Cracked Window

Touchy, touchy some people are, especially zealots on the way-out-there religious right. The American Family Association’s news web site has a filter that automatically changes words it doesn’t like. So an Associated Press story from Eugene, Oregon, about track star Tyson Gay was “corrected.”

The headline: “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.” The story:

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

And on it went. Read more here, if you can stomach it. The AFA later changed the story, restoring Gay’s good name.

Maybe the AFA’s on to something. Imagine the possibilities with the name Bush.

Portland is dog crazy. Walk a dog through neighborhoods like mine (Irvington) and you’ll get more oohs and ahs from passersby than if pushing a cute baby in a stroller. The city reportedly has the country’s highest per capita of canines.

Like many of their owners, some Portland dogs display individuality via bodily adornments. Take Olive’s new hairdo, a henna treatment that sets her apart from other standard poodles. She caught my eye today in the pooch procession past my home office.

Summer stars greet the sun today — freshly opened blossoms in my Portland teardrop pond. I’ll wade in and reward my babies with fertilizer pellets. But I’ll be tempted to disappear beneath the lily pads into my past.

I couldn’t sleep recently and switched on the television. Up popped a PBS story about life on an Navy aircraft carrier, which at 2 a.m. I figured would bore me to slumber. I didn’t pay much attention until a sailor explained how much trash is dumped overboard from this floating city every day.

Last year I’d read about two Texas-size floating islands of plastic bags and other trash. Flanking the Hawaiian islands, these vortexes (pictured is the one east of Japan) are twelve feet deep in some spots. Not vivid enough to embed in your mind? Think about swimming through them.

“Shawn is my name,” he says, holding out a small gnarled hand.

Shawn shows no hint that he minds me, a stranger, flagging him down as he zips past my house on his electric cart. He answers personal questions with no hesitation, no suspicion.

I ask to photograph him and the dog perched at his feet. “That’s Pappy. He’s a pappilon. Couldn’t make it without him.”

Tufts of white fluff drift over my goldfish pond, on the way somewhere. Escapees from a cottonwood tree perhaps, fanning out on this cloudless and cool Portland morning. Another pastoral moment deep in the city.

From my neighbors’ century-old linden tree comes an incessant chirp. Beneath the shroud of limbs, I can’t see the bird but its notes are familiar: distress.

A silent bird comes into view, a juvenile Cooper’s hawk on a thick limb. Its head bobs down then up, pauses, then resumes. Each movement frees little white feathers that join a wind-blown procession toward the pond.

Spying me, the hawk lifts off, baby bird brunch in its beak, and disappears through the green canopy.

The other bird, hidden, still chirps, each note now a lament for what’s been lost.

A little publicity goes a long way. In May, I wrote a story for The Oregonian about two Portland men starting a new business, City Garden Farms. Their idea: grow vegetables in the urban yards of people willing to participate in return for a weekly supply of the harvest.

Their entrepreneurial zeal impressed me. Their philosophy impressed me more: grow food on small plots within a few miles of consumers, minimizing the environmental effects of transportation.