Monthly Archives: June 2008

Barry Johnson, Environment, General, Language, Music

If we sacrifice the semicolon, will the sentence live on?

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Earlier, we were musing about the alleged death of the sentence. We didn’t understand it. Didn’t we frequently, ourselves, muster a sentence or two? But then the Voice Inside Our Head replied, rhetorically, “You call that a sentence?” Our sentences weren’t just NOT sentences; they actually killed The Sentence as they were constructed. We sometimes hate the Voice Inside Our Head. How could we not?

We have new evidence that the sentence is not dead! It’s simple, really. If we aren’t completely sure that the semicolon has passed away, tossed into the rubbage bin with a wink, then surely the sentence has received a premature burial. The French started in back in April, though maybe the whole thing was a joke, oui? John Henley writing in the Guardian exhausted the topic, we would have thought. Every clever thing that has ever been said about the semicolon was in his article. And as a good journalist must, he left the question open: Dear, reader, it is for you to decide. But then Slate’s Paul Collins got in on the fun and proved that Henley had left some things unsaid. His point was simply that the semicolon is either always misused or always dying; we’re not sure which.

We have struggled to have an opinion on the semicolon, and a real opinion, not just a wisecrack. We find that we use them just to give our pinky a bit exercise from time to time. See? We’re just not capable of it. And did you notice the short sentence there? We aren’t just irreverent about semicolon usage; we frequently employ short sentences, even “non-sentences,” instead of erecting handsome, well-made sentences, with their interlocking pieces secured by the semicolon.
We could go on: Something makes us think that if we continue to talk about semicolons, somehow we aren’t killing the sentence.

General, Visual Art

Friday Scatter: Back to business

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So, yes, Scatter had a momentary, um, hiatus. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Actually, we were up in Seattle, lots of us, and we took hundreds of slides! There we are with Gramps splashing in the pool. Uh, Gramps? Pull up the trunks. Yeesh!

Anyway, the best thing about traveling, even just up I-5 a ways, is coming back and telling your dear friends all about it. Which would be you. Stop that cringing once and for all! This is going to be quick…

Northwest African American Museum: Part of a reconverted school in Seattle, this museum is small — and almost perfect in its way. Its first show features the art of Jacob Lawrence (who moved to Seattle in 1970) and James W. Washington Jr., a neat pairing, both deeply interested in the African American history and daily life. But for me the real revelation was the permanent exhibit, most of which is a big timeline of African American history in the Northwest. Dense with information and photographs, it does an excellent job of conveying basic knowledge — the faces of early black settlers, the churches they built, what their lives were like. But then it brings us back to the present with video interviews with present African American residents of Seattle, Portland and Yakima, who talk about what it’s like to live here now. It’s great stuff. I would say Portland should have a museum like it, but this one has taken since 1981 to build (it opened in March), so maybe it’s best to concentrate on this excellent beginning.

Wing Luke Asian Museum: The new building of this museum is also excellent — a conversion by architect Rick Sundberg of an old tenement into a light, airy museum that still reminds us of the tenement it used to be. But the Wing Luke could take its cue from the African American museum on coming up with a clear historical timeline of Asian American history in the Northwest, although it should work well as a community meeting place. Another Seattle artist, sculptor George Tsutakawa, is featured here, though perhaps not given enough space. The best idea? Moving the shelves and counters from a Chinese store that opened in 1910, the Yick Fung Company, and re-installing them stocked with goods in the new building.

Olympic Sculpture Park: OK, you already know about this, right? Sculpture by the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Tony Smith, Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Anthony Caro, Alexander Caro, etc., in a new park overlooking Puget Sound and staring straight at the Olympic Mountains? Some of the moments are beautiful: In a clearing of white Aspens nests a large black Tony Smith rectangle that creates its own clearing inside the clearing, an arena inside an arena. But maybe it’s best as an “urban renewal” project. The park straddles and spans a major arterial and a railroad track, reframes and reconditions them, and then gives us a great view across the Sound. A bit of urban design genius by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi.

