Ethos Magazine Summer 2009

Summer 2009 Volume 1 Issue 2

Family in Namibia Skin Suspension La Mezcla Estonia

NAMIBIA ETHNOMUSICOLOGY POMPEII THE ART OF SUSPENSION FREE

FREE

Want to be a multicultural guru?

Check out more Ethos online.

The New 7 Natural Wonders In the midst of the scorching, dizzying desert stands a magnificent tree, defying death in the harsh region.

The rugged mesquite tree, known as the Tree of Life, or Shajarat al-Hayah, is around four hundred years old. The mesquite’s pale yellow gum is used to make mucilage, candles, and dyes. Native people also use the gum to treat chapped lips and fingers, and cleanse their systems. The pods and seeds are eaten as meal, made into bread, or mixed with water and drank. Local legend declares that if a visitor doesn’t experience the Tree of Life during their stay, they will be back.

Story by KOURTNEY HANNAWAY Illustrations by EMILEE BOOHER

Native American Flute Circles These stages often begin with a moment of discovery where one first discovers a love for Native American flute music. For Sherrie Kuhl, it was a cassette tape that led to this discovery, but others might hear it while walking downtown, at the Saturday market, or at a concert. This moment inspires them to pick up a Native American flute and begin to play for themselves, and as time passes, they continue to make personal discoveries in their playing.

Photos by ALYSHA BECK

Italian Food & Family

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The tiny kitchen bursts with cooks rushing to fill orders, plating dishes such as pollo marsala and ravioli del giorno.

The man in charge of crafting these amazing dishes has been working in the restaurant business since the age of 15.

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—Anneka Miller

Eugene Buddhist Priory For Sky Duarte, the practice of Buddhism became his road to a peaceful life. He explains that meditation allows him to stand back from his anxiety, not allowing it to have “meaning.” “But don’t take my word for it,” Duarte says, “gain your own knowledge through experience. See if it’s true for you.”

—Danielle Sweet

ethos.uoregon.edu

Photos Chris Parker

Photos Luke Harris

Photos Ashley Pennington

Story by DARCY WALLACE

Embracing Death Analee Fuentes’ embellishments are seen in her work with the figure, the body, and her representations of death. From an early age she was exposed to the tradition of The Day of the Dead and the fact that in her culture, death is not a finality.

—Alison Egan-Lodjic

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features

departments 14 THE POWER OF ONDIKUHOLE

6 EDITOR’S NOTE

Story by EMILEE BOOHER

8 PASSPORT Estonia boasts competitive wifecarriers, nationwide clean-ups, and song celebrations.

In Namibia, a young woman learns the love of family.

Photos by GRACIE PERSSON

20 LA MEZCLA (THE MIXTURE)

Mexican and American relations in the United States.

10 DIALOGUE

Taught by his grandfather the art of meditation, Yi-Yuan Tang now studies its effects through Integrative Body-Mind Training.

Stories by ABIGAIL DISKIN, REBECCA LEISHER, SUSANNAH BARD 22 En el Otro Lado At the border of Southern California.

Popular movies hardly reflect reality, nonetheless a country’s culture.

34 SPICES AND SPIRITS

Understanding eating

etiquette can prove to be a secret asset.

36 PEOPLE IN MOTION

Suspension artists find spiritual fulfillment and creative physical expression.

12 FORUM

Mushrooms offer a variety of exciting activities including dyeing, medicines, farming, and food.

24 ¡Ahora Sí! A local radio show and the Latino community.

26 Petiguas, Quisantes, Chicharos, Arvejas, También For the love of linguistic creativity.

32 MOVING PICTURES

30 JOURNEYS ABROAD

Ailin Darling explores the crumbling majesty of Pompeii.

38 SOUNDWAVES Eastern music finds its way into Western classrooms at the University of Oregon.

40 COLORS AND SHAPES

For the past few decades, the glass art movement has been gaining recognition in the Pacific Northwest.

42 THE LAST Texas-born Neethu Ramchandar rises above stereotypes and having to “fit the part.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE

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EDITOR IN CHIEF Roger Bong MANAGING EDITORS Molly McHugh, Christina O’Connor PHOTO BY MELANIE KEPPLER

t’s easy being free. For you, at least. As for Ethos, advertising has been difficult to secure, and our fundraising efforts have yielded only a small percentage of the high cost of printing.

We could put a price on our magazine, which the economy beckons us to do, but that’s not what Ethos is about. We’re a free, multicultural magazine run entirely by students. No other option suits us.

We are extremely fortunate the ASUO Senate granted our funding request for our second issue as Ethos. They took a risk—made an investment, really—they won’t regret. On behalf of everyone on staff, Thank you.

My many thanks to Kevin Bronk, Stuart Mayberry, and Ryan Stasel for remedying my blunders as a clumsy computer user. Days before designers were to begin their layouts, I decided to backup the server on which the magazine’s entire history rests. Luckily, Ryan was able to recover two of the folders I accidentally deleted.

As for this issue’s design folder: lost forever.

Within 24 hours, Kevin and Stuart recreated everything I had obliterated.

This is our first ever summer edition, and we’ve been busier than ever putting it together for you to read before the sunny months take hold. Early deadlines got us here, unexpected obstacles tested our perseverance in preparing for print, and passion for our humble publication will carry us through the summer while we work on the next issue. We hope you’ll continue to read Ethos into 2010—after all, why wouldn’t you? We’re free!

CHIEF COPY EDITOR Suji Paek COPY EDITORS Deborah Bloom, Emily Hutto, Chris Parker, Nina Strochlic, Danielle Sweet ASSOCIATE EDITORS Inka Bajandas, Lindsee Gregory, Jessica Hill, Melissa Hoffman, Sheena Lahren, Michelle Leis, Rachael Mitchell, Rebecca Peterson, Luis Ramirez PRINT WRITERS Heather Ah San, Susannah Bard, Emilee Booher, Grace Caton, Leighton Cosseboom, Rachel Coussens, Ailin Darling, Kasandra Easley, Jordan Eddy, Thomas Furey, Rebecca Leisher, Neethu Ramchandar, Sachie Yorck ONLINE WRITERS Alison Egan-Lodjic, Kourtney Hannaway, Anneka Miller, Danielle Sweet, Ott Tammik, Darcy Wallace

Business DIRECTOR Kelcey Friend PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR Ben Benson PUBLIC RELATIONS Kathryn Beck, Mengwei Deng, Page Fitzsimmons, Laura Johnson, Tiffany Le, Jayna Omaye ADVERTISING MANAGERS Emily Hutto, Ashley Tschudin ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Brandon Galloway, Lindsay Love, Sarah Watkins WEB MANAGEMENT Vera Westbrook VIDEOGRAPHY Luke Harris, Thomas Furey Thank You: ASUO Senate, Stephen Bellissimo, JR Gaddis, Greg Gehres at Lynx Group Inc., Mary Kate Mackey, Geoff Palachuk, Ryan Stasel, Nick Schultz, Louis Vidmar, Maureen Wimberly

ART DIRECTORS Kevin Bronk, Stuart Mayberry

Roger Bong Editor in Chief

DESIGNERS Sabrina Black, Jaime Goldstein, Anna Helland, Whitney Highfield, Katherine Jordan, Allyson Marrs, Daniel Martin, Gabriella Narvaez, Karlee Patton, Adrienne Robles, Holly Schnackenberg ILLUSTRATOR Emilee Booher PHOTO EDITOR Jessie Runyan-Gless PHOTOGRAPHERS Alysha Beck, Lauren Easby, Luke Harris, Courtney Hendricks, Lindsay Minar, Chris Parker, Ashley Pennington, Stephanie Reyes

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CONTACT ethosmag@gmail.com WEBSITE ethos.uoregon.edu

Ethos Magazine is a multicultural, independent student publication based at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. All content is legal property of Ethos Magazine, except when noted. Permission is required to copy, reprint or use any content in Ethos Magazine. All views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the respective author or interviewee.

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PASSPORT

Powerful Anthems

875B

The Song Celebration helped Estonians fight for independence

A I N

Wives to be Carried

O T ES

Estonians are some of the best wife-carriers in the competitive world

1 JUNE 2009 1:31 P.M.

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t the Wife-Carrying World Championships, part of the top prize is your wife’s weight in beer.

Estonians must have a knack for hauling women—or a great love of beer—because they have won the Finnish competition for seven of the past eight years.

The annual competition began in 1992 in Sonkajärvi, a small Finnish town. Its founders were inspired by a local legend about a picky military leader, RosvoRonkainen, who made potential troops steal women from neighboring villages to prove their strength.

Hence, according to the official rules, “The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour’s or you may have found her farther afield.” The important part is that you can carry her 253.5 meters—over two wooden obstacles and through a 1-meter pit of water—without dropping her.

Each year, regional wife-carrying winners from around the world (including the U.S., which holds its competition in Maine) travel to Sonkajärvi for the competition. However, contestants from nearby Estonia have emerged as masters of the sport. Estonians Margot Uusorg and Birgit Ulricht hold the world record for the speediest wife-carry with a time of 55

TOP: Spectators at Estonia’s Song Celebration Grounds in Tallinn, the country’s capital city. BOTTOM: The biggest choir that has ever taken the stage, 24,500 performers, gathered for the 100th anniversary of the festival.

“Soul shaking” is a perfect description for the end of the festival—everyone comes together to sing My Native Land, My Dearest Love.

It’s no surprise that Estonians don’t leave until they’ve belted out the anthem several times. After years of repression, having a voice is something to celebrate.—Jordan Eddy

TOP: PHOTO courtesy sonkajarvi.fi; Bottom: Photo courtesy nagi.ee

In 1991, Estonians successfully gained independence using vocal cords and musical instruments as their only weapons.

TOP: Photo by Ott Tammik; Bottom: Photo Courtesy hansatravel.ee

istory abounds with protest songs by repressed peoples, but Estonia’s manifestation of We Will Overcome, titled My Native Land, My Dearest Love, could be called one of the world’s most powerful anthems.

Estonia spent centuries under Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian occupation, a constant shuffle that left its people with little sense of national identity. In 1869 (during Russia’s rule), a singing society pulled together 51 men’s choirs for a music festival. The idea stuck, and a Song Celebration was held every five years— regardless of the regime in power.

Then Estonia vanished behind the iron curtain, and the USSR decided to inject socialist messages into the celebration.

Artists and musicians flooded out of the country, but the festival continued, always ending with My Native Land, My Dearest Love.

1988 saw the dawn of a “Singing Revolution” that was born at the Song Celebration and helped the Estonians fight for freedom. In 1991, they successfully gained independence using vocal chords and musical instruments as their only weapons.

Now, song is so infused into Estonia’s culture that it’s known for having a choir in every village, no matter how small. Many famous composers hail from the country, including Grammy Award-winning Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis.

The Song Celebration has been held in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, since 1928.

The seaside Song Celebration Grounds are spectacular, with a grandstand-style sounding board structure that can hold 24,000 singers. It has a special shape that distinguishes the sounds of individual choirs, but directs a crushing wave of music straight into the audience of thousands.

The biggest choir that has ever taken the stage, 24,500 performers, gathered for the one hundredth anniversary of the festival.

One hundred oak trees grow on the grounds, part of a national monument that includes a massive granite slab with the lyrics to a song titled Dawn carved into it.

During the Singing Revolution, previously forbidden Estonian flags were hung for the first time above these grounds.

This year’s Song Celebration, billed as “To Breath as One,” will take place from July 4-5. The first day will feature many types of music, but the second is reserved for traditional Estonian fare. The concert website describes the experience as a time when “the souls of one nation meet.”

Their winning technique is the "Estonian carry," where the man carries the woman upside down on his back, her legs locked around his neck and shoulders. Estonians have won the Finnish competitions seven of eight times.

seconds. Perhaps their secret to success is the “Estonian carry,” where the man carries the woman upside down on his back with

her legs hooked over his shoulders.

This year’s competition will take place on July 3-4. —Jordan Eddy

High-Tech Garbage Day M

icrolink founder Rainer Nolvak discovered the ability to resonate little ideas in a big way when he decided to pit new-world technology against oldworld views to clean up Estonia.

