SUMMER 2007
MUSIC ON THE BRAIN KESSLER ON FATHER’S DAY LINDA BRADY PLAYING HARD
CARL MORRIS THE NORTHWEST WAS HIS MUSE Summer Session 0LANªYOURªSUMMERªNOW ô35--%2ô3%33)/.ôôôôô*5.%ôm!5'534ô
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UOSUMMERUOREGONEDU 2007 Summer Schedule &IRSTôFOUR WEEKôSESSIONô*UNEôm*ULYô 3ECONDôFOUR WEEKôSESSIONô*ULYôm!UGUSTô %IGHT WEEKôSESSIONô*UNEôm!UGUSTô %LEVEN WEEKôSESSIONô*UNEôm3EPTEMBERô A Northwest Artist p. 14 Kent Peterson
OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 VOLUME 86 NUMBER 4
FEATURES 14 THE NORTHWEST AS ARTISTIC MUSE by LiDoña Wagner New York seemed the natural place for a painter like Carl Morris, but he couldn’t leave the light and landscape of his adopted home. Chris Michel 18 FATHER’S DAY by Lauren Kessler Father p. 18 Missing the not-so-perfect father. 22 SCIENCE AND SONG by Tracy Ilene Miller Daniel Levitin mixes his love of music with some serious cognitive neuroscience. 26 MEET LINDA BRADY The UO’s new senior vice president and provost explains how international arms negotiations prepared her for university administration—and more.
DEPARTMENTS 2 Letters 6 Currents Lest We Forget by Ryan Coonerty Ross West Music on the Mind p. 22 Eyewitness to History by George Wickes Pulp Philosophy by John Lysaker Good Mornin’ America, How Are You? by Clay Eals 30 University Academics Play Hard / Character-driven Fiction / Cool School Tools / Oregon’s Killer Crocodile / New Bach Festival Head / PROFile: Elizabeth Reis 38 Old Oregon Larry McQueen, Bird Artist / Global Warming and Risk Perception / Designer Tableware / Class Notes / Profile: Tom Killion Ph.D.’78 52 Oregon Trails
Welcome to the MySpace Generation by Kelsey Friedman ’07 Ian Bradshaw Linda Brady p. 26
Cover: From the Carl Morris mural Lumbering, 1943 (see above), which is in the United States Post Office, Main Branch, Eugene. Photograph by Kent Peterson; used courtesy of the John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, Eugene. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
HO S ANGEROUS cal, freethinking opposition to the “status ing to the other. Perhaps the tone of the W ’ D ? quo,” but rather of the exact opposite; the rhetoric needs to be moderated. If we lose The dangerous professor is not the one with intense leftist intolerance for any position the ability to have civilized dialogue with radical ideas [“Danger,” Spring 2007], but that opposes its own. people with differing points of view, then the one who harbors, exhibits, and instills in The irony is that these old hippies and we have lost a great deal, indeed. students an arrogant condescension toward yippies still haven’t come to realize that Evan Mandigo ’67 opposing ideas. My eleven-year journey they are the status quo of the university Bismarck, North Dakota through academia began at Oregon and today and, paradoxically, they exhibit more ended at Harvard, with six other colleges, intolerance for thinking that runs counter I was amused when I saw “Danger” in the universities, and seminaries along the way. to their doctrines than their “status quo” Spring issue. I suspected the gist and was I encountered many brilliant minds who predecessors ever did. Real open-minded not disappointed. A subtle and idyllic myth were acclaimed in their fields yet who were critical thinking will reign at the UO only is that liberal academia is the bastion of smugly closed toward competing viewpoints. when independent-thinking students are the free, open-minded exchange of ideas America has nothing to fear from expos- no longer bullied by liberal professors who and that its detractors, the “powerful,” the ing its brightest young minds to extreme delude themselves that they are open- right, consider such exchange of ideas dan- viewpoints, but our nation has much to minded, and when the criticisms from for- gerous. The mirror image comes closer to fear from those who, contrary to all their mer students like Horowitz (and thousands the truth. proud rhetoric about “academic freedom,” of others like myself) are granted genuine I reflected on my own experience are hostile toward the serious consideration consideration. at the UO. In 1973, I and three or four of contrary worldviews. By contrast, my fin- Philip B. Bean, M.Arch. ’87 other business students were given failing est professor made every effort to present Umpqua marks in a sociology course. The bias was every view on the subject in question—and so egregious that Dean West of the busi- to do so in a way that enabled the student to I read my copy of Oregon Quarterly from ness school intervened with his counter- understand how a reasonable person could cover to cover and eagerly await the arrival part in sociology. My mistake had been in hold that position. That was the high point of the next edition. thinking critically about the exploitation of my education and the approach I used I read “Danger” with great interest. of labor in America. I had to defer gradua- in my career in journalism. Finally, I sug- While I disagree with the perspective of tion for a summer pending “reeducation.” gest that a powerful antidote to intellec- the article and the views of the UO faculty This was the worst, but not the first, price tual arrogance and academic exclusivity is expressed, I also disagree with the view- I paid for “dangerous” opinions during my Harvard psychologist Daniel Goleman’s point that their ideas are dangerous and academic years. book, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychol- should be suppressed in some fashion. What Danger is defined by consequences and ogy of Self-Deception. is dangerous, in my mind, is for either side for liberals, particularly in academia, there Don Clark ’66 of the philosophic spectrum to stop listen- are few consequences. It was ironic to see Arvin, California Lee Bollinger showcased in “Danger,” pon- tificating about academic freedom. It was at Pete Peterson’s seizing upon Horowitz’s hall OREGON QUARTERLY his Columbia that Minuteman speaker Jim of “dangerous thinkers” is both a straw man Gilchrist was recently shouted down. LETTERS POLICY It is difficult to see how academics can diversion as well as an evasion of the real The magazine welcomes all letters, but point. Have you considered the possibility affirm their insular myth about intellectual reserves the right to edit for space and freedom. Both from personal experience that the recent avalanche of conservative clarity. Send your comments to Editor, criticism might be due, not to an ideological and observation, it is clear that there is Oregon Quarterly, 5228 University a deep-seated, ruthlessly enforced liberal backlash, but rather to the truthful accuracy of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-5228; of the charge? And contrary to Peterson’s bias at universities. via fax at (541) 346-5571; or via Bob Bell ’73 (summer!) assertion, the actual criticism directed at e-mail at [email protected]. faculty’s liberal prejudice is not of its radi- Brooklyn, New York
EDITOR OFFICE WEB SITE E-MAIL ADMINISTRATION Guy Maynard Shelly Cooper oregonquarterly.com [email protected] President: Dave Frohnmayer; MANAGING PROOFREADERS OFFICE OREGON QUARTERLY Senior Vice President and Provost: Linda Vol. 86 No.4 EDITOR John Crosiar, Scott Skelton 130 Chapman Hall is published by the UO in March, Brady; Vice President for University The University of Oregon Ross West INTERNS 5228 University of Oregon June, August, and November and Advancement: Allan Price; Vice President is an equal-opportunity, ADVERTISING Whitney Malkin Eugene OR 97403-5228 distributed free to alumni. Printed for Finance and Administration: Frances affirmative-action institution DIRECTOR EDITORIAL Phone (541) 346-5045 in the USA on recycled paper. Dyke; Vice President for Research and committed to cultural Susan Thelen ADVISORY Fax (541) 346-5571 Copyright 2007 University of Graduate Studies: Richard Linton; diversity and compliance DESIGNERS BOARD EDITORIAL Oregon. All rights reserved. Views Associate Vice President for Public and with the Americans with Tim Jordan, Jennifer Casey, David Funk, (541) 346-5048 expressed do not necessarily reflect Government Affairs: Michael Redding; Disabilities Act. This Chris Michel Cathy Hamilton, Kathleen ADVERTISING the views of the UO administration. Executive Director of the UO Alumni publication will be made CONTRIBUTING Holt, Mark Johnson, Ann (541) 346-5046 CHANGE OF ADDRESS Association: Daniel Rodriguez available in accessible PHOTOGRAPHER Mack, Alexandra Mock, SUBSCRIPTIONS Alumni Records, 1204 University UO INFORMATION formats upon request: Jack Liu Michael Redding, Barbara $30 per year domestic of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1204 (541) 346-1000 (541) 346-5048. West, Tom Wheeler $40 per year international (541) 346-3178, [email protected]
2 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 ¡Sí, Se Puede!
Thanks to a lot of hard work – and the generous help of UO scholarship donors – Gerardo Rodriguez is the first person in his family to graduate from college. His B.F.A. in Digital Arts makes him a hero to his younger sisters, as well as the dozens of middle- and high-school students that he’s tutored over the years. “Those young kids – they need to see role models who are successful, who are going to college and are trying to do something with their lives,” says the young web site designer and Webfoot mentor. “I am so grateful for all those scholarships and how they helped me out.” Can we say that it’s equally gratifying to see people like Gerardo transforming lives? ¡Sí, se puede!
© 2006 University of Oregon www.uoregon.edu LETTERS
Pete Peterson raises some important issues and was reinforced by the introduction lack of a remedy for bad behavior that is surrounding political censorship and the of M.B.A.-trained leadership. A pure kind all too contemporary. price academics could pay for unwelcome of democratic working experiment needed John M. Morris, M.F.A. ’90 opinions. I would like to add that, although to live on thinner ice of liability, at least Florence researchers are protected for the content within its own community. That would of their research, we are also bound by have freed up more “energy” to focus on BOUNDARIES moral and ethical responsibilities. With new ideas. the passage of the Native American Russell Morton Regarding “No Boundaries” by Carol Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Eugene Ann Bassett [Spring 2007], I would pres- (1990), tensions within the archaeology, ent another opinion. Visiting annually for anthropology, and museum communities Patricia Marshall’s otherwise fine account thirty years, hunting for the cagey chukar, were exposed. Some made the extreme of the demise of Burley Design Cooperative I have stepped over, straddled through, claim that repatriation was in violation of understates the frustration that many of us and rolled under hundreds of barbed-wire academic freedom because of the poten- feel about the way business was conducted fences. tial loss of “scientific” data. The debate at the co-op in its last years. Clearly, this part of Oregon is much resulted, in some cases, in the creation of I was one of several UO alumni who too harsh, isolated, and humbling for Bas- a false polarity that placed native people joined the cooperative as a way to stay in sett and the volunteer fence-pullers. They in opposition to the scientific community. Eugene after graduating and work in a job venture out there with no understanding Academic freedom should not be viewed that promoted progressive values. Burley of the singular efforts citizens took to settle as an absolute right, but a privilege. There was a truly democratic workplace producing and live in such hard country. The volun- is no such thing as unmitigated academic elegant and fun products that supported teers and ODNA [Oregon Natural Desert freedom. human-powered transportation. When I Association] show little respect for land Melissa Baird, M.S.’03 was hired in 1992, the center of innova- owners who call the Oregon high desert Springfield tion within the cooperative was made up of home. Do these people and organizations people who were committed to an equitable ignore the chaos and destruction that has workplace and who loved bicycles. This BURLEY BLAME been ongoing in their own backyards, in creative and committed group (personified the Willamette Valley, Portland, and by Bruce Creps and Matt Purvis) earned Many thanks for the memories down the Bend? far less at Burley (with its flat wage struc- Tai chi on a ridgeline? I’ve seen more Burley Co-op lane [“Dissolution,” Spring ture) than they could in “the real world.” 2007]. I first went to work for Alan Scholz spirituality from a skulking coyote. A As the co-op grew, many new members rusted, blown-over barbed-wire fence is a in 1976 and was one of the founders of the did not share these values yet, in many cooperative in 1978. Aside from a lengthy steel barrier? Surely, there are public lands cases, earned more than they would have the good-hearted fence-pullers can find “leave of absence,” I worked at the co-op elsewhere. until the summer of 2005. I would meta- closer to their homes—and surely, much When the membership voted in a more comfortable. morphose from production to sales, then majority of directors who did not embrace to shipping and receiving, back to produc- Scott Kellstrom ’70 the progressive ideals Burley once embod- Klamath Falls tion, back into sales, and back again into ied, changes were set in motion that would production. More importantly, I served first poison the workplace atmosphere and two terms on the board of directors and eventually destroy the cooperative. By that LUXURY-FREE PARADISE in the corporate treasurer’s position from time I had moved on. The general manager 1996 to 2005, at which time the job had was empowered to institute a differential I wasn’t surprised by Harley Patrick’s article, become moot. wage and impose a secretive, hierarchical “Honeymoon in Paradise” [Spring 2007], Marshall’s observations are well taken. management regime. Protected by the new not recommending Molokai, Hawaii, as I spent endless nights over the final years secretive and punitive structure, managers the perfect vacation spot. Having lived in wondering where things had gone wrong. and directors made bad product line deci- Hawaii for a number of years, including When I finally came to the conclusion, it sions, approved inferior product designs, 2000–2001 on Molokai, I totally agree. If was too late and no one would listen to and grossly mismanaged the business. it’s luxury you want, Kapalua is just eight me anyway. Burley was principally a low- The article leaves an impression that miles across the Pailolo Channel. tech manufacturing operation that had the the failure of Burley was inevitable in part Molokai is small, thinly populated, advantage of inventory control and ship- because the membership was stuck in the rural, economically poor, and—with the ping from the United States. Everything we idealism of an earlier era. I contend that highest percentage of native Hawaiian made could be easily copied on the Asian the failure can largely be attributed to the inhabitants next to Niihua (off limits to rim for a fraction of the labor cost. What visitors)—wary of outsiders. Residents Burley really needed was an endless flow bridle against what they’ve witnessed as of clever ideas. CORRECTION negative changes on neighboring islands. At the peak of Burley’s success, In “Decades” [Old Oregon, Spring This keeps many luxuries off island. It’s not 1993–95, the capital and brain power was an easy place to live and tourism doesn’t 2007], we mistakenly referred to the there to do many great things. The shift hold a high priority. Doernbecher Memorial Hospital for towards corporate paranoia had started However, the locals certainly aren’t in the offices of Burley’s legal counsel Children as the Dorchester hospital. hostile towards outsiders. All are welcome
4 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 to join in the homespun entertainment, Regarding the recollection of Osama bin example, and then “the leader of a holy notoriously long (talk story) conversa- Laden by Khaled Batarfi, I would have war against America” and “as the archi- tions, and unspoiled island beauty. It’s an been more comfortable with the title “My tect of a great war against the West.” He atmosphere similar to rural mainland com- Former Friend, Osama bin Laden.” I notice obviously approves of bin Laden and his munities—with the added pride in being a relatively recent date of his degree, mak- cause. He does not condemn or denounce rough-around-the-edges-but-typically-laid- ing him too young to experience the very bin Laden’s actions. back Hawaiian. deliberate and ardent, not at all “blind,” We are at war with bin Laden and his So if you visit Molokai, share the warm support for the new state of Israel in 1948. associates. Why would you print an article hugs everybody exchanges when greeting, As a teenager I collected thousands of dol- written by someone who is a friend and return those waves and smiles as you drive lars in little blue boxes from Americans supporter of bin Laden? by, enjoy the beautiful scenery, and laugh of all religions and races, dedicated to David Pinson ’75 off the inconveniences. planting trees and buying land [in Israel]. Folsom, California Scott Davis ’70 Despite all the wars and hardships, Israel La Jolla, California has remained a vital democracy and a ref- LIBERAL ARTS uge, as it has just demonstrated by taking in NO FRIEND Darfur refugees. Judging by the support of For what it’s worth, in reading your all but a small minority, the tiny state that “Decades” [Old Oregon, Spring 2007], I America helped birth remains our respon- was reminded of a freshman scholarship Khaled Batarfi’s essay titled “My Friend, sibility and our ally, our support quite clear- honorary luncheon I attended the spring Osama bin Laden” [Currents, Spring 2007] eyed despite the relentless enmity of the of 1954. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer had just offers some real insights into bin Laden’s tyrants of the world. had his invitation to speak at the Uni- character. Bin Laden’s early statement Lorraine Widman, M.F.A. ’56 versity of Washington revoked, and the about how he would have handled that Portland more open-minded UO had invited him altercation on the playground—“You know, to come to our campus. His message to us if you gave me time, I would have solved The reprint of this article shows poor was to take as many liberal arts courses as the issue peacefully” —might also suggest judgment. Khaled Batarfi, managing edi- possible before narrowing our studies to that bin Laden has been ungrateful and tor of a Saudi newspaper, writes about one exclusive field. Oppenheimer’s advice egotistical since his youth. A deed meant Osama bin Laden as his friend even at seems as pertinent now as it did then. to help bin Laden was rebuffed. In Afghani- this time. He talks about bin Laden as Jean Fay Harmon ’57 stan, when the United States helped the charismatic, pious, peaceful, lead-by- Neskowin mujahedeen defeat the Soviet Union, bin Laden expressed a similar contempt. As gratitude for our assistance, bin Laden soon retrained—at us—the very weapons we had given him. So, would providing bin Laden “the same opportunity that [Batarfi] had— studying and living in America”—really have made bin Laden regard us more favor- ably? I strongly doubt it. Numerous studies suggest that exposure to our educational system actually increases contempt for Western society for those so predisposed. Sadly, the “libertarian” (sic) values that Batarfi so loves about the UO run coun- ter to bin Laden’s personal philosophy of control over other individuals’ thought and behavior. Batarfi’s fascinating essay confirms that two friends from the same geographic loca- Your Duck Shop has everything you tion can turn out very differently. It is all to show your need . the more tragic, and ironic, when one of true colors those friends becomes a respected educator who embraces global diversity, while the other becomes an isolationist zealot who has murdered thousands of innocent people worldwide. Batarfi’s essay, then, says a great deal about personal integrity and grace—or the lack thereof. EUGENE: UO Bookstore / Autzen Stadium / Valley River Center PORTLAND: Richard V. Francaviglia, Ph.D. ’70 SW 2nd & Yamhill / Washington Square BEND: Old Mill District UODuckShop.com Arlington, Texas
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 5
CURRENTS SEEN AND HEARD AROUND THE UO Michael Michael McDermott ROSE CITY AGLOW WITH DUCK PRIDE “Morrison Bridge Rallies for March Madness,” was the headline of a March 19 press release bearing the logos of both Multnomah County and Pacific Power. The text began, “With the University of Oregon men’s basketball team having won its first two games in the NCAA college tournament, Pacific Power and Multnomah County have rallied their collective state pride and put it on display on the newly lit Morrison Bridge. The recently installed energy-efficient lights on the sides of the bridge are going yellow and green while the Ducks play their way through the tournament. . . . ‘We’re proud of our Oregon Ducks getting to the Sweet 16,’ said Pat Reiten, president of Pacific Power. ‘What a great way to show the team that Portland is behind you all the way.’”
LEST WE FORGET To jot down a shopping list or a phone number, just about any scrap of paper will do, but when memorializing a person, event, or ideal for generations still to come, there’s nothing quite like stone. Ryan Coonerty ’96 writes about the words emblazoned on fifty American monuments—two of them in Portland. Reprinted with permission of the National Geographic Society from the book Etched in Stone: Enduring Words from Our Nation’s Monuments by Ryan Coonerty. Text copyright © 2007 Ryan Coonerty. All rights reserved.
