Ethos Magazine Spring 2014

Spring 2014 Volume 6 Issue 3

DOG’S BEST FRIEND

Arms’ bond with his dogs is a bittersweet story of loyalty and firendship.

PLUS: A VIOLENT EDUCATION // BREAKING NORMAL // SPIRITUAL GROWTH

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EVENTS

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CONTENTS

SPRING 2014

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FEATURES 14 DOG’S BEST FRIEND - Leah, Jack and Hank help hunter Steve Arms give real meaning to man’s best friend.

20 BREAKING NORMAL - Women who unafraid to challenge the binary gender system pave the path to gender equality.

24 A VIOLENT EDUCATION - Techers are still allowed to hit public school students in 19 states.

30 SPIRITUAL GROWTH - A farming technique embraces spirituality and cosmic forces to benefit crops.

DEPARTMENT 6

EDITOR’S NOTE

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DIALOGUE - A member of baseball’s new generation discusses the modernization of one of America’s oldest sports.

10 PASSPORT - People of the world gather in Lyon to take in the dazzling illuminations of the Festival of Lights.

12 FORUM - Is it safe and ethical to own exotic animals in nonnative environments?

34 JOURNEYS ABROAD - Tiffany Han pushes her way through one of China’s brightest metro areas.

36 COLORS & SHAPES - Modeling is stripped down to reveal a community of respect and openness.

38 SPICES & SPIRITS - A growing community believes that food is best served raw.

40 PEOPLE IN MOTION - Fire-dancing is a beautiful sport that requires focus and non-synthetic clothes.

42 SOUNDWAVES - The Florence Winter Folk Festival brings music into the community and back into their schools.

44 MOVING PICTURES - An animation studio puts creativity center-stage when creating content for clients.

46 THE LAST - 12-year-old Jamie is faced with the biggest challenge of her life: grief.

Ethos Magazine is a multicultural student publication based at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. Ethos Magazine receives support from the ASUO. All content is legal property of Ethos, except when noted. Permission is required to copy, reprint, or use any content in Ethos Magazine.

All views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the respective author or interviewee.

ETHOS MAGAZINE SPRING 2014

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EDITOR’S NOTE

N

o matter how hard I try to tune out the buzz, I can’t avoid hearing shouts about the disastrous millennial generation that is poisoning our culture and economy with laziness and a misguided sense of entitlement.

A quick Google search taught me that this generation is defined as those born between the early 1980s and early 2000s—a loose demographic of 10 through thirty-something year olds for older generations to berate and lay a finger of blame.

Credible digital and print publications such as Time magazine, and now even authors, are writing articles and books that define us as dumb, unmotivated, and most impressively, lazy.

They tell us that we aren’t working hard enough, or that we lack empathy, or that we postpone growing up in favor of sipping our IPAs and beating our violent videogames.

This stereotypical slander is fervently disproven every day at the University of Oregon. By way of example, I am proud to report that Ethos Magazine is the product of bone-grinding work by fulltime students. Each member of our student staff labors to not only balance classes, homework, student debt, and school projects, but also commits tireless hours of unpaid time. We can only hope that our primary goals to hone our skills as journalists will enable us to stand out in what seems to be a shrinking job market that looms post-graduation.

As journalism majors specifically, many of us will soon funnel into the economy’s biggest scam— internships. Paid or unpaid, students are producing work and content that would typically demand at least an entry-level salary, but instead will only generate a modest stipend or a pat on the back in return. Meanwhile, the cushy salaries of CEOs continue to inflate as students starve in debt and are forced to live with their parents before receiving a living salary. If I sound bitter, it is because we millennials didn’t create this mess, but many of us are suffering for it.

So please allow me to further dispel the oft-told myth of the entitlement, lack of motivation, and uncaring attitude that is attributed to my generation. I think you will appreciate the 20 hours that Ethos feature writer Kyle Hentschel put into “A Violent Education” (Page 32). Staff photographer Kyle McKee estimates he spent eight hours on the same story, and designer Delaney Pratt devoted 10 hours to those pages. Copy and managing editors spent at least another fifteen hours on this story.

All said and done, this one article was the product of at least 53 hours of student work.

We are extremely proud of this story and all the others included in this issue. And if we’ve chipped away even slightly at the bad rap millennials seem to get these days, then we’ve accomplished far more than “just” producing quality journalism.

Conner Gordon Editor in Chief Photographer Devin Ream captures an intiate moment between hunter, Steve Arms, and Hank, his German Shorthair Pointer.

Ethos is printed on 70 percent post-consumer recycled paper Ethos thanks Campus Progress for helping support this student-run publication. Campus Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, is a national progressive organization working to empower young people to make their voices heard.

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Published with support from

EDITOR IN CHIEF Conner Gordon MANAGING EDITOR Ben Stone COPY CHIEF Veronika Hanson COPY EDITORS Gianna Burns, Alyssa Harvey, Nico Passalacqua, Haley Stupasky ASSOCIATE EDITORS Tashia Davis, Riley Dellinger, Gordon Friedman, Veronika Hanson, Haley Stupasky, Jac Thomas WRITERS Jennica Asbury, Asia Balluffier, Nicole Cordier, Megan Dougherty, Kyle Hentschel, Jamie Hershman, Brittany Nguyen, Jayati Ramakrishnan, Hayley Rivet, Emily Weisz PHOTOGRAPHERS Taylor Elliott, Tiffany Han, Kyle Hentschel, Sumi Kim, Kyle McKee, Devin Ream DESIGNERS Lauren Beauchemin, Hayley Bleier, Brittany Hallin, Chris Jones, Brittany Nguyen, Natalie Pomper, Delaney Pratt, Dana Rengel, Phoebe Rios ILLUSTRATOR Whitney Davis VIDEOGRAPHERS Ruben Garcia, Ryan Lund CONTACT ethosmag@gmail.com

PUBLISHER Connor Corr CREATIVE DIRECTOR Carly Elliott PHOTO EDITORS Andy Abeyta, Andrew Seng WEB EDITOR Alex Hicks VIDEO EDITOR Sean Hinson PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR Carol (Szu-Chia) Wu ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Beau Beyrle PUBLIC RELATIONS REPRESENTATIVES Matt Chiodo, Taylor Davis, Michelle Gilman, Kate Gutierrez, Adam Jacobs, Melissa Komer, Stephanie Lane, Chelsea Lazzari, Madison Shipley ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Danielle Allen, Kelly Buckley, Pat DeWitt, Felicia Kloewer, Tom Patton, Zack Yannello WEB TEAM Arabelle Adler, Evan Arnold-Gordon, Nicole Bales, Ella Burnham, Courtney Chew, Yzmari Duran, Michelle Gilman, Noah Gurevich, Morgan Hegarty, Christopher Herndon, Terek Hopkins, Ayshlee Koontz, Stephanie Lambirth, Brett Larson Perez, Jaejin Lee, Ben McBee, Maddie Mesplay, Ayshlee Nicole, Kelsey Rodich, Kaila Sankaran, Allyson Schwab, Caroline Sherratt, Sydney Sloy, Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, Addy Torian, Forrest Welk

SPECIAL THANKS ASUO Senate, Generation Progress, The City of Eugene, Copic Marker, WOW Hall, courtesy photos from: Bent Studios, Krista Buck, and Benjamin Christiansen. Thanks to all of our readers.

Congratulations to the Ethos staff, both past and present, for its award-winning work. For its previous issues, Ethos received multiple awards from the Associated Collegiate Press and Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including its first Digital Magazine Silver Crown and two Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards.

Generation Progress named Ethos Best Overall Publication in 2012-2013.

Winner of the 2013 ACP Pacemaker Award for a Feature Magazine

DIALOGUE

DIAMONDS ARE

FOREVER

Benjamin Christiansen discusses the evolving culture of America’s pastime.

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JT: How would you describe the culture of baseball in the early days, and the way it evolved into America’s pastime?

BC: [Babe] Ruth was obviously the biggest figure that came in and was the spirit that embodied baseball in America. He became the first big superstar in American sports, especially when they did an All-Star Exhibition in Japan and other countries. That’s really when baseball exploded outside of the US. [Ruth] loved kids, he always took time for the media and people who wanted to talk to him, and he became the first huge superstar. That’s when everybody said, “This is it. This is our game.”

JT: What do you think the future of baseball culture looks like?

BC: My deal is I want to spread my love of baseball to all. If The Fan Cave is about reaching this new demographic of fans, then it’s like, alright, I’m the perfect guy to do it. But the problem was they wanted the same cookie cutter type fans, cause, you know, “Let’s keep it white collar, let’s keep it clean, etc., etc.” But the reality is, the players aren’t those type of people.

If you’re gonna take any kind of interest in the youth of today or the youth of the next generation, you have to let the players [do] their own thing. It’s not about the front office sending a press

DESIGN CHRIS JONES

and the Oakland Athletics, Christiansen worked for “The Fan Cave,” an organization that Major League Baseball (MLB) founded to connect younger fans with baseball via social media.

PHOTO KYLE HENTSCHEL

B

aseball is America’s game. It has remained fundamentally the same since its recognition as a professional sport in the 1850s. In contrast, the family-oriented, subdued culture surrounding baseball, which is arguably as important to America’s identity as the game itself, has been constantly evolving to suit increasingly distracted fans.

While baseball purists have resisted changing the traditional formula, beneficial changes, such as steroid tests, have been implemented over the last few years, and instant replay technology is being added in 2014—two refinements that are helping bring America’s pastime into the 21st century. However, changes to the culture surrounding the game have been less controlled and more dramatic.

Centered on tradition, humble ballparks like Civic Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, are being replaced in favor of modern stadiums like the University of Oregon’s PK Park. This is at least partially because of an effort to draw in new fans that aren’t part of the traditional baseball culture. This change has resulted in a modernized ballpark experience, more focused on keeping the fans entertained than on pure, grassroots baseball. If walkup songs, mascots, and Jumbotron screens help sell tickets, are they good for the game, or are they selling out one of America’s greatest traditions?

Benjamin Christiansen is a perfect representative of baseball’s new generation. Well known for his intense love of beards, tattoos

ABOVE: PK Park opened in 2009 as the new face of baseball in Eugene. Home to the University of Oregon Ducks and the minor league Eugene Emeralds, this new facility can house up to 4,000 spectators.

TOP RIGHT: Journalists from local media outlets capture opening night on February 25, 2014. PK Park gives the best seats in the house to camera crews, further promoting technology and its central position in this new era of baseball.

RIGHT: Benjamin Christiansen poses in front of his impressive collection of Oakland Athletics hats, while showing off his Major League Baseball themed tattoo. Follow Christiansen on Twitter @Shakabrodie.

PHOTO KYLE HENTSCHEL

DESIGN CHRIS JONES

release and stuff like that. Let the [players] go on Twitter, speak their mind, help the fans, etc. That’s the only kind of way it’s gonna keep things going in a positive direction.

There’s so much more to baseball than just the business side of it. I think it’s really more of a spiritual thing. As far as the actual mix of baseball fans, it’s you, it’s me, and that’s really what it should be.

JT: Do you think that this new culture will respect tradition while bringing in fresh ideas?

BC: The best thing to look at is the fans in the right field bleachers in Oakland Coliseum. All those guys—they treat it like a soccer atmosphere. You got the signs; they’ve got their yelling. They’re doing the rage thing. It’s not like in St. Louis or New York where you just sit there and keep your mouth shut. You talk to people you came with, but you’re not really talking to the people around you—just kind of sitting there and enjoying the moment. As much as the game is about the game itself and what’s going on the field, it’s also about what’s going on in the stands and this expanding atmosphere.

So I think there’s still a spiritual thing going on in the field.

They’re still paying attention—it’s not like anyone’s being too rowdy or is interfering with the play or anything like that. I just think it’s more self-discretion. It’s like, “How can I help the team even if it’s as far as just cheering for them?”

And it goes outside the stadium. You’ve got guys going on Twitter; you’ve got all sorts of fan clubs—they’re cheering, all these

signs they’re making. The players are responding, and the players feed off the energy that the fans bring. That’s why it works so well in Oakland. MLB wants to get a team out of Oakland, the fans want to stay, and they’ll do whatever they can to make it happen.

So being loud and proud—it’s the way to do it.

JT: Is baseball still America’s pastime?

BC: *pause* Yes. I think it is for a lot of weird reasons, other than to say that it’s very democratic. It’s fair, and now it’s getting a little bit better because of instant replay. Actually, the game could improve a little bit.

Baseball has very specific boundaries. It’s either you hit it there or you don’t. Granted, every now and then a ball may just barely hit the chalk, and [the umpire is] gonna miss it, but that’s all hindsight. Now that replay is coming in, it’s just like, “Okay, now let’s just laser point it and we’re good. ”The rules have never changed. The rules in the NFL change significantly as far as how to keep it a much safer game, but you don’t really have that in Major League Baseball or in baseball in general.

