Billy didn’t bat an eye and proceeded to give the flack a highly polished and brief lecture on the First Amendment and freedom of the press. The Flack had no authority to determine what qualified as a legitimate publication. If he didn’t let Billy pass, he’d be violating Billy’s Constitutional rights (and mine) and adding another unwanted twist to this controversy. Read More
Psyche combs the clearcut for lost souls
After the cutters were finished, 50 acres of forested watershed near our home was pretty much gone. Familiar habitat was replaced by strips of trees surrounded by stumps, slash, and orderly heaps of logs — cash crop to grease the skids of our consumption. Read More
Some kind of crazy heroism
Logging and commercial fishing are neck and neck in a race for most dangerous occupation in America. During some years, as many as 118 loggers die on the job, a death rate nearly 30 times that of a typical workplace, with most of them killed by falling trees. Read More
Women of the Wakonda Auga
The women are the river, the meandering, silent river, the quiet riffles near the bank, where a severed arm raises a finger to the sky. The men are everything else – protagonists, loggers, action, jobs, bluster, egos, wind, and rain slanting down from low, gray skies. Read More
I am a Logger’s Daughter
I come from people that were unwilling to give up or give in to the confines of a place or an era or a lot in life. I come from people that were willing to take on the challenge to fight for a way of life, to persevere, to stick together, to be brave. Read More
Kesey’s Coastal Trip: A Field Guide to the Addled Earth
Ken Kesey, the man himself, loomed large during my Eugene years – an elder prankster, still generating a buzz and mild mischief around almost every worthwhile corner. To me, he seemed nearly as venerable, nearly as emblematic of the town’s gestalt and vibe, as the very university buildings that he ambled past – a man just as steeped in his place as the place was steeped in him. Read More
Correspondence
This is a strange time, is it not my Queen? With the valley shrouded in pooling fog, the days have darkened and the Elk have been proving themselves increasingly difficult to be tallied. Their hooves have forked in three directions: where the Root drinks from the Vein, where the Tongue burrows into sand, and where the Stones From Afar circle The Forest’s edge. [Read More]
Paris Beat
The carefree time knew no tomorrow. Camus affirmed the moment, “could live in a tree trunk…happily.” Feeling alive was enough. See red-brown leaves, smell roasting chestnuts, warm brandy coursing down your throat. Above all, the unboundedness, freedom to roam or stay, party all night or leave for Spain this afternoon. Splash sheer existence into your bearded laugh, grunting “Yess!” [Read More]
After the Wind Rises? (movie review)
When I hear the name Hayao Miyazaki, I think of clouds. Like the kind we see in Cannon Beach on magical evenings after the sun has set, when gold lines our horizon and pink rims giant, puffy pillars. I think of long grass, like on our sand dunes, bending gracefully before mounting winds. And I think of flying images from his films: robots, planes, pig pilots, cat busses, girls on broomsticks, skyscraper-tall gods walking through forests… [Read More]
The Value of a Good Story or Feeding the Wolf Within
Wintertime for me has always been a time of introspection and recounting. I grew up in Alaska, in a culture dominated by the traditions, myths and stories of the tribes native to that titanic place. Stories were the textbook and sustenance of many long winters for me. Oral traditions from all over the world are rooted in histories so long that they cannot be mapped.
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