First, you have to picture yourself going from the flat fields of farmlands through a mountain gate. You're climbing on the 5, up through forest of oak to pine and all along looming straight ahead, through the front windshield, is Mt. Shasta. Like a holy mountain from a fairy tale, it's great volcanic cone rises with snow's white lace covering her top. The mountain is so great that you see it for two hours while climbing the pass at seventy-miles an hour. The forest turns to lush pine and Shasta lake is blue like a desert sky. You cross on a suspension bridge with the water glistening below. Town after town goes by, Yreka, Dunsmuir, and you finally come to Ashland Mountain, the border to Oregon. Just on the other side, at 4,700 feet is another world. Ashland is huddled against the side of a pine ridge. A large stream runs through downtown, bordered by Lethia Park. A spring next to it has Lithium in it. The stuff they give to the very nervous. I think it is a potion from long ago when the Faye's of the North built crystal castles and realized that humans were just way to nervous and needed help. It tastes so bad they have a fountain next to it for you to cleanse your palate. Somehow it sprinkles magic everywhere. Young people gather in groups to play music from violins and folk guitars. Harmonicas sing out like song birds between duck ponds and flowering dogwood. The town's main center is a picture from a hundred years ago. Shops and cafés filled with gentle people. Book stores are everywhere.

There are three theaters there. Two indoors, and one outside, which is the Elizabethan. Her stage looks like the front of a town from that era three stories high. Before the play, an actor hoists a flag to fly from the highest point, signifying the play is to begin.

The Comedy of Errors is set with a Chicago gangster theme. It takes about five minutes to get use to Shakespeare with new clothes but it comes off very well. You get the feel of a sin city where anything can be bought and people can loose their way. A hot hoochy-coo mama plays the wife that is confused by the two twin brothers, one of who is married to her and the other left wondering why everybody is giving him sex and money. The other twins are bellhops. The actors are very professional and nothing is lacking in sets. They threw in a couple of songs too, which really got the crowd going.

'The Visit' was a dark comedy, contemporary set in France. It was a bit too dark for me. A woman driven from town as a young girl, pregnant, accused wrongly as a harlot, takes her revenge. In a whore house she meets and marries a billionaire and comes back to the same town seeking revenge on all. One of the parts that made me actually cringe was when twin brothers shook canisters strapped to their necks. The cans rattled because inside them were their testicles. They falsely testified of having sex with her when she was a young woman. She paid them enough money to entice them to cut off their own gonads.

The Royal Family. What fun this play was. The sets were so detailed, to the point that the runners on the two staircases had brass rods with small decorative ends holding the carpet at each step. Real flowers in vases on the set were changed with new ones at every scene. The costumes were top notch. Even two large hounds running through at the end pulling on their leash. A family of actors, the highs and lows, births and deaths. Wonderful. Wonderful.

Much Ado About Nothing. With the night air and giant moths fluttering like drunken fairies among the actors, this play was a true delight. Songs and scenes were well acted. Hero is a fair redhead. She is so beautiful and such a gifted actress. She carried the whole show. The stage has so many exists and entrances that you are never left alone. The natural setting of the stage, itself, transforms you back to Robin Hood Forest and there you are, once again living in the magic of merry old England.

It will take me another two months to pay my credit cards. Thank god I have been saving for a long time to pay some things in advance. I plan on going next year.

The hotel was such a delight. To have breakfast included where you set in the balcony of the main lobby with light streaming in and palms shading you to breakfast and read the paper. Your next move is back to the room to gather books and writing equipment. Down to the marble lobby with its antiques and displays. I wrote a chapter of my novel read almost three books and then after a dry cold martini, dined before the play. For a whole fucking week.