Monday links: Romancing the Rose Quarter
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLET GAME: Remember the flap over Memorial Coliseum? Tear it down? Fix it up? Turn it into the doorway to a suburban-style, cookie-cutter entertainment and shopping complex? Build a minor-league baseball park in its place, with a concession stand serving grilled architects on a bun?
Niel DePonte has another idea, and you can read about it on this morning’s Oregonian editorial page, under the headline Imagine the Rose Quarter Performing Arts District. I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth at City Hall now. Or is that the sound of stonewalling?
But DePonte — Grammy-nominated percussionist for the Oregon Symphony, music director and conductor for Oregon Ballet Theatre, president and founder of MetroArts, Inc., which is helping to find and train the next generations of artists — has some good ideas. And right now the Coliseum in specific and the Rose Quarter in general need some good ideas. Give it a read. And if you like the idea, or parts of it, pass it along.
FAREWELL TO FRANK: This morning’s New York Times has a good appreciation of Frank McCourt, the New York Irish character and sweet writer who died Sunday at age 78. In 1996 McCourt published Angela’s Ashes, his harrowing yet tender memoir of Ireland and America and poverty and drink and survival, and it became a phenomenon, staying near the top of the best-seller lists for two years.
A lot of bad writing’s been committed in the name of memoir. Let’s take time, then, to celebrate a man who did it right — who told the tale more for his readers than himself, and told it with an innate understanding of what storytelling means.
MTC TURNS 100: … and we’d be not just remiss but downright dumb to not point out Mighty Toy Cannon’s perky celebration of his first century of blogging at Culture Shock. He’s mighty frisky for an old guy. Some writers have got in trouble for misrepresenting the past. MTC niftily sidesteps that problem by brazenly misrepresenting the future. Or is he dead right? Check back in 2109, when our great-grandkids might be comparing him to Nostradamus. Congratulations, old-timer.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
[...] Bill White and former columnist for neo-Nazi Willis Carto’s newspaper American Free Press.” Monday links: Romancing the Rose Quarter – artscatter.com 07/20/2009 TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLET GAME: Remember the flap over Memorial [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I got a little sad when I read about Frank McCourt today — I think of him as the Irish uncle I never had, based only on listening to him read the audio version of Angela’s Ashes (and being served drinks by his brother at the Washbag in San Francisco).
For those who haven’t read it, I highly recommend the audio version because it makes adorably funny what is depressingly grim when read on paper.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
I got a lot sad when I read of Frank McCourt’s death. I found parts of Angela’s Ashes hilarious, particularly the account of his first communion, while most of it of course is gruellingly grim. I had a not so amusing adventure trying to buy the book at Heathrow airport incidentally: I looked for it in a very complete bookstore, then asked for it at the desk. They brought it out from a back storage room, apparently feeling that if they had it on public display it would be encouraging to the IRA.
I think Niel dePonte’s Rose Quarter proposal is definitely worth looking at, though I have seen ballet performed in the Coliseum, as well as the Red Army Chorus and dancers. A lot of remodeling, reworking would have to be done believe me.
And a happy thursday to you all.