Much the same angle from the backyard, just near sunset last month as Summer ebbed.
A tree turning fall colors on our street at mid-October
The base of a redwood tree, planted in Lithia Park in 1922.
The view from the bottom of the twin redwoods. Majestic towers indeed!
" Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't!"
The Lithia Bandshell, where the Ashland City Band performs on Summer nights, and July 4th festivities. It also is where students from the local university, Southern Oregon, hold their graduations.
The Park again, this time near the Japanese Gardens.
Here's one not like the others: A fuzzy shot of me at the City Lights Bookstore, on Broadway in San Francisco, circa 1992.
A rather large mushroom (or toadstool), the most impressive fungus in the neighborhood.
The Elizabethan Stage at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Last year the eleven plays shown over eight months at the three festival stages averaged an 89% attendance rate. I saw "Taming of the Shrew here and there are also plays this year by Tennessee Williams and a variety of modern writers. This set was for "Cymbeline" I believe.
The plaza at the Elizabethan Theatre. Just to the right is the indoor "Bowmer Theatre", named for the festival founder, Angus Bowmer. The "Green Show" is an open-air presentation of various cultural music and dance productions on a rotating basis, available for free during the summer months.
The walkway up to the Bowmer Theater. The official name of the theater area was "Chautauqua Park". In the late 19th/Early 20th Century this area was set up for presentation of the annual Chautauqua adult lecture and musical entertainment circuit. The movement, which featured social, scientific and political leaders and experts expounding on topic of the day, and band and opera music. provided cultural diversions for people outside the major cities in the America Middle and Far West. The term was coined from where the movement started in the 1880s in Chautauqua, New York state. Here's some more information, courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua
One of the older Victorian houses just south of downtown.
I love these pictures Doug ! I've never been to that part of the country, but it looks like a beautiful place. Love your' comment " whatever you're thinking of doing, don't" LOL
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your world with us.
Have a great day.:-)
My pleasure Lia! The one thing that Lithia Park doesn't need is more rules. :-).
DeleteThanks for your interest and best wishes to you. :-)
Thanks for posting these snapshots from your neck of the woods Doug. I have stood on the corner of Jack Kerouac Street at more or less the very spot where you are, outside City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, but some years hence. Some great pictures here, I love the park, but as you know I am a park person myself even if my little urban green space does not rival Lithia Park in any shape or form. Interesting that you should draw attention to the prohibitive signs, it is something I have noticed in the US myself. A lot of finger wagging it seems, more so than in Europe anyway. How much people actually obey them is I suppose another question altogethe Doug..
ReplyDeleteThe autumnal Japanese Gardens are delightful, the colours look sort of floating and ephemeral as one might expect from a Zen garden I suppose.
One of Ashland's crowning glories must be that wonderful looking Elizabethan theatre, it is a great structure and obviously the setting for some excellent drama.
The Green Show sounds great as well, 'free' is always an auspicious sign in my book Doug. Thanks for link to Chautauqua, I hadn't come across it before, interesting that mass communication is what killed it off. The origins of the virtual state we all now think we belong to, but which actually has been cryogenically frozen while business does what business has to do.
A great montage of the fauna and flora of Ashland (pop circa 20,000) and the gem of culture the town is like a far western Stratford-upon-Avon (pop circa 25,000). I suppose if China is in what we Anglophones here call the "far east".... then Oregon must be the "far west" from where I am sitting at least, or so it seems to me Doug.
Interesting to see snapshots of your world Doug thanks again for sharing them!
Thank you, AA. I realized the picture of myself in front of City Lights would more likely have belonged in my previous blog but I didn't remember until this time out to include it. I'm glad you included City Lights and this section of San Francisco (the Broadway/North Beach area) in your travels.
DeleteI understand from my friends who have lived in New York City and Long Island and other places that the prohibition signs are even more prevalent in that part of the country. I also remember your remarks on this situation in your own blog. I wonder such "do not!" signs are less needed in places like England due to a greater respect for custom and a longer historical association with the idea of a "commons".
I do know that I am lucky to live near such a park and the near-by theaters. It's odd to think that Ashland, Oregon, and Stratford-Upon-Avon are about the same size. Owing to the recession the city of Ashland has grown very little in the last five years (a mixed blessing, as funds to schools and the local university have become more strained) but the Shakespeare Festival continues to draw at about 85-95 percent of capacity each season. Even a obscure play like "Cymbeline" does quite well as well as the other offerings from contemporary playwrights like Tennessee Williams and August Wilson as well as brand-new plays which are beginning to have their debuts here before branching out to major cities.
I had not heard very much at all about Chautauqua at all until I moved here, AA. It must have been a time where people in small towns waited with ken anticipation for such orators and singers and lecturers from the East and Europe to pass through town. Ironically, the rise of mass communication gave the USA more entertainment options but less immediacy with the artists and thinkers themselves. Something no doubt has been lost in that bargain.
Thanks for your comments, AA. They are always welcomed.
P.S. Nothing like the word "free" indeed to draw my attention to a good show! :-)
ReplyDeleteNice pictures Doug. I like the look of the Elizabethan stage, bet performing Shakespeare on that stage would be quite an experience.
ReplyDelete