FLUX 2015

FLUX UNIVERSIT Y

of

O R EGO N SCH O O L O F J O UR N A L IS M A ND CO M MUNIC AT IO N

SPRING 2015 • ISSUE 22

EGG DON AT ION DIL EMM A

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RIVER SURFING

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J UMP TOWN GENTRIFIED

Our Board of Directors make important decisions, and while the decisions themselves might not be highly visible, the end results often are. The Board was instrumental in making the remodel of the Campus Duck Store happen, bringing about a much-needed refresh to a store that hadn’t been updated since Ronald Reagan was president.

The Duck Store’s Board of Directors is comprised of current UO students, faculty and staff. Our Board is nominated and elected by their peers; every decision made by the Board has the student’s best interest in mind.

Learn more about The Duck Store’s current board online at UODuckStore.com/board

A few of the 2014 - 15 Board Members; from left to right, back to front: Brent Harrison, Faculty-at-Large Dr. Michael Urbancic, Teaching Faculty Drew Haroldson, President Nicholas Salita, Sophomore Patrick Poggi, Sophomore Stephanie Labasan, Graduate Mitchell Lee, Vice President

Eugene • Portland • Bend • UODuckStore.com

FLUX WH AT ’ S

IN S ID E

INFLUX THE GUIDE TO LUMBERSEXUALITY

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WANDERLUST

BEARD OIL, W H I S K E Y, F L A N N E L & PINE SCENT ARE CAPTURING HEARTS

QUIZ

FORAGED F E A S T ~

~NORTHWEST~

12 ~

BON VOYAGE, PDX CARPET BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE TRAVEL ICON OF PORTL AND

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HOW PNW ARE YOU?

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COME EXPLORE THESE DESTINATIONS DUBBED BY OUR STAFF AS THE BEST SITES IN OREGON

PA R A L L E L

UNIVERSE

W H AT LA NDM A RKS LIE U N D E R T H E 4 5 T H PA R A L L E L?

FE AT URES

THE WILD

THEY NEVER KNEW

18 LIFE IS BETTER THAN IT USED TO BE FOR THESE C H I M P A N Z E E S —B U T THEY’RE STILL NOT WHERE THEY BELONG

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IS THE PRICE RIGHT? D O N AT I N G E G G S C A N B E A L U C R AT I V E V E N T U R E , B U T I T C A N A L S O B E C O S T LY

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UP IN THE

WITH REGUL ATIONS LOOMING, THE FUTURE OF THE VAPING INDUSTRY IS CLOUDED IN UNCERTAINT Y

TH I NG S A I N ’T W H AT TH EY US E D TO B E PORTL A N D ONCE HAD A BUST L I NG JA ZZ SCEN E—U NTI L TH E BU LLDOZERS CA M E

SURF’S UPRIVER

HANG TEN ON THE WHITEWATER

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IN HOP PURSUIT MEET A NA NOBREW ER WHO’S BOTTLING UP A TRU E TASTE OF SOUTH EASTERN OREGON

THE LLAMA IN THE ROOM

~72 ~

FAME . ADORING FANS .

BUCKTEETH. THIS IS NO ORDINARY LLAMA.

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IN STITCH ES W H AT ’ S T H E B E S T WAY TO OVERCOME GRIEF? T H E A N S W ER M AY SURPRISE YOU ( AND M AKE YOU L AUGH)

T H E H A R D E ST CONVERSATION

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SHE NEEDED TO TA LK. H E WA S N ’ T R E A D Y TO LISTEN.

EDITORIAL

FLUX ISSUE 22

EDITOR IN CHIEF Sam Katzman PUBLISHER Janaye Everitt COP Y EDITOR Macy Crowe EDITORIAL INTERN Jonathan Bach

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M ANAGING EDITOR, PRINT Ginger Werner WRITERS Rachel LaChapelle Travis Loose Cheyenne Miner Ryan Phelps Kevin Trevellyan Reuben Unrau

PHOTO PHOTO DIRECTOR Elora Overbey PHOTOGRAPHERS Andy Abeyta Kyra Bailey Devin Ream Will Saunders Mary Jane Schulte Cameron Shultz

letter from

T

the editor

he year was 1993: Jurassic Park was the big box office hit. Michael Jordan was royalty on the hardwood. A guy named Clinton was the center of discussion on talk shows.

And FLUX magazine, along with most of our current staff, was born.

Much has changed since our first issue was printed twenty-two years ago—these days political wonks are talking about a gal named Clinton. But the eye-grabbing and captivating quality of the stories we told in our first issue (cover story: “Sex on Campus in the Age of AIDS”) remains the magazine’s hallmark today.

The FLUX tradition is to craft compelling feature stories that showcase the people, places, and culture fueling the modern-day pulse of the Pacific Northwest. This year’s staff was determined to capture that spirit and much more.

You’ll find the proof in the following pages.

For our latest issue, we strived to produce stories that cater to all curiosities. In a region as eclectic as the Northwest, why mold to one theme?

This issue has stories about healing, transformation, life-altering moments, and . . . beer.

MULTIMEDIA M ANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL Julia Reihs MULTIMEDIA PRODUCERS Emily Basile Zolboo Lili Bayarmagnai Christina Belasco Shirley Chan Pam Cressall Sumi Kim

Those who created what you’re holding worked tirelessly to bring these otherwise untold stories to light. They crammed themselves into a minivan with a llama and an alpaca, stayed up deep into the night hanging out with legends of Portland’s old jazz scene, wiped chimpanzee spit off their camera, and collectively drove more than 3,000 miles every which way across Oregon to produce this magazine. But what impresses me most is they did all that while also juggling the demands of being students, employees, friends, fathers, daughters, and sons.

The world will always be in a state of flux, and it’s tough to predict what things will be like twenty-two years from now. But I know at 44, 66, or any age, I will look back with immense pride at what this staff has created. After having the pleasure of working with these talented journalists, I can confidently say the future of storytelling is bright. It is my genuine hope that you enjoy reading these stories as much as we enjoyed telling them.

Sam Katzman

DESIGN ART DIRECTORS Delaney Pratt Hayley Lane ILLUSTRATOR Natalie Greene

DESIGNERS Natalie Greene Brittany Hallin Megan McKinnon Courtney Meili Michelle Wright

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR ADVISORS FACULTY ADVISOR Charles Butler DESIGN ADVISOR Steven Asbury PHOTO ADVISORS Dan Morrison Sung Park

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wacky

IN FLUX

world records

How has Oregon historically set itself apart on the global stage?

Look through these world records earned (and lost) in the past few years

HIGHEST NUMBER OF HUGS

The love-light was shining near Redmond, Oregon, midway through 2010. Motivational speaker Nick Vujicic was hugged a whopping 1,749 times in one hour. Vujicic has no arms or legs and hopes to use his own example of success in life to help others overcome odds and follow their passions. Redmond’s world record was broken in India, though, in 2012.

LONGEST LINE OF TACOS

Taco-bout a world record. 426 tacos comprised the world’s longest line of tacos in Phoenix, Oregon, in 2011. A group in Eagle, Idaho, took the record in 2013, lining up 2,013 tacos to celebrate the year.

L ARGEST PARADE OF PICKUP TRUCKS

Here’s one for the tailgating fans: On the occasion of its 100th rodeo in 2014, the town of Vale, Oregon, was home to the world’s biggest parade of pickup trucks. 438 trucks rolled down to the Vale Beet Dump to set this world record. As of this spring, though, Texas holds the record at 451 trucks.

flying

*All facts courtesy of Guinness World Records

the

carpet

PDX

It’s official: The PDX carpet that inspired many a traveler to snap a “foot selfie”—taking a picture of your shoes against the old-school design—is being ripped out of Portland International Airport (PDX). Fans of the carpet can purchase beer bottles, Nike shoes, and all kinds of other goodies with the 25-year-old pattern slapped on for nostalgia’s sake.

We recently took to the campus sidewalks and asked how University of Oregon students felt about losing the carpet. For one student, the airport’s old carpet mirrors Portland’s increasing popularity. “It’s really quirky looking, and I feel like that represents Portland’s personality,” says UO student Paulina Liang. “People are tattooing [the design] on themselves.” For UO student Danielle Holley, the PDX carpet gives her a sense of place when she comes back to Oregon. “It’s a reminder, like, ‘Ah, a relief. I’m finally home.” The carpet will be missed not just by locals, but also by the Ducks who’ve flocked to Oregon from other states.

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PDX

L.A.

IN FLUX

We traced the latitudinal line marking the halfway point between the North Pole and the Equator to see what landmarks lie under it

the

45 parallel th

KAZAKHSTAN BLACK SEA

NOVA SCOTIA SALEM

JAPAN

MOUTH OF DANUBE

GREAT LAKES

SERBIA

MONGOLIA

ITALY

YELLOWSTONE

BORDEAUX, FRANCE

GREAT WALL OF CHINA

For years, Yellowstone National Park visitors have stopped to have their picture taken with the landmark 45th parallel sign. Yellowstone is considered an active supervolcano.

The 45th parallel passes over some of the world’s greatest vineyards. It threads its way through the Bordeaux region of France, Italy’s Piedmont region, and the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Stretching roughly 5,500 miles from east to west, the Great Wall of China winds across deserts, grasslands, mountains, and plateaus, like a gigantic dragon.

The #PDXcarpet hashtag has gone viral. Whether leaving Oregon to travel the world or visiting Portland for the first time, thousands of people have taken a moment to stop and take a picture with the iconic carpet. R.I.P. PDX carpet.

You will be missed.

PDX

NEW YORK PDX

LONDON

PDX PDX

SYDNEY

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IN FLUX

THE ULTIM ATE GUIDE TO

lumbersexuality All you need to know to hone the lifestyle that crosses Ron Swanson with Ryan Gosling

THE LOOK The lumbersexual look is not complete without a flannel, fitted denim, Steve Madden boots, a few tattoos, and a perfectly groomed beard.

Suspenders are optional, but recommended. The real lumbersexual carries pinescented mustache wax or beard oil. University of Oregon junior Ethan Ouimet (above) says, “I’ve got to keep the wood on me in an urban environment to remind me where I actually belong.”

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THE DRINK

THE LIFE

Be careful to only grace your lips with the local craft beer or the finest whiskey available, preferably Buffalo Trace or CW Irwin Bourbon.

In a bar setting, Ouimet recommends you only order “Old-Fashioneds or Whiskey Gingers, but more importantly, none of the lesser alcohols.”

Though the look says, “I’m about to go chop some wood now,” you lead an urban-centric lifestyle. Your loft is in the up-and-coming, sustainable part of the city.

It is adorned with rugged yet refined accents––most notably your bear skin rug–– and is a fifteen-minute drive from the nearest REI. You study philosophy or product design and can be found metalworking or in the wood shop during the weekends.

THE AC T The lumbersexual is the perfect combination of urban dweller and burly man. Everything about the lumbersexual persona embodies manual labor, strong wilderness senses, and the ability to wrestle a mountain lion in a moment’s notice. At the same time, you’re pondering the latest Steinbeck novel you’ve started reading. You’re a sensitive soul with a tough, broad exterior.

IN FLUX

ARE YOU A

TRUE OREGONIAN? START

DO YOU LIKE THE OUTDOORS?

Nah. It’s too wet and stuff.

More than anything.

STARBUCKS OR STUMPTOWN?