But I think as far as longevity of the sport and specific moments in American history, I think it will always be America’s game.

- JAC THOMAS ETHOS MAGAZINE SPRING 2014

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PASSPORT

Merci mary Lyon tries to hold onto the meaning of a historic holiday as it becomes a global phenomenon.

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ILLUSTRATION WHITNEY DAVIS

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of 500,000 inhabitants.Today, Lyon’s antique Roman buildings, riverfronts, bridges, and squares light up with dozens of different lights and hundreds of installations, sculptures, and works of art displayed around the city. Among many other attractions, Terreaux Square in downtown Lyon is one of the most crowded places in the city during the festival. Not as spread as its rival Bellecour Square, it lights up every year with a magical show of music and light, giving life to several themes, tales, and characters projected on the walls of the city hall and the Museum of Fine Arts. Several Christian churches are also highlighted by projections of lights on their frontages, shifting the lines of the buildings to emphasize their architecture.

The “Illuminations” have become a competition of creativity for local and international artists who have to defend their projects during the annual adjudication held by the city council to be able to display them at the festival.

“It’s an ideal playground for someone like me that is interested in creating things that are original and colorful.” Says Jacques Rival, a French artist born in Lyon. With a degree in architecture, but attracted to fine arts, Rival focuses on the relation between art and the city, and on the experience of art outside of galleries. For him, the way art is displayed in its environment is what gives it existence. “I am interested in art as an intermediary between audiences, as an indicator of atmospheres, and not

DESIGN NATLIE POMPER

My father’s hand firmly holding mine was the only connection I had with the world surrounding me. As a child, being in a dense crowd of grown-ups felt like being in a hole three feet deep in the ground – all I could see were legs and backs, slowly moving in a penguin-like walk. For me, it was disconcerting to be brought back into reality so suddenly after such a spectacular show. A few minutes earlier, brilliant sound and vivid colors turned the buildings around me into a giant canvas of light. At the climax of the show, the four horses of the famous La Fontaine Bartholdi escaped their frozen pedestal to magically come alive in an unrestrained race around the captivated crowd on the ground of the square.

We finally reached the square’s exit, where we were immediately greeted by the smell of warm wine and chestnuts sold at every block of the area.

Lyon, France celebrates December 8 the way some people decorate Christmas trees—without question because it is a custom. In the early 1990s, Mayor Michel Noir decided to revamp the local Festival of Lights to rejuvenate the city and make it shine on the international stage. Carried on every year on a larger scale that its successors, especially since the 2000s, the festival has grown into an extravagant tourist phenomenon, now lasting four days. Growing from 1 million tourists in 2002 to four million in 2008, the festival has begun to create transportation issues in the town

DESIGN NATLIE POMPER ILLUSTRATION WHITNEY DAVIS

as a finished and defined work within a museum or a gallery,” he says. Rival started working for the Festival of Lights in 2004 and did several other projects in the following years. One of his creations, named “I love Lyon,” was displayed as one of the festival’s headlines in 2006. Rival had the idea of locking up the 18-foot equestrian statue of Louis XIV, a touristic place in Lyon, in a giant snow globe, with the words “I love Lyon” written in pink letters on its base. “I Love Lyon” is one of the most popular pieces in the history of the festival, and it was renewed in 2007. “Often, we bring back a snow globe to remember a place,” says Rival. “Here the snowball plays on the notions of past and present.”Remembrance is at the heart of the Festival of Lights. Before the city council transformed the festival into a touristic event, Lyon celebrated the city’s culture and history on December 8 for over 150 years. And at the origins of this urban festival was a religious commemoration.

In 1643, the plague was spreading throughout Lyon. Fearing a mass epidemic, the magistrates of the city’s council decided to climb onto Notre-Dame Chapel on Fourvière Hill to make an offering and leave the city’s fate up to the Virgin Mary. The pandemic eventually dissipated, and believing it was a miracle, people wished to repeat the procession every year to commemorate the event. “Mary became the central character of Lyon’s religiousness, and the belief in her protection stayed deeply rooted in collective memory,” says Bruno Benoit, a history teacher at Sciences Po Lyon and the author of The Novel of Lyon.

After the French Revolution stopped the annual celebration, the tradition took up again in 1848. For the occasion, the city planned communal festivities and the erection of a golden bronze statue of the Virgin at the top of the new Fourviere Chapel tower. The first Festival of Lights, including fireworks and colored rockets, was celebrated on December 8, 1848. Then, another miracle happened—storms flooding the city cleared up by the end of the day. This strengthened the people of Lyon in their faith and loyalty to Mary, and they spontaneously gathered in the streets with small candles, called lumignons. Since then, every December 8, Lyon’s inhabitants place candles on their windowsills. During the late

“The images of this sharing, this fervor and devotion of the people of Lyon for a symbolic gestures such as placing the lumignons, fascinated me from my earliest childhood” nineteenth century, December 8 and its lumignons would even become a symbol of the resistance of religion during the battles for secularism in France. Those old battles are now in the distant past.

“We went from the Festival of Light, the one that, according to the Christians, the Christ brought through his mother Mary,” explains historian Jean-Dominique Durand, “To the Festival of Lights, with an ‘s’.”

Nowadays, the celebration’s religious background has become marginalized, and the Festival of Lights is a celebration for all. But December 8 stays deeply rooted in the city’s culture as a celebration that unites its people. “The images of this sharing, this fervor and devotion of the people of Lyon for a symbolic gestures such as placing the lumignons, fascinated me from my earliest childhood,” says Rival. “In some ways, when I use the streets as a giant gallery, I try to recreate this same feeling of union at the scale of the city.”

If the population is now divided between those who crowds of tourists like another invasion of the plague, and those who still like to attend the shows put on by the city, very few would question the relevance of celebrating it. Today, if you come to Lyon around December 8, you would be surprised to see lit candles in most windows. As for Mary, the city did not forget her, as it can be read on the frontage of the Fourvière Chapel: “Thank you Mary.”

- ASIA BALLUFFIER

FORUM

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of wild animals that were captured for zoos several generations ago. A lot of the animals are now bred by hobbyists, whom McClain likens to comic book collectors: “A lot of exotic animal hobbyists have an encyclopedic knowledge of the animals they keep, which, even though they lack a degree, in my opinion makes them more qualified than people in zoos.”

McClain’s opposition to wild-caught animals stems from his desire to treat his animals properly, as well as a goal to educate the public about the exotic animal trade. Most people don’t realize how many animals in pet stores, including most reptiles, fish, and birds, are captured from the wild. “I don’t know many people who consider a canary or guppy to be exotic, but a lot of these animals are wild-caught.”

Kenneth Montville, College Campaign Director at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), points out that even when bred in captivity, some animals go through wretched treatment. PETA recently conducted an investigation of an intensive breeding facility in Southern California called Global Captive Breeders. The investigation revealed 700 snakes and reptiles living in horrific conditions. “Some people actually needed counseling after seeing the animals in this condition.” Montville recalls snakes regurgitating their food, something they only do when they have respiratory infections, and rats and mice drowning in barrels of water. This was the largest seizure in California history, with a total of about 16 thousand animals found.

When these animals are taken away from the facility, a few things can happen to them. “Animals at the Global Captive Breeders in California were incredibly sick so animal control took them, and they were euthanized because of all the pathogens they were carrying. It was too harmful for other animals and other humans—way beyond repair,” Montville says.

At another seizure in Texas, some of the animals were taken to various rehabilitation centers, and some were put in animal sanctuaries. It varies on a case-by-case basis.

While Zany Zoo works hard to maintain a high quality of life for all of their animals, it’s a lot of work, and some individuals think there’s no way to truly give exotic animals a good home in an environment to which they are not native. Recently, the dichotomy of exotic pet breeding has spawned many debates across the country, especially in light of serious accidents involving traditionally wild animals. In Connecticut in 2009, a chimpanzee mauled a woman.

PHOTO SUMI KIM

W

alking in the front door of Zany Zoo Pets means being greeted with both lively animal sounds and human chatter. Shrieks between Angel, the umbrella cockatoo, and Doodle, an African Grey Parrot; ,the scurrying of rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs mingled with the sound of delighted customers cooing over the cuddly-looking chinchillas and coatimundis. It also means getting slugged with the unforgettable pet store smell: musty, day-old wood shavings collected at the bottom of animals’ pens, the nutty smell of bird seed, and the sharp, salty air surrounding the rodents’ cages. The water animals swim in a huge metal tub that both looks and smells like a pond.

Zany Zoo Pets, Inc. is a Eugene, Oregon, pet store that sells both common American pets --like puppies, hamsters, and rabbits, --as well as exotic animals rarely seen in pet stores. These include Maras, which are giant rodents that resemble small deer, as well as prehensile-tailed porcupines, common musk turtles, chinchillas, and a tiger reticulated python.

Customers could be greeted by the usual pet store sounds of whistling birds and scurrying guinea pigs. Or, they could be greeted with a ringtailed lemur jumping on their shoulder to say hello. There’s no way to tell beforehand.

This particular lemur, Chester, is owned by the storeowners’ Nate McClain, and is not for sale. He keeps the company of many exotic animals that are available for purchase at the store. Owning exotic pets is an issue that tends to polarize animal lovers. Introducing nonnative animals to a new habitat causes concern for environmentalists because the animals could damage the ecosystem if they escape captivity. Some animal rights activists believe that exotic animals are not meant to be raised in captivity, and that their quality of life decreases when they live outside their natural habitats.

McClain is fully aware of the polarity of their business. They have some ground rules that keep them within USDA laws, as well as a personal code of ethics. They get their animals from local exotic animal breeders, usually no farther than Seattle.

In an effort to procure their animals ethically, they use a simple memorandum: “I do not do wild animals,” says Nate McClain. “I appreciate the argument that wild animals are not meant to be pets, and I agree. I think it’s a huge transition for them.” Many of today’s exotic pets are offspring

DESIGN HAYLEY BLEIER

The Urban Zoo

Eugene debates the ethics behind exotic animals living in non-native ares.

“A lot of exotic animal hobbyists have an encycopedic knowledge of th animals they keep, which, even though they lack a degree, in my opinion makes them more qualified than people in zoos.”

PHOTO SUMI KIM

DESIGN HAYLEY BLEIER

FAR LEFT: Jake McClain, the animal trainer at Zany Zoo, shows his confidence in the pet alligator. McClain said most exotic pets in Zany Zoo are safe to hold and pet under his prevision.

MIDDLE: Cierra Brooks pets Daisy, a Prehensile-tailed porcupine. Zany Zoo offers a free petting zoo every weekend, but customers are generally welcome to come in and hang out with exotic pets.

LEFT: Chester the lemur enjoys a string cheese, his favorite snack.

The monkeywhich had been her friend’s live-in pet. Police came into the house and shot the chimp in an attempt to deter him, causing wounds that killed him. The case incited a national debate about raising wild animals in a domestic environment. The incident raised ethical questions, both about the treatment of the animal and the responsibility that their human caregivers possess. History shows that regardless of how well-trained animals are, they can become uncontrollable at any time. Successfully well trained Montville says that it’s impossible to really use the term “ethical” in the discussion of wild-caught and exotic animals. “The fact of the matter is we can’t even take care of our domestic animals. Every year, six to eight million cats and dogs are surrendered to shelter, and half of them are euthanized because they can’t find good homes – so bringing in more exotic animals is beyond irresponsible.”

McClain agrees with the idea that people need to have licenses and acknowledges the damage that can come from illegally bred animals. He feels that, in some ways, the laws could be even stricter. “Unfortunately, you don’t need a license to own a coati (a South American animal related to the raccoon) – I think you should.” Oregon only outlaws animals that are potentially invasive and could cause damage to the ecosystem. This includes primates, crocodilians, wolf and cat hybrids over 50 pounds, and black bears.

“If you don’t have the wherewithal or resources to own a chimp, there should be an outright ban.”

Montville feels that one of the reasons exotic pet ownership is such a problem is that the laws surrounding it are so weak. “Wildlife trafficking is an underground trade fueled by the exotic pet industry. The law is meant to combat it, but inspection is very scant.” He adds that budgets for inspection are tight, and that most governments do not consider animal issues a priority.

Zany Zoo has one exception to its “no wild-caught” rule: rescues. This includes everything from animals that people can’t take care of and want to find a better home for, to sick animals that Zany Zoo tries to revive. “We can at least do a good triage here, screen for parasites, and do injections,” says McClain.

