The Road Home
Friendships to refresh, holiday rituals to observe, every year lately I go back to Portland during the Christmas holidays. I go to check in.
Read moreBGirdner
Visitors From the Cold
The weeks and months I spent in Denmark came back over me. The hours spent with Isaac’s father in a café called “Bankeråt,” or Bankrupt, over tangy holiday beer. The ebb and flow of good conversation.
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The Great Game
The new version of the old Great Game is being played between a former Soviet intelligence officer and a former TV entertainer. Ukraine is a piece in that game.
Read moreLAX and the Freedom to Travel
The airport itself remains a portrait of world humanity with faces of all hues and characteristics standing outside the terminal, freshly arrived from distant lands and now searching for a way out of the airport. They are often maneuvering huge suitcases stacked high on carts. Within the chaos, trains of airline attendants, perfectly coiffed, trim, in matching uniforms, smoothly, quickly weave their way.
Read moreLady Justice
What is happening to the DOJ. And why it is not more talked about.
Read moreMoth and Flame
The media’s daily concentration on the president’s tactics and language, his tweets and his rallies, leads to the death of overarching analysis. In that bright orange glow, the strategic and methodical undoing of social legislation stays in the shadows.
Read moreWestern Pennsylvania
Entering a courtroom has always seemed a bit like walking through the doors of a theatre. There are actors who take their positions and say their lines. A director sits up high. A kind of Greek chorus comments on the action with a verdict.
Read morePittsburgh
Pittsburgh has a different feel than any of the other American cities I have gone to in the course of building a news service. It is old, yet modern, busy but not too much, hip but not overly so. It is a steel city that lost its steel but found its way.
Read moreYoungstown
Accomplishing chrysalis in reverse, the court in Youngstown was caught at the moment it was metamorphosing from a traditional box-on-the-counter paper access court to a delayed access efiling court, a terrible sight to behold.
Read moreIshigaki
Just like the drink it holds, the flagon is emblematic of Ishigaki, as the islanders are considered according to themselves to be too laid back to get much accomplished. They drink and talk and play music, especially the samisen, a three-stringed instrument that has evolved from a 13th century Chinese ancestor.
Read moreSlot Canyons
The hike was over steep and smooth volcanic outcropping and on for a couple miles to where a set of footholds in a smooth face allowed the nimble to climb into the slot canyon. I had seen plenty of pictures of the glorious red sandstone rendered by desert rainstorms over thousands of years into ovals and curving, liquid shapes.
Read moreWorth the Trip
A road trip to one of the national lands the president is doing his best to desecrate takes you to a place that is vast, stark, empty and stunning.
Read morePalace and Heartland
While pols and pundits remain in the thrall of a conspiracy story about Russia and Trump, a race is being run out in the heartland that will decide the course of the nation.
Read moreTour de Force
With the day’s first cup of coffee in my hand, and about to take a swim at a Hilton in Sonoma County, I happened to walk by the FOX screen in the lobby and saw our ever-present president delivering his two-hour CPAC stemwinder. I paused. And then I was hooked.
Read moreGot His Mojo Workin’
While he is undeclared and maybe too far left for all of America, Courthouse News staff in Texas see a candidate who rocks the house.
Read moreThe Moon Over the Ridge
The vines had decided spring was in the air. And if I waited much longer at all, the sap would be rising in them. And then trying to prune the shoots is a form of mayhem, with the life-giving liquid dripping rapidly from every cut.
Read moreOde to the Past
As the year comes to a close, we can look back on a tumultuous and, in the long run, calamitous year. But we can hope to see a glimmering of better and more just times in America in the New Year.
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