A two-dimensional map never seems quite so useless, so starkly ignorant of the hard reality of the our planet’s pimpled surface, as in that instant when the only thing sparing you from a nasty tumble is the toe of your right boot.
The epiphany arrived while I was lounging in a well-padded chair in the Eltrym Theater, watching Spider-Man soar around the Statue of Liberty, attached by gossamer threads.
Oregon touts itself as a leader in the campaign to combat climate change, but I find it difficult to take the state seriously in what is, to be sure, a matter of considerable importance.
Like most people, I’ve been desperately searching each day for any tiny sliver of joy that I can find. And, after 649 days of “pandemic-ing,” I’m happy to report that I’ve been mostly successful.
A little more than six years after the cataclysmic smoke cloud towered over southern Baker County, fouling the summer air and turning sunsets into blood-red spectacles both beautiful and depre…
When I read the word “worst” near the word “candy,” with only one other word separating the adjective from the noun, I had to look more closely.
I had been searching in vain for the Christmas spirit but my quest ended in the instant I saw the tree, glistening in the glow of a streetlight in the last hour before dawn.
Peter Jackson has fulfilled my dream as a nearly lifelong fan of The Beatles, and I’m furious at the man for doing it.
They’re called poachers but it seems to me that they’re just common thieves.
Government bureaucrats are known for many things but humor, I submit, wouldn’t make the top 10 on anybody’s list.
Rural Oregonians have long counted on local pharmacies deeply rooted in their communities for quality service.
I owned a pair of the original Air Jordan basketball shoes, but at the distance of more than 30 years I can’t recall how I managed to acquire them.
Imagine this page was blank except for one question: “What if there were no local reporters?” That was the front-page question posed by our friends at Pamplin Media last week.
The man was stepping out the front door of the home where I grew up, and as I walked past on the sidewalk I felt a twinge, a slightly painful vestige of possessiveness.
Sen. Ron Wyden has proposed adding over 4,700 miles of waterways to the federal Wild & Scenic Rivers System in Oregon. With half-mile no-touch buffers, the “Rivers Democracy Act” will appl…
I stepped onto my back porch on a recent evening, long after the dark had come, and I winced slightly as you do when you expect to encounter a draft of chilly air that slinks down your neck.
An email that starts with the word “nudists” is likely to stop my right hand before it can click on the delete icon.
The most dangerous activity most of us engage in on a daily basis is one we generally consider as routine as brushing our teeth.
I was muttering curses at my computer the other evening and it occurred to me that life was slower, but rather less annoying, when the word “megabyte” meant as much to me as the Cyrillic alphabet.
I’ve been unusually distracted recently.
We were walking in a neighborhood in Ellensburg, Washington, when I waved to the woman who was standing on her front porch.
I never realized how big one acre is until I tried to get across one that was determined to stop me.
I understand why many people bristle at the notion of the government telling them to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The boys were high school boys, a distinctive subspecies, and one inclined to moderately obnoxious, but generally good-natured, behavior.
I read “obituary” in the email and as always when I come across that lonely word, unattached to any name, I winced slightly, as if anticipating a possible blow.
I zipped the fleece jacket snug to my chin and still I shivered.
There’s a certain majesty to a forest in the wake of a soaking rain — the jewels of water clinging to the ponderosa pine needles, the fresh scent of damp bark, the discarded diaper molding amo…
I opened the book’s cover and almost immediately became lost in a world which no longer exists and, for me, never did.
The rabbitbrush seems confused about which month it is, and it happens that I feel a trifle uncertain myself about precisely where we are on the calendar.
I’m no fan of the current war on “misinformation” — if anything, I’m a conscientious objector — and one of the reasons is the term’s pedigree. Although the Grammar Curmudgeon in me freely admi…
I was sitting on an examination table at an urgent care clinic in Timonium, giving my history to a physician’s assistant. An hour later, she would call me to confirm that I was positive for COVID-19.
I walked through Baker City’s Pythian Castle with what I suspect was the bemused expression of a person who is seeing something that doesn’t merely exceed his expectations, but lies well beyond them.
I have of late taken to preparing for my early evening stroll around town by dousing my T-shirt, and my hair, from the cold tap of the bathroom faucet.
I adore air conditioning.
I recently finished a landscaping project that was about 150 million years in the making.
I love the mountains but I don’t trust them.
Starting in July, EO Media Group is launching Go! Magazine, a weekly arts and entertainment publication designed to do exactly what it says — get readers to “go” out and experience all of what…
I remember, and more clearly than most childhood episodes, the day my dad explained to me the concept of guilt by association.
The boy and his dog, that classic pair of pals, made for the sort of scene that I suspect would have pleased Norman Rockwell’s eye and perhaps prompted him to daub at his palette.
I am fascinated by the reality that anyone, in contemplating a pile of plain old cornmeal, could conceive of something as magical, as truly life-changing, as the Frito.
In the pantheon of patience, Job boasts the ultimate reputation.
The rain woke me at 3:26 a.m.
My kids, who normally act as though a five-minute car ride is a more awful punishment than banishment to a Siberian gulag, recently pleaded with me, as I pulled into our driveway after a 100-m…
I’ve been pleased recently to see that the fact-checkers at The Associated Press, who never refuted so many statements and with such apparent glee as they did during the Trump presidency, have…
I didn’t believe a patch of blackened tree stumps could shock me.
I ought to have known that the solution to the COVID-19 vaccination challenge would involve doughnuts.
President Joe Biden incurred the wrath of some people earlier this week when he said he was “praying” that the jury in the Derek Chauvin murder trial would reach the “right verdict.”
I decided last Sunday that my arid, ailing lawn needed a good dousing, but my enthusiasm for completing this simplest of tasks withered rapidly.
You might scoff at the notion that you haven’t heard enough about COVID-19.
In theory I could tally how many times Chris Collins’ byline has been published in the Baker City Herald.
For the first time in my relatively uneventful life I was truly entertained by the chance to smash a fly with a rolled up magazine.
Until I read the book, I would have claimed, and with considerable confidence, that my feelings about the Holocaust were rigid.
The problem with leaves is that they don’t.
When I got home from work the other day my son Max, who’s almost 10, rushed into the kitchen with the sort of exuberance, and agility, that I haven’t been able to muster for many years.
I learned at least one thing from the second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump.
The email’s subject line had the intended effect of causing my eyes to pause as they slid down the list of new messages in my inbox.
