Willamette Week, May 20, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 30 - "Where the Virus Went"

NEWS: A REOPENING ROAD TRIP. FOOD: BURGER STEVENS’ ITALIAN JOB. PLAY: THE ROGER EBERT OF VIDEO GAMES. P. 6

P. 21

P. 26

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“I KNOW WHO THE TIGER KING IS!” P. 18

Where the Virus Went Reopening Oregon depends on a detective squad tracing where contagious people have been.

BY NIGEL JAQUISS | Page 10

WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/30 05.20.2020

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Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

FINDINGS WESLEY LAPOINTE

DIALOGUE On May 14, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown sanctioned the first stage of reopening for 31 of the state’s 36 counties. That meant many businesses shuttered by the governor’s stay-home order—bars, dine-in restaurants, salons and gyms—could open their doors last weekend under new rules (see story on page 6). The three Portland-area counties have not yet applied to reopen. WW reported the governor’s decision on wweek.com. Here’s what our readers had to say:

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 30.

Nursing homes asked Gov. Kate

Brown to protect them from lawsuits. 4 Elkhart Baptist Church has successfully thrown 20 of the governor’s executive orders into limbo. 5

The Cowlitz tribe installed clear plastic shields between slot machines at the Mill Casino. 6 The Pig ’N Pancake in Lincoln City is still closed. 7 Portland nurses say they’re reusing N95 masks for as many as five surgeries. 8 Tracking the spread of COVID-19 is a lot like conducting a telephone poll. 11 Health experts agree: It is a bummer to be quarantined on your birthday. 12

A defender for the Portland Thorns got kicked off two high school athletic fields while trying to practice during quarantine. 18 The owner of Breakside Brewery thinks consumers won’t tolerate ridiculous prices for craft beer once the pandemic is over. 20 Burger Stevens now makes Italian food and is turning leftover hamburger buns into breadcrumbs. 21 Willing to pay $4 to eat a glob of cookie dough? There is a place, and it’s great. 22 Students at a Portland performance school are remaking The Lion King using Zoom. 25 A vlogger in Bend makes $4,000 a month talking about video games on YouTube. 26 Want to know what Anthony Bourdain’s acid trips were like?

There’s a documentary. 28

ON THE COVER: On the trail of the virus, design by Lennox Rees, lennoxrees.com.

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

The 40-year mystery of a photo taken during Mount St. Helens’ eruption may be solved.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Mark Zusman

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News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Matthew Singer Assistant A&C Editor Andi Prewitt Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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Rob Klavins via Twitter: “I hope I’m wrong, but I fear the second wave or—in places like here in Wallowa County—the first.”

@DebraJane13 via Twitter: “I mean, I want to go to the beach more than anyone, but is this safe? Do the service workers have enough PPE? Do we have enough testing?”

Deven E. Ferté v i a Fa c e b o o k : “God help these communities that are reopening, for several reasons.”

COAST IS CLEAR: The entrance to Apollo’s Nightclub and Restaurant in Newport, Ore., remains boarded up on May 17 as surrounding businesses slowly reopen.

Deb Tinnin via Facebook: “Great. All the Portland folks can come to the beach.”

Jim Andersen via Facebook: “Those in outlying counties who are not comfortable with the governor’s decision can still wear masks or stay at home. Those who want to get back to some sort of semblance of normal can do so. Let’s get back to being productive.”

Eric Aleksandr via Facebook: “Working-class people don’t get to ‘choose to stay home’ when

Dr. Know

Patrick Finney v i a Tw i tt e r : “We’ll all be locked back in our homes

by July because of this.” @rockwoodinvests via Twitt e r : “Sorry, I’m not gonna go to a restaurant if everybody [in masks] looks like they’re getting ready for surgery.”

K . G. Fa c e t v i a wweek.com: “I like the piecework reopening plan that’s based mostly on how the virus moves through more populated areas. Scientifically informed, but allows us to move on with minimal risk. Too slow for some, but I’m more or less on board.”

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BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

The lockdown came with lots of dos and don’t for commercial activity—who had to close, how to act if you were open. Social activity, however, was one big “don’t,” a draconian standard that led many to cheat. Are more realistic guidelines available? —Our Previous Column

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@Joechehly via Twitter: “Wear a goddamn mask so we can get back closer to normal and stay that way, Oregon.”

TESS RISKI

STEVENS ITALIANO, PAGE 21

these orders disqualify you for unemployment.

Good for capitalism, bad for poor people.”

Last week, Evan W. asked how irate he should be about his neighbors’ maskless garden parties.

From this, I adroitly pivoted to a larger question, which I then failed to answer: In a world where going to PetSmart for dog sweaters is allowed, shouldn’t there also be some wiggle room in the blanket “no social visits” prohibition?

The day after that column appeared, the governor’s office revised this very policy. The free press—what can’t it do? (Tune in June 24, 2169, when I’ll use my awesome power to blot out the sun!) The new guidelines permit social and recreational gatherings of up to 10 people.

To be clear, this is not a green light for naked Twister or an all-body-fluids Slip ’N Slide. You still need to practice social distancing—stay 6 feet apart, sanitize surfaces often, and don’t offer anyone a sip of your beer.

The epidemiologically hip may observe it is not actually any safer to have people over now than it was May 14, and many folks I’ve talked to are in no hurry to have people over.

Perhaps that’s because there’s a reason we were tougher on social interactions than retail activity: You’re more likely to infect friends and family with a contagious virus than you are strangers.

We laymen tend to think of infectious disease as a sort of high-stakes cooties that can be passed from one person to another in an instant: Tag, you’re dead!

Viral contagions, however, usually require a certain minimum dose of virus to develop into a full-blown infection. The longer you spend in close contact with an infected person, the more likely you are to reach that dose.

Now, as convenient as you may find Fred Meyer’s bulk section, you’re probably not going to corner one of its stock boys for an hour to tell him that, seriously, you really love him, man. At a house party, though, it’s a different ballgame.

Just be careful out there, OK? QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

NURSING HOMES AND HOSPITALS SEEK LEGAL PROTECTION: Nursing homes and hospitals have asked Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to use her executive orders to protect them from lawsuits resulting from COVID-19. In a letter dated April 3, obtained exclusively by WW, the health care groups and businesses argue the governor has the power without legislative action to shield them from legal liability.

They ask for three specific protections, including to be “immune from civil liability for any injury, death or loss that results from their acts or omissions while rendering, withholding or delaying medical or other care and services unless it is alleged and proved” that the company or group “was grossly negligent.” Among the groups and businesses that signed the letter were the Oregon Medical Association, Oregon Association of Health and Hospital Systems and Oregon Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, along with most of the state’s largest hospital systems. The groups cite the example of New York state, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo included liability protections in an executive order. Brown says she’s made no decision.

PRISONS ORDER HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE: President Donald Trump isn’t the only one looking to hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19.

The Oregon Department of Corrections recently purchased the antimalarial drug to treat inmates afflicted with the coronavirus, department spokeswoman Jennifer Black says. The department purchased the drug “both for usual use as an antiinflammatory drug in patients with rheumatologic disorders, and also a limited quantity for COVID-19 use,” Black adds.

After follow-up questions from WW, the department said it hadn’t purchased any of the hydroxychloroquine solely to treat COVID-19 cases and declined to say how man inmates, if any, it had treated with the drug. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hydroxychloroquine has not been approved for treatment of COVID-19, and the Food and Drug Administration warns

LEGACY GOOD SAMARITAN HOSPITAL

it is not “safe or effective” in treating the virus. Despite the risks, President Trump himself has been taking the drug to stave off the virus, The New York Times reported May 18.

ELECTION COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST OUR OREGON: The Freedom Foundation, an anti-union nonprofit based in Salem, filed a 22-page elections complaint May 13, targeting Our Oregon, the laborbacked 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has dominated Oregon ballot measures for more than a decade. At the heart of the complaint: a claim that Our Oregon has failed to observe state disclosure laws.

“Our Oregon has operated as a political committee without filing a statement of organization with the Secretary of State as required,” the complaint says. Our Oregon executive director Becca Uherbelau says the complaint is frivolous. “Everyone knows that 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to engage in electoral work,” she says.

“This complaint is a waste of time and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.”

READ ELECTION RESULTS NOW: It’s unclear why, but voter turnout hit an uncharacteristic lull Monday, May 18—the day before ballots were counted.

Normally, the final two days of a vote-by-mail cycle yield as many as half the ballots returned. But tepid returns May 18 left turnout at a lower than normal 36.4 percent in Multnomah County going into election day (slightly higher than overall state turnout).

By the time you read this, dozens of Portland-area races will be decided. Visit wweek. com for results and analysis of a primary election inexorably altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK J U S T I N K AT I G B A K

COVID LAWSUIT OF THE WEEK

TIMELINE

Lost

Oregon’s job losses eclipse the worst of the Great Recession.

New unemployment figures the state released this week contain a couple of amazing revelations.

First, Oregon went from near-record low unemployment of about 3.5 percent

in March to record high unemployment in April of 14.2 percent. Second, we easily eclipsed the high-water unemployment mark of the Great Recession: 11.8 percent.

NIGEL JAQUISS.

Elkhorn Baptist Church v. Gov. Kate Brown Pastors wanted to reopen their churches. Their effort could nullify most of Oregon’s pandemic rules.

THE RULING: On May 18, Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff ordered a preliminary injunction to block all 20 of Gov. Kate Brown’s pandemic-related emergency orders.

THE CASE: Fifteen churches, three state lawmakers, the Grant County sheriff, a Christian school in Roseburg, and nearly two dozen additional individual plaintiffs sued Gov. Kate Brown for infringing on their rights to practice their religion.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys Ray Hacke and Kevin Mannix based part of their argument on a state statute—ORS 433.441— which says a proclamation of a state of emergency expires 14 days after the public health emergency is declared, and that the governor may extend her emergency powers an additional 14 days. In total, this gives the governor 28 days of emergency powers.

The lawyers also argued that Brown is beholden to Article X-A of the Oregon Constitution, which says in situations of “catastrophic disaster,” the governor must convene the Legislature within 30 days in order to extend her emergency powers.

THE JUDGE’S REASONING: Shirtcliff wrote in his May 18 order that the governor has discretion to use X-A, but she is not required to invoke it. So Shirtcliff dismissed that part of the plaintiffs’ argument.

But Shirtcliff determined that Brown is beholden to ORS 433.441, which nullified her emergency powers after 28 days of declaring a state of emergency.

This means Brown’s emergency powers expired April 6.

In order to issue his preliminary injunction, Shirtcliff had to decide that

plaintiffs experienced “irreparable harm” from the governor’s executive orders.

“Plaintiffs have shown that they will be harmed by deprivation of the constitutional right to freely exercise their religion,” Shirtcliff wrote. “Indeed, criminal penalties can be imposed if they violate current restrictions that are in place.”

WHAT’S AT STAKE: “Any and all orders issued in response to the pandemic” could be nullified, court filings say. That would mean 20 of Brown’s pandemic-centered orders, ranging from closing childcare facilities to placing moratoriums on renter evictions, would no longer hold the power of law.

Brown couldn’t prohibit gatherings of 25 people or more, and she couldn’t require grocery store and pharmacy workers to wear masks.

Mannix says the case gets complicated when it comes to sections of Brown’s orders that are already allowed under her regulatory powers. For example, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Brown may have the authority—regardless of an emergency declaration—to close public schools.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: Following Shirtcliff’s order, the state immediately filed a petition with the Oregon Supreme Court seeking dismissal. That night, the state Supreme Court granted an emergency stay on Shirtcliff’s order, meaning Brown’s orders are still in effect for now.

The plaintiffs have until Friday, May 22, to respond.

The stay will remain in effect until the Supreme Court rules. The high court may decide either to uphold Shirtcliff’s order or dismiss it. TESS RISKI.

Source: Oregon Employment Department

TRENDING

House Calls

Firefighters now respond to fewer medical calls than before COVID-19.

Last week, the union representing Portland firefighters agreed to renegotiate a three-year labor contract, giving up millions in previously agreed upon pay increases (“This Is Not a Drill,” WW, May 13, 2020). That remarkable concession was more difficult because firefighters noted they were on the front line of COVID-19 response.

There’s little doubt firefighters have dangerous jobs. At Portland Fire & Rescue, however, responding to medical calls is most of the work. Firefighters respond to about 5,000 such calls every month, versus about 350 fires. Many of the medical calls are for routine, non-emergency matters.

But figures WW obtained through a

public records request also show this: Firefighters are responding to significantly fewer medical calls now than they were before the pandemic.

Such medical calls dropped off in March as the stay-home orders took hold, and plummeted more than 18 percent from levels last April. (Fire calls held fairly steady.) In addition to people staying put, officials think a more judicious use of 911 helps explain the drop.

Robyn Burek, a fire bureau analyst, says in March the bureau began ceding some sick calls to American Medical Response: “The fewer people we can send into a potentially contagious situation the better for everyone.” NIGEL JAQUISS.

MEDICAL CALLS Source: Portland Fire & Rescue

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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NEWS

Postcards From the Edge What Oregon’s reopening looked like. tess@wwe e k.com

Mary Carlile left her senior living facility in Roseburg, Ore., for the first time in three months on May 18. She headed straight for the slot machines.

