Stoney Moss

Portlanders Who Make Me Happy, I

First of all, there's Stoney Moss, a blog that has firmly rejected the pernicious advice that a blog should be all about one thing. Stoney Moss is about pretty much everything. It's one of the rare tandem blogs that works (Feathers of Hope being another outstanding example: is it accident that both dip into birding from time to time? I don't think so.)

Both Deb and WD (Whirling Dervish) write poetry sometimes, and both write prose sometimes. They write about whatever they damn well please. It might be a riveting narrative of being lost on a mountain ("please god, if you get me off this mountain, I will stop what I've been doing and I will grow up. I will make it worth it."), or a Mother's Day prose poem ("I draw better than Mother and my eyes are hard; dark circles with icy-blue shadow,") or a triolet love-poem ("when I run a soft hand over your warm walls / I feel history echo in my palms") addressed to a house, or a devastating poem about broken glass ("Broken plates thrown in a rage. / White crumbs on my tongue / when I lick the floor in remorse.") Then again it might be a list of topics for sociology research papers or an Audubon alert about the Portland urban growth boundary. You have no idea. It's Christmas morning with funny relatives in town: God knows what will be under the tree. It might be personal or political, poetic or prosaic. Almost always there's a laugh somewhere in the midst of it: neither Deb nor WD ever takes herself seriously for long.

(Strictly speaking WD is not a Portlander -- she's earning a doctorate back east -- but she has been one, and please God will be again.)

In any case, Stoney Moss has become one of my favorite stops on the information highway, one of the handful of blogs I visit before they pop up in Google Reader, because I'll probably want to read the last post again.