Back to the Great Pacific Northwest!

In mid-April we headed back to the Pacific NW where we had 16 performances scheduled in libraries and a few other venues.
It helped that April was Poetry Month!

At this point we have been out 8 months on the road and feel a renewed energy as we start heading north on our way to Alaska.
Thanks to our friends and family in the area, we have been treated to great home stays with the best hospitality & food anyone can ask for!

The libraries and venues were all unique & diverse.

We were very happy to meet the many librarians, and all who came to our performances and gave us such focused attention to the program and offered up great questions.

We were particularly impressed with Medford Library and librarian Laura Kimberly who shows great enthusiasm for presenting programs for her community.
She has great ideas for enticing people to come to the Medford Library.
For poetry month, she had a "Pie for Poetry" event in which people could get a piece of pie for reading a poem.
Through the month of April, she gave out raffle tickets with a prize of books of poems.
Our friends Kathy & Kon happened to win this raffle - congrats K & K!

One of our performance highlights include the Kala performance space in Astoria.
This space has great acoustics and a warm, intimate ambiance.
KALA is the ground floor presentation space and upper loft production office of HIPFiSHmonthly, the Columbia Pacific Region's free alternative monthly newspaper. KALA features monthly exhibits in conjunction with Astoria's Second Saturday Art Walk, and live performance; including music, theater, authors and more. For events at KALA, visit our website.

- See more at: http://www.coastarts.org/directory/venues/k/kala@hipfish-monthly/#sthash.bcbmegnc.dpuf
We'd like to thank Dinah Urell for presenting our concert for her community & for turning us on the the best pizza we have ever had at the Voodoo Room!
We had the smoked Salmon Pizza - wow, delicious, not at all what we expected.  The secret they say is baking the pizza at a higher temperature.
The crust was the best - this place is a Primal Mates pick for best pizza!

Astoria has become a hip little town.
We enjoyed  all the changes happening along the river & piers including the new restaurants, tasting rooms and local residents hanging out in great numbers!Then onto Manzanita to play at the Hoffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Manzanita is one of our favorite beach towns and beaches along the Oregon Coast.
We especially appreciate how long the beach is here and how far we can walk!
And we really appreciate our friends Martha & Bill who took us in for a 2nd time on this journey.
It was great to catch up and share all that has gone on since we last saw them in September.
In McMinnville, the librarians decided to present our concert in a local tasting room - the sound was fantastic in this old building which used to be the old power house.


What a great  blend, ie Oregon Pinot Noir , music & poetry.....ahhhh!!

Our friends Jack and Bobbi surprised as they came in the door because we thought they were out of town - so we spent a great night with them at their house with delicious food and wine and we were finally able to get a picture of one of our favorite posters which we used to see @ Noah's Wine Bar. 

Another highlight was playing at the beautiful main Salem Library Auditorium - the best acoustics so far of all auditoriums we have been in.
It's design and intimate size makes for a very comfortable space & sound.

On our way back from Salem, we took "The Road Less Traveled" through some of western Oregon's beautiful countryside.


We stopped at Champoeg State Park to take a walk along the Willamette River.

Downtown Vancouver Washington has a beautiful fairly new library and a great room for music and events just off the main entrance to the library.



Just after our program, the League of Women Voters meeting was to take place to develop strategies for upcoming elections and "Get Out the Vote Campaigns".

We were happy to see a gentlemen gathering signatures outside the library to amend the constitution to firmly establish that money is NOT speech, and that human beings, NOT corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. 

This is in regard to the ruling by the Supreme Court on January 21, 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government.

We agreed with this gentleman that Human beings are people & corporations are legal fictions.

And that the Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.

We are thankful the library community rooms offers a democratic space for folks to come together for the common good!

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In Portland, near the end of our stay, we were able to play at our favorite Portland Venue, O'Connor's in Multnomah Village.
Steve Arel, longtime owner, has a strong love of music and offers musicians a chance to play in the Vault, next to the restaurant.
We had a fantastic night - lots of friends, family and musician friends we played with years ago came to this event, plus several folks we had not met yet.
A wonderful last evening / gig in Portland before heading back up to the Seattle area.

