Willamette Week, April 15, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 25 - "Stay High, Stay Home"

NEWS: WE’RE WITH CALIFORNIA. COURTS: WHY ARE THEY OPEN? MUSIC: PANDEMIC RADIO.

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WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“WHAT CAN I PUT IN MY MOUTH NOW?” P. 18 WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/25 04.15.2020

This year, 4/20 is essential. Here’s how to celebrate. Page 11

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FINDINGS

DIALOGUE

C O U R T E S Y O F N ATA L I E G I L D E R S L E E V E

On April 10, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown admonished Portlanders on Twitter, saying they were failing to adequately comply with her stay-home order as the weather improved. WW reported her remarks on wweek.com. “Some parts of Oregon are doing better than others at staying home and practicing social distancing,” Brown wrote. “To all our Portlanders: As tempting as it is to be out and about, please remember that our No. 1 priority right now is staying home and social distancing.” Here’s what readers had to say: FLYING FISH, PAGE 23

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 25.

Without a shutdown, the pandemic could kill 15,000 Portlanders a week for three weeks. 3 The war on cars is postponed. 4

One dispensary owner is campaigning the OLCC to allow him to install a weed-vending machine in his store. 10

When restaurants reopen, expect your waiter to be wearing a mask. 5

For stoner parents, the old “toilet paper roll and dryer sheet” trick still works wonders. 14

Two nursing homes account for 60 percent of Portland’s COVID-19 deaths. 6

The Oregon Zoo’s tigers are enjoying social isolation. 19

Oregon lawmakers expect COVID19 will blow a $3 billion hole in their budget. 8 Cannabis chef Leather Storrs keeps his weed stash in a Hello Kitty lunchbox. 12 The OLCC allowing curbside weed sales could pave the way for cannabis drive-thrus. 10

We’ve reached the point of quarantine where we are reappraising Showgirls. 20 One local DJ considers Captain Beefheart her musical “comfort food.” 21 Portland Center Stage’s art director has a happy place: Bread Loaf, Vt. 26

You can still eat at a Denny’s in Eugene where Jack Nicholson’s iconic toast tantrum was shot for Five Easy Pieces. 27 During this public health crisis, we are continuing to print copies of WW, although we have reduced our press run because fewer of you are on the streets and many businesses where we distribute are closed. To find a print copy of WW near you, go to wweek.com/page/find-a-paper.

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Oregon, Washington and California governors form a pact to jointly reopen their states.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

ART DEPARTMENT

Mark Zusman

Creative Director Joy Bogdan Senior Production Designer Rick “The Hitman” Vodicka Illustration Intern Paola De La Cruz Photography Intern Mick Hangland-Skill

EDITORIAL

News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Matthew Singer Assistant A&C Editor Andi Prewitt Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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Editorial Intern Camille Soleil

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Heather Woodruff, via Facebook: “Thanks, Portland, the longer you ‘rebel’ and stay selfcentered, the longer all of us are screwed.”

K. Kofler, via week.com: “I get social distancing and am practicing it. Closing playgrounds and schools, I get. But telling us we can’t go out into OUR woods is B.S. Since I don’t have the option of working from home and am considered ‘essential,’ my mental health days in the forest by myself are essential, too. Let’s get reasonable about this; dispense with the heavy-handed, over“I’m not sure reaching orders and deal with the all these new real problem—the lack of testing.”

apartment buildings in Portland are roof-friendly.”

Brian Thorp, via Facebook: “I deliver food so I get to see all over the metro area. The further you get from downtown Portland the more people there are outside. Gresham and all up McLoughlin Boulevard are particularly bad. The river is also particularly crowded in Oregon City.”

Robyn Pryor, via Facebook: “People are doing the best they can. We’re allowed to be outside, we’re allowed to talk with friends and neighbors as long as we practice physical distancing. This isn’t a competition of who makes the best martyr.”

Natasha Riedel, via Facebook: “I live in Portland and am an essential worker. I walk to work everyday instead of taking the bus to stay safe. I

Dr. Know

have seen SO MANY people out in the last three days, not adhering to social distancing as well as giving me side eye when I walk around them at an acceptable distance. We aren’t in the clear.

Stay. The fuck. Home.”

Gil George, via week.com: “OK, well let’s take a look at comparative lot size. It is a lot easier to isolate when your living area is measured in acres and not feet.”

Andi Costa, via Facebook: “I’m sure it’s not easy for those living in apartments. My friend in NYC hangs out on the roof. But I’m not sure all these new apartment buildings in Portland are roof-friendly.”

Sean Hanna, via Facebook: “It’s not been perfect, but both Portland and Oregon are beating the curve. Many sad, cynical remarks here.”

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Email: mzusman@wweek.com

BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

Hospital mistakes kill 250,000 people every year, yet we still go to hospitals. Car crashes kill another 40,000, but we keep driving. Heart disease kills 650,000, but we rarely exercise. Are we crashing our economy for a fear out of proportion to reality? —Julie D. Under normal circumstances, Julie, I’d applaud your instinct for culling the herd. Unfortunately, your question is basically the same “flu kills people every year” argument that Donald Trump was pimping last month (to be fair, he’s walked it back since then).

This canard holds that people die all the time, so if COVID-19 kills a few more than usual, who cares? Life will go on. (Well, not for the people who died, but you get the idea.) Unfortunately, there are several reasons you can’t write off this pandemic as “The Flu but a Little Worse.”

Let’s run the numbers. Greater Portland holds about 2.7 million people. The U.S. annual mortality rate is (or used to be, anyway) around 0.8 percent, meaning that locally we bury about 21,500 people a year, or around 425 per week.

Meanwhile, La Rona has a fatality rate of around 2 percent. An unchecked outbreak (one in which 80 percent of us get the disease) would add another 43,000 to that number, effectively tripling our annual body count.

Only triple? Well, that’s not so bad—we could get used to an extra 850 stiffs a week, right?

Unfortunately, due to the nature of outbreaks, it’s not 850 a week for 52 weeks; it’s more like 15,000 a week for three weeks.

But wait, there’s more! Now that we’ve completely overwhelmed the health care system, the virus’s 2 percent fatality rate will go up, because of all the people who would have lived if they’d gotten medical care but will now die because they didn’t.

Scale this laissez-faire approach to pestilence up to the national level and the pandemic goes from killing 500,000 people to killing 6.5 million.

I understand the temptation to say the hell with it and save the economy. Still, it’s a tough call. If only there were some precedent of a nation consigning 6 million of its citizens to a grisly death in the name of progress so we could have a clue as to how history might judge us.

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

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ROCKY BURNSIDE

MURMURS

PORTLAND CYCLIST ENJOYS EMPTY ROADS.

BOP is around the corner.

Make sure you get nominated!

Email bop@wweek.com to find out more 4

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

ADVOCATES PLEAD FOR PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL: Proponents of bolstering Oregon’s woeful mental health system, which regularly ranks among the nation’s worst, appealed to Gov. Kate Brown on April 14, noting the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the shortage of treatment options.

“Emergency departments are closing to all but the most serious cases, which has left Oregonians in mental health crisis without anywhere to receive safe treatment,” said the letter, signed by numerous advocacy groups, including Oregon Recovers and the Portland Business Alliance. It asks Brown to greenlight construction of a long-proposed 100-bed psychiatric hospital in Wilsonville that state officials have blocked. Brown’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

PORTLAND ISN’T CLOSING STREETS TO CARS: Last week, Oakland’s mayor banned cars from 74 miles of city streets in order to give residents more room to walk and bike while staying 6 feet apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. Portland transportation officials won’t be following suit anytime soon.

“If we close streets, we risk creating destinations where people would gather,” Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesman John Brady tells WW. “This is exactly what we must avoid.” To some Portland bicycle and pedestrian advocates, street closures are an elegant solution to the city’s jammed parks. Transportation Commissioner Chloe Eudaly isn’t yet on board. “I am open to creative, thoughtful uses of our right of way, and I plan to champion many more car-free streets in the future,” she tells WW, “but right now, safety, the safety of vulnerable Portlanders and essential services need to come first.”

STATE OVERRULES PROMINENT LANDLORD: The Oregon Health Authority stepped in April 6 to

settle a dispute between landlord Katherine Durant and American Family Urgent Care, which wanted to erect a temporary patient screening facility outside its clinic in the Uptown Shopping Center in Northwest Portland. Durant, who is married to former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, denied earlier requests from the clinic, citing inadequate space in the parking lot. But OHA ordered her to allow the structure so the clinic could separate patients with COVID-19 symptoms from other patients. Durant did not respond to a request for comment.

BROWN FUNDS FOOD PANTRIES: Gov. Kate Brown on April 13 announced $8 million in funding relief over the next eight weeks for the Oregon Food Bank. “In times of crisis, no Oregonian should need to wonder where they can find food for their family,” said Brown. Last week, WW reported on the growing demands on the state’s food pantries and soup kitchens (“Hunger Pains,” April 8, 2020). The food bank told WW it could run out of supplies to meet demand as soon as next week.

CITY WORKERS CONFRONT TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: As most city of Portland employees try to work remotely, many are encountering unanticipated hurdles: lack of bandwidth, and software programs that require their home computers to have a security device called an RSA token in order to access city networks. The tokens have been a particular problem for the Bureau of Development Services, which is responsible for reviewing plans and inspecting construction projects. “The city, like other employers, is experiencing unprecedented demand for telework,” says Dylan Rivera, a city spokesman. “Vendors that supply key technology like tokens are struggling to keep up.”

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

KEEPING COUNT CORBIN SMITH

FORECAST

THAT’S HEAVY, DOC: The Kiggins Theatre in Vancouver, Wash., offers a warning.

Pact to the Future Oregon’s recovery from COVID-19 is now linked to California’s. Here’s what its governor expects.

BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N rmonahan@wweek.com

What will Oregon look like after the COVID-19 pandemic? California.

On April 13, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown joined her counterparts in Washington and California to form a West Coast pact in which they agreed to cooperate on how to rescind their states’ stay-home orders.

Their announcement came after President Donald Trump falsely claimed he had “total authority” to end such orders—even after he left it to the states to halt the spread of the virus. And it was a striking rebuke to the failed federal response.

Each state is still developing its own plan for easing the restrictions that have sent residents indoors. Brown went before cameras April 14 with few specifics—but offered a broad framework for understanding how she’ll decide when to reopen Oregon. Her conditions include adequate protective gear for medical providers, a decline in COVID-19 cases, adequate testing (around 15,000 tests a week), and an effective system for tracing cases and isolating people when cases are identified. (She added that restrictions may be lifted earlier in parts of the state that are less impacted by the virus.)

Want more details? So did we.

With Brown hinting that Oregon may look to our larger neighbor to the south for guidance, WW flipped over to the April 14 announcement by California Gov. Gavin Newsom about how he’ll open his state.

He offered a similar framework to Brown’s—but with the added criteria that the state’s health and tech institutions must develop therapies to address the virus. He also offered vivid specifics about what life in the near future will look like.

Here are five things Oregonians may need to know about Newsom’s outlook

for his “nation-state,” as he calls California, as orders for social distancing are lifted.

“Normal it will not be,” Newsom cautioned, “at least until we have herd immunity or a vaccine.”

Time frame: Wait two weeks. At that time, Newsom expects to be able to announce a larger timeline, if hospitalizations and use of intensive care beds are down.

Masks are here to stay. “Face coverings are likely to be common in public,” the California public health PowerPoint presentation stated.

Going to restaurants will be different. “You may be having dinner with a waiter wearing gloves, maybe a face mask,” Newsom said. “Dinner where the menu is disposable, where half the tables in that restaurant no longer appear, where your temperature is checked before walking in. These are likely scenarios.”

Schools may look different too, with the possibility of fewer students in a building at a time. “Can you stagger the times that our times comes in?” Newsom asked. He said that’s a question he and other officials are asking, along with figuring out how to handle PE, recess and lunch in ways that keep kids apart.

Big events like conventions, graduations and concerts may not return for at least a year. “The prospects of mass gatherings are negligible at best until we get to herd immunity,” Newsom said— meaning such gatherings aren’t going to happen until half the people in the state have had the virus or a vaccine has been developed, which isn’t expected for more than a year.

Above the Law An influential criminal justice panel includes more Democrats than statutes allow.

A panel responsible for formulating Oregon’s criminal justice policy has been operating in violation of state law for the past two years.

In 1995, the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission was created to “improve the legitimacy, efficiency, and effectiveness of state and local criminal justice systems [by] providing a centralized and impartial forum for statewide policy development and planning.”

By law, the CJC consists of nine members. Seven are appointed by the governor and one each by the Senate president and the speaker of the Oregon House.

In order for the commission to be “impartial,” the statute that lays out the commission’s responsibilities says this about the partisan makeup of the governor’s appointments: “Not more than four members may belong to the same political party.”

But records show that since Feb. 14, 2018, five of Gov. Kate Brown’s seven appointees have been Democrats.

In that time, CJC policy discussions and research have underpinned the aggressive reforms that began in 2013 with the Justice Reinvestment Act, which was aimed at reducing incarceration rates. Those CJCbacked reforms continued in 2019, when lawmakers voted to all but end Oregon’s death penalty.

Republicans, who have often chafed at Democrats’ reform agenda in Salem, were unaware of the commission’s makeup.

“The Criminal Justice Commission pushed major policy changes through the Legislature while illegally constituted,” said House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R-Canby) in a statement. “This is of real concern and calls into question the validity of their work. Appointments to the commission that meet the requirements set in Oregon law should be made immediately.”

Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote, a sometime critic of the reforms, was more blunt.

“This is what we get with a one-party

Oregon Criminal Justice Commission Members Appointed

by Gov. Kate Brown

state,” says Foote, who adds that Brown and her supporters have perverted the mission of the panel.

“They’ve forgotten why it was created: to be impartial, fact-based and nonpartisan,” he says. “The idea was to have a place that wouldn’t be driven by ideology.”

Foote, who will retire at the end of this year, has battled reformers for much of the past decade. He says an increase in recidivism during that period should cause all Oregonians to question the commission’s work.

Mike Schmidt, the commission’s director, is currently on leave as he runs for Multnomah County district attorney.

Schmidt referred questions to his deputy, Ken Sanchagrin, who pointed upstairs.

“Commission staff is usually minimally involved in the appointment process as our primary role has been to keep the governor’s office apprised of upcoming vacancies,” Sanchagrin said in an email.

A 2018 Senate confirmation document prepared for Brown’s most recent appointment to the commission, Jessica Kampfe, a Salem public defender, incorrectly stated Kampfe was a non-affiliated voter. Her voter file shows instead that Kampfe has been registered as a Democrat since 2008.

Brown’s spokeswoman Liz Merah acknowledged Kampfe is a Democrat.

“Upon review, it appears that five of the seven governor-appointed CJC commissioners are currently registered as Democrats,” Merah said. “This was a mistake, of which we were unaware. We are consulting CJC and legal counsel on next steps.”

