Last month I wrote this post, marking my 10-year anniversary of so-called “car freedom.” People who’ve given up cars, or who never had them, often use that word to describe themselves: carfree. Of course, becoming carfree can make one feel more a prisoner of cars than ever, here in a country that practically showers in […]Read Post ›
Yesterday, surveying the empty toilet paper aisle at my local Fred Meyer, I was reminded of this Bible verse I was once taught, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns… Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” One […]Read Post ›
Happy Leap Day 2020 to you, and happy 10-year anniversary of being car-free to me! I can’t let this February slip away without celebrating that it marks ten years that I’ve gone without owning a car in America. Yes, I went from a car I’d named Maggie to a bike named Yoko. I don’t even […]Read Post ›
I’m tripping over novels again. I confess: I took one, but didn’t leave one, at Little Free Libraries everywhere, kind of a lot. Add to that the many $5 all-you-can-stuff paper grocery bags full of books with eye-catching covers & persuasive blurbs, hauled home from Friends of the Beaverton Library book & media sales. (Do […]Read Post ›
This post is dedicated to my siblings One thing I learned during my year off from TV: you don’t miss much. I mean, yeah, on Saturdays you miss SNL’s satirical, if not sarcastic, parodic—but often benign—portrayals of “both sides.” I’ve watched that show for years, so I was like,“Oh no! If I don’t watch […]Read Post ›
The Unforeseen is a reference to a 2007 documentary I discovered today while trying to come up with title for this blog post, which mainly consists of the sequel to my first email to the city about sidewalk closures. They replied. I had to respond. The word “unforeseen” caught my eye because the length of my […]Read Post ›
When I lived near downtown Portland, I used to take “running photos” & post them to my social media. They were of interesting architecture, people, trees, & other city things I saw while out jogging. Now I live about 10 miles west, in the suburbs. My running photos pretty much dried up. Only so many […]Read Post ›
That’s a quote from a man working at the site of a future Beaverton hotel/restaurant combo. But more important than a place for people to stay, considering twenty or thirty 50+ mature trees were sawed down to make room for it, is the future driveway and car parking lot the worker told me would be there […]Read Post ›
Why Urban Washington County Will Never Build a Portland-Style Street Grid, and Why That’s a Good Thing When I sat down recently with three City of Hillsboro planners—Don Odermott, Transportation Planning Engineer & Manager; Brad Choi, Transportation Planner; & Ally Holmqvist, Senior Long Range Planner—I was expecting just to discuss adding painted-on bike lanes […]Read Post ›
Not by searching online. I could only find photos of ripe berries, delicious-looking, fat berries. Berries in their prime. Profile-photo quality berries. Blackberry porn. Berries showing their obviously good side, their night-before-the-morning-after side. Berries that make a person think, “Why didn’t I…” I didn’t all summer, at least, not till now, in the last days […]Read Post ›
Naomi Fast 