Michael is a coffee entrepreneur and sometimes author living with his wife and family in the Pacific Northwest. For more articles like this one, please visit www.wordperk.com featuring stories about small town life. After twenty-five years of marital bliss, I’ve come to understand a great many more things about life, love, and the beautiful reality of imperfection called marriage. Some things can’t be taught in the classroom, only learned on the job. We raise our kids with the best of intentions especially […]
“I bring you good news which shall bring great joy to all people…”
Mary wasn’t dreaming when the words hit the woman-child like a thunderbolt. She could not be pregnant because she had never been with a boy that way. The only thing more surreal than the idea of […]
The world is changing and once reasonable expectations for the next generation are now pretty much off the table. For twenty-five years we’ve called Southern Oregon home, raised our kids and built a life upon the foundations of what is now so familiar. Change is in the air, though, […]
The tapestry of a man’s life is woven with many living threads but only a rare few actually color the soul. True friendship is purified by heat and pressure. The rest is recycled in the wisdom of choosing carefully those with whom we share our time. We’ve heard that […]
For Father’s Day I received a basket of gifts one of which is a trivia game called Chat Pack, a collection of conversation starters for around the dinner table. One of the questions asked what would be the most common word people use to describe you. Keep in mind […]
The city recently mailed out a notice to all merchants that city personnel can no longer spend any time collecting on slow-paying accounts, specifically business license and parking district participation fees. The fines for late payment will be assessed at or up to a thousand dollars per day as […]
Memorial Day afternoon a man driving down Oregon Street suffered a cardiac arrest then plowed into the face of GoodBean Jacksonville but not before crushing table and chairs just outside the entrance. The one hundred fifty-five year old solid brick pillar absorbed the car’s massive blow. Only by the […]
This month next year, my lovely wife and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. That’s a quarter-century ago. It’s also the same year we started a life and business in Southern Oregon. As we grow older, more and more people ask us how we met, how we got started, how we made it all work.
I first met Old Jim back in the early nineties when commercial Jacksonville was struggling to survive. The only enterprise with consistent lines out the door throughout the year was Loaves and Fishes, the community food kitchen next door serving hundreds of seniors every week.
Words are powerful. Words hold the course of life and death, redemption and judgment. Words are the molecular building blocks of creation and human interaction. Words seal transactions, heal transgressions and are more potent than destiny...
One key to growing old gracefully is limiting television to network evening news and the Turner Classic Movie channel. Network anchors are all attractive, middle-aged or older men and women. Most commercial spots on the news sell pharmaceuticals to older, attractive men and women. Teenagers, twenty-something’s and even thirty-something’s are pretty much absent, making the process of denial so much easier.
Nothing cuts to the quick of reality faster than burying the young. For one brief moment time slows down enough for us to come up out of this world’s ether and see life in its natural state; brief and fragile, precious and final. No exchanges, no returns.
Life moves pretty fast. We think we have time enough both present and future but it’s a lie. The tyranny of the urgent so often prevents higher ideals from ever taking form. The sad irony is the higher ideal almost always involves helping others outside our circles...
Over the years people have asked me how we’ve survived living and doing business in a small town for so long...
I’ve noticed that columns in the Review have become engagingly pithy and more personal. This is a very good thing...
I think we are all designed to live in a small pond and if not a small pond then much smaller parts of bigger ponds.
This year we were asked by Oregon’s State Fair Division to be the title sponsor and director of the 2013 Best Coffee in Oregon...
As a young boy, I liked to sit in the bow of the small aluminum fishing boat. I liked the wind in my face and the way...
As many of us are now familiar with the blogosphere of political opinion, especially Facebook...