Barry Johnson, General, Visual Art

TJ Norris: signs and no-signs

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Let’s say you’ve just gotten back from a weekend in Seattle, taken for the sweetest of reasons (a wedding!), hurried back actually, because you’d waited until the last possible day to see the TJ Norris installation, Infinitus, at the New American Art Union. A long drive, after a couple of long days, which also included a visit to the Olympic Sculpture Park, and that was on your mind as you walked across I-84 from Northeast Portland to the gallery. Because that’s how we often arrive at our art experiences. After long drives. After long days. With other stuff, even other art, on our minds.

You take the Norris video installation lying down, facing upward at two screens suspended from the ceiling, which show different portions of a 71 minute video loop. Actually, those inclined benches are pretty comfortable and they have pillow-like substance at the top where your head goes. You enter the gallery, get your bearings and take a bench. I was alone most of the time on Sunday, the two screens flickering above me. At first they both had automobile imagery going, one of highway traffic shot from above and the other of traffic shot from the side through the diamonds of a chain link fence. So, my pulse still elevated from the walk and the lanes of I-84 on my mind, I immediately began to think of cars, mostly about how boring they were and that this as much as their destructive effects on cities and the environment was good enough reason to seriously limit their use. Seriously. TJ Norris’s installation has nothing to do with that, at least I don’t think so, but “boring” is a good thing to remember, boring as in “mundane.” The installation itself isn’t boring, of course. I found the experience that it offered just the opposite, once my pulse rate slowed and I stopped thinking about cars.

I situated myself on a bench between the two screens, the better to watch both. That was difficult at first, my attention diverted, eyes darting one way then the other. What did I see? I think the most lasting impression is “movement.” Images in motion. Some of them were abstract — tiny lights flickering and fluttering or shapes morphing across the screen. Bubbling emulsions. These passages could last quite a while. The cars, yes, and other “real” objects or places. Long corridors that the camera wanders down. A disco ball. A convex outdoor mirror, the kind they use to help you see around corners sometimes. Shadows of strange objects. Escalator stairs in motion. Buildings and steel “structures.” A close-up of a plant that, as the camera pulls back, is revealed to be behind a barbed wire fence. And speaking of barbed wire, razor wire. Quite a bit of razor wire. This list could go on, but just imagine these things moving along at a good clip though often in long takes, so you can “watch” the motion.

Nothing happens.

Continue reading TJ Norris: signs and no-signs →

Bob Hicks, Dance, Environment, Film, General, Music, Visual Art

Scatter friends go out on the town

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With the summer solstice having hit town at precisely 4:59 p.m. Friday — was that a sylph we saw cavorting in the woods? — it’s a semi-beautiful weekend here in Portland, Oregon.

All right, clouds are moving in. Yet we are undaunted. Some cool things are happening around and out of town involving Friends of Art Scatter (this is not an official organization, but we like the sound of it, though not as much as we like the sound of “The Loyal Order of Moose”) and we would be remiss not to fill you in on the upcoming action. Some of these are this-weekend-only opportunities, so get on your dancing shoes, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out of the house.

Subversive operatics at Someday Lounge: We like Opera Theater Oregon. How much? Read our report on OTO’s winter production of “Carmen,” sung live to a screening of Cecil B. DeMille‘s 1915 silent-movie version of the Bizet opera. So we are happy to report that this seat-of-the-pants company, which dares to believe that opera ought to be fun (its motto is “Making Opera Safe for America”), is throwing a one-night wingding Saturday at Someday Lounge to show off its new season, raise a little money (there’ll be a silent auction) and generally blow the art form’s reputation for stuffiness all to hell.

“Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” will preview the three-show season of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s “The Medium” (paired with a 10-minute original called “The Head of Mata Hari”) in October, “Camille Traviata” (music from Verdi’s opera accompanying the 1921 silent-movie “Camille” with Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino) in February ’09, and “Das Rheingold” (a scrunching-together of the Wagnerian wallbanger with an episode of television’s “Baywatch”) in June ’09. All shows at the Someday Lounge, where you can drink to all that.

