Willamette Week, October 7, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 50 - "Fire Power"

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“THEY GO FROM VOLLEYBALL TO LARGER THAN A BASKETBALL OVERNIGHT.” P. 20 WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/50 10.07.2020

fire power Oregon's Indigenous communities know how to stop megafires.

Will the state let them?

By Shannon Gormley Page 12

news: mingus mapps is quietly winning. p. 9

health: how sick is trump? we asked an oregon doctor. p. 10 outdoors: a vegetarian goes hunting. p. 21

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FINDINGS

DIALOGUE ALEX WITTWER

DREAM STREET PLAZA, PAGE 23

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 50 Police Chief Chuck Lovell didn’t know his officers would be deputy U.S. marshals for the rest of 2020.

An 829-pound pumpkin is only good for 12th place at the Great Pumpkin Weigh Off. 20

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For some, “going elk hunting” mostly means smoking DMT at a lighthouse. 21

An officer wearing helmet number 67 has been unusually aggressive at Portland protests. 6 The attorney for Tusitala “Tiny” Toese does not want assistance from somebody else behind bars for violating probation. 7

The beer hop capital of the world was also Washington’s hot spot for COVID-19 cases. 22

Mingus Mapps leads City

The city of Portland is loaning trees to bars to help spruce up their temporary pop-up patios. 23

Steroids can make you psychotic.

A new stoner party game dares players to drink bong water and FaceTime with their ex. 25

Commissioner Chloe Eudaly by 16 percentage points. 9

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In 1850, California passed a law classifying as arson the small fires lit by Indigenous tribes to harvest crops. 14 Damian Lillard bought a car dealership in McMinnville. 19

Afro-futurism may be the best genre right now to help us envision a better future. 26

A screening of Disney’s animated Peter Pan helped launch hundreds of video projects by local homeless youth. 28

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

The first Native American in California to becomes supervisor of a national forest for the U.S. Forest Service, selfie by Merv George Jr.

Wildfire smoke returned, but it wasn’t so bad.

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Mark Zusman

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At the end of September, more than 50 officers of the Portland Police Bureau were made deputy U.S. marshals as part of a coordinated law enforcement response to a right-wing rally and counterprotests in North Portland. The deputization will remain in effect until the end of the year. But City Hall and the governor’s office believed the deputization was only good for the weekend. Mayor Ted Wheeler demanded the deputization be revoked. U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams refused. As wweek.com reported Oct. 1, Gov. Kate Brown—who invoked her emergency authority to make the plan happen—says she didn’t help decide how long the deputization would last. Here’s what our readers had to say: @SoldierMedicSi via Twitter: “She’s acting like she’s powerless. We have states’ rights. The federal government is overstepping.” @XR_PDX via Twitter: “‘I did not know’ is not a defense, Gov. Brown. Especially for elected officials in positions of power.” @cathyxOR via Twitter: “OK you do it, but I’m going to leave the room so it looks like I’m not part of the decision.”

BetsyToll via wweek.com: “Put the PPB and [Multnomah County sheriff ’s] officers that are now effectively feds on desk duty. Now. For the duration. Period.”

Brian LeVene via Facebook: “This doesn’t affect or bother a single protester, because the protesters are just that, protesters. The handful of violent agitators may have something to be concerned about, though.”

Dr. Know

Jonathan Henderson via Facebook: “I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that ‘states’ rights’ conservatives are not going to object to this clear federal overreach.”

Mik El via Facebook: “It means nothing for peaceful protesters. It means a criminal record that’ll follow you forever if you’re a rioter. Don’t cause trouble and you won’t have to worry.” reasonandsalt via wweek.com: “Pretty easy to avoid a federal indictment. Don’t destroy property that doesn’t belong to you, don’t use laser pointers, don’t set stuff on fire, don’t throw projectiles at other people, and if the protest turns into a riot (i.e., a bunch of idiots doing dangerous things), have the judgment to go back home and chill. It’s not hard.”

TK via wweek.com: “Yeah, and don’t be a media member trying to document their actions. And also don’t be a peaceful protester. You never know, you could be beaten because…fog of war, and all that.” @PDXperplexed via Twitter: “I’m comforted by the fact that our governor and the Portland mayor/police commissioner are so competent that they had no idea this was happening. Remind me how dumb the feds are again?”

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BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

I’ve heard people say that if Trump is reelected, they ’ll move to Canada. That sounds tempting, but is it really that easy? Are there jobs and apartments just waiting to be filled

by American expats? How do actual Canadians feel about this? —Prospective Member of the Canadian Club As the president recovers from his bout of the coronavirus, Americans will be watching his behavior closely for signs of the post-COVID syndrome of irritability and cognitive impairment known as “brain fog.”

Since this is a Sisyphean undertaking akin to watching Homer Simpson for signs of jaundice, I’m not surprised some people are ready to chuck the whole thing and spend their energies thinking about something more pleasant, like hockey fights.

Luckily for Canada, the same lazy selfishness that leads Americans to elect quick-fixy demagogues in the first place also means most of us lack the ambition to emigrate.

“I don’t speak for the whole country,” says Kate Swoger, a CBC Radio journalist who was foolish enough to answer my email, “but I’d say most Canadians find it kind of funny, because we know that almost none of those people are actually going to move here.”

Aww, they’re so polite! Still, it must be a bit galling that Americans think of Canada—a sovereign nation with, like, laws and stuff—as basically that empty apartment above Mom and Dad’s garage that we can always go crash in if life gets a little too real.

Whatever the case, Canada is a lot more welcoming to its southern neighbors than we are. If you’re serious about emigrating, the quickest path to the Canadian equivalent of a green card is the Express Entry program, which allows skilled workers with high proficiency in English (“…or French!” huffs Quebec) to receive a decision in as little as six months.

It’s not a slam dunk—the screener questionnaire concluded I didn’t qualify, and that was even before we got to the felonies—but the program’s selection matrix suggests if you’re fairly young (ahem) and financially stable (ahem ahem), you’ve got a good shot.

And if you already have family connections and/or a job offer in Canada, your chances are even better! So what are you waiting for? Run away from your problems, you chickenshit bastard, while the rest of us stay behind and clean up the mess! You’re welcome.

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LEGISLATIVE CANDIDATE CAUGHT INFLATING RÉSUMÉ: The Oregon Voters’ Pamphlet statement for Lynnette Shaw, the Democratic nominee for House District 24, falsely claims she received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Minnesota. District 24 covers parts of Yamhill and Washington counties, where Shaw is challenging incumbent Rep. Ron Noble (R-McMinnville) in November. Lying in the Voters’ Pamphlet is a class C felony. Shaw’s campaign acknowledges Shaw overstated her credentials.

“This was an unfortunate mistake,” says Shaw’s campaign manager, Dustin Daniel. “In Lynnette’s primary race voter pamphlet statement, her education was correctly listed as having attended the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately, due to staff oversight, in her general election statement, her education was mistakenly changed.”

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CASINO COMPETITION RENEWED: Reversing course, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde is seeking to develop a casino in Wood Village in east Multnomah County on property the tribe owns but had earlier decided to sell. The tribe, which operate the state’s largest casino, Spirit Mountain, 71 miles southwest of Portland, faces increasing competition from online gambling; a new proposal by the Siletz tribe to open a casino in Salem; and, most recently, the expansion of the Cowlitz tribe’s Ilani casino 26 miles north of Portland. The news was first reported by Smoke Signals, an independent tribal publication. The Grand Ronde faces a lengthy and difficult process to gain federal approval for the Wood Village casino since the property is not currently part of its trust lands and competing tribes will oppose it. Tribal spokeswoman Sara Thompson says the Grand Ronde will file its federal application in 2021. “Wood Village is an amazing location and the city is a great partner,” Thompson says. “We look forward to continuing that relationship.”

FEDERAL DEPUTY CONTROVERSY SIMMERS: Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell is the latest local official to say he was not aware Portland

Police Bureau officers would remain federally deputies through the end of 2020 when he consented to their deputization on behalf of the city ahead of a Sept. 26 Proud Boys rally in Delta Park, according to bureau spokesman Derek Carmon. It remains unclear whether Lovell will formally withdraw consent from the agreement, or if that would affect U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams’ assertion the deputizations remain in place through December. Mayor Ted Wheeler says neither he nor any other elected officials in the city were consulted before Lovell consented to federally deputize Portland police officers.

“The problem is that the decision apparently lasts beyond the governor’s stated emergency,” Wheeler says. Ahead of the November election, the mayor plans to convene city, county, state and federal officials to create a contingency plan for mutual aid agreements. “Cities all across the United States are preparing to protect the public during what could be a time of unrest or unease or anxiety,” Wheeler says. “And we need to do that here.” His opponent in the November election, Sarah Iannarone, says the deputized officers should be pulled from street duty. “So long as an officer is only accountable to Donald Trump,” Iannarone tells WW, “they should not be policing Portlanders.”

REMEMBERING NICK FISH: The Portland City Council found an issue its five members could all agree on last week: their shared love and respect for the late Commissioner Nick Fish, who died in office in January from cancer. Sept. 30 would have been Fish’s 62nd birthday, and the council both proclaimed that day to be Nick Fish Day in Portland and announced that a new, 75-unit affordable housing complex in the Gateway District will be named “The Nick Fish.” The late commissioner devoted much of his nearly 12 years on the council to preserving and developing affordable housing. Joining the council session via Zoom, Fish’s widow, Patricia Schechter, said: “Here to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kindness of people at City Hall.”

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ALEX WITTWER

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

INCIDENTS

Sept. 23, 2020 Southwest Salmon Street and Broadway Melissa Lewis, an independent videographer, has been filming protests on a nightly basis since May. On the night of Sept. 23, tensions between protesters and police were especially high. It was the same day a Kentucky grand jury decided not to charge officers with the murder of a Black woman, Breonna Taylor. That night, a protester threw a Molotov cocktail into police ranks.

Lewis, 30, had been on the front lines trying to capture video of protesters arguing with officers. She says the officer with helmet number 67 started yelling at the person beside her—then turned to her and shoved her to the sidewalk, over a curb. She twisted her ankle.

“I felt it pop. It was so vicious,” Lewis says. “This was the first time I cried on camera. I couldn’t hold it together that I was scared.”

Lewis, who already had three surgeries on that ankle, now wears an ankle brace to report on protests. Officers like 67, she says, “are the people that you follow with the camera because you know they are going to do something.”

BLACK AND WHITE IN PORTLAND

Helmet Number 67

OVER THE LINE: Longtime protesters say they recognize aggressive Portland police officers by their helmet numbers.

June 30 North Lombard Street Lesley McLam, an independent journalist, says 67 has shoved her to the ground on two separate occasions.

