For the last three months we have been producing videos for the Alliance of People with disAbilities. As a past board member and board chair at TACID (Tacoma Area Coalition of Individuals with Disabilities) it felt like old times. On the street, shopping, in business, even in sports, and anywhere you go, most disabilities go […]
Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past – Summit – Aug. 26
When I was in grade school at Stanley Elementary in Tacoma, each year I would bring my class photo home. After the second year photograph my mom would comment about me always having my photograph taken standing next to a tall black girl named Virginia. We were always arranged by height. We were the tallest […]
The Wake of Light – Film Review
I hate watching a film that seems interesting and then the producer brings in god or religion into the equation. Except for the opening quotation (“How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery.”) and a short scene in a church with the main character alone, this production didn’t let religion ruin the […]
No Lions, No Tigers, No Bears, Oh, My – Paradise Pond Park – University Place
Each time I visit University Place, I generally drive along the road by the Fircrest Golf Club in Fircrest. Lately instead of looking at the well manicured fairways of the Fircrest Golf Club, I’ve been eying developments directly across the street: Paradise Pond Park. Once I saw a picnic table at Paradise Pond Park I […]
Big Kill – Western Buddy Film Review
Not since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have I seen a buddy film western pull me into the story as much as Big Kill does. Big Kill does this with humor and the opportunity to voice the next line of dialog before it’s said in the film. This doesn’t happen continually, but enough that […]
Nanci Griffith – The Voice of Commonality Surrenders
It was a sad day for music, story tellers, and those who work hard every day so their families can survive. Nanci Griffith, the Grammy-winning folk and country songwriter whose popular recordings include “Love at the Five and Dime,” “Once in a Very Blue Moon,” and “Outbound Plane,” died Friday, August 13th, her manager confirmed […]
Goldstone – Australian Film Review
Some scientists and historians believe that Aboriginal Australians could be the oldest population of humans living outside of Africa. One theory says they migrated from Africa in boats 70,000 years ago. English colonists over the last two hundred years have shoved aside the Aboriginals much like the Americans and Canadians have done with our native […]
Any Bullet Will Do – Film Review
The hatreds and mistrusts of the Civil War days are still with us, so why not 11 years after the bloodiest conflict America has ever seen? Basically, we have vengeance of brother vs. brother transferred from the old plantation of dirty deeds to the Big Sky Country of Montana just eleven years after the war. […]
A Trip to Dollar Tree and Recognizing Hard Work and Effort
I went to the Dollar Tree in University Place last week. My wife and I live in the North/West End of Tacoma. The roof of the nearby Dollar Tree collapsed last December. It’s surprising what we find that we need at the Dollar Tree from hardware to food, and art supplies. At the U.P. Dollar […]