Ethos Magazine Spring 2020

Volume 11 Issue 3 | Spring 2020

UO's Jewish community at Oregon Hillel

Open to all Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 1

Letter from the

Editor espite being forced to stay apart, community is now extremely important. Being separate from friends and family does not mean these connections will be lost.

On the contrary, they are more important than ever as we face an uncertain future with COVID-19. Classes have been canceled nationwide, in-person commencement is no longer a possibility. Many aspects of daily life have been disrupted by the disease.

According to a 2019 study published in medical journal The Lancet, quarantine has negative effects on our mental health.

"Most reviewed studies reported negative psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion and anger. Stressors included longer quarantine duration, infection fears, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, financial loss and stigma," the study read.

This showcases the importance to surround ourselves, even if digitally, with our loved ones. There's only so much we can carry alone for the next few months. We did not know this pandemic was coming so quickly, and it is easy to feel lost in these uncertain times. This is an unprecedented event. Still, in this spring issue, Ethos is publishing stories that demonstrate the importance of community.

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Renata S. Geraldo For the two Korean immigrants profiled in two different stories, family becomes a source of support. Just as important, they give back to the community in their own ways. As for Jewish students, community means support in times when synagogues become the scenes of mass shootings.

However, it is not easy for all to open up to their community, especially when they have experienced trauma. That was the case for Marty Clements, who started to open up about his traumatic childhood after using psilocybin mushrooms for therapy. For Germans, building a united community remains difficult after the 28-year-long Berlin Wall separation. But constructing and maintaining a strong community may be just what propels a musician to the forefront of the music scene in Eugene.

If there is anything to take away from this issue, it is that uncertain times such as this demand support. There's only so much we can carry by ourselves without harming our mental health during self-isolation and quarantine, as the 2019 study showed. Reach out, schedule a Zoom party with friends and family. And find comfort in your community. We're all in this together, though we are apart.

06 American Adjustment Noodle Bowl owner on being part of the one-and-a-half generation from Korea

Feature

18 Stay for Dinner UO's Jewish community maintains tradition among student life 23 Microdosing Mushrooms give PTSD sufferers relief from the past

Feature

31 Kwang Lee's World

Contents

14 Die Mauer A story of a young woman’s life in a divided Germany

Artist with autism finds his voice with whimsical paintings 40 Chipped Nail Polish

Punk-ukulele band's progression told through photography

Arts & Culture

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Editorial

Multimedia

Editor-in-Chief Renata S. Geraldo

Multimedia Director Jassy McKinley

Managing Editor Sophie Bange Associate Editor Jade Yamazaki Stewart

Multimedia Producers Emily Cline Meg Matsuzaki Kevin Wang Fallon Dunham Alec Kamburov

Fact-Checking Editor Kiki James

Photography

Creative Art Director Emma Nolan Illustrators Eleanor Klock Garrett Dare Sasha Heye Designers Sasha Heye Emily Pascale Christina Staprans

Business President and Publisher Bill Kunerth VP of Operations Kathy Carbone Director of Sales & Marketing Shelly Rondestvedt Creative Director Sam Rudkin

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Photo Editor Payton Bruni Photographers Eric Woodall Josh Murray Jeremy Williams Keven Salazar

Writing Copy Editor Abigail Winn

Fact Checkers Madeline Ryan Hailey O'Donnell Writers Sam Nguyen Jade Yamazaki Stewart Molly Schwartz Julia Page Madeline Ryan

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Through their collaboration with the U of O, Looptworks has created limited edition Duck gear made from your favorite team’s uniforms that are both unique and earth-friendly.

LEFT: Grey Looptworks Roll Top Recycle Mighty Oregon Pack TOP: Silver Looptworks Camo Upcycle Hippack

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Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 5

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An American ADJUSTMENT A Korean American’s journey to find his cultural balance

I

Written by Julia Page Photography by Eric Woodall

t was 12:51 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. The sun had just peeked out for the first time from behind the gray rain clouds that filled the Eugene sky. For Jae Chan Lee, today’s weather wasn’t on his mind as he prepped the home of EunHee Kim with cookies and La Croix. His light-blue button-up paired with his dark-blue sweater and round wire glasses completed the look for his professional attire.

This small condo was not the usual kind of property Lee and his real estate company helped to sell. However, Lee made an exception for Kim. As a member of the closely knit Eugene Korean American community, Lee was always willing to help out one of his own.

As the open house began and interested buyers started to arrive, Lee sprang to life. His knowledge of the real estate world went hand-in-hand with his bright, welcoming personality as he interacted with each and every person that walked through the door.

The One-and-a-Half Generation For many immigrants coming to live in the United States, transitioning and adjusting to American culture is a long and difficult road. However, according to a study published by the Association for Psychological Science, this adjustment process is easier for children under the age of 15.

Korean immigrants like Lee, who immigrated to the U.S. at a young age with their parents, are so common that they have their own name: the one-and-a-half generation. They are known to act as a ‘human bridge’ for their relatives, who are usually more set in their homeland’s way of life, and the American culture.

UCLA anthropologist Kye Young Park first introduced the term in 1999 to “describe misfits in the Korean community, who were ‘distinct from those of the first- or second-generation ethnic American.’”

The one-and-a-half generation immigrants, or ''Il-chom Ose'' in Korean, arrived in the U.S. as children. Their identities, unlike their first-generation parents or U.S.-born siblings, are split between their birthplace and the country they moved to. This term was used primarily to refer to Korean American immigrants, but it has gained more popularity among other Asian American and Latin American communities.

The one-and-a-half generation children are technically firstgeneration immigrants. However, their experiences are vastly different from older first-generation immigrants. According to the Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia, “The distinguishing characteristics of 1.5ers are that they are conversationally bilingual, bicultural, and able to switch between the two cultures with relative ease," the study reads. The children "have memories of being an immigrant, experienced culture shock, and have felt 'in-between' at times.”

Life in Korea

A one-and-a-half generation immigrant himself, Lee, better known as JC in the local community, can relate with other-oneand-a-half generation immigrants and their battles to find a balance between their birth country’s culture and American life.

Born in Seoul in 1988 and raised in Seongnam, South Korea, Lee’s life in Korea was spent living in an apartment with his mother, Jong Choi, his father, J.Y. Lee and his older sister, Jennifer Lee.

Jae Chan Lee poses for a portrait.

Photo by Eric Woodall

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Jae Chan Lee poses with his family on the porch of his childhood home in Eugene. Lee’s family built and moved into the house in 2004.

Photo by Eric Woodall

Surrounding the family’s five-bedroom apartment was a mixture of residential communities and commercial buildings.

With new apartments and shops popping up all the time, a quick walk from his home could lead Lee to the newly built Samsung Plaza, a 10-story shopping mall or neighborhood street food carts. He also recalls frequenting his local ABC Store for school supplies and local arcade rooms as a kid.

Living in one of the most educated countries in the world, the one thing that stood out the most to Lee in South Korea was how rigorous the schooling was in comparison to the U.S. The first 12 years of schooling for every South Korean lead up to a very important test: the Suneung, or the College Scholastic Ability Test. Although it can be equated to the American SAT, this eight-hour test can determine the fate of a student’s life.

Not passing the test with flying colors means one more year of preparation for a second chance.

“Life in Korea was pretty intense, like education itself was pretty intense,” Lee says. “You go to school earlier and you even go to school on Saturdays, and when you’re done with school you do other things like personal tutoring, English and piano lessons.”

Within these memories of hard, non-stop schooling, however, were fun memories made between classes. With the weekly allowances he got from his family as a child, one of Lee’s favorite things to spend his money on was food. Living in a country famous for its cuisine, Lee’s small amount of free time was spent trying local foods.

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“I used to always go buy fish cakes and spicy rice cakes on the street as a really young kid,” Lee says. “You’d eat and then go and do the studying and then go back home, but when I was coming back home, I would always stop by the food carts.”

Along with the food from local vendors, Lee also found joy in making food at home for him and his sister. His specialty was instant ramen with a twist.

“JC always had really creative ramen recipes, so whenever I wanted to eat ramen, I always asked him to cook ramen for me,” Jennifer Lee says. “He would put in seafood or he would put in bean sprouts. He would add little toppings that I would never try and make it really great.”

