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DREAM STREET: 82ND AVENUE PORTLAND OREGON

  Dream street? 82nd Avenue? Somebody wake me up? No, it’s not a dream, but a street of dreams. And those dreams came to life.

WHAT I WANT AND WHAT I GET

Did I want a big fluffy dog? Noooo. But here we are and she’s the best darn dog I’ve ever known, heard of, or seen. Better than Bullet and Rin Tin Tin? Waaaaay better. She’s my dog, and just what I want. But I didn’t know that before hand.

SOLVING PROBLEMS ONE WAY, (and the other)

I started solving problems early with a traffic court appearance. I was sixteen and charged with speeding. On a Honda 100 motorcycle. It wasn’t known for speed. What was the problem?

WORLD CLASS WINE WORKING OVERTIME

This is a glass of wine, world class wine. Mmm, mmm. It originally comes from the Hawks View Winery in Sherwood, Oregon. Today it came from my basement, racked with the other wine in the house. If you’ve heard of  Sherwood, it’s probably from reading about Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. Is it world class? […]

GET TO THE WRITING POINT

People who feel like their head might explode in the middle of the night because their brain won’t calm down need to get to the writing point. No writer has ever felt the internal pressure in their mind because they’ve already gone over things. Gone over, and over, and over, and over. Let me rewrite […]

HOW TO GROW A SENSE OF WONDER IN PORTLAND OREGON

Most of the time a sense of wonder in Portland means a painful memory from the days of old, of Meier and Frank downtown and the Georgian Room for tea. The place had a special aura during the holidays. The painful part? It hasn’t been there for years, Meier and Frank and the Georgian Room, […]

NO KITTY GENOVESE FOR YOU

Would an Oregonian save Kitty Genovese? A few years back a little boy in Portland, Oregon was accidentally left on a train platform. He made it home safely with his dad. A young woman stayed with him until his father returned, just a bystander who saw what happened and took time to care. Those few minutes ended happily; it […]

PUBLIC GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH?

The idea of doing something for the ‘public good’ is a high standard in America. Why? Because the public, of which we’re all a part, is so broad. What’s good in one place is not so good in another, but no one talks about the ‘public bad’ as a goal. Or do they?

GREAT WRITING: WHEN WORDS MATTER MORE

From Google AI on current sentence construction:   Basic Structure: Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) Subject: Who/what the sentence is about (e.g., Matt). Verb: The action or state of being (e.g., eats). Object: Receives the action (e.g., pizza). Example: “Matt eats pizza.”

NOBODY FROM NOWHERE? SO FAR SO GOOD

Some people lament being a nobody from nowhere. Not me. I’ve heard enough big shots complaining about their loss of privacy to the point of living like a shut-in. “I used to be able to go out with no one noticing. Now every time I leave the house is a big event.” Who wants to […]