I love me some Stumptown cold brew.

DO YOU LISTEN TO VINYL? Constantly. It reminds me of the good ol’ days.

Starbs all the way.

Spotify is more my style.

HOW MANY PAIRS OF BIRKENSTOCKS? As many as I can afford.

DO YOU EAT ORGANIC? Always. I grow all my own produce.

WHAT IS RIP CITY?

DO YOU OWN ANY FLANNEL?

It’s all I wear.

Nope. I’m no lumbersexual.

I’ll stick with conventional.

Uh...can I get a hint?

Go Blazers!

IS VOODOO YOUR FAVE? NORTH FACE OR GOODWILL?

North Face, e’ry day.

None.

Those are hippie shoes.

No way, too mainstream.

What is Voodoo?

Heck yes!

One Old Dirty Bastard, please.

I only buy secondhand.

BORN & RAISED

BANDWAGON HIPSTER

BRAND NEW RESIDENT

You don’t need to be told how to compost or which hikes to hit in the summertime. You basically invented that stuff.

People don’t understand that you aren’t being trendy— you’re just living your life like you always have.

You probably shed a tear at the thought of modern-day technology, and when a band gets popular you’ll always claim you knew them “before they blew up.” You basically just make that Portlandia show 100 percent true.

Allow us to be the first to welcome you to Oregon!

Looks like you haven’t been here long—but that’s all right. You just gotta try some local cuisine, local breweries, and maybe some local bike trails. Did we mention local?

DO YOU USE AN UMBRELLA? Sometimes.

Only if it’s raining.

GO BACK TO SOCAL, BRAH Hey dude, a little rain isn’t gonna kill ya. I know we are a bit rough around the edges, but Oregon is a really “down to earth” place once you get to know us a little better. You might change your mind once you’ve stayed a while.

IN FLUX

foraged feast DANDELIONS , ROOTS , AND BERRIES, OH MY! Eating food straight from the ground may seem a bit offbeat, but to some it’s second nature. The wooded areas around Eugene, Oregon, teem with wild treats—if you know where to look. With the twist of a leaf, salmonberries, nettles, or one of Mother Nature’s other tasty snacks could replace your daily pot of Top Ramen.

Douglas Deur says he subsisted essentially on blackberries and greenery during his summers as a University of Oregon undergraduate in the early ’90s. Now a professor at Portland State University, he recently authored Pacific Northwest Foraging, a book about “wild edibles”—safe-to-eat greens, berries, lilies, and roots—that grow naturally around our patch of the continent. Here are a few of his favorite recipes:

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TO DRINK

M AIN COURSE

Brew a true Pacific Northwest punch by adding a mixture of wild mint, fresh needles from a Douglas fir, and wild berries to water. Deur says, “Done right, it tastes like a top-notch specialty fruit drink.”

Get some starch in your system with steamed clover roots. For a bit of flavor, Deur says the roots should be prepped with wild harvested sea salt and finely-chopped wild onion.

A S A SAL AD

FOR DESSERT

Combine the lemony zing of curly dock with some sweet-tasting Miner’s Lettuce, the green head of which looks a bit like a spade. And don’t forget to sprinkle dandelions on top for added texture.

Deur suggests you stick with berries for dessert. “Any number of options there—huckleberries, thimbleberries, salmonberries,” he says. “The tastiest, in my opinion, are the bog huckleberry and the wild strawberry, but they aren’t always easy to find.”

I S SU E 22

IN FLUX

MINER’S LETTUCE Foragers find these greens in wooded areas around the Cascades, especially along small mountain rivers.

ELD ER B ER RY FLO W ER S Make sure to check the flowers for bugs. Deur recommends combining these beauties with steamed lily roots.

WILD ONION The general rule of thumb is: If it looks like an onion and smells like an onion, it’s edible.

FIDDLEHEAD Chefs recommend boiling and sautéing these young ferns as they make a tasty addition to angel hair pasta. But don’t eat them raw.

WILD BERRIES Salmonberry, a PNW favorite, inhabits the area around Eugene.

In the summer, you’ll find these reddish-orange berries fully grown.

SPRUCE TIPS Foragers recommend turning young spruce tips into a tea. Just pick some tips, strain them, and add hot water.

PHOTO WILL SAUNDERS

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northwest wanderlust What are you doing this weekend? Come explore these destinations dubbed by our staff as the top sites in Oregon PHOTOS KYRA BAILEY & WILL SAUNDERS

OREGON COA ST Boat, camp, bike, or hike hundreds of miles of the state’s premium oceanside offerings. And don’t forget to swing by the Sea Lion Caves in the town of Florence or drive to Cannon Beach near the town of Astoria, where The Goonies was filmed.

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CASCADE MOUNTAINS Stretching across Oregon and Washington, the Cascade Mountains make for superb sightseeing from any number of the surrounding campgrounds. See the sun set behind gorgeous Mt. Hood (2), which claims the title of Oregon’s highest point and is topped by eleven glaciers.

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IN FLUX

CENTRAL OREGON Welcome to the land of beer, bikes, and live music. Hit up Bend for its Old Mill Shopping District or ski at nearby Mt. Bachelor. Just up the highway, close to Redmond, stands one of the state’s premier climbing destinations, Smith Rock (4). The iconic Monkey Face towers 350 feet into the central Oregonian air and offers climbers a prime chance to test their skills. Not a climber? Try the winding trails on which you can ascend to the summit.

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IN FLUX

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CRATER L AKE Mt. Mazama erupted 7,000 years ago, bringing into existence one of the state’s most prized natural treasures: a six-mile-wide caldera known for its cerulean blue water.

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wild THE

THEY NEVER KNEW

Life is better than it used to be for these chimpanzees—but they’re still not where they belong PHOTOS WILL SAUNDERS

Marla O’Donnell loves her job, but remains hopeful that it will one day be obsolete. She is the executive director of Chimps Inc., a refuge in Tumalo, Oregon, for wildlife—mainly chimpanzees—that led lives as pets and entertainers before they were abandoned. Seven chimps live at the sanctuary, which is tucked between the dense forests and snowcapped Cascade Mountains of central Oregon. “Our goal is that sanctuaries are no longer needed,” O’Donnell says over the screeches and booming yells of chimps in the background. “These amazing animals are meant to be left in the wild with their families.”

According to data collected by Save The Chimps, a non-profit organization that advocates for protecting primates, about a million chimpanzees lived in Africa’s wilderness fifty years ago. Today, as few as 170,000 remain in the wild, while 2,000 chimpanzees currently live in captivity in the United States. “[Chimp owners] realize that this chimp is out of control at about the age of a year and a half. They can’t take care of it anymore,” O’Donnell says. “Chimpanzees are wild animals. They do not belong in captivity, and they do not belong in a neighborhood walking around.”

Once humans take a chimp from its natural habitat, it loses its instinct to fend for itself in the wild. In a sense, it no longer knows how to be a chimp. That’s where the wildlife sanctuary comes in. Staff members at Chimps Inc. provide lifelong care for the rescued chimpanzees, which spend their days swinging from ropes and climbing on jungle gym equipment in the sanctuary’s expansive outdoor and indoor enclosures.

Though the primates can be aggressive, O’Donnell says they also have a compassionate side and human-like qualities. Herbie, one of the chimps at the sanctuary, “reads” magazines, while others play with iPads, communicate through sign language, and form tight relationships with the caregivers who prepare their meals and watch over them.

“Chimps share 98.76 percent of the same DNA as us, but what you can’t take out is their wild nature,” says O’Donnell. “They are always going to be wild animals. They will never be domesticated and will never be able to live like a human.” ­— CHEYENNE MINER 2015 | | FLUX FLUX SSP P RRIINNGG 2015

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(Above) In 2001, Jackson was separated at birth from his mother at a pet breeding facility and raised like a human. The chimpanzee wore clothes, rode along in cars, and had his own bed. But by the time he was two years old, he had become too big for his owners to manage. The staff at Chimps Inc. often sees Jackson trying on old clothes and accessories.

(Right) Only trained staff members are allowed to have contact with the animals, facilitated through glass and metal bars surrounding the enclosures. O’Donnell says staff members maintain this separation because chimps are eight times stronger than the average man.

(Right) Herbie carefully grasps a plastic champagne glass and sips Crystal Light from a straw. Each chimpanzee at the sanctuary has a unique personality, says O’Donnell. “It’s like dealing with a group of six-yearolds. They’re all completely different.”

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(Left) Topo was the first chimpanzee to be rescued and given a new home at Chimps Inc. Lesley Day, president and founder of the sanctuary, discovered Topo, now approximately 49 years old, locked alone in a cramped, windowless cage at a trailer park in 1993. In the wild, chimpanzees normally live in groups of 15 to 120.

(Above) Jackson stares at his reflection in a mirror.

Chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas or orangutans, according to Save The Chimps.

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(Above) Chimpanzees use facial expressions to convey emotions such as grief, boredom, fear, and joy. “They show more compassion toward each other than most humans do,” says O’Donnell.

“You can see when one of them gets in a scuffle with another chimp, his best friend will come over and put his arm around him and console him.”

(Right) Caregivers prepare all meals and snacks for the chimpanzees. The primates are served a breakfast of fruit and oatmeal every morning. Around noon they’re given a brown-bag lunch full of fruits and veggies. A couple of hours later the chimps are fed a special primate biscuit called chow. Finally, each chimp is served eight to ten pounds of raw vegetables and fruit for dinner.

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IS THE

PRICE College-aged women are selling their eggs for thousands of dollars. A great deal—except for the costs that come with it WORDS SAM KATZMAN | ILLUSTRATIONS NATALIE GREENE

n a wintry afternoon in December 2013, Megan B., a law student at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., was sitting in a lecture hall, struggling to pay attention to her professor’s civil procedure lesson.

Something was on her mind: money.

Actually, money troubles. “I have almost an entirely full scholarship to Georgetown, but my cost of living is ridiculous here,” says Megan (who requested her last name not be used for this story). When she was an undergrad at the University of Oregon, she worked several part-time jobs, some overlapping, to pay for her living expenses. “I always worked to cover everything, but I can’t do that in law school,” she adds.

Megan, 25 at the time, clicked away from the blank page of notes on her laptop screen and headed

to Google. Friends had told her of an easy route to make money. With little cash to pay for groceries let alone a happy hour with classmates, Megan realized she needed to find a source of income. So she dragged the mouse to the search bar and typed in Egg Donation.

Suddenly, Megan was about to enter a world inhabited by many a cash-strapped young woman; a world where women trade their unfertilized, healthy eggs for payments of upwards of $100,000.

With such money at stake, Megan decided selling her sex cells was an option too good to ignore.

She applied to an agency in New York that connects donors from around the country with hopeful parents willing to pay extra for eggs that come from women with specific qualities. Megan had the traits the agency was looking for: Italian descent. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Law student.

“I guess that’s a really rare combination,” she now says.

It took a few weeks to complete a required psychological

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and physical screening; her agent needed to ensure there were no red flags in regards to her family or medical history. Once approved, though, Megan had couples lining up, eager and ready to take and fertilize her eggs. “The agent said, ‘I’ve been waiting for someone like you.’” Megan recalls. “With the first and second couple [who received her donated eggs], the female was an attorney who was brunette and Italian.”

She received $9,000 for her first egg retrieval. It turned out to be a relatively effortless and quick procedure so she decided to keep doing it. Megan donated four times in less than one year.