Despite these light-hearted memories of growing up in South Korea, the intensity of the country’s schooling paired with a very competitive university and corporate system eventually pushed Choi and J.Y. Lee to move to Eugene, Oregon, with JC Lee and his sister in 1999.

“It’s a system that is very hard to succeed in,” JC says. “The corporate world and drinking culture just doesn’t really have that ‘happy effect’ in the family.”

The drinking culture in South Korea is a known problem, according to the Monsoon Project, a student publication that discusses issues affecting the Asia-Pacific and Australia. “An

invitation to drink with an office superior is a great compliment that should not be turned down,” the study reads, making drinking for business workers non-negotiable.

With these issues of alcoholism showing links to the harsh, stressful schooling and work environments of South Korea, JC’s parents decided it would be best for their two children to immigrate to the United States. JC's dad, J.Y. Lee, who initially traveled back and forth between South Korea and the U.S., decided to stay in South Korea permanently about 10 years ago.

“His heart is really in South Korea,” Jennifer says. “That’s when my parents kind of decided that my mom wanted to stay here and my dad wanted to stay in Korea.”

The Eugene Experience After moving to Eugene, where his aunt was already living, JC and his sister started attending school at the local elementary and high schools. Being three years older than JC, Jennifer went to Willamette High School as a freshman, while JC went to Clearlake Elementary School as a sixth-grader.

Although the schools had different names, locations and age groups, there was one thing that both of these schools had in common: the lack of diversity. For JC and Jennifer, the absence of other Asian Americans that they could relate to made it harder for both of them to fit in. Coming from a Korean neighborhood that had little to no white people, becoming racial minorities in the Eugene community was a complete change in perspective.

“It was a rough transition,” Jennifer says. “I was the only Korean girl and I think I was only one of three Asian American students in school. Because I don’t see a lot of my own representation in school, it was hard.”

Even though the siblings had taken English as a required class in South Korea, neither of them were very fluent in the language when they moved to Eugene. As with many child immigrants from non-English speaking countries, JC and Jennifer were both enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. With the help of this class, MTV and the radio, JC and Jennifer eventually caught on to the English language.

North Korea

Seoul Seongnam

South Korea

In contrast to her young children, Choi, a first-generation immigrant who immigrated as an adult, never learned to speak English to the extent that her U.S.-educated children did. Like many one-and-a-half generation immigrants, JC and Jennifer helped break this language barrier for their mother by becoming her translators.

During his first year of schooling, JC struggled to find a sense of belonging among his peers and his community.

Although JC's outgoing personality made it easy to make friends and meet new people, he says his sense of self and of his own identity were still in the making.

“I think the first couple years were a little bit difficult,” JC says. “As all Asian Americans, when they first come to America, they are really lost. It takes like three or four years for them to go through that phase.”

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One thing that helped JC connect with his fellow classmates was through sports. By playing sports like basketball, baseball and soccer with kids his age, language wasn’t an issue when interacting with other children. Unlike in Seongnam, which JC recalls only having cement and dirt soccer fields, the schools in Eugene had large, green grass fields. Some of JC's best memories in school took place on these fields during recess.

“That’s kind of how I bonded with my friends when I first came,” JC Lee says. “That’s kind of how I learned some English: just by being playful.”

The first few years of living in the U.S. were years of social struggles but also years of personal growth, he says. It was during this transition from the Korean lifestyle to the American way of life that JC and Jennifer's relationship grew stronger.

Both JC and Jennifer had to face and experience the same types of personal struggles of being a part of the one-and-a-half generation.

“When we were in Korea, we were kind of far apart because my sister had her friends and I had my friends,” JC says. “But when we came here, we were both Korean American, one-pointfive generation, so we kind of got super tight. We definitely have a special bond between me and my older sister.”

Finding A Balance It wasn’t until JC was in high school that he began to truly discover who he was as a Korean American.

“When I was in high school, I really didn’t know what I was because there was nobody like me around,” JC says. “But after a while, you kind of find yourself and the fact that you’re able to share the culture with other people who are not really familiar with it.”

Although this way of thinking helped to prompt JC in the right direction towards his desire to find himself, it wasn’t until his time at college that he started to find a balance between his American and Korean identities.

“Korean culture is a very long culture; it’s like 2000 years of history that you have to learn. But when I was in Korea, it didn’t intrigue me that much,” JC says. “But now that I’m here in America and I learned about 200 years of United States history, there’s definitely a lot of depth to Asian history.”

It was in 2009, when JC was still in college, that he started to see where his life path was heading after his mother bought a local Eugene restaurant called Noodle Bowl.

When he first started working at Noodle Bowl, he had no experience with running a restaurant or cooking food other than instant ramen, but after watching many YouTube videos about the craft and creation of Korean cuisine and practicing these skills every day, JC Lee’s knowledge of the Korean culture and cuisine grew.

“For most of my life, I always thought I was the minority, I am different from everyone else here,” JC says. “But as I grew up and learned about my culture more, I really thought that I’m 10 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Jae Chan Lee mixes a bowl of bibimbap at Noodle Bowl in Eugene, Oregon.

Photo by Eric Woodall

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With dishes such as bibimbap, JC always makes sure customers know that there is a particular way to mix . . . JC sometimes takes it upon himself to mix the dish himself at the table

unique and I want to be able to share my culture, where I came from, with other people from the United States so that they understand what I’m all about.”

Through the restaurant’s food and the interactions he had with his customers, JC was able to showcase his knowledge about the Korean culture.

Although JC Lee and his mother, Choi, had many fights during the first few years of owning and running Noodle Bowl, the mother-and-son duo eventually found their rhythm.

Working with each other cooking and serving every day helped strengthen their bond and understanding of one another.

“In the beginning, my mom saw JC as more of a young son. She had to take care of him,” Jennifer says. “But now, the relationship kind of changed and now it’s more JC taking care of my mom, and I can definitely see her depending more on him.”

Life with Noodle Bowl “He’s really enthusiastic,” Kevin Brown, a long-time server at Noodle Bowl, says about JC. “He cares a lot about the restaurant, so he’s very willing to walk people through the menu and show new people what is what; what’s popular, what’s good, suggest things.”

With dishes such as bibimbap, a Korean rice bowl topped with vegetables and meats, JC always makes sure customers know that there is a particular way to mix, prepare and eat the traditional Korean dish, Brown says. To ensure that the customer won’t just pick at the individual ingredients, JC sometimes takes it upon himself to mix the dish himself at the table.

“Sometimes it’s awesome and they’re totally into it and sometimes they’re like ‘Whoa, what is happening?’” Brown says.

Along with running Noodle Bowl, JC has come to be a part of many organizations throughout the Eugene community, including the Eugene Korean Association, the Oregon Asian Celebration and InEugene Real Estate. With his real estate office only a block away from Noodle Bowl, JC Lee has no problem jumping back and forth between his two jobs and passions.

The organization that JC is most grateful for, however, is his church.

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“If it wasn’t for the church and the volunteering since I was young, I don’t think that I’d be able to do the kind of things that I do right now,” JC says. “Church was the one entity that is all about giving back. It’s not about you, but it’s about giving back.”

For Choi, the Eugene/Springfield Korean Church has seemed to have an even greater effect on her life after immigrating to the U.S. than it had on himself, JC says.

“Finding the church that she really enjoys serving for is one of the key things that she wants to stay here for the rest of her life,” JC says. “She really sees that it was her calling to come to Eugene to be able to to help the church that she serves. Every time she is volunteering for the church and getting involved with the church she feels the most lively at that time.”

A Bridge Between Cultures When the house-hunters began asking more specific questions about the condo and the area, JC looked to EunHee Kim for answers. Being a first-generation immigrant from Korea, there was a slight language barrier between Kim and the interested buyers. This sense of disconnect was soon broken as JC asked Kim the question in Korean, bridging the language gap with ease. This flow of information, moving from JC to Kim, back to JC, and finally, to the interested buyers, carried on through the open house.

Acting as a bridge between both the Korean community and the Eugene community, as he did at Kim’s open house, will forever be one of JC’s personal jobs as a one-and-a-half generation immigrant. What he’s learned from living in two different worlds with two different ways of speaking and acting has led him to become an active member throughout the communities.

Through his job as a realtor, his restaurant, his organizations and his everyday interactions with the residents of Eugene, JC now feels like Eugene is where he belongs.

