Bob Hicks, Books, Environment, General

On the bookshelf: Ignazio Silone’s ‘Bread and Wine’

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One of the advantages in this Day of the Download to maintaining actual bookshelves is that you browse through them now and again, looking for things you’ve read before that you might want to read again. I’m a proponent of re-reading, and I’ve come to trust my sense of when it’s time to pick up a book and give it another shot.

Bread and WineSo one day last week I picked up my old copy of Ignazio Silone‘s Bread and Wine, a classic Italian novel that is celebrated for its anti-fascist and anti-communist leanings (Silone is often abbreviated as the Italian George Orwell) but which is at least as much, it seems to me, a reflection on the nature of the church and the chasm between organized religion and true morality.

That this reflection comes from a writer who has been accused by historians of spying for the fascists in the 1920s is something I can’t explain, except to suggest that the most potent condemnations of specific wrongs sometimes come from those who are tempted most mightily by them. And if, indeed, Silone was a police informant as a young man, it lends a deeper resonance to Bread and Wine, a story that includes a key character who has informed on his communist cellmates and later come to terms with his motives and actions, bravely enduring a Christlike death. Silone is extraordinarily understanding and insightful about this character, whose path to saintliness echoes the imperfections and weaknesses of Jesus in Nikos Kazantzakis‘s novel The Last Temptation of Christ, except that the Greek writer’s man/god, while tempted to the point of torment, doesn’t give in.

Silone wrote this novel in exile in 1935, when Mussolini and his crowd were riding high and had just gone a-venturing in Abyssinia, prowling for the spoils of victory. He rewrote the book in 1955, seeking to make it sparer and cleaner, and the version I have was published in 1986, which is I imagine when I first read it. That was my second go-round. I’d also read the novel in college, in the late 1960s, for the same class in which I read The God That Failed, the 1949 book of essays by Silone, Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender about how they became disenchanted with communism. Surely it means something that I’ve read Silone’s book at about age 20, and about 38, and now at 61, and each time it’s felt like a fine wrestle with literature that matters.

Continue reading On the bookshelf: Ignazio Silone’s ‘Bread and Wine’ →

Environment, General, Laura Grimes

I have garden nozzle envy and I can’t make it stop

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By LAURA GRIMES

My neighbor invited me to check her drawers. For a male part.

Actually, she has just one drawer. Labeled “hose parts.” Where she claims, and I quote, “numerous male and female parts are happily having a menage a huit ou neuf — you might even say an orgy.”

Let us pray for good spray ....I don’t speak French, so that basically meant to me, “blah blah blah blah ORGY.” And I’m invited.

In case you missed my previous plumbing panic, I have all female parts, and I misplaced my male part.

This is really embarrassing to admit, but without a male part I can’t couple my dirty garden hose to my hose blaster.

Now, not only is my neighbor willing to come to the rescue with a male part, she’s also willing to take care of my large smelly boys. She’s offered to take care of their smell and goo-making attributes. All I have to do is send them to the end of the driveway and she will HOSE THEM OFF. Apparently she has a blast-across-the-street-hose-off-the-neighbor’s-child setting on her garden nozzle.

I know. She sounds so charitable. But I know she’s really just looking for an opportunity to flash her garden nozzle at me.

I’m not proud to admit this, but I have garden nozzle envy. I had no idea I could be so envious of something at the end of a hose. I’ve had a bad case of it ever since my neighbor told me in a rather lofty voice, “I have a new garden nozzle.”

I was speechless at first. But before I knew it, I blurted out, “I want a new garden nozzle!”

Soon after that it was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, and I wanted to play outside, but instead I had to go to a large one-stop shopping store. I was really mad about having to be there. It was crowded and noisy. It’s possible I had forgotten to eat lunch, because I was in a low-sugar stupor.

Maybe I just couldn’t help myself, but somehow, in my daze, I drifted into the garden-nozzle aisle. I looked up and I was in awe. There, in full display, was a wide array of nozzles in bright, shiny Las Vegas colors. They were purple and red. They had flower patterns. They had settings called things like mist and jet. They had beautiful long handles. I felt like I had stumbled into a red light district. All I could do was gawk. I looked around to make sure no one was watching.

The nozzles were so flashy and brazen that I was too embarrassed to buy one, so I did the next best thing. I called my mom.

Bedazzled by mom nozzle ...She came to visit and brought me a new nozzle. It has rhinestones.

She made it with love and a glue gun. I immediately flashed it to the neighbors. When I told my mom she misheard me and thought that I flashed the neighbors, but she got that wrong.