Josephine County Counsel Wally Hicks, the only Republican currently on the CJC, says he was unaware of the legal limit on the number of Democrats but says he’s found the panel to operate fairly. “It’s been evenhanded,” Hicks says. Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill, another commission member, says he’s disappointed to learn from WW that the CJC included too many Democrats. “We need to be in compliance with the statue,” Underhill says.

Merah said the mistake was unintentional and not an attempt to stack the deck.

“One of the governor’s goals with boards and commissions is to ensure a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints are represented,” Merah said. “Specifically with the Criminal Justice Commission, the governor makes appointment decisions based on additional statutory criteria, including geographic diversity and political party diversity.” NIGEL JAQUISS.

Chairman Robert Ball (D) CEO of Robert Ball Companies Jessica Beach (non-affiliated) Yamhill County Community Justice director Rob Bovett (D) Oregon League of Counties Wally Hicks (R) Josephine County legal counsel Jessica Kampfe (D) public defender Sebastian Tapia (D) Lane County associate counsel Rod Underhill (D)Multnomah County district attorney Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

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AARON WESSLING

NEWS MAPPED

Death Spiral Most COVID-19 deaths in Multnomah County can be traced to two nursing homes.

FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT

What It’s Like for a Nurse to Get COVID-19 New figures released by Oregon health officials last week showed 1 in 7 cases of COVID-19 were health care workers.

We spoke to a nurse who contracted the virus.

She’s a Providence nurse in the Portland metro area.

She told WW about her experience testing positive for COVID-19, recovering from the illness and the prospect of going back to work. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak to the press and fears she could lose her job. Here’s what her illness was like, as told to WW reporter Tess Riski.

By Tuesday [March 23], I couldn’t take a deep breath without going into a coughing fit, and was so short of breath just walking to the bathroom that I knew something was definitely wrong. Between the shortness of breath and the no sense of smell, I was pretty sure that I had COVID. [My manager] had checked with someone in the emergency department where I worked and said, “Hey, are you guys busy? I think this person needs to come in.” That was the quickest way, was just to go into the ER as a patient and get swabbed there. So that’s what I did.

The thing that really kept me down the longest is the shortness of breath. The day that I got up and walked just to the bathroom and was struggling to catch my breath was scary because I thought, “What if it escalates more and quicker and I really can’t breathe? Do I have time to call 911? Can I call my son?” If I’m too active, I get really short of breath, sort of like I’ve been running a marathon.

I just shampooed my hair, and when I was done, I was breathing like I had just run a long distance.

When it was at its worst, I couldn’t even take a good deep breath without coughing, and coughing so much that I couldn’t catch my breath. And that part’s scary. Because I had to really sit and have these tiny shallow breaths to try and catch my breath and tell myself that I was OK. Because I’m a nurse and I’m like, “OK, this is what I would tell my patients,” I just had to keep thinking, “Just take 6

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

shallow breaths, just relax, relax, you’re fine.”

One of the things that Providence is doing is, when we have a patient who we suspect or who we test for COVID, there’s a sign-in sheet where you sign in your name and your employee number, and then it’s tracked so if that patient comes back positive you can be notified. Because I got my results [in 24 hours], I called one of the nurses who’s a good friend of mine who happened to triage me.

I said, “Hey, just so you know, I am positive.” I told her that she could tell all of the nurses and the doctor who had come into contact with me. As far as I’m aware, those three people were never actually notified by Providence.* They know because I told them, but they were never actually even notified that they came into contact with a positive patient.

To be honest, I’m scared to go back. I would love to tell you that I’m brave and courageous and can’t wait to go be on the front lines. But I’m scared. Because we don’t know for sure if I have immunity, or if I can catch it again. *Providence Health denies this. In an email to WW, it said the following: “Providence has a process in place to notify caregivers who may have been exposed to any infectious disease patient, including a COVID-19-positive patient.”

Thirteen of Multnomah County’s first 20 deaths from COVID-19 are associated with just two Portland nursing homes.

People living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are at high risk from the virus, because the disease spreads through close contact and poses a greater risk to those who are older and otherwise infirm.

“That’s not a surprise to us,” says Kim Toevs, the county’s director of communicable disease. “They are the most vulnerable people.”

The local data tracks what’s happened statewide: 32 of Oregon’s 55 deaths, as of April 14, were at long-term care facilities. RACHEL MONAHAN.

COVID-19 Deaths in Multnomah County 9 at Healthcare at Foster Creek, 6003 SE 136th Ave. 4 at Laurelhurst Village, 3130 SE Stark St. 7 not in long-term care facilities

Source: Oregon Health Authority

AARON WESSLING

HAVE FAITH: Homemade signs of encouragement dot Portland neighborhoods.

NEWS AARON WESSLING

Approach the Bench Judges were ordered to postpone court hearings during the pandemic. Some hesitate.

BY TE SS R I SK I

tess@wwe ek.com

For many Portlanders, life has come to a halt during the pandemic. But in some parts of the state’s court system, it’s still business as usual.

Back on March 16, Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters announced that courts statewide would postpone nearly all hearings for defendants who weren’t in custody in order to stem the spread of COVID-19, with an exception for essential hearings.

“The nature of this public health emergency has led me to order the postponement of most trials and court hearings,” Walters said in a statement. “We will do our best to provide people their day in court when we can safely do so, and we will pursue options for continuing our work without requiring in-person appearances, but at the present time, limiting the number of people coming into our courtrooms and courthouses is paramount.”

But the state’s online court docket shows dozens of hearings scheduled in Multnomah County courtrooms b e t w e e n n o w a n d M a y 14 . C h r i s O’Connor, a Portland criminal defense lawyer, says not all judges are following Walters’ directive.

Instead, he and other defense lawyers tell WW, judges are latching onto the small amount of wiggle room Walters’ order left them to keep making defendants show up at the courthouse.

WW has viewed a stream of emails between Multnomah County circuit judges and both prosecutors and defense lawyers that show confusion about Walters’ order and how it is or is not being followed.

“When the chief justice says to postpone everything, why isn’t everything postponed?” O’Connor says. “They’re still having 15 people at least gather in a room at a time. Yesterday, I was in a room with 15 people, waiting. There’s still witnesses, presiding officers, court staff all still have to show up.”

Multnomah County Chief Criminal Judge Cheryl Albrecht determines the procedures for the county’s criminal court hearings. She tells WW that any inperson hearings being held are necessary.

“I would disagree that we are holding nonessential hearings,” Albrecht said in an email to WW. “We have carefully reviewed Justice Walters’ order and believe all of the hearings we are holding

comply with that order.”

Albrecht says the court is acting in compliance with April 10 guidelines set forth by Multnomah County Presiding Judge Stephen Bushong. She pointed to a memo she sent judges, telling them to postpone cases for some defendants who weren’t already in custody and hold many other hearings via phone.

Yet Multnomah County criminal judges are still holding in-person hearings, some for out-of-custody defendants, court dockets show. On April 14, for instance, two out-of-custody defendants will appear before Judge Eric Dahlin and Judge Andrew Lavin.

Every Multnomah County courtroom is set up differently, O’Connor says.

Some rows of the gallery are closed off entirely to maintain social distancing, and tables have been moved farther apart. Many people are wearing personal protective equipment, though some staff are not. But in the Justice Center courtroom, where attorneys speak with or whisper to clients, O’Connor says, “It’s impossible to maintain distance, although people are “IT’S LIKE A certainly trying.”

Stacey Reding, a GAME OF CHICKEN. lawyer with MultALL THE COURTS nomah Defenders, says making low-levALL OVER THE C u r r e n t l y, 7 2 6 el offenders appear STATE ARE LEFT TO inmates are locked in court during the up in the Multnomah pandemic is unnecINTERPRET THAT County Jail. That’s essarily risky.

THEMSELVES.” fewer than usual. But “I have been other cities across frustrated with our —CHRIS O’CONNOR, the U.S. are releasc o u r t ’s f a i l u r e t o DEFENSE L AW YER ing hundreds of just do blanket setinmates—primarily overs of these dockthe elderly or mediets, risking people appearing in person for low-level cally vulnerable—to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. offenses,” Reding says.

Erious Johnson Jr., a criminal Aside from the fact that holding nonessential hearings runs counter to defense lawyer in Portland, says Multthe chief justice’s order, O’Connor says nomah County judges have been good at continuing to conduct regular court arranging conferences over the phone. proceedings is troubling for two reasons: That said, he was just in court on MonIf people are still showing up in person day and noticed a lack of personal profor unnecessary hearings, their risk for tective equipment among court staff. “I exposure to COVID-19 increases. And if don’t know if they’ve been requiring face more warrants are issued and more rul- masks and gloves,” Johnson says.

Multnomah County district attorney ings are made, more defendants could be sent to jail—the very place where many spokesman Brent Weisberg says the court states are trying to reduce the number has scheduled most hearings by phone.

“We have been working carefully and of people behind bars so they won’t be trapped in close quarters during the expeditiously with our local public safety partners, including the local defense bar, pandemic.

GRINDING SLOWLY: Much of Portland has come to a standstill. The Multnomah County Courthouse is still buzzing.

and others to do everything we can to balance the needs of public safety, public health and to serve crime victims,” Weisberg said in an email to WW. Albrecht says nearly all nonessential hearings for defendants on bench probation can be conducted over the phone.

Appearances are waived if attorneys can show the court they are in contact with their clients and can communicate upcoming hearing dates to them. Citations are issued only if an attorney can’t do that.

O’Connor says many of his firms’ clients are homeless and struggle to telephone into their hearings. “It’s halfway there, but not quite,” O’Connor says.

“They’re still issuing warrants if you don’t participate in that.”

He argues that the balance Multnomah County courts are trying to achieve looks more like a guessing game.

“All the courts all over the state are left to interpret that themselves,” O’Connor says. “It’s like a game of chicken.”

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

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AARON WESSLING

NEWS

A Sickly Feeling Portland’s public employees have been mostly spared from layoffs so far.

That probably won’t last.

BY NI GEL JAQ U ISS

Get Portland news every day.

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njaquiss@wweek.com

With schools out until next fall, Portland Public Schools’ 350 yellow buses are parked like a swarm of oversized bees, one pretty much the same as next.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has split the district’s nearly 260 bus drivers and mechanics into two very different groups.

For 186 of them, who work for First Student, the district’s transportation contractor, Gov. Kate Brown’s initial schools closure March 12 meant a trip to the unemployment line. “March 13 was pretty much our last day,” says Anna Tompte, a representative of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, and a contracted school bus driver.

But the 72 drivers who are PPS employees, rather than contractors—they are still on the district payroll. (The district uses its own employees to transport its most vulnerable students, those with special needs.)

When Brown closed schools March 12, her executive order required that districts “continue to regularly pay all employees of public schools.” (PPS has about 8,500 employees. About 7,000 are represented by a union.)

For now, those drivers are idle. And many are sitting at home.

“They said we might be delivering food or supplies for students who are home,” says Jimmy Appelhanz, an ATU representative for the drivers who are full-time district employees. “But we haven’t started doing that yet.”

The divergent fortunes of Tompte and Appelhanz are a microcosm of the enormous challenge for school districts, and state and local governments, as top leaders attempt to deal with the effects of COVID-19.

Elected officials, from Brown to the boards of the state’s 197 school districts, are keen to protect the public employees on whom Oregonians rely. But in private conversations and public memos, those officials are beginning to acknowledge that protection cannot last much longer.

The unprecedented job losses COVID-19 has caused—270,000, and rising fast, 13 percent of the state’s workers—have fallen almost entirely on the private sector. That sector is, of course, the source of most of the income taxes that provide the bulk of K-12 funding in Oregon.

But it seems just a matter of time before public employees start losing their jobs in big numbers. The Oregon Legislature, which sends those income tax dollars to PPS and the state’s 196 other school districts, has not issued any guidance on spending yet. Brown and lawmakers are in limbo, waiting for the May revenue forecast.

“The governor and legislative leaders are in agreement that the state needs to be extremely prudent with resources,” says Brown’s spokeswoman Liz Merah. “We will provide additional direction once we have a better picture of the revenue forecast in May and more details and guidance about Oregon’s share of the federal CARES Act.” State Sen. Arnie Roblan (D-Coos Bay), co-chairman of the Leg-

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

MEMENTO MORI: When a food cart pod in Sellwood-Moreland closed last month, the owner left a bleak joke at a picnic table. The novel coronavirus is ravaging Oregon’s economy and will force hard decisions for government employers.

islature’s Joint Special Committee on Coronavirus Response, says lawmakers are being told to expect a $2 billion to $3 billion drop in biennial revenue in the May forecast.

“That’s what I’m hearing,” Roblan says. “It’s going to be really bad.”

Some governments have already acted: Metro, which depends on revenue from the Oregon Convention Center, Oregon Zoo, Expo Center and other shuttered facilities, laid off 40 percent of its workforce. The Port of Portland has announced furloughs, and the state’s universities are laying off workers. And the city of Portland laid off 900 temporary and seasonal Portland Parks & Recreation employees.

But Portland will almost certainly have to do more. Officials say the city is looking at the same kind of hit the state is: $100 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, a nearly 20 percent cut.

On March 14, the city’s chief administrative officer, Tom Rinehart, announced the first actions the city would take to cut costs in the face of sharply lowered revenue.

Rinehart said the city would freeze pay and cost-of-living increases for its 1,700 non-union employees. Those employees will also have to take 10 furlough days between now and Oct. 7.

Mayor Ted Wheeler will also forgo his salary for the rest of the calendar year, saving about $95,000.

But to find bigger savings, Wheeler faces the same challenge Portland Public Schools and other public sector employers face: Most city employees have union contracts. (Nearly three-quarters of the city’s 6,300 full-time employees belong to a union.) Making changes to those employees’ compensation or working conditions requires consultation and agreement from labor leaders, whose cooperation is required to reopen contracts that have already been bargained, signed and implemented.

“We have begun this conversation with our labor partners as well,” Wheeler wrote in an April 10 memo to bureau directors.

“We are in discussion about many of the same strategies—a freeze on merit, COLA and other pay increases, and furloughs. They have been good partners in these conversations, and we hope to reach broad agreement about these approaches before my proposed budget is released at the end of this month.”

The two bureaus that account for the lion’s share of personnel costs, the Portland Police Bureau and Portland Fire & Rescue, are the last to be cut in a normal recession. That’s doubly true now: With the pressure COVID-19 is putting on first responders, those budgets will be heavily protected if cuts are required this time.

If Wheeler and the Portland City Council are forced to ask unions for pay cuts, furloughs or layoffs, the weight of such measures is likely to fall on non-sworn workers, such as members of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, which represents 950 city workers.

AFSCME representative Bao Nguyen says preliminary talks with city management have been constructive. “We are open to conversations about furloughs and COLA freezes,” Nguyen says.

“As we look at the dire financial picture, if they are needed, we are not going to put up a wall.”

The demand for government services usually increases during a recession, but the ability to pay for those services—whether it’s schools or social workers or building inspectors—declines.

“They explained it to us last week that most of the budget is based on income tax,” says Appelhanz, the PPS driver who’s hoping to keep his job. “But if everybody is unemployed, then where’s the money going to come from?”

