ETHAN GOLD

Underground songmaker and music artist Ethan Gold has just wrapped recording for his upcoming record, a double-album Earth City which explores themes of longing — for human connection, for romance, for nightlife in the city, and ultimately for connection to the threatened natural world.  To coincide with the first climate strikes, he released an advance video for one of the environmental songs from the album, “Never Met a World Like You,” and performed for the first time after his 2013 head injury, at three Los Angeles rallies in the final months of 2019. 

During several years of convalescence, Ethan has been quietly making a lot of music, most recently, the glitchily gorgeous score to the Blumhouse supernatural thriller Don’t Let Go, released in autumn 2019 on Universal / Back Lot Music.  In late 2018 Ethan released a soundtrack to his brother Ari’s second feature, The Song of Sway Lake.  To match the tale of the decline of an aristocratic family and the golden light of late summer on an Adirondack lake, Ethan’s piano-driven score is an emotional force of water and silence, dreams and nostalgia.  The soundtrack album also features multiple renditions of Ethan’s original title song “Sway Lake,” including versions sung by John Grant and The Staves, arranged and produced utterly convincingly to sound like lost pop recordings from the late 1930s and ’40s.

Also released in 2018 while Ethan was not playing live shows was the much-praised naive electronic album Expanses (Teenage Synthstrumentals)  (“Primitive analogue instruments to their sound-warping limits” – Uncut; “Wildly diverting… by some wide-eyed, sun and acid-baked LA wunderkind” – Electronic Sound; “Records like these are my reason for getting into independent music in the first place” – Skope Mag; “I can say with complete confidence that I won’t hear anything quite as original… If you think it’s absurd to even suggest that a devotedly experimental, avant-garde artist could have such a reach, I would encourage you to have a listen to some of Lou Reed’s earlier solo work and reassess your opinion… More authentic than anything you’ve heard on FM radio in your life” – Vents Magazine.)  Gold also returned to early influences and completed an album of live covers of mostly new wave tracks, from New Order and Bauhaus to Of Montreal and The Knife, as Live Undead Bedroom Closet Covers(“Unhinged but weirdly compelling” – Uncut; “Brilliant cover versions” – Shindig!; “Rather fantastic” – The Crack). 

Gold first stepped into public consciousness when he produced and arranged his friend Elvis Perkins’ blog-hyped debut Ash Wednesday, one of the most influential albums of the modern folk-rock resurgence.  After moonlighting as bass player in his brother Ari’s New York folk party band the Honey Brothers, and scoring his twin’s debut feature, the epic air-drumming comedy Adventures of Power, Ethan began honing his intensely personal style while living in a dilapidated flat in Los Angeles.  He released his debut art-rock album Songs From A Toxic Apartment in 2011 to underground acclaim (“Emotions delivered with an unfiltered, glaring legibility”- Pitchfork; “The most interesting record I’ve listened to in the past 5 years”- Rock N Roll Experience.)  He then began rolling out a series of videos from the album showcasing his visceral approach, which led him to side work as a video director.  He was working on a film score and his follow-up album when he suffered the head injury in 2013.  Through a long recovery, he now credits the temporary dissolution of his cognitive ability with an upgraded inner power and creativity, and a clarified mission: in a world that seems more and more combative, bringing sensitive people and quieter things —  music and poetry and the living earth — back into their magnificence.  

Gold was raised in San Francisco, during the long extended hangover after hippie times in that city.  His father is Beat author Herbert Gold, and his mother Melissa was a collaborator and last girlfriend of legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, and was killed with Graham in a helicopter crash.  A childhood of constant change and chaos may have led Ethan to the unique way he approaches music as a balm and a life meaning-maker.  Today he lives and dreams songs, writing about half his music while asleep.  Earth City will be both a much-anticipated step forward for an artist whose path has been curved by inner impulse and by fate, and a return to the essential path of his original vision.  He jokes that his mission is to “make sensitivity cool again.”  But we can tell he’s actually not kidding.  He’s willing to be quiet enough to paint in songs the delicate details of the modern age, and willing to be strong enough to fight for the world as it could be.

Hilary O. Shelton, presently serves as the Senior Vice President for Policy and Advocacy/Director to the NAACP’s Washington Bureau for over 2 decades.The Washington Bureau is the Federal legislative and national public policy division of the over 500,000-member, 2,200-membership unit, national civil rights organization. In this capacity, Hilary is responsible for advocating the federal public policy issue agenda of the oldest, largest, and most widely recognized grassroots based civil rights organization in the United States to the U.S. Government. Hilary's government affairs portfolio includes crucial issues such as affirmative action, equal employment protection, access to quality education, stopping gun violence, ending racial profiling, abolition of the death penalty, access to comprehensive healthcare, voting rights protection, federal sentencing and prison reform and a host of civil and human rights enforcement, expansion and protection issues.Hilary serves on a number of national boards of directors, national and federal advisory organizations and federal policy advocacy coalitions.Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a family of six brothers and sisters, Hilary holds degrees in political science, communications, and legal studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C., the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, respectively. He presently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Paula Young Shelton and their three sons, Caleb Wesley, Aaron Joshua, and Noah Otis Young Shelton.

