And then there's news in Portland

I've listened to weather forecasts before, but I don't think I've ever listened to a poetic weather forecast.

http://www.oregonlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2010/06/oregon_rain_day_18_you_can_run.html

Well, hello, Portland.

This, of course, comes from what might well be my favorite newspaper... in fact, I am tempted to get it just because I like the writing style so much. I quote from this articles news-blip, "... including the wettest May-- wetter than Astoria!--" to show the random spunk that gets thrown in the Oregonian's regular journalism!

Or try on for size the random news about Oregonians being the country's "second best" drivers:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2010/05/thats_right_oregonians_are_sma.html

Notice how the hyperlink goes to "that's right, Oregonians are sma--" (which is for smart).

For real fun journalistic adventures, you can even try out the page on "opinions."

God, I love this state! I am proud to be an Oregonian...or soon to be one!

On a side note, for some reason I have been in a bit of a Samuel Taylor Coleridge mood recently, maybe because a guy in the forest and I got into a long discussion of "what was the best decade for American literature," and although I would probably say myself, 1920's or 1970's, this guy was much more inspired by the mid-to-late 19th century writers (figures, that is the Walden times.... Walden being Thoreau's popular book about his nature adventures that actually occurred right in his own backyard--- literally, he went home so mom could do his laundry each weekend-- read it people!)

Anyway, without further ado, if you feel the need to read some Coleridge and really see what is one of the beacons of assonance/consonance, I encourage this.

For example, the first paragraph, you can almost see the "a" sound running through the text, slowly morphing into an "e" sound-- it's sort of an American stylistic thing, but what it does is it unconciously tells us to make "units" out of areas of the text. It changes the flow of that paragraph.... a little secret of poetry reading, if you will, is that you do not stop at the end of each line as you would in a song. Keep moving, naturally, like it's a paragraph, but take not of the line breaks in your head or if you are reading outloud.... read poetry like this and it's no longer flowery and terrible (sometimes it still is) but it's sort of like a music or something... okay, well, clearly I need my rain now.