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Safe Summer 2015 Eula Biss on how a threat becomes a plague Alternatives to policing in the Black Freedom Movement The world’s first all–Asian American dance rock band wrangles with trademark law Ovid and the literature of rape $8 2 Oregon Humanities 3 Summer 2015 Oregon Humanities (ISSN editor editorial advisory board Departments 2333-5513) is published trian- Kathleen Holt Features: Safe Debra Gwartney nually by Oregon Humanities, art director Julia Heydon 921 SW Washington St., Suite Jen Wick Guy Maynard 4 12 25 150, Portland, Oregon 97205. Win McCormack Editor’s Note Plague Fears Group Therapy by eula biss by dionisia morales We welcome letters from assistant editors Greg Netzer 6 In an ongoing apocalypse, how Copping out at an uptown readers. If you would like to Eloise Holland Camela Raymond Field Work do we know when to panic? slumber party submit a letter for consider- Ben Waterhouse Kate Sage Vanport Multimedia Project ation, please send it to the Rich Wandschneider ✢ copy editor Grand Ronde museum and 17 31 Dave Weich ✢ This Is Not Just a Cloud editor at k.holt@oregon- Allison Dubinsky cultural center Humanity Trademark Offense humanities.org or to the Matt Yurdana in Perspective mentors ✢ OH by simon tam by michael heald ✢ ✢ Embracing grief in the address listed above. Letters communications/ News Thanks to our funders An Asian American musician wilderness publications intern Talking about Dying gets into trouble for naming his may be edited for space or band the Slants. Julia Withers clarity. 11 36 Oregon Humanities is From the Director 21 The Rim of the Wound provided free to Oregonians. Civil Rights with Guns by wendy willis An open letter to the students To join our mailing list, email 40 by kristian williams Posts Alternatives to policing during of Columbia University’s o.hm@oregonhumanities. Readers write about “Safe.” the Black Freedom Movement Multicultural Affairs Advi- org, visit oregonhumanities. sory Board, with a special org/magazine, or call our 44 note to my daughters office at (503) 241-0543 or Read. Talk. Think. (800) 735-0543. The Great Detective by Zach Dundas ✢ The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain ✢ Sounding Race in Rap Music by Loren Kajikawa ✢ Below the Radar by Alison L. Gash ✢ What the Dying Have Taught Me about Living by Fred Grewe ✢ Founding Grammars by Rosemarie Ostler ✢ Turtleface and Beyond by Arthur Bradford ✢ Crooked River by Valerie Geary 46 Croppings Daily Objects at the Arts Center in Corvallis OREGON STATE PENITENTIARYOREGON STATE 4 Oregon Humanities 5 Summer 2015 Editor’s Note Safely and Bravely HIS SUMMER, MY DAUGHTER LEARNED SELF- walks through our neighborhood alone, why she must learn to T defense at a music camp for girls. At the weeklong camp, trust her own instincts—even if she offends someone or seems kids form bands, compose music, write songs, play music, make unfriendly—above all else. zines and T-shirts, and revel in girl power, but they also take a But how can I teach her that in protecting herself she workshop on how to physically protect themselves. shouldn’t isolate herself from the rest of the world? As our July “If someone comes up to you and grabs your throat,” my Think & Drink guest, writer Eula Biss, said, the idea that we can daughter said, pretending to reach for me, “you make your arm each create our own little societies in our homes is disturbing: really straight and shove your fingers right here.” She gestured “What do we owe each other as citizens?” This obligation—that to the vulnerable hollow at the base of her neck. She showed me we move together toward good, generous, compassionate lives a couple of other techniques, each detailing how to escape from despite the myriad ways we hurt each other daily—is what I feel various attacks. Watching her move clumsily from one pretend pressing on me even when my strongest urge is to lock the scenario to the next, I felt my heart break a little bit. windows and doors and draw my little family close in around me. I’m a parent, so I’m used to heartbreak—the tiny little fis- But again, doubt: can my daughter—can any of us, really—learn sures that form with every step my children take toward adult- to live both safely and bravely in the world? hood. But this one felt different because my perspective was The essays that follow explore threats of words and ideas, suddenly different: rather than seeing her as moving away fear and vulnerability, ways we challenge one another, ways from me toward some vague place, I clearly saw the place, the we protect one another. That many of these rise out of relation- one filled with external threats of violence, accidents, and ships between parents and children