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
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Cannon Beach Design Review
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Thursday, March 28
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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