NOVEMBER 2020
ROGUE VALLEY SYMPHONY GOES DIGITAL INSIDE REVELS
IN THE NICK
OF TIME New Sammy’s Bistro owners Charlene and Vernon Rollins recall escaping the Almeda fire. See story, Page 2
Charlene Rollins works on preparing meals at Hither restaurant in Ashland. ANDY ATKINSON / ASHLAND TIDINGS
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
New Sammy’s Bistro among Almeda casualties Owners Charlene and Vernon Rollins escaped the fire with just the clothes on their backs By Sarah Lemon for ACC
After pouring all their time, energy and resources for 30 years into a restaurant, Charlene and Vernon Rollins finally will have a house. The Almeda fire destroyed both the couple’s New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro in Talent and their mobile home just steps from the storied establishment. While the restaurant was insured, the residence was not. As they weigh whether resurrecting New Sammy’s is feasible, the Rollinses concede that their more pressing need is shelter. “We wound up with the clothes on our backs,” says Charlene, New Sammy’s chef and chief gardener. A GoFundMe campaign is collecting donations for the couple, both in their 70s, who couldn’t conscience reopening the New Sammy’s dining room since statewide restaurant closures to curb the coronavirus. The fundraiser has accrued about half of its $100,000 goal. To keep the restaurant afloat since spring, the Rollinses had reinvented New Sammy’s as an outlet for takeout. Charlene, 72, worked 14 to 16 hours every day to reconfigure for customers’ home consumption her distinctive, seasonally fresh cuisine prepared with numerous ingredients organically grown on site. As she juggled the challenge of cultivating food with cooking and preserving it, Vernon, 75, says the garden had never been “more beautiful and productive.” “The garden was a great refuge for us,” says Vernon, who was Charlene’s only kitchen assistant since spring. Vernon provided New Sammy’s distinguished wine service since its inception June 1, 1989, at 2210 S. Pacific Highway. Jumping Highway 99 from vegetation along the Bear
Creek Greenway, the windwhipped Almeda fire claimed New Sammy’s as one of its first commercial casualties the afternoon of Sept. 8. Because the restaurant was closed Tuesday, the Rollinses credit a casual conversation with friends in their parking lot as a literal lifesaver. A Jackson County sheriff’s deputy spotted the group, pulled off the highway and told them to evacuate immediately. “We took a bottle of wine and a bottle of water,” says Charlene, adding that she also grabbed their phone book but didn’t safeguard their computer. The couple have never owned cellphones. Spending the night in their car among other evacuees at the Jackson County Expo, the Rollinses despaired that they couldn’t get back to Talent the next morning. A day later, they parked at the Valley View Road interchange with Interstate 5 so Charlene could trek the mile to New Sammy’s. She met a man walking the opposite direction and asked about the restaurant. He replied only with a hug. “He didn’t say anything,” says Charlene. “Told me what I needed to know.” She forged ahead and arrived at a still-smoking scene of “total devastation,” a maze of twisted metal she cautiously surveyed. Green beans hung ready to harvest in the garden, and ripe fruit clung to the trees, but everything edible had been spattered with fire retardant. “I could tell right away that it wasn’t fixable,” she says. “I wouldn’t even want to touch anything.” More than two weeks later, Charlene can’t keep from chopping, stirring, kneading and mixing since she and Vernon accepted the hospitality of longtime Ashland friends Dan and Joan Thorndike. The ritual of preparing food grounds her and Vernon, guiding them through otherwise
ANDY ATKINSON / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Charlene Rollins works on preparing meals at Hither restaurant in Ashland.
directionless days. “This is like an enforced vacation,” says Vernon. In fact, the couple say they may finally retire after listing New Sammy’s for sale with no serious interest over the past three years. Their son, Sammy, maintained for years that he wouldn’t run his namesake business, although he’s mourning the restaurant that was more of a home during his childhood than any house could be. The repository of their memories actually needed decluttering, which the fire conveniently handled for them, the Rollinses joke. “Some of it was precious, and a lot of it wasn’t,” says Charlene. Of interest to many longtime customers is Vernon’s wine collection — some 25,000 bottles that went up in smoke. A list of more than 3,000 labels in New Sammy’s heyday garnered acclaim in several national publications, including Bon Appetit and Food & Wine magazines. But the Rollinses say they auctioned off their truly valuable vintages several years ago. They lament instead the
sacrifice of their personal wine collection, many bottles gifted from friends, which they anticipated drinking in retirement. “That’s like losing personal items that were on the wall,” says Vernon. The loss of a restaurant that, for many diners, had no peer not only is inspiring generosity but endearing the Rollinses to people who don’t know them personally. “There’s a feeling of community we have now that we’ve never had before,” says Charlene. A regular patron of New Sammy’s takeout service, Leslie Crabtree says she felt “gut-punched” seeing the Rollinses seemingly adrift at Ashland’s Shop’n Kart. After expressing her sympathies, Crabtree says she ducked into an aisle and started sobbing. Another shopper, coincidentally a New Sammy’s customer, asked Crabtree if she was OK, heard the Rollinses story and soon suggested GoFundMe. “The response has been really wonderful,” says Crabtree. “Because New Sammy’s was a destination for food
lovers from across America, the link for the fundraiser has been widely shared, and consequently donations, messages of support and grief for their loss have come from folks near and far. “So many kind comments from folks who remember the one brilliant time they ate there or others who celebrated every important event at New Sammy’s.” The prospect of celebrating new milestones keeps the Rollinses optimistic. Their intended home site, farther from New Sammy’s than their mobile, was largely unscathed by fire. Installing a commercial kitchen, if not a full-fledged restaurant, will facilitate Charlene’s artisan baking or perhaps pop-up dinners. “This is an opportunity to build a house,” says Vernon, “which we’ve never had before.” See the New Sammy’s GoFundMe campaign at newsammys.com. Reach freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@ gmail.com.
The prospect of celebrating new milestones keeps the Rollinses optimistic. Their intended home site, farther from New Sammy’s than their mobile, was largely unscathed by fire. Installing a commercial kitchen, if not a full-fledged restaurant, will facilitate Charlene’s artisan baking or perhaps pop-up dinners.
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Boykins’ surprising return home Bear Creek Mobile Home Park resident knew what to expect, but was still shocked
By Joe Zavala ACC
R
egina Boykins doesn’t have a GoFundMe account, but when you remember the Almeda fire and all the stories that have been told since, I’m hoping you’ll remember hers, too. Her own escape began at 11:28 a.m. the day of the fire, Sept. 8, when she received a Nixle alert from the city of Ashland warning her that flames were en route and she was under a Level 3 “go” evacuation order. And her tale ended in about the same spot six days later. That’s roughly when I pulled into the Bear Creek Mobile Home Park on the north end of Ashland, just off the freeway, past the cavity where Burger King once stood — right about where the Almeda fire started gobbling up homes on its destructive path north. I knew what to expect when I arrived after having seen video footage of the fire’s destruction, but the sight still caught me off-guard. I saw steel frame foundations twisted like black licorice, burned-up cars, spray-painted numbers on driveways to help orient search crews and homeowners, an untouched cat food can left out for somebody’s lost pet, and so much ash and soot. The phrase “war zone” had by then already become the go-to descriptor. Having never known war, I can’t say that’s exactly right, but I’ve seen plenty of sooty campfire pits, and Bear Creek Mobile Home Park certainly resembled one of those, just bigger. I was supposed to meet Boykins, but she was running late, so I conducted a little self-guided tour in my minivan, bumping over dead, downed powerlines and trying not to spook the cadaver dog sniffing around. Boykins has the kind of story that, as soon as she starts talking you don’t really want to know the rest. We’ve all heard a lot of those the past
JOE ZAVALA / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Regina Boykins talks on the phone on the deck of her house in the Bear Creek Mobile Home Park, Sept. 14, in Ashland.
few weeks, and here’s hers. She and her husband, Steve, lived in a cute house above the Plaza that was a dead weight on their shoulders mortgage wise, so they decided to fix it up and sell it. Steve, a loud, no-nonsense 6-foot-7 tornado of energy, was the kind of character who could only call Ashland home. As a lover of all living things, he was careful to let even the bugs live out their little lives as nature intended. And as a lover of soccer and a local coach, he had no qualms about chasing referees across the field and, at least once, over a fence to argue a call he disagreed with. Vigorous in all areas, Steve set his mind to refurbishing the little Craftsman-style, even as cancer whittled him down to skin and bones. He died about two years ago, not long after the house was finished for the Realtors, and the Ashland soccer community came out in full force for
the memorial service Boykins arranged at Walter A. Phillips Field. The group formed a circle and told stories about their friend. He said it like it was, they said. He had a teacher’s heart, they said. Then they broke out the cones and played the sport he loved. Boykins sold the house and six months later was happy to find a soft landing in a tiny single-wide, one of 69 trailers in the Bear Creek Mobile Home Park. Of course, you knew where this story was going from the beginning, so I’ll just get to it. I looked around some more then checked the text messages I had received from her to make sure I wasn’t missing something, because it was becoming clear that I must have. I was heading back up to the park’s entrance on Corral Lane when a man I spoke to earlier who seemed to know his way around the place flagged me down. “I found
her,” he said. “Just head all the way down, the last spot.” The road snaked north and I continued to marvel at the ashtray ruins. Though I knew Pacific Power crews had cut off the juice, I clinched my teeth as I rolled over powerline after powerline. The road eventually descended a steep slope, to Boykins. I was in the exact spot where, six days prior, she had hit a wall of smoke in her 2008 Toyota Tacoma while attempting to follow a neighbor to safety. She didn’t want to risk accidentally running over somebody or driving directly into the flames, so Boykins decided to park at the top of the hill and come up with a plan. “I didn’t see anybody else around,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘where is everybody?’ And then from a lower path, different people came.” A group formed there, including a family with two kids. There were eight of them in all, and they decided
collectively to run for it, past Bear Creek and toward the highway. The rest of her story is like many of the others you’ve probably heard by now. They made it to the creek, then charged ahead through thick brush and blackberry bushes — she lifted her pant legs to show me the scratches, still healing — until they found Highway 99 and some police officers directing traffic. From there, it was a squadcar ride to Ray’s Food Place in Phoenix. Boykins’ brother lived on Northridge Terrace, so she headed there to help him evacuate. By then, she’d figured her house was toast, that she was already a 55-year-old homeless woman. She called a sheriff that night to try to arrange an escort to take her to her place, to protect what was left from the looters who were already busy giving humans a bad name. SEE BOYKINS, A5
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
BOYKINS From Page A4
“Sorry,” he told her, “all the homes there burned down.” She saw for herself the next day. Nobody was really supposed to be there, Boykins said, but the park’s former residents were there anyway, using sticks to poke around the ashes. Their presence was the only way to protect what was left from thieves. The path she took through the park was probably the same one I took less than a week later, so I can at least attest to the visceral feeling she described to me that nothing about this made sense, and it still didn’t make sense on the Monday that I pulled in to see for myself. I pulled up to the slope that led down to her spot, the same slope where she had first seen with her own eyes what had been reported to her the previous night. “I was in shock,” she said. On one side of the cul-de-sac stood the blackened remains of a shed, and next to that a pitched tent. Tall trees lined the street, the tops of which were singed and crispy. And on the left side of the street stood Boykins’ tiny place, behind her neighbor’s trailer. The trailer was charred a little on one side but otherwise fine, and Boykins’ house was — and I still can hardly believe it even as I type this — completely, utterly, impossibly untouched. The paint was still a sharp, crisp tan. Her deck’s dark brown stain was true, and the flowers that decorated the space next to the stairs that led to her front door remained a vibrant orange — possibly the only naturally occurring color in a 3-mile radius. No sane person looking at her house from just below the deck would suspect that a slight head turn to the right would reveal a charred, hollowed-out tree no more than 30 feet away, or that just to the left sat a melted basketball hoop beside Boykins’ driveway entrance. Even the plastic compost tumbler and Rubbermaid storage shed alongside her house looked like she’d just picked them up at Lowe’s. “I walked around and nothing was burned,” she said. “Nothing was burned.” How could this happen? Boykins’ theory is that her house was saved by a couple of coincidences that worked together in her favor. Perhaps,
she says, the home’s position at the bottom of the hill combined with favorable wind patterns so that the strong gusts that drove the fire so violently north also carried all those red-hot coals directly over her home. Boykins was told by a neighbor before that first trip back that her house had somehow survived, was one of three in the park that had, but she was still shocked to see it. Almost as shocked as when she came upon the little parking lot at the head of the park where she had abandoned her Tacoma and found it still sitting there, covered in ash but fine. Several other cars parked in the same lot were burned down to the frames. Boykins has no theory about that one. Her life won’t return to normal anytime soon, despite the good fortune. She’s bunking in the back of her store in the railroad district, the Spirit of Shakti, and probably will be for some time, which is why we loaded up everything she needed to do life (she doesn’t feel safe staying in an otherwise empty mobile home park). Except for some rotten food, it was all exactly as she had left it. But the fire that derailed thousands of lives in a matter of hours somehow missed one person who happened to be directly in its path, who was being chased by it and from it and who had no reason to believe that anything she owned would survive that furnace. But it all did. When we look back on September 2020, the staggering number of losses to the Almeda fire will probably always be the first thing that comes to mind. Three lives, 2,490 residential structures and another 164 businesses at last count. But remember Boykins, too. Sometimes this world doesn’t seem to make any sense. As somebody who watched her husband die, Boykins probably knows that better than most. In a way, 2020 has been like that road through Bear Creek Mobile Home Park: slate gray, lifeless, lonely. Poke around and maybe you’ll find a ring, if you’re lucky. We think, “Where did it all go?” Here’s hoping we’ll pull up to a slope soon, look down and see something that we can hardly fathom: A cute little house, a rose bush, color, life. Or, minus the metaphor, a little something I like to call 2021.
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
Ashland Community Hospital Foundation’s
Lights for Life A New Take on a Time-Honored Tradition The day after Thanksgiving has always been one of celebration, family, and friends. Downtown Ashland is abuzz with Festival of Light activities, shoppers, and cheer. At dusk we line the sidewalks to watch the Festival of Light parade followed by a visit with Santa before crowding into our favorite restaurant to warm up and share a drink or dinner with loved ones. At the start of the Festival of Light parade, the Ashland Community Hospital Foundation lights our Lights for Life tree to kick off the parade. The lights on the tree symbolize donations made in honor, or in memory of, someone special. Gifts to the program benefit healthcare in our community. First responders and medical professionals have endured a great deal this year and we hope Lights for Life will shine a light on just how deeply they are appreciated.
this year for those who follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our email list.
In 1987, when the tradition of Lights for Life first began, no one imagined there would one day be a pandemic preventing us from doing such simple things like gathering outside to ceremoniously light a tree before taking a moment to reflect on those we have lost, and those we hold dear.
We invite you to visit the Lights for Life trees during the holiday season. The Ashland tree is located on Siskiyou Boulevard across from the Public Library, and the Talent tree is located at the Talent Town Hall. Take the opportunity to reflect on whom you are thinking of this year. Perhaps a first responder, healthcare worker, family member, friend, or neighbor.
As we thought about how to light the tree this year knowing it would be without the usual fanfare of Festival of Light, we (like so many others) had to get creative. The Lights for Life tree will be lit a bit earlier to coincide with the lighting of downtown. A video about Lights for Life and tree lighting ceremony will be shared virtually
Ashland Community Hospital Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) organization benefitting healthcare priorities in our community, including our local hospital. For more information or to make a tax-deductible donation visit our website at achfoundation.org or call 541-482-0367.
To donate today visit achfoundation.org 541-482-0367 123 Clear Creek Drive, Suite 101, Ashland, OR MF-00132380
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Rain could flush toxins into Bear Creek Jackson County expects to spend $500,000 for emergency erosion control By Vickie Aldous ACC
Jackson County is in a race against time to reseed and stabilize land along the Bear Creek Greenway before fall rains come and wash toxic material from the Almeda fire into the creek. With the towns of Talent and Phoenix reeling from the fire, the county may have to shoulder the estimated $500,000 cost of the emergency treatment, said County Administrator Danny Jordan. “When it comes down to it, somebody has to act,” Jordan said. Hundreds of acres burned along nine miles of the paved path that stretches through multiple jurisdictions from Ashland to Central Point, county officials said. The 3,200-acre Almeda fire burned from north Ashland to the southern outskirts of Medford. Wind drove the fire along a corridor that contains the Greenway, Bear Creek, Highway 99 and Interstate 5. A variety of housing developments, including manufactured home parks, border Bear Creek. Burned homes are now hazardous waste sites with asbestos, mercury, lead, propane tanks and other debris. Jordan said the county will seek reimbursement for the emergency erosion control work, but won’t wait to see if it can get outside funding from another payer like the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “This is not something that can wait on bureaucracy,” he said. The county hopes to have the Ashland-based helicopter company Brim Aviation flying over the Greenway next week, dropping seeds on burned areas, said Jackson County Parks Program Manager Steve Lambert.