McClain also hosts classes for elementary schools at his store, and takes animals to local classrooms to teach students about certain types of wildlife.

The Zoo also holds birthday parties in the store and operates a free petting

zoo on weekends. He says that his goal is not only to educate the public about animals and offer people a good experience for animals they might otherwise fear, but also to show a paradigm of the exotic pet industry that actually works.

Oregon law requires citizens to obtain a USDA license to own an exotic animal if you have more than three breeding females. To get a USDA exotic animals license, a person must fill out paperwork and have a veterinarian assess the animal’s living space to make sure the person is fit to own it. In the case of a pet store like Zany Zoo, a veterinarian comes in once a year.

The store also gets annual, unplanned visits from a USDA inspector.

Montville sees a lot of breeders who treat their animals atrociously and believes that the exotic pet industry is so closely tied to the illegal animal trade that it’s better to just avoid buying exotic animals at all. “These animals are not being sold out of care [for the animals] but for the money they’ll bring in. When animals are sold to make a profit, corners are cut and the animals are always the ones that end up paying the price for that,” argues Montville.

Zany Zoo has encountered some disgruntled animal rights activists, and McClain worries that their actions often hurt the animals. “We have had people come in here and open up the bird cages, and try and shoo them out the door.” He says that this action, while not only exceptionally illegal, is also bad for the birds – most of them are tropical and cannot handle the temperate Oregon climate.

McClain acknowledges the opinion that animals should not be kept in captivity because they cannot handle the stress. However, while he believes that some animals do not make good pets, McClain thinks that certain aspects of animals’ lives are better suited for captivity. “Animals are not devoid of stress in their natural life,” he says, adding that as the dominant species, humans have a skewed, somewhat softened idea of how animals function in nature. “A sugar glider in the wild has a couple imperatives: find food, don’t be food, and procreate. Everything else is stress.” In captivity, he says, all of those stressors are removed. “So the idea that animals can’t handle the stress of captivity is ridiculous. You just have to do it slowly.”

- JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN

ETHOS MAGAZINE SPRING 2014

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DOG’S BEST For Steve Arms, hunting dogs are more than tools to help secure game—they are a part of his family.

STORY NICOLE CORDIER

S

PHOTO DEVIN REAM

DESIGN BRITTANY HALLIN

teve Arms takes a deep breath and looks through the sight on his 12-gauge Remington shotgun. In the distance, his three German Shorthair Pointers stand in a pointing position, alerting Arms of nearby Chukars, an upland bird in the pheasant family. The dogs lift one front paw and stretch their noses in the direction of the birds, tails extended away from their bodies in sharp points. Without warning, a flock of birds takes off into the air in a flurry of webbed red feet, muted brown feathers, and white faces. Arms steadies his gun, tracking a particular bird within the masses. The dogs– Hank, Jack, and Leah–swivel their heads to follow the barrel.

Once his aim is true, Arms takes a smooth, controlled breath out, and slowly squeezes the trigger. The forest rings with the crack of a shotgun blast, and a bird plummets sharply toward the ground. Although the dogs are supposed to wait for Arms’ retrieval command, Leah can’t contain her excitement and bounds off into the bushes to find the fallen bird.

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ABOVE: (From Left to Right) Hank, Leah, and Jack sit with Steve Arms.

ETHOS MAGAZINE SPRING 2014

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TOP: Hank coming back with a fake duck during one of his training exercises at Lakeside Park. The orange antenna and collar is a GPS tracking collar that allows Steve to know where his dogs are just in case they get lost during hunting or if they go too far for a bird.

ABOVE: Hank and Leah digging in the ground searching for anything they can get their paws on when they aren’t in training at Lakeside Park in Cottage Grove, OR. RIGHT: Steve Arms receiving some up close and personal attention from his dog Hank.

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Arms has been training and hunting with dogs since his father first took him hunting as a five-year-old. When he was seven, Arms discovered a Bluetick Coonhound abandoned in the woods and decided to take the dog home. He named him Hobo. Through diligent training and help from his father and uncle, Arms bonded with the former stray and taught him how to hunt raccoons and cougars. Training Hobo was Arms’ first experience with canine behavior. “Getting him to trust me and come when called, creating that bond, it’s just like getting to know a new person,” Arms says.

Since Hobo, Arms has owned ten hunting dogs, eventually switching from scent hounds to retrievers and pointers, which are used for fowl hunts. Over the years, as Arms worked with different breeds, his passion for hunting with dogs grew—a passion he shares with Paleolithic hunters from more than 14,000 years ago.

Hunting dogs have been bred for desirable traits for thousands of years and their senses have refined, allowing them to become specialized at certain types of prey. Arms now

works with pointers, a type of hunting dog renowned for keen senses, the ability to move about in rough terrain without detection, and characteristic “pointing” behavior that alerts a hunter to the presence of game.

It’s important that the hunter chooses a breed of dog that is familiar with hunting, as the woods can be dangerous—hunters must know they can rely on their dogs for protection.

When he was younger, Arms and his uncle had been hired to clear a predatory cougar off a farmer’s land. After trapping the cougar up in a tree, Arms and his uncle waited at the tree’s base until the cougar climbed down, hackles raised and fight in its eyes. “We had the cougar come down out of a tree, and the dogs ran off to distract it and get it away from us,” Arms says. The hunting dogs were able to distract the cougar by luring it away from the two men. In the end, Arms and his uncle escaped without injury, though one of the dogs had a severe laceration that tore open his belly and required immediate veterinary attention. Arms believes that without the dogs there, he and his uncle could have been seriously injured.

However, it’s not only the hunters who rely on their dogs for protection. Often, the dogs must also depend on their owner for safety and guidance. Arms’ dogs always wear GPS tracking collars, which helps him pinpoint their location, ensuring they won’t get separated or wander into dangerous terrain. Once, during a training session, Hank, the oldest dog, got separated from the pack. After wandering around searching for the dog, Arms’ anxiety began to grow. “I was worried about him,” he says, “I went back to the car to see if he had found his way back to where we began.” When he returned to the car, Arms narrowly caught another man attempting to load Hank up into his truck and take him home. The man tried to claim that Hank was his dog, but when Hank saw Arms, he refused to play along and ran straight over to Arms.

Aside from getting lost or stolen, Arms must ensure his dogs aren’t injured in the rough terrain. When Arms goes on a hunt, he always brings a first aid kit for his dogs with him. He watches for lacerations or scrapes, as well as for poisonous plants. He also vaccinates all three of his dogs against snakebites and the game they are tracking. This mutual protection keeps both man and dog safe while on the hunt.

Properly training a dog is tantamount to ensuring well-being on the hunt for all parties involved. It requires an enormous amount of training and diligent exercise to refine a dog’s skills. Arms trains his dogs at least ten hours a week, on top of the reinforcement training that

happens naturally around the house. He takes them out for at least an hour each day and plans training sessions or hunts for both weekend days in order to keep their skills sharp. At home, he practices their basic obedience training and reinforces primary commands like “come,” “stay,” and “heel.”

Arms is an experienced trainer, in part due to the time he volunteers to help fellow hunters with their dogs. To get a new dog prepped for its first hunt, it takes about five to six months of intensive training, according to Arms. He also says training methods that work for some dogs may not work for others. “Every dog is like a human – they have different personalities and different experiences, and you have to train them according to what motivates them and what they need,” Arms says. For example, in the past he has helped train a friend’s new Brittney Spaniel. “All he wanted was affection,” Arms says, “The more you petted him up the more he wanted to do to please you.”

The bond between hunter and dog is more important than training. Without a strong bond, the dog wants to hunt for itself instead of working as a part of a team. “It’s like buying a new car and never reading the owners manual, so you don’t know how to operate it,” says Arms. “You’ve got to go out and bond with the dog to be able to hunt well together.” While some hunters use professional trainers who facilitate the training process and help get their dog ready for the woods, Arms stresses how important it is to train not only the dog, but the hunter as well. “If the client doesn’t go out

and spend time bonding with that dog during training, it’s not gonna work for them as well,” he says.

This bond, in addition to being an important training tool, makes dogs desirable companions for hunts that would otherwise be long and lonely. Often enough, for Arms it’s simply about the presence of other beings enjoying the beauty of nature with him. “The biggest advantage of having them along on the hunt is their companionship,” Arms says. On his longer hunts, sometimes lasting up to 16 days, Arms especially enjoys the company he receives from his dogs. He says they’ll run ahead of him and do their own thing for a while, but having their tracks to follow and their smiling faces running toward him to check in keeps him from feeling alone in the woods.

Part of the companionship Arms gains from his dogs is the entertainment value in watching them enjoy the hunt. “It’s not about getting the animal for me,” he says, “I’ll take the dogs out hunting and use a blank gun, not actually killing the birds, just so they can have their experience.”

His dedication to his dogs’ happiness extends beyond hunting together. In his spare time, Arms likes to take his dogs fishing or out to the field to play ball. Jack, the youngest dog, especially enjoys playing “laser,” a game in which he enthusiastically chases a bright red laser point around the room. He also likes to use treat toys with the dogs because the toys require them to use their mind and solve puzzles, which trains their logic. He has a special command,

Every dog is like a human — they have different personalities and different experiences

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“Alright, go and get it!” which means the dogs are allowed to race each other to a decoy, and vicious tug of war games are encouraged.

For Arms, hunting and interacting with his dogs has become a way of life. They have helped him create a social life that revolves around other families that are passionate about animals.

Arms is a former president of the Green Valley Hunting and Retriever Club, which organizes events centered around hunting dogs, including club fun hunts and field trials. Arms’ girlfriend hunts with her five dogs, and both of them enjoy getting out into nature accompanied by their pack of pups.

“The dogs come first,” Arms says. His love for his dogs is evident when he explains the meaning behind their names. Although he mostly calls them by their first names, each of his three pointers has a full name, used for registration with the American Kennel Club.

Hank, the oldest dog, is formally known by the name White Smoke’s Bad Boy Hank. This name pays homage to Hank’s father, an accomplished hunting dog known as White Smoke. Jack, the youngest dog of the bunch, who also happens to be Hank’s pup, is registered under the name Jack’s To The Point, paying homage to Arm’s father and Jack’s picture perfect pointing position. Finally, Leah is registered as Little Bits Leah. As the only girl of the group and her habit of boisterously begging for attention have led to her reputation as the alpha-female of Arms’ pack. “Her name is the nice way of calling her a little bitch,” Arms says with a sheepish grin.

Although Hank, Jack, and Leah are well trained in the field, at home they like to cuddle just like any other family pet. “You can lay on the couch, and Jack will come along thinking he’s a 75-pound lap dog trying to get attention,” Arms says. Although the dogs begin each night sleeping in their kennel, he chooses to leave the crate doors open and says most mornings he finds them sleeping in a pile on the couch, waiting for him to come wake them up.

For him, it’s the connection with his dogs that make it all worthwhile. Transcending simple pets, Arms’ dogs have truly become a part of his family. When he speaks of them, it is easy to forget he is not referring to people. “For me, living alone with them, the biggest advantage is having someone around, someone to talk to,” Arms says.

Arms’ bond with his dogs is bittersweet.

Their short lifespans guarantee heartbreak when they become old and frail. “Losing a dog is always hard, like losing a kid,” Arms says. To honor past hunting dogs, Arms has had them cremated and scatters their ashes in places where they spent a lot of time. He recalls the loss of one dog in particular, “I took his ashes up onto this ridge that overlooked a great hunting area, a place where we’d always see game and have good luck, and scattered them in wind,” he says. “I wanted to leave him in a place that he knew and loved.”

Back on the hunt, Leah returns with the downed duck and drops it into Arms’ outstretched hands, her mouth open and tongue

hanging out in the canine version of a smile.

Once her mouth is free, she pants heavily, with soft down feathers stuck to her tongue and lips. Once they’re all packed up, Arms and the dogs head back to his burnt orange truck. Upon arrival, Arms puts them up on the tailgate one by one and checks them over for scratches, as well as ensuring they have no seeds in their eyes or cuts on their paws.

Back at camp, Arms relaxes in his chair, his feet resting on the stone fire pit. The dogs, despite a long day of hunting, still have energy, and they chase the sparks flying off the crackling campfire. Occasionally, they glance away from this game to run over to Arms and get his attention, a scratch behind the ears or a pat on the head. As the night closes, and the fire dims to only flickering embers, Arms tucks the dogs into their kennels, each with their own individual bed and insulation system. In the morning this pack of four will rise early to head out hunting again, the dogs’ eyes sparkling, ready to help their owner in any way they can.

PUT YOUR PAWS IN POINTING POSITION WWW.ETHOSMAGONLINE.COM

LEFT: Leah (right) and Hank (left) waiting on Steve Arms to go through more training exercises near Cottage Grove Lake. This is a good way for the dogs to get exercise as well as tune up on their already learned commands.