Colleen with her niece Maggie!

During our time in the NW, we visited Seattle area 2 different times for performances in 4 area libraries and one home concert.
The weather was warm and sunny for both visits.
The last visit took us to Bainbridge and Vashon Islands and Sylvan Way Library near Bremerton Washington.

Sylvan Way has a beautiful library and a community room where we did our performance.
We were so happy to see one of our youngest fans, Max with his mom Sherie at the performance.
Max and Sherie knew us from Boulder when they started to come hear us play at The Rock & Soul.
Max was 6 months old at that time, and from the first time he heard us, he was super attentive and interested in the music.
In fact, he would sit through much of our 2 hours of playing, watching, listening, smiling!
Max, Sherie and Max's dad Richard moved to Bainbridge Island when Max was about 2 1/2 years old.
We had not seen them since then until now.

Sherie graciously invited us to stay with them the night before our Sylvan Way Library performance.
Max was so happy to see us, now 8 years old, he ran up and gave us big hugs and lots of attention as if we were long lost friends - which we were!

Here's Max and his mom Sherie with us at Sylvan Way Library.
Thanks to Sherie, Richard & Max for the great stay on Bainbridge Island!

Then onto Vashon Island where our good friend Paula Hendricks lives.
Paula is a friend from our Bolinas days back in mid- 80's.
She hosted a home concert for us in her sweet home.
We met her friends and a long ago friend of ours, Susan Kernes came over from Seattle WA.
We had met Susan in Homer Alaska in 1985 when she was the KBBI Homer radio program director. ( The best radio station ever! )
2 past lives converge on Vashon as Susan and Paula meet each other.

It was wonderful to catch up with Susan after the concert, it had been about 30 years ago since we were all together.
What a great day it was, also sunny & warm.....of course!! 

Thanks Paula!!
And thanks to Bill for all the help in preparing for this cozy event!


Now, on to our very last library concert in the "lower 48" in Richland Washington.
Richland has a very beautiful library with a great community room for performance and presentations!

Chris is telling the story of Ophelia.


We were having some technical difficulties with interfacing the main computer with Colleen's remote control by i-pad, so we asked for volunteers.
Al Ankrum immediately raised his hand and offered to be our "remote" and he barely blinked an eye when he learned the cord was so short, he needed to be on-stage with us.  Thanks Al!



Richland also had a great turn-out including many children who came to this event thanks to Lisa Adams, librarian.
One little boy raised his hand at the end of our performance and asked "are you done yet so we can play the instruments?"


Al & Claire Ankrum are O'Brien family friends and they kindly offered us a place to stay during our time in Richland.
Great food, wine and conversations abound during our home stay.
Thanks Al & Claire for your gracioiusness & superb hospitality!

One last stop before we head North to Alaska.
We travel north to Ellensburg Washington to visit with Jon & Paula.  Jon is Colleen's nephew.
Jon & Paula live in paradise with a beautiful home, acreage, fruit trees and a river running through it. 
Jon & Paula had welcomed us previously back in September at the start of our journey so we'd like to doubly thank them for another great hang in paradise.


So, does it look like we avoided camping on this part of our journey?

For those who do not know us personally, you may have gathered that we are from Portland and most our family and many old friends still reside in the area.

We'd like to share our gratitude for family and friends who have helped to support us on this part of our journey -
Those not in the blog are no less appreciated, we just didn't have the camera at hand, probably having too much fun!.

Many thanks to Chris' folks, Bob & Donna Lee, my brother Pat & Jocelyn, Teedy Lee for bringing the Lee family together on Mother's Day and made it one of the most memorable Mothers day ever! 

Thanks also to  Jerry & Judy Hahn, JoJo Linden, Kathy and Kon Damas, Al and Alexis Lee, Sue & Walt Gordinier, Jack Thornton & Bobbi Paris and many more for just being good friends & family.  We are truly fortunate & love you!

Next up- "North to Alaska"








 

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