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Fake jobs, real jobs, and the Internet of Vocations: Why it’s no longer...
I met this guy on a tropical island in Belize once. Steven. He was very New Jersey, and I feel somehow qualified to describe him as such although I have never even been to New Jersey: pasty skin,...
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A History of Pop Culture Subversion: Nine Food-and-Drink Mascots Who Totally...
Hey, you! Humanoid American of non-specified ethnicity or gender born between the years of 1980 and 1985! Are you suffering from a low-grade case of of pre-midlife malaise? Are you currently jobless,...
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The Illegals: On befriending (and abandoning) a stray dog in Mexico
Mexico. It’s no place for a lonely soul. Back in 2004, I found myself marooned on an island there for 11 months in the company of a rather motley bunch. There were the not-quite-local Mexicans, all of...
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Under His Spell: In Scrabble as in Love, it’s the Little Words that Count
Deep down, I think, what most writers really want is to be loved with words. Forget the short-shrift gestures, the achy-breaky looks, the profound silences. Forget ever, ever leaving anything unsaid....
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Something Silly this Way Comes: Four Signs of the Impending Portland-Pocalypse
First: summer in Portland now lasts till winter. Or is trying its hardest to, at the least. We’re knee-deep in October, and though the leaves are dropping and fattened squirrels are milling about the...
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The Flowers of Cannon Beach, Oregon
I was once again privileged to be the event photographer for this year’s Cannon Beach History Center and Museum Cottage and Garden Tour. Oregon’s coastal landscape is so stunning on a grand scale that...
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Tough Truth for Writers #1: You are not Don Quixote
I am currently finishing up the first draft of my first-ever e-book! The backstory: three years ago, against the advice of many, I left a budding career in journalism to build my own freelance...
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Willing Flesh, Weak Spirit: Are We Being too Hard on Underachievers?
Do you ever fantasize about your own personal Path Not Taken? I don’t mean the path that would have led you to a better-paying career, or a nicer partner, or a different, cooler city to live in. That’s...
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Type As, We Need to Chat: An Open Letter from A Well-Meaning Type B
Dear Type As: I know you’re really busy making the world a better place and all, but can we talk for a just minute about Type A people? Actually, I want to talk, too, about Type B and Type C and Type D...
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My brain is an Asshole: thoughts on living with face blindness
I have to confess something. I have no idea who in the hell you are. At least some of the time, anyway. I’m honestly not trying to be rude, though you might well think me snobbish because I blew you...
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Fall Captures: McMinnville, Oregon
I’ve spent the past two days in McMinnville, Oregon. Wine country, and the town where I attended undergrad. I don’t get back often, and had forgotten how beautiful the fall foliage is around here. I...
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Journalism’s Ugly Little Plagiarism Problem: What we talk about when we talk...
Kirk: “Well, there it is. War. We didn’t want it, but we’ve got it.” Spock: “Curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.” - Stark Trek, “Errand of Mercy,” aired March 23,...
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Dissed and Dismissed: On Missing Body Parts and Writerly Rejection
Being a freelance writer means getting hired (or fired) on a daily basis, and it takes a lot of mental-emotional winding up to deal with the unpredictability of that, week after week. I’ve been doing...
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French (Un)Dressing: Youth, sex, and squalor in the City of Lights
If I say the word, “Paris,” which images come to mind? Quick! Recite them aloud. Did you envision asthmatic accordions and crusty, yardstick-sized loaves of bread? Gerard Depardieu in that one movie...
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Camus, Sisyphus, and Life’s Big Boulders : meditations on the futility of...
Like Camus and Weldon suggest, maybe we've got this particular ancient Greek all wrong … Maybe we are painting him with the colors of our own judgments and self-imposed limitations. Perhaps he is...
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Inky Breadcrumbs and the Forgotten Magic of Writing by Hand
Hey, writer! When was the last time you took a good look at your own hands? I mean, a really, really good long look? Sure, they’re fluttering in and out of the periphery of vision over the course of...
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Writing Resolution for 2015: Let’s All Stop Arguing with Our To-Do Lists,...
Have you ever kicked a fire hydrant? Pleaded with a cell phone’s dying battery? Shrieked mournfully at that spinning, rainbow-colored pinwheel on your MacBook screen that almost always portends the...
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Maybe Someone Wants Your Voice: Pay Phones and What We Gave Up, in 12 Parts
I am working on a collection of vignettes related to phone booths and the pay phones they house. I’d love to include vignettes from others, if you have them. Here are mine so far. Preamble. When the...
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Ripening: Reflections on Fading Youth and Regretful Aplomb
Is youth wasted on the young? Sometime around one’s 30th birthday, to be certain, one realizes with a start the astonishing measure of self-absorption and small-mindedness that has defined one’s first...
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