Has it really been 10 years: 100 VOICES

January 21, 2009, the day after the inauguration of the first Obama administration, I took off driving – south, then east, then north, then back west. I was interested in listening to everyday people. I wanted to know what they meant when they said that word – especially public in the preceding months – CHANGE. My goal was 100 voices in the first 100 days. Voices across as broad a range of… Read More

Unplugged — a guest blog

Gary Ferguson is a writer.  His subject over the past 30 years has the natural world and the relationships we have with it as human beings.  His setting has most often been Yellowstone National Park, but here, in the first of two guest blogs, Gary tells of his three months with 14-17 year-olds in the desert wilderness of Utah.  People living these years are change-on-legs as far as my memory and observation… Read More

Moments in the Weave

It’s 9-10-11. I just landed in Washington DC National Airport.  Tonight my niece will be married on the banks of thePotomac– first of that generation.  Wow – turn-turn-turn and all of that – change, for sure! Constancy, too.  Expense, distance and daily matters of consequence set aside as all the family that can gathers.  This is what families do.  It’s one way we love each other, taking these opportunities to cinch up… Read More

J. Murry Owen 1955-2011

There are threads that run through a life.  There’s the vague story of birth – the shifting shadows and bright spots childhood – the teen years, every one of them – and what came next and next and next.  There are memories of scent and touch and sound.  Images of faces and bedrooms and meals and travels.  And there’s the land where you were raised. Today the ashes remaining from the 56-year-old… Read More

ROAD TRIP!

  “When life has been given to you, you must take it very seriously.” Calvin Hecocta   There’s something about the open road.  Something about road trips.  Something about how there is just no way any amount of planning and dreaming can remotely predict what will happen in the way a road unfolds time. A year ago today I drove out of Portland.  I had organized my small bag, small supplies and… Read More