RECLAIMING MY TIME ON SOUTHERN OREGON COLLEGE SIXTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

Southern Oregon College Graduating Class of 1960: My dad.

He transferred after two years at Central Oregon Community College in Bend.

It was a well used path to the first college degree in his family.

He was thirty years old, an old 30.

Back then thirty was older, fifty was a grandparent. Hit sixty and you’re probably dead a few years.

Southern Oregon College changed his life. And, I’d like to say, since davidpdx strives to honor higher education, it changed my life too, although five year old me was still only five years old.

We lived in a house on Avery Street. My dad went to classes on the GI Bill and pumped gas for his wife and two kids.

Two became three before he graduated.

I remember going to a daytime football game.

He said he took us to see JFK when he came through on a campaign swing.

Mostly I remember the zoo in Lithia Park.

 

Throughout its history, Lithia has withstood the erosive vicissitudes of politics, the Great Depression, wars, changing social values, the counter-culture movement of the 1960s, uprooting windstorms, and two major floods. 

It has evolved and expanded, but subsequent landscapers have held fast to John McLaren’s original vision of nature enhanced. Lithia Park continues to be fiercely loved by residents and tourists alike.

If the Shakespeare Festival is Ashland’s economic heart, then Lithia Park is its soul.

 

The zoo had local critters penned in. There were deer, but the most impressive were two eagles.

Dad called them ‘Dinky Birds.’

He said if one of them was out and saw a kid peeing in their backyard, it would swoop down and nip their dinky off.

Later I remember hearing about an accident a neighborhood dad had in the park. It was a gun accident; shot himself in the dinky.

Or was it the birds?

 

Southern Oregon College And The Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Southern Oregon College Dropout Class of 1974: Me.

The number of Shakespeare plays eighteen year old freshman me went to: 0

Regrets for dropping out and not spending the next ten years in Ashland collecting degrees and maturing to the point of going to Shakespearean plays: All of them.

Since then I’ve become a fan of live theater and even had a moment in the bright lights.

 

The show ended with her off-stage.

The band finished with a scorcher of a song and took a bow. The audience answered with a loud standing ovation. Then Deidrie came out to the roar of the crowd.

During her curtsy I leaned in for a high five. When she answered with her high five the volume amped up another notch.

In fantasy theater I turned to the crowd from the first row, stood on my chair and waved the crowd quiet, then told them they have the power to change America for a better outcome than the America Billie Holiday lived and died in.

VOTE!

Then Deidrie would lead us through a blasting Hell You Talmbout, the song David Byrne ended his set with at Sasquatch. One, two, three:

“Lady Day.”

“Say Her Name.”

 

Back then I could have graduated and gone on to an advanced degree like one brother, or a degree and a minor like another brother, or the degrees their kids all earned at Southern Oregon. It was a family tradition.

I felt the pull of the place and the part I’d play: grow a pony tail, drink beer, smoke weed, and tell all the new arrivals how cool it used to be.

If you’re into historical recreation you need to look the cool guy part.

Instead, I dropped out after spring term, got a summer job in a saw mill, joined the Army, then U of O, Portland State, season tickets for Portland Center Stage, and regular shows from Broadway Rose.

 

Looking Forward In Ashland

When news arrives that a town, a university, and a world famous theater company are all going down, it hits too close to home.

 

 

This is where the stage and the school meet: reimagining how they deliver their product to their audience.

Three out of then ten plays on the OSF schedule are Shakespeare.

 

We Talked About It

 

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 

 

Me: So you’re saying stay focused on what is possible, not a dream goal, not an aspirational achievement?

Bill:

Laugh and the world laughs with you.

Cry and you cry alone.

Me:

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a large and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

PS:

I met a guy who said he went to Harvard. I told him I went to Portland State University, also known as the Harvard of the West. He said that’s funny because they called Harvard the Portland State of the East.

PSS:

If a school has degree programs that apply to the current work force, they’re doing a good job; if they have degree programs to feed minds curious about knowledge, how it is gained passed from one era to the next, they’re doing a great job.

Seeing important people show how ignorant they are, and how they expect the same level of ignorance from their audience, is a downward spiral hard to recover from.

No one pays to learn how to be stupid, but it’s contagious if left untreated.

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