“It’s really a different feeling, seeing so many people out,” said Carlile. She was wearing face mask, which covered only her nose so that she could still smoke a cigarette.

“I haven’t even been to the grocery store.”

Carlile was one of hundreds who visited the Mill Casino in North Bend on a Monday morning for what was dubbed its “Grand Reopening.” The casino, operated by the Coquille Indian Tribe along the central Oregon Coast, was the first in the state to resume business since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March.

The casino floor had changed: Blackjack tables were shut down, plastic glass barriers were installed between the slot machines, and a masked employee took gamblers’ temperatures at the door, using an infrared thermometer mounted on a tripod. “Have you experienced flu-like symptoms in the last 24 hours?” he asked each patron.

The Mill Casino is an economic engine in Coos County, where the towns of North Bend and Coos Bay never fully recovered from the demise of the timber industry. These

University of Oregon 9 pm Saturday, May 16

East 13th Avenue next to the UO campus is normally a drunken circus on Saturday nights. EDM music, frat boys, street guitarists. But on this night, nobody was on the sidewalk, and not a single business was open.

Around the corner, however, were signs of life. The lights were on at the bar Rennie’s Landing, and customers drank beer around the fireplaces outside.

Inside, a server showed a group of guests to their table and explained the system: Place your orders at the table instead of the bar, and walk through the building counterclockwise to maintain distance.

People stuck to their little groups for the most part, although there were occasional fist bumps and hugs of reunion. And in some places, keeping distance was difficult. All the urinals were occupied in the men’s room.

For other campus businesses, there was less demand.

At Uniquely Chengdu, a Sichuan Chinese restaurant on 13th Avenue, only one group was seated the following afternoon. “The first day, 10 people came in. The second day, nobody came in,” owner Xiaoti Sun said. “Today, it’s just this.” He waved his arm at the nearly empty dining room.

Across campus at Agate Alley Bistro, a popular bar and brunch spot on East 19th Avenue, manager Kerstin Bern prepared to open for dine-in customers on May 20. “We’re excited to see people again.” Bern said. “It’s been weird being in a little bubble.”

She said Agate Alley has been losing money almost every day while only selling takeout, and it has to reopen. But she’s not sure if business will be good, with much of the student body back in their hometowns. —Jade Yamazaki Stewart, Eugene Weekly

6

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

days, seagulls gather on the boardwalk along the namesake bay. Locals in the coffee shop, Kaffe 101, greet each other by name in the mornings.

The regulars at Mill Casino felt relief at being allowed back into a familiar world. “I always love the sounds and the lights and how it feels like everyone’s just able to relax and let go when they’re here,” said Christina Martinez, who lives nearby. “It’s refreshing to see people just happy again.”

Yet Martinez was grateful for new precautions to protect her from the virus. She liked having bottles of hand sanitizer mounted every 20 feet, and preferred the slot machines spaced farther apart.

“I wouldn’t mind it staying like this,” she said. “I truly love this [plastic] separator because, even if it’s just a cold, you don’t know if someone’s going to cough on you, and then I go home and get my kids sick.”

This weekend, Oregon was a divided state. It had one foot out the door from the stay-home orders that kept people housebound for nearly seven weeks. On May 14, Gov. Kate Brown gave 31 of the state’s 36 counties permission to reopen most businesses. (But not Portland, which still lacks some of the required safeguards. See page 10.)

And so, over a rainy weekend, some of your fellow citizens experimented with something thrilling and taboo:

Eugene

10 am Sunday, May 17 Cheryl Mclaughlin’s last shift in the Denny’s dining room had been March 17. In late April, Mclaughlin found out she could return to work for takeout and deliveries.

“Well, that just happened to coincide with the day my husband died,” Mclaughlin said. “I was not thrilled to come back to work. I have an 8-year-old grandson that lives with me, and he’s already reeling with the death of his grandpa. The first thing he told me was, ‘Grandma, I’m afraid you’re going to go to work and get the virus and you’re going to die.’”

This Denny’s—plunked alongside a series of gas stations and a Motel 6—is only really visible from Interstate 5. The location was made famous in 1970 after the diner was used to film a scene for the Oscarnominated Five Easy Pieces, where a young Jack Nicholson attempts to order a plain omelet and a side of toast.

Fifty years later, the diner looks much the same. Except today, every other vinyl booth is marked unavailable. The tables in use are sprayed down almost immediately after a guest leaves and promptly adorned with little red signs that say “Disinfected for Your Safety.” It’s the new “No Smoking.”

According to Mclaughlin, Denny’s was slow virtually all weekend, even considering the loss of space due to social distancing guidelines. Mclaughlin said that management originally told servers to turn away guests not wearing face masks or offer one to wear.

“We’re supposed to have masks to hand out to guests if they want to use them,” Mclaughlin said. “But we don’t have those masks. So people just come in and if they don’t wear them, they don’t wear them.

ON THE SIDE: Denny’s in Eugene welcomed There’s nothing we can do.” —Donny back customers with new signage.

Morrison, Eugene Weekly DONNY MORRISON

BY TE SS R I SKI

They walked into a local pub and ordered a cheeseburger and a beer.

But others didn’t.

Across Oregon, from the coast to Bend, people emerged from lockdown cautiously, in fits and starts. The lifting of the stay-home order did not spark a mass rush back into public life. In many towns, most businesses remained closed. A lone bar could become an attraction—because it was the only one that dared to turn on the “Open” sign.

Nor did Portlanders flood into tourist spots, as the governor openly worried they might. Oregon Department of Transportation data shows that last weekend’s traffic numbers remained flat along U.S. Highway 26—the main route from the Willamette Valley to Bend, the state’s top outdoor destination.

Last weekend, WW partnered with reporters from two other alternative newsweeklies: Eugene Weekly and The Source Weekly in Bend. Our reporters spoke to employees, tourists and locals across the state.

The scenes we observed across Oregon were a preview of what Portland can expect as soon as next month. But two days before election day, they also served as an experiment in democracy. Each citizen had to weigh personal freedom against civic responsibility. They had to decide how much risk they were willing to accept for themselves and their neighbors in order to enjoy food and company.

Carlile, finishing her cigarette in the casino, said she ventured out because her husband was stir crazy. She found the result unsatisfying.

“It’s kind of depressing, I think,” Carlile said. “I congratulate them for joining in and trying this, you know.

We’ll see what happens, I guess.”

PHOTOS: TESS RISKI

ROAD TRIP: Clockwise, starting from top left, gamblers from across the state filed into Mill Casino in Coos Bay, Ore., during its “Grand Reopening” on May 18. A line of customers picked up orders outside of Mo’s Seafood and Chowder restaurant in Newport, Ore., on May 17. Sean Murray, an employee of the Old Bayfront Bazaar in Newport, greets customers through the clear plastic barrier at the checkout counter. A stuffed alpaca sporting a surgical mask warns shoppers to maintain social distancing outside a shop in Newport.

Lincoln City

Newport

Bend

The Pig ’N Pancake was still closed. So was nearly every other brunch spot in Lincoln City. One of the few dining rooms open for business: Old Oregon Tavern, which was serving cheeseburgers and pitchers of Hamm’s.

A group of seven people gathered at one table, and a tattooed man slapped the sides of the Elvira-themed pinball machine placed near the entrance. Aside from one customer dangling a surgical mask around his neck, the only person wearing a face covering was the bartender, who said the place reopened May 15 as soon as the governor gave the signal.

One couple, Danny and Ken Dickerson, ordered onion rings. Danny dug in while Ken played pinball.

They hadn’t picked Old Oregon Tavern as a destination.

It was open, she said, and they were tired of staying home all day.

“We’re still cautious,” Danny Dickerson added. “We don’t just want to go out gallivanting everywhere, but at the same time we still want to have our normal rights that we should have.”

Inside the bar, a few rays of sunlight streamed through the front windows, which are mostly covered with paint and neon signs. No music played, and the majority of conversations were about the reopening itself. The seven people gathered at a table together grew rowdier as their pitchers emptied. —Tess Riski

The problem with reopening a gift shop is that people want to pick up the gifts. That’s a big reason why Sean Murray didn’t want to return to work at Old Bayfront Bazaar.

“If I had my way, I would let it be closed for another couple weeks,” Murray said. “I don’t understand how people don’t have respect when it comes to certain things, especially when it comes to our merchandise.

They want to touch it 20 times, and then we have to go back and we have to go through with gloves and sanitize.

So it’s kind of difficult.”

The shelves in the cramped gift shop were adorned with tourist tchotchkes—shot glasses, T-shirts, and custom magnets with kids’ names. Arrows formed from tape snaked a complicated maze around the glass shelves, causing confusion among customers. “It’s more of a guideline,” an employee named Levi said.

Business at the store had been steady for the past two days, but on this Sunday afternoon the Bazaar had only sold $40 worth of merchandise. “Last year we made twice that,” Murray said. “We can tell the difference.

There’s not as many people. It’s not as fluid.”

Murray says he finds it disrespectful when customers don’t wear masks in the store, and that’s usually the giveaway between who’s local and who’s from out of town.

Locals follow the rules, Murray says. Tourists do not. — Tess Riski

It might have been any other May weekend in downtown Bend. People spilled out of a neighborhood bar near Mirror Pond. The local breweries had waitlists. California and Washington license plates added to the traffic. People hiked the Deschutes River Trail.

Reopening weekend came in like a lion in this tourist town, even if it’s not yet officially inviting tourists back. “The amount of people downtown…it was pretty shocking,” said Dylan Malenfant, a Bendite who went out Friday night. The brewery his group visited practiced social distancing at its tables, he said, but earlier in the night, they passed up going to another bar where people were packed both inside and on the patio. “People have definitely missed going out, and I think a lot of people are already jumping at the opportunity.”

On May 20, the Bend City Council was scheduled to discuss the possibility of closing some downtown streets to cars, allowing businesses—namely, bars and restaurants—to spread out customers for social distancing. May 20 is also when local tourism agencies expect to get a first look at numbers from reopening weekend. Wherever people land on the idea of reopening, seeing an uptick in hotel and Airbnb rentals is a bellwether: Are we being invaded by tourists who could bring more of the disease? Is my business going to be saved when tourists come to town?

Still, some of Bend’s bars and restaurants are taking their time opening back up. At the Dogwood Cocktail Cabin, a moody bar in downtown Bend, its owners have opted to wait to reopen, giving them more time to retrain staff.

“We love tourists, we all look forward to the summer,” said William Frankle, a bartender. “Of course, with everything that’s been going on, the summer season poses a new set of concerns.” —Nicole Vulcan and Cayla Clark, The Source Weekly

Noon Sunday, May 17

2:45 pm Sunday, May 17

9 am Monday, May 18

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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WESLEY LAPOINTE

NEWS

ASK FOR A MASK: Portland doctors and nurses have complained that hospitals are reopening with an inadequate supply of personal protective equipment.

Compromised Operation

Even as Gov. Kate Brown reopens Oregon, a shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment at hospitals suggest a state still in crisis.

BY R ACHEL M ONAH AN

rmonahan@wweek.com

Elective surgeries resumed this month at Providence Portland and Providence St. Vincent, two of the city’s largest hospitals, after Gov. Kate Brown lifted a ban on nonessential medical procedures.

But the Oregon Nurses Association says something is amiss. It alleges nurses at Providence have only one N95 mask each for an entire shift—and are reusing the same mask for three to five surgeries a day. The union says that’s because the stockpile of gear that was supposed to relieve pressure on hospitals never materialized.

“It’s incredibly risky,” says ONA spokesman Kevin Mealy. “Hospital policies are designed to protect the [supply of ] equipment instead of the people using them.”

Providence has not responded to requests for comment.

But the nurses’ union says Providence is not alone in continuing to reuse masks and other personal protective equipment. “It’s incredibly commonplace,” Mealy adds.

That’s dangerous because, in a worst-case scenario, nurses or doctors without adequate PPE could become infected with novel coronavirus during one procedure and then infect any patient they see while still wearing the same coverings.

Unsafe at Home Gov. Kate Brown continues to say she’s committed to “data and science” in deciding on a reopening plan, even as case counts of COVID-19 remain steady.

But Oregon still isn’t testing its most vulnerable citizens: residents of nursing homes.

The Trump administration, which has been slow to act on COVID-19, advised governors last week to test everyone in nursing homes within two weeks. Oregon has been

8

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends hospitals use masks once and then discard them, but on Feb. 4, it issued an emergency standard for PPE—one that no longer required hospitals to replace masks after each patient visit or surgery. Brown allowed hospitals to reopen May 1 for elective procedures, still using that new standard.

By the end of May, hospitals will have to return to their usual policy: using masks once before throwing them away.

So while the Oregon Nurses Association argues that elective surgeries should not be allowed while masks are still being reused, the Providence hospitals appear to be complying with state standards.

Oregonians staying home for nearly two months helped prevent surges in hospital emergency rooms beyond what the medical system could handle. But it was also supposed to buy time—time for hospitals to acquire enough masks and other gear to protect workers, time to ramp up testing to sufficiently guard against the spread of the disease, and time to see the state’s counts of COVID-19 cases drop.