She had more than 110 eggs retrieved between January and December 2014 and earned $39,000 in that span.

But for all her earnings, Megan also discovered they came with a cost. Following her fourth retrieval, she says, “I almost died.” ccording to the most recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in vitro fertilization pregnancy attempts using donor eggs soared from 10,801 to 18,306 between 2000 and 2010. For some women, donating eggs can be a rewarding opportunity, providing hopeful parents with a means to create the gift of life. “I figure if I’m not using them, I might as well let someone else have a great experience because of them,” says Rachel Stewart, 27, a 2009 graduate of the University of Northern Iowa who donated her eggs earlier this year after moving to Portland.

But other donors are being drawn in by the dollar signs.

Payment for one egg donation cycle in the U.S. varies, though the checks are quite often at least four figures. If a clinic or frozen egg bank doesn’t have a donor with the qualities a couple desires, the recipients will seek the services of an “egg broker”, a third-party agency that offers top-dollar for donors who meet more specific criteria. To recruit their donors, agencies and fertility clinics frequently advertise in college newspapers, social media sites, and Craigslist.

Sitting in her office on the third floor of Hendricks Hall, in the heart of the University of Oregon campus, Elizabeth Reis pulls up an image from her computer’s desktop. It’s an ad for the Fertility Center of Oregon that appeared a few years back in the school’s newspaper, then known as The Oregon Daily Emerald: “WHAT’S A FEW EGGS BETWEEN FRIENDS? BECOME AN EGG DONOR. EARN $4,000,” the ad reads.

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Reis, head professor of the UO Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, instructs a class that explores the medical ethics of assisted reproductive technology. This advertisement is just one of many grainy scanned clippings in her collection of egg donor want ads. “They direct this at college-aged women because that’s when their eggs are at the height of their health,” Reis says. “This is a transaction—they want your eggs and they’re going to pay you—but they’re not giving you all the information, at least not in the ads.”

The advertisements are attractive to women who are attending college or recently graduated, billboarding dollar signs in eye-catching, bold letters. What the marketing materials often don’t include, though, is any mention that donating eggs involves an invasive surgical procedure that sometimes can lead to serious medical complications. But the concerns go beyond the physical.

The psychological dilemma egg donation poses for these women can be as crisis bearing as the health risks. Today donors may need the money, but in the future when the money’s long-gone, they may regret not knowing the child (or children) walking around with half of their genes. “This is a human life that you’re participating in creating. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Reis says. “Do you really want to have this baby come back to you twenty years from now and say, ‘I found out that when my mom was pregnant with me the egg came from you’?”

T

ypically, egg donors are selected after undergoing a thorough screening, which includes a psychological consultation and medical tests.

With a dose of birth control pills, the process begins. To stimulate the production of multiple eggs—and to prevent the natural release of just a single egg—donors inject themselves with hormones daily for a little over a week prior to the procedure.

Once enough sex cells have developed, it’s time to harvest the ore.

With the patient under anesthesia, a long, sharp needle is inserted through the top wall of the vagina and into the ovary. From there, the needle extracts each egg individually. This is repeated several more times to ensure the recipients aren’t given dud eggs.

Within about an hour, the procedure is over, the patient is sent home, and recovery usually takes less than a week. Usually.

Justine Griffin realized egg donation wasn’t what she hoped it would be after completing her one and only retrieval. In 2013, Griffin, then 25 and a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida, donated to help a couple build a family and pay off her student loans. Griffin was offered $5,000 for her donation cycle. “It’s hard to walk away from money like that, especially when you’re young,” she says.

But about a week after her retrieval surgery, Griffin was sitting in a Tampa emergency room being told by a doctor that a cyst had developed and ruptured on her ovary. More than a year and a half later, she’s still feeling side effects that she says are related to her decision to donate. “I’ve had to go off birth control pills because my hormone levels have been so messed up since the egg donation. My hair still falls out,” Griffin says.

“I just notice little things about my body that will probably never go back to the way they were.”

Megan can relate. In December 2014, she had scheduled her

SIX

things the ads may not tell you

1

Payment for donating eggs is considered taxable income. Earlier this year, the U.S. Tax Court made its first ruling on taxation of egg donations, rejecting a California woman’s claim that her compensation should be exempt from being taxed.

2

Most of the time, doctors extract more eggs than the recipients need. The excess sex cells are frozen at -3200F. Recipients are charged a monthly storage fee for every individual cryopreserved egg or embryo until they decide they don’t need them anymore.

3

Donors could be helping create more children than they expected. The default on some contracts states that retrieved eggs become the property of the clinic where they’re stored after recipients no longer have a use for them.

Potentially, the extra eggs could be sold in the future to the highest bidder.

4

Agencies, egg banks, and fertility clinics aren’t required to notify donors when their retrieved eggs are fertilized.

5

If a donor has second thoughts and backs out midway through the process, she may have to pay a hefty reimbursement fee to cover a portion of the medical expenses.

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Medical qualifications aren’t necessary to be an egg broker.

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fourth retrieval of the year in New York during “dead week,” the week before final exams. “I thought, ‘Well, I won’t have any classes and I’ll just study in my hotel room,’” Megan says.

Normally, the sites where the needle is inserted are supposed to clot within an hour or two. But this time they weren’t clotting. “A few hours after the surgery I couldn’t breathe. I’d never felt that much pain before,” she says. Megan rushed to the ER where she received blood transfusions, painkillers, and spent the next week in the hospital recovering from internal bleeding. “I couldn’t take any of my finals because I was in the hospital,” Megan says. “It wreaked havoc on my school schedule. I had to withdraw from one of my classes, and it took six weeks before I was able to even try to exercise.” re the medical setbacks Griffin and Megan experienced the norm or outliers? According to Reis, no systematic study has been conducted on the long-term side effects associated with egg donation. But even those in the industry can attest that it can be a tricky procedure. “There are very significant risks to doing this, which is why I talk extensively with donors,” says Sue Armstrong, donor coordinator at Women’s Care, the nearest fertility clinic to the University of Oregon. “I tell them every single bad thing that’s happened to a donor.

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These things haven’t happened here, but I know they’ve happened in this country.”

For these reasons, donors such as Griffin and Megan are calling for more governmental oversight of egg donation. Some states have passed laws to regulate the industry. In California, for instance, advertisements seeking donors are required to include warnings like the ones you’d see on prescription medications or tobacco product packaging. But currently, on a national level the industry is loosely regulated. No federal laws exist that limit the amount a donor can be paid or how often she can donate. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offer guidelines in the interest of protecting egg donors. Payment with “sums over $10,000 are not appropriate” and women should not exceed six donation cycles in a lifetime, according to the ASRM. But assisted reproductive facilities are not required to adhere to the guidelines.

That’s not the case outside the U.S. In several countries in the European Union, national laws cap the amount a donor can be paid per cycle. And in Canada, donors are not allowed to receive compensation. “In general, other countries have more restrictions,” Reis says. “The U.S. is considered the Wild West when it comes to reproductive strategies.”

Though Armstrong acknowledges the risks involved with egg donation, she says the process is safer than ever due to advancing

medical technology. “Most of the time, donors report to me that they had a good experience and feel good about what they did,” Armstrong says. “Some call me up and say, ‘I would like to do this again. Is there anyway you could match me up with somebody?’”

Rachel Stewart, who donated in April, is among those who had such a positive experience that she plans on donating again. Though she did it in part for the money, it was not her primary motivation.

Stewart uses an analogy to a recent injury she suffered to explain her decision. “I was training for a half marathon and I had an injury creep up—issues with my Achilles tendon,” she says.

“I was furious when I found out I couldn’t run. It’s so frustrating when you want to do something that your body is supposed to be able to do and you can’t.” She pauses. “If somebody came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I’ll give you my perfectly good Achilles tendon.’ I’d say, ‘Cool, thanks.’”

D

onating eggs can be a gratifying experience for those who want to help create a family—and pick up quick cash. But aside from the health risks, trading eggs for money also raises ethical concerns.

During the psychological screening, every donor is asked the same basic question: “What would

GENETIC ENGINEERING Those looking to start a family with donor eggs can pick and choose traits to design their ideal child. Many fertility clinics and agencies offer a “Choose an Egg Donor” option on their websites. Like an Online build-a-baby workshop, a list of selectable traits allows prospective parents to construct their very own Stepford child in less than a minute.

In order to provide clients with their ideal match, clinics and agencies in the U.S. need top-caliber candidates to fish out of the donor pool. Over the age of 32? Cigarette smoker? Have a family history of inheritable disorders? Don’t bother applying. But if you’re Jewish, Asian, or stellar at taking tests, congratulations, those rare traits make you a hot commodity at the egg farm.

“There are a lot of assumptions about what type of child you’re going to get,” University of Oregon women’s and gender studies professor Elizabeth Reis says. “What if you pay for a Harvard egg and the baby ends up having some kind of disability? That happens.”

you do if your donor child comes knocking on your door one day?” Stewart donated anonymously and isn’t opposed to meeting the child she played a part in creating. Still, she says, “I don’t want this to be naive or shortsighted, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

Back in Hendricks Hall, Reis has a different take. She tells the story of the day her daughter, Leah, called to let her know she was considering applying to be a donor. She saw an advertisement in her student paper, The Harvard Crimson, offering $100,000 for a donor with exceptional qualities.

Reis told Leah, “‘Don’t do it.’ For one reason I listed all of the medical side effects, but then I also said, ‘You’re creating a child. That’s something to really consider.’”

Megan B. has a lot to consider these days. The Grants Pass, Oregon, native is wrapping up her studies in Washington D.C. next year. She’ll spend this summer at a law firm in Portland, the same city where her second-to-last egg retrieval took place.

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She’s no longer able to donate but doesn’t want to anyway.

“I would never have done it without the money. For me, it’s not worth the risk unless it’s above a certain number,” Megan says. “This is the econ minor in me talking; I think there’s a price point for every woman.” Anything less than $6,000 wouldn’t have been worth it, she says.

But can you quantify the price of life?

One day, Megan says she hopes to settle down and create a family of her own. Until then, she has a lot on her plate. She’s chipping away at her student loan bills from her days as an undergraduate and busy finishing her law degree. Still, while Megan doesn’t have much time to think about her genetic offspring that she’ll likely never know, occasionally her mind starts to wander. “I worry about that sometimes,” she says. “It sounds like a really terrible made-for-TV movie where my daughter meets my egg donation son but doesn’t know it and dates him.” f

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Vaporizers are becoming more and more popular with teens and young adults.

The trend has set up a showdown between regulators and retailers—with the winner set to determine vaping’s future WORDS TRAVIS LOOSE | PHOTOS DEVIN REAM

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ack Ramirez’s hands move deftly. He takes a few drops of syrupy liquid from a small brown bottle and carefully deposits them onto the cotton in his vaporizer. He then hits a switch on the side of the vape, sending a charge to the heating coils, and lifts the device to his mouth. There’s a rapidly rising hum—it sounds like a small fan—met almost instantly by a crackling, sizzling, static.

Ramirez pulls in a deep breath from the vaporizer and slowly exhales a voluminous, thick cloud. The cloud drifts away and dissipates, but the flavor and scent linger. “Banana nut bread,” he says with a satisfied smile.

