By Bob Hicks
That quotation comes from Claudia Dreifus’s interview in this morning’s New York Times with Ellen Bialystok, a cognitive neuroscientist who’s spent almost 40 years studying the ways that speaking two languages keeps your mind sharp, even possibly delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms. (Does that mean that Europeans and Quebecois are smarter longer [...]
UPDATE: Barry Johnson reviews TopShakeDance’s “Gust” on Arts Dispatch.
Todd Stephen
By Bob Hicks
Feels like spring. Finally. Mr. Scatter is cavorting about town in short-sleeve shirts, anticipating the day after the Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade, when the rains might taper off for good and we can start thinking about summer. O gray, gray Puddletown: We’ve had [...]
Gadi Dagon
By Bob Hicks
After a whirlwind fling with white asparagus, Belgian beer, briny mussels, fish stews, canal-skimming tour boats and close encounters with the likes of Memling, Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer, De Hooch, Michelangelo, Cocteau, Picasso, Van Gogh, Frans Hals and Jan Steen in places where a church that began life in 1408 is known [...]
By Bob Hicks
We return to town to some terrible news that many of you no doubt have heard already: Jimmy Caputo, one of Portland’s best-known and most beloved actors, died Thursday morning from a heart attack. The Oregonian’s Marty Hughley has the story on Oregon Live.
Jim was a terrific character actor, a good musician, an [...]
The days go langorously here in the Old Country. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter relax in the Vondepark before wandering off to find pannekoeken and beer:
Excellent news has arrived: Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief corespondent, will be presented with the Senior Critics Award when the national Dance Critics Association holds its annual conference next month in Seattle.
Because Art Scatter World Headquarters has shifted temporarily nine hours east to Amsterdam, we got the word a little late — first, in [...]
Avert your gaze. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter have jettisoned the Large Smelly Boys and are having a romantic interlude abroad. In the meantime, they have temporarily outsourced the blog to their chief travel correspondent, who makes friends wherever he goes — this time to Bruges, Belgium.
By JoJo
Portland Shakespeare Project’s Michael Mendelson talks about big casts, big dreams, and the allure of the classics
By Bob Hicks
Michael Mendelson is sitting at his regular table at Kornblatt’s Delicatessen in Northwest Portland, where he is greeted warmly by name and the waitress checks back on him more often than the line cooks slap classic corned [...]
By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter has a theory: William Shakespeare wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. Not that it matters all that much — the play, not the playwright, really is the thing — but there you are.
The subject comes up now for a couple of reasons.
First, Mr. Scatter has been talking of late with the [...]