NICK TOKES

Greener Pastures What does it mean for weed to be deemed “essential”?

Four Portland cannabis experts weigh in.

BY MATTHEW S IN GER

This year, 4/20 is essential.

Here’s how to celebrate.

It took 100 years for cannabis to go from an unlawful evil to a consumer product advertised on billboards and endorsed by everyone from politicians to mommy bloggers.

But it took only three weeks for it to become essential.

In March, as the governor gradually shut down many businesses across Oregon, consumers rushed weed shops with the same vigor as they did the toilet paper aisle, resulting in $84.5 million in sales—the single biggest retail month since recreational use was legalized in 2015.

On March 23, when Kate Brown issued her formal stay-home order, cannabis dispensaries were placed in the same category as grocery and liquor stores, pharmacies and gas stations— businesses Oregonians apparently cannot do without.

As with everything else in the world right now, the future of cannabis is uncertain. Here’s what we know for sure, though: April 20, the highest of high holidays, is right around the corner, and dispensaries are still open. And that alone is cause for celebration.

Four/20 is going to look a bit different this year—no puff-puff-passing, please. But it’s also never been easier for stoners to remain locked to the couch: Delivery services, which have long

struggled to establish a niche in the recreational marketplace, are suddenly booming. We tried them out, to see which were fastest, cheapest and, crucially, the safest (page 11).

Need ideas for what to order? We asked nine Portlanders which strains, edibles and topicals they’ve stockpiled for the occasion (page 12).

And because there is perhaps no group right now that needs relief more than parents, we’ve provided a guide to getting high while schools are shut down and the kids have nowhere to go (page 14). Make sure dryer sheets are in your next grocery order, even if you don’t own a washing machine!

While forecasting the post-pandemic landscape is difficult, we still had to ask: What might the cannabis industry look like when this is all over? According to those we spoke to, there are reasons for optimism (see right). After all, the country is going to be looking for any way to stimulate the economy, and what better stimulant is there than pot?

So grab a pre-roll, a gummy or an infused bath bomb, and treat yourself to a moment of relaxation. Right now, it might be more crucial than ever—you might even call it essential.

—Matthew Singer, WW Arts & Culture Editor

Oregon’s cannabis industry can’t seem to catch a break.

If it’s not oversupply sending prices plummeting and putting farms and retailers out of business, then it’s vaping products suddenly and mysteriously incinerating users’ lungs. Now, it’s a global pandemic ravaging the economy and taking disposable income out of its customers’ wallets.

While March broke cannabis sales records in Oregon, leaping 37 percent from the same time last year, those numbers are already sliding downward, according to dispensary owners, as their main customer base—namely, service industry workers—face mass unemployment.

“It was like our 4/20 holiday came a month early,” says Tyson Hawarth, owner of Oregon’s Finest, which has stores in Northeast Portland and the Pearl District.

“It seemed like there was a bunch of panic buying right up until the Stay Home, Save Lives order. And then, as soon as that officially took place, we saw sales take a nosedive. Since then it’s been very, very slow.”

Sure, Gov. Kate Brown has deemed cannabis an “essential business,” allowing shops to stay open. But with the pot industry specifically ineligible for loan assistance from the federal government, the already thin margins many dispensaries and growers operate on are getting slimmer.

In the long term, however, there are reasons for cautious optimism. In fact, according to some observers, the pandemic could end up being a boon for cannabis, particularly on a national level.

To get a sense of where coronavirus is pushing the cannabis industry, WW spoke to several Portland experts: Adam Smith, director of the Craft Cannabis Alliance; Amy Margolis, lawyer and founder of the Oregon Cannabis Association; and economist Beau Whitney, formerly of New Frontier Data.

WW: What does it mean in the long term to have so many states deem cannabis an

“essential” business?

Beau Whitney: It benefits the industry in an environment where there’s already nationally 65 percent support for cannabis legalization in some form. By saying this is an essential business, and then by highlighting that fact, the general public becomes more and more comfortable with the concept of having legal access to cannabis products.

Amy Margolis: Just hearing over and over that cannabis is essential is going to have a federal impact. A lot of these state legalization initiatives are not going to make the ballot because they can’t get the signatures under the circumstances, so I think a lot of attention and energy is going to be shifted to federal work. I think a silver lining is going to be that we might have a lot of energy and resources directed at 280E [the federal tax code barring cannabis businesses from taking deductions or credits], federal legalization, veterans research—those kinds of things that are broadly important.

Adam Smith: This is a moment when everything is on the table.

Everything is changing in some way. I think that this is going to impact cannabis, and the first step is the governor calling it essential.

It was an admission of reality. So now it is a question of accommodation. How do we accommodate the new reality, and how is the new reality going to create more frictionless ways for the economy to operate?

March was the biggest month ever for cannabis sales in Oregon. Is there any indication of who was buying all that weed?

Smith: I don’t have numbers, but I’ve heard four different dispensaries in the last month who have said to me some version of, “I had this old lady came in who said she hadn’t smoked in 30 years.” I think people are looking at like, “What am I going to do for the next three weeks at home?” Especially if you lost a job or you’re working from home at some level.

Margolis: I speculate that it’s people stocking up the same way I went and bought 27 boxes of Cheerios.

CONT. on page 10

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9

WESLEY LAPOINTE

KICKED TO THE CURB: Oregon’s Finest is one of several dispensaries in Oregon temporarily allowed to offer curbside pickup during the pandemic shutdown.

Whitney: We’re seeing this across the country.

Consumers were reacting to shelter in place with their grocery shopping or their alcohol shopping, and they did the same thing with cannabis. They reacted to the uncertainty by buying. I don’t think it was any different than buying rice or beans— maybe a little bit different than TP.

C H A L I C E FA R M S . CO M

Will these people remain regular consumers once this is over?

Smith: Again, this is all non-scientific, but like anything else, when people get back to work, they will have less time and do mindless recreational things less. But this is a unique time. It may be a time of expanding the base a little bit, and those behaviors may change, but I think they’re sort of elastic with life situations.

Margolis: Even though I want to think cannabis is recession-proof, I had someone ask the question: If people don’t have jobs and they can’t get any assistance, are they going to spend money they don’t have on the weed? And I think that remains to be seen. Under the circumstances, in a recession, that looks very different than what we’ve seen before, where millions and millions and millions of people are immediately out of work, how do we spend our discretionary money, if there even is any discretionary money? We’ll have to look and see what happens in April and May if people stay on lockdown as they file for unemployment. If there’s no money, there’s just no money to buy weed.

How significant is it that the Oregon Liquor Control Commission allowed curbside sales at dispensaries, even temporarily?

Smith: It’s an indicator of a new way of regulators looking at the industry. “How do we make this function more smoothly?” is becoming more important than, “Oh my God, we have to treat this like nuclear waste.” The absurdity of that starts to become apparent when it’s economically life or death to keep an industry going.

Margolis: It paves the way, if it works, to having drive-thrus, and that’s kind of amazing. You’ve seen Starbucks go from stores where you have to go inside, and now you see the lines around the blocks for takeout. I don’t think people can recognize the big changes because, shit, the world’s a dumpster fire. But that is a huge shift.

Hawarth: Another thing that we’ve requested is that they allow vending machines to be used inside of our locations. The biggest risks are customer and employee interaction—anytime they’re transferring product payment or checking ID, those are the different areas where you’re likely to be within 6 feet of the other person. If you can have mechanisms in place so that it’s not as frequent, it should, in theory, slow the interaction and slow the spread.

What role might cannabis play in reinvigorating

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the economy?

Smith: Cannabis would normally be a very weird place to look for economic stimulus. What would happen, though, if Congress passed the State Cannabis Commerce Act that [Ron] Wyden and [Earl] Blumenauer introduced, which tells the feds, “Hands off, let the states move product”? If we could move product between states, you would immediately have thousands of businesses on the West Coast whose valuations would increase two to five times. On the East Coast, instead of looking three to five years down the road, within the next six to 18 months, if New York legalizes, you have hundreds of companies forming and launching and getting up and running, with hundreds of thousands of suppliers.

Whitney: There are almost 31,000 legal businesses in the United States, and there’s an additional 115,000 that are operating illicitly. Assuming full federal legalization, you’d have an additional 1.5 million workers in the workplace that are paying taxes at a time where people are economically displaced. There’s a strong case to be said for reforming some of the laws in order to allow greater access.

Smith: If we fix the economics, cannabis is poised to be maybe the most important source of economic stimulus in the private sector. What other industry could do anything to have thousands of companies increase their valuations by multiples and hundreds of new companies starting up in the teeth of a recession? It doesn’t exist.

How realistic is the idea of interstate commerce, though?

Smith: All we need is for the feds to get out of the way. The Democrats are ready to allow the states to do what they want. Even [Joe] Biden, who is probably their least cannabis-friendly candidate, has said, “Look, I don’t believe in federal legalization, but of course we will let the states do what they think they need to do.” So what we need to do is get the states to say, “This is what we need to do.”

Kate Brown has signed a bill here, and Jared Polis in Colorado has spoken approvingly of opening up markets. What we need is, this is the moment for the governors to step up. And I think this is going to be the path forward.

Margolis: Eventually, we need interstate commerce. Do I think that somehow the lockdown is going to result in rapidly expediting interstate commerce? No. I also think the focus right now more broadly should be including the cannabis industry and cannabis-adjacent businesses in the stimulus plan. To exclude a business that is legal in Oregon and many other states is totally unacceptable, especially because we have seen many of these states deem cannabis businesses essential and allow them to continue operating.

Bring It On Home

R EVIEWS BY B R IA N N A WHEELER

Dutchie (DUTCHIE.COM) DELIVERY RANGE:

ABBY GORDON

After years of struggle, cannabis delivery services are doing big business in Portland during the pandemic.

Here’s how they stack up.

Portland city limits MINIMUM ORDER: $50 PAYMENT ACCEPTED: Cash, cards SAMPLE ORDER: An eighth of Super Silver Haze, a half-gram cartridge of Avitas Chocolate Oranges CO2 extract TIME ORDER PLACED: 2:11 pm TIME OF DELIVERY: 3 pm OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Rather than functioning as a virtual dispensary, Bend-based Dutchie operates more in the vein of Uber Eats or Grubhub, picking up orders from select dispensaries and bringing them to your door. I was also able to order from a dispensary only a few blocks from me, so the wait time hardly felt like much of a wait at all. My delivery driver wore both a mask and latex gloves and accommodated me putting cash on a table on my porch for pickup. We shrugged at each other and commiserated for a few seconds about how clueless we both felt over this relatively rote transaction. Overall, the experience was sterile but friendly.

Kush Cart

(KUSHCARTPDX.COM) DELIVERY RANGE: Portland city limits MINIMUM ORDER: $40 PAYMENT ACCEPTED: Cash, CanPay mobile app SAMPLE ORDER: A selection of Laurie and

BY L AU R E N YOSH I KO

@LaurenYTerry

Business is finally booming for Kush Cart. It only took three years and a global health crisis to make it happen.

The cannabis delivery service was among the first to launch in Portland after city officials lifted a ban on “weed couriers” in 2017. Since then, the company’s three co-founders have done almost everything themselves, from the marketing to the actual deliveries.

But a lot has changed in just the past few weeks. Orders are nearly four times what they were five weeks ago, says cofounder Eddy Martinez Montes—from 30 deliveries per day to upward of 120.

The increase in revenue has allowed Kush Cart to hire two full-time drivers and an inventory specialist, and to pay above minimum wage and implement paid sick leave for the first time.

“It was a frantic state here at first,” Montes says. “We were lucky to have already been stocking up for 4/20, so we had the inventory to keep up.”

Of all the business models to take root since Oregon legalized recreational cannabis in 2015, delivery has had the hardest time catching on. In Portland, where there’s a dispensary on every corner, the convenience could never seem to outweigh the delivery fees, nor could customers’ apparent reluctance to buy weed without seeing it first. Several businesses have come and quickly gone.

Eaze, one of California’s largest delivery services, launched in Portland last summer, putting up splashy blue billboards

downtown, only to shutter its Oregon operations in February.

But under the cloud of COVID-19, the delivery market is suddenly exploding.

It’s not hard to understand why.

“I think people want to minimize contact as much as possible, especially higher-risk customers like seniors,” says Montes. “One older customer stocked up on every different product category to maximize the order—edibles, flower, vapes—and hit an unprecedented $600 total for a single order.”

Other longtime cannabis couriers in Portland are reporting a similar boom.

Adrian Wayman, founder of Green Box, which offers both on-demand delivery and a monthly subscription service, says both daily orders and subscribers are way up. Rip City Delivery has seen sales roughly triple since mid-March. Many individual dispensaries, such as Oregon’s Finest, also offer delivery, and have experienced an uptick as well.

“People have been really patient and grateful overall,” Montes says. “We get comments like, ‘You’re doing God’s work!’

And tips have been generous.”

Now that delivery is finally taking off, the question becomes: Which are worth ordering from? We tried out five to see how they compare in terms of price, speed and safety. (Note: Rip City Delivery serves Southwest Portland exclusively and could not be reviewed by our writer.)

Mary Jane chocolates (two fudge bars and a tube of five chocolate truffles), two Meraki half-gram pre-rolls TIME ORDER PLACED: 1:25 pm TIME OF DELIVERY: 4 pm OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Kush Cart’s menu is as robust as any typical neighborhood shop’s, with an impressive selection of affordable strains and award-winning edibles, in addition to tinctures, topicals, cartridges and extracts. The delivery driver wore a medical-grade mask and gloves and attempted to maintain proper distance, even as I asked, “How do you want this?”

I clumsily offered a stack of bills with a perilously outstretched arm. “Yeah, I’ll just take it. It’s fine,” they said, gently collecting their cash.

Greenery

(GETGREENERY.COM) DELIVERY RANGE: Portland city limits MINIMUM ORDER: $30 PAYMENT ACCEPTED: Cash, cards SAMPLE ORDER: Two SDK cookies (peanut

butter and snickerdoodle), three Mule Extracts gummies TIME ORDER PLACED: 3:01 pm TIME OF DELIVERY: 4:15 pm OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Greenery’s service requires an approved account before shopping, and the website cautions that approval can take up to 24 hours—in my case, it went through in less than an hour.

The virtual shop is limited but well curated, with a typical assortment of cannabis products and a few crucial accessories like papers, pipes, grinders and batteries. The driver, who was apparently new to the job, arrived along with a trainer. Neither wore masks, and the onus of distance was on me, as they nonchalantly offered their phone so I could swipe my card. “Just sign for me,” I requested while pushing my face as far away from the two of them as I could without disappearing into my own neck.

Green Box

(PDXGREENBOX.COM) DELIVERY RANGE: Portland city limits MINIMUM ORDER: $50 PAYMENT ACCEPTED: Cash, cards, Venmo,

Cash App, Apple Pay Indica and Sativa Magic Drops, 1 top-shelf gram TIME ORDER PLACED: 3:43 pm TIME OF DELIVERY: 4:45 pm OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Green Box’s website promotes its subscription service above on-demand delivery, and it took a few tries to successfully navigate the menu, which is fairly robust. Once I’d successfully ordered, the driver—also the company’s coowner—arrived within an hour, maintained a safe distance, wore a medical-grade mask and gloves, and even coached me when I fumbled paying with my Venmo. As a bonus, now I have an adorable green box to keep future flower orders in.

