Ethos Magazine Summer 2016

SUMMER 2016 /

VOL.8, ISSUE 4 / FREE

Wilderness

IN THE CITY: Eugene’s Delta Ponds Pg. 14

On Public Shaming Pg. 10 - Oregon’s Nudist Subculture Pg. 26 - A Trying Road to Rio Pg. 43

6 Book Review: ‘So Sad Today’ 7 Find me on Friendly 9 Film Review: Fanged Mediocracy 10 A Meditation on Public Shaming 13 A Pause on Life 14 Wilderness in the City 22 Fighting with Foam 26 Full Disclosure 30 Age Gap 36 Ethos World 38 Seven Things to Know Before You Go 40 Seperation Anxiety 43 A Trying Road to Rio 47 What Morocco Taught me about America 50 The Revolution will be Live-Tweeted 52 You Just have to Jump

contents

ETHOS MAGAZINE /

SUMMER 2016

EDITOR’S NOTE

T

he year’s come to a close, so the question is begged: What will University of Oregon graduates take away from their time in Eugene?

The answer will vary from person to person. It’s a quirky, colorful place, this. (Head downtown and you can grab a raspberry-filled donut in the shape of a voodoo doll, for example.) As my own college career ends, I know that editing Ethos was the best way to discover the nuances of the city -- and even its international connections.

At Ethos this term, we’ve written on Eugene in a global context, whether it’s about the runner from Singapore (“A Trying Road to Rio” pg. 43), the University of Oregon student who travels to a foreign nation (“What Morocco Taught me about America” pg. 47), or the American journalist trying to understand the independence movements of the United Kingdom (“Separation Anxiety” pg. 40).

In the United States, we’ve looked at what it means to be a journalist when armed protesters storm a local wildlife refuge, as Ammon Bundy and his gang did earlier this year (“The Revolution Will be Live-Tweeted” pg. 50). We looked at public humiliation through the lens of a failed New York mayoral candidate’s sexting scandal (“‘Weiner’: A Meditation on Public Shaming” pg. 10). And we saw the beauty of the local Delta Ponds in Eugene (“Wilderness in the City” pg. 14).

It’s been a pleasure to edit this magazine over its last four issues, and I know that the next Editor in Chief -- Jordyn Brown -- will continue Ethos’ history of excellence. As a final note: Thank you for an exceptionally colorful time, Eugene.

Signing off,

JONATHAN BACH EDITOR IN CHIEF 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.

Published with support from Generation Progress.

Ethos is a multicultural student publication based at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. Ethos 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. All views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the respective author or interviewee. Ethos is a publication of the Emerald Media Group.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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s ON THE COVER (See: Wilderness in the City pp. 12.)

art CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brittney Reinholtz

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jonathan Bach

DESIGNER Tessa Jackson ILLUSTRATOR

editorial

Mirรณ Merrill

MANAGING EDITOR Rachel LaChapelle

public relations

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Negina Pirzad, Jordyn Brown, Lindsay McWilliams, Junnelle Hogen COPY CHIEF Haley Stupasky WRITERS Patrick Dunham, Melissa Epifano, Russell Wilson, Clayton Davis, Erin Coates, Morgan Krakow, Julia Comnes, Colin Cossi

photography PHOTO EDITOR Kyra Bailey PHOTOGRAPHERS

Kaylee Domzalski, Hannah Giardina, Hayla Beck, Kjersten Hellis Sierra Pedro, Patrick Bryant, Angelina Hess, Mackenzie Moran

PR DIRECTOR Lydia Salvey PR REPS Lina Allen, Kimberly White, Lindsey Whitehouse

web WEB MASTER Haley Stupasky WEB EDITOR Negina Pirzad

contact

ethosmag@gmail.com

special thanks ASUO

ethos world

Junnelle Hogen, Andrew Tsubasa Field, Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, Haley Stupasky 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 a 2013 ACP Pacemaker Award for a Feature Magazine, 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.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 5

REVIEW

So Sad Today

W

e don’t all have a fetish for vomit, but I can guarantee that I know at least 10 people who have regretted their one-night stands, drowned in anxiety, or considered some kind of body altering procedure to make themselves feel better. In Melissa Broder’s book So Sad Today, she fights with all three of these issues, plus a handful of other difficulties that many others encounter.

This isn’t a typical memoir though. Broder made me feel like I stumbled across a diary I wasn’t supposed to read, but at the same time it was my own diary, peeking into my life exposing all my secrets. Her honesty was a breath of fresh air, and her perspective on dealing with mental illness during this time is brilliantly relatable.

It’s not only her witty quips and modern day slang that makes her story unique, but her relationship with her disorders and social media.

The book was the lovechild of her writing and a darkly humorous and anonymous Twitter account of the same name that she created in 2012 to publicly discuss the struggles of being tied down to anxiety.

Thanks to the invention of social media, we’ve been gifted (or cursed?) with live-streaming platforms to share everything we should and shouldn’t. No matter how blunt and provocative or professional and reserved we keep our accounts, there will always be people with varying degrees of confession and cover up. There are thousands of anonymous social media accounts that update their followers about every intimate detail in their life except their name.

All of this poses an interesting question about how we utilize social media to describe our darkest feelings, but also how social media can fuel those feelings. An article

WORDS MELISSA EPIFANO

on Bustle notes that the more time we spend online comparing ourselves to everyone else’s highlight reels, the more depressed we become. But on the reverse, many use social media to rant and rave. Even Broder struggles with this: “How are my feelings not going to kill me? The Internet is going to save me from my feelings. But what is going to save me from the Internet?”

Broder frequently brings up these mental battles.

She doesn’t sugarcoat her flaws and her sticky thought processes. She comments about her eating disorder: “I’m an eater who is a horrible feminist, probably. I dream of what I would eat if I identified as a man and it looks vastly different from what I eat as a woman.”

She also touches on how she views her physical appearance.

“I don’t think this is just the American beauty industry talking. I think this is me and my fear of judgment, time, and death. Actually, maybe it is just the American beauty industry talking. Fine, then. It’s loud as fuck.”

These are questions that I’ve also struggled with on a daily basis. Why do I go on shopping sprees when I feel bad about the amount of waste I produce? How can I be a good role model or feminist when I spend too much time trying to alter my looks? This troubling mind game connects you to Broder, and for a short 213 pages, she becomes you.

Her willingness to put everything on the table shatters any concept of perfection and gives an oddly comforting reminder that everyone is teased by some level of ominous thoughts. Broder’s book is more than a memoir. It is a revealing look at those of us who hide behind smiles and a username.

“THE INTERNET IS GOING TO SAVE ME FROM MY FEELINGS. BUT WHAT IS GOING TO SAVE ME FROM THE INTERNET?” ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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Find me on Friendly WORDS HALEY STUPASKY | PHOTOS WILL NIELSEN

I remember being devastated when Flicks & Pics video closed in 2009. There are few places around town that hold as many nostalgic memories as that tiny storefront where I would rent a movie every chance I got. When a Red Wagon Creamery cart occupied the parking lot and a local pet supply store took over the Flicks & Pics building, bringing more adorable dogs to the area, that certainly softened the blow.

That marked the beginning of the revitalization of the businesses in the area. It also gave me a new place to grab a sweet snack instead of driving to campus for Dairy Queen.

Found just west of the 29th & Willamette hub in Eugene, Oregon, the Friendly Street neighborhood is slowly but surely growing in popularity. With the addition of new businesses and housing developments along with improvements on old storefronts like the Friendly Street Market & Deli, this area of town provides a lovely local experience for people looking to escape the usual bustle of the South Eugene/University area. If you’re looking for a new place to grab a bite or a drink, something different from the Whit, the Friendly Street neighborhood waits for you.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 7

Friendly Street Market & Deli

J-Tea

From what used to be a health food store comparable to Sundance Natural Foods, the Friendly Street Market & Deli has expanded and remodeled to accommodate a new cafe and patio, making the store the perfect destination for a morning coffee date or a light lunch. With Coffee Plant Roaster coffee, Willamette Valley wines, and carefully sourced foods, there’s an obvious emphasis on quality food and supporting other local businesses.

Despite being connected with the grocery store, the cafe space does not feel overcrowded, even with the constant flow of customers. Service is quick and friendly, the seating area is comfortable, outside seating is pet friendly, and most importantly, the food never disappoints.

Although the menu isn’t extensive, the consistent availability of customizable deli sandwiches and hot sandwiches makes Friendly Street Market a dependable choice when you’re craving something more than the leftover lasagna you brought to the office with you for lunch. My recommendation: get the Reuben and the soup of the day. The meat, sauce, and sauerkraut are always perfectly balanced to create a salty and savory treat. The toasted rye bread is never soggy and gives the sandwich a satisfying crunch with every bite. Or if you stop by on a weekend, brunch is available with a bubbly mimosa.

I’ve always been intrigued by J-Tea, wondering how a seemingly small storefront could house such an impressive retail distribution center. When J-Tea International first started in 2004, it was ran out of owner Josh Chamberlain’s home. A seasoned traveler that has spent extensive time in Taiwan, Chamberlain makes it a point to establish relationships with farmers abroad that supply the teas for his store and retail locations all over Eugene. With a mission of quality, simplicity, locality and accessibility, J-Tea seeks to provide an authentic consumer experience true to tea culture.

Specializing in loose leaf tea -- especially oolong, the most diverse and complex of tea types -- J-Tea provides one of the most unique beverages experiences in town. It’s peaceful, open, and has a flavor for every palette. The menu and retail space is thoughtfully laid out, organized by types of tea that your knowledgeable tea tender can tell you about. The employees take meticulous care to make sure that they find the right tea that suits your tastes while also encouraging you to try new flavors. You can even take a Tea Taste Consultation test on J-Tea’s website to determine what your preferences may be. However, I prefer the in-store interactive service at J-Tea. My tea tender, Michael, guided me toward a pleasantly robust Eastern Beauty Twisted Leaf oolong tea after my initial cup of Lemon Rooibos.

If don’t drink coffee like me, J-Tea is a welcome retreat from the standard shop with the constant in-and-out of sleep deprived college students and professionals. The calmness of the space, filled with pottery and teapots designed by local artisans, is only amplified by the jazzy music played by the employee on shift as well as the surrounding area. Just across the street there is an acupuncture studio and a spa called Radiant Health Center, where the wonderful Kaya Skye offers, in my opinion, the best massage therapy in Eugene.

With a location opening on 19th & Agate soon, J-Tea will break into the university market and I predict that it will become a favorite among others just as it has become one of mine.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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REVIEW

THE FAMILY FANG WORDS PATRICK DUNHAM

P

erformance art can be a contentious subject. How far are artists willing to go? Is it inherently wrong to involve your family with your work? Or is that the purest form of the craft? The Family Fang, the second film under actor/director Jason Bateman’s belt, deals with a family of four grappling with both sides of the debate.

Since childhood, the siblings Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Bateman) have been coaxed into stunts, ranging from performing a startlingly dark song in Central Park to robbing a bank of their lollipops with a real gun. Their parents are world class virtuosi, ranked up with the Dadaists (the group that helped to propagate performance art as fine art trend in the early 20th century), but their method predictably causes a generational rift.

The family becomes estranged when Baxter is sent to the hospital for a potato cannon mishap. They are brought back together with the introduction of the film’s main conflict: the patriarch Caleb Fang (Christopher Walken) wants to further the family’s long-dormant involvement in increasingly daring ruses.

The parents’ mysterious disappearance leads the children to investigate whether it is their greatest stunt or a violent crime.

The strong lead performances from Bateman and Kidman propel the gradual setup of the film, but it is a bit on the slow and dry side. The film depicts performance art with none of the gusto it deserves. They devote their lives to their art and yet they don’t seem impassioned by it. That’s a big issue of The Family Fang, because anyone who has seen an artist fully inhabiting a performance would see both passion and devotion present in full

force.

Many of the jokes land flatly, and much of the depth reached in characterization feels obligatory. Of course Baxter writes books in the vein of coping with the sometimes dark capers of his youth. Of course Annie decides to push her acting abilities by performing as a character instead of as herself. It all leads back to the family. Every member of the domestic quartet has issues they must sort through, and by the end, each settles for a compromise.

The Family Fang is a rumination on how a family unit can adapt to support change, even if the change must be a radical one. By the end, the Fangs are an entirely different family and each seem to thrive in becoming a new form of themselves, although it is a bit melancholy. It speaks to the process and value of healing from previous events that resound to the present, but not to the value of family in regular life.

Bateman bookends the film with a mature speech in which Caleb explains the power of imagining ourselves as dead to his children. Once that is possible, there are no limits. Interesting in theory, but a pretty convenient manifesto considering the film’s third act.

