Portland Waterfront Blues Festival – Saturday

A little delayed in finishing this, as it’s more than a week ago, but I thought I’d finish up, even so. Saturday’s schedule was heavy with zydeco bands, especially on the stage with the dance floor. I can appreciate zydeco – and there were some good bands – but I sometimes tire of washboard polka, even with lyrics in French. There were plenty of other fans, though, and the dance floor was teeming with sweaty dancers. So, after a good sample of the beat, I spent most of the afternoon wandering the grounds and sampling the two larger stages, where there were other delights to be heard.

I got to hear the last part of Buddy Flett and The Bluebirds, who played excellent, electric blues, though I note from their Web site that their latest CD features acoustic work. They were rocking for this set and I want to hear more.

I’d not heard of Teresa James before that day, but I was glad I did hear her then. That woman can sing. She has a strong, earthy voice and can pull both the humor and the, well, the blues out of a song. Her band, the Rhythm Tramps, was an excellent support. Another find of the festival for me.

We took the street car into the Pearl district for a dinner at the Bridgeport Brewpub, where we met our friend’s son and had a nice dinner. We closed out the festival with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and, best of all, Mavis Staples and the Staples Singers. Whew! What she lacked in voice, she more than makes up for in soul. And, as she performed, she took the time to remind us of what life was like for so many of our citizens while this music, her music, was being developed. It was a fitting closing to a wonderful experience. Great friends, great site, great music.

Portland Waterfront Blues Festival - Friday

We spent the better part of the day at the Festival, under hot skies moderated by a good breeze. While we waited for the "Delta Music Experience" cruise to begin, we wandered the grounds. S signed up for green power and cruised the samples at the Kashi booth (this is Ecotopia, after all). The Front Porch stage was hosting an amazing little band, fronted by Gunnar Roads (is that his real name?), a boy who looked to be fourteen, singing and playing guitar. The harmonica player also did some singing, but the kid was the hook. He could use some seasoning (maybe even a voice change) for the singing, but he played a pretty good blues guitar. I later saw him on the workshop stage with several other guitar players, hopefully soaking up what he could of their experience.

I enjoyed the cruise, up and back on the Willamette, on board the Portland Spirit. There was more security here (MARSEC 1), I suppose because we were on a boat, different and less flexible regulations applying. Once on board, that little unpleasantness was quickly behind us and it was music (and three bars) and scenery for the rest of the afternoon. We started on the top deck, for the scenery mostly, where the band was the Dylan Thomas Vance Trio, an acoustic slide guitar, violin, and drummer band. They played a rootsy, Appalachian-flavored blues vigorously and with passion. Vance played guitar and sang in a fine, deep voice, while the violin player really made that bow work. I bet he changes a lot of bow strings. The drummer did all his work standing up, using a series of drums hanging from his shoulder. Very good.

I listened to Too Slim and the Taildraggers, with Henry Cooper, for the return journey. I'd heard of them for years, mostly on Seattle radio adds, so it was cool to finally hear them, and up close. Very good rockin' blues -- a tight little trio, with Too Slim singing and playing a mean slide guitar, and a bass player and drummer. Henry Cooper joined for half the set, singing and playing a more blues-flavored slide guitar, too. They more or less repeated that set later that evening in the park.

There were a lot of people dancing on the cruise, but none of them could keep up with what looked to be a ten year old boy -- team jersey, long baggy shorts, and blocks of shoes -- who bopped and bounced and shimmied for the whole set, amazing everyone. His parents seemed amazed themselves, though this can't have been his first experience dancing. Too Slim, who was playing right in front of the kid for the whole set, seemed amazed himself, and gave him a Taildraggers logo t-shirt at the end of the cruise.

That evening, aside from Too Slim and Henry Cooper's set, was dedicated to some names from the past. Savoy Brown, who's name I only vaguely remembered from the sixties, played a really excellent set, I thought. The front man, Kim Simmonds really seemed to link up with the crowd, told some insightful stories, and played in a way that suggested that he was still in it for the music, rather than after that past glory. He played both old, some of which were familiar, and new songs.