Living in the U.S. for over 20 years and experiencing life as a one-and-a-half generation Korean American immigrant, he says he feels like he’s made an impact within his community.

“If I go to any other place, I’m really nobody. I’m just another guy who’s just living his life,” JC says. “But being consistent and being persistent of the things that I do on a daily basis, I feel like I really became somebody in this town.”

Die Mauer

A story of a young woman’s life in a divided Germany Written by Sam Nguyen Illustrations by Eleanor Klock

S

he didn’t quite understand what she was watching.

Sitting in her childhood home outside of East Berlin, Katharina Jones watched an East German official fumble through the announcement: The Berlin Wall was open.

The late evening news reported that people were moving towards the border. It started as a small trickle of people, unsure but hopeful that what they had heard on the news was true.

Unprepared border guards turned them away at first, but people kept coming.

Soon the trickle of people would turn into the largest celebration the world has ever seen.

Jones woke up to her father’s whispering the next morning.

She says he beamed with excitement in the darkness. Hearing the news in her father's voice, it finally resonated with her. She could now travel freely between East and West Germany.

In the early morning hours, they drank champagne to the sound of the radio.

After celebrating with her father, Jones headed off to her early-morning nursing shift. Even at work, everyone’s eyes followed the news on television screens. While she was at work, her younger siblings had already entered West Berlin without even showing their identification cards. The barrier of applying for a visa, paying fees and going through interrogation in order to cross into West Germany was gone.

At the end of their work day, Jones and her family walked the Bornholmer Strasse bridge, one of the checkpoints in the Berlin Wall. On the bridge, Jones could barely move with so many people headed towards West Berlin. The stench of gasoil exhaust from the East German Trabant cars trying to cross remains with her to this day.

On the other side of the Wall, welcoming West Berliners awaited. People greeted each other with hugs, laughter and tears. They drank and danced with strangers as if they were old friends. People exchanged their stories with each other.

Previously intimidating and removed police officers became friendly and joined the celebrating masses.

It was a party for the birth of a new Germany.

Geteilte Deutschland After World War II, with Germany defeated, the Allies decided that they would split the country into four zones, each occupied by one of the Allies. Although Germany’s capital was in the East, Berlin was also split into four by the Allies. Seven years later, in 1952, the U.S.S.R. decided to close the border between West and East Germany, officially setting up the Iron Curtain that divided the capitalist and socialist powers.

Losing their ability to travel to the West, many East Germans turned to the more accessible West Berlin. To stem the East Germans leaving the country, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) started constructing a wall that divided West and East Berlin in 1961. The Berlin Wall, which stood for 28 years, was a Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 13

disillusioned with the GDR’s promises and cut ties with the party.

He preferred to think for himself and encouraged his children to do the same.

“We could all of a sudden go out and speak our mind, which was a totally new experience” Jones

Meiske’s critical and independent qualities passed off onto Jones. Like her father, Jones grew critical of the GDR. She constantly saw flaws in the East German system and wanted to change them. She dreamed of a better socialist state that could give people good lives and security.

“She was quite independent in her way of thinking and what she wanted to do,” Jones’ sister Dorothea Meiske says.

Jones wanted change in the GDR because she couldn’t imagine herself living the same life that her parents had. While she loved her family life, Jones felt that the traditional path was not for her. She longed for a place where she could feel at home.

In East Germany, the limits made it difficult to find that comfort.

“I was sure I would not spend my life in that narrow country,” Jones says.

Die Wende symbol of the Cold War tensions between the capitalist West and the communist East.

For Jones, who was born in East Germany in 1970, the fall of the Berlin Wall would disrupt her life in ways that she never predicted and that would last beyond her time in Germany.

Leben im Osten Jones grew up in the small rural town of SchwanebeckWest, right on the outskirts of East Berlin. Her life was normal

by East German standards. Like most, Jones secretly watched West German television. Despite seeing glimpses of the West on television, Jones grew up knowing that she’d never be able to see it in real life because of East Germany’s strict travel regulations.

In East Germany, the most important rule to follow was supporting the GDR. One's livelihood depended on it. Lack of support could result in threats of unemployment, limited access to education and arrest. If people were critical of the GDR, they tended to criticize in private because the stasi, the GDR’s secret police, could be listening in. Growing up with these restrictions, Jones says they felt natural.

“There was this kind of control on everything you did,” Jones says. “We used to joke that in our country that everything that was not specifically allowed was forbidden.”

While Jones grew up tiptoeing around the limits of East German life, she was free to speak her mind at home. Criticizing the GDR was a common conversation at dinner in Jones’ house.

Jones’ father, Wolfgang Meiske, was a critic of the GDR. Born to working-class parents in Berlin, Meiske identified as a communist in his youth. He was barely entering his twenties when the Wall was built. As he grew older, he became 14 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

After moving to East Berlin when she was 18, Jones was quick to join the opposition movement. Through a connection with a friend, Jones joined an oppositional group called the Umwelt-Bibliothek (Environmental Library), which was concerned with the environmental damage caused by the dated industrial practices in the GDR. Jones worked as a librarian, keeping track of the UmweltBibliothek’s collection of prohibited books and information about the environmental issues in the GDR. Jones also wrote a few articles for the group’s newspaper Umweltblätter, which spread information concerning politics and protests.

Housed in a church, the Umwelt-Bibliothek stayed just outside of the GDR’s reach, and it quickly became a hub for the opposition movement that led to the fall of the Wall.

While Jones says she believed in the mission of the group, she also joined because of the thrill of being part of a movement. It made her feel alive. These were the people that made the news and pushed for change in the GDR. They were outspoken and self-confident, qualities that she wanted herself.

At times, Jones was even intimidated by some of the group members’ confidence because these were not qualities that were encouraged in the controlled GDR. “I definitely wanted to be part of the change, but I also wanted to be part of these cool people,” Jones says.

In the months leading up to the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Jones says she basically lived in the Environmental Library. The church floors became her bed and organizing opposition demonstrations became her job.

Just like her group, there were others just as unsatisfied with the GDR. After the revelation of a fraudulent election in May 1989, people began fighting back against the GDR harder than they had before. East Germans wanted civil and political rights that they had been deprived of for 40 years.

By autumn, tensions built up as demonstrations occurred regularly throughout the country. East Germans were growing restless, demanding the same rights and living standards that people in the West had.

Jones says that it was clear that the police would come down hard on the protesters on the anniversary of the GDR’s establishment. She was scared of the dangers of protesting in the street. She knew the police would not hold back on using force and arrest.

When the anniversary came, Jones watched the protests inside the Environmental Library, where she took care of the injured protesters and helped organize the demonstrations.

Despite the police’s force, the protesters planned even larger demonstrations for the next few days expecting even fiercer reactions.

On October 9, two days after the GDR’s anniversary, young East Germans gathered for the demonstration. It steadily grew, but the protesters didn’t meet the same resistance that they had days before. Jones was experiencing a new freedom with her fellow East Berliners.

“We could all of a sudden go out and speak our mind, which was a totally new experience,” Jones says about the October 9 demonstrations. “If you grow up with that, it kind of goes without saying, but experiencing it as a gift was quite special.”

October 9 marked the beginning of the end of the GDR.

Mauerfall About a month later, people flowed towards the Berlin Wall after the unexpected announcement that East Germans could travel freely to West Germany.

The GDR originally planned to allow regulated travel between West and East Germany because of the increased social pressure. However, with little information at hand, East German party official Günter Schabowski gave an improvised answer to a journalist’s question about when the new travel policy would take effect.

"As far as I know — effective immediately, without delay,” Schabowski said after scanning his note for the right answer.

On November 9, 1989, with his answers, people began moving towards the Wall.

When Jones arrived in West Berlin, she was overwhelmed by the colorful billboards and noise of the other side. West Berliners warmly welcomed the crowds flowing in. It starkly contrasted to the gray quiet that Jones was used to in the East.

While she had seen glimpses of life in the West on television, seeing it in real life was a completely new experience.

Jones, in the midst of celebrating, felt both freedom and grief.

She knew that imminent unification would give her freedoms that she didn’t have before. She could speak her mind and choose her occupation. She could also travel out of the country like she had wanted to for so long.