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BREAKING

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Three women sweep up the shards of the glass ceiling as they thrive in formerly male-dominated activities.

STORY EMILY WEISZ

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rom the suffragettes in the 1920s to women entering the military in 1948, females have struggled for generations in the fight for gender equality. Historical stereotypes remain difficult to dissolve— the idea that women are supposed to be homemakers while men do the real work is

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PHOTO TIFFANY HAN

DESIGN DANA RENGEL

one that persists to this day. Women have faced endless red tape and scrutiny when breaking into male-dominated fields. Women are portrayed on television and in magazines as objects of lust and desire, rather than as intelligent and driven individuals. Women are rightfully beginning to break the mold

ILLUSTRATION WHITNEY DAVIS

of gender classification and are shaping a fair future in and out of the work force. Here are three women who, through passion, persistence, and fearlessness, have made traditionally male occupations their own.

MARGARET GILL Margaret “Maggie” Gill wakes up at the crack of dawn to start her day. After rolling out of bed, she quickly dresses before stepping out into the frigid morning temperatures. Steam streams out of her mouth as Gill starts her morning workout, keeping pace with the rest of the men who comprise her class.

Gill is a sophomore at the University of Oregon and member of the Reserved Officer Training Corps (ROTC), a program that is found on college campuses throughout the country.

Gill did not always know she wanted to be in the army. She was trying to find a way to pay for college, and ROTC seemed like a good way to achieve that goal. After receiving a brochure in the mail, she signed up and has never looked back.

“I was apprehensive about joining ROTC, because I did not want to be seen as weak by the guys in the program,” says Gill. “Once I started training, I picked up everything pretty fast and began to prove myself.”

The first couple months were the most difficult. Only 10 percent of those enlisted in ROTC are women. Though she was intimidated and outnumbered, Gill knew that she had to stay in the program and remain strong through even the most grueling days.

“Sometimes the men think we are favored as women in the program, which is extremely frustrating,” Gill says. “They think we can bat our eyelashes and get our way, but it is our responsibility as women in the program to show that we can do everything they are doing,” After Gill graduates, she plans on staying in Oregon and joining the National Guard to work in army hospitals. She eventually wants to work her way into the psychology department and become a therapist.

While she faced her fair share of scrutiny when she first joined the program, she has learned things she would have never learned outside of ROTC. “It really helps women break mental and physical barriers,” says Gill.

Smiling from ear to ear, Gill exclaims that five women joined this year as members of the freshman class. She expects this number to grow every year as more and more women are becoming interested in the benefits ROTC offers.

“For women that may be scared to join a male dominated field, don’t be,” says Gill. “The men are not that scary and in the end, and even if they are in the beginning, they will respect you for the work you have done.”

“THEY THINK WE CAN BAT OUR EYELASHES AND GET OUR WAY BUT IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY AS WOMEN IN THE PROGRAM TO SHOW THAT IS NOT THE CASE AND WE CAN DO EVERYTHING THEY ARE DOING.”

LEFT: Maggie Gill is one of two women in her ROTC class of around 20 people, reflecting the 10% female population of the program.

TOP RIGHT: Gill is confident that more women will join ROTC each year and recommends the program to other women wanting to break mental and physical barriers.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Gill is recently engaged to fellow ROTC member Tai Danh, who is currently the assistant S-1 and will be commissioning as a second lieutenant into the Army National Guard in June.

LEFT: Krista Buck began riding motocross when she was 11 years old and shows no sign of slowing down or stopping. (Photo by dbuckphotography) RIGHT: Buck lets riding speak for her, showing that she is a worthy competitor amongst male riders. (Photo by dbuckphotography)

KRISTA BUCK Krista Buck has been riding motocross since she was 11 years old. At an age when many girls were asking their parents for dolls, Buck asked for a bike so that she could compete with her cousin.

A typical training day begins at six in the morning for Buck, when she loads all of her gear into a truck and drives an hour to the track. Once she arrives, Buck rides for hours until she is physically unable to ride any longer.

Due to the rough terrain and sheer power of a motorbike, motocross is a physically demanding sport, regardless of gender.

“One big obstacle I have faced is that women are not taken seriously. There are not as many women riders as there are men,” Buck says. “So when a woman wins the women’s class, no one seems to care.”

With only five or six women competing at a time, it does not seem like such a big victory compared to when the boys beat out dozens of rivals. Underrepresentation is one of the sport’s most obvious problems. It is much harder for women to gain respect when there isn’t a lot of competition.

“Another challenge that most women face in this sport are the girls who pose in bikinis with bikes saying that they ride,” Buck says. “Women

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are overlooked in the sport because a group of them care more about how they look with their bikes than they do actually riding them. Which means the girls who take the sport seriously are affected because no one will take them seriously.”

Buck has overcome some roadblocks by occasionally racing with men, showing that she can compete with anybody. Her riding speaks for itself, showing other racers and sponsors that she should be taken seriously.

While the sport is still dominated by men, Buck has seen more girls entering motocross in recent years. “I think more women are starting to ride because even with the girls posing in bikinis, there are a lot of positive role models who are making a good name for the women out there,” says Buck. “There are a lot of organizations and Facebook pages and groups that are supporting women riders and I think that’s part of the reason it’s growing.”

“WOMEN ARE OVERLOOKED IN THE SPORT BECAUSE A GROUP OF THEM CARE MORE ABOUT HOW THEY LOOK WITH THEIR BIKES THEN THEY DO ACTUALLY RIDING THEM.”

BRITNI GREEN Like Gill and Buck, Britni Green sees her job as something that should be defined by passion, not gender. As a female firefighter, Green has used her drive and determination to solidify her place in the heavily male-dominated professions of firefighting and paramedic treatment.

Green has worked as both a firefighter and paramedic in Eugene since 2008. She didn’t always want to be a firefighter, but once she was exposed to the profession in high school, she decided to try it out.

While Green’s parents did not push her to pursue a certain career, they always told her that she could get any job she wanted if she worked hard for it. Though she didn’t know it when she entered the field, firefighting runs in her family.

Green discovered this when her grandfather died and her father gave her his old firefighting badge.

Green’s job has taught her to live for every moment. As a firefighter and paramedic, Green has seen people in some of their hardest times. Her gear is heavy, and the work can be hellish, but it doesn’t matter to Green. Her self-proclaimed stubbornness works to her advantage, and she does not allow herself to give up until she finds a solution.

“I like that it’s a challenge, that it’s not something you can expect to get without any effort. You have to want this job, have the desire to give everything you have to make sure you succeed,” Green says. “It’s physical, it’s mental, and it’s emotional. It hits you at every level of yourself. You can make a positive difference in possibly one of the darkest, most frightening times of a person’s life.”

Green does not want any special treatment because she is a woman. She has worked hard to earn her post, so she wants to be treated as a strong contributor and not as just an ordinary worker. While there may be instances when she has to adjust because of her petite frame, she considers it just another challenge.

It is extremely important to Green that she breaks the female stereotype and is just seen as a firefighter and not a female firefighter. “People can, and will, stereotype anything,” Green says.

“It is up to an individual to step out of the bounds of narrow minds, to stride and succeed in anything they want regardless of what the normal is.”

LEFT: Green lowers a rig, bringing a ladder down from the truck to be employed when fighting fires.

RIGHT: Green braves the elements and wears the required firefighting gear that sometimes weighs up to 30 pounds.

“I LIKE THAT IT’S A CHALLENGE, THAT IT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN EXPECT TO GET WITHOUT ANY EFFORT.”

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Melissa was once a spirited first-grader in rural Ohio, who loved attending school and learning as her older siblings had. This outgoing child’s enthusiasm and vibrance were flattened after her teacher swatted her three times with a wooden paddle in front of the class. Melissa had circled her answers on a worksheet instead of underlining them as her teacher had requested. While the bruises from the paddle faded, the psychological trauma persisted throughout her childhood and beyond.

After the incident, she began experiencing nightmares and became withdrawn, fearful of leaving the house.

Some might overlook the use of physical disciplinary actions in public schools, thinking back to “a different time,” when such practices were the norm. What many people don’t realize is that this method of discipline is still in use. There are 19 US states that still permit public schools to use corporal punishment or the deliberate infliction of physical pain on a student who has broken the rules or acted out. Such action is usually, but not limited to, spanking or paddling.

“Schools are the only institutions in America in which striking another person is legally sanctioned. It is not allowed in prisons, in the military, or in mental hospitals,” says Deborah Sendek, the Director of the Center for Effective Discipline (CED) in Columbus, Ohio. This idea of a legal system that ignores the safety of students concerns Sendek, who developed the non-profit aimed at educating the public about the effects of corporal punishment and alternative disciplinary methods.

While the United States has strict laws against abuse, there are no federal laws banning corporal punishment—only 31 state laws ban its use in schools.

When viewing corporal punishment restrictions on a map of the United States, it is easy to assume there is a definitive line between the North and the South; however, after further research, it becomes clear that opposition of a ban can vary between school districts within each state. For instance, in Louisiana, a state without a ban on corporal punishment, there are 56 school districts that allow it and 17 districts that prohibit its use.

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“SCHOOLS ARE THE ONLY INSTITUTIONS IN AMERICA IN WHICH STRIKING ANOTHER PERSON IS LEGALLY SANCTIONED. IT IS NOT ALLOWED IN PRISONS, IN THE MILITARY, OR IN MENTAL HOSPITALS.”

Corporal punishment is occurring frequently in rural areas, where socioeconomic status and family-related issues penetrate the school system. Such areas also tend to rely heavily on tradition, believing that old-fashioned physical discipline teaches a child to respect authority and its subsequent rules. Larger cities, or more educated areas surrounding colleges or universities, tend to be void of this practice.

This split in values adds complexity and forces the CED, other organizations, and all opponents of corporal punishment to evaluate: Do we have the right to go into those smaller counties and advocate for our beliefs and policies?

RIGHT: Jeff Todahl, Director of the Center for the Prevention of Abuse and Neglect and Associate Professor in the Couples and Family Program at the University of Oregon, reflects upon his personal childhood experiences of physical punishment throughout elementary school, including paddling and pinching from teachers.

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The process of making a change in legislation becomes difficult with this apprehension and, often times, only results in an updated statement in the rulebook. “States like North Carolina have a state Board of Education that says it should be abolished, but that is only a position statement; it’s not official legislation,” Sendek points out.

Organizations that partner with the CED, such as the National Parent Teacher Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, only go as far as position statements as well, “All major associations and organizations have position statements against corporal punishment. The problem is getting them to

act on it. They focus on issues such as healthier school lunches because that would affect children in all 50 states. Corporal punishment is only legal in 19 states. Of those 19 states, about 12 or 13 have high instances of corporal punishment. Then, out of those 12-13, it is not every district that practices it,” Sendek says. When broken down in this way, a ban on corporal punishment becomes a lesser priority on an organization’s legislative agenda, which is a central factor contributing to its legality.

On the international stage, physical discipline has grown into a controversial topic that has evolved over the last few decades.

The movement to end it began in 1979, when

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Sweden passed a law almost unanimously to become the first country to ban corporal punishment completely in homes and schools.

Since then, more than 100 other countries have banned the use of corporal punishment in schools, and 35 countries have banned it completely.

“When you look at countries that have banned corporal punishment in educational settings, you tend to find smaller countries. The size makes it a little easier,” Sendek explains.

“If you look at countries like the United States, the culture, demographics, and values in the Pacific Northwest are significantly different than those in the South.” The United States bears an incredibly diverse moral set, resulting in strong divisions on pertinent issues and complicates the act of approaching certain cultural principles. However, Jeffrey Todahl, a professor at the University of Oregon, believes there are multiple aspects to consider. Todahl has experienced the physical mistreatment of children first hand through his work as the Director of the Center for Prevention of Neglect and Abuse.

“We have ambivalence about this issue,” Todahl says. “For much of recent history, corporal punishment has been accepted as a standard style of punishment. And it’s only much more recent that we have been beginning to think that it’s not good for child development, it’s not good for brain development, and it creates a toxic environment.”

In evaluating the use of corporal punishment in schools, it is essential to understand its roots in early behavioral psychology.

Corporal punishment is based on operant conditioning, a concept studied by psychologist B.F. Skinner. Skinner’s “operant chamber” used rats to exemplify how behavior can be manipulated through consistent reinforcement or punishment techniques. Through these experiments, Skinner developed the basis of operant conditioning: behavior is changed as a result of its consequences. There are multiple subcategories of punishment and reinforcement.

