By Bob Hicks
Seeing it as our duty to help sort out this most perplexing of civic seasons, we here at Art Scatter World Headquarters have hired our first political correspondent. He’s a veteran newspaperman named Eugene Field, and we’re proud to add him to our mix.
Here is Mr. Field’s first dispatch, filed from the late [...]
By Bob Hicks
In Down the rabbit hole: Melody Owen makes a book, which is new on Oregon Arts Watch, I tell the tale of … well, of Melody Owen making a book. Actually, it’s more about the publication party for the Portland artist’s new book, Looking Glass Book, at Publication Studio, in a tuckaway corner [...]
By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter is getting old.
At least, judging by his junk mail, the world seems to think so.
Rest homes (or “active senior residences”), pharmaceutical companies, retirement financial planners, purveyors of musical nostalgia in the Pat Boone mold have got their hands, if not on Mr. Scatter’s obituary, then certainly on the records of his [...]
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 Laura Grimes
Today the blog takes a moment of silence. Richard Vincent Grimes passed away 20 years ago today, but that’s not really the day I’m honoring. I’m remembering instead a quiet moment I shared with my dad nine months after he died.
Hot licks and good times with Andy Stein, Padam Padam
Closing the books: Powell’s layoffs, Looking Glass R.I.P.
Patrick Page plucks praise from “Spider-Man” carnage
In the room with Egypt’s fierce cultural protector
Alexis Rockman and good news at the Smithsonian
By Bob Hicks
Hot licks and good times with Andy Stein, Padam Padam: My old friend and neighbor Jaime Leopold [...]
By Bob Hicks
Today we offer a quick link to Mr. Scatter’s review for The Oregonian, under his non de plume Bob Hicks, of Achilles’ Alibi, the latest evening of choral poetry from Eric Hull and his company Vox.
The program repeats this Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 22-24. Good stuff; catch it if you can. You can [...]
By Bob Hicks
Scatterers have been sowing their wild oats elsewhere lately, and old topics are coming up new again. A quick update:
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, has a guest column on Tobi Tobias’s Seeing Things dance blog at Arts Journal. In Doing Well in a Rainy Climate: Ballet in the Pacific Northwest, Martha [...]
By Bob Hicks
Hard to believe, but here it is late September and already Portland’s fall arts season is in full swing. Somehow things snuck up on Mr. Scatter (he knows he should say “sneaked up,” except he prefers the ancient and slightly disreputable “snuck”), and now he must do some serious catching up.
Some cool-looking things [...]
By Laura Grimes
The Small Large Smelly Boy and I have been on the road for a while, bravely negotiating a clogged highway along a lavender festival, fording a large body of water by ferry, climbing mountains, and gingerly making our way through Sasquatch Country.
JoJo can prove it. Our parenting thinking is so warped that we [...]