My neighbor said she likes her shiny garden nozzle (read blatant hussy) because she can (wait for it) find it in her yard. Herewith, tips for finding shy, unassuming garden nozzles:

1. Locate faucet.
2. Locate hose attached to faucet.
3. Follow hose until …
4. … you find the nozzle.
(Feel free to adapt these tips as needed.)

Turns out my neighbor has two garden nozzles. One in front and one in back.

I wanted one in front and one in back, too. So I got up the courage and went back to the red light district. I shyly checked out a bright red one with a long handle. I even touched it. But I settled on a sweet little blue number — a 7-pattern turret nozzle. It was 10 percent off. My receipt says I got a “noz/hose end.” It has a metallic sheen, and I’m just a little embarrassed to gaze at it too long. But it feels great. It has an ergonomic grip and a trigger lock.

I’m very happy with my new garden nozzles. They look beautiful. They spray like nobody’s business.

But I got some new information. My neighbor said that while I was out of town another neighbor got a new garden nozzle. A very nice one. With 10 speeds.

I haven’t checked it out yet for myself. Partly because I’m still reeling from some other news my neighbor shared. In addition to having a drawer entirely dedicated to hose parts, she has something else, too. She has a king-size auger.

— Laura Grimes

Bob Hicks, Cities, General, Theater, Visual Art

Drammy, Drammy, who’s got the Drammy?

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Thenkewveddymuch. I couldnadunnit without all the little people.

workingdrammy_003Oops. Wrong award ceremony.

Monday night (a night after the Tonys and a very long distance, psychically, from the glamfest called the Oscars) Portland theater folk will gather for the 30th Drammy Awards, the annual celebration of the best and brightest of the local theater season. It’s a good party, a good show, and generally a lot of fun.

Here’s the official scoop:

WHAT: 30th Anniversary Drammy Awards
WHERE: Crystal Ballroom
1332 W. Burnside St.
Portland, OR
WHEN: Monday, June 8
6:00 PM Social hour and slide presentation
7:00 PM Awards presentation
COST: FREE ADMISSION, no-host bar and pizza
DRESS: Theatrical, elegant, innovative. Costumes are encouraged.

Costumes? I generally show up cleverly disguised as an aging L.L. Bean type who doesn’t own an iron. One year I wore my tuxedo and achieved the improbable: I turned a bunch of Portland actors speechless. It’s almost worth doing again.

These were wild and woolly occasions in their early days, with lots of drinking and shouting and the occasional Marlon Brando refusal to appear (Sacheen Littlefeather, where are you now?). I may not be remembering this exactly right — surely I didn’t imagine it — but one year a director of a certain show, miffed over a slight I can’t remember, refused to go up and receive several awards his show had won until the best-director category came up and his own name was announced. Suddenly he had a change of heart. Another year I got in a post-ceremony tiff with the master of ceremonies, who had engaged in an egregious-because-untrue running rant against my employer of the time. I blush to recall.

Things are more tame these days, if no less fun. The people who hate the idea of awards ceremonies have learned to just stay home. The people who show up seem genuinely excited about the event, which doesn’t mean there isn’t sometimes grumbling about the outcomes of the votes. (And a shout-out to the committee members, who see an unconscionable amount of theater in order to cast their votes.)

Last year’s ceremony is a bit of a haze to me — a happy haze — because I was given a lifetime achievement award, which made me feel somewhere between an unlikely cultural icon and dead. Fortunately life goes on, and I don’t seem to be either. But sometimes I look at my little plaque, which sits atop a bookshelf in my bedroom, and smile.

To all those who wish for a similar rush on Monday night, break a leg.

Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Putting the art in the scatter: Escher, Ainu, PNCA, beads

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It’s a big weekend in Portland art. Not only are most of the city’s commercial galleries showing new stuff after their First Thursday and First Friday openings, but the Portland Art Museum also has a couple of big openings on Saturday, and another opens Saturday in the pavilion of the Japanese Garden. The Scatter brain trust will be busy making the rounds.

In the meantime, here’s our (just invented) Friday Scatter Rotogravure:

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lucindaparker_feastofstephen_8151

PNCA at 100, at the Portland Art Museum: The museum kicks off this centennial celebration of the Pacific Northwest College of Art, which for most of its lifetime was connected to the museum and was known as the Museum Art School. Now it’s on its own and bursting with ambition. This show goes back to the beginning with works by the likes of Anna B. Crocker and Harry Wentz, and includes Northwest icons such as Louis Bunce, Michele Russo, Lucinda Parker, George Johanson, Paul Missal and Jay Backstrand, all of whom have had close connections to the art school. Pictured here is Parker’s 1980 acrylic on canvas Feast of Stephen, a museum purchase from the Helen Thurston Ayer Fund.