Despite the content being a bit dreary and expected, there are technical flourishes with jump cuts, clever montages, and beautiful extreme-close ups. While it’s enjoyable as shallow entertainment, it doesn’t go much deeper than that. It doesn’t even remotely capture the poignancy and devotion of those that dedicate their lives to performance art, but it is designed as escapist fare with all its star power and mild-thriller nature.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 9

WEINER

REVIEW

A MEDITATION ON PUBLIC SHAMING WORDS CLAYTON DAVIS

“Why have you let me film this?” Josh Kriegman asks as Anthony Weiner’s 2013 campaign for mayor of New York suf fer s another massive setback.

It’s a fair questi on. When director s Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg started g athering the footage that would become Weiner, a documentar y on the em battled politician that’s just out, they thought they were going to tell the stor y of a fier y young politi cian’s redemption after a ver y public sexting scan dal nearly destroyed his mar riage and career. And things were of f to a g reat start: Weiner was leading in the polls, had an active, well-funded campaign staf f, and had reconciled with his wife (Huma Abe din, protégé of Hillar y Clinton).

T he problem, as anybody near a television set circa 2013 will recall, is that Weiner’s post-scandal refor mation hadn’t quite stuck; around the same time that he was publicly apologizing for lewd misco nduct, he was sending more pictures of his schvantz to another round of women. Oops. Weiner’s chances of winning were demolished, but he stayed in the race, continuing to hold conferences and ral lies as his career and mar riage collapsed around him for a second time. He didn’t win.

Kee ping their cameras rolling, Kriegman and Steinberg didn’t get what they expected, but they got something far more interesting: a portrait of a man in crisis in early 21st centur y America. T hey could’ve made it a hor ror stor y or a sober analysis of materials and footage, but no; our documentarians have sculpted a g rand, bleak, dee ply American comedy of ego and humiliation, and one of the best American documentaries in some time.

At the center of it is Weiner, he of the cur s ed name. T here is no psychologizing here, no interviews with talking eg gheads spouting of f about neurochemical imbalances and stunted psychosexual development. T here’s just 97 minutes of Weiner joking and cajoling and screaming among the g rand ruins he has made of his life, which tells us far more about the inner life of Weiner than any Ivy Leaguer tr ying to sell a book. It’s the fulles t portrait of a man in all his complexity that I’ve seen in year s— it’s easy to dislike Weiner, but it’s hard to hate him for his candor, wit, and sense of justice. (Weiner bur st onto the nati onal scene as a cong ressman who threw passionate tantrums ag ainst cong ressional Re publican obfuscation.) Less dynamic but more sympathetic is Abedin, always in the backg round but never out of the frame, and emotions that play ETHOS SUMMER 2016

10

across her face—shame, reg ret, bitter ness, tenderness, exasperation, love—are a stor y by themselves.

Behind the camera, Kriegman and Steinberg uncanny eye for fortuitous framing and telling moments, never framing Weiner, his wife, and his subordinates alone but kee ping them all in the shot, usually squir ming hor rendously as Weiner bloviates.

As his bluster reaches fever pitch in a television in terview, they cut from the broadcast to Weiner alone in the remote studio, shouting insults and justifica tions into a seeming ly empty room; and from this bi zar re image, they cut to Weiner watching that same interview the next mor ning, laughing at his own jokes. Abedin, looking at the man she mar ried with hor ror and exasperation, isn’t in the same frame so much as trapped there.

And yet Kriegman’s camera is the most sympa thetic one in the movie, far kinder than the many other lenses focused on Weiner in the movie. Weiner is as much about the man as it is about the state of American jour nalism, and the diagnosis is bleak: here are re porter s, pundits, and comedians sharing in an org y of titillation and moralizing.

T he American media, in this hellish vision, is a self-per petuating ecosystem where nothing goes to waste: re ports and comments from the most respect able jour nals become mulch for tabloids while late night comedians thrill in the squabbles and humili ations while acting as if they are above it. Without even the pretense of objective disinterest, the press actively interferes in their own re porting by harass ing Weiner until he snaps in front of the cameras, spur ring a new round of headlines. Escalation tending to absurdity is the rule: after the Ne w York Dail y Ne ws reveals the name of Weiner’s mistress, FOX News f lies her in to hear her side of the stor y; Howard Ster n brings her on to talk about Weiner’s wiener; a por n studio helps her make a sex tape.

Jour nalists, meanwhile, are eager to discuss ever y ang le of the scandal besides the impact of their own ghoulish probing. But can you blame them? His secret online handle was Carlos Danger! His name is Weiner! Sure, Weiner’s campaign staf f is stalked by paparazzi and headlines denig rate Abedin’s fitness as a wife, mother, and human being, but they’re just supplying a public demand. T he press is just follow ing order s, you see, and the market demands scan dal and humiliation. T his machine is big ger than Weiner.

And yet. “I did do the thing,” Weiner admits to

Krieg man. T he vim and venom of the media circus might be unwar ranted, but it’s not unreasonable to sug gest that a good husband wouldn’t send other women pictures of his dick, and that a good politi cian wouldn’t get caught. More damning is the fact that Weiner’s initial response was to lie about it.

Hiding something is always a tacit confir mation of its value. Lying was a desperate punt on Weiner’s part, but an under standable one: sex might make babies, but it unmakes politicians (the exce ption being Bill Clinton, who is not a politician so much as a man who happens to do nothing but politics).

Even if you believe that Weiner’s private indiscre tions should remain private, surely there should be consequences to abusing the public trust. But is a full-court press by the press to humiliate Weiner the right move?

Who deserves public humiliation anyway? Casting shame on stranger s has become a major pastime on the inter net, one fueled by a viciously code pendent relationship between news media and social media.

T he playbook is simple: something—a stupid Tweet, a moment of weakness captured on YouTube, an unfortunate g af fe i s GIFed—makes its way onto the inter net; as retweets mount and things go v iral, the news media comes running; amplified by the press, which by now has named names and hashtags, the retweeter s get a second wind; meanwhile, the fir st wave tur ns momentar y outrage into momentar y activism, and a “Justice for __” hashtag surfaces; finally, somewhere between four hour s and four days after the scandal breaks, the attention fades and the hashtags begin their long second lives as jokes and inter net memes. Meanwhile, whoever found them selves in the midst of the maelstrom is now con demned to a name tar red and feathered by Goog le searches and Twitter spittle.

As a for m of dispensing justice, online public shaming isn’t ideal. Let’s take the recent death of Harambe the gorilla as an example: here is a situation involving a perfect stor m of unpredictable toddler s, an unforeseeable g ap in zoo security, the dif ficulty of parenting in public, a large cohort of camera-equipped onlooker s, and the essential un knowability of gorillas. To be clear, experts of ever y stripe ag ree that shooting the silverback was the wor st possible decision that could be made, exce pt for all the other ones. T he consensus is clear: this is a tremendously complicated tragedy with many mov ing parts and no clear target to bear the blame.

T he inter net disag reed. Because there was a death and a gunshot, the reasoning went, a crime had been committed, and ever y crime has its criminal. See ing smoke, they started a fire, and the mother of the endangered child was sing led out for being neg li gent to the point of gorillacide. Even wor se, she had the temerity to go on Facebook and g loat about it by thanking God for kee ping her toddler from be ing crushed by a silverback gorilla. It was clear that something had to be done about this monster, and

it was up to the mob to decide. By the time a court ruled that the mother had committed no crimes, a petition calling for her trial had amassed half a million signatures. Signatories were openly sharing her name and address online, and calling for her to be fired from her job. Of cour se there were death threats.

I know all this because the media re ported it, shared it, and asked me to share my opinion in the comments section. Sure, more respectable outlets avoided stoking the hysteria, but anybody interested in stoking their outrage can find plenty of fuel under the bylines that exist in the nether-regions of re portage that exist between the establishment and social media. Livelihoods are made printing g lorified factsheets in the service of justice, or at least public shaming.

How just is this justice, anyway? Inter net outrage can and does highlight legitimate lapses of leg al judgment—hello, George Zimmer man—but many of the victims are poorly chosen, as ang r y mobs are rarely patient enough to make fine distinctions. In any case, their own momentum usually impels them toward the har shest punishments, reg ardless of the crime. (Even movie critics get death threats these days.) And in a perfect instance of technolog y abet ting our wor st instincts, the outrage machine can make itself look just and right by sheer dint of its size and noise. Half a million signatories can’t be wrong, after all. Fortunately, the Americ an leg al sys tem still doesn’t per mit online petitions as evidence of guilt, but the court of public opinion is able to cause enough damage on its own, chasing people away from homes and livelihoods on behalf of f limsy headlines that will be tomor row’s punchlines.

Speaking of punchlines, let’s get back to Weiner and Weiner. His wife and campaign staf f, the parties most af fected by Weiner’s indiscretions, are hardly pleased by the scandal, but they stand by him. It’s stranger s who launch the most vociferou s attacks: a concer ned citizen at a campaign stop calls Weiner a pervert; an unbearably smug Lawrence O’Donnell using an entire TV interview to continue asking variations on “What is wrong with you, sir?” as though he’s Jose ph Welch confronting Jo e McCarthy; T he Ne w York Dail y Ne ws calls on Abedin to leave her husband in a tone nor mally reserved for battered women. T he collective animus ag ainst Weiner from people he neither knows nor sends sexts to is stag gering. Behind all the wiener jokes and moralizing, the consensus is that Weiner deserves no t only to lose the race, but his wife and dignity, too.

But why Weiner? Part of it is surely the nature of his crime, or rather the fact that it’s not a crime at all. T his is a good thing—as a rule, adulter y is only criminalized in places with catastrophic lev els of sexual anxiety—but good luck convincing the tabloid crowd accustomed to calling for castration when some wispy starlet is cuckolded by her shiny boylet. Adulter y isn’t illeg al, but that doesn’t mean ETHOS SUMMER 2016 11

“

LYING WAS A DESPERATE PUNT ON WEINER’S PART, BUT AN UNDERSTANDABLE ONE: SEX MIGHT MAKE BABIES, BUT IT UNMAKES POLITICIANS

”

it doesn’t hurt a lo t of people, and in ways that are hard to redress. Unless you’re in divorce court, cheating by itself is not a criminal of fense, and the of fender gets of f scot-free. Surely some of the joy in following tabloid af fair s lies in a sublimated desire to see the adulter y punished in the court of public opinion. (If you doubt that a culture plays out its anxieties through its tabloids, the example of France is instructive: famously indif ferent to infidelity, French presidents have weathered sex s candals that would undo an ald er man in the United States.)

Adulter y isn’t the only part of the events that are compelled to p lay out like a stor y, though. Even before his scandal breaks, Weiner’s tendency to be brash, cocky, and loud made him look like an unfold ing morality tale. If his stor y was fiction, describ ing Weiner’s narcissism by showing him obsessively watching his own i nterviews would be too on the nose. And Weiner jumps ahead of the literar y theo rists in his interviews with Kriegman, wondering out loud if the same force that leads him to be a pub lic fig ure also animates his philandering. Abedin, of cour se, is the platonic spur ned woman: quiet, dignified, and tor n between doing what’s best for her career, her troubled husband, and their infant son. Even before the media tried to drum up a stor y around the fall of Weiner, all the pieces of a g reat drama were there. Did the media and the public go overboard in shaming Weiner because it would make a g reat novel?

Not quite, but we’re getting closer. Good stories, real or fictional, appeal to our sense of fair ness and just desserts. And as far as headlines go, divisive politician gets caught cheating twice, still wins race and stays mar ried isn’t much fun. T he lack of con sequence violates our sense of propriety. And while it’s said that we live in a cynical age, isn’t it true that our most popular movies are about f lying men in tights defeating the forces of evil? And hey, isn’t justice a matter of aligning the world as it is and the world as it should be? T he logic is perver se, but ETHOS SUMMER 2016

12

you can’t say it isn’t sound: the stor y of Anthony Weiner became a good stor y because we wanted a good stor y. T here’s no other way to expl ain so many people openly wishing for this to happen, delight ing in watching Weiner self-destruct and alienate his supporter s. It’s justice, all right, played out across the g reat literar y character s of our time: celebrities.

For many, the trials of the rich and famous satisfy a need that used to be occupied by mythol og y; what could be more human than giving our mundane moral values cosmic weight by playing them out among the star s?

If you’re thinking about the awful weight of this drive for justice and its ef fect on making the news, you’ve come to the right parag raph. For the folks tasked with re porting events and crafting coherent stories out of them, making sure that stock nar rative tropes aren’t driving the reality is a serious respon sibility. Many of the jour nalists covering Anthony Weiner’s mayoral run in 2013 failed in this oblig a tion, and quite a few did it deliberately. Nowhere is this more apparent near the end of Weiner, where media-engineering and the drive for retributive spec tacle collide in a climax might be the most hilarious, absurd, and har rowing portrait of American politics to come out of this decade: Weiner literally running and hiding from his mistakes and a vengeful camera crew on election night, taking refuge in a restaurant where the televisions are loudly declaring that his lifelong dream of being mayor has been shot down by 95 percent of voter s. I couldn’t kee p watching. I couldn’t look away.

