OK, here's a landscape

This shot is especially for Booky Goatherd, who requested landscape pictures of southern Oregon. So far I've not provided any, partly because we're in a little town in a valley where it's difficult to get a long shot. This morning before lunch Jeremy took me in search of a vantage point for a landscape, and when we found this one, startlingly similar to the landscape Booky posted yesterday from Samobor, Croatia, I knew I had my shot for the day.

Then we went to see our last play together for this trip, a workshopped production called The Unfortunates, collaboratively written by a group of five young men who call themselves hip-hop performers. The play has some foot-tapping music and some good singing, dancing, and acting by an ensemble cast, but it fails to come together. If it has a central idea, it is that we all suffer and we're all going to die, and the best thing we can do until that happens is make music together. A sort of hip-hop/gospel/jazz/blues music. In order to make that point, we got a group of World War I prisoners of war (not sure what side they were on) being executed by robotic guards in long coats; a woman with no arms; a couple of songs about addiction, a preacher in a clerical collar, a steamy New Orleans style madam and prostitute, a few clowns, and a guy with very large papier mache hands. Oh, and a gun. It was wacky enough to work, if it ever came together, but it didn't.

So if you're thinking of visiting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival any time between now and early November, I have some advice for you: see Lear and Two Trains Running, and avoid Streetcar and The Unfortunates. There are some other plays happening which could be terrific or terrible. But you'll never see a better Lear, in my opinion.

Bob and Jeremy have gone for a long drive in the rain (the weather changed while we were seeing our last play), to visit a winery they love and know well. When they come back, Bob's going to cook baked red snapper in mustard sauce, sugar snap peas, and carrots. Maybe if it stops raining we'll stroll around town one last time before we start back--Jeremy and I headed north to Portland (for me) and Vancouver B.C. (for him); Bob back to San Francisco. It's always hard for them to part, but they'll be back together in June, when Jeremy flies down to be with Bob for five or six weeks. They've been doing the long-distance relationship for fifteen years now, so it's clear they know how.  If the USA approves gay marriage, as New Zealand recently did, Bob and Jeremy can choose to live together in this country. If that doesn't happen, when Bob retires they'll make a home together in Canada.

P.S. Happy Cinco de Mayo for all those who celebrate it!