Bonus attraction Saturday night: OTO performs Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Classical Revolution PDX and Karaoke From Hell. Ouch, we think.

7 p.m. Saturday, Someday Lounge. $25, $40/couple, 10 bucks if you just show up for the after-party from 9 until the cows come home.

Loie Fuller in the Columbia Gorge: Maryhill Museum of Art, our favorite concrete castle on a cliff with a backside view of Mt. Hood within easy driving distance of Portland (see our report on its affiliated Stonehenge replica) was established by visionary engineering entrepeneur Sam Hill as his home and the center of what he hoped would be an agricultural utopia. That failed, but three of his far-flung friends — Queen Marie of Romania, San Francisco dowager Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (wife of the sugar king) and Loie Fuller, the American girl who became an interpretive dance sensation in Paris — turned the place into one of America’s unlikeliest, and quirkiest, art museums.

On Saturday Maryhill is sponsoring a day-long series of events in celebration of Fuller’s life and art, to culminate in an evening performance in the nearby city of The Dalles by the New York company Jody Sperling and Time Lapse Dance, which will perform three dances inspired by Fuller. 7 p.m. Saturday at At the Dalles-Wahtonka High School Auditorium,
220 E. 10th Street, The Dalles; $7-$10.

Looks like a swell day trip, and if you need a break, some good wineries are nearby. The mammoth Maryhill Winery is just down the road from the museum; we’re also partial to the little, high-quality Syncline Cellars in nearby Lyle, Wash. (The poster shown here, part of the museum’s permanent collection, is by Alfred Choubrac, who with his brother Leon was one of Paris’ first poster designers in the 1880s, anticipating Toulouse-Lautrec. She’s probably doing Le Papillon, her butterfly dance.)

Glass at the Portland Japanese Garden: As many of you know, Portland is Glass City, U.S.A. this summer, with a major retrospective of the work of contemporary master Klaus Moje at the Portland Art Museum through Sept. 7, the annual international conference of the Glass Art Society this weekend, and glass work on view at about 40 galleries and other spots around town.

One of those “other” spots is the beautiful and soul-refreshing Portland Japanese Garden, where work by six Japanese or Japanese American glass artists is on view. The work of five (including onetime Moje students Yoko Yagi and Etsuko Nishi) are inside the Pavilion through June 30. But bigger-scale outdoor installations by one of our favorite artists, Jun Kaneko, remain on the grounds through July 31. “This Kaneko piece seems as if it has always been in the Garden,” Diane Durston says of the serene glass bridge in the photo above. We first got to know Durston, the garden’s curator of culture, art and education, when she was the director of education for the Portland Art Museum, and we trust her taste and enthusiasms.

The return of Chamber Music Northwest: One of Portland’s most congenial summer traditions returns Monday night for its 38th season, and we’re not afraid to say we’re looking forward to it. Sure, the crowd’s heads are largely streaked with silver, but these are geezers (and we count ourselves as part of that category) who know a good time when they see one. Great musicians playing great music under very Portland-friendly conditions: no leader onstage, just a small group of talented artists working on something together, and paying attention to the nuances that requires. Scatter pal David Stabler gives details in The Oregonian; we’re looking forward to festival vet Fred Sherry doing a little Wuorinen and Schoenberg’s first 12-tone quartet on July 12.

Through July 27; Reed College and Catlin Gabel School. (The photo is of cellist Sophie Shao and pianist Pei-Yao Wang in last summer’s “Schubertiade.”)

Bob Hicks, Books, Environment, Food, General

Feeding the masses: What would Tolstoy do?

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Reading William J. Broad’s fascinating report in the Science section of Tuesday’s New York Times about a possible breakthrough in world rice production got me thinking about Leo Tolstoy‘s masterful War and Peace, which I’ve been enjoying, in small gulps of 20 to 40 pages a sitting, in Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s lively 2007 translation.

