What a Rogue!

“Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” declares Hamlet in his second soliloquy. Well, we are not peasant slaves, but this little group of rogues went rafting today down the Rogue River. This has become a part of every trip we take to Ashland because our tour operator, Ferron’s Fun Trips, lets you take dogs along. Ellen and Mike have been with us before; this was the first time down the river for Sherry and Giles. Here’s out group, canines included, ready to go.

 

Ferron always brings his dog, Pupeye, along when there are other dogs on the trip. Edie recognized Pupeye right away.

There’s a section of the Rogue that’s designated wild and scenic and you need not only a wilderness permit to go down that section but you have to be pretty skilled at using a kayak. The section we went down did not have big rapids, and, as you can see, we went down the river in a bit of comfort.

The natural flow of the river did most of the work, but Ferron guided us. He’s not a young guy, but he is quite spry and surprisingly strong. All we had to do was relax and look pretty.

Along the way Ferron pointed out a lot of wildlife we might have missed. Most of them moved too fast to get a picture, but this heron seemed to be almost ready for his closeup.

 

We had a kayak along, and John was eager to try the rapids on his own. He did quite a good job.

A little over halfway on our trip, we pulled over and had lunch. Ferron laid out a spread of sandwich fixings as well as my favorite part of this meal, his wife Sue’s homemade cookies. The dogs had hopes that we were going to share some of this with them, but they were disappointed.

Afterwards, we relaxed a bit and enjoyed the sound of the river and the warmth of the sun.

 

As we continued down river after lunch, Ellen and I and the dogs sat in the front of the boat getting soaked. I flew off the front of the boat as we went through some rapids, but emerged unscathed.

All too soon our adventure was over.

Giles had his turn to fall in the water as we were getting out, but he recovered with his usual grace and style.

 

At this point, Sherry and Giles had to leave us to drive to Portland. Sherry’s godson was getting married Saturday in West Virginia, and she had to catch a flight first thing Friday morning. So Ellen and Mike accompanied John and I back to Ashland where we all had tickets for a play in the evening.

John and I went early to catch the Green Show. Today it featured taiko drumming. The performers were students at a local drumming school. I am not sure whether the fact that all the participants were women was accidental or intentional. They were pretty good.

The Japanese drumming was appropriate because the play that evening was Throne of Blood. This is an original Ashland production which will be traveling to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall. It is a theatrical adaptation of Kurosawa’s film of the same name, which in turn is an adaptation of Macbeth. I think it works better as a film in Japanese than a play in English, but some of the costumes were pretty impressive.

The actress who played the Lady MacBeth role was Japanese, and she was pretty impressive.

Tomorrow, we have a play in the evening, and we’re going to see if we can get into the matinee of Ruined.

Or Not to Be

Our first full day in Ashland started for me by taking the dogs – all three of them now – down to the dog park. It’s about a mile and a half from the house we’re renting to the dog park, so they were ready to jump in one of those little plastic pools and have a drink. Edie found another dog to chase, and Eli enjoyed chasing a ball. I gave them all some time to frolic in Bear Creek and then we headed back to the house. By the time we were there everybody, including me, was ready to flop down and rest for a bit.

This was a big theater day for us. Ellen, Sherry, and John went to see American Night. This show is done by the Los Angeles agitprop theater group Culture Clash. Since I didn’t see it, I am not completely sure what it was about although there is a review of his on the Culture Clash website. Our group liked it. Mike, Giles, and I went to see Hamlet. This was a very non-traditional production. For example, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern became women. In the picture below, that’s Hamlet interrogating them.

The traveling players Hamlet hires to perform the murder of the king play became a hip hop group. Oddly enough, this was the non-traditional bit I think worked the best both visually and theatrically.

Most reviewers – and the bulk of the audience – were really taken with Dan Donohue’s performance as the Danish prince. I didn’t hate it, but I thought that he reached too far to try to create unusual line readings and there were times that he twitched so much that I wondered if he’d stuck his sword in an electrical socket. But, like I said, that’s the minority opinion here.

After we came home, Ellen and Sherry collaborated on a wonderful eggplant pasta dinner. We then returned to the festival to watch their adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. This was a big disappointment for all of us. There just did not seem to be any chemistry between the principals in the story, and it’s not the kind of story which seems to lend itself very well to the stage anyhow. The costumes, I will admit, were pretty.