T he humiliation of Anthony Weiner might not be just, but it certainly speaks to the failures of our media, our politics, our stories. Kriegman and Steinberg, at least, are stilling making compelling and original stories out of that f limsy stuf f called reality.

A PAUSE ON LIFE:

Four Accounts of the Peace Corps

“

WORDS ERIN COATES

If I had read a job description saying that you were going to go to Senegal to build bathrooms for two years, I’m not sure how I would have felt about it,” Nicolette “Nicky” Ulrich laughs. Ulrich, a Peace Corps recruiter who works at the University of Oregon, has a brown pixie cut accentuating two charcoal lines about one inch in length on each of her clavicles, reminding her of her time in Senegal.

“Senegalese people get them on their faces for a variety of reasons,” she says. “Some said it was to relieve demons in your head; others said it was to relieve headaches; some said it was a marking to identify different ethnic groups. It’s done with a razor blade and charcoal.”

Ulrich, who served in Senegal from 2011 to 2013 and now works at the University of Oregon coordinating two-year Peace Corps commitments for students, is one of a bevy of past Peace Corps employees who were lurched into cultural awareness through their experiences abroad.

The Peace Corps, founded by John F. Kennedy in 1961, sends Americans abroad to aid the needs of people around the world, ranging from pandemic diseases and food security to gender equality and empowerment. Since their first year, more than 220,000 Americans have served in 140 different countries.

Ulrich decided to join after a moment of senioritis career uncertainty. “I did not know what I wanted to do,” she says. “Applying for the Peace Corps, for me, was a little bit of a pause on life.”

In the 1960s, however, the Peace Corps was not the next new adventure for college graduates or a way for them to figure out what to do next. For Bob Watata, the Peace Corps was a temporary escape from the Vietnam War draft.

“A lot of my friends were going to Mexico and Canada; they didn’t want to go kill people or get killed,” Watata says. His receding white hair contrasts with a yellow and dark blue striped shirt, a sharp juxtaposition. “It didn’t matter where I went. Just ‘go into the Peace Corps and get out of going to Vietnam.’ So I ended up in Peru.”

Watata left the United States in 1964 to teach economics in a community in Northern Peru. Expecting a warm reception, he was shocked to find kids were not showing up to his classes.

Eventually, he asked one of the few students in his classroom why people didn’t come to class, and he was told that the school system in Peru was different than that in the United States.

“Only rich kids get into the universities, but once you get in, you are guaranteed of getting a degree whether you are going to class and doing the work or not,” Watata says.

While Watata was adjusting to Peru, Sarah Klinghammer was

joining the second Peace Corps group, destination-bent for Turkey. She had heard Kennedy’s speech urging students to enter the Peace Corps when she was a college freshman and decided that was what she was going to do when she graduated.

Although her job was to teach at the middle and high schools, Klinghammer snuck into women’s gatherings with the Peace Corps community development team, talking to them about birth control, which was not allowed in the 1960s.

Klinghammer wasn’t the only Peace Corps veteran to face a disparity in women's issues while serving abroad. In Senegal, Ulrich walked a line between being considered a “lesser” citizen with her foreign roots. Women are still considered second-class citizens in Senegal, as well as many other developing areas.

“I wasn’t quite matched up with the women’s groups, a lot of them were my age but they had three children. High school kids were too young because I was a bit older than them,” Ulrich explains. “And then the men’s group, I was more educated than them, and the conversations that we would have were a lot different than the women’s groups.”

Ulrich said that it was important to find friends in her village to make sure that people didn’t discount her based on a cultural sense of gender disparities. She says she managed to draw close to a number of older men who mentored her.

Gender-related issues were one of a bevy of struggles Ulrich and Klinghammer surmounted. Klinghammer, advocating for birth control, had to focus on more immediate health needs -- a mumps epidemic hit her village in her second year, and she had to take care of the kids who lived at the school.

Klinghammer struggled to keep her students warm. “The kids with mumps had to come and sit at their desks in school because that was the only place that was warm,” she says. “We couldn’t heat both the dormitories and the classrooms. We didn’t have enough wood.”

In the mountains of Turkey, Klinghammer also had trouble connecting with the isolated villagers, as the first American many of them had seen. Communication was sparse; Klinghammer could not even contact her parents during her induction to life abroad, and had few friends.

“I was a teacher in a school, so it was not like I didn’t have a job, but the men teachers invited me to go to the men’s club, so I went,” she says. “I didn’t realize until later that women did not go to the men’s club. They did not know what to do with me.”

For many Peace Corps volunteers, an even bigger transition is returning to the United States. “When you come back, you are going to find it difficult to communicate with people who have never been to another country. You can talk about the weather and that’s all,” Watata explains. “But when I talk to somebody from Costa Rica or Paraguay, there is something that we have with each other, and we can talk about things and understand each other.

Ulrich, and many other returned volunteers, says that the Peace Corps gives people a wider scope of the world, and an understanding of other cultures that cannot be replicated. Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy was part of the second Peace Corps group to go to Ethiopia and she explained how important it is to make connections with people across the world.

“When you know somebody as a human being, you know where they come from and they’re just like you with dreams and hopes and wanting to know if their family is well,” Piercy says.

“You are connected forever across the planet.”

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Wilderness

IN THE CITY WORDS MORGAN KRAKOW PHOTOS KJERSTEN HELLIS

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lad in a forest-green rain suit, Glen Neal jiggles a weed wrench around the bottom of a blackberry bush. The orange metal clamp swings back and forth, gripped to the plant as the roots begin to rupture the soft earth. He and eight other volunteers from the Cascade Family Fly Fishers tread through the matted grasses. The group is working to remove invasive plant species, creating space for turtle nesting sites in Eugene’s Delta Ponds.

Nestled between apartment complexes, a mall, and car dealerships, the ponds are home to over 150 species of birds and other animals native to the area like river otters, beavers, and turtles. The space provides visitors with scenic walking paths to engage with nature.

The Ponds are wilderness in Eugene’s own backyard. They are not remote tracts of land or inaccessible forest; they are nature for the people and cared for by the people. The wilderness and the residents of Eugene are an interplay between volunteers and green herons, morning joggers and great horned owls, bikers and willow trees. They represent a concerted effort to create inspirational and sustainable spaces within cities.

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From Gravel Mine to Wildlife Refuge:

The Ponds, which teem with native plants and wildlife today, once looked similar to an offshoot from the Willamette River. In the 1960s and 1970s, the area just off of Delta Highway and Goodpasture Island Road was mined for gravel and then left untouched. Invasive plants like Scotch broom and blackberry crept in, and the area remained undeveloped.

In the late 1990s, the city proposed to restore the ponds, to take them back to their original state. It would provide a place for juvenile Chinook salmon to rest on their way to the ocean and a sanctuary of wilderness in the center of Eugene. After this restoration project was approved, volunteers, engineers, city planners, and ecologists, like Lauri Holts, set to work on the restoration. Holts worked solely on restoring vegetation within the Ponds for two years, then was brought on permanently to manage ecology across multiple Eugene outdoor areas.

When the process began, the Ponds were an overgrown landscape. Holts referred to the area as a “near monoculture,” with only one or two species of plants living there. Legislation requiring companies to replant with native species did not exist at the time that the mining companies finished the digs, so invasive plants immediately took root. Holts and her team began an effort to restore 30 to 50 plants native to the area that would better serve the wildlife.

“In the beginning, everything seemed so small,” Holts remembers. “It’s not like building a park where you see the changes in a few months after construction. It takes time for all the vegetation to grow and so that’s really rewarding for me to have watched it all on the way.”

With time, the life around the ponds began to diversify.

Great horned owls flew and hooted, sapling trees drank up the groundwater without having to compete with the aggressive invasive species, and juvenile Chinook salmon were swimming in to rest in the shallow areas of the pond. Life sprang up around the restoration, and grew year after year. Even though it was hard to imagine the towering trees and brush that the ponds have today, there was a clear path toward restoration.

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Nature by and for the People

Carrie Karl coordinates volunteers, like Neal, who come out to the ponds and steward the area. Despite the heron, hawks, eagles, and ducks that fly overhead, Karl uses a more mythical bird to describe the history of the ponds.

“I would liken the Delta Ponds to the phoenix,” Karl says. “It’s rising from the ashes of something else. There is a significant amount of energy and work that went into this to make it happen.”

While the Delta Ponds are a regression to original Oregon wilderness, they are also a progression toward the sustainable cities of the future. In a world of disappearing wetlands and natural areas, this neighborhood conservation effort stands as an example of community sustainability in practice.

Karl watches children, bird watchers, neighbors, fly fishers and everyone in between work side by side to help keep invasive species out and encourage the native plant and animal growth. The ponds need this kind of help from the community in order to keep the varied and hearty landscape that exists today. To Karl, these volunteer efforts are just one example of the way the community engages with the Delta Ponds. She sometimes wonders whether people will continue to care as much as she does for the wetlands. “[Community members] are there to see the different types of birds, the pollinators, the beauty of the flowers and the variety of plants that would call that space home,” Karl says. “If you don’t steward that, if you don’t care for that, these other species will come over and they’ll win the battle. They’ll take it over completely.”

Neal and his fly fishing group have tried to stave off these invasive species. He recalls talking with his group about the importance of protecting the environment but never actually doing anything about it. So, he sought out the ponds and offered up his group to lend a hand. That was four years ago, and today the group continues in its volunteerism.

“Conservation is important to our club,” Neal says. “And I don’t ever have trouble getting 10-20 volunteers out there on a Saturday.”

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Restorative for Humans and Animals Alike

Eugene resident and University of Oregon student Sam Hoffman is majoring in environmental studies and minoring in planning, public policy, and management. She says that spaces like the Eugene Delta Ponds cultivate an early connection to the environment. While the ponds are unique, Hoffman says they echo a trend across the nation toward creating tangible nature in already urbanized areas.

“I think a lot of people are really tactile learners,” Hoffman says. “So, to be able to see something in its natural state is really genuine.”

Karl thinks the project matters to the community because it is accessible nature. She appreciates the connection the Ponds have to children, because it demonstrates how they are also an investment in a more sustainable future.

“I think seeing the light in their eyes, and at the end of the tour having the kids say to me, ‘Yes, I want to be a scientist,’ or ‘I want to go and do what you do,’ or ‘I want to care for places like this,’ I think that can be tremendously helpful,” Karl says.

However, the Ponds do not just serve a single demographic. Just as a variety of birds and fish find solace in this tract of undeveloped land, so do a diverse set of community members who bike, jog or stroll through the natural areas.

Karl believes they achieve a certain level of calm there. “You’re able to be inspired, then go back to your day to day work and be rejuvenated by it,” she says. “It’s a real place and people sense that. And the authenticity of it holds a lot of meaning for a person of any age.”

In Karl’s words, the Ponds are not contrived. They are the way Eugene’s river lands should look. They reflect a rich ecological history as well as a sustainable future. They are nature, in the heart of the city.

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Fighting with

Foam Belegarth at the University of Oregon

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t’s a familiar scene on the Knight Library field this Sunday: On one end of the field, two men in cargo shorts lazily toss a baseball back and forth. Students are scattered on the grass, supine on beach towels and yoga mats, reading textbooks or napping. One woman lies on a blanket, tanning in a bikini and typing into a laptop. She barely looks up when two men in medieval outfits striking at each other with foam swords nearly charge into her.

Most University of Oregon students have seen them before: men and women fighting with foam weaponry, wearing tunics and puffy pants and wielding shields. Many shrug them off as LARPers -- live-action role players -- or see them as run-of-the-mill Eugene eccentrics.

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WORDS JULIA COMNES PHOTOS KAYLEE DOMZALSKI

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But members of Tir na nOg, Eugene’s realm of the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society, play a full-contact sport. The garb in which fighters outfit themselves is a large part of the game’s culture, but hardly its centerpiece. While many of the players have fighting names and may adopt a battling persona, most aren’t roleplaying a character. They’re there to fight.

“We just want to go on the field and beat each other up,” says Realm Leader Ethan Schlesinger.

There are a countless gameplays in Belegarth, but the basics are always more or less the same. If someone gets hit in the torso — an area that, as Schlesinger says, includes anything that would be covered by a 60s bathing suit — the player dies. They either fall to the ground, shout “dead,” or pat themselves on the head.

Getting hit on a limb doesn’t result in death, but it means that the player can no longer use that limb. When you’re, say, hit on the knee, you’ll drop down to that knee as if it your leg were cut off, dragging their good leg behind them. Arms that have been struck will swing limply, out of commission. If they get hit at a second limb, they’re dead. Strikes at the head by a sword are forbidden, but allowed if the fighter is using a bow and arrow, a javelin, or a rock (essentially, a cloth-covered Nerf ball).