For all of the novel’s cinematic scope and dense cultural and moral observation (the closest thing to an American equivalent of this amazing piece of writing, which Tolstoy himself referred to as an “epic” rather than a novel, is Herman Melville‘s similarly discursive Moby-Dick), Tolstoy could draw a character and an intimate conversation like nobody’s business: Reading this translation, you feel like you’re in the room, observing with the invisible narrator himself, smiling or shuddering at facial expressions, nodding in agreement with Tolstoy’s acute descriptions.

So let’s drop in, early in the going, on a conversation about the old roue Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov, who is on his deathbed and has no legitimate immediate heirs, although illegitimate ones are apparently scattered across Russia like seed from a flock of migrating birds. One of this prodigious offspring, the fine, fat, clumsy bear of a fellow Count Pyotr Kirillovich, or Pierre, looks to be on the ascent:

“Princess Anna Mikhailovna mixed into the conversation, clearly wishing to show her connections and her knowledge of all the circumstances of society.

” ‘The thing is,’ she said significantly and also in a half whisper. ‘Count Kiril Vladimirovich’s reputation is well-known … He’s lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.’

” ‘How good-looking the old man was,’ said the countess, ‘even last year! I’ve never seen a handsomer man.’

” ‘He’s quite changed now,’ said Anna Mikhailovna. ‘So, as I was about to say,’ she went on, ‘Prince Vassily is the direct heir to the whole fortune through his wife, but the father loved Pierre very much, concerned himself with his upbringing, and wrote to the sovereign … so that when he dies (he’s so poorly that they expect it at any moment, and Lorrain has come from Petersburg), no one knows who will get this enormous fortune, Pierre or Prince Vassily. Forty thousand souls, and millions of roubles. I know it very well, because Prince Vassily told me himself. And Kirill Vladimirovich is my uncle twice removed through my grandmother. And he’s Borya’s godfather,’ she added, as if ascribing no importance to this circumstance.”

Fine, witty writing. But what’s it got to do with the price of rice in China? Hold on. We’ll get there.

Forty thousand souls, the princess counts among the old man’s fortune. That means 40,000 serfs — in effect, slaves — whose lives and labor are in the power and patronage of a single man. Tolstoy finished writing War and Peace in 1868, seven years after the emancipation of Russia’s serfs; America’s Emancipation Proclamation was even fresher news. But the novel is set during the Napoleonic wars, from 1805 through 1812. And at the beginning of that period the world population was about 1 billion (up from a scant 1 million in 10,000 B.C.E.), or roughly one-seventh of today’s estimate of 6.7 billion. So with the same equivalent of the population, Count Bezukhov today would have directly controlled the destinies of 280,000 men, women and children — an astonishing figure, even in the contemporary world of runaway wealth and the new Russia of extreme fortunes got fast and furious. And how does a master feed 40,000, or 280,000, or 6.7 billion souls?
Continue reading Feeding the masses: What would Tolstoy do? →

Barry Johnson, General, Language

Well and truly sentenced

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The question before us today is the question before us every day: Is the sentence dying? It was posed by James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, who then answered it in the affirmative. And that set Washington Post writer Linton Weeks on an imaginative reporter’s journey to test his conclusion. It’s a clever little trip. In typical reporter fashion he finds Important People to agree with Billington and Important People to disagree, and concludes with a trope newspapers seldom employ. He gives us a quote about the whole sentence problem that seems to agree with Billington, but he has taken it from an old Atlantic magazine (October 1937) and out of its context (that the loopy sentences of John Dos Passos and his kin were undermining the sentence with their complexity). Which just goes to show that language changes, and maybe that’s OK. Well played, Mr. Weeks.

The key paragraph of the story has this quote from Billington:

“We are moving toward the language used by computer programmers and air traffic controllers,” he says. “Language as a method of instruction, not a portal into critical thinking.”