“It meant more freedom, even if that doesn’t mean that everybody feels better or that everybody is better off,” Jones says.

At the same time, she knew that the work of the Environmental Library and other groups like it would come to an end with the open borders. They were just starting to make progress in the GDR. With the newly open borders and expectation of reunification, it was clear that the more wealthy and capable Western system would take over in the East.

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“First, it didn’t come so fast. I mean, we could go to West Berlin and come back,” Jones says. “But then it came to us.”

Jones remembers the day when the GDR adopted the West German currency, the stores had changed overnight. She stood in front of the shelves, not recognizing the new colorful products from the West. The plain East German products could not compete with goods from the West.

The everyday products East Germans would use were no longer on shelves, and small things such as using money and phone booths became difficult.

Sending in applications and going to interviews to convince someone to hire her for a position was completely new. It was strange for East Germans like Jones, who came from a system that guaranteed them jobs.

Dorothea Meiske, who was in high school at the time, was excited by the newly opened borders. Like Jones, she hated the travel restrictions in East Germany. But in the months leading up to the fall of the wall, Dorothea joined the demonstrations resisting the GDR without much concern for the consequences.

She hoped that these demonstrations would bring about the change that she already felt coming.

“It was a lot of uncertainty,” Dorothea says. “For me, in a good way. Things that felt so stuck, so it is forever, kind of shifted suddenly. There was a lot of possibility and a lot of hope.”

In school, the students no longer took the pre-army training seriously. The pre-army training was a crucial step in career development in the GDR, but Dorothea says that it felt like they were on the verge of disappearing. The GDR was losing its grip.

“They did have the security of a cradle-to-grave minimal social support system,” Peter Laufer says. Laufer is a journalism professor at the University of Oregon and worked as a journalist in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. “They could get education.

They could get a job. And they could eat, even if they were not the choices or the quality that was on the West side.”

The quick union of the two countries’ economies left thousands of East German professionals unemployed. And everything that East Germans had owned in the GDR became subject to new rules, causing many of them to lose their properties and security.

“That part was really awful, especially for the generation of my parents,” Jones says. “My father sent out, I don’t know, hundreds of applications because all of a sudden his position was endangered.”

While official German reunification was still months away, the process began with the people. Neither side was ready for the other.

“Even so with all the things building up, we didn’t expect that. And it was not even what anybody was fighting for because nobody believed it. We were fighting for a little bit of freedom,” Dorothea says. “I don’t think anybody really imagined that it would just be open. So fast. Or at all.”

While West Berliners initially welcomed people like old friends, the influx of people became too much for the small piece of the West in East Germany. Laufer describes the prejudices that grew in the months following the fall of the wall in his book "Iron Curtain Rising."

Unlike Jones, her father was ecstatic that the Wall fell.

Having grown up in a united Berlin, the establishment of the Wall deeply touched people in Jones’ father’s generation.

Jones says that in the time before the Wall came down, her father told her about a dream where he was walking in a demonstration, surrounded by young people. In the dream, he had trouble keeping up with the crowd, but instead of falling behind, the people around him took his arms and supported him, carrying him along with them.

“The new crowding was soon deplored,” Laufer writes. “The shabby dress and naïve window-shopping of the East Germans were derided by sophisticated West Berliners.”

Ossis und Wessis Treffen Sich

“After the Wall came down, they wanted to be full, accepted, real Germans, but they felt like second-class Germans,” Jones says. “That feeling had always been there in the way we grew up.”

The celebration continued for about seven days after the Wall fell. The ecstasy of this historic moment would quickly fade as the rashness of the fall kicked in and people from both sides became overwhelmed.

16 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Jones also quickly experienced the prejudices that came with reunification. Once, while she was working as a nurse, a patient’s daughter stood by complaining to Jones about how lazy and deceptive East Germans were. Meanwhile, Jones was lifting the woman’s mother from a hospital bed to a chair.

The GDR began building the concrete wall along the West and East Berlin border in 1961 to limit the increasing emigration of East Germans to West Berlin.

Brandenburg Gate two years before the fall of the Berlin wall

Public Domain

As she began to interact more with people from the West, Jones says she found some Western habits to be cold and frustrating. In East Germany, it was natural for friends to spend all their time together without talking about it. In the West, friends were more independent. Jones observed this individualism in how each person would pay for themselves when going out to eat in West Germany.

Mauer im Kopf

“That would not happen in East Germany,” Jones says. “ Our East German style was sticky. Friends really stuck together.”

The adverse economic effects of reunification that occurred in the East have not been completely remedied. According to Laufer, East Germany still remains less developed than West Germany. After years of prejudice and the lack of development in the region, East Germans felt neglected by their own country. The feeling of being marginalized gave way to right-wing sentiments in the East.

As much as Western culture frustrated Jones at times, she also sought out new opportunities she only had access to after the Wall fell. She looked at West Germans and tried to learn from their strengths while also keeping the parts of her that she liked.

As she started working with West Germans, she found that she liked their drive and clarity.

“Later I found that there’s a lot to it that I actually really liked about their way of doing things,” Jones says. “They tend to be clearer often, more outspoken, more articulate and more openminded.”

With the integration of the Western capitalist system came easier access to anything that Jones was interested in.

Jones picked up books on topics ranging from philosophy to psychology. She also tried different jobs and traveled to different countries. She once lied about being an author to get a job creating movie audio for the blind. Another time, she ended up working for an environmental organization in Russia in the middle of the biting cold winter. She only stayed there for six weeks before returning home.

While many of her jobs never worked out for very long, Jones says she is grateful that she had the freedom to explore her options. Without the restrictions of the GDR, she could live a free life with all the good and bad that came with it.

“Looking back, I think that for me it was sometimes really hard,” Jones says, “but also deeply satisfying, in the hindsight, to try so many things.”

While Jones has since moved to Eugene, Oregon, she still keeps up with what’s happening in Germany. In the news, she sees the same problems that were there 30 years ago. There is still a divide between West and East Germany, even without a wall.

“A lot of the far-right, anti-immigrant, racist attitudes that are exemplified by the political party Alternative für Deutschland, the AfD. It has a strong base in the Eastern states,” Laufer says.

Jones says she acknowledges the right-wing politics that have taken root in some of the East. Still, when she sees comments in the news that perpetuate East Germans stereotypes, she gets angry because she knows that it is not the whole story.

Jones remembers East Germans as being warm and close like her friends that she made in her youth. She remembers them as capable and smart like her father. And she remembers them most of all as strong for resisting their government, both quietly and out on the streets.

Jones knows that the scars that the Wall left behind on the German people are still healing.

“You have these huge differences and you cannot just say ‘Okay, let’s make it all equal,’” Jones says about the divide within Germany. “It takes time. It takes generations.”

Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 17

STAY FOR DINNER How Oregon Hillel is using Jewish values to support students and build community

Challah bread is broken among groups at Hillel as part of a ceremonial occasion. Traditionally, Shabbat and Jewish holiday meals begin with members reciting the Kiddush over a cup of wine. The head of house recites a blessing over the bread and the bread is torn and distributed among individuals at the meal.

Photo by Keven Salazar

18 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Written by Madeline Ryan Photography by Keven Salazar Illustrations by Garrett Dare

O

n Friday nights, the green house on the corner seems to glow. Possibly overlooked during the day, it takes on a new warmth by 6 p.m., when the front window is filled with the silhouette of several dozen people sitting together in a candle-lit room. There is music spilling out the front door each time it opens for the gentle stream of visitors. This is Oregon Hillel.

Oregon Hillel, the state’s chapter of Hillel International, is a Jewish student community center that serves University of Oregon and Oregon State University students. They hold Shabbat, traditionally a Jewish time for rest and prayer, every Friday night. The entire evening, from the service to the free home-cooked dinner after, is open to anyone who wants to come.

Hillel serves as a center for students figuring out who they want to be as they move into adulthood. Students come from a variety of backgrounds. Some had experiences with overbearing or notably absent influences of Judaism. Others felt solidarity against anti-Semitic violence across the country or fury from anti-Semitic remarks in high school classes. But everyone has questions about identity and belonging.

The evening begins with a 30 minute service in the dining room. There are rows of students sitting on loosely organized chairs facing the students who are leading the service. Leah Barian is one of the students that leads services. She plays guitar while she sings. This is Barian’s second year helping lead services at Hillel. She is a sophomore music history major at UO.

