One of several exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum consists of cars. -- Really, really wild cars. -- Cars that will make you yearn for the days of extravagant tailfins and jet-blast brake lights. Here are some of the photos Jimand I took when we visited the "Shape of Speed" this afternoon on our tour of … Continue reading Shape of Speed
The Lan Su Chinese Garden is a beautifully designed classical Chinese garden. It is built on a city block in the Chinatown district of downtown Portland, Oregon, near the riverfront. The garden is a symbol of the strong ties that exist between Portland and its sister city, Suzhou, China. Both the garden's designer Kuang Zhen … Continue reading Lan Su Chinese Garden
Today a young woman politely asked me why I was taking so many photos inside the small neighborhood delicatessen where she works here in Portland, Oregon. -- The deli is called Flying Elephants and is near the condo Jim and I have rented for our vacation. It was a fair question. I was in fact taking a … Continue reading Flying Elephants
Luc Lac Vietnamese Kitchen is nothing short of outrageous. Outrageously fresh and vibrant food. Outrageously reasonable prices. Outrageously wild decor and music. And an outrageously original way of seating and serving the mobs of folks who come to eat here. The restaurant itself seems to be the very distillation of the ethnic and social patchwork … Continue reading Luc Lac Vietnamese Kitchen
Pensacola artist Pat Page created the most amazing painting for me. Several months ago I sent her an old black-and-white photograph of my parents, Mary Jane and Robert L. Waters, enjoying the white sand on Pensacola Beach. The original photo is probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s, before I was born. Pat Page … Continue reading The Paintings of Pat Page
Today the church sits in ruins. -- The church where I was baptized. In 2004 Hurricane Ivan was its last knell, breaking through its stained glass windows, leaving holes in its roof. The holes have grown over time. Only a brick hulk remains today, slowly rotting in the summer downpours of this Gulf Coast city, … Continue reading A Testament to the World’s View of Love
Look at the street art painted on the walls here in Pensacola's Belmont-DeVilliers district, sometimes called "the Blocks." Just look at what it says. It tells you so many stories about this city's African-American "downtown" from the days of segregation. In my childhood years here in Pensacola, in the early 1960s, nearly every type of … Continue reading The Blocks
Joe Patti's has the feel of Old Pensacola. -- A loud crowded market where people jostle for fresh seafood here at the edge of Pensacola Bay while a modern version of a fishmonger hawks the latest sales on a loudspeaker. If you plan to be in Pensacola, it is one of the unique experiences of … Continue reading Joe Patti’s
In the law, ripples from the past moving forward in time are called precedents. Earlier events set models for handling future events. History influences the present. What's past is prologue. So it would be in 1857 when the Florida Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in a quarrelsome case involving one of early Tallahassee's … Continue reading Florida Law & the Crooms of Goodwood Plantation
It was Tallahassee's own Trail of Tears. But in its day it would have been called simply a "coffle." And it ended here at the lawn of Goodwood Plantation in Tallahassee. Yesterday, I looked out over that same lawn just steps away from the capital city's largest hospital and imagined the scene that happened in … Continue reading Tallahassee’s Own Trail of Tears
Robert Craig Waters 