The night's closer for us (though the Festival continued) was Eric Burdon and the Animals. I had never really connected with his music back in my youth, but he and his excellent band put on a good show. My youthful experience with his music was not, apparently, shared by most of the people around me, as they enthusiastically cheered and sang along to several of the old favorites. One neighbor remarked that "I've got to get our of here" was the unofficial anthem of his high school class. I enjoyed it, more for another example of how one can have a long career in music if you stay with the music. (Old hits don't hurt, but you'd better keep them fresh.)

Portland Waterfront Blues Festival – Thursday Night

I remember two things about the last time I attended the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival, in the late eighties or thereabouts. The first was seeing the somewhat grand, old man of British blues, John Mayall and his band.

The second is that I first saw and heard an Andean band. They were playing in a margin of the festival, but had drawn quite a crowd, and I was transfixed. I loved the exotic sound, the mix of roots and new, and the cheerful energy of the music. Not so different, in some of those ways, from the blues. Musically, that is the real memory of my first Festival.

From that time, and for the next several years, bands of itinerant musicians with lutes and little guitars and black derbies could be seen all over the country. I wonder what happened to them.

Thursday night's highlight, for me, was seeing Joan Armatrading. I've always admired her song writing and singing and it was good to hear that her voice is as strong as ever. She plays a mean guitar, too. I had a cassette of Me, Myself, I that I wore out. Time to get a CD or two.

I Can't Improve on the Professor

From Howard Zinn, on Alternet (thanks to Rick on OlyBlog):

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

Ashland 2007 – Day Three

Our final day was a day of comedy, starting with As You Like It, though it played a little darker than usual. The Depression era costumes and folk-blues songs helped to enhance the sense of hardship in the forest of Arden, even while the usurped Duke reminds his followers of the blessings in their situation. As usual, the company worked both the text and the situation – even without a clue from the text – for laughs.

Breaking our vow to eat at all new places, we had dinner at the Standing Stone Brewery for dinner. Outside, there was a jazz band playing, the same band as last year this time. They were very good, but left too soon.

As we like to do, we closed with a farce, Tom Stoppard’s On The Razzle, a confection, dedicated to the expression of every kind of joke, verbal and physical, available to the playwright. It was very funny, if not particularly lofty. A surprise for us, Emily Knapp, who appeared in several Harlequin productions a year ago, or so, played the Shop Assistant and the French Maid. This is the third young person we’ve seen in Ashland, whom we’ve also seen before in Harlequin productions.

Ashland 2007 – Day Two

Yesterday afternoon's play was Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. This was the first time I've seen this play. I like Chekhov – one of my favorite speeches in drama is from Uncle Vanya (Sonia’s first speech in Act 1). I liked the interplay of character and situation, as the economic destruction of feudalism, begun with the "catastrophe" of the emancipation of the serfs, continues. It was not as emotional as yesterday's productions, but I don't usually find Chekhov to be particularly emotional. As a playwright, he's more of an observer of humans – of his characters – rather than a manipulator of his audience.

We had a nice, English pub-style dinner at the Black Sheep Pub. It's a big place, on the top floor of the big brick building (which appears in very old photos of Ashland) on Water Street. The menu hit all of the pub-food marks that you'd expect and there were a few English beers on tap, too. I had a Newcastle Brown and some good fish and chips. J had a steak and kidney pie and a glass of red.

The evening's play was our first foray into the world as reconstructed by August Wilson, the beginning of his grand cycle (which I just realized has no over-arching title; refreshing) of twentieth century, African-American history, Gem of the Ocean. It was fascinating and beautiful. The characters of Aunt Ester and Solly Two Kings were beautiful and wonderful recreations of historical archetypes. They represented, respectively, the African past and it's present uses, and the continuing (continuous?) struggle, in the present, to come to inherit and make use of the promise of freedom. Their solemn and warm affection bridged these two elements and created a powerful collaboration. And when Greta Oglesby, who played Aunt Ester, sang, there was nothing to say but, "Wow."

Ashland 2007 – Day One

We were privileged to be able to spend another long weekend in Ashland for our annual visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The drive down here was so uneventful that I don't remember much of it at all. Talking books and good weather can do that.

We're staying in the Shrew's House, a bed and breakfast along Siskiyou Blvd. This is the first time in a B&B in several years and, interestingly, the first season for the proprietors, too. Last year, they were making their annual visit to Ashland, and staying across the street, when they needed an extra night, so they tried this place. As it happened, the place was for sale and, one thing leading to another, they bought it and moved here four months ago. Nice folks.

