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BASIC APPRECIATION OF COMMON THINGS

A basic appreciation is important for context.
Things are usually more complicated than they seem.
A brick is a brick, just some fired up mud, until you see them working together.
In the hands of a skilled craftsman, a brick is a jewel.
What else deserves a second look? A towel rack.
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TALKING DOWN TO SOMEONE? WHY

How can you tell when someone is talking down to you?
It might be the clarification questions you ask that gets them annoyed to the point of explaining everything a few times, very slowly.
Or it might their regular way of communicating.
Which leads to more questions, like, “Why be a jerk?
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FALLING LEAVES OF AUTUMN

Falling leaves are the rule of the season.
The only place without a carpet of leaves is a parking garage.
But that’s Oregon, famous for trees.
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toughen up

CANCER EDUCATION, PAIN MANAGEMENT, LIQUID OXY

I am a sore throat expert. It’s a benefit of neck cancer education after I graduated from treatment. Of all sore throats in the history of sore throats mine was the worst, said everyone with a sore throat rated above an 8.5.

Neck Cancer: Part of Oral, Head and Neck Cancer

  OHNC, for oral, head and neck cancer sounds more like a government agency, as in “let’s meet at the OHNC building and go from there.”   Except no one wants to go anywhere near OHNC any time. Speaking from direct experience, No One Wants To Go There. Any Time.   But here we are. […]

GYM RAT CONFESSIONS: FEAR DRIVEN EXERCISE

    Every fitness center, every last one, from 24Hour, to LA Fitness, to Curves, has a mayor. They also have city councilmen/women, department heads, and gym rats. The gym mayor checks their constituency. They spot, they talk. They walk from machine to machine. Gym councilmen / women spread an array of weights and surgical […]

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boomer years

BOOMER DENIABILITY: WE DIDN’T LIGHT THE FIRE

We Know Where The Matches Are Though. Believable generational research relies on strong academic studies, insurance statistics, and the federal census. This triumvirate of detailed minutia creates a colorless picture of the past. Instead of men in grey flannel suits, it looks like grey men in flannel, lines of them. Baby Boomer research is the […]

1947 – The Highlights Of Baby Boomer Year #2

PART 2 OF A CONTINUING SERIES Reality TV is born. Early television finds its mark broadcasting events in the U.S. Congress for the first time, then the World Series. The complaint, “Man, there’s nothing good on TV,” was first heard. Voice of America. Eastern Europe and the old USSR begin tuning into the broadcasts of […]

BABY BOOMER ANTHOLOGY, A LIFE IN COMMON

Every family has a man with so much backbone you’d think he has two of them. Such a man might have been injured on the job and took up another line of work. Maybe that man was a logger who broke his back in the woods and took up ranching. His biggest regret was missing […]

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buckle up

PORTLAND BLOGS: TOP TEN ACCORDING TO RANKER.COM

    What’s it take to make the top ten list of Portland blogs. If you read ranker.com, the answer is be a newspaper since Willamette Week and The Portland Mercury top the the list at #1 and #2.   I’m not complaining that newspapers and blogs shouldn’t be compared but if it was my […]

NYC SUBWAY CHRISTMAS FAIL

Overheard in the mall. “One Christmas fail made me frightened to ride the subway.” I borrowed a suit from a friend, sky blue, for the office Christmas party that turned into the biggest Christmas fail. The only reason it doesn’t count is I wasn’t married or had kids or lived at home. It was me […]

WOODEN BOATS, EARTH DAY, DEPOE BAY, OREGON CRAB. AND BEER

What do you call fooling around with wooden boats? Fun. That’s what Ratty says: “There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or […]

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