Citizens cleaned the entire country in just five hours.

Since Estonian independence in 1991, ten thousand tons of waste had been deposited in Estonia’s forests. In 2008, the “Let’s Do It” project aimed to remedy this problem, but Nolvak and his team knew they had to change the public mindset surrounding waste.

So the group set a lofty goal: to clean up the entire country in just one day using at least forty thousand yet-to-be-enlisted volunteers, and starting a media firestorm around it.

They used GPS phones and geo-mapping technology to pinpoint the illegal garbage dumps in the country. Then they recruited celebrities, corporations, the media, and even their prime minister to get the word out about the project. While corporations

donated materials, equipment, and transportation, fifty thousand residents signed up via the Internet.

On May 3, teams of volunteers were dotted across the 45,226-square-mile country and picked up every piece of trash in just five hours. Media around the world covered the story, tracking the clean-up project through the same mapping technology originally used to find the trash.

Four percent of the country’s population participated in the project, which cost only five hundred thousand Euros to complete.

Nolvak and Skype architect Ahti Heinla, are planning to unleash their idea on the world. Videos and instructions on how to perform similar projects are available at teeme2008.ee.

—Jordan Eddy

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DIALOGUE

Doctor of Medical Meditation “It’s time for people to combine the physical training and the meditation training” STORY TOM FUREY PHOTO ASHLEY PENNINGTON

When and how did you start meditating?

We have a family tradition and I started very young. Usually my grandfather just taught me the beginning stage and then I had lots of teachers growing up. I can’t tell you the exact age other than it was very young.

How did you decide to come to the University of Oregon?

In the 1990s when I was working in medical school, I did lots of communitysize experiments, but we did not have the opportunity to run the subjects through an fMRI using advanced techniques.

In 2001, I met Professor Michael Possner who was a professor [at UO]. He was running an institute in Cornell [and] I was running another institute in China, so we could not work together. After 2002, he retired and moved back to the UO. Then I found time around 2007 to come here to work together.

How would you describe meditation?

Meditation includes two parts: one part is called physical training, another part mental training. In recent years people in the U.S. and European countries think about only mental training, but it’s actually both.

Would you say they’re equal?

Body and mind cannot separate. If a person separates their body and mind, actually that person will die.

Why do you think it has taken so long for the benefits of meditation to be researched?

Professor Yi-Yuan Tang brings together classic Chinese meditation and modern psychological practices to break ground on the benefits of meditation on the human mind and body.

“Body and mind cannot separate. If a person separates their body and mind... that person will die.”

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With a name that means “one source” and “principles in nature and human beings,” Yi-Yuan Tang was predestined to become a great teacher and a brilliant researcher.

Tang started the art of meditation at a young age. Taught by his grandfather, he has continued to study meditation with more than 20 teachers. He studied at China’s Dalian University where he received his doctorate. For 21 years, he has worked at various universities in China and the United States. His research regarding brain cognition using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is internationally known. With more than 150 research papers and eight published books, his brilliance has been acknowledged.

While attending medical school in the 1990s, Tang developed a revolutionary training method called IBMT, or Integrative Body-Mind Training.

Based on traditional Chinese methods, IBMT is meditation with a twist. It includes four parts: body relaxation, breath adjustment, mental imagery, and mindfulness. Its effects have been studied since 1995, and recent results indicate that it’s an easy, effective way to improve selfregulation in cognition, emotion, and social behavior.

Currently, Tang and his partner, Michael Possner, a retired University of Oregon psychology professor, are researching IBMT on students at the UO.

We are very familiar with physical training, [such as] running or swimming, but for meditation, the style and training method really are far from our common sense. I think it’s hard to conduct very serious research about meditation. The reason being that meditation usually takes a long time—many years, each day [for] a long time. It’s hard to get a consistent group to commit to do it on time.

Another reason I will say is we still lack a very good technique to conduct research about meditation because of all the mental change and training that influences the body.

How would you describe the Integrative Body-Mind Training that you and your team developed?

This method was developed in the 1990s when I was working at medical school. The Integrative Body-Mind Training actually is from traditional Chinese medicine and it includes four parts. One is body relaxation, then breath adjustment, then mental

imagery, then mindfulness. So we integrate four parts together to help a person.

Another thing is that the IBMT puts the body first, which means we strengthen, or emphasize the bodily process at the beginning stage to facilitate the person practicing to get in the meditation state.

So the IBMT helps you get into a deeper state faster?

Exactly, from our results the farthest training, maybe 20 or 30 minutes it really works. Usually, in America they need a couple minutes or a couple years. For example, when several studies recruit a group they have more than ten thousand to forty thousand hours training and then they do the study. It means that forty thousand hours of training is almost a total life job.

How have the subjects for the study responded to the IBMT training?

Actually, we receive very good feedback.

It was very good for [the students] to reduce stress. They feel more relaxed [and] have more room in the mind. It means they have more emotional and cognitive capacity to handle daily school life.

Another thing we find is when the subjects have a balanced body-mind state, usually they have a clear mind … and then they make the right decision. When they have this ability to make the right decision, it will be very helpful in their future life. So, from behavior, emotion, body, or immune activity, we got very good results and feedback.

What challenges have you faced showing the Western scientific community that meditation is effective in improving the brain’s performance, along with all of its other benefits?

I think that usually the Americans, or scientific society, they pay more attention about the real world, or the material world—things they can see and things they can touch, then they say it’s real.

The first challenge is how to convince the scientific community. So we use very rigorous techniques and methods us[ing] a random assignment and double-blind [study] and then get the results.

What are the most significant findings your study has found?

In 2007, we had a study with several findings. The first one, after five days [of] training for 20 minutes a day, [the subjects] significantly improved their attention ability, so they could concentrate and focus for a long time. We improved their positive moods and decreased negative moods.

Then we conducted an immune function

study where we found that five days of training can dramatically reduce one stress hormone called Cortisol. People feel more relaxed and less stressed. It also improved one immune function index called SIgA, which means a person is at a much better healthy level.

Then we find when a person gets deeper into a meditation state, for example, IBMT, their body and their mind coordinate each other. In other words, the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system interact and help them to get deeper, then change the body, change the mood, change the immune function.

Also, we find that the physiological measures—their heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance response—all had very good shape. That means the person had very good physical and mental conditions. They can handle stress, and [have] better performances in life and work.

So, has the fMRI machine helped your research abilities?

Yeah, the fMRI machine is a new advanced brain-imaging machine. Actually, they just opened a window for the brain so they can look at the change, but … we cannot have real-time fMRI when we are practicing. But I think [it] really works.

What do you hope to accomplish after your current study is over?

I will study the short term—just five days—then we start a month’s training, then we will follow up after three months, [and] after six months to see if the effect still remains. I think after this study ends, we will work with a different group, maybe children for example.

I already started to teach meditation in the South Eugene High School [and] I will try to work with aging people, and also with some of the high-risk population.

Do you think that meditation could become a widespread practice in America?

I think it’s a very big cultural difference.

In America, recent years, it looks like meditation got hot. Lots of people started to understand and approach this method, but people still think of meditation, of mindfulness, of spirituality, [as] a little bit … from maybe a religious group.

I will say, in addition to the modern medicine, meditation could be a very important complement. I am not sure if meditation will get popular in the future.

But I will say it’s a balanced life and style between the outside world and the inner world. It’s time for people to combine the physical training and the meditation training. Then they will have a much better life.

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FORUM

Fun With FUNGI The popularity of mushrooms has grown, and for good reason STORY SACHIE YORCK

PHOTOS LAUREN EASBY

Phoenix Oyster mushrooms for sale at the Saturday Market.

Shiitake mushrooms, locally grown at Alpine Farms, are available fresh and dried at Eugene’s Saturday Market. Mushrooms can be used for more than just food.

I

magine the sight of more than two dozen shadowy figures poring over large steaming caldrons behind a gray school building at dusk, the barely full moon casting a soft light on their eager, enchanted smiles. A few members shrill in delight as the pot’s simmering water changes color.

Each of the eight containers possesses a striking hue of autumn, from the reds and deep browns to the special ingredients mixing inside. The smell of Cortinarius sanguineus brings familiar memories to the winter crowd, reminiscent of previous forest journeys. For Patrice Benson, it’s the aroma that gives her life sustenance.

This occult spectacle isn’t the scene of some contemporary witchcraft; rather, it’s a workshop for mushroom enthusiasts.

Eugene’s local fungi club, the Cascade Mycological Society (CMS), existent since 1999, holds two April meetings on mushroom dyeing featuring back-to-

back nights of learning and applying the processes. Benson, president of the Puget Sound Mycological Society, says these types of hobbies extend the use of certain mushrooms past their seasons. From her experience, the components often thrive more when fresh, but drying or freezing also works.

The Pacific Northwest boasts some of the best mushroom environments in the

she still only calls herself an “expert amateur,” not a professional mycologist.

On the second night of the Cascade Mycological Society’s April meetings, Benson and her co-members, Alyssa Allen and Cathy Lennebacker, lay out previously dyed pieces for the Oregonians to see.

The Lane Community College science classroom mills with excited members; the blacktop laboratory tables covered with creative cloth-tributes to mushrooms. Quilts, hats, sample cards, and dolls clutter in spectrum of colors. Molly, wearing a purple CMS T-shirt, beams as she guides a newcomer around, her plastic mushroom earrings swaying as she smiles. Joey passes around his recent Morel collection from a coastal clearcut forest. Michelle unwraps a savory mushroom dip with baguette pieces.

A slideshow presented by Benson confirms fungi’s rising popularity.

International enthusiasts meet around the

There are poisonous look-alikes for common edibles.

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world, along with a substantially growing active fan base. From northern California to British Columbia, people are gathering with a unique fondness for fungi.

Benson’s interest first started when she saw a flyer for a wild mushroom show, shortly after moving to the Seattle area from the East Coast. Now, more than 30 years of dedication later, including two consecutive presidential terms and loads of experience,

world, sharing new uses and techniques, often with mushroom pioneers Miriam C. Rice and Dorothy Beebee to guide them on dyes.

“It’s important to keep records when you do these dye experiments, along with the samples,” Benson says. She recommends keeping track of mordents, pH balance, and mushrooms on a sample card with a dyed strand. The mordents keep the color on while pH levels determine variance. A general rule of thumb is that mushrooms with light-tinted spores don’t often produce pigments good for dyeing.

Dark spores show pigments in the cuticle, the skin of the mushroom.

The procedure is simple enough: after obtaining the appropriate mushrooms, add them to a simmering pot of water with a preferred fiber (animal-based works best) heating inside.

Varying on the mixture, they should soak together for a few hours—the longer amount of time, the more vibrant the colors. Repeat in a second bath to enjoy even more intensity.

Afterwards, the garments can be washed and still retain the color.

After the slideshow concludes, the friends hang out and socialize, admiring mushroomdyed creations. CMS board member Chris Melotti tries on a soft brown hat and tips it down slightly, looking like a sort of earthy Rat Pack hooligan. There are even papers and crayons, called Mycostix, made entirely from mushrooms. “I think mushrooms are going to

save the world,” Benson says.

Fall is notably the best season for picking, right after the rain showers begin.

Chanterelles are most commonly found in a wide range of subspecies with various colors and tastes. Mount Pisgah Arboretum holds an annual mushroom festival in autumn, this year on October 25.

Following a cold, mostly barren winter, spring brings new fungi species from the ground. Morels, known for honeycomb-like caps, thrive on decomposing plant life and heated floors. They’re especially delicious. Cascade Mycological Society’s “mushroom of the month” cook, Michelle Pak, likes putting morels in a stir-fry. She likes recipes that don’t deter from the authentic mushroom taste. “You need to understand the flavor of the mushroom you’re cooking before you really cook it,” she says, adding that she only eats them if she’s absolutely certain they’re safe.

