At the Waterline Scavenger Hunt – This Saturday: 5/13/2017

As more teams are signing up, I’d just like to remind people that a few of Saturday’s challenges will be based on events that take place in the book. To get ahead of the competition, you might consider picking up a copy of #AttheWaterline at Powell’s Books, Inc. – http://www.powells.com/book/at-the-waterline-9781932010923/62-0

List of Businesses sponsoring the At the Waterline Scavenger Hunt and Book Launch Party.

 

Since 1966, the PSU Outdoor Program has been helping PSU students and community members access and enjoy the outdoors. #AttheWaterline is focused around the natural spaces that connect us to this beautiful place we call the Pacific Northwest, and the Outdoor Program does much to provide people with the opportunity to explore nature and make connections with other outdoor lovers. The PSU Outdoor Program is awarding a $25 gift certificate to a winning team for equipment rental. If you’ve been looking to rent a kayak or raft, this might be your chance!

Willamette Sailing Club is located on the banks of the Willamette River, and is the only small boat sailing club in Portland. Dedicated to dinghy, sailing, and racing, the club hosts numerous activities throughout the year, and serves as a community for the water loving members of Portland. The Willamette Sailing Club’s tight-knit community reminds us a bit of the Rock Creek marina where the quirky characters of #AttheWaterline live. Willamette Sailing Club has generously donated quite a bit of swag: from pint glasses to hats!

 

#AttheWaterline character Emma takes in the beauty of the nature around her by kayaking down the Columbia River. An engaging, relaxing sport, kayaking lets you explore your surroundings from the perspective of the water. No one knows this better than the Portland Kayak Company, located just steps from the Willamette River. Offering kayak rentals, demos, guided kayak tours, classes, and a wide range of boats for sale, they make it easy to explore the river in a peaceful, unobtrusive way. Portland Kayak Company has generously donated a 2 hour kayak rental, so winners of our scavenger hunt could channel their inner Emma and explore the beautiful Portland waterline by kayak!

 

In #AttheWaterline, coffee is one of those magical things that brings people from all different backgrounds and walks of life together. This is a philosophy that Nossa Familia Coffee understands as well. A Portland, OR based roaster, Nossa Familia’s passion is for roasting outstanding coffee sourced through deeply-rooted relationships. Nossa Familia Coffee has donated not one, not two, but six bags of their famous Full Cycle coffee to our final prizes!

 

A handcrafted, small-batch artisan popcorn stop owned and operated by local Portlanders, you won’t find a more unique gift than the fresh popped popcorn at Poplandia Popcorn. Using only fresh, premium, locally sourced ingredients, Poplandia creates popcorn that not only tastes, great, but that you can feel good about too. Poplandia offers a variety of sizes of cafe bags, tins, and party bowls so you can share this unique Portland treat with your friends and family, much like Marge from #AttheWaterline shares her Loaves of Abundance. Poplandia has generously donated a gallon bucket of their scrumptious popcorn to the event!

Oregon’s original craft brewery, BridgePort Brewing Company is a destination for classic English Ales and cutting edge hand-crafted microbrews, paired with elevated pub food. Visit the source brews, grub and brewery tours in a historical industrial setting. They’ve donated one of their beautiful glass growlers, along with a gift certificate to get it filled with your favorite BridgePort brew!

 

Bull Run Distillery produces some of the best single malt whiskey in Oregon. Distilled right here in NW Portland, their craft whiskeys, rums, and vodkas can be sampled right in their tasting room, which serves as the perfect place for friends and community members to meet and catch up, much like the characters in #AttheWaterline do at the end of a long day. Bull Run has donated not only two of their branded shot glasses, but also a full bottle of their finest straight bourbon whiskey, to be awarded to winning team members of age!

The Daily In the Pearl is a bustling breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot in downtown Portland, serving up comfortable, unpretentious, but undeniably delicious dishes. Many of their ingredients are locally sourced, and the cafe itself is a meeting spot where locals can sit and chat over a steaming cup of Stumptown coffee, much like the residents of the Rock Creek Marina. The Daily Cafe has generously donated a brunch for two!

 

Pacific Pie Company specializes in handmade sweet and savory pies. They make everything from scratch, using only the finest ingredients. Like Marge’s Loaves of Abundance, the pies of the Pacific Pie Company bring downtown residents together to break bread and enjoy each others’ company. They’ve generously donated a gift certificate to be spent on one of their scrumptious pies or sweets!

The Meadow is a beautiful Portland shop for craft made salts, gourmet chocolates, and handmade cocktail bitters, but it’s also a full service florist offering fresh cut flowers and bouquets daily. A uniquely Portland stop, the The Meadow offers the finest quality goods from all over the world. Their focus on and love for food, culture, and travel reminds us of adventurous Marge, whose Loaves of Abundance starter comes directly from Venice, Italy. The Meadow has donated a very nice starter set of their signature finishing salts from around the world!

