OSF "The Best". "Survival is the only art I recognize."

I have been coming to Ashland for more than a dozen years. There are few places like this where you have the great outdoors and great culture at your doorstep.

Today I took full advantage of all that Ashland has to offer. I got up around 6AM took an hour and a half hike among the tall redwood trees, and then hung out with P at a great coffee shop, one of the many in this town. (For you tea drinkers, there are also lots of choices here!)

Went home and did a little work trying to figure out how we can connect one of my biotech clients with the hundreds of thousands of patients with Multiple Sclerosis. (Still working on that one).

Then, the highlight of the day, went to the theater and watched a disturbing but terrific play, "Ruined".

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is, of course know for the Bard, but they also put on many contemporary works as well as other classics. The acting and directing is almost always top shelf, as good as you will find anywhere including New York.

I am pretty much speechless about today's performance except to say I am still thinking about the play hours later.

I will let this review summarize the play..if it comes your city or town..run, don't walk to see it and be prepared to emotionally engaged.

“Ruined”, The Pulitzer Prize winning play shines a harsh light on the plight of women in East Africa, where rape has been employed as a terrorist tactic in ongoing armed conflicts among ever-fracturing alignments of nations and rebel militias. The play premiered in the West at the Oregon Shakespeare’s New Theater, and its emotional force is almost overwhelming. It has moments of humor, warmth and tenderness, lively music, dancing that channels both raw sexuality and a very desperate love of life. But it also has recurring tensions that ratchet to nearly unbearable levels, and speaks of the horrors of war and sexual slavery in wrenching terms. "

P.S. The situation depicted in "Ruined" is the result of a toxic blend of ethnic rivalries, fallout from a colonial past, economic deprivation, fighting that continues to this day though the war has officially ended. In this conflict, rape is regarded as a tactic of war. Systemic, deliberate and often public, rape is committed to instill terror.

In the past few years several newspapers have covered the issue and finally international pressure is being brought to bear upon the government of Congo to end this culture of impunity in its army as well as upon the UN to reign in it's peacekeepers. Things are slowly changing, but not fast enough. Secretary of State Clinton, during her visit last August, pledged $17 million for medical care, counseling, economic assistance and legal support for these victimized women.