Spanking children in school falls under the category of positive punishment, or delivering an unpleasant stimulus in an attempt to end a certain behavior. The American Psychological

Association states the most frequent outcome of positive punishment has consistently been “increased immediate compliance on the part of the child,” which often justifies its continuance by the punisher.

Todahl says, “It can look like, in the short term, that it’s effective because the child may change their behavior, which reinforces the decision to use that kind of strategy. But in the long-term, it sends a message that a way to resolve conflict or to deal with adverse situations in our lives is to use force.”

Cases of sustained physical injuries are rare; however, the psychological ramifications prove detrimental to a child’s ability to learn, interact with peers, and trust authority figures as displayed in Melissa’s story. Research conducted at the University of Texas at Austin verifies that students who are victims of physical disciplinary practices perform worse on academic assessments and are significantly more prone to violence, vandalism, and the display of aggressive, antisocial behavior to those around them.

“We can educate children very productively without ever taking such a risk,” Sendek says. “When children act out, hold them accountable, teach them that their behavior affects others, and continually remind them.

Their understanding isn’t the same as our understanding. When you say ‘no’ to a two-yearold, they understand. But five minutes later, it’s a whole new situation.”

Even if the child is about to do something that may be dangerous, for example, touching a hot stove, the appropriate response is not to slap the child’s hand. The idea ‘I’m going to hurt you so you don’t hurt yourself’ is not an effective method of teaching. Instead, Sendek suggests getting to the child’s eye level and repeating, “No! The stove is hot!” Guiding the hand over the stove and letting the child feel the heat coming off the burner can paint a clearer image

of why it isn’t safe. It is crucial to constantly remind the child throughout this entire learning stage in order to solidify the concept of a stove being unsafe.

“It’s about understanding the logical and natural consequences of behavior,” Sendek adds.

When a child is physically disciplined, there is a tendency to focus less on why unwanted behavior is not acceptable and more on resentment towards the teacher. Punished students often associate the punishment with the authority figure who administers it and maintain a negative view of the punisher. They quickly lose trust in their teachers and tend to avoid them, which hinders academic success.

“We are taught that teachers and administrative figures should be respected because those are the people who will guide us and teach us,” Sendek says, describing it as a violation of a student-teacher relationship.

When these authority figures hit children, trust diminishes, and the relationship is strained. This obstructs a child’s capacity for retention and progression in the classroom, crippling the sole purpose of going to school: to learn.

Jeffrey Sprague, a professor of special education and clinical sciences at the University of Oregon, says, “School is compulsory education. Children are required to be in a space with an adult. If that adult engages in behavior that is basically abusive, then it’s a trap for the child.” Sprague, who directs the UO Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior, says it becomes a matter of “learned helplessness,” in which a human’s natural fight or flight responses are both repressed. This state of helplessness often results in a child feeling depressed or anxious, unable to respond to unpleasant stimuli in a natural “fight-or-flight” manner.

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“THE IDEA IS NOT TO TREAT CHILDREN AS ADULTS. IT IS ABOUT TREATING CHILDREN WITH RESPECT AS HUMANS.”

ABOVE: Schools are the only institution in America in which striking another person is legally sanctioned. These forms of violence are not allowed in prisons, in the military, or in mental hospitals.

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It becomes the school’s responsibility to recognize the negative repercussions of corporal punishment and work for productive solutions. “You need to understand what the child’s motivation is behind the problem behavior. For instance, if I am acting out because the schoolwork is too difficult, then it would be incumbent on the school to adjust the instruction, so the child can feel more successful,” Sprague says.

The future of classroom discipline lies in the constructive alternatives to corporal punishment, many of which have proven successful in place of physical discipline. The CED and other organizations have compiled resources for school administrators and teachers, presenting them with the tools necessary for non-violent discipline. Methods include suspensions, expulsions, detentions, interventions, or weekly conferences, and the utilization of school counselors, psychologists, and resource officers. In addition, it is imperative for schools to follow a consistent disciplinary code assuring that students and parents know and agree to what is not allowed in their school.

Sendek’s sights are set on replicating what many counties have already done, “Ideally, we become a much more humane society. The goal would be to end corporal punishment completely in all 50 states. I am not sure if that will happen in my professional career, or even in my lifetime. I would like to see a culture of not hitting kids, of stepping away.”

The idea is not to treat children as adults.

It is about treating children with respect as humans. While the use of corporal punishment slowly declines every year, cases similar to Melissa’s continue to surface.

“In one way it’s complicated, in another way, it’s not complicated at all,” Todahl says. “It is some version of loving each other more fully, which can sound kind of silly, but I don’t think it’s silly at all.”

Via handles each soil preparation with extreme care, making sure the ingredients are in harmony with one another.

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Spiritual Growth Biodynamic farming reverts back to the origins of agricultural stewardship, while also bringing in touches of spirituality and cosmic forces.

STORY BRITTANY NGUYEN

PHOTO TIFFANY HAN

DESIGN LAUREN BEAUCHEMIN

It may be the dead of winter in Oregon’s Central Willamette Valley, but it’s difficult to tell when looking at Winter Green Farm. It’s especially apparent on a rare sunny day in January, when the grass shines a healthy shade of bright green, and the roaring of trucks on the gravel mixed with the lively chatter of farmers fills the air.

Winter Green Farm’s co-owner Wali Via checks up on a group of four farmers expertly chopping burdock, a popular herb commonly used in Japanese dishes. The swiftness of the chopping and boxing doesn’t reflect earlier snowstorms that significantly ailed many crops in the region. Via’s age conveys a sense of wise authority over these younger farmers, but his relaxed demeanor and casual smile shows that he leads by example. After he talks to his employees, he goes out to the field to check on other budding crops, his daily routine during the winter.

“The kale was slammed during the storm,” the 68-year-old Via says as he runs his bare hands over the crop. He digs his fingertips slightly into the soil that he attends to meticulously.

“The whole farm basically went dead. But look – the kale is starting to finally come back.”

But it’s not the work ethic, nor the 365-day capability of Winter Green that sets it apart from what most consider a conventional farm. What sets it apart physically is miniscule: about a half teaspoon per acre, in fact. It’s the philosophical aspects that make it easier to understand why Winter Green is different from most agricultural institutions. Winter Green Farm uses biodynamics, where the influences of cosmic forces are brought into harmony with the cropping actions done on earth.

For Via, biodynamic farming is the solution to a life path he sought when he was only 18.

He was beginning his undergraduate education at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, but felt unsettled by the experience and by the city life he grew up in. However, he found a park on campus, where he began to feel in tune with nature.

“I got to experience the beauty and harmony of nature, but at the same time, everywhere I looked, I saw that harmony and beauty disrupted by the human hand that had come in,” Via says. “That’s what pushed me to find where the beauty and harmony came from instead of just seeing its destruction.”

A cross-country hitchhiking adventure led Via to Eugene, Oregon, with just five dollars to his name, where he had a couple farming friends who would later co-own Winter Green with him. He began to read every agricultural book he could get his hands on to completely immerse himself into the new way of life.

“I couldn’t find any reading that spoke to that connective place I found with nature,” Via says of his experience. “It was all hard and dry how-to. And then I ran across a book written by some biodynamic authors, and I said, ‘Aha! Here’s someone that’s experiencing what I’m experiencing.’”

So Via quickly found a small Northwest group now known as the Oregon Biodynamic Group and landed a job at Winter Green Farm 35 years ago, never questioning the beliefs instilled in this unique way of farming. He now spends his days roaming about the vast acres of his property, carefully inspecting crops and paying special attention to the health of the soil and the cows that produce the fertalizer.

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ABOVE: Burdock, a commonly used herb in Japanese dishes, being expertly chopped and boxed for packaging by farmers who work for Winter Green Farm.

Biodynamics has been around since 1924, when anthroposophy philosopher Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures to rekindle ancient agricultural efforts of stewardship. It’s a modern take on the origins of being in harmony with the land, soil, and outside cosmic forces using mixed potions spread across the crops.

The lectures are complicated, but the principle is basic: the term biodynamic literally means “life force”. Though many disregard this unique philosophical view on agriculture, calling it a real-life take on magic that lacks proof of quantitative results, some conventional farmers admire the attention to detail and spirituality that this distinctive practice requires.

Via explains that the difference is qualitative rather than quantitative. He claims that it’s the

taste and oftentimes storability of a plant that make the difference.“Unfortunately, we don’t have good scientific methods of measuring,” Via says. “It’s usually based on taste tests, but that’s very [subjective]. For example: carrots.

How do you scientifically measure the quality of its taste? I’d say this has been the nemesis of biodynamics in some ways.”

Winter Green, which Via owns with his wife and two other families, boasts one of the largest lands in Oregon practicing this technique, with over 35 employees tending to 170 acres of crop. As with all agricultural techniques, biodynamic practices can be applied on different levels depending on the farmer’s wants and needs. Though Winter Green takes on the more esoteric-spiritual approach, other

farms take it on a more practical level, leading to confusion with organic farming. What really sets a biodynamic farm apart from an organic one are the unique mixtures of herbs and animal compost used spiritually. Think of them as influencers, if you will. Spread throughout the farm, these influencers can bring the soil in harmony with the land and with the alignments of the planets throughout the year.

These mixtures, which biodynamicists call preparations, are made of nine ingredients, numbered 500 to 508. Each ingredient is in itself made up of its own preparations. Again, the level that each biodynamicist takes varies, and unfortunately, some of the more extreme varieties are what makes people skeptical of this practice.

Soil Preparations Biodynamic ingredients according Steiner’s lectures

500

A humus mixture prepared by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow and buried into the ground, 40-60 cm below the surface, in the autumn and left to decompose during the winter.

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501

Crushed powdered quartz prepared by stuffing it into a horn of a cow and buried into the ground in spring and taken out in autumn. The mixture is sprayed under very low pressure over the crop during the wet season.

502

Yarrow blossoms stuffed into urinary bladders from Red Deer, placed in the sun during summer, buried in earth during winter and retrieved in the spring.

503

Chamomile blossoms stuffed into small intestines from cattle buried in humus-rich earth in the autumn and retrieved in the spring.

5

Stingin stu surroun

3

uffed into buried in tumn and ng.

University of Oregon urban farm director Harper Keeler has studied biodynamics and has analyzed these methods. Though he doesn’t practice it, he is quick to defend what he considers radical farmers, while understanding the skeptics’ view.

“So you get your bucket, you put yarrow in it and spin it fifty times in one direction before you contemplate on the vortex,” Keeler says of some of the more extreme adaptations of biodynamics he’s heard that includes the weedy flower. “Sure, it sounds weird. But it’s just an extra little ritual added. If you think about it on a faith base, it makes enough sense.”

The most commonly used preparations normally involve stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow with various ingredients such as quartz, yarrow blossoms, dandelion flowers, and other herbs and flowers.

Steiner explains the cow horn in one of his lectures, stating, “The cow has horns in order to reflect inwards the astral and etheric formative forces, which then penetrate right into the metabolic system so that increased activity in the digestive organism arises by reason of this radiation from horns and hooves.” Every year, Winter Green hosts a gathering of all members of the Oregon Biodynamic Group to make these preparations together. They then bury the horn into the ground about 40-60 cm below the surface. There’s nothing scientific about the placement of these objects. The reasoning solely aligns with the spiritual-ethical-ethological approach of this agricultural practice.

“Biodynamics has had a difficult time getting footing in the US in terms of acceptance because of this,” Via said. “When you start throwing in fairly wild ideas that are more spiritual in orientation, that can be off-putting to many people.”

Keeler, as an outside observer, fully agrees with this.

“People are cynical because we are generally programmed to think that western science has to prove why it works,” Keeler said. “That you have this many grams of something, and it grows that much more. It has to be proved.”

When the Oregon Biodynamic Group meets, its members make preparations that help sensitize the earth to the influence of the cosmic rhythms that the earth is both surrounded by

504

Stinging nettle plants in full bloom stuffed together underground surrounded on all sides by peat for a year.

505

“That’s exactly how biodynamics works: looking at everything in a broader sense.”

and is part of. Oftentimes they use an astrological calendar to find the right alignments with certain planets.

“Think about it,” Via says.

“When we grow a plant in the ground, we can’t just concentrate on the small square of patch where the seed was buried. We have to look at that tree over there and see how its shadow could affect the plant. That’s exactly how biodynamics works: looking at everything in a broader sense.”

It may sound unusual, but that doesn’t mean it should be completely disregarded.

“It doesn’t do any harm, so people shouldn’t be so against it.” Keeler says. “Sure, there’s no way to prove it works. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t. All it does is demonstrate a heightened sense of stewardship. And it makes things exciting.”

In addition to these preparations, Via explains the importance of using self-producing fertility, rather than outside compost sources to support the sustainability of the soil.

