Thanksgiving with Family Well Spent

Issue 62

by Steven Kramer

Despite living out of town, I still get invited on certain expeditions my parents go on. Thanksgiving, being traditionally a holiday spent together, I was invited to go to a deluxe yurt at Umpqua Beach State Park, an invitation I gladly accepted.  Deluxe yurts are very similar to the regular yurts mentioned in previous issues.  For those who haven't seen or read about them before now, these are modernized replicas of the mongolian traditional structure: in essence, a round cabin with a checkerboard-like wooden framework, a glass dome in the center of the roof, a heater, a lamp, table and chairs, a futon, and a bunk bed. In essence, a deluxe yurt is the same, except that a deluxe yurt also has a built in bathroom with shower, a TV, VCR, and kitchenette… not exactly 'bare necessities camping' but a nice alternative to tent camping, in a part of the state where winters are rainy and average around 50 degrees.

My parents came down to Ashland to pick me up, and I drove the return trip along I-5, to give them a rest. We spent the car trip catching up on each others lives, and had dinner and watched a movie when we got there. However, despite our sluggishness, Umpqua (əmp-kwah) Lighthouse State Park is in the middle of the southern Oregon Coast, so there are no shortage of things to do, and we made the most of these. When we weren't watching movies or episodes of Grimm (see review, next issue), we explored the coast, and saw a few places we were already familiar with. 

We had lunch at a local casino, which does a thanksgiving buffet. It was very good food, but took us nearly an hour to get into, and we were both hungry and slightly annoyed by the time we were finally seated. Overall the weather was outstanding (unusually so for November on the Oregon Coast) and we made the most of this as well. We went for a handful of hikes, including one around the lake at Umpqua Lighthouse, and a nearby lake, called Eel Lake. The latter hike takes its travelers away from civilization and into the southern Oregon backcountry so that the only sign of civilization is the occasional boat and the sound of Rt. 101 on the far bank. We also walked the dunes and beach in the nearby Oregon Dunes Nat. Rec. Area. The Evergreen Huckleberries, a winter crop, with a sweet, smokey taste, were ripe and Dad and I enjoyed several handfuls worth, though Mom decided to pass.

By far, however, the highlight of our trip was the Shore Acres State Park holiday lights. Following a reasonably long hike to let the sun set, we went into the botanical gardens to see the lights. Shore Acres State Park is a public showcase of the remains of a large coastal estate, including gardens, tennis courts, and beautiful natural features. The Gardens were it up with all sorts of lights: colored draperies on bushes, strings through trees, and then there were the shapes. By far these were the most impressive. There were lights in the shapes of flowers on flowers, with round lights to look like the flowers themselves. There was a jumping frog, a stationary frog next to a soundbox to give the illusion the frog was alive, two glowing underwater koi, and two whales. The inside of the groundkeeper's house was decorated as well, with tinsel, lights, a tree in every room, and Christmas themed things that were loaned from other people for the display, including Santa in a bubble bath of clear glass globes.

The weekend went well I'm getting older, more mature and am beginning want an independent life away from family. However despite this new and exciting journey known as college, it's always nice to spend time with family now and then, if only for a weekend.

The glowing fish and garden decorations as they
 apeared in 2012. Much of the decoration in this picture
 were brought back for the 2013 season.

What to see in Portland

Issue 62

Progress Ridge Area as seen from above. Progress Lake is
in the foreground, with bull mountain rising above it. The
Mall is barely visible to the left. withthe houses around the
 lake toard the center

This issue: Progress Ridge

Starting off our new column, is a district of suburban Portland called Progress Ridge. Progress Ridge is a recently developed area, built entirely in the past ten years. It's a nice place to visit if you like shopping, dining and variety in general. The area is basically a lakeside park, condos, and an outdoor mall with, among other things, a frozen yogurt shop, a soda shop with about every kind of bottled soda imaginable, a cinema, and several restaurants. If you get bored, you can take a walk to Progress Lake, where you can fish, or just gaze out over the lake at the houses surrounding it, and the small patch of forest behind them. Overall, a very nice place. However, it is the sort of place that you would stop at while visiting the suburbs, it’s not a destination in itself.

