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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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.
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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.
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