By some measures, Oregon still hasn’t reached those goals. Doctors and nurses say Oregon has fallen woefully short of providing them sufficient PPE, and the state hasn’t met federal standards for testing, especially in nursing homes (see sidebar).

under pressure for weeks, yet hasn’t launched a nursing home testing plan.

“I certainly think it’s time,” says Ruby Haughton-Pitts, the Oregon state director for AARP. “All congregate care facilities should provide testing and testing schedules for residents and staff”—meaning testing just once won’t be adequate.

Testing staff and residents of the state’s senior care facilities would be a massive undertaking: an estimated 57,000 tests, not including retesting staff. (So far the state has conducted just under 100,000 tests—total—

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

since the pandemic began.)

Oregon’s Department of Human Services says it doesn’t have data on how many people have already been tested at those facilities.

But more than 60 percent of the state’s deaths have been in nursing homes or other senior care facilities. Testing (along with adequate PPE) are the top requests from the union representing long-term care workers, says Melissa Unger, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 503.

“There needs to be a continued focus on long-term care,”

But with pressure growing to return to normal, Gov. Brown moved forward last week, sanctioning the gradual reopening of 31 counties. Observers fear the governor is moving into a new, more dangerous era without fully meeting the conditions set by the federal government and her own advisers.

“We have been at a high plateau [in case counts],” says Oregon State University professor Chunhuei Chi. “I would advise her not to open.”

To be sure, some counties have seen very few cases of COVID-19 and could handle the few that they have seen, but the policy of reopening relies on people from Portland and other higher-risk parts of the state staying home. “Counties don’t have borders,” says Chi. Among those who are most worried: doctors.

Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, an emergency room doctor, says the hospital reopening is too expansive. “We have thrown cosmetic surgery in the same category as cancer surgery,” says Meieran. “We have ended up with a system that makes no sense, is inequitably applied, and, in too many cases, can’t provide assurance that patients or providers will be protected.”

In order to resume elective surgeries, the state required large hospitals to attest to having a 30-day supply of personal protective equipment. Doctors say that supply isn’t showing up.

“We’re concerned that there is some fudging of the numbers going on,” says Dr. Mike McCaskill, president of the Oregon chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which has 500 members. “We’re here wondering where is our PPE?” The chapter wrote to the governor’s office May 11, outlining concerns about safety, including excerpts of doctors’ comments from the end of April and the first week of May. WW obtained that email this week.

“I have not received a single new mask from the hospital, and we have no clear trajectory when PPE will be available,” wrote one anonymous doctor. “I’m reusing several masks that my family sent me and have now used them each at least five times, using one per shift and then reusing for several days. I feel like I can’t speak up about this for fear of retribution by the hospital.”

As The Oregonian reported last week, a survey of the college’s members found only 23.6 percent reported “being as safe as they could reasonably be” at work.

Responsibility for obtaining more masks for doctors and nurses lies with the hospitals and clinics that employ them, though the state is still engaged in providing masks, given the ongoing shortages.

Brown’s office defended her efforts around masks and other gear. “Securing personal protective equipment for frontline health care workers has been a top priority for the governor since day one of this crisis,” says spokeswoman Liz Merah. “If frontline workers still do not feel safe, their employers need to sit down with them and have an honest conversation. Employers should be transparent with their employees about safety equipment.”

Meieran isn’t satisfied. “It is offensive that their response to this desperate cry from the people who are actually doing the work of saving lives is dismissed and that no action has been taken by the state to investigate this issue and ensure meaningful accountability,” she says.

says Unger, whether the state reopens or not.

Jim Carlson, president of the nursing home industry’s Oregon Health Care Association, says he expects a plan from the state in the coming weeks that may start with conducting tests in Portland-area counties that are seeing a higher number of cases.

“I fully believe we’re going to identify more COVID-positive cases through this large an undertaking,” he says. “But if you don’t identify them, it’s pretty hard to stop and restrict the spread.”

The governor’s office says Brown has made it a priority to keep nursing home residents safe.

“We are working to develop plans for a practical testing strategy for long-term care facilities within our capacity,” says Brown’s spokeswoman Liz Merah. “As with other guidance and recommendations from the White House, we must review and determine how best to implement that guidance on the ground in our state, given current and projected resources and capacity.”

RACHEL MONAHAN.

PORTLAND’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES SENT DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

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Where the Virus Went Reopening Oregon depends on a detective squad tracing where contagious people have been.

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Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

M O T O YA N A K A M U R A

BY N I G EL JAQUI SS

njaq uiss@wweek.com

Think back: Where were you at this time a week ago?

How many times did you leave the house that day?

What businesses did you visit? Who did you talk to?

Now, imagine you just tested positive for the coronavirus. A stranger claiming to be from the Multnomah County Health Department calls.

He wants the names and phone numbers of everybody you’ve come in contact with since two days before you started feeling sick. He’s got a million other questions. About whom you might have slept with, whom you came in contact with and where you were every hour of every day.

You just want to sleep.

David Cuevas is the man making that call.

Cuevas, 41, has the official title of case investigator for the communicable disease services section of the Multnomah County Health Department. In the larger scheme of things, he is the first link in a chain of steps that will determine whether the county can reopen successfully this summer.

His work can be difficult, interviewing someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus about where she has been, whom she had contact with, and how to get in touch with those people.

When Cuevas gets the information he needs, he then passes those facts along to a contact tracer. That person’s job is to reach each of those contacts, tell them they might have been exposed to COVID-19, and urge them to stay home for two weeks.

Multnomah County must satisfy state officials it has the capacity to hire enough investigators to contact 95 percent of patients who test positive for the coronavirus within 24 hours, the threshold set by Gov. Kate Brown. Until then, it will stay shut. (Washington and Clackamas counties, which also remain closed, are in a similar position.)

Multnomah County, which has reported 1,000 COVID-19 cases and 56 deaths, is currently reaching about 60 percent of patients within that time. (Data for other counties isn’t available, but in Washington, the statewide average is about 84 percent.)

On May 12, Dr. Anthony Fauci highlighted the

importance of the work Cuevas and his colleagues perform. “Identification, isolation and contact tracing will determine whether you can continue to go forward as you try to reopen America,” Fauci told a U.S. Senate hearing.

The Oregon state epidemiologist, Dr. Dean Sidelinger, echoes that point.

“By following [COVID-19] more closely, we’re able to treat it like a brush fire,” Sidelinger says. “We’re stamping out the sparks and the smaller outbreaks and thereby preventing another forest fire.”

In the past week, WW interviewed five members of the county’s communicable disease team. They’re all working long days and weekends, doing a job that’s less like CSI: Miami and more like conducting a telephone poll. It’s a deceptively complex job: To gather the information critical to slowing COVID-19, they must combine the relentlessness of a bloodhound with the cheery nature of a telemarketer in what can be a lifeor-death situation.

Initial calls to people who have tested positive can take an hour or more, as the person on the other end of the line may be hostile, ill or under duress.

“I had a call where the guy was so sick, I said, ‘You need to hang up and call 911,’” says Cuevas. “His wife drove him to the hospital instead.”

Every morning, Sara McCall, a Multnomah County public health nurse, logs on to a state database called Orpheus. (In Greek mythology, the poet Orpheus strives—unsuccessfully—to rescue his late wife, Eurydice, from hell.)

Oregon law requires health care providers to report to the state when a patient arrives with a communicable disease. There are currently 112 such communicable diseases, ranging from anthrax poisoning to zika. Those reports go into the Orpheus system and are routed to the county where the patient lives.

With the name comes a record that usually contains a medical history and a phone number.

McCall, 38, knows that on any given day she will log in and find cases of hepatitis, salmonella, measles, Lyme disease or any of the other reportable diseases. In a normal year, the Multnomah County communicable disease team investigates about 2,500 disease reports.

“Until recently, it was always something different,” she says. “I’m not used to focusing on just one disease.”

These days, Orpheus spits out the names of those who have tested positive for the coronavirus. It’s crowded out all but the most pressing other investigations.

“In non-COVID times, I definitely felt a lot more excitement about work, because I’ve got no idea what is going to happen,” McCall says. “For a while after COVID, I was concerned about logging in and finding out more people had died. Now I’ve gotten used to it.”

Like Cuevas, McCall spends her days tracking

MASKED MAN: David Cuevas’ fluency in Spanish is a big asset in COVID-19 investigations.

MOVIE BUFF: After watching Outbreak in junior high, Sara McCall found her life’s path.

TRAINING DAY: McCall has helped new hires learn the ropes of contact tracing.

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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says. “People are afraid they are going to get really, really sick. I’ve have had people say, ‘Are you going to call my employer?’ I think there’s always that fear, if we call the employer, they aren’t going to have a job.” (Typically, the investigator will ask patients to notify their employers themselves or will ask for permission to call.)

McCall’s boss, Lisa Ferguson, manager of the county’s communicable disease program, is in the process of hiring dozens of investigators per the governor’s directive.

For case investigators, Fe r g u s o n wa n t s p e o p l e who are methodical and detail-oriented. They should also have the verbal and intellectual dexterity of a skilled salesperson. It helps to have a medical or scientific background.

“Many of our people are nurses,” says Ferguson, 44, who worked in an orphanage in China before joining Multnomah County in 2016.

“But we are essentially cold calling, so you have to be able to build a rapport and shift your conversation to fit the needs of the person.”

Even though disease investigation requires the clinical extraction of precise information as quickly as possible, Pinsent says it also demands empathy and an ability to build a relationship, even if it’s only fleeting.

On a recent call, she spoke to a person quarantined on their birthday. That was an opportunity to connect.

“Man, it’s a bummer that you are spending your birthday alone,” she told the person.

Finding a connection is important: It’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medical information g o down. “How many times can you tell somebody to make sure and wash their hands?”

Pinsent asks.

If all of that seems hard, it’s just the beginning.

Once they get people talking, c a s e i nv e st i g a t o r s t y p e responses into Orpheus.

They are trying to find out not only where the person might have contracted the virus and details of the person’s illness but also names and phone numbers of all the people the ill person came in close contact with before and since becoming ill.

“We hand [contact names] to another team,” Cuevas says. “They call those contacts and tell them they may have been exposed.”

County contact tracers tell “contacts” they should stay home for 14 days. If the contacts have COVID-19 symptoms, they are put on what’s called active monitoring. They must take their temperature twice a day and report their results to the county.

County epidemiologists, such as Russell Barlow, analyze the data the investigators gather, looking for hot spots and patterns that suggest outbreaks within social networks such as job sites or other group settings.

Case investigation and contact tracing is like

M O T O YA N A K A M U R A

COVID-19 as a case investigator, the first and most important step to tracking and stopping the virus’s spread.

When the pandemic started, McCall worked as part of a team of eight case investigators and contact tracers. Now the team has expanded to 45 people. For Multnomah County to reopen, the health department needs to demonstrate to the state it’s on track to employ 120.

She and her colleagues might each work four or five cases a day, although some have handled as many as a dozen. And since mid-March, that work has all been done from home.

McCall says she and her colleagues have little in common with the swashbuckling Hollywood virus investigators in such movies as Outbreak. (McCall says the 1995 blockbuster sparked her interest in communicable diseases when she watched it as a junior high student in North Bend, Ore., 25 years ago. She built a science project on community response to a lethal virus outbreak.)

“It’s not as exciting as the movies make it seem,” McCall says. “We’re not actually testing people.

We’re on the phone all day.”

McCall, who has degrees in health education and nursing and a master’s in public health, studied motivational interviewing to help her gather information more effectively.

Investigators work with a list of questions developed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that are pretty standard nationwide.

They record details about race, ethnicity, work status and location, and any underlying or related health conditions. They establish when the patient first noticed symptoms of COVID-19 and ask the person to think back two days before that. They want a detailed chronology, hour by hour if necessary, including all close contacts.

It’s a lot of ground to cover. “The idea is, you empower the other person,” McCall says. “It’s less yes or no and more open-ended questions.”

If people are reluctant to talk, McCall varies her approach.

“I will try to find connections or ask the same questions from different directions or prompt them with information from their medical record,” she says.

Sometimes, nothing works.

“The interviews that tend not to go well are the ones that, from the beginning, the person makes it clear they don’t want to talk,” she says. That’s rare, but when it happens, she moves on to the next case. (Investigators interview about 90 percent of patients who test positive, though only 60 percent within the state’s new 24-hour goal.)

Few people are eager to get an unexpected phone call from the government. That’s particularly true for those most likely to get COVID-19, who are disproportionately low income and people of color.

“It’s fair for people to be a little suspicious,” says Taylor Pinsent, 37, a Multnomah County epidemiologist who has been yanked back into case investigations during the pandemic. “People get called for all kinds of things: They get taken advantage of by scammers.”

Pinsent says the first thing she does is identify herself and explain why she’s calling. If people don’t believe she is who she says she is, she gives them the main switchboard number at the county and asks them to call and ask for her.

In some states, COVID-19 skeptics have pushed back against contact tracing, saying it’s an invasion of privacy and expensive. That hasn’t been much of an issue in Multnomah County.

Most people are willing to talk, Pinsent says, because they’ve at least heard about COVID-19 and want to help. But emotions can run high.

