Portland

Dare I compare atmospheres at different high schools forty years and three thousand miles apart? Such comparison seems sure to illuminate nothing surprising and elicit a chorus of yawns. It would be like examining life on planets in different solar systems populated by different life forms and declaring, “Eureka! They’re not the same!” But after […]

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I don’t believe in the Rapture, though the concept intrigues me spiritually and intellectually. Perhaps that’s why a man’s suit caught my eye yesterday, abandoned on the steps of a downtown Portland church. A fine-looking suit with a subtle glen-plaid pattern. I considered inquiring at the Portland Korean Church, SE 10th and Clay. But if […]

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Our small backyard goldfish pond in Northeast Portland sparkles from its annual cleanup today. The pond is compact: eight feet across at the widest point, thirty inches deep in the deepest spot, and nine hundred gallons. Just large enough that I can zoom in on a Google satellite map and spy its blurry roundness, as […]

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Tom Jones haunts me. The well-preserved and über manly entertainer, whose twitching hips persuade otherwise demure women to part with their panties, has gyrated into the sacred halls of my bedroom. Last night, for the third consecutive day, my wife Suzame sang snippets of “She’s a Lady.” We were in bed. This the woman who […]

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Looking for home

May 31, 2008

How strange to stumble upon photos of my childhood house of the 1960s on a movie web site. I was searching Google images for a picture of Lake Sybelia in Maitland, Florida. Once a quaint hamlet of citrus trees and lakes, Maitland was long ago consumed by the tourist monster that ate Orlando. During my […]

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Hyperbole was among my mother’s traits, especially when I was a kid. Before issuing a warning or threat regarding my behavior, she would foreshadow her pronouncement with squinted eyes, like a gunslinger telegraphing lethal intent. Then she might let loose with the cliché of clichés: “It will go on your permanent record!” I’d respond with […]

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A dreaded Sunday morning excursion: stocking up on household staples at Costco in outer Northeast Portland. Luckily, I only have to run this gantlet once every few months. Not sure I could take the crowded aisles and old ladies peddling samples of bad food any more often. What eases my disorientation and general disgust with […]

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Runaway grocery cart

May 20, 2008

They’ve appeared before on the sidewalk across the street from my home office — grocery carts deposited like driftwood on an overnight tide. I noticed one this morning but paid it no mind. That is until I observed people react to this interloper in Irvington, my Northeast Portland neighborhood. There was the boy clad in […]

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Stooping to a new low, the Clintons tried today to undermine my family’s support for Barack Obama. They dispatched Chelsea to enlist our little boy, Atticus, in a duplicitous campaign to persuade us to switch our allegiance. While Atticus and his mother, Suzame, waited for friends outside the entrance to the Oregon Zoo in Portland, […]

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Let’s say you’re politically active. Active enough to volunteer time campaigning for your favorite candidate. (I’ve done a little for Barack Obama but not nearly as much as I should.) But would you travel to Canada and work for candidates there, such as the leader of the Liberal Party, Stéphane Dion? Most of us can’t […]

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From my car at the stoplight on NE 20th at Sandy Boulevard in Portland, I see a man so frail that the warm breeze might whisk him away. Bent at the waist, he’s shuffling forward six inches with each hesitant step. He reaches the sidewalk to my right. His pale yellowed skin appears brittle and […]

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Good year, 1950

May 7, 2008

“Is your birthday really Friday?” I ask the wisp of a man leaning against the Post Office wall in Northeast Portland and panhandling for money. Thickets of wiry gray hair spill from beneath his maroon stocking hat. A beard partly hides sunken cheeks. His clothes are faded but clean. It was our second encounter. I’d […]

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From My Window

May 1, 2008

Twenty children clutching flowers stroll the sidewalk beneath my window. No older than six and with teachers in tow, they stop, wave, and smile at me, the gray-haired crank a half-century older. I open the window, and they all call out “Happy May Day!” The sidewalk and street are dusted with wind-blown petals, whites and […]

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