"We're going to sing it again, and again..."
This is 2023 in the backup camera; some of my favorite posts and best moments from the past year. Thank you for reading and subscribing, and I wish you a very happy New Year.
Best Entertainment
That’s the signboard outside the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City where we visited this fall, and the cover of my favorite Christmas present this year: A double CD that’s been soaring from my car and basement speakers nonstop. It’s on right now, as a matter of fact.
Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be your first pick as a Broadway musical kind of guy. But, as I’ve told a few people, a pair of musicals now top my list of the best entertainment I’ve ever seen. Sorry, Blazers, Ducks, Beavers and various movies, TV shows and rock concerts.
First it was “Hamilton,” which we saw in New York for the first time in 2022 and went to see again this year. It is flat out stirring, hopeful and patriotic — and the founding fathers could rap, man.
My wife disagrees, but I think “Hadestown” tops “Hamilton.” I sat on the edge of my seat with my jaw dropped the whole time. Such beautiful storytelling, great music and inventive stagecraft.
Very simplified: the show is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The latter descends to the underworld, where Hades rules, and Orpheus goes to bring her home. Influenced by his redeemed wife, Persephone, Hades relents and lets the young lovers go — with a condition that you know is going to doom them.
Because doubt comes in.
As a Vox reviewer put it, the climax of the show is a “moment that made everyone gasp in unison.”
I gasped, too, even though we knew their downfall was coming.
If you ever get the chance, go see “Hadestown.”
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Death of an old cat
Rosie’s gravestone arrived, and I’m making a frame for it. When it’s done and painted, I’ll put it on her grave, which is next to Max’s grave along the east side of the house. Max was our other old cat, Rosie’s lifelong friend, and she nearly died of grief when he passed in 2021.
I wrote about digging Rosie's grave in November, and it turned out to be my most-read column of 2023. Proof once again that if you want to be a popular writer, you can’t go wrong writing about dogs and cats.
As I said in the column, however, of course there are far more tragic things going on in the world than the loss of a bony old cat, beginning with Israel and Gaza and including Ukraine and Russia. And we have family members dealing with serious cancer. But Rosie’s passing was another layer of grief up close. She was a wonderful old lady, our purring assassin.
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Best Moment in Sports
Trish Johnson had a two-shot lead coming to the 17th tee but then had an excruciating wait as the pair ahead floundered and took forever. She gazed at the Willamette River, fiddled with her driver and struggled to maintain her focus as the gallery tried to breathe for her. She eventually striped her drive but gambled unnecessarily on her next shot and bogeyed the hole, cutting the lead to one. She made a routine par at the 18th, however, and won the national championship for women over 50.
We attended the last day of the U.S Senior Women’s Open Championship, which was held at southeast Portland’s Waverley Country Club in August. We followed the eventual winner, the marvelous Trish Johnson of England, over her last five holes. Her victory was a stirring display of grit, focus and determination — tempered by humor and perspective. I was happy for her, and even happier that my daughter got to see it, too. I wrote about it in a post titled Golf Lessons.
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The Urban-Rural Divide, Continued:
Here are city and country extremes: A couple getting their wedding photos taken on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, and a group of young people warming up their horses at the Wheeler County Fair in Eastern Oregon.
At the suggestion of The Other Oregon magazine editor Joe Beach, I took a swing at solving Oregon's urban-rural divide. It was my second most-read post of the year, but I don’t think that’s because I actually closed the gap between Portland, Salem, Eugene and the rest of the state. Rather, I’m pleased to think it indicates people care about the topic.
It’s heartening to me, knowing people care about the differences between us: Political, social, economic, racial. I hope we make some progress on easing that divide. It’s a issue I’ll most likely revisit in the coming year.
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“Children need their Daddy,” my Mom told me
That’s my mom’s father, Charles Miller. The Army thought his experience handling work horses on the farm in rural Oregon would be handy in France and Belgium during World War I at the tail end of 1918. He came back shattered, and died in 1937 when she was 11.
I think this was my favorite column of the year. I’ve made a couple attempts to tell my mom’s story, and this was a piece of it. Her childhood was streaked with poverty, violence and sorrow, yet she emerged to live a life of love, care and service, an only child who became mother to seven. Before she died, she wrote her memoirs in pen on stationery paper, and gave it to me. I titled the column, "She wanted us to know about it."
I wrote about Charles Miller’s military service in a 2022 post titled "The obituary said he was a sheepman." That one remains the most-read of my Substack pieces. It was helped considerably by accidentally finding the family of another veteran from the same part of Oregon, Henry Krebs, who had served overseas in the same machine gun battalion as Charles Miller.
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There’s light under the bridge, if not at the end of the tunnel
The low winter sun finding its way under the Sellwood Bridge in Southeast Portland, blessing the Willamette River on its journey to join its big brother, the Columbia. And from there to the Pacific Ocean. Forever.
One of the oddest things that happened to me this past year came at a time of dark depression and anger. I later called it a Burning Bush kind of moment, because it was damn near biblical in the way it presented itself when I asked the cosmos for help. At the very least, it got me to quit the cesspool of Twitter.
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“It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway”
This photo of André De Shields is copied from the lyrics booklet that came with the double CD of “Hadestown.” His character, Hermes, is the story’s narrator, counselor and go-between. De Shields, described by one reviewer as “a national treasure,” wasn’t in the live performance we saw but blows me away on the 2019 recording. Good Lord, as our mom would have said. National treasure, indeed.
Yeah, back to “Hadestown.” The music and lyrics are by Anaïs Mitchell. The show won eight Tony Awards in 2019, including Best Musical.
The songs, paired with my memory of seeing the singers and musicians tell the story on stage, carried me through the last weeks of this year, and I’ll go back to it if darkness settles again this winter.
I’ll remember what Hermes tells Orpheus as he leaves Hadestown, with Eurydices following, and doubt and doom at their backs.
Mr. Hermes says:
“The meanest dog you’ll ever meet, he ain’t the hound dog in the street,
He bares some teeth and tears some skin, but brother, that’s the worst of him.
The dog you really got to dread is the one that howls inside your head,
It’s him whose howling drives men mad, and the mind to its undoing.”
And hopefully I’ll remember Mr. Hermes also said it’s a sad song, this life.
But we sing it anyway.
And we’re going to sing it again, and again.
Once again over and over you have inspired me. Keep your wick trimmed and your candle bright. If the Bridge doesn’t flood and the good lord wills it we will see more of your postings in the New Year! Hope you and yours have a good New Year!
Beautiful, thanks for sharing Eric. Now I have a new musical on my list!!