Cracked Window

“You just changed the course of my son’s life,” I tell Phil Bondy.

Phil’s a young guy pounding away on a full drum set at the corner of Northeast Alberta and 13th in Portland. Atticus, who turns three in less than two weeks, is enthralled.

The occasion is Last Thursday, the once-a-month event when the stores and galleries on Alberta stay open late, artisans and vendors hawk their stuff on the sidewalk, and a festive atmosphere envelops everyone.

The media feeding frenzy over tiny carp performing pedicures strikes me as gluttonous as the fish themselves. Then again the story’s a talker, an offbeat news morsel. (How many bad food puns can I stuff in these sentences?)

At the gym today, I couldn’t escape the story. It beamed from two TV screens. But I wasn’t going to end my workout just because watching the fish dine on Kathy Lee Gifford’s feet and thinking about her calluses as food made my stomach churn.

Many people want simple answers to complex situations. They don’t care that the truth is a many layered thing, defying reduction to slogans and sound bites. What’s happening in Iraq is a crucial example.

With that prelude, I recommend two commentaries on the U.S. troop surge, an issue that John McCain muddles and twists for political gain. If only he would read the commentaries. They’re online here and here, but the man who could be president doesn’t know how to use a computer.

It’s hard not to spot a woman riding a bike and wearing a skirt. I mean that strictly from a safety standpoint. After all, it’s a benefit given how cyclists and motorists in Portland struggle at times to share the road.

Don’t believe the safety bit? You shouldn’t.

Nothing stops more people along our precious corner of Northeast Portland than these towering July beauties. I sit on the porch, unseen by passersby, and eavesdrop on the oohing and ahhing.

Luckily, the flower thieves haven’t struck; some regal lily blooms were snipped last summer.

He’s no wacko. This friend of a friend is rational, educated, and well read. Personable, too. Yet his vision of the world’s immediate future, though short of apocalyptic, is bleak.

We’ve met several times in small social settings. At the first I learned he was an avid proponent of the Peak Oil school of thought and liberally shared his views: the world is beginning to run out and we’ll soon see the effects, not just in soaring fuel prices but food shortages and, eventually, economic collapse. He spoke not grimly but with the determination of someone certain of the road ahead. That was three years ago.

I’m at the gym today, listening to the Avett Brothers‘ CD Emotionalism as I pant and sweat. CNN is on the TV several feet away. I vow not to read the closed-caption transcription of John McCain’s speech and look away. But my eyes betray me.

McCain excoriates Barack Obama for not supporting the surge and brands him as an opponent of “victory.”

First thought: Karl Rove is playing a larger advisory role in the McCain campaign than reported.