Driving east from Portland on Interstate 84 is humbling. I’m but an insignificant speck squeezing between the Columbia River’s slow-flowing expanse on one side and cliffs on the other. As I cross the Cascade Mountains and encroach upon the high desert at The Dalles, a question arises: is there anywhere else in the United States […]
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They say that after death people live on in others’ dreams. But I rarely dream about my mother, dead for five years. I much prefer how she materialized last month at my forty-year high school reunion in Winter Park, Florida. Several friends told me how much they liked my mother. Who could blame them? She […]
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Tonight on NPR’s “Philosophy Talk” I heard this declaration referring to death: “The world as I know it will cease to exist,” and then there will be nothing. When I heard this somber reminder of what everyone fears, I was in the car on the way home. I had been drinking wine at a downtown […]
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One of my two world-trekking pilot friends unknowingly gave me a gift. It’s an image that flashes to life at odd moments. I don’t know if the image bears any resemblance to what he saw, to what he experienced on many long journeys. He told me of flying 747 cargo jets to points scattered around […]
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He looked familiar. Not his rumpled clothes. Or red blotches mottling his face. The man on the sidewalk reminded me of a close friend’s older brother. So striking was the resemblance that he could have been a down-trodden other brother. The guy looked done in, as if he’d recently had but lost the financial wherewithal […]
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Each morning I obsessively pore over information about visits to Cracked Window. Not that the number is large, though this offbeat post about a bear campaigning for Barack Obama attracted more than ten thousand because The Atlantic magazine’s Andrew Sullivan linked to it. I’m curious about what gets read how often — which posts resonate […]
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Four street scenes all within fifty yards of NE 15th and Fremont, expose Portland’s big beating quirky heart: The first to catch my eye in a thirty-second span is a hand-painted sign on a rickety weathered fence: We Love People. Another sign, this one on a post outside a Starbucks, had read: No Skate Boarding. […]
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I’ve made it halfway through a movie that uses my childhood home on a Central Florida lake as a main setting. One of my brother’s bought the DVD after I learned of the film and wrote about it. So far it’s like glancing around a museum I visited a long time ago, a familiar building […]
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My morning email trek began with discovery of a story that pushes aside all the world’s troubles. Even with NPR blaring about economic travails and bitter presidential politics, I was transported to the East Oregon mountains and into a stranger’s childhood memory. The 1,004-word evocation of a father’s love for his son isn’t a story […]
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After closely following the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of the presidential campaign, I’m not surprised that much in Rolling Stone’s damning new portrayal of John McCain’s life and career isn’t widely known. The piece feels like a hatchet job but only because the sheer volume of negative information is so shocking. I’ve read some of it […]
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