The Addendum

Here There Nowhere Paintings by Michael Brophy with essays by Jonathan Raban and William L. Lang. OSU Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331-4501; http://oregonstate.edu/dep t/press; 12.0 x 12.0 x 0.25 in; paperbound; 60 pages, 20 color images; $25.00 The landscape of the Pacific Northwest is an ever-changing one, and so it should be no surprise that artistic views on that landscape...

I can still remember, as a child, my mother's big oaken desk. It was sturdy, if a little worn, with a black blotter top and drawers that were heavy and deep. It was always a cornucopia of sensations: sticky translucent yellow glue, a Swingline stapler in a very 1970s dusky pink, stamps with perforated edges from back in the day when you had to lick the backs to make them stick to anything. There...

Although I am a die-hard film shooter, I've been pondering buying a digital camera for some time now. Top on my list has been the Canon Powershot G9. (Canon info here, Digital Photography Review thoughts here.) Part of Canon's extremely well made G series of point-and-shoots, it is a top of the line machine: slim, sleek, and extremely capable. The Canon Powershot G9, courtesy khedra @ flickr...

Can we have a time-out on the whole streetcar expansion thing? Recently, the Oregonian printed a story on the impending Portland Streetcar System Plan. What's really interesting is to compare the system's proposed map, (as shown here in a Big O rendering,) with historic maps of the Portland Traction system, such as this one from 1924. They are amazingly similar. The historian/nostalgist in...

The bachelor's kitchen can be a lonely lonely place. Recently, this predicament came up in conversations with some of my fellow bachelor friends, and I hit upon the idea of trying to solve it. The goal, of course, would be to produce a good quality meal in 30 minutes or less, with little mess and few ingredients. This is a challenge I'm still working to solve. In the meanwhile, how about...

Since December, I've pumped out 11 weeks of Week In Review, but I just don't think I can put out a 12th. I've learned a few things. First off, it's still too blog-centric. When I began The Addendum it was meant to be just that, an addendum for things that didn't have place in the regular route99west web site, but which were still begging for an outlet. Casual efforts, off-topic items, rants and...

Pronouncements of doom for various car styles have always amused me. Some time ago, my mother covered a screen with newspaper clippings of British sports cars -- the covers of magazines, newspaper articles, even classified advertisements. One of the articles is written in the late 1970s, and predicted the doom of the convertible. New U.S. safety standards, you see, made them inherently unsafe, and...