Clare Consultation, LLCJ. 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
Columbus Day: Do You Know Where You Are?
Yesterday I sat again across a small table from Dr. Dapo, one of the 100 voices of EX:Change (EX:C blog, “What’s in a Name?” 4-13-2010). We had seen one another on Multnomah Ave. several weeks earlier. I was walking fast toward the Max Station and Dapo was driving in the opposite direction. He honked and we stopped traffic for long enough to promise to find yesterday’s tea and coffee. Dapo (as he… Read More
Because I Knew You Then, I Can Listen to You Now
I spent the last week with a friend I had not seen since we were both 15 – a friend I met when we were 6 and in elementary school in Sweetwater, TX. By the time we were 12, serendipity of some wild Texas variety had turned circumstances so that we both showed up in Mrs. Southerland’s English class in Peterson Junior High School, Kerrville, TX. His family had moved to start Gibson’s, an early version of discount stores now dwarfed… Read More
Spirit & Faith
“We change up above, on our surfaces, but there’s that underlying constant that travels through all the changes. It’s something I don’t really have the words for. The only concrete thing I have, which isn’t concrete at all, is that deep soul feeling.” Lauren Kraakevik It’s an overcast but warm spring day in Portland, OR. I’m back down the street in the corner Starbuck’s where the staff have been so consistent in cheering… Read More
Change and Topography
Last year by this date, the EX:Change project had taken me, via Mini Cooper, across about 5000 miles. That’s a lot a lot of miles…and I was only half way. Already and more times than I can begin to recount, I’d been swept into that American road trip bonus: The mix of surprise and awe at another unfolding of landscape – even the stretches I’d seen so many times before. The land of this country… Read More
So, where do we go from here?
“I think change is trying new things and trying to see if something works for the better or for the worse. ” Alcena, HighTech High LA Yesterday, Bob Herbert used his column in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/opinion/09herbert.html?th&emc=th to lift the curtain on the economic numbers behind the ‘average. ’ On average, as reported this past week jobless rates were vastly improved – i.e., decreased. Herbert quotes a recent Center for Labor Market Studies report:… Read More