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SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

Discover what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!

Mar
11
Sat
Readings by Martha Grover, Casey Jarman, Lizzy Acker and Hajara Quinn with MUSIC by The Morals and Jessica Dennison and Jones!
Mar 11 @ 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Martha Grover’s Messy Lives

The End of My Career Author Is the Voice of Portland Right Now

 

AS SOON AS Martha Grover opened her new book, The End of My Career, with a story about cleaning, I knew we were on the same page. People make fun of me for liking David Sedaris, but at least he understands how to clean a hardwood floor. Grover does too, as a seasoned custodian. “Cleaning Jack’s House” breaks open an observational mystery about the home of a “total bachelor slob.” She finds the “truly messy” home breathtaking: “A thing of wonder,” she writes fondly, “you so rarely see it. Messy people don’t host dinner parties.”

The first short story in a collection is always a clue about what’s coming next. In this case, Grover sets herself up as the non-judgmental observer of a client who, she gradually begins to discover, is not messy out of laziness but an illness from which he is recovering. This echoes Grover’s own situation—she has idiopathic Cushing’s disease.

Grover’s collection, available now from Portland’s Perfect Day Publishing, continues with “The Truth About Pheromones,” bringing the book’s situation more sharply into perspective. We’re dropped into her dating life as she hooks up repeatedly with someone she isn’t attracted to—all the while wondering why she’s doing it. Grover is suddenly no longer the benevolent observer. Here is her own laundry: some of it dirty, some of it utilitarian, all of it very necessary and human. We are the custodians now, and Grover seems to ask us to regard her with the same impartiality she showed her first chapter’s slob.

Grover’s dating trials will resonate with many. Some are dark. At the end of “The Five Stages,” Grover casually mentions her IUD to her date to explain why she doesn’t have a period. “He looked like he wanted me to stop explaining,” she writes. “As if he didn’t want to be reminded that I had a body.” These short sentences were shocking for their succinct honesty and apt description. I think we’ve all been on the receiving end of that sentiment, naked or otherwise.

I want to graph the passage where a “dating expert” tells Grover about “the three signs that a man is in love […], the four signs that a man only wants sex, the 10 lies that men tell, the seven ways that I can make a man adore me, love me, commit to me, the three signs that he is not ready for a relationship, the three signs that I am not ready for a relationship.”

illustrated by Martha Grover

I’m surprised Grover—who frequently brings up drawing and whose illustrations appear throughout End of My Career—hasn’t illustrated it.

Many of the book’s chapters have appeared in Grover’s ongoing zine Somnambulist, which just recently celebrated its 27th issue in July at the 2016 Portland Zine Symposium. In 2011, eight years’ worth of Somnambulist were collected in Grover’s first book, One More for the People, also released by Perfect Day, which described the everyday grimness of her illness. “In medicine, when they can’t come up with a cause for a disease, they call it idiopathic,” she notes. But in The End of My Career, Grover is recovering, or is perhaps as recovered as she can be for now. She tests out her newly regained strength, trying to take on jobs and wondering if she can ever move out of her parents’ home again.

I don’t have much in common with Grover, but her easy prose makes me feel as if I do. In my mind, she’s exactly where every Portlander is right now. She is coping with an illness. She has strained but important relationships with her family. She tries out different jobs, willing to be versatile, to try everything, to survive. She works as a private investigator and later as a real estate agent. It’s somewhat humbling that—despite growing up in Corbett and the Montavilla neighborhood—Grover still views herself as an interloper. Martha Grover isn’t an outsider. Or maybe she is—but only in the way that in Portland, we all are.

Mar
18
Sat
Bad Assets
Mar 18 @ 8:00 pm

Come along as Bad Assets take you on a musical road trip through the ghost towns and back roads of Oregon

Mar
25
Sat
Those Willows
Mar 25 @ 8:00 pm

Portland based Indie Pop band Those Willows began almost 10 years ago when Jack Wells and Mel Tarter met in high school in the suburbs of Detroit, MI.

