By Bob Hicks
So this is the way it gets.
Lying in bed awake
at 3:17 a.m.
my wife’s heavy breathing
the weight of the dog on my leg
I am visited by the ghosts
of past mistakes
and dance to a symphony
of regrets
I wouldn’t change a thing
This is who I am
counting my blessings
in the dark morning
That’s Portland writer Charles Deemer’s poem The [...]
By Bob Hicks
Keep Portland Pickled. Or maybe, in honor of a certain shape of preserved cucumber, Keep Portland Speared.
Imagine a city where something called the Portland Fermentation Festival is such a mind-boggling hit that you can’t get in the doors. It’s like reporting that the Iowa City Haggis Festival or the Twin Falls Ukelele and [...]
Patrick Weishampel
By Martha Ullman West
I’ve already expressed my outrage at the comments posted on Marty Hughley’s preview of Oklahoma! in The Oregonian that confirmed what I already knew: We are decades away from a post-racial society, whatever that means. It will be a joyful day when we celebrate our differences rather than [...]
By Bob Hicks
A few days ago my friend Barry Johnson, the guy behind the infant but swiftly growing online magazine Oregon Arts Watch, asked me to sit down with him and talk about Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and actor William Hurt’s starring performance in it at Artists Repertory Theatre. I said sure, and Barry [...]
James McGrew
By Martha Ullman West
Last night I returned to Keller Auditorium because I wanted to see again Nicolo Fonte’s highly detailed urban rendering of Petrouchka, and to see Haiyan Wu dance Micaela in Carmen. I’m very glad I did.
Apparently, for some readers, I failed to convey in my original review for The Oregonian that [...]
Blaine Truitt Covert/OBT
By Bob Hicks
Last weekend I went to two dances and a play. The dances were Petrouchka and No Man’s Land. The play was Carmen.
This was odd, because No Man’s Land, a sort-of-comic psychic tussle at Artists Repertory Theatre, is by the revered British playwright Harold Pinter, whose brand of rhythmically menacing theater has [...]
By Martha Ullman West
I have had an addiction to detective stories (and coffee, I confess) since I was fourteen years old, when I read Agatha Christie late into the night, using a flashlight, in my dormitory room at the Quaker boarding school I loved.
We sometimes had interesting vespers speakers on Sunday [...]
By Laura Grimes
The season’s pickle swaps are in full swing. These things sneak up and before you know it, you have hot peppers in the cupboard and elk meat in the freezer.
A few jars of piccalilli flew out the door the other night in return for promissory notes for bread-and-butter pickles and honey.
An email popped [...]
By Bob Hicks
Geishas, kabuki actors, mountain landscapes, samurai scenes.
Check, check, check, check.
But what about those spine-tingling scenes of natural disaster?
The Portland Art Museum’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints has long been a strong suit in its permanent collections, and the new exhibition The Artist’s Touch, the Craftsman’s Hand, which features about 230 prints from a [...]
25 candles for First Thursday
BodyVox leans horizontally
William Hurt and Harold Pinter duke it out
Wordstock throws a bookapalooza
Oregon Arts Watch puts on a show (times three)
A double feature at Oregon Ballet Theatre
Portland Open Studios’ peek behind the scenes
By Bob Hicks
Good lord, what a weekend. Used to be, a person who really tried could actually keep up [...]