Fellow Oregonians: We live in a wonderland.

I just got back from a 2500 mile motorbike ride with an old friend around Oregon with a couple of dashes into Washington and California. We went to many places that I had been before but then to many that I explored for the first time despite having lived in Oregon for almost 22 years – some of these places I did not even know about. Here is snapshot of our ten day ride.

This place is big for goodness sake – Oregon has the same area as the UK with a twentieth of the people.

Up the Columbia Gorge in mist and rain past the waterfalls and massive cliffs. Run up to Glenwood in WA to ride down the Klickitat River. Up the Columbia River then along the farms and valleys and across the rolling hills to Heppner and Pendleton.

North to Walla Walla and Clarkston to get around the Wallowa Mountains to Joseph. Through Hells Canyon and back around to Baker City and the Oregon Trail. Through the Blue Mountains to John Day and Burns, then south across Malheur Lake to Frenchglen and the view of the Steens Mountains.

Offroad across the Catlow Valley and Hart Mountain to the Warner Valley Wetlands and Lakeview and across Quartz Mountain to Klamath Falls.

Off to Ashland to see HenryV at the Shakespeare Festival (Spoiler Alert – the English win) then on the back roads (we took Dead Indian Memorial Rd. out of Ashland – only in America folks) around Mt. McLoughlin to Crater Lake and onwards to Bend.

Offroad out of Bend into the Deschutes National Forest and across Christmas Lake Valley to the Summer Lake Hotsprings. Back to Bend via Fort Rock and the Cascades Lakes Highway with views of Mt. Bachelor and The Sisters.

Finally Bend to Sisters to Breitenbush and back to Portland along the Clackamas River.

Any one of these legs could have been worth a few days to stay and explore and hike and talk. And we only scratched the surface of the state; there are so many more places that we just di not have time to get to. But we still went to every one of Oregon’s seven climate zones – from 32 degrees at Crater Lake with icy rain to 95 degrees at Frenchglen with friendly mosquitos – and we rode through 26 of Oregon’s 36 counties.

Note to self: When beachcombing, check the tide tables.

On March 11, 2011, this piece of floating dock was attached to Misawa in Japan and was being used by local fishermen to offload squid catches. The tsunami broke it loose and last week it washed up on Agate Beach in Oregon after a 5,000 mile journey.

We hoped to see it up close but forgot it was high tide.

The dock has high “windage”, bits poking out about the waterline that the wind can push, so it moved faster than items that are at or below the water which are driven just by water currents. Apparently there were 5 million tons of debris that were washed out to sea and about 1.5 million tons that did not sink off Japan. We can expect a few more of those to arrive over the next few months.

The sign for the tsunami zone always makes me chuckle. It depicts a very Hollywood idea of a wave – surfs up dude – but the reality of a tsunami as we saw from the horrific Japan YouTube videos, is far more sinister, slow, and deadly. You don’t run uphill away from this kind of disaster; you watch as it slowly eats your towns and property and sends them across the Pacific.

Cloggies in Seattle

Walking in Seattle yesterday we came across the Northwest Folklife Festival. We had no idea what this was but wandered in to follow the strains of music and the smell of the food.

Imagine my shock when the FIRST thing we came across was the North by Northwest Morris Men – Lancashire clog dancing in Seattle – The Cloggies incarnate.

Now I would like to explain to my American friends why grown, bearded men dress in white with flowered hats and with bells on their ankles and then dance whilst waving handkerchiefs in the air.

But I cannot even begin. You’ll have to checkout the explanations below.

I am including the very first Bill Tidy cartoon for The Cloggies which will tickle the Brits on this list and bemuse everyone else.

The rest of the festival was an overload of twenty stages of every imaginable style of music and dance – with every available space filled with bands who obviously just showed up and performed. Here we see The Conjugal Visitors and The Tallboys working the crowd.

Further reading on The Cloggies – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloggies

Details of Northwest Folklife – www.nwfolklifefestival.org/

History of The Morris – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dance

Delightful at the time but absurd upon reflection.

We just came back from a short trip to sample the cuisine at The Willows on Lummi Island – an eight minute ferry ride just off Bellingham, WA.

Chef Blaine Wetzel is a “rare and amazing talent” and The Willows was declared by the NYT as “One of the 10 restaurants (in the world) worth a plane ride”.

The menu consisted of five courses interspersed with sixteen, yes sixteen, “snacks” and all of these delights came from ingredients “fished, foraged, and farmed” on the island. As a visual and taste experience, this was astonishing – plate after plate of miniature masterpieces with combinations that you’d never think of presented as little art works.

Some examples here – oysters served on a bed of beach pebbles frozen into the plate, kale leaf crisp with black truffles, radish and toasted flax seeds. We also had venison tartare, asparagus with spruce shoots, halibut skin, local foraged mushrooms, scallops and clams, and more local flowers and herbs than I can remember.

One interesting touch – local stone and beach pebbles in almost every plate. Frozen in ice as a plate for the raw oysters, flat stones to serve tiny plates, heated in the wooden box to keep the bread warm, grilled hot under the oysters cooked in tequila and sage. You can do this at home folks.

Totally astonishing experience but we could not get away from two thoughts:

– Where was the main course? Twenty miniatures but no grand canvas to step back from and admire; I am sure there must have been a lamb to kill on the island.