Hyped as the world’s most dangerous mushroom, Amanita phalloides can be found in Oregon, often under oak trees. Also known as “The Death Cap,” it’s recognized by free, crowded gills, white veil tissue, and submerged volva and stalk. Pak recommends consulting multiple manuals and experts, while always staying extremely cautious.

“A mycologist who uses only one book is normally a dead mycologist,” she says.

Most mushroom aficionados recommend going picking with a professional. There are

structure by selling wholesale mushrooms directly from the picker to the eateries.

Standing on his 28-acre property, the sweltering sun beating on his bare chest, Webber, now 70, admits, “A lot of local people depend on [mushrooms] for an income.” However, with commercial companies swooping in with teams of pickers dominating local individuals, he says, “In most cases, pickers are people out of work.”

Mushroom farms are popular in Oregon, especially with the changing new ways to use fungi. By planning and perfecting the growth of mushrooms, businesses can have, for the most part, a guaranteed income. John Seleen and his business, JHS Medicine, have greenhouses growing mushrooms across the state—and even in China.

Turkey-tail, for instance, is grown on sterilized sawdust. Seleen claims his company, open since 1994, is the only one in North America to actually follow the traditional preparation procedure of hot water extraction. For thousands of years, Eastern Asians used mushrooms for medicine and in tea, for instance.

Seleen explains that the beta-glucans found in mushroom cell walls promote the immune system. He says mushrooms are the most important tonic herb in traditional Chinese medicine.

His bookshelves are littered with texts of medicine, from certified textbooks on cancer to holistic approaches on sickness.

A tiny porcelain collection of Chinese figurines strikes a chord to the medicinal origins. Seleen’s office sits in front of the packaging warehouse, stacked with boxes to be shipped out.

Mushroom products aren’t yet federally approved pharmaceuticals like they are in Japan, so Seleen can only unofficially advocate their medical purposes. Coriolus versicolor (turkey-tail), Maitake, Reishi, and Shiitake species are suggested immunity boosters, all sold

by JHS Medicine. Seleen says Reishi are the most useful, with added alleged cardiovascular and liver benefits.

Seleen warns of inaccurate sellers who use a water-alcohol extracting process, which is cheaper to produce, but loses a lot of the beta-glucan properties. He says, “It’s the biggest fraud going on in the dietary supplement industry today.”

Mushrooms appear elsewhere, too.

Kombucha, a once rare creation reserved for sacred ceremonies, now floods hippie markets. Whether steaming from a hot plate of food or a boiling pot of wool, growing off decomposing old-growth or in a commercial greenhouse, fungi are bringing fun to more individuals.

So don’t be shy, take a trip with your local fungi!

The Pacific Northwest boasts some of the best mushroom environments in the world, along with a substantially growing active fan base. poisonous look-alikes for common edibles.

To pick on federal land, a Bureau of Land Management permit is needed. Those afraid of mushroom hunting can utilize local farms and pickers. George Weppler, a former mushroom broker and biologist, says, “Don’t just go out there and pick and eat unless you talk to an expert first—in fact, talk to two experts.”

Weppler, the retired owner of Weppler Farms in Brownsville, says the traditional journey of a wild mushroom begins with a picker who travels to buying stations and sells to purveyors. The mushroom is then shipped, bought, and finally sold to an upscale restaurant. Weppler broke this

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the power of Ondikuhole Love and family take on new meaning for Gracie Persson after living with the Nghuuyepa family in Ondangwa, Namibia STORY EMILEE BOOHER PHOTOS GRACIE PERSSON

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“They’ve been taught that white people are better,” she said. The family couldn’t fathom why a white person would want to come stay in their village.

G

racie tried to sleep on the floor of the sweltering sheriff’s office as insects swarmed the room and crawled all over her body.

The men lounged around in nothing but boxers, continuously eyeing her on the floor. The sound of the snakes hissing outside of the open windows was even more bothersome than the buzzing of the flies surrounding her face. She arrived in town after nightfall, and couldn’t find her way to the village where the Nghuuyepa family lived.

The village was a two-hour walk outside of the town of Ondangwa, in northern Namibia, where the sheriff’s office was. Gracie called the family several times for directions, but failed to reach them because of shoddy reception. Fearful of getting lost in the Namibian night, she was forced to seek refuge with the half-naked sheriffs.

The night grew long and more sleepless. The only thing she wanted was to see the grass-roof huts of the Nghuuyepa family’s home. She was trying to at least slip into a sullen slumber when her phone rang. It was a call from the Nghuuyepa sisters. They had been walking for hours looking for her and had already started heading back to their village.

Ecstatic to finally get a hold of Gracie, the sisters turned back to rescue her from the inferno that was the sheriff station.

After about an hour of walking, the sisters reached the station and welcomed Gracie back with laughter and locking embraces. It was too deep into the night to walk back to the village, so they decided to stay there. Mono, the middle sister, sat down in a squatting position and rested Gracie’s head in her lap like a mother to her child.

“Ondikuhole,” Mono said to Gracie, meaning, “I love you” in Oshiwambo, her native language.

Gracie was coming back to stay with the family again after being away for three months. She had left to go home to Eugene to earn money in hopes of returning to them soon.

Born and raised in Oregon, 20-year-old Gracie Persson serendipitously found a home away from home in Namibia with the Nghuuyepa family. She lived with them for a total of three months, with a brief trip home in between. In this family, she found a sense of daughterhood and sisterhood that had not always been present during her childhood. The ideas of home and family were unfamiliar to her, considering the rocky realities of her youth in Eugene.

Growing up, Gracie never felt the joy of a functional and healthy family. She rarely had the pleasure of seeing her parents get along.

“They fought a lot. I remember plates being thrown, and I would always try to get in the middle and make peace,” she says. “Their whole marriage was fast and they don’t even share the same belief system.”

As a result, her parents divorced when she was seven. Her father moved to the coast and Gracie stayed in Eugene with her mother and younger sister. “I really, really loved my dad when I was little … I remember asking him to marry me, and I was completely serious,” she says.

With her father out of the picture, Gracie and her mother had a long-lasting resentment toward each other. “I was a really strong-willed and bold little child, so I would confront my mom all the time, angry with what had happened.”

By the time Gracie turned 16, she had a non-existent relationship with her father and a conflicted relationship with her mother. “My

mom and I went through a really hard time in high school and I was really depressed ... I would wake up in the morning to my mom just yelling at me,” she says.

On the verge of self-destruction, Gracie moved out of her mother’s house and in with the family of one of her classmates. This change slowly restored her stability piece by piece. She began to feel just how powerful loving relationships could be. “When you love people, you forget about you, and you start to heal … That’s what started happening to me,” she says.

In 2006, the summer after her junior year in high school, her church presented her with the opportunity to volunteer in the eastern African country of Uganda. She traveled there with 28 people, staying in various volunteer houses and hotels. During the group’s stay, she worked in orphanages and taught art to the children. She also visited different refugee and internally displaced persons camps where she was exposed to levels of poverty, disease, and turmoil that she had never seen before.

It was in Uganda that Gracie discovered her passion for volunteering in developing areas. She started planning her next journey for the fall of 2007. This time it was to Namibia, a country on the western border of South Africa. “I knew that Namibia had really high HIV rates, and I wanted to spend time with the people there and see if I could help,” she says.

Until it gained its independence in 1990, Namibia had been under an apartheid, which literally means “separately” in Afrikaans.

This system separated people by the color of their skin, giving whites superiority. It forced people with black or colored skin to move out of many areas including Windhoek, the country’s capital city. Many settled in areas on its perimeter such as Katutura, which means “a place where we don’t want to stay.”

“There was still a lot of segregation and separation between the people … and it’s still affecting them today,” Gracie says.

She first went to Namibia to volunteer at the Beautiful Gate organization in Katutura, where she saw disturbing remnants of the apartheid era. Beautiful Gate is a Christian organization led by Afrikaners, people predominantly of European descent. Its goal is to provide care for children in need, particularly those with HIV. But the organization’s caretakers were not as she expected. “The only time the leaders would come was to tell the people what they were doing wrong … They didn’t really have a relationship with any of the children,” she says. “They also allowed the teachers to beat the children, not just a spanking, but with a wooden spoon all over their bodies; they would do these things in the name of Jesus.”

The leaders used their beliefs to justify a strict hierarchy above the teachers and volunteers. “If a blanket was missing, [the leaders] would automatically assume a teacher had stolen it, so they would break into [the teacher’s] classroom and go through all of their stuff,” she says. It

was hard for her to abide by the leaders’ authoritarian methods. Gracie once tried confronting them about the morality of their practice, only to be rejected and ignored. “I was all by myself, and they just started yelling at me … It was horrible,” she says.

Gracie quickly grew to hate Beautiful Gate, calling it “terrible” and “corrupt.” She saw the organization doing more harm than good. It instilled some of the same system of beliefs as the apartheid. “[The leaders] were controlling, narrow-minded … treating black people like they’re less,” she says.

She endured the organization for two months, during which time she became friends with Gabriel Nghuuyepa, another volunteer from a tiny village in northern Namibia. This friendship soon became the catalyst to Gracie’s escape from the organization, and her entry into a life-changing situation.

Gabriel invited her to accompany him on a visit to his family’s village for holiday break, and Gracie enthusiastically said yes.

They left the organization in Katutura and made their 335-mile journey north to Ondangwa, covering nearly half the country’s length.

They traveled on an old, rickety bus, followed by a two-hour walk to Gabriel’s village under the scorching sun. It was summer in Namibia, and the days were hot and dry, typical of its semi-desert climate.

When Gracie arrived, the Nghuuyepa family welcomed her with smiling yet apprehensive faces. Behind their transparent smiles, Gracie could see doubt concerning the presence of a foreign white woman in their home. “They’ve been taught that white people are better,” she says. The family couldn’t fathom why a white person would want to come stay in their village.

“They thought it was crazy I was even coming there … The dad tried to persuade Gabriel to have me stay in town because they were embarrassed to have me,” Gracie says.

The family members stared at her as if she were an object on display. Some of them had never even seen a white person before.

Gracie wanted more than anything to be accepted and trusted by the family as an equal, and as someone who didn’t see herself above them.

When Gabriel returned to Beautiful Gate after the break was over, Gracie didn’t go with him. She was weary of returning to the organization, and the family generously invited her to stay with them for the duration of her stay in Namibia.

Gabriel’s family included his father, mother, five sisters, and six-yearold niece. He and his sisters spanned from 14 to 24 years old, all around two years apart. The Nghuuyepas were self-sustaining; growing their own crops and raising their own livestock. Whereas many Americans see sustainability as drinking out of reusable mugs and buying organic products, the family relied on nothing but the careful craft of their hands, the mobility of their feet, and the fertility of their soil to live. The father, Tate Joseph, was a pastor who traveled by foot to preach to various groups of people in the town. The mother, Meme, often sold produce at the local market.

The family’s home consisted of multiple huts that each served a specific purpose. “They were like bedrooms in a house, but all outdoors,” Gracie says. The parents had their own hut and the sisters shared another one.

There were also separate huts for uses such as beating millet (a type of grain), cooking, using the bathroom, and sheltering the livestock.

As a foreigner and guest in the Nghuuyepas’ home, it was important to Gracie to help change their belief that white people were superior.

“They were very much wanting to serve me and do everything for me,” she says. The family was embarrassed to even share their food with Gracie and compared their crops to eating cockroaches. “They bought me stuff like white rice at the grocery store in town, which they didn’t even have money for … I had to refuse and say no, I’m going to eat what you eat, and I’m going to drink what you drink.

Stop elevating me.”

She began to assimilate into their everyday lives by helping them harvest their crops, pound millet, cook meals, shepherd the cattle and goats, and fetch water. “I would help get water and try to carry it in a basket on top of my head, but my neck was too weak so I’d fill it up half way and try to carry it back,” she says. “I also tried to milk a cow once and they thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”

Laughter and play quickly became the most powerful adhesives between Gracie and the family, particularly with the sisters. “They saw something silly in me, and they were really silly girls,” she says. The girls made up the word ombwilu, for “playing and joking around.” “They would come to me and

say, ‘Let’s play ombwilu!’ and we would wrestle or sing songs.”