Staying here at the same time is another set of nice folks, a pair of couples who have been coming to Ashland for decades. They've been staying in this B&B for ten years. We've had some nice breakfast table conversations and, in one of the nice elements of a B&B stay, the owners will sit down and join us, too.

As for theater, our first day was an excellent start. The afternoon play was Tracy's Tiger, in the New Theater, put together by a collaboration of OSF folks from a novella by William Saroyan. I love Saroyan and have learned to trust adaptations and translations that they do here, so I was eager to see it and was not disappointed. There was great music, wonder, philosophy, and it affected me deeply. The notion of people "having" tigers, as we have a shadow on a sunny day, following them around and representing their bolder nature, made for excellent theater. I loved the characters of Nimmo & the psychiatrist, both played by Michael Hume and every time the bird started to sing, I teared up. I loved the play and the performances.

The evening's entertainment was The Tempest, in the Elizabethan Theater. This is a beautiful and complex play, superbly done. Derrick Lee Weeden makes a powerful Prospero. He speaks so clearly and acts so smoothly that new layers of the text become available. The theme of slavery was strongly and expertly developed, with Calaban (played by Dan Donohue, in a welcome return to the OSF) brutally constrained and tormented, as befits the greater fear Prospero has of the earth and the solid. Ariel, though more gently constrained and motivated also by love for her master, still chafes at her bondage, though her master values her gifts more highly, matching as they do his own predilections.

Our restaurant theme this year is to eat in new places this time. For Thursday night, the night we arrived, that was Pasta Piatti, a "new world Italian" place on the main drag. We'd walked by it many times, so this time we went in. We had a very nice meal with friendly, professional, informal service. Recommended.

Friday, between plays, we had dinner at the Peerless Restaurant. It's more expensive, but with the garden table on a nice evening, very friendly greetings, excellent service, and wonderful food (with espresso to finish!). Literally peerless? I’m not sure, but I'd have to put it near the top of the list for meals we've had in this town.

Assunta Femia

Nearly thirty years ago, my then-wife and I took our baby H, just a few months old, to visit my friend M in the Haight, in San Francisco. We spent a few days exploring that historic neighborhood and the larger city. One evening, we planned to go out to a movie (A Dream of Passion, with Melina Mercouri and Ellen Burstyn), so we needed someone to stay with H. I wasn’t sure how we’d find someone near by, but M brought his friend Assunta over, who calmly assured us that he was prepared for and comfortable with the task.

I remember him as a slender man, dressed in a long, narrow skirt, with long, dark hair. He talked about his love of pumps and his experiences as a gay man in parochial schools. Somehow, he both charmed me and reassured me that H would be fine in his care. And it was so.

I sometimes return to that evening and think of how I came to trust this man, so different from me, so quickly, and for such an important duty. Beyond the recommendation of M, he manifested a courage and an integrity that I found immediately reassuring.

A couple of months ago, M told me that he had recently died and passed me a link to this obituary. Reading it, I see even more evidence for the trust that I placed in him that evening, long ago. Thanks, again, Assunta.

Back, Though I Haven’t Been Gone

I don’t have a good explanation for the hiatus, except that time passes whether we blog or not. So, here we are, two months gone.

I wanted to start back in with a shout-out to those writers that keep me coming back to the Web, ‘cause I have been reading, even if not writing. These are the ones that give me a little frisson when I see a new entry in my blogroll.

I welcome my son’s new blog. It took me a couple of entries to get over the annoyance of needing a MySpace id to comment. I’ve always liked his writing and am glad to see him exercising it again. By the way: Happy Birthday, Allen!

I appreciate how much Karan at Flummel Flummer Flummo is able to share and how clearly and cleverly she writes it.

When Neddie Jingo writes about the local history he finds in his back yard, I find myself looking around my own place and wondering what might be buried in the local mud flats. I can’t usually keep up when he writes about music, but I love the ride when he cuts loose on one of his shaggy dog tales.

Spc. Freeman has a poet’s heart and a job in one terrible place. I appreciate both his writing and his commitment to the task in front of him.

Christopher Soghoian writes interesting posts about security issues -- not a trivial achievement. I learned of his blog when he hit the computer trade press for writing an airline boarding pass generator as a way to illustrate the thinness of the protection that our airport security system provides.

