The Eastside View

Ashland, Oregon— W E FINISHED THIS SEASON of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last night with a satisfying production of Twelfth Night . It ...

Ashland, Oregon— S O MUCH JUSTIFICATION for producing The Merchant of Venice was trotted out by the direction here at Oregon Shakespeare F...

Ashland, Oregon— T HE REPERTORY HERE leans heavily to Shakespeare: after all, this is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Every year we see at...

Ashland, Oregon— W E'RE BACK AT the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for six more plays, having seen the other five of the season last March...

W E DON'T TAKE that many magazines here; perhaps the only one I read more or less consistently is The Nation . Lindsey's father sub...

I ' VE BEEN READING three books simultaneously: James Joyce's Ulysses , Victor Navasky's A Matter of Opinion , and Michael Milan...

B ECAUSE THE BASSOON was my instrument through high school, and my best friend Merton played oboe, a fascination for the double-reed instru...

D ON'T TALK TO ME about superstitions; I find them too useful to abandon them to the embrace of science. No sooner did I write about Ha...

I T'S NATURAL AND NECESSARY that we die in appropriate circumstances, therefore no cause for lamentation. When an exceptionally good ma...

  P ROBABLY BECAUSE MY FIRST hands-on experience with music was in my high school band, where I concentrated on bassoon but learned most o...

rue des Petits Ecuries, Paris, June 10, 2010— S O MUCH WRITTEN (so much ephemera) so quickly; then so long a hiatus. From Enna we descended...

Piazza Vanvitelli, Caserta, May 29, 2010— I N E NNA A FEW days ago I had an interesting conversation with the moody young man at the "...

  via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 24 — L OOKING OVER THE PHOTOS we took last night in the Greek Theater of the performance of Euripides's Hip...

via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 24 — C URTIS REMINDS ME of a few driving-in-Europe stories. My favorite was told by an acquaintance who'd got...

  via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 23 W E LEFT R AGUSA with a little bit of regret. At least I did. The hotel had been comfortable, the technology...

S O MANY THINGS going through my mind, it was difficult to sleep last night. Shortly before turning in I received a message from an acquain...

Ragusa, Friday, May 21— T ODAY REPRESENTS THE center day of our Sicilian journey: we arrived in Palermo the 11th; we propose to leave the i...

Sciacca, Wednesday, May 19— I MAGINE AN EQUILATERAL triangle. Put yourself at one corner; Nature at another; Society at the third. Well, I...

Tuesday, May 18— S ORRY TO LEAVE Tràpani, but eager to get on to the next sights, we drove out of town south today toward Marsala — but di...