JAPANESE AMERICAN But the plaza, a collaboration of landscape stone, representing HISTORICAL PLAZA designer Robert Murase and poet Lawson the Nisei, first-gen- Portland, Oregon, 1990 Inada, M.F.A. ’66—both interned as chil- eration Americans: dren—is more than a memorial to the injus- “Sure, I go to school HE 13 BASALT STONES OF THE JAPANESE tice of the internment; it is an account of / Same as you. / I’m American Historical Plaza in Portland, the Japanese experience in America. an American.” T Oregon’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park The first stone honors the Issei genera- The next stones solemnize the U.S. internment of Japanese tion—men and women who immigrated to speak of the isolation Americans during World War II, follow- the United States from Japan: “Mighty Wil- and pain of intern- ing Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor. Each lamette! / Beautiful friend, / I am learning, ment: “Rounded up / In the sweltering yard stone is engraved with a brief anonymous / I am practicing to say your name.” The / Unable to endure any longer / Standing in poem and the name of an internment camp. theme of assimilation continues on the next line / Some collapse.” Camps in the barren
6 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 deserts of the West housed some 110,000 Japanese Americans in harsh conditions: “Black smoke rolls / Across the blue sky. / Winter chills our bones. / This is Minidoka.” But even worse than the conditions was the pain that lay in knowing that their loyalty to the country was questioned: “Our young men and women / Joined the Army, too / They are proud to be American.” Indeed, Don’t miss a single issue. a regiment of Japanese Americans volun- teered from the camps and fought bravely Donating a minimum of $30 for their adopted country in Europe. to Oregon Quarterly or joining the UO Alumni Association will With the end of the war, the Japanese ensure that you will receive a were released and allowed to return home, full year of magazines. but while interned, many had lost their jobs, businesses, and homes. The next Donate online at OregonQuarterly.com generations, the Sansei and Yonsei, had or mail your check directly to Oregon to reconcile and come to terms with their Quarterly using the envelope included country’s actions. The concluding stones with this issue. recognize this struggle: “Going home, / Feeling cheated, / Gripping my daughter’s Keep yourself covered. hand, / I tell her we’re leaving / Without Donate today at emotion.” The U.S. government issued a OregonQuarterly.com formal apology in 1988 and offered some reparations to affected families. The final SPRING 2006 stone looks to the future: “With new hope, / We build new lives. / Why complain when it rains? / This is what it means to PLEASE SEND YOUR CHECK BY MAIL TO: OREGON QUARTERLY, be free.” 5228 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, EUGENE OR 97403-5228 YES, I want to stay covered $250: Receive a beautiful Cross UO signature select tip rolling ball pen in a YAMHILL STREET Please remove my name from the Portland, Oregon, 1990 two-tone metal combination of polished Oregon Quarterly mailing list. chrome and twenty-three karat gold plated appointments.* Stand on Yamhill Street in downtown Port- $30: Guaranteed to receive the next four issues! $500 Lifetime Subscriber: land, Oregon, and you will find yourself Receive a black granite single desk set. surrounded by people who are staring at $50: Receive a full-color reproduction Includes a classic Cross UO signature their feet and laughing out loud. The gig- 1920 Rose Bowl Game poster* black ball-point pen with an engraved gold name plate embedded onto the granite.* gling people form human barricades, and $100: Receive a hardbound coffee table book, Picture Oregon, Portraits of *No thanks. Keep my gift and use my soon the sidewalk is clogged, sending the the University of Oregon* entire donation to support OQ. normal flow of pedestrians into disarray. City officials in Portland would not have it any other way. NAME (PLEASE PRINT YOUR NAME AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR CREDIT CARD, IF USING ONE) The culprit is a public-art project that gives an artistic dimension to a nearby city- ADDRESS owned parking garage. (Portland, like many cities in the United States, requires that CHECK ENCLOSED (PAYABLE TO UO FOUNDATION WITH “OQ” IN MEMO LINE) publicly funded projects, such as parking CHARGE MY GIFT: VISA MASTERCARD garages, spend one percent of their costs on public art.) Streetwise—informally known E-MAIL around town as the Talking Sidewalk— CREDIT CARD NUMBER AMOUNT incorporates paving stones engraved with quirky quotations into a brick sidewalk. EXPIRATION DATE DAYTIME PHONE (INCLUDE AREA CODE) The words and the reactions of those read- ing them are as much a part of the art as SIGNATURE DATE is the visual arrangement of the stones. Artist Bill Will conceived the idea and teamed with novelist Katherine Dunn on the project. Their hope was to make passersby laugh, think, and pause as they went about their business. Will and Dunn selected a
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 7 CURRENTS thousand quotations, ranging from those by YEWITNESS TO ISTORY Yogi Berra to Shakespeare to anonymous. E H Eventually, 83 sayings made the cut and At the end of World War II, twenty-two-year-old George Wickes were carved into stone. The pavers were was a soldier in the U. S. Army, stationed in Rangoon, Burma, placed in various directions to force the with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the wartime military intelligence readers to move about, weaving through organization that was a predecessor to the postwar CIA). His experience made the crowds to enjoy the words. him an eyewitness to world history at a moment of monumental transition, Some of the more popular quota- and also put him face to face with one of the key political figures of the tions include a reminder to “not step on twentieth century. Wickes, now an emeritus professor of English, has been cracks” and Marilyn Monroe’s quip “I’ve teaching at the UO since 1970. The excerpt below is from two memoirs— been on a calendar but never on time.” Saigon 1945 and Hanoi 1946—written at the request of a Vietnamese Groucho Marx’s remark “I never forget a historian. They have been published in Vietnamese, but not in English. face but in your case, I’ll make an excep- tion” is engraved near Einstein’s claim HORTLY AFTER THE JAPANESE SUR- first casualty in the Vietnam conflict], and “Imagination is more important than render the OSS sent small teams of told him I wanted very much to go with knowledge.” S officers and men to the principal cities him. He was unimpressed when I told him For Will, the art is not the engraved of Southeast Asia. Their mission was partly I had studied Vietnamese under the Army bricks, but the public’s response: “For every military (e.g., repatriating American prison- Specialized Training Program but asked if person who takes the time to read it, they ers of war, locating the graves of Americans I knew French. When I replied that I had will imagine something . . . the art is in killed during the war, and investigating war learned French at my Belgian mother’s the mind of the beholder. Hopefully it crimes), but in the absence of other rep- knee, he gave me a one-word oral exam: stimulates their imaginations.” The art resentatives of the American government “What is the French word for ‘street’?” is also in watching people react to the (e.g., the State Department), they also per- He was not testing my vocabulary but my quotes, something Will admits to doing. formed some peacetime functions, notably pronunciation, for rue is one French word Portland Public Art Director Eloise Dam- monitoring the political situation. few Americans can pronounce properly. rosch says the project “engages pedestrians Colonel Dewey, who spoke flawless French in a new way.” When I heard that an OSS team was himself, was satisfied with my pronuncia- In the end, even the sidewalk itself has going to Saigon, I went to see the officer in tion and said, “All right, you can go. Be a sense of humor, offering William Shake- command, Colonel Peter Dewey [killed by ready at 2:30 tomorrow morning.” speare’s lament, “You blocks, you stones, Vietnamese soldiers on September 26, 1945, you worse than senseless things.” and considered by some to be America’s Our arrival in Saigon was quite dramatic.
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8 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 We were the first Allied soldiers to land quarters was at least as well informed as we there, and, despite the surrender in Japan, were, for a number of OSS men had been we were not at all sure of the reception with Ho in the jungle, training Vietnamese that awaited us. Southern Indochina was guerrillas during the Japanese occupation, occupied by some 72,000 Japanese troops. and others had been in close contact with Would they accept the surrender? We need him in Hanoi after the Japanese surrender. not have worried. When we landed at Tan But OSS had had no one in Hanoi since Son Nhut, some fifty of the highest-ranking October and probably welcomed the oppor- Japanese officers were lined up on the tar- tunity to send observers there again. mac waiting to receive us most respectfully. In the coming weeks, the Japanese were to . . . Frank White and I paid our call on do exactly what they were told to do, which Ho Chi Minh. He received us in his office often meant serving as police and even at in the governor-general’s palace. As if to times as soldiers against the Vietnamese indicate his official role, he was wearing a [who were fighting against French colonial military-style tunic, but wearing it mod- forces in what became known as the First estly without any insignia to suggest that Indochina War], sometimes even under the he was more than a private citizen. We had command of British officers. expected the interview to be in French, but to our surprise he spoke to us in Eng- He looks like a martyr lish and reminisced about his experiences all right . . . but kindly in the United States when he worked in restaurants in Boston or New York. When rather than fanatic, asked if he was a communist, he made no like a benevolent secret of the fact, but when asked if that meant Vietnam would become a commu- grandfather nist country, he said he was not the one to for his people. determine that, for the political character of the country would have to be decided by the people. He spoke a good deal about the . . . The greatest event for the French of United States. He admired the principles Saigon was the reopening of their country of the Declaration of Independence, some club, le Cercle Sportif. Wars and regimes of which he had paraphrased in declaring and occupations could come and go, but the independence of Vietnam the previous life was not worth living without le Cercle September 2. He wanted us to transmit to Sportif. We went to the grand opening at Washington his high hopes that the United */2$!.ª3#(.)4:%2ô the suggestion of Major Frank White, who States would aid Vietnam in its efforts to with his journalist’s sense of irony noted establish itself as an independent nation. -53%5-ô/&ô!24 that British officers were now being feted Make the Jordan Schnitzer by the same French residents who had Ho invited Frank to a dinner he was Museum of Art your own. collaborated and fraternized with the giving that night. When Frank arrived Japanese during the occupation. At his he found himself in the company of !MONGôTHEôORIGINALôPIECESôINô suggestion we went again a few days later high-ranking dignitaries, including several THEô-URRAYô7ARNERô#OLLECTIONôOFô and observed the social life of Saigon while French and Chinese generals and [top Viet- /RIENTALô!RTôISôAôTEN PANELôFOLDINGô the sound of cannon fire boomed regularly namese army general] Vo Nguyen Giap. To SCREEN ô4HEô4ENô3YMBOLSôOFô in the background and ashes from burning his astonishment Frank discovered that Ho ,ONGEVITYô4HESEôSYMBOLSôEACHô Vietnamese villages drifted down on the had reserved the place of honor for him. REPRESENTôAôCONNECTIONôTOôLONGEVITY tennis courts. In a letter I wrote home a few days after "ECOMEôAôMEMBERôTODAYôBYô our visit with Ho Chi Minh, I attempted ADOPTINGôAôSYMBOLôOFôLONGEVITYô Toward the end of December 1945, to describe him: "ENEkTSôINCLUDEôUNLIMITEDôFREEô Major Frank White first suggested that we His pictures present him as an emaciated ADMISSION ôFREEôPARKINGôONôEVENINGSô try to go to Hanoi together to interview martyr with burning eyes. He looks like a ANDôWEEKENDS ôANDôDISCOUNTSôONô [Vietnamese leader] Ho Chi Minh. He then martyr all right (and in fact is one, having WORKSHOPS ôCLASSES ôANDôSHOPPING made the proposal to OSS headquarters in devoted practically all of his 60-odd years to 6ISITôJSMAUOREGONEDUôORôCALLôô Washington, employing the pretext that the cause of his country), but kindly rather ô ôFORôINFORMATION we would ask Ho if he was a communist than fanatic, like a benevolent grandfather !BOVEô4HEô4ENô3YMBOLSôOFô,ONGEVITY ôLATEô*OSEONô and ask what his plans were for the future for his people. PERIOD ôNINETEENTHôCENTURY ôTEN PANELôFOLDINGôSCREEN ô of Vietnam if the country should obtain its Short and very slight, a little stooped, INKôANDôCOLORôONôSILK independence from France. Of course we with seamed cheeks and generally well-weath- knew the answer to the first question and ered features, wiry grayish hair, a scraggly had a pretty good idea of what the answer mandarin mustache and wispy beard—all to the second would be; and OSS head- in all not a very imposing man physically.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 9 CURRENTS
But when you talk with him, he strikes you you next watch the film. (I won’t tell you Here’s another question. Who is right, as quite above the ordinary run of mortals. my thoughts on these issues, although Cypher or Trinity? The philosopher Rob- Perhaps it is the spirit that great patriots are I’d be happy to discuss them at jlysaker@ ert Nozick has argued that very few people supposed to have. Surely he has that—long uoregon.edu.) would trade real-life experiences for those struggling has left him mild and resigned, still The film’s most obvious philosophi- provided by an experience machine. (He sustaining some small idealism and hope. But cal issue concerns a distinction between clearly never played a computer fantasy I think it is particularly his kindliness, his appearance and reality. This problem lies game.) In The Matrix, Cypher’s decision to simplicity, his down-to-earthiness. I think at the heart of philosophical reflection, return to the matrix challenges Nozick’s Abraham Lincoln must have been such a and it has puzzled folk for millennia, and position. While eating dinner with Agent man, calm, sane, and humble. in untold philosophical traditions, from Smith, or while seeming to eat dinner with In the minds of most Americans Abra- classical Greece and India to seventeenth- Agent Smith, Cypher confesses that a ham Lincoln is our greatest president, the century France on into today’s philosophy world of visceral, convincing pleasures is man who kept the nation together through departments. In the film, we are asked preferable to whatever the so-called real our terrible Civil War and freed the slaves. to believe that the world of the matrix world has to offer. Trinity objects, and Though no one uses such language, it would is one of mere appearance, whereas the insists that the matrix isn’t real. But this be no exaggeration to say that Abraham razed world that Morpheus navigates in raises two questions. First, how important Lincoln is generally revered as a saint. Ever the Nebuchadnezzar is the real world. But for a meaningful, fulfilling life is something since that meeting with Ho Chi Minh I how far down does the rabbit hole go? like “contact with reality”? Second, if a have thought of him in the same light, and If you were Neo, why would you believe virtual reality allows one to make choices when asked what he was like described him that Morpheus hasn’t led you to just and to suffer the consequences of those as a cross between Saint Francis of Assisi another matrix world, perhaps unwit- choices, up to and including death, isn’t and Abraham Lincoln. tingly? Couldn’t a matrix world involve it as real as any world? Won’t both serve ports in the back of our heads, cruddy equally well in exposing someone’s char- PULP PHILOSOPHY food, and ratty clothing? Next time you acter? At one point, Trinity tells Neo that watch the film, consider how the film tries the matrix cannot tell you who you are. Imagine two grad students, to establish the reality of the devastated Is this right? let’s call them Bill and Ted, world and the illusoriness of the matrix Last question. As far as Morpheus and dreaming up an extremely excellent world. But don’t just listen to what the his pals are concerned, they are justified in adventure: Dude, we could watch characters say. Also look at how the film killing those still plugged into the matrix. a boatload of Keanu Reeves depicts the two worlds. Then press the In fact, the film revels in laying waste to movies and get credit for it! question: has the film taken this issue far as many “copper tops” as possible. The In fact, doctoral student enough? film also makes plain, however, that each Michael McCann and master’s student Jen Hammond conceived the Keanu Reeves Film Series to Fort Stevens State Park (! Oregon State Parks O!(!!( showcase the UO comparative !( DAY USE literature program’s commitment (!(! !( (! !( to providing students with a (!!( (!!((!(!!( (! !( (! (!(!(!(!(!!( !( breadth of subject matter— !( !( (! !( (! ! !( !( !( in this case, an extracurricular D River State (! (! ( !( (! Rec. Site (! (! Silver Falls State Park !( screening of films ranging from (!O(! (! (!(! !( Maples Rest Area adaptations of classics such as Yaquina Bay (!(! O!(!!( (! (! !( State Rec. Site (!O(! (! O! (! !( Much Ado About Nothing and (!!(!( (! !( Neptune State (!!( (! !( (!(!(! (! Dracula to box office smash Speed Scenic Viewpoint !(! !( (! O(!(! (! (! and the futuristic A Scanner Darkly, !(!(!( O!(! (! (! Pilot Butte based on the Philip K. Dick novel. (! State Scenic Day Use Parks (visitors per year) !( Short lectures by various speakers (! Viewpoint !( !( 6,354 – 124,934 ! preceded each screening; John (!(!!( ( !( 124,935 – 296,208 Lysaker, head of the philosophy (!(! (! 296,209 – 526,000 526,001 – 817,016 department, introduced The Matrix (!!( !( with these comments, titled !( (!(! !( ( 817,017 – 1,525,396 Samuel H. !( ! “Travels Down the Rabbit Hole.” !( (! !( ( Boardman !( (!O Valley of the Rogue State Park State Park !( !( O! Top Ten Most Visited Parks O!(!O (! (! he Matrix is an explicitly philosophical Harris Beach !( State Park film. Morpheus, Neo, Trinity, and 0 50 100 200 Miles T Cypher raise philosophical questions, and those questions are integral to the film’s A DAY AT THE PARK This map shows day use at Oregon state parks. June graduate Ian plot. Are humans free or are we fated? What Hackett ’07, an environmental studies and geography major, created the map for his Advanced is the mind’s relation to the body? Today, Cartography class (Geography 411). He based the map on Oregon Parks and Recreation I’d like to explore three of these issues with Department data—some of which he collected while working as a seasonal park ranger at you, and ask you to think about them when Portland’s Tryon Creek State Natural Area.
10 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 name:
major: !DVERTISING *OURNALISM favorite: 9FFB 4HE /UTSIDERS :C8JJ
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SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 11 CURRENTS matrix life corresponds to a human life cause of the American Revolution? Or, stashed in a pod somewhere just above if you think Morpheus is right in killing the earth’s scorched face, and that this life his matrix-deluded opponents, ask yourself ends when the matrix life eats a bullet or whether it matters that these victims are two (or forty). One thus has to ask: are completely ignorant of the state of affairs these killings justified? When you next they’re defending? watch the film, take note of whatever I hope these questions prove fruitful reasons Morpheus provides for these during your next viewing of The Matrix. It’s killings. How convincing are his argu- a good deal of fun, and often rewarding, to ments? Once you come to a conclusion watch films with philosophical questions about your view, imagine how someone on the brain. It often leads us to attend in might object who held the other view, new ways to what various characters do, and then try to address that objection. say, and even allegorically represent. But For example, if you find Morpheus’s posi- when viewing films, we shouldn’t limit tion unconvincing, ask yourself whether ourselves to those resources, even if our killing is ever justified in revolutionary concerns are explicitly philosophical. It moments. Were colonial soldiers justified is a philosophical mistake to treat film as in killing loyalists who threatened the a transparent medium of communication, as if all the other aspects of a film were mere ornamentation. Instead, we should pay attention to all the ways in which transcending his status as the eldest child films address us, including the contexts of his famous dad, Woody Guthrie. He in which they are produced, distributed, had released an LP that featured the 18- and shown. So, alongside the words and minute, anti-establishment, shaggy-dog deeds of characters, and the multiple story “Alice’s Restaurant” and had starred meanings those entail, one should also in an offbeat feature film of the same name. look at filmic elements like costuming, His profile had risen further with a spacey camera placement and movement, editing, bit in Woodstock, the 1970 documentary of Brent Harrison music, lighting, and so forth. If you do, the landmark 1969 rock festival. SCHOOL OF ROCK the rabbit hole will deepen beyond your A big-enough draw to play larger wildest expectations. venues, Guthrie was working the Quiet This formation mysteriously appeared Knight as a favor to club owner Richard not long ago in the Willamette River Harding. After Guthrie had finished the just west of the Autzen footbridge. For GOOD MORNIN’ last of three sets and the audience filed some years, the downstream shallows AMERICA, down the stairs into the sub-freezing night have often been decorated with stacks air, he ambled with his guitar to Harding’s of rocks (cairns), though we’ve never HOW ARE YOU? back-room office to say goodbye. Awaiting seen an installation quite so elaborate or him was Steve. celebratory of the alma mater. Anybody A bar, a beer, and a brief Tipsy and tired, Guthrie wanted to know how far back this tradition goes? encounter are all part of what led return to his hotel. Harding, too, was ine- As long as we’re on the subject, to a recording that has been briated, but he also had a mission. Hearing this from Wikipedia: “In some regions, pouring from radios for decades. Steve perform “City of New Orleans” had piles of rocks used to mark hiking trails are called ‘ducks’ or ‘duckies.’ These Clay Eals ’74 has written an 800-page reminded Harding of youthful railroading are typically smaller cairns, so named book, Steve Goodman: Facing the days in the late 1940s when he had ridden because some would have a ‘beak’ Music (ECW Press, 2007) that traces the Twentieth Century Limited and the pointing in the direction of the route. the life of the gifted folksinger and Rock Island Line. “I wanted somebody to An expression, ‘two rocks do not make songwriter, including the night he met record it that would make it a hit because a duck,’ reminds hikers that just one Arlo Guthrie, who would go on to the word was out that Steve had leuke- rock resting upon another could be the record Goodman’s most famous song. mia,” Harding says. “I wanted him, before result of accident or nature rather than Eals read from his work in June he died, to have a major hit, whether he intentional trail marking.” at the UO Bookstore. Below is was singing it or not.” a condensed excerpt from the book. Guthrie had been primed for the meet- Attention photographers: we’re Text copyright © 2007 by Clay Eals. ing by Harding, who also had told him interested in Duck-related photos—the more interesting or funny, the better. Also, All rights reserved. of Steve’s [leukemia]. It was an instant consider sharing shots of you or your friends parallel because Guthrie’s father had suf- in Duck regalia (hats, T-shirts, etc.) in HE PERFORMER STEVE WENT TO SEE fered since his early 40s from the relent- exotic or unusual locales. High-resolution that night in Chicago was the son of lessly debilitating Huntington’s chorea digital images work best; low-resolution T American folk music’s most revered (which became known by the plainer title shots won’t reproduce in print. E-mail to icon. Then 23, just one year older than of Woody Guthrie’s disease) and died from [email protected]. Steve, Arlo Guthrie had emblazoned his it in 1967 at age 55. The genetic chance identity in the country’s consciousness, that his father’s fatal nervous-system
12 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 disorder eventually would befall Guthrie like I really wasn’t that interested.” and thought no more of them until I got was 50 percent. “I was under the same Harding says Guthrie told him, “I’ll home, it might have been days or weeks gun,” Guthrie says, “even though nobody listen to the song if you say so, but he’s later,” Guthrie says. “When I got home, knew anything definitive.” got to buy me a beer.” In his more colorful I put the sheet music on the piano, and After Guthrie ambled into Harding’s stage yarn, Guthrie says that he told Steve, it stayed there for months. I didn’t think office, Harding picked up Guthrie’s guitar “OK, tell you what. Buy me a beer, I’ll sit anything of it. I was just busy doing other and handed it to Steve. As recalled by here and drink it, and as long as it lasts, things.” WFMT’s Rich Warren, who was standing you can do whatever you want.” Of course, Guthrie ends his stage story outside the office door, Harding bellowed So while Harding furnished the beer, otherwise, playing off the beer reference. at Steve, “Sing him the goddamn train Steve performed “City of New Orleans” While Guthrie wouldn’t realize or state it song! Play the goddamn train song!” for Guthrie, who afterward asked Steve until two years later, his punch line was: Harding also backed Guthrie into a for a lead sheet and a tape, both of which “It turned out to be one of the finer beers corner of the office, Steve said later, and Steve supplied. “I put those in my suitcase of my life.” told him, “Now, Arlo, you’ve gotta take this song down to Nashville and give it to John Cash because it’s about trains.” Cash had built much of his musical identity A University of Oregon degree in partnership upon railroad tunes. with Oregon State University and “Now, Arlo, Portland State University you’ve gotta take this song down to Nashville and give it to John Cash because it’s about trains.”