Blue Wren writes long, passionate, political harangues and deft, closely-observed descriptions of her own corner of the world.

Avraham amazes me with his testimony from Mogadisho, though it’s been a month now since his last posting (and, of course, there is reason to worry).

Everything's Ready To Go...

I'm basking in that moment, when everything is ready to go -- the winter's cache of branches and limbs torn out of the Douglas-firs next to our house have been hauled to the chipping pile, thanks to the thoughtfulness of our friend Ule, who called this morning offering to share his rental of a trailer and his help in loading and unloading; the house has been cleaned up: vacuumed, swept, tidied (and the other messes hidden away behind closed doors); the dog run and dried off; the groceries bought and put away; the planning and measuring and chopping for the meal completed; the table and sideboard decorated; and the double-shot of espresso just entering my brain -- for the final orchestration of the meal for our friends, who are coming over in about an hour. And I thought I'd take a moment to break a month's-long blog-break to memorialize that.

Jo Jenner

A very special person, whom I was proud to call a friend, died last weekend. I met Jo Jenner at a discussion group we call The Salon in late 1992. She had recently lost her husband, Julian, and was spreading out a little into the community. I was struck, at the time, by her dignity and her sadness.

The Olympian had a very nice article about her impact on the community of artists in town and an obituary (link to search: search for ‘jenner’) with an excellent photo and details about her life that were new to me.

She was a generous, intelligent, sensitive, strong, and creative woman. The obituary has a story about her that gets to some of the kind of person she was, showing her sense of justice and her sense of humor:

Mr. Jenner's banking career led to a four-year posting in Hong Kong for the National Bank of Commerce in 1967, and Jo worked as a volunteer for several years with the Family Planning Council there. Her creation of a promotional poster featuring a pregnant man earned international media attention.

I hope that I am as creative, connected, and committed as Jo was when I’m her age. We’ll miss you, Jo.

Cross-posted at OlyBlog

Update 4/18: A commenter notes that there was a memorial for Jo this past weekend. I'm sorry I missed it. Our Salon had its own remembrance of her in a meeting shortly after her death. By the next meeting, we used the example that she set for us to re-energize the group.

Jo joined the Salon in its first year; she stayed with us for several years. She hosted our first feast. But as she got older and her energy waned, she made a choice to drop regular attendance and direct her energies in other pursuits. She did so with her usual grace and clarity, so that we all knew and understood what she meant.

The Salon is now in its fifteenth year. In the last year, though, it has been in a very low energy phase. Because of this, our last meeting was a discussion of whether and, if so, how to continue the Salon. Jo's example was our guide.

We wanted to honor her gift to us by making an open, clear, and intentional decision about continuing, rather than just fading away. Thanks to that clear beacon, we were able to realize that we did want to continue and recommitted to the Salon. Thanks, Jo.

Intercity Transit: Another Story

I write about Intercity Transit from time to time, most recently about a slightly wobbly trip home. I came across this story, on OlyBlog, describing our community's response to huge cuts in Intercity Transit's routes due to the dramatic reduction in tax support for the system due to I-695 (Eyman's $30 tab initiative).

When we heard how people were going to be stuck, some of us got together and organized the Oly Free Bus. We used our own vehicles on our own time paying for gas with our own money, and we tried to fill the gaps in transit service as best we could. At the time, I had a van equipped with a wheelchair lift, and I'm proud to say that for 13 weeks in the spring of 2000, my van was the only wheelchair accessible public transportation in Thurston County on Sundays. At first we tried running scheduled routes, to make our service as much as possible like what people had come to expect from IT. After a few weeks, we got enough publicity and enough public support that we were able to switch to more of an on-call service. A local business owner paid for us to have cell phones, and helped to pay for gas.

This is an example of the idealism and bias for action that I love about this town. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, so the rest of the story involves a letter from an attorney, working for -- you guessed it -- Intercity Transit. I can't wait for Part Two.

