Remember when you received your first copy of AARP Magazine? It felt like a cold hand reaching up from the grave. Looking the other way, you picked it up like a dead mouse, a page pinched between forefinger and thumb, and threw it in the trash. Fast forward a decade or two and, admit it, […]
Ellen Waterston
Poet and author Ellen Waterston, named Oregon's Poet Laureate in 2024, is a woman of a certain age who resides in Bend. "The Third Act" is a series of columns on ageing and ageism.
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Where There Is Fire, Manifest Lake
The art of verbal judo can help one remain in control
At a recent event, I chatted with a consultant whose area of focus and expertise intrigued me. Long a practitioner of martial arts, he now travels the country to instruct organizations, from corporations to churches, to employ verbal martial arts techniques to create more fruitful communications outcomes between adversarial groups. From what I gathered, an […]
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Poop, Pee and Carbon Dating
For a number of years, I’ve led an autumn nature writing workshop at different locations in the high desert. They’ve been held at ranches in Crook County, including the Rafter Q, where I used to live and ranch, and at the historic GI Ranch next door, where the springs that create the headwaters of the […]
Posted inColumns
Rewilding Words
The Third Act: A Column on Ageism and Ageing
I recently came across the word “landholder,” an indigenous term for tree. How magical! An expression that speaks in the tongue of the thing itself. How can we reshape our daily language to reflect that notion, to get us out of our word silos? It strikes me that maintaining the diversity of language guards the […]
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The Third Act: A Column on Ageism and Ageing
Building Bridges
July is a time to get away from it all—exploring America’s rivers, coastlines and national parks or just holing up at a cabin on the shore of a nearby lake. Any one of those sounds wonderful. But in a recent podcast on “The Journal,” travel guru Rick Steves proposes a different idea. Instead of heading […]
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The Third Act: A Column on Ageism and Ageing
Leap, Creep, Sleep
The sign said “Free Tomato Plants!” Why not, I thought. I randomly picked one. Turning to leave, a voice from alongside the house asked. “Do you know which kind you got?” She was every inch the gardener, this Madam Appleseed…wide brimmed sun hat, trowel, weeder and hand rake sticking out from her apron pockets. She’d […]
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The Third Act
Finding Your Voice
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry In writing classes and programs there’s a lot of talk about the importance of an author or poet’s voice. Emerging writers are urged to find theirs. Book club groups discuss authors who have […]
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Just Sayin’
What’s your documentary moment?
You have to admit, the first 66 days of Trump’s presidency have been a rodeo. I’d like to feel everything is fine, but don’t. I’m not alone. I. Maria Ressa’s book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” recounts her dogged and personally dangerous commitment to standing up for fact-based journalism in the Philippines during […]
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The Third Act: Heart Songs
Miles and miles of heart needed
Let’s hear it for conversation hearts, Valentine’s Day cards, bouquets or heart-shaped chocolates from unknown admirers! Sure, sure, but feeling and expressing heartfelt emotions is not a once-a-year thing. We don’t have to be “Damn Yankees” to know we gotta have heart every day, miles and miles of it, in order to get through life. […]
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The Third Act: Workarounds
Doing what we can in the time that is left with the resources we have
Ok. A new year. If you’re my age, or older, you’re now in full awareness mode. I read somewhere that in galactic or geologic or anthropologic time (I don’t remember which), one life will have only lasted an hour. That would mean, at my age, I have the equivalent of a few nanoseconds left, if […]