JAMIE LUSCH / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Jackson County is looking for ways to stop rain from washing toxic ash and soils from the Almeda fire into Bear Creek.
Crews will focus additional treatment on highly vulnerable areas such as steep slopes and inlets that feed into Bear Creek, he said. The National Weather Service predicts no rain at least through Thursday for the Medford area. Bartlett Tree Service arborists have already been at work cutting down hundreds of hazard trees that could fall on people using the walking, jogging and biking path. The county is gradually reopening sections of the Greenway that had to be closed due to hazard trees, damaged bridges and other dangers. Anyone using open sections should stick to the path and stay out of burned areas, officials said. Before the Almeda fire, crews cut fire breaks along the Greenway this year, but the cleared areas were no match for flames and embers pushed by 40 mph winds, said John Vial, head of the county’s roads and parks department plus the leader of the county’s Emergency Operations Center. After the initial emergency effort to stabilize Greenway
Before the Almeda fire, crews cut fire breaks along the Greenway this year, but the cleared areas were no match for flames and embers pushed by 40 mph winds, said John Vial, head of the county’s roads and parks department plus the leader of the county’s Emergency Operations Center. After the initial emergency effort to stabilize Greenway soil, the area will need more restoration, including the planting of native plants, Vial said. soil, the area will need more restoration, including the planting of native plants, Vial said. Although it brought unprecedented destruction to Jackson County, the Almeda fire cleared many areas of
flammable vegetation along the Greenway. That creates a good opportunity to manage the area in the future to reduce fire danger, Vial said. The Almeda fire destroyed 2,490 residential structures, 164 commercial buildings and four government structures, according to the latest count. Most of the damage occurred in and around Phoenix and Talent. Rogue Valley Sewer Services is installing inlet protections in the fire zone on publicly owned storm drains to prevent ash and debris from entering the creek. Storm drain systems empty into local creeks, not sewage treatment plants. Rogue Valley Sewer Services is also working with private property owners to get protections installed for commercial lots and mobile home parks, and is working with a variety of stakeholders to get burned areas in riparian zones reseeded before the rainy season. Effective Sept. 8, the day the Almeda fire started, Rogue Valley Sewer Services suspended sewer service billing
for properties that burned and are uninhabitable. It’s capping sewer pipes at the property line for burned sites so debris and animals don’t enter the sewer system and cause blockages. Rogue Valley Sewer Service says it will work with people to bring sewer services to temporary emergency housing sites and will waive any plan review and inspection fees for those projects. The agency will also work with those who want a recreational vehicle dump installed on their property. RVs have holding tanks for waste that is emptied into RV dumps, which are then emptied into sewer or septic systems. Jackson County has long had a shortage of rental houses and apartments, so local officials are working to identify parcels of land for trailers that can provide temporary housing for some displaced residents during the cleanup and rebuilding process. Reach reporter Vickie Aldous at valdous@rosebudmedia. com. Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
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OSF theaters might not reopen until next fall Company will now livestream Broadway concerts online By Jim Flint for ACC OSFASHLAND.ORG
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland has opened a donation center at Carpenter Hall to serve anyone who is impacted by the Rogue Valley fires.
that we look for ways to make a greater impact,” she says. “We’re having conversations with people in 40 different countries. So when we open our doors again, there are more people to welcome, more stories to share. We have to go back to the basics.” Garrett says the future of OSF depends on the seeds planted now. “It’s not how we can just survive,” she says. “It’s not just how can we use the resource, but how can we leave something behind for another generation.” Schmitz came on board Sept. 1, although he arrived in Ashland around the first of August. He says for a long time he has taken for granted being able to share creatively through the arts. The pandemic, social unrest and wildfires all have had an impact on communities and the arts, adding a new dynamic. “We can get mired in the tragedies of the moment,” he says, “but I think we have to lift up our heads and look to the future as we deal with the crises before us.” OSF has played a role in helping its employees deal with the pandemic, and most recently in aiding people who have been affected by the Almeda fire. Furloughs due to COVID-19 have unexpectedly resulted in OSF’s being able to offer shelter for victims. “One aspect of the pandemic is that we don’t have 150 artists housed,” Schmitz says. “Virtually all those spaces are filled by refugees of the fire. Twenty-two OSF employees lost everything.” Carpenter Hall became a center for distribution of supplies to fire victims. Initially a resource center for furloughed OSF employees, Carpenter Hall morphed into a dual role almost by accident.
While the fire was still active, a truck loaded with supplies was heading from Ashland to an evacuation center. The truck was forced to turn around, and OSF gave permission for the supplies to be offloaded at Carpenter Hall. Now the Thomas Theatre is filled to the brim with supplies that are used to restock Carpenter Hall. Crews of OSF technicians and volunteers help move supplies almost daily. Schmitz says he is impressed by how generous the community has been in its support. During the OSF tea conversation, Garrett and Schmitz noted how the O! digital platform has allowed patrons to stay connected to the festival while providing OSF with
of Broadway show tunes, pop songs and personal stories from each headliner, broadcast from The Shubert Virtual Studios on Manhattan’s West Side. Viewers will be invited to participate in a live email Q&A during the show. Tickets cost $30 per show or $75 for all three, and all proceeds from ticket sales will support OSF. Only one ticket is required per household. After purchasing tickets, buyers will receive a link, log-in instructions and a password by email the day before each performance. Ticket holders get an additional 72 hours of on-demand viewing after the show airs. The shows can be watched on any device that can access the internet, including laptop and desktop computers, iPads, smartphones and smart TVs. For more information about the performers and answers to frequently asked questions, see osfashland.org and click on the “Women of Broadway” link. Reach Ashland writer Jim Flint at jimflint.ashland@yahoo. com.
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It all depends on the course of the pandemic and when a COVID-19 vaccine will be available, but it appears the earliest the Oregon Shakespeare Festival will reopen is the fall of 2021. During a virtual OSF tea for premier members, Artistic Director Nataki Garrett and Executive Director David Schmitz talked about festival finances, the future of OSF, the recent fires and new digital offerings. The hour-long online conversation, moderated by Associate Artistic Director Evren Odcikin, was recently placed on the OSF website for public view. Halfway into the program, Odcikin asked about the reemergence of the festival. “Do we dare to dream of any future?” he asked. “What does the future look like?” “Now we are scenario-building,” Garrett said. “We’re focusing on whether we can perform in 2021 ... and, if so, when.” What brought that to the forefront, she says, is the discussion about vaccines and hearing Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, say that people probably won’t be going back into theaters until late 2021. “The blessing of that information for me is that I now have a horizon line we can shoot for,” Garrett says. “So, if we’re going to do this in fall of 2021, what will people need? “After we’ve been out of the theater business for so long, what will our company need, our community, our donors and our newly found audiences?” Garrett believes one of the things that must be done over the coming months is to reach out beyond OSF’s current audience. “When we open back up, we need to make sure we have more people, more connections, greater connections,
needed income. In addition to online classes, workshops, documentaries, and behind-the-scenes footage, O! has offered films of some 2020 plays and a number of archived productions. Discussions are underway to offer additional OSF productions online. “We need to learn which plays are possible and what we can afford,” Garrett says. “We do have a couple of surprises coming our way,” she says. One of those surprises was revealed by the marketing department this week: “Women of Broadway,” a livestream concert series scheduled for this fall. The September livestreamed concert with Christopher Jackson of “Hamilton” was such a success, OSF partnered with Dallas Summer Musicals to present Broadway legend Patti LuPone Oct. 24, Tony Award winner Laura Benanti Nov. 14, and actor and singer Vanessa Williams Dec. 4. All shows start at 5 p.m., transmitted live in HD with professional sound mixing. Each concert will feature a mix
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Proposals solicited on Pioneer Hall and Community Center projects By Allayana Darrow ACC
The city of Ashland has released a request for proposals regarding repairs to Pioneer Hall and Ashland Community Center — a plan to address structural deficiencies and lack of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act at both facilities, according to interim Public Works Director Scott Fleury. The Ashland City Council approved a three-phase, qualification-based RFP process for both building projects unanimously during a business meeting Tuesday. Each phase requires council authorization before proceeding. “When we come out of COVID, at whatever point that is, I think this community is going to need places to get together, so let’s keep this process moving,” said Councilor Tonya Graham. The three project phases include preliminary engineering, final engineering and construction administration, totaling about 14 months of work ahead. The RFP remains open for submissions until 2 p.m. Nov. 10. Intent to award will be announced mid-December, and contract negotiations are scheduled to begin prior to the New Year. Expected project completion on all phases is May 31, 2022, according to council documents. The solicitation process is qualification based — negotiations on project scope and cost for each building will come after contractors are selected, Fleury said. The city has documented more information about the structural integrity and engineering needs of the Pioneer Hall facility than the Community Center, which will likely bump Pioneer Hall up to phase two right away. City Attorney David Lohman said with qualification-based contractor selection, a multi-departmental selection team should
ALLYANA DARROW / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Ashland City Council is seeking proposals for repairs to Pioneer Hall and the city Community Center.
be chosen with care. “The qualification-based selection is one that puts a lot of emphasis on that initial phase, because you’re not basing the decision primarily on cost proposals, you look at qualifications first,” Lohman said. “Therefore, having a good selection panel that understands what’s needed and what the engineering and construction firms bring to the table is more important in this case than it is in most of our contracting.” The estimated timeline for completion is based on information known so far, though negotiations with the chosen consultant firm may shorten the 14-month estimate, Fleury said. The project is also subject to the city
facilities budget, which is set up to fund the project through the preliminary engineering phase but will necessitate further appropriations requests in the next biennium. “If we get moving forward quick enough in this engineering phase, we’ll have really good budget numbers to bring forward through that process and make that request for appropriations to actually bring the facility up to a usable standard,” Fleury said. Current limited uses within Pioneer Hall include food preparation for community service programs. While legal, the conditions are less than ideal for such an operation, interim City Administrator Adam Hanks said. Initial engineering phases on the facilities
are necessary regardless of what the city and community decide is the best use of both. The city does not have the specialists on staff to execute a project of this magnitude, even with potential challenges finding enough qualified contractors to cover the Rogue Valley following the Almeda fire, Fleury and Mayor John Stromberg noted. Structural evaluations on both buildings revealed deficiencies in the floor and roof systems. A building code analysis on Pioneer Hall compared current code to existing building conditions and defined in greater detail what needs fixing to achieve compliance, Fleury said. Public input on future uses of the facilities may be
supplied between the preliminary engineering phase and design stage, Fleury said, when the Parks Department will also supply an opinion on preferred use and design components. “That’s the chance, near the finish line of that design engineering phase, to look at if either parks or city or community envisions the buildings as being what they are, plus this or plus that,” Hanks said. “Then we can look at what those plus addons cost and where those funds would come from.” Contact Ashland Tidings reporter Allayana Darrow at adarrow@rosebudmedia.com or 530-598-2818 and follow her on Twitter @AllayanaD.
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OSF online fundraiser surpasses goal by over $100,000 By Allayana Darrow ACC
Between Oct. 23-26, Oregon Shakespeare Festival raised more than $600,000 through an online fundraiser called the Dare to Dream Gala — surpassing its fundraising goal by more than $100,000. “In this extraordinary time, despite the challenges we are all facing from the global pandemic and recent wildfire devastation, our OSF artistic family, the Rogue Valley community and everyone who joined us online truly came together not just for recovery reasons, but in support of
causes that matter the most,” Health-E, Unete and United OSF spokesman CJ Martinez yet available, as other active said Nataki Garrett, OSF artis- Way are listed as recipients for said a complete breakdown of fundraising campaigns remain fire relief funds. funding distribution is not ongoing. tic director. OSF expanded its global reach through the event, with viewers spread across five continents and 15 countries. Half of the money raised was directed at fire relief efforts in The Rogue Community College (RCC) Board of Education (Board) is seeking applications for the region, while the remaininterim appointment to the RCC Board created by a vacancy in Zone 7 of the RCC District. der will support OSF education programs, novel artistic purTo qualify, candidates must reside in Zone 7 of the RCC District generally described as suits and digital program North Jackson County including precincts 40-42, 44-45, 47-48, 51, 54, 56-57, 66, 74, 76, 78, expansion. and 80 in North and South Medford. You can contact the Jackson County Elections office My Valley My Home, at 541-774-6148 to determine if you reside in the correct precinct. You may also view RCC Northwest Seasonal Workers District zone maps here: https://web.roguecc.edu/board-education/district-zone-maps Association, Phoenix-Talent School District, Rogue Action Qualified candidates will be interviewed and appointed by current Board of Education Center, Rogue Climate, Siskimembers as directed by ORS 341.335(3). The seven-member Board is responsible for you Rising Tide, SOEquity, SO programs, budgets, policy and college contracts. The college president reports directly to the Board, and through her administrative staff, carries out Board policies at the college. Currently, Board meetings are held via Zoom in the afternoon of the third Tuesday of each month with periodic special meetings. Meeting participation in person will resume after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, and these meetings rotate between the three RCC campuses located in Grants Pass, downtown Medford, and White City.
CANDIDATES SOUGHT FOR RCC BOARD – INTERIM SEAT –
Ashland to study value of ambulance service By Allayana Darrow ACC
Ashland Fire and Rescue requested a three-year extension on its existing contract with Jackson County for ambulance services, rather than renewing a typical five-year contract, during a work study session of the Board of County Commissioners Tuesday. Ashland fire Chief David Shepherd said the decision was made in anticipation that a report about the value of independent city ambulance services may determine the benefit to citizens is insufficient to continue the service, and alternative contracts may become necessary. Ambulance services provided by AFR remain a prominent topic of consideration at the city level and within the Budget Committee, Shepherd said. Questions persist about whether an Ashland-based service is worthwhile and affordable for the city. “At the end of the day, we figured the best solution to put the issue to rest was to bring in a third party contractor who will, in great detail, examine everything regarding the ambulance service as provided by the city of Ashland,” Shepherd reported to county commissioners. Results of the report will come back before city administration
to inform further actions. “It’s my opinion as a fire chief that we provide a great service to the citizens of Southern Oregon, but at what cost?” Shepherd posed. “To some degree, the ambulance service that we provide is subsidized by the taxpayers in the city of Ashland.” The final phases of a request for proposal and contractor selection will be completed by the end of the week, he said. The final report, expected in four to five months, will assess costs and overall value in the context of taxpayer subsidy. Interim City Administrator Adam Hanks described the assessment period as a “prudent opportunity” to consider city- and county-level priorities. The three-year period for contracted services will pass quickly, as administrators take up duties to coordinate outcomes recommended by the report, he said. A public hearing will be opened prior to an official decision, though the county commission is expected to pass the three-year contract extension for ambulance services unanimously. Contact Ashland Tidings reporter Allayana Darrow at adarrow@rosebudmedia.com or 541-776-4497 and follow her on Twitter @AllayanaD.
For an application or additional information contact Rachelle Brown, Assistant to the President – Governance, at 541-956-7001 or by e-mail, rbrown@roguecc.edu. The deadline to apply is Monday, November 23, 2020.
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A10
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
YMCA denies former employee’s claim of racial discrimination ACC
A former employee of the Ashland Family YMCA, Nkeruwem “Tony” Akpan, filed a lawsuit Oct. 24 against the fitness center in Jackson County Circuit Court, seeking $950,000 for 16 alleged violations including discrimination and harassment based on race, retaliation, failure to reasonably accommodate and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Akpan, who identifies as African American, began working for the YMCA in August 2015 and by July 2019 had been promoted to sports director. “The YMCA has reviewed the press release issued by Mr. Akpan’s attorney, Thomas Dimitre. The allegations Mr. Dimitre makes are categorically false, and we are confident that your readership will understand Mr. Dimitre’s media strategy for what it is. We look forward to a judicial determination that the Y treated Mr. Akpan fairly and consistent with the law. Beyond that, we are unable to discuss the details of Mr. Akpan’s employment,” CEO Dan Crocker said in a prepared statement. Akpan claims supervisors failed to communicate with him appropriately due to bias about his accent and further issued reprimands as retaliation for his complaints of discrimination. Dimitre said no other disciplinary actions were issued on Akpan’s employment record prior to this series of events. Around Jan. 6, Akpan made a formal complaint of harassment, discrimination and retaliation based on nationality, race and ethnicity, and requested an investigation into the matter, according to the suit. No formal response was issued, though a document was drafted criticizing Akpan’s work history, ethics and performance — later removed from his file when Akpan dropped the discrimination complaint out of concern for his job security, Dimitre said. Dimitre denied any
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foundation for the “disparaging critique of his work” and poor performance evaluation, as Akpan received promotions, raises and positive evaluations in months prior. Between June and July, Akpan reported two instances of racism and verbal attacks using racial slurs from customers and no action was taken, according to the suit. Akpan did not respond to the customers’ statements and immediately reported them to supervisors at the time, Dimitre said. By mid-July, Akpan was demoted and sustained a pay cut — the only one on staff to lose hours and compensation, according to Dimitre. On Aug. 4, Akpan received a onemonth notice of termination from the YMCA. A separation agreement offered $2,910 in severance pay and agreement to drop claims alleged against the CEO, which Akpan declined. “The YMCA attempted to coerce Mr. Akpan into signing a settlement in order to prevent him from suing. Mr. Akpan refused,” Dimitre said in a press release. According to the YMCA employee handbook, if the allegations are founded, Akpan’s reports of discrimination are protected under the harassment and whistleblower policies and must be investigated accordingly. Harassment is defined as “actions that create an intimidating, offensive, or hostile working environment, and other acts that have the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance, when harassing acts are based on a protected characteristic such as, but not limited to, race, color, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin or genetic characteristics.” Contact Ashland Tidings reporter Allayana Darrow at adarrow@rosebudmedia.com or 541-776-4497 and follow her on Twitter @AllayanaD.