Both Steve and Guthrie felt they were being thrown together unceremoniously. As Steve noted later, “Arlo was trying to get out of the room as politely as he could, and so was I.” Guthrie, in the comic version of the story that he has told from the stage for decades, has characterized himself as responding to Harding like a “butthead.” For instance, he told a 1996 pub audience in Ireland that he shot back to Harding, “I don’t want to hear no songs. I hate songs. I don’t even like my songs. Why should I listen to other people’s songs, man?” In contrast, however, Steve observed that Guthrie acted graciously. “He just “Oregon Executive MBA was the ideal way didn’t tell everybody where to go and walk to learn— excellent instructors, a unique out of the room,” Steve said. study group format, and active classroom And Guthrie allows that his stage story is an exaggeration. “I wasn’t really case discussions.” in the mood to hear a song from anyone,” Paul Scagnetti, OEMBA ‘00 Guthrie says, “but he (Steve) just looked Strategic Marketing Director, NanoElectronics like a little guy. There’s a thousand little FEI Company guys everywhere with songs, y’know? I didn’t have a policy about it.” The fact that Steve was a friend of Harding’s made the prospect more palatable. “I probably Personal Growth. Professional Success. didn’t hesitate to say yes,” Guthrie says, www.oemba.uoregon.edu Toll-free (866) 996-3622 PDX: (503) 276-3622 “even though in my story I make it seem
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 13 AGRICULTURE 1943, CARL MORRIS’S MURAL IN THE U.S. P
Carl Morris seemed destined for New York. And if the dice had landed differently in 1941, he might be as well known as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Robert Motherwell. In the 1950s Morris THE NORTHWEST won numerous major awards and had a national reputation as an as abstract painter. His European training and friendship with Rothko ARTISTIC MUSE opened connections to the whole of the New York School of abstract expressionism. But by the time he set up a New York studio in 1953, it Did Carl Morris’s devotion to was too late. By then the land, water, and light of the Pacific Northwest had seeped into his blood and coursed through his veins. By then the the place that inspired him Northwest as artistic muse had claimed Morris with the same tenacity cost him the recognition he deserved? that the white whale gripped Captain Ahab’s soul. It was by accident that Morris came under the spell of the Northwest. While he was teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1938, the Federal BY LIDOÑA WAGNER Art Project (FAP) tapped him to direct one of its art centers. Wanting to be near water, Morris was tricked into going to Spokane, Washington, by a recruiter’s exaggerated stories of an enormous nearby waterfall. Under Morris’s direction, the Spokane Art Center took hold and requests for classes grew beyond expectations. To meet the demand, the FAP recruited artist teachers from far-flung states. From the East Coast came Hilda Deutsch, a sculptor who charmed and challenged Morris from the moment she stepped off the bus and started arguing about art. Hilda modeled for some of his paintings and it wasn’t long before the bohemian New Yorker had fallen in love and,
14 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 “The Northwest as Artistic Muse” by LiDoña Wagner is the winning essay in the open category of the 2007 Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest, as selected by this year’s contest judge, Portland author Molly Gloss. Wagner wins $750. Second place in the open category is Alice Evans of Eugene for “One Long, Precious Moment” ($300), and third place goes to Amanda Powell of Eugene for “Little Outbreaks of Justice, of Love” ($100). The winner in the student category is Claire McQuerry of Tempe, Arizona, for “Tumbleweed Invasive, Tumbleweed Tough” ($500), which will be published in the Autumn issue of Oregon Quarterly. Seth Michael White of Corvallis takes second for “The Phantom Barn” ($200), and Katey Schultz of Burnsville, North Carolina, is third for “Meditation on Activism” ($75).
Writers are encouraged to enter the 2008 essay contest. The deadline is January 31, 2008. Details will be available at oregonquarterly.com as they become available.
.S. POST OFFICE, MAIN BRANCH, EUGENE. PHOTOGRAPH BY KENT PETERSON; USED COURTESY OF THE JOHN G. SHEDD INSTITUTE FOR THE ARTS IN EUGENE.
to the chagrin of conservative townspeople, moved in with the minerals with his high school mentor, ceramicist Glen Lukens. highly respected art center director. Asked later about his upbringing, Morris would say, “I came from They were an unlikely couple. He was a quiet, handsome the land.” Quaker who topped off at six feet in workman’s boots. She was Within eighteen months of his arrival, Morris had made a loquacious New Yorker who had to stretch to reach five feet in the Spokane center one of few in the country with enthusiastic ribbon-tied patent leather pumps. He grew up in Yorba Linda, community participation. As a result, the FAP transferred him California, the same pioneer Quaker community as writer to Seattle in January 1940. They hoped he could generate similar Jessamyn West of Friendly Persuasion fame and Richard Nixon of local involvement by launching art programs in outlying areas. Watergate infamy. She grew up in the Big Apple discussing music Hilda followed several months later. and literature at dinner with immigrant parents from Lithuania and the Ukraine. He planned to be a ceramicist and metalworker But as the war in Europe increasingly drew the focus and ended up a painter. She began as a fashion designer and of the U.S. government, the Federal Art Project turned its converted to sculpture. He studied painting in Vienna and Paris. programs over to state governments. Local conservative forces in She went to Mexico to see the murals of Diego Rivera. Seattle squelched innovative programs and Morris was unable As the months passed, the two young artists explored the area to carry out the purpose for which he was sent. Instead he was around Spokane, digging for artifacts of the region’s indigenous restricted to office work. In a letter to Norman Rice, dean of the people. These forays linked Morris back to roots that he’d Art Institute of Chicago, Morris wrote, “After my arrival here, forgotten in eight years of urban living. The farms and hills of day by day my painting sessions diminished. Finally, the cold the Palouse reminded the Californian of his roots in the land. fact of facing the future as an ‘executive’ or as an artist had to be Raised on a citrus farm, he had, from an early age, hefted irrigation faced. Since the policy of this state art program has been turning pipe, picked fruit, loaded produce, and driven the horse-drawn from arts to crafts, I felt I had no place in it. Therefore, two buckboard to market. As Morris and Hilda tramped the Columbia months ago, I resigned my job.” Morris and Hilda were married Plateau, he remembered trips into Death Valley in search of the same day they quit the FAP.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 15 “My wife and I,” Morris continued, submit new ones, it made perfect sense He was absolutely determined to win. “have a houseboat on Lake Union, just five to allow the “quality” artist to also submit And he did. minutes from the city center. . . . Aside from sketches, this time specifically reflecting On December 6, 1941, the eve of Pearl being a pleasant place to live, the location the region around Eugene. According to Harbor. affords quiet in spite of being in the city. Morris, the federal department wrote the All through the war, Morris worked The quiet animation of the boats from the local jury saying, “If you want to put these in the Portland shipyards supervising nearby docks furnishes a pleasant activity conditions on it, then we suggest that you construction of lifeboats for large warships that by now has become an integral part open it up to Carl Morris and Jacob Elshin built on the West Coast. He worked on the of our living. I find it extremely inspiring with the understanding that they are murals at night and on off-days. On June to work here and it is my determination to competing again.” 19, 1943, he called in sick so he could go work and to benefit from my surroundings.” Morris and Hilda felt a federal to Eugene to install the murals, one on He invited Rice and his wife to visit. commission would be a feather in his agriculture and the other on the lumber “I can offer a mess of fish from our back cap. It could lead to other things. Buoyed industry. The murals show Morris’s window or your choice of any one of two by knowing the jury considered Morris identification and familiarity with the land dozen wild ducks that frequent our back to be the better artist, they decided he and reflect the social realist painting style porch every evening for a few bread crumbs.” should take the challenge. They could base characteristic of the Depression era. In Whatever living on the water meant to themselves in Portland where there was a one mural, sturdy farmers pitch hay in an Hilda, it was inspiring for Morris. By 1940, small artist community centered on the agricultural setting. In the other, muscular he was close to recognizing that he had Portland Art Museum, and Hilda could workers stack lumber in a sawmill set in found his muse. However, they left Seattle teach sculpture in its art school. a forested area. Social realist art depicted in the summer of 1941 after learning that After scarcely a month on the East idealized laborers, a style adopted from the commission he’d sought for a mural Coast, the two thirty-year-olds packed up socialist mural artists in Mexico. in the new post office of Eugene had been and took a train back across the continent. awarded to Russian émigré Jacob Elshin. Morris would have about six weeks to t the end of the war, Morris was Crushed by defeat, Morris was convinced prepare his submission. While he traveled to offered director positions at private by Hilda that New York had plenty of art Eugene and Springfield to see the landscape Aart centers in Seattle and Ithaca, schools where they could teach. and economic activities of the region, Hilda New York. He and Hilda were also urged by By all logic, Morris’s arrival in New York would find a place for them to live. artist friends to move to San Francisco. But should have been the launch of his East relocating with an infant—their son Coast career. But no sooner had the David was born in September 1945— couple settled in with Hilda’s family would take all the money they’d saved than a friend called, inviting them, from the Eugene commission. Morris on a lark, to consult a fortuneteller in and Hilda decided instead to use the Greenwich Village. Eager for diversion, money to stay in Portland for a year Morris and Hilda agreed. during which they would concentrate The fortuneteller told Morris “an on their art. Morris was now able at awful lot of things I didn’t want to last to focus on his paintings, which hear.” Then, once more examining her soon began winning national awards. crystal ball, she said, “You will get a One of his first nationally letter that will send you west.” recognized paintings was Out of Morris responded sarcastically, the Coulee. The painting’s angular “OK. I’m going to get a letter.” shapes and rich earth tones suggest Shortly, Morris received a letter OUT OF THE COULEE, 1945–46 the harsh alkaline plateau and big sky saying that the competition for the Eugene of northeast Washington, where he and post office mural had been reopened. The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Hilda had fallen in love. Two figures in the It seemed the Portland jury had written (JSMA) on the University of Oregon abstract landscape clasp so tightly they in their report that if their decision were campus will present an exhibition of appear to be one. The painting’s power based on quality, they would have chosen murals by Carl Morris from June 28 to comes from its expression of the link to the Morris, but they selected Elshin because his September 9. Titled Carl Morris: History land that was such a vital piece of Morris’s work reflected the verdure of the region. of Religions, the exhibit will display a soul. Cash awards, supplemented by fees Morris the storyteller liked to say, “When series of murals commissioned for a earned teaching private classes, enabled pavilion charged with representing the the national office received the report, the couple to stretch one year to two and history of religious faiths at the 1959 they said, ‘Here, here, we gave no such Oregon Centennial Exposition. The then three years. In 1949, the house they instructions.’” JSMA exhibit will also include examples were renting went up for sale. The couple Edward Bruce, the head of the section of Morris’s early work with figurative acquired land in the northwest hills of of the Department of Treasury that was and landscape paintings. For more Portland in exchange for a sculpture in charge of the project, was a stickler for information, visit jsma.uoregon.edu or and a painting. Morris began building a quality. When he saw that the local jury call (541) 346-3027. A free opening home-studio using salvaged material from had not been entirely pleased with Elshin’s reception will be held Wednesday, buildings damaged the year before in the sketches and wanted to require him to June 27, 5:30—8:00 P.M. Vanport flood.
16 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 CARL MORRIS the northwest is my studio. publicity. Within a few months he said with certainty, “The Northwest is my studio.” He packed up and returned to the cloud-kissed hills, the cooing of pigeons, and the rhythmic sighing of rain dripping through cedar boughs. Though in tune with abstract expressionism, Morris found his muse in nature rather than through an inner process. During the fifteen years in which he came of age as an artist, he had been changed by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and the lifestyle it permitted. Over the next three decades he used a growing vocabulary of regional textures, shapes, and colors to paint monumental abstract paintings expressing transcendent experience. Carl Morris became a painter of place—the Pacific Northwest—in the same HILDA AND CARL MORRIS IN THE STUDIO, PORTLAND, 1955 way that Joan Miro painted the spirit of Catalonia in Spain and Monet painted Morris said he carried that house that Morris’s love of the Northwest had, his gardens in Giverny. However, there on his back twelve times, referring to like the cloud, come between them. was a significant difference. Catalonia moving bricks, boards, beams, and nails Two years later, in a painting called and Giverny were not far from Paris, the from Vanport into Portland, then up the Machine No. 3, Morris captured some artistic hub of Europe, whereas a vast hill to the undeveloped area on Skyline of the mystery and fascination of living continent separated the Northwest from Boulevard. His comment suggests not only on the water. Machine No. 3 is totally the art center of New York—coast to coast the magnitude of what it took to build their abstract. There are no figures. The painting by train was a journey of several days. Not residence but also the depth of emotional can be seen as an aerial view of a marina only was the Pacific region seen as a rural investment Morris put into it. If asked, he such as his houseboat mooring on Lake backwater by many on the East Coast, it would probably have said, “I know every Union or the shipyards where he worked operated on different values. nail by name.” during World War II. The blue-grays of For fifty years Hilda pushed Morris Once Morris and Hilda moved into the painting suggest differing depths of toward the Big Apple. She insisted his their partially completed home-studio water while the harlequin shapes and colors career would never flourish outside the in 1950, the two artists found themselves around a central platform bespeak the major artistic marketplace. For his part, surrounded by cedars and with a view animated maritime activity of which he Morris knew that to desert his muse that extended from the Tualatin Valley to wrote in his letter to Norman Rice in 1940. would be similar to cutting his wrists, as Mount Hood. As Morris put in a garden Taken together, these three paintings his friend Mark Rothko had done. The and set up a pigeon cote, life among the reflect Morris’s evolving process of finding Northwest unshakably claimed Morris’s clouds provided a continually changing inspiration in the natural environment soul. The result was what Hilda suspected: light show: morning mist, hypnotic of the Northwest, a gradual letting go of one of Oregon’s most celebrated artists has rainstorms, color-drenched sunsets. autobiographical figures, and his emerging fallen into obscurity. This legendary artist Experiencing that iridescent light sealed trust in total abstraction. immortalized the Pacific Northwest in Morris’s fate—much to Hilda’s regret. hundreds of paintings. He deserves to be That same year, Morris painted The s his national reputation grew, remembered. Cloud. In contrast to the tight embrace of Hilda prodded Morris to move to the figures in Out of the Coulee, a distance ANew York. In 1953 he acquiesced LiDoña Wagner, M.S. ’06, has a graduate has come between the man and woman in to setting up a studio there while she and degree in literary nonfiction from the UO The Cloud. The male figure occupies the their son remained in Portland. It was a School of Journalism and Communication. whole left side of the cloud whereas the frustrating experience. Morris was accus- Her writing has appeared in Focus (Canada) woman’s head is barely inside its lower right tomed to long periods of concentrated and American Artist. She is currently corner. A large white area (the cloud) sepa- painting. Having fellow artists drop in approaching agents with “Fresh Starts: Stories rates the couple. The man has the same unannounced at any time of day or night and Exercises for a New Beginning,” a manu- characteristics as the figure in Morris’s interrupted his process. Although he was script derived from her former work in grass Self Portrait of 1948. fond of whiskey and vodka, he was shocked roots empowerment projects. Wagner is also Hilda was convinced that she and by how freely alcohol flowed in the artist an artist. An exhibition of her paintings will Morris belonged in New York. Artists from community and how it reduced creative be held at Opus6ix in Eugene in fall 2007. all over Europe had relocated there, creating dialogue to a senseless brawl. Nor did he Wagner is an international workshop pre- a stir. She missed her family and all the appreciate the constant competition for senter and coordinates leadership programs museums and shows. The painting suggests buyers, museum shows, and newspaper in the UO College of Education.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 17 CHRIS MICHEL FATHERS DAY Hallmark cards weren’t made for this guy.
BY LAUREN KESSLER
ather’s Day was a big deal in my house not just because it was Father’s Day— and my father was one to whom homage was paid, the coins of the realm being F argyle socks and cans of Wilson tennis balls—but because it ushered in the annual allowance-draining third week in June. This was the week that included Father’s Day, my father’s birthday, and my parents’ anniversary. One, two, three, right in a row. Every week during the six months between Christmas and the third week in June, I put away a part of my allowance (which topped out at $2.50 when I was a senior in high school) to buy gifts for these three occasions.
I am remembering this thirty, oh-my-God forty years later because today, June 18, 2006, is my first fatherless Father’s Day. My father died last year, August 1, in his bed, in his apartment, after breakfast. One of the home health ladies was with him, the big, pillowy, Sweet-Jesus-I’m-born-again woman whose name I don’t recall. My father was a casual, northern-bred racist whose only expressed thoughts about Blacks (and Puerto Ricans) were that they brought down property values. I’m not sure, exactly, what he thought about being cared for by Black women—all his home caregivers were Black women— but I imagine he considered them domestic servants, which in a way they were, and dealt with it like that. When I was growing up, we had had a Black woman come in to clean our house every Thursday, driven in from Amityville, where the Black people lived, in a car with four other Black women who were delivered to other homes in our neighborhood.
