Portland

Stopping Time

April 30, 2008

Suzame, Atticus, and I wait for our food in the dinner-crowd din at Ken’s Artisan Pizza on SE 28th. I gaze out the window. People awash in early evening light pass on the sidewalk. A young man comes into view. Hip-looking in that Portland style that anyone on the eastside under 30 wears like skin. […]

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Obama Didn’t Sleep Here

April 28, 2008

A Barack Obama campaign worker was our overnight guest Sunday, part of a volunteer-your-home program Suzame and I signed up for. Then she was off to Salem this morning, two big suitcases in tow — “all my stuff,” she said. “I go where they send me.” It’s been that way for nearly a year. She […]

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Dear Tulip Thief

April 27, 2008

For a few weeks, we watched the dozen green tulip buds grow taller and fatten. They cloaked themselves in a hint of red. I planted them three years ago in a small corner garden at the intersection where we live in Northeast Portland. The tulips were on the verge of opening, an event we and […]

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Balloon Man’s lament

April 27, 2008

From a distance, Balloon Man looks happy. Little children line up next to him beneath an elm beginning to unfurl new leaves. The sights and sounds of the Portland Farmers Market surround them. The children watch in awe as his hands move in a blur, creating made-to-order pirate swords, three-corner hats, bugs, and dinosaurs. “Three […]

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Dapper Cadavers

April 26, 2008

Blue sky and a breath of warm air do wonders for Portland, especially on a Saturday in the midst of a cold spring. Among the throngs at the downtown Farmers Market are people with eyes closed, faces turned reverently toward the sun. Strolling past baked goods and rows of vegetable starts for the garden, I […]

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Cracked Up

April 24, 2008

I’m a hypocrite. I rant about people yapping on their cell phones while they drive, especially on city streets. Well, I wasn’t yapping but asking an operator for a phone number while driving through our Northeast Portland neighborhood. Suzame was sitting next to me. At the time my call seemed important enough for me to […]

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Raptured?

April 21, 2008

Portland being Portland, it’s not unusual to see pairs of shoes dangling from overhead wires. I imagine the fun some jokers had flinging footwear in the air until one of them got lucky. Somewhere in Northeast, where I live, I once saw high-heels similarly perched above the middle of a street, string looped around the […]

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