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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 2019)
A4 • Friday, March 8, 2019 | Cannon Beach Gazette | CannonBeachGazette.com Views from the Rock THE HALL MARK OF HO S P I TA L I T Y CANNON SHOTS R.J. MARX H allmark Inns & Resorts is an independent, family and employee owned hospital- ity company with properties in Cannon Beach and Newport. Most recently, Hallmark acquired the Whaler in Newport from founders John and JoAnne Clark. In Cannon Beach, the Hallmark Inn is “the closest to Haystack Rock” and a mecca for visitors since 1948. Guest room renovations, launched last fall, will continue through May. Overseeing this will be Ric Rabourn, recently promoted president and chief exec- utive offi cer of Hallmark Inns & Resorts. We spoke with Rabourn about his newest venture in Newport, and what’s coming up in Can- non Beach. Q: What is your background? Rabourn: I’ve lived in Oregon 19 years. Before that, all over western Washington. I grew up in the hotel business. My dad was in the hotel business. We kind of moved around. I moved to Lake Oswego after 18 years as vice president of operations and general man- ager of the Newport resort, when I was pro- moted to the president/CEO position. Q: Tell me about your properties. Rabourn: We currently have three hotels. And we’re getting ready to develop a hotel site in Bend. Q: Will there be changes in Cannon Beach? Rabourn: With the Cannon Beach hotel, we’re in the middle of a $3 million renova- tion right now at the Cannon Beach prop- erty, which is a pretty much a fl oor-to-ceiling upgrade of the guest rooms. Q: What kind of improvements are you making? Rabourn: We are doing all new carpeting, fl ooring, furniture, all new wallpaper, paint- ing. The bathrooms are all being updated with new LED-lit mirrors as well as quartz vanity tops. Woodcastle (based in Albany) Guest room at the Hallmark Inn in Cannon Beach. is doing all the furniture for us. They bring all the raw logs from within 80 miles of Corvallis. Q: Who is your demographic? Rabourn: I would say upper-scale, pri- marily. The Cannon Beach market pricing is fairly upper-scale. Most of the guests are going to come from the Portland area and up into Washington. We have a lot of guests from Seattle. Q: How does the Newport audience differ? Rabourn: The Newport audience mainly pulls from Portland south, down the I-5 corri- dor and east as far as Boise. Q: Do you have international visitors? Rabourn: We do. In Newport, we get a lot of group tours that come in. They tend to have a lot of international travelers with the group tours. In Cannon Beach, it’s more indi- vidual travelers. We still get — especially in the summertime — quite a few travelers around the world. Q: How do you approach the threat of a tsunami? Rabourn: Our Newport property is high enough up that it’s not considered to be in the tsunami zone. We still have all the tsunami preparedness information, as well as evacua- tion routes, posted in all the guest rooms. Likewise in Cannon Beach as well, we have all the information there as well. Q: Do guests feel more comfortable knowing the risk? Rabourn: They don’t really say a lot about it. The Japanese tsunami (of 2013) didn’t end up hitting in Newport or Cannon Beach, but guests appreciated having the information. We actually had several guests, who decided, despite being told it wasn’t coming, to high- tail it to Corvallis at night. Q: What are some of the special features of your Cannon Beach location? Rabourn: The Cannon Beach location does have a full-service spa on-site. That’s very popular. It’s an amenity not many places have. We do seasonally free bike rentals as well. We do monthly specials at all the proper- ties. Sometimes they’re added value special — in Newport, it might be a bed and break- fast, in Cannon Beach, a spa treatment or dis- counted rate offer. Q: Will you be involved in local land-use and planning matters? Rabourn: As far as the local chamber of commerce related things, typically the gen- eral managers of the property are the ones I want to go home again A Native American’s debut novel VIEW FROM THE PORCH EVE MARX I belong to a book group; it’s natu- ral and common for the membership to pass around books we’ve enjoyed. Not all the books make it to our sched- uled discussions, which, yes, are all accompanied by food and drink. (Has there ever been a book group, except maybe bible study, that hasn’t included food and drink?) So when two of the book group members urged me to read “There There” by Tommy Orange, it was hard to say no, even though my night table was already groaning with piles of books. “There There,” published in 2018, is a debut novel by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange, a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of Ameri- can Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He is also a McDowell Fellow. The story is a contem- porary tale of woe of violence and recov- ery as well as memory and identity of Native Americans. Told from the point of view of 13 intergenerational charac- ters, all Natives, everything comes to a head at the gathering of the Big Oak- land Powwow. Among them, Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober. Dene Oxendene struggles to pull his life together after his uncle’s death. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield only wants to see her nephew, Orvil, perform traditional Indian dance. Eve Marx Tony Loneman is the teenage product of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. At the Powwow, their lives converge in an afternoon of unspeakable loss, sacrifi ce, and heroism. Although I like to think of myself as someone widely read, the sole Native American author I’m familiar with is Louise Erdrich. That doesn’t really speak that well of me. Reading “There There” I was forced to acknowledge how little I know about Native people, in no small part because everywhere I’ve lived, and I’ve lived on both coasts, east and west, Native people and their culture were sys- tematically wiped out by white men. After I fi nished the novel, I searched for more information about its author. In an interview with the American Booksell- ers Association, Orange said many Native Americans today struggle with authentic- ity. He said if you don’t look stereotypi- cally Native, as soon as you say who you are, everyone thinks they have the right to ask you how Native you are, and how much right you have to claim your heri- tage. He said that’s a seriously destructive thing to experience. The novel’s title comes from a 1937 Gertrude Stein reference to Oakland, “There’s no there there.” Stein was talking, even then, about urban sprawl and land developed to the point of unrec- ognition. Orange said he drew a paral- lel to the Native experience of there not being a “there there” for Native lands and the people who once inhabited it. This made me think of the Clatsop tribe and what has become of them. In the early part of the 19th century, the Clatsop made their home on the Ore- gon coast from the mouth of the Colum- bia River south to Tillamook Head. The Natives shared their salmon, their berries, and their hunting tips with the white men but did not mingle socially; in 1851 the Clatsop tribe ceded by treaty 90 percent of their land to the U.S. government. Today the Clatsop have no formal rec- ognition, which means their people, like so many other Natives, struggle to main- tain an identity. Two hundred or so Clat- sop Natives formed an unoffi cial con- federation called the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes of Oregon. Some Clatsop also are enrolled with the Chi- nook Tribe. I wonder if the popularity of genetic testing kits such as 23andMe and Ances- tryDNA can help them fi nd more of each other and inspire interest in their heritage. Meanwhile, if you want to get a taste of what it means to be an urban Native, read “There There.” It’s available at the Cannon Beach Book Company on North Hemlock Street. OUT OF MY HEAD BOB DIETSCHE T PUBLIC MEETINGS Monday, March 11 Cannon Beach Rural Fire Protec- tion District Board of Directors, 6 p.m., 188 E. Sunset Blvd. Tuesday, March 12 Cannon Beach City Council, 5:30 p.m., work session, City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Wednesday, March 13 Cannon Beach City Council, bud- Publisher Kari Borgen Editor R.J. Marx Circulation Manager Jeremy Feldman Production Manager John D. Bruijn get preliminary discussions, City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Tuesday, March 19 Thursday, March 14 Cannon Beach Public Works Com- mittee, 9 a.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Cannon Beach Academy, board meeting, 3781 S. Hemlock, Cannon Beach. Seaside School District Board of Directors, 6 p.m., 1801 S. Franklin. Monday, March 18 Thursday, March 21 Ecola Creek Watershed Council, 4:30 p.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower, Cannon Beach. Parks and Community Services Committee, 9 a.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Advertising Sales Holly Larkins Staff writer Brenna Visser Contributing writers Joseph Bernt Eve Marx Bob Dietsche Nancy McCarthy Dave Fisher Cara Mico Rita Goldfarb Rain Jordan CANNON BEACH GAZETTE The Cannon Beach Gazette is published every other week by EO Media Group. 