Patrick Neville is an American politician and a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from the 45th District, which includes much of Douglas County. A Republican, Neville currently serves as the Minority Leader of the House, having been elected to this position at the beginning of his second term in January 2017.

Karen received her Masters’ Degree in Social Work from Columbia University and has worked in the areas of family therapy, eldercare and PTSD.

Acclaimed talk show host of Spouting Off

As a performer, she has toured the country in musical comedies, entertained on cruise ships and appeared in television and film. Her broadcast experience includes turns as a classical music radio announcer, news-caster, voice-over artist and of course, talk radio host. She lends her operatic voice to a variety of fundraisers and community events and has sung the National Anthem and God Bless America in numerous venues from State Legislatures to the New Jersey Nets.

Karen has trained people of all ages in public speaking, voice and diction, assertiveness and interpersonal communication. She taught communications at a Manhattan corporate training firm, the New School for Social Research, Parsons School of Design in New York, New Jersey’s Montclair State College, and Fairleigh Dickenson University, among others.

In politics, Karen has written numerous editorials and run for public office. She is passionate about freedom, equal justice and personal responsibility. You might have trouble pigeonholing her.

She enjoys encouraging people to think for themselves and to question everything.

Karen is the author of the awarding winning memoir, FATLASH! Food Police & the Fear of Thin, a memoir about her "stage mother on steroids" and her participation in child beauty pageants.

The world is ours to make anyway we see fit. If one Man or Woman has the power to change the world, think about how powerful collective souls are when working in concert towards a worthy goal of eternal peace and harmony.

Today, human thought is looked upon as an "infection" throughout the universe, as it reverberates fear and anger throughout.

It's easy to change your "reality" if one chooses. But one thing you have to remember about choice and "free will". If all your choices are being provided for you, you're being directed (controlled). If your free will is "clouded" by your memory bank of the "past" then even your freewill is controlled.

You can empty your mind and go back to "void" (Buddha), "blank" (Shakespeare), "purity of thought (Jesus).

Ask and it is given, but when you ask, ask as if it has already been given, and it will be yours.

In peace.

It is no secret that Laurie has semi-retired and has closed her office in Lake Oswego, Oregon that she  had for more than thirty years. We have moved to Central Oregon to a beautiful rural area a few miles outside of Redmond. The property has been owned by us for several years but we only had a house built there during the last few months. We began moving in during the last half of July, 2015 and now have a very modest 2600 square foot home with two unattached garages on two acres overlooking a big canyon.

Laurie spent several months looking at homes, modular homes and other types of construction in the Portland area before she selected a floor plan that she liked and had the builder convert her ideas into a stick-built home that would be appropriate for our new area. Laurie selected all the appliances, interior colors, kitchen layout and even purchased quite a bit of new bedroom furniture and other items for the house. For my part, I was left in charge of the two garages and have all my woodworking and auto repair tools in the larger of the two garages.

Laurie has outfitted her home office with her computer, landline phones and recording equipment and has resumed a scaled down business, albeit just on the phone so far. She has not decided whether to open an office in Bend or Redmond or to travel a few times a month to those areas or to Portland for personal readings. The concept of being semi-retired is difficult for her to accept. She has resumed talking to large groups and has several speaking engagements planned.

One of the pluses of living in a rural area is the wildlife. There are many deer, cottontail bunnies, jackrabbits, quail, doves, ground squirrels and other critters in our front yard on a daily basis. Central Oregon is generally described as being Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson Counties in the middle of the state. This would encompass cities like Bend, Redmond, Prineville, Terrebonne and Madras along with a myriad of small cities included. The general area is known for deep canyons, rivers, Juniper trees and sagebrush. Many years ago Laurie worked at the hospital in Madras while living in a town called Culver next to Lake Billy Chinook. She fell in love with the region then and always thought she would return to the area.

In addition to offering psychic assistance to over 7,000 personal and business clients over the past 33 years, she has also worked on more than 500 cases (several being internationally known). While the specifics of whom she has helped are confidential in nature, her work on nationally televised cases continues on into today. Laurie has worked domestically as well as internationally with many law enforcement agencies.

Laurie has been profiled on The Lifetime Channel for her work in this field, on a special called “Beyond Chance” – her extensive media coverage and experience also includes 52 television appearances, 21 radio shows, and  being highlighted in 4 books. In addition, the murder case in which Laurie met her police detective husband (me) has been filmed by six separate production companies and made into half hour television shows. Laurie and Bob have even gone to Japan and filmed the case there using Japanese actors in addition to Bob and Laurie.