Like many people, I’ve been dwelling today on my year’s highlights and lowlights. Besides the most important and obvious — the health and love of my family, I keep thinking about what it means to have rekindled long-lost friendships with a handful of high school friends.
They’re not just people I like because of our good times together way back when, but I admire them for who they were and even more for what they’ve become.
Though they live far away, the expression “my friends” never sounded more resonant and meaningful than at this moment.
And in these perilous financial times, I’m also thankful that I’m not the toothless man I saw today a block from my house. Gaunt and younger than me, he stopped his bike and examined an orange next to the street. (An orange on the ground in Portland is indeed odd.) He smelled and squeezed it, then tossed away the fruit. Read More
No one is happier about Portland’s record December snowfall finally melting than our Irvington neighborhood Gnome. There was more than enough white stuff to fill his tree-trunk abode, so I’m assuming people kept his doorway sufficiently cleared so he could maintain his perpetual southeasterly gaze from our block. Read More
Sometimes, rarely actually, a movie stuns me. Leaves me in awe. Not fully grasping what I’ve just seen, I want to watch it again and again.
That’s how I feel twenty-four hours after watching “A Christmas Tale.” The French film examines the complexities of a dysfunctional, estranged family reunited for the holiday. Typically that subject wouldn’t interest me. But there’s so much more to it in this film. Read More
I drilled into our little boy today another of my dead mother’s irrational holiday rules: everything Christmas related must be taken down before the new year begins. Otherwise, the most dire bad luck will ensue.
Atticus accepted the rule as if our very existence hinged upon it, and we did mom proud. As a bonus, he learned another valuable lesson while helping unscrew the Christmas tree holder — lefty loosey, righty tighty.
And he’s been repeating it over and over while setting up a make-believe bookstore and pretending to take phone calls from Santa Claus. All this after his first inauspicious attempt to use his Christmas gift scooter and showing off in this video that his mother, Suzame, made.
What my mother missed.
Portland’s rapidly melting blanket of snow reveals how whacked out the city became during its record-setting bout of wintry weather. Many people who zealously clean up after their pooping dogs didn’t. The result: on the sidewalks there’s lots more to slip on than patches of slushy ice.
Were dog owners too cold and hurried to bother? Did they think the snow would make the droppings permanently vanish? If I was generous, I’d conclude it was snowing so hard that people simply lost sight of what Rover left behind. Read More
A newspaper photo published this week shows a “Leave It to Beaver” family posing next to a Christmas tree in 1956. The family includes a boy holding his new shotgun.
Except for his well-coiffed hair and fancy bathrobe, the boy reminds me of what I might have looked like six years later when I turned twelve. I held a gun that Christmas morning but not a shotgun or the .22 rifle I desperately wanted. My father didn’t like guns, so the compromise gift was something smaller and far less dangerous. I hid my disappointment and was eager to shoot my new BB gun. Read More
I wrote recently about the fertile ground my neighborhood Safeway provides for observing people and things I’d otherwise never see. Passing through its doors makes me suddenly alive to the world.
That’s not what I was thinking this afternoon as I trudged through ice-encrusted snow to the grocery. Soon after entering, I saw a tall young man who looked familiar. Is that an actor from the HBO series Six Feet Under? The guy who played the the whacked-out character Billy?
Can’t be, I thought, as I watched him and two companions head for the deli counter. I moved closer. He spoke to one of two companions. The voice was unmistakable. Read More
While having a tooth wrenched from my mouth the other day, I squirmed in the dental chair as if trying to escape the oral surgeon’s maniacal array of implements. I had assumed the procedure would be quick. It wasn’t.
What helped me through the prying, splitting, and yanking was a simple gesture: a young dental nurse put her hand on my shoulder and kept it there. Her touch distracted me in a way she couldn’t have imagined. It sent me back to another dental chair in 1963, when the 12-year molar getting pulled first peeked from my gum. Read More
A Slate magazine column, The Explainer, is a must read for me. It typically explains issues in the news or suggested by the news, such as these recent entries: What do Iraqis find so insulting about shoes and feet? Can you be a gay Mormon?
Reading through the archive of questions answered this year is a refresher course on what’s transpired, from the important (Can Blagojevich still appoint a new senator?) to the absurd (Who first put lipstick on a pig?). Read More
I’m a dictator when it comes to decorating our Christmas tree. Blame my mother.
As free-wheeling and independent as she was in most aspects of her life, Joanie had rules and regulations aplenty this time of year. The most rigid of all was this edict: big ornaments on the bottom of the tree, smaller ones at the top. Read More
A tooth that played a key role in chewing more than 49,000 meals and countless snacks died today in Portland. The veteran molar was 45 years old.
The death of Tooth 31 came after three weeks of intense medical treatment, including two root canals, antibiotics, and x-rays. “We did everything we could,” said a specialist called in to save the tooth. “Sometimes there’s no choice but to pull them.” Read More
Portland’s commitment to mass transit and bicycling is no secret. Bus and train ridership continue to increase significantly. Bike traffic is becoming positively European, accounting for 13 percent of all traffic across the main four downtown bridges spanning the Willamette River. Read More
The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in Baghdad was hailed as a hero today across the Middle East. In Baghdad, where the incident happened, protesters filled the streets and demanded his release from custody.
When I first watched the video, I marveled at Bush’s sharp reflexes and calm under fire. I even felt a passing wave of resentment that someone would publicly disrespect our president, though I’ve long considered him worse than contemptible. It took me longer than it should have to appreciate the rage that the shoe-thrower must have felt to risk jail for his actions. Read More