SAMPLE ORDER:

Diem

(PORTLAND.HELLODIEM.COM) DELIVERY RANGE: Most ZIP codes within city limits

MINIMUM ORDER:

$30 Cards only SAMPLE ORDER: One gram of Slurricane sugar sauce, 1 gram of Chem Sour shatter TIME ORDER PLACED: 1:05 pm TIME OF DELIVERY: 2:35 pm OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Bargain dabs warm my heart and empty my wallet, and Diem has a gorgeous selection that spirals from value buys to top-shelf trophies. Once they arrived, the driver—protected with what looked like a homemade mask—maintained a comfortable distance, taking my card details aloud and entering them manually just off my porch, and signing an X for me so I wouldn’t have to touch their phone.

PAYMENT ACCEPTED:

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

11

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NICHOLAS PETER WILSON

Nine Portlanders tell us what they’re smoking, eating and soaking in to get through quarantine.

Anja Charbonneau

Editor in chief and creative director of Broccoli magazine For an indoor-themed 4/20, I’m relying on a multifaceted kit of weed essentials that focuses on feeling calm and pleasantly distracted. I’ve got full-spectrum CBD bath bombs from Cherry River, made in Hood River. I soak and listen to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1986 ambient album, Green. To distract my mind and keep me away from the computer, I’ve got local faves for edibles, like Mr. Moxey’s Mints and Wyld gummies—I prefer both in the 1-to-1 CBD-THC varieties—and I pair them with the meditative activity of putting together a puzzle.

We teamed up with Piecework Puzzles to make our own featuring Broccoli art: flowers smoking joints!

Leather Storrs

Chef and co-host of Cooked With Cannabis on Netflix One of the benefits of being a weed chef is that I get lots of samples. One of the side effects of being stony, though, is forgetting what a lot of them are. My Hello Kitty lunchbox is loaded with odds and ends, so I’ve had a lot of salads these last few weeks. Some I could identify, some were just green. Yesterday was Neil Armstrong and 9 Pound Hammer. There’s a joke in there somewhere.

Zia McCabe

Musician, the Dandy Warhols While everyone else seemed to be racing around for the last packs of toilet paper, I rushed to Oregon’s Finest to make sure I had all the weed I’d need to get through at least the first stretch of our shelter in place experience. Wyld is my favorite brand of edibles—their gummies are delicious and potent. My sweetie has been getting some great deals from Nectar to keep up with our growing need for weed. I’ve been making brownies with homemade cannabis-infused coconut oil that I’ve been stockpiling in my freezer. Pro tip: Always make two batches of brownies, one with cannabis and one without, so you don’t accidentally eat a tray of pot brownies when the munchies kick in.

12

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

Byrdie McCoy

Myke Bogan Musician

Founder of Sativa Science Club

I’ve been dedicating this quarantine to lots of self-care and creative projects, so my stash consists of my favorite pre-rolls, CBD oils and beauty products. My rollies are from Soul Addict with Nice Paper, TKO Reserve and Güd Gardens, but my hands-down fave is Create from East Fork Cultivars. I use 750 mg CBD oils from Rosebud CBD and Frogsong Farm every morning and after my workouts for recovery. And I use Make & Mary’s CBD beauty stick and serums on my face every day.

Since this whole thing started, I just stocked up on a strain called Geist OG. I really like it and wasn’t sure when I would be able to get more, so I just got enough to last me a few weeks. During the quarantine I’ve been working on loads of new music, trying to stay motivated and push boundaries. I’ll smoke and get experimental to try and stay sane, and it’s honestly been working for the mot part. The cycle of smoking, writing, cooking and playing FIFA hasn’t been half bad.

This spring, it’s all about CBD tincture mocktails and convection vaporizers. I like to start my day with a bulletproof coffee, including a nice, big dropperful of 1,200 mg Recover CBD Tincture by Bloom Farms. When my work is done for the evenings, I’ll either kick back with a blueberry basil mocktail and a dropper full of Luminous Botanicals 1:1 Meadow Tincture or I’ll pack my Firefly vaporizer with some Blue Orchid cultivated by my friends at East Fork Cultivars. I chose this chemovar specifically because it contains the terpene pinene, which is known to have bronchodilation properties.

Emma Chasen

Maarquii Musician

Social media manager for Tokeativity

I am stocked up on old flower and have been using it to make a ton of homemade edibles. I’m trying to preserve pulmonary health, so I’ve been choosing to ingest rather than inhale. I also have a lot of cannabis-infused soaking salts from Sweetbody Labs as I have more time at home to relax and take baths.

I’m not smoking much since Miss Rona said she likes the lungs, so I’ve taken to eating edibles. My favorite at the moment is Titan’s Kind Indica Grape Fruit Chews. I was gifted a box after my last show—remember shows?—and I’m hooked. Usually an hour before bed and night night, honey. I miss rolling up so much, so as a treat sometimes I’ll roll a little herbal spliff with damiana, rose and some bud and sit back with a book. Lately, it’s been Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown.

I’m particularly interested in noninhalant cannabis products to minimize any potential lung irritation for the time being. I’m personally stoked on the CBD Apothecary’s line of ratioed THC-CBD tinctures and capsules (for general wellness and mood), Crop Circle Chocolate Truffles (super potent but even more delicious) and Toro Ma’s Baptiste Cannabis Balm (amazing skin soother). Also, although it’s not sold in dispensaries, Gaia Herbs Hemp & Herbs Sleep blend has been clutch in helping me get good rest.

Holistic fitness coach

Cannabis educator and consultant, Eminent Consulting

Brandie Bee

Amy Zimmerman

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

13

Parental Guidance A school-shutdown survival guide for stoner parents.

BY B R IA N N A WHEELER

FIRST LEGAL POT SHOP ON THE WEST COAST

Your kids already know you smoke weed.

No matter how incognito you think you’ve been, they know. They recognize that skunky diesel smell and those droopy, bloodshot eyes. Even if they’re not old enough to understand what cannabis is, they definitely know when you’re baked.

But that’s no excuse for blowing fat bowls of dank kush right in their precious little faces over the quarantine breakfast table. Even during the pandemic, stoner etiquette—parental or otherwise—is essential.

Unfortunately, not all of us have the luxury of a backyard joint sanctuary or a spindly balcony to escape to when we want to enjoy cannabis out of range of our kids. For many parents, the fleeting hours of their child’s school day are the only times they can comfortably smoke weed in their own homes. So how are we supposed to get high when school is suddenly out forever—or at least the rest of the academic year—and children are suddenly our responsibility for all hours of the day?

Even the most secretive parental potheads might reconsider loosening the restrictions on their own consumption. As noted, you’re not fooling your kids anyway. All that’s really needed is to set boundaries. But how does the modern pothead parent navigate those boundaries during quarantine?

As a modern pothead parent myself, I have a few bits of advice to impart.

Designate and Commit to One Stone Zone…

When communal spaces must remain as such 24/7, it’s necessary to name one room as the prescribed weed area. Because we are adults in supervisory roles, running off to hide in a closet as soon as the urge to smoke strikes is not a power move. Resist that compulsion and instead pick the most ventilated room in your house as your “stone zone.” It’s not about hiding your consumption so much as it is making sure you have an appropriate space to consume. Once again, your kids know you smoke weed, so now is a good time to steer the narrative away from shame and suppression and into education and normalcy. If the idea of coming out of the cannabis closet to your children feels daunting, cannabis educator Emma Chasen offers this advice: “Approach the subject rationally without hysteria or fearmongering,” she says. “It’s important to give young people credit for their intelligence and to let them know that cannabis is a medicine used for a variety of reasons by adults.”

…or Sit in the Car

Then again, there may be times when you need more of a break from your quarantine cohorts than your stone zone can provide. There may also be times when a powerful hotbox is what’s needed to redirect your mood away from cabin fever and toward cabin contentment. If you’re blessed with a driveway neatly tucked beside your home, consider that your new weed annex. Crank up the Peppa Pig, Thomas the Tank Engine or whatever innocuous blather your child is currently obsessed with and sneak just out of sight for a proper five-minute hotboxing.

You absolutely will return reeking of herb, but as we’ve established, your kid already knows your stoner ways, 14

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

and in their older years are likely to look back and appreciate the modest courtesy of not smoking out the bathroom instead.

Employ the Toilet Paper Roll Plus Dryer Sheet Trick

Camouflaging the thick funk of particularly pungent strains is another way to maintain an agreeable atmosphere post-bong hit. Just stuff a scented dryer sheet into an empty toilet paper roll and exhale through the tube to gently obscure the louder strains and mute milder ones altogether.

Consider this a courtesy not only to kids who wouldn’t know a terpene from a fart but also for those in the house with palates refined enough to be offended by a preponderance of caryophyllene. What you do with the dryer s h e e t s o n c e t h e y ’v e absorbed enough smoke to lose their perfume is up to you, but know this: They ain’t flushable.

Burn Aromatic Botanicals

Incense is certainly a lovely way to perfume the atmosphere, but regardless of its ubiquity in headshops, it won’t do much by itself to obscure throaty exhales of today’s pure kush. Sage, palo santo, and cedar all have rich, botanical perfumes that go beyond masking the smell of weed and instead work with the pungent odor of cannabis to create a nuanced tableau worthy of the sophisticated urban bohemian. Sage and cedar can be collected on a quarantine walk, dried out in the kitchen and then used to smudge your home of both bad vibes and stale weed smells, neither of which we need.

Think Outside the Flower

Now is a great time to explore making edibles, tinctures and concentrates for yourself—decarboxylating, extracting and cooking with your own cannabis oil is a skill all committed potheads should have in their tool kit. Even one gram of weed can be successfully extracted and used to infuse as many as a dozen low-dose chocolates, a half-dozen moderately dosed treats or just one huge brownie with the same cannabinoid percentages as the original gram. On days when the kids’ need for attention supersedes the parent’s need to smoke a joint, a bit of homemade medicated fudge can be a gamechanger.

Find Your New Normal

Trying to find the right balance of consumption and vigilance is a challenge, but knowing your limits is fundamental to functional stoner parenting. During waking hours, the goal should be “whimsically mellow,” and only detached from reality after the kids are in bed. Low-dose chocolates , gummies and tinctures can all help maintain a smolder of metaphysical comfort without tipping over into full-blown physical intoxication.

Quill brand’s full-spectrum CBD vape pen is the perfect product to gently temper overly aggressive THC and coax the user back to earth.

STREET

“text here”

Photos by Sam Gehrke @samgehrkephotography

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H OW I 'M SP EN D I N G MY Q UA R ANT I NE

MICHAEL MCCRARY

GET INSIDE

WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU'RE STUCK AT HOME

H E AR T H IS

Five Albums by the Recently Departed Properly mourning the musicians who have died in recent weeks has become a bizarre challenge. Before you’ve come to terms with the loss of one artist, news breaks that we’ve lost another. Lest their memories fade quickly—and to provide the proper context for listeners who might be unfamiliar with the work of artists that have left us recently—here’s where to start paying tribute.

Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers (2003) Adam Schlesinger, who passed away from coronavirus-related complications April 1, co-founded this brilliant New York power-pop group in the mid-’90s. On their third album, he helped craft masterful, radio-ready odes to suburbia, lower-middle-class life, and the lovers that got away.

Bill Withers, Just as I Am (1971) Recorded with the help of Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the debut album from the soul legend—who died March 30 from heart complications—was an instant classic, gifting the world powerful statements like “Grandma’s Hands” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

DANNY CLINCH

Courtenay Hameister Occupation: Writer, former host of Live Wire Age: 52 City: Portland How many people do you live with? One partner.

What have you been eating? Everything? Like, literally everything that crosses my path. I’ve struggled with anxiety and food issues my whole adult life, so this shelter in place experience is like the perfect storm for a flare-up of What Can I Put in My Mouth Now? To be more specific: rosemary crackers every 30 minutes or so when I have to get up from my desk to avoid work; Mexican-esque bowls because they’re easy; and a metric fuckton of caffeine-free Diet Coke.

What have you been watching, listening to or playing during quarantine? Like seemingly everyone in America, I’ve started watching Tiger King, but it’s difficult because it makes me so angry. I’ve been angry since November 2016, so I’d rather watch something more escapist like Better Call Saul, Project Runway or the charmingly pudgy squirrels in my backyard.

Have you picked up a new hobby or resumed an old one? I am trying new recipes and tending to plants for the first time in my life, and I re-alphabetized my spices.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done so far? Please see above.

What’s the last time you were closer than 6 feet to someone outside your household? When I went to Fred Meyer for toilet paper early in the morning on Friday and thought, “Is this actually happening? Am I actually risking my life for a nine-pack of mega rolls? This is 100 percent not how I thought I’d go out.”

What’s your secret to staying sane? The biggest thing I struggle with as a person with anxiety is differentiating between the things that I should be worried about and the things that my hyperactive lizard brain is prodding me to be worried about.

This is why access to Twitter is so dangerous for someone like me. So I did a Twitter moratorium, and it was miraculous in its effectiveness. If you want to stay informed, subscribe to the daily update from a trusted national and local resource, and choose one time of day to read them. Then, live your life. It’s really OK if you’re not the first person to know something.

What’s the first thing you’re doing when this is all over? Hugging everyone I’ve ever known and loved. And I’m not a hugger. Second, eating all the sushi.

What has quarantine taught you about yourself ? My whole life, I’ve said that I am not a “people person.” My whole life, I’ve been very, very wrong.

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Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

JOHN PRINE

John Prine, John Prine (1971) Everyone from Johnny Cash to Jason Isbell has sung the praises of Prine, who succumbed to COVID-19 on April 7. One spin of his debut will make anyone a convert to his finely honed Americana. The album also introduced a new standard to the country canon with the beautifully anguished “Angel From Montgomery.”

Cristina, Sleep It Off (1984) Long before she became another victim of the pandemic March 31, Cristina Monet-Palaci recorded this no-wave disco gem with the help of Don Was, setting the template for oddball pop sensations like Zola Jesus and Blood Orange.

Various artists, Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music From Disney Films (1988) To best understand the genius of Hal Willner, the producer and former Saturday Night Live music supervisor, who died April 7, start with this 1988 tribute album featuring exotica legend Yma Sumac, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, James Taylor and Ringo Starr, all covering classics from the House of Mouse.

QUARANTINE: APRIL 15-21 Q & A COURTESY OF MOBILMED

MobilMED A Portland doctor is bringing the house call into the 21st century.

By this point, most of us have come to rely on some sort of home delivery service, for groceries, dinner, alcohol—even strippers.

Add health care to that list.

“Even prior to COVID -19, there are still huge reasons to be at home, and one is simply time,” says Dr. Mark Hosko, founder of MobilMED, Portland’s first mobile urgent care clinic. “If you’re a busy adult, that’s critical.

