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GOOD TIMES GOING FORWARD

The good times ahead aren’t for everybody. They may not be for the people who voted for the good timing man. Getting on toward seventy this year, I expect to hear all about it. What’s it going to sound like going forward? You’ve heard it before:

CURIOUS WRITERS SNIFF AROUND

Curious writers hook you and they know it. What’s their proof? You turning the page or scrolling down to read more is all the proof needed. What are writers curious about? A check in the mail? Sniff this:

LOVE SOMEONE LIKE IT MEANS SOMETHING

“Love someone, anyone, just not them.” How many times have you heard that? Never? Me neither, but it feels like that’s the rule. As long as we love someone, anyone, we can all rest easier. But, what if . . . ?

WHO LIES ABOUT ABANDONING NYC

I spoke to a woman recently who moved to Portland Oregon from Brooklyn New York, just casual conversation in a Safeway line. We had something in common since I moved here from the same place, though she didn’t start in North Bend Oregon. She was big city all the way with no perspective on the […]

PORTLAND FEVER: 1980-1990

    After walking around Manhattan and finding the perfect neighborhood, I wanted to find that neighborhood in Portland. When I did it started Portland fever.   Northwest Portland in late spring reminded me of Greenwich Village on a smaller scale. Like most everything compared to NYC, smaller is normal. Smaller buildings, smaller stores up […]

PORTLAND 1980: HOW TO SETTLE IN A NEW TOWN

    One song stuck with me on the bus ride from NYC to Portland 1980: The second verse of Lodi, by Creedence Clearwater:   I rode in on the Greyhound I’ll be walkin’ out if I go I was just passin’ through Must be seven seven months or more Ran out of time and […]

MANHATTAN STATES OF MIND ACROSS AMERICA

    Does anyone see a Manhattan sunrise and feel the power of the Big Apple, the urge to go out and take a big bite? Or a Manhattan sunset at the end of another satisfying day sorting chicken and chicken sh!t.   Manhattan promised you could make it anywhere if you could make it […]

YOU KNOW YOU MADE A WRONG TURN WHEN…

How often do we get warnings when we make the wrong turn? The #oregonstandoff took a wrong turn or two in the past month, but they’re not alone. How to respond when you learn a wrong turn could be a life saver? A wrong turn happens on foot, in cars, relationships. When things go wrong, […]

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 […]

ON WRITING WELL, pt. 1

One idea is to write a lot, just not about writing well. As a youth I enjoyed reading about writers and their lives. Their work? Not so much. Writers’ biographies were more interesting than anything they wrote at the time. With the idea that living like a writer would make a better writer, those biographies […]