1555 N. Roosevelt, Seaside, Oregon 97138 503-738-5561 • Fax 503-738- 9285 CannonBeachgazette.com • email: editor@cannonbeachgazette.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Annually: $40.50 in county, $58.00 in and out of county. Postage Paid at: Cannon Beach, OR 97110 Cannon Beach Design Review Board Meeting, 6 p.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Thursday, March 28 Cannon Beach Planning Commis- sion, 6 p.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. Friday, March 29 Emergency Preparedness Commit- tee, 9 a.m., 163 E. Gower St. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Cannon Beach Gazette, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103 Copyright 2019 © Cannon Beach Gazette. Nothing can be reprinted or copied without consent of the owners. attending those meet- ings. They’ll let me know if there is any- thing bigger picture that’s coming down the pike I should be aware of. I would certainly be attuned to that and get involved if applicable. Q: Do you get involved with state lodg- Ric Rabourn, ing decisions? president and chief Rabourn: We’re executive offi cer members of the state of Hallmark Inns & lodging association and Resorts. I will be attending some of those sessions. Our role is to try to continue to provide a great lodging experience for visitors that are coming into town, as well as being a good member of the community. Mike Locke (Hallmark general manager) has been there since August. He’s living in the area now and getting out and trying to meet as many people as possible. Q: You are employee-owned? Rabourn: A key feature of Hallmark is we’re one of the few hospitality companies that has an employee stock ownership pro- gram. We’re presently 70 percent-owned by family and 30 percent employees. Q: Who is covered? Rabourn: (Employees) top to bottom. The hourly cut-off is 30 hours, or anyone who works 1,000 hours per year or more is eligi- ble for the employee stock option program, that’s something provided at company costs. The employee doesn’t pay anything. Q: That’s one way to get good employees on the coast. Rabourn: It is. We offer a great benefi ts package including medical, dental, vision, as well as the 401K plans, discounts at our vari- ous properties. Q: What percentage of your guests have pets? Rabourn: In Cannon Beach, about 40 percent of our rooms are pet-friendly, and they tend to run pretty full. I’m not a scien- tifi c person, but I think 40 percent is pretty accurate. We do $20 per pet per night. That includes a pet basket that we put in the rooms. It has a sheet they can put out out for the pet, as well as a water bowl, toys and treats. hanks to Jack Nicholson bucket lists have become fashionable. So last week I made a list. I would like to visit Thomas Wolfe’s memorial in Ashe- ville, North Carolina. or take the boat ride to Catalina Island or be a part of the crowd at a Steelers and Browns football game, but most of all I want to go home again. I want to revisit the house in Toledo, Ohio that I grew up in 70 years ago. Perhaps you’re asking why would anyone want to do that? The terminally nostalgic or as lyricist Dave Frishberg put it: “people with a psycho- pathic involvement with the past.” I drive by my old house every time I am in Toledo, but I want to go inside. I want to know what it is like to step back in time real- izing that several generations have made changes at 4108 N. Lockwood. This urge is more than just a nostalgic trip. I want to test my memory. Could I climb the stairs , turn right, and fi nd my bedroom? Will the size of the rooms inside match my recollection? Is the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen where I remember? And what happened to the coal eating furnace in the basement that my Dad and I used to feed each night? Is there still a place in the backyard where grass would never grow? I get a rush just thinking about it, but with some apprehension. What is it going to be like when I step inside, where the past and present are there all at once like an epi- sode out of the Twilight Zone? I want to know what the current own- ers think about my old house and why they bought it. I want to know what they think about the neighborhood and Whittier Ele- mentary where I went to school. Does it still have great teachers like Ms. Dryfus, Ms. Moon and Ms. Atkins ? I thought a lot on how to make this hap- pen. I can’t out of the blue just knock on the door. My friend April has a better idea: She said, “fi nd out the names of the current resi- dents on Google and ask them if they would be willing to let you have a one hour tour at their convenience.” News at 11. THE NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING
