Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.
– Robert Hunter
Not far from here, in a parallel dimension, people are listening to the greatest hits of Zed Whimsy. Come gather round for a little musical testimony.
“Be kind to strangers,
lest they’re angels in disguise.”
verse from Shakespeare and Company song
Offbeat questions arise while minding my bookshop in winter on the Oregon coast. Like — why does our calendar year begin with a month named after a double-headed deity who looks backward and forward at the same time?
The Golden Globes will always hold a special place in my heart. Nineteen years ago, I was at the Beverly Hilton working as a Production Assistant on the 50th Annual Golden Globes. It was a night of glory. And it was my first Hollywood job. It was the first time the curtain came down for me – or, rather, the screen. You know the one I mean. The one between audience and performer. The one that separates us, the appreciators [...more]
In 2006, some 600,000 homeowners living in coastal areas that insurers consider high storm risk saw their insurance policies cancelled or not renewed. This includes coastal areas stretching all along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean from Texas to New York. Allstate Insurance totally pulled out of Florida, leaving 650,000 policy-holders without insurance. A 2007 study by Environmental Defense showed that new policies in Miami, Florida are now costing residents 500% more than previous ones. In March 2008, State Farm, the last major insurer in coastal coverage, pulled out. It no longer will write homeowner policies within a mile of the Atlantic Ocean.
Just over a month ago, our movie theater in Astoria added a 3D projector. Finally, coastal cinephiles need not drive the 69 miles to Hillsboro to see the splendors of multi-dimensional cinema (and I’m mostly talking about the visual technology, not the depth of story or theme). And, boy, is it worth the extra three bucks in my opinion.
Ye olde memory banks get jolted by holiday gatherings. This season I experienced a festal flashback while communing with the extended kin.
There I was, reclining with fellow elders in epicurian bliss….
At this ancient Solstice time, when the great trees are honored (with the conifer in the living room), and the power of fire and return of the sun is invoked (with the burning of candles and the splashes of electric lights on our houses), the birth of Jesus, great dissident and rebel, is celebrated by many. In our present era of mind-numbing consumerism, increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, obvious collusion between corporations and the state, and bold attacks on our constitutional rights by the government we pay taxes to, [...more]
I want to tell you a story. It’s from a book called The River Midnight. The book takes place over the course of a year in a Polish shtetl toward the end of the last century. It is about the bonds of family, friendship, religion and culture. It is the story of four women who were childhood friends, the wild ones from the village who danced and dreamed in the forest. One of them went to America and gave birth [...more]
‘Twas the perfect day for an off-season wedding. Clouds blanketed Cannon Beach with sufficient wetness to justify rain pants. Enough bluster was present to dispense with hair styling.
Family members and friends huddled together on the sodden sand south of Ecola Creek. For the first time in my life, I was asked to officiate a wedding. The betrothed couple said they wanted me, even though I’m not an ordained anything, because of my core commitment to marriage.
Give me this moment and write, asks Natalie Goldberg, in “Writing Down the Bones” – ok I can try that. Just write about what’s on my mind.
“But what have I been thinking about?” I ask myself as I search for a writing topic.
To be honest I was thinking about panty hose. Yes, panty hose –I remember when panty hose first came out on the market and I remember my first pair of panty hose. I begged and pleaded, stormed and fumed, cajoled and demanded. Finally, at the age of 12 my mother wore down and said I could have a pair. I think she finally relented because it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to. I’m not sure now what the big deal was, for her or me. Perhaps it was because panty hose were a pretty new thing at that time or perhaps it was because I wanted to grow up all at once and she didn’t want me to or perhaps it was because we were both just stubborn. I don’t know. But I remember that first pair of panty hose, I got to wear them to Mass.
It snowed the winter I moved to Cannon Beach. When I made my final trip to the Oregon coast the day before Christmas, it looked like the beach in winter dressed for the holiday season. Twinkle lights and mock snow drifts surrounding shop windows, haloed street lights tousled with circled boughs of cedar; the scene had all the visuals of a winter-set romance or a cozy mystery prowled by a granny sleuth. It looked like Christmas all right, but my spirits failed to lift and all I wanted to do was park, unload the boxes of books, take my dog Banjo for a stretching walk and hold to my plans.
