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LAURA ROSS-PAUL’S PORTLAND KNOCK OUT

A View From The Froelick Gallery. By now Portland baby boomers understand the meaning of an invitation. It’s a give and take thing. If someone invites you to attend their Easter church service you don’t expect Jesus to show up. But He does. If you invite someone to watch a sporting event, you don’t expect […]

WHAT DO WILLAMETTE WRITERS AND THE PCC CLIMB CENTER HAVE IN COMMON

According to his son Zane, Ken Kesey’s goal was making today different than yesterday. Was yesterday different from the day before? Today makes the cut if you’re not doing the same things as yesterday. It seems so easy, but there is a penalty. Log two similar days in a row and you’re off the bus. […]

Powell’s Books, Phillip Margolin, And Worthy Brown’s Daughter

Listen to a man say he writes but only took one college writing class. He admits to grinding out a C+, then says he’d like to talk to an MFA fiction expert one day to learn how writing really works. The same man tried writing historical fiction for thirty years. He took one history class. If the main question of history is, […]

Richard Sherman, The New Muhammad Ali?

He’s Got A Good Start. Baby boomers have known The Greatest since the early sixties. Cassius Clay told us it was him. Even when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, he was still the greatest. Richard Sherman channelled some Ali in his famous interview with espn talker Skip Bayless. While Bayless is no Howard […]

Starting At Anti-Drug Quarterback, Kevin Sabet

From wiki: In February of 2013, Salon Magazine referred to Kevin as “the quarterback of the new anti-drug movement.” Welcome to Oregon, player. Hope you enjoy this stop on your platform building tour. Mr. Sabet, a Cal Berkeley grad with a PhD from Oxford understands his audience. When the subject is weed, he gets it. Isn’t Berkeley famous […]

Author Jill Kelly Speaks To Willamette Writers

She Tells Her Truth, The Writer’s Truth, Inside The Old Church. What do you buy a know-it-all for Christmas? Not an encyclopedia. What do you give a writer? A membership to the Willamette Writers always works. If that was a present to the writer in your life, then the first Tuesday in January would have […]

Downton Mountain Or Just Another English Oregon

Fans of one of the most watched shows in the world revel in the drama of English manners. Either that or they enjoy seeing landed aristocrats marrying American money to save their house. The English lords don’t call it, ‘taking one for the team,’ but the results are the same. If Monty Python is your sort […]

Doing Time, And It Ain’t a’Changin’

Any front page Oregonian news featuring a baby boomer is good news for boomerpdx. But there’s a problem. It’s about a retired man moving up in his career, a man with a sail in the winds of progress. That’s not the problem. Baby boomers drive entrepreneurship. You can’t walk into a coffee shop without seeing gray hair […]

Boomerpdx Remembers Historian Thomas Vaughan

Most baby boomers who’ve worked for important companies never meet the big guy. You apply, go through human resources, or the personnel office, meet the department head, co-workers, and go at it for the next few decades. Thomas Vaughan met everyone before they got with the Oregon Historical Society program. He made it personal. How […]

JFK: The Great Baby Boomer Daddy

From ‘Leader of the Free World’ to ‘Most Powerful Man On Earth’, American Presidents carry many names. Kids raised in the 1950’s and early 60’s saw a remarkable change in the office and added a new title. Out went Eisenhower who looked like everyone’s grandfather. In came Kennedy who looked like their dads. The ‘Great […]