He’s talking about texting, IM-ing, commenting on blogs and how these activities are seeping in the language as a whole. Sentences lurk beneath these crypticons, of course, but not good sentences, not beautiful sentences, not important sentences. The language of technology is replacing the language of… falconry. I made that last bit up, but my point is that technology always affects language, special languages do too, and for that matter so does the mode of communication. The old telegraph “language” was masterfully compressed (stop). So are classified ads (talk about a phrase that’s about to exit the language in a hurry). They save keystrokes, space and money. Modern texting is the same thing: an exploration of how little language it takes to make sense.
Continue reading Well and truly sentenced →

General, Visual Art

Hey, wait a minute Mr. Postman

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Mister postman look and see/You got a letter in your bag for me

Yes, Art Scatter DOES get mail. Most excellent mail, thank you very much. For example, Scott Wayne Indiana sent us a key. Well, not exactly a key (“this is not a key”), but an image of a key. You can see at the left, right? And can you make out what it says? “Do not duplicate.” And what did we do? Just moments ago with a couple of clicks? Mr. Indiana waved the red flag right in front of us, and we couldn’t resist. Anyway, we like Mr. Indiana’s impulses, so we are not obeying the key, and we pass along his invitation to further disobedience. At his website, Mr. Indiana explains how.

We also received a note from Jeff Jahn at Portlandart.net, which he says is now in it’s third year. Art Scatter feels your pain, Mr. Jahn. Three years on the WWW must feel like … well, we could only imagine because we’re only four months in and that feels like… well, we have no idea. Anyway, he directed our attention to two interviews, one with LA art master Ed Ruscha and one with photographer Justine Kurland, and he was absolutely right. It was smart of Arcy Douglass to ask Ruscha about his use of diagonals in his work, and his answer, it has to do with trains (which will be coming up in a relativity post in August — trains, I mean!), was excellent. And Ryan Pierce’s take on Kurland is long and digressive and deep. She’s going to be a great addition to the art world here.

We’ve gotten two recent notes from Alyssa Rosso at the Tacoma Art Museum, which we admit to thinking is a pretty terrific museum, especially in its coddling of Northwest artists. The first is a call for submissions to the museum’s 9th Northwest Biennial. The deadline for you artists out there is July 26, and you have to work through some special entry site. We recommend going to the museum’s website and figuring out things from there. Alison de Lima Greene, cuurator of Contemporary Art and Special Projects at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will be helping the museum’s Rock Hushka sort through the entries. Good luck! The second email simply lists the museum’s fall shows: recent acquisitions of a surrealist bent (including work by Salvador Dali and such Northwest artists as Morris Graves, Claudia Fitch, Anya Kivarkis, and Karen Willenbrink-Johnson); a Donald Fels collaboration with sign painters in India (which couldn’t sound more interesting); and the responses of Western artists to the Ottoman Empire. Hey, see you in Tacoma!

Finally, Art Scatter has made some very wise purchases at the Studio 333 open house before. Very wise indeed. It’s now called the Boxlift Building, but the artists, and we counted 15, are still conducting the open house. The details: 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday, June 14, 333 NE Hancock St and MLK Blvd. (with a music, wine and hors d’oeuvre reception). And thanks to Boxlift for letting us know about it!

Barry Johnson, Environment, General

A planning thrill ride with Fregonese, Koolhaas, Krier

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According to the number crunchers at Metro (Portland’s regional government, for those keeping track outside Oregon), metropolitan Portland, which includes five counties in Oregon and two across the Columbia River in Washington, will reach a population of 3.85 million by the year 2060. The population now is roughly 2.1 million. And if the area continues to grow at the rate it did from 1960 to 2000, that rises to more than 6 million.