The first was June 4 at a downtown protest. She says he chased her and knocked her to the pavement on Southwest 3rd Avenue. On a second night, June 30, she was filming a protest at the headquarters of the Portland Police Association on North Lombard Street.

She says officer 67 shoved her to the ground so hard it left a bruise and her legs still ache.

McLam says she is now is reluctant to film protests up close. “I back off even if I know I’ve done nothing wrong.”

She can’t understand why 67 is allowed to remain on street duty.

“If this was any other corporation or company, the lawyers would not allow that salesperson back on the sales floor,” McLam says. “How can our government allow this officer to go back out to enforce something if their enforcement ability is in question?”

Three people who attended Portland protests say they recognize the helmet number of an officer who struck a Black homeowner.

BY L ATISH A J E N S E N

ljensen@wweek.com

A Portland police officer is under investigation by Independent Police Review for allegedly striking a Black homeowner who complained about tear gas seeping into his house.

As WW previously reported, Elijah Warren, who was hit in the back of the head with a baton Sept 6, didn’t know the name of the officer, just the number on his helmet: 67.

That number is unpleasantly familiar to people who attend Portland protests.

Three people—two journalists and an activist—gave WW detailed accounts of incidents of force committed by an officer wearing helmet number 67.

After four months of nightly confrontations with police, protesters say they can recognize and rank how violent each officer is by their faces and helmet numbers—but not by their names. Portland Police Bureau officers were given permission to cover the name plates on their badges to avoid doxxing—the sharing of their names, addresses and other personal information on social media—but police watchdogs say the practice has resulted in less accountability.

Several witnesses tell WW one officer stands out: He wears a helmet marked 67 with blue tape. Videos of him have circulated on social media for weeks. Several show the officer shoving protesters to the ground.

“We all know the numbers of the guys who are the worst,” says Laura Jedeed, an independent journalist covering protests, “and [67] is one of the numbers you hear.”

The Police Bureau says it cannot identify an officer based solely on a helmet number. Mayor Ted Wheeler won’t comment on an open investigation and says that releasing the officer’s identity would compromise the integrity of the investigation. Wheeler’s spokesman Jim Middaugh says he doesn’t know if 67 is still patrolling protests. “We take it seriously and we’re evaluating what the appropriate duty status for that officer should be based on the allegations that have been made,” Middaugh says.

Here is how the three people describe their encounters with 67.

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Sept. 26 Southwest 6th Avenue and Yamhill Street Tealeanna Lindseth says she was following a police order to walk away from the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland when officer 67 repeatedly shoved her. He pushed her hard enough that she fell into an intersection, she says.

“My entire body smacked the ground so hard,” Lindseth says.

Lindseth, 22, was shoved again by him soon after, she says—and this time, she ran into a potted plant, shattering the phone that was in her pocket and bruising her right thigh.

Lindseth is an active protester, a Portland activist and a Black woman. She says she is repeatedly targeted by officers, especially 67. “None of them are getting held accountable, and it’s wrong,” she says, “If someone messes up, they need to all be checked again.”

Whose Doctor Is In? People of color in Oregon are unlikely to find a doctor with a shared background.

Representation among health care providers can mean the difference between life and death. For people of color, who become infected and die from the COVID-19 virus at a significantly higher rate than white people, having a trusted health care provider is crucial.

Not only do white Oregonians dominate the health care workforce, a 2017 Oregon Health Authority report shows they are greatly overrepresented in nearly all but four out of 32 health care fields from chiropractic to dietetics.

The exact opposite can be said for Black, Hispanic and Latino providers: They are all underrepresented.

Hispanic and Latinos are only equally represented in two out of 32 health care professions in the state. Black health care professionals make up less than 1% of those in the chiropractic field, dentistry, naturopathy, dietetics, physical therapy, and speech language pathology and audiology, although they make up 1.8% of Oregon’s population.

Increased diversity is important in a similar way it is for mental health care providers—having such a cultural similarity, shared life experiences and connection can build or derail trust. Without these, patients of color are more likely to withhold information and potentially be misdiagnosed.

Dr. Jill Ginsberg is the co-founder of North by Northeast Community Health Center, a medical clinic dedicated to Black health. She says the scarcity of Black health care providers in Portland is troubling and consequential.

“It’s important to be able to relate to health care professionals,” Ginsberg says. “It helps to build trust. If we don’t trust our health care professionals, it’s very hard for people to get good information and potentially improve their health.”

She says the shortage of Black physicians in Portland is so pronounced, her clinic doesn’t even have one on staff, so it is currently searching outside of Portland.

“Portland has an ugly history of racism, and it’s not been a friendly place for a lot of black professionals and people of color in general,” Ginsberg says. “As a physician, you have a choice to practice in Atlanta or Chicago or Washington, D.C., versus Portland. [Portland] is not particularly welcoming to black professionals.”

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LEGAL BRIEF

ALEX WITTWER

NEWS

WISH YOU WERE HERE: A Proud Boys rally on Sept. 26 was held without Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, who is jailed on a probation violation.

Talking It Out A jailhouse lawyer says “Tiny” Toese can’t be barred from attending protests.

Since Sept. 1, right-wing street brawler Tusitala “Tiny” Toese has been held in the Multnomah County Jail for violating terms of his probation agreement. A fellow inmate has come to his defense, with a legal argument that echoes the complaints of Toese’s ideological opponents.

In January 2020, Toese, a self-described Proud Boy, pleaded guilty to assault for punching a man on a North Portland sidewalk in 2018. As part of his plea agreement, the judge barred Toese from attending protests in Multnomah County for two years.

That didn’t stop the 24-year-old from attending multiple protests this summer, including an Aug. 22 Proud Boys rally in downtown Portland. One week after the rally, Washington state officials arrested Toese on several probation violations. Since then, he’s been held in the Multnomah County Jail in downtown Portland.

Now, a surprising character has come to his aid.

WHO: Benjamin Barber, 35. In 2016, jurors found him guilty of disseminating intimate images of a woman and uploading them to five different pornographic websites.

Barber is currently being held in Washington County Jail following a probation violation.

WHEN: On Sept. 11, Barber filed a pro se motion in Toese’s case, arguing that Toese’s probation agreement is unconstitutional because barring him from attending protests acts as a prior restraint on Toese’s constitutionally protected free speech. Barber claims he and Toese had previously attended a “free speech protest” together in 2017 and that he “intends to attend other protests with [Toese] in opposition to the Marxist and new Marxist philosophies.”

THE ARGUMENT: Barber acknowledges in the motion that the probation agreement “was meant to prevent potential violence between the Defendant and the group Antifa.” That said, he cites landmark First Amendment cases, including Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), which placed strict limits on the government’s authority to stifle speech.

“Prior restraints ‘must be couched in the narrowest terms that will accomplish the pinpointed objective

permitted by constitutional mandate and the essential needs of public order,’” Barber says, citing a 1968 ruling.

“Thus the order by the court amounts to a heckler’s veto of speech, hoping that by freezing the defendants speech that Antifa will not engage in disorderly conduct.” He argues that if the sentence wasn’t legal, Toese can’t be jailed for violating it.

WHY IT MATTERS: Toese is one of the figures most despised by Portland’s leftist demonstrators. And Barber’s argument displays that enmity—taking a gratuitous poke at anti-fascists for fighting with Toese.

But left-wing activists might want to listen—they, too, have been barred from protests as a condition of their release from jail. A ProPublica investigation in July revealed that federal prosecutors were prohibiting releasing protesters from jail on the condition that they stop protesting. After criticism that such a condition was unconstitutional, federal defenders and prosecutors agreed to end that court practice. On Oct. 5, a Portland standup comedian, Christian Burke, agreed not to attend counterprotests, potentially indefinitely, or be present within five blocks of the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, as a condition of their release from jail.

One obvious difference is that Toese pleaded guilty.

“There are certainly constitutional concerns raised by a sentencing condition like the one you mention,” says Steven Wilker, a Portland-based lawyer who specializes in constitutional law. “But any kind of sentence condition restricts liberty, including the liberty to do things that would otherwise be permissible... If a defendant agrees to a particular condition—particularly one, as here, that is related to the charges he faced—as a means of avoiding an otherwise appropriate jail term, it would seem more difficult to argue that such a condition would amount to an unconstitutional condition.”

WHAT TOESE’S ATTORNEY SAYS: Public defender Dave Peters, who is representing Toese, says he doesn’t plan to utilize Barber’s argument.

“I read through it and I don’t think it has any merit,” Peters said, adding that Toese wasn’t aware Barber was filing the motion on his behalf. “He has nothing to do with that and neither do I. Mr. Toese says he doesn’t know anything about it.”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: Toese’s next scheduled hearing is Tuesday, Oct. 20. The Multnomah County Department of Community Justice is calling for Toese to serve one year in jail. TESS RISKI.

Contribution of the Week HOW MUCH? Six figures, with perhaps more to come, in an independent expenditure campaign WHO’S GOING TO GET IT? Mayor Ted Wheeler WHO’S GIVING IT? United for Portland, a brand-new coalition that includes Services Employees International Union, the Portland Business Alliance, the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council, the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, the Portland NAACP, and a handful of other groups WHY DOES IT MATTER? As first reported on wweek.com earlier this week, a poll conducted by DHM Research in late September showed challenger Sarah Iannarone leading Wheeler by 11 percentage points. That’s a huge swing from the May primary, when Wheeler fell less than a percentage point shy of winning an outright majority in a field of 18 candidates.

Since then, Wheeler has experienced intense criticism for his handling of racial justice protests. And he’s struggled to raise money. Wheeler bet wrongly that he could muster funds from his usual pool of large donors, but new election rules that went into effect in May ended that hope, leaving him far behind Iannarone, who is publicly funded. (She’s got $255,000 on hand, compared to his $134,000, which includes a recent loan by Wheeler to his own campaign of $150,000.)

The new city campaign finance rules still allow independent expenditures, however. Members of United for Portland include labor, environmental and business groups that have nothing much in common—and are often at odds—except they are all willing to put their names and money on the line to shore up Wheeler’s campaign.

“Our members are committed to making sure the mayor wins the race,” says SEIU Local 49 political organizer Yasmin Ibarra.

United for Portland says it will spend what it takes to get out its message—probably aimed at raising doubts about Iannarone. NIGEL JAQUISS.

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MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

NEWS

LOW PROFILE: Mingus Mapps has spent more time with Rasu, his 11-year-old mutt, than at nightly protests.

The Quiet Man

BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS

njaquiss@wweek.com

Portland City Council candidate Mingus Mapps and Margot Black make for an odd pairing.

Black, the housing advocate who co-founded Portland Tenants United, is a staunch supporter of Mapps’ opponent, incumbent City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. Eudaly is running for reelection in November partly on the strength of tenants’ rights reforms she pushed through City Hall with Black’s help.