Ramirez, 22, has reason to smile. The University of Oregon junior started smoking cigarettes in the eighth grade, which led to a pack-a-day habit by his sophomore year of high school. In 2011, he began making efforts to quit. “I did the gum, but it made my teeth hurt,” says Ramirez. “The patches didn’t work because I was a water polo player, so I couldn’t wear them while swimming. I tried dip, but that just ruins your teeth and I didn’t want to do that. Then I tried snus, which

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was alright, but it tastes like tea. I almost committed to it, but then I fell into e-cigs.”

Synonymously called e-cigarettes, vaporizers, mods, or vape pens, these devices are at the center of a growing national discussion: Are they the latest remedy to cut tobacco smoking or just the next evolution of nicotine delivery systems?

Vaporizers heat e-liquid, or simply “juice,” to create a vapor that can carry levels of nicotine ranging from zero mg (e.g., to be used as a dietary supplement or for the fun of blowing clouds) to 24 mg per bottle. By comparison, a typical pack of Marlboro Reds has approximately 18 mg of nicotine.

Vaporizer variations have been around since the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 2006 that they became prevalent as more companies began marketing their own versions. More recently, significant advances in vape technology have caused a surge of smokers like Ramirez to turn to the devices when trying to give up tobacco.

Ramirez is a vape crusader of sorts. He believes that vapor is less harmful than smoke and that the devices should be categorized accordingly. “You’re not combusting tobacco leaves; you’re vaporizing liquid,” he says. When Ramirez first

(Left) Oregon Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward (D-District 17) and Joseph Gilpatrick, marketing and communications director for the Northwest Vapor Association, present at Vape at the Capitol Day 2015 in Salem last February. (Below) Oregon Rep. John Lively (D-District 12) says he supports regulating the industry mostly to prevent children from using vaporizers.

began vaping, he used e-liquid with nicotine levels at around 18/24 mg per ml. Now, he is at 3 mg per ml. “It should be classified as a smoking cessation device, just like the patch, gum, or anything like that,� he says.

Not everyone views vaping as clearly as Ramirez does. From Washington, D.C., lawmakers to the mom-and-pop stores on Main Street that sell vape-related products, debates about usage, sales, and regulation have increased in recent years.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to officially declare its definition of vaping, whether it’s a cessation device or another harmful method to inhale nicotine (i.e., a tobaccolike product). As a result, the vaping industry remains mostly unregulated. Without any federal guidance, some states and counties have established their own regulations, leading to a patchwork of laws and ordinances across the country. Oregon is among the states struggling to find a resolution. While lawmakers in Salem have debated statewide laws in recent months, cities and counties have gone ahead and established regulations that are inconsistent from one another.

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scientific evidence exists that links vaping to long-term health problems. They also point to studies conducted by universities and centers for tobacco and nicotine research that claim vaping might be an effective way to help tobacco smokers quit.

On the other side, legislators, who are entrusted to protect the welfare of citizens, must at least consider regulations if health concerns may exist. How these opposing forces work out their differences will likely determine vaping’s long-term future. ne thing that isn’t up for debate is that the vaping market is booming. Bonnie Herzog, managing director for the Tobacco, Beverage & Convenience Store Research department at Wells Fargo Securities, says, “We have been estimating the e-cig/ vapor market will increase to around $3.5 billion at retail in 2015, up from $2.5 billion [in 2014].”

Colin Rau has seen firsthand the growing demand for e-cigs, and like many in his industry he also asserts their value as a tobacco-cessation device. Rau owns Emerald Vapors, an Oregon-based vape retailer with shops in Eugene, Springfield, and Portland. When you open the door to his shop on Lawrence Street in Eugene, the perfumed air of recently vaporized e-liquids is immediately noticeable. As employees answer questions and recommend devices and flavors, they occasionally take a pull from their own vaporizers, adding to the pervading scent.

Rau had smoked tobacco cigarettes since he was 15 years old. Now 35, he has been smoke-free ever since being introduced to vapor in 2012. “I think I bought one bottle of juice before I started making my own,” he says. Rau’s business produces all the e-liquids that it sells. His stock of 200-plus e-liquid custom flavors includes such popular choices as Professor P., Cloud City, and Ectoplasm.

E-liquid flavors have no shortage of interesting titles, yet the syrups themselves are typically made up of just four ingredients—all of which are easily accessible. The vegetable glycerin and food flavorings can be purchased at retailers like Walmart. And ordering propylene glycol (PG) and/or nicotine online is as simple as purchasing a song on iTunes. As for manufacturing the juice, “It’s a lot like making cookies,” Rau says. “You just pour the liquids together.”

Rau has seen his business and profits grow in an extremely short amount of time. “It’s kind of eerie actually. My financial situation has completely changed,” says Rau. “[Now] I have thirty-five people who rely on me for a paycheck.”

Rau has company; in Eugene and Springfield there are at least seven competing retailers. Meanwhile, across the U.S., there are an estimated 6,000–10,000 vapor retailers. The challenge in counting them all stems from the fact that vape products aren’t strictly sold at businesses classified explicitly as vape shops. They’re also sold at supermarkets, gas stations, head shops, and bodegas.

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“ you’re not combusting tobacco leaves, you’re vaporizing ­— JACK RAMIREZ

I

vaping’s surging popularity with a vulnerable sector of the population: the youth market. n April 2015, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced findings from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey that showed “current e-cigarette use [at least once per month] among high school students increased from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.4 percent in 2014, rising from approximately 660,000 to two million students.”

Oregon youth are following the national trend. Jonathan Modie, communications director for the Oregon Public Health Division, says, “A growing number of Oregon youth and young adults are using e-cigarettes, introducing the potential for life-long nicotine addiction. Current use of e-cigarettes among Oregon eleventh grade students increased from 2 to 5 percent, a 150 percent increase, from 2011 to 2013.”

Statistics such as those have fueled the push to regulate vaping in Oregon. In recent months, legislators in Salem have discussed a number of bills, two of which stand to cause the most immediate changes to the vaping industry. The first, House Bill (HB) 2546, defines vaporizer products as “inhalant delivery systems;” restricts sales to minors; assigns the Oregon Health Authority as the regulating body for e-cigaretteassociated products in Oregon; and places vaping under the Clean Air Act, which would prohibit vaping indoors. On May 11, the bill passed through the Senate and now awaits final approval from the House before it would be signed into law and go into full effect on January 1, 2016.

The second, Senate Bill (SB) 663, would require Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) licensure for all retailers that sell tobacco products or “inhalant delivery systems;” raises the legal age for purchasing tobacco and vaping products to 21 years; and allows an exemption from the Clean Air Act for testing vape products within authorized vape shops, provided no tobacco or alcohol is sold on the premises and no person under 18 is allowed to enter. That exemption in SB 663 is an important feature for the vaping industry in Oregon.

Currently, vape clerks can show a prospective customer how the vaporizer works and how to use the product—such as the proper technique to fill the device with e-liquid or to replace heating coils. The clerk can also facilitate the testing of varied nicotine strength e-liquids so that users can sample flavors, allowing them to know which syrups they prefer. “When customers first come in, they say they want something that tastes like a cigarette, and I chuckle to myself,” says Amy Lapano, owner of Vapor Headquarters in Springfield. “In

(Above) Northwest Vapor Association President Will Krause, 68, smoked from his teenage years into his late 20s. He and his eldest son run Northwest Vapors, a vape retailer based in Vernonia, Oregon. (Left) Quinn Daniel, an employee at Emerald Vapors in Eugene, Oregon, blows a vape cloud while servicing a vaporizer. A big part of his industry’s business stems from the ability to allow customers to test the devices in the shop.

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two or three weeks, you’re not going to want anything that tastes like a cigarette because a cigarette tastes [awful].”

To show legislators that they care about their industry and are concerned about how government officials are going to involve themselves in their businesses, vape shop owners and e-liquid manufacturers have begun to organize to represent their industry in an official capacity.

“State legislators are in the midst of passing laws about something they don’t understand,” says Northwest Vapor Association (NWVA) President Will Krause, a 68-year-old Christian minister who became involved in the industry when he began helping his son’s growing vapor business, Northwest Vapors, in Vernonia, Oregon. “I’m not against legislation; I just want it to be reasonable.”

I

f and when HB 2546 is signed into law, minors will not be allowed to purchase vaping products. This would blunt a concern among some lawmakers that the rise in vape usage may trigger an increase among those who have never been addicted to cigarettes.

But Krause says most in his industry wouldn’t sell their products to minors even without the new law. “That’s hogwash,” says Krause. “Our business has always been based on helping smokers get off of cigarettes and onto a product that’s healthier for them.

We do not target kids under 18, and we never will. But the logic behind saying it’s a gateway—it’s just the opposite.

It’s a way of getting off of cigarettes and using a product that’s much healthier and safer for you.”

Overall cigarette sales in Oregon have fallen 52 percent since 1997. Policies that prohibit where smoking can take place are often credited with contributing to the decline.

But e-cigarette and vaping industry advocates say that at least a part of that reduction is a result of adult tobacco users switching to vapor. “I have 65-year-old men who have put their cigarettes down and can hike and go hunting again and do the things they haven’t been able to do in a lot of years,” says Lapano.

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But aside from keeping vaporizers out of minors’ hands, legislators are also concerned about whether vaping actually is an effective and healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes. John Lively, an Oregon state representative, is among the legislators who voted in favor of HB 2546. “I’ve talked to people who vape—trying to get off of cigarettes—and I believe what they’re telling me: That it does work, and it does help them,” he says.

“But the problem is that we don’t have any real data at this point that proves or disproves it.”

Yet according to a 2013 study published in the medical journal The Lancet, “E-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were modestly effective at helping smokers to quit,” and the efficacy of an e-cigarette as a cessation aid was similar to a nicotine patch, an FDA-approved cessation device. Likewise, studies from the University of Oklahoma’s Tobacco Research Center in 2013 and the Minnesota Department of Health in 2014 both found that e-cigarettes were the most commonly used cessation method among tobacco smokers in those states.

This doesn’t necessarily clear the air, however. Most e-liquids still have nicotine in them at varied and unregulated strengths.

And people who, in many cases, don’t have degrees in chemistry or medicine are manufacturing these liquids without supervision.

Nevertheless, the officially unapproved value of an e-cigarette as a cessation aid and the usefulness of the vape shop clerk in facilitating the purchase of vaping hardware are clear indicators that the industry has some clout. Now, for the vape industry, it’s simply a matter of convincing Oregon legislators and forging a path that satisfies all concerns on both sides.

Like the cloud it produces, vaping’s future will likely remain in the air for some time. But for now there is one certainty: Jack Ramirez says he will continue to use his vape unabated. “If there was definitive proof, and it was from an unbiased source and everybody said, ‘Yep, [vaping] is worse [than smoking],’ then I’d look at the evidence and measure both [cigarettes and vapor],” he says. “But in the end, I’d probably try to quit both, realizing that it’s bad all around. It’s just that knowing how bad cigarettes were for me makes me never want to go back to smoking.” f FOR MORE ON M AKING E-JUICE, VISIT F L U X S T O R I E S . C O M

After smoking cigarettes since middle school, Jack Ramirez, 22, a political science major at the University of Oregon, has given up tobacco in favor of vaping.

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Corey Adams performs a backside 180 while surfing the Deschutes River near Maupin, Oregon.