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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Student hopes to lower voting age “It’s really arbitrary because when you turn 18, you’re not suddenly enlightened in this entire new world where every one of your beliefs is fundamentally challenged. Those same values that you were raised on throughout your life impact you in some way, whether you disagreed with them or agreed with them. Those have as much of an impact on you when you’re 18 or older as they do when you’re 16 or 17.”
By Allayana Darrow ACC
Back in June, 16-year-old Ashland High School junior Luke Seeley was ready for a project. Though the coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench in planning, he chose to work on an idea that has been a passion since the 2016 election: Push legislation at the city level to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in municipal elections. Before the pandemic, he intended to gather signatures on an initiative to be brought to Ashland City Council. Instead, he turned to research on youth voting. For the past four months, Seeley has collaborated with council member Stefani Seffinger and compiled research on examples of youth voting from other states, pros and cons, citizen petitions and formal ordinances. Seeley has put more than 100 hours of work into the project, which coalesced into a draft document, “Benefits of Enfranchising Youth,” which might morph into his senior project. “It’s really arbitrary because when you turn 18, you’re not suddenly enlightened in this entire new world where every one of your beliefs is fundamentally challenged,” Seeley said. “Those same values that you were raised on throughout your life impact you in some way, whether you disagreed with them or agreed with them. “Those have as much of an impact on you when you’re 18 or older as they do when you’re 16 or 17.” According to City Attorney David Lohman, Seeley has a low chance of success at the city level. Voting age is set by the state. However, nothing bars a minor from running for city council or sitting on commissions. Seffinger said it seems an annual ritual for at least one standout student to reach out looking for a council member to help with a project. She formerly worked with a student who assisted on her council campaign. Student participation in commissions has come up before, such as the idea of a youth commission to weigh in on City Council decisions. Youth provided invaluable contributions to the city’s climate action plan, she said. “When this student said that he wanted somebody to work with him on the project, I said that I would be happy to help in any way I could, because it’s a belief of mine that we need to engage kids in high school, before high school, to get them actively involved in their communities,” Seffinger said. She suggested focusing on 16- and 17-year-olds, not any younger, because
Ashland High School junior Luke Seeley
COURTESY PHOTO
Luke Seeley, a junior at Ashland High School, reviews the Jackson County Voters’ Pamphlet. Seeley is working on a proposal to extend municipal voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds.
civics education at the 11th-grade level could become a valuable part of school curriculum, combined with decision-making practice during an election. Having decision-making capability changes the way individuals listen and engage with various topics, as Seffinger said she has witnessed on council. Many students aren’t able to attend college, or they drop out early, leaving a gap in political scope and hands-on learning, she said. “I see it like learning to drive, where there’s a sequential exposure to the process,” Seffinger said. Seffinger sees more benefits than risks to getting students involved in voting, but recognizes the state-level barriers that would impede Seeley’s goals. Regardless of how far the project goes, enhancing youth engagement with local government is a worthwhile endeavor, she said.
Opposition to the idea is fairly standard: Students aren’t mature enough; they do not need to vote because they are represented by parents; or they are not educated enough to make the decision for themselves. The same basic arguments were used in opposition to the 19th Amendment ratifying the right to vote regardless of sex — that a woman would clearly vote the same way as her husband, Seeley recalled from his research. “I think a lot of the fear about this idea is … it’s not actually about the students or teenagers wouldn’t be able to do it effectively, but students and teenagers might have different ideas, might challenge the norm that exists in politics right now,” Seeley said. He is prepared for some potential institutional resistance to youth influence on the status quo. Based on his research, Seeley said
he believes there may be some room to get an ordinance passed for the city of Ashland without a change to state law, so long as the vote counted only for municipal elections. Seeley has been in close contact with leadership in a Maryland city, where teenagers can vote and a youth commission supplies advice to the City Council. As a result, improved youth and adult engagement prompts more nuanced discussions at home about a variety of political opinions, he said. In his own home, Seeley and his parents are accepting of each other’s viewpoints, but he falls on the more progressive side of the spectrum. Fruitful discussion either strengthens or alters his own beliefs, with the understanding that each viewpoint stems from different life experiences. About 20-30 students have shown interest in his project and are ready to do the groundwork to get youth voting passed, he said. One of the most compelling arguments in favor of a youth vote, from Seeley’s perspective, is that 18 is a highly inconvenient time to start voting. Amid moving on to college, joining the military or other substantial lifestyle changes, introducing a new habit like voting doesn’t churn out great results, he said, as new adults don’t have the practice. At 16, Seeley is entrenched in classes about government, history and politics, which inform how he would vote. Some students, like adults, may remain disengaged from voting, as is their right, Seeley said. Still, he hopes a youth vote would propel a higher level of educational and community engagement from the student body. Contact Ashland Tidings reporter Allayana Darrow at adarrow@rosebudmedia.com or 541-776-4497 and follow her on Twitter @AllayanaD.
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
GingerBread Jubilee develops COVID-19 recipe for 2020 event By Nick Morgan ACC
Transforming the James Collier GingerBread Jubilee into a social distancing compliant and sugary spectacle will require some tweaks to a beloved recipe. For its 18th year, the Jubilee’s community tour will move to a new location in downtown Medford with expanded hours next month and admission down to the low, low price of free, according to Aspen Droesch, development director for the Craterian Performances Company. Droesch said that during a “normal” year, the GingerBread Jubilee would be their largest fundraiser of the year, bringing in around a quarter of a million dollars. “We’re certainly not expecting that this year,” Droesch said, adding that instead they’re focused on giving the community a “joyful and festive” event at no cost. She described the free admission as an effort to add a little sweetness to a somber year. “Just given everything with COVID and the fires and everything that people are dealing with, we wanted everyone to be able to come out and enjoy a holiday tradition,” Droesch said, adding that her team is “working really hard to pivot and make it safe.” This year’s community tour, running from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 20-22, will feature a covered outdoor, tour of festive holiday window displays at the Collier Creative Center, 50 N. Fir St. in Medford. Typically the building is used for the Craterian’s Teen Musical Theater of Oregon programs, but the building — formerly a Scan Design furniture store — “has these gorgeous, huge windows,” according to Droesch, which organizers will use to showcase the gingerbread creations in different themes. Organizers will meter people one by one in the outdoor tour to ensure physical distancing.
“It’ll be chilly, but fully covered,” Droesch said. “I think it’ll look especially festive at night.” For those unwilling or unable to brave the crowds to enjoy the sights of locally made gingerbread creations, there will also be an online component to the tour. Normally the gingerbread creations are auctioned off at a catered gala, but this year’s auction will be online and open to everyone instead of just a couple hundred gala ticketholders. Culinary architects interested in participating the baking contest have until Nov. 1 to apply. Participants must use all edible materials, but the event is open to all ages and skill levels. “They can be anything,” Droesch said. “They don’t have to be houses.” Roughly $3,000 worth of cash prizes are awarded in multiple categories that include student, adult and group. For entry and event details, see craterian.org or facebook. com/GingerBreadJubilee. Droesch said the Craterian has faced its own setbacks in that they were among the first to close and anticipate being among the last to reopen. Their Teen Musical Theater of Oregon program had to completely cancel their spring production on dress rehearsal. TMTO is now gearing up to reopen with a holiday performance. With social distancing, the Craterian’s 80 seats are a fraction of what they used to be, and Droesch said arriving at the theater is a little different from what it once was because they can’t allow lingering in the lobby. “Once you get in the seat ... you really don’t feel like you’re missing anything,” Droesch said. “It’s really incredible to see a live performance again.” Reach reporter Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or nmorgan@ rosebudmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MTCrimeBeat.
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THURSDAY, November 5, 2020
MUSIC THIS WAY Rogue Valley Symphony films digital ‘Concert Detours’ to view during the pandemic. See Page 14
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
COVER STORY ROGUE VALLEY SYMPHONY: NEW ONLINE PERFORMANCES
‘DIGITAL JOURNEYS: CONCERT DETOURS’ By Jim Flint for Revels
T
he Rogue Valley Symphony has canceled the remaining live performances of its 2020-21 concert season, hoping to return to the stage in September of next year. RVS has continued its new series, “Digital Journeys: Concert Detours,” with the second online performance that is now available on the symphony’s YouTube channel. Search YouTube for “Rogue Valley Symphony” to see posted concerts. The RVS brass and percussion sections were filmed for the second concert detour as they traveled throughout the Rogue Valley the week of Oct. 7, performing three fanfares in honor of local heroes who responded to the COVID19 pandemic and the fires that raced through Southern Oregon in September. “This project was conceived in gratitude for the selfless work of medical professionals who bravely faced the new and unknown,” said Martin Majkut, RVS music director. “And when the fires happened, our eyes opened to new heroes — firefighters, first responders and citizens — who risked their lives in order to save others and to save property.” The program includes “Fanfare for the Common Man” by Aaron Copland, “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” by Joan Tower, and “Fanfare for Our Heroes” by Chelsea Majkut. The music was performed at fire stations in Ashland, Phoenix and Talent; at a fire relief center at the Shoppes at Exit 24 in Phoenix; and for the staff at Talent Middle School. The third concert detour
PHOTO BY DAVID JOHNSON
Rogue Valley Symphony music director Martin Majkut, left, and French horn player Alison Dresser are recorded for a digital concert performance.
PHOTO BY JOELLE GRAVES
Fire District No. 5 firefighters and staff enjoy a concert at the South Pacific Highway station.
will include “Romanian Folk Dances” by Bela Bartok, “Musica Celestis” by Aaron J. Kernis, and “Holberg Suite” by Edvard Grieg. It will be offered early to RVS subscribers Nov. 20 and to the general public after Dec. 1, again on the symphony’s YouTube channel. The program will feature members of the string
section, socially distanced and wearing masks. Majkut says he chose music designed to soothe and lift spirits. “Kernis’s ‘Musica Celestis’ indeed sounds like a choir of angels,” Majkut said. “The ‘Holberg Suite’ is subtitled, ‘Suite in Olden Style.’ It came to mind because every time I think of events before
the pandemic, it feels like ancient history. ‘Romanian Folk Dances’ is on the program because no matter how much we are tested, we have to remember to laugh and dance.” The first digital detour concert is part of the RVS YouTube channel archive. The hour-long program includes interviews and performances by seven soloists who are members or friends of the orchestra. Capping the program is a two-piano number featuring maestro Majkut and guest pianist Alexander Tutunov, professor of piano and artist in residence at Southern Oregon University who performs internationally. The performances were filmed in four intimate settings — the historic Siskiyou Barn, a home overlooking Ashland, a Medford home complete with a concert stage, and Tutunov’s home. More concert detours in the spring will follow the
symphony’s original performance schedule. Joelle Graves, executive director, says that without the arts in their usual forms, RVS was forced to try a new direction. “There was only one answer,” she said. “Find a way to perform.” Majkut and Graves came up with the concept of offering digital concerts. “Every challenge is an opportunity,” Majkut said. “We dream about being in the concert hall with an audience again. Nothing beats that feeling. However, the world still needs beauty.” Meanwhile, the RVS educational programs continue, with professional musicians employed as resources to music teachers and students in the Rogue Valley. The organization also collected instrument donations from the community to replace those lost by Phoenix and Talent students in the fires. The RVS is already making plans for the 2021-22 season. “We plan to produce some of the concerts from the unrealized 2020-21 season, but also add new content,” said Majkut. “I am working on several programs that could be easily adjusted to shorter presentations with no intermission. It all depends on how widespread the vaccines are.” Traditionally, the following season is unveiled in February, but RVS is delaying its announcement for 202122 because of COVID-19 uncertainties. “We are eager to be back in our concert halls,” he said, “but safety is of paramount importance.” Reach Ashland writer Jim Flint at jimflint.ashland@yahoo. com.
“This project was conceived in gratitude for the selfless work of medical professionals who bravely faced the new and unknown,” said Martin Majkut, RVS music director. “And when the fires happened, our eyes opened to new heroes — firefighters, first responders and citizens — who risked their lives in order to save others and to save property.”
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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HOLIDAY TRADITIONS CANCELLATIONS HIT DANCE COMPANIES HARD
WE WANT OUR ‘NUTCRACKER’ By Andrew Welsh-Huggins The Associated Press
C
OLUMBUS, Ohio — For many, it’s not Christmas without the dance of Clara, Uncle Drosselmeyer, the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Mouse King and, of course, the Nutcracker Prince. But this year the coronavirus pandemic has canceled performances of “The Nutcracker” around the U.S. and Canada, eliminating a major and reliable source of revenue for dance companies already reeling financially following the essential shutdown of their industry. “This is an incredibly devastating situation for the arts and in particular for organizations like ours that rely on ticket sales from the Nutcracker to fund so many of our initiatives,” said Sue Porter, executive director of BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. “The Nutcracker” typically provides about $1.4 million of the company’s $2 million in annual ticket sales, against a $7 million budget. That money goes to school programing and financial aid for dance class students, Porter said. It’s the first year since 1977 that the company isn’t staging the ballet in Ohio’s capital. The cancellations have meant layoffs, furloughs and salary cuts, with companies relying heavily— sometimes exclusively — on fundraising to stay afloat. Beyond their financial importance, “Nutcracker” performances are also a crucial marketing tool for dance companies, company directors say. Children often enroll in classes for the chance to dance in the performances as mice, young partygoers and angels, among other supporting roles. For adults, the shows are sometimes their initial experience watching live dance. “It tends to be the first ballet that people see, the first
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO
Pitt sophomores Danielle Shermock, left, and Kayla Siedlecki, members of the Pitt Ballet Club wait backstage during their performance of “The Nutcracker” at the Bellefield Hall Auditorium in November 2019 in Pittsburgh. The student-run classical ballet group usually organizes two shows a year.
The cost of the digital equipment needed to record broadcast quality performances has been a sticking point for companies in the past, said Amy Fitterer, executive director of Dance/ USA, a dance service and advocacy organization. Now, companies are working on ways to access such equipment to prepare for a hybrid future of performances, she said. time they experience attending a production, that thrill when the curtain goes up, the hush of the crowd,” said Max
Hodges, executive director of the Boston Ballet. “So for that reason it’s a key part of the pipeline in welcoming audiences into the art form.” After deciding to cancel this year’s live performances, the Boston Ballet will use archived footage of past performances for a one-hour version to be shown on television in New England. The annual $8 million in “Nutcracker” ticket sales accounts for about 20% of the company’s annual budget. The pandemic has cost the arts and entertainment industry about 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion nationally, according to an August analysis by the Brookings Institution. The economic vulnerability inherent in arts organizations is exacerbated when they rely on a major seasonal event SEE ‘NUTCRACKER’, A16
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A16
| Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Some companies that canceled are offering online streams of a past performance, such as Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. Others are offering in-person performances of a sort, such as Atlanta Ballet’s “Drive-In Movie Experience” allowing patrons to watch a filmed past performance from their car. Still others are proceeding, for now, with plans for live performances. The Eugene Ballet in Oregon canceled its normal four-state tour but expanded its stage offerings from four to 10 performances, with a socially distanced audience of 500 in a 2,500-seat auditorium. The company is shortening performances to 70 minutes, reducing the number of student participants and going without a live orchestra.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ballet student Micah Sparrow dances with a mask on in a classroom at the Texas Ballet Theatre Oct. 7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
‘NUTCRACKER’ From Page A15
— like “The Nutcracker” — for large portions of revenue, said Amir Pasic, dean of the School of Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. One silver lining is the opportunity for organizations to improve their online offerings, which could also help open up markets to younger consumers, he said. That’s the case in Toronto, where the National Ballet of Canada is contemplating future hybrid programming that offers tickets for in-person “Nutcracker” performances and less expensive tickets for those who want to watch it online. The company canceled its “Nutcracker” in August.
