Postcards from the Rogue Valley

Ashland City Council “listening session,” January 30, 2023. Photo courtesy Bob Palermini (palermini.com).

Two years after my husband and I moved to Ashland, inspired by the ways it was not like any place we’d lived before, the pandemic turned this small city upside down. Nostalgia for the Ashland I was just getting to know paired up with nostalgia for the East Coast life I had left behind. Finding my voice and making a contribution in this new “home” has been a daily pursuit after years of “being known.” For Ashland (I hesitate to compare the two!) the process of sorting through the pandemic’s aftermath — what to recover and what to create new — is just beginning.

What follows builds from notes to myself during these days of unravelling and renewal. I’ve struggled with this story, daunted by its multiple narratives.

It’s easy to like Ashland, Oregon.

Nestled against the Siskiyou mountains, the small city is home to the legendary Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants fill the downtown. At the upscale Ashland Food Coop, counter-culture baby boomers — men in their 60s and 70s with ponytails — rub shoulders with small business owners. The forested, creek side trail through the century old-Lithia Park may be one of the best city hikes in the country. The view of the Rogue Valley from nearby Lower Table Rock, with its wildflowers and vernal pools, is breathtaking.

When my husband, Tony, and I moved here in 2018, after 50 years living in the urban northeast, we felt we had entered an alternate universe. Indeed, that was the point of our impulsive decision to pack our bags and two cats and to trade coasts and landscapes.

It didn’t take long, however, for memories from the life we’d left behind to seep into my days — of raising children in tandem with neighbors, building a community of friends in a compact New England city, wood-fired pizzas and fresh clams, ethnicity and diversity, the buzz of a world-class university, brilliant fall leaves followed by quiet snow.

Our three years in Brooklyn did not steal my heart, though taking care of our grandson there did. Still, a recent Netflix movie with Brooklyn as a backdrop brought tears to my eyes.

Was I homesick, a close East Coast friend asked. Depressed?

“Just nostalgic,” I said.

I did want to live my life forward, I said, but I couldn’t help bringing along the past.

Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It provided a texture to my days and gave me strength to engage in ways I never imagined: savoring nature, delivering barn cats and fighting a disastrous pig farm near me, putting a toe in local politics, and more. 

When COVID-19 swept the United States in the winter of 2020, it turned civic life upside down. In Ashland, the pandemic may have scored higher on the Richter Scale than the earthquake long predicted and yet to arrive in Southern Oregon. 

I spent the first days of March 2020 taking photos of Ashland’s empty restaurants and stores, deserted streets and grocery store queues, the still graceful Lithia Park without visitors, and one day, traffic lights that only blinked red. I had no idea how quickly the pandemic would unravel the city.

A week later, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), which draws more than 300,000 visitors a year  —  and is the oldest, largest, professional, regional, rotating repertory theater company in the U.S. — suspended its 2020 season, which had just opened the week before.  A day later, the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF), which brings together over 7,000 film lovers for five days, darkened its screens.

As the months passed, the consequences of Ashland’s dependence on tourists feasting on Shakespeare sunk in. OSF’s new director, Nataki Garrett, worked desperately to put “anything” on its stages to keep the organization moving forward in 2021, as the pandemic continued to rage.  

“OSF is one of the economic engines of this valley,” Garrett told a local reporter. “My responsibility is to get the theater open so that people come and spend their dollars here and keep these businesses going.” 

It was a herculean task. OSF’s limited 2021 season played to houses where two-thirds of the seats were empty. The 2022 season, despite some spectacular plays, fared only modestly better, igniting a side debate about whether OSF’s low attendance came from Black director Garrett’s play choices — not enough Shakespeare, too much wokeness — and not the lingering pandemic. (Off stage, Garrett was receiving death threats.) 

Meanwhile, the Ashland Independent Film Festival pivoted to virtual in 2021 and 2022. In the summer of ’21, its talented and knowledgeable artistic director moved East and a successive replacement, with no ties to Ashland or the city’s energetic group of local videographers, left after one year. AIFF has been on hiatus since then.

