This morning’s air was filled with water – the marine air that sometimes makes summer visits to Portland from the Oregon coast. I was up early to meet up with friends and underestimated what turned out to be enough moisture to soak almost through my rain coat over the course of my walk. Time with the people I had ventured out to meet was cozy and kind – like brown sugar on… Read More
On the day the only living Pinta Island Giant Tortoise was found dead, fires raged in the foothills of the Colorado front range and the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided the state of Montana could not assert its 100+ year old legislative policy stating the corporations are not people. It was raining in Portland, OR where today the sun peeks regularly between clouds making for dappled shadows instead of monochrome. That… Read More
My friend, Mark, is teaching himself to play the piano. He’s reading a book by David Sudnow called Ways of the Hand. Sudnow’s book sounds daunting (at its easiest). It’s a phenomenological inquiry into the intersection of physical forms (hands and all their linked physiology), consciousness and the music of jazz piano. Or at least that’s the closest I can come to a description. Mark says, “Music lives in the hands. Every… Read More
My youngest sister just posted this on facebook. Every single person in the picture is a mother now – a fact both astonishing and not. In this photo the mom is my mom, our mom. Here, somewhere in a field in south central Texas, she sits forever 33 with her four little girls, lined up by age. I’m the oldest, the one in all yellow. Also in that forever way, I know… Read More
Yesterday I drove through rain at the end of 8 hours on the highway. I drove I-80W again — through what this time I learned is the National Silos and Smokestacks Historic Area. I hadn’t noticed this three years ago and found myself tweeting ( a behavior I still can’t quite square with my sense of self), “Who knew?” Beyond the rain was Council Bluffs, Iowa and a family of four —… Read More
Today is the third above 70 degrees in Wisconsin. Locals clearly love it. So do I. And … really? 70’s in late winter here in a U.S. state that shares a rather large lake (Superior) with the Canadian state of Ontario? Maybe it’s the Texan in me who can’t imagine anyplace else acting in total defiance of the seasons. Maybe it’s my vigilant interest in our reading the trends to avert calamitous… Read More
The people I’ve talked with in Texas this week say two things. My friend Cindy, a white business woman in Grayson County sums up one of those things. “The divisions in this state are so strong, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to talk to each other. It just starts out hateful with neither side willing to back down.” As she talks, she describes how community proceeds in spite of the… Read More
I had Thanksgiving Dinner at the home of a Nigerian-American family. My brother, Preston(since the dawn of our friendship we’ve been pretty sure we are twins separated at birth) and his wife, Michelle and their 5-year-old daughter, Rachel had invited me along on their Thanksgiving plans. Preston, the host couple and three more guests share the fact of long ancestries, birth, childhood and young adulthood in Nigeria. Although they did not meet… Read More
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
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
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