I miss my Mum.

Readers were very gracious with feedback when I wrote  in The Astorian and Chinook Observer about her surviving the London Blitz, her sporty prowess, her late-life struggles and her 2020 covid death. Astonishingly, that was five years ago this month. The oddest thing for me recently has been hearing her cadence in my voice. 

You would think after almost 45 years in this country I would be saying “you bet” and “see y’all,” but instead I appear to be maintaining my British speech patterns. When I appeared in “Macbeth” at the Ten Fifteen Theater in Astoria in fall 2023, they tried to teach me how to speak with an American accent. The idea was that once my main character, King Duncan, was stabbed to death early in the proceedings, I could return with a different voice in three bit-part guises. It was a forlorn attempt: Second Murderer and that mansplaining doctor were all me.

Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States and my admonition to readers is to find a way to treat your mom this weekend, perhaps by taking her out to an arts event. Astoria’s wonderful Flavel House landmark will be serving tea and scones for Mother’s Day on Saturday. It is hosted by the good people at the Clatsop County Historical Society; I think we can all agree that it is one of our region’s most important institutions. Sunday signals the beginning of the retail year at the Astoria Sunday Market, so that is another option. My colleague Zoe Buchli writes about the market’s successes this week.

Talented Astoria writer Jennifer Nightingale informed Coast Weekend about Peter Adams Young of Ocean Park speaking in Warrenton May 10. Both have their own creative avenues, but commendably they also work to support and promote other North Coast authors. Young is busy continuing his murder-mystery series from Civil War battlefields. He started, perhaps almost inevitably, with Gettysburg, a place he used to visit as a lad when his father, who covered the presidency for the Chicago Tribune, traveled with the press corps to the nearby Eisenhower Farm. How cool is that?

Next up is Antietam, a place name I can never pronounce without hesitating, whose dreadful claim to fame is it was the date in history when most Americans died. Young’s great great grandfather, Henry Bennett Adams, a private in the 132nd Pennsylvania Infantry, died there. With 27,000 others.