The Pennells after opening presents on Christmas morning

The sorcerer tree is looking frightening again

Peno does not care for snow.

More snow pictures

Snowed In

I got the bus to Portland yesterday morning, made it 2 hours late but just in time before all the busses and trains got canceled due to the snow. Alison met me at the station and we made our way on the bus to her place, where we made a day spa!

I've never seen it so snowy here, its gorgeous. Not a bad place to be snowed in.

These were taken at the park across from Alison's house, so pretty!

I'm famous!

I took part in Day Without a Gay and volunteered at a Eugene gathering for International Human Rights Day with Basic Rights Oregon. Becky Flynn, the leader of the local chapter, was interviewed by KVAL, the local CBS station, and she told them about Call in Gay day and that I was participating, so they asked to interview me too! Of course I said yes- anything to further my career as a professional lesbian. Alas, since I thought I was going to be helping move tables and chairs around I was not dressed to impress but thats ok. You can read the transcript and watch the video here, though they misquoted me a bit, I didn't say that people were being fired for the protest, but said that in some states you can still be fired for being gay. Anyway, I'm excited! I got to be on TV for being gay and participating in this cool cause, and they said my name a lot and even pronounced it correctly. So now anyone looking to hire a professional homo, give me a call.

Tegan visits Eugene

Tegan came to visit for a few days, and it was action packed! We went to the white trash gateway mall, to the Team Folklore Christmas Extravaganza, watched Pride & Prejudice, went to Florence, took our own fantasy photography shots, went to my gamelan practice where she got to hit a few kenongs, bingo at Sam Bonds (that's right Tom), and had dessert at Sweet Life. Fun times! We don't normally get to see each other so often, but I'll be in Seattle right after Christmas so the adventures can continue.


I wore the same dress from last year, just with more accessories. Later this evening we clogged at a bar- we were the life of the party for sure.


Christmas party in the folklore lounge


The lovely coast at Florence- sand beaches are unusual in Oregon so the dunes are a novelty here




Can you see the tree-like pattern in the sand?


It's pretty where the Siuslaw River feeds into the ocean


Just north of Florence there's a tiny site with these cool carnivorous plants


I was so excited to win at bingo! Now I'm the proud owner of a rotato!

Thanksgiving- a time for togetherness

Tegan really took the costume idea to a new level this year. She fashioned my head piece with ease! Luckily I'd packed a turtleneck with fall colors, and found an old cape of my moms that worked perfectly.

Savage Indian Corn attacks Sweet Pumpkin!

Momma perfected the Pilgrim costume this year

Daddo as the Manly Turkey Hunter

I am here to recruit you

Despite the fact that it was hard to hear all the speakers, the Prop 8 Protest was fun, and very inspiring. Sam Adams, Portland's out and proud mayor elect spoke, as did the director of the Q Center (whose name I forget, but she was a great speaker) and many others, all full of hope and passion. I'm excited that I actually am employed at the moment (yay for graduate teaching fellows!) so can give to the cause. We can gain equal rights! No second-class citizenship!

Its on bitches. Prepare to get served.

Protest Proposition 8 Tomorrow, Saturday Nov. 15

Tomorrow there will be nationwide simultaneous protests in several cities to protest the passing of Proposition 8 in California, and other state laws that banned gay marriage. Join thousands demanding marriage equality. To find where to participate in your city, go to www.jointheimpact.com

Everyone is smitten

My crush on the Colbert Report. Sigh. She was also on the cover of The Advocate.

We finally won!

I never thought a minority would be elected president in my lifetime, but it has happened! Words can't describe... I know I've expressed my crankyness towards Obama in previous posts, but I couldn't be happier to have him as my president.

Team Folklore Rocks the House, again!

Me, Beth, and Marion at the last party of the night, random warehouse, random industrial district, Eugene

Marion as a marion berry

Robby and Mariel, as Donatello and a figure skater- Mariel was very dedicated and wore the ice skates all night

Rock! You should see our secret handshake

Amy as Little Red Riding Hood

Al as the dead Prefontaine, a local icon

Me as Hanoman, the cool white monkey god from the Ramayana. Awesome!

Rachel Maddow for president?

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Sbdifm&altl=Nbeepx

Check out the link to find out!

Poehler's Palin rap

Check out this hilarious Palin rap by Amy Poehler- awesome!

And it has a preview for W at the end, I must go see this movie.

Love Letter to Rachel Maddow

Rachel, I love you. I love the way you can argue without raising your voice or sounding upset. How do you keep your cool when conservatives are saying ridiculous things about you? Talk political to me

The funniest thing I've heard in awhile

Sarah Palin- "I like this debate, I like answering these difficult questions"

Really Sarah? Did you answer any of the questions? I'm pretty sure you didn't, except with a quick cursory yeah me too or I disagree before you started rambling about something on a totally different topic. You were talking about McCain's energy policy 2 or 3 questions before that was the topic you were asked about. Give me a break.

The City Dance- Meh, it could have been better

I was excited to go to this TBA event- water and dance, two of my favorite things, together at last. But what I saw was disappointing. The music I actually liked a lot- no complaints there, it was great. I went to 3 of the 4 pieces, the first one I went to again on the second run through so I could see if I liked it more from a different angle. I did, until the hula hoops came out. Anyway, here is my completely non-professional opinion, with some very unprofessional photos. I wish I had a good camera, but they intimidate me.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Keller Fountain

Performance 1

This blue thing (water- get it!) shades musicians nicely, but blocks the view of everyone on the right side of the fountain, so we missed a lot of what was going on in the front. I heard several people complain about how poorly planned that was. Taken during the second run of the performance.