Outside of the basic rules, there’s flexibility. Fighters learn what styles and weapons work best for them. Often, Schlesinger says, players learn to use what might be perceived as a weakness as a strength.

Schlesinger is left-handed, and when he started out with Belegarth would often get teased about it by other players. Most shields didn’t work for him because they were designed for right-handed players. “That kind of limited me, but that kind of allowed me to be a little bit more creative with how I fight,” he says.

He’s gotten good at fighting with his pike, a small foam knife that he’s decorated with a floral handle. Since most players aren’t used to fighting with a left-handed person, he uses it to his advantage.

One aspect that distinguishes Belegarth from fencing and many LARP games is its requirement of sufficient force. A mere tap with a sword won’t result in injury in Belegarth.

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of force used in Belegarth. Towering at over six feet tall, he grew up wrestling and playing football. He had a friend in high school who played with foam weaponry who encouraged Burke to join, but Burke thought it would be too easy for him.

“I don’t wanna just beat up a bunch of nerds,” he says.

Burke left for a small college in Iowa on a football scholarship but came back home to Eugene after he got injured and his grandparents were having health issues. He was working full-time, taking 18 credits and taking care of his grandparents. “I was losing my mind,” he says.

His friend told him that he knew the exact thing that would relieve his stress. His friend told him to meet at a nearby field, where Burke was greeted by a pile of foam swords. Burke’s friend struck him with one of the swords, hard. “That’s minimum force,” Burke’s friend told him. “Anything less than that doesn’t count.”

They began fighting, and Burke was hooked.

Another important aspect of Belegarth is the garb, or costuming. Schlesinger says that more or less, anything that would have been worn pre-gunpowder is allowed. Basically, no jeans or modern prints.

“No camouflage under any circumstances,” says Schlesinger.

The basic garb that Schlesigner recommends for beginners is a rolled-up pair of pajama pants and a thermal shirt. Modern footwear is allowed. He says that most beginners can find their basic garb for less than $10 at Goodwill.

Many fighters choose to go beyond the basic garb, though.

Burke crafts his own leather armor. Many members sew or buy hoods, capes, and kilts. Recently, Schlesinger bought a floppy black women’s sun hat that was on sale at Fred Meyer. He folded up the brim on one side, attached it with a button, and added a feather, transforming it into a hat that would look at home on a musketeer.

For many of the members of Tir na nOg, the community is just as important as the fighting. Schlesinger discovered the group his freshman year at UO, and found himself immediately welcomed by the group.

Schlesinger is half black, half Jewish, and says that as a multicultural student, he didn’t feel welcomed by a lot of other groups on campus. “It was the first place where I felt like I kind of belonged,” he says of Tir na nOg. “We’ve already been accepting people who say they’re goblins and people who walk around saying they’re fire elves,” says Schlesinger.

That open-minded nature allows for people of all communities to join in.

Burke says that outside of Belegarth, he’d probably just be thought of as a typical red neck. He’s fairly conservative, but one of his best friends in Belegarth is a self-described “debauched libertine.” “We all come together to hit each other with sticks and you have people from all different walks of life, and people who otherwise, outside of the sport might not get along,” he says.

“Sure, we kinda dress funny and sure we may shout some funny things at each other,” Schlesinger says. “But in the end, we’re a big family.”

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FULL DISCLOSURE: Uncovering Oregon’s Nudist Subculture WORDS LINDSAY MCWILLIAMS ILLUSTRATIONS MIRÓ MERRILL

I’m sitting with a group of eight people in lawn chairs by a pool. With my notepad handy and recorder on, I ask questions about my interviewees’ lives — typical of my job as a writer.

Typical, until I look down.

I am naked. In fact, we’re all naked. We are at the Willamettans Family Nudist Resort.

I had arrived fully clothed at the property in Marcola, Oregon about 40 minutes earlier, where I was greeted by an older woman with a raspy voice named BJ. She was wearing a tank-top and flip-flops — nothing else. We hopped into a golf cart and traveled up a gravel road as BJ laid out the rules.

“No cameras on the grounds,” she explains. “Always have a sit-upon if you’re nude. We’re clothing optional, so we can wear clothes. But there are a few places where you need to be nude: in the swimming pool — who likes bathing suits? — and in the hot tub.”

The Willamettans resort reminds me of summer camp. It’s 44 acres of dense forest, where trees have been cut down to make way for the cabins, condos and trailers that guests can rent or own. A single gravel road travels in one big circle, serving as the main drag. Just up the road from the front office is the Full Moon Saloon, The Bun Marché gift shop and the Rest-ur-Rump restaurant. “We play on words,” says BJ. The 400-member family resort has every amenity one could need: a laundromat, communal showers, a bar with cheap drinks, a pool and hot tub. It even has tennis courts, bocce ball and shuffleboard. And all of the upkeep and operation of the resort is done by members and volunteers. A co-op club, the resort requires that all of its members pitch in to keep the place running.

“It’s like any other park except you don’t have to wear clothes,” says BJ. As she brought me into the pool area, I was warmly greeted by several naked folk. “As we usually say, welcome home!” says Brain, a man in a fisherman’s hat. “This is the happiest place on Earth. Disney’s got nothing on this,” says Nettie, a brunette-haired woman cooling herself with an embroidered fan.

It took me a while to accustom myself to seeing so many body parts that I usually don’t see, and for a time I struggled to look people in the eye. But, before long, the nudity didn’t faze me as much.

We finished a full tour around the grounds, and I went back to the poolside deck where most of the regulars were hanging out.

“So Lindsay, are you going to partake?” one man asks. My plan was to fully participate, but I’d been putting it off. I considered myself open-minded about the experience, but I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t nervous to be naked in front of a bunch of people I had just met. Questions and insecurities began popping up inside my head: Should I have shaved better before I came here? Maybe there’s something grossly abnormal about my body that I’ve never noticed until

now… Will guys creep on me, stare at me or get a little too close? Regardless, I knew that I had to do it. I had promised myself I would.

Still fully clothed, I sat down at a table with five people, some smoking cigarettes or pipes, all of them naked. John Kinman, former president of the Willamettans and also of the American Association of Nude Recreation, told a story.

“This goes back to the early 80s. BJ and I were together and I took her to a business conference in Florida. We’re lying by the pool and she says, ‘I’m a little uncomfortable. Guys walk by and gawk at me and I’m worried — is my breast falling out or is my pubic hair showing?’ I said, ‘When this conference is over, I’ll take you somewhere else.’ We went to Tampa to a place called Paradise Lakes, and an hour later we’re lying nude by the pool. All the sudden, BJ says ‘Nobody’s staring at me. I just feel so relaxed and it’s a non-sexual environment.’”

I found it fascinating that, from her experience, BJ felt less sexually exploited when she was nude than when she was wearing a bathing suit. It’s as if the tease of being almost naked creates more sexual tension.

John was raised as a nudist from childhood and he introduced BJ to nudism when the two began dating. “It was hard for me at first to understand, but it became a beautiful lifestyle,” BJ explains. “You start to love people by the heart rather than criticizing what they wear. And sometimes their whole personality changes when they take off those clothes.”

At this point, I was starting to loosen up. First off was my shirt, then my bra. But no one really stared, or even seemed to notice that I was stripping. And yet, I was fighting the urge to cross my arms in front of my breasts. I kept self-consciously looking down to see how they looked, the palest parts of my body that had clearly never seen the sun.

A woman named Kari seemed to notice my discomfort. “You know, everyone feels the need to cover up at first. But, everyone I’ve ever met at a nudist resort, they look you in the eye,” she says.

“They’re not looking at your body and they’re not judging you.”

What most of them didn’t know was just how huge this moment was for me. Three years ago, I had finally recovered from a long battle with anorexia, which had crippled any body acceptance that existed in me. Three years ago, I wouldn’t be caught naked in front of the people closest to me, let alone complete strangers. And yet here I was — doing it.

“Look at me,” says Paula, a woman likely in her seventies who’s evidently had a double mastectomy. “I have no breasts.”

She was a spunky, social member of the Willamettans with a tattoo of bright pink lips stamped onto her right buttcheek. Paula was already a nudist when she had to have one of her breasts removed due to cancer. She asked her surgeon to remove both and refused reconstructive surgery. “Don’t want it, don’t need it,” ETHOS SUMMER 2016 27

“

WE DON’T TELL EVERYONE BECAUSE THEIR MIND IMMEDIATELY GOES TO SEX OR SOMETHING DIRTY, AND THAT’S THE FARTHEST THING FROM THE TRUTH,

”

she said. “I’m a nudist.”

Many people at the Willamettans talked about nudism being beneficial for their body images. Looking around, all shapes and sizes of people could be found. Some were hairy, some with stretch marks or C-section scars; others with wrinkles or cellulite.

“Before we first came out here, I always thought it was going to be all Barbies and Kens,” says one woman named Lee. “And we have not found Barbie and Ken yet. We’ve been looking for them,” says Nettie, as the group around her bursts into laughter.

The demographic of this resort is vast. Many members are in their forties or fifties, but I also met many in their thirties. Apparently young adults have become more common at the resort over the previous years. The Willamettans is also family-friendly; many people bring their young children, who are apparently the club’s “best nudists” because they love to be naked. Overall, the people I met weren’t all crazy hippies and nature-freaks like I might have thought. They were normal, everyday people: teachers, bus drivers, government workers, lawyers and nurses. They just don’t like to wear clothes.

“The most important thing: we’re not a colony. There’s no leprosy here,” says Brian. For these nudists, identifying them as a colony has a very negative connotation. It makes them feel like outcasts, undesirables or like some type of cult.

Another misconception about resorts like the Willamettans is that they are teeming with perverted creeps. But this club takes special care to ensure the safety of its members. Each person who wants to join must first pass a background check, showing no criminal activity. Then, during the first year, new members are on probation; their membership can be terminated by the board of directors at any time. Longtime members keep an eye on the newer ones, making sure incoming members aren’t staring a little too long or getting a little too close. “And we really want to watch out for the kids,” says Jackie, a board member. “That’s our main priority.”

Because of the stigma around nudism though, members know better than to tell their friends and coworkers about where they spend their weekends. As far as others know, they “go camping” or to the beach often, especially for nudists who still lead professional careers and fear that they would be judged by employers.

“We don’t tell everyone because their mind immediately goes to sex or something dirty, and that’s the farthest thing from the truth,” says Nettie.

Hanging out naked may be publicly frowned upon, but it’s hardly a minority activity. According to the American AssociaETHOS SUMMER 2016

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tion for Nude Recreation, Oregon alone has at least nine nudist or clothing-optional clubs. And many, like the Willamettans, draw several hundred people each year. Those who participate in nude recreation often travel nationwide or worldwide to visit different clubs or attend nudist conventions. “These days, we won’t go on vacation unless there’s somewhere we can be naked,” says Lee. While people in the United States commonly attribute the birth of nudism to the French, there is evidence that it existed elsewhere, much longer ago. In 1932, researchers and nudist experts Frances and Mason Merrill wrote one of the earliest extensive accounts of nudism in the U.S. titled Nudism Comes to America.

They cite “high civilizations” like Ancient Greece and Japan, but also a large movement in Germany, long before developments in France. Yet the couple also refers to nudism in North Africa, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Russia, and Portugal during this time.

Years after the movement began in Germany, secret nudists (also known as naturists or sun-worhsippers) in the U.S. heard about what was happening in Germany and began to organize themselves informally. According to the authors, the oldest nudist club was formed by German-Americans in 1929 in New York City. It was called the American League for Physical Culture. Of the 200+ members of the club, many were known to be clergymen, professors, business professionals — “very bourgeois.”

Nudism has never been new. It has ebbed and flowed with changes in society, practiced in secret and in public. However, common across nudists of all time periods is the idea that being naked is healthy and natural.

At a nudist resort, nothing is hidden. And, therefore, there is no such thing as “too much information.” Bodily functions, and things that might otherwise be embarrassing or taboo, are brought to the forefront. Because they have to be.

“Alright, Lindsay,” Brian says to me, “ask the really hard question that I know you want to ask.” I had no idea what he was getting at. “What happens when guys get overexcited? It’s a natural thing,” he says. My cheeks immediately turned pink as I laughed, realizing that I was now talking about male erections with a complete stranger. Jackie responds, “You should roll turn around, cover it up with a towel or go back to your tent, and try to keep that thing under control.”

“Parts is parts — everybody’s got `em,” says Debbie, a tan woman wearing a sunhat.

The candor of the group was extremely refreshing. I began to feel what they were feeling — that I could talk about anything, that I could show any part of myself, physical or not, without fear of judgement. It made sense to me why many of the members called the resort “a no-judgement zone.”

“I’ve always felt that, deep down in all of us, there’s this latent desire to get back to the Garden again and be able to walk naked in nature,” says another man named Jon. “Walk naked in nature,” Kari repeats, approvingly.

