Ed told me that he hardly ever gets a call from men after they lose their wedding bands — no, it’s their wives, he said, who track him down to see if there’s any way he can turn the beach upside down to bring the lost ring back.  I stopped asking questions for a moment and then the friendly carpenter, who lets his ladder idle as often as possible to search for a needle in a “wet haystack,” asked me how many men I knew who are willing to drive to a gas station for directions after they made the wrong turn?  And, yes, he’d helped several wives surprise their spouses...

It’s such a beautiful word– in sound and in meaning.  And its essence honors my father, who died today, one year ago, as well as it honors my precious mother. Both wanted to be remembered by all the love and the helping hand they offered so often — and by what they left behind in their exquisite and meaningful art.  That was who they were.  Shaloha. The bulk of my father’s artistic legacy is settled now in New York City, his home of homes —  in such good company.   Shipments, first from Oregon, and, more recently, from Hawaii, brought his images, books, publications,...

“Grattis” to Alice Munro for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, this year!  I once met a Nobel Prize-winning economist, during an awful winter snow storm. He was the patriarch of our next door neighbor’s family —  when we were mainlanders — and his 18 year old grand-daughter truly deserved a medal, too, for her exceptional kindness and  generosity, when she plodded through the snow and gave us the keys to her snow-ready car, so we could plow through the messy streets and refill our refrigerator.  Emily’s grandfather, Daniel McFadden, won the Nobel Prize in...

I was on the beach this morning,  just in time to catch the opening act of a new enactment of the war of the genders.  Two very young boys were working on on what could have passed for a sleeping octopus.  The taller boy was barking out work orders in a menacing tone. Still wet and half-wrapped in a towel, I surrendered my front row seat to see what was going on. “We gotta beat them,” Cooper told me and pointed to two small  girls about 20 feet away.  Then he shook a tiny crab under my nose.  “Afraid of crabs?”  he taunted.  I held my ground politely and dropped by to...

I wrote this story several years ago, when my family chased after an elusive harvest moon.   We found it — way up high in the sky.  So watch out — here it comes again.  2013-style. Looking Up All the way back from the gym, our necks stretched out of the windows to preview the guest of the night.  But no — rooftops, electrical lines, clouds, nothing more.  Had its appearance been canceled? It’s a bit early, the sky is too light, some celestial tie-ups, my husband explains.  His own impatience surfaces as he looks up and squints. And just when we planned it all so carefully this...

With all due respect to the state of Oregon — most particularly to its Symphony, its homey groceries, and my wonderful friends who I met calling/canvassing/laughing on so many great campaigns and in “classrooms” —  all of that Everything that happened when I first parachuted in as a 31 year old Manhattanite …  until I finally made it here to this precious Pacific island, three decades later —  With all due respect! I lived in a beautiful house we built in Washington County, Oregon (97007) almost as many years as I did on the East Coast. I changed diapers there, my...