Sara Ryan

I usually don’t listen to abridged audiobooks, but I made an exception for Dreams From My Father, seeing as it was read by the author. I’m following my usual practice of listening mostly at night, falling into and out of consciousness, rousing myself enough to slide the iTunes bar back to an earlier chapter if [...]

That is all.

When I do the elliptical trainer, my pace is generally about 5 miles an hour. Often, I feel bad about this. It seems so slow in comparison to the people I know who do marathons and triathlons. (We’ll leave aside the question of why I choose those folks to measure myself against.) So sometimes, I [...]

One day when I was home sick from junior high, my mom read to me about Archy, the vers libre poet reincarnated in the body of a cockroach, and his friend Mehitabel the cat, who may or may not be the reincarnation of Cleopatra. I fell in love with them both, and with the George [...]

Today I saw a sign reading: “Due to the economy, this store is permanently closed.” I would not highlight this, since it is a sadly common phenomenon of late, except that the sign was on the door of a Salvation Army thrift store. You know it’s bad when even the charity stores are closing.

I’m just now finally reading Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! — and I am enthusiastic, but I should also note that the exclamation mark is part of the title. A bit from one of his narrative captions struck me as a lovely microcosm of a certain style of hell: “Sunday…one-ish. The place for brunch is the [...]

A while back, I wrote about writing and risk, and mentioned the phenomenon of double-tracking: constantly taking apart whatever story you’re reading/watching/otherwise experiencing. So last night, in what seems to be my theme this week, I finally got around to seeing another pop culture phenomenon: Dark Knight. (Previously I’d finally gotten around to seeing Dr. [...]

Turkey Bacon and Chard with Dijon Vinaigrette Totally based on a Mark Bittman recipe from How To Cook Everything; his is for dandelion greens and regular bacon, which I am sure would also be delicious. And I bet you could use veggie bacon or that sort of bacony kind of tempeh to good effect, too. [...]

…over at the also new, nifty Circle into Square: a Portland-based label, online magazine, and local artist community. It’s called Everybody Knows You’re Not From Here. Me and Steve talk about a whole bunch of stuff, including but not limited to comics, prose, and Portland, with our friend Hiram Lucke of The Harvey Girls.

Me=a sucker for poignant objects in the street. See also: many other photos in my Flickr account. This made me wonder if it was intended as an alert that there was an actual camera close by, or merely a generalized warning that Big Brother’s watching. From some building in Denver. Tiny snowmen, built on top [...]