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ARMY ENLISTMENT? HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Me: Today is my Army enlistment anniversary. Did you remember.
Wife: It’s also the day my Mom died.
Me: It is? I mean, yes, it is, and also my anniversary.
Wife: I’m glad you remember it.
Me: And there’s another thing to celebrate on the same date.
Wife: What?
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BOOMER BLOGGERS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. TOO CLOSE?

As a cohort of boomer bloggers, I read all about them.
From posts and opinions, to ABOUT pages, we’re all about challenges and adventures, the places we’ve been, places we’re going.
Take this picture for example. It’s from the Portland Art Museum page.
Does that big golden ring look like an adventure, some kind of portal? Yes?
What do you do when you see a portal? Jump in.

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WANTED MAN vs NEEDED. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE?

If you’re waiting for a wanted man to make life better, you’ll be waiting a minute.
This man was a one-float parade around Silverton during my last visit.
You could hear him from blocks away with his booming sound system blasting AC/DC.
When I left, he followed my car out of town, then turned back at the city limits.
He was either a one float parade or a motor escort service.
Either way, I asked myself: Are there town characters everywhere?
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ONE PORTLAND JOURNEY: MINE

I got off the bus at the end of my Portland journey, only to begin the real deal.
This is where I lived after breaking up.
My usual move after a break up was moving to bigger and better.
For instance, I broke up in Delaware and moved to Brooklyn, NY.
Here, I broke up in far SE and moved downtown Portland.
This building had a lot of break up apartments, so I was in good company.
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CLASSIC PORTLAND RIVALRY

Social media Portland isn’t for the weak of heart.
It’s either heaven on earth, or a hell hole from the underworld sticky goo.
If you showed up recently, things are looking better; if you’ve been here a minute you’ve seen the ups and downs.
Lastly, if you’ve lived here your whole life? Uh oh.
[Read More…]

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toughen up

CANCER SURVIVOR ESSAY STRUGGLE

    Stories about a cancer survivor are an inspiration to all cancer survivors. Even a cancer survivor essay about the trauma of being a cancer survivor holds important hope.   Pam Parker gets into it with a cancer survivor story in the Chicago Tribune.   It’s not pretty and sweet and all dolled up […]

CANCER ROOM: BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES

The biggest motivation for writing a cancer room memoir like ‘LICKING CANCER, The Full Response’ is paying tribute to the people I met in there.   From staff to patients, it’s a team focused on the same goal, until it goes off the tracks, and it does in one way or the other for everyone. […]

WORK ON HABITS, COMPULSIONS, ADDICTIONS, NOT GOALS?

Work on habits, not goals? What about goal oriented people?   Long term goals don’t happen overnight. You achieve them by doing the little things. For instance, you decide you’d like to run a marathon. Do you find the nearest race with the closest date and just sign up? Some people do, but what would […]

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boomer years

THE SOUND OF CIVIC DUTY

Ask An Academic Professional About Civic Duty And Listen Hard. You won’t hear about their civic duty or your civic duty, but the shared community. Might not be your community either. Keep listening. Civic duty is more than boundaries and lines drawn on a map, they say. An academic pro, the teacher, counselor, the administrator, […]

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 […]

MESSAGE TO AGING MILLENNIALS: STAND TOGETHER

Eventually you figure out where you stand. How does that work? Look around. You’re not standing alone. Even when if feels like no one notices, they do. What they notice is context, where you are, and the nearest identifier. The biggest thing is if they decide to join you. You might call it selfish to […]

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buckle up

LIVING UNDER A PORTLAND CHERRY BLOSSOM CANOPY FOR AN AFTERNOON

    Portland cherry blossom between Burnside and Steel This side of a drone video the best place to see the whole run of the Portland cherry blossom parade is the on ramp off Front to the Steel Bridge. Just enough space and height to see the beautiful curve of nature. It looks deserted at […]

SUPERIOR ARIZONA AFTER APACHE TEARS SEARCH

    One of the most impressive rocks I’ve knocked out of a rock wall? Apache tears.   Just another rock until I held it up to the sun for my own solar eclipse.   What’s going on in there? See through rocks in Superior Arizona.

HISTORY ROAD CHALLENGES FROM BOOMERPDX

The current state of history road challenges. Westies, people living beyond the Mississippi, and beyond the Great Divide in the Rockies, live with problems of modern America, along with the rash of chain stores you can’t escape. If a town like Staunton, Virginia, like most towns in Virginia, have centuries of history behind them, why […]

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