Portland Events and Information!

91-year-old blind, African American author talks about her life

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 05:19:48 GMT

My name is Eva Fields and I'm sending this to tell you that my grandma Eva Rutland www.evarutland.com will be signing books in Portland. Mrs. Rutland wrote a memoir entitled "When We Were Colored, a Mother's Story" that tells her story of being a young black mother raising four children in California during the early days of integration of the 1950s and 1960s. Upbeat and funny, she states in her introduction "I was born in the
olden days, when pot was a cooking utensil, webs were for spiders and civil rights were for white folks." She tells stories all mothers can relate to. Stories like taking her four children all under the age of eight to the 5-and-10 (the five and dime) three days before Christmas and 5-year-old Ginger having a break down in the store because she spent all her money and forgot to buy her daddy a present. She peppers her stories with reminders of the special problems that blacks faced. She ends the Christmas story with a lament about having to walk past Woolworths during the Civil Rights era when the store was being picketed for because they would not serve blacks at their lunch counters in the South. She states "but pass it up I did. This was bigger than my pockets. These young people were bigger than me---and I couldn't let them down."

Eva Rutland is now 91-years-old and blind but she continues to write. She has published over 20 novels and is currently working on her sequel to "When We Were Colored," tentatively entitled "Grandma Troubles." She will be signing books and talking about her life on:
Saturday March 15th, 1:00 PM
Central Library - Multnomah County
801 SW 10th Ave
Portland, OR 97205

Brother Ali concert in Portland!

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:27:18 GMT

Time to get back in the van, as Rhymesayers presents the Truth Is Here Tour featuring Brother Ali, Abstract Rude, Toki Wright, and BK-One.

They will be playing an all-ages show in Portland on Tuesday March 11 at the Hawthorne Theater. Doors open at 8:00 pm and the show starts at 9:00 pm. Tickets are $13.50 in advance and $15 at the door.

Ghost Stories for Winter

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:56:29 GMT

Pavement Productions and The Bluestockings are proud to present Dead of Winter, three ghost stories written for the stage by Portland playwright Steve Patterson.

Winter. Bare trees. Fog. A chill breeze. It's the perfect time of year to cozy up and tell stories about things that might be there, in the dark. In the night. And that's just what these three psychological chillers do: explore that which isn't there…unless it is.

Winner of the Sam Bass One-Act Contest in Austin, Whitechapel takes us to a London flat which may or may not be haunted by the grandfather of serial killers, Jack the Ripper.
A World Premiere written especially for The Bluestockings, Wet Paint invites us into a house which may or may not have uninvited guests, and a rainy night's séance which may or may not be harmless fun.
The evening wraps up with The Body, a visit with a grieving coroner who may or may not be a little too in touch with one of his "patients." The Body was featured in The Nature of Fear and Its Effects, produced by Jobsite Theatre at the Tampa Performing Arts Center.

Directed by Pavement Productions' Co-Producer Lisa L. Abbott, Dead of Winter's cast includes Trish Egan, Angie Hughes, Reba Kenison, Deborah Zelda Lee, Harold Phillips, Ben Plont, and Justina Price, with set design by Sean DeVine, lights by Julie Booth, and sound design by Gordon Romei.

Dead of Winter opens 8:00 PM February 1, 2008, at Performance Works Northwest (4625 SE 67th Avenue, Portland) in the Foster Arts District. It runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through February 23^rd. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and $10 for students and seniors. Thursdays are sliding scale. Tickets can be purchased online at www.theblustockings.com. (Also check out the Bluestockings site for a Dead of Winter teaser video.) For reservations, call 503-777-2771.

hello

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:10:33 GMT

Hello.

I was wondering if any of you are attending or would want to go see Barbara Ehrenreich speak at Willamette University in Salem on Thursday Oct. 18th at 8pm??

My husband and I would like to go but our car just broke so we don't have a way to get down there and I have to be at work the next day.

If anyone is going and would like to get paid for having company, please let me know!! (I'll pay for some gas and your ticket)

If you are interested in what I am talking about, here is a recent interview discussing her new book on collective joy. and an older interview from '97 about the origins of the passion for war. She is also known for her work on poor and middle class work as well as white color corporate workers. She's also a radical feminist and an all around great thinker. She's basically my hero.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author most recently of Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy on MEDIA MATTERS WITH BOB MCCHESNEY.

DR. BARBARA EHRENREICH Political Essayist, Social Critic, Activist and Novelist. Author: "Blood Rites - Origins and History of the Passions of War" Originally aired" 11-10-97 on CONVERSATIONS WITH HAROLD HUDSON CHANNER

x-posted

PIG in PORTLAND July 10 (former members of KMFDM, + Mindless Faith & Digital Mindy)

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:35:55 GMT

THE ALL HAMERICAN PIG SHOW
PIG
(featuring Raymond Watts and Guenter Schulz, ex-KMFDM)
Mindless Faith
Digital Mindy

July 10, 2006 8:00pm
at
Sabalas @ the Mt Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97201
503-238-1646

The tour will also be in SEATTLE July 9. Seattle info here.