– The food was local but the foodies weren’t. The food has a zero carbon footprint but the customers all came from miles around; we drive almost 600 miles there and back and others had clearly taken the NYT advice and flown there.

http://www.willows-inn.com/nyt-1-7-11/

Roger Waters – The Wall

Last night at the Rose Garden. This has to be the most over the top spectacular shows I have ever seen. Building and destroying a 30 foot wall, crashing aircraft, attacking floating capitalist pigs, massive puppets, and astonishing graphics.

Oh, the performance was breathtaking too and the themes even more relevant.

Lots of highlights but my favourite was Roger Waters singing “Mother” in harmony with a film of him singing the same song 30 years ago at Earls Court. 

Hey Teacher – Leave Those Kids Alone.

What happened to Main Street America?

We have been living part time in this part of Paris for about 12 years yet every time I walk up Rue des Martyrs I am struck by how unique this place is. One street with everything you could possibly need to equip and feed a household – no driving to Fred Meyer or Home Depot or Macys – it’s all on one street. You actually walk along the street and pick what looks and smells good to eat. What a novel concept.

Why doesn’t this still exist in America?

Some statistics – I went and gathered some data this morning.

– Rue des Martyrs runs from the church at Notre Dame de Lorette in the 9th Arrondissement all the way up the Butte de Montmartre to the Cathedral of Sacre Coeur. The real commercial part that is the Market Street for the 9th starts pretty much at our front door and stretches just 400 metres up to Place Lino Ventura.

– There are 125 businesses in that stretch of street – I counted them all and did not include anything in the side streets. This is really a street of everyday life: Restaurants/Cafe/Bar (16), Traiteur/Epicerie (12), Clothes/Femme (11), Household (11), Boulanger/Patissier (8), Fruit/Vegetables (7), Chocolatier (5), Cosmetics (5), Butchers (4), Wine (3), Flowers (3), Fish (3) – plus hair salons, banks, a few mens clothes stores, opticians, pharmacies, and only ONE supermarket.

– Apart from the obvious candidates (banks, Carrefour, Nicolas) there are almost no national brand stores here – almost all independent businesses that mostly seem to have been here forever under the same ownership.

I am sure there are other streets like this in Paris but I do not think there is one left in America. 

Have you ever thought how hard it must be to cut off your ear?

Most forms of bodily mutilation seem to be quite easy to pull off; get drunk, get pierced, look cool. Or not, depending on what you had pierced.

But to chop your ear off, that takes time and determination. Even the Japanese Yakuza who ceremonially chop off a little finger learn that it hurts AFTER but an ear has gristle and sinew and has to take time to chop off; it has to hurt DURING. Lots of chances to think about whether it was such a smart idea to start with.

Well that is the thought that occupied me as we walked around St. Remy de Provence, where Vincent Van Gogh spent a year or so in hospital after a couple of psychotic episodes and the well know ear chopping business. Here he painted most of the stuff that we all know and hang to brighten up our dining rooms, kitchen nooks, dorm rooms, and place mats; pictures of starry starry nights, fading irises, and lots of peasants doing what peasants did back then in the sun; digging, reaping, sleeping.

These photos include the view he would have had from his bedroom, the cloisters in the abbey/hospital, and a view of the Alpilles; a rocky slash across Provence that was the backdrop to most of his landscapes.

Further reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Paul_Asylum,_Saint-R%C3%A9my_(Van_Gogh_series) Colin Evans colin.pdx@gmail.com (503)853-3348

A very sweaty end to Keep Portland Weird week in Paris with an electro-pop dance night at Le Gaite Lyrique. This is a fantastic venue with lots of room to mingle and talk outside the Grande Salle and impeccable acoustics inside.

Brainstorm and Miracles Club were brilliant and YACHT blew the roof off the place. Rafael Fauria of Miracles Club really committed to the event with shaved head and tattoo and YACHT ignited the partisan crowd with Brigitte Fontaine’s Le Goudron in French.

(Review of Le Goudron here – http://www.covermesongs.com/2012/04/yacht-electropops-french-avant-garde-classic-le-goudron.html#more-35688)

This is “Keep Portland Weird” week in Paris; a collection of music and art and discussion events built on the reputation and people and good things of our home town.

So we came several thousand miles to see local artists.

A couple of nights ago there were Lovers and Tender Forever and Vanessa Renwick with Tara Jane O’Neil at the Pompidou Centre.

Last night, Holcombe Waller at the Centre Pompidou ended an exquisite set with a few unamplified songs at the front of the stage. The Thermals were certainly not unamplified at Gaite Lyrique. The folks from Mississippi Records were very proud of the fact that they “sell no digital medium and are barely on the internet”.

That’s weird enough right there.

My Mum and Dad were brought up in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire but, after they retired, became adoptive Yorkshire folk. I think this may have something to do with having honeymooned at Scarborough but we’ll never know for sure – we didn’t ask and now they cannot tell us.

They did end up with a holiday home in Pickering just on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors and both expressed a desire that their last resting place should be St. Gregory’s Minster at Kirkdale. I don’t believe that they ever worshipped there as they both were typical Church of England types who, as my Dad’s mother used to say, “went to church for three occasions; hatch, match, and dispatch”. They did, however, enjoy the walks around St. Gregory’s up into the Moors and enjoy the peace and isolation of a very beautiful spot that seems little altered from the time this church was constructed by the river in the 11th century.

When Dad died in 2005 and Mum joined him in 2007, my sister Sally and I did as requested and said our farewells and spread their ashes in the churchyard you can see in these photographs. It was only recently that we regretted not placing a stone to continue their memory so, better late than never, we just visited Kirkdale together to put that right.

A simple stone with a view they cherished.

http://www.achurchnearyou.com/kirkdale-st-gregory/