Not far from my house is a big faux Santa Claus butt. It’s actually a painting of his butt made to look like it’s sticking through a tire. The painting hangs from a tree like a, well, tire swing.
A nearby peace sign I understand as a year-round decoration. But whatever clever humor the butt might provide faded weeks ago. Read More
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Hard to correlate these two disparate ideas: airplane crash victims lost high in the Andes resorting to cannibalism, and stark humanity imbued with love.
But that’s what played out on the movie screen tonight in the documentary Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains. After the plane carrying the Uruguayan ruby team went down in October 1972, sixteen of the forty-five passengers survived for more than two months. Had they not eaten from the bodies of their dead companions, they too would have died in the aptly named Valley of Tears. They were rescued when two team members trekked for days through towering peaks. Read More
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I find myself drawn to people who embark on solitary adventures far from the helter-skelter of cities. Contemplating them is an escape from the mundane and predictable. Seriously imagining myself in their roles induces tinges of exhilaration — and panic.
In August last year, I wrote about and began following the blog of teenager Zac Sunderland, who continues his quest to sail around the world. Now I’m also following John Wells, who moved from New York to the Texas desert where he’s “living off the grid.” John blogs daily about experiences. And not just about the overwhelming challenge of building a self-sufficient enclave in the middle of nowhere. Read More
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Looking at my junk email folder, I feel unloved. Normally jammed with obnoxious, fraudulent, and salacious offers, it’s received only eight spams in the last fifteen hours.
That’s a shockingly small number, even with the typical weekend slowdown in such traffic. It’s also low considering that spam has rebounded since a dramatic drop worldwide in November. That drop came when a cybercrime-friendly Internet service provider was shut down. Read More
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Like many people, I’ve been dwelling today on my year’s highlights and lowlights. Besides the most important and obvious — the health and love of my family, I keep thinking about what it means to have rekindled long-lost friendships with a handful of high school friends.
They’re not just people I like because of our good times together way back when, but I admire them for who they were and even more for what they’ve become.
Though they live far away, the expression “my friends” never sounded more resonant and meaningful than at this moment.
And in these perilous financial times, I’m also thankful that I’m not the toothless man I saw today a block from my house. Gaunt and younger than me, he stopped his bike and examined an orange next to the street. (An orange on the ground in Portland is indeed odd.) He smelled and squeezed it, then tossed away the fruit. Read More
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No one is happier about Portland’s record December snowfall finally melting than our Irvington neighborhood Gnome. There was more than enough white stuff to fill his tree-trunk abode, so I’m assuming people kept his doorway sufficiently cleared so he could maintain his perpetual southeasterly gaze from our block. Read More
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Portland’s rapidly melting blanket of snow reveals how whacked out the city became during its record-setting bout of wintry weather. Many people who zealously clean up after their pooping dogs didn’t. The result: on the sidewalks there’s lots more to slip on than patches of slushy ice.
Were dog owners too cold and hurried to bother? Did they think the snow would make the droppings permanently vanish? If I was generous, I’d conclude it was snowing so hard that people simply lost sight of what Rover left behind. Read More
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I wrote recently about the fertile ground my neighborhood Safeway provides for observing people and things I’d otherwise never see. Passing through its doors makes me suddenly alive to the world.
That’s not what I was thinking this afternoon as I trudged through ice-encrusted snow to the grocery. Soon after entering, I saw a tall young man who looked familiar. Is that an actor from the HBO series Six Feet Under? The guy who played the the whacked-out character Billy?
Can’t be, I thought, as I watched him and two companions head for the deli counter. I moved closer. He spoke to one of two companions. The voice was unmistakable. Read More
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A tooth that played a key role in chewing more than 49,000 meals and countless snacks died today in Portland. The veteran molar was 45 years old.
The death of Tooth 31 came after three weeks of intense medical treatment, including two root canals, antibiotics, and x-rays. “We did everything we could,” said a specialist called in to save the tooth. “Sometimes there’s no choice but to pull them.” Read More
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Even with the onslaught of winter, some flowers refuse to yield to nature. They won’t give in despite the overwhelming forces aligned against them.
Yes, I’m granting powers to plants — thinking, free will, emotions — that to our knowledge don’t exist. Read More
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Portland’s robust recycle and reuse ethos is stronger than I thought. But the competition for customers may be getting out of hand, judging from this scene:
A sign in a vacant lot on NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard advertises potted Christmas trees. I see some as I drive past. Next to the trees are stacks of mattresses. Christmas trees and mattresses are visually incongruous items, so I head back for a closer look. Read More
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