 

Ellen and I left at intermission. John and Sherry said that the second act was a little better than the first, but even they were not that enthusiastic about it.

Tomorrow, off for river rafting.

Ashland

This was a travel day mostly. We packed up early in the morning. Our plan was to take Rafiki, Ellen’s dog down to Ashland with us, so that Ellen and Mike could show Sherry and Giles the wineries of the Willamette Valley. Over the years Rafiki has become very fond of her cousins, as we call Edie and Eli, and she jumped in the car without any hesitation. It is a pretty long haul from Portland to Ashland. The dogs were pretty good about the cramped quarters during the five hours in the car, so when we pulled into Ashland we decided that they deserved a trip to one of the best dog parks in the country. All the dogs immediately ran to the back of the field to get their feet wet in Bear Creek.

Our housing situation in Ashland was a little  odd. We rented a house in Ashland last year from a woman named Shoshannah. This year when we contacted her to see if we could rent the house again, it turned out that the dates were not available. So she offered to rent us her own house for our four days in Ashland. It was located in a nice, quiet residential neighborhood and had a stunning view of Bear Mountain from the front porch.

The sofa on the front porch quickly became our favorite place to be. It also had pretty good 3G reception, so I planked myself there with my iPad.

 

There is a fenced in area in the front yard, so I planked the dogs there. I thought it a nice place to spend some time, but the forlornly look at me as if I had put them in the kennel.

 

We went to the local supermarket to get some stuff for dinner and we had a haircut at the same time. Our fellow adventurers arrived in the early evening, and they had barely time to unpack their cars before we had to take off for our first play She Loves Me.

I have to admit that I had never really heard of this musical before I saw it. The Wall Street Journal review, where I found the picture above,  gave this background on the production.

First seen on Broadway in 1963, "She Loves Me" is based on "The Shop Around the Corner," Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 screen version of "Parfumerie," a Miklós Laszló stage comedy that was later filmed as "In the Good Old Summertime" and "You've Got Mail." The setting is prewar Budapest and the plot is a clockwork farce: Amalia and Georg, two love-starved members of what used to be called a "lonelyhearts club," are sending each another anonymous mash notes without ever having met. Then Amalia lands a job at the perfume shop where Georg works, thus triggering a string of comedic complications that lead to the happiest of endings.

I did not much care for the movie, but that’s because I find Jimmy Stewart particularly grating in the lead role. But I liked this play a lot, and I thought the staging was particularly clever.

Tomorrow we have two plays! Reviews will be forthcoming….

Columbia Gorgeous

Our final day in Portland took us out of this charming city to the Columbia Gorge. Ellen and Mike had suggested that we stop on our way out of town at Edgefield for breakfast. It was, of course, a good suggestion. Edgefield used to be the poor farm for Multnomah County. A number of American cities during the Progressive Era had poor farms. The idea was that taking the indigent out of the corruption of the cities and placing them in the morally pure air of the country would make them self-sufficient and endue them with other middle-class values. I am not sure how well it ever worked, but by the 1960’s the county abandoned the property. It was scheduled for demolition until the McMenamin brothers, who have developed a series of successful restaurants and hotels in historical sites, bought it to make a kind of resort. There is a hotel and a hostel there, a couple restaurants, a golf course, a spa, a brewery and a winery.

 

While much of the property has been completely renovated, the history of the property as a poor farm is celebrated by keeping certain industrial fixtures and in a series of murals.

 

From Edgefield we continued on to the old Columbia River Highway, one of the most attractive drives in the country. Our first stop was the Vista House, an odd 1910 era building which looks like a giant orange juicer. There are astonishing views of the Columbia River and the Gorge from this point.

 

A number of creeks and rivers carrying the snow melt from Mount Hood turn into stunning waterfalls when they meet the granite cliffs of the fjord. The most stunning of these is Multnomah Falls. John and I had been there earlier this summer and it was so mobbed we had to park about a mile away. This time we were determined to make it there earlier in the morning and we were lucky enough to find only a few other fellow tourists there.

 

Sherry was not crazy about the bridge, but even she could not resist getting her picture taken again the backdrop of the rushing waters.

 

We found a better spot where Sherry could relax a bit.

