“Negro” Bill’s Cabin

While I was hiking in Rich Gulch, in the Jacksonville Woodlands in Southern Oregon, I walked a little ways above the former mining works to the area called Frenchman’s Gulch. It got that name due to the numbers of French families who made their way into the area in the 19th and very early 20th [...]

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What is existence

3-inches tall and luminescent,
A dismissive gesture
Hovering above your right shoulder,
I would arrive on the scene
Like Gazoo,
Michel Leiris in one hand and on the other,
Soon,
The more I like it,
The more I think about you moving to Paris.
Then Max Jacob would appear.
We would stride among the increasingly-irrelevant Europeans
A “well-thumbed” copy of CJF Williams’ “What Is Existence” tucked [...]

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The Return of American Monster

England is awful. Yesterday we ate breazelled rat glace with sautéed britches over a bed of splinters.
However, we also saw Measure for Measure at the Globe Theater.
Today we’re going back to see Much Ado About Hanson, one of the Bard’s Hanson series, universally acknowledged to be his best.
However, thereafter we’re going to High Tea at [...]

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American Monster

A citizen of the world and yet, paradoxically perennially American, I remain, your friend.
How do I get myself an office in Paris, approving tones to the rest of the staff?
Columbia as the next step in the interview process everything I had ever seen, read or heard about the place for a Latin American analyst position [...]

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Twittering My Bafflement

If I had the slightest shred of cool to squander (and thought doodaddery was in fact cool), I would tremble at the daunting notion of making the following utterance. Since I’m militantly uncool and effortlessly contrarian, I’ll probably get through it somehow.
I am utterly dumbfounded by Twitter.
So. With Twitter you…tell people what you’re doing, via [...]

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Precipitous Increase in Governmental Filtering of the Internet

According to an article on the BBC news site, governmental increase in Internet filtering (structural censorship) has increased markedly.
“In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25,” said John Palfrey, at Harvard Law School.
Drawing on studies by the OpenNet Initiative, the article publishes the following list of [...]

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This claim has yet to be independently verified

In the last several years, whenever a group or person in Iraq has issued a statement, there is often a phrase I’ve heard on TV and radio, and read in newspaper articles, in magazines and online news sites that accompanies it. Sometimes it comes from reporters and other times from officials.
This claim has yet to [...]

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Daily Constitutional #1: Jacksonville Woodlands, Rich Gulch

Although it’s not a great photo, this place, the Jacksonville Woodlands, is my favorite place to hike. It’s a rink of privately-acquired (though publicly accessible) woods surrounding the historic town of Jacksonville, Oregon, where part of my family is from.
I wrote up my favorite hike there as a sample for a column I was planning [...]

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100 Peaks Over 7,800 Feet in Oregon

Some time ago I came across a great article by Jeff Howbert on the Mazamas’ web site. (The Mazamas are a 113-year old Northwest mountain-climbing organization.)
Want to make a couple of quick bucks? Here’s a bar bet almost any Washington climber should jump at. The conversation would go something like this…After swapping lies for awhile, [...]

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Site Architecture & Strategy

I am occasionally charged by clients with creating the design and strategy for a website they have planned, or with helping them reach a goal toward which I think a website of some sort is the best avenue.
Below is the outline for a site devoted to filling holes in news coverage that I created for [...]

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