Also, many people have transportation problems. You use public transportation, you have a leg injury, you have children and have to get child care, you need somebody to walk the dog—these are all barriers, and what could be a very simple exam turns into an all-day event.”

Hosko, who also founded Portland Urgent Care, planned to roll out MobilMED later this spring, as an expansion of the growing practice of telemedicine. But with the arrival of COVID-19, he realized there was an immediate need for a service allowing patients to receive medical care without having to venture out into public.

MobilMED offers patients consultation with a licensed provider and urgent care treatment, minus the hazards of leaving home. A health care assistant comes to you, takes vital signs and makes a physical exam, and uploads the data to the clinic’s physician, who can then remotely administer further tests or prescribe treatment.

“The health care assistant is essentially the hands of the doctor or the provider,” Hosko says.

Though it is not equipped to treat broken bones, severe abdominal pain, or lacerations that require stitches, the van is outfitted with an X-ray machine, labs for rapid diagnostic tests, medical supplies and the most common medications.

Service is also currently limited to the east side of the Willamette River, but there are plans to expand in the future.

Hosko believes the current model of health care—with prohibitive access and crowded urgent care waiting rooms—will soon be a thing of the past. By employing modern technology, MobilMED and other similar services will be the 21st century version of that old anachronism: the house call.

“I honestly see the future of health care moving that way: where the help comes to the patient rather than the patient having to get to the help,” he says.

“The patient is the one who is ill and has trouble moving. Transport of help to the patient can now be done very easily.” SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY. PL AY T HI S

Sheri Horiszny,

Deputy Director of Oregon Zoo As we all find ourselves seeing fewer and fewer people each day—spouses, roommates, that one beloved deli clerk—so too have the animals at the Oregon Zoo, which has been closed to the public since mid-March. But it’s not all bad news: Without an audience, some zoo animals have been able to waddle out of captivity and see how the other side lives, giving us all prime quarantine content on social media.

WW spoke to Sheri Horiszny, deputy director of the Oregon Zoo, about coronavirus testing for zoo animals, what interspecies social distancing looks like, and the logic behind orchestrating a meet-cute between a Humboldt penguin and a harbor seal. SCOUT BROBST. WW: How has the shutdown changed day-to-day life for the animals?

Sheri Horiszny: For the animals themselves, I think the biggest change now, since Sunday when the Bronx tiger tested positive, is they’re seeing our animal care staff wear masks. We’re trying to do everything we can to have the animals not notice a difference and still provide excellent care for them, but we are now social distancing with the animals and wearing masks when we’re within 6 feet of them as well.

Does it feel like some animals are feeling the lack of an audience more than others?

Our tigers have been at the zoo for just about a year and they’re super shy, so they’re enjoying that it’s quiet at the zoo. For many animals, they’re not noticing a difference at all, because they’ve got their animal care staff there, and those are the relationships they’re really keyed in on.

We saw the Oregon Zoo penguins find their way to the seal tank last week. Can we look forward to more unlikely pairings as the quarantine continues?

We had the tortoises go for a walk last week. The beavers and porcupines have been out walking more than they might other times.

Are those adventures more for the animals or the people missing the zoo?

I think it’s both. I think it’s definitely about creating fun experiences that we can share with people while they’re unable to come to the zoo, but it’s also both psychologically and physiologically stimulating for the animals to go and get to do new things.

What would happen if a zoo animal were to test positive?

It depends. If it were a primate or a cat, we would look at what our current practices in place fell short. If it’s in a new species, it would probably be bigger news because it would be news for not just us but also other zoos. We would just try to shore up our practices in any way we could if we could figure out how that happened given that we’ve got a lot of cautionary measures already in place.

Shadow of the Colossus (SIE Japan Studio and Team Ico)

For all the majesty of modern gaming ’s “living ” worlds, with their bustling streets and spontaneity, contemplative solitude is a much rarer pleasure. Rather than a dense landscape of towns and quest-givers, Fumito Ueda’s Shadow of the Colossus is a game filled with quiet reflection and punctuated by exhilarating combat. The result is one of the form’s great critical successes, at once a masterwork of open-world design devoid of the fluff that pervades modern gaming and a boss rush with some of the best puzzle-combat encounters this side of The Legend of Zelda. Originally released in 2005 but remade in 2018, Shadow tasks players with hunting down and killing 16 primordial Colossi—enormous beasts resembling mythological guardians long since overtaken by moss and decay. Players defeat them in David vs. Goliath duels

in which the Colossi themselves are a puzzle, gauntlet and foe wrapped into one. Fight on their backs, climb their limbs, and take them down with improvised strategies. The space in between each battle is for finding the monsters. A beam of light cast by the protagonist’s sword points the way, but only as the crow flies. Actually traversing the landscape is more complex and requires some oldfashioned navigation on the player’s part. The enjoyment is akin to hiking the backcountry and carving your own path through the wilderness. With the 2018 remaster, the graphics are as astounding and painterly as battling the godlike Colossi is exciting and triumphant. A cocktail of artistry and mechanical confidence, Shadow is one of gaming’s early works of literary power, and one you should absolutely be playing. NOLAN GOOD. BUY: Shadow of the Colossus is available for PS4. See store.playstation.com to download.

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

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ONLINE SOCIAL HOUR

Our devices have conditioned us to loathe the phone call. Keeping in touch and conveying information are essential. Hearing your voice? Not so much. It doesn’t seem to matter what sort of bells, beeps, or whistles you’ve chosen as your ringtone—they rudely puncture our lives with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. I still don’t welcome the unknown caller, but now that I’ve been physically separated from my friends and family for a month, I am thoroughly embracing video chatting. The first time I fired up Zoom and saw my best friend’s face, it felt like a confetti popper had burst in my chest—a flicker of joy I hadn’t experienced since before our period of self-isolation. ANDI PREWITT.

SHOWGIRLS

“I need you guys to still be around when we’re allowed out in the wild again. How else will I remember where to drink, what to eat, how to dress, and who to vote for?”

- Ashley

In these uncertain times, I’ve really relied on your smart, savvy coverage of local news, and I appreciate the spirit of your publication.”

– Rachel

“Just read through the article you did highlighting those who remain working during the spread of the virus - thank you for highlighting them.”

- Margaret

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Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

Aubrey Plaza and Sarah Ramos re-creating the “doggy chow” scene on Twitter brought me back to the movie that confused a whole generation of barely pubescent boys about what sex is supposed to look like. It long ago reached “so bad it’s good” status, and some have even tried elevating it to “it’s good satire, actually.” Watching it again after 20 years, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but in any case, it’s still fun to watch Elizabeth Berkley act like she’s on those caffeine pills from Saved by the Bell for an entire movie. MATTHEW SINGER.

LEGO MASTERS

There are no sports right now, but you can still find someone to root for. This week, Portland-area duo Mark Cruickshank and Boone Langston are among the final three teams competing in Fox’s new reality competition, Lego Masters. The grand prize may be $100,000, an oversized trophy made of the plastic bricks and the coveted titular title, but anyone who’s kept up with the 10-episode series knows the true award is the hometown pride these two bearded builders have inspired. If you haven’t yet seen the show, it’s worth streaming from the beginning as a purely blissful distraction during a difficult time—a nerdy obsession with the building blocks is not required. AP.

DAMIAN LILLARD

Even with the NBA season in purgatory, Dame finds a way to be the most righteous dude in Portland. He’s low key one of the best interviews in sports—see his conversation with Inside the NBA’s Ernie Johnson from this past week, where he discusses everything from fatherhood to tattoos to religion to quarantine. He also threatens to pull up from half-court in a game whenever play resumes, which is basically just him telling Russell Westbrook how he’s going to crush him months in advance. MS.

ORDERING IN

One of the most difficult things about life being canceled for the foreseeable future is that there is nothing to anticipate. We can’t plan much of anything since it’s not clear when, exactly, we can start executing plans once again. Without that, every day can start to feel the same as you migrate from bed to desk, desk to couch, couch to bed, and repeat. To break up this monotony and give myself a little something to look forward to, my husband and I reward ourselves with dinner prepared by someone else on the weekend. Ordering from restaurants just once or twice a week gives us the feeling we’re indulging just enough without inhaling Big Chicken’s sumptuous fried birds and jojos, or kalua pig combo plates from 808 Grinds every night. After all, my hair is going to be a grown-out, shapeless tangle of curls when I come out on the other side of this thing—I don’t also need to emerge from quarantine 15 pounds heavier. AP.

SHAKE SHACK, MAYBE?!?

News broke late on press day that Shake Shack might be opening in Southwest Portland.

As a California kid, I’m loyal to In-N-Out, but the one time I had a ShackBurger—in New York around Thanksgiving three years ago—I questioned my entire childhood. Sure, seeing my friends again would be nice and blah blah blah, but now I really have a reason to hope we’re out of quarantine before summer. MS.

MUSIC

COURTESY OF JEFFERSON SMITH

What’s Left of the Dial Community radio is one of the last vestiges of Portland’s music culture still alive during the coronavirus shutdown. But many challenges remain.

BY S HA N N O N G O R M L EY sgormley@wweek.com

More than once in the past month, Chase Spross has had to rush into XRAY.fm’s Northeast Portland studio—suited up with mask, gloves and headlamp—to make emergency repairs.

Since Oregon’s shelter in place order, Portland’s community radio DJs have been broadcasting from home studios. But each remotely recorded mix is still transmitted through the same central signal. So when something goes wrong, Spross, XRAY’s operations manager, has to go into the station’s now-vacant subterranean studio in the Falcon Art Community building on North Albina Avenue to fix it.

“I’ve been spotted in there a few times over the last couple of weeks, not only just wiping down the studio but recabling some stuff,” he says. “We’re really reliant on computers, and we’ve got a really nice network, but there are times when it doesn’t work and you’ve got to go in there and restart things or turn things back on.”

When COVID-19 shut down Portland, community radio DJs across the city stopped broadcasting from central studios and took to the airwaves from DIY setups in their kitchens, bedrooms and home offices. Now that concerts are canceled, clubs are closed and record stores have shuttered, stations like XRAY are some of the only remaining local music hubs. And for many hosts, that’s sparked a renewed sense of purpose.

“We’re moving with superhero purpose at this point,” says DJ Ambush of the Numberz, Portland’s only all-black radio station and an offshoot of XRAY. “If there’s an issue, if streams are down or something’s going wrong with the broadcast, it’s like, ‘Who’s close enough? Who can get to the station real quick? Run in there with your mask and gloves, hit a couple switches and then get on out.’”

While they’ve seen a spike in engagement, Portland’s community radio stations are also struggling with loss of sponsors and facing unique technological puzzles. For a listener, though, the transition sounds fairly seamless.

Cristina Trecha is a board member and DJ for Freeform, Portland’s only allvolunteer radio station. Normally, she hosts a show called Guitar and Other Machines, in which she highlights experimental music played on traditional instruments. But during the pandemic, Trecha has decided to take a break from her regular show. Instead, she’s been turning to what refers to as her musical “comfort food,” which recently included a Captain Beefheart tribute show.

“I’m picking things that are easier to lis-

ten to,” says Trecha. “I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll do a half an hour set of actual songs with words.”

Just about every station has shifted its programming to some degree. Freeform has abandoned its regular schedule for a constantly changing rotation of DJs. XRAY has started producing a daily news podcast called The Local and broadcasting digital debates between local political candidates.

The Numberz is still spinning an eclectic mix that ranges from trap to classic funk, but has shortened its shows to make room for more PSAs. In an effort to keep listener interaction alive in the absence of livestreaming, just about every organization has added community-submitted playlists to their rotation.

Behind the scenes, however, DJs are people could broadcast.” scrambling to adapt to a media landscape But that’s a drawback, too. Radio’s live that’s changing by the day. Many Portland format allows real-time human interacradio stations already possessed the tech- tion, which is largely what distinguishes it nology for remote broadcasting, but it was from a Spotify playlist. used by only a handful of DJs who couldn’t “Pre-recorded shows are great, but make it into the studio or the occasional there’s something about the live thing,” says remote broadcast from a bar.

Kilkenny. “It’s like jazz or something, that “The tech is there,” says Freeform DJ Ian improvisational aspect of live radio where Zentner. “We just haven’t had to think about you can really interact with people.” it in terms of, like, our Currently, there’s entire community no model for remote needing to use it.” livestreaming on “RADIO IS Coordinating dozsuch a mass scale. ens of remote studios is SUPPOSED TO KEEP Livestreaming from less of a technological dozens of studios is GOING DURING hurdle and more of a exponentially more people problem. Prior complicated than EARTHQUAKES. to the shutdown, most broadcasting preRADIO SURE AS Portland radio DJs recorded mixes. Few had never broadcast HECK HAS GOT TO radio stations have figremotely. Once they ured out how to build KEEP GOING IN could no longer go their own live network, into the studio, staso it’s become someA PANDEMIC.” tions suddenly had to thing of a holy grail for —JEFFERSON SMITH, train dozens of show community radio durXRAY.FM hosts how to set up and ing the pandemic. broadcast from home GENERAL MANAGER “For the live broadstudios and make the cast, it means switchabrupt technological ing studios and studio transition undetectable to the listener— setups,” says Jefferson Smith, XRAY’s genwithout every setting foot in a studio. eral manager. “The nice thing about having Prior to the pandemic, “I was managing one studio is, it’s just setup and someone one studio and I was able to be there all the goes in and uses it. When we’re now operattime and able to walk down there and help ing lots of studios, that means switches in people out,” Spross says. “Not being able to between those have to be ready, and all of see each other and not knowing what setup the connections between those studios have they have has been the challenging thing.” to be routed to the proper place.”

Now, most stations are broadcasting That difficulty is compounded by the pre-recorded shows, which are then cen- fact that all the DJs have their own setup, trally edited and added to the mix. Though with different gear and its own unique remote training and troubleshooting have quirks. Still, XRAY is one of only a few stabeen a feat, the process of recording mixes tions nationwide that has managed to pioitself isn’t that complicated. neer a remote livestreaming setup.

“Essentially,” says Eric Kilkenny, a DJ Spross essentially built the system from for both Freeform and WFMU in New York, the ground up, by overhauling XRAY’s auto“if you can make a mixtape at home, most mation system, cobbling together different

ON THE AIR: XRAY DJ Tex Clark broadcasts from home.

software systems and helping DJs find the correct gear to buy for their home setups.

Now, XRAY has slowly begun rolling out livestreaming show by show. Currently, eight of XRAY’s shows are live, with plans to add another next week.

“It’s cliché to say, but necessity is the mother of invention,” Spross says. “We were really forced to look at what we have and see how we can make it work.”

The need for innovation, however, comes hand in hand with financial constraints. Run entirely by volunteers, Freeform is used to operating on a low budget and, luckily, made several repairs just before the pandemic hit. According to DJ Ambush, none of the Numberz’s sponsors has backed out yet. XRAY.fm, however, has lost several. To make things worse, the station had scheduled its annual fundraising gala for March 21. But when Gov. Kate Brown issued a ban on large gatherings just 10 days before the event, XRAY was forced to cancel one of its largest annual moneymakers.