“With COVID, I sense a lot more fear,” Pinsent

BY THE NUMBERS: Taylor Pinsent normally works as an epidemiologist, but she’s on investigations now.

ENVIABLE POSITION: Unlike many bosses in Oregon, Lisa Ferguson is hiring people as fast as she can.

“It’s fair for people to be a little suspicious,”

—Taylor Pinsent, Multnomah County epidemiologist

HENRY CROMETT

solving a puzzle with the clock ticking. The investigators want to find out when and how somebody got sick and share information that will stop the disease from spreading. That’s true with any communicable disease.

McCall recalls an instance two years ago when she and another investigator were tracking a salmonella outbreak.

“We both overheard the other say the same restaurant name. It was kind of like one of those movie moments,” she recalls. “We went with the inspector to watch cooking techniques, take temperature checks, and look at how food was stored.”

The inspection got the restaurant cleaned up, and McCall and her colleagues, using credit card receipts, were able to identify and contact other diners. They stopped the outbreak.

That kind of success is impossible with the coronavirus because it is everywhere.

COVID-19 is also more complicated than other diseases. For example, many people who test positive for the coronavirus never experience symptoms. Second, the symptoms people do experience vary widely.

Some lose their sense of smell or taste; others get fevers; for some, it’s gastrointestinal disturbances. And federal guidance on how long people need to be in contact with each other to spread the disease has shifted. The threshold used to be an hour; now it’s 15 minutes.

“COVID -19 defies what we know about other coronaviruses, and that makes our work really complicated,” says Barlow, the county epidemiologist.

People who have the virus are also confused. While gathering information, case investigators explain the disease and the precautions those who are infected should take.

“Sometimes, the calls can be frustrating when people are working sick,” Cuevas says. “They might say, ‘Well, I’ve had this cold for a while. I thought it was like allergies.’ Or sometimes they’ll say, ‘It’s just nothing or a false positive. I don’t believe those tests.’”

That’s where having a medical or scientific background can help.

Cuevas was a doctor in his native Mexico. He has worked in a variety of public health roles in Multnomah County. Before the pandemic, his specialty was tracking the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, which often takes him into the city’s homeless encampments. He says that work taught him how to ask questions in an unthreatening way and to read people. “I definitely like the in-person work better,” he says. “You get more information face

to face.”

For now, though, he works on the phone.

COVID -19 has hit Latinx populations particularly hard: Nearly a third of the state’s confirmed cases are Latinx, although they constitute just 13.3 percent of the population.

As a native Spanish speaker, Cuevas handles many of those calls. He says being able to talk about Mexico—he’s from Guadalajara—or touchstones in the Latinx culture helps him break the ice.

“The communities hardest hit by STDs and HIV are also the hardest hit by COVID,” Cuevas says. “Many of them are considered essential workers, in places like food processing plants. It’s a lot of industries that people don’t see.”

Cuevas says poverty and immigration status often come up when he asks questions.

“I have situations where families all get sick and they don’t have money for food or rent so they still feel like have to go to work,” he says. “A lot are undocumented so they can’t file for unemployment.”

The ultimate goal of the communicable disease team is to keep people from spreading the virus, which means getting them to restrict their own movement. That’s sometimes tricky.

“It’s hard for somebody to understand they should stay home and not work when they feel fine,” Cuevas says.

On May 15, President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a massive federal initiative aimed at fast-tracking a vaccine for COVID-19. In the best-case scenario, Dr. Fauci and other experts say, that vaccine won’t come for more than a year.

In the meantime, Oregon is gradually reopening, with 28 counties having already met the governor’s standards for at least partial reopening. Multnomah County says it has now exceeded the threshold for testing capacity to reopen, although it’s still deficient in other areas—notably the number of contact tracers it’s supposed to hire.

“Case investigation and contact tracing are among the most important and fundamental epidemiological tools that Oregon will be using to reduce the spread of COVID19 as we move into the reopening of our state,” Sidelinger tells WW. “The importance of doing this work and doing it well cannot be overstated.”

On May 15, officials from Clackamas and Washington counties expressed concern about whether they could meet Gov. Brown’s ambitious hiring goals.

But Ferguson says she’s confident the county can meet the state guidelines for hiring additional contact tracers.

Johns Hopkins University, where the school of public health has made itself a national resource on COVID-19, has released a six-hour online training module for contact tracers. Ferguson says such resources will allow the county to increase its capacity and help achieve the goal of containing the spread of the virus.

For a society that has grown accustomed to fixing medical problems with pills and having everything we want when we want it, the COVID-19 pandemic has been both a wake-up call and a reminder that technology is not always the solution. Returning to normal will require a national contact tracing effort like the one underway in Multnomah County.

And it will require a quality often in short supply: selfdiscipline.

“Without contact tracing, we may need to go back to community or statewide mitigation efforts,” Sidelinger says—that means more stay-home orders. “Those efforts have a much larger societal impact, and we’d like to avoid them. But this requires every Oregonian to be responsive if they are among those who get a call.”

Normally, the county’s communicable disease team works in the Gladys McCoy Building overlooking Union Station in Old Town. It’s an open-plan office, where investigators can stick their heads up above their cubicles to share scraps of information. Like in any office, there are irritations. But there are also camaraderie and a sense of shared purpose as people make the same difficult phone calls, over and over.

But now, investigators and contact tracers are spread across the city, dialing from their couches and home offices, isolated from each other even as they plumb the despair of COVID-19 patients and their families.

Cuevas says the difference between COVID and other diseases he’s investigated is the sheer volume of serious illness and death and the 24-7 nature of the disease.

“We are talking to people who are positive every single day,” Cuevas says. “It’s very hard to distance yourself from that. It sometimes never seems like my day finishes. It’s very hard to step away from it. It’s everywhere.”

He says COVID-19 has affected him differently from any other disease he’s tracked.

“I’m becoming very paranoid,” Cuevas says. “I only shop every two weeks. I’m counting the days since I had an face-to-face interaction with somebody else.”

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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STREET: SCENES FROM PORTLAND’S GREENWAYS Photos by Alex Wittwer @the.photon.thief

Greenway signage along NW Hoyt St.

NW 20th Ave.

NW Overton & 9th

Signage along NW Hoyt St.

NW Overton & 11th

NW Overton & 13th 14

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SW River & Montgomery

NW Hoyt St.

NW Overton & 14th

NW Naito Parkway

SW River & Montgomery

NW Overton & 10th

NW Overton & 13th

NW Overton & 20th

NW Marshall & 14th

NW Overton & 19th

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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GET INSIDE

WHAT TO DO— AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING— WHILE STUCK INSIDE.

Q( UARANT IN E ) & A

Emily Menges,

Portland Thorns Defender WW: How’s quarantine going for you?

Emily Menges: It’s lasting a bit longer than I was hoping it was going to last. It started off interesting because I was playing in Australia in our off season. I came back to the United States and immediately went into quarantine. I’ve only laid eyes on three friends since, like, Halloween.

What’s it like for you as an athlete who should be a few weeks into your season now?

I have a dive bar right across the street from my apartment that has a brick wall. I’ll kick against that. I’m trying to follow the rules, so I don’t go out with anyone, but I got kicked off two high school fields. I’ve given up trying to find a new field, so I just kick against the dive bar. There’s no windows, so I can’t break anything.

P O R T L A N D T H O R N S FC /C R A I G M I TC H E L L DY E R

What are you doing to stay sane?

I’ve watched more TV than I ever have. I get cultural references now. I know who the Tiger King is!

What’s the first thing you’re going to do when this is over?

It didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t allowed to go hiking. So I drove all the way out to Dog Mountain. I get there, and there’s a huge closed sign. So probably stuff like that. Maybe drink a beer outside with somebody. I’ve been boiled down to the simplest pleasures.

Who are you most looking forward to playing?

Always North Carolina, because you always want to beat them. Chicago, since they kicked us out last year. Anybody, really. Just to be on the field.

See a full video interview at wweek.com/distant-voices.

HERE'S A N I D E A

Camp in Your Backyard!

Nic Parrish understands your burning desire to explore the Oregon backcountry as the summer season draws near. After all, as the founder of Portland gear rental startup Xscape Pod (xscapepod.com), he helps facilitate adventures in the outdoors. But with the ongoing pandemic pressing pause on most activities related to nature, he’s been forced to adapt. His solution: the Patio Pod, a $149 curated gear bundle containing all the equipment for camping in your literal backyard. Sure, it might not be Glacier, but it’s the best we can do right now. Here’s what you’ll find in the pack:

No campout is complete without a few lights to help you avoid fumbling through the dark. The rechargeable Petzl brand headlamps are used for rock climbing, Parrish says, while the lantern is made

by BioLite and is “perfectly suited for light in the tent or for making your way around the campsite.”

A classic two-burner Coleman camp stove, and the cookset comes from MSR. “If I were renting this,” Parrish says, “I’d probably grab my pots and pans from the kitchen.”

“The tent is built by a brand called Big Agnes out of Colorado,” says Parrish.

“They make some incredible gear.”

Order a two-person pod to receive a two-person tent, or peruse the combinations you can form when you upgrade to the four-person pod.

This Yeti-style cooler is insulated enough to keep frozen food unmelted for 10 days. “A little overkill for the backyard,” Parrish admits.

Also from Big Agnes, the sleeping bags are rated to keep you warm in temperatures as low as 30 degrees, and are accompanied by insulated air pads that further help to keep you warm enough that you don’t immediately give up and go back in your house.

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Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

This four-person s’mores kit, from Portland’s 1927 S’mores, gives you everything you need to re-create the campfire classic. “People are absolutely loving this final touch,” Parrish says.

MAY 20-26 COLO R T H IS

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y @ WA LT O O N S

RE A D T HI S

The Song of Achilles,

by Madeline Miller

“Right now, nothing is better than a book that offers an escape. So enters The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which transported me from the four walls of my Portland studio, where I am social distancing, to ancient Greece, where a young Achilles falls in love, studies medicine and music in Chiron’s rose quartz cave, and gets sent to battle in Troy. Miller breathes new life into the myth of Achilles, which is retold through the eyes of his gay lover, Patroclus. ‘Name one hero who was happy,’ Achilles asks Patroclus.

‘You can’t…They never let you be famous and happy.’” When he presents this question to his love, Achilles still believes that he will be the exception, the hero to live happily ever after and also remembered through history, his story and his honor achieving immortality that his body never could. Of course, anyone who is familiar with Greek myth knows the fate what befalls Achilles. But Miller makes this epic tale startlingly fresh and breathes something new into an ancient myth. I read it quickly, absorbed it, rooting for a different ending than the one I knew would come. It’s a novel that asks hard questions about fate, pride, honor and mortality, and refuses to supply an easy answer to any.” —Genevieve Hudson, author of Boys of Alabama (2020) See more book recommendations, page 25.

Hey, remember doing things? So do we! Relive some of your favorite Portland activities through the miracle of coloring. Color this image—hell, even add your own art—and let us see it on social media with the hashtag #colorthispdx.

WATC H THI S

Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame Speech Did the end of The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part docuseries about the dynastic ’90s Chicago Bulls, leave you fiending for a little more insane Michael Jordan energy in your life? Well, have I got some good news for you: The man’s Hall of Fame speech, from 2012, is one of the strangest the world has ever known, and it’s available to watch on YouTube. Here are some of the highlights.

0:59 Here is MJ doing what everyone born after 1998 most associates him with: crying. Prior to it becoming a meme, he didn’t seem like a guy who cries much, but between this and him tearing up in The Last Dance, it’s safe to say that thinking about giving it all to basketball kind of gets it out of him.

Also when he tosses a few back and listens to some Whitney Houston. The man loves divas!

10:40 I recall Jordan being meaner to Bulls GM Jerry Krause, but he actually gives him his due, more or less. But he also tells a story about when he was trying to play on a doomed team with a mostly healed leg. When Krause argues, “If you had a headache, and there were 10 pills, nine would cure your headache, and one is coated with cyanide, would you take the pills?”

Jordan replies: “Depends on how fucking bad the headache is.”

A pure crystallization of the gambler’s mindset.

12:40 To his children: “I wouldn’t wanna be you guys.” He also lightly complains about being made to pay $1,000 for their tickets.

4:17 Michael takes a second to roast his brothers for being short, before talking about their military service and getting an applause break.

6:22 As a sophomore, Jordan was famously cut from his high school varsity basketball team in favor of Leroy Smith. He invited Smith to his induction, so Smith could watch him invalidate this decision.

20:01 Jordan talks about Byron Russell trash talking him while he was playing baseball. The camera cuts to John Stockton, inducted earlier in the night, as MJ asks, “You remember this?”

Stockton, his eyes wide in the presence of true competitive madness, gently nods and lets MJ know: “Yes, I do. It was hard to forget when you killed us in the finals two years in a row.”

23:00 MJ says he might play when he’s 50 and all limits are fake. Honestly, this is more inspiring than I recall from my last viewing. I am going to run through a brick wall. Thank you, MJ. Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

19

CULTURE NASHCO

DISTANT VOICES

DRAFT DAYS: Breakside celebrated its 10th anniversary May 14.

