"Don't Say Nothin'!"

Not very competent bank robber interrupts the Sherwood Heritage Trail Festival by ordering everyone not to look at him or say anything. But never fear. A spook from the F.B.I. quickly arrives to gather clues. This was one of a dozen actual historical scenes depicted during the Festival this week-end. SEE MORE AT OUR NEW HERITAGE TRAIL BLOG!

Actors of all ages turned out to make the two day event a success.

Preservation Bookstore opens in Portland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 16, 2008
Contact: Tim Cannan (503) 223-4939

Portland, Oregon – PreservationDirectory.com, the leading online resource for historic and cultural resource preservation based in Portland, Oregon, is pleased to announce the launch of the comprehensive “Preservation Bookstore.” The bookstore features a broad array of titles about: building restoration; architectural history and design; downtown, Main Street, and urban revitalization; historic preservation funding sources, laws and policy; historic real estate; architectural tours and heritage tourism; identifying architectural styles; researching house history; endangered history; museum management; and roadside attractions.

The Preservation Bookstore works in partnership with Powell's City of Books.

Clyde List Editorial: Hello China!

If the Sherwood Historical Society wants to live forever, she needs to do what businesses do, and "think global." Making friends with Edogawa, Japan was a good start. We also have a person named "Jessica" who is anxious to build bridges with China. I discovered China already, without Jessica. It happened many many years ago when I was a college student. I hated school. To this day, if I "take a course" in something it means I would have been better off reading a book.

Ah, what a library full of books my college had. Four stories tall and four stories deep. I worked out a system. Every Friday I would toss my course materials aside and march into the library. I would pick a number. One to Four. I would rise that many stories and then I'd toss an imaginary coin and turn left or right as I Ieft the elevator. After another series of randomized steps and turns I would arrive somewhere deep inside the stacks. On the countdown, I would shove out either my left or right arm and grab whatever book my fingers touched. If the book was at all readable, I would check it out and take it home with me and read it.

That is how I discovered Li Po (701–762). Li Po (pronounced "Li Bai") was a man of many talents, including writing poetry. He was obscure enough not to have a course taught about him at my college (thank God), but famous enough to receive one full column in my trusty old Brittanica. His biography reads like a comedy. He used to make little boats out of his poems and cast them adrift on a stream. He could have been an important member of the Emperor's court except that he would not stop composing poems about the Empress's nose! And so he wound up kissing his reflection in a pool and forgot to hang on to the guard rail, and he drowned. And so (life is strange) I became a friend of Li Po, who died many centuries before I lived, by a channel no mortal could predict.

But only in translation. I have been searching for some thirty years for someone who can read Li Po to me in Chinese. Jessica says she has waited over a thousand years to perform this honor. Ooooh! The word 'inscrutable' comes to mind....!

New Old Benches for Smock House

Eagle Scout Nathanael Haggard gets his receipt for a job well done from Sherwood Historical Society President Polly. Thanks to Nathan, the musicians now have benches to sit upon as they perform from the front and/or back porches of Smock House.