“That was like writing a $30,000, $50,000 check to the credit buyers,” Smith says. “[Losing] that, of course, had a real impact.”

So far, that’s meant only a few layoffs.

Mostly, tight finances have meant the station has had to delay maintenance updates and other technological investments.

On April 20, XRAY will kick off its listener drive. Since the station doesn’t track its listenership by Nielsen ratings, the drive is when the station can really quantify its presumed spike in community engagement.

The uncertainty isn’t going to abate anytime soon. Regardless, Portland’s community radio stations mostly seem galvanized. After all, connecting people through disasters is exactly what radio was designed to do.

“This is what we’re born for,” says Smith.

“Radio is supposed to keep going during earthquakes. Radio sure as heck has got to keep going in a pandemic.”

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

Editor: Matthew Singer / Contact: msinger@wweek.com

COURTESY OF SEBASTIAN CAROSI

RECIPE

TOP 5

HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.

1. Cicoria 3377 SE Division St. There are no new Portland restaurants in the time of COVID-19. Somehow, though, there is new pizza. Chef Joshua McFadden’s new joint wasn’t supposed to open until spring or early summer, but the Midwest-inspired “tavern-style” pie was already dialed in. Cicoria brings quality ingredients to a style of pizza originally meant to be washed down with Schlitz. The flour is freshly milled and regional, the crust is 50 percent whole wheat, and while it’s crispier than Neapolitan or a foldable New York slice, it’s neither buttery nor greasy like Chicago thin crust.

HOW TO ORDER: See submarinehospitality.com/takeout, or call 503-444-7537.

2. Top Burmese

Infused deviled eggs just in time for 4/20.

BY S E BAST I A N C A R OSI

As a progressive home cook and working professional chef, having as many vehicles in the pantry to help incorporate full-spectrum cannabis into the daily diet has become another mission of mine. The chamomile cannabis vinegar used in this pickled egg recipe is one such example.

When eating eggs, I choose only pasture-raised farm eggs from happy hens—they are richer in vitamin A, vitamin E and omega 3s. Over many years of living on a farm and raising chickens, I strongly believe when the chickens are allowed to roam free on the range and eat insects and plants around the barnyard and farm, they produce a more nutrient-dense egg versus the commercially produced conventional eggs that are standard on grocery store shelves.

Personally, my favorite are brown eggs from Rhode Island reds and blue-green eggs laid by Araucanas and Ameraucanas.

Remember that the color of an eggshell doesn’t mean that one is healthier than the other—the different colors and shades are from the many different chicken breeds out there. Both brown, white and even bluegreen eggs are all equally as healthy.

For pickling, I quickly choose turmeric.

It is a close relative of ginger and a great source of curcumin, which is a known anti-inflammatory. It also has the ability to keep blood sugar levels steady, and it is used to help treat type 2 diabetes. The warm floral chamomile cannabis vinegar used to pickle the eggs will impart slight nuances of honey, cider apples and chamomile. Both chamomile and cannabis contain the terpene bisabolol, which is known to have antifungal, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-irritant and analgesic properties.

Considering all those health benefits, these pickled, pasture-raised farm eggs will definitely help with an overall healthy diet that includes full-spectrum cannabis. They are a great addition to any tabletop, anytime of year.

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Chamomile + Turmeric Pickled Li’l Devils Prep time: 20 minutes Cook time: 8 minutes Yield: 24 eggs.

Total THC/CBD: Depends on products used.

INGREDIENTS For the pickling liquid: • 1 cup chamomile- and cannabisinfused vinegar • 1 cup rice wine vinegar • ½ cup water • 2 fresh turmeric fingers, chopped fine • 2 tablespoons dry turmeric • ½ teaspoon fennel seeds • ¼ teaspoon mustard seeds • ¼ teaspoon celery seeds • ¼ teaspoon wild fennel pollen • 1 tablespoon Jacobsen sea salt • ¼ cup organic cane sugar • 1 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns • 3 sprigs fresh lemon thyme • 2 drops True Terpenes limonene • 12 hard-boiled, pasture-raised farm eggs, peeled For the stuffing: • 1 drop True Terpenes myrcene • 1 tablespoon yellow mustard • ¼ cup mayonnaise (more if needed) • 8 drops Fairwinds THC Sriracha Tincture • Yolks from the above eggs For the ham powder: • ¾ ounce country ham steak • 1 to 2 teaspoons kosher salt • 2 tablespoons chopped chives and chive flowers

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, add the first 13 ingredients and simmer until sugar is dissolved, 5 or 6 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool for 15 minutes and add the limonene.

Mix well. Add this mixture and the peeled eggs to a plastic container and refrigerate for up to 3 days.

2. Remove eggs from pickling liquid and pat dry. Cut in half and remove yolks, and place in a stainless steel bowl. Add remaining stuffing ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

3. Fill each egg half with your desired amount of stuffing.

4. To make the ham powder, place ham steak on a lined sheet pan. Bake in 200 degree oven for 3 to 4 hours, checking occasionally.

The idea is to dry the ham steak out without browning or burning. When the ham steak is sufficiently dry, remove from the oven and set on the counter to cool. Break the ham steak into little pieces to check moisture level. If sufficiently dry, place in a coffee grinder and grind to a fine powder. Place the powder in a small mixing bowl and add enough salt to keep it dry, 1 teaspoon or more. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

5. Sprinkle the top of each egg with ham powder and chopped chives.

Chef Sebastian Carosi is a farm-raised, Portland culinary professional with more than 25 years in the restaurant and hospitality industry who has been cooking with cannabis since the mid-’90s.

He shares most of his terpene-fortified recipes on Instagram: @chef_sebastian_carosi.

THOMAS TEAL

The Devil’s Weed

413 NW 21st Ave., 503-477-5985, topburmese.com.

The booming Burmese takeout spot has traded its tiny rectangular room with a lone table for a slightly larger space inside the former Kim Jong’s Smokehouse, and the menu has expanded in the process. But the dishes that wowed us the first time around remain the all-stars—like the fermented tea leaf salad and the incredible fivepack of golden-brown samosas.

HOW TO ORDER: Caviar, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats.

3. Bless Your Heart 5410 NE 33rd Ave., 503-719-6447, byhpdx.com.

For years, John Gorham’s ever-growing restaurant empire has been serving knockout bistro burgers, but Bless Your Heart veers diner style, and it’s damn near perfect. Though the Carolina burger slathered in chili and slaw is the signature menu item, the LL Cool J comes bedecked with all the classics, plus hefty slabs of bacon and a mound of guac so generous it puts most nacho platters to shame.

HOW TO ORDER: Caviar.

4. Nong’s Khao Man Gai 609 SE Ankeny St., Suite C, 503-740-2907, khaomangai.com.

Starting with a food cart and working her way up to a series of restaurants, Nong Poonsukwattana became a Portland icon for her khao man gai— delicately seasoned, poached chicken on fluffy rice, served with cucumber, cilantro and sipping broth. It’s an exercise in perfection and simplicity.

HOW TO ORDER: Caviar, DoorDash.

5. Baes 225 SW Ash St., baeschicken.com.

Four years after he pulled the plug on his previous attempt at a fried chicken joint, fast-casual kingpin Micah Camden’s newest project doles out fresh, juicy birds with ruthless efficiency and alarming consistency. The hot chicken, in particular, is destined to be the subject of citywide hype. The heat level is tolerable for most, preserving the smoky, peppery flavor without scorching taste buds.

HOW TO ORDER: Caviar.

TAKE ME OUT

BY AN D I P R E W I T T

Here, Drink This

The steelhead sandwich from Flying Fish Company is a Northwest take on a Floridian classic.

aprewitt@wweek.com

For a city that’s bisected by a river and also just a 90-minute drive from the ocean, Portland has a shocking scarcity of fish sandwiches on its restaurant menus. Stop searching, and instead head straight for Flying Fish Company’s new outpost on East Burnside Street. The brand is best known as a market supplying home chefs with fresh, highquality seafood, but the move from a crowded corner of Providore Fine Foods to its own restaurant means there’s now room to prepare everything from chowder to poke in the full kitchen. The new location had a short but vigorous run after opening Feb. 10, just a little over a month before Gov. Kate Brown halted all in-person dining to stop the spread of COVID-19. “We came out of the gates, crushed it and

just had an awesome five weeks,” says Gildersleeve, “busier than any month we ever had at Providore.”

You may not be able to take a seat at the beautiful rough-edged wood bar for the time being, but customers can pop in to pick up groceries or meals from a slimmed-down online menu—like that exceptional fish sandwich. Inspiration for the hearty stack of steelhead and housemade slaw sprang from a collection of fish shacks on the opposite side of the country. While studying aquaculture at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, Gildersleeve ended up eating his way through the peninsula’s seafood shanties and sandwich shops. “I would always get the fish sandwiches,” Gildersleeve says, “and they were amazing, so I wanted to bring my own Northwest version to the equation.” Here’s what goes into it:

THE FIXINGS

THE BREAD

The steelhead is topped with a green confetti of slightly sweet cabbage and earthy kale that’s been doused in a piquant marinade of lime, jalapeño, cilantro and Arbequina olive oil. The dressing’s citrus is so bright, it will leave you vibrating like the first sunny, 70-degree day in spring.

C O U R T E S Y O F N ATA L I E G I L D E R S L E E V E

The fish is stuffed between two pieces of ciabatta from Grand Central Bakery—buttered and browned on the grill, then slathered with aioli.

THE FISH The 6-ounce fillet of steelhead is farmed sustainably in Northern Washington at a hatchery Gildersleeve visited personally to ensure it met his standards.

It’s prepped simply to allow the tender fish to speak for itself. The cut gets a dash of salt before it’s grilled on the flat top, skin down, and then the other side kisses the griddle. The result is a moist yet flaky center for the sandwich and a crispy, blackened exterior.

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST

Where order beer from this week.

1. Old Town Brewing 5201 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-200-5988, 226 NW Davis St., 503-222-9999, otbrewing.com.

Old Town has quietly, steadily built a brewing program that meshes nicely with its pizzerias. The beers run the gamut from light to dark—Pillowfist, in particular, is a hazy with bright tropical notes. The brewery has combined forces with Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider, maybe the most battily inventive cider spot in the country, so double up by ordering cans from each.

2. Away Days Brewing 1516 SE 10th Ave., 503-206-4735, awaydaysbrewing.com.

The owners of popular British-themed pub Toffee Club took over this space and the brewery within it upon the closing of Scout Beer in early 2019, bringing on ex-Alameda brewer Marshall Kunz to help make English-style ales. All beers leaning toward a more classic malty balance than fruitbombed modernity—there’s even the occasional lager for good measure.

Four cocktail recipes from Old Gold owner Ezra Ace Caraeff.

BY EZR A ACE

CARAEFF

You can’t go to a bar right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring the bar into your home. Here, Ezra Ace Caraeff, owner of the Old Gold, Paydirt, Tough Luck and Hi-Top Tavern, offers recipes for some easy, high-quality cocktails you can make right in your kitchen.

Old Gold Rush

COURTESY OF EZRA ACE CARAEFF

Go Fish

RECIPE

• 2 ounces bourbon (we use Four Roses but it’s literally a global pandemic so we won’t judge you if you use something else) • 1 ounce lemon juice • 1 ounce honey syrup* • 2 dashes of Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters Shake, double strain over fresh ice and garnish with a lemon wedge or peel.

Best combined with a John Prine album in the backyard. *Two parts honey to 1 part hot water. Stir to combine.

Will keep for up to two weeks if properly refrigerated.

OLD GOLD RUSH

Herb E. Hancock • • • • • • ORDER: Flying Fish Company’s fish sandwich can be ordered at flyingfishportland.com for in-store or curbside pickup at 3004 E Burnside St. $18.

3. Modern Times 600 SE Belmont St., 503-420-0799, moderntimesbeer.com.

There’s no better place in Portland to snap a trendy photo of a hazy IPA, sweet stout, or neon-red kettle sour. But if you look past the sea of perfectly dressed beer tourists (and the more obvious styles), you’ll find some of the city’s finest beers. If available, try the Italian Pilsner, which marries crackery malt with perfumey modern hopping techniques—taming the face-melting flavors of Modern Times’ hazy IPAs.

4. Base Camp Brewing 930 SE Oak St., 503-477-7479, basecampbrewingco.com.

The outdoor-themed brewery is delivering six packs via cargo bike. Base Camp’s standard lagers and ales are light and easy to drink, perfectly suited for a post-hike cooldown—or, y’know, passing the time alone on your porch.

Call in for ordering.

5. Level Beer 5211 NE 148th Ave., 503-714-1222, 7840 SW Capitol Highway, levelbeer.com.

Level’s founders have children, which pushed them to produce beers with an alcohol content that won’t leave your head spinning, like the crisp, 4.5-percent ABV Grisetta Stone, whose flavors bob between citrus and black pepper. Two IPAs—the West Coast-style Game On! and the hazy Stable Genius—continue to be the brewery’s top performers, both in execution and popularity.

1½ ounces gin (we use Aviation Gin) ¾ ounce lime juice ½ ounce thyme syrup* ¼ ounce simple syrup 2 basil leaves 1 dash Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters

1. Muddle basil with lime juice.

2. Add remaining ingredients to shaker tin. Shake, double strain over large cube, garnish with rosemary sprig. *Add 1/3 of a cup of dried thyme to 1-to-1 simple syrup, let steep overnight in refrigerator, strain with cheese cloth or fine mesh strainer.

Will keep for up to a week if refrigerated.

Maradona

• 2 ounces Fernet Branca • Dash of Amarena cherry syrup (it’s the syrup that comes with those fancy cherries you bought that one time).

• Top with Coca-Cola.

Pappy Van Sanitizer

• Gently compress hand sanitizer into your hands.

• Rub them together.

• Pour yourself that fancy whiskey you have been saving for years. There will never be a better time than now to drink the good stuff.

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

23

PERFORMANCE

BOOKS

GARY NORMAN

My Essential Seven:

Marissa Wolf Portland Center Stage’s artistic director talks fiction, family rituals and FaceTime.

BY B EN N ETT CA MPB ELL FER GU SON

When Portland Center Stage artistic director Marissa Wolf needs inspiration, she turns to the business section of the Sunday New York Times.

“Often, they’ll have such smart pagewide profiles of amazing women leaders, and I just love those,” Wolf says. “From the time I was in my early 20s, I’ve always been interested in ambitious women who have followed their ambitions with a vociferousness and a resiliency.”

With those words, Wolf could be describing herself. Under her leadership, PCS has staged some of its most challenging productions—including an elaborate version of In the Heights and an intimate, all-female Macbeth. And as for resiliency, Wolf ’s incandescent optimism makes her perfectly suited to steer the company through a pandemic.

PCS has shortened its season in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Yet speaking to WW about the places, people and works of art that matter to her, Wolf exuded joy when describing images and sounds so vividly that despite social distancing, the world and its wonders didn’t feel so far away.