Heritage Project Progress

I’ve been scanning my grandfather’s slides this week. The cute little device to the left tracks the progress I’ve made against my estimate of 3700 slides. All of the last few days’ scanning has been from the years 1946, 1947, and 1948. Many of them are of trips: the Pacific coast, southern Oregon and northern California, Colorado, eastern Washington, and Mt. Rainier. There is another set of slides of boats and a river, from a box with a note of “Allen on the Hudson.” My dad’s younger brother Allen was a coxswain on crew boats. Since none of the photos are of Allen, I’m assuming that Allen took them on a trip he took to New York for a regatta or similar event. There are also a set of shots of a football game in progress (though they’re mostly of the fans in the stands holding up cards that spell out sayings or make pictures – you don’t see much of that these days), another that shows a building being built (is it the office my grandfather had next to his home in Edmonds?), and several shots of snow around that Edmonds home (I recognize it, though the trees and hedges sure were smaller).

Many of the photos suffered from the usual technical problems (focus was a problem with this batch) and age-related issues, especially scratches and some emulsion degradation. Still, there are several interesting images to share.

The first is from a July 1946 trip to Crater Lake and the Shasta area in northern California. This dramatic, if fuzzy picture is of snow removal on the round-the-crater highway. Remember, this is July! (Click on this and later images for a larger version.)

The equipment hints at the exotic, too, at least from this vantage, though it’s hard to tell just what it is, other than a snow blower.

The next image has “Garden of the Gods” written on the slide. A quick Web search tells me that this is in Colorado. There are other slides in this set that are labeled with Utah, so there was a road trip that summer in 1947. The image is also dramatic, sharp, and powerful. I find myself straining to the left to see what this is all leaning toward. There are similar images in the Web site linked above, including some that suggest the answer.

The third image is from a slide with the note: Pacific Ocean wreck; Long Beach Wash. I think that refers to the ship, not the car, which seems to be in good shape. And, yes, that car is on the beach, right next to the tide line. It’s something weird we do in this state, though I’ve never been a big fan; it’s legal – and, in fact, exceedingly popular – to drive on most of the beaches along the Pacific Coast. I’m sure the towing companies like it, too. I don’t know anything about the wreck, but it looks like it’s been there a while. Since this shot is from March 1948, you can sure there’s nothing much left of it today.

Finally, this photo of Wenatchee from Ohme Gardens is of mostly historical interest, since the quality is poor, especially in the upper right corner. But, you can be sure that the open fields of trees that the road cuts through have been replaced by buildings and development since the picture was taken in April 1948. I looked on the Web for newer photos from this vantage and found several that suggested that I was right, but none of them were really comparable enough to this one to show the change clearly.

The County Prosecutor Should Get It Together

This item in today's Olympian...

A former Thurston County paralegal secretary has filed an $86,000 sexual- and disability- discrimination and retaliation claim against the county and the office of Prosecuting Attorney Ed Holm.

Holm, who could not be reached for comment late Friday, was not specifically named in the claim, which was filed Jan. 9 with the county's human resources department by Susanne Davis of Lacey. Davis, who worked for about 14 years in the county's non-support office, left her job in fall 2004 on disability and was fired in 2005, said her attorney, William Michael Hanbey of Olympia.

Following this item from a few months back...

SHELTON - The Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney's Office discriminated against three of its former attorneys because they are women, and the county now owes them $1.52 million in damages, a Mason County jury decided Tuesday.

The jury also found that the Prosecuting Attorney's Office retaliated against each of the three plaintiffs after they came forward with their discrimination complaints.

...brings to mind questions about the competence of the Prosecutor. I don't care how good an attorney he is, if the shop he runs can't avoid these kinds of problems, then he's not the manager that the job calls for.

Heritage Project

I started a long-awaited project this month. It’s to digitize the collection of 35mm slides and 16mm movies that I inherited from my grandfather when he passed away over twenty years ago. I’ve lugged them around ever since. They were taken over several decades (I’m not sure of the entire scope), at least the Thirties through the Fifties. It’s a sizable collection: over 3500 slides and approximately 8000 feet of film.

After some research, I settled on scanning the slides myself and sending the movies out to a service. So, just after Christmas, I purchased a Nikon Coolscan V ED slide and film scanner. I’ve had it a couple of weeks now and have scanned over 100 slides (this will take a while). The process is easy enough and the scanner has enough controls to do a pretty good job with some of these very old slides.