This show, curated by Bruce Guenther, hangs around until Sept. 13.
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M.C. Escher, Encounter, 1944. Collection Dr. & Mrs. Robery W. LearyM.C. ESCHER at the Portland Art Museum: Truly an artist for the Age of Engineering — a draftsman for the dreamers, a dreamer for the draftsmen. On Saturday the museum opens Virtual Worlds: M.C. Escher and Paradox, and somehow that’s got us us humming a tune from The Pirates of Penzance:

A paradox?
A parodox,
A most ingenious paradox!
We’ve quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

The Escher Equation continues through Sept. 13 at the museum. Pictured is Escher’s 1944 lithograph Encounter, from the collection of Dr. and Mrs. Robert W. Leary.

This show, curated by Annette Dixon, hangs around until Sept. 13, too.

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Ainu group, 1902 or 1904/Wikimedia Commons

PARALLEL WORLDS at the Japanese Garden: Subtitled Art of the Ainu of Hokkaido and Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, this appealing-looking show brings together traditional ceremonial robes and other woven pieces by northern Japan’s Ainu ethnic group and the more familiar work of Tlingit and other artists from Alaska and British Columbia.

The Ainu story is intriguing: It’s a native nation from Japan’s northern islands, with a little spillover to main land Siberia, that has struggled to maintain its own identity: Only recently has Japan reversed a decades-long policy of forced assimilation.

The photo above isn’t from the exhibit. It was taken in 1902 or 1904, and was printed in the book Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. It’s from Wikmedia Commons.

The exhibit, curated by Diane Durston, is in the Garden Pavilion through June 28.

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Columbia Plateau beaded bag, ca. 1900-20. Coll. Arlene and Harold SchnitzerGIFTS OF HONOR at the Portland Art Museum: This very good show has been up since the end of last August in the museum’s Marge Riley Education Gallery, which straddles the museum’s two buildings, but it ends June 30, and you should try to catch it before it disappears.

Assembled from the collection of Arlene and Harold Schnitzer and subtitled Beaded Bags From the Columbia River Plateau, it’s a terrific sampling of 35 bags, ranging in age from about 1900 to about 1960. The one shown here is circa 1900-1920, and is made of glass beads, hide, wool, cotton cloth and cotton string.

The quality and variety of work in this show, which is curated by Anna Strankman, is immensely pleasing.

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This is, of course, only a taste of what’s out there to be seen in the city’s galleries and museums. And we haven’t even mentioned its theaters and concert halls. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for instance, Oregon Ballet Theatre performs its season-ending show of Jerome Robbins and Christopher Wheeldon at Keller Auditorium. Go forth, fellow Scatterers, and multiply across the face of the city.

General, Laura Grimes

Seventy-six trombones and a giant cow

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By LAURA GRIMES

A brief report from today’s Junior Rose Parade, where the arts were alive and well.

Tillie the Tillamook cow and friend. Rose Festival AssociationYes, long before the parade started, when people were still scarce, a driver held his hand out of a passing van and released two butterflies.

Yes, men do wear kimonos.

No, Mayor Sam Adams wasn’t to be seen.

Yes, City Commissioner Amanda Fritz walked the parade with a red skirt suit, black pumps, a big smile and a sign that read, “Hi, I’m Amanda!”

Yes, the best middle school bands were from Washington state.

Yes, the biggest cheers were for … (I kid you not) …

Tillamook Cheese (celebrating 100 years) with a giant cow and a giant cheddar loaf

and …

the Multnomah County Library.

— Laura Grimes

General, Language, Vernon Peterson

There’s a word for this sort of thing

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“I stare at the gleaming black surface, at the red soil beneath my feet, at the dry eucalyptus leaves, curled into the shapes of letters as if they had been shaken from a tray of type.”
– Cees Nooteboom, Lost Paradise

This is a story without pictures. So it must be a story about Paradise.

It is a retreat, a refuge, a quiet place of natural beauty and extended view, where victims of the “modern madness, mere maniacal extension and motion,” find a place to nurture the “inner life,” to regain “the uncontested possession of the long, sweet, stupid day.”