Sometimes Gracie and the girls made a game out of beating the insects, or hohos, off of the crops with broken cornstalks.

Ndamangululwa, the young niece, found the most pleasure in this, laughing and chasing Gracie and the other sisters saying, “let’s get the hohos!”

At night they would all lie together in the huts and tell stories about ghosts, or albinos, which they pronounced “al-bee-nos.” They would congregate together on the floor of one of the huts and fall asleep next to each other. “We started sharing beds as sisters … They would hold

Soon, the lines between white and black suggested by the country’s history began to dissolve; Gracie was becoming part of the family. me and tell me they loved me,” she says. Soon, the lines between white and black dictated by the country’s history began to dissolve; Gracie became part of the family.

Everyone gathered a few times a day to share a prayer together or just talk as a family. “Sometimes we would have very good, intense debates … They were really strong women who wanted to know the truth, so they would argue with me and it was awesome.”

When Gracie left the village, Ndamangululwa cried to the sisters and said, “But I love the white girl, I love the white girl … I want her to come back.” It was heart wrenching for Gracie to leave her family in Namibia, but she was thankful for the unique experience they gave her.

“I was really humbled,” Gracie says. “I saw the purity and how freeing it is to completely sustain yourself, how much easier it is than we think, and how far off Americans are from it.” She says that although people in the United States are so concerned with sustainability, many still drive their cars and go out to eat. It’s not just a fad for the Nghuuyepas, it’s a necessity for survival. “I think they have a lot to teach us.”

But the most significant experience for Gracie was being a part of the love and closeness of the Nghuuyepa family. She felt what it’s like to have sisters who search outside for her all night. “I learned how a family functions healthily and saw how much peace they had … They were so loving and were with each other all of the time,” she says. She saw a loving mother who taught her daughters the things they needed to know, and the transfer of that knowledge from the older sisters to the younger sisters.

“I feel since I got this chance to change and feel more love in my life that I should also bestow it on other people … I’m trying to encourage my family to do that too,” she says. Since her return, Gracie and her mother have been working on resolving some of their issues. “Now my

mom and I have a good relationship, pretty good, I mean, I’m kind of selfish,” she says jokingly.

W

hen Gracie went to Namibia, she found a kind of love that’s rare to come by. It’s the kind of love where people’s differences become the glue that holds them together.

It interweaves and fills in the gaps until all parts become a whole.

Even though they come from two very separate worlds, Gracie and the Nghuuyepa family found the simplest joy in a shared sense of humanity. That in itself is the greatest healer.

“I believe you can heal people’s spirits through relationships,” she says. “It’s so important to believe in love, because we can’t change it all, that’s not what it’s about … It’s about touching people and loving them for who they are.”

Gracie will be going to India for at least a year starting this summer, where she plans to do an apprenticeship for midwifery. Her future goal is to become a midwife and work with women in developing countries so they can teach each other basic reproductive needs.

You may contact Gracie to learn more about her upcoming trip and ways to help support her efforts at: yumnummy@yahoo.com

Visit her blog at seasaltcondensation.blogspot.com.

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La Mezcla the mixture Every year, thousands of people cross the border from Mexico into the United States. As a result, Mexican culture has become deeply infused with American life. But perhaps it’s because of such convergence that an immense amount of discrimination exists.

“En El Otro Lado” takes us cerca de la frontera, or near the border, to San Diego for a closer look at the hardships Mexican immigrants face. “¡Ahora Sí!” profiles Armando Morales, a pioneer in the fight for diversity in Eugene’s media. “Petiguas, Quisantes, Chicaros, Arvejas, También” displays the challenges and benefits of being multiethnic and multilingual. Collectively, these three features provide a look at the mezcla cultural between Mexico and the United States and remind us of the importance of tolerance.

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En el Otro Lado Undocumented immigrants risk their lives crossing the border to find work STORY Abigail Diskin PHOTOS Jeannette Lekach & ABigail DISKIN

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alt and pepper hair arches across the top of Javier’s head, complementing his cinnamon-colored skin. Standing at about six feet tall, he towers above most of the others. He is wearing jeans and tan Converse shoes, dressed more like an 18-year-old than a man of his age, 44.

Javier is one of roughly 15 migrantes sin papeles standing in front of the Home Depot in San Diego, California. Some have been in the U.S. for many years, while others crossed over recently.

All have families; it is the reason why they risk their lives crossing to el otro lado, the other side.

Javier stands in front of the Home Depot from 6 a.m. until dusk, everyday. He waits, hungry and thirsty, for work, any work, even if it’s exploitative. It’s common for U.S. citizens to pay immigrants below minimum wage for backbreaking labor. And los migrantes tolerate it because they have no other options. Without a Social Security number, they are invisible, forced to live in the shadows; they do not legally exist in the U.S. Javier’s hands look as though they belong to a man twice his age: wrinkled, rough, mangled. He was a skilled carpenter in Mexico; he even built his family’s house. However, seven years ago, Javier couldn’t find work anymore. So he did what millions before him have done—he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without documentation in search of a job.

Rivulets of tears stream down his face, pooling underneath his chin. He turns away, peering into the distance. The profile of his leather face crumbles; his lips quiver. He brings heavy, large hands to his broad, sun-kissed cheeks to wipe away the moisture. It has been seven years since he left Mexico, and Javier misses his wife, daughter, and son.

He faces us again. His milky eyes, framed by long, black eyelashes, lock with mine. I reach out and touch his arm; he lets me. There are no words to say, so I cry with him. We make deep eye contact, tears blurring our vision. I listen to what he is telling me without words, and I understand his loneliness, just one aspect of his struggle.

“What struck me about Javier was his perseverance and the amount of strength he had, even optimism, that he was going to get a job and see his kids one day … That seemed like the sliver of hope he was holding onto,” Anna Steeves-Reece says.

Steeves-Reece and I were two of 18 University of Oregon students who participated in this year’s Service Learning Alternative Spring Break trip. We spent eight days volunteering for two organizations in San Diego: Border Angels and Casa Familiar, both of which work on immigration issues.

Javier says approximately ten U.S. dollars can buy enough food in Mexico to survive for one month. However, the amount it takes to survive in the States is significantly larger. The majority of the men we meet in front of the Home Depot live in the Canyon Lands. There, tucked into the hills below the freeway, hundreds of undocumented immigrants squat in homemade shelters. On the road above them, wealthy Americans make their daily commute to work, Starbucks coffee in hand.

“It’s like smack[ing] the American dream in the face. It’s a perfect metaphor for our country … the beautiful million dollar houses above on the hills and down below, immigrants are staying in the slums, in the bushes and boxes,” trip participant James Brannon says.

In addition to being poor and undocumented, many of los migrantes feel socially ignored and excluded.

In Spanish, Javier tells me he feels like a piece of paper floating in the wind; like a piece of trash.

Enrique Morones, director and founder of the non-profit Border Angels, is appalled that los migrantes are forced to live under these conditions. “In the Canyons, they are living outdoors year-round with no electricity and no running water … It’s a very sad situation. To treat them in this manner is inhumane … They are the reason we have food on our tables; they take care of our kids; they do the jobs we don’t necessarily want,” Morones says.

In 1994, the Immigration and Naturalization Service launched Operation Gatekeeper in an attempt to disrupt heavily traveled immigration routes from Tijuana to San Diego. The operation funded the construction of a wall that extends across the majority of northern Tijuana and all the way into the ocean. Then post 9/11, the Bush Administration initiated a huge increase in government spending to improve border security and ensure that terrorists couldn’t enter the country across the U.S.-Mexico border. By 2005, Border Patrol officers had increased their numbers by 3,000; from 9,500 in 2001 to 12,500.

However, Morones asserts, this increased militarization has “forced people to cross in more hostile environments, like the mountains and the desert, and has increased the death rate … It used to be one or two people die every month crossing the border, and now it is two or three people dying every day.”

Many of these people are never identified. The bodies of over seven hundred Mexican immigrants lie in a dirt field behind the well-kept Holtville Cemetery, located cerca de la frontera, near the border. Their graves are marked with small, pomegranate-colored bricks and read either “John Doe,” for a male, or “Jane Doe,” for a female. The majority of these Johns and Janes died crossing the Imperial Valley Desert, one of the only areas along the border that doesn’t have a wall.

Morones advocates for comprehensive immigration reform to eliminate these unnecessary deaths. “There is no statue of liberty for people coming from Latin America. There needs to be a more humane way for people to enter the country,” Morones says.

The sun burns our cheeks as we trudge through the Imperial Valley Desert. Our shoes slip on the rocks and sink into the white sand, dimpled by hundreds of footprints. This is where the vast majority of undocumented immigrants cross the border.

The mountainous terrain is home to rattle snakes, scorpions, and cacti. With temperatures reaching as high as 127 degrees during the day and as low as 45 degrees at night, los migrantes are at the mercy of extreme conditions. The journey usually takes three to four days. They travel at night, risking injury to remain hidden in the folds of darkness. And although we are alone on the path, there is evidence of the thousands who have crossed here. Belongings are scattered in the bushes—a pair of blue jeans, a backpack, a hairbrush.

“If someone were to fall, there’s nothing you could really do,” Steeves-Reece says of the desert’s unforgiving landscape. “As Enrique [Morones] told us, there is the policy that if you fall, you get left behind.”

Border Angels upkeeps water stations throughout the desert to eliminate the number of immigrant deaths. Many stations are marked by tall, blue and orange flags but aren’t meant to be seen.

Rather, the sound of the flags flapping in the wind guides thirsty travelers to them during the night. Morones says that extremist groups like the Minuteman Project occasionally inject water jugs with toxins to harm immigrants. In the past, they have also slashed water jugs, tampered with the flags, and dragged tires in the sand to track footprints. Jim Gilchrist, founder of the non-profit Minuteman Project, states on his website he is just “trying to get a neglectful U.S. government to simply enforce existing immigration laws.”

Although crossing the desert is extremely dangerous, many

of the immigrants we spoke to at the Canyon Lands make the journey frequently. Steeves-Reece says she spoke with a young man from Oaxaca who told her matter-of-factly, “Of course we are afraid … but we have to do it.” At 24, he has crossed the border several times. However, for the older or less fit, the journey is more difficult. Javier is afraid to visit his family in Mexico because he doesn’t think he is physically capable of making it back across the desert.

Even though a large group of Mexican immigrants live in the isolated Canyon Lands, many live throughout San Diego, contributing to the city’s diversity.

La Cultura Mexicana is visible in Chicano Park, located in el Barrio Logan, a predominantly Mexican neighborhood. Brightly colored murals decorate the T-shaped highway supports above the park.

Benches are painted red, white, and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. Larger-than-life images of Aztlan, the area of the southern United States thought to have been Aztecan territory, blaze up the walls.

But Brannon says he still sees the city as segregated, despite Chicano Park. “It holds a lot of history of the Mexican population,” he says.

“I see how [cultures] blend in the words but not in the people.

Socially, not a lot of people go into these areas … It’s like they selected the parts of the culture they liked and left the rest.”

Back in the Home Depot parking lot, Javier proudly shows us a photograph of his children. Grinning, he tells us that they will start attending school soon. He is just like any other father, except that he can’t see his children when he misses them.

Maybe one day, Javier will be able to apply for legal citizenship.

But for now, that dream is unattainable, since he speaks hardly any English and lacks basic computer skills. Javier is only one face in a sea of millions, but his story reminds us that we are all human no matter what side of the wall we are on.

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“There is no Statue of Liberty for people coming from Latin America”

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¡Ahora Sí!

A local radio station benefits the Latino community

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STORY SUSANNAH BARD PHOTOS LUKE HARRIS

rmando Morales moved to the United States from Guanajuato, Mexico in 1978, in search of opportunity and in pursuit of love. He followed the love of his life to Eugene, Oregon, where he began his education.

For ten years he lived as an illegal immigrant, before becoming a citizen in the late 1980s.

After attaining his GED and attending community college, Morales received his bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Spanish from the University of Oregon.