Side Hustle

Breakside brewmaster Ben Edmunds can’t wait to drink beer out of someone else’s glass again.

BY ANDI PREWITT

STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED .

WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. 20

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

aprewitt@wweek.com

A small piece of every beer lover’s soul died when images of breweries across the country dumping out their liquid gold made headlines in late April. The move was spurred by a lack of feasible means for those businesses to serve their product off premises as it approached peak freshness.

But you won’t see anything of the sort from Breakside Brewery.

Shortly after Gov. Kate Brown temporarily banned in-person dining, Ben Edmunds, founder and head brewer of the award-winning 10-year-old brewery, was quickly able to shift gears and package beer that had originally been bound for its pubs’ draft lines—which means there is no threat to your supply of Breakside’s regular offerings.

But these are still unusual times for Edmunds and his team.

For instance, instead of marking Breakside’s 10th anniversary last week by throwing a giant block party, the pubs in Woodlawn and Slabtown sit mostly empty, serving only as a handoff point for beer and food. But the milestone won’t go unnoticed: Edmunds is now canning beers made in collaboration with other breweries, like Barley Brown’s, Pelican and Upright, in honor of its first decade in business.

Until he can reopen and plan a new bash, WW caught up with Edmunds from his Milwaukie production facility to discuss the post-pandemic future of the craft beer industry, the measures Breakside has taken to adjust during COVID-19, and to find out if “shelter in place” for a brewer means subsisting on your own product.

WW: What has Breakside done to adapt to the current health crisis?

Ben Edmunds: We’re fortunate we have our own bottling line, so we can do 10 and 22 ounce bottles ourselves. We were able to take a lot of the beer we hadn’t processed back when shelter in place started and move that to bottles and

cans we do with a mobile packager. We’re actually buying our own canning line this week. It’s something we’d be talking about doing for a while, but the pandemic and the change to the marketplace put that to the forefront of what we need to do to keep moving forward, so we pulled the trigger on it. It’s a good birthday present to ourselves.

Where do you see the craft beer industry a year from now?

We know the draft market is going to change.

The breweries that had a lot of sales through on-premises accounts, I think everyone’s portion of their business or total volume going in that direction is going to be less. Whether that’s because there are fewer bars and restaurants that exist, or limitations on seating. Consumers are also going to be mindful of price point. Over the last four or five years we’ve seen consistent increase in the average price point of six-pack of IPA or Pilsner. I think the days of the $20, $25 four-pack are done.

During lockdown, are you just constantly hanging out and drinking your own beer?

You have to be careful and stay healthy. I’ve been running a lot and cooking a lot, like everyone.

I’ve really expanded my cooking repertoire in the last month—I never thought I’d be making cassoulet and beef Wellington for two on a Saturday night.

What are you looking forward to doing once this is over?

Probably just being able to sit down with friends at a bar or at their house and not feel like you have to be mindful of social distancing. When we can get back to the point when I can have a drink out of someone else’s glass, or share food family style, getting back to that is what I’m looking forward to.

See the full video interview at week.com/distantvoices.

FOOD & DRINK TAKE ME OUT

BY M ATTHE W SI NGE R

msinger@wweek.com

Don Salamone puts a lot of love into his cooking—and a little guilt, too.

The chef and restaurateur spent most of his early culinary career in upscale French kitchens of the sort his working-class Italian American parents could never afford to visit. It’s partly why, when he opened a place of his own, he went in the opposite direction: a no-frills, blue-collar hamburger cart.

Keeping to the all-American trifecta of fries, soft serve and a simple, fast food-style burger, Burger Stevens—the name is an inside joke with his brother-in-law—caught on quickly in Portland, allowing Salamone to expand from a parking lot along Capitol Highway to a spot in Pioneer Courthouse Square and a takeaway window at perpetually packed eastside night spot Dig A Pony.

But he still wasn’t making the food closest to his heart.

“On the weekend, we’d go out and get burgers at local joints,” says Salamone, recalling his youth in Rochester, N.Y., “but at home, it was always Italian food.”

In Salamone’s mother’s recipe, the eggplant is sliced thin and stacked five to six layers high. “It totally reminds me of making terrines when I worked in French restaurants,” Salamone says, “because you make it, and all night you can’t stop thinking of it.”

The eggplant is breaded with breadcrumbs Salamone makes himself from surplus burger buns.

The sauce is also a Mother Salamone original—just olive oil, garlic, onion, tomato, basil and crushed red pepper. “I’ll put it on and let it simmer all day,” Salamone says. “That, as well, reminds me of home.”

The cheese—Parmesan, mozzarella and pecorino Romano—is sourced from Barter Foods, a small purveyor just up the street from Dig A Pony. “It’s not about special ingredients or cheffy touches,” he says. “I’m just trying to re-create what my family has been eating my entire life—and their entire life.”

ORDER: Stevens Italiano, 736 SE Grand Ave., 503801-8017, stevensitaliano. com. Pickup 4-7 pm Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. All orders must be placed by noon. See website for upcoming menus and ordering information. Eggplant Parmigiana is next available May 21. $18.

HOT PLATES Where to get takeout or delivery Memorial Day weekend.

LAUREL KADAS

Don Salamone makes one of Portland’s best burgers. But his heart is in Italy.

He’s not talking spaghetti with Ragu. He means gnocchi and tripe, stuffed shells and wedding soup—the classics, as he calls them, all made from scratch. Every Sunday, his mother tended to a pot of sauce loaded with sausage, meatballs, pork necks and other pig parts. He never even knew there was such a thing as jarred tomato sauce until high school.

When the pandemic hit, Salamone saw an opportunity to finally get back in touch with his roots. While the cart downtown stays focused on burgers, Salamone and his wife, Katie, converted their Dig A Pony kitchen into Stevens Italiano, preparing traditional, rotating Italian meals twice a week, in portions big enough to guarantee leftovers. Each order contains an entree, side, salad and garlic bread, plus dessert—all for around $25.

“I’m basically taking recipes and food I grew up eating and what my parents, aunts and family still make to this day,” he says.

“I wanted to bring that here, because I can’t get that here.”

Although he estimates he has 150 Italian cookbooks at home, the recipes Salamone draws from indeed come straight from his family—he’s now on the phone with them constantly, asking for advice. Over the past few weeks, that’s included his uncle’s sausage cacciatore, homemade gnocchi in creamy vodka sauce and, on the higher end, Sicilian-style osso buco with polenta. Much of what Salamone cooks he’s making for the first time himself, and tasting it often triggers a “Ratatouille moment,” transporting him back to a specific time and place from his childhood.

One such dish is his mother’s eggplant Parmigiana. At once simple and completely her own, Salamone says it’s unlike any he’s ever had.

It’s back on the menu this week, so we had him break it down for us.

WESLEY LAPOINTE

Sauce Boss

TOP 5

1. Bullard 813 SW Alder St., 503-222-1670, bullardpdx.com.

Top Chef made Doug Adams into a celebrity, but until Bullard’s opening last December, his ability to conceive a credible menu and run a restaurant of his own awaited proof.

Well, here it is. While the dining room is shut down, Adams is serving daily family-style meals fit for the Flintstones: This week, that includes pulled pork sandwiches with both mac and potato salad, smoked chicken and Tex-Mex beef enchiladas.

How to order: See exploretock.com/bullard.

2. Holy Trinity 3582 SE Powell Blvd., 469-964-9256, holytrinitybarbecue.com.

Open for about a year, Holy Trinity is Portland’s newest Texas-style barbecue joint, but it’s earned a reputation for serving some of the best brisket ribs, sausage and pulled pork in town. Sample it all in one of its two to-go meal boxes: the $60 Single Dad, which feeds up to three, or the heftier Family Pack that comes with a pound of everything, plus four sausages and a bunch of sides. Don’t sleep on the banana pudding, either.

How to order: See website.

3. Bless Your Heart 5410 NE 33rd Ave., 503-719-6447, byhpdx.com.

For years, John Gorham’s ever-growing restaurant empire has been serving knockout bistro burgers, but Bless Your Heart veers diner style, and it’s damn near perfect.

Though the Carolina burger slathered in chili and slaw is the signature menu item, the LL Cool J comes bedecked with all the classics, plus hefty slabs of bacon and a mound of guac so generous it puts most nacho platters to shame.

How to order: See website or order through Caviar.

4. Laurelhurst Market 3155 E Burnside St., 503-206-3097, laurelhurstmarket.com.

A steakhouse that is neither aggressively brutish nor daintily refined, Laurelhurst Market is a thoroughly modern meat palace and a perennial Portland favorite. Sadly, chef Ben Bettinger’s meaty marvels are not available, but the adjacent butcher shop is open if you want to take Memorial Day into your own hands—it also offers weekly “Butcher’s Boxes” full of curated cuts. Check instagram. com/laurelhurstmarket to get in on that.

How to order: Call restaurant.

5. Carne 2512 NE Broadway, 503-206-6075, carnepdx.com.

Carne is basically the budget version of Ox, and that’s meant as a major compliment.

The small Irvington steakhouse and bar prepares its meats with a similar Latin touch, at prices that won’t make your eyes cross when the bill arrives. For the time being, the restaurant is serving some truly packed family dinner packs—items include ensalata mista, crispy papas bravas and grilled skirt steak— which are available to go Tuesdays through Saturdays.

How to order: See website.

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Bomb Like most traumas, the COVID -19 pandemic has forced America to pass through the five stages of grief. Two months into the ordeal, many of us are finally ready to give up on bargaining (“Maybe if I clean the garage or bake the perfect chocolate chip cookies, it will go away!”) and move on to depression and then acceptance. In this case, that means accepting you’ll never make the perfect chocolate chip cookie—but the Chocolate Peanut Butter Bomb from PDX Cookie Co will certainly help ease you into the revelation that cookie baking is best left to the professionals.

There’s not a crispy edge or a toasty underbelly in sight among the offerings at this Montavilla bakery—it’s as if your stoner friend who worked at Subway and constantly snacked on the half-frozen cookie batter opened a Coldstone Creamery franchise. The Chocolate Peanut

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST Five Oregon beers to drink on Memorial Day.

Butter Bomb, in particular, is less an homage to Tollhouse than a commercially sanctioned feast on al dente cookie dough. A generous glob of housemade whipped peanut butter holds the two cookies together, and it only takes one bite to understand where the $4 price tag comes from.

A purist might bristle at the idea of calling this pricy pile of goo a “real” chocolate chip cookie, but weird times call for weird takes on the classics. It’ll take severe couchlock to plow through the whole thing in one sitting, but now’s a better time than any to indulge in the few good things left in the world.

Recommended. PETE COTTELL. EAT: PDX Cookie Co, 7919 SE Stark St., pdx-cookie-co.myshopify.com. Order online Monday-Thursday, or stop by the storefront 10 am-4 pm Friday-Sunday or until sold out.

1. Wayfinder’s CZAF Brewer Kevin Davey employs the magic of decoction to make a beer with exceptional malt character and a crisp, slightly bitter snap, emulating the character of classic Czech lagers. A 16-ounce can is perilously easy to finish.

2. pFriem Pilsner Even easier to knock back is pFriem’s excellent Pilsner—12 ounces of delightfully easy drinking, a finely balanced little song of crispness and light character.

3. Block 15’s Fresca Pils Billed as an Italian-style Pilsner, it’s brewed with Italian malts—yes, they’re a thing—and Styrian

hops, grown in Slovenia and Austria.

The Corvallis-based brewery has come up with a fine summer drinker that’s slightly grassy, a bit citrusy, and redolent with something akin to hop perfume.

4. Von Ebert’s Rauch Helles A fascinating change of pace for the brewery, the Rauch Helles is dominated by pleasingly light malt flavors with a gentle hint of smoke in the finish, which might get overwhelmed by more intensely flavored barbecues. Enjoy on its own, or with some good cold cuts.

5. Cascade’s Gose Roselle For those who enjoy refreshing tartness, Cascade’s Gose Roselle is a fruity 12-ounce quencher. The Honey Ginger Lime also makes for a fine after-dinner dessert beer, striking just the right balance of sour and sweet.

DON SCHEIDT.

W W S TA F F

POTLANDER

Red, White and Blue Dream Celebrate Memorial Day by getting stoned on these strains.

BY BR I A NNA W H EELER

It’s a tradition to celebrate Memorial Day by eating a pile of food from a paper plate in somebody’s crowded backyard. But just because your auntie’s BBQ is canceled and the economy is tanking doesn’t mean you can’t take a moment to smoke a joint in honor of our fallen military servicepeople.

I propose that celebrating the same day in isolation with the right strain of cannabis can be just as gratifying—if not more. Gathering around a ’cue may be the most popular way we honor our casualties of war, but cannabis is prized in the veteran community for its therapeutic effects, particularly related to trauma. If you ask me, lighting up the reefer rather than loading up on potato salad is a perfectly appropriate way to celebrate the day.

Bottom line, there’s no one way to spend your Memorial Day. But whether you’re loudly celebrating with beer and hot dogs or choosing a quiet day of somber reflection, there is a strain for that.

