I’m so glad you found me. This is your site for news, information, progress on the series, accolades, opinions and rants (yes both Emma and her creator can be snarky at times), whines, and the sharing of important information. Let’s get to know each other better. Stick around and enjoy the ride, and please feel free to contact me by leaving comments on the blog page.
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Every writer has a journey that each of their characters must take.
The state of the state Once again, it is past mid-month and I find myself wondering how on earth this happened. The month began with several days spent in the bowels of the Multnomah County Elections Office doing the very necessary and unglamorous business of preparing ballots to be run through counting machines. Democracy isn’t […]
Read MoreThe state of the state Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. –George Eliot I just spent a week with one of my favorite girls–Ginger, the strawberry blond Aussie Cattle Dog. “Now that’s a proper cattle […]
Read MoreThe State of the State Yesterday was spent on the sorting line of RR Winery. Pinot Noir grapes came in from our original vineyard on Ribbon Ridge–beautiful, plump clusters, sweeter than table grapes, fresh and bright tasting, in compact, tight clusters. For all the years I was involved with helping to start a vineyard and […]
Read MoreThe State of the State Our 4-day trip to Mitchell covered a lot of ground even though temperatures got over 100 degrees. First full day included a trip to the Painted Hills. Then Patrick and Janet showed us pictographs left by local tribes 200-300 years ago, plus a swim in the John Day River at […]
Read MoreThe State of the State Damn, it’s hot. I’m not complaining. I love summer, particularly those long luscious days when sunset doesn’t come until after 9 p.m. Summer is about heat. My lovely daughter and I plan to enjoy it. We have a pool date set for Tuesday that may involve lunch and some Salt […]
Read MoreThe State of the State In western Oregon, summer has arrived with a couple of very warm days followed by some very East Coast thunderstorms. Rest and repeat. Today is the longest day of the year, so happy Solstice everyone! I’ve made Chicken Paprikash twice since we returned from our Grand Tour of the Danube. […]
Read MoreThe State of the State Having enjoyed two weeks in a different world, it has taken a bit of time to get back on my feet. As I wrote my April newsletter, I was headed to Europe and I anticipated I know not what. There would be the river cruise down the Danube, plus time […]
Read MoreThe State of the State Unless I break something between now and Tuesday morning, the die is cast. Long-awaited trip to Parts Unknown–for me at least. Wynne and I are flying out of Portland, taking a nonstop to Amsterdam, from there to Prague. I have never been there, but my late son Ian loved the […]
Read MoreThe State of the State I left y’all last month on the cusp of my trip to Tucson. If I went there to get sunshine, I was sorely disappointed. During my time there, more than two inches of water dumped from the sky–just like home. It was worse in Oregon, where there were snow flurries […]
Read MoreMusings and reviews of theatrical plays.
Okay, call me a sucker. I’m a sucker for Christmas stories. Not the ones we see on the Hallmark channel, but real Christmas stories–like that poor couple who travel to Bethlehem to pay their taxes and end up crashing in a stable, and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in its many iterations. Portland Playhouse has presented A Christmas Carol […]
Read MoreWhat does everybody fear most? Why, death, of course. Women may fear childbirth. There is something near-death-like about it. But death? Death happens to everybody. Which is why some may find Branden Jacobs-Jenkins‘s play Everybody a bit disquieting. Everybody, now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre, is a play about death. The play opens with the Usher (Sarah Lucht). […]
Read MoreIt’s Thanksgiving Day 2000, and everyone in a certain East Village apartment are up to the task except the hostess, Ellen (Beth Thompson). She is obsessing about the results from the recent Gore vs. Bush Presidential election, which, because of Florida’s sketchy voting system, remain undecided. Not only is Ellen obsessed, in Lisa Kron’s timely […]
Read MoreA funny thing happened at Portland Center Stage the other night. Dorothy and Toto and Little Orphan Annie showed up onstage in a show about Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol. How are such things even allowed? They are allowed because The Second City’s A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens has returned to the Armory’s Main Stage […]
Read MoreTwo small gems grace the stage of Portland Center Stage’s Ellyn Bye Studio now through December 30. One is a vintage Christmas classic by Truman Capote; the second is a new production that is to Portland and of Portland. I would walk miles to see and hear Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. Once I hear […]
Read More‘Twas the night before Christmas, 1943, and the crew at radio station WOV in Newark, New Jersey are assembled to broadcast a special treat for their war-time audience. Station manager Clifton Feddington (Shawn Rogers) has hired the well-known actor William St. Claire (Tim Blough) to join the Feddington Players as Scrooge for an on-air presentation […]
Read MoreHe that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart. –Proverbs 11:29 Since the 2016 election, theatres in the greater Portland area have stepped up to the task of asking their audiences to examine their beliefs, prejudices, and world views through the live performance […]
Read More“I have no plan,” announces the guru-like Teacher (Mary McDonald-Lewis) to a gathering of six disparate and mostly miserable souls in Bess Wohl‘s Small Mouth Sounds now running on the Alder Stage at Artists Repertory Theatre. The six are gathered at a silent meditation retreat in a rainy woodland setting. No cell phones. No outside food. […]
Read More“My sense is that American character lives not in one place or the other,” playwright Anna Deavere Smith writes in her introduction to her Pulitzer Prize-finalist play Fires in the Mirror, “but in the gaps between the places, and in our struggle to be together in our differences.” In this phenomenal play, now at Profile […]
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