BaltimOregon

I was surprised to find a STYLE: Smart Living in Baltimore magazine forwarded to my Corvallis address. A wave of longing for my favorite Baltimore restaurants hit me when I read its piece on former City Paper (and now Baltimore Sun) restaurant critic Richard Gorelick. sorry, there’s no link to it online. But it mentions the One World Cafe (see photo above) and Golden West, two Baltimore institutions for which we have yet to find replacements.

 I met Laura Wexler, the STYLE article’s author, at a spirited Day of the Dead dinner at Cafe Azafran on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus, just about this time last year. Little did we then know where we’d be for Dia de los Muertos in 2008! Oh, and how I miss the Stoop Storytelling series that Wexler co-currates at Centerstage Theater in Baltimore. It hurts to miss the Stoop Holiday Hoopla, with its line-up of prime Baltimore musicians like Abby Mott and Caleb Stine. The Real Geniuses (Abby Mott is lead female vocalist) played at our wedding, and Hannah and I were just becoming groupies for the alt-country yet genre-defying Caleb Stine. But live where you are, right, and there is much to love here.

For a city of just over 50,000, Corvallis sure has a lot of yoga options. I was just getting turned on to Anusara yoga’s focus on alignment and mindfulness before I left Baltimore. Although I still sorely miss my weekly morning classes with Sara Neufeld before work at The Sun and the welcoming (and affordable) yoga community Regina Armenta created in the exposed brick sanctuary of St. John’s Church on 2640 St. Paul Street, I am feeling at ease with the nurturing styles of the teachers here.

It seems everyone does yoga in Oregon. I can walk or ride my bike to Cedar and Fir Studio, nestled in the trees next to the home of owner and teacher Lisa Wells. She incorporates the Anusara, Vinyasa and Inyengar styles into her classes, all of which I have dabbled in over the years. The studio also developing a  Reach Out Yoga non-profit to bring yoga to prisons, homeless shelters and drug rehab centers.

There were enough teachers in town to convene this all-day Downward Beaver yoga conference at a cost of only $10. Wish I hadn’t been in Austin.

And I’m still (good) sore from the more Classical yoga class I attended Friday. We didn’t do a single downward dog but lots of backbends using a folding chair. Subbappa, a native of Mysore, India, teaches the class at The Yoga Center downtown. Hoping to find some free classes, too, when I get around to joining the Oregon State gym as a faculty wife (gasp!).