Seated at a bench above a “wide, far-reaching garden,” comfortable in the good place of serenity and peace, the old man recalls his former life, outside in the world, where he had “lost possession” of his soul, “surrounded only with the affairs of other people, and the irrelevant, destructive, brutalising sides of life.” Out there, he tells his sympathetic bench mate, he thought he would never recover: “The wild waters would close over me, and I should drop straight to the bottom where the vanquished dead lie.” That thought precipitates this exchange:

“I follow you every step of your way,” said the friendly Brother. “The wild waters, you mean, of our horrible time.”

“Of our horrible time – precisely. Not, of course – as we sometimes dream – of any other.”

“Yes, any other is only a dream. We really know none but our own.”

You suspect those are not the words of our time? They are from Henry James’ story “The Great Good Place” published in 1900. It could have been another story from any century running back to much earlier times. This, the one at hand, because I read it yesterday.

A couple of ideas about Paradise.

We envision it behind us or in front of us. Even in the best of times, the blest of times, Paradise is some place or time other than ours. It is the place we left or the one we are headed to. Meaning the Garden we were thrust from, or the crystalline palace beyond the abstract gate of the unknown. In the Pacific Northwest the idea of Paradise tumbles like a stream out of the Cascades. Our natural world is Eden if unspoiled or Heaven if it is transformed into a rose garden. Rivers, wild or flood-controlled. Notice that the bench mates look out over a peaceful garden and shiver at the thought of drowning in wild waters. Metaphorical experience, of course.

Paradise is lost or not yet found. Paradise misplaced, mistranslated. That’s it. Paradise is words. Words we’ve fumbled, or lost. A place of words within words. We read a landscape the way we read a book, though perhaps no as literally as the woman in Lost Paradise reads the eucalyptus leaves. All we do is read. Unlike the animals in James Dickey’s poem, “The Heaven of Animals,” the place at which they arrive, “beyond their knowing,” where “Their instincts wholly bloom / and they rise”:

For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

We’ve all been there! – In metaphorical exhalations. Now is the heaven of animals. Now for us is before or after as we think about it.

Home is where the words are, and they are buried deep. Ronald Johnson found his book Radi Os (1977) by digging words out from words. He picked up an 1892 edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost in a Seattle bookstore and erased or “etched” away most lines and words on each page, leaving a core of images, in the same place on the page of his published book: PARADISE LOST.

Radiating out. A book, a Paradise, a place of words within words.

Choose your words carefully.

Books, Cities, General, Language, Laura Grimes, Poetry

Poem for city travelers: reading and writing on the bus

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By LAURA GRIMES

Anna Griffin’s column today in The Oregonian about poetry disappearing from buses makes my heart hurt. I love those poems, those found sparks of life, and I will sorely miss them if they disappear. Often, when I was lost in thought on the bus, I would spy one of those poems and read it over and over. I would crane my neck around other passengers to follow the lines.

Credit: TriMetPerhaps if the poetry cards go away, riders could start carrying around books of poetry — reading them, exchanging them, passing them around. TriMet could have stacks of books on the bus, donated by riders, free for the taking and dropping off again.

Perhaps riders could start writing poetry. Maybe TriMet could run its own poetry contest. It would be fitting for buses and MAX trains to run local poems. If TriMet pays to print cards anyway for public service announcements, why not some inspiring art? Worried about printing costs? Use recycled paper and Sharpies, have people write their own poems, pick the best and most legible, and paste them on the old boards. Why stop at poetry in motion? Decorate them. TriMet would be so hip. TriMet would be … so Portland.

What’s the harm? What’s to lose? Look at everything TriMet has to gain: public outreach, supporting the arts, good vibes for riders, a happier Portland, impressing tourists, giving itself a great image boost.

Maybe TriMet could spearhead various literary efforts: One week, a free ride if you have a poetry book, for instance. Another week if you have a book more than an inch thick. Another week if you have a Newbery Medal book. It could be a wonderfully organic, perfect-for-Portland kind of thing. Think of the heady, positive impact that could have.

When I had to start commuting on the bus, I didn’t entirely like the idea. I didn’t like the idea of sitting next to people who smelled like pee, or of listening to overblown phone conversations. But I quickly realized it was good head time. I liked being part of the everyday jostlings of people getting to places. The ride made me take the time to see and hear, and made my brain turn over many a matter.

My whole Henry James gig that ran in The Oregonian got its life on the bus.