It did look cool to see them all on the fountain, but the dancing didn't do it for me. As you notice, they're wearing blue, like water! The people not in the water wore white!

As a friend of mine said, there's dancing, and there's dancing around. Today's pieces looked more like dancing around to me, with a little splashing around for good measure.

Also, apparently when I was 5 (or 26, cause I still do this) and kinda danced around in the pool with a few ballet movements, I was being innovative. Who knew I was such a natural choreographer ahead of my time? That's pretty much what this piece looked like. They used the architecture of the fountain well- dancing on all parts of it, using all the levels, but they didn't use the water as a thing. Maybe that wasn't the point, but I would have liked to see them use the water a little more than just jumping in it and splashing around. For most of it, the water could have been there or not, the only difference was the dancers were wet. Or cannonballed into the little pools. It was kind of like that waterworld skit at Universal Studios- climbing up ladders, splashing the crowd, falling in the pool with their heads dangerously close to the edge. But at Universal Studios you expect it to be a little hokey. As I said before, I was a little more convinced on my second viewing when I had a better view (despite the annoying blue tent thing) until they started hula hooping. I was thinking OK its a wave motion, like the water, but is it necessary? In the program it states that is a reference to Anna Halprin, the choreographer who was part of the inspiration for the show, along with her husband who designed the fountains. But couldn't they have come up with a better way to reference her that wouldn't make people roll their eyes? And the bathing references? It just looked like the dancers were hot and were taking advantage of the water to cool off. So I thought it was OK, but not great.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Pettygrove Park

Mike Barber- his face is very expressive, which I love. The dance itself- not so much.

Looks like a member of a deranged color guard got loose and is going after the woman in the wheelchair!

This is apparently part of the audience "participation"

The second piece- I hated it. It is rare that I don't like a dance performance, I can usually find one part I like. Not this time- other than the music, the lead violinist sounded excellent. In this space the audience was cued to move around which in the program is explained as "participating." I enjoy performance or visual art pieces that incorporate participation, but being herded around by volunteers or having a piece of blue fabric waved in my face does not seem participatory to me, just irritating. Blue waving fabric- I think its that water reference again! Did I mention these pieces were done around fountains? Just in case we forgot.

Anyway, at first the audience sat in the center of four hills, in a recessed concrete space. Since everyone was sitting you could see OK, but not everything. And it didn't seem like they were using the space so much as the hills just happened to be there. They could have done some cool partnering/weight sharing using the uneven surfaces, but alas, they did not. At one point Mike Barber was standing right in front of me, and instead of being excited that I might get to do something, I was annoyed that the blue flag thing was close to my face. The dancers looked like some kind of deranged color guard.

Then we were herded onto 2 of the little hills. Some of the dancers kept walking through the crowds waving the flags of irritation. Then there was some running around and yelling "wait" and "walk the dog" while they shook their tail feathers. Maybe if I was 5 I would find this amusing. I read in the program that they were playing musical telephone with quotes from the Halprins' work with another musician, Pauline Oliveros. Perhaps I am just simply too pedestrian to understand such an obscure musical reference. I don't know, either way it didn't do anything for me. The program also states that the choreographer Cydney Wilkes wants to "creat[e] opportunities for the performers" instead of "imposing [her] aesthetics." Hmm, maybe if there was more imposing it would have been more interesting. No one in the small group I was with liked this piece, and since we are all dance lovers, I wonder if other dance lovers in the crowd had similar negative feelings.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Lovejoy Fountain

The dancers boogeying down to the performance space

This location was the easiest to see, and I liked how they were using the water more

What did the poor piano do to them?

I liked this piece, until the ending when it went downhill for me. Part of it might have been that this location had the best view, but I also liked the movements better. They were using the water and the architecture of the space. I would never be able to do this piece, I'm way too clumsy. They were climbing up the stairs where the water runs down, walking monkey-like on the edge, and I feared for their safety. At one point a single dancer stood under the waterfall on the right, her arms stiff at her sides, twisting from left to right, it matched perfectly with what was happening musically. They used the water to make hand prints on the wall, poured it out of cups, and squeezed it out of sponges on each others' heads. And it looked like choreography, less like they were just hanging out in the fountain which is what a large part of the water-portions in the first piece looked like to me.

The last musical piece (the only music part I disliked) was strange. According to the program it is inspired by Anna Halprin's first musical directors who got rid of "any traditional sense of musical form, [and] replaced [it] with the 'ancestors of the wild sounds.'" In this rendition, the ancestors of wild sound were apparently garbage cans and chains dragged along the ground, and then various things beating on the piano and scraping across the strings. No thank you. It was like a wannabe stomp, but without any recognizable rhythm or focus. To make it more awkward, at some point people in TBA volunteer shirts who were in the audience space started to dance- the kind of dancing that seems neither here nor there, like are they supposed to look awkward or is this part of the "minimalist" thing? I'm not sure, but my friend and I didn't like it and didn't want to watch. Nor were we inspired to see the last solo piece, so we had lunch instead.

In conclusion- eh, I've seen better.

More Bali Photos

Here's some more photos from my trip, taken by some of the other students

Cremation ceremony photos

More cremation ceremony photos