February 14th . . . . .
Happy 150th Birthday, Oregon!
..... and Happy 27th Birthday, Dex!
You both have a huge part of my heart. It's my fervent wish that you will "meet" some day in the future.
Dex graduated from law school in the Philippines in 2008 and has dreams of attending Lewis & Clark College School of Law in Portland, Oregon, to obtain an LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law.
Lewis & Clark's LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law offers excellent preparation for practicing, teaching, or policy-making in the environmental and natural resources law field. Our dynamic program draws lawyers from across the country and around the world, who consistently give the program high marks for its breadth, depth and educational excellence. Our environmental law program is ranked #1 in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. We also provide outstanding staff support to our LL.M. students as well as one-on-one access to our renowned faculty members.
To honor both Oregon and Dex here's a poem by William Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate from 1975-1989. As noted in the partial bio below, he taught at Lewis and Clark College from 1948 until his retirement in 1980!
An Oregon Message
When we first moved here, pulled
the trees in around us, curled
our backs to the wind, no one
had ever hit the moon—no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars,
and only other people's neglect
is our precious and abiding shell,
pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.
From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide:
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice, the hovering hawk
of the state, or the sudden quiet stare
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.
This message we smuggle out in
its plain cover, to be opened
quietly: Friends everywhere—
we are alive! Those moon rockets
have missed millions of secret
places! Best wishes.
Burn this.
William Stafford..... (more about him here)
was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914. He received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Kansas at Lawrence and, in 1954, a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. During the Second World War, Stafford was a conscientious objector and worked in the civilian public service camps . . .
. . . In 1948 Stafford moved to Oregon to teach at Lewis and Clark College. Though he traveled and read his work widely, he taught at Lewis and Clark until his retirement in 1980. His first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when Stafford was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose. Among his many honors and awards were a Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Western States Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry. In 1970, he was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a position currently known as the Poet Laureate). . .-poets.org
Places to learn more about this beautiful place:
Dex's blog, Thirty-Thousand Fishes, was one of the first blogs that spoke deeply to me when I started blogging a year ago this month.
Perhaps in the future I will write about the journey of our hearts, a journey crossing years and miles of ocean between the Philippines and Oregon, that has come to my saying this...........Happy Birthday, son. I'm joyful to have heard your voice and laughter on the phone as you enjoyed breakfast to begin your special day!
[Note: I keyed the incorrect year when I originally posted this and have corrected it from birthday #26 to #27. In the meantime, Dex has written his birthday post at his blog.]
graphic and bottom photo: tinypic.com
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