Category: Portland, Oregon Local News

GOOD MORNING, SUNDAY! It’s the perfect time to catch up on some of the great reporting and stories the Mercury churned out this week! (PRO TIP: If you despise being “the last to know,” then be one of the first to know by signing up for Mercury newsletters! All the latest stories shipped directly to your email’s in-box… and then… YOUR HEAD.)

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• Auditors Determine Insufficient Evidence that Rene Gonzalez Violated Campaign Finance Laws

Portland’s Auditor’s Office cites “insufficient evidence” (but just barely) of a campaign violation by Commissioner and mayoral candidate Rene Gonzalez for using taxpayer funds to edit his Wikipedia page. Other potential state violations will be investigated.

• POP QUIZ PDX!

This week’s trivia questions include: Sketchy millionaires try to buy a mayor, sexy new bridge alert, and what NOT to name Portland’s new WNBA team. See how well YOU score!

• Talk About Political Theater

Risk/Reward’s newest theatrical adventure, the Election Anti-Party, wants to rescue you from this year’s political anxiety-spiral.

• What Art Goes With Your Job?

If people keep telling you to take up pottery, you have other options. Make art, truth, and beauty work for you for a change.

• Beatlemania Through the Eyes of a Beatle

Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm provides the ultimate insider’s view of the cultural event that was Beatlemania.

• THE TRASH REPORT

This week’s hot goss includes: Florida man’s obsession with eating cats, a decades-long feud with Madonna, and is your brain running out of your nose?

• Randoserus in Portland

Japanese leather goods manufacturer Tsuchiya Kaban likes Portland so much it launched its first US outpost, in downtown clothing boutique Frances May!

• This Week In Portland Food News

Japanese cuisine reigns supreme in Portland this week, as the nationally acclaimed restaurant Takibi reopens, Tomo Ramen expands to Woodstock, and Jewan Manuel of Plant Based Papi debuts Ra-Ra Ramen. 

• SAVAGE LOVE

A longtime couple finally admit their sexy fantasies… but can’t carry them out! WHAT CAN BE DONE? Dan Savage and a guest expert sort it all out in this week’s column!

• TBA Review: Yelling Choir by Maxx Katz Commands Sonic Space

Maxx Katz’s eclectic research into somatic practices, heavy metal, improvisation, and classical music infuses Yelling Choir’s compositions with a radical and unexpected edge.

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WOW, THAT IS A LOT OF GOOD READIN’. I hope you didn’t have any other plans this weekend! Dig in, and remember: Producing all this hard work costs moolah—so please consider contributing to the Mercury to keep it all coming! Thanks!

Hey, maybe before you rev up your engine to start doing donuts at 2:30AM, look around: do you think those apartment buildings and homes near you have people in them? Do they, or their children, or their pets, really want to be accosted with the roar of your car engine, or have the smell of burnt rubber waft into their windows? Can you do them all the kindness of finding something else to do with your time?

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Portland Opera’s 60th season finds the eminent arts institution at a fulcrum. In recent months, it sold the Hampton Opera Center, the organization’s home base for over two decades, and now it’s deeply embroiled in ongoing discussions about the future of the Keller Auditorium. It’s little wonder then that the company has kept its impressive anniversary season relatively modest, only mounting two full-scale operas: Verdi’s repertory mainstay Falstaff, and The Shining, a new work based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel. And both of those won’t open until spring 2025.

What may help the Portland Opera weather this blustery period are the roots it laid years ago, with its efforts to foster new talent and engage with people that may have never experienced opera before. And to do that, the company is looking outside typical performance venues and into school auditoriums, gymnasiums, and community centers across the state.

In 2022, the organization introduced Our Oregon: a series of commissioned operas aimed at young audiences that tell the stories of important Oregonians from historically marginalized communities. That year, the Portland Opera staged Beatrice, a short work based on the life of Beatrice Morrow Cannady, the first Black woman to practice law in Oregon who also helped found the state’s chapter of the NAACP. 

This fall, the project continues with the premiere of Shizue: An American Story, a 50-minute opera that tells the tale of Shizue Iwatsuki, a poet and fierce advocate for Oregon’s Japanese-American community, who spent nearly four years incarcerated at concentration camps in California during World War II. Although her poetry does appear at the Japanese American Historical Plaza, Iwatsuki’s name isn’t well-known beyond scholars of her work. 

“I want to say that’s the basis of every woman’s story in history,” says Dmae Lo Roberts, the playwright and journalist commissioned to write the libretto for, and direct, the upcoming performances of Shizue. “When you start uncovering it, they were pretty fantastic! Why haven’t we learned about this person before? I felt excited that young people might be learning about her history through opera.”

The biggest challenge for Roberts and her collaborator, composer Kenji Oh, was working out how to condense Iwatsuki’s life into a musical work that runs less than an hour. The pair hit on a novel conceit: Two actors will play the main character concurrently, Lindsey Nakatani as a younger Iwatsuki and Chihiro Asano as an older, looking back and commenting on her life. The music Oh conceived for this work follows a similar line, maintaining a modern tone while weaving in melodies from traditional Japanese folk songs. 