Since then, they have grown to a four piece band and evolved their sound with Motown, folk and soul influences.

With four releases, tours around the US, and songs appearing on MTV, VH1 and Bravo, Those Willows will hook you with their vice grip vocal harmonies and magnetic energy.

Apr
1
Sat
Boys Keep Swinging
Apr 1 @ 8:00 pm

David Bowie Cover Band from Portland, OR featuring members of Gossip, Wampire, Fur Coats, Cat Hoch Band, and Snowblind Traveler.  Boys Keep Swinging!

Apr
8
Sat
MayMay
Apr 8 @ 8:00 pm

Laurel Simmons is the songwriter behind MayMay and has just released her second LP, Mountains Hills Plateuas and PlainsMayMay debuted their first release, And so I place you in the setting sun, in 2012 after a few years of shows under the moniker and has evolved to be a project, at various times, played with Heather Woods Broderick, Peter Broderick, Birger Olsen and Raul Pastor Medall.

MayMay’s sound is inviting and reflective with lush yet spacious arrangements; weaving ethereal vocalizations, homespun beats, twangy guitars and melodic piano.

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Apr
15
Sat
Dusty Santamaria with Galen Ballinger & Travis Champ
Apr 15 @ 8:00 pm
Touring in support of his newest vinyl release, “Minor Cult Figure,” on Voodoo It Yourself Records, Dusty Santamaria  has been a phantom cornerstone of the West Coast underground music and poetry scene for the past decade. Drawing from mid-century R&B, gospel, and country music as well as Magick theory and poetics. Santamaria’s songs and memorable live shows have scored him opening slots for the likes of Reckless Eric and Lucinda Williams. A self described “minor cult figure,” Dusty Santamaria performs as one possessed by the spirit of that re-emerging zeitgeist of a lost, yet intrinsic era of American sound.
Apr
16
Sun
Easter Egg Hunt
Apr 16 @ 10:00 am

 

Calling all Sou’wester Guests…..Please join us in Welcoming Springtime with an Easter Egg Hunt starting at 10:00am. Come on into the lodge for coffee and tea and then rush off to find your treats!

10:00am to 12:00pm

Egg Hunt OUTSIDE for Kiddos (Kid-Kind Treats)

AND

Egg Hunt INSIDE the Lodge for Adults (Adult-Themed Treats)

 

You’ll even find some fun non-traditional non-junk food style fun in the hunt too! (Event for Sou’wester friends/family and for guests staying in lodging at the Sou’wester.)

 

Apr
22
Sat
Stringology plus Meg Baier
Apr 22 @ 8:00 pm
Stringologypresents the best in Vintage American Music, Classic Jazz & Swing in a unique duo format, that, as the name implies, is all-strings! Hot jazz of the 1920’s, ‘The Great American Songbook’ of the 1930’s and ‘40’s, Gypsy Swing — even Contemporary and Latin American styles are showcased by the virtuoso guitarist ERIC BOGART— and the “rock-solid” rhythm back-up of TERIANNE STRATTON on ukulele.
 
The influence of the legendary Gypsy guitarist, Django Reinhardt, who won acclaim for his unique guitar styling in 1930’s Paris, infuses every performance by “Stringology” with spirited excitement, passionate improvisation and pulsating rhythm that leaves every audience cheering– and wanting to come back for more.
 
Stringology” has performed in Seattle, Miami Beach, Victoria BC, Mexico, and can be seen regularly at many festivals and music venues on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State– their home base. 
Meg Baier’s latest release,  Cedar Rose, is an album composed by Meg Baier and Produced by Alan Singley. The songs are a little bit Laurel Canyon and a little bit Lilith Fair. Rich harmonies and sonic playgrounds surround the listener. The songs deal with love and making it in the world. It’s all very modern and classic at the same time. 
 
Apr
29
Sat
5 Year Anniversary Celebration
Apr 29 @ 4:00 pm – Apr 30 @ 12:00 pm
Apr
30
Sun
5 Year Anniversary Celebration
Apr 30 @ 10:00 am