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surf ’s

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Why take your board to the coast when you can catch a wave on the whitewater?

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Elijah Mack (standing) and Adams relax on the Deschutes’ rocky edge.

he three surfers hop out of the once-white pickup truck and onto the edge of the wind-whipped cliffside. Elijah Mack, a 44-year-old barber from Portland, Oregon, is ready as always to hit the waves.

The tattoos on his skull blur behind close-cropped hair, continuing down his neck and beneath the shawl collar of a white wool cardigan. Where the ink reappears at his right sleeve, a wave circles his wrist and the words “Live Free Cut Well” are written across his four fingers.

Mack and his crew have traded salty sea breezes and sandy shores for the scent of sagebrush and pebbled banks. The waves they surf on the Deschutes River near Maupin, Oregon, are 200 miles and a four-hour drive from the spray of the Pacific. At first they might look lost carrying surfboards along the riverbank, but once they get on the waves it’s clear they’re right at home. For these three, river surfing is an adrenaline-fueled adventure—all the thrill of surfing without the need for a beach. In the United States, twenty-six states have no coastal access, and even in some parts of Oregon driving to the ocean is too time-consuming to be considered for a daytrip. “[River surfing] can take surfing to

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everyone around the world,” Mack says.

The surfers grab their boards and gear from the back of the truck: A pair of diving fins that have been hanging haphazardly from a steel rack, a wetsuit that’s flung across the tailgate and turned inside out to the waist. Kevin Ludwig, 30, fights wildfires in central Oregon by summer and works a manufacturing job the rest of the year. His clean-cut hair is swept neatly across his forehead, and his manner is soft-spoken and earnest—Mack’s polar opposite—yet the two act more like brothers than teacher and student. The more experienced Mack has been a mentor

to Ludwig and Corey Adams, 29, who works construction in Willamina, Oregon.

The men stop for a moment to take in the beauty and isolation of their surroundings. Adams surveys a narrow, winding not-quite-a-trail of loose rock that leads from the edge of the road. There is no clear path to the sparkling water—they will have to, as Adams says, “bushwhack” their way down. At the bottom of the ravine lies their destination and reward: This stretch of the Deschutes is a prime spot for river surfing.

River surfers need certain qualities in a wave, such as the

At White River Falls State Park, Adams (left) and Kevin Ludwig take the scenic path down to the roaring river.

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A rope attached to a tree branch helps Adams position himself on the wave. Seconds later he’ll be standing on his surfboard.

right angle, speed, and volume of water. When these conditions are met, standing waves can form. Instead of riding the river downstream, river surfers shift left and right to remain on top of the stationary wave, as if they’re on a waterpark surf simulator.

Among his friends, Mack is considered a river surfing pioneer. He began bodyboarding at age eight, started surfing when he was twelve, and spent most of his high school days on the beaches of Oceanside, California. After years of involvement in the surfing scene in Southern California, Mack grew tired of the subculture surrounding the sport and made the switch from saltwater to freshwater. He first tried river surfing in 1997 when it was still relatively obscure. “I’ve always wanted to be outside the box,” Mack says. “River surfing is odd, that’s the appeal: to be surfing a wave on a river in the mountains.”

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is also involved in consulting and collaborating with hydraulic engineers to work on sustainable designs for manmade river surfing parks. “There is no other gentleman in the sport who has put in more time and effort or had his success,” says Ludwig.

Six years ago, Ludwig, an avid snowboarder and occasional ocean surfer, watched an Oregon Field Guide documentary featuring Mack riding the waves of Oregon’s rivers. After that, he says, “I was on a mission to learn more about river surfing.” He drove to Portland, walked into the barbershop where Mack worked, and introduced himself.

Mack, Ludwig, and Adams are looking to expand the local river surfing scene. They hope the grand opening in September of a new whitewater park in Bend, Oregon—the first river playground of its kind in the state—may help river surfing gain more popularity with the general public.

Out on Mother Nature’s waves, “the river tells us when

(Top) Mack and Adams paddle upriver to hit a stationary wave. (Bottom) Before going out on the water, Ludwig adjusts the fins of his surfboard.

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(Above) Mack takes a moment to soak in his surroundings.

(Right) Adams concentrates as he surfs a standing wave.

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Left:Kevin Ludwig prepares his board prior to going out on the water Bottom: Corey Adams concentrates as he surfs a standing wave.

Right: Corey Adams stands on the shore before hitting the water.

“BEING ON THE

WATER IS

HOME TO ME”

— COREY ADAMS

we can go surf,” Ludwig says. Winter is generally good for surfing on rivers located in the Oregon Coast Range, which are fed by heavy rainfall. Spring is the season to surf in the Cascade Mountains, when the waterways swell with snowmelt.

The trio has returned on this Tuesday in April to where the river cuts through a steep-walled canyon. But if the hike to the bank were to deter them, they probably wouldn’t be surfing in the first place—this sport is a dangerous one. “I’ve had a lot of near deaths on the river,” Adams says. He remains relaxed even as he speaks of his near drowning experience. Risky areas in the river can be hard to spot. Hit the wrong whirling current, and surfers can be, like Adams was, “punched into the recirculating water.”

He was caught under the surface long enough to think about what

was happening, he says, helpless to do anything but wait for the river to circulate him back out.

Yet Adams keeps coming back to the river for more of the thrill he felt on his first ocean wave at age 11. Surfing is not only recreation for him, but also a form of self-expression, and the maneuvers and tricks he performs on the water are his chance to be creative. At times, he surfs to relax, still holding a conversation with his buddies on the shore. “Once you get on the wave and you’re dialed in to what it’s doing, you can surf as long as you can stand,” Adams says.

Atop the wave, Adams seems to hover, his board gliding on the river’s glassy surface. “I can’t live without surfing,” he says later.

“Being on the water is home to me.” f

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what they Albina was once the hottest neighborhood for jazz in Portland, where Etta, Louis, and Thelonious jammed late into the night. But then the bulldozers came and took the music away—along with so much more

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WORDS REUBEN UNRAU | PHOTOS ANDY ABEY TA

ommuters on bicycles cruise by a row of yoga studios, cafés, and craft breweries along North Williams Avenue in northeast Portland. Subarus and Toyota Priuses fill the parking lot at New Seasons, the local organic grocery store. Across the street, shoppers pop in and out of high-end boutiques that specialize in faux-leather bags, handcrafted toys, and vegan soap products.

North Williams runs through the Albina district, a modern-day haven for trendy urbanites, reflecting the hip identity that has put Portland in the spotlight in recent years.

The city frequently finds itself near the top of national lists for being the most livable, the most bike friendly, and the best city for beer, luring young, college-educated progressives along the way.

But fifty years ago, “hip” in Albina took on a different definition. “Hip” didn’t come in the form of baristas or breweries or bearded bicyclists. “Hip” was the word to describe the music that rang inside the packed jazz clubs that once dotted North Williams Avenue. And for many of the African-American residents who used to make up the majority of Albina, “hip” has long since disappeared.

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North Williams Avenue was the hub of all the late-night action in Portland—the epicenter of an integrated, around-the-clock spectacle of swing dancers, be-boppers, and street hustlers. The musicians of the 1950s and ’60s who came to play there affectionately called it “The Stem.” Clubs like Fraternal Hall, Jackie’s, McLendon’s Rhythm Room, and Paul’s Paradise lined the avenue and attracted such talent as John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Louis Armstrong. “It was happening,” says drummer Ron Steen, who launched his music career at the tail end of Albina’s jazz heyday during the 1960s. “People from out of town would come up and couldn’t believe the energy. They said they’d never seen anything like this in other cities.”

On a Wednesday night in late winter, Steen, 65, wearing his graying black hair in a ponytail, has just finished performing at Wilf’s, a restaurant and bar in downtown Portland, about ten minutes across the Broadway Bridge from Albina. Sipping on coffee, he transports himself back to his teenage days learning jazz on Albina’s bandstands. He remembers seeing Bill Cosby smoke a cigar while sitting in on drums during late-night jam sessions at the Upstairs Lounge. He remembers the night he learned how to play softer after being scolded on stage by legendary soul diva Etta James. “Stop playing those damn drums and give me a backbeat!” Steen recalls her saying. He remembers frequently ordering a steak and eggs plate for $3.50 before walking home in the early hours of the morning.

As fond as Steen’s memories are as an up-and-comer in Portland’s bustling black entertainment district, he also remembers when those famous clubs and businesses in his neighborhood disappeared. “It’s all gone now,” he says, shaking his head. “They tore it all down.”

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he rise and fall of the African-American community—and with it the once thriving jazz scene in Albina—is an ongoing story of segregation, urban renewal, and gentrification. It’s a story that began decades before the first notes of jazz were ever played along North Williams Avenue.

During World War II, Portland established itself as one of the nation’s largest shipbuilding industries, attracting thousands of African-Americans to the city from the South to find work at the Kaiser shipyards. According to In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, between 1940 and 1950 the city’s black population skyrocketed from 1,931 to 9,529, but finding housing after the war proved to be difficult. Realtors refused to sell property to blacks in predominately white neighborhoods under the notion that “negroes depress property values,” according to a 1957 report by the City Club of Portland. As a result, roughly half of the entire black population of Portland was squeezed into Lower Albina, a two-mile area centered along North Williams Avenue near the Steel Bridge.

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, black-owned businesses began sprouting up in Albina, including the famous jazz clubs that became the go-to destination for entertainment. Despite Portland becoming one of the most segregated cities in the northern United States, music acted as a unifying force between races. “The people who went there went there for the music, and that was the common denominator,” says Robert Dietsche, a jazz historian and author of Jumptown: The Golden Age of Portland Jazz, 1942-1957. “They didn’t realize what they were doing, but they were on the cutting edge of integration.”

James Benton, a prominent jazz singer better known by his stage name “Sweet Baby” James, owned a one-of-a-kind venue in Albina

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“it’s all gone now. all down.

–RON STEEN

Drummer Ron Steen stands outside the Arabella Salon on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Fifty years ago, this was the location of the Upstairs Lounge, a popular jazz club where Steen spent his teenage years learning drums at late-night jam sessions. Today, he lives a few blocks from here and says that he barely recognizes the community he grew up in. “It was an all-black neighborhood, and now I’m the only black dude around. I live smack dab in the middle of Portlandia.”

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“music was

our thing all the time.”

– “SWEET BABY” JAMES

where people of all races came together to dance the night away.

His house on the corner of Northeast Shaver Street and North Williams was known as “The Backyard”—a renovated, makeshift nightclub with soundproofed walls, two pianos, and thirty-nine chairs taken from an abandoned movie theater. In the back, two barbeque pits cooked up the best in soul food—“pig tails, neck bones, black-eyed peas, and greens,” as Benton puts it. For local jazz luminaries like Mel Brown and Bobby Bradford, “The Backyard” was a launching pad used for pre-show rehearsals and postshow jam sessions that swung till six in the morning. “Everyone wanted to come by there and show their stuff,” Benton, 84, says in his home nestled in the woods of Scappoose, Oregon, about a half an hour north of Portland. “It never mattered what color you were. Music was our thing and it was all the time.” Today, Benton’s house serves as a museum that tells the story of Albina’s musical history. Polaroid photos cover the walls, revealing the faces of the musicians, club owners, and hustlers that roamed the streets during the 1950s.