“In a way, I was very active because of my grandma, and her connection and her need to educate people,” Barian says.

“We did a lot of the traditions. I just never went to a synagogue.

So going to Hillel was a new aspect of things for me.”

One of the most significant aspects of the community Hillel provides are the services being led by students. It’s a new experience for students to have peers leading services, because most students that come to Hillel grew up going to services led by their rabbi. Peers filling the roles that authority figures once did changes the tone of the service completely.t

" If you grow

up going to services, you can go through the motions

"

Barian leading services is unique because she had never led a service before attending Hillel, and she had never even heard any of the songs. “If you grow up going to services, you can go through the motions,” she says. “But I had never done that.”

Barian is Jewish, but growing up, she and her family were never members of a synagogue. Her Jewish identity was encouraged in her family as a part of her cultural heritage, rather than as a religious observance. Her paternal grandmother survived the Holocaust, escaping from Czechoslovakia before Hitler invaded in 1939. When her grandmother immigrated to the United States, she was eager to educate people about the Holocaust. She then founded a community for Humanist Jews, who usually focus on the culture and heritage of Judaism, rather than the religion.

Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 19

Sarah Birch (left) and Leah Barian (right) lead the Friday night student service at Oregon Hillel, a student-centric Jewish community at the University of Oregon.

Photo by Keven Salazar

“Hillel has always wanted to focus on things being student-led, because it’s easier to engage if you have your peers up there leading the service,” Barian says. “And there’s not as much pressure as a leader. If you mess up, it's not the end of the world. We’re all just having a good time singing.”

Like most of the people in Hillel, Barian isn’t dressed up for the service. She wears a black turtleneck, jeans and chacos.

Around her neck, shining off a background of black fabric, hangs a golden Star of David necklace. She hasn’t always had the necklace. Wearing a symbol of her identity became crucial to her after the Pittsburgh shooting in 2018, when 11 people were killed in a synagogue during Passover.

“I hadn’t really worn anything that would identify me as Jewish before, but after the shooting, I specifically bought a Star of David necklace, and I was like, ‘I’m going to wear this every day,’” Barian says, gently touching her necklace. “I felt it was ridiculous that I should have to hide who I am. Especially after my whole childhood growing up, I hated my hair. But that’s a stereotypical thing. Jews have curly hair. But it was still something I struggled with a lot.”

While the service is going on, some students retreat upstairs to play games, choosing to not be present for the 20 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

service at all. Aaron Silberman, also a sophomore at UO, is occasionally one of those students. Unlike Leah, who attended Hillel the first Friday of her first term, Silberman was unsure if Hillel was right for him.

Silberman’s family are members of a synagogue, and he attended services regularly growing up. When he got to college, his parents encouraged him to go to Hillel so he would continue to be involved with the Jewish community.

“I knew it was an organization that was there for me,” Silberman says. “But I also felt like I wanted to do my own thing in college. And with both of my parents telling me I should go, I kind of looked at it like, I would be doing it because they wanted me to, not because I wanted to. So I didn’t go for all of fall term.”

Silberman had struggled to find a welcoming group of friends during his freshman year, and Hillel offered a community that was there when he needed it the most.

“I didn’t really make friends at school until this year. Last year, I was plagued by bad friendships, but that’s how freshman year is. This year, I actually found friends that treat me with basic human dignity,” he says, laughing. “I wouldn’t have found that without Hillel.”

Part of Silberman’s hesitance to commit to his religion further has to do with new perspectives he’s gained in college.

During his first term at UO, Silberman took a class on genesis that challenged his views on the religion, forcing him to ask questions about what he believed in a way he never had before.

“Having the opportunity to learn for myself, that’s been a really pivotal thing in how I view my religion and how I view me.

I don’t know if I believe more or if I believe less, but I’m building my own foundation as opposed to having that foundation thrust upon me,” he says.

Despite questioning his relationship with his religion, Silberman is planning on going on a Birthright Israel trip this summer, a free trip for Jewish people who are 18 to 26 years old, to explore the birthplace of Judaism.

“I’m looking forward to the trip and looking forward to being in the holy land,” Silberman says. “It’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

When the service is over, everyone puts away their prayer books, called Siddurim, and they get up to rearrange the space into a functional dining room. They bring out folding tables and spread tablecloths. When they’re finished, they gather in the foyer of the house. First, students pass paper cups filled with wine or grape juice around on trays, and when everyone has a cup in hand, they say the Hebrew prayer for wine together. The cups are thrown away as three large loaves of challah bread are uncovered and distributed. People form clusters around each loaf, every person resting their hand upon it. They say the Hebrew blessing for bread quickly, laughing and making excited glances to each other before ripping the loaf apart into fist-sized chunks. The bread is gone only moments later, in the time it takes for everyone to form a messy line toward the table where dinner is laid out.

Hillel hosts home-cooked dinners every Friday night. Andy Gitelson, the executive director of Oregon Hillel, often cooks the dinners himself in Hillel’s kitchen. But students also frequently come volunteer to help prepare the meal in the hours before the service begins.

“We have some students that come and help us all day Friday and get ready for Shabbat, but they have no desire to sit in that room and pray,” Gitelson says while preparing chicken and vegetable skewers to be barbequed. “And that’s okay. Come volunteer for your community. Create something for everybody else to take part in. Take pride in that, and have a great Friday night.”

Hillel just changed its mission statement last year. It is now "a catalyst for connecting students, building community and inspiring leadership through Jewish values," according to its website. This is different from previous years, when its mission statement said it was mainly dedicated to Jewish students.

Mecah Klein stands during services as scripture is read for the Siddur.

Photo by Keven Salazar

Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 21

This motivation to include more people in Hillel has a lot to do with Hillel’s hospitality, but it also emphasizes encouraging diversity and acceptance by welcoming the rest of the student body into the Jewish tradition.

“If a non-Jewish student sees anti-Semitism happening on campus, they don’t think about just some random Jewish community,” Gitelson says. “They think, ‘No, I’ve visited that community. I’ve been a part of that community. I’ve eaten dinner there on a Friday night, and this can’t stand.’”

Hillel still devotes a lot of its resources and time to serving the Jewish students on campus. It advocates for Jewish students at UO, often helping to facilitate the observation of important holidays. The first week of fall term this year started a day late to observe Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. The observance was the product of five years of discussion with the UO admissions office.

“Sometimes when you’re in a minority community, simply recognizing the conflict, saying, ‘As a university, we recognize this is a conflict for you’. That can be really reassuring,” Gitelson says.

Gitelson emphasized that Hillel’s central role is to empower its students.

“It is certainly our approach that we don’t think we have all the answers,” he says. “I want students to see that Judaism can look like a lot of different things.”

“And I do think that’s where a lot of students are at — a question of how do they fit and where do they fit.”

Aaron Silberman’s younger sister, Lilah Silberman, is a freshman at UO who is beginning to figure that out for herself.

The one thing she’s sure of, however, is that she appreciates being Jewish more now.

“In high school, I had a tenth grade English teacher make a gas chamber joke,” Lilah says. “There were swastikas drawn in school lockers and bathrooms. But school leadership didn’t do anything about it.”

“Here, I can be Jewish,” she says. “I feel accepted, and I really like that. I have always felt safe here.”

For most of her life growing up, her experience being Jewish wasn’t exactly what she wanted it to be. “My parents always forced me to go to services for holidays and I’d hate it. It was just boring,” Lilah says. “But now I’m in college, and there’s Hillel,” she says, smiling widely. “It makes me like being Jewish.”

Lilah likes to stay at Hillel even after dinner, because after most people have left, the remaining students will reposition the tables in the dining room for game night. Game night is a new, entirely student-organized tradition that just began this year. Students bring their own board games and card games to Shabbat so they can play and spend more time together when it’s over.

22 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Maddie Schaeffer, Hillel’s development associate, is excited about how the energy around Hillel is growing. “You can feel it when you’re in the room. You can feel that people want to be here,” Schaeffer says. As a staff member, she is particularly excited about game nights. “That is such a good symbol of a strong Jewish community. We set up Shabbat. We cook for Shabbat. We clean up for Shabbat. Then we leave, and students are still there. That means a lot.”

