Super Chickens
Position: SCRATCHING FOR FEED With 10 hungry beaks to feed, you’d think taking care of chickens would be a chore. Turns out it isn’t. The little peckers have grown on us over the past couple of weeks and now they’re …
Category: Underway
Green Acres
Position: 45°42’18″N 121°30’38″W Oliver Wendell Douglas is a name that will strike merriment in the heart of anyone over the age of 50. As a lawyer Oliver was an unhappy man. As a farmer, he found his true calling and …
Bend, Oregon
Position: 44°03’32.6″N 121°18’54.6″W Compared with the Byzantine Empire, the city of Bend, Oregon, has had a short history. For millennia indigenous peoples lived, gathered and hunted the wide plains and foothills surrounding the “Towarnehiooks” river. They also fought each other …
Transitions
Position: 44°3’31.4″N, 121°18’43.1″W In films, a good transition heralds a change without confusing the audience or disrupting the narrative. Sometimes that’s a simple cut from one speaker to another. Sometimes it is a slow cross-dissolve, where one scene fades in …
Tucumcari
Position: 35°10’51.4″N 103°43’34.5″W America’s answer to Timbuktu is Tucumcari, a small town in eastern New Mexico. Before Route 66 was the main road west to California, Tucumcari had already gained notoriety. Founded as a construction camp for the Rock Island …
Putting the Fun in Fungi
Position: 46°11’37.5″N 123°58’28.5″W One of Oregon’s autumn fixtures is the annual Portland Book Festival. Hundreds of readers head downtown and take in the perspectives and wisdom of both local and internationally known writers. Staged interviews are congenial and leave plenty …
The Advantages of Being Foreign
Position: DRUG-INDUCED AMBULATORY COMA I have been a foreigner for much of my life. It has its advantages. Let me clarify. By the time my dad landed a decent job with tenure at the University of Chicago, he had dragged …
Hoedspruit and Home
Position: 24°20’42.8″S 30°57’56.8″E Hoedspruit is not pronounced “hoed’ sprout” as you might imagine. Rather it is “who’d’ sprit”. Such are the variances between modern Dutch and Afrikaans (broadly based on 400-year-old Dutch). Twenty years ago, Indians in India were still …
Kruger Vignettes
Position: 24°23’44.1″S 31°46’29.4″E Visiting South Africa is a bit like entering a gated community. Once inside, safe behind the security guards and barbed wire, you can leave reality behind. In Kruger National Park, the tourists are almost all white, and …