In June 2011, my husband and I sold our house and most of our belongings and set out for the West Coast. We packed what we thought we needed in our red Prius. We planned to begin in Missoula, head...
I’ve always had an ascetic streak that strives to overcome my love of clothes and home furnishings and food. When Todd and I went on our Twelve Cities, 1 Year tour in 2011, it was ascendant, as...
Here’s a photo from the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle that makes me laugh. I took many pictures of Tyler Tornfelt playing his upright bass for Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, but I...
Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center lies southwest of the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed in Seattle. Located on the western edge of Discovery Park, it overlooks Puget Sound. Years ago, Indian...
She has gray hair and sleeps in the doorway. She fits her back into it, concave, her face out for safety. Sitting on her bedding at 8:30 in the morning, she packs her small troupe of possessions for...
When I was in San Francisco last month, my cousin invited us to eat at Mandalay, one of two Burmese restaurants within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco. I knew nothing about Burmese food...
Two days after moving into the basement of another friend’s house, I unpacked some of the items in our camping box. I wanted the blue polyester napkins I’d had since graduate school and a...
I’m back in Denver now, going to see surgeons and oncologists about my metastatic breast cancer. There’s still a lot of Occupy stuff going on, despite the fact that pseudo-Democratic...
Arcata’s Occupy camp differed from Portland’s in a couple of ways. First of all, it was much smaller, initially set up in the middle of Arcata Plaza and then moved to City Hall...
One thing I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving is the Occupy movement. I have a buttload of photos of the few I’ve seen, mostly of Portland and Arcata. Occupy Portland’s camp was...
I’m sitting in my sister’s house in Kansas City on a Friday night, listening to the train in the distance (last night I heard a great horned owl hooting in the backyard). In a way...
Arcata has a lovely Halloween tradition. Kids and their parents dress up for Halloween and head for Arcata Plaza, where local businesses give out candy at their front doors. I thought of Broomfield...
Is it about Flying Free, any which way you can? Is it about Love? Or is it about Friendship? Even the kelp was wondering at Trinidad State Beach.
Wordstock 2011 played up the theme “America is a story that never ends.” And it was true that stories were in never-ending supply at the Portland literary festival (October 8–9). Tie for...
In Oregon, the surf sounds like a wheeled suitcase knocking along uneven ground. It doesn’t roar, nor hiss. It rolls stones up the beach, almost over my feet, clicking.
In Portland, I decided I had to visit a French restaurant. This craving had started in Vancouver, but I had been putting it off because French restaurants are almost always expensive, and we had been...
Note from 2015: This was originally a page about Portland on the 12 Cities, 1 Year website, which no longer exists. All the pages and posts from 12 Cities, 1 Year, can be found on this site or on...
Go to Samoa Cookhouse for the history, not the food. It is “the last lumber camp–style cookhouse in operation in North America,” and the food is what you’d expect from a cookhouse...
Lately I’ve been photographing a lot with my BlackBerry. It doesn’t have a very good camera, but it’s a lot lighter than my Canon DSLR. I carry it with me everywhere, so it’s...
This post has been updated. See new photograph below. North Coast Co-op just doesn’t have the same friendly vibe as People’s Co-op in Portland. Luckily, there’s Wildberries Market...
Note from 2015: This was originally a page about Arcata on the 12 Cities, 1 Year website, which no longer exists. All the pages and posts from 12 Cities, 1 Year, can be found on this site or on Todd...
One of the first restaurants Todd and I visited while living in Arcata, California, was Annie’s Cambodian Cuisine in Eureka. And the dish I had was memorable: Somlaw Machew Manoss, or sweet and...
I took the picture below in Pioneer Place in Portland on a rainy Saturday night before the AIDS walk. Looks pretty standard, right? Just a landmark, a tourist attraction, etc. The red carpet on the...
The point of Project Grow is to create community for “adults of all mental diversities.” The methods used are farming and making art. After I called up and scheduled a time to volunteer...