1. Fiction I can’t put down by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Strout and Julia Alvarez “I certainly love reading books in which I see myself, but I’m actually most drawn to books in which I get to seek out my heart inside characters whose lives are very different from mine. Each of these writers constructs such whole, rich worlds that they invite the reader into—from the very first word, they construct deeply compelling lead characters, mostly heroines who you just want to live with.”

2. Bread Loaf, Vermont “I grew up going there because my parents taught there during the summers. We haven’t been back in years, and yet when I am closing my eyes to try to center myself or calm down, the place I think of is Bread Loaf, Vt. I picture this beautiful and rolling meadow that gets taller and taller throughout the summer, and I can hear the loud hum of the crickets and tree frogs and smell the thick and sweet air. It’s just one of those places that I carry inside me in ways that are different from anywhere else.”

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3. Portland community pools—namely, Matt Dishman and Columbia “For over 15 years, I’ve gone swimming a couple times a week in the early, early morning. I do love seeing recognizable faces, and there is a really beautiful feeling of community in the women’s locker room and then in the pool where you’ve all arrived to do this thing for yourself that makes you feel really good.”

4. NPR Tiny Desk Concerts “I love that they’re 15- to 20-minute sets of incredible music and that you are invited into a wonderfully intimate concert that’s very informal. [The artists] have to bring only their essential band members who they can fit in the space, and they’re performing behind a desk. They always do something special and unique that you wouldn’t hear them do in another venue. Lizzo’s Tiny Desk Concert was just exquisite.”

5. The New York Times, Sunday edition “I look forward to Sunday mornings because of the Sunday New York Times.

There’s something about the ritual—the feeling of all the sections in your hands. My

husband and I argue over who gets to read the front section first, and then who gets to read the Opinion section first, because for me, those two are most relevant that day and then the rest of the paper you can read during the week.”

6. Popcorn Movie Fridays “My husband Tom is the popcorn maker and he is excellent at it. We get kernels from the farmers market, so they’re really fresh.

We do it in a pot with a little bit of olive oil, and then he is very generous with the butter and salt. The fun thing about Friday Night Popcorn Movie Night is that we have a 5-year-old, and so the deal is that as you’re watching the movie and you’re eating dinner, you also get to have a bowl of popcorn by your side, so it’s pure decadence.”

7. FaceTime “My parents are in Connecticut and my inlaws are in Northern California. [FaceTime] has been a way for our kid to stay connected to his grandparents from the time he was very young. It’s become a really beautiful part of the day where he gets to talk to his grandparents and share a little bit about his day, and then just listen to them read for a full half an hour from different picture books and chapter books.”

Written by: James Helmsworth / Contact: words@wweek.com

Five Classics Worth Revisiting The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway There are some that read—or at least pretended to read—Hemingway in a rogue high school American literature class, and he is worth returning to as the days get longer and the distractions get tired. If that brings you to The Old Man and the Sea, it won’t be hours wasted, but Hemingway’s first novel is also his best. With the plain, laminated prose that has endeared the author to readers for nearly a century, The Sun Also Rises cycles through glitz and hope and disappointment as the world recovers from the First World War, giving voice to Hemingway’s own “lost generation” of unfulfilled idealists.

The Human Comedy, William Saroyan William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy is what it says on the tin. Saroyan writes about the human experience with clarity and a disarming frankness, welcoming the reader into all the quiet intimacies of a family home and expecting that its characters are treated with care.

The novel is set in Ithaca, a fictional town in California’s San Joaquin Valley meant to resemble Saroyan’s own hometown of Fresno, and 14-year-old Homer Macauley is straddling the line between masculinity and childhood as the human toll of World War II ravages the country. This is no sweeping epic—the novel is sentimental, sweet and short enough to earn your afternoon’s attention.

Who Goes There?, John W. Campbell Jr. For those who have no intention of committing to a novel-length book, it’s perfectly fine to settle for a novella. Fifty years before The Thing John Carpenter’s popular film adaptation, there was Who Goes There?, John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story detailing the terror of a remote research group that discovers a parasitic alien buried under layers of polar ice. “The place stank,” reads the opening line.

“A queer, mingled stench that only the iceburied cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fishoil stench of melted seal blubber.”

Sounds chillingly familiar these days.

Adam Bede, George Eliot It should be noted this George Eliot classic was not written by George Eliot. Well, it was, but George Eliot was actually Mary Ann Evans, with Adam Bede as the first of her many novels, all published pseudonymously and to widespread acclaim. The plot might not get you out of bed in the morning—the pulse of the story is a love triangle set in the pastoral hills of 1799 Hayslope, a fictional English village. But the real draw of Adam Bede is Evans’ prose and her undeniable knack for piecing apart the nuances of human relationships as they form, falter and endure.

The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut It is difficult to find anyone who can spool out rich, immediate prose with quite the same finesse as Kurt Vonnegut. Your familiarity with the author is probably through Slaughterhouse-Five, but it might be time to move on to an earlier classic. The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut’s second published novel, is a fantastical sci-fi smorgasbord, registering sometimes as comedy, sometimes as drama, and reels in readers with an outlandish space-centered plot before prodding you with genuine ethical theology. It’s every bit as relevant today as it was in the ’60s.

MOVIES

SCREENER

COURTESY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES

GET YOUR REP S IN

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week’s theme is REVOLUTION, because it’s kinda what we need right now.

Parasite (2019) Bong Joon-ho’s Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture Oscar winner centers on…well, if you haven’t seen it, best to go in blind. All we’ll say is that Parasite is a masterful blend of genres and immaculate commentary on class warfare, and features the most iconic use of peaches since Call Me by Your Name. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube.

Daisies (1966) After two women (both named Marie) have had enough of being “good,” they decide to rebel by pulling off a series of absurd pranks and schemes. Quickly banned by the Czech government upon release for “depicting the wanton,” this avant-garde, off-the-wall feminist romp from Věra Chytilová is as playful as it is radical. Criterion Channel.

Les Misérables (2012) Tom Hooper’s 158-minute film version of the rock opera is definitely polarizing, but it’s worth sitting through for Anne Hathaway’s Oscar-winning rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s rowdy “Master of the House,” and the rousing flame of revolution lit ablaze during “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

Amazon Prime, Google Play, HBO, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

First Reformed (2017)

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Taking major inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963), Paul Schrader’s stirring meditation on loss of faith follows an ailing pastor (Ethan Hawke, delivering a career-best performance) as he swigs whiskey mixed with Pepto-Bismol and fears that climate change is proof of God’s abandonment.

Amazon Prime, Google Play, Kanopy, Vudu, YouTube.

Chicken Run (2000) Yes, this claymation Aardman comedy absolutely counts as a revolution movie!

It’s about a group of chickens who team up with a handsome American stuntrooster (Mel Gibson, unfortunately) to escape the sadistic farmers who want to turn them into pot pies. Why wasn’t it called Chicken Coup?! Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

EIGHTY-SIXED: Jack Nicholson is about to go berserk in Five Easy Pieces’ Oregon-shot diner scene.

Two Rebels Turn 50 Five Easy Pieces and Getting Straight are examples of American New Wave cinema filmed in Oregon.

BY C H ANC E SOLEM-PFEIFER

@chance_s_p

A decade before “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” and two before “You can’t handle the truth!”

Jack Nicholson sat in a highway diner in Eugene (a Denny’s that’s still standing) and teed up his first iconic movie conniption. It was on account of some toast.

This standout scene from Five Easy Pieces (1970) was confirmation of Nicholson’s new stardom—squirrely, venomous and cutting edge. With neither matinee looks nor polish, he sneered his way through an argument over menu substitutions, eventually ordering a chicken salad sandwich, hold everything but the browned bread. The server can’t abide his snarky gambit for toast, so he clears the table with his forearm and storms out.

That boiling point helped usher in a new era of cinema, making it the perfect movie to revisit right now. Not only was a portion of Five Easy Pieces shot in our own backyard, it happens to be turning 50 years old, and you are likely relate to Nicholson’s malaise building into rage while sheltering at home during a pandemic. The acclaimed Bob Rafelson drama typifies ’70s New Hollywood, with its roving character study, small-budget, patient camerawork and rejection of what passed for American values and storytelling.

Nicholson simmers in the role of Bobby Dupea, a Central California oil rigger whose blue-collar pattern of working, bowling and traipsing home to his girlfriend (Karen Black) doesn’t quell his anger. After losing the job, he travels north to the San Juan Islands of Washington to visit his ailing father. Though only the

middle section of this journey is set in Oregon, the film as a whole resembles a drifter’s journey along I-5: Bobby can’t hold down a job, commit to a relationship or remain sober for too long because, as he puts it, “Things get bad if I stay.”

While Five Easy Pieces is vastly superior, another Oregon-shot 1970 film, Getting Straight, is perhaps a clearer artifact from a half-century ago. Through the perspective of a failing grad student (Elliott Gould, fresh off M*A*S*H), Getting Straight touches a countercultural pulse that’s verging on arrhythmia. The Vietnam War, the sexual revolution and a whole slew of liberation movements were cresting, and in turn, the film’s best sequences are of a student body violently clashing with the National Guard (filmed at Eugene’s Lane Community College). These visceral, frenzied scenes later proved their relevance through tragedy, hitting theaters just one week after the Kent State shootings of May 1970.

If both films lend a big-screen rebel shine to Oregon, they also borrow the freedom of the setting. In Five Easy Pieces, Oregon represents catharsis, a vagabond’s playground away from the tainted Rockwellian fantasy of the Central Valley. In Getting Straight, Oregon takes on another of its well-known dimensions as a left-wing petri dish. The jaded Harry Bailey (Gould) has attained big-fish status in his unnamed West Coast college town. It’s no Berkeley, he says, but the grassroots enclave has aspirations to take the national protest stage.

Of course, these films also make good (or bad, as it were) on another New Hollywood trope: giving their white male

antiheroes endless leeway to abuse romantic partners, misuse privilege and wallow in their anger. Perhaps Bobby and Harry’s most damning shared trait is their constantly falling into bed with women they’ve just finished harassing. Through 2020 eyes, there’s an undeniable and maybe unforgivable romance to their terrible behavior, and even New Hollywood’s most important critic, Pauline Kael, described the Five Easy Pieces protagonist as “so defeated [he’s] morally superior.”

More resounding than whether these 1970 films “hold up” is the track they laid. Five Easy Pieces helped cement the morally complex loner-against-society paradigm. You can see its likeness in Taxi Driver (1976), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Thelma and Louise (1991) and even Joker (2019). While Getting Straight didn’t have quite as much influence on future projects, its powder keg storyline and latently idealistic POV character are improved a hundredfold by Spike Lee in both School Daze and Do the Right Thing.

“A man who can’t believe in a cause could never believe in himself,” Candice Bergen’s Jan chides Harry in Getting Straight. It’s one of the few proper rebuttals to the central man in either film, and 50 years later, her accusation provides a balanced lens to reappraise these slices of film history. We don’t have to believe in these men, but we can sense their quandary.

SEE IT: Five Easy Pieces streams on Amazon Prime, Crackle, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Getting Straight streams on Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube.

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April 15-21

MOVIES

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution The opening moments of the new documentary Crip Camp are immediately heartwarming: We see kids with disabilities jumping and rolling with joy as Richie Havens’ iconic ad lib Woodstock anthem “Freedom” plays in the background. Before the title card even appears, you’re already inspired by Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht’s archival-footage film. The origin story of the disability rights movement in the 1970s has largely gone untold until now: It all began with Camp Jened, a summer getaway in the Catskills for disabled youth, who were encouraged to use the time to explore their interests and identities. Co-director Lebrecht was a camper at Jened, and intentionally used the term “crip” in the title as a way of reclaiming the slur. The camp was also a place where teens and young adults could simply let their guard down: They played baseball, pranked each other, smoked pot with the counselors and sometimes even had sex. But before long, the filmmakers expand their narrative arc by illustrating how people were empowered by their experiences there, particularly Judy Heumann, a former camper who went on to become a disability rights activist and helped pass the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The ultimate message is revolution can start with the young, which aligns perfectly with the opening song’s theme of liberation. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

ALSO PLAYING Blow the Man Down While trapped at home under quarantine, it’s only natural to look for ways to escape. Right now, it seems one of our only options is using streaming services as virtual trips to new places. Amazon Prime’s new release Blow the Man Down takes audiences to Maine, where the atmosphere washes over you with its chilly blues and frosty whites. In a gritty fishing village called Easter Cove, director of photography Todd Banhazl captures the hardscrabble lives of its residents by using a lot of natural lighting and digitally re-created Super 8 footage of the town. Things get darker once bodies start washing ashore.

The police are Fargo-level dumb. And that’s actually good for sisters Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), who end up stabbing a rapist with a harpoon and stealing his bag of cash.

“Someone’s going to miss this,” says Mary Beth. Duh. Don’t go fishing for meaning why this neo-noir flips gender roles, with two girls pulling the strings, but it’s a refreshing twist. Blow the Man Down may not be the idyllic vacation you’re looking for, but it sure is fun. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime.

First Avenue: Closer to the Stars With any luck, public rituals like concertgoing will resume sometime in 2020, but for now, we involuntary couch potatoes can sweat or sway vicariously through PBS’s new documentary about First Avenue. This 55-minute love note to the iconic Minneapolis music venue, made famous by Purple Rain, was produced first for a Twin Cities audience. That means it includes some very insular information (like who had what liquor license when), but also no breathless oversells on who 28

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

this Prince character was. Narrated

by Doomtree’s P.O.S, the standard rock doc’s best quality is in showing how First Avenue shape-shifted through the eras of Woodstock rock, disco, punk, Prince (his own era), hip-hop and indie rock.

Every town in America was home to some bygone club its music community wishes had First Avenue’s survival skills, but here we learn how the 50-year-old Minneapolis institution was never financially safe, was never all-the-way cool and never operated according to one coherent mission statement. Ironically, it took incredible inconsistency to create consistency: DJs who knew they needed to spin ABBA but still snuck in Brian Eno, a business benefactor who was terrible with money and, eventually, a grateful city that couldn’t live without the legacy. NR. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. PBS.

The Hunt Critics panned it. The president hated it. But I found myself elated by The Hunt, a social satire that uses provocation as ammunition, with both sides of the political divide in its crosshairs. Since this is a riff on 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game, expect a bunch of humans to be hunted, and every viewer to be grazed by the hilarious dialogue. In one corner are the “rednecks,” a pack of whites in flannels who wake up gagged in a field and are then shot at. These early scenes are remarkably well orchestrated, making us believe someone is a main character, only to show their brains turn into a cloud of red mist seconds later. In the other corner are the “liberal elites,” hunters who care more about podcasts than human lives.

The thorn in their side is a woman named Crystal who speaks with a Southern twang and becomes a backwoods hero, played by GLOW’s Betty Gilpin with a ferocity that matches Charlotte Christensen’s cinematography. The harsh reviews that fly in the face of The Hunt’s brilliant performances and smart satire

CRIP CAMP only drive home the point of the movie: Narrow-minded political divisiveness drives pretty much everything these days.