At the end of my visit, I was given hugs by many who encouraged me to come back again. I put my clothes back on to head home. The inside of my car was about 90 degrees due to a rare, sunny day in the Oregon springtime. During my drive back to Eugene, my clothes clung to me as I began to sweat. My elastic bra felt more constricting around my ribcage than ever. At that point, I understood.

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Do Millennials Want to be Farmers?

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WORDS JUNNELLE HOGAN ILLUSTRATIONS PHILLIP QUINN

aura and Gerry Berdeen are no strangers to hard work.

The couple, who are in their 60s, rise at dawn to begin all the tasks associated with farm labor — overseeing a rotating staff of seasonal employees, monitoring their large crops of blueberries and strawberries, and arranging for visitors to take

their fill.

For 35 years they have owned and operated Eden Valley Farm in the verdant outskirts of Cottage Grove, Oregon, one of the popular tourism stops on the list of self-pick berry farms in the Willamette Valley.

Now, as the couple looks to retire, they hope to find younger counterparts to fill their shoes.

However, their need comes at a time of a cultural shift. The median age of farmers is at an all-time high, and the Berdeens, like many others, are facing the challenge of trying to pass on a legacy when the younger generation is largely unrepresented in farming leadership.

“It’s difficult,” says Gerry Berdeen. “It seems like there’s a lot of people out there, but making the connection is another issue.”

A median age shift According to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture census data, conducted and released every five years, the median age of Oregon principal farm operators jumped to 59.6 years old in 2012.

The rising age, although slow, has been ongoing. In the last 30 years, the median age of principal operators in Oregon has risen roughly nine years, nearly a decade of an increased gap. This is counting a vast pool of over 35,000 principal operators in Oregon.

While the pace outmatches the national average, the gradual rise of age in farming operators is also playing out on a national scale. The USDA census data shows the national average is nearing retirement age, at an average of roughly 58 years old, a figure that has risen 7.8 years in the last three decades.

“The USDA has been voicing a concern about the aging population of farmers for several years now,” says Garry Stephenson, the coordinator of the Oregon State University Small Farms Program and director of the OSU Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems.

Stephenson recently served four years on a USDA Beginning Farm and Rancher advisory committee, providing recommendations for USDA programs to kickstart the growth of young involvement.

He says one of the more prevalent industry trends is the decline of generational farming.

“There’s the problem of the farmers in the pipeline,” Stephenson says. “Who’s going to step up and take over some of these farms? Because most of this transition is going to happen within multigenerational farm families.”

Recounts of generational splits are often word-of-mouth. But it’s a common concern cited by agriculture experts in the Pacific Northwest. Speaking at a “Farmland Tenure and Access” panel hosted this March at Portland State University, Washington County Commissioner Greg Malinowski shared how his family fit into the mold.

“I was raised on a farm. My dad purchased the farm in the early 40s,” Malinowski said.

“There are three brothers — we all have children, and we figured one of those would want to take over the farm. Not so far as we can tell.”

Jim Johnson, the Land Use and Water Planning Coordinator at the Oregon Department

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of Agriculture, also fits into this generational shift, although he doesn’t fit into the millennial bracket. His parents, who own a farm in Oregon, are nearing retirement – but instead of keeping the farm in the family, they’re considering selling it to other farmers in the area.

“That type of method makes farms bigger, but also takes farmland off the market for other people,” Johnson says.

Generational and financial decline With every pro there is a con. According to Johnson, generational shifts provide agriculture land for those who want to start farming yet face a shrinkage in range land available to be converted to agriculture uses.

While the latest USDA census shows that the average acreage of Oregon farms has shrunk in the last three decades, the number of farms has increased to compensate — showing that output is not, as of yet, at risk.

What does seem to be at risk, though, are opportunities for millennials. In cases of multigenerational farm inheritance, often the capital needed to start a farm is not a concern, given the preexistence of land, equipment, and storage facilities provided by the previous generation.

“I know there are a lot of farmers in the South Valley Farmers Network who are able to farm because they inherited land,” says Jules Reynolds, the coordinator of a network, based in Cottage Grove, which connects younger and older farmers.

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sometimes only time can surmount.

“There’s a phenomenon we’ve been seeing now, which is a change from the 70s and the 80s: Younger people that come from non-farm backgrounds interested in going into farming as a career,” says Stephenson.

Within the Small Farms Program, this disparity in idealism versus financial means becomes apparent early on, according to Stephenson. The program partners with nonprofits with internship programs — one of the more popular programs being known for its stark realism.

“They call the first phase of their training ‘Crashing their dreams,’” Stephenson says. “Everyone comes into it with a very rosy picture of farming. And it’s very, very hard work.”

Stephenson says he tries not to sugarcoat the challenges of stepping into farming, particularly for those without much economic resiliency. “Profitability is a struggle even for the established farms,” he says. “Having to face something like that, where you’re trying to start a business, and you don’t have any infrastructure, and you don’t own land, that’s a lot to deal with.”

Reynolds agrees. “It’s a struggling business because our economy’s not built to support small farms,” she says. “A lot of farmers — even the successful ones — are forced to have jobs on the side, because their markets are small. It’s just kind of a cycle where you can’t get ahead.”

For some new farmers, the struggle is too much to take. One of the more important findings of the 2012 Census of Agriculture was that in just five years, the number of beginning farmers nationwide

who have been farming for 10 years or less decreased by 20 percent, an abnormally large turnover rate.

“There are many reasons why a new farm fails, and considering the Great Economic Recession and several severe droughts and floods over the past five years, these may be some of the contributing factors to the loss of these new farms,” wrote the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in a blog recapping key census findings. “It is clear that more needs to be done to grow the next generation of producers.”

Silver linings A number of nationwide and state efforts have been attempting to counteract the increasingly growing gap.

The 2014 Farm Bill was a harbinger of future progress. The bill, which expires in 2018, funded a number of initiatives to help new farmers, including $20 million a year to the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Program to fund farmer education programs, a young farmer microloan program, and matching investment funds from the USDA for aspiring rancher and farmer bank savings. Other programs, like the Agriculture Conservation Easement Program, have helped protect agricultural land for young and seasoned farmers alike.

Oregon land zoning is also ahead of most states in protecting agricultural land.

Often, the struggle is this: as urban areas develop, many states cut into what used to be rural land, and as farmland becomes worth more money, it sells for urban development uses, lost to agriculture forever.

Oregon is one of three states with mandatory urban growth boundaries, restricting the development of farmland outside cities, and along with the Oregon State Legislature establishment of an Exclusive Farm Use zone in 1963, farm lands have received an additional cloaking of legal protection, keeping them available financially and physically for future generations.

“My early findings suggest that Oregon’s farmland protection efforts are indeed helping protect farmland, but they’re not ensuring access by aspiring farmers to farmland or community food systems,” says Portland State University Assistant Professor Megan Horst, at the “Farmland Tenure and Access” panel.

Despite the challenges, regional resources for young farmers are also on the rise. Cottage Grove is one example of a community starting to integrate younger

farmers. In late January, Sustainable Cottage Grove helped kickstart an organization for farmers of all ages to meet, assist each other, and in some cases, provide mentorship opportunities to young farmers.

Jules Reynolds, the coordinator, says the network has since grown to encompass 25 farmers who host monthly work parties. “We’ve had some older farmers come to the network with the idea of finding younger farmers to pass off their land too,” Reynolds says.

The OSU Small Farms Program has also expanded its network, with similar results.

Back to beginnings Because of the increasingly connected community, Gerry and Laura Berdeen, the owners of the Eden Valley Farm, might find a resolution to their quest for young blood. The two were linked with several younger couples through the OSU Small Farms Program, and are planning to slowly transfer ownership, starting with co-management, before they settle down for retirement.

“We realize it might not work out.

We’re not obligated to keep the property as a farm,” Gerry Berdeen says. “But I’d like to see it continue. We’ve been told it’s a really good community asset.”

Meanwhile, Reynolds, the coordinator of the South Valley Farmers Network, has a different story to tell, as she contemplates whether she’ll figure into the new tide of farmers. Growing up in the quiet stretches of miles of Iowa cornfields, Reynolds, now 25, dreamed of running her own farm as a child.

“I obviously care about the environment a lot,” Reynolds says. “As I went through school, I started learning about agricultural issues, and it just made me want to learn more.”

In the process of acquiring knowledge, Reynolds’ dream dissipated — or was at least been put on hold — as her visions of rural peace and quiet transmogrified into the realism of the economic and physical struggles modern farmers face.

“I’d love to have a farm someday, but I don’t know if that’s any time soon,” Reynolds says. “I think I came from a very idealistic view. In reality, farmers can’t leave their farm. It’s 365 days a year.”

She pauses.

“Maybe I need to wait.”

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 33

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ETHOS SUMMER 2016 37

Seven Things to Know

BEFORE YOU GO Summer is in the offing, and with it comes a bevy of international experiences in store for students. Before starting the migration, here are some tips for how to prepare.

WORDS JUNNELLE HOGEN

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1.

5.

Depending on where you’re going, immunizations might be recommended or in some cases even required.

So get your shot before your ship sails. Visit the Centers for Disease Control Prevention website for info.

Battery life IS life when you’re cut off from home and friends. So instead of realizing you’re not able to plug in your devices at the airport terminal, order/purchase what you need beforehand. The World Standards website gives a comprehensive list of plug, socket, and voltage needs by country.

GET YOUR SHOTS!

2.

DO YOU NEED A VISA?

It isn’t all about the passport. Some countries require a Visa just for a pleasure excursion -- and if you’re going abroad for a job or internship, the chance you’ll need one triples. The U.S. Department of Consular Affairs has what you need to know -- and remember, if you thought the wait time for a passport was bad, don’t expect it to get any better for the Visa.

3.

CARRY THAT CASH POUCH.

Travel is a ripe time to get ripped off, and unless you want to imitate a baby bump with a fanny pack, best to keep currency and important IDs in a small belt pouch. REI and AAA offer several slim-fit options.

4.

TELL YOUR BANK.

Unless you want to be that person sitting in Copenhagen Airport at 11 p.m., calling her bank because her card was frozen (referencing yours truly here), notify your bank of ALL the locations you plan to visit in advance, AND check to make sure they put the notation on your account. Any unreported destinations may show up on your card history as potential card fraud, leading your bank to freeze or even cancel and reissue your card. It might be a good conversation starter -- but it isn’t such a great experience.

RIGHT CHARGER, RIGHT COUNTRY

6.

E.T., PHONE HOME You can’t unsee that $200 phone bill for international roaming charges … unless you never saw it. Many U.S. phone carriers will try to charge the heart and soul out of you for international calls, texts, and data, although T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan does provide free international roaming data in over 140 countries. Other cheap options include temporarily switching your SIM card to a cheap international alternative, or keeping a plan with decent international data and having your family and friends contact you through apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype, and Google Hangouts. Added bonus: WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, and Facebook now let users call people using WiFi.

7.

GOT DOCS?

Proof of insurance comes in handy if you need to got to a hospital, as does your student I.D. if you’re taking advantage of discounts for tourist attractions and entertainment. Also, keep copies of nearby embassy information and flight itineraries, just in case. Breathe, Watson. You’ll make it.

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 39

Separation

T

he train from King’s Cross Station in London jolted through the Lake District, separating England from Scotland, with old-school vicarages and stone relics peeping out from the vast array of fields. As flat farmlands turned into undulating hills and lakeside vistas, I was nodding off to The Temptations in my earbuds and the book Far from the Madding Crowd splayed face-down on my lap.

Soon I was far from England’s capital city, and a dotting of sea and tundra changed into the rough and rugged stone-sprinkled scenery of the Scottish countryside. The train, with a final jolt, stalled at the Waverley station, in the center of “Auld Reekie.”

It was August of 2015, too early for the term “Brexit” — the push for the United Kingdom to leave the larger European Union via a referendum — to gain large-scale relevance.

But another referendum had produced political discord, despite its 11 months of finality. The summer before my trip, Scots voted on whether to split from the UK. By a slim margin, they decided to stay a part of the UK, with a 55.3 percent versus 44.7 percent vote. The referendum garnered a turnout of 84.6% of the voting population, the largest showing in UK history since the vote for women’s suffrage.

My visit was 11 months after conservative Prime Minister David Cameron uttered the iconic words, “A question mark hangs over the United Kingdom,” begging Scotland to stay in a speech broadcast by the BBC. “There will be no going back,” he said. “I believe passionately that it is in their best interests to stay in the United Kingdom.

That way Scotland has the space to take decisions while still having the security of being part of something bigger.”

The die had been cast. That much was clear. But from my week talking to locals in the Scottish cities of Edinburgh, Inverness, and Glasgow, a much more nuanced picture emerged.