My grandfather was a dedicated amateur photographer, taking slides, prints, and movies. Nearly all of the photos I have of myself as a baby and young boy are his. He wasn’t, however, an exceptional technician; he’s somewhat famous in the family for his poorly composed shots. I think some of that is unfair, but I’ve run across quite a few oddly composed, hopelessly underexposed, or just hopeless (a lit up window from inside a dark building, for instance) shots in the few that I’ve so far processed. Still, the idea isn’t so much to find a hidden masterpiece as to see some of what he saw, to understand what he saw as important. And that comes through pretty strongly, even this early in the process.

The best examples are a couple of movies that I was able to screen before the projector (also an antique) quit on me. One was a terrible-looking, technically speaking, shot of a lit-up Christmas tree. There was no color, just light and dark, but as I watched the camera pan over the tree, I imagined that my grandfather wanted to film this, not so much because the film would preserve or communicate the sight, but because it anchored the memory of something beautiful. The other example included both my father and his brother, but in a strange way, so that I had a hint of something new in the, somewhat troubled, relationship that my father shared with his.

I haven’t come across anything that striking in the slides, so far (only a few thousand to go), but I have seen some interesting images. I’ve selected a sample to share here. These were all taken, as near as I can tell, in 1947 (at least they were in a box from the processor with a 1947 postmark on them). My grandfather was stationed in Alaska during the Second World War, in the Aleutians (the only part North America occupied by Japan, though down at the far end of the chain), and I presume that these images are from there. I find the colors and the strength of the images interesting and impressive. (Click on the images to see a slightly larger version.)

“President Bush is Insane”

So said Dwight Pelz, Washington State Democrats Chair, in a short speech this afternoon at the Heritage Park fountain, which followed a pretty successful (as far as success can be measured for these symbolic events) rally against the war along 4th Avenue today. Of course, his use of the word insane was based on the folk definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. Not a real diagnosis, nor even much of a rhetorical step above cliché, but it does make a good lead.

I went to the rally not because I it might bring about a change in policy (I’m not insane, by any definition), but because I thought it was time, once again, to stand out in public with others who think the same as I do as witnesses to our belief that the war is wrong, has always been wrong, and should be ended. Now.

There were more people out than a year ago and the responses from those driving over the bridge, going about their daily business, were more weighted to the positive side. Whether this was because of a change in thinking, which subsequently led to the recent election results, or because of those results themselves, I’m not sure. It’s probably both. I wouldn’t be surprised to start to hear whining about how hard it has become to support the war.

Cross-posted at Oly Blog.

Meta: Back in the Blogger

The work project I was bending all of my energy toward through the fall has, more or less, been completed. (When is an application development project ever finished?) It’s taken me this long to recover my energy from that push (and to get over my irritation over how under-appreciated it was).

I’ve converted my blog to New Blogger Beta a few weeks ago and I’m going through my old postings and tagging labeling them.

With the exception of that last quarter collapse, the first year of blogging has been interesting. Not much of a readership, only a few comments, but I find it interesting to make myself write and to do so publicly. I try to actually write something, rather than react or just post something someone else has written. That means it takes some inspiration and some energy. It also means I try to stay close to what I know, which limits me considerably, and calls for even more inspiration. I think I’ll keep it up.

Thanks for Thanksgiving

I’ve been so taken up with work for the last couple of months that I haven’t had energy for much of anything else, but this four-day weekend was just the thing. I got some rest, let the work stuff subside for a while, hit Wagner’s twice, and visited my family in Seattle for the annual feast.

Months ago, I had decided on a new car, but was stymied by the anticipation of a repeat of the deeply annoying process of buying my last car. So, I dawdled for months, while getting more and more over my eleven-year-old Kia Sephia. This weekend was my chance – a couple of days to rest and get psyched – so on Friday I went into the local dealer and bought a new Subaru Forester. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be a pleasant experience (except for the expense, of course, but we try not to think about that). My timing couldn’t have been better, because this morning we were greeted by an inch of slippery snow.


The Forester passed the test: it was able to climb the driveway into the garage. No trouble at all.

Bruce Cockburn is a Treasure

My wife and I attended a great Bruce Cockburn concert at the Washington Center last Tuesday. It was a near thing – we almost missed it – and I’d have to say that it was poorly promoted. Perhaps the change from the Capital Theater, where I saw him perform to a packed house a couple of years ago, interfered. The audience that was there certainly seemed to enjoy and appreciate him. I know I did. His band of a drummer and keyboard player-and-singer were very good, as well. He played a pleasing mix of old and new songs, though many in the audience knew them all (I was behind on the new ones, though I think it’s time to pick up another CD).

