Culture: Page 204

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Local tastes and experiences as gifts

Gift Guide
Red Wagon Creamery. Photo by Amanda L. Smith.

With the holidays just around the corner, finding the right gifts for family and friends can be a daunting task. But what if I told you this could be accomplished from home, in your pajamas, all while benefitting the local economy?  Shopping for experiences — through subscriptions and memberships — can be fun, and it helps support some of our community’s most important cultural and culinary institutions. Continue reading →

Festive Felt

Learn needle-felting skills with Willamalane

Gift Guide
Leslie Seese’s needle felting class is Dec. 5 at Springfield’s Dorris Ranch

Unless explicitly discussed beforehand, EW doesn’t recommend giving pets as gifts. Too often, holiday puppies and kittens grow up to become shelter dogs and cats.  We do, however, endorse checking out the cute critters made by needle-felt artist Leslie Seese or, better yet, you can learn to make them yourself at her class in December. Needle felting is a craft that involves poking wool with very sharp needles to tangle the wool fibers so that they take on a desired shape — a heart, snowflake or reindeer, for example. Continue reading →

A Mental Escape

Soccer behind bars provides relief from despair

Sports

Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that every person has the right to leisure. For many people, leisure consists of playing soccer, especially with goals, referees, out-of-bounds lines and other standard conditions — including opponents. These things are not so easy to get at the Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP), I discovered when I came to play there as an outsider in a prison soccer match. Continue reading →