Still prevalent was a widespread separatist culture voicing a chagrin with political representation and a frustrated idealism of pro-regional policies. The decision had not destroyed that 44.7

Anxiety A personal journey through the UK’s Independence Crisis WORDS AND PHOTOS JUNNELLE HOGEN

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percent separatist element represented in the referendum vote. It had merely temporarily quieted their political resilience. Also at war in unresolved domestic dialogues were the ruling faction — the anti-separatist vote, some motivated by the fear of the unknown, the history of UK unification, geographical land ties, and economic concerns.

Settling into a cold night at a renovated estate-turned-hostel in Glasgow, I chatted with a group of young women from the countryside. One of my newfound acquaintances recounted the historic tensions between Scotland and the UK, with Flora Mac-Ivor enthusiasm evocative of Waverly, mentioning the series of conflicts starting with the Wars of Independence to the rise of the Scottish National Party in the mid-1970s, to the 1997 devolution of UK-centric government, empowering the Scottish political process. Several listeners to our conversation seemed to have lost interest, voices muffled as “What Do You Mean?” blasted from a speaker crouched on a crumbling mold, panpipes and synths adding background discord, but she had my attention.

Our rendezvous in Glasgow was part of a larger national dialogue. In May 2016, a Scottish Social Attitudes survey found 42 percent of respondents wanted to leave the UK and 58 percent wanted to stay, despite First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement that she would push for independence in the next parliament.

But the fading voices of the lost cause echoed on my trip back to London. As a month passed, and the end of my stay veered into view, fragments of the “A question mark hangs over the United Kingdom” speech started to unify into active dialogue. This time more massive implications were at stake.

That’s when the Brexit emerged — a term piggybacking on the idea of “Grexit,” the discussion of Greece’s potential withdrawal from the Eurozone during financial difficulties.

Cameron first suggested the referendum in January of 2013, as part of his campaign promises if the Conservative Party should win another parliamentary majority in the May 2015 general election. The Conservatives did gain another majority, and with Cameron’s continuation

as prime minister, he promised to hold the referendum by the end of 2017, despite French President François Hollande’s statements to the European Parliament saying there could be no “à la carte” option for EU membership.

By September of 2015, the referendum was not a certainty, as two pieces of legislation making the vote legal (which both had passed by January 2016) had yet to find approval. However, the dialogue surrounding the proposed exit was growing like a steady stream and popping up in the most unlikely places in London: “Brexit” graffiti lettering in Chinatown, pro-exit words hanging in the air of the Southwark commercial mainstream – all part of a steadily, slowly growing movement I only glimpsed as a frequenter of London culture.

By the time the last piece of legislation deciding the certainty of a referendum passed in January 2016, I was back in the United States, unable to witness the bubbling hiss of muffled expectations gush into a torrent.

Within two years, the UK had gone from considering a proposed Scottish secession to the even more dramatic step ETHOS SUMMER 2016 41

of considering a separation politically, economically, and socially from the European Union, a group of 28 mainly European nations representing over 508 million people, with an internal single market and subsidized passport requirements ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital.

Supporters of EU membership argued that doing away with EU affiliations could lead to economic implications without the free trade agreements encouraging business partnerships within EU countries and doing away with cross-border tariffs, as well as put in jeopardy the 3 million EU nationals who are living and working in Britain as part of the EU’s free movement of labor laws. In turn, separation supporters advocated that a shift could give the UK more control over immigration policy, keeping the pound instead of the euro, and a clear political power letting Britain run its own affairs without EU interference.

The questions and statements in the discussion, bubbling to fervor, have become eerily reminiscent of the Scottish referendum: cries for more representation and references to historical differences on one side, and concerns over generational consequences and economic repercussions on the other.

In May 2016, I reached out for perspective to one of my London contacts — Camilla Byk, a veteran of the BBC and cofounder of international podcasting site Podium.me, a media outlet voicing the perspectives of the “under 25s,” which occasionally partners with BBC Radio 1.

With her podcasting platform, she oversees hundreds of young journalists and has an ear to the ground when it comes to the millennial voice in the UK. During the Scottish referendum, Byk had three of her journalists produced podcasts on the dissention from both camps.

Because the voting age was lowered to 16 for the Scottish referendum, she says her journalists found that millennials were paying attention to the outcome more than usual.

Her experiences gathering content on the Brexit vote were more reminiscent of an echo chamber – only one out of over 400 journalists even proposed to cover the story.

“The information today hasn’t been that clear or targeted for the younger age group,” Byk comments.

What she says she has found prevalent ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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is an ingrained sense of separatism within the UK from the EU. “Ever since the EU was created as an entity, people have just had a different attitude towards it,” Byk says. “The fact that we’re not keen to join the euro. The fact that sadly with the majority of people in the UK, learning a second language isn’t a huge priority, because English is a main language that you can use all over the world. There’s a slight sense of ‘What is there in it for me?’”

Byk mentions that this time, she has been noticing political interest from the Scottish youth with a slightly different twist that the Scottish referendum. While Scottish millennials were more likely to vote in favor of separating from the UK in the Scottish referendum, recent polls have been showing a desire in the same age demographic to stay within the EU for the Brexit vote.

In March 2016, a YouGov poll of more than 16,000 Great Britain adults showed that Scottish voters are more likely to vote to stay in the EU, with 63 percent of the Scots surveyed wanting to stay and 37 percent wanting to leave.

Here in Oregon, Damian Radcliffe, a professor at the University of Oregon and British citizen, shared his viewpoint. As we discussed the implications of Brexit, Radcliffe leaned back in his desk chair, furrowing his brow at the unknown possibilities of leaving the EU. “I think if you do get the British exit than it is going to make it very difficult to maintain the United Kingdom as a single entity,” Radcliffe says. “They talked about the Scottish referendum being a once in a generational thing, but if Britain exits and Scotland voted to stay in, what does that mean for the union? That makes it very, very difficult.”

Radcliffe pinpointed similarities between the Scottish referendum and Brexit: An idealistic draw to independence. Deeprooted dissatisfaction with political and economic representation. Geographical separations.

“It is an ideological, pathological dislike and distrust of Europe,” Radcliffe says.

Radcliffe compared the position advanced by Prime Minister David Cameron to the fine line balanced by 1990s UK Prime Minister John Major, who juggled an anti-European group with a small majority, in a political tightrope between over pacification and a vote of no confidence.

“The conservative party has had ten-

sions for the last 25 years and longer where there’s been a lot of unease about the relationship with Europe,” Radcliffe says.

“That has threatened to blow apart the party for a very long time, and now with the referendum next month, you really are at the precipice.”

“I think the EU referendum could be very, very close,” Radcliffe says. “A lot of people are instinctively anti-Europe without being able to explain and pinpoint why.”

Whether or not the vote, set for June 23, is a precipice remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, as the layers unfold and the Brexit vote draws near, I can’t help but think of the music that ushered me into the harsh Scottish terrain in 2015 – The Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion.”

“Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration / Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation / Ball of confusion / Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today.”

As I listened, the independent tundra of Edinburgh came into focus, like a panned camera. The Sir Walter Scott monument, the largest monument dedicated to a writer in the world, stood out as a towering reminder of this stolid nation’s history.

It remained unmoved in the wind and summertime cold, where the ideas of the romanticized dead and the living seemed to mix in an almost palpable way. Flickering lights shone from Edinburgh Castle, perched on Castle Rock, which had withstood so many attacks during the Jacobite Rising.

I recalled the words of Scott, who touted Scottish independence in his works.

He once said: “Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland?”

Now the fight is no longer with weapons, but words. However, as first Scotland, and now the UK, battles the instinct of separatism with the stability of unification, it is only fitting that the old Temptations number characterizes my journey.

A ball of confusion indeed.

WORDS ANDREW TSUBASA FIELD PHOTOS KAYLEE DOMZALSKI

CARRYING A NATION’S

DREAM

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 43

T

training with those who have achieved the Olympic triumph that he has dreamed of.

On a diet of the traditional African dish Ugali, he ran long distances of 17 miles, which gradually peaked into 22 ½ mile runs by the end of the trip, whipping him into top-class fitness.

Back in Cardiff, Soh was reaching the third mile mark. He took another glance at his watch, 5:07 — a comfortable lead for someone shooting to complete 13.1 miles within 67 minutes — Singapore’s current half-marathon record. He paced among the second pack alongside the comforting presence of Iolo Nikolov of Bulgaria, a good friend he had met while training in Kenya. A steep hill was fast approach-

he had pounded into numbness.

He sped on; the top of his soaked number tag flew off, leaving it whipping he 2016 IAAF World arrhythmically in time with his feet, and Marathon Championships flickering over the crescent moon and in Cardiff, Wales, was stars of Singapore’s flag on his chest. He every marathon runner’s passed runners from South Africa, France, worst nightmare. Freezing torrential downChina — athletes from nations of running pour and 40 miles-per-hour wind beat at prestige and personal records which far the 86 competing athletes. crowned his own.

Rain shot along the course and stung “The thought of a Singaporean mixing into the eyes of 2015 University of it up with these guys allowed me to fight Oregon alumnus and Singapore long dison,” he reflected in his blog, “This is about tance runner, Rui Yong Soh. He watched more than myself.” runners topple over left, right, and center, Soh crossed the finish in 64th place snapping past him hazardously, yet he at 1:07:56 — 48 seconds from breaking paced behind competitors to alleviate the Singapore’s record of 1:07:08. However, force of the thumping winds. Soh passed his ranking was the highest that a the first mile mark and glanced at Singaporean had ever placed at his watch — he crossed it in 5:01. the World Half-Marathon ChamSoh felt his spirits rise. Never had pionships. a five minute mile felt so effortless.

Two days after the race, Soh “If this was anything to go by, anxiously waited for X-rays of the race was going to be someI STOPPED HEARING PEOPLE his foot inside a hospital in North thing special,” Soh recounted in Devon, England. His left heel CHEERING, THE WORLD his blog after the race. was bruised and puffed out larger The 24-year-old is striding TURNED WHITE … I RAN than his right; he was on crutches into unbeaten paths in Singaand was unable to walk. Soh was MYSELF TO THE POINT OF pore athletic history. While still certain that it was broken, which a UO student, he became the BLINDING meant that he would need two fastest active marathon runner months to recover and miss the in the city-state, after clocking in London Marathon, extinguishat 2:26:01. And on the cusp of ing his chance to pass the 2:19:00 graduating, he won Singapore a qualifying time. gold medal in the 2015 Southeast ing. Soh adjusted his pace to embrace the “The nurse looked at it and said, Asian Games. Soh then woke up the next decline.

‘Yes, something is probably ruptured or morning with a vision to become the first But destiny took a turn for the worst. broken,” Soh said. “I was just hanging out, male Singaporean marathoner to qualify A stabbing sensation shot out from under hoping that the swelling would go down.” for the Olympic Games — and Rio 2016 Soh’s left heel and continued to pierce The X-ray scans popped up on a comwould be his stage. Since hitting the tartan with every step. Tears filled his eyes in the puter monitor. Much to Soh’s relief, the as a full-time runner, he was ready to grasp pouring rain. His plantar was giving out bones were remarkably intact within the his full potential. and the soreness he had managed for four swollen highlights of his foot. No broken However, Soh has been injured with months had erupted into excruciating bones. Also, his heel bone was cleanly plantar fasciitis — an inflammation of the pain. rounded to display no signs of a heel spur large band of tissue that connects the heel Soh landed his feet one after the other — a hooked bone outgrowth often coming bone and the toes — leading to a spell of on the slippery roads, gently on the left hand-in-hand with plantar fasciitis, as disappointing races, and causing him to foot, hard on the right, gently on the left, the body attempts to buttress the fascia to fall short of meeting the 2:19:00 Olympic hard on the right. the heel bone. Meanwhile, the MRI scan qualification time. But on July 3rd, he’ll “I was running on basically one foot,” showed no signs of ruptured tendons, but have one last chance to make ends meet at Soh says. He pressed forward, hoping that heavy bruising and teared muscle. the Gold Coast Marathon in Queensland, the stinging pain would subside as his foot After posting an April Fool’s joke by Australia. Many of Soh’s countrymen are turned numb. posing in Nikolov’s marathon uniform and still confident that he can be successful At around six miles, Soh felt a snap in claiming to have joined the Bulgarian naDown Under; his face is emblazoned on the left arch of his foot, causing him to tional team — much to the bewilderment bus stop posters and monorails around the bite his lip. A flock of runners, including of many of his fans and sponsors — he Republic, with local media keeping tabs Nikolov, flashed by him and disappeared, was out and jogging again to prepare for on his journey. still on the chase to set records. Soh was the 2016 London Marathon.

Soh’s hunger to achieve an Olympic now running alone, his greatest opponent But Soh’s fitness still hung in the air. qualifying time drew him to the running being the giant swelling marble he carried He had less than a month to both recover mecca of Iten, Kenya to undergo spartan in his left shoe, which by the eighth mile and prepare for London, which would

“

”

ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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be double the distance of Cardiff, at 26.2 miles. One week passed, and Soh could do little more than jog or stride. With two weeks left, Soh completed a long run of 12 miles; training which paled in comparison to the 23 miles he ran to prepare for his first full marathon. Soh only ran 13 times in the four weeks leading up to the contest, compared to the 35 and 47 times he ran in preparation for his previous two marathons.

