This essay won the 2005 non-fiction writing award in the graduate writing program at Portland State University. Read More
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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 bubbles that comes out of your skin and pops back into the sky.”
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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 him about his companion. Read More
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“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 story connects with me because another table for two, this one at a small restaurant in Winter Park, Florida, proved pivotal in my love life years ago. Funny that I remember nothing about the food but can still picture everything about the table and the bewitching woman sitting across from me.
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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 mesmerizing. Few noticed the camera of Simon Høgsberg and thus are captured in mundane moments. Nothing is happening. Or so it seems until you linger on faces and imagine what the lens couldn’t see. Who are these people? What are they thinking? How did they come to be there? Where are they going?
Upon third viewing, I pictured myself in the picture.
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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 effects of our increasingly fragmented ability to focus. Read More
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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 the letter’s effect soon faded. Read More
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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 though I was a freshman and he was a senior,” Horace said.
Then Horace told me his last name, which I should have known considering he’s cut my hair for two years. “It’s Simpson.” Read More
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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. Read More
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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 spot between patio and garage, then relocating it to their front yard. Read More
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“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 notes, words in this maddening debate are more than plentiful. Read More
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