“We’re going to build into our model regular capture of content to build a more robust catalogue,” said Executive Director Barry Hughson. “So when we face this at some point in future — hopefully a long way away in the future — we will have solved that part of this equation.” The cost of the digital equipment needed to record broadcast quality performances has been a sticking point for companies in the past, said Amy Fitterer, executive director of Dance/USA, a dance service and advocacy organization. Now, companies are working on ways to access such equipment to prepare for a hybrid future of performances, she said. Other cancellations this year include performances by the New York City Ballet, the
Charlotte Ballet, the Milwaukee Ballet, the Sacramento Ballet and the Kansas City Ballet, which is forgoing about $2.2 million in ticket sales. Making it through this season is tough enough, but “if this goes beyond next year, then I think we’ve got some serious issues to attend to,” said Jeffrey Bentley, the Kansas City Ballet’s executive director. Some companies that canceled are offering online streams of a past performance, such as Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. Others are offering in-person performances of a sort, such as Atlanta Ballet’s “Drive-In Movie Experience” allowing patrons to watch a filmed past performance from their car. Still others are proceeding, for now, with plans for live
performances. The Eugene Ballet in Oregon canceled its normal four-state tour but expanded its stage offerings from four to 10 performances, with a socially distanced audience of 500 in a 2,500-seat auditorium. The company is shortening performances to 70 minutes, reducing the number of student participants and going without a live orchestra. “We’re just all trying to be resilient, and our dancers are champing at the bit to get in the studio and start rehearsing things,” said Eugene Ballet Artistic Director Toni Pimble. Of the 50 dance companies with the largest annual expenses surveyed by the Dance Data Project, only eight were proceeding with in-person performances. Others either canceled, planned
to offer streaming versions or still haven’t made an announcement. In Fort Worth, the cancellation of the Texas Ballet Theater’s “Nutcracker” meant the loss of about $2 million in ticket sales. It was also a personal blow to 16-year-old Micah Sparrow, who would have danced roles as a rat and a cook, the third time she would have performed in the show. Sparrow, a longtime Texas Ballet Theater student, hopes to become a professional dancer. For now, she attends ballet classes reduced in scope as social distancing limits normal movement. “It really gives me a sense of purpose around the Christmas season just to make magic for the audience and for everyone who watches it,” Sparrow said. “I’m really going to miss it.”
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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MUSIC
TOAST OF THE PANDEMIC AGE By Randall Roberts Los Angeles Times
L
ike thousands of artists, Nashville singer and songwriter Emma Swift faced a reckoning in March after all of her gigs were scrapped. “When the pandemic hit, I lost my job as a touring musician. And in losing that job, I lost my primary income stream,” she said during a recent phone call. Pondering the prospect of releasing “Blonde on the Tracks,” her new folk-rock album of Bob Dylan songs, to major music streaming services minus any sense of when she’d be able to tour in support of it, Swift ran the numbers. “It wasn’t actually going to be financially sensible or sustainable for me to release it on mainstream streaming platforms such as Spotify or Apple,” Swift explained. “I was only gonna be able to survive as an artist if I used a platform that would allow me to make money from the record.” Like a skyrocketing number of independent artists, Swift went with Bandcamp. The platform, with its artist-first business model, has since its birth in 2008 become a player in the music streaming wars by celebrating niche communities while promising a radically transparent approach to royalties. Born in Oakland with profits in part from the sale of an email start-up company, Bandcamp has thrived during a moment when the challenges facing musicians couldn’t be greater. Starved of road money and feeling abused or ignored by major services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and YouTube that pay fractions of a penny per spin, artists have flocked to Bandcamp and fans have followed. Launched as a digital music site, it has since become a merchandising powerhouse, connecting listeners with
PIOTR SWAT / DREAMSTIME
Bandcamp has, since its birth in 2008, become a player in the music streaming wars.
Starved of road money and feeling abused or ignored by major services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and YouTube that pay fractions of a penny per spin, artists have flocked to Bandcamp and fans have followed. Launched as a digital music site, it has since become a merchandising powerhouse, connecting listeners with vinyl, CDs, cassettes and T-shirts. vinyl, CDs, cassettes and T-shirts. Underscoring musicians’ needs, Bandcamp announced in March that once monthly, on each first Friday through the end of 2020, it would forgo its regular 15% cut on digital sales (and 10% cut of physical sales), in effect channeling 100% of money directly from fan to artist, often with as little as a two-day turnaround. Since then, fans have paid artists nearly $100 million. All told, according to a tally prominently displayed on Bandcamp’s landing page, the platform has generated $584 million for artists since 2008. “Spotify didn’t do anything to actually improve the financial situation for musicians out of their own pocket,” Swift said. Indicting Spotify’s billionaire founder and Chief Executive Daniel Ek as what she called “a morally reprehensible human being,” she added, “the music industry is in a really unfortunate
situation where artists feel like they have to use those platforms or they’re not going to get their music heard.” Bandcamp, by comparison, was founded on a basic question, says 49-year-old co-founder and Chief Executive Ethan Diamond. “If I love a piece of music, how do I get as close as possible to directly handing the artist some money? How do I do that and create that relationship with them?” He then repeats a mantra he’s recited in countless interviews: “Our success is tied to the artist’s success. We only make money if the artist makes a whole lot more.” That approach has made it the rarest of tech companies: a beloved business that upends the market while coming across like some combination of consummately curated record store, laudably progressive nonprofit group and supersize first-generation music blog. How did Bandcamp become the only music platform that
“That’s exactly what Bandcamp has tapped into. People will go support their favorite artists on Bandcamp because they know they are making a statement of support,” Mulligan says. To get a sense of the site’s expansive aesthetic mission, check out some of the hundreds of Bandcamp Daily headlines it has published since launching in 2016. “Eight Indie Bands to Know From Daegu, South Korea.” “How Galya Bisengalieva Mapped a Soviet EMMA SWIFTT / FACEBOOK Ecological Disaster With Singer and songwriter Emma Swift Her Violin.” “Seven Heavy performs. Records Inspired by ‘Magic: The Gathering.’” “Skyzoo’s everyone likes? Hyper-Lyrical Underground For starters, it’s a low Rap Is Still Going Strong After bar, says digital music 20 Years.” consultant Mark MulliHearing some of those gan of Britain-based media headlines recited out loud, research company Midia Diamond laughs. “I think Research. “Bandcamp has a sometimes that stuff can veer lot of momentum and a lot towards parody,” he says. of love, but that has as much “If it were only what you just to do with the weaknesses of said, then I would be like, streaming as it has to do with ‘OK, this is ridiculous.’” He the strength of Bandcamp.” loves, however, that such For one, unlike corponiche features appear alongrate-owned platforms such side the site’s most bankable as Apple Music and Spotify, editorial content: monthly the latter of which is partially roundups of more accessible owned by the three major labels, the connection between genres such as the best jazz and hip-hop. musician and fan is virtually Bandcamp has had to push direct through Bandcamp. to break free of the perception That’s been essential since that it’s an indie rock site, the arrival of the coronavieven if its earliest success rus. “Before the pandemic, an artist might not have made came through young, independent artists unlikely to be much money from streams, approached by major labels but the potential to reach but still hoping to earn a living hundreds of thousands of in music. potential ticket buyers in J. Edward Keyes, Bandadvance of shows made the camp’s director of content, math work,” Mulligan says. said that the goal of Band“The more people that camp Daily when it launched could hear your music meant was to steer the conversations more people at concerts toward avenues other than meant more people buying merch, and everybody’s indie rock. The intent was “to happy. Take live out of the build a platform that showequation, and suddenly it cases the wide variety, not doesn’t really add up,” he only of music that’s available added. As the plight of their on the site, but of the people favorite musicians spread who live in countries all over across social media, fans were the world who are making eager to help. their music available.”
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
MUSIC LOST DYLAN INTERVIEW
HE WASN’T GOING TO BE ‘BOB DOUGHNUT’
Are you ready to
“Be Family Again”? A Memory Care Community
By Jon Bream Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
B
ob Dylan changed his surname from Zimmerman because he feared possible anti-Semitism. He didn’t mind being booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. And he wrote “Lay Lady Lay” for Barbra Streisand. Those are among the revelations in a previously unpublished 1971 interview he did with his pal Tony Glover, the influential Minneapolis musician, writer and collector. Although Dylan was known for being cagey with the media, he was very straightforward with Glover, whom he knew from their Twin Cities coffeehouse days circa 1959. Rolling Stone has done a deep dive into the threeand-a-half-hour interview, which will be auctioned Nov. 12-19 by RRauction.com of Boston as part of Glover’s extensive archives. He died in 2019. Among the 2,400 items for sale are albums, books, posters, instruments, taped interviews and signed correspondence with Joan Baez, Jim Morrison and Dylan. Glover had hoped to sell the interview to Esquire magazine. Dylan himself marked revisions on all but one of the 37 pages of typed transcript. Here are a dozen things we learned from the interview: 1. Dylan left Minnesota because he saw no job future there. “I mean, I had to leave. The only other choice was to sell shirts, or work in the mines, or maybe to learn to fly an airplane. ... I don’t think
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO
Musician Bob Dylan appears in London on April 27, 1965. Transcripts of a lost 1971 Dylan interview with the late American blues artist Tony Glover are among a trove of Dylan archives being auctioned in November by Boston-based R.R. Auction.
I wanted to be James Dean.” Since he was obsessed with Woody Guthrie’s songs, he decided to visit the ailing folk singer in a New York hospital. 2. As he battled Huntington’s disease, Guthrie wanted to hear his own songs. So Dylan would sing them for hours. He figures he knew at least 75 Guthrie tunes at the time and never exhausted the repertoire. 3. Fearing anti-Semitism, Bob Zimmerman created a character named Bob Dylan. “It wouldn’t have worked if I’d changed the name to Bob Levy or Bob Johnston or Bob Doughnut. I mean, it wouldn’t have worked. There had to be something about it to carry it to that extra dimension.” SEE DYLAN, A19
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PARTNERING WITH
STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS)
Minnesota musician, writer and collector Tony Glover knew Bob Dylan all the way back from their Twin Cities coffeehouse days circa 1959.
He once confiscated a Dylan bootleg from a street vendor outside Carnegie Hall. After a David Crosby-Graham Nash concert in October 1971, Dylan and his then-wife Sara saw a hawker selling a bootleg titled “Zimmerman.” “We said, ‘Gimme that record.’ She grabbed the record from him and said, ‘Punk!’ — and we just took it, man, and split, just walked away with it.”
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4. “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” (written in 1962) had nothing to do with the Cuban missile crisis. It was all about a new breakthrough in song form. “That song really existed because of the new form — new to me at the time. That ‘da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da,’ on and on — that was like hypnotizing me. I could just hypnotize myself singing the thing. It just sort of freed me from having to sing all that rhyming stuff where I’d have to remember the rhymes, I had to remember the story, plus the intricate detail.” 5. “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) was neither a shout at the establishment nor a particular woman. “It’s just ... you know, who are you mad at when you go into a store and ask for a screwdriver and you don’t get waited on for an hour, man,” he said, laughing. “Then you go to get something to eat and you look in your pudding and you see a puddle of (crap).
You go to a movie house, man, you walk down to your seat and step in some slime, then you sit in some slime. You walk outta that and go for a ride in your car, and it breaks down — who are you mad at? It’s not any kind of one person.” 6. “Sign on the Window,” a song on the 1970 album “New Morning,” was about Green Giant in LeSueur, Minnesota, where migrant workers came to pick vegetables. 7. “Lay Lady Lay” wasn’t written for the 1969 Dustin Hoffman movie “Midnight Cowboy,” as was widely reported, but rather for Barbra Streisand. She apparently never recorded it. 8. Dylan wasn’t afraid to criticize — or praise — his own work. He didn’t think his 1971 novel “Tarantula” was well written “but it’s got a hell of a lot of energy.” As for his 1966 double album “Blonde on Blonde,” he said, “That’s a great album. I hear that album every once in a while, and I know it just can’t be topped.” SEE DYLAN, A23
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
BOOKS NEW THRILLERS AND MYSTERIES
TAKE US BACK TO THE PRE-COVID ERA By Richard Lipez The Washington Post
F
ive excellent new mysteries and thrillers out this autumn all take place in “normal” times. Though in one — Val McDermid’s “Still Life,” set this past February — a character mentions “this virus thing in China” she’s heard about. It’s a sign. This time next year, mystery fans wanting relief from pandemic stories might have to reread Wilkie Collins.
‘The Darkest Evening: A Vera Stanhope Novel’ ANN CLEEVES
“Large and shabby” Northumberland Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope in Ann Cleeves’s novels, as well as the long-running British TV series, is the type of English eccentric who more often appears in crime fiction as an offbeat character, even a suspect, instead of a brainy solver of crimes. In this creepily flavorsome tale of a young mother bludgeoned to death in a blizzard, Stanhope examines a manor house full of distant members of “her own strange family,” the lot of them “fraught, anxious and not at all at ease with themselves.” The entire village of Kirkhill, in fact, is a place where wholesale DNA testing might uncover a panoply of rude surprises.
‘And Now She’s Gone’ RACHEL HOWZELL HALL
It’s a feat to keep high humor and crushing sorrow in plausible equilibrium in a mystery novel, and few writers are as adept at it as Rachel Howzell Hall. In “And
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Now She’s Gone,” the author of four stand-alones plus four Elouise Norton Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective novels, introduces Black private investigator Grayson Sykes. She’s hired to track down a missing woman intent on not being found by her jerk boyfriend. Sykes can sympathize; a decade earlier she escaped a violent abuser who is now stalking her again. Growing up, Sykes dreamed of being “the Negro Nancy Drew.” Insecure on her first big case, she’s buoyed by an understanding boss, Ketel One, peach cobbler and, when possible, good sex.
‘Still Life: A Karen Pirie Novel’ VAL MCDERMID
In the sixth Karen Pirie police procedural, the restless, sometimes craftily
insubordinate head of Edinburgh’s Historic Cases Unit faces two thorny situations. The body of a man dragged from the sea by a lobster boat is identified as the brother of a government official missing for 10 years. At the same time, a decaying corpse turns up in a camper parked in a garage. Scottish politics and art forgery figure in one case and stolen IDs in both. Pirie eventually prevails, even though clues are hard to come by. She laments at one point that it’s “like doing a jigsaw when the dog’s eaten half the sky.”
‘Interference’ BRAD PARKS
To be pleasurably bamboozled, try this nifty scientific thriller by a onetime Washington Post reporter who writes prize-winning novels over breakfast at a Virginia
Hardee’s. Matt Bronik is a Dartmouth College professor working on a virus of great interest to both the Pentagon and the Chinese government, because quantum physics and its biological component make up “the new space race.” Hearing-impaired librarian Brigid Bronik frantically joins the chase when her sweet, wisecracking researcher husband is abducted for reasons far more complicated than it first seems. Professorial competition is also a factor in a narrative enlivened by pithy quotes from Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, among others who’d love to figure out “the shape of the universe.”
‘A Song for the Dark Times: An Inspector Rebus Novel’ IAN RANKIN
John Rebus is crankier than ever, with plenty to be cranky
about, in this remarkably fresh 24th outing for the Police Scotland detective inspector. Instead of a badge, the now-retired Rebus carries an inhaler for his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and his high-mileage Saab is wheezing, too. When he travels up north to help clear his alienated daughter, suspected of killing her husband, a local constable tells Rebus he looks “more like a tramp than an ex-cop.” Meanwhile, in Edinburgh a minor Saudi prince has had his throat slit. The incidents are connected, and the ailing pensioner wearily takes on sorting it out because “it’s all I seem to be good for.” Richard Lipez writes the Donald Strachey PI novels under the name Richard Stevenson.
To be pleasurably bamboozled, try a nifty scientific thriller, “Interference,” by a onetime Washington Post reporter who writes prize-winning novels over breakfast at a Virginia Hardee’s. Matt Bronik is a Dartmouth College professor working on a virus of great interest to both the Pentagon and the Chinese government, because quantum physics and its biological component make up “the new space race.”
