I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading —
It vexes me to choose another guide —
― Emily Brontë
Welcome to Portable Bohemia, a website and blog devoted to celebration of the artistic spirit and pursuit of intellectual adventure.
The blog features essays, reviews, rants, screeds, ruminations, and on the good days maybe a measure of insightful commentary about books, cinema, art and culture, sports, and sundry other themes and topics. Matters of politics and current affairs are taken up as conscience and honest indignation dictate.
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Portable Bohemia goes Substack. The blog moved to Substack on April 16, 2023. Content remains free. Click the link above to subscribe for free posts via email and the Substack app.
Check out the Gallery page for photographs. For the most part I point the camera and hope something good will come of it. I like to think that sometimes it does.
​​Contact me if you have questions, comments, or information about upcoming events. I would love to hear from you.
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The site member feature has been discontinued. I set it up for a while as a way to monitor comments on blog posts. This proved both unnecessary and unwieldy. New requests show up somehow from somewhere from time to time. These are blocked without reply. Readers who wish to contact me may use the from on the contact page.
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Newsletters
Portable Bohemia at Substack
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May 1, 2024 / Vol. IX, No. 9: remembering Mom on her birthday, a 2018 journal entry, the escalating conflict on campus...
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April 15, 2024 / Vol. IX, No. 8: notes on Ukraine, Israel/Iran, the novel Emotionally Weird by the incomparable Kate Atkinson…
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April 1, 2024 / Vol. IX, No. 7: commentary on the kerfuffle over Easter, Transgender Day of Visibility, and prohibited egg decorations for the White House Easter Egg hunt, resurrection of the old chemtrails conspiracy theory, March Madness…
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March 15, 2024 / Vol. IX, No. 6: reflections on the loss of NW Film Center and the Portland International Film Festival, Biden's SOTU, Britt's rebuttal, the Hur report, Jr Kennedy running mate possibilities…
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Blockheads and Worse, May 8, 2024. In 2019 I defended Ilhan Omar against accusations of antisemitism during the brouhaha over her statements to the effect that Republican Party support of Israel is driven by campaign donations from AIPAC…
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Margarita (a poem), May 5, 2024. “Margarita” was previously published in the July 1982 issue of Local Storms. The first lines came to me one evening in the spring of 1978 while drinking more than was strictly speaking advisable with companions at the Little 5 Points Pub…
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Protest and Responsibility, April 30, 2024. The immediate challenge as I try to take up the protests roiling university campuses and erupting in other spaces, private as well as public, is getting the story straight…
Poems
​Adelaide Literary Magazine December 2022
Otoliths issue fifty-seven, southern autumn, 2020
Quill & Parchment
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Easy to Forget (February 2007)
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A Hard Climb (March 2007)
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Wait (April 2008)
Steam Ticket Vol. 25 Spring 2022
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Literary
Websites of Interest
Activism
​Arts
Bookstores
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City Lights (San Francicso)
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Odd Bird Books (Columbia, SC)
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Powell's Books (Portland)
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The Source (Detroit)
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The Strand (New York)
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Tall Tales (Atlanta)
Coffee Dens, etc.
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