“In his lectures, Steiner stressed that importing fertility onto the farm should be viewed as bringing medicine to an ailing organism,” Via said. “A healthy ecosystem means being self-sustaining.”

To Via, viewing a farm as a living organism is one of the key principles of his personal beliefs about biodynamics. In today’s scientific terms, a farm is seen as a local ecosystem. But in biodynamic philosophy, it’s much broader than simply seeing it as biological interconnectivity because it extends into the spiritual realm as well, with forces unseen and immeasurable.

“We’re right on this border now, where 95 percent of society says, ‘OK, out the door,’” Via says. “So I tend to emphasize the qualitative side of biodynamics, that the proof is in the pudding.”

On the flipside, Keeler brings to light a legitimate reason for the cynicism. “There are those that believe these people just put a little extra on their soil just to tack on the name ‘biodynamic’ and be able to charge more,” Keeler said. “And in some cases, some people charge more because it takes more time to do.

And in this capitalistic society, people have the

Oak bark chopped in small pieces, placed inside the skull of a domesticated animal, surrounded by peat and buried in earth in a place where lots of rain water runs by.

506

Dandelion flowers stuffed into the peritoneum of cattle and buried in earth during winter and retrieved in the spring.

assumption that everyone is just in it for the monetary reason.”

Though that could be the case for some biodynamic farms, most truly see it as a practice that gives them a purpose. Biodynamic farming benefits the farming world as a whole, revisiting old agricultural mantras that have been lost as the demand for food grows. Rather than viewing land as something to manipulate in order to produce mass quantities of food, biodynamic farmers see themselves as stewards of the land.

They strongly believe in the ethical treatment of their agriculture and their animals.

Keeler, along with many other farmers throughout the valley, praises Via for his extreme attentiveness to his soil, claiming that Via’s soil is the best in the area. He also has respect for the work ethic of biodynamic farmers in general.

“These people that are so into it, so intent on perfecting every little detail to align with their beliefs,” Keeler said. “And I don’t know if it’s because of the faith or just the coincidental default setting of these farmers. So to those who are cynical: in that respect if it gets you really into studying and watching all the time and it’s the methodology, then it’s really cool.”

In short, biodynamic farming is an extreme way of following a cycle – something that every successful farmer does. Their techniques just tailor more towards a larger meaning.

“I think that human nature is such that many people find it easier to disregard something that doesn’t fit into their paradigm than it is to approach it with an open mind and consider the validity of it,” Via says. “Me? I prefer to walk in life seeing that everything is possible. If I’m absolutely convinced that something needs to be disregarded, fine. But with an open mind; life is just richer.”

507

Valerian flowers extracted into water.

508 Horsetail.

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JOURNEYS ABROAD

LEFT: Old fans contrast with the bright lights and bold advertisements that fill the cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong.

TOP RIGHT: Fresh fruits and vegetables sold on the streets is common in Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world with over seven million residents.

MIDDLE RIGHT: Tourists crowd a narrow pedestrian shopping street selling clothing, trinkets, and food.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Aboard a ferry on Victoria Harbour, panoramic skylines from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon illuminate the night sky. A symphony of lights, a nightly show, projects colorful lights and laser beams from buildings on both sides of the harbor for the city to enjoy.

PHOTO TIFFANY HAN

ABOVE: A monk, wearing a knitted beanie, graces the Tong Hua Night Market on a rainy evening in Taipei. Night markets are frequent all over Taiwan and sell a variety of traditional Taiwanese delicacies.

DESIGN LAUREN BEAUCHEMIN

ALL OF THE LIGHTS

PHOTO TIFFANY HAN

DESIGN LAUREN BEAUCHEMIN

Hong Kong has exploded into a jam-packed megalopolis, while hanging on to cultural tradition.

I am surrounded by people on all sides— there’s hardly room to move. People are pushing past one another as we shuffle our way down the street. Vendors selling food, clothing, and a dizzying amount of impractical, yet desirable trinkets line both sides of the narrow street, leaving little room for the masses that have swarmed the market. As time drags on, I look at the people surrounding me and realize what it’s like to live in a city with over seven million residents.

I arrived in the metropolis of Hong Kong during the rush of the Christmas holidays. It was my first time traveling to China, and I was unprepared for the commotion that lay ahead of me.Although I didn’t anticipate that Christmas was celebrated in Hong Kong, the entire city was buried under elaborate decorations and echoed with classic Christmas songs. Dull buildings were transformed by ornate displays of lights illuminating the city. The holiday mayhem made an already crowded city twice as overwhelming.

Amid the chaos of the city, an evening ferry ride from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island gave me a much-needed moment of peace. The city filled the sky with layers of skyscrapers, looking like a scene from a futuristic movie.I encountered people from all over the world.

Those who were born in the city and have no reason to leave witnessed the slow and gradual transformation of the city into the cosmopolitan center it is today. As a waiter with kind eyes and passable English brings my bowl of hand-pulled noodles, he tells me that the price is the same as it was 60 years ago, when the restaurant first opened. He grumbles that it takes him 3 times as long to get to work as it did back then, due to the floods of people migrating to Hong Kong and stifling the city.

Every so often, a proper English accent passes me on the street as a reminder of Hong Kong’s history as a former British colony.

Familiar American voices I overhear on the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) talk about how they’ve uprooted their lives to move across the world in order to take advantage of the city’s rich opportunities. The disparate perspectives that make up Hong Kong are unique in creating an identity that can no longer be tied to a specific person.

During the few short days I spent in Hong Kong, I experienced a city difficult to keep up with. Though the xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings, are reason enough to make the journey to Hong Kong, the time I spent there seemed like a blur similar to the reflection of skyscrapers on the cool waters of the harbor.

- TIFFANY HAN

COLORS & SHAPES

L

indsey Belleau places her hands on her hips and points her toes outward. Her lips are curved into a slight smile, and her blue eyes, although fixed on the blank wall in front of her, sparkle eagerly.

She looks lost in thought, but is sharply aware of what’s going on around her.

Relaxed, she drapes her hands over her head and rotates every few minutes, so that each person in the room can see her from various angles. Belleau stands atop a platform that is draped in a patterned yellow rug and colorful blankets, which pops against the washed-out brick walls and cement floor. Her pale skin features three green tattoos: a narrow ivy vine encircling her right upper arm, a large “ankh” (the Egyptian sign for life) on the back her left calf, and a Taurus zodiac sign on the small of her back. A circle of 16 people sit around the platform, balancing two-foot-long pads of paper on easels or their knees while furiously 36

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blending soft grey charcoal lines into the grainy white paper, their heads snapping up every few seconds to look at Belleau. After an hour, Belleau steps down from the platform for a break. She walks to the corner of the room and picks up a dark purple robe to cover her nude body.

Nude modeling for figure drawing classes is as much of a creative process for the models as it is for the people sketching them. “Standing still is a great opportunity to meditate and focus.

You get paid for it, and the other artists around you are doing what they love,” says Belleau, a 26-year-old singer and dancer. Originally from San Diego, Belleau moved up to Eugene a few years ago. She had been interested in working as a nude model and considers finding her current job pure luck.

Belleau draws more from the experience of nude modeling than a paycheck. “I enjoy being naked,” she says. “I love clothes, but I definitely

am an exhibitionist. I love to be as I was created – which was naked. I try to be naked as much as possible.” She feels a sense of freedom with nudity and has even considered living in a nudist colony – although if she did, it would have to be somewhere near the ocean. The job also allows her to be self-motivated, both as an artist and as a person. “Lately, it’s been more towards—I want to be my own boss and make my life around art.”

Although many college students model part time to earn some extra money, Belleau is a fulltime live model, modeling nude two to three times a day for art classes around Eugene and Springfield. Kyle Swartzlender, an art history major at the University of Oregon, models about three to four times a term. Like Belleau, he stumbled upon the job almost by accident.

His roommate was looking through the UO job database and thought that Swartzlender might be interested in this position. “Actually,

PHOTO ANDREW SENG

Nude models embrace their natural form and contribute their bodies to a community of artists.

DESIGN CARLY ELLIOTT

Wake Up Flawless

DESIGN CARLY ELLIOTT PHOTO ANDREW SENG

it sounded amazing. I’ve never been shy about my body. I went in almost as a joke, and they asked if I had any experience – which I didn’t – but also with dance, tai chi, yoga, anything to keep you still – and I did have that.” Males were in short supply as well. “I just assumed there wasn’t going to be a huge market for men comfortable with being naked – and I was right,” Swartzlender says. Only seven of about 60 people applying to be models were male.

Unlike fashion modeling, desirable qualities in a live model, or someone who poses nude for art classes, have little to do with physical appearance. “You’re not always trying to be pretty. You’re trying to be interesting for the artist,” Swartzlender says. He recalls his first experience, when he applied in person to model.

“They kind of look at you – I think it’s mostly whether you look like anyone else – they want diversity for the different art classes. Apparently I didn’t, so I got hired.”

Sadie Trush, another UO student who models part-time, says that she has always been comfortable drawing nudity as well as modeling it, and looking at it from an artistic standpoint helps people feel more at ease. “I understand that it’s not judging. It’s appreciating values and shading.” Both agree that the nudity aspect is much more uncomfortable for the artists than for the model. Swartzlender has no reservations about modeling. “I went to the country fair when I was younger. I’ve seen naked bodies, and I’ve been a naked body. Once you’ve done it— once that precedent is set—it’s a lot easier.”

Looking at figure drawing from the artist’s perspective helps the models feel less selfconscious and gives them a respect for how strenuous the artist’s work can be. “It’s difficult to capture a human being on paper, especially in a short amount of time,” Swartzlender says.

Trush feels that preconceived ideas of the human figure make drawing more difficult. “The mistake people make is, ‘Oh, I know what a leg looks like,’ so they draw it. I’ll draw what I see and it looks weird, but a lot of people don’t draw what they see.”

Though modeling usually involves standing or sitting in one place, it’s physically strenuous and sometimes painful. Legs fall asleep, backs

get strained, and arms lose feeling. The challenge of sitting still for three hours can be one of the downsides of modeling, but the environment it creates for introspection can be valuable time for the model. “I often almost forget there’s people around me, especially poses upward of five minutes,” Swartzlender says. “Your mind tends to travel into weird places; I sometimes have to remind myself not to get up and leave.” Trush cherishes the time and has found that the silence and mental solitude have created a prime environment for creative expression. “I have a busy schedule – I’m taking 20 credits, so this is a time where I have to be still. Sometimes I write poems in my head, and during the breaks I go and write them down – I call the book ‘Still and Silent.’” She laughs. “It’s much better than thinking about time.”

Belleau likes that the job expects her to be silent. “It’s good training for me,” she says.

“I want my speech to be more effective, so that what comes out is what [I] really want to say.”

In addition to classes, Belleau also works as a private model for artists. “It’s been very interesting how they treat the model – I’ve been treated like a god.” She finds that people are consistently going out of their way to make sure she’s comfortable.

“The people that you meet are amazing, and talented, and kind – it really goes to show that if you do the work, you will get there.”

Above all else, the experience of observing and being observed instills a heightened sense of respect and appreciation for the human form. “Drawing people makes me realize how beautiful they all are,” says Trush. “I don’t know how to explain it until you do it – but once you draw them you realize all the little things that are beautiful about them. I guess it’s kind of like being in love.”

- JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN

TOP LEFT: Lindsey Belleau of Eugene, Ore., has practiced modeling and nude modeling since September 2013 and does at least two shifts per day between Lane Community College and the University of Oregon.

TOP RIGHT: For Lindsey, modeling is not only a source of income but a way to connect with her spirit, “For me it’s about desire. I just want to do it, and I enjoy meditating. I’m getting paid to meditate basically… If I strike a pose and it’s comfortable enough… Even if it’s that my hip is screaming at me.”

ABOVE: The ability to appreciate art and how others interpret the world are aspects that Lindsey enjoys the most about her job, “Getting paid to stand around naked is great. But also the people that I’ve met. I’ve met some extraordinary people.”

LEFT: Nude and private modeling for art purposes are Lindsey’s primary source of income and takes up the bulk of her days, with each modeling shift lasting about three hours, “If I’m not commuting I’m modeling, and when I’m not commuting or modeling I’m resting or stretching.”

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SPICES & SPIRITS

ABOVE: David ResSeguig shows a food bar that includes a few raw food options.

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A

new customer sits down at the restaurant’s counter and looks ups at the chalkboard menu hanging from the ceiling. Half of the menu has the word “raw” after each entrée. Ready to try something new, she orders the pizza. When the meal arrives, the dish looks familiar, but certainly not ordinary.