If you are in the planning business, and John Fregonese is, this is important news, because big change ahead means more planning! Fregonese spoke Monday night at the Bright Lights Discussion Series, sponsored by Portland Spaces magazine and moderated by editor Randy Gragg, and one of the first things he referenced was that figure. Not because he’s looking for work, but because it lends a certain urgency to the work he’s doing with the Big Look, Oregon’s attempt to improve its land-use framework, still seen as a model nationally, but now a bit old and proven to be short on flexibility. Especially with hordes of new residents lining up to come here.

Fregonese’s discussion wasn’t all that radical, primarily a restatement of the principles governing the Big Look, a short and flattering account of Chicago’s planning process (not to mention Denver, both Fregonese clients), and some cautionary notes about the cost to Portland of standing still. What gave it some urgency for me, though, was the Nicolai Ouroussoff story in the New York Times magazine about urban planning and building (without urban planning) in China, specifically the coastal town of Shenzen, which has grown from a little fishing village of a few thousand to a city of eight million or so in the past 30 years. That’s eight million. Ouroussoff’s story is interesting for its account of this frenzied growth, not all that uncommon in China, where a huge rural population is shifting to the cities, but also for the “values” it contains. More about that later. Finally, I was also considering a rousing defense of New Urbanist Leon Krier by Roger Scruton in Journal magazine, a publication of the Manhattan Institute. I started to type that the Manhattan Institute is like Portland’s own Cascade Policy Institute, but it’s much smarter than that, though its eagerness to battle “collectivism” in all of its real and imagined forms is similar. Both are important for they way they send you back to check your “arithmetic” on various issues (the Cascade Politicy Institute, for example, hates light rail, accommodating bicycles and the Eastbank Esplanade).

So, just to recap the introduction: Fregonese on contemporary planning processes; Ouroussoff on China; new urbanism. If we throw them together, what do we come up with?
Continue reading A planning thrill ride with Fregonese, Koolhaas, Krier →

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Bob Hicks on Drammy night

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NOTE: This was in the comment section to the post below, but I’ve moved it up. It’s Bob’s account of Monday night when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Drammy committee, which dispenses awards to the local theater community.

Ah, Barry. Thank you sincerely for tooting my horn, although that headline’s a bit over the top. My impression of last night’s Drammy Awards is one of humor and grace, and I believe I’d feel that way even if I hadn’t been pulled into the midst of it. (I confess to feeling just a little like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn peeking in on their own funeral.)

I’ve made fun of Portland’s penchant for standing ovations in the past, but let me tell you, standing on a stage and actually receiving one is a heady and discombobulating experience. It felt like a blessing, and we can all use as many blessings as we can get. But I am more than willing to leave the experience from this point on to actual performers, who after all, put their emotional lives on the line every night.

And now let me point out that my little corner of the awards ceremony at the Crystal Ballroom was just that: a little corner, as it should be, in a large and generous evening that celebrated the accomplishments of Portland’s lively theater community. And “community” is right: This was an evening of both polish and spontaneity, with an air of genuineness that overly scripted events like the Oscars can only wish they could recapture.

Mom-and-daughter co-hosts Vana and Eleanor O’Brien set the mood by inviting all the presenters to tell a joke, and so they did, from the corny to the blue to the downright hilarious. My favorite was a yarn about a couple of tekkies and a stage manager who are stranded on a desert island and stumble across the inevitable genie in a lamp, who grants each a wish. After the first two have themselves whisked off the island to lives of leisure and wealth, it’s the stage manager’s turn. Looking at his watch, he says, “I want those two back here in 10 minutes!” The house erupted.

The evening had its serious moments, particularly from best-actress winner Luisa Sermol on the ways the nine Iraqi women in “9 Parts of Desire” got inside her skin, and from supporting actress Michele Mariana (Fraulein Schneider in “Cabaret”) on the links among theater, family, courage and politics. But in general this was a lovefest – a far cry from the awards’ early days, when they were called the Willies, and when booze-fueled actors and directors were as likely to boo a selection from the crowd or pull a Marlon Brando and refuse an award as to cheer the winners. Those days had a certain bravado, a certain unpredictability, a certain rough-cut charm. Last night had, as I said, humor and grace. It was like the difference between the Ride of the Valkyries and “The Magic Flute.”