R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always When we first meet 17-year-old Autumn (newcomer Sidney Flanigan), she’s singing in her high school talent show.

Everyone around her is dressed up in ’50s and ’60s garb, performing dance routines or mouthing oldie lyrics, and Autumn is clearly out of place. Even though she’s belting out the Exciters’ 1963 song “He’s Got the Power,” it sounds more like something you’d hear on the radio today, and she makes sure to raise her voice when she gets to the chorus: “He makes me do things I don’t want to do.” The crowd boos, but we already love her, and for the next two hours director Eliza Hittman puts Autumn’s entire life on display. In this harsh and heartwarming portrait, Autumn struggles to get an abortion as a poor teenager in the suburbs of Pennsylvania—the title of the film refers to the four optional answers to a health worker’s questions about her sexual history. She and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) end up taking a bus to New York City in order to terminate the pregnancy without parental consent. Along the way, we are confronted with a bleak style of filmmaking that recalls another feminist triumph, Barbara Loden’s first and only feature from 1970, Wanda. With 16 mm close-ups and barren landscapes that mirror Autumn’s inner despair, Hittman has expertly shot the picture through the protagonist’s eyes. It may not be pretty, but it is worth witnessing yet another female fight for control of her life and body. R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

The Platform The Platform works on two levels: First and foremost, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s horror flick is a master class in building atmosphere, but it also functions as an allegory about the detrimental effects of trickle-down economics. Inside a prison with

250 floors, you can practically feel the cold cement enveloping the inmates. When a platter of food descends from one level to the next, with a minute for cellmates to scarf down what’s left, it’s clear that the lower classes are merely feeding on the upper echelon’s scraps. While there is nothing subtle about the message, there is a mysterious tone to the story. Since it moves at a snail’s pace (in a good way), we spend much of the run time trying to figure out what is going on, just like the protagonist, Goreng (Iván Massagué). His goal is to restore order to this rotten world, but that’s no easy task when other inmates are considering cannibalism to stay alive. A dash of Camus, a sprinkle of Kafka and helpings of Lovecraft, The Platform will leave you both sick and satisfied. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

Butt Boy With an unruly midnight movie setting unavailable, the time seems ripe for demented schlock at home—like, say, a half-spoof about a serial killer addicted to sticking objects up his butt. Just by themselves, the title and premise of Tyler Cornack’s Butt Boy earn your double take.

Cornack co-stars as Chip, an IT guy anesthetized by the drudgery of work and family until a prostate exam stirs something deep within (one guess where). Chip’s descent into anal fixation is committed and hilarious, but parody isn’t the larger aim here. No, Butt Boy aspires to be a straight cat-and-mouse thriller—with Tyler Rice as a dogged, alcoholic detective—that belies the absurd comedic hysteria of the setup. That (perhaps noble) genre aspiration runs the film up against a litany of banal low-budget problems, unbecoming of the insanity you want from a movie called Butt Boy: shaky dramatic acting, unnecessary night driving and a POV imbalance that handicaps suspense. (Nobody wants a Mindhunter episode that’s 65 percent BTK interludes.)

The execution of Butt Boy is a little like holding court with a one-of-a-kind dirty joke but pausing constantly to insist it’s not a joke. The punchline may still kill, but the approach is a little up its own ass. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

Spotlight

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Featured artist: Zachary Reno

New book of photography, OH WELL, released April 2020 - zacharyreno.bigcartel.com Instagram @ 000.ooo.666.999 Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Contact us at art@wweek.com.

THE QUARANTINE 13:

IT’S AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD, DON’T YOU KNOW THAT YET? (PROPHESY SONGS)

Share your own Top 10 playlist!

ART@WWEEK.COM

by Eric Isaacson

1. The Gaylads Sound of Silence

5. Bernie Reagan - There’s a New World Coming

10. The Soul Stirrers - Time Brings About a Change

2. Young Marble Giants Final Day

6. David Bowie - 5 Years

11. Eddie and Ernie Time Waits For No One

3. Nina Simone 22nd Century

8. Sun Ra and His Arkestra Somebody Else’s World

4. The Kinks This Time Tomorrow

7. Exuma - The Vision

9. The Talking Heads Heaven (Live from

12. Solomon Burke Time Is a Thief 13. Charles Bradley Changes

Stop Making Sense)

Visit Eric at Mississippi Records when all this is over.

Willamette Week APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

29

JONESIN’

52 It's usually due April 15

by Matt Jones

"Cool, Cool" - another door opens.

53 Breakfast hrs.

56 Android program 58 Carp in some ponds 60 ITEMS IN THE VEGETABLE CRISPER 67 ITEMS IN THE VEGETABLE CRISPER 68 Words before ante 69 It ended on April 9 this year 70 Musk of Tesla Motors

19 Karmann _ _ _ (classic VW model) 24 Rhett Butler's last word 25 The _ _ _ State University

53 Photographer Diane

30 "Despicable Me" supervillain

33 Omit

Down

35 Initialism for the series of "Avengers" movies

3 Longest possible sentence 4 Go together perfectly 5 With "The," 2008 Mike Myers flop 6 Carpet calculation

49 Go letter by letter

28 Actress _ _ _ Ling of "The Crow"

73 Some TV rooms

2 "30 Rock" star Baldwin

48 "Hawaii Five-O" detective, to McGarrett 51 "Bon _ _ _" (good evening, in France)

72 Get the idea

1 Golden State, informally

43 Make retroactive, like a payment

26 Jonas who developed a polio vaccine

31 "Late Night" host Meyers who's currently broadcasting from home

71 Bedding item

42 Preternatural power

37 "Keep _ _ _!" ("Don't give up!")

38 "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" star Michael

54 Transform bit by bit 55 Dealt a sharp blow, in the Bible 57 Asks intrusive questions 59 "The Sky _ _ _" (1950 Italian drama) 61 Hurt all over 62 Rapper in "Law & Order: SVU" 63 Dermatologist's case 64 Miniature golf goal

39 "Jurassic Park" beast

65 English school founded by Henry VI

41 God, to a Rastafarian

66 1040 IDs

last week’s answers

7 Stereotypical '80s hairdos Across 1 Completely chill 5 Cat's 8 "Sweat smile" or "money-mouth face," e.g.

13 Et ___ (Latin for "and others") 14 Golden ___ O's (cereal variety that somehow exists)

20 ITEMS IN THE FREEZER

32 Exclamations that have their moments?

21 Affectionate greeting (that I'm guessing there will be a lot of when this is done)

34 Ewe's mate

22 Raphael's weapon, in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" 23 Gallery offering 24 RaÌz c˙bica de ocho

16 Fix with a needle

27 Long sandwich

17 ITEMS IN THE FREEZER

29 Makeshift car cleaners

30

Willamette Week Classifieds APRIL 15, 2020 wweek.com

36 Answer a stimulus 40 ITEMS IN THE REFRIGERATOR 44 Phone maker from Finland

8 Words in the middle of everyone's favorite Napoleon-based palindrome 9 Alternate nickname for Sporty Spice (as opposed to Scary) 10 Home of Suntory's headquarters

45 "Born in the ___"

11 2000 World Series MVP Derek

46 New employee

12 "_ _ _ let you down!"

47 Degs. for many professors

15 Green "Sesame Street" character

50 Alternatives to Macs

18 "It's either them _ _ _"

©2020 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ984.

Week of APRIL 15

©2020 Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Aries artist Vincent van Gogh got started on his life's work relatively late. At ages 25 and 26 he made failed attempts to train as a pastor and serve as a missionary. He didn't launch his art career in earnest until he was 27. During the next ten years, he created 860 paintings —an average of 1.7 every week—as well as over 1,200 additional works of art. For comparison, the prolific painter Salvador Dali made 1,500 paintings in 61 years. During the coming twelve months, Aries, you could achieve a van Gogh-like level of productiveness in your own chosen field—especially if you lay the foundations now, during our stay-at-home phase.

Libran rapper and activist Talib Kweli says, "You have to know when to be arrogant. You have to know when to be humble. You have to know when to be hard and you have to know when to be soft." You Librans tend to be skilled in this artful approach to life: activating and applying the appropriate attitude as is necessary for each new situation.

And I'm happy to report that your capacity for having just the right touch at the right time will be a crucial asset in the coming weeks. Trust your intuition to guide you through every subtle shift of emphasis.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Most authors do their writing while sitting on chairs in front of desks. But long before there were standing desks, poet Rainer Maria Rilke and children's author Lewis Carroll wrote their books while standing up. Novelist Henry James had eight desks, but typically paced between them as he dictated his thoughts to a secretary. And then there have been weirdoes like poet Robert Lowell and novelist Truman Capote. They attended to their craft as they lay in their bed.

I suggest you draw inspiration from those two in the coming weeks. It'll be a favorable time to accomplish masterpieces of work and play while in the prone position.

Scorpio artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956) enjoyed a colorful fate. One of the few female Cubist painters, she was a prominent figure in the Parisian avant-garde. She was also the muse and romantic partner of renowned poet Guillaume Apollinaire. But there came a turning point when she abandoned her relationship with Apollinaire. "I was twentyfive and he was sleeping with all the women," she said, "and at twenty-five you don’t stand for that, even from a poet." Is there a comparable situation in your life, Scorpio? A role you relish but that also takes a toll? Now is a favorable time to reevaluate it. I'm not telling you what you should decide, only that you should think hard about it.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

While sleeping, most of us have over a thousand dreams every year. Many are hard to remember and not worth remembering. But a beloved few can be life-changers. They have the potential to trigger epiphanies that transform our destinies for the better. In my astrological opinion, you are now in a phase when such dreams are more likely than usual. That's why I invite you to keep a pen and notebook by your bed so as to capture them. For inspiration, read this testimony from Jasper Johns, whom some call America's "foremost living artist": "One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it." (Painting flags ultimately became one of Johns' specialties.)

Sagittarian sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1596– 1680) was a prodigious, inventive creator. One scholar wrote, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture."

He designed and built public squares, fountains, and buildings, many in Rome, which embodied his great skills as both sculptor and architect. Unlike many brilliant artists alive today, Bernini was deeply religious. Every night for 40 years, he walked from his home to pay a devotional visit to the Church of the Gesù.

According to my reading of the astrological factors, now would be an excellent time for you to engage in reverential rituals like those—but without leaving your home, of course. Use this social-distancing time to draw reinvigoration from holy places within you or in your memory.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) was a renowned author who wrote The Good Soldier, a novel that has been called "one of the 100 greatest novels of all time." Yet another very famous author, Henry James (1843–1916), was so eager to escape hanging out with Ford that he once concealed himself behind a tree so as to not be seen. You have astrological permission to engage in comparable strategies during the coming weeks.

It won't be a time when you should force yourself to endure boring, meaningless, and unproductive tasks.

As I understand the current chapter of your life story, you have been doing the unspectacular but yeoman work of recharging your spiritual batteries. Although you may have outwardly appeared to be quiet and still, you have in fact been generating and storing up concentrated reserves of inner power. Because of the coronavirus crisis, it's not yet time to tap into those impressive reserves and start channeling them into a series of dynamic practical actions.

But it is time to formulate the practical actions you will take when the emergency has passed.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) I hope that during the coronavirus crisis you have been entertaining wild truths and pondering the liberations you will initiate when the emergency has passed. I trust you have been pushing your imagination beyond its borders and wandering into the nooks and crannies of your psyche that you were previously hesitant to explore. Am I correct in my assumptions, Leo? Have you been wandering outside your comfort zone and discovering clues about how, when things return to normal, you can add spice and flair to your rhythm?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) I like this quote by the author Jake Remington: "Fate whispers to the warrior, 'You cannot withstand the storm.'

The warrior whispers back, 'I am the storm.'" Although this passage is more melodramatic than necessary for your needs in the coming weeks, I think it might be good medicine that will help you prevail over the turbulence of the coronavirus crisis. Getting yourself into a storm-like mood could provide you with the personal power necessary to be unflappable and authoritative. You should also remember that a storm is not inherently bad. It may be akin to a catharsis or orgasm that relieves the tension and clears the air.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Aquarian poet Jacques Prévert offered a variation on the famous Christian supplication known as the Lord's Prayer.

The original version begins, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." But Prévert's variation says, "Our father who art in heaven: Stay there." Being an atheist, he had no need for the help and support of a paternal deity. I understand his feeling. I tend to favor the Goddess myself.

But for you Aquarians right now, even if you're allergic to talk of a divine presence, I'll recommend that you seek out generous and inspiring masculine influences. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will benefit from influences that resemble good fathering.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) How skillful are you in expressing what you want? Wait.

Let me back up and reformulate that. How skillful are you in knowing what you want and expressing the truth about what you want to the people who might ultimately be able to give it to you or help you get it? This is the most important question for you to meditate on in the coming weeks. If you find that you're fuzzy about what you want or hazy about asking for what you want, correct the problems.

HOMEWORK: For three days, uphold your highest ideal in every little way you can imagine.

Report results at FreeWillAstrology.com.

Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at

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OVID-19 closures have my partner and I working from home - we’re now together all day, every day. We’re both healthy, and part of me thinks we “should” be taking advantage of this time together with romance and sex but… we’re not. I love my partner and think they’re hot as hell, but we’ve hardly even been naked together for the last couple weeks, much less getting frisky. Is there some sexy quarantine ingredient I’m missing?

- Sexy In Quarantine

COVID-19 pulled the rug out from under all of us, SIQ. And as Jen Gunter, Obstetrician and Gynecologist wrote this week: “These are not sexy times.” There are resources coming out daily reminding us that we are experiencing collective trauma, and that we are all, globally, grieving a multitude of losses and changes, both trivial and immeasurably large.

In short: Despite the fact that you two may be snuggled up at home spending your days with “nothing better to do,” there are some very real reasons this isn’t the sexy extended spring break of your dreams.

Some ideas of what you can do: 1. Create some structure for your shared space - less chaos and more communication will lead to a calmer, smoother time for both of you, and less stress can lead to greater arousal. Local sex educator and intimacy coach Stella Harris recently posted a great resource on sudden close quarters - give it a look for some ideas (stellaharris.net/ when-social-distancing-means-close-quarters/).

2. Figure out what you want from sex during this time, and communicate that to your partner rather than worrying that you’re not having “enough” sex (whatever that means)! Do you want comfort? Distraction? Connection?

Endorphins? Reassurance? Whatever it is, brainstorm how you and your partner can express and meet those needs, through sex and/or all the other creative means available to you. Cuddling, exercising, massaging, playing a goofy game, listening deeply and learning about each other intimacy can be expressed in all kinds of ways.

3. Strike while the iron is hot! If you and your partner find yourselves in a flirty makeout moment - run with it. The list of things you could worry about, odd jobs you could pick up, CDC guidelines you could check in on, chores to be done - all of that will still be there, and whether we like it or not, it’ll find its way back to your consciousness shortly.

Here is your permission to enjoy yourself and find pleasure in the moments it arises. Soak that shit up, let it fill you.

Let it give you the power it has to offer, whenever you feel ready to receive it, in whatever doses you feel capable of.

You’re doing it right, SIQ. Take care.

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