 

Our next stop was the Bonneville Dam. John and I had been here about 10 years ago and the powerhouse was not open to tours then. We had an enthusiastic ranger who told us many times about the “court-ordered” water release.

 

And here is that “court ordered” release coming through the spillway.

 

There is a huge fish hatchery there which produces a variety of different types of sport and commercial fish to undo some of the damage that the dam created. There is a viewing area where John snapped this rainbow trout who seemed to be interested in checking out the day’s tourists.

 

They also sold fish so that chumps like me could feed the fish.

 

As we were leaving the dam, my sister called and suggested that we meet them and their friends Jill and Loren in Hood River. We ate at this great restaurant there which has a patio with a stunning view of the town and the river. The food was great and the conversation even better.

 

Hood River has a lot of cute shops and the shoppers in our group had to check them all out. We also stopped at this little boutique winery which has an unusual hook.

We came back to Portland and had a pleasant if quiet evening. Tomorrow, on to Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Downhill

Ellen and Mike went off to spend a day and a night in the Gorge, and John and I went around to show Sherry and Giles more of Portland. Giles and I started our morning right at Trinity Cathedral. I neglected to bring my camera along here, and surprisingly there are not even any good pictures of the building to swipe from the internet. It’s a handsome old building with a fine organ. For a Sunday in August, it was almost full.

We started our tour at the famous Saturday Market at the foot of the Burnside Bridge. It’s so great that they have it on Sunday, too. We’re here at the Skidmore Fountain dedicated as a place where “men, horses, and dogs” can drink from. The Saturday Market is always entertaining. There was a guy standing there asking for money for “beer, weed, and pornography”. At least he was honest!

 

We come by here each year to buy a couple new dog beds from the women at Doodle Bug Duds.

After this, we rented bikes for a half day. John and I had done this earlier this summer. We put them on the Max Line and took them up to the West Hills by the zoo. Here we are waiting for the streetcar.

 

The charm of this particular trip is that it is almost all downhill.

 

It takes you past the fabulous Rose Garden. We added one more rose to this arrangement.

 

Following this, we went to the Japanese Gardens there. John artfully arranged us in a contemplative pose.

 

John was also struck by the way that the garden designer seemed to plan sunlight as a element of his plan.

 

John also stopped and offered to take a picture of a father and his family. In return, the man took pictures of all of us.

 

We continued through the park and then took Sherry shopping in Northwest Portland. She liked the stores on 23rd Avenue. Since we were on bikes, however, it was hard to buy anything big.

Tomorrow we are off to the Columbia Gorge.

Splitting Up, Coming Together

Day broke on Sherman street, and as our residents drank their coffee, they had to check their messages, their email, and update the GPS. The dogs seem to say that all this technology is ridiculous and that we just need to go for walks instead. The dogs are right. They usually are.

Our group split up into separate adventures today. I took some of the less glamorous duties. I got the car washed – it was beginning to smell awfully doggy even for people who like dogs – and I also got one of my dogs washed. Edie, who seems to enjoy smelling doggy, did not enjoy that.

John took Sherry and Giles out to explore Portland. They went on the Epicurean Tour of Portland. I did this a couple years ago and it’s a lot of fun. You have a small group of fellow tourists and a knowledgeable tour guide.

The guide takes you into a couple dozen food shops, bakeries, breweries and the like where they tell you about the food they prepare or sell, and you get to sample a bit. Here are some of the selections from the Pearl Bakery.

After this, John took them to that most famous of Portland institutions, Powell’s Books.

In the late afternoon, Bill, Ellen and Mike’s next-door neighbor, stopped by for a visit. He mentioned that there was a free concert this evening in Laurelhurst Park. It stuck Ellen and me as a great idea, and we planned a picnic. Bill came with us and brought along a fantastic rhubarb cake. As you can see, our friends from Louisiana had a great time. So did I.

 

The concert was offered by the Portland Festival Symphony. Although the concerts are free, they are quite professional. The players are all members of the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Opera Orchestra, or other professional classical music groups. 

The concert started a little late because of some light sprinkles. The program consisted of the Dvorak “New World” Symphony and the Hayden Symphony 104. It concluded with Hayden’s short “Toy Symphony”. The children were invited to come forward. They were given recorders and other musical instruments and their improvisations were incorporated into the piece. It was magically fun!