No supper. That was my vow on a recent cool night in Suzhou, China. I was alone. My son Atticus, a fifth-grader at The International School (TIS) in Portland, was living with a Chinese family for a week and attending Suzhou Experimental Elementary School, the culmination of seven years of Mandarin immersion. Like some other parents, […]
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I keep collecting plants that can’t survive Portland winters outside. Perhaps I’ll live long enough for the air plants, bromeliads, elephant ears, and stag horn fern to thrive in the yard and on the porch beyond their summer parole. That would be a sliver of joy in the coming chaos and destruction of accelerating climate change. As new […]
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[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/58731907[/vimeo] NASA has reassured me that there’s no reason to freak out a week from today. That’s when an asteroid 150 feet in diameter, or half the length of an American football field, will pass closer to Earth than any other asteroid that we’ve seen coming our way. The flyby distance is 17,200 miles, or […]
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A few years ago I had the privilege of working on a project with the namesake of Bryan Potter Design. Every year since I’ve received from Bryan a card commemorating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. It arrives in the mail a a few days before the MLK Day holiday. The cards are always […]
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I entered the room of a dying woman, my father’s widow, living her final days under hospice care. Her eyes searched through the dim light, settling on my face for a moment then fixing on something, what I couldn’t tell. The proverbial distant shore drawing closer? Or the landscape of a drug-induced waking dream? After […]
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Can you feel nostalgic about something you don’t remember? There’s surely a clever word for the feeling, but I can’t find it. I’m pondering this, precisely 62 years and 68 minutes after my birth, because I stumbled upon the address of my first home. Thanks to Google Street View, I’ve can see the apartment building […]
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The growing call for arming teachers is getting louder than gunfire. Forget that the tactic would protect students as well as holding dynamite over a chemistry class Bunsen burner. What about the cost in these fiscally fraught times? Here are quick back-of-a-napkin estimates: 7.2 million teachers nationwide multiplied by $500 for the Glock G17 pistol, preferred […]
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Someone said it’s harder to get a driver’s license than buy a semi-automatic rifle like the one used in the massacre in Connecticut. Needing to renew my license, I decided to test the claim today. After the Oregon DMV in North Portland was so efficient — or my timing so good, I wondered why bother with the […]
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I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to imagine my teachers of yesteryear packing heat at school to protect me from crazy people armed with assault rifles. Not that shootings at schools happened in my youth, a comparatively quaint time of many fewer guns and people who killed with them. Now gun zealots of many stripes want to arm […]
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How can I fetch our seven year old, Atticus, at school in a few hours without imagining the slaughter today at a Connecticut elementary school? Will I scan the surroundings for danger, perhaps a sniper on the bridges overlooking his school? Should I scrutinize every adult I encounter on campus to see if they’re hiding […]
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If only I could remember the first time a song created a scene so vivid that I suddenly found myself in an unknown place populated with unknown people. “Norwegian Wood” may hold the honor. The song debuted in December 1965 with the release of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. I turned 15 that month and […]
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When my wife, Suzame Tong, told me that she has a new colleague at Jive Software who has my last name, I asked if the young woman has ancestral roots in Indiana. My roots run deep in the state, especially on my father’s side. So when the colleague said yes, I set out to learn if […]
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Maybe the day will return when milk is delivered to the front door and the doctor makes house calls. I’m old enough to remember when both happened, though my children would doubt such a world ever existed. Oddly, the more distinct memory is milk. The chiming rattle of bottles in the milk man’s crate, the […]
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