But on Sept. 19, Black met Mapps, at his invitation, at the Montavilla Saloon at 8012 NE Glisan St. It was a cool Saturday evening and many Portlanders’ first chance to socialize after a week of toxic air.

As Mapps and Black chatted at an outdoor table, a passing car slowed.

“They yelled ‘Fucking n-----!’ out the window,” Black recalls. “Mingus was the only Black person around.”

An incident of open bigotry in Portland no longer comes as much of a shock. The protests shaking this city are in part a reckoning with ugly attitudes and racist practices hidden under a progressive sheen.

What was more surprising was Mapps’ reaction: He didn’t get angry.

“It definitely stings,” he says. “Instead of making me mad, though, it makes me sad. Something must have happened in his life that hurt him, and so he wanted to pass the hate forward.”

The incident, and Mapps’ reaction to it, highlights the tenor of his campaign.

At a time when police treatment of Black men is driving political dialogue in Portland and across the country, Mapps, 52, is seeking to become just the third Black man ever elected to the Portland City Council.

Yet Mapps is not running on a platform of racial justice reforms. Indeed, he seems at times to be hardly campaigning at all. His social media presence is minimal. He hasn’t taken a visible role at the nightly protests.

“Twitter is clearly a rage machine that gives you validation

WESLEY LAPOINTE

Mingus Mapps is running an old-fashioned campaign in his challenge to Commissioner Chloe Eudaly.

The bureau she inherited—then known as the Office of Neighborhood Involvement—was deeply troubled, according to a damning 2016 city audit. Eudaly renamed it the Office of Community & Civic Life and set out to reshape the neighborhood system. Eudaly wanted to expand involvement by including younger, more diverse Portlanders, which some homeowners saw as a diminution of their power.

The neighborhood associations revolted and found their candidate in Mapps, who was fresh from getting canned by the bureau they now despised. Meanwhile, bureau employees flocked en masse to City Ombudsman Margie Sollinger, registering what Sollinger called an “unprecedented” number and variety of complaints against their managers.

Eudaly acknowledges mistakes but says they were made in service of a more equitable, inclusive city.

“I don’t want to tear the system down,” she says. “I want to make it bigger and better.”

But the unrest in Eudaly’s bureau gave Mapps a weakness to exploit, and he’s capitalized on it.

Mapps’ approach has convinced institutions as different from each other as the Portland Business Alliance and its ideological opposite, Service Employees International Union Local 49, to endorse him.

It also won him the nod from Adams. “Portland is as polarized as it has been in a generation,” the former mayor says.

“Mingus has a passion and an ability to bring a wide diversity of stakeholders to the city’s decision-making table.”

But others wonder who Mapps is cultivating.

In May, he accepted both the endorsement and a $15,000 in-kind contribution from the Portland Police Association.

Mapps says he wouldn’t take the union’s money again because the criticism that came with it “has been too much of a distraction.”

Eudaly highlighted that distraction in her Voters’ Pamphlet statement, noting, “I am the only candidate in this race who hasn’t taken contributions from the Portland Police Association.”

The police union’s support has raised questions about In 2016, Eudaly, then a little-known bookstore owner, built Mapps in activist circles. At a Sept. 25 debate sponsored by a strong following based on a Facebook page devoted to the the Democratic Party of Oregon Black Caucus, Mapps said city’s housing crisis. She got just 15% of the vote in the prima- in response to a question about the City Council’s decision to eliminate the Portland Police ry, squeaking out a second-place finBureau’s gun violence reduction ish, but then knocked off incumbent team that a spike in shootings folCommissioner Steve Novick in the lowing that decision had given him general election. pause.

Why? Because Novick had alienEudaly pushed back. “It’s incredated voters who perceived him as ibly irresponsible to link the arrogant and unwilling to listen to increase in gun violence with the them. elimination of the GVRT,” she said.

The insurgent candidate who Mapps’ unwillingness to condemn took Novick’s seat now seems to the team, which stood accused of have emulated his mistakes. racially profiling Portlanders susEudaly, 50, finished first in a pected of gang involvement, played tight three-way May primary with a part in the Police Bureau’s leading Mapps and former Mayor Sam critic, City Commissioner Jo Ann Adams (who finished less than a Hardesty, endorsing Eudaly last percentage point behind Mapps).

But since then, she has run a lackSTREET FIGHTER: “The fighting spirit week after earlier rescinding her worked well for me as an advocate and support. luster campaign for the general an activist,” Commissioner Chloe Eudaly Mapps says he’s aware of racial proelection. says. “It’s taken me a while to find my Although both she and Mapps place as a commissioner.” filing accusations against the GVRT, but he’s also aware that the upsurge in are taking advantage of the city’s new public campaign financing program, which matches con- shootings has disproportionately harmed Black men. His position tributions up to $50 by 6 to 1, Mapps has attracted about 60% is that analysis, rather than gut feelings, ought to drive policy.

“Let’s look at the data and figure out what’s really going more donors than Eudaly. And once a prolific social media presence, she hasn’t updated her campaign blog since April on,” Mapps tells WW. “It may be that getting rid of GVRT and funding the youth violence task force instead is the answer.”

23.

He rejects the idea that he’s the police union’s man.

Eudaly says trying to run for reelection during COVID-19 “The concern that they bought me with $15,000 donation, while also serving on the council and taking care of her disthat’s frickin’ ridiculous,” he adds. “It’s ridiculous to assume abled son is nearly impossible. that, as a Black man, I will forget about the stakes here.”

“It’s hard to figure out how to effectively campaign,” she says.

Mapps says voters should understand a distinction: The Mapps, a former political science professor, is in some Portland Police Association endorsed him, not the other way ways an unlikely challenger.

After leaving academia, he worked at Historic Parkrose, a around.

“I pretty much don’t agree with PPA on anything,” he says. community organization in outer Northeast Portland, and later in crime prevention at the Office of Community & Civic Life, the “But if you want to see them evolve, you have to be able to sit city bureau through which Eudaly tried to revamp Portland’s down with them. Currently, there’s no one on City Council for neighborhood associations. He says he was fired from the bureau them to have a discussion with.”

Mapps says he’s glad he got a chance to exchange views for refusing an order to discipline a subordinate. (Records only show his supervisor was unhappy with his performance before with Black—despite getting tagged with a racial slur in the middle of their meeting. he was let go.)

“One of the interesting things I find is, when you sit down More than any other issue, Eudaly’s failed effort to remake the way the city deals with its 95 neighborhood associations and talk to people,” Mapps says, “there’s more room for conprovided Mapps an opening. sensus.” and pisses you off,” he says. “I want to try to find a different kind of discourse. I could try to get a bunch of ‘likes’ for getting tear-gassed, but I’d rather figure out a bunch of different ways for Portlanders to come together.”

Instead, he is quietly holding meetings with skeptics like Black (who, that night in Montavilla, soon resumed making the case to Mapps that his housing platform was insufficiently progressive). And Black’s decision to sit down with him on a Saturday night in the midst of a pandemic points to an increasingly likely outcome: a Mapps victory in November.

All candidates try to define themselves. Mapps’ approach is to make himself the anti-Eudaly.

“I like Commissioner Eudaly a lot,” Mapps says. “We share many core values, but her brand is to burn bridges. I don’t know anybody who comes away from her and feels like they’ve been heard.”

In a year of extraordinary polarization and rancor in Portland, Mapps is running a campaign that appeals to people who feel they aren’t radical enough to get a hearing from City Hall. In particular, he has the backing of neighborhood association activists who feel snubbed by Eudaly.

So he’s sought to meet with people, like Black, who aren’t sure they agree with him.

The question that remains unanswered: Is Mapps engaging in a constructive dialogue with all comers, or is he coyly seeking to co-opt interest groups and voters frustrated with the status quo?

Eudaly says Mapps is a smooth talker who excels at platitudinous generalities and telling people what they want to hear. “Why should renters believe you are an advocate for them when some of your biggest supporters oppose everything I’ve done?” she asked Mapps during a WW endorsement interview.

Whatever Mapps is doing, it’s working.

A poll conducted in late September by Portland’s DHM Research for the Portland Business Alliance shows Mapps ahead of Eudaly 41% to 25%.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

9

NEWS COURTESY OF ESTHER CHOO

What’s your letter grade so far for his doctors?

What the doctors have described compared to the treatment that he’s on has been very inconsistent. From the beginning, they’ve been saying he’s totally fine. He feels great. He’s high energy—nothing to worry about. And then he went on this escalating, very aggressive treatment plan that you would normally only give to a patient who has moderate to severe COVID. The possibilities are [either] they’re giving him treatment that is not standard of care or they’re giving him standard of care treatment and their assessment at the bedside was that he was sicker than they were willing to let on. But it’s clear that they weren’t giving a very lucid or consistent story.

Are you worried about armchair diagnosing the president of the United States?

Many of us in the medical field kind of stepped up to try to fill in the blanks and explain what’s going on, because it was so puzzling. We certainly tried to steer clear of armchair diagnoses but rather give people an idea of the spectrum of possibilities when somebody has COVID. Some of those possibilities cross over into things that have relevance to all of us: international security. And I think SECOND OPINION: Dr. Esther Choo cautions that it’s important to create some sort of framework, so that it’s she’s offering her own medical opinions, not those of not a bunch of nonmedical voices trying to sort through all Oregon Health & Science University. the information that was coming from the medical team at the White House, particularly when that information was so very confusing.

HOTSEAT: Dr. Esther Choo An Oregon doctor is offering frank appraisals of President Trump’s health.

BY AA RO N M E S H

amesh@wweek.com

When the White House press corps wants a frank assessment of President Donald Trump’s struggle with the coronavirus, reporters don’t look to his doctors. Instead, some of them call an Oregon emergency room physician.

In the days following Trump’s positive test for COVID-19, Dr. Esther Choo has emerged as one of the most outspoken long-distance observers of the president’s disease course.

Choo, 48, is an emergency medicine professor at Oregon Health & Science University. She also sees patients in the ER atop Marquam Hill, including “dozens” of people suffering from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

But none of them had the profile of Trump, 74. The world leader who downplayed the dangers of the disease has now fallen prey to it—and continues to scoff at its effects and toss aside his face mask, even as he receives oxygen and steroids. His doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center offer incomplete and conflicting accounts of his health, leaving the nation speculating just how sick the president is.

Choo, who has 166,000 followers on Twitter, is one of the handful of prominent doctors willing to offer public assessments of Trump’s condition. On Oct. 4, Choo told The New York Times the president’s treatment no longer matched typical precautionary measures—which meant Trump was probably more ill than he let on.

