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Scratchpad: Solidarity among artists is so cool

One of the coolest things I heard recently was about a gathering of three bands who play vastly…

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Scratchpad: The weekend to celebrate your mom

I miss my Mum. Readers were very gracious with feedback when I wrote  in The Astorian and Chinook…

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Scratchpad: We REALLY need the arts right now

The newspaper joins me in commending our colleague Lissa Brewer for her stewardship of Coast Weekend these past…

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An enduring sense of place

Some of my earliest memories of visiting the Oregon Coast are with my dad’s mother, who we called…

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Notes from the newsroom

They come ringing the doorbell and ask if we’re still here. Have we moved? Has the building sold…

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Liberty Theatre in Astoria celebrates 100 years

On April 4, 1925, Astoria was emerging from a cloud of ash. Two and a half years earlier,…

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Our Coast Magazine looks at relationships with the land

In Astoria, 1,200 miles of the Columbia River spill into the vast Pacific. From above, silver tributaries branch…

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On Discovery Trail

To clear my head, I take drives. Sometimes nowhere, and lately in the mornings east on Highway 30…

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Alive in the Columbia River

“I believe everything has a soul,” the poet Mary Oliver writes in “Staying Alive,” an essay from the…

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Making botanical art with seaweed

Seaweed, dried and pressed into lifelike shapes and muted green and yellow hues, covered a table at the…

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