Nostalgic places

As I continue the journey of my life through Google Earth, at the center of this photo is the roof of the duplex on Mississippi Ave. where "Sally" and I lived after dropping out of grad school, where I lived when I first started publishing stories in literary magazines, began editing a trade newspaper to earn money, and also began publishing freelance journalism in Northwest Magazine: in other words, where I lived when I "officially" became a writer. Next door was a nursery, hence the long greenhouse, and the German owners and ourselves were just about the only whites in the neighborhood then. Today Mississippi Ave. is a hip neighborhood filled with young artists, writers and musicians, the way NW Portland was thirty and more years ago, in this continuing cycle of neighborhood change, from neglected to bohemian to gentrification.