Culture: Page 244

Homegrown Gowns

Local designer Renne Phillips makes couture wedding dresses accessible

Culture

Renne Phillips sits perched on a stool in the Redoux Parlour’s workspace surrounded by scissors, paper patterns and sketches. Behind her, a dress form is mocked up with lace — the beginning of a gown she’ll complete for a summer wedding. She pulls out the garment’s sketch; sweeping lines resembling rose petals flow together creating a voluminous skirt, which is sprinkled with dots representing intricate beadwork. Continue reading →

For Every Couple, A Story

High-end production meets traditional storytelling at Moetic Wedding Films

Culture

“Everywhere we travel we tell people there’s no better place to get married than Oregon,” says Ryan Welch, co-founder of Moetic Wedding Films, a high-end wedding film production company with offices in Eugene and McMinnville, Ore. “The problem is,” Welch continues, to take advantage of Oregon’s natural beauty “you’ve only got three months. We’re not going to film a wedding here in the Northwest until June.” Continue reading →

A Hoot of a Ceremony

Local author Melissa Hart remembers her wedding at Cascades Raptor Center

Culture
Author Melissa Hart and husband Jonathan release a red-tailed hawk at their nuptials.

“Jonathan? Melissa? Meet us on the lawn and close your eyes.” Grinning staff members at the Cascades Raptor Center led us past our lopsided wedding cake to the grass outside the visitors’ center. “We have a gift for you … don’t peek.” For years, we’d volunteered to clean mews, feed orphaned owls and medicate injured hawks at the nature center and wildlife hospital in Eugene. After Jonathan proposed, we asked to marry at the center.  Continue reading →

It’s About Time – January 2014

About Time

Last month the east Delta Ponds froze and then seven inches of snow fell, making for a rare and beautiful scene. When the snow melted on a single warm day, the ponds revealed dozens of patches of tapering, branching, clear lines radiating outwards from one point. These patterns were evenly spread across the ponds, three to 10 feet in diameter, over inch-thick ice. The mechanism behind the formation of these patterns is a topic of debate among my geophysical friends. Continue reading →

A Common Problem

Examining new standards for Oregon students

Culture

When Macey France’s second-grade son brought home his math homework, France couldn’t believe that he was already working with fractions. “The sad thing is, my eight-year-old doesn’t know what a fraction is yet,” she says, “and he’s reading it out loud, saying, ‘one and then a line and then a four,’ and I realized, oh my goodness, they’re asking for a quarter of something.” Continue reading →

Deep-Freeze Survival

Too early to tell what died in the big chill

Gardening

It could have been worse. December’s sudden deep freeze did quite a bit of damage to gardens in our area, and probably more out of town than in. But the relatively short duration of sub-zero temperatures, combined with an insulating blanket of snow, meant that the soil didn’t freeze deeply, which limited the damage. Many shrubs blackened by frost will send up a flush of new stems from the roots or from their protected lower branches. Veggies that were small enough to hide beneath the snow already show signs of new growth.  Continue reading →