Choo says she started speaking up about Trump’s health because the actions of the president’s doctors didn’t match their words, and the public deserved some clarity. But this isn’t her first foray into politics. In 2018, she led a social media campaign of doctors advocating for gun control. (“We are not anti-gun,” she wrote, “we are anti-bullet holes in our patients.”) This time, however, the spotlight and the stakes are enormous—and the patient may be the nation’s greatest threat to public health.

WW spoke with Choo about what Trump’s treatment indicates about his illness, why she’s willing to discuss the health of someone she hasn’t treated, and the taboo question on everyone’s mind: Would Trump’s death finally make America take COVID-19 seriously?

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

WW: The president says he has no symptoms left and he feels great. Is he better?

Dr. Esther Choo: It’s really hard to say, for a couple reasons. One is that we’re only getting partial information.

We heard a range for his oxygen saturations, but we didn’t hear whether that’s on supplemental oxygen, meaning that he dipped lower at different times. And we didn’t hear the full set of vital signs. We didn’t hear specifically what symptoms he does not have. Has a shortness of breath completely resolved? Has his fever completely resolved?

The other reason we don’t know how he’s doing is because it’s still really early in the course. One of the classic patterns that has emerged in COVID-19 is that you can feel pretty good, or just feel like you have a cough or a regular flu early on. And then some patients will go on to get precipitously worse between Day 7 and 10. So those of us who have been treating COVID patients and really following the literature on the course of this disease, are just sitting back and waiting to see what happens as we get into Week 2.

He’s also had steroids. What are the usual effects of steroids administered to a COVID patient or someone else experiencing a respiratory disease?

The reason that we give them is because they can modulate inflammation. The really damaging effects of COVID have been not just the virus itself but the body’s immune response. We tend to have this really vigorous immune response, and that causes damage to the lungs. The steroid course is intended to interrupt that immune response. Of course, steroids of all kinds come with side effects. They can really affect your mood. You can feel manic or super hyperactive. It also can actually change your mental status and make you psychotic.

I can see the downside of having a psychotic president.

There might be a downside, since they’re in charge of a lot of things.

The president’s approach to being a patient probably leaves something to be desired. What kind of model do you think he’s setting for the rest of the country right now?

What do people think when the president, during his hospitalization, takes a joy ride around the hospital, putting the people in the car at direct risk? What does it say when he comes out of the hospital with active COVID—like, actively infectious—and the first thing he does at the steps of the White House terrace is rip off his mask? And what does it mean for millions of lives out there when he says it’s not a big deal, don’t let it dominate your life? Seeing all those things, I felt very discouraged. All of us working together collectively—epidemiologists, virologists, public health advocates, nurses, contact tracers—we’ve all been working so hard to try to get these simple messages out there. He can destroy that work in a moment or two.

How much damage do you think he’s done this week to that public health messaging?

We’ll never be able to quantify it exactly, but it will lead to illness and death. I’m certain of it. When Trump says anything, whether it’s about a medication or behavior, you can see that ripple effect of other people emulating that behavior. When he advocates for hydroxychloroquine, it flies off the shelves. When he talked about bleach, there was almost immediately an attempted bleach ingestion.

He really is a viral communicator.

If he dies, what does that do for public health?

Oh, boy. I’ve been afraid to go there mentally, frankly, because it is so destabilizing for our country to have something like that happen. I think that would be a real cometo-Jesus moment for people about the impact of this virus and how it does not see status. The virus does not care who is influential. I feel like that would be a really sobering moment for people who have been inclined to downplay the impact of the disease. Whether we like it or not, for many Americans who haven’t been touched directly by this: A nameless, faceless 210,000 people dying may actually weigh less than having this one person, who has such outsized importance, succumbing to this disease.

But the president, despite having multiple risk factors, has gotten a really aggressive world-class treatment and is being monitored from minute to minute. Statistically speaking, he’s still most likely to survive and do well.

Men’s Virility Restored in Clinical Trial; 275% More Blood Flow in 5 Minutes A newly improved version of America’s best-selling male performance enhancer gives 70-year-old men the ability and stamina they enjoyed in their 30’s.

America’s best-selling sexual performance enhancer just got a lot better.

It’s the latest breakthrough for nitric oxide – the molecule that makes E.D. woes fade and restores virility when it counts the most.

Nitric oxide won the Nobel Prize in 1998.

It’s why “the little blue pill” works. More than 200,000 studies confirm it’s the key to superior sexual performance.

And this new discovery increases nitric oxide availability resulting in even quicker, stronger and longer-lasting performance.

One double-blind, placebo-controlled study (the “gold-standard” of research) involved a group of 70-year-old-men.

They didn’t exercise. They didn’t eat healthy.

And researchers reported their “nitric oxide availability was almost totally compromised,” resulting in blood flow less than HALF of a man in peak sexual health.

But only five minutes after the first dose their blood flow increased 275%, back to levels of a perfectly healthy 31-year-old man! “It’s amazing,” remarks nitric oxide expert Dr. Al Sears. “That’s like giving 70-year-old men the sexual power of 30-year-olds.”

WHY SO MUCH EXCITEMENT? Despite the billions men spend annually on older nitric oxide therapies, there’s one wellknown problem with them.

They don’t always work.

A very distinguished and awarded doctor practicing at a prestigious Massachusetts hospital who has studied Nitric Oxide for over 43 years states a “deficiency of bioactive nitric oxide… leads to impaired endotheliumdependent vasorelaxation.”

In plain English, these older products may increase levels of nitric oxide. But that’s only half the battle. If it’s not bioactively available then your body can’t absorb it to produce an erection.

Experts simply call it the nitric oxide “glitch.”

And until now, there’s never been a solution.

NEXT GENERATION NITRIC OXIDE FORMULA FLYING OFF SHELVES Upon further research, America’s No. 1 men’s health expert Dr. Al Sears discovered certain nutrients fix this “glitch” resulting in 275% better blood flow.

He’s combined those nutrients with proven nitric oxide boosters in a new formula called Primal Max Red. In clinical trials, 5,000 mg is required for satisfying sexual performance.

Primal Max Red contains a bigger, 9,000 mg per serving dose. It’s become so popular, he’s having trouble keeping it in stock.

Dr. Sears is the author of more than 500 scientific papers. Thousands of people listened to him speak at the recent Palm Beach Health & Wellness Festival featuring Dr. Oz. NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath recently visited his clinic, the Sears Institute for Anti-Aging Medicine.

Primal Max Red has only been available for a few months — but everyone who takes it reports a big difference. “I have the energy to have sex three times in one day, WOW! That has not happened in years. Oh, by the way I am 62,” says Jonathan K. from Birmingham, AL.

A new discovery that increases nitric oxide availability was recently proven in a clinical trial to boost blood flow 275%

“I measured my nitric oxide levels, you can buy a test kit from Amazon,” reports 48-yearold Jeff O. “Monday night I showed depleted.”

Then he used ingredients in Primal Max Red and, “The results were off the charts. I first woke around 3 a.m. on Tuesday very excited.

My nitric oxide levels measured at the top end of the range.”

HOW IT WORKS

FREE BONUS TESTOSTERONE BOOSTER

Loss of erection power starts with your blood vessels. Specifically, the inside layer called the endothelium where nitric oxide is made.

Every order also gets Dr. Sears testosterone boosting formula Primal Max Black for free.

The problem is various factors THICKEN your blood vessels as you age. This blocks availability causing the nitric oxide “glitch.” The result is difficulty in getting and sustaining a healthy erection.

How bad is the problem?

Researcher shows the typical 40-year-old man absorbs 50% less nitric oxide. At 50, that drops to 25%. And once you pass 60 just a measly 15% gets through.

To make matters worse, nitric oxide levels start declining in your 30’s. And by 70, nitric oxide production is down an alarming 75%.

Primal Max Red is the first formula to tackle both problems. Combining powerful nitric oxide boosters and a proven delivery mechanism that defeats the nitric oxide “glitch” resulting in 275% better blood flow. There’s not enough space here to fully explain how it works, so Dr. Sears will send anyone who orders Primal Max Red a free special report that explains everything.

MORE CLINICAL RESULTS Nutrients in Primal Max Red have logged impressive results.

In a Journal of Applied Physiology study, one resulted in a 30 times MORE nitric oxide. And these increased levels lasted up to 12 hours.

“If you want passionate ‘rip your clothes off’ sex you had in your younger days, you need nitric oxide to get your erection going. And testosterone for energy and drive,” says Dr. Sears. “You get both with Primal Max Red and Primal Max Black.”

HOW TO GET PRIMAL MAX To secure free bottles of Primal Max Black and get the hot, new Primal Max Red formula, buyers should contact the Sears Health Hotline at 1-800-551-4272 within the next 48 hours. “It’s not available in drug stores yet,” says Dr. Sears.

“The Hotline allows us to ship directly to the customer.”

Dr. Sears feels so strongly about Primal Max, all orders are backed by a 100% moneyback guarantee. “Just send me back the bottle and any unused product within 90 days from purchase date, and I’ll send you all your money back,” he says.

The Hotline will be open for the next 48 hours.

After that, the phone number will be shut down to allow them to restock. Call 1-800-551-4272 to secure your limited supply of Primal Max Red and free bottles of Primal Max Black. You don’t need a prescription, and those who call in the first 24 hours qualify for a significant discount.

Use Promo Code NP0920PMAX718 when you call in. Lines are frequently busy, but all calls will be answered.

THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. THIS PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE. RESULTS MAY VARY Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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COURTESY OF METRO

fire power Oregon’s Indigenous communities know how to stop megafires.

Will the state let them?

RING OF FIRE: A controlled burn conducted by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde near Tigard.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

D E N I S E B A R AT TA

BY SH A N N O N GO RM LEY

sgormley@wweek.com

In May 2019, Merv George Jr. stood onstage at the Camelot Theatre in Talent, Ore., in front of a few dozen locals, and issued a warning.

If Oregon is going to prevent massive wildfires, it’s going to have to start lighting a lot of little ones.

George, 47, is the U.S. Forest Service supervisor for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest on the Oregon-California border. He’d come to the small Southern Oregon town to talk about controlled burns—small fires deliberately set in order to clear underbrush, creating more space between trees to prevent fires from spreading rapidly.

As a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the concept of fighting fire with fire is part of George’s heritage. It’s a common practice in other parts of the country, where the terrain is less rugged.

But George says it’s not happening in Oregon nearly enough as it should.

That’s why he’s spent much of his career giving lectures and interviews to educate the public on the practice of “prescribed fires.”

A stocky, tattooed father of four, George peppered his talk with endearingly corny dad jokes about Indigenous life in the days before Walmart and Uber.

But his main point is serious.

“I know for a fact that when you remove low-intensity, prescribed fires from the landscape,” he told the audience at the Camelot while wearing his beige and green Forest Service uniform, “you’re adding to the fuel problem.”

A year later, George’s talk now seems prophetic.