He went on to complete his master’s at the UO. When he was finished, he dedicated his life to music.

Morales formed a band called The Sanduga, and traveled and played music over the next 12 years.

In 1983, he began to participate with KLCC, a local public radio station licensed to Lane Community College in Eugene.

KLCC hosted a Latino show called ¡Ahora Sí! Soon after he began volunteering for KLCC, the hosts of ¡Ahora Sí! decided it was time to move on from the show, and Morales was first to jump on the opportunity.

At the time, it was the only show that offered a voice in Spanish.

“I had an idea of what kind of music I wanted to have, which was folk, but when I got involved with the community here in Oregon I realized it is different; it is not only people from Mexico but Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, all over. I decided to put all this kind of music together in one program,” Morales says.

For the first ten years, Morales ran his show the exact same way. The hour would start off with folk, then salsa, and end with

romantic music. For a long time, he and his wife were the only ones working on the show.

But by 2004, he realized he needed help. He invited a few students from the University of Oregon to join the crew. These students created their own show called ¡Porque No!, which is ¡Ahora Sí!’s opener. They play mainly tropical music, eventually transitioning to folk and romantic.

Morales’ daughter is 18 years old and about to graduate from Oak Hill School. She has been helping her dad out on the show for seven years. From the beginning, she has been speaking on the radio, and now she laughs about the changes over the years.

“You can listen back to old tapes and hear how my voice has changed since I was 11,” she says.

Morales has been running his show for over 20 years. He has received all kinds of feedback, both positive and negative. Morales says that the negative feedback doesn’t hurt him, but what does hurt him are racist phone calls that the show receives. Some callers, he explains, swear at him and demand him to stop speaking in Spanish. He has been told, “This is America where people speak English.”

He takes this gracefully, however, realizing that there are always going to be people who don’t appreciate you or your culture.

“There is 90 percent good feedback, and ten percent bad, but I focus on the good; that’s what’s important,” Morales says.

Morales is aware of the influence he has being on the radio. He is careful with whom he allows to speak on his show. Although almost everyone who helps out has a chance to speak, it has taken a lot to prove they are ready.

Each has had to spend at least one year learning how to handle the equipment and observing how the show is run before they are

ready to have their voices broadcasted.

“The radio is a powerful instrument. People on the radio have the power to do many things, politically and culturally,” Morales says. “You need to be careful, and consider the interest of the person you are putting in such power.”

In addition to music, Morales’ show also involves discussions about the community. The program offers news about immigration laws, licensing, locations of meetings and cultural events.

“Anything that is happening in Oregon, the U.S., Latin America, all around the world.” Morales says.

Morales has the show set up in both Spanish and English. He says it’s difficult to run a bilingual radio show.

“You need to get the timing perfect, there has to be an agreement between switching from Spanish to English.

"Everything is said in both languages, it is a very smooth transition,” Morales says.

Morales smiles as he watches his students gracefully run his radio show. It’s like a carefully synchronized dance when they quietly signal to each other to switch between speakers. The transition is smooth and Morales is pleased.

He has taught them well.

There are only two shows in Eugene that reach out to the Latino community. It’s important to Morales to connect with his community like he does.

“We are breaking the stereotype. People say that we are taking American jobs but here we are proving that we aren’t just doing that. We’re giving back to our community,” Morales says.

“It’s a little stone to make some change. To say we exist. We are the spice of this society, the condiment, [if] you don’t have a condiment the food is not going to taste good!”

“The radio is a powerful instrument,” Morales says.

“People on the radio have the power to do many things, politically and culturally.”

“You need to get the timing perfect, there has to be an agreement between switching from Spanish to English.”

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Petit Pois, Quisantes, Chicharos, Arvejas, También Lillian Darwin-López tries to generate cultural awareness by using hybrid languages STORY rebecca leisher PHOTO courteSy lillian darwin-lÓpEz

“N

i es bueno ni es malo, sino abominable”—it is neither good nor bad, but abominable, said Mexican writer Octavio Paz, expressing his opinion on inglañol, or Spanglish, as it’s known in the United States.

Purists have been condemning the hybrid language for years, whether they view it as linguistic corruption or a debilitation of effective communication. The English First Foundation fights against bilingual education in U.S. schools and advocates “the importance of preserving English as the common language of the United States.” The Royal Academy of Spanish Language, based in Madrid, develops linguistic policies with Spanish-speaking countries to sustain their historic language.

Lillian Darwin-López doesn’t agree with the purists.

Darwin-López’s life is a mélange of language, culture, and heritage. Her family lived in Eugene, Oregon until DarwinLópez was a teenager when they moved to Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Her father was part Chickasaw; her mother is also mixed.

Darwin-López’s ex-husband is Rastafarian and half Chorotega, an indigenous tribe of Nicaragua. Their son, Sereno, was trilingual by age eight. Darwin-López and Sereno have lived all over Latin America, Spain, and the United States. She speaks Spanish, English, Portuguese, and some Japanese. Her life has been anything but that of a purist.

Different versions of Spanglish are just regional dialects of Spanish, says Darwin-López, who now teaches Spanish at the University of Oregon. “My Spanglish is very mixed up in Costa Rican Spanish, which has its own peculiarities that you don’t even understand outside Costa Rica,” she says. She points out that she grew up calling peas petit pois, pulling out her copy of the first-year Spanish textbook. She riffles through its pages in search of the standard Spanish word, which she’d never heard before teaching the language. “Ah, guisantes,” she says, shaking her head.

“So here’s an example: In Spain you say guisantes, in México you say chícharos, and in several other Caribbean countries they say arvejas—oh, and in Chile también—and then we say petit pois.”

Darwin-López also points out that there are words that don’t exist in Latin America, so Spanish speakers form words out of the English equivalents. She says chatear is a good example. While charlar means literally “to chat,” Internet chatting required a different word. “A lot of people say it’s killing the language, but Spanish is a hybrid language to begin with,” she says, pointing out heavy Latin as well as Arabic influences.

Raising her son to be multilingual has been a fun challenge for Darwin-López. When Sereno was younger, he’d say things like, “what funny”—switching between English words and Spanish

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structure characteristic of Spanglish. Darwin-López wants her son to learn proper Spanish eventually, but she’s careful not to overcorrect him. “I never discouraged his attempts to speak Spanish,” she says. “I thought it was great because it shows that he was thinking in both languages.”

Darwin-López thinks the blending of different languages and cultures is beautiful and creative, far from being polluted. “The idea of purity of language to me is linked to the idea of purity of race,” she says. “And that’s something I’m not interested in preserving at all.”

She’s much more interested in generating cultural awareness, especially in Sereno, who is now 11-years-old. Darwin-López’s family, education, and work brought them to Costa Rica, Bolivia, Spain, Ecuador, and Brazil until they settled in the United States three years ago. While she enjoys having a home base after so much traveling, Darwin-López is thankful her son’s worldview extends beyond Eugene. When they lived in Bolivia, he was shocked to find that he shared his skin color with so many other people. “Wow, Mom, everybody here is some shade of brown,” he would say.

Throughout their travels, Sereno also noticed kids his age—six or seven years old—working and living on the streets. DarwinLópez says she’s always tried to be upfront with her son and explain the social inequalities in the world, but she also tries to protect him from certain negative images in the media, which are sometimes influenced by the tensions that can result from cultural convergence. She says she’s often disturbed by the way people of color are portrayed in mainstream media, so she tries to teach Sereno to be critical of what he watches or hears.

“There’s a tendency to see Latinos as gang-bangers and lazy,” she says. “I’m not interested in him taking on that self-image.”

On the other hand, Darwin-López appreciates and enjoys popular culture because it’s an opportunity for “really cool hybrids” between cultures to emerge. She points to low-rider culture as something completely original. “It’s kitschy, in-yourface, clearly not Mexican and clearly not Anglo, but it’s a mix,” she says. “They take popular culture and change it and make it

their own.” Darwin-López appreciates those aspects of popular culture because she doesn’t want anyone to be forced into a “box of authenticity.”

Keeping a balance between enjoying popular culture and maintaining cultural self-esteem has been tricky for the DarwinLópez family since they have moved back to the states. When Sereno was in elementary school his class put on a Thanksgiving play, and he was insistent on being a pilgrim rather than a Native American. He seemed to feel that being Native American was negative. Darwin-López says Sereno is a wide mixture of ethnicities: Latin American, African American, and almost half indigenous of various tribes in the Americas. “I was really upset,” Darwin-López says. “I really try to cultivate pride in him in his various backgrounds.”

A self-proclaimed idealist, Darwin-López hopes Sereno’s diverse background and world experience leads to “greater intercultural understanding.”

In her experience, being raised from a mixed background fosters a more empathetic outlook toward people around the world. That perspective is already evident in Sereno’s responses to children living in other countries like Bolivia and in his ability to befriend people from all walks of life.

“There’s something about having parents from different worlds and having yourself grown up in different worlds—It’s a lot harder to turn your back on someone else’s pain.”

When she reads Colombian news, she can relate to the place and the people because she’s been there, but that empathy also extends, she says. “I understand that to people in Iraq, Iraq is the center of their world, so the pain they’re experiencing is not just something passing on the nightly news.”

Darwin-López says the same thing goes for being multilingual, which is why she’s not a stickler about keeping Spanish and English separate. It’s also why she encourages Sereno to use different languages, regardless of whether his use is proper.

“The kinds of pathways it opens up in your brain, the kinds of leaps of imagination, understanding—when you get that concept, there’s more than one way to think.”

“The idea of purity of language to me is linked to the idea of purity of race”

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JOURNEYS ABROAD

Pompeii seems designed for adventure and exploration. We became explorers, feeling for the faint pulse of a place that should have died centuries ago.

One girl’s travels in Italy take her back in time

Destination: Pompeii, Italy

Unable to escape the lava and ash which devoured Pompeii, many habitants died instantly. Their bodies were frozen in the molten lava leaving behind a cast of their bodies.

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PHOTO COURTESY GABRIELLA NARVAEZ; OPPOSITE PHOTO AILIN DARLING

I

t’s cold inside the faded stone walls of the villa. The sun waits at the windows, forbidden to enter the empty square rooms where each step, tap, and sneeze grows into a chorus of booms. Similar bangs come from above: the repetitive thundering of workers’ hammers and power tools.

“Am I really allowed in here?” I think to myself. I turn to look around, making a complete circle on the spot. The parade of tourists who I had entered the ruins with are nowhere in sight. I could hear the softer cacophonies of my friends, each enjoying her little discovery inside this house of mysteries.

I enter the next room where smears of color only suggest the vibrant fresco that had once adorned its walls. The rest is gray and smooth, like concrete. Even after centuries of excavation, the ancient city of Pompeii is still partially buried under the rock and ash of a volcanic eruption.

Thousands of people have already walked through these rooms and wondered about its original inhabitants. But on this February morning, the villa seems to reveal its secrets only to me.

I take out a thick wine-colored pamphlet, my guide to the history and layout of this crumbling wonderland. In the quiet of my gray shelter I read a quick summary of the day that gives this minor Roman colony its timeless fame. In August 79 C.E., Pompeii was under reconstruction after an earthquake had shaken the Vesuvian area several years before. The eruption was sudden and unexpected. Plaster casts of fossils on display in the ruins depict fleeing Pompeians in desperate poses: running, hiding, covering their eyes. The condemned city was rediscovered in the 16th century, and its excavation began in 1748.