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businesses and a bustling nightlife, city planners had different ideas for the area. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, cities across the nation began a wave of urban renewal projects that aimed to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods. For the Portland Development Commission (PDC), Albina was one of those areas. In 1962, the PDC justified its actions for re-development in the Central Albina Study by stating that “urban renewal, largely clearance, appears to be the only solution to not only the blight that presently exists in Albina but also to avoid the spread of that blight to other surrounding areas.”

Businessman Paul Knauls moved to Portland from Spokane, Washington, in 1963 to fulfill his dream of opening a nightclub.

He arrived in the city at a time when Albina had already experienced significant renewal. Massive development projects such as the construction of the Minnesota Freeway (now Interstate 5) and the Veterans Memorial Coliseum uprooted more than 500 homes and businesses in Lower Albina. Lil’ Sandy’s, Portland’s largest blues club where B.B. King performed, was just one of the notable locations demolished in the process.

Singer James Benton, known onstage as “Sweet Baby” James, listens to a record in his home in Scappoose, Oregon. On the walls, hundreds of photos tell the story of Albina’s jazz history.

“City Council says, ‘We got to get them out of here, that’s going to be big development,” says Knauls. “They run a freeway through your community, then you got to move out. You have no options when they just move you out.” As residents relocated, so did the music and business hub of Albina. Six blocks northward, on the corner of North Russell and Williams, the new heart of Portland’s African-American community emerged.

Knauls’ first business venture came to fruition in 1963 when he opened the Cotton Club just three blocks away from North Russell and Williams. Named after the iconic venue in Harlem, Knauls’ Portland offshoot soon became the hottest spot in town for live music during the 1960s. Among the famous faces seen inside his club were Etta James, Sammy Davis Jr., and boxer Joe Louis. At the end of many nights, Knauls, sharply dressed in a suit and fedora, would jump on stage and announce: “You’re at 2125 North Vancouver Avenue. It’s the only club on the West Coast with wall-to-wall soul. You don’t have to go home, but you got to get out of here!”

(Above) In front of Benton’s porch, a street sign pays homage to the location of his childhood home. (Left) Benton sifts through photos as he relives his early singing days in Albina. He got his start singing jazz harmonies with a group of friends on the corner of North Russell and Williams Avenue. “We were just spelling, man,” he says. “We couldn’t read good, but we could speak with our ears.”

“Music is our basis for life,” he says. “Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights—those were our nights to party. We worked for lower wages than our counterparts, but when you get paid, it’s time to celebrate.”

After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, business at the Cotton Club started to decline as racial tensions rose. The integrated clientele that once filled Knauls’ club most nights stopped showing up, and in 1970 he sold his venue. Today, where the club once stood, sits a dilapidated, vacant warehouse locked behind a chain-link fence.

However, throughout the 1960s, Knauls and his wife, Geneva, had established themselves as the neighborhood’s most prominent black business owners. They operated two other popular businesses, Geneva’s Restaurant and Lounge (“known for the best soul food west of the Mississippi”) and Paul’s Cocktails, a pool hall and bar. Before long, though, Knauls experienced firsthand the impact of a new urban renewal project that would once again take down the heart of the African-American community.

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In 1971, the PDC launched the Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project, which required seventy-six acres of land between Russell and Ivy Street for a widespread expansion. By 1975, the PDC had purchased and demolished 188 properties (158 residential and 30 commercial) including Paul’s Cocktails. Affected residents received compensation—$4,000 for renters, $15,000 for homeowners—but were left to find housing on their own.

Today, on North Russell and Williams, at the site of the projected hospital expansion lies an empty patch of grassland. The project lost funding and was never completed.

Since moving to Albina, Knauls has witnessed more than just the disappearance of Albina’s jazz scene. On his fingers, he can count the few black-owned businesses that have remained in the neighborhood.

“From repair shops to record stores to dry cleaners—everything you can think of that makes a community go, that’s all gone now,” he says.

Ron Steen, who got his first professional drumming gig at Knauls’ Cotton Club when he was 15, says that many significant locations from his upbringing have disappeared, too: The house where he was born on North Williams Avenue; Slaughter’s Pool Hall, a teen hangout popular for its jukebox; and the grocery store where his mother worked for thirty-four years.

“It was devastating,” Steen says of Albina’s changing landscape.

“To me, that was like a death in the family.”

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oday, Albina is again under development, but this time projects are materializing. On North Williams Avenue, cranes on construction sites tower over the street where new, high-rise condominiums are beginning to take shape. While Albina during the 1960s and ’70s was defined by large-scale land clearance and resident relocation, a new wave of transformation is taking place. Gentrification—the divisive urban process in which affluent, typically white residents and developers move in and repurpose lower-income areas—is the latest chapter in Albina’s makeover.

Community leaders in Seattle, Washington D.C., and San Francisco have been dealing with this issue for the last twenty years, but a February 2015 survey by Governing Magazine shows that gentrification is accelerating the fastest in Portland.

Karen Gibson, associate professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, says cities have an incentive to gentrify.

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Businessman Paul Knauls stands in front of the location of the former Cotton Club. Aside from his jazz venue, Knauls has owned three other bussinesses and served as a community activist in the neighborhood, earning the title as “The Unofficial Mayor of Northeast Portland.”

“they run a freeway through your community, then you got to move out.”

–PAUL KNAULS

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Ron Steen’s brushes rest on his snare drum after a performance at Wilf’s Restaurant and Bar in downtown Portland. Despite Albina’s sweeping transformation, Steen still performs in clubs across the city.

“Music is bigger than I can ever tell you,” he says.

“There might be all this racism and discrimination, but up here on the bandstand everybody’s equal.”

nearly 60 percent, from $249,000 to $395,000 in that same span, according to data from Zillow. Developers look at neighborhoods like Albina with dollar signs in their eyes, but many tenants can’t afford rising rent costs, and moving out is their only option. In 1970, African-Americans made up 60 percent of the Albina population. In 2010, they comprised just 20 percent. And for the longtime residents who have remained in redeveloped areas like Albina, certain aspects of their community have been lost forever.

“You lose culture and people start to feel a lack of belonging in their own neighborhood,” Gibson says. “Your commu-

nity changes so much that it’s a sense of loss. Some feel their history is being erased.”

Despite decades marked by bulldozers and accelerating rent, the spirit of old Albina lives on for Paul Knauls and Ron Steen. For the past twenty-four years, Knauls has owned Geneva’s Shear Perfection Barber-Beauty Salon on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Albina. Now 84 and a recent widower, Knauls still wears a gold chain and his signature white captain’s cap; he still answers phone calls and greets customers with a smile spread ear-to-ear. In the back of the barbershop, where his son Paul Jr. cuts hair, a “Wall of Fame”

ALBINA through the years 1919

1945

Portland Realty Board declares it “unethical” to sell property to AfricanAmericans in white neighborhoods.

Jazz clubs in lower Albina along North Williams Avenue begin to sprout up. On one night, the Dude Ranch hosted jazz legends Coleman Hawkins and Thelonious Monk.

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1963 Paul Knauls opens the Cotton Club on North Vancouver Avenue, one block west of North Williams. He would later go on to own three other businesses in the area­, including Paul’s Cocktails and Geneva’s Restaurant & Lounge.­­

holds dozens of framed photos of iconic musicians, athletes, and celebrities who have visited the various businesses he has owned in Albina throughout his life. A large sign for “House of Sound,” an old record store where he used to shop, hangs on an adjacent wall.

Knauls admits that business at Geneva’s has suffered over the years as Albina’s black residents have relocated to the eastern fringes of the city. “The same person that used to walk by here to make an appointment doesn’t walk by here anymore,” he says.

“That person lives in Gresham and Troutdale now.”

In conversation, though, Knauls frequently lets out a burst of raspy laughter and returns to the fact that he is “blessed.” He is blessed to own his building; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to afford the higher rent. Perhaps more importantly, he is blessed to maintain a strong core of faithful customers who have kept his barbershop alive.

Armetrice Campbell, an Albina resident who moved to Portland from Paris, Texas, in 1990, has been one of those loyal customers. While her son, Jadarian, rests his head on her shoulder, Campbell explains that Knauls’ barbershop is more than just a place to get a haircut. “It’s one big family,” she says, sitting in a barber chair. “If Geneva’s goes away, then pretty much part of our black community is gone.”

Across the river from Knauls’ barbershop, Ron Steen is proving that the “power, beauty, and mystery” of jazz that enraptured him as a boy is still alive within him. At Wilf’s, his trio swings along to a medley of upbeat be-bop and tender ballads. During his drum solos, he plays with the same fervent spirit reminiscent of his Cotton Club days—his eyebrows rise over his glasses and he shouts as his cymbals crash in exclamation. Steen consistently plays at least three shows a week all over the city—Wednesday nights at Wilf’s, and two Sunday shows at the Augustana Church and Clyde’s Prime Rib. Playing in the moment and accepting the spontaneous changes that occur throughout a song are crucial elements of jazz, and for Steen his opinions on the transformation of Albina throughout his life aren’t too different. “For every advance you make, you lose something in the process. That’s just the way it is,” he says reflectively after the show. “But what makes you a human being, what you have in your head—that can never be taken away. You can give it up, but no one can take it from you.”f

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African-American Population in NE Portland

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1964 Construction completed for I-5 and the Memorial Coliseum. Residents have been relocated further north and east—hundreds of homes and businesses are demolished. Many of the local jazz clubs centered on the corner of Broadway and North Williams are taken down in the process.

1971 Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project begins. By the end of the project, the Portland Development Commission will have purchased and demolished 188 properties. Of the homeowners displaced 74 percent are black.

2015 A study by Governing Magazine reveals that Portland is the fastest gentrifying city in the United States. In Albina, median home values have increased nearly 60 percent since 2005.

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in hop PUR SU IT

Rick Roy travels far and wide in search of gold—brewer’s gold—to create a unique flavor that’s luring beer lovers to the tiny town of Burns, Oregon

WORDS RYAN PHELPS | PHOTOS WILL SAUNDERS

t

he vast landscape of Harney County in southeast Oregon is at once desolate and scenic. Withered homesteads from the pioneer days are scattered throughout the valley, resembling the settings of John Wayne’s western films. Broken-down distillery equipment still hides in the hillsides where moonshiners went to dodge prohibition. It seems as though the same tumbleweeds have been drifting across the highway ever since.

The most populated spot in Harney County is the quiet town of Burns (pop: 2,728). At first glance it may not look like a whole lot has changed in Burns over the past century. Back then, the town was perhaps most famous for the homemade pies Grandma Haskell, once a familiar face in the community, baked for the homesteaders passing through town. She made them in the kitchen of her small wooden house at 150 West Washington Street and sold them on a nearby corner along with her fresh garden vegetables.

But today, something new is brewing in Burns. And if Rick Roy has his way, it will give passersby a reason to stay and explore what Harney County has to offer. In Haskell’s old kitchen, an otherwise ordinary looking freezer has been converted into a beer lover’s treasure chest. Inside the freezer is Roy’s hardearned bounty: Countless stacks of Ziploc bags stuffed with bright green hop cones waiting to be put to good use.

Sure, plenty of brewers have hops in their freezers; the green buds are a key component to making beer. But unlike most brewers in the industry who buy their hops from farms, Roy

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Rick Roy, owner of Steens Mountain Brewing Company, mixes his secret heirloom hops before adding them to a fresh batch of Harney Valley Ale.

