In March 2016, I was asked to by the then-director of Alberta Main Street to come up with a proposal for haiku that could be etched onto art benches here and there throughout the Alberta Street arts district neighborhood….
San Marzano Tomatoes Are in the House…
A September Sunday of rain on the long holiday weekend. Harvesting the San Marzano tomatoes at our community garden plot after giving a tour of the garden to passersby…
Neighborhood Poet!
My poem, “Record-breaking Winter Storm Tableau,” was featured in the April 2023 edition of Concordia News, the monthly neighborhood newsletter. A PDF version of the newsletter is here: concordiapdx.org/concordia-news/concordia-news-downloads. The italicized lines in this poem are from Emily Dickinson’s….
A Humble Curbside Memorial
I first stumbled on this small portrait of George Floyd in September 2020, after the upheavals of the Portland pandemic summer/protest summer. It sat by its lonesome on a curb in the Woodlawn neighborhood here in Northeast Portland, making a quiet statement (I thought) every time I walked past…
Betwixt, Between
There were clouds upon waking but blue sky triumphant behind and around them. Then a wind that kicked up as I sat in my upstairs knotty pine room and tried, with some desperation and silliness, to concentrate on words. Afternoon was errands, a Ladybug coffee meet-up, and then back here to regroup.
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Art, Sun, Gardening
Alberta Art Hop Day. The Al Forno Feruzza bus had its completed paint job on display (this is the in-progress version) as we wandered by, up and down the closed thirty or so blocks of Alberta Street, our neighborhood, our neck of the Portland woods….
City Days, City Scenes
I really feel (finally) like I live in a city this past week. This in spite of just coming in from digging out spreading day …
Things I Saw Today…
A woman jogger with stocking seams tattooed down the backs of her bare legs, bows at the bottom near her ankles. A man walking along 42nd, not far from Fremont by AJ Java, taking off his sandals to walk in bare feet across Prescott Street…
Nancy’s Virtual Vacation Post #1
I feel like Richard, Ronna, and John in DC are all getting one up on me re: this virtual summer holiday so I thought I’d better come up with something of my own to offer/throw into the mix. Let’s see. What did I do on my summer vacation?…
It’s a Small World After All
Over the past few hot, holiday days, we’ve also heard “Pop! Goes the Weasel” and “You Are My Sunshine”—competing ice cream vendors, who knows? This is life in the city, post-Baghdad on the Columbia 4th of July festivities around the corner and down the street. It’s been an enlightening number of days
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