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Interregnum
Autumn is usually when a deeper, bereft sadness and sense of uncertainty and out-of-jointness has tended to surface, it’s just the time of year when hard or stressful things have tended to accumulate over the years and leave a heavy residue. Usually I don’t get through it without buying a few school supplies (though I’ve…
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just passing through
I recently attended an online conference that was enormous, but the online format at this time allowed for a much more paced digestion of the content and general exposure. The experience has been valuable in understanding more about the structure of the field and academia, the current questions and the work being done. Some of…
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Things one carries
Some injuries almost a decade ago forced me to reevaluate how I move in the world. It was a small miracle by an extraordinary surgeon and a lot of PT work that I’m able to walk again. Coming that close to losing my mobility and the access it allows compelled me to vow to use…
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Coviding
What a time to be alive. For me covid days have meant looking longer and harder at things both outwards and inwards. The collective pause has brought a space to stand back into, to assess in ways one usually reserves for the change of year either annually or personally. When covid started, I was embarking…
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Renaissance – maybe.
For better or worse (I think largely better) the covid-19 interval has spurred such a plentiful offering of online arts, cultural, and intellectual events. For someone like me who exists on some plane outside of large institutions but who holds interest and curiosity, and who is also in an active phase of attempted self-integration and…
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Mount St. Helens
Last week I went to see the Mount St. Helens exhibit at the Portland Art Museum during the typically – but that evening especially sparsely – attended Friday evening open hours. Just afterwards, the museum closed for at least a month but now probably two in order to help flatten the curve. Because this means…
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Streaming feature
The truncated 2020 Portland International Film Festival featured a film by Patricio Guzmán called Cordillera of Dreams. Though I had planned to go, I didn’t due to a cold and Coronavirus isolation. However, I was able to find his two other documentary films which began his trilogy capped by Cordillera: Nostalgia for the Light and…
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Death, Love and German
How did I become interested in German? I’ve never been one of those savants who have an “ear for languages” or accents, though I’ve always been able to assemble strong vocabularies. Nor do I thrill to the hard work of constant repetition and drilling. Nonetheless, German drew me. This started with my Oma. My great-grandma,…