Although light workouts brought reassurance to his aerobic fitness for the big race, further symptoms of dealing with Plantar Fasciitis began to creep in. He felt the soreness of his left heel spread to his knee — his body’s way of compensating for the weak link in his plantar by working the knee muscles harder.

“On some days, I’d try to go for a run, then limp back to the house because my left knee was so sore,” Soh reflected in his blog. “It was frustrating, and I was running out of time.”

In the final days leading up to the big race, Soh decided not to back down from a contest that he had spent three months training for. Although Soh flew into Kenya to discover what training lifestyle makes Kenya such a renowned powerhouse in long distance running, it was the spirit of the local athletes he met who lifted him in his time of injury. His time in Kenya made him realize that running a disappointing race and getting injured were minor problems once you put things in perspective.

“When you have no money to eat, when you are struggling to get an opportunity to race outside of Africa, you are

struggling to get a roof over your head — that is a real problem,” Soh said, referring to the daily battles of Kenyan athletes he ran with.

“I am not going to get down on myself. I am just going to suck it up. If I want to run and I set my mind on running London, I am going to run London and will do my best. Whatever comes from it, comes from it,” he said.

And so, with his left heel taped, he laced on his arch supportive ASICS DS Racer 11s and answered the call for an attempt to be Singapore’s marathon bid at the 2016 Olympic Games.

Soh ran at national record pace for the majority of the race, averaging around 5:30 a mile. He felt the roar of the crowds as he crossed over the River Thames on Tower Bridge.

But with 6.2 miles left to go, Soh hit the dreaded “Marathon Wall” as he fell into glycogen depletion. His quadriceps were overcome with pain, and he fell into a state of near passing out, as his body shut off energy storages around his body in favor of his thighs.

“I stopped hearing people cheering, the world turned white … I ran myself to the point of blinding,” Soh said, “It was a scary experience.”

The fight for a record began to slip away as Soh passed the 23 mile mark in 6:54, the 25th in 8:53.

The Singaporean long distance runner staggered over the finish line, placed 211th, and clocked 2:37:33. Soh failed to qualify for the Olympics.

At least for now.

For Soh, it seems like yesterday that he graduated from the University of Oregon in the summer of 2015, and departed from Eugene, Oregon to become Singapore’s first professional marathon runner. In May, 2016, Soh returned to Track Town USA. He stepped onto the tracks of South Eugene High School and embraced his coach, 2008 Olympic athlete, Ian Dobson.

Shortly before receiving his sports business degree at the UO with Magna Cum Laude honors, Soh’s celebrity status in Singapore skyrocketed when he won first place at the 2015 South East Asia Games on home soil. Before he stood on the podium with a gold medal draped around his neck to Majulah Singapura, Singapore had never won a SEA Games gold medal in any athletics event.

“I have done what I wanted to achieve since I was a kid, which is win a gold medal on home soil and hear the national anthem — something my people can celebrate — and that is never going to leave me,” Soh said.

But if you spoke to Soh about his achievements, he would tell you that none of this would have been accomplished if he hadn’t decided to convince the Singapore Sports Council to let him transfer from the National University of Singapore to the UO in 2013. Frustrated from placing 4th place in the SEA University Games 10,000 meter event, despite crossing at 32:26 — the second fastest time a Singaporean had accomplished at the time — he wanted to learn how not only to be the fastest in Singapore, or South East Asia, but be able to compete with the world.

“I would never have adopted a new training philosophy, had the training partners I did, had the coaching that I did, had the chance to train on the trails that I did, I may not have even tried the marathon, honestly,” Soh said. “If I had stayed in Singapore, I would not have won the SEA Games, let me just put it that way.”

Dobson recalls memories of training Soh for the first time, as Soh transitioned from Singapore’s training system, which emphasized intensity at the expense of frequency.

“It was clear when he came here that had not run a lot. He just didn’t have a lot of aerobic base behind him,” Dobson said.

“So he was able to see some pretty good performance increases pretty quickly just by virtue of training a lot.”

ETHOS SUMMER 2016 45

Soh has since linked back up with his teammates at Team Run Eugene — a running community at the University of Oregon — and runs with them along the soft terrain of Amazon Park’s trails.

Fellow TRE Elite long distance runner, Rob McLauchlan, was the first runner he befriended while they were both part of the UO Running Club. McLauchlan describes Soh as initially being awestruck with the ability of the running community in Eugene.

“When he was meeting people, he was always like, ‘Look at this person, look at this person!’” says McLauchlan. “And, eventually, he got himself to the place in which he can be the person that people look up to.”

Soh speaks with his head held high, the pacing of his voice quick and with conviction. However, his humbleness shows through when he describes marathoners he has both befriended and competed against — his face lighting up as he lists each one’s accolades like a proud brother.

UO graduate student and Oregon Track Club’s long distance runner, Alexi Pappas, was Soh’s favorite training partner throughout his time at the UO. While Soh was a UO student, he would run 90 to 100 miles a week with Pappas by his side.

“Rui's hard work and positivity rubs off on those around him,” she wrote in an email to Ethos. “He brings people together ETHOS SUMMER 2016

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and lifts them up. I wish him all the best in his running career and beyond, and know we will be friends forever.”

In May, Pappas qualified for Rio 2016 with the Greek team, running 10,000 meters in 31:46:85 (the Olympic standard being 32:15:00).

But Soh hasn’t given up hope to join her in Brazil.

Singapore’s golden boy has one final chance to meet the 2:19:00 qualifying time for the 2016 Olympic Games in the upcoming Gold Coast Marathon on July 3rd.

Soh and Dobson have set up a plan which balances concerns for his long-term health with the reality of a limited timeline.

“We set up a plan which is pretty aggressive. He has to get up to full volume and be able to do long workouts. There is no way around that,” Dobson said.

“Maybe it is not going to be 100 percent.

Maybe his plantar is going to hurt. But as long as he can do the training, maybe that’s okay. That’s really a decision for Rui to make.”

As for the Plantar Fasciitis, Soh has enlisted the help of former Bermuda competitive runner-turned massage therapist, Michael Donawa.

Donawa has kept the intensity of his healing touch to mildly aggressive, applying dry needle to break up some of the scar tissue, which has developed on Soh’s heel, to accommodate his training so that

it is not too sore to run on. To complement this, Soh spends every waking moment tiptoe walking, doing calf raises, and rolling his foot on a trigger ball to improve blood circulation in his foot.

“He seems to be in a spirited place — excited and motivated. And that’s half the battle right there,” Donawa said.

The only case where an athlete has qualified for the Olympics with Plantar Fasciitis is former US long distance legend, Ryan Hall, who made the 2008 United States Olympic trials. However, Hall’s story ends in tragedy — while leading in the London Olympic Marathon, he dropped out on mile 11 due to a sore hamstring.

But Soh is confident that he can effectively heal and prepare for July.

“I wouldn't say that I would have want to have plantar again, but I think that having this injury helps more people tune into my story. They know that I'm not super human, I get hurt too.” Soh said, “It is how you come back from an injuries that shows that you’re a better runner.”

Soh grew up inspired by Singapore’s rich running culture; every weekend, many of its citizens jog along beach, reservoir, and jungle throughout the “Garden City.”

But today, he remains an icon in his homeland.

On May 28, 27,000 Singaporeans, of all running abilities and ages, took to the streets in a night marathon amidst booming music and festivities.

Awaiting them at the end of the race was a podium. Displayed on either side were two towering images of a posing Soh, his signature scrawled underneath; In-between, the word “Limitless” printed in bold white letters.

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THEY KNOW THAT I’M NOT SUPER HUMAN, I GET HURT TOO.

What Morocco taught me about America

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WORDS AND PHOTOS HANNAH STEINKOPF-FRANK

hen I was getting into the taxi, I didn’t expect another conversation about Donald Trump. I had just arrived in Casablanca by train and was running late — as I usually was in Morocco — for an interview with a political cartoonist I was profiling.

I quickly hailed one of the city’s ubiquitous red taxis and greeted the driver and front passenger (taxi sharing is common in Morocco) in Arabic. I gave the driver directions in a mix of broken Arabic and French. The man in the front seat, who was wearing a suit and looked to be in his 40s, asked me if I was French.

“Non, je suis americaine,” I responded. “American,” he responded in perfect English. But instead of asking if I knew a distant cousin who lived somewhere in the Midwest or relaying some other connection he had to my home country — like most Moroccans did after they found out I was American — the passenger told me about his diplomatic trips to the United States.

He asked what I was doing in Morocco, and I said I was a journalism student. The conversation inevitably turned to politics, and Trump. He wanted to know what I thought of him and if I thought he had any chance of winning the presidency. I’ll admit I did not stay neutral and was only beginning to express my frustrations about the Republican frontrunner when we arrived at his stop. But before he got out, he had something to tell me.

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‘

Back at their apartment, we crowded around the TV on our phones and computers and watched the body count rise while drinking cheap Moroccan wine.

‘

“You must know that not all Muslims are bad,” he said before getting out of the cab. I gave an unconvincing response, trying to express sympathy for his fears and let him know that like many Americans, I believe that Muslims are friendly and peaceful. Still, I felt like I had disappointed him, someone who had experienced America firsthand.

This was not the only time I proved to be an unsuccessful ambassador for my country. I lived in Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, from September to December 2015, during the rise of Trump. I remember early conversations with my Moroccan friends. All they knew about the elections was that Trump, who they had seen on television, and Hillary Clinton, the wife of Bill Clinton, were both candidates. We mostly laughed at how silly it was that a reality television star was running for president.

None of us could have predicted his high numbers in the polls.

And none of us could have predicted Paris and its aftermath.

When I learned about the November terrorist attacks in the French capital, I was visiting a group of my American friends who were living in Casablanca. A few of us had just had dinner at a new sushi restaurant. We were stuffed because the owner, after finding out we were American, gave us bowls of miso, extra sushi, and dessert for free. While walking to a taxi stop, I got a message from my dad. He wrote something along the lines of “Terrorist attack in Paris. Many dead. Be safe.” Back at their apartment, we crowded around the TV on our phones and computers and watched the body count rise while drinking cheap Moroccan wine.

The next day, we continued with our plan to visit the Hassan II Mosque, the third largest mosque in the world and the largest in Africa. Framed by the Atlantic Ocean, the structure was intimidating, calm, and beautiful, all at the same time. Children dived into the crashing waves as tourists took photos and Moroccans entered to pray. Even though I had heard it a million times before, the mosque was a reminder that Islam is a religion of peace.

Reality hit when I went back home to the family I was living with in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. A few weeks earlier, I had started renting a room from Sanaa, a single mother and doctor.

I had already spent long evenings laughing and bonding with her two daughters, Baraa, 21, and Ataa, 25, who were both born in France, but grew up in Morocco. When I returned, Baraa was in a frenzy. She was midway through getting a psychology degree from an online French college and was planning a trip to

the country to take her exams. She and Sanaa were worried that because one of the attackers was of Moroccan origin, she would be unable to travel to Europe. For the next few weeks, she went through countless interviews, unsure if she would be able to complete her schooling. When she found out she got a visa — for the country she was born in — we all said, “Hamdullah.” Praise god.

But these small triumphs were overshadowed by a growing Islamophobia that even in Morocco, I could feel. A few weeks later, in the heightened political climate following the attacks, Trump asked for a highly publicized halt on all Muslims coming into the United States. Many have talked about the social and political implications of such a policy, but few have explored how even suggesting institutionalized Islamophobia affects perceptions of the United States abroad.

Conversations with Moroccans like the man in the taxi became the norm. I had an almost identical conversation with a taxi driver in the northern city of Tangier. In broken English, he also felt persuaded to convince my parents, who were visiting, and me that he was not a terrorist. The only thing I could think to say was “I believe you.” I don’t know if it meant anything.

Worse was learning about the struggles of my Moroccan friends. As an American, you can come to Morocco without a visa and stay for 60 days. For Moroccans, coming to America involves a long and complicated visa process that is increasingly unlikely to be successful. My friend Soukaina (who goes by “Sue”) dresses like an American Apparel model and speaks English with a slight Valley Girl accent. Her older sister lives in Florida and is married to an American. Sue was excited about getting to visit the United States, a country she has only experienced through pop culture and American students like me. But one day, she told me her visa request was denied because she was asked for financial forms she hadn’t been told she needed. But Sue is still hopeful that she will get to travel to the U.S. and visit the sister she hasn’t seen in years.

This is a narrative I heard over and over again. I grew sick of having to apologize for the words of bigoted politicians and for a country of immigrants that refused to let certain people in.

When foreigners are unable to travel to a country, their view of it is shaped only by snippets of news, television shows, and songs.