It may be that my father didn’t think about his caregivers at all, that who they were, what they did, where he was, what was going on, all that just didn’t register. In those last six months when he needed twenty-four-hour care, his mind was somewhere else. His brain, robbed of good blood flow by years of coronary artery disease, was sluggish, cloudy, clogged. I don’t know how to describe it, only that much of who I thought my father was, was missing those last six months.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 19 My father had been a stubborn, often nasty, irascible man. He pulled no punches. You knew where you stood with him, and where you stood was usually in the doghouse. He disliked a lot of things, including people who sneezed, people who left the lights on in a room after they left, people who sat around and read all day, all auto mechanics, most drivers, especially women, anyone who rang the doorbell—and often, even when I didn’t fall into any of those categories, me. He was quick with insults, and even quicker with withering looks. But when his brain started to die, he lost most of his edge. He didn’t talk much or seem to be listening. He lay in his bedroom in his hospital bed propped up by pillows, surrounded by my mother’s paintings, which hung on all four walls. He lay there with the TV on, a night table crowded with prescription medicine bottles on one side, a big Black woman on the other, and his heart kept beating and beating until one morning, after breakfast, it didn’t.
When I had left home and was sending Father’s Day cards and gifts across the country every June, finding an appropriate card was always a problem. I’d stand in front of the Dads and Grads card displays in bookstores and newsstands—Chicago, San Francisco, Carbondale, McMinnville, Seattle, Eugene, I moved around a lot in those years—and for as long as it took, half an hour or more, I’d open and read every card hoping to find one I could send. I couldn’t send one of those you’re-the-best-guy-ever cards. That would have been so insincere as to be insulting. Then there were the we-had-great-times-together cards which, until recently, until too late, I wouldn’t think of sending because I mostly remembered our Saturdays on the tennis court with my father yelling at me after every shot. I remembered crying on my side of the court, happy at least that he couldn’t see the effect he was having on me. Now, of course, I think about the fact that he actually took me out every Saturday, that we not only played tennis, but in the winter, went roller skating and ice skating and bowling. He took me horseback riding. We stopped at Carvel’s on the way home. We both loved chocolate. (Among my father’s dislikes were people who ordered vanilla ice cream.)
But when my father was still a Man in Full, when I was still locked in battle with him— which is to say, from puberty to about two years ago—I remembered our time together as stressful and unpleasant, yet another excuse for him to criticize and belittle me. So I couldn’t send the thanks-for-a-great-time cards. There was also a whole genre of he- did-everything-and-he-did-it-well cards, which I couldn’t send, and I-hope-I-grow-up- just-like-you cards, which, needless to say, I didn’t. Hope that I’d grow up to be just like him, that is. That left very few cards. Sappy ones were out. Religious ones were out. Ones with men on golf courses were out. And so I stood in front of many a card rack, looking at cards and putting them back, a lump in my throat. Because I didn’t have the kind of father about whom Hallmark made cards. Because I didn’t have the kind of relationship with my father about which Hallmark made cards. Because he didn’t love me. Because, maybe worse, I didn’t love him. But each year I managed to find a card and send it from I gave my father foot wherever I was to where he was, which was always 3728 Richard Lane. I could, if I wanted massages while I told to, see the cards I selected all those years because they are in a box in the closet in my him stories about the house. My father saved all of them. I brought them home with me after he died. Saturdays we spent together: sledding We find out too late how much people mean to us and how much we meant to them, or breakneck down the that we meant anything at all to them. The last time I saw my father alive, in the spring, he was bedridden and mostly silent. I made him my mother’s chicken parmesan, one of hill at Bethpage State his favorite dishes, which I didn’t want him to eat from a tray sitting up in bed. I wanted Park, the time the horse us to have a meal together at the table. It took two of us to get him out of bed and into a almost rolled over on wheelchair. I wheeled him into the dining room, and he sat at the table staring straight me, the time he bowled ahead, slowly, slowly moving a shaky hand up to his mouth, slowly, slowly, chewing his 225, the time we almost food, which I had cut up in tiny pieces. My father, the irascible father of my childhood, fell through the ice would never have stood for anyone eating like that. I could almost hear that father sighing, at the pond, sundaes clucking, muttering under his breath. Come on, already. Let’s go. Jeezus H. Christ. at Jahn’s Ice Cream My father, the nasty one, was an eater. Portions could not be too big for him. He judged Parlour that we didn’t the worth of restaurants based on how much of his dinner plate was obscured. The ideal tell my mother about. plate, invisible under mounds of food, would be 75 percent meat, 25 percent potato, 0 percent vegetable, and 1,000 percent sodium. But that spring, sitting in the wheelchair, staring ahead, struggling to eat, he finished perhaps half of one small portion, maybe an ounce or two of chicken, not much more than a bite my father of old would have taken. Then grunted and waved his hand in the air, dismissing the meal. Lauren Kessler, M.S. ’75, has written eleven books, including During the long days of my last visit, not knowing what to do but knowing I should the just-published Dancing be doing something, I gave my father foot massages while I told him stories about the with Rose, which looks at Saturdays we spent together: sledding breakneck down the hill at Bethpage State Park, the time the horse almost rolled over on me, the time he bowled 225, the time we almost Alzheimer’s disease from the fell through the ice at the pond, sundaes at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlour that we didn’t tell point of view of a caregiver in a my mother about. He stared up at the ceiling while I talked. He dozed off. He didn’t residential facility. She directs seem to be listening. It probably was too late to tell him all this. the literary nonfiction program at the UO School of Journalism The last thing my father said to me was actually the only full sentence he said to me and Communication. She during my five-day visit that spring. He had uttered an occasional yes or no in response contributes often to Oregon to direct questions, but he had never initiated a conversation. That afternoon, he was Quarterly and her work has lying in the hospital bed, and I was bending over him rubbing moisturizer into his hands. also appeared in The New My long hair—you look like Cousin Itt, he used to say to me—fell in front of my face. York Times Magazine, Los I swept it back over my ear and smiled at him. His eyes were focused, and I knew he was Angeles Times Magazine, O: going to say something. “You’ve got gray in your hair,” he said to me. “Do something The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, about it.” That’s the last thing I ever heard from my father. The bastard. I miss him. and The Nation.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 21 BY TRACY ILENE MILLER ScienceSong and and Science Song THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC
Okay, before we go any further, take a moment to answer this question (no reading ahead!): does the word at appear in “The Star Spangled Banner”?
Find it?
Now, another question: how did you get to your answer? Did you do like most people and fast-forward through the verses (maybe even mumble-sing, your head rocking back and forth like an energetic metronome) until you came to, ah, there it is: “What so PROUD-ly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleaming. . . . ”
Daniel Levitin RWt
22 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 A musician turned cognitive neuroscientist writes new refrains on the brain and the neural impulses that drive our love for music— from Handel to hip-hop.
ou might feel silly, but What distinguishes Levitin in his remembers reading in an elective course field of cognitive neuroscience is not a slim volume by Michael Posner about consider: when put through only his use of both nonmusicians and cognition. Posner, now professor emeritus Y this test, professional musicians in his research, but also his of psychology at the University of Oregon, emphasis on real-world music and, in would become Levitin’s adviser nearly musicians must go through the same particular, popular music. Levitin has fifteen years later. process to get to the at in our national shown that musical knowledge comes Although he quit MIT to play guitar, as readily from listening to the Police’s Levitin was struck by the notion that “you anthem. Daniel Levitin, M.S. ’93, Ph.D. “Roxanne” or “Every Breath You Take” on could construct an experiment, just like a ’96, in his best-selling book This Is your car radio as from a symphony hall chemist would construct an experiment rendition of Handel’s Messiah. Levitin, . . . and probe the origins of thoughts and Your Brain on Music: The Science of a a professor and cognitive psychologist come up with an answer. I found that very Human Obsession (Dutton, 2006), walks who runs the Laboratory for Music stimulating and remarkable,” he says. Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at He continued reading his Scientific us through this small experiment to McGill University in Montreal, conducts Americans and buying books on demonstrate simply that, with or without experiments with classical music as well psychology even as he moved west and as tunes as familiar as “Happy Birthday,” began playing lead guitar in the country- musical training, we all encode the Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock,” and Eminen’s western Alsea River Band, working experience of song in similar ways. We “The Real Slim Shady.” Waldport and Oregon Coast venues Who better to explore this territory covering songs such as “Poison Love” and store the important tones of a piece with than a musician and former record “Crazy.” He progressed in the industry similar accuracy and develop “musical producer. Before Levitin received his Ph.D. from session musician to, eventually, in 1996, he had already gone gold and record producer in California. contour” naturally. In both his book and platinum nine times working with artists But he still had time for science. his ongoing research, Levitin probes our as different as Blue Öyster Cult and Stevie “When I established myself as a record Wonder. Here’s a man whose publication producer, I needed a hobby,” he says. So intuitive sense of music to challenge credits span the distance from Billboard naturally, “since music was my job, why those evolutionary theorists who posit magazine to Child Neuropsychology. not have science as a hobby.” And it’s not as if he has given Levitin took calculus at the University that music is mere “cheesecake”—an up his music industry connections. of California at Berkeley “in my spare incidental pleasure without which the Conversations with Levitin are sprinkled time” and drove to Stanford University with references to times spent with such to take classes in the only department human species could get along just rock ’n’ roll hall-of-famers as Joni and that was exploring music and the brain fine. Levitin instead places music—the Carlos (neither of whom require a last —psychology. name), pop culture icon Cher (who has no “I never really stopped thinking about complex stimuli that get us tapping our last name), and current alternative rock science,” he says. “I think science is more feet and sometimes humming along phenomenon Arcade Fire. an outlook or a disposition than just a career or a field of inquiry. You have with melodies we haven’t heard in thirty ut the chasm between his people who have scientific temperament years—more squarely as an essential two worlds was never wide; whether they are scientists or not.” music has never been far from Levitin came to a crossroads in 1990. piece in the framework of human Bscience. Levitin had a childhood His interest was flagging in a music industry that was dropping rock greats Ross West evolution and cognitive development. fascination with audio equipment (in the generation when hi-fi technology such as Elvis Costello because of sluggish advanced and exploded on the American record sales. But for a friend’s coaching, market) and with music as varied as rock Levitin may have become a llama legends Cream and piano jazzman George rancher in Oregon, playing his guitar Shearing. Graduating high school a year and writing songs. The longtime friend early in 1975, Levitin headed to MIT for was Lewis Goldberg, a UO professor a degree in electrical engineering—to who studied personality psychology. learn how to build sound equipment. In Goldberg persuaded Levitin he had the a quirky preview of his future, Levitin temperament and mindset for academia.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 23 And he was right.
Levitin returned to Stanford to finish Ross West his undergraduate degree in cognitive psychology and cognitive science, while research into the way the brain processes also lecturing on audio recording in the music had been done with pings and The way most programs work, music department. His work began to dings or simple rhythms in a laboratory. Levitin says, “you train experts in one take the field in new directions by asking “Most pitch perception work had methodology. [But at the UO] I was questions about the neural basis of our been done in pure tones,” says Michael trained as a true cognitive neuroscientist, affinity for song and music’s impact on Posner. “[Levitin] had a more natural to use all the tools available to really us as an indicator of, among other things, way of studying music in its real-world attack the problem from multiple how our memory works. context. He opened up the psychology directions. The idea being, if you see In a significant experiment, Levitin of music to a more ecologically valid the answer coming up worked on the notion that, unlike way of study.” again and again from classical pieces that could be played by Second, the experiment gave cre- converging methods, many different performers and still be dence to the idea that “absolute considered the same song, most rock features of music are encoded in or pop tunes have a single canonical, memory,” Levitin writes. “And there or standard, recording. In other words, is no reason to think that musical listeners associate “New Year’s Day” with memory functions differently from, the U2 release, and any other version say, visual, olfactory, tactile, or gusta- registers as significantly as Muzak. Same tory memory.” with songs like “New York State of Mind” (clearly Billy Joel) or “Like a Virgin” (any n 1992, Levitin moved to the doubts?). University of Oregon to continue With that in mind, Levitin invited his work. He says his experience people to a campus laboratory to sing. Istudying with psychology He excluded songs that had multiple professors Posner, Doug Hintzman, versions (for instance, avoiding the and Helen Neville did two things: made confusion of what to sing when him a scientist and instilled the notion thinking “Twist and Shout”: the Isley of taking a cross-disciplinary approach to Brothers or the Beatles?) and recruited problems. nonmusicians to sing popular songs. “They taught me to think that I had The results were surprising. More to have evidence for every statement than forty subjects, who complained that I made—and what counted as good and protested their way through their evidence—and it wasn’t enough to just favorite pop songs, exhibited similar be satisfied that I had seen something “music memory.” They matched the happen once, or in one way,” Levitin says. different technologies, different correct key, or absolute pitch, of the “I had to make sure it wasn’t anomalous, methodologies, then you know you are originals at least two-thirds of the time to not just poke at a question from one onto something.” and the tempo with a 4 percent margin direction.” It was only during his postdoctoral of error. When the recordings of the Applying that lesson in his current work that Levitin began to use functional subjects were played side-by-side with work, he uses genetic models (for magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to the pop-star versions, it almost sounded instance, the study of populations with map neural networks affected by music. as if they were all singing together. gene-linked abnormalities, including The images he saw reinforced the notion That experiment signaled a slight Down and Williams syndromes), that “music is distributed throughout the shift in cognitive neuroscience in two neuroimaging, psychophysics, and “plain brain”—that music is, in a sense, a whole- ways. First, before then, much of the old experimental psychology.” body experience: it manipulates our
24 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 emotions and forces our toes to tap, hips Price, who uses This Is Your Brain and theory, Wehr’s goal “is to give to sway, and fingers to snap. on Music in his class, sees Levitin’s work students the tools [of analysis] to start And even while we have a collective moving the two sides, the scientist and asking interesting questions about their appreciation for music as a culture, the musician-artist, toward what Levitin favorite song, or music that they find Levitin’s work showed that individuals describes as working from the same vein powerful.” When students are exposed hear the music differently based on of truth. to experiments and modes of analysis, personal experience—a then-novel idea in “With the new research coming out Wehr finds they come up with new ways the study of brain mechanisms and music examining how experience and emotion to look at music and ask questions. For as memory. impact music, musicians and scientists instance, why do people like some kinds Mapping the networks of the brain both are more comfortable with messy,” of music and not others? Why does a with fMRI has led cognitive psychologists says Price, “—that music is a whole, not different version of a well-known song to understand where (not only when) a part, and the stimulants for study are elicit different emotional content? How the brain responds to a given musical not always safely contained within a lab. do people with autism or Williams stimulus, what the pattern of response is The experiments can be creative and syndrome perceive music? in the brain, and what brain mechanisms interesting and still be credible.” Wehr says this technical approach underlie emotion and memory. So far, often brings up fears that music will lose fMRI results have led to more questions . . . music is, in a sense, its mystery and be less enjoyable. But the than answers. For example, how is it that classroom experience says otherwise. an Alzheimer’s patient loses most of his a whole-body experience: Students “listen to music and or her memory to the disease but can still It manipulates our emotions experience it in a richer and more instantly recall (as perhaps you can?) a meaningful way,” Wehr says. “They think favorite song from age fourteen? and forces our toes to tap, about it in a way they haven’t before On one level, Levitin says, the answer and translate that into a new perceptual is that, in our lives, times of intense hips to sway, and fingers to snap. experience.” social bonding or intense emotional experience, which for many of us For instance, Price points to one he goal of the cognitive peak around age fourteen, fixes music study where listeners are given different neuroscientist, Levitin says, to our brains. (In other words, your information about a piece of recorded is “to understand thought favorite songs will almost certainly music. One group is told the performance Tprocesses, memories, emotions, date you.) is by a graduate student; a second group and experience. And the brain just That’s also is told it’s by a professional performer. happens to be the box that all this the time The results: the second group gave higher happens in.” when the marks to the performance. Which is the reason Levitin wrote brain starts If we consider that listeners are his book. He shows how music is a pruning affected by cultural and experiential foundation of thought, a real world unused references, “the point is that psychology wide web: music appreciation links neural con- and emotion overshadow our experience philosophy, history, mechanical nections to with music,” says Price. “The grad student inventions, and cultural connection form the group was ready for the performance to (or disconnection). And even without adult brain. not be as good.” training, nonmusicians have internalized That criti- While Price is looking at music the tools to understand and better cal pruning from the perspective of nurture (social appreciate music by examining its process also and behavioral factors that affect how underlying structure. He stresses that begins to set music is perceived), he says Wehr in the knowing music—whether tribal folk or our individual musical tastes—which may psychology department looks at it from Tchaikovsky, Tupac or Tormé—is basic very well account for one generation’s nature: from the view of physics and to all humans. Music is not just the disdain for Elvis, and the next’s for rap. biology—the nervous system response— purview of experts and virtuosos but is with a bit of music theory thrown in. accessible to anyone with a stick, a voice, ut there’s another gap Levitin is In addition to the textbooks Wehr or an iPod in hand. working on, says Harry Price, relies on for his specifically scientific professor of music and chair of focus on music, he plans to use Levitin’s Tracy Ilene Miller, M.S. ’06, is a Eugene Bmusic education at the UO— popular book as supplemental reading. freelance writer and editor and an the one between music theorists and “The book, I think, covers very well adjunct instructor at the UO School of psychologists. Price teaches one of two the themes of the material I want to get Journalism and Communication and at courses at Oregon with the same name: across,” Wehr says. Northwest Christian College. She has been Psychology of Music. His class is in the By exploring the themes of musical editor of several publications, including School of Music and Dance, and the other organization (for example, interval, Oregon Cycling magazine, writes for The is in Levitin’s old department, psychology, melody, harmony, and tonality) and its Register-Guard, and is a contributor to taught by Assistant Professor Mike Wehr. relationship to higher brain function the online magazine Culinate.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 25 MEET
LINDA BRADY assumed the duties of UO senior vice president and provost on July 1, 2006. With nearly a year on the job behind her, Oregon Quarterly thought it was time to ask her a few questions.
You were the first member of your family engaging together in the hard work that that being a college professor was the most to attend college, and not only have you lies ahead. Oregon is undergoing rapid exciting job in the world—imagine, being earned an impressive array of degrees, demographic change, and the University paid to think and teach! but you’ve had a distinguished career of Oregon must reflect these conditions I had an opportunity to participate [see sidebar] as a professor and now in in our community. In addition, we are in arms control negotiations in Vienna, a leadership role at a flagship university. exploring options to ensure all qualified Austria, and Geneva, Switzerland, in What do your academic accomplishments Oregonians who are admitted to the the late 1970s and early 1980s. We were mean to you and your family? university are not deterred by the high engaged with the Soviet Union and our My father emigrated from Scotland cost of education. respective allies in talks designed to reduce in 1928. He was the second youngest You’ve spent all of your life east of the the danger of war in Europe by controlling of eight children, and never had the Mississippi River. What attracted you to a or eliminating conventional and theater opportunity to attend college. But my job in this far corner of the United States? nuclear weapons deployed there. As a scholar, the experience enriched my parents believed that education was the I was drawn to the culture of this great key to their children’s futures. One of the research and resulted in my book, The university, which is characterized by Politics of Negotiation: America’s Dealings proudest moments of their lives was the a sense of community, a commitment day I graduated from Douglass College. with Allies, Adversaries, and Friends. As to transparency, and a tradition of a practitioner, I was pleased to be part How does the fact that you were the consultation and shared leadership. The of a process, along with many dedicated higher-education pioneer in your family University of Oregon has a long history civil servants and military officers, which affect the way you think about higher of serving the people of the state of ultimately led to successful treaties. education? Oregon, which resonates with my belief in the social responsibility of higher With the war in Iraq, friction with Iran I am deeply committed to access for education. and Korea over nuclear weapons, and underrepresented minorities and other geopolitical conflicts regularly in What exactly is the senior vice president students from economically challenged the news, is this a particularly difficult and provost’s job? backgrounds. As a public institution, we time in the international arena or are have a responsibility to provide access The senior vice president and provost the tensions just more visible? and set high expectations for students at is the chief academic officer and the the University of Oregon, and we must chief operating officer of the University. Some political scientists believe the end be committed to their success. We also The provost provides leadership for of the Cold War created a window of need to pay serious attention to the cost matters that affect academic instruction opportunity for world leaders to establish of higher education. As state support has and research. Working collaboratively a new model of international relations declined as a percentage of our overall with vice presidents, academic deans, based on enhanced communication, budget, public institutions, including department heads, and other University shared interests, and collaboration. the University of Oregon, have raised and faculty leaders, the provost helps Unfortunately, that window closed tuition significantly in order to support ensure the quality of the faculty and quickly. The dissolution of a bipolar high-quality education. Higher education student learning. It’s obviously a big job. international system, in which the United is becoming less and less affordable for States and the Soviet Union were able to Your academic and professional Oregonians. manage tensions, led to the reemergence background is in the field of international of historic, intractable conflicts, many Does that commitment affect how you negotiations and arms control. Please grounded in ethnic, cultural, or religious do your job? tell us about your training and work differences and the growing gap between Absolutely. During this academic year, in that area. rich and poor in societies around the units across campus have developed I entered college as a pre-med major. During world. In that sense, the tensions are focused diversity plans that are grounded my sophomore year I enrolled in a required simply more visible, but the shift in the in the University of Oregon Diversity political science course. My instructor made structure of the international system has Plan that was approved in May 2006. I am the subject come alive and his intellectual made it more difficult for us to manage struck by the widespread commitment to passion became mine. He also convinced me these conflicts.