In early September, the Almeda Fire, which started in Ashland and spread to over 3,000 acres, just about burned Talent off the map. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash, leaving nothing but gnarled trees for blocks on end. The Camelot is among the few buildings left standing.

The wildfires that swept across Oregon last month, incinerating 1 million acres of land, displacing tens of thousands of residents, and choking the Willamette Valley with hazardous smoke, were described as a “once-in-a-generation event” by Gov. Kate Brown.

But megafires—blazes that consume more than 100,000 acres—are becoming an almost annual occurrence.

For George, the answer to slowing them is obvious: prescribed burns, and lots of them. And he wants Oregon’s Indigenous communities to help.

For generations, Native American tribes used small fires to manage the forestland they occupied.

But over the past century, the Forest Service has taken control of most of the nation’s forests, replacing Indigenous land stewardship with an approach that favors fire suppression over prevention.

Right now, tribes in Oregon can get permission to conduct prescribed burns on their own reservations, but the process is bogged down by bureaucracy, causing them to often miss crucial seasonal windows.

BRING THE HEAT: Merv George Jr. has spent much of his career educating the public on how lighting small fires can help prevent big ones.

Many tribes, George says, would relish the opportunity to play a part in managing the ceded lands off their reservations.

The concept of prescribed fires in general have several factors working against them, including the unpopularity of burns and the attendant smoke among Oregonians and the fact that the timber industry would much rather cut trees than burn them.

The regional Forest Service says it wants to expand prescribed burns in Oregon, but funding suppression efforts remains a priority because it ensures the safety of firefighters battling blazes.

But there’s a growing consensus among experts that controlled burns are crucial for curtailing megafires. In a study released at the beginning of 2020, environmental scientists at Stanford University called for “a colossal expansion of fuel treatments” and declared that “fundamental shifts in prescribed-burn policies…are needed to address wildfires in California and worldwide.”

If that doesn’t happen, George predicts Oregonians will continue to watch homes and beloved natural areas go up in flames year after year.

“It’s not a foreign concept to those of us that come from the tribal communities,” he says. “It’s just what you do. It’s why you’re put on this earth—to take care of the landscapes that take care of you.”

“I know for a fact that when you remove low-intensity, prescribed fires from the landscape, you’re adding to the fuel problem.”

—merv george jr.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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COURTESY OF MERV GEORGE JR.

“you talk to any tribal elder and there was always a sense of frustration that the forest service never let them do their cultural burns.”

—merv george jr.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

from tarweed pods so they could be harvested and ground into flour.

Everywhere along the West Coast, managing the land with fire produced a common benefit, as thinner forests are much less likely to become fuel for megafires.

But cultural burnings have been viewed as essentially arson since at least 1850, when California outlawed intentional burns as part of the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.

Conservationists opposed them, too. Naturalists like John Muir helped lodge the image of a “wild West” undisturbed by humans in the American consciousness. To this day, wilderness designations—which, according to the Wilderness Act of 1964, preserve lands “untrammeled by man”—are a major focus of conservation groups across the nation.

“Wilderness designations sort of rubbed a lot of Indian country the wrong way, because what a foreign concept—you’re somehow protecting something by neglecting it,” George says. Now, “our forests are completely unnatural. There are way too many trees and way too much brush.”

George says it’s still much easier to get funding for fire suppression than it is for projects that could prevent costly fires from happening in the future.

“We haven’t turned a corner yet in our country,” he says. “For some reason, it’s always easier for our agency to find the money to put fire out, when it’s often more difficult to fund the organization to prevent fire.”

Stephen Baker, a spokesperson for the Forest Service, says the agency wants to expand its prescribed burning programs. But funding for fire suppression, which takes up about half of the agency’s budget, still takes precedent.

“The issue is expanding [prescribed burns] and doing it on a bigger scale,” he says. “The challenges we face from wildfires are bigger than one agency.”

COURTESY OF MERV GEORGE JR.

At the start of every workweek, George gets into his pickup truck, throws on an eclectic mix of gangsta rap, classic country and techno, and drives three hours from his home on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Northern California to his office in Medford, Ore. Growing up, George never imagined he’d end up working for the Forest Service. He remembers the green trucks that rolled through the reservation during the logging boom of the 1970s and ’80s, driven by officials who’d never even make eye contact with anyone who lived there.

“They always made you feel unwelcome in your own forest,” he says.

“I just never understood that. Like, what’s the deal here? Are they all in a bad mood? Do they all just hate Indians?”

When he became forest supervisor for Six Rivers National Forest, just east of California’s famous redwoods, in 2014—the first Native American to ever hold the position in California— he hoped to improve the relationship between the Forest Service and Indigenous tribes.

Gregarious and decidedly nonconfrontational, George sees himself as a sort of cultural diplomat. But as a son of a Hoopa tribal ceremonial leader, he recognized the Forest Service had a long history of disenfranchising tribes, preventing Indigenous communities from accessing and cultivating the lands that sustained their entire way of life. “ You talk to any tribal elder,” George says, “and there was always a sense of frustration that the Forest Service never let them do their cultural burns.”

For centuries, Indigenous tribes used intentional, low-intensity burns to shape the landscape.

In the Willamette Valley, fire cleared understories of brush and poison oak for easier passage, proliferated camas seeds, and removed the coating

George has seen some success in establishing burn programs that involve Indigenous communities.

At Six Rivers, he partnered with the Karuk Tribe to conduct burns on its ancestral lands (see “Burn Notice,” page 16). In Rogue River-Siskiyou, which he came to supervise in 2018, he’s working with the Coquille to create a joint environmental impact team to oversee more burn projects.

Along with working to repair generations of injustice, George believes collaborating with tribes can address the Forest Service’s capacity issues. But it takes time and effort to build trust between tribes and an agency that has historically worked to disenfranchise them.

“There’s not a cookie-cutter, oneway approach to get there,” he says.

“Every local forest and tribe has a different dynamic and different histories, so you have to navigate all of that in order to get to all of those positive outcomes.”

FAMILY HISTORY: George and his daughters (left to right) Pateisha, Deja and Evelyn.

COURTESY OF METRO

“It just makes sense. what better group of people to be putting fire on their ceded lands than the Indigenous group that’s here?”

—colby drake

BURN BOSS: Colby Drake instructs his team at Quamash Prairie.

A few weeks ago, George drove west from Medford toward Cave Junction to see what was left in the wake of the Slater Fire. When he stopped to look south toward the California border, he saw nothing but scorched earth for miles.

“I guarantee you that looks worse than any project I’ve ever proposed,” he says. “When you incinerate an ecosystem, you know you have done something wrong. I’m trying to do my best to prepare our landscapes to see fire again so that doesn’t happen.”

COURTESY OF METRO

NATURAL FUEL: Drake says the Grand Ronde tribe is eager to conduct more burns on and off the reservation.

COURTESY OF METRO

As the fire prevention manager for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Colby Drake is eager to take on more off-reservation partnerships for prescribed burn projects.

Even for burns on the Grand Ronde’s reservation, just west of Oregon City, Drake’s projects are mired in red tape. To conduct a burn, he has to coordinate with a long list of government oversight agencies and run the plan up through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which manages all tribal lands.

The process has to start months in advance, but the weather can shift at the last moment, potentially causing Drake’s team to get rained out of their chance to burn for the whole season.

For more burns to happen, Drake says tribes need more power to make their own decisions and greater access to their ancestral lands off the reservation.

“It just makes sense,” he says. “What better group of people to be putting fire on their ceded lands than the Indigenous group that’s here?”

Drake is encouraged by a recent spike in government agencies and nongovernmental organizations asking the Grand Ronde for help with land management. Last fall, in partnership with Metro, Drake led a controlled burn in the Quamash Prairie Natural Area near Tigard.

“It’s just looking for that one extra push to be like, OK, we’re here, you guys, it’s time to do or die,” he says. “Are we going to move forward and get these projects done, or are we just going to sit back and let this happen every summer? For lack of a better term, shit or get off the pot.”

But George isn’t waiting for legislators or government agencies to come around.

He plans to continue to rally public support for what he believes is true—fire exclusion doesn’t work and Indigenous land management does. He’s hoping his district’s new partnership with the Coquille Tribe will allow the Rogue River-Siskiyou to conduct more burns and reduce more hazardous fuels in the wilderness.

Even with the Coquille’s help, though, it won’t be a quick fix.

“It’s taken us 100 years to get here,” says George. “It’s going to take a long time to get our forests healthy again.”

But that’s just all the more reason to act quickly.

FROM THE ASHES: New growth after the burn at Quamash Prairie.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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burn notice A California tribe’s partnership with the U.S. Forest Service shows how collaborations on forest management can work.

COURTESY OF BILL TRIPP

FIRE FIGHT: Bill Tripp is a staunch advocate for more Indigenous sovereignty to conduct burns.

COURTESY OF BILL TRIPP

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN: A controlled burn last fall near the Klamath River.

COURTESY OF BILL TRIPP

FOREST FOR THE TREES: Prescribed burns clear forest floors of brush that could fuel wildfires.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

A few years ago, the Karuk Tribe won a major victory that garnered national attention.

The tribe, whose ancestral lands span what’s now the Oregon-California border, entered into a historic partnership with the U.S. Forest Service to conduct prescribed burns in Northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest—where Merv George Jr. was forest supervisor.

After years of unsuccessfully suing the Forest Service over timber contracts, the tribe entered talks with the agency in 2013 facilitated by the Nature Conservancy. In 2016, two years into his role as forest supervisor, George signed a 10-year agreement allowing the Karuk to plan and conduct controlled burns throughout the 974,612-acre forest. This year, the tribe also began controlling some of the forest’s timber contracts.

The collaboration represents a unique success for the Karuk. Attempts to replicate the agreement elsewhere, though, have been stalled by timber interests, according to Bill Tripp, deputy director of eco-revitalization for the Karuk Tribe.

The Forest Service makes money from timber sales. Each sale has a board-feet quota of timber that it’s expected to produce each year. Those quotas don’t distinguish between logging an oldgrowth forest or a highly flammable tree plantation. Critics argue that such quotas encourage the agency to sell off older, larger trees even though younger, smaller ones are more flammable and their logging would do more to prevent megafires.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that the Forest Service is going to take on the role of carrying out prescribed burning,” Tripp says. “I think that’s going to have to be handled separately.

We’re just not overcoming that obstacle.”

Around the same time the Karuk began negotiating for Six Rivers, Tripp submitted a similar proposal for the timber-rich Klamath National Forest. It never went anywhere.

“Our shared values from our side of this whole thing is just being left as the last thing to do,” he says. “If you’ve got to get more timber to get more budget, that’s where your focus goes. That is a product of systemic racism, in our mind.”

For things to really change, Tripp says, tribes need more autonomy—and more funding.