Crafty Wonderland is a local retail store that features handmade goods and art from over 200 Portland area artists. Their dedication to local art also extends to the two large craft markets they organize each year, the next of which is happening May 20th at the Oregon Convention Center. Crafty Wonderland’s dedication to local artists reminds us of whimsical Marge, who moves from one art medium to the next, searching for her passion. They’ve generously donated a set of their uniquely Portland, handcrafted enamel pins!

Set in a quaint Victorian house on vibrant 23rd Ave, Lela’s Bistro offers authentic Vietnamese comfort food in a familiar, homelike setting. Lela’s is truly a local’s favorite. It’s a place to go where you know you’ll be treated like family, which is why they’re such a great sponsor for #AttheWaterline, where the Rock Creek marina welcomes any and all residents home. Lela’s has also donated a gift certificate, as well as a limited edition t-shirt designed by their current artist in residence.

 

Ancestry Brewing is dedicated to building a lineage of family crafted ales, one brew at at time. Family owned and operated, this brewery in Tualatin is an integral part of the community. It’s a place where families and friends can meet for some good food, and even better brews. Their community feel reminds us of the brews and chatter that bring even the most different characters, like Chad and Dory, together. Ancestry Brewing has generously donated a branded hat, a full-size growler, and a gift certificate to get that growler filled with your favorite Ancestry brew.

 

Pina

It is impossible to do with words what Wim Wenders is able to do in his recent non-fiction film, Pina.  As Mr. Wenders expressed before an audience last week in Portland, Oregon at Cinema 21, he found the film impossible to make until just recently.  He struggled to envision a way to represent the elegant, subtle expression of Pina Bausch’s choreograph on film.  For 20 years the desire to capture the experience of a live production captivated him.  And then he saw a little film 4 or 5 years ago called “U2 3D.”  With the advent of 3D technologies in recent years he discovered the missing element that had been eluding him: space. The difficulty of capturing depth of field for a movie audience (rather than merely its suggestion) was the barrier that he felt he could finally overcome with the arrival of more advanced 3D technologies.

And the results are stunning. With Avatar, James Cameron, brought 3D movies into their wide-eyed adolescence.  With Pina, Wim Wenders has finally helped the medium of 3D film to grow into its adulthood.

Wim Wenders uses 3D to deepen and broaden the perspective of his subject.  He uses space in such astounding ways for humor, for surprise, for the pure joy of it.  He chooses settings for short dance pieces to showcase individual dancers from Pina Bausch’s studio.  Each piece is like a poem.  And they take you out of the theater and into the wide world.  Outdoor settings in traffic, on rail cars, an underground tunnel, postmodern architectural landscapes.

What this movie does so well is that it creates something other than just a live viewing of a ballet or a live dance performence.  Rather than a stationary viewing from one vantage point in a ballet theater, the camera’s eye moves with the dancers and amongst them at well-chosen positions on the stage.  It envelopes you in purposeful ways in the production itself so that it is almost as if the audience in the movie theater joins in with the performers in ways that it would not be able to in a 2D movie-theater experience and in ways that it can’t in front of a live performance.

Pina is a masterful work.  A beautiful blending of performance art, film, tribute, and audience participation.  It is one of the most vulnerable, unpretentious films I have ever seen.  The dancers play fearlessness fearlessly and they also play fearfulness fearlessly. Pina’s choreography includes dancers moving through several inches of water, several inches of soil, dirt and water flying through the air.  There is no hiding, no safety for these performers.  The movie does more than tantalize.  It envelopes the audience so that the vulnerabilities and confusion and ferocity of the dancers sinks into your skin, or at least it beckons to you to participate. A voyeristic spectacle it is not. In fact, it juggles the subject of voyerism like a cat playing with a ball of yarn.

Perhaps this says more about me than about the movie, but I found myself so caught up in the  immediate forms of physical expressions: emotions and desires, sorrows and joys, longings and anger, anxiety and confidence and tenderness that I found my own body twitching involuntarily along with the motion in the space just in front of my 3D glasses.

You can hear the dancers’ movements.  You can hear them breathing. You can see their doubts and fears and confidences written in their physical expressions.  Perhaps it is impossible to do with words what this movie does with sights and sounds and movements through 3-dimensional space. But this movie does with 3D technology what a live performance and a 2-dimensional film cannot do by themselves.

Trailer:

Guardian Interview:

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Ursula K. Le Guin Reading at Powell’s – 7-28-08

I recorded this reading last night at Powell’s in downtown Portland. Ursula K. Le Guin was among a handful of others reading in honor of the 32nd birthday of Calyx, a local literary journal of writing and art by women. My apologies for the poor quality of the video. She looked great.

Part 1

Part 2

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