For those that don’t know, Bruce is a Canadian songwriter and guitar player and singer from Canada. I’ve followed his work for decades and have seen him in concert eight or ten times, in Seattle, Olympia, and most recently, aside from this week, at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.

He’s a superb songwriter, an amazing guitar player, and an inventive singer. He is also a person – and a musician – of uncommon integrity. He’s not much for the clever banter and never appears comfortable with the crowds, but he his very comfortable with his music.

Our host at our second agriturismo on our recent trip to Italy was a guitar player and fan of popular music. I was surprised and pleased that one of the names that he rattled off as influences was Bruce Cockburn (pronounced phonetically). He even played one of his songs for us (forgotten which, but one I knew). I see Bruce whenever I get a chance. You should consider it.

The Sights We Saw

In my first Italy post, I mentioned a lot of the places we visited and the sights we saw. In this one, I thought I’d highlight the, well, highlights of the places we visited.

No visit – certainly no first visit – to Italy would be complete without spending at least some time amongst great art and amazing antiquities. This trip was no exception, but we also saw some wonderful modern art and beautiful countryside that was at least a match.

The highlights of Rome were the powerful statue of Moses by Michelangelo, tucked away in the  San Pietro in Vincoli, quite near our hotel, actually. I remember seeing slides of this statue in my seventh grade Art Appreciation class. (That class was one of the great awakenings of my young life. I still remember portions of it vividly.) It made it on our list because my sister-in-law had insisted to my wife to not miss it. San Pietro in Vaticano was stunning, enormous, and oddly soaring and oppressive at the same time. Walking back from San Pietro, we passed by the Pantheon, which is more beautiful for its antiquity and simplicity. For a thousand years, it was the largest dome in western Europe. My biggest delight of that day of delights, though, was the Trevi Fountain. As you approach, you begin to hear the rush of the water and then, you enter the square and you’re there, with this Baroque wonder.

We spent the following few days staying in Montepulciano and touring the hill towns of Tuscano and Umbria. That topography was one of the highlights of the trip. Long, misty vistas, dramatic, cloudy skies, and charming, walled towns perched on all of the highest hilltops. The façade (and interior) of the Duomo in Orvieto was stunning. We arrived in late afternoon and the lowering sun struck the face directly, absolutely lighting up the gold and white of the decoration. Inside is another delight – one of the chapels is decorated by amazing frescos depicting the Apocalypse. Meanwhile, a small gang of kids was playing soccer against the white and black stripped side walls.

Besides the views of the city from the town of Fiesole to the northeast and the Giardino Boboli to the south, the highlights of Firenze were in the museums. The Galleria degli Uffizi was too big for the time we had allowed for it, but we saw some wonderful paintings in a beautiful building, which has been an amazing museum for centuries. But the best for me was the Botticellis, with the prize going to his The Birth of Venus, which is the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen. Later that afternoon, we visited the Galleria dell'Accademia nearby, where the star, by far, is Michelangelo’s David. It is amazingly impressive, if only because it is so much larger than I had supposed. I must have circled it a half-a-dozen times.

The next segment took us to Liguria and we spent two days on trips to the coast. My favorite element of that were the Ligurian Sea and the dramatic rocks and cliffs of the coastline. The water was clear and blue and warm. The cliffs plunged into the sea, with only a few pockets of beach, around which the little towns were clustered and sometimes piled. That and the wonderful seafood.

Venezia itself was a highlight. For all of the antiquity that we’d seen in Italy and for all that Venezia contains, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection came as a refreshing surprise. Jumping five centuries in art can be a shocking experience (I remember skipping from the seventeen century to the nineteenth in the Louve and being struck, for a time, until my eyes adjusted, by the thought that those crazy Impressionists couldn’t paint.) but it came as a revelation to me. The collection is awesome. Nearly every early twentieth century artist I’ve heard of was represented there, including Pollack’s stunning Alchemy. There were also amazing works by Calder, Chagall, De Kooning, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti, Klee, Magritte, Mondrian, Moore, Motherwell, Picasso, Rothko and a bunch more I hadn’t heard of. As for buildings, the Palazzo Ducale was amazing, a huge house for and monument to the power of Venezia.

Still want to go back.