It’s hard to prove to someone that Americans aren’t Islamophobic when that’s the only image of the country they have. But worse, I grew sick of the privilege my American passport gave me. My Moroccan friends envied my status. I could be a global citizen. I could travel around the world and learn. While I knew Muslims

weren’t bad people before I came to Morocco, the friendliness I experienced on a daily basis was in large part due to Islam’s focus on community, hospitality, and family, whether that was by blood or not.

One such moment occurred when my parents and I visited the pottery shop of an American friend’s Moroccan husband, Khalid.

They had met and gotten married when she worked in Morocco as a volunteer. Now, they were going through the arduous process of getting him a visa. His modest shop filled with colorful, handmade dishware was nestled in the historic medina of Essaouira, a coastal town that was the inspiration for Jimmy Hendrix’s “Castles in the Sand.”

Khalid told us that since a recent terrorist cell was busted, tourism, and consequently business, had been down. We picked out a stack of bowls, plates, and tagines, not only to support him, but also because the pieces were beautifully crafted. He made us pay barely half of what it should have cost because it was “a gift for friends.” While carefully wrapping the pieces in newspaper, he told us about his dream of going to the United States to be with his wife. In between sentences, he repeated “Insha’Allah,” an Arabic expression meaning “God willing.” It’s a phrase often used in Morocco when the desired outcome is next to impossible.

It was with a sunken feeling that we left Khalid with his pottery packed into an overhead bin on an international flight.

I wondered why Trump didn’t want my Moroccan friends to have the opportunity to study in the United States, to visit family they hadn’t seen in years, or to reunite with their spouses. It goes without saying these aren’t terrorists. A few wouldn’t even define themselves as Muslims. But for a large part of America, they could never escape this identity.

The most incredible part was that they still wanted to travel to the United States. Despite the image of bigotry and hatred that is

quickly coming to define the U.S. for an international audience, my friends and many other Moroccans still want to travel here.

They somehow still see it as a place where anyone can achieve anything if they try hard enough. It’s an idealized vision, but I wish I still had their optimism. Given the current political and social climate in my country, I can’t help but feel pessimistic.

But there are moments of hope. I recently learned Khalid got his visa and is now in Portland with his wife. It is unclear if he can complete the path to citizenship or if he will be forced to return to Morocco. But for now, he is American. And I hope he feels welcomed.

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The Revolution Will Be Live-Tweeted

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HOW JOURNALISTS ADAPTED TO COVER A NEW BRAND OF CIVIL UNREST

ohn Sepulvado has covered gangs, cartels and riots around the globe for the past decade, but the Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter encountered a first when dispatched to Harney County in early January.

“I can’t remember anyone actively breaking the law, with firearms in hand, courting the press. They wanted to start a revolution there.”

Sepulvado was one of the first on the scene of the quixotic occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside of Burns. He was also one of the last to leave after the revolution climaxed with the roadside shooting death of LaVoy Finicum by state police and ended with 25 militants in handcuffs. Though the 41-day standoff didn’t make for exciting television, the drama played out in real time on social media thanks to local journalists who dug in, adapted and found innovative ways to tell the story of the first American rebellion of the Digital Age. The occupation itself was the product of social media. In April 2014, Nevada

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rancher Cliven Bundy led an armed protest against federal agents when a 20-year dispute over public land grazing fees came to a head. The Bundy family amassed a Facebook following, and their subsequent victory turned them into online folk heroes for the resurgent militia movement.

Nearly two years later, they were rebels in search of a cause. In October, a judge ordered Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who had served partial sentences for a rangeland arson conviction, to return to prison in January. Cliven’s son, Ammon, and others moved to Burns in late 2015 and organized protests in favor of the Hammonds.

Counter protests sprung up in the normally quiet town of 2,800. The war of words bordered on threats. Law enforcement grew anxious. By New Year’s Day, everyone was on edge. Something had to give.

On January 2, what began as a peaceful march escalated into a call to action

by Bundy, who rallied an armed splinter group to follow him to the vacated wildlife refuge headquarters 30 miles south.

The revolution was on. When the news broke, Sepulvado hit the road for Burns.

“I knew it would become a circus.”

Having covered the Bundys’ 2014 Nevada standoff, it was a safe bet.

While the militants bunkered down at the refuge, another kind of occupying force rolled into Harney County.

“There must have been a hundred, two-hundred reporters out there the first few days,” says Gordon Friedman, a recent Oregon graduate and political reporter for the Salem Statesman-Journal. The paper’s parent company, USA Today, deputized him to feed its national coverage.

“I just went to where things were happening. I didn’t have to think about it at first.”

The national byline, however prestigious, presented its own challenges.

Friedman was now under the charge of an unfamiliar editor in New York, and the east coast deadline fell in mid-afternoon in Oregon.

“I’d go out and talk to Ammon, or LaVoy [Finicum], whoever, get some quotes, and email what I had to the rewrite desk.

And they would turn what I gathered into a story.”

With that came the challenge of pleasing the audiences of both papers with one article. Whereas USAT readers needed help finding Burns on a map, S-J readers wanted details: What the governor was doing, what the sheriff was saying, who the occupiers were. In response, Friedman pursued feature stories, established a rapport with the militants that led to access inside the perimeter and began using his personal Twitter account to send out credible information when he got it.

“I didn’t have time to come up with some big social media strategy,” he says. “I just tweeted what I thought was interesting.”

He got over 1.5 million views during the occupation.

“That’s totally irregular for me. But I was definitely reaching my audience. It’s the best way to follow a story. You know exactly where it’s going to be.”

The occupation wore on. Days turned into weeks. Interviews with “Tarp Man” and looping footage of drab buildings among snowy sagebrush failed to satisfy the cable networks’ voracious appetite for

action. The story faded from television.

Meanwhile, regional outlets like the Oregonian and OPB held firm. The “circus” hadn’t gone anywhere; it just wasn’t happening in the open. This was an ideological battle, and the occupiers were savvier than the caricatures people saw on TV. The real action was online.

That was where the audience was, too. At the same time he was reporting for OPB’s radio and web page, John Sepulvado also used his personal Twitter account to provide updates and engage with thousands who were following the situation closely.

“The people following me on Twitter were much more interested in the minutiae of what was happening,” he says. Unlike with a broadcast audience, who may tune in once daily, he could bypass context and get right to the point with pertinent details.

He earned his followers’ trust by being transparent, authentic and rigorous, and they rewarded him with reliable news tips, allowing him to be both broadcaster and investigator.

“It was so much more important for us to gather information than to tell it. Twitter was invaluable. It was absolutely the most important tool I had in my toolkit for this story.”

Too many journalists and editors discount the value of social media, he says, to their detriment.

“There were some major stories we broke not because we were looking in the right place, but because someone online said one little thing and we followed up on it. They were interested, they were engaged, and they routinely fed us solid information.”

Sepulvado, Friedman and their colleagues demonstrated the difference between reporting and repeating and gave depth and clarity to an ever-evolving story.

The Malheur Refuge occupation was unique in that social media both created it and led to its demise, which, almost fittingly, played out online. Journalists found ways to bring the occupiers and audience together in an unprecedented and compelling way and provided a template for covering future standoffs.

Full disclosure: Gordon Friedman is the former Editor-in-Chief of Ethos.

WORDS RUSSELL WILSON PHOTOS GORDON FRIEDMAN

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Jump YOU JUST HAVE TO

WORDS COLIN COSSI ILLUSTRATION MIRÓ MERRILL

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chain of lakes runs through the heart of Uptown Minneapolis. Million-dollar homes line the lakefront streets, and runners and bikers take pathways and bridges nestled against the shores.

One particular bridge is hidden from sight with a steep drop, deep water, and a cobblestone wall perfect for scaling back to the top after a quick plunge. Around my sophomore year of high school, this bridge became a trendy destination for thrillseekers. Remember that old adage your parents used about trying to be popular?

“Well, if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” At sixteen, we proved the answer was “Yeah Mom, duh.”

On a muggy summer afternoon, my buddy Joe and I drove into the city to investigate the hype. We peered over the bridge’s edge — nothing standing in the way of the water but our reflections. Joe’s face looked excited. Mine looked a bit peaky.

In this moment I remembered that I’m actually terrified of heights. Every nightmare I’ve ever had was about falling, besides the recent one where I got lost at a Donald Trump rally.

Joe said I should go first. I took off my sandals, perched myself on the ledge, took a deep breath, and froze. Too cool to be scared, all I could think to do was ask Joe to count me off. So I asked, and he did. 3, 2, 1.

The fall was exhilarating, the water a cold freedom. I swam out of the way, he followed suit, and we scaled the cobblestone wall to go again. At this point I knew it was safe, but I still needed an extra push.

So I asked again. Joe counted me off. The third time, though, he didn’t.

“I’m not going to count you off,” he said. “You just have to jump.”

He was right. With a deep breath and a quick prayer, I jumped without saying a word.

This was the day I learned I was never afraid of heights. And I didn’t mind the fall. I was just afraid to jump. My biggest jump yet: At the beginning of my senior year, I chose to come out as gay.

I spent my entire adolescence telling myself that I was straight — convinced that what I was feeling was just a phase.

Every date felt wrong, every dance awkward. Conversations about sex filled me

with anxiety. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I was finally able to let go of all that and be honest with myself.

I spent two years looking myself in the mirror every day, telling myself, “You’re gay, and that’s perfectly fine. And one day, people are going to love you for it.”

Yet, after two years of building up my confidence I still felt frustrated. I hadn’t told anyone, and I had no real plans to. I had no practice living as part of a marginalized community. There I was, peering over the edge, staring down at the water — too afraid to jump, and too cool to tell anyone I was scared.

Then one day, fall term of senior year, I remembered what Joe said up on that ledge some six years prior. “I’m not going to count you off. You just have to jump.”

His voice was stern when he said it, as if it was this obvious truth.

For the next several days, that phrase was all I heard.

The more I heard it in my head, the more I knew it to be true. There would be no special moment telling me it was time to come out. If I was going to start living my life authentically, the way I needed to, then I’d have to make that choice — a choice to obliterate my comfort zone, to share the thing I’d always feared, even hated, most about myself. This choice comes with no manual, and no guarantee of success. It was simply a steep jump into cold water.

So I jumped and told my family, friends, and colleagues. At one point I told the sales clerk at my co-op. I started dating. I had no idea what the consequences would be, but I knew that not taking that leap would have been too stifling to bear.

After that, everyone jumped in after me. My parents expressed their unconditional love and support. My roommates decided it was their new mission to eliminate homophobic behavior in their social lives. My siblings sent cards of congratulations and made donations to anti-bullying campaigns in my name. My sister-in-law called me in tears to say how happy she was that her children would grow up with me as a role model. My friends took me out to celebrate. When I’d tell people, they’d react to my vulnerability by matching it, sharing stories they had never shared with anyone else, detailing their unique experiences that they feared no one would understand. In one week I

saw more compassion, vulnerability, and respect than I’d seen in my entire life.

Back in Minneapolis, I didn’t enjoy standing on that bridge looking down at the water, but at least I knew how the concrete felt under my feet. The moment I jumped, I forgot all about the fear of the fall, and the familiarity of the ledge.

The fall was a rush of excitement, and the plunge was exactly what I needed. Swimming underneath the bridge, all that fear just felt silly—like a waste of time. And now, when I think of all the time I could have spent living authentically and happily if I’d only mustered up the courage to come out, I wish I’d done it much sooner.

If I could write a letter to myself back then, it’d go something like this: As college comes to a close, and you wait for your diploma to be framed, you’ll be faced with a lot of free time to wonder: What’s next? After all, you’ve majored in music. Everyone you’ve ever met has asked you, “What are you going to do with that?”

The answer won’t be easy. After four years in Eugene, and about 17 years in school, you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone here. Chances are the Eugene Symphony won’t hire us all.

Whatever the next step is, it will test your courage. It will disrupt the familiarity of your life. And to make matters worse, that next step might not be successful.

Auditions fail. Employers make cuts.

Symphonies run out of money. But opening yourself up to that failure, pointing your life and career in a direction that feels right, will be so much better than staying where you are now.

There’s plenty of time to spend dwelling on fear and failure. That’s part of taking the leap. No one’s going to count you off. You just have to jump.

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zerowaste.uoregon.edu

SCRIMMAGE

Football in American Art from the Civil War to the Present

JULY 30 – DECEMBER 31, 2016

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KICK-OFF PARTY Friday, July 29, 6–8 p.m.

For more information, visit jsma.uoregon.edu/Scrimmage This exhibition is supported by the FUNd Endowment at Colorado State University; the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Fund; the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund; RBC Wealth Management; the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Endowment; the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the University of Oregon Office of Advancement; and JSMA members.

Ernie Barnes, (1938–2009). Fumble in the Line, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. Ernie Barnes Family Trust

jsma.uoregon.edu | 541.346.3027 EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity

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