I have very few credentials to help me launch an imaginary career as a movie critic.  But if I ever landed an interview, I’d say a little about my high school newspaper profile about the just-emerging  Joni Mitchell, after hearing “Clouds”for the first time — how I once chatted with Dustin Hoffman outside the stage door after watching “Jimmy Shine,” and how I sat not more than 20 feet away from Richard Burton when he dazzled us in “Equus. ” And if my interviewer was still paying attention, I’d go on and on about the time I shook hands with...

I can’t remember who it was  — just who it wasn’t.  The ticket office was frantic: where were all the ticket buyers hiding?   The more obscure the name, the harder PR toiled.  And it happened so early in my days at the Symphony that I had no idea what to do when the general manager sprang the alert:  “We’re papering the house — Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.”  That’s when my boss explained that we needed to do whatever we could to ensure that our artist not be humiliated by rows of empty seats.  Showering schools and whoever we could welcome in with...

A new loss that brings with it such delicious memories — Maestro James DePreist,  Jimmy to every Oregonian, is now forever still. A long time ago, Jimmy  gave me a little ceramic pot with a picture of an ice fisherman at work.  “This is what you do for me,” he explained in the kindest way.   But there wasn’t any ice when I was pitching national media about a great conductor who let nothing dwarf his ascension.  Nobody ever sent me more effusive thank you notes for doing what was so very possible.  I remember the carrot soup that he made for lovely Ginette and me and the...

My husband was sure that Jim, the appliance serviceman dispatched for our annual washer/dryer check-up, would have nothing to say about detergent preferences. Our tete a tete in the laundry room, he tried to convince me, would simply confirm that our front-loading high efficiency machines were meeting industry standards.   I raced ahead to our laundry room to line up the questionable detergent boxes. And as I waited for Jim, I wondered whether our fluffy towels and dirty gym clothes were sometimes at odds in the suds.  I’d ask him about the upper range of full loads, too —  if he stayed...

I’m married to a master negotiator. He was born with the will to make things happen. He even makes stuck wheels turn his way.  I’m guessing it has something to do with his Type B blood, instant know-how passed through ancestors who refused to give in.  Not me.  I prefer to find things hidden under mossy stones. I let my eyes lead and turn up my ears when something makes them glow.  True, I lit up when Dustin Hoffman was asked at the Golden Globes about who he’d most like to spend time with that night and he inched closer to his wife of so many years, and declared:...

“This is the most beautiful aria in the world,” I told the sage in the produce department, as an electrifying voice swept over the lettuce, encircled the cabbage, and gobbled up my heart. Adam, who knows more about turnips than anybody else I know, smiled knowingly.  “Yeah, somebody else just told me that, too.”  Then, another vegetable savant put down his radishes and asked me, “What’s it called —   I gotta get it.” But I couldn’t remember the name. None of us could remember it back then, either.  Back when Tott’s flashed it on our tv...