“It’s not the hot drippy kind of pizza,” says Dianna Rodgers, a new customer to TruVeg, a restaurant inside South Eugene’s YMCA. What appears to be crumbly cheese is actually grated cauliflower and shredded yam. The crust is made with sprouted buckwheat and sunflower seeds. The dish itself is not hot from the oven, but instead refreshingly crisp. This was Rodgers’ first taste of a completely raw meal. “The food was great,” she says. “I ate every bit on my plate.”

The raw food movement is a community pursuing a healthier lifestyle through eating foods in their most natural form—uncooked.

The diet is founded on the belief that food loses enzymes, minerals, and nutrients when heated. Raw foodists, as they call themselves, have become less of a fringe group in the past few decades. The diet has gained popularity as famous chefs and celebrities, like Demi Moore, have caught onto the health-conscious trend.

Rodgers’ first raw experience was at TruVeg, a restaurant that was opened by Chef Brian Igarta and his wife Crystal DuBoyce. The couple, along with their daughter Skye, has moved from Hawaii and settled in Eugene, Oregon, in 2013 with the intent to promote healthy ways of eating. Igarta is a studied chef and author of three vegetarian/vegan cookbooks that include raw recipes.

“A lot of people would ask us, ‘what do you eat? Just salads?’” Igarta says. His reply is that they eat much, much more. Igarta wrote his cookbooks and opened TruVeg as a way to show

PHOTO TAYLOR ELLIOTT

Raw foodists believe uncooked food is higher in nutrients and better for the body.

DESIGN DANA RENGEL

best served cold

ABOVE LEFT: Brian cuts a raw pizza with onion bread, tomato sauce, cauliflower to act as the cheese, carrots, pappers, onions, olives, tomatoes, and basil sauce.

ABOVE RIGHT: Brian and Crystal model with a lettuce wrapped burger, and a pizza made from unexpected ingredients. Both dishes include a side salad.

PHOTO TAYLOR ELLIOTT

DESIGN DANA RENGEL

d

that vegan and raw meals can actually taste good and that raw food is more than just eating salad.

“Our whole goal is just to educate people to make better lifestyle choices,” he says. “Coming from a culinary background, we chose food.”

Committed vegans, Igarta and DuBoyce first began experimenting with raw food about seven years ago. “Tasting is believing,” DuBoyce says about both her own experience and the people who come into their restaurant hesitant about trying raw food.

In addition to their menu of vegetarian dishes, TruVeg currently has raw tacos, raw pizza, and a raw burger on its menu.

They attempt to make hesitant eaters more comfortable by making raw versions of classic dishes that sound familiar and unintimidating.

Igarta and DuBoyce say responses have been very positive.

“Everything is so fresh and there’s a lot of flavor in vegetables,” DuBoyce says. Customers seem to notice the difference. Fresh local vegetables are the most crucial aspect of the raw diet and some local food stores are working to cater to raw foodists in the community.

Sundance Natural Foods, a natural food store in South Eugene, has also been a support to raw foodists in the community. David ResSeguie has been working at Sundance for nearly 30 years and says that over this time he has seen a very dynamic shift in the popularity and demand for raw foods.

“There’s definitely always been a core movement here in Eugene for raw foods, and now there’s a lot more people who are hearing the word,” ResSeguie says. Although the essence of raw food is void of manufacturers, ResSeguie has seen food manufacturers respond to the rising popularity of raw food over the years.

There are raw crackers, granola, trail mixes, and the ever-popular kale chip, which makes ResSeguie chuckle as he recalls the 15 different types of kale chip that Sundance has shelved in the past year.

“Our whole goal is just to educate people to make better lifestyle choices.”

Although radical proponents of the diet eat raw meat and dairy, the average raw foodist avoids anything from the animal kingdom.

Similar to other popular diets, the raw food diet comes with its own spectrum of beliefs and controversies. There are differing views about the specific temperature at which food should be eaten for optimal nutrition, but it ranges from about 106 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ferale Hubbard is another passionate raw foodist who lives in Eugene. “Raw food is pure energy for the body,” she says. Her summertime diet consists of fresh local vegetables and berries, and in the cold rainy months she eats kale, cabbage, and soups with warming spice, like cardamom and cloves. Her journey with nutrition and diet has been filled with trial and error, as she experimented while trying to discover what would be best for her body.

The two roads of diet and passion for nutrition converged when she discovered and settled on the raw food diet.

When Hubbard first made her diet change, she saw a lack of support and resources for raw foodists in Eugene, so she decided to initiate a solution to this problem. In 2010, Hubbard opened Raw Love, a raw food cart and catering business. Her goal, much the same as Igarta’s, is to make gourmet raw food that fulfills the cravings that the body has for cooked food. Being in the raw food business, she has experienced much of the controversy surrounding the diet.

“There are people from both extremes saying that cooked food is an addiction and you should only eat raw food,” Hubbard says. “And then people in the other spectrum saying that

50 to 60 percent of raw food is fine, and you’re going to be just as healthy.”

While raw foodists believe that eating raw is the best way to become healthier, some would suggest that some claims about the raw food diet are misleading and inaccurate.

Ingrid Skoog, a Registered Dietician and faculty member in the dietetics program at Oregon State University, has strong convictions about a balanced approach to providing the body with the nutrients it needs. She says that eating raw fruits and vegetables is great; however, cooking these foods has advantages too. Science and physiology show that while heat and acids can denature proteins and break down enzymes, these are not enzymes the body uses to digest food. “The body can increase or decrease the production of digestive enzymes based on the food we consume,” says Skoog.

“It doesn’t tax your body to make more enzymes,” she says. Heat is one way we increase fiber solubility. Because many of a plant’s micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) are bound up with the fiber, heat actually helps to break apart fiber and make more of these essential nutrients easier to absorb.

Skoog agrees that all people need to incorporate more fresh fruits and vegetables into their diets, but she says that a completely raw diet is not always beneficial. “I don’t argue with a well-designed diet,” she says. “You can eat a nutritionally-balanced raw food diet if you want to. But know that it’s not because your body can’t do it.”

Regardless of whether or not eating raw is the healthier way to go, it’s hard to deny that fresh raw food tastes good.

DuBoyce, who usually works at the front counter at TruVeg, says she enjoys watching customers, such as Rodgers, experience raw food for the first time. “It makes people happy,” she says. “It’s like their taste buds light up when they taste good raw food.”

- MEGAN DOUGHERTY

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PEOPLE IN MOTION

fire

Fire dancers brave potential burns to deliver an entrancing show.

Veteran fire dancers don’t deny that part of the allure of whipping flaming balls around their bodies comes from the peril involved. Precautions must be taken in order for fire dancers to be allowed to perform on public property, and even with that done, a strong risk of injury remains.

“It can definitely be dangerous if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing,” says LeeAnn Sturrock, who has been fire dancing for nearly a decade.

“If you use the wrong materials, you 40

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will get severely burned. It’s very important to wear the right clothes, because even the slightest bit of wrong fiber will make the clothes burn on to you.”

Tovi Ross, an 8-year fire-dancing veteran, agrees that the sport is hazardous and strongly cautions beginners. Ross says that there is a strict protocol to be followed in order to avoid getting scorched.

“Basically, the dangers of firedancing are the same as for anything

else—if you’re stupid, you’re going to get hurt. The answer is don’t be stupid, don’t wear synthetic clothes,” Ross says. “And you want to make sure you use the right fuel. I use white gas, which produces a low amount of smoke and residue. It creates a cold flame, which means that if I were to hit myself with the flame, which I often do, it won’t burn me.”

“And don’t wear hair products.”

- JENNICA ASBURY

PHOTO ANDY ABEYTA

COOL UNDER

DESIGN BRITTANY HALLIN

ABOVE: Tovi Ross demonstrates her nerve as she twirls ignited fans just above her face. Fans are simple thin metal rods that connect to metal rings held in the performer’s palms with the rods protruding between their fingers.

DESIGN BRITTANY HALLIN PHOTO ANDY ABEYTA

TOP LEFT: As the most freely moving prop of the bunch, poi can be considered the most difficult prop to control. Poi are simply balls of Kevlar wicking attached to a chain that are spun around the body to create different designs and illusions.

TOP RIGHT: Fire dancing often maintains a delicate balance between fast paced excitement and a more calm, intimate display of fire. In these moments viewers are reminded of the danger involved with each movement.

MIDDLE LEFT: LeeAnn Sturrock says that her favorite part of performing with fire is watching the surprise and amusement of viewers. She has been doing it since she was in the 6th grade, so to her the moves are basic and simple, but when people are watching she is reminded of what it was like for her to watch fire dancing for her first time.

ABOVE The intensity of the flames changes throughout the performance. Of course the more white gas that the Kevlar is drenched in, the more immense the flame becomes, but it also changes greatly based on movement and the action of the performers.

LEFT: Another prop used in fire dancing is the staff. The staff is essentially a long metal stick with Kevlar wicking on each end. The staff presents its own challenge purely in size and difficulty to control.

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SOUNDWAVES

F

Folk of

lorence

The Florence Winter Folk Festival brings the community together to put music programs into schools.

Nine birdhouses are hanging outside the forest home of Maria Fisher in Florence, Oregon. She had just moved from a suburban neighborhood to a house in the woods, where she could live in harmony with wild animals.

Throughout the spring, none of the birdhouses had a single bird. “Can’t you make the birds come to our yard? Please,” Maria said to her husband, Amen. “When you hang a box

in a tree and nobody lives in it, it doesn’t give anything to anybody.”

Amen decided to create habitats for the birds out of what he thought they use in nature.

The Fishers began to collect driftwood and small branches that had naturally fallen off the trees to create birdhouses..

“The way the tree grows, the way the mosses are colored - all these elements combine to inspire us,” Maria says.

The Fishers donate these houses to any community auction fundraiser that asks for one. They were one of the venders at the Florence Winter Folk Festival, an event that happens once a year to benefit the local school districts.

The people of Florence truly embody the age-old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” When the funding for music programs was cut from the Mapleton School District, the community banded together to create a unique experience for their students. The festival was created 12 years ago in hopes of putting music programs back into the local schools.

The Friends of the Florence Event Center is a group of volunteers determined to make events like the Winter Folk Festival happen. They raise money to pay for teachers to teach in local schools using the curriculum

they provide, which includes the songs that the festival’s performing artists play. They also fund the buses that take the children to the event center. Every year there is a theme incorporated into the design of the backdrop and set, which the children work with local artists to create. A picture from every child in Siuslaw Elementary School hangs on the walls of the auditorium.

They are images that represent important things in the children’s lives.

The Fishers’ role in the festival of venders is different than the musicians’ because they don’t directly work with the children; however, selling their birdhouses means giving back in a different way. “People come back to us and tell us over

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PHOTO SUMI KIM

ABOVE: Lou Crist of Barefoot Leroy from Eugene, Ore. plays accordion while singing. Barefoot Leroy opened up the concert at the Florence Winter Folk Festival on Jan. 18, 2014. It was Barefoot Leroy’s first performance at a music festival.

“It is good to have audience who listen, that is huge,” said Lea Jones, the lead singer and founder of the group.

and over again that the art that we have created actually makes their yard a better place, and it actually gives them joy and smiles,” Maria says.

The Fishers now work on the birdhouses full-time in their fifth year of the business. “You normally don’t think of a birdhouse business, or even an art business as something you can sustain. But we are trying so hard to do that, and we are making it work,” Maria says. The prices they charge don’t make the business very profitable considering the labor and expenses that go into building the birdhouses.

However, the Fishers care about giving back to the community and the natural habitat more than they do about profit. “We don’t get back what we put into it. It’s all just giving out, and eventually it might tip, the good karma and stuff like that,” Maria says. The Fishers’ generous lifestyle truly embodies the spirit of the beachside pocket that is Florence: a community of people dedicated to the well-being of one another. The town is nestled between the Siuslaw National Forest and the Oregon Coast.

People travel to Florence just to experience

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this is a group of people that, no matter what the project is, come together to help support each other.

ABOVE: McCornacks performed Saturday’s finale of the Florence Winter Folk Festival. Carleen McCornack (middle) and Michael McCornack (right) also performed at the kid’s concert earlier in the week to provide place for children to learn their songs and create new songs. McCornacks said they are always delighted to perform and teach young students in Florence, Ore. many who do not receive music classes from their school due to budgetary issues.

“There’s nothing that happens here in the winter,” Weiner says. The Florence Winter Folk Festival began in part as a way to stimulate the economy. However, upon entering the festival, it seems as if most of the people are not tourists at all, but rather neighbors that have only traveled a few miles. The way one festival-goer greets another emphasizes the family-like community

PHOTO SUMI KIM

DESIGN DELANEY PRATT

the Sea Lion Caves, sand dunes, and endless camping and fishing sites. While Florence may be a popular tourist attraction, roughly 8,500 people make up the tight-knit community they call home.