The strong community Hillel provides has already made a large impact on Lilah’s experience in college as she navigates a new environment. “I look forward to it every week,” she says.

“Every day I get closer to Friday, I know that it’s going to get better. Fridays are my favorite because I get to be with people who are a little more understanding of the stress, of the friend troubles, of the experience.”

“It’s a community,” Lilah says. “Everyone wants to hear what you have to say. Everyone is there for each other, and that’s what makes it so nice.”

" Here, I can be Jewish . . . I feel accepted, and I really like that.

I have always felt safe here

"

“Times have changed,” Gitelson says. “We see our values as being here for all students.”

A man opens up about being abused as a child, 60 years later

with

Treating Trauma Psilocybin

Warning: This story contains descriptions of child abuse Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 23

Marty Clements, 72, poses for a portrait shot in Eugene, Oregon. Clements uses small doses of psilocybin mushrooms to help treat his PTSD and face the traumatic memories he was left with from years of child abuse. (To maintain anonymity and privacy, Clements’s real name and identity were withheld from these photos per Clements’s request.)

Photo by Payton Bruni

Written by Jade Yamazaki Stewart Photography by Payton Bruni Illustrations by Sasha Heye

S

oon after Marty Clements retired, the nightmares started.

He’d jolt awake from them in a frenzy. Sometimes, he’d be so anxious that he’d throw up.

That was 10 years ago. Clements is 72 now.

“When they first started happening, I couldn’t even remember what the hell they were about,” he says. “All I knew was that I would wake up in this mentally wrecked state of mind.”

Clements struggled with depression and anxiety for most of his life, but the nightmares brought him to new levels of misery.

“They were just my mind going back to childhood situations,” he says. His mind was unoccupied with work now that he was retired, and dark memories from the past emerged from the murky waters of his subconscious.

He describes a recurring nightmare.

His stepmother was interrogating the kids about makeup powder that was dusted on the bathroom floor. Like always, his stepmother was picking on Clements more than the others. She took him into the garage, to his “beating spot.” He stood in the three foot gap between the washer and dryer and the car, a black and yellow 1957 four-door Chevy.

Clements’ biological mother died in a car crash when he was four years old, and his father remarried. Clements had two stepsisters, but he was the only sibling from the previous marriage. He says his stepmother especially targeted him for being the “foreign child.”

“She just started pounding on me and pounding on me and pounding on me until I caved,” he says. He told his stepmother he’d spilled the powder, even though he hadn’t.

She started beating him when he was seven, and kept beating him regularly until he turned 16 — that’s when he moved out of the house.

Clements’ voice is packed with emotion as he speaks. It happened 65 years ago, but he’s replayed the situation over and over in his head.

He went to counseling soon after the nightmares started, but he couldn’t figure out what they were about or why he was having them. His therapist couldn’t either.

His little sister was the one who’d spilled the powder on the floor to spite her mother. But Clements didn’t know that while his stepmother was beating him — he only found this out five years ago.

Then four or five months after the nightmares started, he started remembering them.

While he is open to talking about being abused as a child now, he kept his trauma to himself for almost 60 years.

24 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

“Hell, I was only seven years old.”

“The more times I tell this story, with more depth and detail, the easier it becomes.�

Marty Clements

Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 25

26 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Marty Clements’s stepmother began beating him at age seven and continued to do so until Clements moved out of the house at age 16. The years of abuse left Clements with depression, anxiety and PTSD. Clements says that psilocybin mushrooms have helped him find happiness and work through his trauma more than prescription antianxiety medication or antidepressants ever did. (To maintain anonymity and privacy, Clements’s real name and identity were withheld from these photos per Clements’s request.)

Photo by Payton Bruni

“I was married the first time for 13 years, and I never told that woman. And after that, I was married again for 24 years, 11 months and something days, and I never told that woman,” he says. “It was buried,” he pauses. “That’s a burial job.”

Clements attributes his newfound openness to a new habit — eating mushrooms containing the psychedelic drug psilocybin every day.

Since he started taking the mushrooms in August 2019, he says he’s been feeling happier. And he’s made strides in working through his depression, his anxiety and his PTSD from child abuse.

“I’m more open, straightforward, more present, more grounded,” Clements says. “I can laugh at my bad attitude now.”

There’s only one issue. Psilocybin, the psychoactive substance in mushrooms, is federally a Schedule I drug, on the same legal level as heroin, ecstacy and LSD — substances the Drug Enforcement Administration says have no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse.

People have been using psilocybin for thousands of years.

Researchers found sculptures of psilocybin mushrooms at archaeological sites in Mesoamerica dating back to 500 B.C. The oldest archaeological evidence shows that humans have been eating these mushrooms for over 10,000 years, according to a paper by ethnobotanist Georgio Samorini.

And recent studies show the drug’s potential for treating PTSD, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. So scientists, psychologists and activists are pushing to get psilocybin decriminalized, legalized or licensed for therapeutic use in the U.S. Last year, psilocybin was decriminalized in Denver, Colorado, and Oakland, California. In Oregon, two bills relating to psilocybin may be on the ballot this year: initiative petitions 44 and 34. If passed, 44 will be the first to decriminalize psilocybin on the state level in the United States, and 34 will be the first to license it for therapeutic use.

Psilocybin is not physically addictive, according to Michael Pollan’s 2018 book, “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.” It’s also nearly impossible to die from an overdose of the drug.

But “bad trips” sometimes happen. These experiences can be psychologically scarring

and can damage your mental health instead of making it better. However, bad trips normally stem from being in the wrong mindset for a trip or the wrong environment. And since psilocybin research restarted in the 1990s, people have been given more than a thousand doses of psilocybin, and nobody’s mental health has been harmed, according to the book.

Initiative Petition 34 would try to create treatment centers where licensed therapists could prepare patients to minimize the risk of a bad trip. The bill would just allow the drug to be administered inside these facilities during guided treatment sessions.

Patients would be given large doses of psilocybin in licensed centers. Licensed therapists would then lead them through an intense trip intended to break behavioral and mental loops of depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma and fear.

They’d be screened to make sure they’d respond positively to psilocybin before a session. They’d be briefed and prepared for the trip. And they’d be debriefed afterwards, to talk about how they can revisit the experience to use the trip to change themselves.

“While there are many different reasons people could potentially benefit from psilocybin therapy,” Initiative Petition 34 Spokesperson Sam Chapman says. “It’s not for everyone, and we’re not pretending it will be.”

If passed in November, there would be a two-year planning period before it took effect. In this period, the governor would create a board of experts who would make recommendations to the Oregon Health Authority on rules that should be included in the law.

Oregon is the second worst state in the country for mental health and addiction services, and psilocybin could be a good tool to help fight the mental health crisis, according to a press release provided by Chapman.

Initiative Petition 44 would decriminalize noncommercial possession of all Schedule I, II, III and IV drugs, and replace criminal charges with small fines. It would also reappropriate funds from state marijuana taxes to fund addiction treatment centers for those found with drugs.

Canvassers are currently collecting signatures to get the bills on the ballot. In Eugene, signature gatherers have been stopping students outside the Erb Memorial Union and on 13th Avenue near campus. They’ve been talking to people outside of grocery stores and restaurants around Eugene. The deadline for submitting signatures is July 2.

Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 27

“When you’re growing up, you’re imprinted with all this stuff that helps shape you, who you are.”

Ken Babbs

doing,” he says about taking psychedelic drugs.

Under the influence of psychedelics, he says, old truths, like “cigarettes are bad for you,” take on a new authority that can lead to change. In Clements’ case, he realized how past trauma was causing him to act now. By seeing the pattern clearly, he was able to break it.

“Psychedelics lubricate cognition, it just relieves you of that set of connections that you keep falling back on,” Pollan says. “And at least temporarily, new connections form.”

In Clements’ case, he says psilocybin has helped him become more open to other people. He says it’s helped him reduce his dependency on marijuana. And he says it’s helped him work through his PTSD from child abuse — something he’d carried around his whole life.

Before trying mushrooms, Clements went through a medicine cabinet’s worth of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. But he says none of them helped him work through his issues.

Clements also smoked through pounds of marijuana to keep his issues at bay. He says he’s struggled with a need to use substances his whole life.

He says he thinks he would have been an alcoholic if he didn’t have celiac disease, which makes him unable to drink.

