Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Heads up

It's better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission. So with your forgiveness I couldn't resist snapping this restroom shot taken at the Hopworks Urban Brewery in the SE Portland district.

The brewpub beers are excellent and food well above what is normally described as pub grub.

Men will require no explanation for the bike saddles strategically located above the urinals.

Let's just say men adopt many different styles when doing what comes naturally and those styles are often directly influenced by the amount and strength of alcohol consumed.

So when the time comes and head heaviness is impossible to deny, how much easier on the forehead is a soft saddle than the stone wall normally provided.

Keen observers will note that, rightly so, headrests are not provided for children using the lower of the two urinals.

Doubt, A Parable - a great play

Doubt is the absence of certainty.
Living without doubt is as near impossible as living with certainty.
Certainty brings people together, but so does doubt.
Doubt is a broad church.
Doubt pervades all cultures; it is a most human instinct and drives the search for truth.
A perceived truth may be so strong nothing will induce doubt.

John Patrick Shanley explores these themes in his 2004 Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play – Doubt, A Parable.

Set in St Nicholas Catholic School, The Bronx in 1964, Sister Aloysius (Jayne Taini) is convinced that popular Father Flynn (John Behlmann) is plying an altar boy with communion wine in order to abuse him. Father Flynn – who the dialect coach furnished with a Boston accent – denies any improper conduct, accusing Sister James (Jennifer Lee Taylor) of spreading gossip and uses his sermon to point a wagging finger at her conduct.

He likens her action to someone who takes a feather pillow to the roof and slits it with a knife, scattering the feathers in the winds and four corners of the world. Gathering those feathers and stuffing them back in the pillow is like trying to redress a defamed reputation, says Flynn

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the play was the determination of Sister Aloysius to confront Father Flynn, concocting her own lies to trap him, which she never does.

She attempts to enlist the help of the boy's mother Mrs. Muller (Lisa Renee Pitts) who instead providing help makes a passionate plea for the Sister to turn a blind eye so that her son, and the only black child at the school, can graduate and have an opportunity to attend a better school.

"It's only 'til the end of term," she pleads.

Father Flynn resigns under the relentless pressure from Sister Aloysius, and is promptly promoted to lead an order and school in another city.

Did Sister Aloysius do the right thing? In the end she agonizes and doubts both her own actions and those of Father Flynn who she accused so zealously.

The play, staged by Portland Center Stage in their remodeled, refurbished and beautiful armory building, carries it weighty subject with calm assuredness – no doubt about that.

Monday, June 02, 2008

#42 - A Chinese garden

The problem with visiting a Chinese garden is that as soon as you leave you want to visit another one. OK, it's a poor joke - but a good garden.
Located in Portland's downtown Chinatown and tucked away behind grey painted stone walls, the Portland Classical Chinese Garden is less extensive, but as expensive to visit as the more distant Japanese gardens. Rocks, water and buildings feature more profusely than flowering plants, giving a harsh defined edge to most vistas.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Japanese Garden, Portland

It is difficult to capture the shear beauty of this gardens either in words or pictures. Manicured is too clinical a word, perhaps ordered is better.

Each garden, a delight in itself, leads to another, blending stone, bamboo, sculptures and plants into organic shades and shapes.

Even in drizzly overcast weather, a fact of life in Portland as it is in England where it creates a similar green lushness of moss and foliage, the garden is serene and welcoming.