Details Matter

My long-time friend Thomas is a great creative mind. He draws and creates things prolifically and with a greater degree of detail, skill, and depth than anything that I can do. Still, I don’t feel any sense of competition with him; just inspiration. His drawings can be seen over at Mission Azul, and while sometimes less based in reality than mine, they still move me to want to improve my drawing skills.  

This Whale Eats Stories

I’ve long been possessed by the beauty and strangeness of sea creatures. They float, they swim, they disappear suddenly.

Story Time

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What’s the connection between a tiny folding knife, a Japanese passport, and a group of people huddled around a cedar whale sculpture? A good story.

The Story Migration Project kicked off quietly last spring. The “whale box” as it had come to be known was opened, and its unusual passenger, the whale, was passed around. At first everyone sat around waiting for someone else to start. My living room was dreadfully quiet. Despite hopeful looks, no one said anything, yet a sense of hopeful anticipation was in the air.  

The Man and The Book

“It’s not exactly an impulse buy,” Harvey told me with a chuckle, when describing his new book, Kayaks of Alaska. I admit that it’s heavy and that maybe the average person wouldn’t buy a copy, but it’s well worth perusing and I’m not just saying that because Harvey is my friend. A big part of the appeal is visual. 

Harvey’s Museum

Harvey is kind of shy, but in a good way. Over the next few posts, I’m going to profile a few things I like about him and his new kayak book. To get to know Harvey, you need to know his museum.

The Lincoln Street Canoe & Kayak Museum could just as well be called Harvey’s Museum, or even the Museum of Harvey. Located in a refurbished 1913 corner store in Portland, Oregon, the building is home to dozens of traditional boats, including an Irish Boyne Curragh, an Algonquin birch-bark canoe, and a Wu-Hu tub boat from Nanking, China — all acquired by owner and museum curator Harvey Golden.

Read the rest of the story across the jump at Three Sheets NW.

Cold Brew

Perhaps because I have a Y chromosome, I’m drawn to stare at the occupants of the small pink trailer each morning as I bike to work, but I like to think there’s more to it than that. Sitting at the edge of a parking lot on a prominent corner, a neon “open” sign flashes and light floods out of every window, so that on a dark morning, one’s eye wanders there whether you intend to look or not.