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Showing posts from October, 2017

Seemingly Simple

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We hear the phrase all the time: It was a simpler time.  Things were very different back then.  Back then can refer to anything from 20 to 100 years ago these days.  But, for the most part, we do live in a different world than mere decades ago.  One easy way to compute and visualize the differences is to simply turn on the TV.  As a culture, we seem to be fond of looking at family sit-coms from the 50s and 60s as a way to gauge social change.  The black and white images of squeaky clean 50s families with perfectly coifed mothers and business-suited fathers seem ridiculous by today's family units.  Take the color out of TV and we find a land where nobody is gay, neighborhoods are lily-white, and the language...oh the language is ever so proper.  These Pleasantvilles weren't always so peaceful and perfect.  But the arch of early TV sitcoms is both predictable and benign compared to today's fare.  Sometimes, while watching TV these days, I imagine myself a 10-year-old again wa

Hang On

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I I was all set to sit down and write about what an awful year this has been when I encountered quite a pair in this coffeehouse.  They aren't really an odd couple but he is quite a bit younger than she.  I'd say about 50 years. A grandmother and grandson...most likely.  But just his reactions to her voice changed my mood.  He has dark blonde curly hair but is obviously of mixed racial parents.  She could be most anyone's grandma, but an older middle-class white woman will suffice.  They upset my apple cart of gloom and doom.  Lots of babbling, smiles and that kind of innocent curiosity that can hold anyone's attention.  I admired how she kept talking to him all through their time together.  In the end, I got a modest good-bye wave and a last glimpse of that smile.  Mood elevating to be sure. How easy it is to stop thinking about a President that lies more often than not and the recent wild firestorms that have decimated much of the Northwest I love when you have th

Walk a Few Miles

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That this country, the USA, is deeply divided is not news.  We've been that way since the inception.  In fact, it's in our DNA and we value that diversity of viewpoints.  What is new, however, is that the divides seem deeper than ever before. Countless stories surface of people not being able to talk to one another.  If the sight and sound of political commentators and policy wonks talking over one another, no, shouting over one another is any indication, we are in new territory.  So how can anything move forward in an environment of so much verbal toxicity? Empathy is the only answer, in my view.  Say it again, empathy.  People need to walk a few miles in the other guy's moccasins, as native Americans would say. There are many ways to walk those miles, too.  That was the theory when I went through my training as a VISTA Volunteer.  For two weeks, we altruistic, recent college grads lived in the homes with families that had very little.  Poor folks.  People who lived in

Mother May I

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Aside from the plethora of tragedies that converged this past week on this culture, a couple of homegrown phenomena crossed paths in front of me.  While the Mayor of Portland was telling the media that he's aware that the new name for his city has become "Tent City," I finished the novel Mary Coin by Marisa Silver. Portland has a serious homeless problem.  Parts of the city resemble the "Hoovervilles" of the 1930s. Tests and makeshift lean-tos pockmark the bridges, underpasses, and trails surrounding the many beautiful parks.  It's the underbelly of the American Dream and it won't go away.  Now, the problem has morphed with the addition of broken down RVs that are often towed to a city lot for destruction.  It's not uncommon to find a person's belongings inside these decrepit vehicles. But then, living on the side, or by the side, or underneath or on the margins is nothing new.  In fact, one of the most iconic photographs of all time, Dorothea