VACATIONING IN SOUTHERN OREGON!

I had last week off for fall break at the University of Portland. Kent and I took advantage of the opportunity to visit my cousin Sue and her husband Dave in Jacksonville, a historic gold-rush era town just outside Medford. Pictured here is their rental home, and portraits of us while on a walk. The entire area was quite beautiful, especially Ashland and the wine country/organic farm area between there and Grants Pass. We took a guided tour of the Shakespeare Festival area in Ashland, where they stage hundreds of performances every year.

We went to a movie one night in Ashland -- "Departures," a Japanese film that won the Academy Award this year for best foreign film. It's easy to see why. It tells the strange story of a cellist who loses his job and becomes an undertaker. Sounds macabre, but it's not. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sue and Dave are enjoying their new retired life and have a 20-month lease in this almost Disney-esque housing development in Jacksonville. New construction here must comply with strict codes because of the historic designation of the town, so their neighborhood is filled with homes of a sort of Victorian/Arts and Crafts style.

A DAY DOWNTOWN WITH ALEX

Alex got a rare day off from her feisty 2-1/2-year-old son yesterday when her friend's husband offered to take Truman for awhile. We stopped at the University of Portland to investigate possible accounting degree programs for Alex, ate scrumptious Reuben sandwiches at a Jewish deli, and browsed around Powell's Bookstore, one of the largest bookstores in the country. It occupies an old warehouse of an entire square block in the heart of downtown. We ended the trip with coffee and cupcakes at the bookstore coffee shop. I believe the statistics show that Portlanders read more books than anywhere else in the country. Maybe it's all that rain.

I'm able to travel downtown on the light rail, which I catch about 5 blocks from my house. It's also free, as is all public transportation within downtown.

A PUBLIC POLITICAL STATEMENT

This handcrafted message was NOT in someone's front yard. In case you can't read it, someone had written "the GOP" beneath the "Stop" message. Well, it is Portland, after all, where there are more Priuses than Ford trucks.

A WALK THROUGH MY HISTORIC IRVINGTON NEIGHBORHOOD

These photos represent some of the quirkiness I was talking about in an earlier entry. Portlanders like to display their creativity, their politics or their passions in front of their homes.

A WALKING TRIP DOWNTOWN

Since it was such a beautiful day and I have the week off from work, I decided to walk downtown -- took less than a half-hour from our rental house. My first stop after crossing the Broadway Bridge was this gorgeous vintage train station. Nik took the train from here a few weeks ago to return to school in Olympia. The fare was $29. Not bad.

FALL COLORS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

As I walked around today, I noticed that the reds and oranges are dominant -- not nearly as many yellow shades as in Minnesota. They're almost glowing, they're so bright. The weather, however, is still almost summery here. The high today was 65.

TRUMAN AND AUNTIE STEPH IN MANZANITA