I liked the way the awards reflected the diversity of Portland theater: a dozen of 39 total awards for the city’s biggest company, Portland Center Stage (half of them, including an outstanding production nod, for “Twelfth Night”), seven (including an outstanding production for “Grace”) for the lean and vital Third Rail Rep, and a liberal smattering for smaller companies ranging from the musical-centric Live on Stage and Broadway Rose to such adventurous alternative troupes as defunkt and Sojourn. The rewards represented the validity of varying approaches to the art of theater: the traditional resident-theater professionalism of Center Stage; the high-quality, low-rent professionalism of Third Rail; the tradition-bending adventurousness of the smaller companies (Sojourn won the third outstanding-production award for “Good,” an original, site-specific show that took place in a car dealership).

Someone asked me after the ceremony if I’d ever been an actor. No, and I never wanted to be. Nor did I ever want to be a playwright, or a director (although now and again I DID wish I could re-direct a show). I was never in competition with the people who made theater; I was content to speak for the audience – to start a conversation, really.

Writing is a solitary adventure. Theater is a social art. As a writer, that excited me – that sense that art can rise from collaboration, from the unspoken spaces between. It excites me still, and I am happy to have left The Oregonian’s theater chair in the intelligent and capable hands of Marty Hughley, whose eye and ear and voice compel his readers to approach the stage with an open and curious mind.

I would like to thank Gretchen Corbett for her generous words of introduction, Richard Wattenberg for his kind essay in the Drammy program, the entire Drammy committee for coming up with the audacious idea that an award might be given to a critic, and that wonderful roomful of theater makers who so generously showered me with the grace of their good wishes. And I would like to officially apologize to the fine young actor Taylor Caffall, who won a supporting-actor award for his work in Alan Ayckbourn’s “Garden,” and to whom I mistakenly referred, in an admiring notice way last fall, as Taylor “Calfall.” Enough said.

General

Hail, Bob Hicks!

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Monday night at the annual Drammy Awards, Art Scatter’s own Bob Hicks received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Drammy committee and, by extension, the Portland theater community. And for once, we’re not going to make jokes about it because we really do think it brings honor both to Bob and to the theater community itself and that’s no joking matter. To the theater community because it recognized the value of the smart, insightful, carefully (even beautifully) written prose that Bob directed at the art and craft of theater in Portland and the state over a sustained period of time at The Oregonian. To Bob, because for a critic to be held in this high esteem means that he (in this case) offers something both highly useful AND compassionate. The only group not represented, the third side of the triangle, is the readers, and I know that if they organized a committee, they would have agreed with this award — we are so much better off in so many ways for having read Bob’s reviews.

Of course, all of this sounds so past tense. Awards are that way, after all: celebrations of past achievement. And Bob is also about the other side of the timeline. We can look forward to many more of his considerations of life in our place ahead. And not just on Art Scatter! Somehow, that’s comforting to those of us who have read him for better than 30 years. Keep ’em coming, Brother Bob!

For a look at the award ceremony and a full list of this year’s winners, we direct you to Bob’s successor in all things theater at The Oregonian, Marty Hughley, and his account on Oregonlive.

While we’ve got you at Oregonlive, we’ll direct you to a book review by another Scatter-fellow, Vernon Peterson, and his review of Dreaming Up America by Russell Banks. We strongly suspect that there is a Director’s Cut of this review floating around on Vernon’s computer. Wouldn’t you just LOVE to read it here?!?

How much more self-referential could we be? Well, fortunately we’ve just about exhausted our capacity for self-examination. We do know of some posts that are brewing, though. Portland Spaces magazine had another of its Bright Lights Discussion Series events last night, and planner John Fregonese, who is leading Oregon’s Big Look task force, was there with some words of wisdom about the FUTURE (we shudder as we type the word!). So we’ll get to that pretty quickly. And a couple of other tasty topics are still simmering away.