26 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 Ian Bradshaw Linda Brady
“Professional experience in international negotiation and arms control is terrific preparation for academic administration,“ says the UO’s new senior vice president and provost Bradshaw SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 27 Ian Can you give us some advice or insight organizations, such as the United Nations, education and the research enterprise, about how to gauge what’s going on with provide a framework within which diversity, internationalization, and the negotiations and diplomacy related international relations are conducted, but engagement—including expanding our to these trouble spots? such organizations cannot act without the presence in Portland. The work of Roger Fisher and his agreement of their members. To focus on just one of these priorities, colleagues in the Harvard Negotiation The university environment is very faculty members represent the talent and Project provides a useful framework for similar. While some believe administrators imagination that will shape the future of understanding international negotiation. have real power, given our traditions this university. Within the next decade Fisher argues successful negotiations of intellectual discourse and shared more than 50 percent of our faculty will separate the people from the problem, governance, the most important tool reach the age at which they will consider focus on underlying interests, not we have at our disposal is the power of retirement. This is a national trend that positions, develop options for mutual gain persuasion. In order to move an agenda will create an opportunity to shape the (win-win solutions), and use objective forward, we must craft intellectually American university of the future. But criteria to assess the costs and benefits persuasive arguments and convince our it also represents a significant challenge, of alternatives. These are principles that colleagues that proposed changes will as the competition among research shaped President Jimmy Carter’s successful benefit individuals and the institution as universities for the next generation of approach at Camp David. Unfortunately, a whole. faculty will be fierce. Faculty salaries at in recent years we haven’t been able to What was your first impression of Oregon, the UO are below the average of our AAU translate theory into practice. the state? public peers. To be competitive in the marketplace, we must address this issue How closely do you follow these We drove across the country from North and provide support to faculty members international events and developments Carolina, and as we entered Oregon deemed vulnerable to recruitment by these days? the entire landscape changed. My first other top institutions. The recently One of the real challenges for someone impression was of the diversity of the announced Fund for Faculty Excellence in my field is the geographic distance environment—I never expected to see awards and related gifts in support of between Eugene and Washington, D.C. desert in Oregon. the faculty are designed to reinforce the I’m unable to attend policy meetings in How about Oregon, the university? university’s strategic commitment to Washington as frequently as I would like. improve its overall quality and reputation Thank goodness for online resources and I’m impressed with the human scale of the by recruiting, supporting, recognizing, and CNN. University—the fact that I can walk from retaining world-class faculty. one end of the campus to the other in ten Do you miss being involved with issues minutes or less. The physical beauty of the Expanding the UO’s presence in Portland of such immense global significance? campus is breathtaking. has also been identified as a priority for I don’t miss being in government. When you. Could you talk about what the UO What do you think are some of the best I worked in Washington, D.C., between is doing and hopes to do in this area? things the UO has working in its favor? 1978 and 1986, there was a greater sense Why is it important? of bipartisanship and cooperation, across The people of the University of Oregon are The University of Oregon has been in political parties and agencies. That spirit deeply committed to this institution and Portland since 1884. In spring 2008 we fell by the wayside in the mid-1980s, its continued success. Higher education will move our Portland programs to the and was replaced with a bitter, partisan institutions are only as strong as our historic White Stag Block in Old Town environment. People seemed more people. Portland. There is strong demand in interested in making political points than What do you see as some of the thorniest Portland for UO programs in journalism, in solving problems. That environment challenges facing the UO? law, architecture and allied arts, which exists yet today. I greatly value the will relocate to the White Stag Block. The experience I had in government, including Building and sustaining academic Oregon Executive M.B.A. Program, a the colleagues I worked with and the excellence in an environment of declining joint program of the UO, PSU, and OSU, insights I gained that have informed my state support for higher education is our recently relocated to new facilities on research, but I have no desire to go back. greatest challenge. Specific challenges, such as the recruitment and retention of Market Street. White Stag will also house What aspects of your background in outstanding faculty and staff members, a UO library satellite facility, university international events and arms control apply and access and affordability for students, bookstore and Duck Shop, as well as AHA to your current role? stem from this fundamental problem. Our International, the University of Oregon’s Professional experience in international ability to offer a high-quality University study-abroad program. I’m excited about negotiation and arms control is terrific of Oregon education to future generations the enhanced visibility for the UO in preparation for academic administration. of students is in danger of being Portland—home to many future Ducks International negotiations are conducted compromised. and University of Oregon alumni. We have within an international system in a responsibility to serve the educational In what directions do you hope to see which nation-states are sovereign and needs of Oregonians. Many live and the UO move during your time here? independent. Each pursues its own work in the Portland area and want to interests and goals, has a monopoly on We are focusing attention on the take advantage of what the University of the use of force, and is not subject to recruitment and retention of top faculty, Oregon has to offer without relocating higher authority. Intergovernmental student success, expansion of graduate to Eugene. In addition, the University
28 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 of Oregon in Portland will provide students based in Eugene with significant connections within the Portland community, supporting internships and other active learning opportunities. Diversity on campus is another priority. Could you talk about what that means and why it’s important? Diversity is directly related to our ability to attract intelligent and successful faculty, staff, and students. Building and sustaining quality at the University of Oregon depends on our ability to successfully recruit and retain the next generation of talent while creating a learning environment in which education is enriched by a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. How might the campus be different in ten years if the UO makes the kind of progress with diversity that you would hope to see? Before starting at the UO, Linda Brady served as dean of the College of Progress means that in ten years we Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University, a post would see a campus that reflects our she held since July 1, 2001. A noted scholar in the field of international society. It also means that our graduates negotiations and arms control, she led the Sam Nunn School of International will be prepared to live and work in an Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1993 to 2001, where increasingly diverse and multicultural she also served as a professor of international affairs. She has been a distin- society and global economy. Some would guished professor of national security at the United States Military Academy argue that if we achieve our goals there and a senior fellow in international security and arms control at the Carter will be no need for a formal Diversity Plan in ten years—diversity simply will be Center of Emory University. From 1978 to 1985, Brady held several positions part of our identity and character as an in the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense. She served institution of higher education committed as a political analyst in the state department’s Office of Disarmament and to excellence. Arms Control and was special assistant for mutual and balanced force reduc- What are your favorite things to do tions in the defense department during the Carter administration. when you’re not working? A native of New York City, Brady graduated in 1969 from Douglass College, Walking our dog, Scarlet, is good for her the women’s division of Rutgers University, with a degree in political science. and for me. She is a rescue dog, half beagle and half basset, and very demanding. My She received her master’s degree in political science from Rutgers in 1970, husband and I love to travel and have and her doctorate in political science from Ohio State University in 1974. planned a trip to Scotland and Ireland this She has published in the fields of American foreign policy, international summer. negotiation, and arms control. Her current research focuses on the role of Can you tell us some books you’ve negotiation in war termination. read recently? John Daniel’s Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone. A wonderful exploration of personal identity, nature, and family university campuses to support student How do you stay in touch with students? relationships, set in the Oregon wilderness. learning and a healthy and sustainable This is the first year in my academic James C. Mohr’s Plague and Fire: environment. career that I haven’t taught a class. Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning What sort of music do you like? However, I have lectured in classes in the of Honolulu’s Chinatown. Jim is a senior School of Law, the honors college, and member of the UO’s history department. I have very eclectic tastes—everything the International Studies Program, and I’m reading as much faculty work as I can. from classical (especially Mozart) to have been impressed with the quality of It’s a terrific way to get to know the quality opera (partial to Verdi and Puccini) to UO students. In winter term 2008 I will and depth of our faculty. Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, and Motown. offer a freshman seminar on international Also Perry Chapman’s American Because I’m a fan of Fred Astaire and negotiation. I look forward to having Places: In Search of the Twenty-first Ginger Rogers movies, I also appreciate more regular contact with undergraduates. Century Campus, an exciting new the music of Irving Berlin and George Teaching reminds us of why we are here approach for addressing the design of Gershwin. and it’s what keeps us going.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 29 UNIVERSITY NEWS AND PEOPLE OF THE UO John Pegg Dean of Libraries Deb Carver high in the Himalayas
PLAY HARD
UO faculty members sometimes take their recreational activities to the extreme.
O CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR MIKE HALEY That’s Mike Haley. He’s ready to go Molecular biologist John Postlethwait was in Clemson, South Carolina, in at a moment’s notice when the rain has started running in 1971 at the urging of a U March giving a talk when another swollen local creeks to just the right couple of students and has been a regular scientist pulled him aside and inquired about level. Sometimes, when conditions look with “The Noon Group” UO faculty and Haley’s other passion, the one that’s not just right, he’ll shout down the chemistry staff members who’ve been meeting for a about building and studying the structure of department hallway to a fellow paddler run every day at noon for three decades. organic molecules. The colleague asked, “Do and they’ll put together a quick trip on the Each year on his birthday, Postlethwait runs you want to go run the Chattooga?” spot. If paddling Tuesday morning means his age in miles. In December, he turned Haley’s response was a blend of Saturday in the offi ce, so be it. That’s one sixty-two and, starting at 5:00 A.M., jogged Oklahoma and Texas exuberance that a of the great advantages of his job: hard the equivalent of 2.3 marathons in around mere yes can’t really capture. This is a guy work lets him play hard, too. thirteen hours, “It takes a little longer each with a picture of himself on his offi ce wall Such conversations happen all over year,” he says, “but it’s fun.” paddling a kayak over a seventeen-foot campus when conditions for various Craig Thornley ’86, M.S. ’88, teaches waterfall in Idaho. The Chattooga is a river sports are ideal: the right amount of rain in geological sciences and is an ultra- that’s chock-full of drops, ledges, slides, and in the river, thick powder snow in the marathoner as well as a ski patroller and sluices—a half-mile stretch of it is even mountains, or a good swell rolling in at rock climber. He attributes part of his called “Five Falls.” He’s been running rivers the coast. Sunny weather is a great excuse, success in 100-mile races to the fl exibility of for eleven years and has run much of what’s too. Gray days won’t stop the Haleys of his schedule, but he’s not averse to running worth running in Oregon, so he was eager the world either. For many of the UO’s in the dark, either. to try his hand on this legendary river. devoted athletic academics, current less- Summers off allow for extended trips And thus he found himself, on a warm than-optimal conditions rarely stand in the for some, but to get ready for world-class and beautiful spring day, deep in the way of that four-hour run, 100-mile bike adventure, proximity helps, too. The Appalachians. It’s an infamous river, the ride, or scramble up a nearby rock face. University is an hour or two from snow one that nearly consumed Burt Reynolds The list of faculty members who take and surf, and trailheads fan out from Eugene in the fi lm Deliverance, and is still one of outdoor sports to extremes is long. The UO into abundant public land. Many local the most remote and dangerous runs in the has ultra-marathoners, Himalayan climbers, roads have smooth, bike-friendly shoulders. Southeast. He borrowed a boat and the avalanche experts, long-distance bicyclists, There’s a culture here, too, formal and gear he needed, and the colleague served and waterfall runners. A nanotechnology informal, of outdoor adventure. as his guide. He had a blast. researcher is a tandem telemark skier. Philip H. Knight Dean of Libraries Deb
30 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 Carver, a rock climber and mountaineer, to sports that they later became deeply thinks that university demographics involved with. Carver made it a goal to contribute to the culture. Something climb Mount Rainier in Washington when about being around eighteen-to-twenty- she moved here from North Carolina. She four-year-olds all day is a reminder of was captivated by the idea of it but had not how fun it is to be young and see the climbed before. She signed up for climbing possibilities for adventure around you. courses with the Obsidians, a local hiking “Their enthusiasm is infectious,” and climbing group, and, along the way Carver says. to her goal of summiting Rainier, met her Students and faculty members trade husband. They climb with other UO faculty outdoor expertise. Haley said he learned and staff members. to kayak from a student, and since that time “Pretty soon it becomes kind of your he’s introduced his sport to a few others who whole world outside of work,” Carver, a have passed through his offi ce and asked lifelong skier, says. She volunteers with about the waterfall picture. The UO also has Eugene Mountain Rescue and can be found the Outdoor Program and physical education at the local climbing gym staying in tune programs in outdoor leadership, which have for big adventures. Carver climbed in Nepal a dedicated faculty. Even informally, schools in April 2006 and wants to climb above
and departments sometimes come together 20,000 feet. She just missed a chance at Jim Barlow around an activity. For many years, the that height on the Nepal trip, but will try Marjorie Taylor School of Journalism and Communication again. She reached 18,400 feet in Bolivia has had a group of devoted white-water a few years ago. “When you set these PSYCHOLOGY rafters and kayakers on its faculty. goals, the idea of not fi nishing—for me, For many faculty members, those it’s haunting.” communities have served as gateways —MARK BLAINE, M.S. ’00 WHO’S GIVING THE ORDERS AROUND HERE?
Researcher investigates the phenomenon of fictional characters acting as if they have minds of their own.
V. I. WARSHAWSKI, THE GRITTY PRIVATE detective appearing in thirteen books by bestselling author Sara Paretsky, didn’t want to go to prison in the book Hard Time. And why would she? She knew she’d be beaten up and tortured. She knew she’d have to eat crummy food. So, she refused to go. This left Paretsky with something of a predicament—she had a story to write after all—so she made a deal with V. I. that if she went to prison in Hard Time, the detective would find true love in the next novel. V. I. relented and off to the slam- mer she went. This exchange between Paretsky and her character, recounted in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio interview, illustrates a phenomenon called the illusion of independent agency, a theory champi- oned by University of Oregon psychologist Marjorie Taylor. As described first in a 2003 paper by Taylor and two colleagues in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, the phenomenon occurs when
Jason Rackley fiction authors perceive a character as having Chemistry Professor Mike Haley midway over Sunset Falls on the East Fork of independent thoughts, words, and actions. Washington’s Lewis River The author may be driving the car, but the
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 31 UNIVERSITY character is sitting in the backseat, blurting ever, and resists simple explanation. “The find her kind of delightful, actually, and so directions whether they’re wanted or not. old notion that writing is kind of mystical, it’s almost as if I enjoy being in the company “Instead of carefully thinking about that you have to be drunk enough and have of this imaginary character. Also her grand- what the character is going to say, you listen enough sex and enough divorces, that you father, ‘Grampy.’ So scenes where the two to what the character has to say and you just sit there and the voices of the gods talk in of them are interacting, I almost feel like a write it down,” Taylor says. “That’s the way your ear, I think is a bunch of bullshit,” says secretary—I’m just writing it down.” it feels, this sort of taking dictation from Ehud Havazelet, an author of two critically And if the scenes ever grow difficult, your character. And that’s a really common acclaimed novels and an associate professor he could always try cutting a deal. experience for writers.” of writing at Oregon. “There’s no muse. All —MATT TIFFANY, M.S. ’07 Taylor’s theory grew out of her ground- characters have to have their own origin in breaking research into children’s imaginary the real world, in your interpretation.” INTERNET friends, work presented in her book, Havazelet recounts an observation Imaginary Companions and the Children attributed to William Faulkner where, if Who Create Them (Oxford University Press, a writer has worked hard over a couple REACHING GEN Y 1999). While little Susie may know her of hundred pages, the character will have imaginary friend Bingo the Dragon is fake, been infused with enough light, motivation, UO educators are discovering that doesn’t stop her from carrying on con- and need that the writer can sit back and innovative ways to bridge the gap versations with it. Some kids even find their let the characters develop themselves. It’s between old school and new school. imaginary friends bossy and impertinent, after a writer has put so much effort into a unwilling to follow directions, Taylor says. character, filling it with details so intricate THE LINGO OF TODAY’S UO CLASSROOM IS Fiction writers report that their characters they surpass even what the author knows taking on the strange and exotic inflections often display similar behaviors. about close friends, that the characters seem of the Internet: Google this and wiki that, “We’re talking about the human imagi- to come alive. and, oh, you missed last Thursday’s lecture? nation here, and I don’t think it can be “Some characters are much, much Just check Blackboard or the prof’s blog and entirely rationalized,” says Peter Abrahams, harder to write than others,” says Abrahams, download the podcast to get caught up. a novelist specializing in crime fiction who’s the crime novelist. But thirteen-year-old This foreign lingo, however, translates written almost twenty books. “Every day Ingrid Levine-Hill, the precocious main simply to new ways of teaching and learn- when I’m writing I enter a kind of imagi- character in his Echo Falls series, is a snap. “I ing. And it has to, because students enrolled native space, which definitely for me is a physical feeling. That’s when characters can indeed, as some people say, blurt out something that you, the writer actually typing it, didn’t intend.” In Taylor’s first study, she interviewed fifty writers who live in Eugene. Of the fifty, forty-six reported experiencing the illusion of independent agency; however, each experience is different, Taylor notes. “Sometimes the words are just there in their heads, sometimes they imagine themselves talking to the character, sometimes they just hear the character talking to them or even see the character.” Taylor is now working on a larger study in which she is interviewing as many popular authors as she can. It’s arduous work, she admits, John Hughes because she has to read each author’s oeuvre before any interviews can occur. CRIKEY! KILLER CROCS IN JURASSIC OREGON She’s interviewed some notable authors already, she says, but because she agreed Archaeology researchers have discovered remains of an ancient sea-going crocodile in the rocks to keep them anonymous within her study, of Crook County in eastern Oregon. Bill Orr, emeritus professor of geological sciences and she can’t drop names. director of the Condon collection of fossils, describes the creature as having been six to eight Writers often tackle this concept of feet long with a fish-like tail and needle-sharp teeth. The reptiles’ short, stubby legs would have their characters’ sentience themselves, allowed them to move about on land, where they may have laid eggs. The fossil remains— Taylor says. Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, about half of the animal, estimated to be 150 to 180 million years old—are believed to be from and the recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut the metriorhynchid taxonomical group. These predators are thought to have been common (all of whom were invited to participate in around much of the world during the Jurassic period. The discovery was made by a member the research) have each written or talked of the North American Research Group (NARG), a private Beaverton-based group doing about perceiving their characters as sepa- research in the paleontology, paleobotany, and geology of the Pacific Northwest. According to rate beings that influence a story. Orr, an adviser to NARG, fossils from other crocodile families and other reptiles have been The writing process is complex, how- found previously in Oregon, but none have been as old as the “Crook County croc.”
