Two weeks ago, in what might have been an improbable and random decision, I moved to Corvallis, Oregon. I have been spinning my gears, doing nothing useful, for quite a while, and so I decided to make a move. Despite the situation with the pandemic, I had to do something. What I am going to do, I don't know. 2020 is such a mess that any achievement or movement counts as a wild victory. From March until August, I had not had an in-person conversation with a person I knew of, except my mother. Things were at a dead end. So I came here.

Corvallis is an almost irritatingly wholesome place. And, I realized in my first week here, a pretty flush place, after being in Eureka, California. Corvallis is a weird mixture of laid-back hippies and German engineering. Lots of health-food and book stores, music venues, bars, and also the parks are all immaculately well-kept. The buses run on time, and are free. I was starting to settle in, despite the unpredictability of the future.

This is a story you may not know
And it's banned in pickle town
It's about a peppered pickle
That became a circus clown ...

Carl Joseph Roberts Oct 2013

It seems reasonable to assume that most readers are aware that fermentation by yeast produces alcohol. Fermentation by lactic acid producing bacteria (of which there are…

the sound of

traffic,  as the night sky surrenders to day and commerce

overwhelms all 

the sound of 

sidewalk musicians,  a benign exchange of coins for

a few moments of heaven 

the sound of 

geese, flying overhead in precise formation

hundreds of wings,  all moving South  …