The Karuk recently started the Endowment for Eco-Cultural Revitalization Fund, hoping to create a $200 million endowment to back the tribe’s land management works.

“If the tribes had a couple million dollars a year to say, ‘Hey, these are our priorities, this is where we want to put our money,’” Tripp says, “then other folks like the Forest Service may be more willing to engage the dialogue.”

SHANNON GORMLEY.

STREET

OH MY GOURD Photos by Aaron Wessling On Instagram: @aaronwessling

Scenes from the 2020 Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off at Bauman’s Farm in Gervais, Ore.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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STREET

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STARTERS

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS T H AT H AP P E NE D IN PORTLAND CULTURE THIS WE E K, GRAP H E D.

RE AD MORE AB OU T T H E S E STORI E S AT WWE E K .COM

RIDICULOUS ALEX WITTWER

C O U R T E S Y O F T OYO TA

Damian Lillard buys a Toyota dealership in McMinnville.

Just when you thought it was safe to breathe again, the National Weather Service issues an air stagnation advisory for Portland.

AWFUL

AWESOME

DA

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Portland’s indie rock elite— including Stephen Malkmus, Corin Tucker and Colin Meloy—will play a virtual benefit concert for Sarah Iannarone this week.

AARON WESSLING

BRI

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Goodbye, Saucebox…

SAM GEHRKE

The Portland Bureau of Transportation extends its Healthy Businesses program, allowing restaurants to establish pop-up dining patios and cover them with tents.

Unfold is now even more accessible with equity pricing!

…and Beech Street Parlor… …and CC Slaughters, Portland’s oldest gay bar.

CHRISTINE DONG

The U.S. House of Representatives passes Earl Blumenaur’s $120 billion restaurant relief bill.

SERIOUS

Our classes are now all online, plus Park Pop-ups!

unfoldportland.com Single classes are $5 - 15 Unlimited memberships range from $25 - 120/month

ANOTHER BELIEVER, WIKI COMMONS

Not your typical yoga studio, we feature: Gentle, Yin, Restorative, Strength, Flow & Chair Yoga, plus Meditation!

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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ORANGE CRUSH: Aaron Wessling and friend.

The Great Pumpkin Some have spent quarantine baking bread and doing puzzles.

Aaron Wessling grew an 800-pound gourd.

We’ve all had to find something to sustain us during the horrible year that is 2020. Knitting.

Pumping iron. Hiking (when the state isn’t on fire). Baking. Drinking.

Photographer Aaron Wessling has been indulging a hobby he started a year before: growing humongous pumpkins.

He has one this year that weighs an estimated 830 pounds, with more of the growing season to go. Last year’s beast was 829 pounds.

Wessling—who occasionally contributes photos to WW—had been gardening for about five years when he got frustrated with the size of his pumpkins. So he turned to the internet and went down a rabbit hole. Soon, he was buying seeds from farmers in the Midwest who have been in the monster-squash game for years.

“It’s become a neighborhood attraction, and it’s been a distraction from literally everything,” Wessling says. “The community connection has been the most enjoyable part.”

In high-growth mode, Frankenpumpkins will

put on 50 pounds in 24 hours. “They will go from volleyball to larger than a basketball overnight, Wessling says. “It’s kind of freakish.”

Last year, Wessling took 12th in the Pacific Northwest with his 829-pounder at the “Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off” at Bauman’s Farm in Gervais.

The winner clocked in at 2,000 pounds, he says.

“I’m small potatoes in this game,” Wessling says.

He’s hoping to get bigger, literally. He joined the Pacific Giant Vegetable Growers, a group dedicated to growing obscenely large produce.

So what becomes of these huge pumpkins?

Some are turned into makeshift boats for the West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta. Many of them end up at the Oregon Zoo, where the elephants participate in the annual “Squishing of the Squash.” Big animals need big food, and farmers like Wessling are happy to oblige. ANTHONY EFFINGER. See photos from the most recent Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off on page 17.

HOTLINE What does utopia look like to you? Is it a bunch of hippies skipping through a verdant field while the Mamas and the Papas play from God’s hi-fi? Is it the heaven of Hollywood mythology, with clouds and angels and Jimi Hendrix jamming with Mozart? Or is it simply a world free of disease, injustice and Trump? Whatever it is, someone in Portland wants to know. Since July, mysterious fliers for something called the “Utopian Hotline” have been appearing on telephone poles around town. Call the number, and a robotic voice implores you to leave a message answering the prompt, “Can you imagine a more perfect future on earth?” Reached through an affiliated Instagram account, the person behind the hotline requested anonymity but says the responses will be used for an as yet undetermined art project—and whatever it is, it should be interesting. “It varies from people who want to convince me I should convert to Christianity to people talking about the protests and racial inequality in the country,” they say of the messages received so far. “Then I get the stoners and the tweakers.” Want to add your voice? Call 503-662-7263, and dream on.

MATTHEW SINGER. 20

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

HOT STUFF

FERMENTER

Q(UARANTINE)&A

AARON WESSLING

GET...OUTSIDE?

WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—AS PORTLAND REOPENS.

Sick Burn Trolling Ted Wheeler with hot sauce.

“Pain Is Good.” “Death Angel Reaper.” “Ass in the Tub.” These are the sort of cartoonishly sadistic names you’ll find on hot sauce labels across the country. Add “Tear Gas Ted’s” to the list. The jalapeño-tomatillo-garlic hot sauce that won’t actually burn your eyes or interfere with respiratory function, but it is “extra-spicy” and delicious.

Creator August Winningham began making the hot sauce as a lark. Already well-versed in lacto-fermentation as an employee of the Southeast vegan restaurants Fermenter and Farm Spirit, Winningham had always wanted to start a hot sauce business. One night during Portland’s summer of protests—many of which began at Revolution Hall, mere yards from Fermenter—the idea popped into his head.

Tear Gas Ted’s isn’t a business venture, though. To get a bottle, just give at least $10 to Don’t Shoot PDX, then show your receipt at Fermenter.

“I just figured that [would] be a nice little way to bring awareness to the fact that Ted Wheeler is responsible for the way his police force has been acting,” Winningham says. “Just to get that image out there in any small way that I can.”

A graphic designer friend, Nicole Black, provided an art nouveau-inspired label, which features a picture of Wheeler from the night he came down to the front lines of the protests and got gassed himself. “Invest in Community,” “Black Lives Matter” and “ACAB” are also on the bottle, along with the sauce’s spice level: three gas masks out of five.

First released in August, the first batch of 75 sold out in one weekend, while the second batch, of 125 bottles, is almost gone. That means at least $2,000 raised for Don’t Shoot PDX, though Winningham says most people give more than the $10 minimum.

“I think this whole project was just my way to kind of break myself out of the depression that we’re all in, with COVID and these fucking protests,” he says. “Watching protesters get tear-gassed and beat the shit out of, experiencing that myself a couple of times, and just feeling really overwhelmed and needing to do something, however small.” JASON COHEN.

To get a bottle of Tear Gas Ted’s, bring a donation receipt to Fermenter at 1414 SE Morrison St. 11 am-6 pm WednesdaySaturday. See more at instagram/teargasteds_hotsauce.

GET...OUTSIDE? OUTDOORS

Big Elk Hunter What happens when a longtime vegetarian goes hunting? Drugs, mostly. @thecomedianjake

There is a beast out there, and we are trying to kill it.

We stand in silence, listening for a single sound that may give us the advantage. Alex is completely immersed, giving me hand signals and mouthing words.

And I am doing everything in my power not to laugh.

Until now, I hadn’t considered the possibility that being on mushrooms, even what Alex called “a microdose,” might not be the best mental condition for my first time hunting elk. I didn’t think we would actually get on the trail of an animal as soon as I started peaking, and silently laughing at tree bark when those rustling branches could be a bear is not what anyone would call “best practices.”

Yet here I am—a vegetarian newbie hunter with no weapon, biting his lip so as not to scare away what could be a year’s worth of meat for my friend.

I’ve been friends with Alex for over a decade.

For him to take up bowhunting was much more than a slight surprise. This is a man so proud of his veganism that once, during our time as roommates, he called the entire house into the bathroom after he’d taken a shit to demand that we sniff the air, noting the complete lack of stench.

“That’s the vegan diet, man,” he smirked as we awkwardly shuffled out.

Alex’s transition from preachy shitter to camo-wearing elk hunter had taken place over the past few years. He’d begun thinking about eating meat again in early 2019, after almost a decade as a vegetarian and three years as a vegan. After consulting with his doctor, he dove back in, devouring an entire rotisserie chicken his first meal back and calling it “one of the best meals of my life.”

Alex has made his living as an independent artist for the past few years, and this new layer fit naturally into his DIY lifestyle. Just as he had worked to avoid having to punch the clock for someone else, the goal of being able to at least partially provide his own food was also part of that ethic. Most meat eaters never have to face the cold reality of how the steak gets on their plate, but it was important to Alex that he was viscerally aware of the process.

With no experience, but an interest in doing some hunting of his own, he bought a bow after a friend did in hopes of being able to learn alongside someone. Since MasterClass doesn’t seem to cater to the bookish hunter, he took an online course called the “University of Elk Hunting” and went out on a few scouting missions. Because he didn’t want to be in the woods alone, he asked me to join the adventure.

As an 11-year vegetarian myself—God, that sounds smug—I’ve never been hunting, nor given it much thought. It’s not exactly a generational tradition that’s handed down from one big-city Jew to the next. The image of hunters in my head was of a guy with a couple of buddies getting

JAKE SILBERMAN

BY JAK E SI L B E R M A N

SURVIVOR MAN: Jake Silberman in the shit.

drunk in a tree stand, or maybe Dick Cheney blowing away his friend’s face that one time.

Besides, the only hunting tips I’d heard sounded like boyhood sex advice. I had this idea that deer were attracted to pee, and kept imagining a horned-up deer orgasmically lapping up forest-floor piss. The only image I had of an elk was from the statue downtown, which isn’t even there anymore.

Despite my clear lack of interest in or knowledge of hunting, I was actually pretty excited when Alex invited me to tag along. The world is becoming a darker place—I’m not saving up for my very own bunker or anything, but I have been bingeing Survivorman during quarantine and thinking about my own ability to live off the land.

With a perma-virus that has now reached the Oval Office, daily civil unrest, and my dream of being a professional standup comedian growing dimmer by the day, learning to hunt and kill an animal might be something I’ll need to do in the future. It probably also helped that I wouldn’t have to shoot anything and I strongly doubted our chances of getting a kill.

This also might be the only hunting trip I ever take, so I decided not to drop big bucks on gear.

For under $25, I was able to nab two pieces of usable camo: a long-sleeve shirt and a Goodwill rain jacket. Alex, on the other hand, seemed to have the Tesla of camo gear, complete with a matching backpack and gun holster.