The town fosters a special relationship between its inhabitants. The residents feel responsible to take on the problems that their neighbors are facing. “This is a group of people that, no matter what the project is, come together to help support each other,” Hal Weiner says.

Weiner is a Florence resident, proud community member, and one of the creators of the Florence Folk Festival. He used his connections to make the first event successful.

“I knew a lot of people who were folk singers in the sixties, who were at that time famous, and I got on the phone and I said, ‘We are doing this festival out here and all of the proceeds are going to bring music into our schools because we have none. Would you like to come out here and play for next to nothing and support this program?’ and they all said yes,” Weiner says.

Weiner takes pride in his city and the way community members care for one another. “If somebody gets really ill here in this community and can’t find healthcare and needs emergency care, this community comes together and raises money over a weekend to do that,” he says.

The residents are especially proud of the city’s event center. Weiner refers to it as, “a world class auditorium.” The Florence Event Center was built without a single dollar of tax money and was funded entirely by volunteers over the course of 15 years. Due to the economy, however, the event center was recently added to the city budget.

The winter can be a desolate time for an Oregon coastal city that relies on tourism for much of its income.

in Florence. Typically a festival assumes that people will be traveling to attend the event, whereas this festival emphasizes a local philanthropic cause.

Barefoot Leroy was one of the bands that played at the festival on Saturday January 18, 2014. This was Barefoot Leroy’s first time playing in a festival with all of its band members. “Having pro-sound, and a professional stage crew, and an audience that listens - that’s huge,” a band member Lea Jones says. Barefoot Leroy is based in Eugene. Some of the members have been performing together since the eighties.

Many of the band’s songs were inspired by the beauty of Oregon. “How can you not be inspired by this state, the spaciousness and the glory of nature,” Jones says. “If you don’t get a buzz out of that then you must be dead.”

Oregon is also an interesting environment for musicians, according to Jones.

“The thing about Oregon is you don’t really get audiences so much. But there are so many great musicians around and you can do whatever you want in terms of putting together a group. It’s a very fertile artistic environment,” Jones says.

Artistry and giving seem to go hand in hand.

The Florence Folk Festival is more than an event that happens once a year. It is a showcase of the lifestyle that Florence fosters. An entire city full of neighbors may seem just like a nostalgic longing for most, but for the people of Florence it is a reality.

- HALEY RIVET

ABOVE: Amen Fisher (left), the co-owner of Given Back Bird Houses explains to his customer how he makes the birdhouses at Florence Winter Folk Festival on Jan. 18, 2014. Amen Fisher, with his wife Maria Fisher have been making birdhouses with remnants of trees and plants. Fishers are proud of their eco-friendly birdhouses that actually welcome birds to the yard.

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MOVING PICTURES

G

reg Arden pulls out a two-part silicone mold in the shape of a miniature body says. “I have a cabinet of random objects called the ‘holy junk drawer’,” he says.

Arden holds up the mold compared to the doll, which fits perfectly into the form. The figure is composed of wire rods and foam, but doesn’t look like the average Barbie doll. It has a more eerie feel, like it’s straight out of The Nightmare Before Christmas with a lanky build and untamed hair. Scrap fabric, yarn, wood and other bits clutter the wood workshop table. “I can’t throw [anything] away because you never know when or where it might work in a miniature set,” Arden says. The art department is a well-stocked craft store with shelves dedicated to paints, catalogued randomly by color, threads set in a caddy like the rainbow.

Coworker and Creative Director Paul Harrod admires Arden’s doll. “Somehow we put our brains together and that’s what we get out of it,” Harrod says. He grins as he looks around the room at the myriad of puppets and scaled-down furniture sets, seemingly amazed at the work that’s produced daily in this animation studio.

Bent Image Lab acts more like a small community rather than a formal work setting.

Founded in 2002, this animation studio focuses on special effects-style commercials. They utilize many forms of animation, such as stopmotion, computer-generated imagery, twodimensional and live-action puppetry to capture a new take on advertising.

Famously known for building miniature claymation sets for their stop-motion animation, Bent Image Lab uses this technique to make small sculpted objects appear as if they are moving on their own. Bent studios call for

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meticulously sharp and creative team members to execute complex ideas by designing unique content for production. A single project includes creating physical art, directing, and finalizing digital animation, requiring a team of animators to collaborate to produce a 30-second commercial.

Art is a difficult field to break into, but Harrod made his passion into a career. His interest in animation began at the age of five by the stop-motion animation in the original King Kong. He created his first sculptures when he was 12 by making masks out of carved mattress

later moved on to work at Will Vinton Studios that created the Fox TV show The PJs, the first stop-motion primetime TV series in the United States. He started his work at Bent in 2002, less than a year after it was founded.

Creating stop motion animation requires a hands-on education to create these miniature worlds. Arden, who is now an art director and fabricator, began his work at Bent as a carpenter, creating full-size wood sets. He learned all of his artistic skills while working at Bent—he never had a formal college education, so he worked his way up from freelance carpenter to full-time art director.

As a set creator for the Portland rats segment on Portlandia, Arden is known in the office as a garbage artist. He creates unique sets from bits of scraps and things he finds. Using unconventional innovation, he added an upside-down barometer to serve as a grandfather clock in the rats’ apartment, along with dried orange peels to resemble a midcentury lamp. Creativity is certainly not lost in him, as he can make a blue loveseat the size of a computer keyboard out of fiberboard and bed foam cushions.

“Obviously, it’s the art world, so you are always looking for something new and different,” Arden explains, desribing some of the different types of material he used for the show.

It’s not easy to be an artist at Bent. Different companies hire the animators to create sets for them. It’s equal parts art and business, and pleasing the company they are creating animations for is not an easy feat.

“The approval process is always really hard,” Arden explains. “You want an agency to have confidence in what you’re presenting. The biggest job is keeping that trust.”

Obviously it’s the art world, so you are always looking for something new and different. foam and liquid latex inspired by characters from Planet of the Apes. “I loved making the stuff,” Harrod says. It impacted him in such a way that he turned sculpting into a career.

Harrod received his Master’s of Fine Arts degree at the California Institute of the Arts, where he used his free time to experiment with miniature set constructions and short videos to get hands-on experience. He originally planned to use his education and love of sculpting to make stop motion animations, despite the fact that they were loosing their popularity in the 1980s. Harrod was lucky enough to land a job on the children’s cartoon show Pee-wee’s Playhouse with the help of a friend from art school, which launched his animation career.

The show transformed the image of stopmotion in the late 1980s by using innovative strata-cut clay animation techniques, where lumps of clay are sliced into thin sheets. He

DESIGN BRITTANY NGUYEN

Animation studio Bent Image Lab meticulously creates stop motion animation for advertisements and TV.

DESIGN BRITTANY NGUYEN

When all the stop-motion sets are created, it’s the animator’s job to make the piece come to life digitally. Animator Jen Prokopowicz spends her entire day alone with a set of headphones and a desktop computer, making the animations come to life on screen. She started at Bent making tiny puppets as a freelancer, later shifting her work to computer animation.

Her work is meticulous—Prokopowicz edits each small piece of animation 24 times to reach one second of film because there are 24 frames in a second. She usually can produce up to eight seconds of film a day, working for hours in the animation booth.

“It’s like slow-motion acting,” Prokopowicz says of stop motion. She has to understand how to act out the scene from the character’s perspective. “You have to figure out how that robot walks, how that character feels when that other character rejects them, how does that small dog get through a busy street,” she explains. Each clay figure must be moved just a little with each frame to generate the image of fluid and natural movement.

While a lot of the animation she does requires individual work, the entire process of making a commercial requires a team approach.

Each member has a specific part of a project for the commercial to be made in the best way possible.

“My favorite part of the job is being able to collaborate,” Prokopwicz says. She talks quietly, using her hands to explain herself.

“Everybody has such a wide variety of skill sets that I admire.” She looks around at her colleagues. With a quick glance and a slight head nod, Prokopwicz conveys the respect she has for Harrod and Arden. Her pride for her work shines through with her smile.

- JAMIE HERSHMAN

ABOVE: Greg Arden is an experienced sculptor of landscapes and textures, and enjoys found object sculpting and “scrapping.”

BELOW: Jen Prokopowicz graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in animation from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2007. Her work aired on the Peabody Award-winning series “Portlandia.”

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THE LAST

Smile and Drive Safely A young adult learns to grieve for a departed best friend.

I remember my dad facing away from me at the kitchen sink. Beams of summer sunlight stream through the window as he washes the dishes. My father turns around—his eyes are puffy from crying.

“Elisa passed away in her sleep last night,” he whispers. Those were the last words I expected to hear—a cousin or a grandparent, maybe, but not Elisa. I can hardly register his words, but his face says it all: sunken and pale, he, too, is in disbelief that my best friend is dead.

Staring down at the hardwood floors, I hear only the sound of running water that fills the silence. My young mind cannot immediately comprehend her death. My father and I look past each other, standing a few feet apart. My eyes fill with tears, and I bite my tongue to keep them from spilling. My father’s lower lip quivers, but he tries to compose himself for his 12-year-old daughter. His tears turn disbelief into reality. mindThe first question that comes to my mind is, how did she die? The why follows shortly after.

Elisa was 13 when she passed away from a rare heart condition known as Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome. From the moment I met her at the YMCA in kindergarten to the time she graduated middle school, she never showed any signs of illness. That night she went to sleep healthy and never woke up.

The funeral followed three days after her death. Rows of wooden benches set in a circular formation were filled with adolescents accompanied by their parents. A sea of black sport coats and sweaters contrasted against the colors of the stained-glass windows of the temple. A large portrait of Elisa stood next to her father as he read a eulogy in broken sentences.

I can’t recall seeing the casket, but her portrait stared at me. Her soft brown eyes and

genuine smile pierced right through my stoic face, a mask against the pain I felt sitting at my best friend’s funeral. I slumped down in my seat and stared down at the ground, trying to hide from her. I didn’t want Elisa to see me cry. I held my breath to keep the tears back. Staring straight ahead, my face was emotionless, but inside, I was a mess.

I wanted to be alone and cry until my eyes were so swollen that I could barely open them.

But I made sure to hold back my tears. I didn’t want to be the sad best friend that others pitied.

A single tear slid down my cheek when I heard Elisa’s mom wail in grief behind a sheer black curtain on the side of the alter.

Weeks passed as I avoided my grief. Months went by that I never talked about her death with anyone.

I kept thinking about all the things she would be missing out on. She would never

season. We would eat popsicles in her backyard and play pool games until our fingers pruned. In those moments, we felt carefree. That was my childhood, being happy with her.

After that moment of reflection about our summers together passed, I began remembering the other things I loved about her and the way she brought joy to my life. From playing princess dress-up games to watching Disney movies, it was just being together that shaped our childhood. She came back to me as my happiest memory. I began to see that Elisa never missed out on anything.

Grieving is the hardest part of death.

Everybody deals with grief differently—there is no correct way to feel. It took me years to accept Elisa’s death and understand the impact her existence had on my life. She taught me how to be caring and what it means to be an unconditionally loving friend. She loved me like a sister, and for that I am forever grateful.

My grief for Elisa has still not passed, and maybe that’s the way it should be. Sometimes I think about her and I miss her, allowing myself to cry a little behind my bedroom door. I will always miss her. That’s how I grieve.

Little things remind me of her. A sunny day after a week of rain brings back our summers together. Sometimes I drive through her neighborhood and pass the street sign that always made us laugh uncontrollably. It said “Smile and Drive Safely” with a happy face at the bottom. She would always put her hands out in front of her gripping an imaginary steering wheel and smile as big as her cheeks would allow, imitating the street sign. I would laugh until my stomach clenched, and I could barely breathe, begging for her to act it out again. She was the best part of my childhood, and I loved her. I will never forget her.

- JAMIE HERSHMAN

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dress up for her senior prom or go to college.

She would never walk down the aisle on her wedding day or even have a first kiss. I felt selfish. Why did I deserve to live while Elisa was dead? That was the hardest part to understand.

That guilt slowly faded away towards the end of the summer as my thoughts of Elisa erased from my mind. The years went by while I failed to mourn. I blocked her death out from my memory.

During my senior year in high school, my creative writing class brought Elisa back to me. In one of our daily journal entries, my teacher simply asked the class to write about a childhood memory. My summers with Elisa came to mind immediately—it was our favorite

DESIGN PHOEBE RIOS

“She came back to me as my happiest memory. I began to see that Elisa never missed out on anything.”

DESIGN PHOEBE RIOS

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