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US Highway 20 turns into North Broadway Avenue as it meanders through the sleepy town of Burns, Oregon. hunts down his own supply, hauling them home from the canyons and hillsides of Harney County.

“I try to find heirloom hops,” Roy says, admiring his frozen fortune. “They help tell the story of a history that people have forgotten about. I’m trying to use these older hop styles to make modern beer that says, ‘This is Harney County. This is part of who we are.’”

Although Roy, 54, is originally from the East Coast, he might just have more pride in Harney County than any third-generation farmer. He plays many roles, including husband, father/guardian of ten kids, high school lacrosse coach, and Field Manager for the Bureau of Land Management. He also runs the show at Steens Mountain Brewing Company, which he launched in October 2014.

Steens is not a microbrewery but a nanobrewery—the smallest classification within the craft beer industry and just one step above a neighborhood homebrewer. What makes Steens special, though, is not its size. No, it’s the hops—the homegrown hops of Harney County—that give the brewery its distinction.

During Labor Day weekend, when the hop plants are tall and green, with gangly vines covered in budding flowers, Roy sets out in search of heirloom hops growing wild in Oregon’s isolated southeastern sector. Working swiftly throughout the weekend, he’ll gather about ten pounds worth of the plant. It may not sound like much, but the bitter hop flavor goes a long way for a nanobrewer who only needs a few ounces for each batch.

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The harvest is time-sensitive, but Roy might take a quick break if he happens to stumble upon a fishing hole during his hop hunt.

After all, he first discovered hops growing in the wild while he was on a fishing trip in Colorado ten years ago. “I found those hops and always kept them in the back of my mind,” Roy says.

These days, he’s venturing miles down unmaintained roads and hiking for hours to collect the component so necessary to his craft.

When it comes to gathering ingredients for his brews, Roy says, “The closer to the source, the better.”

Marc O’Toole, a cattle rancher from outside of Burns, recalls talking with Roy about beer and hops at the Harney County Fair a few years back. At that point, Steens was still just an idea brewing in Roy’s mind.

“Well, I’ve got hops,” O’Toole said to Roy. “Take all you want!”

Intrusive hop vines were nothing more than a nuisance to the cattle rancher. “They crawl on everything and make fixing your fence a pain,” O’Toole says. “So I was happy that there was some use for them. It’s neat to have somebody make beer out of hops that they get off of your land.”

O’Toole’s hops were a start, but Roy knew he’d have to hunt down plenty more plants to operate his brewery. He expressed to the town’s newspaper his desire to use all local ingredients in his beers. After the story ran, Roy’s phone began to ring with friends and neighbors telling him where to find wild growths, both in town and far away.

(Above) Roy helps customers order a couple kegs for their daughter’s wedding this summer.

The only way to purchase Roy’s beer is by traveling to the town where it’s brewed. (Left) This is Burns, Oregon. Wrangler jeans, weathered leather boots, and beer made with local, wild hops.

Roy quickly noted what little directions were offered, laced up his hiking boots, and took to the trail to track down the wild plants.

“It’s kind of all over the map,” he says. “For some of the sites, no one has lived there for 100-something years, so no one has any idea how they got there.”

Some of the hops grow on abandoned homesteads, while others are more conveniently found growing in backyards or on the side of the highway. “People drive by them all the time,” Roy says.

The tales vary with every site, creating a unique story for each beer. O’Toole’s favorite is Roy’s “Outhouse Oatmeal Stout,” which uses hops from vines that have taken over an old outhouse about sixty miles outside of Burns. Roy won’t divulge much more information than that. These hops are part of his livelihood, and he’s careful to leave out certain details when discussing the location of the treasured plants.

According to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, Steens Mountain Brewing Company is among approximately 200 breweries in Oregon, which has the most craft breweries per capita in the United States. Competition may be tough in a state that has emerged as a craft beer mecca, but for now Roy is focusing on making a name for his beer closer to home.

Roy sold just over half a barrel of beer last October, his first month in business. By comparison, Rogue Ales, a Newport, Oregonbased company, sold a little over 1,000 barrels in the same month.

Roy says he has since seen a consistent growth in sales, estimating he sold about three barrels in April. But numbers are not Roy’s motivation; he embraces the company’s local operation. “I think he’s really doing a good service for the community,” O’Toole says.

Customers often ask Roy when he plans on extending his business out to Bend, a city that is known for its craft beer and located just 130 miles west. “No time soon,” he replies. Widespread distribution is not part of the plan for Steens Mountain Brewing Company. In a way, it defeats the purpose of what he’s trying to do in Burns. “Everything is about Harney County and Southeast Oregon,” Roy says. “It’s about economic development and publicity for the town.”

At the brewery, pots of soil with tiny green hop sprouts line the walls, waiting to be planted where Grandma Haskell once had a thriving vegetable garden. Handwritten labels distinguish one pot from the next: Turnout, Mustang, Windmill, and North Fork. Their names are derived from landmarks where Roy collected them.

“The goal is for you to come here to buy the beer, but also spend some time here,” Roy says, looking out the window at the suncovered yard where he’ll plant his heirloom hops.

It’s going to take more hop hunts to fill the yard with prospering vines, but when Roy preps the soil and plants his crops with the summer sun beating down, at least he’ll have the reassurance of knowing there’s a cold beer waiting for him when he’s done. f

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Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich has always pushed the boundaries in an attempt to “redefine normalcy.� Today, she is pushing the boundaries on stage and tackling taboos head on with a dark brand of comedy.

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institches WORDS CHEYENNE MINER | PHOTOS CA MERON SHULT Z

When tragedy strikes, what’s the best way to lift someone’s spirit? The answer may surprise you (and make you laugh)

I t’s a full house tonight at Bleepin’ Funny, a monthly comedy show hosted at Sam Bond’s Garage in Eugene, Oregon. As waitresses scurry out from behind the bar carrying mason jars full of beer to packed tables, Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich stands center stage under the dim light. Wearing a black dress and gripping a microphone in her right hand, she begins her routine. “My husband hated planning anything ­— so for my 50th he died.”

A NNIN G A N Y TH IN G— “ MY H U S BA ND H ATE D PL TH SO FOR MY 50 HE DIED.” The audience gasps and the scattered sound of chuckling can be heard from the darkness of the bar. The comedian pauses and continues her set.

“The man was never on time—even the funeral was a close call,” she says.

Staring at the audience with a defiant look in her eye, she tosses her free hand up, as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?” The crowd responds this time with enthusiastic laughter.

Caprario-Ulrich’s dark sense of humor is rooted in anguish that stems from her husband’s suicide. Finding humor in her situation has helped alleviate her sorrow. “I do not think that comedy or laughing is going to cure all of one’s ills, but it sure makes life a hell of a lot easier to bear,” she says a few days after her show over tea. “If you can’t laugh at yourself, you are in a sorry state.”

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Comedy is not just about knock-knock jokes and wisecracks; it’s also a remedy. Caprario-Ulrich realized the best way to overcome her grief was to joke about it, and she’s not the only one who has benefited from comedy’s healing powers. Humor therapy—making light out of dark situations through the use of comedic performance or writing—has become a popular and effective method to aid recovery after traumatic experiences.

In 2001, Caprario-Ulrich’s world turned upside down when her husband of almost twenty years, James Ulrich, passed away.

“Here I was, just shy of my 50th birthday. I was expecting a party, not a dead husband. I really felt cheated out of everything,” she says. James had suffered through eight years of severe clinical depression with suicidal ideation before he took his life. During this time, Caprario-Ulrich and her then-teenage son watched James unravel. As she says, “It was a living hell for everyone.”

After her husband’s death, Caprario-Ulrich turned to her friends for support but found their sentiments largely unhelpful.

“People think, ‘Oh, you got to move on,’” she says. “Well, I didn’t lose a flippin’ mitten here. I lost my husband. The person I have been with for the bulk of my life.”

Caprario-Ulrich spent nine years on the couches in therapists’ offices—which she says helped—but her grief still weighed her down. Trying to manage the Secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by her husband’s death paired with the added challenge of raising a son without her husband’s income fomented into anger. An art instructor at Lane Community College in Eugene, Caprario-Ulrich prepped for her classes by screaming to release the tension. Then, during the summer of 2010, while flying back from a volunteer mission in Australia that taxed her both physically and emotionally, she had an 66

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“I AM GENETICALLY PRONE

TO HAVING MEN DIE ON ME—

SOMETIMES LITERALLY,” epiphany. “I realized I needed to laugh at death,” she says. “I had to punch death in the nose and make fun of my situation.”

Once back in Oregon, Caprario-Ulrich registered for Write Your Life Funny, a comedy class at Lane Community College that focuses on taking personal situations and finding humor in them. After completing the class in 2010, she began performing standup at bars and entertainment venues in Eugene and used her pain and anger as fuel for her live comedy routine. “Comedy diffuses the power of that experience,” Caprario-Ulrich says.

“It empowered me. That is such a corny word, but it really did.

I felt like I was becoming my authentic self.”

Recovering from traumatic events often requires extensive amounts of therapy. But sometimes, as in Caprario-Ulrich’s case, the traditional avenues are not enough. Roberta Gold, therapist and founder of the Southern California-based workshop Laughter for the Health of It, uses humor therapy to help people overcome mental and physical trauma. Gold has worked with patients from all walks of life. Her patients have issues ranging from transitioning into middle school to coping with domestic violence. “There is so much credibility to what Reader’s Digest coined a long time ago: Laughter is the best medicine,” Gold says. “If you can somehow laugh, then you can face the situation and try to find a solution.”

Similar to exercise, laughter releases endorphins—the “feel good” chemical produced by the central nervous system and pituitary gland. Just a short, hearty chuckle increases endorphin

(Opposite page) Comedy is not Caprario-Ulrich’s only cathartic release. She works as an art instructor at Lane Community College and is a practicing artist herself. “I’m a creative person,” she says. “[Art is] a means to understanding yourself, your humanity, others, and the world.” (Left) Caprario-Ulrich with her late husband, James, in Eugene in the ’80s.

Image courtesy of Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich.

levels and eases tension, causing an overall sense of well being, according to a 2013 article released by the Mayo Clinic.

Leigh Anne Jasheway, instructor of the Write Your Life Funny class, says it’s common to see students signing-up for her course with the hope that it will help them recover from difficult experiences. A standup comedian and professor at the University of Oregon and Lane Community College, Jasheway has a Master’s degree in public health and is an expert in humor and stress management. She uses her combination of stress relief knowledge and standup experience to promote recovery within her pupils. “We become like a great big group therapy by the end because everyone is telling the truth of their life story,” says Jasheway. Each term, she sees students sitting next to each other who are battling illness or depression, mourning a loss, or just trying to get over being shy.

Like Caprario-Ulrich, Emese Dunai decided to register for Jasheway’s comedy class in an effort to become whole again.

While backpacking across southeast Asia in 2011, Dunai, who was 31 at the time, stopped in Indonesia to scuba dive. After surfacing, Dunai lay screaming on the beach, thinking she had the bends. She took a boat to the mainland to receive treatment at a hospital. Once there she was shocked to discover that her condition was much more serious. Dunai had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a poorly mixed oxygen tank.

