Category Archives: News

Braving the ice, wind and snow for the Portland Auto Show

Posted on by February 12, 2014

Anyone who knows me well, knows I love cars. This weekend we decided to fight the elements of snow, wind and rain and hit up Portland’s Auto Show.

We’d been planning to go to the auto show with another family for awhile. Then Snowmageddon, as the locals are calling it, hit and the city shut down. For reals. In Chicago on a normal winter this would have been called a Thursday in February, but not here.

It's snowing! (Sorta.)

It’s snowing! (Sorta.)

The morning of the auto show … Read more ...

Ruffling a Few Feathers About The Lack of School Funding

Posted on by January 23, 2014

We all believe that children are our future. We all feel like education is important. And yet our schools are terribly underfunded.

Image by Stock Monkeys.

Image by Stock Monkeys.

I’m not in the business of getting into a back-and-forth about school funding formulas, Common Core standards, tax breaks for corporations, school bonds, bickering legislators and all that jazz. All worthy issues, but, just not gonna get into it here.

All I know is that when we were in suburban Chicago, Logan’s kindergarten class had 18 students and four … Read more ...

Former Portland mayoral candidate talks about hitting woman in college

Posted on by December 12, 2013

Portlanders at a storytelling event last night got quite the surprise when former mayoral candidate Jefferson Smith took the stage and told a story about the time in college when he hit a woman at a party.

Smith, who lost to Charlie Hales in last year’s election, was a Democratic state representative who was considered a rising star in Oregon politics.

It's not a great picture, I know, but it's what I got. Jefferson Smith on stage talking about how he hit a girl.

It’s not a great picture, I know, but it’s what I got. Jefferson Smith on stage talking about how he hit a girl.

Then … Read more ...

The First Indian Miss America, racism and the bigot next door

Posted on by September 20, 2013

When Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America, there was a nasty backlash online. People didn’t like that she was the first woman of Indian descent to win the crown. They told her: It’s America, not India and called her a terrorist, made references to al-Qaeda and whined about it being inappropriate because it was close to 9/11.

My good friend Ruby is a gracious mom of two boys and a wife to a sweet man. They are also Sikhs and she wrote a telling post … Read more ...

Honoring Sept. 11 Through Teaching Our Kids, Each Other

Posted on by September 11, 2013

It’s Sept. 11, 2013. Twelve years. A lot happens in 12 years. A whole generation has come and for many 9/11 is a day of tributes on TV, a discussion in the classroom or simply black white words on the pages of their history books.

It’s understandable. It’s like how growing up I didn’t understand the gravity of Nov. 22, 1963: The day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Or even April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. We all know about … Read more ...