For the Inconsolable, Three-Day Weekend Bargain Hunter:

Northern Lights Live Resin (Oregrown)

In the absence of economic security, regarding Memorial Day as a three-day shopportunity is absurd. Instead, let’s consider how military families who have experienced loss are affected by this crisis. If you simply can’t identify, maybe this is a good time to reflect on what separates you

from those families, and how those separations inform your life now. Start by opening your mind with Northern Lights, the classically hypnotic strain with a syrupy head high that allows for premium contemplation before putting your uppity ass to sleep.

Find it at: Oregrown, 111 NE 12th Ave., 503-477-6898, oregrown.com.

For the Authentic Patriot:

God Bud (Sasha Gardens)

Nothing’s going to stop you from getting loud and proud on this day, and bless your heart, I salute you. For the sake of the nation you hold dear, calibrate that celebration appropriately with God Bud, a formidable, indica-dominant strain that will simultaneously level up your revelry with a buzzy, giggly head high and keep your body way too stoned to leave the house. Your star-spangled enthusiasm will remain intact and that’s what counts.

Find it at: Nebula Cannabis, 11605 SE Powell Blvd., 503477-5799, nebulapdx.com.

If You’re Mixed Like Your Emotions:

Mandarin Cookies Hash Rosin (Oregon Genetics)

As a member of a multicultural military family, it’s sometimes hard for me to reconcile my relatives’ experiences in the service with the pride with which they performed their duties. If you’ve ever sat at Grandpa’s knee and heard

wartime stories involving both terrible racism and righteous equity, you may feel the same. Let’s dab some Mandarin Cookies—a rosy, uplifting hybrid with a space-cadet head high—and maybe we can dissociate enough from our inherited trauma to get a proper celebratory vibe going.

Do it for the military personnel that broke down barriers then and continue to do so today.

Find it at: Roseway Organics/Eden Cannabis, 7420 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-477-4368, edencraftcannabis.com.

To Support Reflection and a Gentle Mood:

ACDC Distillate (Evolvd)

For many people, this is not a backyard barbecue day—it is a day of reminiscence and comfort, but also of loss, grief and trauma. For the survivors of war and surviving family members navigating actual memorials today, ACDC is a therapeutic strain known to ease the bitter melancholy of loss and smother the associated anxiety without the burden of an unmanageable high. Add a dose of this tincture to herbal tea to maximize the soothing effects.

Find it at: Rose City Wellness, 214 NW Couch St., 503206-4781.

For the Lonely BBQ Champ:

Cheese Distillate (Select)

Your New Balances are sparkling clean, and so is your Weber grill. Your tongs are already hanging from the loop of your signature summer barbecue apron. Your ribs are defrosted. You may not be feeding the whole neighborhood this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t amp up your personal appetite for BBQ madness with Cheese, a strain that inspires ecstatic munchies after a lazy wave of creativity mellows you all the way out. Go ahead, get high, and eat all your ribs. Do it for America.

Find it at: Virtue Supply Co., 510 NW 11th Ave., 971-9406624, virtuesupplycompany.com.

Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com COURTESY OF PHAME

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Written by: Scout Brobst / Contact: sbrobst@wweek.com

FIVE GREAT BOOKS SET IN PORTLAND

ON THE GRID: Students at PHAME Academy now learn online.

Keeping PHAME Alive A Portland arts school for adults with disabilities could have shut down. Instead, it expanded its reach.

BY BE N NE TT C AM PBELL FE RGUS O N

As the coronavirus outbreak continued to spread this spring, PHAME Academy—the 35-year-old Portland arts school for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities—went from planning 30 classes a term to being completely shuttered.

“When we had some campus coordinators calling and checking in on students, some of them were like, ‘Oh my God, so glad you called,’” says Matthew Gailey, the school’s director of arts and education. “But some of them were like, ‘I’m glad you called, but don’t ask me how I’m doing. Let’s talk about classes.’”

PHAME’s staff did more than talk. In three weeks, they reconfigured the school, whose acronym stands for Pacific Honored Artists, Musicians and Entertainers, so students could use Zoom to do everything online—from cartooning to singing “Lean on Me.” While the nonprofit hasn’t gotten back to offering its full load of courses, its essence has been preserved for students like Ashlie Parrott, who became involved with the school after she saw its 2016 production of The Wizard of Oz. “It’s pretty cool to connect with every single one of your friends who go to PHAME with you during the pandemic,” says Parrott. “I think it’s really important to stay connected.”

Until the pandemic forced the major adjustment, PHAME had never offered online classes. But both staff and students made it clear they wanted the school to find a way to stay open.

“For us, art is always in the service of community,” says executive director Jenny Stadler. “People with developmental disabilities are so isolated already that if they did not have PHAME, they would have taken a huge, huge hit.”

Even though classes are back in session, they look anything but normal. For example, Zoom’s time delay makes it impossible for choral students to sing in unison, so they instead practice with recordings. The shift has also allowed PHAME to expand its offerings. One addition is a radio drama course, which is taught by Stephanie Scelza and Gailey, whose initial disappointment over the students’ choice to adapt The Lion King

eventually gave way to enthusiasm.

“I have to say, it’s pretty entertaining—the voices they’re coming up with for the characters and the sound effects,” Gailey says. “One of our students, if the script calls for ominous music, his job is to search his music library and come up with something and be ready to play that excerpt on cue. Then we have two other students who are teaming up—if we need a ‘thwap’ sound or a knocking or a rumble, their job is to find practical items in the house that can be used to reproduce those sounds.”

PHAME’s teachers have fought to sustain the communal spirit that makes the school indispensable to its students.

“I’ve incorporated a check-in into every class so we can talk about how they’re doing, what they’ve been doing at home or wherever they’re social distancing at,” says Tess Raunig, a current teacher and former student. “I also let them know that it’s not easy for me. I’m a very social person and it’s hard on my mental health to not be going out and seeing people in person. I let them know we’re all in this together.”

Togetherness is built into the architecture of the new PHAME. The corridor where students used to hang out with campus coordinators may be off limits for now, but it lives on as a three-times-a-week Zoom session called CC Hallway that is both a time for socialization and a symbol of the PHAME community’s endurance.

“A CC Hallway is where you get to hang out and it’s free,” Parrott says. “You just talk about anything, or sometimes play some games.”

While Zoom has allowed PHAME to reach people outside Portland’s city limits, some of the school’s students have disabilities that prevent them from taking online classes. But for the 66 students who remain, those sessions offer ways of coping with life during a global health crisis.

“I have one student who wrote this parody song about COVID-19 and about having to stay inside and how they wanted to see their friends,” says Raunig. “I’m so grateful that PHAME took this online idea and ran with it. I’m so grateful I get to see my colleagues and my students.”

The Residue Years, Mitchell S. Jackson (2013) Mitchell S. Jackson’s acclaimed debut novel is about addiction, racial injustice, familial legacy, the life cycle of poverty. It’s also about living in Portland. Jackson, a native of Northeast, lets truth and fiction seep into one another to tell the story of Grace and Champ, a mother and son who wrestle with drug abuse and rehabilitation in a system where recovery just isn’t profitable. The writing is plucky and raw, stripped of excesses, and describes things as they are, rather than how we imagine them to be. It doesn’t describe Portland as seen on Portlandia, but whose Portland was that to begin with?

My Abandonment, Peter Rock (2009) A decade ago, Peter Rock published My Abandonment, the story of a father and daughter living together in the woods of Forest Park, surviving in a makeshift home on a monthly disability check. The novel, which was recently adapted for film under the name Leave No Trace, is based on the true story of a Vietnam War veteran and his 12-year-old daughter, who forced the city to reckon with its preconceptions about parenthood, quality of life and the nature of care. Rock writes in the voice of the girl, drawing the reader into the Oregon woods with the wide-eyed honesty of a child who knows no different.

Fugitives and Refugees, Chuck Palahniuk (2003) One part guidebook, one part encyclopedia, one part memoir, Fugitives and Refugees gives readers a strange, kaleidoscopic window into Chuck Palahniuk’s Portland. Not everything looks as it did nearly two decades ago: The pair of Northwest paranormal investigators apparently found no more ghosts to investigate, the Red White & Blue Thrift Store is now a micro-chain, and it’s hard to say what happened to the Emily Dickinson sing-along. But Palahniuk’s book is still worth a read, if only to dumpster-dive into a Portland that allegedly existed in freer times.

Glaciers, Alexis M. Smith (2012) “Years later, in Portland, their father began to tell them his stories,” begins one chapter of Alexis M. Smith’s debut novel. “They trickled out of him, as if his past were slowly melting.” At its lowest common denominator, that is what Glaciers is about—stories, memories and the way we remember things. Smith writes of a single, Alaskan-born woman living in Portland in her 20s who religiously collects second-hand items and mills through thrift stores. In a series of vignettes, the book lays out lush, careful prose that allows the reader to fall back in love with the city and all its novelties.

The River Why, David James Duncan (1983) You read The River Why for the same reason that you read All the Pretty Horses or The Catcher in the Rye—it’s a quiet, durable coming-of-age novel that can be picked up on a Friday and finished by the time the work week begins. Published in 1983, the book moves between Portland and the rocky Oregon Coast, following the story of a young man falling out of love with the life fly-fishing carved out for him. It is an ode to the natural world and the growing pains of young adulthood, and insulated enough to remind audiences that sometimes it’s cathartic to read a few hundred pages about salmon.

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VIDEO GAMES T W I T T E R . C O M / M R G E R VA I S W R I T E S

Noah Caldwell-Gervais’

Quarantine Gaming Recommendations

1. Death Stranding (2019) HIGHWAYMAN: Noah Caldwell-Gervais makes enough money reviewing video games that he and his wife can afford to take long road trips in the VW Bus they bought for $300.

Have Game, Will Travel

Seven years ago, Oregon video game critic Noah Caldwell-Gervais was going nowhere. Now he might be the closest thing the gaming world has to Roger Ebert.

BY N O L A N G O O D

Noah Caldwell- Gervais didn’t set out to make a career of reviewing video games. At first, he just needed something to take his mind off the job he did have at the time, working as a line cook at a Seattle pizzeria.

“It was boredom,” the 32-year-old says of the impulse to post his first critique online. “I wanted really, really badly to have something in my life that wasn’t just, like, pizza.”

In February 2013, Caldwell-Gervais uploaded a 50-minute analysis of the Fallout series to YouTube. Fans often debate what the best game is in the franchise, and as a devotee since age 12, Caldwell-Gervais felt he had something to say on the matter. For him, it wasn’t about arguing for a favorite but understanding the evolution of the series as a whole. He didn’t expect anyone would care about his opinion. But without much else going on in his life, what reason was there not to spend an hour talking about one of his favorite game series?

Seven years later, the video has over 300,000 views, and is one of many equally detailed, thoughtful breakdowns found on his channel. In the world of video game criticism, CaldwellGervais’ reviews stand out for their writerly prose and unique perspective. Inspired by classic travel literature, and usually clocking in at more than an hour long—and sometimes much longer—his essays often go beyond the game itself, placing it in a wider historical and personal context. He talks about what he found in the games, and why it mattered to him. In doing so, he makes the viewer see the game in a different way.

At a time where video games are transcending their lowbrow reputation, Caldwell-Gervais, who now lives in Bend, is playing a role in both legitimizing the form and demonstrating what he can accomplish. It’s earned him a sizable following—and a healthy income.

It’s a far cry from where he was seven years ago. Without a college degree or much in the way of prospects, and a résumé made up entirely of food service jobs, Caldwell-Gervais says he couldn’t even get hired at Blockbuster.

“Once you get on paper as being a certain way, that’s sort of what you are,” he says. “On paper I was just a ‘low-end cook person.’ I’m not knocking food service. That’s just the nature of the job. You do the same thing all day, and then you do the day again.”

Video games were his escape. As a kid, Caldwell-Gervais 26

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persuaded his dad to buy work computers more powerful than necessary so he could play games when his father wasn’t using the machine. It was the discovery of Fallout, however, that opened his eyes to the potential of the medium. In the game, the player is free to roam and explore in an expansive, apocalyptic desert. Caldwell-Gervais recalls the wonder of having a whole world inside a small box. Open-world games that allow for exploration and discovery, on the player’s terms, continued to absorb him over the years.

After his Fallout review, Caldwell-Gervais’ video essays got increasingly more ambitious: He’s spent 150 minutes exploring the Mass Effect trilogy, and four hours examining the Red Dead games and the cultural legacy of the Western. Despite the intimidating length, the videos remain accessible and entertaining, with a charmingly lo-fi presentation. They often open with images of record players or old television sets, and old jazz music fuzzily piped in over handwritten title cards. Sometimes, he reads his credit sequence outside, beneath the Oregon sky, the camera microphone picking up the wind and giving it the feeling of an old home videotape. It’s hardly a slick production—it feels like you’re simply having a long, engaging conversation with a friend.

His channel now has 130,000 subscribers, and over 13 million total views. He also receives monthly donations from 800 Patreon subscribers, earning him just over $4,000 a month.

It’s afforded him the ability to live out a lifelong dream: touring the United States in a VW Bus, with little more than a gaming laptop and his wife, reviewing as he goes. He and his wife originally bought their van from a relative in 2013. It didn’t run for two and a half years, but they eventually fixed it up. In 2015, they took an eight-month road trip across America, which they documented on YouTube, and the van, which they named Lawretta, became something of a mascot.