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
NEW EDITIONS OF CULT FAVORITES
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BOOKS
IT’S HEAVEN ON MIDDLE-EARTH By Michael Dirda The Washington Post
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eality got you down? Then come to Middle-earth or Oz! Devotees of Sherlock Holmes regularly escape to 1895, and readers of P.G. Wodehouse know that the sun is always shining on Blandings Castle. After all, certain writers, books and films are so attractive that we happily immerse ourselves in their imaginary worlds. FIAWOL, as they say in science fiction circles: Fandom Is a Way of Life. Here, for instance, are some recent books to help you forget, if only for a while, that it is 2020. The long-standing cultic fervor associated with J.R.R. Tolkien very seldom cools down, given the steady attention his work receives from publishers, artists and scholars. Just this fall, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has reissued “The History of Middle-Earth” as a threebook boxed set. Originally published as 12 individual volumes, the set more fully relates some of the legends, tragic episodes and ancient lore merely nodded to in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.” Scrupulously edited by Christopher Tolkien, it complements his one-volume compilation titled “Unfinished Tales,” which now reappears in a 40th anniversary edition, along with a “centenary edition” of the delightful “Letters From Father Christmas.” Keeping it all in the family, this last is edited by Christopher’s wife, Baillie Tolkien. Yet even that’s not all. Alan Lee, Tolkien’s best-known illustrator and the “conceptual designer” for Peter Jackson’s films, has brought out “The Hobbit Sketchbook,” while Christopher Snyder’s “Hobbit Virtues” addresses the philosophical and ethical issues embedded in these epic tales
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of swords and sorcery. Winter is still coming for Westeros, but fans of George R.R. Martin can now acquire “A Game of Thrones” along with its first two successors, “A Clash of Kings” and “A Storm of Swords,” in sumptuous editions from the Folio Society. Admirers of Ray Bradbury, perhaps the most revered of all American writers of fantastika, will slaver over David and Daniel Ritter’s “The Earliest Bradbury,” a scrapbook-like volume that reproduces in facsimile the young writer’s contributions to 1930s and ’40s fanzines. Scholars, as well as general readers, have already learned an immense amount from Jonathan R. Eller’s “Becoming Ray Bradbury” and “Ray Bradbury Unbound,” the first two installments of a critical biography now completed by “Bradbury Beyond Apollo,” about which I’ll say no more since I gave the book a blurb. Though “Star Wars” began as just a movie, it quickly grew into a trilogy, then a franchise and eventually a mythology. Bill Kimberlin’s “Inside the Star Wars Empire” calls itself a memoir
by “one of those names on the endless list of credits at the close of blockbuster movies.” Kimberlin first directed his own indie film (“American Nitro,” described as “having a strong cult following”) but paid the bills as a visual effects expert, often as part of Industrial Light and Magic. He’s certainly an engaging storyteller. Did you know that in “Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade” the scene in which Hitler’s hand is shown signing an autograph book required 45 takes? The next day, however, those few seconds had to be reshot because the hand mistakenly scribbled Adolph instead of Adolf. Lewis Carroll’s two novels about a little girl’s misadventures in topsy-turvy dream lands are revered everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. In the very first of the nine superb essays collected in “Lewis Carroll: The Worlds of His Alices,” Edward Guiliano, a past president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, writes that “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has been translated into 174 languages. I myself actually prefer “Through
the Looking-Glass,” in part because it features that best of all nonsense poems, “Jabberwocky,” now available as a stunning children’s book, the last project of that muchmissed illustrator, Charles Santore, who died in 2019. In this large album, a clean-cut, long-haired warrior encounters the fierce Jubjub Bird and the Frumious Bandersnatch before facing — in a four-page gatefold — the impossibly immense, dragon-like Jabberwock. Fortunately, our hero can count on his vorpal blade to go snicker-snack. O frabjous day! Santore’s numerous other picture books are no less breathtaking. These include the nostalgia-laden “The Night Before Christmas,” a “Snow White” whose evil queen exhibits the kind of chilling sensuality we associate with Swinburne’s poetry, “The Wizard of Oz” wonderfully reimagined, and a rumbustious “Aesop’s Fables,” as well as half dozen other children’s favorites, available individually or together in a hefty “treasury” volume from Cider Mill Press.
The critic Steven Moore once said that he wanted to be buried with his copy of “Darconville’s Cat,” Alexander Theroux’s linguistically dazzling, extremely funny and matchlessly vituperative first novel of love, betrayal and revenge, set largely at a Virginia women’s college. Moore’s “Alexander Theroux: A Fan’s Notes” isn’t just an overview of this sui generis writer’s fiction, poetry and criticism; it’s the literary equivalent of a carnival goody-bag, mixing insights, gossipy anecdotes, photographs and exacting bibliographical scholarship, all of it related with Moore’s own characteristic razzmatazz. Among late 20th-century American writers, none can rival Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson in sheer force of personality, both on the page and in person. Mailer, whether in his fiction, polemical essays or reportage, always aimed to be consequential, to be fiercely engaged with his times. Would that he were living now! For a hint of what we’ve lost, check out the latest book-length issue, Volume 13, of “The Mailer Review” at the home page of The Norman Mailer Society. Thompson’s motto might well have been “Nothing in moderation.” For “The ‘Hell’s Angels’ Letters,” Margaret Ann Harrell — in collaboration with Ron Whitehead — has assembled a dossier of all her correspondence with Thompson during the time she worked as the editor of the gonzo writer’s “strange and terrible sage of the outlaw motorcycle gangs.” Typed manuscript pages, scribbled notes, photographs, interviews and all sorts of period ephemera relating to “Hell’s Angels” allow the reader a valuable, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of this classic of New Journalism.
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BOOKS SPANISH-SPEAKING WRITERS
THEIR TAKE ON SCI-FI AND FANTASY By Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar The Washington Post
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panish is one of the world’s most-spoken languages, with a long, rich literary history extending all the way back to what many regard as the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” With authors writing in Spanish from Madrid to Mexico City to Havana, what are we English speakers missing out on? And where do we start exploring? Lavie: I recently got back from Celsius 232, a science fiction and fantasy festival in Asturias, Spain, which usually attracts hundreds of Spanish genre writers every year. This year, it felt somewhat apocalyptic, with compulsory face masks and authors signing books behind plastic screens while wearing gloves (and disinfecting them after each book). I did get to meet Sofia Rhei, a prolific novelist for both children and adults, who has one collection of stories in English, “Everything Is Made of Letters,” published by Aqueduct Press. While Spain has a vibrant sci-fi and fantasy scene, it is only in recent years that there has been a push into the English-language market. Two fairly recent anthologies are “Terra Nova” and “Castles in Spain,” both edited by Mariano Villarreal. They showcase some of that talent, including the excellent Elia Barcelo and Felix J. Palma, whose books in English translation include the internationally successful “The Map of Time.” There’s also cyberpunk. Rodolfo Martinez’s “Cat’s Whirld” was translated by Steve Redwood and is considered Spain’s first cyberpunk novel, first published in 1995. And Rosa Montero’s “Tears in Rain” is a hard-boiled tribute to “Blade Runner.” There are writers I’m curious about, like novelist Guillem
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“Latin America has always been in a weird position because it’s pigeonholed into the magical realism bucket, which means we don’t see much of the other work that might be sprouting there.” Lopez, who aren’t translated (at least, not yet), who writes ambitious fantasy. And there are horror-tinged writers like the indefatigable Cristina Jurado, whose slim collection, “Alphaland,” recently came out in English. It seems that as diverse as Spanish genre fiction is, most of it is hidden from the English-language world, and what does come out in translation is done by enthusiasts. Small publishers like Sportula and Nevsky Prospects lead the way and do good work but without the reach of the big presses. Looking across the sea, how is the world of Latin American sci-fi and fantasy doing? Silvia: Latin America has always been in a weird position because it’s pigeonholed into the magical realism bucket, which means we don’t see much of the other work that
might be sprouting there. And there is the added problems that Latin America has had much less buying power than Spain, and there are few dedicated sci-fi and fantasy imprints of any major size — one of them is DarkSide in Brazil, though it obviously publishes in Portuguese, not Spanish. Unlike in Spain, which has long-standing imprints such as Minotauro, Latin American sci-fi and fantasy have emerged generally through literary imprints. This is one reason “Tender Is the Flesh” by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica caught my interest: Science fiction books out of Latin America are always a bit of an oddity, despite the existence of collections such as “Cosmos Latinos,” which offers an overview of Latin American science fiction. “Tender Is the Flesh” is a dystopia, taking place in a reality in
which all animal meat consumption has ceased because of a deadly virus. Instead, humans are now farmed and eaten. Bazterrica’s writing may be too much telling instead of showing for Anglo readers — though it is a common trait of Latin American fiction — but it feels fresh and exciting. I highly recommend it. Lavie: I’ve been reading Latin American short stories recently. Since you mention Brazil, Fabio Fernandes (who writes in both Portuguese and English) has a new English collection due next year, “Love: An Archaeology,” which is very good! And Malena Salazar Macia, of Cuba, has had some excellent recent stories in translation in genre magazines. Going back to old Spain, though, I have to confess my heart belongs to an older title: Arturo Perez-Reverte’s “The Club Dumas.” For lovers of adventure, mystery, the occult or, indeed, “The Three Musketeers,” this is a biblio-mystery possibly involving the devil and is pure joyous fun. Silvia: Which was adapted into the movie “The Ninth
Gate.” But jumping back to Cuba, “Red Dust” by Yosscame out recently. If you’re looking for a pulpy space opera, that’s your ticket. It’s also worth mentioning Argentine Angelica Gorodischer’s “Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire that Never Was,” which was translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s fantasy, not magical realism, and consists of stories that form a tapestry of an elaborate imaginary land. The magazine Strange Horizons is organizing a cycle of Mexican sci-fi and fantasy stories for its website, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and I presume any day now Mexican author Alberto Chimal should be getting the collection translation treatment. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of “Mexican Gothic,” “Gods of Jade and Shadow” and “Signal to Noise.” Lavie Tidhar is the author of several novels, including “The Violent Century,” “A Man Lies Dreaming,” “Central Station” and, most recently, “By Force Alone.”
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RELIEF FROM ZOOM
ENJOY YOUR TABLETOP PLAY IN A BOX By Peter Marks The Washington Post
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n just seven months, “zoom” has gone from signifying something moving fast to something you can’t get away from fast enough. If you’re on the Zoom meeting circuit, you know all too well what I mean. And if you’ve been in the market for online theatrical diversions, you surely know what I mean, too. Which is why I was tickled when the box arrived in the mail from Baltimore’s sharp little experimental company the Acme Corporation. The group, led by Artistic Director Lola B. Pierson, sent me — and you can get one, too — a literal play in a box: a do-it-in-your-own-time delight titled “The Institute for Counterfeit Memory.” All it requires is a performance space (the top of a kitchen table), about 25 minutes and a longing for the days, now zooming rapidly into the past, when you could sit in a packed little theater and let some smart new entertainment wash over you. “The Institute for Counterfeit Memory” is most certainly the sum of its parts, which all come in a nifty 4-by-6-by-3 ½-inch box bearing a logo representing the mind and a slogan: “Bringing you back to you.” The contents will remain secret here; you’ll find that their uses are orchestrated elegantly, via writer-director Pierson and a voice in your ear — delivered on the mini MP3 player that comes in your kit — that escorts you through an intro to the Institute. So power down the laptop and the phone. The play, performed by Molly Cohen, Megan Livingston, Bob Norman and Kaya Vision, takes the form of an instructional guide into both the uniqueness — and utter blandness — of
DYLAN From Page A19
9. Pete Seeger was upset at the crowd booing Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival but Dylan wasn’t. “Pete Seeger was crying” backstage after ascendant folk star Dylan was poorly received for his first effort with an electric rock band. So, he decided to return to the stage and give the people what they wanted to hear — solo acoustic performances of “Mr. Tambourine
: BRITT OLSEN-ECKER
A play in a box: All it requires is the top of a kitchen table and about 25 minutes of your time.
recorded experience. Intermingled with a pleasant narrator issuing commands, all to be followed with the help of some ridiculously simple cue cards, you hear snippets of monologues and a conversation. They’re the puzzle pieces of a play you can never see. It’s the job of the Institute, it seems, to provide the counterfeit memories of your having seen it, and to plant in your mind suggestions of sensations and idle thoughts that might have occurred to you, had you actually been watching a show in person, in the dark. “You think about something ordinary, like what you need from the grocery store,” the narrator posits, in one of the moments that, yes, ring true about the multiple places your mind can wander during a play. “The Institute for Counterfeit Memory” cannily employs the devices it provides to bring you back to the feeling of being in a room with other spectators, even as it reminds you that you are alone. Its ministrations so impressed me that when I turned over the final cue card instructing me to applaud, I actually did. Theater people are nothing if not scavengers: Desperate in a time of shutdown to use their skills, they’ll look for any available platform and make it theirs. Theater is happening anew on
Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Said Dylan: “I’ve never really been what you’d call a professional entertainer. For someone like Steve Lawrence or Robert Goulet, to go up in front of a large audience at Newport and get booed — that would be a considerable jolt to their career. But to me, it was just one of those things. My life was like that — booing didn’t matter, you know: up and down.” 10. He once confiscated a Dylan bootleg from a street
outdoor stages in socially distanced configurations, in radio formats, even over phones. Not everyone, though, can drop a production in your mailbox; so many writers, actors and directors have for the time being nested on the most accessible digital driftwood: Zoom. It has become a necessary utensil, like a spatula. The limitations of a format involving endless galleries of talking heads have become increasingly, drearily apparent, even as artists of the stage work diligently to improve its technical elasticity. And, in some cases, succeed. Playwright-director Richard Nelson has been one of Zoom’s most industrious adherents. With his latest Zoom play, “Incidental Moments of the Day,” he completes over the months of the shutdown an achingly poignant trilogy that maps out the existential black hole we seem to have fallen into. Starved of the ability to gather around the dining room table — as they had in previous, live-audience installments of the Apple Family plays, the Apples of Rhinebeck, N.Y., now congregate on Zoom. The sense of a family keeping in touch but ever more adrift hangs over the electronic connection. That’s the thing about a quarantine: The longer you stay in one place, the more psychically scattered you feel. That, at least, is what’s evoked in Nelson’s most embraceable character, Barbara Apple (played by the indispensable Maryann Plunkett), a retired high school teacher of brittle affect who doesn’t thrive in isolation. To complicate her plight, the lives of her brother (Jay O. Sanders) and sisters (Laila Robins and Sally Murphy) are percolating even as hers seems to be coming apart. The Apple plays are more character than plot-driven, which suits the format: The siblings (and the partner of Murphy’s Jane, played by Stephen
vendor outside Carnegie Hall. After a David Crosby-Graham Nash concert in October 1971, Dylan and his then-wife Sara saw a hawker selling a bootleg titled “Zimmerman.” “We said, ‘Gimme that record.’ She grabbed the record from him and said, ‘Punk!’ — and we just took it, man, and split, just walked away with it.” 11. His 1966 motorcycle accident saved Dylan’s life, well, his sanity. “I had done stuff for so long, I was moving for so long, moving so fast for so long — that it took years
Kunken) log on to keep going on. You get a deepening sense over the course of the trilogy that something isn’t quite right in the relationship between Jane and Kunken’s Tim, for instance. Though they live together, they are never once together on Zoom. What unites them all in joy is art: From a Paris flat, a former student of Barbara’s named Lucy (Charlotte Bydwell) appears in a Zoom cube, to perform a modern dance set to Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” The camera in this moment catches the look of rapture on the face of Sanders’s Richard. It is a bona fide asset of Zoom, the facility for portraying the watchers watching, separately and together. In dishy short spurts, Zoom can be a happy sit, as occurs when two veteran comic actors wrestle with the platform in a one-act like “Any Song.” Written and directed by Greg Germann — probably best known for his stint on “Ally McBeal” — this 16-minute Zoom play recounts the audition torture heaped on a journeyman actor played by Lee Wilkof, seen two years ago in the Kennedy Center’s revival of “Little Shop of Horrors.” Germann plays a self-regarding British director — you know the type — who arranges to speak to Wilkof’s Albert about a role in a new musical. But the call is based on a misunderstanding: Albert thinks the part is already his. The torment he undergoes is the nub of this terrific entry in the comedy of humiliation, the sort practiced on Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and in priceless show business satires, such as Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback.” “The Institute for Counterfeit Memory”: theacmecorporation.org. Incidental Moments of the Day”: theapplefamilyplays.com. “Any Song”: anysongproductions.com.
to get out of my system. It wasn’t like, ‘Man, I had been on a binge since ’62 or ’63.’ Before that even, before that. I had been on a binge my whole life, you could say. My whole life had been one big, long binge.” 12. Dylan was proud of his impact and accomplishments 10 years into his professional career. “We listen to radio nowadays — and there’s so much music that was influenced by me,” he said. “I’m not bragging when I say this, or nothing like that. But for
a cat to actually say, ‘Well, I changed popular music’ (laughs), man, what a hell of a statement is that? I can actually say that, man, and it blows my mind. ... All these people are just doing, in one kind of phase, what Bob Dylan was doing back in those days, you know?” Asked if he felt a sense of pride for changing music history, Dylan was his usual inscrutable self: “Yeah, really do, really do feel a sense of pride ... on one level. On another level, no, it’s nothing at all — of course not.”
