This personal essay won the 2005 non-fiction award in the graduate writing program at Portland State University.
I set out to find Celilo Falls, or where it’s buried underwater. . . I wonder whether the river will reveal why the photograph tugs at me. I imagine myself, solemn, dipping my hands in the river and feeling the answer in water trickling through my fingers, like an Indian shaman divining unseen truth.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Sometimes I need reminding how wonderful life is for those not yet afflicted with cynicism. The reminder came from our son, Atticus. “Where do dreams go?” he asked soon after waking this morning — a question I don’t recall contemplating at any age. Then he answered his question: “A dream is a cloud with tiny […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
News of the chimpanzee nearly killing a woman in Connecticut delivered a memory. About fifteen years ago, during chitchat before a late-starting meeting, a colleague at a Florida newspaper mentioned that an elderly chimp lived with him. There was an uncomfortable silence. Then this man, friendly but blandly reserved, came to life as I questioned […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Table 25 is a table of two…” So begins a restaurant owner’s account of a most romantic Portland spot. Not because of the setting at Andina’s but what Mama Doris calls magic at work. She describes celebrations of love playing out at the table, events sometimes so intense that they rivet the staff. Maybe her […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I can’t stop looking at photos of 178 people taken during 20 days from the same spot on a Berlin railroad bridge. The image of disconnected lives artistically stitched together into a very long, single picture is called “We’re All Gonna Die — 100 meters of existence.” Scrolling through this gaggle of humanity is strangely […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I’m prone to distraction. Part of this stems from many years working in newsrooms, mostly as an editor who thrived on the dual high of daily deadlines and the unexpected. Loving all things web-based hasn’t helped either. Now comes Maggie Jackson’s book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which examines the […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The letter made me feel good. Pacific Power reported that our household bought enough renewable energy in 2008 to prevent the release of 19,890 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the air. That’s the same as not driving 20,170 miles. We paid $125 more for electricity to participate in the utility’s Blue Sky program. But […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Getting my hair cut always yields a story or two. That’s because the two barbers and their clients talk a lot. Today the friendly banter included my barber, Horace, recounting how he attended Portland’s Lincoln High School in the 1970s, overlapping for a year with Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. “We talked occasionally even […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Finally, graffiti I can read. And it’s not only legible but painted in a flamboyant cursive script, conveys a simple but powerful admonition, and is brazenly displayed in the heart of one of Portland’s most-tagged neighborhoods.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Maybe aches and pains from transplanting a tree explain why I keep thinking about the Japanese maple. But the real reason, I’m afraid, is irrational emotional attachment for something not even in my yard. The tree belongs to friends in Portland’s Sabin neighborhood. I spent several hours Saturday helping them extricate it from a tight […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Socialism is apparently what is created when a president you do not like spends money on things of which you do not approve,” writes Mark Schone of Salon. He zings the Rush Limbaugh crowd of Stimulus Bill opponents by pointing to the infrastructure projects the federal government financed during the Great Depression. But as he […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