Our expedition was to take place near Florence in what the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife calls Alsea Unit 18. A day and a half in and we hadn’t offcially hunted yet. Our journey started with a small canoe trip, complete with selfies and “fuck yeahs” galore. It quickly turned into “a learning experience” that ended with Alex

falling waist deep into marsh water and toasting his phone. After finally making it to the campsite, we realized Alex’s bow had been damaged in the process, meaning we’d have to drive to Eugene the next day to get it fixed. The next morning we made the hike out and arrived at BowTech, the favorite archery shop of frequent Joe Rogan guest Cameron Hanes, for the repair.

I took a picture of a T-shirt for sale that read “0% Vegetarian.”

Once you’re actually in the woods and on the hunt, it’s an immersive experience. The possibility of seeing an animal keeps you involved throughout. Plus, you’ve got to be quiet, which provided a great cover for my sweeping bouts of anxiety.

You have a lot of time to sit alone with your thoughts but get to break it up periodically with popular hunting phrases like, “Did you hear that?” and “What kind of shit is that?”

After a long day spent combing overgrown forest roads, we headed to Heceta Head Lighthouse to see the ocean. As the fog surrounded us and the lighthouse cast its beams into the void, we decided there couldn’t be a better place to smoke a bit of DMT. We parked Alex’s truck in the lot and headed up the path. There were just two other vehicles near us, and they looked to be people waiting out the smoke near the beach for a few days. Soon, we’re sitting under the lighthouse and I am much too high to function. It makes me feel bad, because Alex is much more spiritual than I am. So while he throws a mushroom capsule into the ocean as an offering, I kind of just meander off into the dark to pretend I’m getting in touch with God. As we sit back together, Alex tells a story about a former elementary schoolteacher of his.

I try to pay attention, but I’m distracted by a distant beeping.

“Is that your car alarm, dude?”

Alex perks up and listens.

“Shit. We gotta go!”

I’m way too high to be running through the darkness toward Alex’s ringing truck alarm, terrified that some coastal wack job has nabbed all our stuff and possibly made off with the gun.

Rounding the corner, I dimly make out Alex’s camoed silhouette by the red bike light he’s palming, his boonie hat my only real guide. We reach the bottom of the path and are met with a very safe truck and the roar of the ocean.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we bound off to the wave’s edge and wipe away the remainder of our camo face paint. This is elk hunting, I guess.

We ended up not seeing a single big game animal on the trip since whatever was in those bushes could evade our detection. But apparently, the best part about hunting is that even if you’re unsuccessful, you’re still outside, the air is clean, and you’re connected to nature, mushrooms or not.

And I have to admit, I don’t look half-bad in camo.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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Drink Fresh Through sickness and fire, Oregon’s fresh hop season has arrived. Here’s the best of what’s out so far, and what to look forward to.

BY E ZRA J O H N SO N - G R EE NO UGH

It’s been a rough season for hop growers.

This year, farmers had to reckon with a freak, oncein-a-lifetime windstorm that toppled fields of hop bines and wildfires that threatened to contaminate crops with smoke or wipe them out entirely. And, of course, there’s the virus: Yakima, Wash., is the top hop-growing region in the world, and has also been the epicenter of COVID-19 infections in the state.

Somehow, though, they pulled it off.

And now, with the Northern Hemisphere’s annual hop harvest coming to a close, Oregon and Washington are currently awash with seasonal fresh hop beers that show off the limited picking window and our proximity to the growers.

Fresh hop beers are brewed almost exclusively in the Pacific Northwest—just once a year, over the period of a month. They require undried, freshly picked hop cones, typically within 24 hours of harvest.

What’s the difference between the regularly hopped beers we drink year-round and the fresh kind? Think of it like cooking with dried basil from the supermarket versus fresh basil from your own garden. When done right, the lush green hop cones are still sticky and wet, and the bright yellow lupulin behind the petals can impart oily, grassy, citrusy and spicy flavors and aromas that are almost impossible to capture in beers using kiln-dried hops.

Because of their seasonal nature, and their delicate balance of volatile oils and fresh flavors, fresh hop beers are often draft only. But if there’s one benefit to everyone being stuck at home, it’s that breweries are bottling and canning much more of them this year.

Here’s the best of what I’ve tried so far, and the ones I’m most excited about that are still to come.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

MARKUS SPISKE

BEER

FOOD & DRINK

BEST SO FAR

MOST ANTICIPATED

Ex Novo’s Fresh Hop Eliot IPA One of the first fresh hop beers out this year was also among the best. Ex Novo opened in North Portland in 2014 and has since expanded with locations in Beaverton and New Mexico, and it’s easy to see why. This fresh hop version of its flagship Eliot IPA is everything a hop-head wants in a West Coast-style IPA: big, dusty, green aromatics, flower petals, herbs and citrus and a bitter backbone that leaves the entire beer as a showcase for the signature Oregon Centennial hop variety.

Von Ebert Brewing’s Fresh Hop Volatile Substance It’s hard to believe it’s possible to improve on one of Oregon’s best IPAs already, but Von Ebert Brewing did it last year with the fresh hop version of its mainstay, Volatile Substance. A clean, crisp, modern American IPA, Volatile Substance captures a balance of berry, bubblegum, passion fruit and orange with slightly herbal, grassy and piney notes amplified by fresh Mosaic hops from Coleman Agriculture in Woodburn.

Fort George’s Rock, Paper, Sterling Most fresh hop beers are IPAs, but increasingly, brewers are attempting lagers as Fort George Brewery did with Rock, Paper Sterling. While the base beer is a light lager, it shows off more rough edges and pillowy mouthfeel than a true Pilsner. But that’s OK, because while it may take inspiration from the land of Oktoberfest, it’s bred far more for the Pacific Northwest palate. Utilizing the Oregon-grown Sterling hop variety that was developed as a more resilient form of German Saaz hops, the beer offer a peppery, herbal, pineapple tea-like flavor much different from the other beers you may try this season.

Crux Fermentation Project’s Sabro IPA One of the few successful fresh hop beers this year not based on a previous recipe, Sabro IPA is an aptly named expression of one of the most distinct hop varieties to become widely available in the last five years. The Sabro hop—originally tested under the name HBC 438—is known for its divisive woody coconut flavor profile.

In the case of Crux’s hazy, light-bodied Sabro IPA, it comes off like a hopped-up piña colada without all the sweetness.

Wayfinder’s Stairs and Flowers Fresh Hop IPA For a brewery known for lagers and German beers, Wayfinder has developed a strong IPA game over the past year. Some of that success comes down to the new “cold IPA” subtrend that is being heavily pushed by head brewer Kevin Davey. Stairs and Flowers IPA is probably the first ever fresh hop cold IPA, which translates into a clear and dry West Coast style that’s cool fermented like a lager with adjuncts to lighten the body for a crisp finish similar to a light beer. With that deceptively light profile, the fresh Strata hops shine through, with notes of citrus and cannabis.

StormBreaker Brewing’s Fresh Hop House Martell North Portland’s StormBreaker Brewing released a half-dozen fresh hop beers in 2020 in a variety of styles, from red ale to saison. But it’s the fresh hop version of the brewery’s year-round House Martell hazy IPA that caught my nose on a recent flight around its seasonals. As you pull this ale up to your lips, you are immediately hit with a burst of stank that can only be compared with putting your nose into a bag full of whole hop cones.

Breakside Brewery’s Up Top! Having already made some of the best fresh hop beers ever— and released more than a half-dozen great ones this year already—there’s cause to get hyped about anything Breakside puts out. Up Top! is Breakside’s final fresh hop release of the year, a version of its collaborative “Peaka Peaka” Zwickel-Pils with New Mexico’s most acclaimed brewery, La Cumbre. What makes this beer even more intriguing is that it’s a rare American take on the zwickel-style Pilsner, which is a younger and unfiltered version of the European classic. With this rendition, Breakside used its house German lager yeast and American malts, but sent the batch through a whirlpool of fresh Santiam hops known for their spicy and lemony characteristics.

Sunriver Brewing’s D’ Kine The hop maestros at Central Oregon’s Sunriver Brewing have consistently been able to conduct hoppy flavors to symphonic levels, and previous years of D’Kine have consistently called up the chorus. D’Kine is an unfiltered but relatively clear delivery mechanism for Mosaic hops that arrives in a puff of green smoke that will be here and gone as fast as you can exhale before hitting the vape pen again.

Fremont Brewing’s Head Full of Fresh Hops For the fresh hop version of its hazy IPA, Seattle’s Fremont Brewing is using a recently released new hop variety that many predict will be beer’s next big thing. Previously known as HBC 692, Talus hops were developed at Loftus Ranches in Yakima and are a cousin of Sabro said to be even more complex. Talus hops are allegedly reminiscent of pink grapefruit, citrus rinds, dried roses, pine resin, tropical fruits and sage.

Deschutes Brewery’s Chasin’ Freshies Deschutes’ fresh hop game has always been strong. It was one of the first breweries to bottle a fresh hop beer and release it widely with Hop Trip Pale Ale in 2004. Deschutes’ 2020 release of its fresh hop IPA highlights the über-popular New Zealand hop El Dorado and the unique Neomexicanus variety Zappa.

El Dorado is known for its application in hazy and milkshake smoothie IPAs, while Zappa is a rare new hop that was found in the wild and has now been cultivated for commercial use.

PATIO REVIEW

ALEX WITTWER

FOOD & DRINK

Inebriated Forest A garden center’s worth of trees and bushes have transformed the street outside Old Town Brewing into a green escape.

BY AN D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek.com

In most instances when you run up against one of those whiteand safety-orange-striped “Road Closed” barricades, heavy equipment is on the other side ripping into the pavement, frustrating drivers now in need of another route along with neighbors who must put up with the sustained din of construction.

At Old Town Brewing’s Northeast Portland location, these blockades actually seal off a tranquil urban thicket right in the middle of the street.

This past summer saw every bar, brewery and restaurant in town expand into lanes of traffic if they had the means and ability. While many of these makeshift pandemic patios are nothing much to look at, Old Town’s is different: It immerses you in nature.

“I think one of the things that made such a drastic improvement were all of the trees,” says owner Adam Milne. “It made Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard look like a park. It’s beautiful.”

The temporary woodland—just off the major thoroughfare on Northeast Sumner Street—took more to create than just a run to the closest big-box store’s garden department. The trees are actually loaners from the city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services as part of its effort to partner with the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Healthy Business program. And the agency didn’t just pick whatever extra available shrubs happened to be in storage, either—careful planning went into the selection of each

flower and frond for Old Town and the newly launched Dream Street Plaza it’s a part of.

“They sent out an arborist who walked through the place to develop a ‘tree site plan’ to help support the goals of the plaza,” says PBOT spokesperson Hannah Schafer.

