David Stairs View from atop the Middle Sister in the west central Oregon Cascades reaches 100 miles north to Mt. Hood. On a recent drive across country I was thinking about what the land must have looked like two hundred years ago. Lewis and Clark described an “Eden” of endless vistas and limitless game, a […]
David Stairs I recently came to the end of a three-year creativity cycle. This usually means it’s time to relax, reflect, and reconsider my options. For me, a great way to do a little lateral thinking is my annual painting chore.
David Stairs Amid the controversy over Guantanamo interrogation techniques resurrected by Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty I read Mark Owen’s No Easy Day, the ooh-rah first person Seal Team Six account of the assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 1st, 2011. Suddenly, the notion of watching Jessica Chastain burn up the screen with her […]
David Stairs “It’s not a blue world anymore, Max.” —Chief Blue Meany speaking to his assistant at the end of Yellow Submarine The aftermath of the 2012 election got me thinking about color. The typical red/blue dichotomy that the media has devised to represent our apparent “bad blood” has been an all-too-familiar-display since Election Day, […]
David Stairs It happened in an instant. One moment I was leaving the school parking lot, the next the ground was close to my face and I could see the EMT’s feet as they worked around me. It was 8:20am Monday May 2. Moments earlier I had dropped my son Luco off at Renaissance Public […]
David Stairs On Sunday February 6th I went to my local grocery store to get some canned tomatoes for the dinner I was planning. The place was mobbed. I looked around, half expecting to see the Lord descend in a cloud of glory, but I should have known better. After all, it was Superbowl Sunday. […]
Martin Scriblerus As the sun comes up on a new day… Chances are good you know them all by name: Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po. They live in one of the most completely artificial environments on earth, or anywhere outside of Disneyworld, the Tubbytronic Superdome. Under the sign of the drooling sun, over hill […]
David Stairs The author, at his homemade miniature golf range, with his Father’s Plymouth Belvedere in the background. I was driving across northern Indiana last year when a wide-tracking station wagon blew past me at 85mph. Once upon a time this event would not have warranted notice. But on this particular day it was the […]
David Stairs Guaranty RV sales, Junction City, Oregon One doesn’t notice it at first, not until you start frequenting environments dominated by parks and resorts. Until then it’s subtle, in the background. But driving through the Targhee National Forest it’s inescapable: the number of RV-related camps and services expands exponentially. In Yellowstone, general elevation +7500′, […]