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NEWS IN BRIEF
HALF A BILLION RAISED Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives, the University’s fundraising initiative, has passed the $500 million mark toward a goal of $600 million for student and faculty support, programs, and facilities. The bulk of donations so far have come from alumni, nonalumni friends of the University, parents, and faculty and staff members. Other gifts have come from sources such as corporations, foundations, and family foundations. Nearly half the donations have come from out of state. The total endowment of the UO Foundation, which receives, invests, and disburses private gifts made
to the University, has exceeded a market RagsdaleDave value of $400 million for the first time. Al “The Podfather” Stavitsky and doctoral student Michael Huntsberger at work on a podcast
KILKENNY NAMED today, millennial students—the group is authoring of information), social network- also dubbed Generation Y and Generation ing sites (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster), NEW ATHLETIC DIRECTOR Next—demand it. These students exist and virtual worlds (Second World). In March, Pat Kilkenny ’74 became the comfortably between the actual and virtual Many educators are far from the novice University’s new athletic director. A native worlds, so today’s educators are looking for end of this learning curve. In fact, many UO of Heppner, Kilkenny served on both the ways to shift their approach to teaching professors and instructors are finding innova- UO Department of Intercollegiate Athletic class material. tive and successful ways to apply new media Advisory Board and the UO Foundation According to the January 2007 results tools in the classroom. Arts and administra- Board of Trustees. He previously served of the Pew Research Foundation’s report tion instructor Scott Huette is using blogs, on the UC San Diego Athletics Board and “A Portrait of ‘Generation Next’—How websites that allow for online journaling, to the San Diego State University athletic Young People View Their Lives, Futures, help engage students in his Art and Human director’s cabinet. Kilkenny, former and Politics,” these baby boomer progeny Values course. Planning, public policy and chairman and chief executive officer of “use technology and the Internet to con- management assistant professor Marc the San Diego–based Arrowhead General nect with people in new and distinctive Schlossberg is incorporating personal digi- Insurance Agency, guided his business ways . . .” and “their embrace of new tech- tal assistants (PDAs) and GIS (geographic to become a nationwide organization nology has made them uniquely aware of information system) mapping software to with written premiums of nearly $1 billion its advantages and disadvantages.” have students in his Social Planning GIS when he sold the company in 2006. As UO freshman Jewel Myers says, course explore ways to improve the livabil- “Times are changing and the Internet is ity of local Eugene communities. Instructor NEUROSCIENTIST HONORED becoming more and more a part of our Mark Blaine in the School of Journalism and Helen Neville, director of the UO Center everyday lives.” Communication and his reporting students for Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention, As the world changes, teaching needs to have created Tabula Rasa, the “first-ever has been elected a fellow of the keep pace. The UO Teaching Effectiveness School of Journalism wiki,” to foster web- prestigious American Academy of Arts Program is aimed at helping teachers do based collaboration. and Sciences—inducted along with such just that. In a recent workshop titled “Pop Students are taking note of these new luminaries as Sandra Day O’Connor, Culture I and II: What Are My Students elements popping up and enlivening their Al Gore, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Talking About?” faculty consultant Leslie classes. She joins nine previous UO recipients, Rutberg introduced the virtual world as a UO sophomore Erin Fine says, “I’m including President Frohnmayer. way to make class “examples, activities, taking math this term, and part of our grade and illustrations accessible and connected depends on work completed in WebAssign WORKING FOR PEACE to [students’] values and interests.” [an online interactive classroom website The Peace Corps reports it had seventy- The workshop also introduced new program]. I also have an English professor eight UO graduates volunteering media or “hypermedia” as “the kind of who is incorporating a class blog into the worldwide in 2006, enough to earn information format Generation Y is most syllabus.” a ranking of sixth among schools comfortable with . . . nonlinear, interactive, But UO educators are not only using producing participants, the same high exploratory, participatory, multilayered.” new media to create connections with the rank as in 2005. In all, more than 900 Hypermedia formats include online video- students and the classroom material—they UO graduatess have served in the games, content sharing (YouTube for video, are using these tools to connect the students Peace Corps. podcasts for audio, wikis for collaborative to the world at large.
3434 OOREGONREGON QQUARTERLYUARTERLY SUMMERSUMMER 2007 Journalism Associate Dean and Professor Al Stavitsky has been using podcasts—audio and video streams that can be downloaded 5.)6%23)49ª/&ª/2%'/. to computers or MP3 players—in his J 201 3CHOOLªOFª*OURNALISMªª Mass Media and Society class since 2005. ANDª#OMMUNICATION Last fall, Stavitsky created a podcast for his 'EORGEô3ô4URNBULLôô J 201 students while attending a public media 0ORTLANDô#ENTER conference 5,100 miles away in Amsterdam. This was a special addition to the audio pod- casts (complete with an “Al Pod” hip-hop theme song) Stavitsky posts for the class Be a Part each week. (To check out Stavitsky’s audio and video podcasts, visit his blog at jcomm. of It uoregon.edu/weblog/ags.) Fine, who took J 201 with Stavitsky, 6ISITôô TURNBULLCENTERô says, “The podcasts connected the readings UOREGONEDU with the lectures. Overall, [Stavitsky’s] use of Internet technology was both helpful and fitting, considering that the class was /RôCONTACTô Mass Media and Society. It just made the !Lô3TAVITSKY !SSOCIATEô$EANôô class that much more interesting.” 4URNBULLô#ENTERô$IRECTOR These new formats require of the educa- AGS UOREGONEDU tor at least as much set-up and maintenance ô as older teaching techniques, but they also 3ETHô7ALKER put more power and accountability into the 0ORTLANDô0ROGRAMô#OORDINATOR hands of students to track class material SETH UOREGONEDU and their own performance. ô “I know I’ll never lose the syllabus if it’s online instead of crammed in a notebook -ASTERSª0ROGRAMªINª*OURNALISMª3TRATEGICª#OMMUNICATIONªBEGINNINGªFALLª somewhere,” Fine says. “[And] professors who use the Internet for communication are also more likely to be in touch during nonclass time, either sending out e-mails that relate to the homework or sending articles about current events that pertain to the class.” —BOBBIE WILLIS SOEBY, M.A. ’01
MUSIC
BACH TO THE FUTURE Oregon Bach Festival to debut new executive director
ON JUNE 29, WHEN THE CURTAIN GOES UP on the thirty-eighth Oregon Bach Festival, a new executive director will be present and Newly designed preparing to succeed cofounder and long- time festival stalwart H. Royce Saltzman. During the University’s eight-month inter- with timeless elegance ... national search, John Evans rose above a field of forty candidates. “Evans just blew us away,” says Brad Foley, dean of the UO School of Music and Dance and chair of the search committee. “His knowledge, 232 SW Elizabeth Street his broadcasting experience, his connec- Newport, Oregon 97365 tions with European music figures . . . his www.elizabethstreetinn.com background was really superior.” Evans, fifty-three, looks forward to 877-265-9400 diving into the festival season with Saltzman
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 35 UNIVERSITY
and cofounder Helmuth Rilling, the Bach festival’s artistic director and conductor. “I believe in continuity—but nothing stands PROFILE still,” says Evans. “I want to build on the extraordinary legacy and very strong founda- ELIZABETH REIS tion that Helmuth and Royce have worked so hard to develop. I believe we can nurture and broaden this legacy without changing ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ELIZABETH REIS the personality and profile of the festival knows that sometimes learning lessons too much.” close to home is the best way to make Evans is well equipped to achieve history come alive. that goal. His new colleagues at the UO Students in her class call their mothers describe him as a compelling character, asking about Vietnam. They call their effervescent and bursting with energy, and grandmothers, wondering about wartime his career accomplishments are testament rationing. Working on oral history to that praise. From 1985 to 2006, Evans projects, they learn about the past from worked his way up from production to Jack Liu the lives of family members. head of music programming for the BBC’s Reis has respect for the power of personal experience. Her grandmother, cultural station Radio 3. During those Leona Tamarkin, was a refugee during the First World War and later years, he was responsible for numerous immigrated to America. Scarred by traumatic experiences, she rarely spoke award-winning programs, including Live about her childhood. from Tanglewood, which was selected as Her grandmother finally told her story through a memoir, which started out the radio broadcasting event of the year as a letter to Reis. The book, Dear Lizzie, was published in 2000. in 1996 and earned the prestigious Sony When students in Reis’s History of Women in the United States class Gold award. He worked with Leonard read the book, the story leaves them awestruck, staggered by the eyewitness Bernstein and the London Symphony accounts of the atrocities of war and power of the human experience. Orchestra on the video and audio pro- For their own projects, students conduct a recorded interview with a family member and then head to the library to explore the historical context duction of Bernstein’s operetta Candide of their family member’s experiences. and other projects, and has maintained a The finished product is much more than the resulting term paper. Over connection with the Bernstein estate since the course of their research, students become historians, passionate about being involved in a tribute to Bernstein family experience and excited about history. after his death. “We did a whole day of “I had a student last term who wrote about her grandmother delivering a broadcasting live from Manhattan,” says stillborn baby,” says Reis. “The grandmother had never talked to anyone about Evans, “celebrating Lenny’s love affair the experience before and that was so powerful for them to share.” with the Big Apple.” When listening to the students’ interview recordings, Reis is often “I love the States,” he says. “Throughout captivated by the material. “I usually try to just listen to a short part,” she says. my time at the BBC, I’ve done major proj- “But I get so into it, I’ll look up and it’s twenty minutes later. I have to make ects in America nearly every year since myself stop or I’d never get through all of the papers.” 1985.” With radio programming and Now in her tenth year of teaching this course at Oregon, Reis believes recording associates in New York, Boston, it not only teaches students to learn from the past, but also helps to unite Chicago, and points west, he intends to families in the present. cultivate those connections to widen and diversify the Bach festival’s audience. Name: Elizabeth Reis “Broadcasting is something I’m certainly Age: 48 going to be looking at.” Education: Calling the Oregon Bach Festival “a Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1991 jewel in the crown of the summer festival M.A., Brown University, 1982 scene in America,” Evans says that the A.B., Smith College, 1980 OBF is rife with possibilities. He speaks Teaching experience: Undergraduate and graduate courses in women’s of expanding the festival into several large and gender studies. Seventeen years at the University of Oregon events, retaining the main festival in July Awards: as the heart of the program while maybe UO Sheri K. Coleman and Margaret E. Guitteau Professor in the adding a series of themed festivals at differ- Humanities, 2006–7 ent times of year—Easter and Christmas, UO Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2004 for example. Collaborating with children’s Off Campus: Spending time with her children, a son who is a freshman choirs, musical organizations, and dance at Cornell University and a tenth-grade daughter ensembles from other Oregon locations Last Word: “People die. It would be tragic for someone not to have ever to round out the themed seasonal festivals asked to hear their stories.” would also strengthen the Bach festival’s —WHITNEY MALKIN presence and visibility, says Evans. Greatly impressed with the OBF’s Youth
36 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 Takeadrive down I-5 and meet 82,000 of our readers. They’re University of Oregon graduates, and we’re mighty OQ HOUSE AD proud of their successes—from Seattle to San Diego. When you advertise in Oregon Quarterly, your message will reach one of the most attractive audiences on the West Coast.
Reserve your space for upcoming issues. Contact Susan Thelen at (541) 346-5046 or [email protected]. Gideon Hart New Oregon Bach Fesival Director John Evans Choral Academy—which draws eighty accomplished high school participants from around the country each year—Evans says, www.uoregon.edu “It’s the type of program that truly deserves nurturing for the next generation. I’d like SOURCE: ADVANCE MARKETING RESEARCH, INC., APRIL 1999 SURVEY to develop a youth orchestral academy to complement that effort.” A native of South Wales, Evans spent much of his professional life in London where the pace, he admits, is somewhat strenuous. But his career began with a six- year stint in Aldeburgh, a small historic village on the English coast. While he com- pleted his doctorate on the work of British composer Benjamin Britten, Evans ran the vocal master program at the Britten-Pears School, and worked with operatic tenor Declare your Peter Pears. Early this spring, Evans stayed at the Red House, Britten’s “rather spooky” devotion to the home at Aldeburgh, while he completed the annotating and editing of Britten’s Ducks while you private diaries for publication. Though his career has kept him immersed in classical music and opera, fund academic scholarships. his musical tastes extend to other areas. He enjoys jazz and classic Broadway (Warning: May induce nostalgia, chest-thumping pride music: Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Bernstein, and constant whistling of the fight song.) Rodgers and Hammerstein, and “I’m an absolute Sondheim nut. I’m almost as obsessive about Sondheim as I am about Britten.” But what’s in his personal CD Who are you rooting for this season? player? “Well, I’m a big fan of Sting,” Evans answers. “And Ella Fitzgerald. My Visit us at uoalumni.com for details. father was a saxophonist and a dance-band License plate illustrated for promotional purposes only. Vanity plates not available. leader, so Ella was quite important in our household.” —KATHERINE GRIES ’05
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 37 OLD OREGON NEWS OF UO ALUMNI Zanne Miller Zanne Downey Woodpecker Larry McQueen has painted more than 1,500 bird species. BIRDMAN OF EUGENE
With keen eye and steady hand, artist creates startlingly lifelike avian images.
OMETIMES, BIRDS FROM HALFWAY “Fortunately, it helps that I have a lifetime for what McQueen describes as “a quiet around the world arrive at Larry of looking at birds.” way of instructing, which was directed SMcQueen’s Eugene home in a box, Looking at birds—and drawing and to the task at hand and most helpful. . . . a phenomenon his wife once called “the painting them—has been McQueen’s self- McCosh had a profound knowledge of migration of dead birds.” described “obsession” since his childhood color and he expanded my consciousness Weighing only ounces, these birds in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, where a of color.” McQueen worked parttime as an have been carefully prepped, skinned, hummingbird in the backyard first cap- illustrator for the Oregon State Museum and stuffed with cotton. They have no tured his attention. He was a founding of Anthropology at the UO—“I did some eyes—eyes are soft tissue and decompose member of the Bucknell University orni- of my best illustrative work there,” he quickly, McQueen explains. In his second- thology club at age twelve and spent a lot says—and later as a full-time photographer floor artist’s studio, he carefully inspects a of time observing birds in the wild. “I’d and graphic artist for the Lane County specimen, called a “skin,” for detail. Then, come into the house and try to draw what Intermediate Education District. He met first with a pencil and then with a brush, I had just seen,” McQueen says. Legendary and married Elga Brown, M.S. ’70, who McQueen brings it back to life. bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes became was studying education at Oregon. Listening to him talk about his work an early inspiration. Once Brown started work as a kinder- is an art lesson, an eco-tour, and an edu- His fascination with birds took garten teacher, McQueen felt that, with cation in ornithology all in one. “I need McQueen west to Idaho State University, the family having at least one consistent photos of the caught bird and of the hab- where he earned a B.S. in biology in 1961. source of income, it was safe to make his itat and plants, info on the habits and For a few summers, he worked for the fish art a full-time occupation. natural posture of the bird, and finally, and wildlife service in Idaho studying the “I realized I could do what I always the skin,” he explains. He doesn’t use the predatory relationship of golden eagles wanted to do,” he says. “We decided to skin as a model—a living bird looks quite and pronghorns. see how it would go.” different than the specimen. He relies on Following a stint in the Army, he relo- His first commission was painting some the skin for shape and size of bill, feet, cated to Eugene and, taking advantage illustrations for the Portland Audubon closed wing and tail, and other important of the GI Bill, enrolled at the University Society book Familiar Birds of Northwest details. “But the perched bird is something of Oregon to study art. The late David Shores and Waters in 1975. “Fifty dollars that has to be taken from life,” he says. McCosh was his favorite painting teacher, a painting, and they kept the paintings,
38 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 birding world’s who’s who is the fact that he’s painted about 1,550 species. At the moment he is working on a water- color painting of an evening grosbeak, a migratory bird that arrives each spring in the Willamette Valley to, as McQueen instructs, “gorge on new seeds of maple and elm, prior to their journey to the mountains, where they breed.” The image he’s laboring over is the arrival of a pair of grosbeaks at their nesting site while snow still lingers. He’s been at it for sev- eral days, struggling to get the vegetation just right. In a pile, discarded, are six or seven trial runs. This process—absorbing the reference materials, planning, making mockups, creating the environment—is always one of trial and error, he says. John O’Neill, one of the nation’s foremost living ornithologists and bird Anthony Leiserowitz painters, first encountered McQueen’s work in a juried exhibition in 1980. Right away, O’Neill contacted McQueen to work THE RISK FACTOR on Birds of Peru, a comprehensive field guide that documents Peru’s nearly 1,800 Global warming is one thing, Mockingbird species. “All of North America excluding how we feel about it may Mexico has a total list of half that many,” be quite another. but I was glad to do it for the experience,” says McQueen, who drew 1,200 figures he says. of birds for the book—about one-third CONSCIENTIOUS MOM BUCKLES HER Since that time, McQueen’s work—in of the total. two toddlers in the back seat of her all about 2,300 paintings, he estimates— Thirteen artists and three authors Acar and drives several crowded free- has appeared in dozens of periodicals and worked on the monumental project, way miles to a store where she can buy field guides ranging from the popular (Bird which, due in part to vagaries of fund- pesticide-free grains and produce for their Watcher’s Digest) to the scientific (The ing, has been in process for more than meals. Her overweight neighbor down the Wilson Journal of Ornithology). His work was thirty years—so far. Its long-awaited street rarely exercises and subsists mostly published in several issues of Audubon, the and greatly anticipated publication by on fast food, but will rail for hours about magazine for the 600,000 members of the Princeton University Press is projected the health dangers of emissions from over- National Audubon Society, as well as on for later this year. head power lines. the cover of the annual catalog for Victor “I recognized right away that Larry Without being fully aware of it, these Emanuel Nature Tours—the largest birding would be a very good person to have on individuals—and all the rest of us—daily tour company in the world—almost every the project,” remembers O’Neill. “His navigate the mental terrain known by year since 1985. interpretation has always been so perfect. researchers as risk perception, whether Although “well-known bird artist” There are a lot of good technicians . . . but it involves deciding to take a plane trip, is probably an oxymoron, McQueen is probably only twenty-five or thirty incredible climbing a mountain, lighting up the after- considered among the very best. He is painters who are really outstanding, who dinner cigarette, or downing that second mentioned in a “favorite artist” discussion really understand birds.” pint of beer before driving home. on birdforum.net, which bills itself as What is it that puts a wildlife artist “It seems like a weird thing, but once “the net’s largest community dedicated among the elite? “There are tiny little you are introduced to it, you realize this to wild birds.” He is among the “twelve things that we would never notice, that to field underlies almost every single impor- contemporary masters of the genre” him are a big deal,” O’Neill says. “I would tant decision we make in our lives about featured in a 1988 book by Susan Rayfield trust him to paint a bird he’s never seen. anything,” says geographer Anthony called Painting Birds and is featured in . . . Larry’s paintings are the bird—as close Leiserowitz, M.S.’98, Ph.D ’03, a former Nicholas Hammond’s Twentieth-Century to the living bird as you can get.” courtesy research associate in the Wildlife Artists. University of Oregon’s Environmental Bird watchers keep life lists, a tally of The Spirit of Birds, a showing of thirteen of Studies Program. how many of the world’s 10,000 recognized Larry McQueen’s paintings, is on display Leiserowitz, now director of strategic species they have seen. McQueen’s own weekdays from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. initiatives at the Yale School of Forestry life list includes about 2,200 species, “not through the end of June in the dean’s office and Environmental Studies, came upon the a real accomplishment today compared reception area of Knight Law Center on the field of risk perception after a circuitous to many world birders,” he says. But an UO campus. academic route left him wondering what it achievement that puts him among the —ZANNE MILLER, M.S. ’97 was about humans that allowed them, over
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 39 OLD OREGON
and over, to make decisions that resulted in spoiling the very ecological environment they depend on to sustain them. His studies in environmental science and policy at Oregon led him to Paul Slovic, a leading researcher in the field of risk perception and a professor in the UO psychology department since 1986. “I finally had found a field and a language that allowed me to focus in on and look at how people perceive environmental issues and respond to them,” Leiserowitz says. Leiserowitz used the risk perception approach to survey people’s attitudes about what is widely considered to be People are good at recognizing concrete threats, but less skilled at assessing risks that are “diffuse, invisible, and have abstract effects that they don’t see.”
EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY the greatest challenge facing the earth today: global climate change. The results of one of his surveys are included in the volume Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (Cambridge University Press, 2007). 9OUREôJUSTôAôCLICKôô Leiserowitz was curious about what AWAYôFROMôTHEôWORLDSô factors are involved in the way people assess the risk of global change. Between GREATESTôMUSIC November 2002 and February 2003, he sent out hundreds of sixteen-page surveys across the United States and 673 were returned. Leiserowitz found that the majority of the respondents perceived the risk from global warming as “moderate” because, in short, it wasn’t affecting them personally and lacked a sense of urgency. At the time the survey was taken, the issue wasn’t attract- ing the overwhelming media attention that it does today. Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was still in production, science seemed much more conflicted over the phenomenon than it appears today, and the Bush administration was challenging the issue’s legitimacy. In general, survey 5.)6%23)49ô/&ô/2%'/.ô2!$)/ªª+7!8 &-ô respondents saw climate change as a prob- lem that in the future would likely affect ./7ô"2/!$#!34ô/.ô4(%ô7%"ô!4 nonhuman nature or people who live in distant countries, but it wasn’t perceived as +7!8#/- a particular risk to their own health. The findings, Leiserowitz says, shore up other risk perception studies show-
40 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 DUC K SITES WEBSITES OF INTEREST TO OQ READERS Jack Liu Solar panels on Erb Memorial Union roof
FROHNMAYER PLEDGES TO CURB UO CARBON EMISSIONS
UO President Dave Frohnmayer announced during campus Earth Day festivities that he signed a commitment to reduce the University’s “carbon footprint.” The document, known as the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, pledges the University of Oregon to support a broad effort by the 5/$UCK3HOPCOM nation’s higher education institu- 9OURôPURCHASESôSUPPORTôCURRENTô5/ôSTUDENTS ôFACULTYôANDôCLASSIkEDôSTAFF tions to address global warming by neutralizing their greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating research and educational efforts to equip society to re-stabilize the earth’s climate. The heads of more ATôTHEô5NIVERSITYôOFô/REGON than 150 institutions across the country have signed the pledge. Active Minds for Active Lives “Addressing climate change In Eugene/Springfi eld, Central Oregon in our curriculum as well as and coming soon to Portland! campus operations is an urgent http://osher.uoregon.edu • (800) 824-2714714 and integral part of our mis- sion,” Frohnmayer said. “Higher education plays a critical role in preparing the new workforce and creating the knowledge that will help society create the strate- gies, technologies, policies, and economic opportunities that will allow humanity to thrive while protecting our life-supporting environment.”
For more information go to ERB MEMORIAL UNION presidentsclimatecommitment.org. Where memories of a lifetime happen everyday. emu.uoregon.edu SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 41 OLD OREGON ing that people are good at recognizing more apt to use emotion, imagery, and what he believes the true risk to be. Such a concrete threats, but less skilled at assess- associations in assessing risk than the closer alignment could play a vital role in ing risks that are “diffuse, invisible, and analytic approach used by experts. getting the public and policymakers to sup- have abstract effects that they don’t see.” “Experts judged risk by probability, the port difficult and potentially costly choices, When people cannot feel or imagine a severity of consequences,” Slovic says. But as well as to commit to the hard work of risk, he says, they don’t have an emotional his work showed that people attach greater changing deeply ingrained habits. response to it. And emotions “are what danger to risks that contain a “dread” To this end, Leiserowitz used his provide the motivation for action.” quality—meaning that they elicit a sense analysis to develop several communica- Leiserowitz and others credit Slovic of being uncontrollable, catastrophic, tion strategies. He divided respondents with opening new avenues in the field or fatal—or an “unknown” quality. For into several “interpretive communities,” of risk perception. In the early 1980s, his example, people rated alcohol—a familiar, or groups that, generally, share demo- studies demonstrated that people are far predictable substance—as low risk despite graphics, values, political leanings, and it being associated with tens of thousands similar attitudes toward climate change. of motor vehicle accidents and deaths each Representing approximately 7 percent of year. In contrast, respondents also perceived the U.S. population is a group he termed nuclear power, which incorporates elements “nay-sayers,” made up of individuals who of both dread and the unknown, as a much perceive climate change as a very low risk. greater risk, even though the number of This group tends to be vocal and politi- deaths attributed to the technology has cally active, and have strong political and been comparatively minuscule. private-sector allies. Affecting this group’s Slovic, who is also founder and attitude toward climate change, he says, president of the Eugene-based nonprofit will likely require casting the issue in terms Decision Research, found that perceived of economic costs and opportunities, or NASA Hurricane Katrina in the benefit also influences people’s assessment on the national security issue of fossil fuel Gulf of Mexico of risk. “If we feel good about an activity, dependency. The group also may be per- it fools us into thinking the risks are low,” suaded if they hear the message from sources UO GEOGRAPHY he says. In the same vein, “if we don’t see they trust, such as religious leaders. PROFESSOR HAS ROLE something as a good thing to do, we become He suggests that messages aimed at IN MAJOR CLIMATE- more sensitive to the risk.” For instance, persuading other groups should take dif- MODELING PROJECT even though x-rays are connected with ferent approaches. Some will be motivated nuclear technology (perceived as highly by images of cute, cuddly animals, such as University of Oregon geography risky), people tend to be tolerant of them polar bears, that are endangered by the phe- professor Patrick J. Bartlein because they appreciate the technology’s nomenon. Others will be more impressed is playing a role in the newly many medical applications. by vivid examples of the extreme weather launched Project PALEOVAR, Perception of risk can also rest on a events that might accompany climate funded by the National Science single word, if it is potent enough. He notes change, such as “heat waves, hurricanes, Foundation. that when magnetic resonant imaging flooding, or drought” (even if a particular The effort seeks to understand (MRI) first came on the market, it was event might not be “definitively said to be the interaction between short- called nuclear magnetic resonate imaging. caused by global warming”). term variability and climate “They quickly learned to drop the nuclear,” Leiserowitz recommends using conditions over the past 50,000 he says. approaches that bring climate change years. Participating researchers Similarly, Leiserowitz found that down to a local or regional level and will consider climate variability lack of a clear “villain” can lead people that emphasize its visceral effects. What is using numerous land and oceanic to downplay a formidable risk, as found needed, he says, are more concrete images factors, which will be combined for in his research. Global climate change and stories about people, places, cultures, the first time, to project possible arises from invisible gases that are part and ecosystems “to fill out the picture,” climate changes in response to of nature, and it involves weather, the and “bring the issue to life.” global warming. random risks of which people have no The debate over how to respond to In recent years, Bartlein has choice but to tolerate. In addition, the global warming is contentious and the studied the interplay of vegetation changes it causes are incremental. “It’s stakes are extremely high—perceived by and fire events of the Pacific easier to ignore what happens in a drip- some to be nothing less than the fate of Northwest over the last 12,000 drip fashion as opposed to a single, solitary the planet, by others as the arena where years. dramatic event,” he explains. vast sums of money stand to be gained Along with Bartlein, project Avoiding such an event—which could or lost with changes in environmental PALEOVAR involves several come in the form of a cataclysmic eco- policies. As the public debate and policy researchers from OSU and the logical wake-up call—is on the minds of proposals unfold, those involved will sug- University of Minnesota. Under Leiserowitz and many of his colleagues, who gest numerous strategies for addressing the the project’s NSF grant of $3 are unabashedly concerned about climate risks of global warming—perhaps the most million over five years, Bartlein change and global warming. For him the successful will also take into account the received $439,000. challenge is how to get the public’s percep- public’s perception of those risks. tion of global warming risk more in line with —ALICE TALLMADGE, M.A. ’87
42 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 DOTTIE BAROQUE
Designer adds color and fun to the fine art of dressing the table.
HAT DO YOU DO WITH A DEGREE IN Romance languages, combined W with a love of classic literature in general and Shakespeare in particular? If you’re Rosanna Bowles, M.A. ’79, you design fabulously beautiful tableware, a mix of classic patterns and edgy, trend- setting design, and you sell it all over the world. Of course, it didn’t happen all at once. Bowles faced the classic liberal arts uncer- tainties upon graduation, compounded by the fact that in the late 1970s, the door was just starting to creak open for women in the business world. Fluent in Italian and Rosanna Bowles puts her training in classics to work in designing her tableware. French, but facing limited choices, Bowles even went so far as to interview with the men who created fine tableware the way design is contemporary or classic.” Once CIA. “They were looking for people who it had been done for centuries. Nowadays, the craftsmen saw that she had a good were culturally savvy,” she remembers. ceramics are fired in electric ovens rather eye and aesthetic integrity, they took her “But I could never keep a secret.” than wood-burning kilns, but otherwise under their wing. And, she remarks with As an undergraduate, Bowles had spent the process hasn’t changed very much. a grin, “Italians love women.” a year in Perugia, Italy, following the lead Were the local craftsmen receptive Back in Oregon, Bowles finished of her older sister. Nearby Deruta has been to an American woman learning some of her bachelor’s degree at Portland State famous for its artisan ceramics since the their trade secrets? “Something has to be University, then entered the University Middle Ages. There, Bowles met crafts- beautiful, but if it is, they don’t care if the of Oregon to study Italian literature and
ONCE A DUCK... ALWAYS A DUCK.
YOUR LIFELONG CONNECTION
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 43 OLD OREGON
NEWS IN BRIEF garnered a graduate teaching fellowship. “Every day I’m using art and language,” She discovered that she loved to teach. She she says, “the things I studied at school.” has fond memories of the “little cultural Bowles’s love of dressing the table took ALUMNI CENTER world” that was the Romance languages its first inspiration from her mother, who PASSES MILESTONE department in Friendly Hall—drinking learned to cook Italian to please her hus- The campaign for a new, on-campus coffee and comparing notes with col- band, and then took on the art of French home for UO alumni continues to leagues from around the globe. cuisine, courtesy of Julia Child. “My mom make strides. Donations for the Bowles had the insight that ceramics was like a sponge. She did everything from Alumni Center, a Campaign Oregon: was the perfect mix of her passion and her scratch.” Bowles’s mother had settings for Transforming Lives project, recently studies. Working with artisans that she every conceivable occasion, from orange surpassed the $8 million mark and met during her year abroad, she designed and brown cups and plates for Halloween are on target to hit the halfway point and contracted her first line, Casa Venturi. to Santa’s mugs for Christmas. this fall. The selection process for an It featured a sketch of a house in simple, After graduate school, Bowles borrowed architect to design the $20 million childlike strokes. The shipment from $15,000 and started her own business in building that will be located at East Perugia was delivered directly to her home, Seattle. Now, her products are featured in 13th Avenue and Agate Street, is and she hand washed every one of the many high-end fashion magazines and by underway, and an announcement is 30,000 pieces before storing them in her stores such as Nordstrom and Anthropologie, expected in early summer. garage. During her first year of business, as well as on her own website, www.rosannainc Metropolitan Home magazine featured her .com. “We’re trendsetters in the industry,” UOALUMNI.COM plateware in a photo spread. Soon, her cre- she says, after first apologizing for bragging. GETS A MAKEOVER ations were being shipped to destinations “Our vision is to make plateware more A revamped Alumni Association both national and international. fun, celebratory—getting people back into website is now available online. Her line of tableware, teapots, and connecting with people.” A much more dynamic layout glassware is all about fun. Peeking through Outside the United States, her brand provides easier access to updated the showroom window while I waited for is sold in Europe, Brazil, South Korea, stories about the University, UO Bowles, I saw Alice in Wonderland’s tea Dubai, even China, where most of the alumni, and campus life. It also party come to life: polka-dotted plates in manufacturing is done. In a postmillen- offers improved ways to stay bright colors, classic Baroque scenes painted nial boomerang, her goods are designed connected to the University, friends, on teapots and cups, elegant Tuscan pat- and marketed in Seattle, manufactured and classmates. Check it out: terns in earth tones, thick pitchers and in China, shipped back to the U.S., and uoalumni.com. plates reminiscent of that American classic, then back to China for retail sale. Lately, Fiesta ware. If the style is hard to categorize, the company shipped its first order to STUDENTS TAKE THE FLIGHT it’s because her imagination and ideas on Afghanistan, though the exact location The Alumni Association has taken utility play such a big part in the design. remains a bit of a mystery. It may take its student support to the next Tea’s Me, Dark Chocolate, American a real CIA operative, with or without a level. This fall will mark the official Bungalow, Dottie Baroque—the names degree in classics, to get to the bottom launch of a student membership of the lines are almost as intriguing as the of that one. organization, The Flight. Run by items themselves. —RICHARD BERMAN, M.F.A. ’83 members of the Student Alumni Association, it offers leadership ALUMNI EVENTS opportunities for students and also promotes spirit and tradition on the UO campus. JUNE 28 Portland FOOTBALL Alumni Networking and PREGAME HOMECOMING: OCTOBER 12–14 Career Connection Event PARTIES Homecoming 2007 promises to be JULY 3 Southern California September 8 better than ever as more schools and departments are collaborating Hollywood Bowl Event at Michigan to develop activities for alumni AUGUST 12 Eugene September 22 Your Duck Shop returning to campus. In addition to Eugene Ems vs. Spokane Indians at Stanford has everything you the Ducks versus Cougars football need to show your. game at Autzen Stadium, activities AUGUST 30 Eugene October 20 true colors will include special alumni events on Tailgate Auction at Washington campus, tours of academic program November 15 areas as well as individual schools OCTOBER 12–14 UO Campus at Arizona and departments. Alumni will be UO Homecoming impressed by the many changes to NOVEMBER 30 Portland November 24 campus and vibrancy of student life! Holiday Music Fest at UCLA Specific details will be available as the date draws near.
EUGENE: PORTLAND: 44 OOREGONREGON QQUARTERLYUARTERLY SUMMERSUMMER 2007 BEND: Your Duck Shop has everything you need to show your. true colors
EUGENE: UO Bookstore / Autzen Stadium / Valley River Center PORTLAND: SW 2nd & Yamhill / Washington Square SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 45 BEND: Old Mill District UODuckShop.com OLD OREGON CLASS NOTES
Mahima R. Kundu, M.Ed. ’66, Ph.D. ’67, lectures Bruce Gutgesell ’76 retired after thirty years 1940 internationally on holistic health and life manage- of teaching music at Juanita High School in ment. He is a yoga master who has studied in India. Kirkland, Washington. He is a past president of Margaret Griffith ’49 and Warren Smith ’49 the Washington Music Educators Association and have enjoyed a long marriage—they were wed Gary Wiren, Ph.D. ’68, was inducted into the held elected offices for the Washington unit of on the day of their graduation. Warren gradu- Professional Golfers Association of America Hall the International Association of Jazz Educators. ated from MIT with his M.A. in architecture of Fame in December. In January, he was inducted In 2004, he was inducted into the Washington before the couple moved to Seattle. They into the World Golf Teachers Hall of Fame. Music Educators Hall of Fame. lived in Holland for two years before settling in Connecticut, where Warren commuted to Ray Miller, M.S.’77, Ph.D. ’84, will be honored New York City and Margaret taught school 1970 with the School of Music and Dance’s 2007 in Ridgefield. In 1962, they moved to Florida, distinguished alumni award. Miller has directed where Warren established his architectural firm. Yvonne (Turnbow) Warzynski ’70 retired in or choreographed more than 200 musicals, operas, Margaret spent her time working in the commu- January from her job at the Oregon State Hospital plays, and dance concerts. He has written articles nity. She founded the Lakeland Chapter of the in Salem after a career of more than two decades. and reviews for numerous academic journals. A Leukemia Society. They are both recently retired. She will continue to work and volunteer as a drug book on the history of dance on the American and alcohol counselor. She is also a participant in musical theater stage will soon be published by the UO mentor program. Praeger Press. He currently is president-elect of 1950 the Congress on Research in Dance. ■ Richard K. Mickelson, J.D. ’74, retired after John R. Faust Jr. ’58 and Joyle C. Dahl ’59 of twenty-two years as a circuit court judge (Fifteenth Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt in Portland were Judicial District). He had previously retired in 1980 named in the 2007 edition of the peer-reviewed 1999 after twenty-nine years of service in the U.S. referral guide, The Best Lawyers in America—Faust military, obtaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. Lisa Pardini ’81 works as a public defender for for appellate law and commercial litigation and He resides in Gold Beach with Kathleen, his wife Multnomah Defenders in Portland. Dahl for tax law. of thirty years. Edgardo Simone ’82, M.A. ’83, will be honored Klement Hambourg, M.A. ’75, is now a resident with a 2007 faculty award for distinguished 1960 of Victoria, British Columbia, having retired teaching from the School of Music and Dance. from the faculty of Lebanon Valley College in His film credits as orchestrator in the past six Pennsylvania as professor emeritus in 1997. In years include Men in Black, Skin Walkers, Spider- Alaby Blivet ’63 is now touring the country—in 2002, he established the Celebration of Chamber Man and Spider-Man 2, Big Fish, Charlie and a biodiesel-powered bus driven by his wife Sara Music series in Victoria, now in its fifth season. the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Charlotte’s Lee Cake ’45—delivering a stirring PowerPoint presentation he calls “An Inconvenient Fashion Truth” in a crusade to bring back platform shoes. “It’s counterintuitive,” he says, “but Americans can decrease the size of their carbon footprint, by increasing the size of their soles.” A platform, he notes, not only sequesters a great deal of atmospheric carbon dioxide, it’s also slenderizing.
John Leland ’63 exhibited his artwork in an April showing at Yoshida’s Fine Art Gallery in Portland.
Jon Jay Cruson ’64, M.F.A. ’67, is a member of the painting commission for Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, Texas. One of his paintings was recently purchased for the collection of the attorney general of Washington state in Olympia. Another painting was accepted in the collection of the UO School of Law.
Stephen Green ’66, M.S. ’68, retired after working in California state government. Previously he worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for thirty-two years. He and his wife live in Fair Oaks, California. CLASS NOTABLE Gordon Gribble, Ph.D.’67, coauthored Palladium in Heterocyclic Chemistry: A Guide for the Synthetic On a fairly regular basis Joe M. Fischer ’60, M.F.A. ’63, of Longview, Chemist. He is a chemistry professor at Dartmouth. Washington, sends OQ brief updates on his accomplishments as a ■ Kathryn L. (Martin) Hutchinson ’67 is a new professional artist (for example, “Completed a portrait for Mr. & Mrs. member of the Marist Catholic High School Hall Gabe Nathan, El Paso, Tx.”) for Class Notes. What sets Fischer’s letters of Fame. She is a past president of the Marist Foundation. apart is the outside of the envelopes—which he adorns with cartoons that never fail to make us smile. Here, he commemorates the Duck men’s ■ Stephen A. Hutchinson, J.D. ’67, was recently inducted into the Marist Catholic High School basketball victory in the 2007 Pac-10 tournament. Hall of Fame. He is a past president of the Marist parents and alumni association.
46 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 Web, Planet of the Apes (2001), and Meet the Robinsons. He has won several awards, including 2000 an American Music Center–NEA grant, a prize from the Young Composer’s competition of the Margaret Graham ’00 recently returned from ``ÀiÃÃÊ >}ið National Association of Composers, and the BMI teaching at a women’s college in Jeddah, Saudi Composition Award. Arabia. She spent her first year helping to build an >ÃÃÊ Ìið art foundations program. In her second year, she Angela Tobin ’87 works with the Learning created the first printmaking studio in the country. iÌÌiÀÃÊÌÊÌ iÊ `ÌÀ° Community, a nonprofit organization that helps parents and schools work together. She lives in Lily Barmor Rose, Ph.D. ’04, is a member of the ÜÜÜ°"Ài}+Õ>ÀÌiÀÞ°V Tigard with her husband and son. Seattle Composers Alliance, the International Alliance for Women in Music, the American Paul Chandler ’88 is a member of the music Composers Forum, and Composition Today. Last committee at the Unitarian church in August she was awarded second place in the Vancouver, Washington, and also serves as a Cappella Gloriana Choral Competition in San featured musician and piano accompanist for Diego, California, with her composition October. Sunday services. He is currently the lead guitarist She also received a Masterworks Prize for the with Graham and the Crackers. overture from her doctoral dissertation.