Nostalgia for what had made Ashland feel special took root, even among newcomers like me.

I remembered our first Oregon Shakespeare play in the summer of 2018, watching the intense romance of Romeo and Juliet electrify an audience of 360 at OSF’s outdoor Elizabethan theater. A few weeks later, an LGBTQ makeover of “Oklahoma!” left us dancing on air.

Earlier that spring, Tony and I had joined thousands of local and out-of-town film goers at the AIFF, screening new films — some fresh from Sundance and others on the cusp of breaking through — and listening to directors talk about their work. My best friend and videographer Kathy Roselli, a regular in AIFF’s “Locals” strand, presented her latest film.

On weekends, street musicians filled the sidewalks. 

Pandemic-induced sturm and drang not only overtook Ashland’s cultural life. It invaded local politics, too, taking a page from Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage.”

At City Council meetings, sparring between budget hawks and their more liberal-spending adversaries became toxic. Name calling moved from the council chambers to social media. (Apparently, this wasn’t entirely new. In 2007, according to the local Mail Tribune, the Ashland City Council signed a $37,000 contract with a local naturapath for a five-month series of therapy sessions.) 

The acrimony spilled into the business of filling the new city manager job created by Ashland residents in 2020, when they voted to amend the city charter and create a city manager position that would be “above politics.” Two successive recruitment firms hired to fill the position resigned, saying they couldn’t in good conscience bring candidates into such a caustic environment. A retired assistant city manager from Austin, Texas ultimately assumed the reins.

Meanwhile, page views of local amateur filmmaker Jim Falkenstein’s five-minute YouTube spoofs of Ashland City Council meetings grew. “Short and unboring,” he promised.

Happily, 2023 has kindled a sense of renewal here. The winter storms that have pounded the West Coast hold promise of easing the drought and the pandemic, we are told, has lost its grip. 

Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s artistic director, Nataki Garrett, recently announced that while the 2022 season was about recovery and rebuilding, “the 2023 season is about reimagining, revitalizing, and reinvigorating” — though the five-play lineup, the most the current budget can support, falls far short of the 2018 season with its 11 productions.

Out of seeming thin air, a dedicated group of local cinephiles, joined by Ashland Independent Film Festival’s remaining board members, have assembled a week-long documentary showcase in April with12 films (in-person and virtual), including an opening night with the film directors.  

Though empty storefronts still haunt the downtown, new restaurants have opened in kitchens that had closed. The chic MÄS, which offers “Cascadian cuisine” in an intimate setting off a downtown alley, made the New York Times’ 2022 list of 50 exciting restaurants across America. (At $185 per person for dinner, excluding wine, it is beyond the price range of most locals.)

If OSF is Ashland’s “Broadway,” the off-Broadway scene seems more robust than ever — from the Rogue Valley Theater and its thought-provoking one or two person plays (mostly starring former OSF actors) or the Oregon Cabaret Theater to the line-up of international chamber music groups at Southern Oregon University. 

In the forested maze of trails above Ashland, hikers are once again greeting each other with enthusiasm rather than stepping off the trail and turning their backs, as they did in the height of the pandemic.

It is nice to be in the company of others again.

Still, the past three years have exposed the downside of Ashland’s monogamous affair with Shakespeare. “It feels like an overdue identity crisis,” a friend who has lived here for 40 years says.

In late January 2023, the Ashland City Council invited residents to a gathering that was unimaginable in the COVID-19 years: a two hour community-wide “listening session,” billed as a chance for citizens to express their priorities for the upcoming biennial budget.

A few days earlier, Ashland’s mayor and one of her allies on the City Council had abruptly resigned. Perhaps this thunderbolt helped account for the turnout at the Historic Ashland Armory that night: over 300 people. I was one of them.

Following the Pledge of Allegiance, City Councilor Tonya Graham took the stage, clearly astonished by the size of the crowd. “Tonight is all about you.,” she began. “The city officials who are here want to hear from you about what is important to you.”