From the window of a train arriving at and impressive semi-circle of the theater climb into wells, descend into pits, and Pompeii Scavi station, the ancient ruins are give the ancient city a dream-like faraway duck under gates—snapping pictures all a massive gray labyrinth nesting in the soft splendor. With my mind’s eye, I fill the the while. The clanging of workers, the green haze of clustered trees. As if placed to gaps in each chipped and broken arch, stretches of orange caution tape, and the highlight the city’s notoriously dire history, sweep the floor to a polished shine, and occasional cascade of falling rocks give the the snow-capped Mt. Vesuvius looms over envision leather sandals and long skirts site an exciting atmosphere. It’s a work in it, threatening to explode once again. To the moving across it. I fill the cobbled streets progress, bringing life to a long lifeless city. left, on the The possibility other side of discovering of the train, something is the bay totally new from of Naples, a something so sheet of deep ancient seems blue glass cut just around every by a slice of land covered by urban buildings with noisy, colorfully dressed buyers and grainy stone corner. and billboards advertising cell phones. The sellers, calling from their stands like the After leaving the Villa of Mysteries, city’s proximity to the volcano is unnerving; present-day vendors we had passed outside. we follow an unmarked trail up into the could the living, bustling city of Naples be Relics of normal everyday life found in the foothills of Mt. Vesuvius. Suddenly, I am the next Pompeii? ruins of a bakery and several snack bars give surrounded by lush greenery and a truly Leaving the train station, we pass a me another kind of thrill: a connection to stunning panorama; my excited, curious row of food stands primed for a long day a city and its people from another time. state quickly changes to one of lazy repose. of feeding hungry tourists; there is no Examining a catillus for grinding grain or Cool blue and dark gray ruins become Ristorante Pompeii. The entrance to the a decaying bench in the shade of a garden the backdrop for vibrant fields of herbs and ruins is a round unimpressive ticket counter offers me a real glimpse into a culture with vines. Their blooming fragrance covers the flanked by a cramped rectangular gift shop. needs and wants not so very different from scent of rock and dirt. Beyond the fields, Along with my ticket, I receive a pocketmy own. the afternoon sun floats idly over the bay. sized guidebook filled with information on As a tourist attraction, Pompeii seems People work in fields just above the ruins, particularly distinguished gray buildings designed for adventure and exploration. We trimming leaves and watering rows of with thrilling, beautiful names such as become explorers, feeling for the faint pulse flowering plants. They wave when they see House of the Tragic Poet and Porta Nocera. of a place that should have died centuries us watching. I wave back.

The entrance is as crowded as ago. Dark crumbling rooms left unattended, Above them, as they resume their work Disneyland. We enter at an ant’s pace, challenge the audacious visitor to enter. Tufa in its shadow, the living volcano stands like turning our heads in every direction, taking stone walls surround impressive colonnades a bully still gloating over its victory after in our first views of this skeleton of a and statue gardens, save for a few holes large almost two thousand years. I throw off a civilization. View of the first suburban villa enough to poke a head in for a closer look. shiver and turn back to the view. and the temple of Apollo is obscured by All around me people stand on arches, —Ailin Darling families squeezing together for photographs and school groups beginning their guided tours. But after these landmarks, the city sprawls out in every direction.

The narrow streets lead us to row after row of stony ruins, each with a past and a purpose: businesses, tombs, private residences. The guides give us a brief lesson identifying gray lumps and piles of all shapes and sizes, remnants of a “mixed” society.

Artifacts from architecture to tools of industry bore the influence of several different cultures: Etruscan, Greek, and a few native tribes. Certain structures can still be identified as the homes of the rich and powerful by their grand size, large number of frescoed rooms, or a particularly magnificent view.

The site is a playground for my imagination. The striking aristocratic villas Pompeii was destroyed during a two day explosion by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Archeologists have since unveiled a window into the past.

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Moving Pictures

It’s Just a Movie Popular cinema portrays a director’s creative desires, not a country’s true character Gopal’s solution to solving this problem of false perceptions is to gather information and research from more than one source; not just one film. People believe that films reflect reality, when often times they don’t.

“That would be like basing all of your impressions about New York City watching Batman. It has something to say about New York and the way gangs operate and the play of good versus evil in big cities, but it’s just a movie,” Gopal says.

“There is poverty in India, but there is also poverty in the U.S.,” says University of Oregon professor Gabriela Martinez, who has won awards for her ethnographic and social documentaries. “The issue is that we

who wished to remain anonymous, watched Sex and the City: The Movie at home. In regards to the scene where Charlotte, played by actress Kristin Davis, drinks bad water in Mexico, the student said, “I bet they glue water bottles back together and sell them to make money in Mexico, too.” Her friend asked, “How do you know that?” She replied, “Because of Slumdog Millionaire. They’re both poor areas. I bet they do the same things to make money.”

She assumed Mexico and India have the same types of poverty.

She also grouped a country with many eclectic cultures into one: a poor slum. One movie’s way of showing how a character makes money doesn’t mean that all of the world’s impoverished does the same—an assumption the student makes. Also, Mexico and India are thousands of miles apart, and are thus, culturally different.

Her biggest mistake was taking a fictional scene and making it a reality.

Although this situation isn’t indicative of the entire student population, it proves that faulty perceptions can easily be made just by watching fictional movies.

In other countries, Batman and Superman are figures that represent American culture. But what Batman portrays about American culture is that there are gangs in cities across the country.

If people base their perceptions of the U.S. on a superhero, Americans, too, would likely be offended.

“I don’t think many of these films represent a culture,” Martinez says. “It gives me a glimpse of one part of that society, but not the whole part.” Martinez focuses her work on subjects such as Latin American Cinema and Society. “Americans need to start researching and stop falsifying their own reality by getting their information from more than one source instead of fictional movies.”

It’s impossible to represent America with a single point of view—just as it’s impossible to do with other countries such as India and Mexico. Knowledge of cultures and issues isn’t only vital to one’s intellect, but it’s respectful to other countries, and avoids clumping other cultures into stereotypes.

Study facts from credible sources like watching documentaries, talking with experts, and experiencing first hand. And avoid watching fictional movies as a source of truth. —Grace Caton

If people base their perceptions of the U.S. on a superhero, Americans, too, would likely be offended. don’t make these comparisons and contrasts.

We only see these things [like poverty] from our individual perspective.” Instead of noticing there are places in America that look like the slums in Millionaire and making just comparisons, many people feel pity and remorse for places like India.

Many Americans think, “That’s not us, it’s only these other countries that have these terrible lives,” Martinez explains.

Although many films seem real and often times portray real events, the audience must remember that it’s a fictional movie. Gopal states that Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire, “has the right to go into India and portray whatever the hell he wants.

That’s his freedom as an artist.”

In January, Boyle made a statement to the Mumbai press, saying, “First and foremost, Slumdog Millionaire is not a documentary.” Opinions are split in Indian slums over the realism of the film, according to The Washington Post. Some hate it, some embrace it.

“Movies are incredibly valuable things, but not for truth,” Gopal says. “They are valuable for other things. How that artist imagines what we want to see.” Film is an art form, and the audience is responsible to know that film doesn’t have to be factual.

“Think about the director’s intentions, their shot setups, and previous influences on the movies rather than reality,” Gopal says.

College students are also liable to create false realities for themselves when it comes to movies. A University of Oregon student

Illustrations by Roger Bong & kevin Bronk

T

wo young brothers run across the heated Indian desert, sand jumping out of the slums of their village.

When the youngest brother sees the lost girl, it’s like magic. For years to come, the youngest brother will base his life around finding his soul mate. A movie that explains an adventurous, heartwarming, but fictional story like that of Slumdog Millionaire is an artwork or even a masterpiece.

Winner of eight Oscars at the 2009 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the rundown village and the suffering people of Millionaire broke many hearts and created a lot of tears—not tears of remorse, but thankfulness that America isn’t in the same situation.

Slumdog Millionaire grossed over $141 million at the box office, and more than double that amount in home DVD sales. But instead of researching current issues and learning about the culture of a country, Americans base their perceptions on what the mainstream media feeds them: through movies, music, and television, which are often times fictional and not fact.

Many people see movies such as Slumdog Millionaire as a representation of India, when in truth, it’s a love story, says University of Oregon assistant professor Sangita Gopal, who analyzes Indian cinema and literature.

In the United States, the media are meant to inform the public about ongoing events in the world.

However, the media also entertain the public to make money. Although movies are a form of media, most are fictional.

SPICES AND SPIRITS

Cultural Courtesy L

adies, ordering a drink or two in the States won’t warrant attention, but in Peru it may give you the reputation of being a “bad woman.” Peruvian Doris Rodriguez de Platt explains that in Peru,

there are only two kinds of women: good or bad. And a woman’s public behavior during a meal or social gathering will quickly place her in one of these two non-transferable categories. On the other hand, American

ABOVE: Some of the ingredients that go into Lomo Saltado, a traditional Peruvian dish with an Asian influence.

OPPOSITE: Lomo Saltado is usually served with a side of rice or potatoes.

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culture doesn’t bat an eye at a woman drinking more than one drink, as long as she doesn’t get plastered.

As an American living in a country that incorporates cultures from all over the world, knowing a country’s eating etiquette can prove to be a secret asset. Cultures practice their traditions and customs in America’s backyard. Understanding and occasionally performing under different cultural conduct codes will earn brownie points with employers and hosts. Learning about a culture’s etiquette will help filter out cultural stereotypes when trying to grasp their traditions. Culture begins in the kitchen, where proper dining etiquette takes place.

“There is no melting pot in America that could come close to describing home etiquette. It really isn’t the Martha Stewart type family,” says Lisa Gallo, 49, owner of The Etiquette School of Washington State.

As cultural practices are a reflection of a country’s values and manners, dining etiquette is understood to be a part of your cultural identity and daily life. Culture builds a country’s eating etiquette, and their dining habits play off of values and manners.

“The difference between Peru and America is [that] they have a proficient ethic culture and proficient religion. The distance that one moves from one’s homeland origin is about less than one percent in Peru,” Gallo says. Eating etiquette is more than sliding a napkin on your lap. It’s encompassed by introductions, conversation, courtesy, and table mechanics. With such a close-knit community, residents judge each other more so by their culture, religion, and eating etiquette.

“It’s not like you go and say hi, no.

They always kiss you,” Ana Salcedo says of her home country Peru. In comparison, American greetings remain formal.

Generally, Americans address each other with a firm handshake consisting of one to three vertical pumps.

Dining customs can be different from city to city. According to de Platt, the eating customs vary from towns in the Andes to the coastal villages of Peru. De Platt and her family operate a Peruvian restaurant in the Pearl District of downtown Portland called “Andina.”

She grew up in the Andes, where her mother taught her that dining etiquette was a direct

Food PHOTOS BY JESSIE RUNYAN-GLESS; Silverware PHOTO BY KEVIN BRONK

Understanding cultural eating habits breaks down stereotypes

reflection of those who raised you.

In small towns, meals take place at home. Emphasis is placed on invitations and greetings that occur when arriving at the house for the meal. According to de Platt, restaurants are for foreigners, young singles, and “marriages on the rocks.” The Peruvian culture believes that homes are used for entertaining and eating. If invited to a party or meal, expect to be waited on. “Any invitation, it’s expected that the person who invites to do everything,” de Platt says.

“You never see [a] potluck or a ‘German style’ [“going Dutch”] where everybody pays.” The job of the mother of the house is to serve, introduce, and entertain her guests. Only sometimes she may have aid from her daughters or a grandmother.

In return, guests operate under an unwritten code of conduct. “You always stay in the door till the owner comes and says come, thank you very much,” de Platt says. “[The host] goes to introduce you to everybody and you cannot sit unless they say come and sit. You are always waiting.” As a result of this social taboo, the American cocktail hour, where guests mingle amongst each other carrying their drinks, is nonexistent in Peru. “In general, cocktails need to be served, you need to sit down and you need to be introduced to people,” de Platt says.

“So you never go into a group and introduce yourself—it’s rude.”

Failure for either party to misstep during this dance leads to dishonoring either the host or guest.

American culture varies upon whether the situation is formal or informal. “The host or hostess’ responsibility at the event is to make [their] guests feel comfortable and to meet their needs,” Gallo says. In the American culture for formal events, an attendant should have

prepared at least five things that he or she is ready to talk about besides the weather, Gallo says. Research can even be helpful in finding five topics.

For example, if a guest knows that the Portland Trailblazers will be at the party, the guest may look up the team’s statistics or watch a recent game online. “No one is invited to a party as art to be looked at or to be entertained. You’re an intricate part of the party. If you don’t come prepared, you’ve cancelled the opportunity that that host was planning,” Gallo says.

