From my "Up the Mtn, Again! Series" #177

From my "Up the Mountain Series"

From my "Up the Mtn Series #225"

From my "Up the Mtn, Again Series" #203

From my "Up the Mtn, Again Series" #194

From my "Up the Mountain Series"

"From my "Up the Mtn Series"

From my "Up the Mtn Series" #190

From my "Up the Mtn again series" #215

From my "Up the Mtn Series" 148

From my "Up the Mtn Series" #205

Frrom my "Up the Mtn Series" #178

From my "Up the Mtn Series" #219

From my "Up the Mtn Series"

From my "Up the Mtn series"

Up the Mtn series #130a

From the "Up the Mtn series, #155"

Up the Mtn series #133

Up the Mtn series

Up the Mountain Series #104

Springs morning hue

Bright green fern leaves

sunrise paints

Loving Nature

dormant

unmanifested latency

Love's nascency

Oregon's Willamette National Forest

Oregon's Willamette National Forest

Up the Mtn

Southeast PDX

Portland's Woodstock Neighborhood

Wine in Woodstock

Black Lives & Cops Lives matter, Equally!

Here is a repost of a Facebook Post I read

FACEBOOK: The attempt to use the killing of the two police officers in NYC over the weekend (which is horrible) to discredit a social justice movement dedicated to eradicating police brutality in black and brown communities is deplorable. Further, to isolate the murder of the officers from a chain of unlawful events including Brinsley shooting his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore hours before the murders is dishonest. The posts about the violence he wanted to exact against police officers were posted by him on his ex-girlfriend's Instagram account. The murder of the police officers was not an isolated event -- it was one of many despicable acts by a mentally unstable 28-year-old. To use his awful actions as an indictment against those who justly fight against injustice in our country in fact shows how mentally ill we are as a society. While you pray for the police officers, remember to pray for his ex-girlfriend who is being written out of this dominant narrative in an effort to undermine the very real need to continue to fight against police brutality, despite yesterday's tragic events. #blackwomenslivesmattertoo FACEBOOK END.

What is Gentrification?

Here is the response I posted to Kai Ryssdal's Money Place Market December 5th, Report addressing Gentrification on NPR.Org.

 Gentrification specifically in America occurs when white investors and business people (dominant society) from outside of a oppressed and depressed minority community financially gain from the physical displacement of, and financial disenfranchisement of these oppressed and depressed minorities communities.

How does this occur? Gentrification does so by inflating the property values in these oppressed and depressed minority communities. Gentrification does so by investing in new predominately white owned or controlled businesses; while simultaneously financially forcing out and buying out the local minority businesses and property owners. Gentrification then forces out the remaining local minority renters & owners via increased rent and property taxs. All of which forces the minorities that once populated the gentrified community into sprawling out into other depressed and oppressed communities. Eventually dominant society begins to again look outwards and beyond the communitiy they've just gentrified. Then once again the process of gentrification begins anew, like bacteria spreading in a petri dish.  

This phenomenon of gentrification is only part of what has occurred in for instance Bed-Sty Brooklyn over the last decade. 

I address how these social justice, economic, and environmental issues intersect in the final notes of the latest edition of my book of poetry entitled JIKU. Here is a link to a free copy of the book.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e337mirjvlgilzn/AABCUqjhTr2uKgUCTz-GMo_Za?dl=0

November in Portland and its 62 degrees ?

Portland's Autumn

81 degrees, on October 8th, 2014 Seaside, Oregon

Graceful movements

roaring otiosity

winds & rapids painting sound

with moss breaths

Posted with Blogsy

Somewhere in B.C.

Somewhere in the Yukon or B.C.

In Ester Alaska

Somewhere in British Columbia

Somewhere in the Yukon

Up in Canada's Yukon

Thoughts on Haiku and the idioms associated with it

"Haiku are meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader ... to light the spark that triggers creative rumination ... They act as literary manifestations ... visions of nature’s seasonal modulations ... They're emotionally tinged words, barely perceptible sensory flickers ... literary etchings of lucid visions transposed to the minds of its readers ... They're meant to act as sensory catalysts ... like the passing of a penciled baton laid out upon a piece of paper that a reader might grasp for in their mind's eye ... all of which prompts the reader to continue exploring the sensory experience elicited from the writers pen ... This is how the literary sketching of poets are intended to function ... as creative stimulants with which readers can draw from and into their own artistic idioms ... from that lucid space within their heads ... where their minds eye can spark their own creative visions" 

                                                         Bukusai Ashagawa, 2013

Somewhere in the Yukon!

My favorite hiking boots