By Bob Hicks
It’s pretty grim, according to Steve Law’s report, Historical Society may ask voters for tax levy, in The Portland Tribune, and Sarah Mirk’s followup, State History Museum Will Run Out of Cash in 2011, Pitches Tax To Stay Afloat, in The Mercury’s Blogtown.
Things are skeletal right now. Oregon Historical Society boss George Vogt [...]
By Bob Hicks
Actors have a parlor trick they like to pull out to amaze and amuse their non-thespian friends. I’m not sure if it has an accepted given name, but I sometimes call it the “laugh-cry game.” It’s simple, really: They cover their faces, start making an odd guttural sound, and challenge you to tell [...]
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the world is overflowing with causes deserving of our support. It is a truth personally declared that Mr. Scatter, on occasion, will spotlight certain of these causes in the hope that his friends and readers will give them a second look.
Two such possibilities have presented themselves of late.
The [...]
By Laura Grimes
You’re stuck with me. Sorry about that, but it can’t be helped. Mr. Scatter had a wee bit of oral surgery and he’s either high or sleeping. Either condition would produce an interesting blog post, but it ain’t happening.
Like that wasn’t enough, the Small Large Smelly Boy came home from school smelling like [...]
By Laura Grimes
Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of my last day at a large daily news organization. So it seems only fitting to reimagine a new, inspiring era of journalism … that incorporates poetry.
*****
For more than half my life I was a journalist. At least that’s [...]
No, not the golf course. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter do not do the Scottish thing. (Maybe the Scotch thing, but that’s different.) This morning the Scattermobile is heckbent for the Oregon coast to take the salty waters for a few days, Large Smelly Boys in tow and hoping that some Susan Cooper on tape will [...]
Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we’re identifying proudly these days with the good townswomen of River City, Iowa, in The Music Man: “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more.”
With emphasis on the “talk a lot.”
Thanks to the silver-tongued Mead [...]
“When I see three oranges, I juggle,” the then 24-year-old highwire daredevil Philippe Petit is supposed to have said in 1974 after his 110-story-high prance between the two unfinished towers of the World Trade Center. “When I see two towers, I walk.”
When Glenn Beck sees his foot, he inserts it in his mouth, and then [...]
This afternoon, while shuffling idly through the File of Unfinished and Rejected Posts — it’s true, not everything we write ends up in virtual print — we found this piece from last August, initially rejected on the grounds that maybe it was a little off-topic and too much of a downer. But in light of [...]
You’ve probably heard the news already. On Wednesday The Oregonian laid off 37 workers, 27 in the newsroom. The cuts have long been expected. Like the rest of the daily newspaper industry, the (not so) Big (anymore) O is trapped in a nightmare downward spiral triggered by landmark technological shifts, declining readership and, OK, its [...]