Don Colburn: gravity on the bus
And that’s where I read As If Gravity Were a Theory, a book of poetry by Don Colburn. I worked with Don at The Oregonian. He sat across from me. He whirs a whistle on occasion when a rowdy celebratory moment deserves it. He’s a health writer by day. But other times he writes beautiful, brain-tickling verse. His title poem ran in The Oregonian. It’s worth every careful winged word.

Don has no idea that I wrote a poem many months ago about reading his poetry on the bus. What poetry ride will you take? Will TriMet take up the challenge?

Don, I Read You on the Bus

Words flit by like traffic lights
blinking colors
in stop and go.

The bus bends
the way you say clouds kneel
and people file on
clinking coins
tumbling.
It’s gray outside.

Heads framed
by wide windows
scuzzy on the outside.
Whole bridges stand in
as backdrops
and then whiz gone.

I drop in and out
of poems
the way I drop in and out
of people.
The everyday.
I rock and sway with suspension,
re-sort my bags
and zone in
on a life sliced uneasy.
I’m lost. Forgotten.
Unconsciously counting the meter
in my head,
rewording the words
and slipping into spaces
of someone else
in some other place.

That was streets ago.
White tennis shoes
center my gaze
blue jeans
coat no hat
and the slow focus
to a face creased brown
like fresh-made paper
and lips flat quiet.

Then the woman
and the hill and the pill.
I’m stepping with her
going up and going down
lost in her rhythm
and life’s seasons

when the driver honks goodbye
to a toddler waving,
his eyes following small steps,
though his expression doesn’t change.

My eyes refocus
to a tan trenchcoat,
black hat and headphones,
a paperback with bus ticket bookmarks.
He’s lost in a John Grisham world.

Black words
make sense of
white paper
and when I read
there in your
poem
15th and Fremont,
my stop in just a few blocks,
it’s not just a coincidence,
but another everyday thing
in a whole spectrum
of in-between colors
in in-between places.

–Laura Grimes

Environment, General, Laura Grimes

Would someone please tell my husband I’m trying to fix the bathtub drain?

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By LAURA GRIMES

“Why are you heating water?” my husband asked me with a note of alarm in his voice.

He associates hot water with tea. And he associates tea with sore throats.

“Because I’m … uh … ”

we_can_do_itHow do I tell my husband that I’m heating water because our bathtub drain is plugged? As I shower, the water slowly rises to my ankles until I cry for help, quickly rinse and turn off the faucet. Then the water slowly recedes, leaving a gray filthy mess. This isn’t pleasant. It grosses me out.

Somehow it doesn’t gross out one of the large smelly boys, who not only doesn’t notice the gray filthy mess, he TAKES A BATH IN IT. My only comfort in this is that one of the large smelly boys is actually taking a bath, though I still worry for his overall hygiene.

My mom visited and somehow the rising pool of water did not escape her notice.

Figuring a large clump of goo got lodged in the drain, I unscrewed the stopper to clean it out. But there’s a trap a few inches down that blocks getting to the goo.

I tried the vinegar and soda trick. Nada.

Continue reading Would someone please tell my husband I’m trying to fix the bathtub drain? →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

Time to pay it forward to Oregon Ballet Theatre

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2007 Nutcracker. Photo: BLAINE TRUITT COVERTYou’ve read here and elsewhere about the deep financial hole Oregon Ballet Theatre has stumbled into. Scatter partner Barry Johnson broke the news in The Oregonian last week that the company needs $750,000, fast, to keep from going under. The problem isn’t getting customers in the seats — OBT’s concerts are extremely popular — but a precipitous 50 percent drop in individual contributions.

The arguments have been made. I believe the loss of this company would be devastating for Portland, even for people who have no interest in ballet. Now’s the time to help.

First: If you can, write a check or use your credit card to make a contribution. I’m doing that. Here‘s where to do it.

Second: Buy tickets to the season finale concert of ballets by Jerome Robbins and Christopher Wheeldon, June 5-7 at Portland’s Keller Auditorium. Here‘s where to do it. Or call the ballet at 503-227-0977.

Third: Buy tickets for Dance United, the benefit performance June 12 at the Keller that will bring together dancers from major companies across North America, including New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Washington Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project, Ballet West, BodyVox, White Bird/Minh Tran & Company, Oslund+Co., Linda Austin Dance, and OBT. Program details are here. It’s an astonishing show of solidarity, and an astonishing array of talent. Here‘s where to do it.

Fourth: OBT is organizing an online auction to help raise money. Maybe you have something to donate, or maybe you’re in the market to buy. Here‘s where to get details.

