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A MAY WEDDING AND ONE LOUD, “I DO,” LATER

A May wedding in a Fir Cathedral and still in the woods thirty one years later. Doesn’t every married couple have a theme song? They should, and it doesn’t have to be the same song forever. Just make it a song older than your marriage. And no Beatles. This ought to be the common default:

ASPIRATIONAL EDUCATION GOAL CALLED THE 40-40-20 PLAN, NOT 420

  40-40-20 Plan called an Aspirational Goal, like a wish list From The Oregonian in 2012: 40 percent of the state’s adults with four-year college degrees, 40 percent with two-year degrees or the equivalent, and the remaining 20 percent with high school degrees. It would be an impressive advance, since the four-year number is now […]

DOES YOUR FAMILY HATE YOU ENOUGH? GET BUSY

  Family hate means family values 0.  Are you the right gender? Check early pictures to see if you’re wearing the right clothes. If you’re a guy and your baby pictures look like a girl, relax. General Douglas MacArther wore a dress and long hair as a child. It was the fashion, and it didn’t hurt […]

LEARNING FROM WHERE YOU LIVE, PT2: BABY BOOMER ERA

  The baby boomer era state of mind.   What is there to learn from the baby boomer era? Every passing year the nostalgia grows stronger, but that doesn’t change history. Consider the boomer time line from 1946-1964. The oldest boomers were twenty year olds in 1966. The youngest were twenty in 1984. My cohort […]

PORTLAND RENTS A LIFESTYLE, WHO PAYS THE FREIGHT

  One solution to rising Portland rents   At first tiny apartments got the shit because they went up in neighborhoods with streets jammed by normal parking. Now the micro havens are a solution, a reason for a drop in the rent crisis. And those bikes? Millennials and bikes and small apartments? It happens. Add […]

ANTICIPATION VS PARTICIPATION pt 1: LEARNING

Don’t let anticipation ruin participation.   Here’s the situation: you have a plan to do something you’ve never done before. This is when every past failure shows up saying, “Who do you think you are?” Past success whispers, “You’re ready for this.” Of course we always listen to the reasonable voice, either one. No matter […]

NEXT ANGRY MAN UP IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Preparing the angry White House. How to tell if an angry man moves into an angry White House? It’s not because so many edited pictures show him mouthing either “F” or a “U.” That’s simply bad journalism, a smear, sour grapes. No one carries around a resting “F” face followed by a resting “U” face. […]

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 […]

IS COLLEGE EDUCATION A TRUST FACTOR?

Do you trust people with more college education than you?   The old rule was get a college education and get a good job. A college degree opened doors. A high school diploma used to be the ticket to success. What changed? Boomers used to work high school education level jobs during their summer college […]

KING OF THE HILL IN NORTH BEND, OREGON

People know the place when you say you’re from North Bend. Ask someone where there from and you expect one answer, one place. Then you get this: “I grew up all over the place.” Hear that and know you’ve got someone ashamed of where they’re from. They know the name of their town, they just […]