A journey of 1000 miles (actually my journey of 1414 miles) begins with me driving my car, from the Pacific Northwest to the American Southwest. While I enjoy the road, the scenery, for two or third days, I will be understandably preoccupied with reestablishing my life in New Mexico, after 3 and half years in Oregon. Outside of the regular logistics of setting up a home, settling into a new job, getting new car license plates, and new drivers’ license, I am keen to register to vote with the local county clerk’s office – in time for the November mid-term elections. Continue reading →

The season of Autumn has changed since the days of my youth. This is because I was born/raised in the Midwest but I have spent most of my adult years in the Southwest – and now the Northwest. My memories of the fall season are brushed with the deep rustic colors of endless tree-lined streets in the city of St. Louis. So despite, the muted autumn, the Southwest, or the evergreen autumn, the Northwest, of my adult years, I continued to experience, mnemonically, the bittersweet decay of the Midwest.
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Column 08/2018

Since Portland resembles a black and white photograph (see above photo, that I took one November morning 2016), October to May, it is easy to reminisce about the classical black/white photographers of the mid-century. Before the advent of digital photography, prior to 25 years ago, there was the physical or traditional process of photograph-making; that is, non-digital cameras, light meters, tripods, film, negatives, and photographic paper. Continue reading →

Column-07/2018

We get an early start – there is free admission before 10.00a, this time of year (April), at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens in SE Portland near Reed College. The nearly 10 acre bucolic gardens/woodlands features a riot of Rhododendron and Azaleas (members of the same genus or the same class of flowering flora) as well as a variety of trees, plants, birds, and water fowl. Continue reading →

Column 05/2018

A solitary day, autumn, several blocks north of downtown, in Oregon’s capital, I am on my way to work, while driving southbound on liberty street southeast, which is a one way passage into downtown, and while navigating the grey cotton light; the houses and structures on both sides of the street are witnesses to the three lanes of heavy traffic that flow by .. Continue reading →

The unveiling of the recent official portraits of President Obama and the First Lady, for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, has been cause for a vigorous discussion (goggle ‘official Obama portraits’). The First Lady’s portrait was painted by Amy Sherald, an artist residing in Baltimore MD, while the President’s portrait was painted by Kelinde Wiley who is based in New York City. Continue reading →

Poetry is a different form of writing. In the context of a broad oversimplification, of the three basic forms of writing (there are more than three), that is, non-fiction, fiction, and poetry, each form can operate within its own unique modality. In general, non-fiction writing exists within a fact-based or research-based narrative structure, while fiction is a modal arc of explication or of storytelling, and finally poetry is an ephemeral snapshot of an idea or a person or a place or some compelling condition. Continue reading →

Column 01/2018

The sensation of birds, migratory waterfowl overhead, can vivify a leaden gray day in autumn. I image these birds might be the same ones that friends, in the southwest, encounter overhead, although weeks later. Migration, long-distance migration, is an annual seasonality movement of these birds, north to south, an instinctual process, that we can witness in the northwest USA and the southwest Canada. Waterfowl migrate because of shifting conditions of food supply and climate. They tend to return north in the spring for nesting and breeding purposes. Continue reading →

journal notes, october 2017 – Oregon

contrary to photographic evidence

the bodies of trees are fully alive

ever conscious, ready for discourse

+++++++++++++++++ Continue reading →

In 2008, on a tenacious summer day in sunny New Mexico, I strode into a Saturn automobile dealership and I left with a new Saturn Astra XE. The dealership was a sociable place to do business with but unfortunately the Saturn Corporation ceased operations in 2010. Continue reading →