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Legendary folksinger and storyteller Larry Penn is in town. He performed at Reality Kitchen Tuesday night (seen here with Jim Evangelista) and will be performing again at 7:30 this evening, July 12, at Reality Kitchen on Van Buren, across from Ninkasi. Continue reading
Nothing in this life is certain but death, taxes and the Oregon Country Fair. Here in Eugene, the Fair is part of our very atmosphere; it is the air we breathe. You can feel it coming weeks before it opens, wafting in the breeze like some hippie hurricane about to unleash its (not quite free) love on our stomping grounds. You can see it on the streets, with the increase of young seekers sporting ragged backpacks and dreadlocks and bare feet padding on broiling pavement. Continue reading
Sorry folks, there’s actually no definitive evidence suggesting that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, to whom the reversed title of this story can be credited, ever made it to the Fair, but it didn’t take more than three years — after the Fair’s beginnings in 1969 — for our annual psychedelic parade in Veneta to start taking on other famous faces. Continue reading
Some people go to the Oregon Country Fair to lose their inhibitions, their worries, their minds or all of the above; more often than not, though, they just end up losing their cell phones. “Smart phones have memories,” a Samsung LG phone recently lost at the Country Fair tells me. “No pun intended,” the phone jokes, flicking an ash from his cigarette into the street where we are talking. Continue reading
The Oregon Country Fair is debuting a new addition: This year revelers can stroll along on the maiden voyage of a new loop that veers off through an as-yet-virginal section of the forested fairgrounds. “It’s taken a huge amount of work to put in the new loop,” OCF General Manager Charlie Ruff says. “We’ve been looking at areas to develop new paths for many years.” Continue reading
Real Oregon Country Fair-goers remember “Field Trips” with the Dead: the magical times when Kesey and his Merry Pranksters pranced around the grounds, ensuring every last face was stolen off Owsley’s freshest batch, coaxing you to slip into the oblivion of one of Jerry’s jams. Sounds molten just thinking about it. Fruition Continue reading
Woody Allen is a great American filmmaker, though I’m not sure if I should place that somewhat queasy statement in quotation marks or simply note that, as an assertion, it drags the luggage of several qualifiers. Continue reading
An email alert from Oregon Wild tonight warns that 1.5 million acres of public lands logging might get pushed through the Farm Bill by Rep. Kurt Scrader tonight. The email is below: Continue reading
This just in from the Oregon Marijuana Policy Initiative folks. Two pot-related initiatives were gathering signatures for the November ballot, but the OMPI effort failed. The Oregon Marijuana Policy Initiative (OMPI) today filed suit in Oregon Circuit Court against Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown in response to her office’s disqualification of tens of thousands of valid signatures on petitions for Initiative Petition 24. IP-24 is a constitutional amendment to end marijuana prohibition for adults. Continue reading
How hot has it been? According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just confirmed what you already suspected: Americans are enduring the hottest weather in our recorded history. The following was sent out his week by the EDF: Continue reading