More info at:
http://theswining.com
http://myspace.com/raymondwatts
http://www.sabalasmttabor.com

***Slick cynical lyrics delivered with growling vocals on top of a razor and nail mattress of driving guitars, heavy synths, and aggressive beats to create this industrial-rock accomplishment that no fan of KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Fear Factory, or Static-X should be without.***

Hear PIG:
http://theswining.com/samples

See PIG:
Arbor Vitate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpGSfwtkA4
Painiac:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeT_ZwkHZ8
Blades (live 6/20/06):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oslEFGIUYII
Cold Light (live with Schaft):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18FpjyVZTgI
Juke Joint Jezebel (with KMFDM):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YstmrLz2Cf4

PIG is Raymond Watts.

Watts began his arrest record in London where he was most likely pissed off about something and doing sound manipulations, loops and live sound for Psychic TV. He soon crashed into Einstuerzende Neubauten (probably in a strip bar) and escaped the smug complacency of the English music scene by moving to Hamburg, Germany and setting up his Building Site studio in a bunker of munitions factory, where he invited in artists including Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Die Haut, and Christiane F. In his pursuit of a cutting edge music scene he sought out like-minded souls to create terrorism instead of tonality. Playing on European/American Neubauten tours, he quickly earned a reputation for destroying PA systems -- the security guards sent by the PA companies to protect the gear were not amused. Between their security thugs and ones hired by Watts to protect him from them, most nights ended up bloody, tense and occasionally on fire. Burning the stage and blowing up the PAs...you should have been there.

While collaborating with Neubauten's "gritter" twins: Blixa Bargeld and FM Einheit, Watts lived in the red light district next to a brothel, in amongst the sleaze of the Hamburg docks. Watts heard about Sascha Konietzko who was doing bizarre work with vacuum cleaners, and after drinking him into submission, dragged him and his tall, pale cohort En Esch down the stairs into the freezing Building Site studio, where they locked themselves into Watts' "frozen cesspit" with 20' steel sheets and other garbage, emerging with the KMFDM debut What Do You Know Deutschland?

When the wall came down, Watts split his time between London and Tokyo, looking for a new alien habitat after Berlin's pleasure dome exploded. PIG is big in Japan. Well of course he is. He's 6'3". PIG morphed with various collaborators and Watts started working with Japanese musicians, turning his attention to Schaft, which became a huge hit there. The Watts system emerged as an elastic style of working with refuse and collaborating with pariahs: one man's trash is another man's treasure, darling.

Long-time PIG fan Trent Reznor came to see him around '91/'92 at a tiny club in Camden, London, England and introduced himself to the unimpressed Watts who was surprised that this fellow knew most of PIG's scattered discography. PIG was invited to open Nine Inch Nails' European tour in '94 -- complete with real pig heads on stage that were a load of fun after a few days' decomposition. Later, in 1995, Reznor's Nothing label released PIG's fourth album, Sinsation.

In the mid 1990's, Konietzko ran into Watts again and they worked on the KMFDM vs. PIG EP, which led to Watts returning to the fold for Nihil, the most successful KMFDM album to date, which included the massive Watts-penned hit "Juke Joint Jezebel."

For 2005, Pigmartyr was re-mastered by Isaac Glendening of Cesium _137 and three bonus tracks were added along with new artwork to create Pigmata.

OFFICIAL PIG SITE

A Night Of Random Literature

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:12:39 GMT

A NIGHT OF RANDOM LITERATURE
featuring Rob Christopher,
author of 100 Spinning Plates
Also reading: Frayn Masters and Mike Daily
Friday, January 20th 2005, 7:30 PM
@ Urban Grind Coffee
NE 22nd & Oregon Street
http://www.urbangrindcoffee.com

ABOUT 100 Spinning Plates:
"Rob Christopher's 100 SPINNING PLATES is a fascinating exercise in specificity and the economy of language - no word unnecessary, no explanation given where none needed. We experience the author's life through random ordered little snapshots, slices of life which stand individually but add up to much more than their sum. A book of memories, chance observations, sexual encounters, and odd little ironic events, all told with amazing objectivity which allows us to enter into the text like a piece of autobiographical detective fiction, putting together a very private life."
- Greg Allen, Artistic Director, The Neo-Futurists and creator of "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind"

ABOUT Rob Christopher:
Rob Christopher has lived in Chicago since 1993. His selfpublished "exploded novel" of Random Literature, 100 Spinning Plates, is available online at http://www.randomcha.net as well at fine bookstores like Powell's in Portland and Quimby's. In his spare time he watches far too many movies, mixes up retro cocktails (the Mai Tai being his specialty), and writes more stuff.