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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 2015)
June 19, 2015 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 5A Summer tourism begins, but who plans the events? E very town on the North Coast has its own way of signaling summer, and when summer does arrive on the weekend of June 20 this year, it will be duly noted by thousands of visitors. From Cannon Beach to Asto- ria, the weekend promises to be ¿OOHGZLWKDFWLYLWLHV²LIDQ\RQH can get to them. My question is this: Do the planners of these events ever talk to each other? In Cannon Beach, the Sandcas- tle Contest Weekend runs from June 19 to 21, when the tides are low enough to accommodate the crowds, cars and the sandcas- tle-crafters. That is also opening weekend for the Coaster Theatre’s “Little Shop of Horrors.” Meanwhile, in Seaside, two of the city’s largest events, the Sea- side Beach Soccer Tournament and the Muscle and Chrome car show, will occupy the downtown core area. Gearhart Golf Links will host the Greater Oregon Brew Tour on June 19. Astoria will be the site of the annual Scandanavian Midsummer Festival June 19 through 21 at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. And, for those who can make it to the Long Beach (Wash.) Penin- sula, the annual Northwest Garlic Festival is being staged in Ocean Park June 19 and 20. And so, the summer begins. /DVW VXPPHU WUDI¿F VQDUOV caused consternation among drivers up and down the coast. When there’s only one main road connecting those towns and ev- ery town has a big event, there’s bound to be bumper-to-bumper WUDI¿F$QGWKDW¶VDEXPPHU I admit that, after eight years of being a full-time North Coast resident, I’m becoming tired of seeing all the visitors in town every weekend. I’m turning into a curmudgeon who growls when six cars are parked in front of a vacation rental home on my street for an entire weekend. At the same time, I know our area thrives on the generosi- ty of strangers. Without them, we would have few resources to maintain the lifestyle we would like to become accustomed to. Finding the balance So there’s the balance we need to consider. The Seaside Visitors Impressions By NANCY McCARTHY Bumper-to-bumper traffi c is a bummer. Bureau and the Seaside Chamber of Commerce have done a bang- up job of attracting crowds to local events. Astoria’s event plan- ners also produce myriad tourism opportunities. The Cannon Beach Cham- ber of Commerce has managed to coax a 1 percent lodging tax increase out of the city’s budget committee. Seventy percent of that increase will go to help the chamber bolster the staff at the information center, which, ulti- mately, will result in more “vis- itors and tourism” for Cannon Beach, according to City Manag- er Brant Kucera. Yippee. Just this past week, two of the “old guard” in Cannon Beach have died. Steve McLeod, an art- ist who may be remembered for his paintings of Haystack Rock that looked more like photographs ZKHQ¿QLVKHGDQGZKRDOVRFUHDW ed artwork from seaweed, lived in Cannon Beach since the time the town was an early arts colony. Pat Friedland, former opera- tor of Pat’s Coffee Shop from the late 1970s to 1998, died May 30. She lived a quiet life in Cannon Beach, but she was a generous benefactor to the local arts, con- servation projects and student scholarships. Those who raised a cup of black coffee in Pat’s honor at a recent informal tribute, recalled how she used to tell the tourists who came to her shop on our rare sunny afternoons to head to the beach instead of to the stores. That attitude may not be very popular now. At another recent gathering of friends, a few people fondly recalled Cannon Beach’s “old days,” when the North Coast was sparsely populated and tourists were relatively unfamiliar with the area. When the town’s gnarly “characters” were welcome and WKH WRZQ¶V VWUHHWV ZHUHQ¶W ¿OOHG with day-trippers. They agreed those days are long gone. :H FDQ¶W ² DQG GRQ¶W ZDQW WR ² VHQG DOO WKH YLVLWRUV DZD\ We depend on them. Maybe too much. My favorite season used to be summer. Now, it’s winter. Espe- cially January and February, the darkest time of the year. There are few cars parked on the streets. It’s easier to drive on the highway. Local towns are quiet. Full-time residents turn to each other for company. We may not be able to have that ambiance all the time here on the North Coast. But we need more conversations about what we do want here and how to plan for it. We need to ask ourselves how much is too much. Nancy McCarthy is a free- lance writer who recently retired as editor of the Cannon Beach Gazette and the Seaside Signal. Her column appears monthly. Renowned artist Shirley Gittlesohn dies Gazette, Signal win awards for excellence Artist from Page 1A “I was born in Good Sa- maritan Hospital,” she said in an interview last month. “They took me home, and then three months later they took me down to the beach. And that was sort of the story of my life.” Her parents, Tom and Dai- sy Georges, decided to rent a home in sleepy Cannon Beach when she was a teen- ager, Gittelsohn said, because in Seaside she spent too much time chasing boys. The family bought a hill- top house north of Elk Creek in 1944 with an ocean-facing view that swept from Chap- man Point to Cape Falcon, a vista she painted in rain, shine and fog from the 1950s, when VKH ¿UVW WRRN XS D EUXVK ³, liked being a mother and wife and so on, but I wanted some- thing else to do, too,” she told the Gazette’s Erick Bengel in DQ$SULOSUR¿OH³6R,VWDUWHG painting and found I enjoyed it very much.” “Cannon Beach was for Mom what Giverny was for Monet,” John Gittelsohn said Monday. “It’s a vast garden of shifting light and thick, salty air that inspired her unique vision.” Gittelsohn was to con- tinue painting until macular degeneration deprived her of her long-distance vision. She loved to walk on the beach south of Ecola State Park un- til she was 89. In 1981, she feared that a proposed housing develop- ment would block her view of Haystack Rock. So, between March and July of that year, she cranked