Author Archives: jthere

Portland Take 1 I am 20. I’m getting a great education at a state university in a wonderful small city; I have lots of friends and fun – the hiking and ice cream can’t be beat – yet I’m curious about life outside a big public university. What if I experienced one of those smallContinue reading “Portland Take 2”

Pause: noun: 1. a temporary stop             2. temporary inaction especially as caused by uncertainty. verb:     1. to stop temporarily 2 : to linger for a time The pause heard round the world came to our front door this week, when the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was put on hold after 6 people developed bloodContinue reading “Pause”

May we awaken from the illusion that we are different. – Thich Nhat Hanh The flowering trees are all at peak bloom right now, the magnolias and also the dogwood, the cherry and apple blossoms; the forsythia…it is a perfect Springtime moment. April always gets me thinking about how fleeting and ephemeral beauty is, aboutContinue reading “What Lasts”

This week I’m following two unfolding stories, one hyperlocal and one national. A block away, my favorite tree is budding. It’s a big magnolia on the small front lawn of one of the houses on Hilltop Place, which is not at the top of a hill, but is directly facing a cemetery. The tree seemsContinue reading “Bearing Witness”

Among the gifts and challenges – the two so often are intertwined – of living in a family like ours is that you experience things you otherwise never would have imagined.  Take having a year being stuck inside your house, a year of lockdown that we all have just survived – you likely couldn’t evenContinue reading “Twighlight at the Silberling Museum”

I became a vegetarian when I was 15, back when kids — at least kids from the type of conservative-leaning suburbs where I grew up — didn’t do that too often. I was teased relentlessly (good naturedly, but teased nonetheless) by kids at school. My mother’s friends bought me cookbooks because they were so worriedContinue reading “Chickening Out”

Fathom: to penetrate and come to understand I cannot fathom how anyone — let alone every single Republican –could vote against a bill that will help eradicate child poverty. And yet it passed, Biden signed the Covid 19 Relief Law, ending a trajectory that began with Reagan in 1981, with the longstanding false notion thatContinue reading “Fathom”

“Your track record for surviving your bad days is 100 percent.” I read that in a great interview with Amy Poehler in this past week’s NYT Magazine, a quote she attributed to Steve Harvey and a lot of tic tic videos, cultural references I admit to being only marginally familiar with, although I’m interested inContinue reading “March”

A poem for My Dad and Aunts On their 282nd Birthday Together  And now for some really good news, which after this past year we sure could use. Joe, Minna and Betty are 14 and four score, Hard to believe that you’re now 94! Although if anyone has any doubt The Guinness Book of RecordsContinue reading “A Birthday Poem”

Ease: The state of being comfortable: such as a : freedom from pain or discomfort b : freedom from care c : freedom from labor or difficulty d : freedom from embarrassment or constraint :e : an easy fit Among the qualities I try to cultivate in my morning meditation is ease of well-being, whichContinue reading “When Ease is Hard”