At this point, I feel like I have roots in a lot of places. I have friends who have put down roots, in Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, and I feel very close to them.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

Being told that you are good at banter is like being told that you are a good person.

Everyone has to decide how they're going to appear in their lives, how they're going to put themselves out there to the world.

But social justice and the environment are very tied together in my head.

They preach that I should save the world. They pray that I won't do a better job of it.

I have a sordid past.