“But I smoked the shit out of weed for 50 years,” he says.

At Johns Hopkins University, researcher Roland Griffiths and his team at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research have been conducting psilocybin therapy sessions since 2000, similar to those that would be conducted in Oregon if the initiative passes. According to the center’s website, research has shown that psilocybin has therapeutic effects in people who suffer from addiction and treatment-resistant depression. Researchers at the center administer large doses of psilocybin in their trials.

Clements only takes small amounts of psilocybin, around 0.1 grams per day. This is less than a tenth of a regular recreational dose and a thirtieth of the doses given in psilocybin therapy.

The technique is called microdosing. He grinds the mushrooms into a powder. He mixes it into melted chocolate and makes little chocolate squares. He nibbles the chocolate through the day.

But the results that Clements has had from microdosing are similar to those that people who’ve been in trials at Johns Hopkins have experienced: breaking out of patterns, reducing dependency on substances and seeing old issues in a new light.

“I still think these things are the greatest things since sliced bread,” Clements says about the mushrooms. He takes a prescription bottle out of his bag, opens it and shakes a couple of squares of psilocybin chocolate into his hand. He puts the chocolate back in the bottle and snaps the lid shut.

Author Michael Pollan says that psychedelics can help people to see their own behavior in a new light.

“The camera on the scene of your life gets pulled back to a new height and you can see the absurdity of something you’re 28 | ETHOS | Winter 2020

Clements says microdosing has made him less dependent on cannabis. He smokes half of what he used to. And Clements says he doesn’t feel like he needs to take pharmaceutical drugs anymore.

Sharon Newton, who’s been friends with Clements for 10 years, says he seems more relaxed and outgoing in social situations than he used to be. She says he would be in “a deep, dark hole” right now without them.

Newton also says she’s noticed Clements change in other ways.

Back when she met Clements, she noticed he’d hunch up his shoulders when he got excited while he was talking. Newton thought it was creepy at first.

“Then I figured it out. It was because he was flinching, expecting to get hit. After years of doing that all the time, it becomes the natural thing for you to do,” she says.

Since Clements started microdosing, he says he’s been able to stop himself from hunching. He says he can see patterns of behavior caused by his PTSD now.

While Clements has used psilocybin as a balm for his mental health, people have been using the drug for other purposes for thousands of years.

The Aztecs ate psilocybin mushrooms as a religious sacrament, calling it teonanácatl, or “flesh of the gods,” according to Pollan’s book. It was their method of having mystical experiences that connected them to the divine.

Pollan writes that in the 1960s, hippies used psilocybin and LSD to break out of the strict cultural norms of the 1950s.

Ken Babbs is a member of the Merry Pranksters, an LSD-taking counterculture group whose trip across the country in the school bus “Furthur” was memorialized in Tom Wolfe’s book,

Ken Babbs poses for a portrait at Washburne Park in Eugene, Oregon. Babbs, a member of the Merry Pranksters group, advocates the use of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms in an effort to better oneself.

Photo by Payton Bruni Winter 2020 | ETHOS | 29

“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”

Babbs says taking LSD and psilocybin helped him become a kinder, more open person, at an interview at his home he built out of pieces of an old barn in Dexter, Oregon.

“It changed me. I was a real dickhead when I was young,” Babbs says. “It changes your perception of how to be with other people and how to be yourself.”

“When you’re growing up, you’re imprinted with all this stuff that helps shape you, who you are. And it forms a screen in your head, right in here.” He taps his right temple with his forefinger and leans forward with his elbows on his worn wooden dining table.

“But when you take LSD, it blows that screen apart. And new shit is coming in,” he says. “And your mind is exploring places it’s never been.” He picks up the glass of red wine he’s drinking, takes a sip and sets it back down.

Carolyn Garcia, another member of the Merry Pranksters, was married to Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Grateful Dead. She’s known as “Mountain Girl” in the Prankster crowd.

Using psilocybin has helped her be more present and find a new appreciation for nature, Garcia says. She describes the first time she took psychedelics.

Garcia was sitting on the ground under the redwood trees in Palo Alto, California, on a sunny day in 1964. As the LSD she had taken took effect, she looked down at the redwood needles below her and saw them rotating and swirling in little circles on the ground. She listened to the gurgling of the creek nearby, the wind rustling through the trees and the birds chirping.

Taking psychedelics has helped her connect to nature ever since, and it’s helped enrich her day-to-day life, she says.

Then, about 65 years after his stepmom beat him in the garage, about 10 years after the nightmares started, a couple of months after he started taking psilocybin, he went back to his two exwives — and he told them about his trauma.

His first wife was shocked. She’d never expected something like this. But mainly, she was relieved. Clements says she finally understood why he could never tell her how he felt.

Clements was also relieved. He says telling her about his trauma was a key stepping stone on his path towards disclosure, ownership and acceptance.

His second wife was also happy Clements told her. He says she finally understood why Clements never knew how to fully love her — he didn’t console her even during her darkest moments, like when 9/11 happened.

He says psilocybin helped him tell them and everybody else about his child abuse, something that’s been essential to his recovery.

“The more times I tell this story, with more depth and detail, the easier it becomes.”

Psyilocibin

is a schedule I drug along with. . .

Heroin

Garcia says she supports people who use psilocybin for medical use, but she feels that Initiative Petition 34 is too narrow and should include licensing for uses of psilocybin that don’t have to do with therapy. The bill was revised last year to be more focused on therapy, a move Garcia doesn’t agree with.

“There’s too many people involved here who’ve been handling mushrooms for a long time all over the world, and to try to sequester that activity and hold it just to therapists in carefully monitored situations seems unfair,” she says.

For Clements, though, psilocybin use has been deeply rooted in therapy. And that’s what Initiative Petition 34 is about.

Clements says his romantic relationships all ended partially because he was unable to share his emotions. Not only was he not telling his partners about his PTSD from child abuse, he was also not telling them how he felt.

Clements says he remembers his first wife yelling at him, imploring him: “Tell me how you feel! Tell me how you feel!” But he couldn’t get himself to open up.

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LSD Ecstasy Bath Salts

The World of

KWANG LEE A Korean artist’s path towards acceptance

Kwang Lee sketches his artwork before starting on his latest painting. He begins with pencil drawings of his characters and instruments before painting.

Photo by Jeremy Williams

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Written by Molly Schwartz Photography by Jeremy Williams

wang Lee puts his pencil to the canvas and sketches out his ideas for a painting. He begins to sketch a hot air balloon, and in it he traces cats, giraffes and all different types of animals playing musical instruments. On the right side of the painting, he draws cats that are dressed up as angels.

Kwang Lee's sister Tani Lee says that realism doesn’t make sense to him. He does not think about proportion, and he will draw an elephant and a cat the same size. Yet, this is part of what makes Kwang Lee’s paintings so magical. Kwang’s paintings transport spectators into a whimsical world of colorful animals playing instruments. He can spend anywhere from six to eight hours painting.

Eight years ago, Kwang’s art career started when his older sister Tani took him to her watercolor class. She asked him if he wanted to try painting, and from that day, he has always been a painter.

“When I paint, I am in heaven,” Kwang says.

In order to improve his painting skills, Tani enrolled him in classes with the Oregon Supported Living Program’s Arts and Culture Program. Kwang has attended open studio classes every Friday for about three years.

The OSLP Arts and Culture program allows people of all abilities to take art classes.

This includes helping adults with developmental disabilities become better at art.

Kwang, an adult with autism, finds a lot of comfort in the community he has at the Lincoln Gallery. The staff and students at the Lincoln Gallery accept and appreciate Kwang Lee for his art and who he is as a person.

But before finding a place at the Lincoln Gallery, Kwang struggled to be accepted.

Sixty years ago, he was born in Seoul, South Korea, into a family of classically trained musicians. His father was the army conductor, and his mother enjoyed singing. He is the youngest of five siblings, with two older sisters and two brothers. As Kwang got older, his family soon realized that he was different. Especially as he reached primary school, Tani says kids were very cruel to Kwang.

“As you get older, you go to school, and kids would be very cruel,” Tani says.

Kwang’s siblings always looked out for their younger brother. Their mother always made sure they packed his backpack and walked him to school every day.