Video games might seem incongruous with the open road, but travel is a recurring motif in Caldwell-Gervais’ reviews. In one video, he even revisits his Fallout roots by driving through the Southwest to find the real-life locations depicted in the games— a trip made possible entirely because of the success of that first review, and the others that followed.

“It’s just been an indescribable process,” Caldwell-Gervais says, “to go from imagining the rest of my life as working in the pizzeria to actually having enough of a professional portfolio at this point, to where I don’t have to do that anymore.”

Hideo Kojima’s latest game has players traverse a ravaged landscape in an alternatetimeline U.S. to deliver packages to the last holdouts of civilization. Against both the elements and more intelligent threats, delivering cargo safely requires logistical thought and careful execution. It’s a slowpaced and mysterious work with more emphasis on hiking than action. “In a world of social isolation,” Caldwell-Gervais says, “playing Death Stranding is a great way to see that feeling tackled artistically while also reminding yourself that, hey, things could always be more inconvenient.”

2. Civilization 6 (2016)

In Civilization 6, geopolitics and human history are presented on a hex grid with rules like a board game. Players direct their chosen civilization to prosperity from the Stone Age all the way to the future. Warfare, diplomacy and scientific development must be balanced and managed to succeed over thousands of years. “Somewhat simplified rules and the whole arc of human history condensed into one or two sittings make this an amazing pick for a living room time killer,” Caldwell-Gervais says.

3. Far Cry: New Dawn (2019)

The newest installment in the series takes the familiar, open-world shooter formula and applies it to a fictional, rural county of Montana devastated by a nuclear exchange.

“Things are stressful and turning your brain off feels soothing,” Caldwell-Gervais says, “so why not go nuts in a post-apocalypse playground that’s verdant and scenic enough to feel on the nose?”

4. Kentucky Route Zero (2013-20)

Kentucky Route Zero is a point-and-click adventure game dripping with atmosphere.

A delivery driver for an antique store, lost on the way to an address off Interstate 65, discovers a hidden highway in the dead of night. Journeying onward brings the player into increasingly bizarre and ethereal lands. Caldwell-Gervais calls it “a strange, slow game about loss and regret.” “It takes time to build its imagery and themes, time which we all have more of than we wish now,” he says. “A great choice if you’re looking to try something different and more difficult to parse than an average game.”

MOVIES

SCREENER

C O U R T E S Y O F O S C I L L O S C O P E L A B O R ATO R I E S

GET YOUR REP S IN

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week, we’re focused on comfort movies that feel like a warm hug every time you watch them or, if you’re quarantining alone, crawling under a weighted blanket.

What’s Up, Doc? (1972) After four identical plaid bags are mixed up at a hotel, a series of screwball misunderstandings and romantic high jinks ensue.

Barbra Streisand is witty, playful and displays endless charm, while Ryan O’Neal’s straightman professor serves as an excellent foil.

It also features one of the craziest climactic car chases in film history. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

Obvious Child (2014) In this breezy romantic comedy, a standup comic (Jenny Slate) finds herself pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a goodhearted man (Jake Lacy). She decides to have an abortion, and director-writer Gillian Robespierre handles the tricky subject with realism, compassion and much-needed humor. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Netflix, Vudu, YouTube.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) Ryan Gosling stars as the titular Lars, a painfully shy guy who falls in love with a life-size doll in order to cope with his mental illness.

Though the premise sounds far from wholesome, Nancy Oliver’s empathetic script keeps their relationship strictly platonic, choosing to have Lars’ small town accept and support the odd couple instead of alienating them. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

C O U R T E S Y O F WA R N E R B R O S .

When a virtuous small-town tuba player named Mr. Deeds (Gary Cooper) inherits $20 million during the Great Depression, he moves to New York City and soon finds that everyone wants to take advantage of his kindness—including the plucky gal reporter (screwball comedy queen Jean Arthur) he falls for. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

Paddington 2 (2017) We can’t talk about comfort movies without mentioning the sweetest emotional support bear in the world. No need to see the first film to experience the joy of the sequel, which finds our hero on a quest to procure the perfect birthday present for his Aunt Lucy: a pop-up book of London stolen by a flamboyant, scheming actor (Hugh Grant).

Amazon Prime, fuboTV, Google Play, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube.

SUMMER LOVING: Clementine is a minimal drama that unfolds at an Oregon lake house.

Oh My Darling

Portland director Lara Jean Gallagher’s debut feature, Clementine, is a sensual thriller about two women who become entangled following one’s heartbreak.

BY C H A N CE SOLEM-PFEIFER

@chance_s_p

Clementine begins with a woman breaking into a Florence, Ore., lake house and staying awhile. The lonesome Karen (Otmara Marrero) is as shattered as the window she’s climbing through. Still, the real uninvited guest is time.

Despite the endless summer feeling of Portland director Lara Jean Gallagher’s debut feature—replete with campfires, joint passing and unscheduled sunbathing—all that Karen and townie ingénue Lana (Sydney Sweeney) can seem to talk about is their ages. Karen, nursing the wounds of a fresh break from an older girlfriend, is near 30. Lana says she’s 19.

“For me, part of the inspiration for the story was dating somebody older and more successful, and then getting to be that age myself and reflecting on what that means,” says Gallagher, whose film is in virtual cinemas now, via reputable indie distributor Oscilloscope Labs.

Gallagher’s minimal drama proves slippery, as Karen and Lana’s conversations morph from earnest confessions to self-mythologizing lies, and back again.

Karen needs to find a foothold in her emotional free fall; Lana seeks an escape hatch from small-town drudgery. The mystery hanging thick in the coastal summer air is whether that makes them each others’ soulmates or suckers.

Employing the evergreen concept of Oregon as a place to lose and rediscover oneself, Clementine certainly owes something to Kelly Reichardt, with its semi-unknowable female protagonist and

lack of a safety net. Then there’s the film’s lightly dangerous sensuality, which invites Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola into the conversation. Leg brushes, hair braiding and bed sharing look sisterly in one light and sexual in another. Composer Katy Jarzebowski’s atonal, woodwind-driven score goes a long way toward injecting Karen and Lana’s relationship with peril. That said, Gallagher says she never set out to dip more than “a toe” in the thriller genre.

“FOR ME, PART OF THE INSPIRATION FOR THE STORY WAS DATING SOMEBODY OLDER AND MORE SUCCESSFUL, AND GETTING TO BE THAT AGE MYSELF AND REFLECTING ON WHAT THAT MEANS.” —L ARA JEAN GALL AGHER

“Karen is at this breaking point,” the director says. “She could do something because of her hurt that changes the course of her life. Or she can learn from it and hopefully do better. The thriller idea was kind of like, ‘Am I going to let my life be a thriller, or go the other way?’”

Even if theatrical and continued festival ambitions were cut off by COVID-19, Clementine can count its blessings. For one, Sweeney has ascended to the verge of stardom in the three years since this production. She’s snagged roles on shows

like Sharp Objects, The Handmaid’s Tale and Euphoria, and even popped up in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

“There was something about her audition tape where I just knew,” says Gallagher of the now 22-year-old performer. “Watching her walk around a room, even between lines of dialogue, she had a calm confidence and control a lot of young actors don’t.”

Ultimately, time is on both Sweeney’s and Gallagher’s sides. Just a few years out from a master’s degree in directing from Columbia University, a couple of award-winning short films, and some eyecatching music videos for artists like Allison Crutchfield and Ex Hex, the director has a well-received full-length debut on her hands—Clementine won Best Narrative Feature at the 2019 Bend Film Festival last year and competed at Tribeca.

Even if Gallagher once freely obsessed over the age of Citizen Kane-era Orson Welles with her film school pals (oh, that dreaded 25), she has more positive lenses to consider the passage of time than prodigies and their early accomplishments. The second of four western Pennsylvania-raised sisters, Gallagher says she’s always made sense of her life by observing her older sibling’s. In turn, she’s watched her younger sisters use her as the measuring stick.

Mining that cycle of time for wisdom might be poor Karen’s saving grace, too. The next best thing to accepting age as a number is wielding its power for good: Write a coming-of-age movie, not a thriller.

SEE IT: Clementine streams in virtual cinemas that can be found at clementine. oscilloscope.net.

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May 20-26

MOVIES

COURTESY OF PROSPECTOR FILMS

OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E X C E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WAT C H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.

BLOOD QUANTUM

Arkansas

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Blood Quantum For as long as one side’s been the horde and the other survivors, the zombie narrative has been ripe for moral and political bite, critiquing slavery, consumerism, global warming and more. Now, for an urgent indigenous people’s take on the genre, writer-director Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) brings the zombie outbreak to a fictionalized version of his place of origin: the Mi’gmaq reserve in Quebec. On its face, Blood Quantum is a capably directed small-town bloodbath, and a fitting entry in the horror film library. While the acting by Gary Farmer as an upstanding police officer and Kiowa Gordon, playing his son, ranges from serviceable to apocalyptically ominous, mostly it’s the point of view that elevates Blood Quantum, bringing something new to the reanimated-corpse thriller. Without much explicit commentary, Barnaby’s film asks how a community under centuries of duress can confront a new threat that resembles old perils: diseased blankets, broken bargains and poisoned natural resources. “I’m not leaving this land again,” proclaims a Mi’gmaq defender during a pivotal stand.

You won’t know whether to pump your fist or dry your eyes. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime, Shudder.

ALSO PLAYING

Driveways

Bad Education

Gentle and touching, the second feature from Korean American director Andrew Ahn is a warm embrace of a movie when we need it most. This low-key drama works as an examination of how small acts of kindness can result in great rewards, and provides a coda to Brian Dennehy’s rich career following the actor’s death last month. He plays Del, a Korean War veteran and widower perfectly content to spend his final days on the front porch watching shadows dance on his driveway as life passes by, until a single mother, Kathy (Hong Chau), and her 8-year-old son, Cody (Lucas Jaye), arrive next door. Kathy is there to clean out her dead sister’s home and get it ready to place on the market.

That leads her son to form an unlikely yet touching bond with the old man, since he desperately needs both a friend and father figure. While mismatched buddies are a common trope in indie pictures, Driveways gives Cody and Del texture, and the actors flesh out their roles with stellar subdued depictions. “I wish I took the time to take a good look at stuff,” Del explains in a tear-jerking monologue in which he shares life advice with the boy. He’s talking about relishing what’s in front of you before it’s gone, a kernel of wisdom for those watching Dennehy’s final, deeply moving performance. NR. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube.

Midway through this school embezzlement saga based on a true story, Cory Finley’s sophomore film (following 2018’s Thoroughbreds) breaks out its version of a Goodfellas montage.

Elvis Presley croons “Blue Christmas,” but in lieu of cocaine packing, we see PTA baskets stuffed. And instead of cash counting, a PowerPoint presentation shows off early-decision college acceptance rates. It’s a dash ironic, but the HBO original is critically revealing how corruption can guzzle accomplishment as its fuel. Embodying that consumption is charismatic superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), who strives to keep his Long Island school district’s reputation gleaming despite a brewing scandal. Backed by Allison Janney and Ray Romano, Jackman inhabits his best mode here: a gifted ringleader with a dry rot problem. Every lie is wrapped in an ideal, and it takes the full film to figure out which came first: the ideal or the lie. And while there’s not a gun, narcotic or punch in the entire film, Bad Education is a crime movie with guts. After all, it’s easy to critique conspicuously wealthy South Shore hypocrites, but connecting those trappings to more widely accepted American aspirations—blue-ribbon public schools and the high-achieving students they produce—well, that’s a far more bitter pill. There hasn’t been a smarter streaming original this quarantine season. TV-MA. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Amazon Prime, HBO.

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If you know Clark Duke only as the bespectacled fourth wheel of the Hot Tub Time Machine movies, you might not assume he has a Southern noir in his bag, much less one with the crime-movie literacy of Donnie Brasco and a Flaming Lips soundtrack.

Duke’s directorial debut, a Lionsgate release redirected to VOD this month, fields a stacked cast of Arkansas drug runners: Liam Hemsworth and Duke as our two flunky protagonists, and Vince Vaughn, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox and Michael K. Williams as compelling higher-ups. And what this adaptation of John Brandon’s 2009 novel lacks in production value—shot with the overly digital flimsiness of so many streaming originals—it more than makes up for with well-tuned dialogue and acting that embraces a Southern gentility right up until it’s bashing those good manners over the head.

Replacing the near-gothic seriousness of a True Detective is the loony banality of drug-smuggler movie nights, sweaty man buns, fireworks emporiums and Vaughn spending probably half the movie’s budget on flamboyant Western button-downs. Despite an epic structure that jumps through time, Arkansas remains light on its feet and successfully normalizes criminal life by presenting the same unreliable co-workers, thankless chores and finite shelf lives of any other profession. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime, iTunes, On Demand.