Entertainment Review

Issue 62

This Issue: Portlandia

Review by Steven Kramer

In case our readers haven’t noticed, there is a new TV sketch Comedy called Portlandia, starring, among others, Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live. SNL is generally a funny show. However, just because a comedian is featured in a successful comedy, does not mean all of his work will be equally successful. Portlandia, is a good example of this: the show is set (and shot) in my current residence, Portland Oregon. That is the primary reason that I looked into it. People around town talk about it, and I wanted to see it for myself. However, by the end of the first episode, it became clear that the show was not all it was cracked up to be. While it was somewhat funny, I feel it would be better described by the words annoying and confusing. Like most sketch comedies, it involves staging of everyday events, with e purpose of satirizing Portlanders and our countercultural culture, a survivor of the previous decades. Indeed, they managed to capture this successfully, several of the characters possessed a similar philosophy. They captured the strange people, businesses, and personality of the city as a whole. But the buck stops there. Even as a man familiar with Portland (having lived here for the past twelve years) the jokes seldom made sense, and were overly drawn out. The characters would berate each other (in much the same way as overly-sensitive portlander do.) But while it may have been funny for short jokes, the sketches went on and on, making an extreme example of portlanders. The characters in the show behave in a manner I have seldom seen even on the streets (for example bringing a blender into an outdoor concert) or overblowing truth (a transgender book store owner being offended when a customer points a finger) Still others became hideously confusing. A chicken at a restaurant had complete paperwork on its lifestyle (a parody of the preference for organic, free-range food) Yet it was revealed that the owner was a polygamous cult leader (here, the chickens disappeared, and it was a confusing flurry of denim skirts, and weird personalities that had nothing at all to do with Portland or its culture.) Perhaps I am being too hard on the show, but as a Portlander, I was confused by the show. It was nothing but a collection of drawn out,  irritating, confusing skits.

Rating for Portlandia:  ★☆☆☆☆

Even Ashland Gets Excited Over Snow

Issue 62

by Edward Stevens
Ashland Summit

One would think that a city like Ashland, Oregon would consider snow no big deal. Ashland  a town located at MP 16 on Interstate 5, with a vibrant eco-firendly culture and overarching Shakespearean theme, is located around 1800 feet, which is low enough to avoid most snow showers, but high enough to be more prone to them. So one would expect people to look outside on a snow day and consider it with the same enthusiasm as someone noticing that their garden gnome got tipped over. It would seem that this viewpoint is wrong.
The weather report had been calling for snow, so it was no surprise when the flakes began to fall on Friday. Of ourse, being from Portland, the snow was an exitement to behold, and I immidiately hopped onto my bike to see all of my favorite landmarks  covered in snow. I dsicovered that the snow hadn't actually stuck, that the scenery looked perfetly normal, and I finally turned around when a man wiht a german aent stoped to warn me about a storm in the mountains and 'did I need a ride.' I politely declined, and went back. The actual snowstorm began about two hours later.

Snow-Covered cars in the parking lot near McGlouglin andShasta Halls. University Avenue is in the foreground, also snow-covered

A nearly-snowbound Interstate 5 seen from the E Main St. overpass. Traffi was slowed to a crawl during the storm making the aprox. 20 mile trip to medford take hours (src. word of mouth)

The snow fell rapidly and in only a few hours had built up to almost five inches. The main courtyard between McLoughlin and Shasta Halls, known internally as 'the quad' was dangerous to walk through due the ongoing snowball fight put on by hundreds of college students bored to tears with their studies and the pressures of impending finals. As the snowfall continued, mysterious messages were left on cellular phones telling everyone the campus was closed, and the school day ended then and there. But for the rest of us, life went on. It would seem that intuition about a mountain town getting bored wiht snow is incorrect: College kids are still children at heart, many of us are anyway, and the oppurtunity for a snowball fight is just too good to turn down.
Meanwhile, transportation was also not as well prepared as I would have expected. Snow covered roads and sidewalks, and while graters and snowplows patrolled streets, the freeway conneting Oregon and California slowed to a crawl.
And so the snow days continue. No new snow has fallen, but what with the frighteningly low temperatures, it will likely stay for at least a few days to come. There will definitely be a few more snowball fights to get into before white gives way to green, and life resumes.

Introducing the Kramer Paper… Online

Issue 62

It's good to be back in the press office...

by Steven Kramer, 

Editor-in-Chief

First of all, I'm certain that everyone who is my subscriber to the Print newsletter known as the Kramer Paper knows who I am, and is probably wondering why they have not heard from me in years. The answer, is that I grew bored with running a newspaper, and let it crash, owing several newsletters when i quit. However, I still would like to continue to publish A newsletter of sorts, even if it is sort of a un-orthodox newsletter. Here's how we'll do it.

The posts on this blog will be grouped together into 'issues', beginning at number 62. This issue number corresponds to Kramer Paper Issue 62, and will continue as long as I continue to do this. These volumes will then be transferred to a word processing document to form the physical Kramer Papers (maybe.) In short, The Kramer Paper will continue to exist, as a collection of entries, though a printed newsletter has an uncertain future. Again, I am not turning my back on the printed word, I just figure that this way, I will have more of an ability to continue creating,…er… reporting news for subscribers and family friends alike.

For those who don't know, the Kramer Paper is a family newsletter created as airplane entertainment in 2000, and evolved into a six page newsletter sent to four states. (Why I chose the amazingly uncreative 'Kramer Paper' as the name for my ompany, I have no earthly idea: I was seven when I named it. Now, at 21, I keep it out of name recognition: teh name graced 61 copies of the newsletter, so it seems a bit late to hange it now.) The tongue-in-cheek 'Kramer Paper Co.' eased production of newsletters in 2008, and the presses have been colleting dust ever since. I hope, through this blog, to change that.

Happy Reading,
Steven Kramer
Editor-in-chief