JP Johnson teaches Cherokee culture

On February 25th Tara and I attended the monthly meeting of the Mount Hood Cherokees, who hosted cultural specialist JP Johnson and COTTA Technical Assistant Ryan Sierra, both visiting from the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Community Organization Training and Technical Assistance (COTTA) Program was formed under the request of former Chief Chad Smith when it […]

In the shadow of a volcano

Despite having lived around mountains all my life, or perhaps because of that, I remain in awe of the awesome sweep of snowy mountain slopes that rise from valleys in the way that volcanoes do. I am simply not able to drive along our highways and not feel an emotional surge of admiration for volcanoes […]

D.C. via Tunisia

The Occupy! movement began with Mohamed Bouazizi and spread across the world.

Christmas 2011 – Part II

A deep river of lava poured through the valley following a volcanic eruption around 100,000 years ago.

Christmas 2011 – Part I

I’ll suggest you simply add the words, “…and it was damn cold” to the end of each sentence from here on out.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many […]

Surround yourself with beauty

Beauty often saves my life.

How Do I Let Go?

Arno and I are getting to know each other still. And we will continue to, of course, for years to come. He has seen that deeply personal messages sent originally to him will sometimes end up in a public forum. He said he’s realizing that <in his words> I am a writer, and a writer […]

I’m Not Graceful

My mother’s health failed rapidly, once we finally heard the diagnosis of cancer. And I have had multiple stages of not dealing with any of it gracefully. This is probably because it has come on so fast. Just when I make peace with a stage, we move on to another shocking phase. In a meeting […]

Question Mark

My mother is dying of cancer. From the looks of things, combined with my extreme lack of experience with cancer, or of death, I think she has anywhere from a few days to a few weeks left. Or maybe a month, but I hope not, because this is no life. I wish I had written […]