Iwatsuki’s story is absolutely ripe for an operatic retelling. Born in Okayama in 1897, she was raised in a life of refinement before marrying Kamegoro Iwatsuki and following him to Hood River where he was an apple farmer. Even as she raised the couple’s three children and helped oversee the farm, Iwatsuki helped her fellow Japanese emigres learn American customs. And, says Roberts, she continued her studies of poetry, in particular the form known as tanka, and flower arranging, even during her internment. 

“She had to use whatever was around her,” Roberts says. “There were no flowers to use. Her grandson showed us a flower arrangement she made in the camp with pipe cleaners and yarn with hay underneath for the soul. It’s the sweetest, most beautiful thing when you know the history. You could put her behind barb wire, but you can’t take her art away from her.”

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The world premiere of Shizue: An American Story takes place at Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Fri Oct 4, 7 pm & Sat Oct 5, 1 pm, $5+ pay what you will, all ages. After the Portland premiere, Portland Opera to Go carries it to schools and community centers across the state.

The Mercury provides its readers with interesting and useful news & culture reporting every single day. If you appreciate that, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. If you read something you like, something you don’t like but are glad to know about, and/or something you can’t find anywhere else consider a one-time tip. It all goes in the same pot and it all goes to the editorial team. Thanks for your support!

Good Morning, Portland! Come on coffee—💊DO SOMETHING💀. Let’s hit the news!

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Not much is known yet about last night’s MAX Blue Line shooting, but one person has died. Portland Police say they responded to the stop’s platform, at Northeast 148th and East Burnside, at 7:26 pm where they found “a male victim who died at the scene.” Police detained one person as part of the investigation.

• Should Oregon use federal land to farm solar? Oregon Capital Chronicle reports that BLM officials announced last month that they plan to “add Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming to its existing Western Solar Plan – an Obama-era project that expanded permitting for solar projects on federal land. “

• From this season’s Mercury‘s Arts Guide, Japanese-American immigrant Shizue Iwatsuki was one of over 100,000 people the US government incarerated during World War II. While she was held in a camp she practiced ikebana flower arranging with pipe cleaners, yarn, and hay. Portland Opera wants you to know her story.

• From Pioneer Courthouse Square this week:

Amazing stuff happening in Pioneer Square rn pic.twitter.com/pFouQVYKUo

— Copmala Harris’ Strongest Soldier 🥥🌴🏈 (@ShadowNeedsHelp) September 17, 2024

• The last two nights of HUMP! 2024, part 2, roll their eyes back with ecstasy at Cinema 21 tonight and tomorrow. The long and short of it is that the best little amateur pornography festival to support an alternative newspaper had so many high quality subs of micro-smut this year that the powers that be split it into two portions! Round 2 commences aftercare this weekend; if you haven’t grabbed a ticket this is your last shot.

• Speaking of tickets, the Mercury is giving a bunch of free ones away this week. Enter for your chance to scoop free admission to ScareGrounds PDX 👻 or Portland’s Erotic Ball 🎩!

• AGAIN WE SPEAK OF TICKETS to say that many go on sale this morning, including Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai, Pete Holmes, and a Team Dresch 30th anniversary celebration, next January!

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• The big news this morning is New York mag’s disclosure that its Washington correspondent Oliva Nuzzi has been inappropriately engaging in a romantic relationship with a subject—and that subject was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—😬.

“New York magazine on Thursday said its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, is on leave after learning the star journalist had allegedly engaged in a romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” @OliverDarcy reports for STATUS https://t.co/Cu6z7l123K

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 20, 2024

Statement from @Olivianuzzi pic.twitter.com/yDNCP9M2B0

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) September 20, 2024

• Yikes. Ooof. And also.

Ugh. Dating a source is such a betrayal of all the woman journalists who’ve been subjected to sexual harassment from male politicians and ridiculous TV/film portrayals of unethical female reporters. https://t.co/DonOjiHluW

— Julia Shumway (@JMShumway) September 20, 2024

• The OTHER big news today is that Jon Lovett, former Obama speechwriter, current host of Lovett or Leave It, and co-founder of Pod Save America / Crooked Media did not make it past the first episode of the 47th season of Survivor. Some will say that he himself predicted this.

I watched this video of Jon Lovett talking about survivor a lot back in June because the way he said coconuts made me laugh and now I understand why he did that… pic.twitter.com/DW69p3yphp

— Matty Moorhead (@mattyj1294) September 19, 2024

YOU’RE TELLING ME JON LOVETT MISSED 6 WEEKS OF HIS JOB FOR THIS

— Emma Mont (She/Her) 🫶🏻🥥🌴 (@theemmamont) September 19, 2024

• And then the actual world news that is a big deal this morning is Israel’s ongoing military moves in Lebanon this week. Following the deployment of a long con that placed explosives in various electronic devices allegedly connected to Hezbollah—killing at least 25 and injuring hundreds, according to the New York Times—Israel’s military bombed a neighborhood in Beirut this morning, as an attempt to kill a senior leader within the militia.

• In entertainment world news, we now know the SNL fall plan:

Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) has set five (yes five) – weeks of hosts & musical guests starting Sept 28:

Sept 28 Jean Smart / Jelly Roll
Oct 5 Nate Bargatze / Coldplay
Oct 12 Ariana Grande / Stevie Nicks
Oct 19 Michael Keaton / Billie Eilish
Nov 2 John Mulaney / Chappell Roan

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) September 18, 2024

• Sending you into the weekend with a sincere lack of respect for Tesla and its products.