To Kenny, I’m Stanley. It’s been a year since I last tried to correct him. When he spots me in the neighborhood, he yells, “Stanley.” Sometimes he does a little dance. Sometimes he says he was hoping he might see me. He always carries his Bible...
I’m in the middle of a transformation, and so is my neighborhood. Yesterday I was trying to negotiate the seemingly endless construction with my usual calm confidence. (It helps to cloak myself in those words when facing danger.) At one particular intersection,...
Most Memorial Day weekends, you can find me at the Baker’s fishing cabin on the Deschutes River in Central Oregon. The river roar is constant. Ospreys fish from the same tree. The stand of yellow irises by the dock are almost in bloom when we arrive. Bill makes...
I want to be honest about my more troubling emotions; about my reactions to difficult situations that aren’t easy to resolve. This week I attended a meeting with a group of people with various disabilities. I was one of 20 attendees joining a commission focused...
When I first received my diagnosis, I told myself that if I was okay with it, every one I loved would be, too. Perhaps a naive notion. Possibly verging on wisdom. Or maybe just self-preservation. I wanted to move to acceptance so that others could as well. It was too...
Change has been my constant companion. At first, misunderstood. At times, unwelcome. At last, recognized, though I have not always been. Recognized. Especially on returning home after a considerable absence. It comes in waves, it seems. The awkward handshake. The slow...
If I have to go to each and every new eatery in my neighborhood to conduct access audits and negotiate deals, I will, readers. I will. Down here in the Square, Rain Shadow Meats opened last month. I tracked the new construction with great expectation. We resident...
Handmade pasta crafted with love and devotion mere blocks from my condo. And me, an Italophile. How to resist? I shouldn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t. But I did have to tackle some obstacles: one steep hill, two awkward steps, and a whole lot of stubborn...
“What are you, his mother?” the paramedic asked my wife. I was in a stretcher in the back of an ambulance outside Boston on a frigid night. It had taken a lifetime for them to maneuver me down the steep and tight back steps of my parents’ colonial,...
Spring is in full swing in Seattle. I see reminders everywhere that renewal is possible. “That’s me,” I say when I wheel by one of the London Plane trees that line Occidental Mall, somewhat scarred but ready to burst forth with new leaves. I live...
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