Deerskin The latest from French DJ-turned-director Quentin Dupieux begins with a man shelling out 8,000 euros for a used deerskin jacket. The fringe-fronted coat doesn’t really even fit Georges (Jean Dujardin, Oscar winner from The Artist), but he’s obsessed nonetheless. What follows belongs to a very specific subgenre: Cherished object takes hold of its owner. Think Lars and the Real Girl with Ryan Gosling or William Goldman’s Magic. While those titles are set in something like our reality, Deerskin follows a man trying to rid a remote French mountain town of all its other jackets. In the process, Georges begins accidentally making a DIY art film with a local barkeep (Adèle Haenel of Portrait of a Lady on Fire).

Given that ridiculousness, the tone is a small miracle. Dujardin keeps Georges innocent, almost paternally daffy, as he shuffles toward madness, trying to

goad strangers into discussing his new David Crosby-esque duds. Granted, Deerskin at some point simply runs out of ideas or tricks (or both) and shrugs into its destiny as a 75-minute curio. But that’s not the worst sin for a bit of absurd diversion. Two of France’s biggest stars sell the material for, let’s say, 7,950 euros more than it’s worth. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Greenwich Entertainment at Home: Kiggins, Liberty.

Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics Most people agree you don’t have to take acid to find out what it’s like—countless song lyrics, at least one adventurous friend, or even Google will tell you all you need to know. Donick Cary’s Netflix doc uses a treasure trove of celebrities to go into more detail, allowing the subjects to spin funny anecdotes about how cool, singular and harmless LSD trips really are. Although Have a Good Trip aims for lighthearted entertainment rather than presenting a scientific thesis, you walk away feeling like it might be safe to give it a try—or give it a second go. As stars like A$AP Rocky, David Cross and Ben Stiller describe themselves tripping balls, revue-style reenactments and ’60s album coverinspired animation play on the screen.

The now-deceased Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain have some of the more memorable stories, the latter’s involving a road trip, shrooms and an almost-dead stripper. Nick Offerman serves as host, wearing a lab coat while explaining, “Don’t get me wrong, drugs can be dangerous. But they can also be hilarious.” A couple slow sections aside, Cary’s directorial debut passes the acid test with flying colors.

TV-MA. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

Vanilla I’m typically wary of any indie romantic comedy that has “quirky” in the synopsis, but Vanilla writer, director and star Will Dennis manages to infuse the film with enough self-awareness and charm to keep the eye-rolling at bay. The story centers on Elliot (Dennis), a well-meaning elder millennial whose trust fund keeps him aimless; Kimmie (Kelsea BaumanMurphy), a free-spirited (and, dare I say, quirky) would-be comedian; and the New York City-to-New Orleans

road trip they suddenly find themselves on together. A large part of the film’s success lies in Dennis’ skewering of Elliot’s false wokeness, whether via his square reaction to sex work or the use of that golden emblem of pseudohip guys around the globe: a copy of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Bauman-Murphy possesses a magnetic screen presence and affability on par with the Broad City crew, making her the perfect vehicle for the audience to share “man, dudes are stupid” laughs with.

Like any good road movie, Vanilla features a fair amount of philosophical discussion—the philosophy here being white, cis men are often cluelessly presumptive, selfishly unaware and, well, vanilla. Wisely presenting a story about communication between the sexes from the perspective of Kimmie, Vanilla is among the rare romcoms that smartly dissects our evolving ideas of gender roles. NR. DONOVAN FARLEY. On Demand.

The Lovebirds At one point in The Lovebirds, Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) comments on the dramatic misadventures he’s suddenly found himself in with soonto-be-ex-girlfriend Leilani (Issa Rae): “This is like The Amazing Race, but with dead people.” And that’s essentially what you get from this film. Nanjiani and director Michael Showalter were last paired up in the award-winning The Big Sick, and though the talented Showalter has two dream leads in Rae and Nanjiani, The Lovebirds never elevates itself beyond “this is fine” territory. The plot involves Jibran and Leilani getting thrown into a convoluted conspiracy mere moments after agreeing to break up, sending them on the run from both the law and a mysterious killer played by Paul Sparks (Waco, House of Cards). While the desire to sit back and let Nanjiani and Rae shine is perfectly understandable, The Lovebirds consists of little more than throwing its highly talented stars into increasingly ridiculous situations and letting them riff upon said ridiculousness. This results in some funny moments, but overall The Lovebirds is another average— if somewhat charming—entry in the ever-growing content receptacle that is the Netflix library. R. DONOVAN FARLEY. Netflix.

FLASHBACK

E X AC TLY 17 Y E A R S AG O, I N WI LL A M E T TE WE E K . . .

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Spotlight

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Featured artist: Nate Ashley

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LITERAL TOP TEN

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Willamette Week MAY 20, 2020 wweek.com

By DDDJJJ666

1. The Pop Group One Out of Many

6. Throbbing Gristle Six Six Sixties

2. Stacey Q - Two of Hearts

7. Love - 7 and 7 Is

3. The The - Three Orange Kisses From Kazan

8. Laughing Hands - Eight

4. Charged GBH - Four Men

9. The Sisters of Mercy Nine While Nine

5. Mötley Crüe Five Years Dead

10. Peter and The Test Tube Babies - Ten Deadly Sins

LISTEN TO HIPSTERS SUCK WITH DDDJJJ666, MONDAY NIGHTS @ 11:00PM ON XRAY.FM

Share your own Top 10 playlist!

ART@WWEEK.COM

JONESIN’

Week of MAY 20

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"Books I Didn't Finish" - it's OK, you get the idea.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

"Excellence does not require perfection," wrote Aries author Henry James. Now I'm conveying this brilliant counsel to you—just in time for the season when it will make good sense to strive for shining excellence without getting bogged down in a debilitating quest for perfection. Have fun re-committing yourself to doing the best you can, Aries, even as you refuse to be tempted by the unprofitable lure of absolute purity and juvenile forms of idealism.

"Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence." Playwright Tennessee Williams said that, and now I'm conveying his insight to you—just in time for you to dramatically embody it. According to my astrological analysis, you now have more power than usual to accomplish this magic trick: to create something permanent in the midst of the transitory; to make an indelible mark on a process that has previously been characterized by restless permutations; to initiate a bold move that you will forever remember and be remembered for.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) To generate an ounce of pure cocaine, you must collect 52 pounds of raw coca leaf and work hard to transform it. But please don't do that. Fate won't be on your side if you do. However, I will suggest that you consider undertaking a metaphorically comparable process—by gathering a sizable amount of raw material or basic stuff that will be necessary to produce the small treasure or precious resource that you require.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) "The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for," writes author Barbara Kingsolver. "And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof." According to my analysis of the astrological omens, that is exactly the work you should be doing right now, Gemini. Everything good that can and should happen for you in the coming months depends on you defining what you hope for, and then doing whatever's necessary to live inside that hope.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

Across

56 Aries symbol

1 Raised-eyebrow remarks

57 December garnish

4 From Bangkok

61 Start of a classic 1972 Judith Viorst kids' book title

8 Loud two-year-old, maybe 14 Kabuki relative 15 Fair share, between two 16 Baltimore player 17 Start of a best-selling 2003 Mark Haddon title 20 Remote button

64 1998 Olympics city in Japan 65 Japanese seaweed 66 Metal container?

67 Wallace's canine sidekick 68 Big thick book

29 Paper packaged with a board game, perhaps 31 Variety of owl, hippo, or seahorse 32 Airline that went bankrupt in 1991 34 Winner of the most French Open singles titles 35 Pad see ew ingredient 36 Opposing argument 37 "May contain ___"

21 Meas. for really fast rotations

69 It gets caked on

43 Procedure where you may be asked to select numbers

22 Band supposedly doing their final concert in 2021

Down

44 Terbium or erbium, e.g.

1 Where "I'm not a doctor" spokespeople usually "play one"

45 Looked the wrong way?

23 Pellets found in some old pocket puzzles 24 Catches

2 Hostess snack cake

51 Band of murder hornets, e.g.

26 100 centesimi, once

3 "Falling Up" poet Silverstein

52 The Governator, familiarly

4 Part of a "hang loose" sign

53 Candidate who dropped out in February 2020

5 Long-eared hoppers

54 Fruit spray banned by the EPA

29 Sargasso, for one 30 Scandinavian native properly called S·mi 33 Start of a time-traveling Mark Twain title 38 Like the Beatles 39 Some time __ _

6 Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Century (1999)

50 "Ready __ _ ..."

55 Blocks that inspired an animated Batman movie

7 Befuddled comment

58 Chemistry 101 model

8 ___ nova

41 Wildebeest

59 Drive-___ window

9 "Entourage" agent Gold

42 Start of a Fannie Flagg title (the movie title being shorter than the book)

60 Pay attention to

10 Shares a secret with, maybe

62 "Fuel" singer DiFranco

46 New Age vocalist from County Donegal

12 53-Across students

40 Colin, to Tom Hanks

47 Chicago trains 48 Closed facilities (work out at home!)

49 Run off to get married (wait, how would that work these days?)

51 "On the Road" narrator Paradise 53 See 12-Down

11 Focal points 13 Tasting party options 18 Like the mojito's origin 19 Lifts 25 Actress Emily 26 "___-A-Lympics" (1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon) 27 Words of support 28 One of the Bee Gees

©2020 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ989.

63 Kanga's kid

last week’s answers

The periodic arrivals of "natural disruption" in our everyday routines has a divine purpose, writes Yoruba priest Awó Falokun Fatunmbi. It is "to shake consciousness loose from complacency and rigid thinking." To be vital, he says, our perception of truth must be constantly evolving, and never stagnant. "Truth is a way of looking at self and World," Fatunmbi declares. "It is a state of being rather than an act of knowing." Many Westerners find this hard to understand because they regard truth as a "fixed set of rules or dogma," or as a body of "objective facts." But here's the good news: Right now, you Cancerians are especially receptive to Fatunmbi's alternative understanding of truth—and likely to thrive by adopting it.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Novelist and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn departed this life in 1998, but she articulated a message that's important for you to hear right now. She wrote, "People often say, with pride, 'I’m not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.'" Gelhorn added, "If we mean to keep control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics." In my opinion, her advice is always applicable to all of us, but it's especially crucial for you to meditate on right now. You'll be wise to upgrade your interest and involvement in the big cultural and political developments that are impacting your personal destiny.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) According to author and teacher Marianne Williamson, "Ego says, 'Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace.' Spirit says, 'Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.'" I think the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to take Williamson's advice seriously, Virgo. How? By giving control of your life to Spirit as you find your peace. In saying this, I'm not implying that Ego is bad or wrong. In fact, I think Ego is a crucial asset for you, and I'm hoping that in recent months you have been lifting your Ego to a higher, finer state of confidence and competence than ever before. But right now I think you should authorize Spirit to run the show for a while. If you do, it will bless you with good surprises.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) In the course of his 73 years on the planet, Scorpio author Paul Valéry (1871–1945) wrote more than 20 books. But between the ages of 25 and 45, he passed through a phase he called the "great silence." During that time, he quit writing and published nothing.

Afterwards, he returned to his life's work and was nominated 12 times for a Nobel Prize. Although your own version of a great silence is less extreme than his, I'm happy to announce that you will emerge from it sooner than you imagine.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) I'm sad that my two favorite 19th-century poets were unfamiliar with each other's poetry. Walt Whitman was 11 years older than Emily Dickinson, but didn't know her work. Dickinson had heard of Whitman, but didn't read his stuff. Their styles were indeed very different: hers intimate, elliptical, psychologically acute; his expansive, gregarious, earthy. But they were alike in being the most innovative American poets of their time, and equally transgressive in their disregard for standard poetic forms. If there were such a thing as time travel, I'd send one of you Sagittarians back to set up a meeting between them. Acts of innovative blending and creative unifying will be your specialties in the coming weeks.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) The fictional character Sherlock Holmes (born January 6, and thus a Capricorn) is a brilliant logician and acute observer who has astonishing crimesolving skills. On the other hand, according to his friend Dr. Watson, he "knows next to nothing" about "contemporary literature, philosophy, and politics."

So he's not a well-rounded person. He's smart in some ways, dumb in others. Most of us fit that description.

We are both brilliant and ignorant; talented and inept; interesting and boring. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to hone and cultivate the less mature aspects of your own nature. I bet you'll reap rich rewards by doing so.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) "People become like what they love," observed theologian St. Catherine of Siena. That'll be an interesting truth for you to meditate on in the coming weeks. I suspect you will attract experiences that are clear reflections of the kind of love you have cultivated and expressed for quite some time. You'll be blessed in ways similar to the ways you have blessed. You'll be challenged to face questions about love that you have not been dealing with. And here's a promise for the future: You'll have the opportunity to refine and deepen your approach to love so as to transform yourself into more of the person you'd like to become.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) "Humanity is a mystery," wrote author Fyodor Dostoevsky. "The mystery needs to be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, you haven't wasted your time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a complete human being." I love this tender perspective on the preciousness of the Great Riddle we're all immersed in. It's especially useful and apropos for you to adopt right now, Pisces, because you are undergoing an unusually deep and intense communion with the mystery. As you marinate, you shouldn't measure your success and good fortune by how much new understanding you have attained, but rather by how much reverence and gratitude you feel and how stirring your questions are.

HOMEWORK: Is there anything about your experience of the global pandemic that you enjoy? RealAstrology.com Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at

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