Barry Johnson has been following the situation more closely than anyone else in the press. For more insights, see this and this from his Portland Arts Watch blog and column for The Oregonian.

All together, now. Let’s get this thing done.

Bob Hicks, Cities, Food, General, Journalism, Theater, Visual Art

Sunday links: Art garden and a wild and crazy quote

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A quick Sunday scatter of good stuff in other places:

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Summer," 1573, Louvre/Paris. Wikimedia Commons*************************

FEED THE BODY, FEED THE MIND: Under the headline Philbrook Museum of Art Trades Tulips for Tomatoes, artdaily.org reports that Tulsa’s Philbrook — the museum that Brian Ferriso left to become executive director of the Portland Art Museum — is replacing its 3,600-square-foot south formal garden with a vegetable garden and will give the veggies to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma to help Oklahomans get through the economic crisis. Now, there’s a conceptual art project we can get behind. Bravo. Too often when times get tough, culture and shelter (and schools, for that matter) get tossed into an either/or funding game, turning natural allies into competing animals at a shrinking watering hole. As this project reveals, it doesn’t have to be that way.

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STEVE MARTIN UNLEASHED: The Oregonian’s Marty Hughley has a good report in Sunday’s O! section on how things turned out when students from the local high school finally got to put on their production of Steve Martin‘s stage comedy Picasso at the Lapin Agile. They performed it at Eastern Oregon University instead of at the high school because the school board, after receiving parental complaints about the play’s purported immorality, called the thing off.

Martin then stepped in and paid for the production himself, and in a letter to the local paper he came up with this gem, which Hughley quotes:

“I have heard that some in your community have characterized the play as ‘people drinking in bars, and treating women as sex objects.’ With apologies to William Shakespeare, this is like calling Hamlet a play about a castle.”

Yes, Xenophobia, there is an Oregon. But the good news to take from Marty’s story is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

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IN SWITZERLAND, A SWING TO THE RIGHT: A few art insiders complained when Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times’ chief art critic, decamped to Europe for a year instead of paying attention to what was happening on the art scene stateside. Not me. I’ve enjoyed his Abroad reports. They’ve helped an already top-notch critic broaden his knowledge even further, and they’ve given readers a lot of good stories they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

One of the best is last week’s report from Zurich, In Quiet Switzerland, Outspoken Rapper Takes on the Far Right, about an Estonian-born Swiss rapper stage-named Stress who’s stirred up some welcome controversy by tackling directly in his lyrics chemicals tycoon Christoph Blocher, powerful head of the ultranationalist Swiss People’s Party, who is one scary dude. Like Hitler and Stalin before him, Blocher uses his own sanitized vision of cultural purity in the arts to push his ideal of the perfect, and perfectly xenophobic, homeland. Kimmelman writes:

Mr. Blocher used his own collection of works by 19th-century painters like Albert Anker and Ferdinand Hodler in shows he organized to illustrate what he has said represent wholesome Swiss ideals: women in the home, farmers milking cows, a nation historically separated from outsiders by more than just mountains.

Steve Martin, the good people of Switzerland need you. Now.

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A CREATIVE WAKE-UP CALL IN PORTLAND?: Also in Sunday’s O! section of The Oregonian, visual arts critic D.K. Row files this intriguing report on how the flap over City Hall’s recent push to bulldoze Portland’s Memorial Coliseum has lit an activist fire under at least a slice of the city’s creative class. D.K. quotes architect/activist Stuart Emmons:

“We’ve just said, ‘Enough.’ We need to speak out for what we believe in and quit allowing politics to keep us from what’s right. This goes way beyond Memorial Coliseum.”

This could give a whole new meaning to the phrase “the art of politics.” Stay tuned. Let’s see where this thing heads.

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ON ART AND THE CRITICS: A recent Art Scatter post about Rocco Landesman’s appointment to run the National Endowment for the Arts sparked a heady and rambunctious round of comments that went off in all sorts of directions. I hope to get back to some of those issues, notably the meaning of “local” in the arts and the role of failure in creativity: Is it a necessary element of discovery, or a cult of self-absorption that ignore the needs and rights of the audience? Then there was this note from playwright, filmmaker, novelist and teacher Charles Deemer:

“At their best, critics are mediators between the artist and the society that doesn’t quite get it yet. At their worst, critics themselves don’t get it and go on to say it’s therefore not worth trying to figure out.”

Can’t argue with that. But if you’d like to, hit that comment button.

a Portland-centric arts and culture blog