Mr. Prude – III

“I didn’t make the second cut.”  Mr. Prude was smiling. We’d run into one another again in the crosswalk on Sandy Boulevard and I’d turned to walk with him back toward the dialysis center.  We stopped to stand on the sidewalk just beyond the old Barber Babes (EX:C blog, “I’m Not Done Yet,” 5-21-2011).  Mr. Prude had been telling me about being just back from Joseph, OR where he’d spent a week… Read More

Book Release Invitations!

   I just sent this email to the 504 people on my “EX:Change Friends and Family” list.  Cool number, huh?  504. These are the people who, along the way — as I drove the highways of U.S. in early 2009 and in the time since have befriended me and the EX:Change project and asked to be kept updated.  In ten days, what was once only and idea on a cold and rainy New Year’s Eve will show up… Read More

Listening to the Military

It’s Labor Day.  Over the course of our country’s history, one place many people have found work has been in the military. I’m not a military person.  I know a few veterans and I like them but outside movies, newscasts and the anti-war protests I’ve been a part of over the years, I know almost nothing about military service. I hadn’t counted until now, but turns out six of the people who… Read More

Sister Story

There’s a spirit of listening – an inclination to learn – and for all but the most shy, a powerful desire to make social contact, to communicate, to hang out.  EX:Change and the 100 Voices book (www.loudmouthpress.org) turn out to be living records of this spirit.  I thought I was starting a project to learn about change – about what a popular word in a particular time meant to the people using… Read More

Book Publication and Press Info – YAY!!

One of the things about straddling the generations of print and electronic media is that I still don’t quite understand the genre of “blogging.”  That means I don’t know if I’m within or outside of convention with this particular post.  Now that I think of it, it’s quite possible the idea of any convention relative to blogging isn’t even relevant to the genre which is probably very cool.  Whatever the case, here… Read More

The Streets of London and a Bridge in Portland, OR

There are weeks when I think, “I have no idea what to write in this week’s blog.”  Really.  Lots of them.  Then, without fail, events turn.  They may be close in like with bus rides, or widespread like weather, or painful like the death of a dear one.  They can also seem to have nothing to do with one another, and then, out of the nowhere of random neuron firings, I see… Read More

Climate — Listening to know for sure

I have a friend in South Dakota who lives in a town that flooded last month.  It was near completely under water.  I have another friend who lives in Akiak, Alaska who told me about the tundra taking on a smell, thawing for the first time in his life or in the lives of his ancestors who have lived there for many thousand years.  Then there was the photo my dad managed to… Read More

Mr. Prude – II

“I heard from the Idol people.  I’m goin’ to LA in October!”  Mr. Prude was at the bus stop Tuesday morning.  “I went right to the Western Union office and sent my mom a telegraph.  Next thing I know my phone was ringing and she was saying, ‘I knew you could do it!’” So this is how the story of Mr. Prude was unfolding for me.  Here was a man I took… Read More

Mr. Prude – I

Ever since my garage door crunched itself into an intractable accordion, trapping my car inside, I’ve been riding the bus.  I like it.  It takes more time, but it’s easy – and its richer.  One of my companions at the bus stop most Tuesdays and Thursdays is Mr. Joey Prude. The first time we spoke was on a Thursday.  That day, like every other day I’d seen Mr. Prude he sat under… Read More

Missing Murry

I just got e-mail.  I’ve been writing e-mail back.  And crying.  My friend, Murry Owen, died last night.  His body just couldn’t manage to breathe anymore. Yesterday I started this week’s blog.  I called it “Big Changes.”  I wrote about how I got to spend time yesterday morning with my friend Jim.  Jim is the friend who found out 7 months ago that he has Rheumatoid Arthritis (EX:C blog, “Chronic Pain,” 6-4-2011). … Read More