isn’t surprising: Perhaps earthquakes, and internal ones, like failure, disappointment, the last times we felt truly safe were in our childhood. Perhaps and despair. we instinctively conspire to preserve those times and recre- And when I imagined my child in this place, I felt new doubt. ate them when possible. Or perhaps we revisit them again and The list of instructions on keeping her safe has been, so far, again to test old frailties, draw new insights, and wield new pretty straightforward: wash your hands, wear your seat belt, tools for living in a precarious world. wear your helmet, don’t chase a ball into the street. But I know kathleen holt, Editor these warnings won’t be enough. I’ll soon have to explain to her [email protected] why she is learning self-defense, why she must be alert when she Cover Art Ideas for “Move” This issue’s cover is by Hye-Ryoung Min, a online at oregonhumanities.org), then send Please consider the constraints of a New York–based photographer whose work us the following by October 12, 2015: magazine cover (e.g., vertical orientation, was on display earlier this summer at News- • A high-resolution digital image (300 dpi nameplate, and cover lines). We are most pace Center for Photography in southeast at 8” x 10”; scans or photographs, JPEG interested in works by Oregon-based artists. Portland. or TIFF) Submissions can be sent to If you’re an artist and have work that • Your name, the title of the work, the type [email protected] or by post we might consider for the Fall/Winter 2015 of media, as well as contact information to Oregon Humanities magazine, issue, on the theme “Move,” we’d love to (email and phone number) 921 SW Washington St. Suite 150, Portland, know about it. Please familiarize yourself • Description of the relationship of the OR 97205. with our publication (back issues viewable image to the theme 6 Oregon Humanities 7 Summer 2015 Training Center. In 2014, Laura Lo Forti came on board as project director, leading a series of free workshops in which volunteers combined recordings of Vanport survivors’ stories with archival photos and video to create short mul- timedia pieces. “They’re talking about the same event, but Field Work from very different perspectives,” Lo Forti HUMANITIES ACROSS OREGON says. “We edit [the interviews] with other lay- ers of storytelling, and then we go back and ask the survivors if that’s a good representation of their story.” The edited stories, collectively titled The Wake of Vanport, were first screened last fall to a standing-room-only crowd at Vancouver Ave- nue First Baptist Church. Subsequent screen- ings have been similarly packed. “That was fantastic. It really made me feel TIM LABARGE good to see that outpouring of people,” says Marge Moss, a Vanport survivor who contrib- Our supporters make uted her story to the project. “It’s important that people know the history. The people that this magazine—and so lived there, we were human beings, and we didn’t matter.” The screenings drew interest from many much more—possible. more Portlanders eager to have their expe- Take a look at how much donors like you helped riences recorded. “More and more former Vanport residents are contacting us and say- Oregon Humanities accomplish around the state ing, ‘What about me? I also have a story,’” Lo in our 2014 Annual Report, now available online Forti says. “And not just people from the black at oregonhumanities.org. community—this is a story that touches many communities.” Moss, who was born in Louisiana, says she remembers Vanport, which had integrated works of music, dance, theater, art, and film. schools but segregated streets and medical “This is a story of community strength and facilities, as a place of relative racial tolerance. resilience,” Lo Forti says. “We are acknowl- “It was like culture shock when we moved edging that Vanport was a community. People there,” she says. “I had never associated with came with hopes to build a future, escaping any other races. In Louisiana we were not awful realities. They came with hope and INTISAR ABIOTO allowed to look at white people in the face. The strength. It is the entire experience we are exposure in Vanport was very good.” celebrating.” Audience members at an over- With Hope and Strength early snowmelt, rushed in through the crack. Starting this summer, Lo Forti is partner- To learn more about upcoming events capacity 2014 presentation of Volunteers are working to preserve memories of In its path lay Vanport, Oregon’s second-largest ing with libraries, churches, schools, and senior related to the Vanport oral history project, visit “The Wake of Vanport” at Oregon Historical Society Vanport, Oregon’s lost city.

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