Thanksgiving cheer and inspiration came from an unlikely source for me this year – “A Very Gaga Thanksgiving” which aired on ABC Thanksgiving night. And while I can in no way be labeled a ‘little monster’ (as she calls her true fans), I admit to being wooed by this 25-year-old superstar.
The curtain has not only risen on the new Rosie O’Donnell talk show on OWN – it’s disappeared. And now there’s no better source of cheer, community and astounding good will on daytime TV. Allow me to explain.
On the first show, Rosie came out from behind a curtain and did some standup comedy before taking questions from the audience and interviewing her guests. That format has stayed the same, but the curtain hasn’t been seen since.
Occupy Portland is in its very uniquely Portland end game and it’s time to think a little. Because of some family health issues I have only been marginally attached to the flow of Occupy events, so my reflections are… pure. Something that the Occupy Movement is not. Occupy is made up of wildly diverse groups of people with different needs, different agendas, different experiences and the complete spectrum of identities. No generalization takes into account the true diversity represented. But [...more]
Can stories help us remember who we really are? Can they offer fresh hope for our lives? ABC’s new series Once Upon A Time thinks so, agreeing with some of my favorite storytellers: Jesus, Charles Dickens, and Walter Brueggemann.
It was Jesus who once said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ That came to mind while watching Once Upon A Time last week because the whole premise of that series hinges on a child.
Today is cool and crisp, with a peek of sunshine, and there’s probably 300 people in the park surrounding the Vancouver Art Gallery(VAG), where Occupy Vancouver has existed since October 15. There are about a hundred small tents, from one-to six person size, mostly distributed around the periphery of the encampment, with a so-called “gated community”(not really, of course) of tents in a sheltered area behind the Food Not Bombs(FNB) kitchen tent, which puts out meals fifteen hours a day. There are larger tents for “information”, “media”, “medical assistance”, “peacekeeping”, a”tea house”, and a very well-stocked lending library with comfy sofa and chairs, where I borrowed a copy of Manda Scott’s Boudacia–to take back on Saturday, of course. Hand-written posters everywhere remind us of the shenanigans of the banksters and the governments, the evil and waste of the illegal wars being waged against poor people all over the world, and how these crimes are impacting every one of us.
I’ve been reading books, articles and e-mails about complexity, the economic and political situation, and technology for years now, trying to get a handle on what is going to happen to life on earth in the near future (while I might be alive). I get all kinds of mixed signals, and I seem to change my mind almost daily about what it all means.
Near the center of Athens you can walk through large tracts of public land covered in rocks, ruins, wooded areas, and dry-land vegetation. Go in one direction and you’ll find the Hill of the Muses. It’s a cool place to take a break from news of global economic decay.
My family wandered there one afternoon during a recent trip to Europe. On the hillside facing the Parthenon we could hear the roar of 100,000 citizens outside the parliament building, protesting cuts in worker pensions, reductions in the minimum wage, increases in taxes, and other bloodletting demanded by eurozone financiers.
This piece was originally published in The Chinook Observer during October 2011.
One of my nieces was getting married. Yes, we got a “save the date” postcard with the young couple’s photo on it, but no, there was no formal invitation with details. We had to go to a website. At a family get together beforehand, however, it turned out that none of us had taken the time to go to the site to get directions to the farm near Mt. Angel where the wedding would be held—and “us” included the bride’s mother and older sister. And, Google maps (as usual) was pretty vague when providing directions to a rural location.
First published in The Daily Astorian 10/25/2011.
The title of this column comes from a poster I was given by a friend from the British Commonwealth. The words were a civic maxim during World War II. If fascists had crossed the English Channel, posters like the one that now hangs in my shop would have graced windows throughout the U.K.
The essence of this maxim was repeated recently while I was in Rome and Athens. It was shouted when panic spread beside the Colosseum during a demonstration with tens of thousands of people. It was spoken near the foot of the Acropolis during a protest with 100,000 participants, when violence erupted between policemen and provocateurs.