When she made it back to the United States six months after the accident, Dunai could no longer walk and was diagnosed with dystonia and an untreatable form of Parkinsonism. The conditions pushed her into a cycle of depression, and the dystonia caused one of her Achilles tendons to constrict six inches shorter than the other, permanently forcing her foot into a pointed position.

Although she doesn’t perform on stage, Dunai is now using humor as her guiding light and is on her way back to restoring the positive self-esteem and confidence she possessed before the accident. She says comedy has been the catalyst for her recovery because it gives her a new perspective. She looks for the humor in her situation, especially when sharing her story with others.

“When you make people laugh, it builds you up. It just keeps building and raising you up,” Dunai says. “When I am in that mode, everybody says the same thing: ‘You are shining.’ It makes me feel so good.”

Now, she says with a giggle, she feels beautiful for the first time since the diving accident. Not even her “ugly clunker” shoes can hold her back when she is in the zone. “You don’t feel sexy in them, but when I feel like I am shining it doesn’t matter what I am wearing,” Dunai says.

Back at Sam Bond’s Garage, the sun is setting outside and once-full mason jars now only contain foam. Candle centerpieces on the tables flicker, revealing the amused faces of wide-eyed audience members as they hang on to Caprario-Ulrich’s every word. Dressed in black—but not in mourning—she serves up one last zinger for the crowd as they fall gravely silent. It doesn’t go unnoticed by the comedian.

“I am genetically prone to having men die on me—sometimes literally,” she says. “Thanks everybody! I’m Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich.”

Flashing a wide smile at the applauding audience, she places the microphone back in its stand and exits stage left. f FOR MORE ON HUMOR THERAPY, VISIT F L U X S T O R I E S . C O M

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He has modeled on the runway and been featured on TV, but this famous llama also has a healing touch WORDS KEVIN TREVELLYAN | PHOTOS KYRA BAILEY

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Rojo has a fully booked schedule of events.

On this day, the certified therapy llama is making his monthly guest appearance at Marquis Centennial, an assisted care facility in Portland, with his alpaca friend Napoleon.

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(Above) Rojo is rewarded with hay after visiting over 100 different residents at Marquis Centennial. He’ll take a vanride ride back home to Gregory’s stable before preparing for another event the next day.

(Right) Paula Olson perks up when Rojo the Llama enters her room at Marquis Centennial. Jessie Fowler, the program director at Marquis Centenni(Above) Paula Olson, a resident at Marquis Centennial, perks up when Rojo enters her room. “She loves these animals,” says Jessie Fowler, the program director at the assisted care facility. (Right) Rojo is rewarded with hay after visiting more than 100 residents at Marquis Centennial. He’ll return to his stable in Vancouver, Washington, before preparing for his next appearance the following day. (Opposite page) Lucille Langlitz awaits her visit as Rojo gives a “carrot kiss” to fellow resident Donna Beska in the hallway.

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al says, “This is one of the few times of month that she is truly happy. She loves these animals.”

(Right below) Lucille Langlitz awaits Rojo’s visit to her room at Marquis Centennial Senior Center as he gives a carrot kiss to Donna Beska in the hallway. Langlitz says, “If I could afford it I would buy ten llamas just to have them.”

‘‘H

e’s always held himself like he’s the king of the llamas.” Lori Gregory is speaking of Rojo, the pet llama she and her family have cared for since his humble beginnings in the Pacific Northwest. But don’t just take the word of a proud owner. According to the International Llama Registry, Rojo is the top “Beyond the Showring” public relations llama in the world, selected from a pool of over 200,000. His fans can purchase “I Heart Rojo the Llama” bumper stickers online, and he’s worked a Project Runway fashion show, modeling a tiny chic top hat in front of an audience full of fashion enthusiasts. Rojo also recently had his international television debut with an appearance on Nat Geo Wild’s Unlikely Animal Friends television show. Nowadays, however, the distinguished llama spends most of his time serving the community at nursing homes, schools, hospitals, and charity events.

Gregory found the chestnut-colored diva in 2001 while shopping for an alternate method to cut her family’s grass.

“Little Rojo was only four months old,” recalls Gregory.

“He was following his [previous] owner around the yard while she was working. He was almost half-human.” The Gregory family purchased him immediately, relocating Rojo to their home in Vancouver, Washington. Over the ensuing years, Rojo, the living lawn mower, became a certified therapy llama. He has made almost 1,000 appearances since 2001, from birthday parties to parades.

Rojo’s even temperament is well-suited for therapy work. “He grew up to be this big, beautiful, hairy, lovable, huggable guy,” says Gregory, his owner and talent agent. He doesn’t seem to mind the jostling and petting

that comes with his visits; the contact is light compared to the way llamas naturally interact with each other, which can include body slamming and neck wrestling.

As he does with several other facilities, Rojo makes monthly visits to residents of the Marquis Centennial assisted care facility in southeast Portland. Before they leave the house for a recent visit, Gregory has Rojo made up for the occasion. Shimmering gold bracelets adorn his ankles above jet black polished hooves. Freshly-shampooed auburn hair blows around like prairie grass, except for the fur matted underneath a sash draped over his back. It bears Rojo’s name in a decorative scrawl of purple embroidery. His aloof expression conveys a sense of ease, despite all the grandeur of his presentation.

From her large, grass-filled backyard, Gregory leads Rojo through a sliding glass door into the family kitchen.

She guides him between sofas on a path of runner rugs, avoiding stray barstools and shelves full of knickknacks and stuffed llamas. Eventually, they make it out the front door to the driveway. Rojo takes a seat in the back of a silver minivan while Gregory takes her own place behind the steering wheel. He waits patiently with his legs tucked underneath him as the van hits the I-205 South on-ramp. An alpaca named Napoleon sits next to him, with curly blonde hair framing a pair of dark eyes. He’s been a member of Rojo’s entourage for the last five years.

The van arrives at Marquis Centennial, and patients are elated when they see a pair of furry creatures walk through the otherwise plain, beige hallways of the facility.

“A lot of the time the atmosphere around here is very sullen, even though people are trying to get better,” says Evan Werner, who just moved into Marquis Centennial. When

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Rojo makes his visit, the spirit in the building lightens.

“I’ve got a friend’s father in here who has dementia,” says Werner. “But when I watched him with the llama, he woke up. It was like nothing mattered at that point— it didn’t take a memory for him to smile.” One resident compliments Rojo’s fluffy fur and subtle grin. Another resident attempts to sit up and give Rojo a “carrot kiss,” as he gently snatches the food from her mouth.

Between rooms, Rojo strides down the corridor behind Gregory with a swagger, Napoleon following behind as he stares with admiration at his idol (alpacas are pack-driven). The animals look distinctly out of place amongst the framed family photos that adorn patients’ walls. Rojo’s guttural grunts are out of sync with the sounds of soap operas or news programs that come from the televisions, his fur puffed out like a pair of parachute pants from the ’80s. One man lying on his bed near the end of Rojo’s visitation circuit scoffs when 72

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Gregory brings the llama by. “Ah, I’ve seen him before!” he says. But the other patients adore Rojo. “I never would have expected to see a llama in a rehabilitation care facility,” says Werner. “I don’t have a lot to be happy about lately, and that just made me smile. A smile one time during the day is better than not smiling at all.”

After several hours visiting patients, Rojo gets back into the minivan and sits down on the floor next to Napoleon. He’s spent, and hungry for some hay.

The van exits the parking lot to travel north back to the stable, where Rojo can get some much needed rest. He has seventeen more appearances this month. Tomorrow he’ll pay a visit to an elementary school, fashionable as ever and ready to entertain.

The life of a celebrity llama never slows down. f FOR MORE ON ROJO THE LL A M A , VISIT F L U X S T O R I E S . C O M

“a smile one time during the day is better than not smiling at all.”

— EVAN WERNER

(Opposite page) Rojo is the original of four llamas and three alpacas, including Napoleon (right), that Lori Gregory cares for at her home in Vancouver, Washington. (Above) Trademarked as the “World’s Most Beloved Llama,” Rojo has nearly 7,000 likes on his Facebook fan page.

(Left) After a shampoo and grooming, Rojo’s coat and freshly polished hoofs shine like the jewelry around his ankles.

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the

hardest conversation

t

ILLUSTRATION NATALIE GREENE

WORDS JONATHAN BACH

he door closes behind me. As I get farther down the driveway, moonlight replaces the glow from our porch lamp, illuminating the snow underfoot. I just need to get outside and breathe for a minute.

It had been roughly eight years since my mother was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. Translated across the medical terminology: a person’s kidneys aren’t working normally and can barely help the body anymore. Mom had been in the hospital recently with seizures from a heart infection. Now that she was back at home, she wanted to have the “end-of-life” conversation with me.

It is a talk for which I am not prepared, so I respond by getting up and walking out the front door.

I knew I didn’t want to see my mother go, and to talk about the possibility of that happening felt frightening. From when I could first toddle, we’d been best buddies. When I was small, she and I would snuggle up on the living room couch in the evening and watch her favorite after-work primetime dramas.

As the years passed, with the patience only mothers can seem to muster, she encouraged me through a fervent Obi-WanKenobi phase, a bike racing phase, and a jazz musician phase, complete with harsh fortes coming from our piano.

For her sake, I should turn back and go inside, but for a time I just keep walking.

We were living in Montana when she was diagnosed. At 11, I didn’t understand that lots of families go through bouts when a loved one has a bad disease. As her kidney failure worsened, we relocated around the United States in search of adequate medical care. We moved to Bend, Oregon, in 2008 and finally found the care for which we had been searching. Though our situation continued on imperfectly—Mom’s visits to the hospital still occurred often—the turbulent waters seemed to calm themselves for a time. But one phone call shattered the semblance of stability I had attained: In the winter of 2013, during my sophomore year at the University of Oregon, my dad called to say Mom was in the hospital again—and this time it was bad.

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Dad, a steel-hard man who’d been through years of his wife’s medical ups and downs, said something to the effect of, “You may want to come back home. Your mother’s not doing too well.” He said she was on life support and was having seizures because of a heart infection. She was immunocompromised, the doctors had said, which meant her immune system was weaker than the average person’s, making it easier for infections to take hold. While hospitalized, she was incoherent and could hardly eat.

That winter break, in a hospital room that overlooked the city, I saw her convulse and seize as she fought her heart infection. She was in the hospital, and then in rehab, for roughly three months. But then, as if God had decided to grant us a midwinter miracle, she began to recover. She slowly regained her ability to speak and move. She relearned how to hold a fork. During the recovery, a therapist would have her take a small bite of food and swallow to help her wean off liquid protein shakes. She eventually came home from the rehab center to her beloved cats, two dogs, and her family.

The moon is out. I get down our long driveway and know I should turn around.

I’ll only realize later, after she has fought off this latest challenge to her health, how difficult it must be for someone who is staring out over the edge of a perilous cliff to say, “I don’t know how much longer I have to live.” And watching her through the ensuing years, I’ll learn that when adversity comes your way, you have to try and roll with the punches, even if some hit with more “umph” than others. But that insight awaits.

On this night, I crunch back through the snow to the porch.

Open the door. Walk past the familiar staircase in the house that had finally become home and go into the room where they brought her after she had arrived from the hospital. I walk to her bedside where she sits waiting for me. I sit beside her and say, “Let’s try again.” Her frail body has been beaten by infections and seizures, so I hug her carefully. She is still the same tough woman I’ve always known. She is still my mother.

And now I am ready to listen to what she has to say. f

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