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Photo Courtesy of Lomakatsi Restoration Project
| Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
NOW MORE THAN EVER, WE NEED THE BENEFITS OF GOOD FIRE. Minimizing Wildfire Risk and restoring healthy forests: The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, City of Ashland, Lomakatsi Restoration Project, and The Nature Conservancy are following COVID-19 guidance and working closely with health organizations and smoke regulators to safely conduct controlled burning this fall. To receive non-emergency notifications for controlled burns, register for our email list at www.ashlandwatershed.org or text WATERSHED as the message to 888777. You can also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/AFR.Project or on Twitter at @ashlandforest. MF-00131667
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
‘Fire has always been my biggest phobia’ Houks had to escape fast-moving Almeda fire By Caitlin Fowlkes for ACC
J
ason and Vanessa Houk found themselves homeless after the Almeda fire destroyed all of their belongings when it swept through the Bear Creek Mobile Home Park on the north end of Ashland. The Houks have spent the better part of the past decade helping the homeless community. Despite the family’s devastation, they are still worried about their homeless friends and what the destruction will do to the already minimal amount of affordable housing in the Rogue Valley. Vanessa Houk described the morning of the fire as a normal Tuesday aside from the high winds and nagging knowledge of extreme fire danger that day. Jason took the family car and went to the KSKQ radio station to host his “We the People” segment. Their youngest daughter, Grace, started her first day of high school online — just your average 2020 day. The Houk’s received a Nixle alert from the city after the fire started in Quiet Village, not close enough to their home to worry about, but close enough that Vanessa and her oldest daughter, Madison, began preparing for potential evacuation. They took note of where the cats where, put the family’s two ferrets in the cage and began collecting their most personal items; for Vanessa it was a box containing everything she had left of her son Dylan, who passed away in 1998, and for Jason she collected his grandfather’s hat and placed the items on the porch for a quick getaway if need be. While Vanessa searched for her wallet, Jason called and told her and the girls to leave immediately. On foot, they fled through the park toward a police vehicle. The only thing Vanessa managed to
grab was a metal box containing important documents and some cash. The officer instructed everyone to get inside a vehicle and drive. “He told us no matter what you see, you keep driving,” Vanessa said. “You do not stop for anything, he told us.” As she was relaying this information to her elderly neighbor in the driver’s seat, the officer suddenly motioned for everyone to get out of their vehicles. He changed tactics and instead had everyone go by foot down a dirt path next to the creek, the bear path, as some might know it. The cluster of neighbors found themselves at a deadend, their only exit a dry field with patches already ablaze. The group funneled into the field, and Vanessa instructed her children to ball up the clothes they had in their hands to put in front of their mouths and to stay low to the ground to avoid as much smoke as possible. She described the smoke as impenetrable and the wind was whipping unforgivably. She said the wind ripped open the metal box her daughter was holding for her and their papers went everywhere. The group frantically tried to collect the papers as the fires burned nearby and explosions popped like fireworks. She said she noticed a propane tank near a hotspot close to the field and prayed that it would not ignite. “Fire has always been my biggest phobia,” Vanessa said. “I’ve never been so scared and I’ve never been faced with all my fears all at once — am I going to watch my kids burn to death? It was so horrifying I don’t even have words.” Then a piece of paper she was trying to catch led her to an unmarked SUV where officers instructed the neighbors to get inside. SEE FIRE, A26
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FIRE
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They were driven to The Expo, where Vanessa said she and her daughters sat in the grass for about two hours in shock until State Rep. Pam Marsh approached her. She said Marsh asked her what she needed, and she responded, “Get me out of here.” Marsh took the family to a Sonic restaurant to get a cold drink and had the family stay at her house for the night. Jason, meanwhile, had been broadcasting updates on the fire for a short time before abandoning post to try to get to his family. He said the roads were blocked because the freeway had been shut down. He was stuck watching the fire blaze north and through his community as he listened to the police scanner and all of the responses of “we have no resources to send you.” The Houks and both of their children are safe. They found two of their three cats. Their ferrets died in the fire. There is a group that goes to the burned remains of the park daily to look for pets that might have survived the fire and to set out food for the cats they see on the trail cameras they’ve placed around the rubble. After staying at Marsh’s house that first night, the family stayed with a friend for a while and moved into a semi-permanent rental Wednesday. The Houks said since they have returned to housing insecurity, they are incredibly rich. They said they’ve had so many people offer to help them. The home is being offered to them at a great rental price, but it’s still about three times what they paid for their 1970s trailer home, and they foresee being able to afford it for about a year. The Houk’s expressed concern that new regulations will spring up in regard to replacing the mobile home parks that scorched. They agreed that nobody wants a 1970s mobile home, but it is substantially cheaper than a 2010 or newer model, a standard some parks are requiring. Their worry is that such regulations could hurt people on the cusp of homelessness. “There’s a lot of giving, but there’s a lot of people falling
COURTESY PHOTOS
Jason Houk looks over the damage to the Houk’s home after the Almeda fire.
through the cracks,” Jason said. “We know people living in the shell of their burned-out home because they have nowhere else to go.” Vanessa spoke at a gathering on the Plaza last Saturday with a local group forming to bring attention to the lack of housing and how it’s affecting the homeless community. She said there has been a huge outpouring of donations, but homeless people are not receiving the services they need. Jason mentioned several services available to fire victims, such as the Wildfire Damage Housing Relief program, which offers up to $7,000 through the state (apply at oregon.gov/ ohcs/housing-assistance/ Pages/program-wildfire-damage-housing-relief.aspx); and Disaster Unemployment Assistance offered through FEMA and administered through the Employment Department (apply at oregon.gov/employ/ Unemployment/Pages/Disaster-Assistance.aspx). Vanessa said she is still bothered that she never received an alert through the county and nobody knocked on their doors. “I just have a lot of questions for the county when they decided to not send out an
alert,” Vanessa said. “If Jason had not called us, I don’t know if we would have gotten out.” Vanessa said the family thought their elderly and blind neighbor had perished in the fire, only to find out he had been hospitalized. The man had found his way by himself down the path next to the creek and was eventually found, but no one knocked on his door, she said. Vanessa said her family was as prepared as they could be — they attended safety fairs every year, they had plans, they had fire safety equipment, and they were signed up for the Jackson County alerts and the city of Ashland alerts. “We thought signing up for that was a level of protection,” Vanessa said. Jason said KSKQ is a part of the emergency alert hub. “We do a lot of work to make sure those systems work, and it was not activated,” Jason said. There were people who burned to death in Phoenix. There was no reason that there shouldn’t have been an alert.” “I’ve got a lot of disappointment in Ashland,” Vanessa said. Wildfire Division Chief Chris Chambers said the mobile home park the Houks lived in
One of the Houks’ cats that survived the Almeda fire.
is outside of city limits, and because the fire moved north, there was no need to send out an evacuation alert for anyone inside the city. Chambers said several homes within the city were damaged, and all of those people were evacuated. He explained that the city has control over the Nixle alert system. The county has control over the county alert system, but also has access to issue alerts through the Ashland system. Chambers has spent years educating people about the fast spread of wildfire and how everyone should be prepared to leave at all times during fire season in the Rogue Valley. “I’ve run through so many of those scenarios,” Chambers said. “I could not have imagined that the fire would have gone on to wreak as much havoc as it did, and in the direction that it went is a rare day. Unfortunately, it was that rare day that the fires went down the valley.” Chambers said the fire department has been in contact with ODOT about the traffic that poured into town during the fires and that a better protocol needs to be established.
He said the department recently received a grant through the state to hire a consultant to perform an evacuation traffic study. The reality of what happened in Talent and Phoenix is that people weren’t ready,” Chambers said. “This should be the big wake-up call that everyone needs to be ready to go at all times during the entire fire season.” According to John Vial, Emergency Operations Center director, the fire moved very fast and included far more law enforcement agencies than normal, which created problems with the alert system. Chambers said the internet was down and the cell towers were overwhelmed that day, causing more havoc on the system. Jason urged anyone who has a vacation rental in the area to contact United Way and offer it to someone displaced by the fires. He also recommended reaching out to Unete and the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation. “There’s nowhere to go but up,” Vanessa said. Email freelance writer Caitlin Fowlkes at caitlin.fowlkes@ gmail.com.
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Phase two housing moves forward from Expo By Allayana Darrow ACC
The Jackson County Expo will serve as the primary staging area for Federal Emergency Management Agency post-wildfire direct housing efforts throughout the state — 20 FEMA representatives will begin to receive and coordinate mobile housing units from the site Wednesday, officials said Monday. More than 162 RVs are on the way to The Expo as of Tuesday, said John Vial, director of the Jackson County Emergency Operations Center, speaking at a Monday news conference. Vial reminded the public that deadlines are fast approaching for various emergency resources and programs. The deadline to register for overall FEMA assistance is Nov. 16, which falls 60 days from the date a state of emergency was declared for wildfires. Though registration numbers are improving, with 4,372 people signed up for resources, Vial said officials remain “confident and concerned” that many people affected by the fires have not registered due to concerns about eligibility or availability of services. To date, FEMA has provided $17.3 million in grants, including $13.8 million for housing assistance. United Way of Jackson County has raised $2 million of its $3 million goal and announced last week applications are open for the first half-million of the fund, due Nov. 15. Grant awards are capped at $2,500. The Oregon Employment Department has extended the deadline for disaster unemployment assistance to Nov. 27, for those who were prevented from accessing their place of employment or lost self-employment due to the fires. Benefits are available for lost employment from Sept. 13 through March 20, 2021. Environmental Protection Agency strike teams have cleaned 90% of sites assigned to the agency for household hazardous waste and debris cleanup, Vial said. Nearly 200 properties do not have completed right-of-entry forms,
JAMIE LUSCH / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Crews work on clean-up at a destroyed neighborhood in Talent last week.
preventing teams from cleaning them up. “We are cautioning people to be careful,” Vial said. “If you wait too long, the strike teams and the cleanup forces will leave town and you will lose your opportunity to get your property cleaned up for free.” Those who are fully insured and do not wish to participate in the free cleanup program should still complete a rightof-entry form opting out of the service, Vial said. EPA strike teams focused on phase one cleanup will begin to leave the Rogue Valley Friday, while some resources will remain in the area temporarily. Phase two cleanup, focused on removing ash, trash and burned debris, will begin through a state-contracted, locally coordinated program, Vial said. Contract bids for monitoring and physical cleanup are now open. The state has begun to review bids for the monitoring component and will begin to review cleanup bids next week. Phase two work is expected to
Phase two transitional housing will secure shelter for those impacted by fire for six to 18 months while permanent housing is constructed. FEMA is leading a direct housing mission, which includes searching for available rentals, RV spaces and opportunities for facility retrofitting within Southern Oregon University dorms, the Elks Lodge and old hotel buildings. begin later this month. “This is a significant milestone,” Vial said. “Now we have contractors that are starting to come on board, and this work can get started to clean these sites up.” As of last Friday, Red Cross housed nearly 600 people in hotels and RV parks, contracted through the state to continue through Dec. 31. Vial said he is eager to hear from the state what will be arranged for those people once the deadline expires. “What the state of Oregon is telling us: There will be an alternative,” Vial said. “I don’t know what that alternative looks like yet, but they
have indicated that additional housing will be provided in one way.” Phase two transitional housing will secure shelter for those impacted by fire for six to 18 months while permanent housing is constructed. FEMA is leading a direct housing mission, which includes searching for available rentals, RV spaces and opportunities for facility retrofitting within Southern Oregon University dorms, the Elks Lodge and old hotel buildings. Vial said significant progress has been made determining which option — or if all options together — will be the most viable transitional housing
options for those impacted by fire. FEMA spokesperson Toby Rice said mobile housing units will be available for people registered with the agency, whose primary dwelling was severely damaged or destroyed by fire. Size and composition of each household will be considered when selecting the appropriate unit and placement location. Property owners with enough room may be able to place a temporary unit on their property. The FEMA housing assistance program, whether through rental assistance funding or direct housing, lasts 18 months from Sept. 15. “Everyone would love to see someone in before Thanksgiving, but I don’t have a hard date on that,” Rice said of the direct housing timeline. Contact Ashland Tidings reporter Allayana Darrow at adarrow@rosebudmedia.com or 541-776-4497 and follow her on Twitter @AllayanaD.
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
Reseeding the Greenway Phoenix High School athletes among volunteers to help with recovery efforts By Allayana Darrow ACC
In mid-October, a helicopter passed along the Bear Creek Greenway, dropping seeds to replant the blackened landscape. During the last two weekends of the month, more than 100 volunteers turned out to protect the seeds and encourage strong germination rates by spreading straw over the top and hand-seeding areas unreachable by air. About 30 members of the Phoenix High School cross-country team and some parents participated in the volunteer effort, coordinated by Jackson County. Head Coach John Cornet said team families were quick to show interest in getting involved. About 30% of the team lost homes in the Almeda fire — many of who came to contribute their time near Blue Heron Park in Phoenix, where volunteer groups focused their work on Saturday. Senior Noah Marshall, 17, said he is eager to assist with recovery efforts. He did not sustain a direct home loss but feels the impact among his neighbors and teammates. The Almeda fire encroached within four houses of his own, he said. As a volunteer, Marshall also learned about soil erosion, water quality and habitat restoration. “I have been very proud to have been able to help with this,” Marshall said. “The Greenway is something we run on and so being able to help keep it from eroding away means a lot.” The intrinsic value of the project was enough; student-athletes received no extra incentive to do the work, Cornet said. The team trains along the Greenway about once a week during the season and recognizes that others in the region benefit from using the space as well. From a coach’s perspective, this work is important for his athletes as an active way of giving back and helping the community to heal.
practices to mitigate forecasted erosion, Speece said. While the 2019 Bear Creek Restoration Initiative spurred conversations about necessary projects, state and federal resources are now contributing to erosion control measures identified as critical through partner organization surveys, Speece said. Volunteers effectively fill the gaps between nonprofit and agency resources. Despite the need for rain, those with knowledge of soil erosion and water quality are grateful for a delay in seasonal precipitation, so soil stabilization tactics can be put in place first, he said. As someone who visits the
Greenway multiple times per week, Speece has been consistently surprised by what natural regeneration has already begun. Native species such as wild rose, cottonwood, willow, dogwood and Pacific ninebark are sprouting on their own. Unfortunately, so are the blackberries. A secondary effort is underway to treat blackberry regrowth and prevent the invasive species from outcompeting native regrowth, Speece said. Years of blackberry growth mixed with dead biomass served as highly flammable fuel in the recent fire episode. Blackberries do not have the root mass to stabilize soil like native
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vegetation, Speece said, He further explained they’re bad for water quality. Still, the plant species that have now been seeded will not be long-term features of the landscape. “This is an immediate, shortterm need, an action that we can do, to help mitigate some of those erosion concerns ... while we develop a long-term vision for the Greenway through community interaction,” Speece said. Those interested in future volunteer opportunities may contact Jackson County Parks Volunteer Coordinator Brooke Amposta at AmpostBA@JacksonCounty.org.
ANDY ATKINSON / ASHLAND TIDINGS
Phoenix cross country athletes Noah Marshall and Ellwood Hosking volunteer to help reseed the greenway area between the bike path and Bear Creek near Blue Heron Park in Phoenix.