out 183 paintings of the rock, to “catch the view before it was gone,” she said. These were displayed at Can- non Beach City Hall. In 1987, she and her hus- band, Bill, built a new house ZLWK D WRSÀRRU VWXGLR WKDW recaptured the view blocked by the condos. In 2009, a ret- rospective of Gittelsohn’s ca- reer was presented at the Vol- lum Gallery at Reed College. Also in 2009, she wrote and published a book, “Paintings DQG5HÀHFWLRQV´ PHOTO COURTESY JOHN GITTELSON Th e black-and-white photo of Shirley with her 1981 series of Haystack Rock, which she rushed to paint before con- struction of the Breakers Point condos blocked the view from the house her parents bought in 1944. Gittlesohn reminisces about the beach paintings, most of which she painted during the 1970s and 80s. They depict the stretch In 2013, a crew for Oregon of beach from Chapman Pubic Broadcasting’s Oregon Point to Haystack Rock as $UW %HDW ¿OPHG *LWWHOVRKQ she viewed it from her beach and her family reminiscing house window. about the beach and its role in “I’ve been going through her development as an artist. various pieces and just re- During her nearly 60-year seeing them again and just career as an artist, Gittelsohn enjoying them very much for also painted still life scenes the most part,” she said be- from her vacations in Mexi- fore the exhibition’s opening. co and many, many portraits “I just hope the gallery’s big of her children. Her work has enough for all this stuff!” been displayed at Reed Col- The exhibit was domi- lege, Willamette University, nated by a 1977 family por- the Oregon Jewish Museum WUDLWRIKHUWKUHHFKLOGUHQ² and Arlene Schnitzer’s Foun- 'HQD-RKQDQG-XG\²KHU tain Gallery. late husband, Bill Gittelsohn, This year, her exhibi- and the family cat and dog, tion at the Cannon Beach posed on the dunes where the Gallery, which ran through Breakers Point condominium June 2, included about 15 oil project now stands. When the condo project was approved in the 1981, she rushed to paint dozens of versions of Haystack Rock before the view from her home disap- peared. The paintings were exhibited in Cannon Beach City Hall later that year. Currently, her paintings hang in Cannon Beach City Hall and the Cannon Beach Library. Others are on sale at the White Bird Gallery, which was founded by her late sister-in-law, Evelyn Georges. Though macular degen- eration slowed her output, Gittelsohn, still painted and showed her work at White Bird Gallery. Asked what tradition she paints in, Gittelsohn said in April: “My own.” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR A concrete contradiction In the May 22 issue of the Gazette, there is an arti- cle entitled “New Sidewalk Project Could Improve ADA Accessibility on Spruce Street.” This article states, “Councilor George Vetter said he wondered if there were a more aestheti- cally appealing way to han- dle the problem than “just throwing concrete down. We’re a town that prides it- self on aesthetics, and con- crete is not part of that.” We agree with Mr. Vet- ter. However, we wonder why council didn’t have any concerns about concrete be- fore granting the property located at 532 N. Laurel to build four single residenc- es on a half-acre lot. Typ- ically a minimum of three acres are required for this type of development. This property design included a very industrial-looking concrete retaining wall/ driveway, approximately 10 feet high and 125 feet long! Throwing down con- crete? WOW!! The project also means the removal of many trees. And this from a town that “prides itself on aesthetics”? Council, please recon- sider before allowing this much concrete to be thrown down in OUR neighbor- hood! Dale and Linda Hintz Cannon Beach The Cannon Beach Ga- zette and Seaside Signal of EO Media Group earned four awards in the North- west Excellence in Journal- ism competition sponsored by the Society of Profes- sional Journalists, held in Abany, Saturday, June 6. Reporter Erick Ben- gel earned two awards for work in the Gazette. He placed second in the life- styles category for cover- age of a citywide miniature golf fundraiser for Tolova- na Arts Colony. He placed third in arts reporting and criticism for his coverage of Cannon Beach musician Michael Corry’s remix of his “Codger Pole” music CD. Nancy McCarthy, retired editor of both newspapers, earned third place in the government and politics reporting category, for cov- erage of attempts to unseat Gearhart Mayor Dianne Widdop. The awards included third place in general ex- cellence for the Seaside Signal. The awards, for work published during 2014 at the annual banquet of the Oregon Territory Chapter of the SPJ in Albany. The chapter covers Oregon and Southwest Washington. The newspapers com- pete against nondaily news- papers in Oregon, Wash- ington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. McCarthy also earned third place in the best local column category. Her col- umns covered recollections of the murder of the 2-year- old baby in Cannon Beach, what nature can teach during a vacation and con- nections made at Cannon Beach’s annual “welcome home salmon” ceremony. “I’m happy the Sigma Delta Chi judges recog- nized the commitment, hard work and long hours put in by the Cannon Beach Gazette staff, which is ded- icated to publishing a qual- ity community newspaper,” said Nancy McCarthy, who recently retired as editor of the Gazette. “This is a great compliment for the paper, which had been under the new ownership of the EO Media Group for only one year when the newspaper’s editions were submitted for judging.” McCarthy also won a third-place award for gov- ernment and politics report- ing category, for coverage of attempts to unseat Gear- hart Mayor Dianne Wid- dop. “The Cannon Beach community has greatly supported the Gazette, and the staff appreciates that support,” McCarthy said. “Without it, the reporters, sales representatives and the other staff members could not produce such a successful newspaper.” McCarthy also earned third place in the best local column category. 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