Saying “no” at a Peruvian meal may actually mean that you’re saying “yes.” “We were all taught that you need to be asked two to three times,” de Platt says. “It’s impolite to say yes the first time.” The same holds true for saying “no.” If you know you don’t want any more food, then you must prepare the host for this answer. Saying that your stomach hurts is a valid excuse if the host asks if you would like seconds. Typically, you will be spared the invitation for more food if specified earlier.

Similar to American culture, it’s rude to eat too much or shovel down your food. “If you have a basket

“You never go into a group and introduce yourself—it’s rude.”

of bread, you take the smaller one,” de Platt says. While attending a party at her aunt’s home as a child, she scanned the bread platter to find the smallest piece of bread on the bottom. De Platt struggled to slide the piece out and the tower of bread crumbled to the floor. In the ruins, she spotted her prospective piece, which, ironically, turned out to be the largest piece of them all.

Peru, like many cultures, operates on an unwritten code of eating behaviors that are understood and followed by hosts and guests. Breaking the code results in a bad reputation that is often irreversible. Every action conducted by hosts and guests holds an underlying meaning in Peruvian society: if a guest even brings a salad or a main dish to the party, they have disgraced the host.

Learning other cultures’ eating habits will translate into an understanding of why that culture operates the way it does. Next time you dine with guests from another culture, be sure to review their eating etiquette—your reputation will thank you. —Rachel Coussens

Five American Etiquette Tips You May Not Know : When finished with a meal, position the fork and knife on the plate pointing at the 11 o’clock.

If a fork or napkin falls on the floor, leave it and ask the server for a fresh one.

Tear off a piece of bread, butter it over the plate.

Utensils never touch the table and remain on the plate after use.

Spoon soup away from your body.

Never place crackers into your soup. Oyster crackers in chowder is the exception.

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PEOPLE IN MOTION

The Act of Suspension

for art and physical performance. Others participate in suspension to hurl themselves into deep, weightless meditation. There are even people who see the procedure as a recreational activity for performing acrobatics and applying innovative new ideas to suspension. Some reasons are less spiritual; some people just suspend themselves simply for the adrenaline rush.

Devin Mense, from the suspension group known as Hangman Suspensions, which is based in Portland as well as Honolulu, says, “I think that most people who suspend with us for their first time do it to test themselves.” According to the Hangman Suspensions’ web page, they’re a group of individuals who suspend for their individually different reasons.

“I think for a lot of people it offers an almost tangible release followed by a sense of accomplishment and harmony that can last for a long time,” Mense explains.

This year, from July 31st through August 1st, the group will be hosting a suspension retreat at Twisted Cedar Estate in Sandy, Oregon. The gathering will be somewhat of a festival where meals and lodging will be provided and all sorts of suspensions will take place. The group welcomes all who are interested in trying suspension for the first

Hanging by hooks is more therapeutic than one might think there will be when he is done. Harrington’s skin continues to stretch and the blood flows to his docile face. He smiles as a result of our shocked facial expressions. I awaken from my paralysis and he tells me I can push him around like a pendulum if I want to. Laughing, we all take a turn pushing

Alex Harrington hangs by his knees. Suspension has been equated to the feeling of being able to fly.

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him like a child on a swing. Only it's a man hanging from his own flesh.

Suspension elevates a person above the ground through large hooks in the flesh. The number of deep sea fishing hooks used for procedure suspension ranges from one to 12 depending on the person’s body as well as the type of suspension. The suspendee is then hoisted into the air by a pulley, rope, or wench.

“I’ve been suspended quite a few times for performance,” says High Priestess Tattoo and Piercing employee Alex Harrington. “It feels like being at zero gravity, like you’re able to fly. It’s definitely a thrill and a rush.”

High Priestess tattoo artist and piercer John Logger has been participating in suspension for five years. “My most common suspension style is the superman style.

It’s four hooks straight in my back and I am suspended horizontally,” he says, as he turns to ask his coworker a question under the High Priestess tent at the Oregon Ink Tattoo Convention. “The very first time I did it I was extremely scared and I couldn’t physically make myself do it. People had to help me get my feet off the ground,” Logger says, “but I am really glad that an old friend of mine, who I really trusted, encouraged me do it.”

Suspension is not as uncommon as most people might think. The act of suspending oneself in the air via giant deep sea fishhooks through the flesh is a trend which many more individuals and groups are beginning to adopt.

Originally, the Native American Mandan tribe used ritual suspension to signify the male rite of passage into adulthood. The Mandans were the first people to suspend humans by their skin and are responsible for many of the suspension methods people presently use. Today, suspension has begun to spread into other groups and subcultures all around the world. Harrington’s first suspension was at a tattoo convention in Everett, Washington. “I was in front of about four hundred people and there was an auction going on where I was displaying different types of jewelry,” Harrington says, “it was pretty awesome.”

Nearly everyone has different reasons for participating in suspension. Some see it as creative physical expression, while others partake in suspension as a form of meditation or spiritual fulfillment, similar to the Mandan tribe. “It is a great stress outlet for me. It is something I can do to release myself from any personal issues I have going on [in] my life,” says Logger. Some people, like Harrington, engage in the activity

type of suspension, allowing you to swing more, spin more, do yoga poses, etc.”

A very tricky but popular type of suspension is known as the lotus, where the participant is suspended in a cross-legged position with his or her hands together as if in prayer. This position is most often used with meditation practices.

The knee suspension, as performed by Harrington, is known for being the most dangerous. Precise calculations must be taken prior to the procedure, especially if the suspendee is attempting it with only one hook in each knee.

“When I go up on my knees, I prefer to have no less than two hooks in each knee,” Harrington says. “Of all the major accidents I’ve seen in suspensions, I’ve definitely noticed the knees are right up there.”

Some may consider Harrington to be a human marvel, while others may see him as a fellow performer and stunt man.

Harrington explains he just likes to see people’s reactions to him hanging by hooks.

“I’m addicted to the shock value. I mean, the crowd response is always my favorite thing because I always feed off of their energy,” Harrington says enthusiastically. I remember this, laugh, and give him another push on his skin swing. —Leighton Cosseboom

“I prefer to have no less than two hooks in each knee.” themselves around the room and even spring off of walls in an acrobatic style.

The coma is a type of suspension in which the person lies on his or her back and is supported by two rows of hooks running from the chest to the legs. The suicide suspension places two hooks in the upper back, almost as though controlling a marionette.

“I think that it’s the most popular style of suspension because for a lot of people, it is the least intimidating,” Mense says. “You also have more freedom of movement and are more in control of your motion with this

PHOTOS BY COURTNEY HENDRICKS

A

lex Harrington is hanging upsidedown in the air as we surround him in silence, our jaws wide open, as the skin of his knees stretches like rubber under the weight of his body. There is no blood from the deep sea fishhooks that penetrate his flesh at this moment, but he assures us

time, as well as any curious individuals who simply want to attend for entertainment.

One very popular type of suspension is the chest suspension, commonly used by the Mandan tribe along the Missouri River.

For this type of suspension, two hooks are placed in the chest of the suspendee and act as the only support devices for the suspension. The chest suspension allows for a wide range of motion and it’s not uncommon for suspendees to swing

Skin suspension comes with a price, but for Harrington, any pain post-suspension is well worth the pleasure.

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SOUNDWAVES

Breaking Musical Barriers Ethnomusicology provides cultural understandings of Eastern and Western music

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Students in Levy’s ethnomusicology class playing some instruments.

Levy says. “However, the UO has made Music in World Cultures a mandatory class for all music majors. This just shows us how ethnomusicology is becoming more important.”

Levy’s passion for ethnomusicology is infectious. Over the years the attendance for classes such as Music in World Cultures has increased by leaps and bounds. The classroom is filled with up to 150 students who, to my surprise, take a keen interest in learning about world music. The concepts initially seem abstract, even absurd, in our university community.

Levy plays a Muslim singing genre called ganga. Despite my trying to keep an open mind, it still sounds like intensely loud whining. But Levy explains it’s a part of a religious ceremony called the Mevlud Festival, celebrating the birth of the Muslim holy figure Muhammad. At the festival, single women participate in courtship by singing ganga.

The difference between male and female ganga is that the women are judged by their singing skills to a certain degree while males are allowed to sing as loudly and powerfully as they wish. This, Levy comments, is reflective of the social norm of the culture.

Levy says that he tends to highlight the differences between Western and Eastern cultures rather than the similarities. Yet rather than building upon the barriers between these two worlds, ethnomusicology aims to break these barriers through musical understanding. “It’s my mission to expand musical awareness,” Levy says.

In the course of the past 40 years, the University of Oregon has slowly been adjusting to the idea of ethnomusicology.

In the 1950s, when major universities

were fostering budding ethnomusicology programs, UCLA music professor Robert Trotter came to the UO and proposed “to give students experience with ‘underexposed’ music,” says Brad Foley, Dean of the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon.

During the years Trotter was dean of UO’s music school (1963-69, 70-75), he drastically reformed the traditionally classical music school. However, it wasn't until recently that ethnomusicology classes were made mandatory for music majors.

Anne Dhu McLucas, a former dean of the music school and current professor in the Ethnomusicology department, believes that students take a lot out of the ethnomusicology classes offered. “For students who are purely classically trained,

“It significantly alters their mindset and how they view music.”

Professor Mark Levy teaches a course on ethnomusicology at the University of Oregon using traditional Gamelan instruments from southeast Asia. The instruments are located in Gerlinger Hall.

fire has ignited, his eyes sparkle and he immediately delves into his excitement for ethnomusicology.

Levy has been teaching at the University of Oregon since 1991. With a music degree from the University of Chicago and a specialization in ethnomusicology at the

University of California Los Angeles, Levy is well aware of the challenges of exposing ethnomusicology to the western world— specifically, at the UO. Currently, the university offers no degree for ethnomusicology. “There’s simply not enough funding to expand the program,”

PHOTOS BY LUKE HARRIS

distant but overwhelming wailing noise sounds over the city; to the Western world, it’s nothing more than alien sounds, meaningless, and foreign of what is deemed as music. What then, must the Eastern world think of our pyrotechnic, clashing noise, incoherent rap about demeaning women, or Britney Spears’ If U Seek Amy? The misunderstandings and cultural barriers that divide Western and Eastern music seem like the iron curtain of cultural and social understanding. I can see the apocalypse now: religious singers of ganga facing a cold war with Britney Spears over whether music should become more sexual or sacred. However, there is a light at the end of this tunnel. What is its name?

Ethnomusicology.

A lot of what ethnomusicology entails is field work, going to other countries to study, and work with natives to find the correlation between culture and music.

Ethnomusicology, unlike music history, is an interactive study; less about the facts and more speculative about the current effects and influences of music. As the demographic of American cultures diversifies with social change and the influx of immigrants, the need for understanding foreign cultures becomes imperative.

Ethnomusicology can easily be stereotyped as the study of world music.

Comparatively, the study of world music can easily be attributed with racial stereotypes, colonialist influences, and minority groups struggling with the divide between their American and foreign identities. These stereotypes however, are what ethnomusicology aims to understand and break.

Music programs across the country have recognized this, and have made ethnomusicology an essential part of many curriculae, including that of the University of Oregon.

With classes like Music of India or Music and Gender, Oregon strives to provide students with as diverse a curriculae as possible. Though the program is still small in comparison to the classical and jazz music programs, it’s slowly evolving with the help of professors and students and the funding for its expansion and development.

Professor Mark Levy sits in his small office preparing for my interview. I see a mixture of slight confusion and apprehension as to why I have come to interview him. I, being nervous, immediately ask what classes he teaches. Then, as if a

Ethnomusicology is concerned more with the present. Instead of using facts to reason, one asks artists still living today what their opinion would be.

To McLucas, ethnomusicology is all about field work and personal interaction.

“Ethnomusicology used to be seen as colonization, now there is a lot more personal interaction; the field workers and those being studied work hand in hand,” McLucas says.

Although she describes ethnomusicology very differently from Levy, she shares Levy’s passion for understanding world cultures.

