Lyn’s Love Song to Redding (or, Goodbye Sizzle, Hello Drizzle!)

It’s going to be Redding’s misfortune to lose the dynamic couple pictured above. Portland, meanwhile, stands to benefit immensely.

Lyn and Jesse Rosten are blowing this Popsicle stand for points further north, and woe are we. Most folks in these parts are familiar with Jesse as a film wunderkind, the brilliant mind behind such classics as “The Cart,” those hilarious Rolling Hills Casino commercials, and the video spoof on Adobe Photoshop he concocted on a whim that immediately went viral (and yes, I’m still a little miffed that you went with someone else for the voice-over, Jesse).

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

While Redding is going to sorely miss having the talented creative abilities of Mr. Rosten, I’m gonna play favorites for a moment and just come clean with you all…I’m going to miss the Mrs. even more.

Lyn Rosten has been the house manager at the Cascade Theatre for several years, and she is leaving behind some size 14EEE shoes to fill. She’s amazingly organized, whip smart, never in a bad mood. She keeps the place running smoothly during the craziest shows when the theatre is overflowing, the egos are overboosted and tempers and temperatures are elevated. Not her though….cool as a cucumber. And her personality is so endearing that everyone just loves her. The performers love her (there was that one time she talked Garrison Keillor into creating a new voicemail message for her on her cell phone…I could not believe it!), the staff loves her, the other volunteers love her and the patrons love her. Am I leaving anyone out? Stella, her adorable Boston terrier, loves her the mostest.

And Lyn, I suppose if you ever apply for another housemanagerish job, you could just use this column as a reference.

So a few weeks back, Lyn and I were talking about Mistress of the Mix, and how she too likes to put together ‘mixtapes’ (in quotes because nobody but nobody, except perhaps the ubercoolest retro hipsters would make an actual cassette tape these days) of music on a theme, and I suggested that she do a guest mix here. Her goodbye-to-Redding, hello-Portland mix. Her last love song to Shasta County as she straps the last box onto the jalopy and heads north.

And she said yes.

About Redding, Lyn says “Redding was my Beginning. It’s where I learned who I was, but alsdo who I ultimately and intentionally want to be. I learned what was important to me, what I wanted in friendships and (hopefully) how to be that to people. I learned I really like riding on 2 wheels: mountain biking, rod cycling and now motorcycling.”

About the playlist below, Lyn says her Farewell to Redding playlist isn’t exactly sequential, “though it starts with the beginning of The Beginning” (Pounding – their wedding recessional) and then follows a “very loose timeline wherein I weave songs that remind me of, and therefore represent relationships, travel (Empire State of Mind), hobbies (All These Things, Fidelity & Wake Up), work (The District Sleeps Alone – USFWS; Africa – The Cascade Theatre; Window & Building Houses – Jesse Rosten Productions) and even specific people (Big Country & Far Far). ”

For Lyn, just as for me, each and every song in the below playlist is very personal. But, she says they are “really good songs that, I think, make up a pretty kick-ass playlist. Ciao and Love to Redding! We leave with great times behind us and look forward to great things ahead.”