The evening’s format invited participants to move through a series of table discussions, each focused on one of nine topics, from infrastructure concerns to quality of life. I started at the “economic opportunity and vitality” table, facilitated by one of the newly elected city councilors, a solar entrepreneur. 

“So who wants to start,” Eric Hansen asked.

The woman next to me broke the silence. “Like all of you, I feel the weight of the past three years,” she said. “But I’m here tonight to put my nostalgia to good use.” (“This isn’t a Chamber of Commerce meeting,” she said.)

“Amen,” came a voice from the back.

A contingent of mountain bikers (far from the Oregon Shakespeare Theatre, single-track mountain trails have made Ashland a mountain-biking mecca) spoke passionately about their sport and the contributions they could and would make to the community, if given the chance. 

A student from Southern Oregon University, with its 5,000 undergraduates, pushed back against the mantra “shop local.” “Do you know why you never see students in downtown Ashland? For us, there’s no ‘there’ there,” he said. Later, when I ran into him at another table and asked for examples, he gave me this list of “not us”: tourist boutiques, high-priced restaurants, real estate offices, fashion wear for the over 60 crowd, crystals. 

A middle-age man sitting across from me, who identified himself as gay, spoke about the city’s failure to promote Ashland’s cultural riches to potential gay tourists up and down the West Coast. “It seems a match made in heaven” he said.

Several people linked the city’s economic vitality to affordable housing. “It’s hard to attract newcomers when you can’t afford to live here.”

I moved on to the “quality of life table,” where open space and park improvements dominated the conversation.

At the social initiatives table, participants talked about coming together for more conversation surrounding social equity and racial justice (90 percent of Ashland’s population is White). An organizer with a migrant advocacy program talked about the invisibility of the local Hispanic community. (Taped to the wall next to my computer is a receipt for an online takeout from a favorite downtown restaurant. At the bottom it says: IMMIGRANTS MAKE AMERICA GREAT. They also cooked your food today.)

When I joined the public safety table, an intense discussion between Ashland’s police chief and a homeless resident was unfolding. A woman standing next to me, likely homeless too, whispered in my ear: “When people talk about safety it’s short for policing the homeless.” If you are serious about safety, the unhoused gentleman told the police chief, “you gotta commit to crisis intervention that centers mental illness and dignity.” 

As the evening closed, the large posters lining the walls of the Armory were filled with green stickers, placed by participants to indicate the priorities (32 in all) that mattered most to them. When tallied, open space and park improvements, wildfire risk reduction programs, and affordable/workforce housing led the list. Not captured was the texture — and personal stories — of the many voices present.

When Tony and I declared Ashland our new home, it wasn’t just nostalgia for what we’d left behind that was challenging. Tougher for me was carving a new identity, tethered as I had been for fifty years to what had been my life’s mission: promoting public high schools where students were known well. 

At age 71, I suddenly felt unknown. This blog became my first stab at transformation, a way to connect with old and new friends and to pay attention to the world around me. I started calling myself a writer.

As I think about the large challenges facing Ashland, I hold my breath. The robust exchanges at January’s listening session put a lot on the table, while leaving fundamental questions in the air. To what extent should Ashland’s priorities be shaped by tourists and the dollars they bring or the people who live here daily, for example? How much should the nostalgia of the city’s over 60 age group, more than a third of the population, guide the future? Or, in the words of the SOU student I met that night, “When will ethnic food trucks be allowed to compete with ‘fine dining establishments’ in Ashland’s downtown?”

I am a fan of the term “inflection point.” Once confined to mathematics, the term has come to refer to moments, big and small, that can change the way we think about circumstances. They describe a situation’s potential to spur us into action, when we wouldn’t have acted before. We often don’t realize we’re at an inflection point until it has passed or we see it as something that happens to us to which we can only respond defensively.

Ashland, I would argue, is at an inflection point, one of those rare chances to think and plan anew. The January listening session pointed to both the promise and the complexities of including diverse voices.

How will this small city, straddling the Siskiyou Mountains and Shakespeare, make the best of this opportunity?

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