Today is only a day. It is Saturday, the 4th of July weekend, and like every other day it has filled with moments linking up into hours, holding people and motion – holding change. This is how it went. Sun rays angled across the morning sky. I woke with two friends on my mind – two friends who are too close to death. Tom, a remarkable and kind educational leader, is here… Read More
It’s sunny in Portland OR and already in the 60’s at 12:24 p.m. on Saturday. People are out everywhere and I’m walking west, nearing the center of the Steel Bridge, one of the ten bridges spanning the Willamette River and operated by the Port of Portland. The water level is very high – highest since the flood of 1996. As I walk onto the Steel Bridge, I’m guessing the bridge operators are… Read More
Two American Indian men stand together. The Elder is Wyandotte and Choctaw of the Mississippi Valley; the younger is Walla Walla of the Columbia River. They are of two generations and they are friends. The men chat with one another during a break in a graduate class of mostly non-Indian students. The students are preparing to be teachers and counselors and taking this course on contemporary Native American life. The older man… Read More
Early this morning, I read email from “a cultural insider of the hacker community.” He’s a student in a class I’m teaching this term and was writing to clarify the term troll as it applies to internet hackers. A NYT article I’d assigned had used that word in a story of a man who drew people with epilepsy to an internet site that, unknown to the web surfers, presented a sensory blast… Read More
I have a friend who lives with chronic pain. He has Rheumatoid Arthritis. The other day we were sitting drinking tea. It was the first time he told me of the RA diagnosis he received last December. “It hits like a train,” he said. “But, man is it ever teaching me about making choices.” “Three things,” he said. “First, it doesn’t feel fair. It isn’t fair, and it is what’s going on,… Read More
My friend Murry is in a protracted conversation with esophageal cancer. He knows all too well that his condition didn’t come from nowhere. The president spoke yesterday to matters in the Middle East – to the changes signified with the public uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. He spoke to Israel and Palestine– to that protracted conversation. We all know that none of that came from nowhere. Today I took a photo of… Read More
During the work week between 6 and 7 a.m., it’s a different kind of quiet on the streets of downtown Portland. All last week I walked downtown to catch the bus. The weather was warming, the air softer to the touch. I liked it. That time of morning, delivery people dot the grid of city streets. They roll dollies with boxes of produce. They use fork lifts to move reams of paper… Read More
I heard no fireworks. In the center of the rural Midwest, I was aware of no celebrations – raucous or otherwise – in bars, in living rooms, in church fellowship halls. I was an outsider. Just visiting. I may not have been sensitive to the signs. Midwesterners are also known to be a rather reserved bunch. But, this winter I’ve had occasion to observe both Green Bay Packers fans and energized mass… Read More
Obama released his birth certificate. Kate and William finally walked the aisle. Then the phone rings yesterday. One of my dearest of dears doesn’t know what to do. She is a hair’s breadth from ending it all. They are unmistakable when they show up, these things that are more important. Yesterday, regarding this week’s focus on the part of the news media Dan Rather said Come on, gang. Really? or something to… Read More
…Posting this on Monday morning in Malta — Qawra, to be exact — in a piazza at the edge of St Paul’s Bay with free public wifi access. Only took me three days to find this place (sort of a miracle, really) and only a 2 mile walk from the hotel. Easter came and went. The wind and surf were and continue impressively high. It’s not quite tourist season here, which is… Read More
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