Archives for Oregon

Chill, this is Ashland!

Ashland, Oregon is a small, artsy “destination town” in southern Oregon, just north of the California border. Home to Southern Oregon University, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and gorgeous Lithia Park, it (before Covid, at least) welcomes some four hundred thousand visitors a year. It’s also attracted a number of resident artists and writers, including two of your blog hosts, Rail and Wren—this, in no small part because of its easy-going and sometimes eccentric character. Not to mention, characters, who often refer to their hometown as “Ashlantis,” or “Ashlandia,” or sometimes, when they object to some city ordinance, “the Peoples Republic
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Fulfilling Little Nell’s Wish During Quarantine

Our state, Oregon, went into full lockdown in the middle of March this year (2020), and has been in the gradual reopening process over the past months. As I’m among those who was never able to work remotely, working as I do with superheroic adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (or, different-abilities!) in a group home setting, I’ve not been able to focus as much time and energy on writing and on research as I’d like. However, I have been delving into a big Dickens readathon ~ or, perhaps more appropriately, re-readathon. I’ve recently started the renowned Dickens biography by
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