I’m finally back in western Oregon after nearly three weeks in the Northeast, visiting with family in northeastern Pennsylvania; two nights and three days up …
Disaster Preparedness?
Sunset here on the fault line that could lead to an earthquake any second any day here in the Coast Range of western Oregon. Maybe because of the acreage, the well, the short bike ride or even walk into town, but I feel safe here…
Cut and Come Again Zinnias
Just went into the garden to harvest the latest bumper crop of zinnias for the kitchen table — this has been their banner year. The radio station that usually plays Randi Rhodes and Air America has been pre-empted in favor of a Seattle Mariners baseball game, OK….
It’s Never Easy
Dateline July 2005—
Who was I reading recently who said life is hard enough even when you have everything going for you and your life is happy and easy?…
Travel Diary: Bronze, Blues, and Brews
Rocking steady blues at a music festival held in a park on the edge of a river in the isolated, interesting town of Joseph, Oregon, in the Wallowa Mountains, not far from the Idaho border. We are friends with the music coordinator so we have backstage passes…
Poetry: Rumi for an August Tuesday
Dateline Summer 2005— Apropos after close to three weeks of having house guests and one more planned: The Guest House This being human is a …
Coast Range Winds
Photo by Dave Croker The weather changes with the setting of the sun here, in this outpost of cloud/sky/tall tree/mud that was once the ocean …
Travel Diary: The Capital of Nowhere
From Jan Morris’s last book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere—words that speak to me, maybe help explain some of what I struggle to understand, this otherness, this search for place and identity and tribe…
Travel Diary: Back from Vancouver, B.C.
Road trip north up I-5 until it ends and is highway 99 again and dumps you easily and with charm into downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. The Vancouver International Jazz Festival was happening while we were there — free concerts in and around Granville Island…
Big Smile Sunflowers
Whoever has the job of naming new hybrids of flowers got it right with this one. How can you not grin when you know you are going to have not one but two Big Smile sunflowers vying for sun along with the chard, pole beans, heirloom tomatoes, callas, zinnas, dahlias…
