I guess one of the most depressing things about getting older is realizing that, just like Grandpa used to say, (or, in my case, my crazy grandmother, Etta…), since one’s youth, things really have indeed gone downhill. Growing up in Oregon in the 60′s and 70′s was a little bit like living in the socialist [...]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeXrMRf25U8 It makes no difference what anyone says about flying these days because you just have to suck up all the airport rules, or don’t fly. Tell me about it. Having flown last week-end, just before the little terrorist wannabe tried to detonate something between his legs on a flight into Detroit on Christmas Day, [...]
I saw my VA health man the other day, to talk about my meds – including weighing the pros and cons of going on a cholesterol-lowering drug; plus I asked for an eye exam and had blood drawn. Everything looks good. I’m in the pink. On the way out the door, I got a couple [...]
Since I’m going to LA next week, I’ve been dropping into the LATimes website more often, and scrolling past the usual horsemen of LA apocalypse, like wildfires and, well, rain, it seems there’s always a story about another water main break, some of them quite spectacular. Of course, this depressing phenomenon is familiar in many [...]
Several items in the news both here and nationwide remind me that in today’s America, we will only throw good money after bad; spending precious funds and actually getting something for them in return is considered risky, wasteful, and a woefully inappropriate response to our straitened circumstances. And how, pray, did our circumstances become so [...]
Atwater Place, a condominium project in the South Waterfront district near downtown Portland, will tomorrow be auctioning off 40 of the 150 or so units it has failed to sell, at prices starting at a bit less than half of what the 60-odd original buyers paid just two years ago. It’s another victim not just [...]
It was inevitable, really. After nearly ten years of a dominant and domineering political party governing with an iron fist, unfailingly promoting the most violent, punishing, and ruthless answers to every question, Americans have become very skeptical and cheap about doing anything other than hurting people, even themselves. Cynical ploys to convert inchoate resentments into [...]
It isn’t every day that Paul Krugman and John Boehner agree, but when they do, everyone should take notice. The Golden Mean in question? The Stimulus Package isn’t enough, by a long shot, to revive the economy, and the hag is throwing in with this odd couple to concur. Of course, our prescriptions are different; [...]
When my crazy grandmother, Etta, used to say that the “commies and the unions are ruining the country,” I dismissed it as I did most everything else she said, as probably close to the opposite of the fact, which turned out to be a pretty successful formula over time. First of all, in Portland, Oregon [...]
Having just exited the bar car on the unusually deserted Coast Starlight, I’ve returned from a trip to Seattle, to work on the penthouse garden owned by my friend Bob. It’s always enjoyable going up there; reading on the train, fussing over the now beautifully mature garden that I designed and planted ten years ago [...]