Back to Ashland

After a long absence, our return south reminds us to pay it forward

ASHLAND—Jean Glausi was among the more generous people I’ve known. I met the Eugene woman in 2004 when speaking to her book club about American Nightingale, my story about the first nurse to die after the landings at Normandy in World War II.

“You know,” Jean said afterward, “we own a little cottage in Ashland, a few blocks from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In the spring, when demand is low, we’d love to make it available to you and Sally.”

“Oh, wow.”

“And I’m on the Festival board; we’d be happy to provide you tickets to a couple of plays when you’re down there.”

Though as a teenager I had allowed my sister, Linda, to spit scrambled eggs in my face as she practiced the part of Helen Keller for a play at Corvallis High, neither She Who nor I had a theatrical bent. But how could we turn down such an offer? We gladly accepted.

What ensued were yearly getaways in which we fell in love with Ashland, broadened our cultural horizons and sampled the adventure of new places, new people and new experiences. It became our yearly hideaway, a spring retreat of sorts.

Over the years we watched a handful of Shakespeare plays and dozens of others, from Our Town to The Diary of Anne Frank to Fences to The Importance of Being Earnest.

Though we prefer conventional plays to Shakespeare—Richard III has 3,619 lines, most of which zinged past me like Serena Williams serves—we are enamored by the actors who pull it off. And they do this more than 100 times between March and October—how, I have no idea.