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Auntie Pammy Leaves Legacy Of Lennox Lancer Love

  Life transitions can mean so many things. After all other guesses run out, the final life transition is the end. Auntie Pammy’s life ended, but she left a legacy of love that’s hard to ignore.   From the time the news went out I thought of the a meme that said, “Write about what […]

Willie Nelson Brings More To Portland Than His Band

The old guitar picker takes the stage tonight at McMenamins Edgefield. Willie Nelson, all eighty five years of himself, takes the stage after opener Allison Krause.   More important, he’s on the cover of AARP magazine. Why is that important? How many public figures don’t want to talk about age? In a youth motivated culture, […]

Oregon BrewFest 2018 Featuring Famous Mandy Hat

  In a tradition unlike any other, the Oregon brewfest is more than tossing beers down on a hot day. It’s civic involvement. I’d like to think every big beer event carries similar goals.   If it’s only about drinking beer you can do that in your garage, or living room, or backyard. But it’s […]

Climate Change In My Kitchen Is Real

  The first step to take when the air conditioning fails on the hottest week of the year, with an even hotter week on the near horizon?   Stop making things hotter. No cooking. Eighty five degrees in the kitchen with nothing on is hot enough.   Thinking of baking a polenta pizza? Maybe flattening […]

Life Long Learners Get Life Lesson Whether They Learn Or Not

Life Lessons start early for writers, then they spend years figuring it out enough to make a joke, a poem, a short story, novella, novel. Maybe more, like a groundbreaking memoir. If it’s worth learning, it’s worth writing about to drill it in. Like most children of my generation, baby boomers, I had it made […]

Humanities: Way Of Life Or Waste Of Time?

  What comes to mind when you hear the word Humanities, when a friend says they’re going to college to study Humanities?   Ask around and get back to me. I did it and came up with a few examples.   1-What are humanities?   2-Aren’t those the hippopotamus cousins that live in the Florida […]

Historical Debris: A Record Of Time

    Most museums have a bar they set for accepting historical debris, artifacts, one of a kind deals, and whatever an important person touched or signed.   Paul Revere silver, the last breath of Thomas Edison, the Magna Carta? No one is making any more of that stuff, so that’s a bar too high. […]

Wild Life And Life In The Wild Not The Same

  Wild life is what you might see on a safari, or a drive from Portland to Bend. Or your front yard if you live in the woods where deer come to the door.   Living a wild life is not the same. Living wild takes so much energy. Being wild is a tiring option […]

NO KITTY GENOVESE FOR YOU

Would an Oregonian save Kitty Genovese? A few years back a little boy in Portland, Oregon was accidentally left on a train platform. He made it home safely with his dad. A young woman stayed with him until his father returned, just a bystander who saw what happened and took time to care. Those few minutes ended happily; it […]

How Older Men Express Themselves When No One Is Around To Call BS

  I knew older men who’d been everywhere, done everything, and could drive any car ever invented.   They’d had every job from sales executive to mailman, to factory worker, to fighter pilot in three wars. Sometimes it was true.   One of them said he was shot down and imprisoned on a Japanese held […]