This changed when Kwang’s mother died from heart failure when he was 12 years old.

His father remarried shortly after to a woman that Tani describes as “the evil stepmother from Cinderella.” Kwang’s new stepmother convinced their father to move to the countryside. His life completely changed.

The stepmother would yell at their grandmother, and Tani says she could not take it anymore. She was trying to survive high school and the siblings did not spend as much time together.

"He felt lonely. He's like, 'what is going on here? Somebody.' This lady came in and we were all forced to call her mother, which I resisted. I didn't call her mother,” Tani says.

“He literally just does not even know what's going on. So for that period, to me, it's like there was no one because I had to survive myself.”

At this point, Kwang was unable to learn in a traditional school environment, so he ended up leaving school after junior high, Tani says.

Back in the gallery, Kwang periodically blows off the extra pencil marks and sketches with extreme concentration. Kwang often draws chickens and cats. But he primarily draws dairy cows.

After Kwang left school, his stepmother wanted him out of the house, so he picked up a job, Tani says. He worked on a dairy farm for more than a decade. He would wake up every day at 4:30 a.m. and milk 50 cows, one by one. Tani says he worked about 30

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Kwang Lee sketches his artwork before starting on his latest painting. He begins with pencil drawings of his characters and instruments before painting.

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different jobs while living in Korea.

There were other jobs Kwang had but did not enjoy. Before moving to Eugene, Oregon, Kwang worked in South Korea at a shoe factory. He would glue the shoes using a spray and inhale toxic chemicals. Tani says that the job was always forced upon Kwang because he did not understand the consequences.

Those were not the only things the factory workers did to make Kwang’s life difficult. Living in Kum Chong, his neighbors always knew when the factory workers were going to get paid in cash.

“So whenever he got paid, he literally either got robbed or forced to spend his money to buy everybody's lunch, something like that,” Tani says.

At one point, the cops told Kwang to give them his money. When he refused, the cops punched out four of his front teeth. Tani says that Kwang did not reveal this to her until he moved to the United States.

He completes his sketch. Kwang sits with his paint pallette and discusses with his sister what colors he should use. He then picks up the paint palette and applies a royal blue color to the hot air balloon. Tani sits next to him and occasionally helps him on where he should spread his extra blue paint.

Tani has been taking care of Kwang since he moved to the United States.

Ten years ago, Tani and her older sister were concerned about Kwang’s wellbeing. He was working a dangerous job at a shoe factory in Korea and sleeping on the floor of a Chinese restaurant. Tani and her sister had discussed the possibility of bringing him to the United States so they could look over him.

Around this time, she recalls receiving a call from her father who was visiting at the time.

He told her that Kwang was in Eugene. Kwang’s older sister had paid for Kwang to come to America. Yet, she did not consult Tani about this plan or consider the commitment that was required to watch over Kwang. She had simply paid for his ticket.

Tani then chose to take care of her brother. At first, she was upset that she had been handed this responsibility without warning. It completely changed her life. She has since learned to accept this new reality and continues to watch over her brother.

Back at the canvas, Kwang begins to paint his animals. He first outlines the giraffe in black ink and then colors it in. Joe Peila, the resident artist at the Lincoln Gallery, comes over to the table and directs Kwang to first color and then outline once the paint is dry.

Peila repeats the instructions about three times before Kwang follows his suggestion.

The Lincoln Gallery does not tell artists how to paint, but rather helps them expand on their skills. It became a space where Kwang could spend time by himself. Kwang speaks Korean but can only speak English at a two-year-old level, according to Tani. This makes communicating with others in English difficult for him.

Although he cannot communicate much with the staff, Tani says Kwang feels safe there.

As he has expanded on his painting, he has received lots of recognition for his art from the Eugene community. In fall of 2019, he had a show at the Eugene airport, organized

by Peila. with about 30 paintings. Almost all of them were sold.

“When the kicker makes the point in football — that’s what it feels like to sell a painting,” Tani says.

Kwang says that when people buy his paintings, it gives him purpose. After spending a lot of his life being misunderstood, art has given him the chance to be celebrated for who he is as a person.

“At sixty, Kwang is the happiest man in the world,” Tani says. “Give him a Costco size pizza and some paint and he could not ask for more.”

Kwang Lee paints while his sister Tani Lee stands by his side. Art has united the two siblings for the past eight years.

Photo by Jeremy Williams

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Kwang Lee sits at his easel and paints away, dedicated to his work once he starts class at the Lincoln Art gallery’s OSLP Arts and culture program.

Photo by Jeremy Williams

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Artwork provided by Kwang Lee

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Sitting in the staircase outside of the music studio, Sullivan strums her ukulele to find her rhythm before recording. According to Sullivan, her music has been influenced by a variety of music genres. She says, “I’m definitely influenced by indie and alternative music as well as punk rock. Some of my songs do hit a little bit harder.”

CHIPPED NAIL POLISH Progression of a Punk Ukulele band

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Photo Essay by Josh Murray

he founder and lead singer of the Eugenebased, all-women band Chipped Nail Polish is Jill Sullivan. Sullivan, a winter 2020 University of Oregon (UO) graduate, says she formed the band with the intention of combining her skills as an advertising major with her passion for music. “The band has kind of just been a really fun passion project of mine and I want it to be the best that it can be,” she says.

Beyond Chipped Nail Polish, Sullivan has dedicated herself to the music industry by spending the last four years as a member of the UO Music and Concerts Team. Her time with the student group has meant booking and organizing concerts, hosting guest speakers embedded in the industry and gathering student musicians from the Eugene, Oregon, area. The end result of this involvement takes the form of connections and experience, which Sullivan says she hopes to use in the music industry now that she has graduated from the UO. She says, “That’s where my music love has been and that’s where I’m trying to move towards professionally.”

Sullivan put together an all-women, indie/alternative band and she says Chipped Nail Polish is the only one of its kind in Eugene. “We are the only all-female, all-girl band in Eugene that is currently playing shows,” Sullivan says. There are other bands in Eugene with prominent women members, such as Common Koi’s bassist Kira Elbaugh, Ponderosa’s guitarist and vocalist Molly Rose and Laundry’s lead guitarist and vocalist Kiki Paroissien, but with Chipped Nail Polish it has been nothing but women-led since its creation.

This was Sullivan’s vision from the beginning. “When I was putting together the band I really wanted it to be as female fronted as possible,” she says. “I think that is definitely a highlight of the band and that does make us unique when we all play together.” Even as Sullivan looks for work outside of Eugene and her fellow UO student band members do the same, Sullivan says she wants Chipped Nail Polish to continue to be led by women. She says, “It’s something that’s super important to me. If I move and me, Grace, Allison and Frankie can’t all play together, I really want to do my best to work with as many female-identifying people as possible.”

The Ibanez electric ukulele is Sullivan’s instrument of choice and its sound is prevalent throughout her music.

Sullivan describes her music as being indie/alternative with a sprinkle of punk. She says, “The original idea was having it be a mix between punk and ukulele, which I call puke.”

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This studio is a part of a University of Oregon professors home located in South Eugene.

Every Wednesday evening at 8:00 is studio time for Jill and Justin to get done what they have on the agenda; sometimes taking up to five hours per session.

Jill Sullivan (left), the leader and founder of Chipped Nail Polish, and Justin Kiatvongcharoen (right), the producer of Jill’s extended play recording (EP), sit down to work on editing Sullivan’s music.

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Justin Kiatvongcharoen (left) and Jill Sullivan (right) work on determining what adjustments need to be made in Sullivan’s songs like syllables and audible in-between breaths.

From left to right, Frankie Kerner (drums), Allison Barr (bass), Jill Sullivan (ukulele & vocals) and Grace Cardinale (guitar) take a moment to talk before going on stage.

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Sullivan strums her electric ukulele and sings the lyrics of her unreleased music during a Chipped Nail Polish concert at The Lorax Manner student co-op house in Eugene, Oregon.

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From left to right, Grace Cardinale, Jill Sullivan and Allison Barr prepare to end their concert set with a cover of Avril Lavigne’s song Complicated.

The crowd at The Lorax Manner shout and dance along to Chipped Nail Polish’s music as the band closes out for the night.

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Jill Sullivan, the lead singer and founder of the all-women band Chipped Nail Polish, poses for a portrait shot.

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