In a cost-cutting measure to cope with declining attendance in 2022, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced Friday it has revamped its plans for 2023, trimming the length of its season and number of plays produced. The company will produce two fewer live plays next season, which will run from April 18 to Oct. 15, about two weeks fewer on each end than originally planned.
The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University kicks off a year-long celebration of Southern Oregon University’s 150th anniversary with a Festival of Arts from Friday, Sept. 23, to Oct. 7.
MJ Daspit: “Rogue Valley wine grower Terry Sullivan keeps a yearly record of what he calls season milestones, noting the dates of budbreak, flowering, onset of ripening and harvest. Budbreak is the point in spring when the vines emerge from dormancy and show their first tiny leaves and shoots. Later flowers appear that will form fruit after pollination. Veraison begins in late summer as the bunches of green grapes change to a ripe color — purple or gold, depending on the variety.”
Edward Hirsch: “By Sacred Mystery, I would call people not to a doctrine, but precisely the opposite, to a sense of openness and reverence before the Mystery that cannot be confined within any doctrine. This doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all, it’s just that, while we can respect many views, we can also declutch the grasping mind that needs that sense of certainty in the face of insecurity and not knowing.”
Two award-winning artists will perform Saturday night, Oct. 1, in the featured event of “OSF Onwards,” an Oregon Shakespeare Festival gala weekend celebration from Friday, Sept. 30, through Sunday, Oct. 2. “Throughout the weekend, we will celebrate dynamic artists and artistry at OSF,” according to an event announcement, “while raising critical funds to secure an OSF for tomorrow.”
Herbert Rothschild: “All sides to an armed conflict lie. They lie about what their opponents do and they lie about what they do. This should be the working assumption of news media. State-run media can’t act on it; U.S. media can and should.”
Photographer Christopher Briscoe was supposed to return to Ashland after spending time documenting the plight of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Instead, he cancelled his ticket, got out of his “comfort zone” and crossed the border into war-torn Ukraine to find what stories his camera could capture.
A donation of more than $12 million from Medford-based Lithia Motors CEO Bryan DeBoer to Southern Oregon University — the largest single donation to the university on record — will fund a $5 million scholarship geared toward first-generation students and those in minority groups and creation of a new Institute for Applied Sustainability, among other initiatives, SOU President Rick Bailey announced Wednesday.
“The Truth to Power club hoped to involve local residents with a community painting day. Their vision for the mural is to have it be an educational and motivating presence to reduce racism locally — both within the high school and the greater Ashland community. Involving as many locals as possible in the mural creation would contribute to their vision.”
After approximately 20% of the spigots tested at the site of Ashland School District’s alternative school programs were found to have higher than normal amounts of lead in the drinking water when tested in May 2022, Ashland Schools Superintendent Samuel Bogdanove updated the school board on Monday night on the extent of the lead results, which includes “higher than normal” amounts of lead discovered in “a couple fixtures” at Ashland High School, Ashland Middle School and at Bellview Elementary.
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Ask Strider: A worried older brother asks our advice columnist’s advice. And a dog’s guardian wants to know if there is any hope getting their hat-hating dog to calm down. As always, Strider tries to give words that help!
After a successful production of “The Vagina Monologues” and raising more than $2,000 for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Ashland actor and director Lia Dugal intends for “The Climate Monologues” to premiere in Oregon in late 2025 or early 2026 at the Bellview Grange in Ashland.
It’s complicated.
Herbert Rothschild: Whether visualization and intention by themselves can effect broad social change is impossible to determine, but the question merits sustained consideration.
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