written.  What’s funny, though, is that nobody ever tells me the things they like that I post, only the things they don’t like.  That’s something I’m discovering is hard when being in the public eye right now… I get lots of feedback on posting things that are too personal, or too controversial, or in this case, too uninteresting, and then I find myself in a loop of apologies for everything because I don’t want anyone to be disappointed in the product I’m putting out there.  I’m not the type that’s able to say, Here’s what I’ve got, take it or leave it – and then feel confident that I’ll still succeed in what I’m doing.  I’m very aware that what I’m doing relies on the public liking it, so with so much feedback of what not to do, it makes you want to just play it safe and do nothing at all (or at all that interesting).

While part of the issue is that I’m tired of being controversial, the other part is that it takes a lot of time to run this business, and sadly, posting to our blog has been put on back burner while I try and keep us afloat through the construction that has taken place over the last three months in front of our shop, as well as what is the slowest time of the year in the coffee industry (January/February).  However, if what you (and others) are saying is that you were more interested in Posies when you felt you had more of an inside track to what was happening behind the scenes or in my mind, so be it.  I love writing, and if I knew others felt more connected to us with my old ways, I’m happy to go back, or maybe to a blend of what’s been suggested to me.

I’d appreciate your thoughts, and if you don’t mind, will be posting this to our blog for public feedback.

PS: Oddly enough, I’ve responded to every post I’ve ever received asking for suggestions of how to do better, and not a single person has ever written back to me.  I hope you write back.

–
Jessie Burke

Anthony Fox: Anthony is father to 7-year-old Journey, and he and his family are fellow Kenton residents.  He is an experienced barista having worked at many well-known coffee shops in Portland (Urban Grind, Blend), has lived in Thailand, and is currently in school on track to study International Law.

Keri Phillips: Keri teaches English at an area Washington college, and a former Starbucks barista.  She recently moved to Portland from Oklahoma, and wooed us with her daily patronage, her sense of humor, and her sweet midwestern sincerity.  She play indoor soccer, has a masters in rhetoric, and likes long walks on the beach (actually, I’m not sure about that last one).

Kristin Armstrong: Kristin came to us by way of a friend of mine – Jennifer Burlingame – who Kristin used to nanny for.  Kristin has traveled and studied overseas extensively, is fluent in French, and in her spare time was a barista in college.  She was a nanny for several years post-academia, and continues to nanny two days a week.  She is an avid cyclist, and volunteers at SCRAP and the Food Co-Op.

Laura Wilcox: Laura came to us out of the blue when a friend of hers (that works at Coffee House 5) heard we had an opening.  She is originally from South Dakota where she was a barista at a coffee cart (her favorite job to date), and is currently a student of biology at PSU.  Like Katie, Laura was a collegiate athlete as a competitive swimmer during her first two years of college.  She hopes to teach high school biology and be one of those teachers that “actually makes a difference in the lives of students.” (Though secretly she hopes to open her own coffee shop)

So there you have it! The newest additions to the Posies team! Make sure to stop in and say hi, and if you have a drink they should memorize, let them know – they’re eager to get into the swing of things.

Starting next week we will have a children’s activity every weekday morning at 10am, and starting in January we’ll have a regularly scheduled evening show Tuesday nights and weekends.  The morning schedule is as follows:

Mondays: Live music with Mr. Ben

Tuesdays: Teeny Tiny Storytime Theater with Ms. Yvonne

Wednesdays: Story time with Judi

Thursdays: Live music with Mr. Ben

Fridays: Teeny Tiny Storytime Theater with Ms. Yvonne

The evenings schedule will be:

Tuesdays: 8pm Songwriters Roundtable (see this link for details: http://endhits.portlandmercury.com/endhits/archives/2009/12/17/posies-cafe-to-host-all-star-open-mic-night)

Fridays or Saturdays: 7pm Live music (*Mnemonic is booked again for Feb. 27th!)

And our usual weekend favorites:

Saturdays: 8am – 12pm Buttermilk biscuits

Sundays: 8am – 12pm Breakfast Wraps (they’re back!)
Hope to see you all at many of these events! We love seeing your smiling faces.

Jessie