North of Santa Fe, in the mountains, is the town of Chimayo. There is a Catholic church there that is the site of pilgrimage of people for two things. One is the site (they believe) of the discovery of a crucifix buried in the earth, …
July 1995. Mark Wilkerson, trombone picker and memoirist. The Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee has been a favorite trip for all of us at The Army Band. We fly out on Saturday, have a free evening, march in the parade on Sunday afternoon, and fly …
About three years ago, Torie, a colleague at the campus library I worked at suggested that in April we use a white board on the foyer of the library to put up a poem a day. April being National Poetry Month, that was a no …
Our house is old for Portland, having been built in 1892 by George Martin, great-grandfather of the Beatles’ producer, and at that time the local manager of the San Francisco Bridge Company. That company had been hired by the City of Portland to build a …
My research for the Malheur takeover has led me into the morass of public records. In theory these are documents created by public agencies which should be available to the citizenry. Some official material on the Malheur occupation is available, but most of the reports …
The Quest for Public Records (May 20, 2021, Updated 26 May) Read More
Portland has thousands of homeless people in its borders, most living in tent camps on city sidewalks, undeveloped land next to freeways, and other corners. The previous mayor declared a “Homeless Emergency” which, best as I can tell, means camps will not be broken up …
It has been difficult for me to get a grasp on what has been happening every night in downtown Portland, so I talked with a friend, Caleb, who had participated in some of the demonstrations, and he agreed to show me the ropes. We met …
When she was a girl, my mother (Dolores) lived on the family farm adjacent to the falls of the San Antonio River in a town called Falls City, which is about 60 miles downstream from the Alamo City. I grew up hearing a story of …
It had been a fairly uneventful summer for us since our early vacation in the San Juan islands. You may remember an earlier story about our neighbor Lydia, who put in a backyard pond and stocked it with koi. Naturally, the local raccoons thought this …
Updated 29 May 2021. Remy is a village of less than 1,000 people, and lies 60 miles northeast of Paris. In August 1944, a flight of American P-51 fighter planes flying over the town spotted a German train pulled up to the town depot. They …