Monte Muirhead ’89 has been named editor of Jasmine Bartz, D.M.A. ’06, and husband Ezra the Winston Reporter. He previously worked as a have announced the arrival of their daughter reporter, anchor, and news director for a number Amelie, born on December 28, 2006. of television stations in Oregon. A native of Oakland, he is a past member of the Oakland Dave Camwell, D.M.A. ’06, is now assistant School Board and a founding member of the professor of saxophone and jazz studies at Simpson Oakland Community Theater. College. Last summer Camwell performed Ibert’s Concertino da Camera at the University of Jane Reed ’89 has published a book, Is Your Body Manitoba, and performed a work he commissioned Baby-Friendly?, which describes Dr. Alan Beer’s from Nate Brown for live electronics and work in treating couples who have had trouble saxophone at the World Saxophone Congress. conceiving. In Memoriam 1990 Isabel Turnbull ’31 died in January at the age of ninety-five. Born in New Salem, North Shannon McBride ’90 was awarded the Dakota, she was a charter member of Zeta Tau Northwest Education Association’s Educator Alpha sorority and remained an active member of the Year award (Secondary Division, Pacific after graduation. Turnbull taught high school Region) for 2007 after a seventeen-year career in the Eugene-Springfield area throughout her in teaching. She currently teaches at Lakeridge Coaches shows, archived life. She also worked in her local area to found High School in the Lake Oswego School District. the Westminster Presbyterian Church and the games, post-game interviews, Mark Schumock ’90 has been appointed as an Willakenzie volunteer fire department. player features, game audio, assistant attorney general in the natural resources great moments, highlights and Ruth Staton Siegenthaler ’33 died at the age of section of the Oregon Department of Justice. much more. ninety-six in February. She was a member of the Stacy Cormier ’93 and her husband recently Eugene Opera, Mu Phi Epsilon, and Very Little adopted a daughter. They also have a three-year- Theatre. old son. Naomi Willoughby ’37 died in February at the age Julie Sparlin ’93 is working as a first-year of ninety. She was born in Portland and operated a Anytime,nytime, anesthesiology resident in Buffalo, New York. farm in Coburg. AnywherAnywheree Matt Aiken ’94 performs and teaches music. Dorothy Bates Schwieger ’40 died in June of He is on the summer jazz percussion faculty at natural causes. She was ninety. Schwieger was The Summer Interlude in New York City. He born in Myrtle Creek and was a member of Kappa also performs with the Creative Arts Program in Kappa Gamma, the Junior League of Eugene, and Brooklyn, the San Francisco Bass Workshop, and the Sunshine Girls. She enjoyed spending time the American Festival of the Arts in Houston, with her four children, gardening, collecting rocks, Texas. playing golf, and traveling.
Angel Gambino ’97 was recently named vice Frank Meek ’41 died in February at the age of president of commercial strategy and digital eighty-seven. media at MTV Networks UK. Bob Hone ’48 died in December at his home in Alycia N. Sykora, J.D. ’97, of Edwards Law Clyde Hill, Washington. He was born in Winona, zonezzoonnee Offices in Bend is president of the Deschutes Minnesota, in 1921 and spent his youth in rural County Bar Association. eastern Oregon, graduating from high school in Pendleton. He served in World War II as a naval Stay connected with Oregon Sarah (Glaze) Black ’99 recently earned a aviator and flight instructor. After the war he Athletics in the O-Zone at master’s degree in teaching with a focus in earned his degree, then, along with his brothers, elementary education from Lewis and Clark opened an apparel business. He played a role GODUCKS.COM College. She and her husband Jeston Black ’99 in the development of the World Trade Center reside in Portland. Seattle in the late 1970s.
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 47 PROFILE
ASKING GOOD QUESTIONS A UO grad is the first nonengineer to oversee the U.S. Army’s $1.7 billion annual R&D budget.
.S. Army chief scientist Tom Killion, and management for the Army Research Ph.D. ’78, could not have antici- Laboratory, graduated with highest Upated the reaction he received on distinction from the Naval War College, and being introduced to an injured soldier became the first nonengineer appointed as in Walter Reed hospital’s occupational the Army’s chief scientist in March 2004. therapy ward. Many of the biggest questions facing “I didn’t know who to thank,” said the Killion concern helping soldiers master what young woman who had had portions of is known as “Future Combat Systems,” a both her legs amputated as the result of family of manned and unmanned systems a rocket-propelled grenade that flew into connected by a common network. the cockpit of the helicopter she was “A popular misconception is that the piloting. Army is low tech,” Killion says. “Our soldiers Killion was taken aback. are learning to deal with robots, graphical “All the technology you gave us user interfaces, and complex electronics in worked,” she went on, naming off Tom Killion our various weapons systems. We need to the ballistic vest that kept her alive by consider how people learn when we design shielding her heart and lungs, the flight these systems. I think that’s why my boss felt suit that protected her from burns, and the high-tech I was the right person for the job at this time.” helmet that preserved her vision and hearing. Asked to name some of the recent innovations that “The fact that she and so many others who would not he finds most exciting, Killion quickly lists examples have survived in the past are alive today is a tribute to that glimpse the scope of Army-funded research technology and the skills of the people in the field,” says efforts. The Chitosin bandage stops severe arterial Killion. “We are constantly asking how we can do even bleeding within two-to-four minutes. A laser-based better.” system neutralizes surface mines. FALCON (short for Asking and answering those questions is helping the Forward Area Language Converter) provides on-the- Army move toward achieving its ultimate goal of placing spot translation and analysis of captured documents in only unmanned vehicles in harm’s way. forty-six languages including Arabic. “Bottom line,” he Killion sets the priorities for basic and applied research says, “these things may not make headlines but they that is revolutionizing how soldiers fight and how well they save lives.” And there is a long tradition of military-funded can recover from both physical and psychological trauma. research advances making their way to the public sector, How did a boy from Wichita, Kansas, with a Ph.D. in experi- especially in technology and medicine. mental psychology from the University of Oregon become Looking to the near future, Killion sees flexible, rugged, responsible for Army science and technology? As it turns lightweight displays replacing breakable glass displays out, Killion’s training as a cognitive neuroscientist, his on computers and PDAs used by soldiers. Flexible knowledge of state-of-the-art training techniques, and his nanotechnology-based armor, already on the drawing expertise in robotics made him a good fit at this stage in board, will harden instantly to stop bullets. Brain-controlled the Army’s transition to a fully networked combat force. robotics, such as synthetic hands, will respond to brain “There is no clear career path to this position,” signals in much the same way as flesh-and-blood hands. Killion reflects, “but I give great credit to my mentor at Although he focuses on helping soldiers, Killion the University of Oregon, Mike Posner, for creating a expresses confidence that Army innovations ultimately stimulating and challenging intellectual environment will benefit all of society. “I think that tissue regeneration where I learned to ask good questions and come up with capability will make a difference not just for wounded strategies for finding answers.” soldiers but for people who have lost limbs or lost Rather than trying to make computers mimic human function due to disease, aging, or accidental injury,” he decision-making, Posner’s graduate students studied how says. “This is a truly exciting area.” humans learn. “Mike was an early adopter of technology When not working on what many of us would think of that measures brain behavior,” Killion says. “Part of the as futuristic (if not science fiction) technologies, Killion progress in cognitive neuroscience is due to the explo- manages a remarkably balanced life. His swims regularly, sion in the ability to measure what’s going on in the brain reads avidly (materials science, physics, mysteries), and when people respond to something in their environment.” delights in his granddaughters, ages nine and two. He Killion went on from Oregon to lead research on also enjoys serving as a science fair judge at his older electronic combat training in the U.S. Air Force and granddaughter’s school, reminding students to “keep develop technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles for asking good questions and finding ways to answer them.” the U.S. Navy. He crossed over to business planning —Melody Ward Leslie ’79
48 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 Gordon Gerretsen ’49 died in December at the age of eighty-two. He was born in Roseburg and served in World War II as a medic. After graduating from Oregon he opened and operated Tell us what’s happening. Gerretsen Building Supply with his younger Send us news of yourself, your relatives, your friends — brother Don. Committed to service work, he was involved in the Boy Scouts of America, City of anyone who ever attended the University. Please include current addresses as well. Roseburg Planning Commission, and the Roseburg Attention Parents: Are you receiving your children’s copies of Oregon Quarterly? City Council. He also served for over twelve years If they now have a permanent address, please notify us. Thanks. as a water utility commissioner and was involved with a number of service groups. Class Notes–Old Oregon: 5228 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-5228 Class Fax: (541) 346-5571 Morven “Mo” Thomas ’49 died February 16 in Eugene. While on campus he was a member of (E-MAIL: [email protected]) Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and Friars honorary society. He worked as a certified public accoun- Name, Class year: tant for a many years and as chief financial Address: officer of New Pacific Corporation. Thomas also served as president of the Eugene Planning City, State, Zip: Commission.
Dr. Robert H. Gray ’53 died in January at age Occupation: seventy-eight. He was born in Portland and Telephone: E-Mail: graduated from Jefferson High School as student body president. At Oregon, he was a member News Item: of the Sigma Chi fraternity and Asklepiad, a premedicine honorary society. After graduating with his medical degree, Gray served in the Navy as a medical officer and later practiced medicine as an internist. He retired in 1996, then moved with his wife to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he enjoyed volunteering, fishing, and woodworking. Sent by (name, class year):
Robert Warren Scott ’54 died in November at SUMMER 2007 age seventy-five. He grew up in Klamath Falls and graduated from Oregon with degrees in business and communications. He served as a captain in the Air Force and later worked in radio broadcasting and lighting products. During his retirement, he became a Coast Guard captain and Know Your Ducks ran charters through the San Juan and Canadian Gulf Islands. . . . and other local birds Harold Joseph Arent Jr. ’55, M.S. ’59, died in January of liver failure. He was eighty-three. Arent graduated with degrees in history and library sciences. He taught English and social studies at Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland for twenty-eight years. An Army veteran, he was a member of Gethsemane Lutheran Church.
Robert Allan Strowger ’63 died in January at the age of sixty-four. He and his wife Mary lived in Martinez, California, where he worked as a shipping manager.
Lawrence Amund Barnes ’65 died in December. Birds of Oregon While at the University of Oregon, he played A General Reference basketball and graduated with a degree in general Edited by DAVID B. MARSHALL, MATTHEW science. Barnes then served in the Air Force with G. HUNTER, AND ALAN L. CONTRERAS assignments in Japan, Vietnam, and Portland. He “The reigning ultimate birding resource worked as an airline transport pilot with United for the Northwest.”—The Oregonian Airlines. He was a member of the American Birds of Lane County, Paperback, $45.00 Legion Post 14 of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Masonic Oregon Lodge of Coeur d’Alene, Scottish Rite, Air Line Edited by ALAN L. CONTRERAS Pilots Association, Lutheran Church, and the Girl (B.S. ‘82, J.D. ‘85) Scouts of America. Paperback, $20.00
Dean McWilliams, Ph.D. ’69, died in December at the age of sixty-seven. He had recently retired The OSU Press now distributes the award-winning Atlas of Oregon and a selection of other books published by the University from Ohio University, where he was a professor of Oregon Press. Available in bookstores or by calling 1-800-426-3797. For a free catalog, email [email protected] of English and the humanities. While teaching,
SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 49 OLD OREGON
he received many awards and also taught as a Jeremy Hayes Dawe ’02 died in January at age school, and membership in the Rotary Club. Fulbright professor overseas. He enjoyed wood- twenty-eight of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. working and crafting furniture. He loved music and traveling, and took a solo- John Gustafson, a professor of music education backpacking trip through Europe after college at Oregon from 1956 to 1967, died November 14 Philip ‘Phil’ Jackson Miles ’72 died in January graduation. He also spent many summers in of natural causes. He was eighty-nine. He served at the age of fifty-seven. He worked as a records the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the Navy during World War II in Europe and analyst at the state archives in Salem before as a camper and then a camp counselor and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. becoming the Marion County licensing and climbing instructor. A May 2006 graduate of Howard Louis Ramey died December 14 of age- records supervisor. He was appointed chief the Washington University (St. Louis) School deputy of Marion County clerks in 2004 and was related causes. He was ninety-two. Ramey was of Law, (where he was an editor of the Global born in Rainier and married Marjory Allingham also active in the Oregon Association of County Studies Law Review), he worked as an associate in Clerks. He enjoyed spending his spare time with (who would eventually retire as the UO’s the business law department of Seltzer, Caplan, housing director) in 1947 in Portland. They had family and friends, as well as reading; studying McMahon, Vitek in San Diego, California. history, genealogy, and geology; and listening to three sons. He served in the Army Signal Corps music. during World War II, stationed for more than Faculty In Memoriam two years in Tehran, Iran, where he was awarded Harry “Lee” Phillips ’75 died in January of Richard Schlaadt died January 6 of cancer at the the Bronze Star. He later worked as director of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-four. He financial aid at the University of Oregon, as the age of seventy-one. He was born in Portland and worked as a CPA in Portland for over thirty technical director of the University Theatre, and graduated with a degree in physical education and years. in educational television. He retired in 1976. health from Lewis and Clark College, where he Dirk Jacobson DuBois, M.A. ’00, died in played baseball. He later received his master’s from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from August of cancer. He was thirty-seven. DuBois N EMORIAM OLICY was born in Newport and grew up in Eugene. He Oregon State University. Schlaadt taught as a I M P attended Western Oregon University majoring professor at Oregon for over thirty years. He served All “In Memoriam” submissions must be in health and physical education. After teaching as the department head for school and community accompanied by a copy of a newspaper and coaching baseball in Elko, Nevada, he health and developed the school’s Substance Abuse obituary or funeral home notice. Editors returned to Eugene to teach and coach at Briggs Prevention Program and Drug Education Program reserve the right to edit for space and Middle School. He completed his master’s degree for Oregon Teachers. He was the recipient of many clarity. Send to Oregon Quarterly, In at Oregon. DuBois enjoyed hunting, fishing, and national teaching awards. In his free time, he Memoriam, 5228 University of Oregon, caring for the environment. enjoyed traveling, volunteering in his daughter’s Eugene, OR 97403-5228.
DECADES
Reports from previous Summer issues of Old Oregon and Oregon Quarterly
1927 Joel Pearcy recalls 1876, the first year of of clandestine CIA funding of the National Student University operation, in Old Oregon. Since Eugene Association, an apolitical confederation of college had no bank, young Pearcy gave local merchant (and groups representing over a million students. Sherburne University stalwart, regent, and eventual building served as national affairs vice president for the NSA, namesake) T. G. Hendricks the $200 that would see the organization from which the CIA’s Covert Action him through a year on campus. Hendricks put the Division No. 5 gained intel on foreign student groups money in a sack and safely stowed it in his safe. and individuals who might someday emerge as leaders in countries of special interest. 1937 A faculty vote for the five-day week mandates that Oregon students will no longer attend classes on 1977 The UO alumni office is offering a tour of Saturday. Russia—three days in Moscow and four days in Leningrad, round-trip air fare, rail transportation, hotel 1947 With help from the Phi Psi house, a Saint Bernard accommodations, three meals daily, guided sight- named Snowbelle mounts an energetic last-minute |seeing tours, and two theater performances—at a campaign and is elected to the Junior Weekend court. cost of $799 per person. 1957 Old Oregon goes in-depth on co-eds “Getting 1987 A proposal is in the works to site the federally Ready” for the junior prom—a “transformation from funded $4.4 billion Superconducting Super Collider, pedal-pusher-clad college girl to charming Cinderella” an oval-shaped particle accelerator fifty-two-miles in that requires the better part of a day and includes the length, near the UO. The Reagan administration’s Big “Hair Washing Routine,” “Waiting for the Hair to Dry,” Science project could bring 177,000 permanent jobs. “Applying Nail Polish,” the “Final Touch” (applying lipstick), and of course “Keeping the Date Waiting” 1997 A UO professor estimates that three-quarters the regulation five minutes. of students lack sufficient computer and Internet skills to succeed in his classes. A possible remedy comes 1967 Former UO student body president (1963–4) from the library, now offering Get Ready! a program Phil Sherburne creates a scandal by going public in a teaching computer terminology, database research, Ramparts magazine story that exposes fifteen years use of electronic mail, and Internet navigation.
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SUMMER 2007 OREGON QUARTERLY 51 OREGON TRAILS
WELCOME TO THE MYSPACE GENERATION by Kelsey Friedman
s we rise fifty-five floors to Ghostbar mothers saved and the collections of trolls at the top of Las Vegas’s Palms and Tabasco bottles we once adored. Acasino, I hustle to pull out my So when our parents and their camera. With only twenty seconds to baby boomer friends see these pictures make that perfect memory, I stretch out and wonder why we take ten different my arm and my friends and I freeze, posing shots of the same pose, why we need drunkenly with the drab backdrop of the documentation of “another night at elevator doors. Max’s,” the answer is simple: we love to After our attempt at a self portrait, a look at ourselves. stranger nearby offers the delightful words: We retake snapshots over and over “Do you want me to take it?” We pose again because we don’t like our crooked again for our new photographer and as she smiles, our double chins, our squinting
returns my camera she shouts “MySpace!” Chris Michel eyes. Even without the controversial The entire elevator laughs because we know that’s where this tools of the beauty industry, we have the ability to create the photo will go. image of perfection, simply by deleting the reality we dislike and A national, comprehensive psychological study of 16,475 preserving that which we do. American college students released in February showed them to Crary quotes Professor Jean Twenge, the psychology study’s be “more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors,” lead author, explaining that “current technology fuels the according to an article by Associated Press national writer David increase in narcissism.” With technological manipulation, we Crary. It’s no surprise to me. can create the illusion of perfection; the desire to do so is in itself We have grown up in an age of consumerism and high-priced narcissistic. pop culture. We want the money we think we deserve so we can We want to remember these youthful nights as perfect—even buy the products we think we need. We go to college and thus when they are far from it. We were there and we won’t let feel entitled to the best jobs and the best lives. We go out and anyone forget it. Because we are the best, the most entitled, get drunk so we can dance with strangers, embarrass ourselves, the most privileged. We have the world at our eighty-word-per- and laugh about it in the morning when we scroll through our minute fingertips and we will take what we deserve. cameras. But I wonder: do we deserve any of it? With all this In two hours at Ghostbar, my group snapped over 250 photos technology and ease of self-sufficiency, we have lost the notion on a variety of tiny digital cameras. This collection of photo of work ethic. Our definition of interpersonal communication documentation will someday prove that we once smoked cigars rarely puts us face to face. Appearance and possessions; money on the panoramic balcony, indulged in overpriced cocktails, and status; these materialistic conceits are the symbols of our and laughed, danced, and sweated together—and with total existence. strangers—at one of Las Vegas’s hottest twenty-something We are a culture of things, and as we step into our roles as nightclubs. leaders, I am afraid that our country might never recover. Our But without the city’s neon lights and the casinos’ impressive compassion is dwindling. As long as we continue to think first façades towering behind us, our vacation photos could have been of ourselves and then only sometimes of our responsibilities, our anywhere, any day. Not only are we part of a technological age society will continue its collapse into a self-righteous, privileged that allows us to easily take multitudes of photographs and videos nation. on cameras and cell phones, we are a generation of narcissists. We are the narcissist generation, and unless we grow out We shoot photos of ourselves to post them as our profile of it soon, I fear that our egocentricity will alienate us from the pictures on MySpace. At the bars it is typical to see cameras rest of the world and from each other. Will pop culture take flashing all night long. We don’t hesitate to ask strangers to snap over the government? Will the attractive flourish while the photos for us, nor do we mind when they ask us to do the same. not-so-beautiful are excluded by natural selection? To save our Facebook is now a verb. We demand our friends “facebook” generation from its shameful fall into self-indulgence, we must their photos so we can not only look at ourselves, but so our shift the lens away from ourselves and focus instead on becoming other friends can see where we have been and with whom. We part of the bigger picture. document the most mundane moments of our lives because “someday these will be memories.” Kelsey Friedman will graduate this June from the UO School of And after all is snapped and done, we file away these photos Journalism and Communication with degrees in electronic media on our computers or CDs. For a few months we might look back and magazine, as well as with a certificate in film studies. After at them and occasionally even print them out. But eventually graduation, she plans to travel to Africa and Southeast Asia and then they become artifacts gathering dust with the school projects our join AmeriCorps when she returns to the United States.
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