January 20, 2009 was a day that I’ll always remember.  We brought up a TV so everyone—from the library patrons to the staff—could watch the inauguration of Barack Obama.  Despite a heated and sometimes vicious election season, we watched the inauguration not as Democrats and Republicans, but...

I recently drove from Los Angeles to Portland with my friend and her two small children.  We sang silly songs, ate snacks and read a stack of children’s books.  It was a fun adventure, until we were about 300 miles from home, and her son informed me that it was “taking too long.” “Are we there...

In middle school, my favorite book was Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. The book is more or less a history of one of Clancy’s recurring characters, a special operative known as John Clark. One of the book’s storylines follows a pilot shot down over Vietnam, a devout Mormon named Robin...

On Monday, NPR ran a long piece on the legalization of marijuana. With a slightly convoluted structure, the piece imagined a world where marijuana had been legalized for two years already, repeatedly reminding the listener that it was still fantasy, lest a War of the Worlds-style hysteria break out. Possibly...

My senior year in high school, our English teacher had us read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a sturdy and wordy book that this particular teacher was, to say the least, a big fan of. I loved the book, and so did most of my class. On the surface, our love for Rand was odd, since The Fountainhead...

There are days when the morning news just brings you down: another bank is failing, more layoffs, or the fact that the economic crisis in Russia is spawning support for hardliners with anti-American rhetoric. Every report seems to come off like another trainwreck. Which is why we cling to heroes like...

I’m the token Republican at BWC. I suspect my presence here is welcome due to some obscure Federal blogging regulation that ensures equal time. I was a mere teen when Ronald Reagan still possesses those rock star qualities. That was before he “couldn’t precisely recollect.” I...

Removed by over a thousand miles, I’ve struggled to keep in the loop regarding the debacle swirling around Portland mayor Sam Adams. Whether by nature or design, Adams cuts an Obama-esque figure. He’s a charismatic young Democrat with a bright political future, and he’s the first openly...

Since all the world’s problems are going to be solved within a couple hours, I think it’s okay if we all go back to wasting time on the internet. The devilish goons over at Paste Magazine have come up with a fantastic site where you can turn your own photos into Obama-style posters. As if...

Basic Training is not pleasant. You go to bed at 10pm if you’re lucky, wake up at 4:30. Every third night, we had fire guard, which meant crawling from bed for two hours in the middle of night and sitting at a desk, waiting for a fire to happen. There was endless berating from drill sergeants....