Urbanhonking is a website community project launched by three friends in Portland, Oregon. It’s the home of dozens of bloggers and a rambling chat room. Youngish and playful, thick with musicians and independent media producers, these are mostly people trying to have fun and do good in a crazy messed up world. It’s one of the places I’ve been hanging out in the last year. There are talented, energetic people there that kind of slant the way I slant. But they are also about three quarters of a generation younger than I. It’s interesting (to me) to visit there.
Pages from the Urbanhonking Founders
Jona Bechtolt
Mike Merrill
Steve Schroeder
Aug 14, 2007, 10:47PM PDT | 0 comments
There’s this sweet young man at work. Very smart, shy, and gentle, tall. Today we talked. We had an errand and I drove the van with him in the seat along side. I’m old and curious and so is he. He tells me about mathematics and the astrophysics trivia he trades with his grandfather. Suddenly I got a thought and turned to him and asked, “You aren’t going to join the army are you?” And he said, “Yes.” He wants to join the air force, actually, and break codes somewhere back from the enemy lines, maybe deep inside a mountain bunker. Our conversation went along. He’s a good kid. He said he’d be proud to serve his country.
I said I thought the American government was criminal and there were much better ways to serve his country. We spent the rest of the day in silence.
Jun 28, 2006, 10:47PM PDT | 2 comments
The other day I was looking at two large pine trees on the hill above my daughter’s bedroom and realized with pleasure that each was a kind of dirty cone. Later I wondered if that also fit the unique disturbance I offered circling my block: a coiling cone, exactly like the boys from Ohio who arrived with all the Time Worm magazines.
Jun 22, 2006, 10:24PM PDT | 6 comments
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