stories

She was almost exactly as wide as she was tall, and (apparently) humiliated by it. The first words out of her mouth were "I used to be really thin." She whipped out a picture of herself as a teenager to prove it. Mind you, she was 45, happily married, the mother of a little girl and a college freshman. What [...]

Wow. That was fun. Just got back from the reception for my first advertised art show, and I had a ball. The work got a pretty positive reception, I loved the way it fit with my gallery partner Leah Wilson's paintings (so did she) and people couldn't have been nicer. The folks at Guardino Gallery made it a wonderful experience.

"I'm really not a cab driver," he confessed, as he negotiated a sharp left on what felt like two of the cab's four wheels. "You can't imagine how surprised I am to hear that," I said drily, clutching the armrest for dear life. "So what is it you really do?"

"Cool tatt," I said, nodding at the lines peeking out from under Sean's arm, "Who's the artist?" "Oh, he's back in Maine," he explained, rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal a massive outline of trees, flowers and very artistic nudes, embracing. "This is just the linework, none of it's been filled in yet. I've got to get it finished because it really looks pretty dorky this way."

Right around lunchtime I heard a quiet tapping on my front door and sighed. (door to door peddlers famously interrupt my Saturday afternoons) I opened the door to a woman about 25, slim, vivacious and smiling. "Hi!" she said brightly, "I'm Lisa, and you're going to think this is really weird, but can I take a picture of your tree?"

You know you're in Oregon when you walk into a dockside pancake shack and the sign on the wall says, "Gluten-free pancakes with organic chai tea." I'm down in Coos Bay this weekend, about five hours south of Portland, working through a casting problem with Hugh McKay of Cast Glass Forms. Hugh's in Port Orford; Gigi the iPhone led me a merry GPS dance through cow pastures and abandoned farmland to get there. "Geeeez, that's hours out of the way," said Hugh, "Don't you computer people ever look at a map?"

Yesterday a girl ran headlong down the aisle at the Container Store, skidding to a halt about five inches from my belly. She was maybe 17, a blue-eyed brunette dressed like a tree. (Typical glasslander costume: Nondescript fabric in grey, brown and moss, none too clean, shaggy so you're not quite sure there's a girl in there and a couple of holes thrown in for spice.) She took a deep breath and opened her mouth all the way back to her tonsils.

"I just need $14.50," the woman said anxiously, "And I'll have enough for a room for the night. That's all, and I'm not lying! It's only so I have a place to sleep." I'd had a rare hour to spare before my next appointment in Portland's Pearl District and so I did my favorite thing: I drifted through the streets and watched.