Coming to Portland recently was the easiest move I’ve made in a…well, let’s say it’s been my easiest move ever. It’s a friendly big city, which is rare. People reach out and encourage new ideas, helping out with advice when asked, jump at the chance to collaborate over coffee.
 Also, I’m finding that Portland lives up to [...]

Today while walking up SE Hawthorne in Portland, I was greeted on the sidewalk by Dylan, who works against global warming by working for Greenpeace. Dylan tells me there’s a global warming gathering that Portland-area OnwardOregonians might like to know about, coming up this weekend.
+ Saturday, Nov 3, from 2-4 p.m. Greenpeace is hosting a gathering of concerned [...]

The first thing to do when faced with a situation racing wildly out of control, such as a massive wildfire roaring down a canyon road toward you, is to evacuate. You can drop everything that isn’t alive and regroup later.
My son Eric is the youth pastor of Malibu Presbyterian, the church that was one of [...]

Life is either light or dark. The other night, my therapy-dog-in-training Conor and I walked the main boulevard near my Portland house and got to see what street people see: social injustice. You’re either in or you’re out. At least eight people along the 10-block stretch sat on the cold sidewalk outside busy, well-lit, Friday-night-crowd restaurants. The sidewalk [...]

During our town`s bomb scare yesterday morning on one of our busiest days of the year — Astoria Regatta with its Grand Land Parade — there was a bit of a … traffic problem. Actually you might call it The Astoria Perfect Storm. Parade floats and their handlers effectively blocked one main route through town [...]

Over here on the North Oregon Coast, the way mega-companies get through any untidy community-concern roadblock is to use a very large bulldozer, both literal and figurative. Sure, community hearings are arranged. But then the hearings may have been done without letting the media know about them (a technical oversight). One hears about the hearings [...]

We have two groups that meet outside Astoria City Hall at 5 p.m. Fridays, on either side of the busiest street in Astoria, about 50 feet apart so they don`t have to actually look at each other across the road. On one side stand the older guys waving huge flags and signs that say, “SUPPORT [...]