I might have been sitting in a dental school classroom, taking lecture notes on all the bad things that can happen in the mouth. But I was prone in my dentist’s chair, enthralled with a stream-of-conscious presentation the hygienist delivered while prodding gums and polishing teeth.
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I’m confused. Portland, my home, is the fifth most popular destination among people moving from state to state. But it’s also the unhappiest city in the country, according to a new study. Something’s amiss. Either the movers haven’t heard how forlorn we Portland residents supposedly are or the findings are wrong.
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This story won the 2005 fiction award in the graduate writing program at Portland State University.
Looking at him now I saw Cassius Clay in miniature. His hair was trimmed short and squared off flattop style. Dark, almond-shaped eyes widened a moment before he spoke, as if signaling to pay attention to whatever came next. His eyes never stopped moving, soaking up everything even as he talked.
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Recently I stumbled upon old snapshots of unidentified people I can’t get out of my head. The photos are on two web sites, waiting for someone to give names to faces. One site features more than 500 color images from film found in cameras at flea markets and second-hand stores. The other site consists of […]
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A writing professor I know often uses time travel as a plot device. His novel about Abraham Lincoln involuntarily appearing in Chicago in the 1950s bring him to life in a unique way. More intriguing is the professor’s unpublished story imagining himself as an adult occupying his boyhood body and mind. That’s a journey I […]
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From the book Pendleton Round-Up at 100: Oregon’s Legendary Rodeo.
Cowboys disagreed about the women’s skills. Strickland’s husband Hugo, a champion at Pendleton and many other rodeos, said one roper had lobbied him to persuade Mabel to enter women-only exhibitions. ‘Hugh, durn it, we fellas got to stick together. We don’t come off good in the public’s eye with a woman beating the whey out of us . . .’
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From the book Pendleton Round-Up at 100: Oregon’s Legendary Rodeo.
None of the 15,000 people who crowded into the arena . . . knew they were about to watch a contest that’s still the centerpiece of Round-Up lore, or that they collectively would become a key character in the story’s dramatic conclusion. In the end, the crowd chose one champion, and the judges chose another.
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Written for The Oregonian newspaper and published Jan. 22, 2009.
This is a story about love, shopping locally and the power of the Internet. And burritos, too. It began in early December when a man learned that his mother’s Northeast neighborhood business, Broadway Books, faced financial problems more ominous than the struggles small independent booksellers typically see.
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I spent a long time on the print side of newspapers and a good number of years starting and nurturing their online offspring. These days I’m online much of each day and night but still have this thing for the printed page. It began, like many things, with a childhood ritual: plodding barefoot to the […]
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Written for The Oregonian newspaper and published Feb. 28, 2008.
The blunt nose of a psychedelically painted hippie van is perched on a front porch . . . Its empty headlight sockets gawk at the street through falling snow. From a portrait in a window, a pensive teenage boy peers outside. Scrawled on the window above a “Do Not Disturb” sign is an ornate signature: Benjamin Alexander Clark.
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Written for The Oregonian newspaper and published May 8, 2008.
As the sun tries to burn through morning clouds, the business partners laugh while explaining their nicknames: Barrett is Moss and Bravin is Broc (short for Broccoli Whisperer). The laughter stops as they discuss what it will take to succeed. ‘There are long, long days ahead,’ Bravin says.
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Rarely do I find commentary as incisive and articulate as that of Scott Horton. His “No Comment” blog for Harper’s Magazine illuminates current affairs not with polemics but cohesive facts and analysis. Reading his work I see the fog of he-said-she-said media coverage lift to reveal what looks like truth.
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Graffiti fascinates me. It’s hard to miss in Portland, especially east of the Willamette River where I live. Some is artistic. Most is illegible, as if space aliens scrawl communiques at night, unaware that their writings generally make no sense to Earthlings. And defacing property, no matter the creativity involved, is a crime costing major […]
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