“It also helps us heal emotionally, to be honest,” Cornet said. “It is important for them to know that they can create a small ripple of change, which can have a longterm, positive effect on others.” John Speece, project manager for the Rogue River Watershed Council, served as a natural resource leader for volunteer work sessions on the Greenway in October. Jackson County officials provided the seed and straw used for the project but solicited help from natural resource experts to guide volunteers in the field. Speece manages a restoration project at Blue Heron Park in partnership with the city of Phoenix, which began prior to the Almeda fire. Ongoing natural resource conservation and restoration projects in Talent and Phoenix serve as “anchor points” for work along Bear Creek, adding to the county’s reseeding application and supplemented by volunteerism, Speece said. After the Almeda fire burned three-quarters of the corridor’s vegetation, RRWC and other stakeholders came forward with water quality concerns. Headed into winter, restoration goals are centered around inputting best management
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
HISTORIES & MYSTERIES
A PACIFIC FISHER NAMED ‘MARTY’
On the Bandersnatch Trail, a sculpture and its personality is known By Peter Finkle for ACC
M
y wife and I first saw the “Pacific Fisher” sculpture by Jeremy Criswell on the Bandersnatch Trail art walk in July. As I climbed uphill and saw the front of the mosaic sculpture, one of three sculptures on the trail, I thought, “This is beautiful.” When I walked around to the back of the piece and saw the complex design, color and detail, I said, “Wow!” I immediately wanted to learn what a Pacific fisher is and find out about the artist. When I asked Criswell how he started making art, he laughed and said, “As a kid, I was sure I was not an artist. I couldn’t draw. But my grandpa was a potter. So when I got to (Rogue Community College), I took a pottery class. I was fortunate that it was taught by Tom Wilson, who introduced me to sculpture and was an early inspiration for me.” Criswell’s mentor was Lilli Ann Rosenberg. He met Lilli Ann and Marvin Rosenberg when they were in their 80s, with a lifetime of experience creating public art mosaics around the United States. He and Lilli Ann clicked from the start, and he became her assistant in 2007. “Everything I know about mosaics I learned from her,” Criswell said. “For a number of years, I was her assistant. I was her eyes and hands in many ways. My work is incredibly influenced by her. The things that she held important, they became such a part of me … if anything, I think I honor her when I work.” When he is not making art, you will find Criswell in his fourth year of teaching at Madrone Trail, a Waldorf-inspired public charter school in Central Point. The “Pacific Fisher” sculpture exists because Stef Seffinger, Pam Marsh and Sue Springer formed the Watershed Art Group to place public art along a trail above Lithia Park. Their goal was to bring attention to the importance of the watershed. They received support from the Ashland Public Arts Commission, with funding primarily from the Haines & Friends art fund. Since he makes his own ceramic mosaic pieces, Criswell visualized the colors, textures, shapes and sizes of the mosaic pieces for “Pacific Fisher.” Then he handmade all the striped,
PHOTOS BY PETER FINKLE
ABOVE: The back side of the “Pacific Fisher” sculpture by Jeremy Criswell on the Bandersnatch Trail. BELOW: As Jeremy Criswell makes his own ceramic mosaic pieces, he first visualizes the colors, textures, shapes and sizes that he will use in his sculptures.
quarter-moon tiles for the front side of the piece and the round green tiles for the back side. The glass tiles he used on the back side are handmade Italian glass. The core of the sculpture is twoinch-thick concrete with rebar added for strength. It has a different design of ceramic tile mosaic embedded in each side. The hand-molded concrete base for “Pacific Fisher” is embedded with leaf tiles Criswell made from fresh leaves he collected in the Ashland watershed. About 40 people attended the dedication of “Pacific Fisher” on the trail Oct. 9, 2015. Dave Clayton, a wildlife
biologist who has studied Pacific fishers, spoke about their role in the ecosystem. The sculpture is named “Marty.” To boost interest, there was a contest to name the “Pacific Fisher” sculpture after someone. At the sculpture’s dedication, Seffinger explained that the name honors Southern Oregon forester and ecosystem restoration expert Marty Main. He has been a consultant to the Forest Lands Commission since 1995, and he is widely respected in the community. Unknown to Main, several people from the Ashland Forest Lands Commission had nominated the name “Marty.”
I asked Main to tell me a little about the Pacific fisher, and he explained that they are in the same family as weasels, and are about the size of a house cat. They are rare on the West Coast, and a healthy, growing population of Pacific fishers in the Ashland watershed is a sign of ecosystem health. Throughout Oregon and North America, the population of Pacific fishers was decimated by the fur trade in the late 1800s, the use of poisons at illegal marijuana grows in federal forests (thankfully fewer since the legalization of marijuana) and the loss of old-growth habitat. Pacific fishers nest and rest in large, older trees. They are nocturnal, so they are not very visible. In spite of their name, Pacific fishers don’t eat fish. Their unusual common name is thought to come from the word fiche (or fichet, or fitch, or fitchet), an old term for the pelt of a European polecat, a related animal familiar to 19th century fur trappers. Pacific fishers eat small mammals such as mice, squirrels, rabbits and porcupines. “They are one of the few animals that eat porcupines,” Main said. “They have learned to flip porcupines over to get to the soft belly. They are unique that way.” The Bandersnatch trail begins just above Lithia Park near the swimming hole on Ashland Creek. To get there, take Granite Street south to the swimming hole, then turn left on Glenview Drive. After a short distance, you’ll see two parking areas. Near the smaller parking area on the right is a sign that says, “Waterline Trail” and “To Bandersnatch Trail 820.” You will reach a sculpture called “Elevation” about one-tenth of a mile from the parking lot on the Waterline trail. Next to the sculpture is a sign pointing to the beginning of the Bandersnatch Trail. Head uphill to see the other two sculptures on the art walk, “Pacific Fisher” and “Water is Life.” What is a Bandersnatch? I don’t suppose it’s helpful to know that the Bandersnatch is found in the vicinity of the Jabberwock and the Jubjub bird. It might be more helpful to know that it occurs in the follow-up book to “Alice in Wonderland,” in which nearly everything is topsy turvy. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” By Lewis Carroll, from the poem “Jabberwocky” in “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,” 1872
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AGING HAPPENS
Evacuation brings out the strength around us “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” — Coretta Scott King
T
hrough so much recent grief due to the fires, our communities are still pulling together to help. Here are some uplifting examples of how residents living in adult communities were cared for during this crisis. To start, these care providers and staff are the ones who oversee and support our aging friends and family each day. For those with dementia needing specialized care, this work is some of the most challenging. Under these very compromised conditions of both the fires and COVID-19, what they did was remarkable. Here are some of the positive actions that occurred in these communities when the fires erupted. At the north end of Ashland, the Village at Valley View, a memory care community, (villagevalleyview.com; 541-482-0888), was given the use of passenger vans from TC Chevrolet. They moved their residents to Pear Valley Senior Living’s memory care in Central Point, (compass-living. com/senior-living/or/ central-point/pear-valley; 541-727-6245). Notice that saying they moved them does not describe how difficult this might be for people who have varying degrees of cognitive impairment. On a normal day, many people with this disease don’t like to leave the safe and familiar environments in which they’re living. Imagine how skillfully the staff must have worked to make this happen. Pear Valley graciously accepted them into their “home,” and was able to care for the residents until they were all able to return safely. One of my clients living there told his wife he was having a good time and was very happy, but wanted to go back to his home, meaning the Village at Valley View. This was
ELLEN WALDMAN
Many of the people who provide this invaluable service live in Talent or Phoenix, as well as other communities that were impacted by fires. Sadly, too many have lost all they once owned. And still, most of them will go to work, caring for our loved ones with skill and diligence. surely confusing for them, but having the staff welltrained and able to provide this compassionate care made a big difference. Another example of grace under pressure was the evacuation of the Rogue Valley Manor’s 900-plus residents (retirement.org/rvm; 541857-7777). It so happened that I was there the day the fires started, overseeing a moving company removing furniture from a client’s home. When the residents were told to evacuate, the employees found a way to transport and guide all of their residents to safety. This was no small undertaking, but again, it was accomplished with efficiency and a reassuring presence. Some went to the Rogue Valley Country Club, some to skilled nursing facilities, and others to memory care communities. One person I know even chose to sleep in her car with her cat at The Expo in Central Point. They are now all back in their homes. I know of one private caregiver who took her client with moderate dementia, and who lived alone in an area that had to evacuate, back to her own home. Then, when that area was being evacuated, the caregiver took her to a
friend’s house in Grants Pass. The client told the caregiver that as long as they were together, she felt happy and safe. Over and above what these front-line teams do on a daily basis to care for our older community members, you can also see their extreme dedication. Many times, through the years, I have reminded others how precious these people are to those they care for.
They may not be the highest-paid workers, but they do this service with great heart. If you’ve ever taken care of an aging individual, or someone with any cognitive impairment, you know how taxing this can be. Many of the people who provide this invaluable service live in Talent or Phoenix, as well as other communities that were impacted by fires. Sadly, too many have lost all they once owned. And still,
most of them will go to work, caring for our loved ones with skill and diligence. This is the greatness of compassion in our communities. Ellen Waldman is a certified aging life care professional. Submit questions about aging and Ashland-area aging resources and column suggestions to her through her website, SeniorOptionsAshland.com.
Did You See That? Learn about DIY food gifts in the October issue of
Shrubs, also known as drinking vinegars, can make for gourmet gifts that cost just pennies to produce in home kitchens. Similarly, infused vinegars look and taste fancy but are practical ways to use an herb or vegetable garden’s excess, say food preservation experts in Southern Oregon.
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A32
| Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
CULTURE OF PEACE
The time is now: Reckoning with racism in Oregon process will include using an equity lens to discover and remove barriers that exist for people of color to be hired and to experience satisfaction in e are living in their jobs, as well as a path one of the most toward advancement. transformational eras of our Our public policy initiatives lifetimes. The COVID-19 pandemic has will create more equity for shone a light on the clear ineq- communities that are particularly harmed by current uities that exist in our society and highlighted the importance policies. One of our ballot measure recommendations of a quality health care system supports Measure 110, which that is accessible to all. decriminalizes possession of Likewise, the Black Lives Matter movement has brought certain drugs and establishes a drug addiction treatment thousands of people into the and recovery program funded streets to demand systemic change, and it is time (way past by the state’s marijuana tax revenue. By decriminalizing time) for change. most drug possessions, the Ijeoma Oluo, author of the measure will also likely reduce New York Times bestselling longstanding and traumatic book “So You Want to Talk racial disparities in Oregon’s About Race,” says, “The criminal justice system and beauty of anti-racism is that direct much-needed funding you don’t have to pretend to treatment programs. to be free of racism to be an Perhaps one of the most anti-racist. Anti-racism is the exciting projects that EMO commitment to fight racism is supporting is “Reckoning wherever you find it, includwith Oregon’s Racist Hising in yourself. And it’s the tory.” The Common Table only way forward.” Fighting racism requires us (commontableoregon.org), a project that EMO helped to to acknowledge the racism found, is organizing a statewe have been socialized into, wide, nine-month forum with so we can recognize our role faith leaders. Participants in it and interrupt our comwill meet twice monthly to placency and complicity. learn more about past racist By confessing our part in practices within Oregon and the legacy of racism, we can acknowledge ways they have interrupt its continuation been carried into the present and begin to make amends. day. They will listen to Black, The truth is, white people are Brown, Indigenous, Asian and living on land stolen from our other communities of color Indigenous neighbors and inside intentional cohorts, participate in an economy building bridges of respect that was founded on the slave and understanding in order labor of our African American to identify and remove the brothers and sisters. But what social and economic barriers does it mean to take responto human flourishing. When sibility for the sins we inherit? we listen to others’ experiEcumenical Ministries of ences, memories and stories, Oregon is committed to fight- it can foster understanding. ing racism and to changing When we support each other, systems that perpetuate ineq- seek feedback and encourage uity, and systems only change reform, we begin to create when hearts are transformed. a better society and better This fall, EMO will begin an outcomes toward restorative intensive process of diversity, justice. equity and inclusion training SEE PEACE, A33 for our staff and board. The
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A33
Professional dancer finds joy through her teaching CURTAIN CALL
By Jim Flint for ACC
A
isha Wand is celebrating her 20th year as founder and owner of Danceworks, an Ashland dance studio, at 280 E. Hersey St., Suite 14. After a successful career as a professional dancer in Honolulu, New York and Los Angeles, she finds great satisfaction in teaching. She loves seeing the joy on her students’ faces when they reach a goal. “When you dance and let go of everything, there is a beautiful sense of freedom,” she said. “And it has always been a way of coping.” Coping is something she has been doing a lot of lately. First it was the pandemic. And then both she and her studio manager lost their homes in the Almeda fire. There has been an outpouring of help to victims of the fire. She, her husband and their three children have been moved by the generosity of those who have contributed to accounts set up for them at GoFundMe and Facebook. The business has suffered. “Danceworks is barely staying afloat,” she said. “Doing what I do is almost impossible with the circumstances we are in. Now we’re offering online classes and private and semi-private instruction.” Available online classes and schedules are posted at ashlanddanceworks. com. Wand, 50, was born in London and began dancing at the age of 9 in Santa Barbara. She developed a love for dance in her middle school years in Honolulu when she studied ballet, hula, jazz and hip-hop. After high school she continued her studies at EDGE Performing Arts Center studios in Los Angeles and
COURTESY PHOTO
Aisha Wand has owned Damceworks studio since it was founded 20 years ago.
the Broadway Dance Center in New York. In the early ’90s, she began a professional career, performing in television commercials, off-Broadway
productions, and in Legends in Concert, a Las Vegas-based production that went international. Later she performed in music videos for MTV and VH1 with artists such as
Prince, Morris Day and Babyface. “I have always loved performing,” she said. “I was in a singing group when I was a child. The love of music is what inspired me to want to dance and do choreography.” She grew up in a creative family. Her sister was a ballet dancer and her father was a painter and writer. One of the early influences inspiring her to dance was Michael Jackson. “I wanted to be in one of his videos,” she said. “Michael was an inspiration to all aspiring performers because of his charisma and pure talent. He pushed aspects of dance and performance where they had never gone before.” Life experiences inspire her choreography. Dance is a way she can react and cope with those experiences. “The storytelling starts with digging deep within yourself,” she said. “Everyone’s process is different, but with me it starts with a song that triggers an emotion and transcends through the body.” She teaches her students to never hold back. “I tell them to love who they are and express themselves, that every dancer is unique.” Her daily routine keeps her fit and dance ready. “I work out regularly and love healthy foods,” she said. “I am a barre fitness instructor and dance five days a week.” She moved to Ashland to be close to family. Before she opened the dance studio, she worked as a bartender and waitress at the now-defunct Kat Wok restaurant and at Martino’s. Today she teaches children and adults how to celebrate life through dance. “I can’t think of a better career.” Reach Ashland writer Jim Flint at jimflint.ashland@yahoo.com.
“The storytelling starts with digging deep within yourself. Everyone’s process is different, but with me it starts with a song that triggers an emotion and transcends through the body.” Aisha Ward
A34
| Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
Ashland Community Connections | Revels
INNER PEACE
Got privilege? Got a place to offer? tape. A vision of a world to come. A neighbor is moving, “No, those beds cannot go to the did my first walk-through dump. I’ll hold them until in Talent recently, nearly there is a need.” Items get four weeks after the Almeda picked up, taken to a famifire. ly’s new place, a huge feat of For four weeks, I stayed coordination and heart. inside, my abode still standI asked myself, could I offer ing, saw the photos, felt my my workroom, turn it into heart breaking open, yet not a bedroom for one person, able to take myself out there might free up a larger space to see it. I am still in shock for a family to stay together. from the viewing. Downtown I said, “yes!” then, a crack was as I remembered it, on in my bubble. “A stranger in one side of the street; blackmy house,” I thought, “during ened remains on the other. COVID?” Even considerMy mind could not even piece ing this started to give me a together what used to be stomachache. It came smack there. into conflict with a lot of my What do I do? white, U.S. conditioning. I have many privileges, as do “Let the agencies do this. I many here. I have white skin don’t live in a village. Property privilege; economic privilege, ownership is a sacred cow.” my income not interrupted by Things I am embarrassed to the COVID downturn. I have, admit went through this “libso far, good health privieral, good person’s” head. lege, getting around, driving, Do I have an obligation walking, hardly ever need a to support here? I want the doctor. I have privilege, being answer to be yes. straight and married. I have I am probably not alone less privilege, being over 65, with dueling sensations of becoming less visible, and feeling “frozen” or with an being a woman, grappling with urgency to “fix things.” Neiinternalized and externalized ther gets me very far. There sexism. are centuries here of interCan I use any of this privnalizing this pretzel-making ilege to make a difference to conditioning. families impacted by the fire? Yet to stretch these conWhat do I do? torted feelings, to undo the I donate supplies and pretzel, I must admit this is money here and there. Am I not easy and is very uncomdone? What holds me back fortable. It takes practice. from doing more? That is why I write. After the fire, I learned We don’t undo this alone. that a grassroots group had Having valued independent formed to find housing and achievement and separateprovide continuing support ness for so long is how we got to families affected by the to this contorted place. fire, especially Hispanic and What do I do? migrant families. I connect with others. The group Long Term Secure Actions help, even small ones. Short Term Housing Project I offer my garage to store (LTSST), a long name for the furnishings. I have challenging long term, is doing so much. conversations with neighbors What was I doing? who have a house that is empty. They were finding people Without more creative with means who may have a thinking, like I see happening studio, or empty house, or for with LTSST, folks are going a house for sale that could be to be in tents this winter, and taken off the market; coorthat is unthinkable, though it dinating families with these has been true and unthinkable “home offerers,” acquiring for years before the fire set in. furnishings, cash for grocerSEE INNER PEACE, A35 ies, all with little to no red
FIRE ADAPTED ASHLAND
By Toni Lovaglia for ACC
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Visit fireadaptedashland.org to learn how you can start today to reduce the wildfire risk around your home.
