A photograph would convey more than words, but I don’t have one of a barista at Peet’s Coffee at Northeast Broadway and 15th. You can’t miss him: the young guy with a modified mohawk, traditionally cut on top but with checkerboard-patterned sides and back. By Portland standards, the haircut barely rates a second glance. But […]
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Dare I compare atmospheres at different high schools forty years and three thousand miles apart? Such comparison seems sure to illuminate nothing surprising and elicit a chorus of yawns. It would be like examining life on planets in different solar systems populated by different life forms and declaring, “Eureka! They’re not the same!” But after […]
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I learned today that a high-school friend died over the weekend. I last saw Jeff Schofield nearly ten years ago at our thirty-year reunion in Florida. He was frail as a twig, victim of personal excesses that claim so many. The news naturally conjured up memories of Winter Park High, class of 1968. I remembered […]
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From my car at the stoplight on NE 20th at Sandy Boulevard in Portland, I see a man so frail that the warm breeze might whisk him away. Bent at the waist, he’s shuffling forward six inches with each hesitant step. He reaches the sidewalk to my right. His pale yellowed skin appears brittle and […]
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At the gym today, I saw the ghost of me. His image materialized six feet in front of me on the window overlooking the squash courts. I was striding in place on an elliptical machine. Cast in shades of gray, he appeared to occupy a space between two worlds, mine and one of shadows. He […]
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