Laura Grimes

Laura Grimes worked as a journalist at The Oregonian for 24 years, where for most of that time she oversaw the production of features sections. When she’s not keeping Arts Watch in line, she’s the marketing and public relations manager for The Portland Ballet. As a freelance writer and editor, she has a notable thing for writing quirky essays when the muse strikes, and has published in The Oregonian, Oregon Arts Watch, and Art Scatter. She spent several years as a volunteer working to grow arts programs in schools and to improve school playgrounds.

 

The art of giving, large and small

It's not just an action but a process, as big as a sea lion and as small as a salmonberry

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Published November 27, 2019, in COAST, CULTURE, NEWS & NOTES, OREGON, VISUAL ART

The act of giving can be so simple and yet so complex. Giving in a sense that is not just good cheer, but something deeper and nuanced and more layered. It’s not just a word, but an entire etiquette. It’s not just a formality, but a way of life.

It’s a matter of respect, a shared experience, an exchange of goodwill, a nod to humility, a deference, a show of appreciation, a payback, a responsibility, a form of courage, an act of selflessness. It’s what matters most and gives meaning. Go deeper. Go higher. A language unto itself. A conversation.

All these words are important, and each is different.

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), aretha franklin (1942-2018) reins supreme dance cap, yellow cedar bark (Kodiak, AK): Vickie Era; black berry and beet dye (Columbia River, OR); red cedar bark (Kingcome, British Columbia): Marianne Nicolson; salmon vertebrae (Kingcome, B.C.); sweet grass: Theresa Secord; spruce root (North Spit of Jordan Cove, Coos Bay, OR); glass and shell beads: Amazon, the world.
Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), aretha franklin (1942-2018) reins supreme dance cap, yellow cedar bark (Kodiak, AK): Vickie Era; black berry and beet dye (Columbia River, OR); red cedar bark (Kingcome, British Columbia): Marianne Nicolson; salmon vertebrae (Kingcome, B.C.); sweet grass: Theresa Secord; spruce root (North Spit of Jordan Cove, Coos Bay, OR); glass and shell beads: Amazon, the world.

A trip to the Oregon Coast a while back got me thinking about all that, and has stayed with me for more than a year. What does it mean “to give?” It’s all about a balance in the universe, but it’s not simply to balance out “to get,” and certainly not “to take.” But what does it mean to give in a sense that achieves an equilibrium?

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Demanding to be seen in a faceless bureaucracy

Mohamed Asem's memoir "Stranger in the Pen" reflects on identity and belonging

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Published November 20, 2018, in CULTURE, LANGUAGE ARTS

Mohamed Asem is a man between countries and cultures, which puts him squarely at odds with bureaucratic systems that crave neat little scribbled-in circles. When everything is carefully defined, there are fewer choices. No gray area. Nothing to consider or worry about. So what happens when it isn’t?

Asem is a man of independent means with no permanent ties, free to explore the world when and how he chooses. Yet he learns abruptly, rudely, and quite painfully that “where” is not always a possibility. Not all doors are open to him. In his short memoir (131 pages), Stranger in the Pen, newly published by Portland’s Perfect Day Publishing, Asem recounts in his understated prose how he’s detained overnight at Gatwick Airport in London in July 2016, a few days after the Bastille Day terrorist attack, in which a semi-truck drove through crowds in Nice, France, killing 86 people.

Mohamed Asem for Perfect Day Publishing, June 2018. Photo by Jason Quigley.

Like a film lens moving in and out of a close-up, throughout the airport story Asem deftly weaves in memories and details about the rest of his life, one that defies categories and easy identification so that it stymies Border Control agents. Born in California and raised in Paris and Kuwait, he’s not truly at home anywhere.

His accent doesn’t fit no matter what language he speaks. He’s comfortable with family and friends in Kuwait, but his introverted ways (so “Western”) make him a tough fit in a culture that is so social, and his perpetual single status inhibits his ability to buy property so he can have privacy and write. On top of that, he’s light-skinned because his ancestors moved to Kuwait from other countries, so even in a Kuwaiti airport he’s often asked to get in a line for non-citizens. Where does the meta stop?

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To Ursula, with love

Hopelessly stuck in traffic with a literary legend – my wild ride of a day with Ursula K. Le Guin

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Published April 18, 2018, in CULTURE, LANGUAGE ARTS

A tribute to Portland literary great Ursula K. Le Guin has been set for Wednesday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m., at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Fittingly, Literary Arts, with whom Ursula had a long association, has the honor of hosting, and you can sign up to receive a notice when free tickets will be released on May 1.

As Literary Arts bills it: “We will hear from some of the people who were with her professionally or privately throughout the course of her life: writers influenced by her work, artists who collaborated with her, readers who were changed by her stories, and some of her closest friends.”

Seemingly, everyone has an Ursula story. Mine? She was the centerpiece of one of the best and one of the worst days of my life.

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