Category: Social Commentary
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What work do you do? Why?
by Neva Knott I awoke this morning thinking about work. I imagine that is often the first thought of each of us in our capitalism culture of getting and having. The pandemic put my work into a tailspin because, well, my whole teaching career had been budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts and COVID just…
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Is my passion worth an hour a day?
By Neva Knott My life has been a frazzled mess for a couple of years. Or five years, to be specific. Or the last decade since I made a huge career move not knowing the recession was coming and having not yet totally gotten back to full-time, professional employment. Or for the last twelve years…
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Malama Aloha A’aina Kaho’olawe: Caring for the Land the Hawaiian Way
By Neva Knott I’m dreaming and a beautiful noise comes in and I’m dreamt awake to the sound of the conch shell, the pu. The night is still dark. Time to prepare for sunrise. Time to go into the ocean and cleanse. I walk down to the shore and take in the stillness of the…
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The Long Bus Ride Home from War
By Neva Knott It’s Tuesday, July 5. I’m bartending at The White Eagle Saloon, a small music venue in Portland, with an 11-room hotel on the top floor. The bar is pretty empty. Everyone has the holiday hangover, I guess. My first customers were a nice couple who’d just checked in to the hotel. Just…
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Bus Stop Angels
By Neva Knott Monday, while walking my dog, Josh, in the rain at the little park by my house, the one next to Rose City Golf Course, I heard from under the boughs of a large tree, “Hello.” I looked up to find a man taking shelter from the rain. He was wearing a head…
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Punk
By Neva Knott It’s sweaty. I’m pushed right up front against the stage, to the right of Andrew’s drum kit. I don’t care about the little groupies trying to get his attention. Caitlyn’s here, too, and we’ve been his best girls for 20 years, so our vibe is move over, cute little things. I’ve been…
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Hawaiian Immersion Graduation
As was often true with colonialism, the missionaries deemed languages of the “heathens” to be coarse, base, unintelligible–forbidden, even. Use of one’s native tongue was disallowed, and use thereof was punished. In result, languages came near to extinction, as happened here in Hawaii. When missionaries arrived in the islands, they began their insurgence…
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No longer Kerouac’s America…
He’d been riding freight trains. From Florida, originally, but just in New Orleans. Coming west to look for work. That’s how he said it, “look for work,” as if an apparition from the Great Depression, from years gone by. “There’s no work in the eastern South.” Today, he and friends were coming up from California,…
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Sitting in a Church Basement, Learning to Plant Trees
Sitting in a church basement, surrounded by people in rubber boots and every variety of raincoat. Drinking coffee out of small church cups, eating donated baked goods. There is even something that looks like pink whipped cream Jello on the food table. Boy Scouts of America Troop 64 meets here, as I can tell from…
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Listening to the Forest
On our way back in from the hike we stopped at a small overlook. Below us was Taylor Creek and to the right and left it’s canyon. The moon was coming up on the distant side and the sun was setting on the close side. This little place was just next to the sign, Leaving…
The Diary of Beautiful Enchiladas 