“Ethnomusicology is music outside the Western culture, and how you look at it in its context and culture. It doesn’t aim to ‘bring the world together’ but rather to provide a cultural understanding of one another’s cultures, and break the barriers between western and eastern music,” she says.

Music has a lot of influence on the cultural, social, and even political barriers that diminish our understanding of one another. Thus, prejudices and stereotypes slowly become erased, and a mutual understanding is gained through music. It sounds like a lofty goal, but McLucas sees promise as ethnomusicology’s influence evolves and spreads throughout the country.

That influence is starting to catch on at the UO, and Levy would like to see more funding put into the ethnomusicology program.

“Typically, most funding is given to the western popular and classical music, and ethnomusicology is sort of a ‘frill.’ There is simply too much to teach in terms of ethnomusicology and not enough funds to support it,” he says.

Luckily, the ethnomusicology program will soon be growing with the arrival of a young and exciting new professor in fall 2009. Loren Kajikawa, currently a graduate student at UCLA, plans to bring new courses on African and Asian music, not currently offered at the UO. Kajikawa will eventually replace McLucas after she retires.

In addition, the program has received funding to provide a master’s program with a major in ethnomusicology within the next few years. When it’s complete, the UO will offer the only ethnomusicology program in the state of Oregon.

The completion of an ethnomusicology degree excites Dean Foley. Levy, who has been with the program the longest, is most excited of all.

“I enjoy those light bulb moments when a student finally gets something, when they discover the universes of music.” “[Students] come in with an initial appreciation of world music, but leave with an even greater awareness, knowledge and respect of the world around them,” Kinnear says. —Heather Ah San

it significantly alters their mindset and how they view music,” McLucas says.

Tyler Kinnear, a student teaching assistant in Music in World Cultures, agrees with this statement. Kinnear, who is earning a degree in musicology, says that learning about world music is refreshing in contrast to his western music background. “It’s like eating a hamburger night after night, and then suddenly eating Indian food!”

So, what are the differences between the study of ethnomusicology and the study of classical music? Classical music, for the most part, can only be studied through history and speculation. For example, a musician can never ask Bach how he wished a piece to be performed; questions can only infer from historical evidence from studies.

ETHOS.UOREGON.EDU

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COLORS & SHAPES

Glass Art in the Pacific NW Over the past few decades, the Northwest glass movement has gained recognition

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of greens and golds. Shuffling them about until she’s satisfied, her eyes dance with delight as her vision springs to life.

Brown has been a professional artist since the 1970s and has been working with glass for nearly a decade. As a local Northwest artist based in Blue River, Oregon, Brown is part of the worldrenowned tradition of glass art in the region.

“The Northwest is an epicenter for glass artwork,” she says, “Portland and Seattle are considered to be one of the hubs.”

Glass artwork is an unique trait that has come to be associated with the Pacific Northwest. Glass galleries line the rainy streets and artwork adorns the counters and windows of many local businesses. From sun catchers to sculptures, the Northwest has it all. One of the largest glass manufactures in the world calls the Pacific Northwest its home and has inspired many artists to do the same.

Bullseye Glass Company, founded in Portland in 1974, is credited with being one of the first companies to offer sheets of colorful 90 coefficient of expansion (COE) glass that can be used for glass fusing, stained glass art, and glass casting. Glass fusing is the art of joining separate pieces of glass together in the kiln—stained glass is a more specific way to practice glass fusing.

Glass casting, however, consists of allowing molten glass to harden in a mold.

To be a successful glass artist, it's important that the glass used has the correct COE. The COE is the amount the glass will expand as it's being fired and cooled.

“The lower the COE, the harder the glass is. Flameworkers and bead makers will use glass with different COE,” says Sam Pritchard, a staff member at the Eugene Glass School.

Bullseye is known all throughout the world, Brown says. “I once ran into a native Laplander in Sweden who was educated with glass in Australia and orders from Bullseye.” They have dealers in 23 countries around the world, ready to provide you with their wide assortment of colors ranging from marigold yellow to light plum and back again through the color wheel.

“The glass movement in the Northwest is very aggressive,” says Saeed Mohtadi, the President and a founder of the Eugene Glass School. “Glass isn’t coming from Italy anymore, the glass movement is in the United States now.”

“Oregon is [geographically] close to the glass scene in Seattle,” Mohtadi says.

“The scene in Oregon has emerged over the last ten years—ten years ago Eugene had maybe one hot shop or private studio.

We opened the [Eugene Glass] School and made it public at the same time a private studio opened in Goshen.” This availability to the local public provided a supportive environment for glass art to become well known and appreciated as it's in this day and age.

When Terry discovered she had heart disease she created a piece of art to represent a healthy heart and one affected by heart disease. The art, based upon a brand image of heart disease, will be donated to Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend.

Creating such beautiful glass art, like the kind the Northwest is known for, isn’t easy, Brown says. She has been perfecting her process for nearly a decade. She experiments with different shades of glass, various firing temperatures and other intricate variables that influence the end result. Charts with her recipes for heating and cooling the glass cover the walls closest to her kilns.

Learning by and trial and error, she documents the temperatures at which the colors and shapes will crack. She has found that colors like yellow and turquoise require a cooler temperature to melt, so she keeps them towards the top of the kiln. This knowledge becomes helpful when it comes time to load the kiln.

The glass also changes color after it’s fired. Holding up a sheet of blue-tinted unfired glass up to the light, Brown explains that this glass, once fired, will turn a violet color. She has developed a system to keep the colors and features straight, an “expensive trial and error process,” as she says.

Like many other artists working with glass as their medium, precision and experimentation are crucial. For Brown, her experimentation has more than paid off in the long run.

Brown is most known for her aweinspiring sun catchers. She used her previous background with clay to create a large assortment of molds for these “sun face” sun catchers. The designs are simultaneously basic and timeless—a small, smiling face surrounded by various sweeping designs, spreading the rays out towards the edges of the brightly colored glass.

Using male molds, which are molds that essentially imprint a design into the preferred medium, the glass is cut to size and the pattern is melted into the glass.

As demand for the colorful creations rose, Brown made “moon face” designs to accompany the “sun face” sun catchers. She makes and sells most of these famous sun catchers in many styles and colors online.

Cutting circles for the sun catchers out of the large sheets of glass, called strikers, leaves Brown with a lot of oddly shaped glass. “The scrap from circles gives you all this expensive leftover material,” she says, “so I started cutting it into strips. Then I pre-fire it to make jewels to use as accents and provide textual

“We never know who the next glass master will be.”

PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE REYES

I

t’s mid-afternoon on a beautiful, sunny spring day. Light streams in through the windows, illuminating the sun catchers on the ceiling, creating dazzling color.

These glowing circles could put anyone in a momentary trance. Terry Brown is hard at work in her studio, working meticulously on a custom design. It’s an outdoor lampshade that is filled with carefully arranged pieces

variety.” Her unfinished masterpiece of the week is full of these green and gold accent jewels.

In addition to her daily pieces—which include plates, picture frames, luminarias, and tiles, Brown enjoys creating custom artwork simply to see how the colors, textures, shapes, and accents will come out in the end.

Brown’s glass and concepts are anything but ordinary, and she is one of many local artists taking part in this cultural phenomenon, embracing each step of the Northwest’s journey into glasswork. Artists like Brown, who push the envelope to create stunning works of art, are paving the way for future glass masters to emerge and revolutionize the trade. After all, like Mohtadi says, “We never know who the next glass master will be.”

—Kasandra Easley

THE LAST

Living the Life of a Minority STORY NEETHU RAMCHANDAR ILLUSTRATION SUJI PAEK

I

watched as her pudgy lips squished together over and over. Slowly, her 99-cent lipstick rubbed onto her teeth.

I hoped that bad fashion taste wasn’t contagious because of all places and all people, she would be the one to catch it from. I knew this lady well; at least, I knew her type. She had pulled me out of my gifted program class in order to take yet another English as a Second Language test.

During this test, my examiner would spend hours repeating words like “cat” over and over again, asking me to write down what I had heard. Apparently my olivetinted skin labeled my forehead with the sign that read, “When you say ‘cat,’ she won’t actually hear ‘cat.’”

For ten years I entertained these tests thinking they were a good way to be excused from a few assignments here or there. However, it was freshman year when I finally realized that teachers no longer excused assignments but rather just gave you a fat zero, that I went to deliver the news to the ESL department: I would no longer pretend that English was my second language. I was born in Texas after all.

The ESL examiner looked up at me with puppy dog eyes as though she was sending a child into the cold world without the proper equipment. “Are you sure you’re ready?” she asked. I stared at her lipstick-stained teeth one last time and replied, “I don’t know, let’s see.

‘CAT.’ Ya, I think I’ll manage.”

Many times, ignorant comments would come flying my way and I would deflect them as best as I could.

However, it was important to realize that not all comments were sent with harmful intentions.

I was in sixth grade during the September 11th attacks. I remember it as one of the least productive days in middle school history. Instead of reminding us of our manners and assigning us classroom tasks like “line leader,” our teachers comforted us, wiped our tears, and reminded us that if anyone needed to talk, their doors were open.

After that day the air seemed tense, although I was too preoccupied with the cute boy sitting next to me to notice that the tense eyes were focused in my direction.

However one day, our campus security guard stopped my best friend and I on our way to lunch. He asked us how our day was going and if the kids were being nice to us. It was sweet, but confusing. We were Indian children, not Muslim. We laughed

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this incident off, joking that this poor man was obviously not equipped with the same “Indian radar” that we so obviously were.

We didn’t realize how well meaning he was until we, the dynamic duo, were forced to place a restraining order on a peer. At first, we thought he was flirting with her.

She would twirl her hair and entertain his requests of bending over and acting as his footrest. It was obvious that this was the test to make sure she was worthy of his attention.

When he told us that my friend had killed people and needed to pay for 9/11, we laughed

it off. Yet when the abuse got physical, we took action. It was definitely not what we had expected to write in each other’s yearbooks.

Best moments of sixth grade: pool parties, sleepovers, and going to court for sexual harassment?

Growing up as a minority in New Mexico taught me a couple of things: keep your head down, your hands busy, and only listen to about two percent of what people tell you. I got good at this mantra early on.

“Now you really fit the part,” my friend said one day in second grade as she tossed me an apron.

Great, I thought to myself. I wonder

if there will ever be another part that I could fit. During our daily recess ritual, I would be left as the maid in our game of “house” while the two blondes of our trio ran off to dote on the shininess of the their hair. If I ever asked for another role, the blondes would break their sacred circle of blondeness to explain the rules to me once again.

“What other role could you have? You’re brown,” they would whisper as though being brown was some sort of a fatal illness that limited me to the role of maid.

How kind they were to remind me that I would never be one of the blond girls frolicking in the grass, fixated on the shininess of my hair.

Sometimes I think my life should be an episode of Kids Say the Darndest Things. But sometimes, the show got scary.

“Neethu, it’s so sad that we won’t be able to be friends forever,” my friend said to me one day as we were running hand in hand to class after recess.

“You’re so sweet,” she explained.

“But when we die, we won’t be able to play anymore. I’ll be going to heaven without you. You know, since you’re not Christian.”

Her hand suddenly felt sweaty in mine, but when I glanced down I realized it was actually my hand that was moist. Sweaty palms were giving my cool away. I was going to play the part that I hadn’t yet practiced for. A secret agent, leather pants and all. A locked vault where no one could poison my innocence.

That afternoon I ran home to my mom and told her what had happened. She called my friend’s mom to clear up the situation.

“Oh, I know, it’s so sad,” the woman said.

“She’s such a sweet girl, but Neethu just isn’t Christian. Maybe you can reconsider your choice. We’re very accepting, you know. You don’t have to remain a … what are you again?”

“We are Hindus,” my mom replied in a flat tone.

“Right,” she scoffed.

When we were little, these kinds of incidents left marks on our developing selfesteem. But now, they just become the next chapter in my life. After all, I am living the life of a minority.

ē'thŏs' the fundamental characteristic of a spirit, people, or culture.

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