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Ashland Community Connections | Revels
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Thursday, November 5, 2020 |
A35
ENTRE AMIGOS
Virtual student exchange program dodges pandemic for ACC
A 50-year-old student exchange program between the University of Guanajuato and Southern Oregon University has gone virtual, allowing students to avoid travel abroad and potential infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has challenged international education in many ways, especially for those seeking exposure to cultural, social and educational experiences in other countries. In the case of Ashland and Guanajuato, Mexico, the ban on international travel posed a threat to the Amistad student exchange program between the universities. This happened despite increased interest in people-to-people contact generated by the 50th anniversary of sister-city and university relations in 2019. Challenged by the lack of physical mobility between the two countries, academics in Ashland and Guanajuato turned to an online curriculum initiative already in place between the University of Guanajuato School of Business and the State University of New York. Through the Collaborative Online International Learning program managed by SUNY, Guanajuato and SUNY professors had added an international component to their existing courses, taught in English. SOU and the UG had for years collaborated on an SOU Master in Management
INNER PEACE From Page A34
There are a lot of people with means in the area. Could we practice being freer with those means? Yes, we can. To do this, and in service to our own wholeness, we can come to grips with our whiteness, our privilege, and see how deeply it is ingrained. A crisis like this makes for an opportunity to do just that. Toni Lovaglia and the Deconstructing Whiteness Planning Team offer monthly educational practice of
program, allowing students in Guanajuato to earn SOU master’s degrees in business by taking classes taught by UG and visiting SOU professors. When a participating SOU associate professor, Al Case, became aware of the COIL arrangement between SUNY and UG, he met with Martin Pantoja, coordinator of COIL at UG, to discuss the possibility of SOU joining the collaboration. In April 2020, three instructors, one each from SOU, UG, and the LaGuardia Community College in New York, a SUNY institution, collaborated in teaching an international business course. By joining the COIL program, the SOU Amistad program not only allowed cooperation between SOU and UG, but also extended its international features to the Long Island college. The experience has become truly multicultural through activities conducted online by teams of students from all three institutions. Students and professors interact on Moodle, a free online teaching and learning application that allows tweaking for specific needs of each institution. The shared online courses are designed to teach students multicultural skills designed for social and personal life, pursuing career opportunities, and running businesses internationally. The COIL experience benefits not only the participating students, but also the instructors and institutions involved. cracking through the lens of whiteness and privilege. Their next offering is Thursday, Oct. 22 – a Zoom session from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. To RSVP, or for more info, email dwlearningspace@gmail.com, or see Peace House Newsletter at peacehouse.net for more information. If you have time, money or housing to offer, email Tia Laida Fe at ltssthousing@ gmail.com. Email 600- to 700-word articles on all aspects of inner peace to Sally McKirgan at innerpeaceforyou@outlook. com.
Through collaboration, professors share and learn each other’s teaching methods and are motivated to improve the material and research in the courses. In this way, the pedagogic and academic content of the courses becomes international. Through this joint effort, the schools are extending the sister-city “people-to-people concept” to a virtual educational environment that eliminates the need and expense of travel to another country.
Students can overcome the difficult times and restrictions of the pandemic and still experience cultural, social and educational contacts abroad without leaving home or their nearby college or university. Enrollment reached 92 students this spring, including 30 from SOU, 28 from UG and 34 from LGCC. Fall enrollment totals 54 so far. There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced enrollment at educational institutions around the
world, but through COIL, the Amistad program is keeping multicultural experiences and collaboration alive and expanding the internationalization of education and curriculum through virtual mobility. By embracing virtual collaboration and future expansion of its benefits to other Mexican and U.S. institutions, Amistad’s future has no borders. Meanwhile, it has become good “medicine” in the fight against COVID-19, even before a vaccine has arrived.
A4 | Friday, November 1, 2019 | Ashland Tidings
LOCAL DOWNTOWN
A&E
The Plaza gets a new tree Latinx art flavors
Schneider this fall
By Caitlin Fowlkes Ashland Tidings
By Maureen Flanagan Battistella murals depict the relationship With the annual Festival of for the Tidings between human and fuel, a full Light celebration in mind, Ash Ashcolor rendering of food that land city crews planted a new Contemporary, culturally feeds the body and the soul. “holiday” tree in the Ashland complicated and sizzling works He created the mural Plaza. of Latinx artists make up the installation, which he calls The tree, a Nordmann fir, is fall exhibitions show at the “Together/Juntos,” with his adjacent to City Hall near the Schneider Museum of Art at students to tell the stories of Plaza bus stop. Southern Oregon University. food and family, of home and The tree was purchased from The work of Justin Favela, heart. The murals are tissue Plant Oregon Nursery in Talent Victor Maldonado and the paper mosaics, with white for $2,500, said Public Works artists of Self Help Graphics & space waiting for community Director Paula Brown. Art are in brilliant color, with participants. Parks Superintendent Mike comic lines and bold abstrac“I do installation work, and Oxendine said the tree replaces tions. Fall Exhibitions opened that takes up a lot of space, one of the two that have been last week and will continue so having volunteers or a removed in the downtown area through Dec. 14. lot of artists are part of the in the past few years. He said Favela is this semester’s process,” explained Favela. because Ashland is a1, certified A4 | Friday, November 2019 | Ashland Tidings Visiting Artist and Scholar in “I really try to engage more Tree City, staff must track each Teaching at Southern Oregon people, and for museums it’s tree removed by the city and University and will host a very important to bring in the find a way to replace them. variety of events, including community; it’s a great way to “Several large trees have Tuesday evening converTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS structure programming.” DOWNTOWN been lost on the Ashland Plaza sations, at the Flames consume Soda Rock Winery onA&E Sunday inart-making Healdsburg, Calif. Favela is a native of Las Vegas in the past few decades, includ includSchneider, and Free Family and of Guatemalan and Mexiing a large pine tree that died Day events at the museum. can heritage, which flavor his as a result of drought and heat “It’s very compelling, very art with intense hues, abstract stress,” Oxendine said. “This beautiful work that all audi- representation and outsized tree had been decorated yearly ences, all ages will enjoy,” symbologies. Transient, temas Caitlin a celebratory Schneider Museum of Art porary and of the moment, By Fowlkes holiday tree JAMIE LUSCH / ASHLAND TIDINGS Ashland during Tidings the Festival of Light. We Director Scott Malbaurn says Favela’s murals are composed hope this new addition to the Paula Brown, public works director, and Mike Oxendine, Ashland parks of Favela’s work. Battistella murals By Maureen Flanagan the relationship of paintdepict and cardboard, paper Plaza will beloved by many With thebeannual Festival of supervisor, stand next to a Nordmann fir planted recently on the Ashland forFavela’s the Tidings murals extend between andwith fuel,fronds a full and glue,human feathered Plaza. for generations to come. We all through the largest gallery at color Light celebration in mind, Ashofthe food that that liftrendering and wave in breeze, look forward to seeing this tree downtown because it can stand licensed arborists, said ecologthe Schneider. Explosions of feeds land city crews planted a new Contemporary, culturally the body and the soul.of adapting the techniques decorated in November for the drought well and can take the ical benefits are a core value of color whet every part of the the “holiday” tree in the Ashland complicated and sizzling works Hepiñata created to histhe art. mural Favela A4 | Friday, November 1, 2019 | Ashland Tidings palette and palate: there’s Festival of Light.” Plaza. reflective heat given off by most public works departments. of Latinx artists make up thea installation, he calls works on largewhich expanses, such row ing up Southern Ore hugeexhibitions purple ham sliced for “Together/Juntos,” A sidewalk replacement The tree, a Nordmann fir, is parked cars andin asphalt. “There are of studies that go fall show at the n,tons withand his as the sides of buildings, I ha ve alw ay s co nsi serving, a Guatemalan tortilla along East earlier de adjacent toMain City Street Hall near the the red It’ll also do well decorated for show that businesses do better Ash Schneider Museum of Artlan at d ge students to tell the stories of smaller areas, transforming m of the Ro guewith folded with a fresh, soft boiled food Vatrees this year oppor- the holiday season, he added. lley.planted Plaza busgave stop.staff the oppor in front of I gradu Southern Oregon University. and family, of home and two-dimensional space into ate d froegg, m Sou the awork golden flan custard tunity to add more greenery to Un“Preserving rn Ore The tree was purchased from planting their storefronts. They can iversit y anand go n The of Justin Favela, heart. The murals are tissue three-dimensional cultural DOWNTOWN A&E d ha ve d an drippingMaldonado with caramel sauce, d wo that area, Brown said.in Talent trees in Ashland is environ-live Plant Oregon Nursery rkeproducts, charge more for the d in Ashlan Victor and the paper mosaics, white icons that seem towith breathe. d for the In my spare pa an artichoke inst all9of said the sidewalk, which timebeneficial, forShe $2,500, said Public Works mentally butl there’s you wil do better in school,” rs.waiting for community artists of Selfstanding Help Graphics &yea space find and students hiking in SEE LATINX, A5 its spiky green glory. Favela’s the was cracked broken in also beauty to it,” Brown said. me Ash Director Paula and Brown. Oxendine said. “Just by looking lan ArtWa are in brilliant color, with participants. d Gri ter zzly she Pe d, ak up or on som several places, was entirely ewahe imagine downtown Parks Superintendent Mike “Can you out of Pa a window and seeing a tree re off the comic lines and bold abstrac“I do installation work, and cific improve st Tra replaced and pushed back away in the fall without trees?” Oxendine said the tree replaces has been shown toCre test il up in Fall tions. Exhibitions the Greenopened takes up a lot of space, springthat s. having I fromofthe about 4been feet ha Brown and Oxendine said ve one thestreet two that have scores. The benefits to planting a last week and will continue stro ng so volunteers or a pa ssion forreviBy order Caitlin to Fowlkes buildi in preserve the trees ngaren’t removed in the downtown area they hope the downtown relajust trees psychological, through Dec. 14. tio nsh lot of artists are part of the ips Ashland Tidings bo th pe rsona pro lly there. Instead the fes straight siona an talization project will allow the in the past few of years. He said d they’re very tangible.” lly. I alw Favela is this semester’s ays try to listen intently process,” explained Favela. By Maureen Flanagan Battistella murals depict the relationship line thatAshland was there, it now addition of more trees, planters because is a certified Other studiesan show thatft my Visiting Artist and Scholar in “I d cra really human try to engage clie Witharound the annual Festival of ns ca nt’s marke for the Tidings mp aig between and fuel,more a full curves tree trunks. ting people, andto greening meeteffects. Tree City, staff the must track each trees are planted along Teaching at Southern Oregon their individwhen and for museums it’s Light celebration in mind, Ashua l ne ed color rendering of food that s antends “That’s whatby wethe always Brown said a community busy streets, traffic d butodget. tree removed citywant and University will host a very Using and important to bring in the ttin Ro land crews cu planted ag-e new dg seb ud Contemporary, culturally e tar feeds the body and the soul. ’s to doacity isway preserve trees,” OxenOxen geted input session for the Revifind to replace them. slowtfo down, because the field of variety of events, including community; it’s a great way to digital pla “holiday” tree in the Ashland rm s, you complicated and sizzling works He created the mural ad dine said. large vertisTuesday Downtown Ashland sight is obstructed byrthe “Several trees leafy ing meevening converrea chhave ssa programming.” pe talize ge Plaza. le mo of Latinx art-making artists makeca up n the structure re effecfor installation, which he calls The was Plaza also op project is scheduled 6 to tive been lostsidewalk on the Ashland canopies, he said. sations, at the ly tha n eve Favela is a native of Las Vegas rjust beprettier,” The tree,toa meet Nordmann fir, is 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6, at fore. My pri fall exhibitions showFamily at the “Together/Juntos,” with his improved Americans ma he in the past few decades, includry “And it’s lp Schneider, and Free ob my jective clie and of Guatemalan Mexints is dri adjacent to City Hall near the to ve rev Schneider Museum of Art at en students to tell theand stories of ue With Disabilities standards, andthr ing a large pine tree that died Carpenter Hall. Oxendine ou Brown added. Day events at the museum. gh tho ug can heritage, which flavor his htf ul plann Plaza bus stop. Southern Oregon University. ing food and family, of home and op , and Rogue Valley TransportaTransporta Brown said the vision gathered tim exe as a result of drought andiza heat cu “It’s very compelling, very tio tio n. I would love to lea n, andart with intense hues, abstract The tree was purchased from The work of Justin Favela, TheFLANAGAN murals BATTISTELLA are tissue tion District put in asaid. larger bus from the community input ses- rn Contact Tidings reporter PHOTO heart. BY MAUREEN abou stress,” Oxendine “This beautiful work that all audit you r representation and outsized Plantbench Oregon Nursery iness Talent bu Victor all Maldonado theFisher sin paper mosaics, with white Ashlanders Francie Patt and Margaret Garrington enjoy be what Caitlin Fowlkes at cfowlstop and shelter. to sions tree had been decorated yearly seewill ences, ages Ghidinelli, will and enjoy,” if Ro sebdetermines Transient, temud for $2,500, artists of Self Help Graphics & symbologies. ting solutions or space for community an afternoon atMuseum the Schneider Museum of Art. waiting They are seated in the kes@rosebudmedia.com e n d i nsaid e s Public aholiday i d t hWorks e tree f i r the scope of the project.’s ma rke asOaxcelebratory Schneider of Art porary and of the moment, alig Director Paula Brown. n wit Art are in brilliant color, with h you participants. JAMIE LUSCH / ASHLAND TIDINGS Heiter Gallery, in front of two Victor Maldonado vibrant abstracts. Oxendine, one of the city’s 541-776-4496. will thrive in its little plot r bu siness objectives. during the Festival of Light. We Director Scott Malbaurn says Favela’s murals are composed Parks Superintendent Mike Paula Brown, public Please comic lineswork. and bold abstrac“I do installation work, and givparks works director, and Mike Oxendine, Ashland e hope this new me addition to the of Favela’s paint andup cardboard, paper areplaces ca Oxendine said the tree ll orsupervisor, tions. Fall Exhibitions opened of emailstand that takes a lot of space, a Nordmann fir planted recently on the Ashland to next setto up Plaza will be beloved by many Favela’s murals extend an ap pointment. and glue, feathered with fronds one of the two that have been last week and will gallery continue so having volunteers or a for generations to come. We all Plaza. through the largest at that lift and wave in the breeze, removed in the downtown area through Dec. 14. lot of artists are part of the look forward to seeing this tree downtown because it can stand licensed arborists, said ecolog the Schneider. Explosions of adapting ecologtechniques of in the past few years. He said Favela this semester’s process,”the explained Favela. decorated in November for the drought well and can take the ical benefits are a core value of color whetisevery part of the the piñata totohis art. Favela because Ashland is a certified Visitingand Artist and Scholar “I really try engage more palette palate: there’sin a works Festival of Light.” onand large expanses, such Tree City, staff must track each reflective heat given off by most public works departments. Teaching at Southern Oregon people, for museums it’s huge purple ham sliced for as the sides of buildings, and A sidewalk replacement “There are tons of studies that tree removed by the city and parked cars and asphalt. University and will tortilla host a very important to bring in the serving, a Guatemalan along East Main Street earlier It’ll also do well decorated for show that businesses do better smaller areas, find a way to replace them. varietywith of events, including community; it’stransforming a great way to folded a fresh, soft boiled two-dimensional this year gave staff the oppor oppor- the holiday season, he added. with trees planted in front of space into “Several large trees have Tuesday evening converstructure programming.” egg, a golden flan custard tunity to add more greenery to “Preserving and planting their storefronts. They can three-dimensional cultural been lost on the Ashland Plaza sations, art-making at the Favela is a native of Las Vegas dripping with caramel sauce, that area, Brown said. trees in Ashland is environcharge more for the products, icons that seem to breathe. in the past few decades, includSchneider, Free in Family an artichokeand standing all of and of Guatemalan and MexiShe said the sidewalk, which ing a large pine tree that died mentally beneficial, but there’s and students do better in school,” Day events at the museum. SEEflavor LATINX,his A5 its spiky green glory. Favela’s can heritage, which was cracked and broken in also beauty to it,” Brown said. Oxendine said. “Just by looking as a result of drought and heat “It’s very compelling, very art with intense hues, abstract several places, was entirely “Can you imagine a downtown out of a window and seeing a tree stress,” Oxendine said. “This beautiful work that all audi- representation and outsized replaced and pushed back away in the fall without trees?” has been shown to improve test tree had been decorated yearly ences, all ages will enjoy,” symbologies. Transient, temfrom the street about 4 feet Brown and Oxendine said scores. The benefits to planting as a celebratory holiday tree Schneider Museum of Art porary and of the moment, in order to preserve the trees they hope the downtown revi- treesJAMIE aren’t just/psychological, LUSCH ASHLAND TIDINGS during the Festival of Light. We Director Scott Malbaurn says Favela’s murals are composed there. Instead of the straight talization will allow theandthey’re very tangible.” public works director, Mike Oxendine, Ashland parks hope this new addition to the Paula Brown,project of Favela’s work. of paint and cardboard, paper line that was there, it now addition more trees, Otherrecently studies show that next to a planters Nordmann fir planted on the Ashland Plaza will be beloved by many supervisor,ofstand Favela’s murals extend and glue, feathered with fronds curves around the tree trunks. and when trees are planted along for generations to come. We all Plaza.greening effects. through the largest gallery at
YOUR ASHLAN
D CONNEC
LOCAL
MAX GOLDMAN
TION
The Plaza gets a new tree Latinx art flavors
G
MARKETING CONSULTANT
Schneider this fall
LOCAL
The Plaza gets a new tree Latinx art flavors
Schneider this fall
MF-00132422
By Martin P. Pantoja Aguilar
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| Thursday, November 5, 2020
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