Julius Caesar at Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The current production of Julius Caesar at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival doesn’t exactly mirror the current political reality in the United States, but there are rhymes. The populist Julius Caesar flirts with authoritarianism, but unlike Republicans in our congress who refuse to stand up to the authoritarian in the White House, the senators of Rome, led by Marcus Brutus and Cassius, take a principled if excessively violent stand to protect their republic. Ultimately, though, Mark Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus fight a civil war, essentially ending the Roman Republic and establish an authoritarian Roman Empire that will persist for centuries.
The OSF production was staged with an all-female cast. Director Rosa Joshi focuses on Shakespeare’s language, placing actors on a simple clean-lined set. Despite my skepticism about an all female cast for such a potentially brutal play, I was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness and clarity of the production. I recall seeing Caesar at OSF in 2017 and I much prefer this production, possibly because of the female cast. Standouts in the company were Jessika D. Williams as Mark Antony and Antoinette Robinson as Brutus. (Kate Hurster, the regular Brutus was out for this performance and Robinson, who normally plays Trebonius stepped in for her. A good friend of mine, Julie Oda, stepped into the role of Trebonius and did a great job.) Frankly, the entire cast was strong — it’s always so refreshing to see Shakespeare at OSF, where actors are clearly cast for their ability to handle the language.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything we’ve seen at OSF this season. August Wilson’s Jitney may be one of the best shows I’ve seen there in the past few years. Two of my favorite OSF actors, Kevin Kennerly and Tyrone Wilson are in especially fine form in the show. You can’t go wrong with anything on the calendar at OSF this season.
Posted 17 July 2025 by Mark ·
Carrying the war on diversity too far
In mid February Elon Musk’s DOGE (pronounced “douche”) attacked the USDA’s team of scientists that maintain a diverse collection of seeds as a strategic hedge against catastrophic famine brought on by any number of potential threats. The DOGE team fired some of the scientists that carry out this important work.
Since its establishment in 1898, the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Plant Germplasm System and the scientists who support it have systematically gathered and maintained the agricultural plant species that undergird our food system in vast collections such as the one in Aberdeen. The collections represent a towering achievement of foresight that food security depends on the availability of diverse plant genetic resources. NY Times, March 22, 2025
One can imagine that Elon and Trump heard that the USDA was protecting diverse plant genetics and wanted to rid the agency of this DEI program.
Posted 22 March 2025 by Mark ·
Oh lord, he's such a putz
This is what happens when you are a corrupt weakling cosplaying as a strongman. You take credit for things that competent people do.
The Starliner saga is finally coming to an end with the return of NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on Tuesday after a prolonged nine month stay in space. The story is largely over, but that didn’t prevent President Donald Trump from taking one final stab at the former administration—a stab packed with disinformation, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods.
Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Monday to once again take credit for the plan to bring the Starliner astronauts back home. The NASA duo, Wilmore and Williams, launched to the International Space Station on board Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on June 5, 2024. The mission was supposed to last for eight days but NASA declared Starliner unsafe in the wake of alarming technical issues. The spacecraft returned home empty, with Wilmore and Williams assigned a pair of seats aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which finally undocked from the ISS on Tuesday, March 18 at 1:05 a.m. ET.
Trump is disingenuously claiming to have facilitated a rescue mission to bring the astronauts home, accusing the Biden administration of having “abandoned” them. The president’s latest social media diatribe on the return of Crew-9, posted to Truth Social on Monday, is a doozy, filled with nonsensical claims and glaring inaccuracies.
Posted 18 March 2025 by Mark ·