The plaza, which had its grand opening Oct. 2, is the result of a $25,000 National Association of City Transportation Officials grant that PBOT won to aid with pandemic response and recovery. Through Nov. 1, 15 vendors will be posted along Sumner. Spearheaded by the Soul District Business Association, Old Town’s side-street picnic table seating was also born of that group’s suggestion.

Right now, there’s no better place than the little forest sprouting from cement to enjoy a pizza and a Pillowfist, Old Town’s take on a New England IPA that is appropriately soft in mouthfeel and cloudy in appearance. While the temperature still allows, the oversized garage door at the front entrance will be rolled up, providing more airflow for anyone dining indoors.

But you owe it to yourself to find some solace among the trees— some squat and bushy, others taller than the red umbrellas shading the patch with blooming flowers in a complementary shade of crimson.

When not looking up at the flora, you’ll notice the landscaping and shaping extends to the ground. On one half of the road is a mural that looks like a postmodern game of hopscotch; the brightly colored squares and rectangles were designed by the owner of the neighboring boutique. Then, next to the curb is a wide strip of green artificial lawn, a purchase inspired by an internet search for design ideas last spring.

Milne plans to pitch large tents over the tables this fall, prolonging the patio’s life. For now, though, he’s enjoying the distanced gathering that’s fostered in between the branches, even when Old Town is closed.

“Even though we’re not open typically for lunch, we get people in the neighborhood that are working—they’ll come down and sit and meet,” Milne says. “I think the way the space has come together, it just makes people want to meet with colleagues and neighbors and friends.”

PATIO SPECS

TOP 5

HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.

Rock Paper Fish 2605 SE Burnside St., rockpaperfishandchips.com. 11 am-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Rock Paper Fish is yet another fast-casual Micah Camden restaurant, and yet another quick pandemic pivot. Open since mid-August, it’s a pickup- and delivery-only fishand-chips window, operating out of what used to be Boxer Ramen in the Burnside 26 building. The seafood may be mostly local or regional, but the style is New England: double-battered, double-fried, with thick fries reminiscent of Belgian frites.

La Moule 2500 SE Clinton St., 971-339-2822, lamoulepdx.com. 4-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Going from Paris to Portland may seem an odd career move for a chef. But for John Denison, it made perfect sense. Having started his career at St. Jack before bouncing around some of Europe’s finest kitchens, he’s back at Aaron Barnett’s other French-inspired restaurant, moving the menu in an even more Gallic direction. Denison’s tour de force? An ultra-rustic pâté en croûte.

Dimo’s Apizza 701 E Burnside St., 503-327-8968, dimosapizza.com. 4-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

The menu at Dimo’s Apizza is loaded with variations of the New Haven-style pies chef Doug Miriello grew up eating in Connecticut. But his new spot aims for a place in Portland’s sandwich pantheon, too. The most recent addition to the menu is maybe the most impressive. It’s called The Beast: whole top sirloin seasoned like brisket, cave-aged Gruyère and slathered-on aioli.

Number of tables: 16 Space between tables: At least 6 feet Additional safety measures: Tables sanitized after every use, menus via QR code or single-use paper handouts, touchless transactions.

Peak hours: 4-9 pm EAT: Old Town Brewing, 5201 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-200-5988, otbrewing.com. 4-9 pm Sunday-Thursday, 3-9 pm Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday.

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST

Where to drink outside this week.

TREVOR GAGNIER

Baerlic Brewing’s Super Secret Beer Club 1020 SE Grant St., 503-477-9418, baerlicbrewing.com. 2-8 pm daily.

Baerlic Brewing is among that inspired group of entrepreneurs during the pandemic that looked at the cracked, gray parking lot behind its building and somehow saw a socially distanced party. The 6,000-square-foot space has turned into a Bavarianinspired drinking lawn, complete with a huge faux foliage backdrop affixed with the words “Super Secret Beer Club.”

CC Slaughters 219 NW Davis St., 503-248-9135, ccslaughterspdx.com.

4-10 pm daily.

CC Slaughters, the 39-year-old Portland gay bar, is closing—for now, anyway. Frequently packed with college kids, tourists and regulars for drag shows and dance nights, it often acted as a gateway to Portland’s wider LGBTQ+ community. If you’ve never been, there’s still time: It’s last day of service is Sunday, Oct. 11.

3920 N Mississippi Ave., 503-477-7164, stemwinebarpdx.com.

5 pm-close Monday-Friday, noon-close Saturday-Sunday.

Businesses that opened just weeks before the mandated coronavirus closures in mid-March have had a tough go—just ask 45 North. Five weeks after opening, the North Portland wine bar shuttered. It’s back open now, but dealing with yet another obstacle: rebranding. Now known as Stem, the bar offers a wide global selection, spanning from the Willamette Valley to South Africa, with private tasting appointments available through its website.

Migration Rooftop 817 SW 17th Ave., 9th floor, 971-291-0258, migrationbrewing.com. 1-10 pm Thursday-Sunday.

The ascendant brewery has gone and launched a rooftop taproom at downtown’s freshly opened Canvas building. It boasts a panoramic view few others can claim, which includes the Providence Park Jumbotron, and the brewery already has some grand plans once games resume with fans in the stands: “I might have to put a tifo up,” says co-owner Colin Rath.

Lady of the Mountain 100 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-345-2992, kexhotels. com/eat-drink/rooftop. 5-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday; last reservations taken at 8:30 pm. Brunch 10 am-1 pm Saturday-Sunday.

At four stories up, Lady of the Mountain feels a bit like being nestled in a fjord made of glass and concrete. The list of wine, beer and cocktails is long, but to make things easy, just order the Pimm’s Cup: It’s like an adult snow cone, made with cucumber-infused gin.

CHRISTINE DONG

Stem Wine Bar

Galactic Grapes 5800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 213-246-7993, instagram.com/galacticgrapespdx.

One of the only places in the country where you can purchase a candy-encrusted grape is out of a splatter-painted food truck in Northeast Portland. Co-owners Vicky Carmichael and Andre Montgomery call the titular product “the fruit of the future,” but the individual elements are straight out of the ’80s: smashed Lemonheads, Fun Dip powder and Pop Rocks act as seasoning, and biting into any of them quenches like chugging a sports drink—crisp, juicy, electrolyte-forward.

Rough Draft Burger Shop Inside Uptown Beer Co. at 6620 SW Scholls Ferry Road, rdburgershop.com. 4-9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, noon-9 pm Friday-Saturday.

Rough Draft’s idea of the perfect burger is fatty, simple and crispy-smashed—just meat, cheese and condiments.

The dark horse menu item, though? Vegetables. Fried broccoli with hot cheese, pickled peppers, scallion and crispy jalapeños does not feel virtuous at all, but it delivers cruciferous vitamins and fiber.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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POTLANDER REVIEW

FITZG AMES .COM

Cards Against Sobriety Hot Box is a decent party game for stoners, provided you don’t mind being dared to drink bong water.

BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R

The first thing a player sees when they open the instructions to Hot Box is a bedraggled, clip-art hippie mascot welcoming you to the card game by waving his arms like an inflatable noodle person and designating the game’s first judge as “the highest person in the room, or whoever has the fewest Instagram followers.”

After showing the instructions the three other players, a chorus of half-annoyed half-bemused groans overtook the room.

“That guy is why I never smoked pot when I was in high school,” one friend said.

As a table of multicultural 40-year-old cannabis users who all have nominally commensurate tolerances and minimal interest in social media, the collective feeling this mascot gave us was that we were somehow either too old or too young for this game.

Representation-wise, we were off to a lukewarm start.

But we’re a bunch of good-natured stoners who enjoy the occasional card game—the target audience. If representation didn’t arrive via the instruction manual, it was certainly in the cards.

Hot Box is a pretty straightforward comedy card game—basically a stoner Cards Against Humanity, with the addition of cards that prompt dares like holding a bong hit as long as you can or drinking bong water on TikTok. To play, the deck is split into question cards, answer cards and an additional third stack of dare cards. Dare cards appear in the question deck every four or five turns, prompting that round’s judge to either perform the required task or forfeit their points. The dares vary from harmless (do the

Carlton Dance!) to indefensibly gross (act out the worst poop of your life) to low-key rude (FaceTime your ex).

On Round 1, the first answer card I pulled was about letting a dog lick peanut butter off my vagina, to which I swoon-gasped and clutched my pearls like the stuck-up auntie I am. Based on Lazy Jay or Green Dean or whatever the stoner mascot’s name is, I wrongly assumed this game was going to be full of dad-tier weed jokes.

The highlight of Round 2 came when I pulled the dare card that read “Do the Carlton Dance!” I stood up, did the Carlton Banks, and then sat down and gave myself a point. One player’s face remained twisted in confusion the entire time.

“What is a Carlton dance?” they asked. “How do you know how to do that?”

And it was with such deserved satisfaction that I then patronizingly described The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to my white husband from Connecticut for several minutes.

On Round 3, our gameplay started to feature the Cypress Hill Expansion Pack, featuring questions framed around the ’90s stoner rap crew. Inquiries included: “Sen Dog is known for ____ on tour.” “Before performing, Bobo gets in the mood with ____.” “B Real loves 2 things, weed and ____.”

The expansion pack continues in this, uh, fascinating fashion. If any of us had been superfans, the jokes would have rung some bells for us. We decided that Cypress Hill should be the ones to narrate the instruction booklet, not Bonghit Bob or Marijuana Mel or whoever.

In the end, the player who consistently gave the most non sequitur, stoned-logic answer cards ended up as the victor. At first blush, we all felt a bit stuck up about the

stereotypes playing out on the cards and the provocative nature of some of the dares, but after a few turns, a few personal joints, and modifying the dares to be optional, we leaned in as we would any smoked-up Q&A card game.

The loudest takeaway from playing one game of Hot Box was that several of these jokes and dares seemed geared toward a far younger, more nihilistic audience. I just want to get high, sip white wine spritzers and laugh with the homies, I’m not trying to shave one leg on Instagram Live so I can get a point in a card game. But hey, takes all kinds.

That said, I will play this game again, but with two caveats—dares are not compulsory, and we burn the peanut butter vagina card.

BUY IT: Hot Box is available for order through Amazon and fitzgames.com. $25.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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BOOKS MARION ETTLINGER

HOTSEAT

Finding My Religion David Biespiel reflects on Judaism and Texas in A Place of Exodus.

PHOTO: Caption tktktk

BY S COU T B R O B ST

sbrobst@wweek.com

David Biespiel begins A Place of Exodus with a confession.

“I never told anyone this,” he writes, “but for a time I thought I would be a rabbi when I grew up.”

This is not his first memoir, or his first book––in fact, it is his 12th––but it is Biespiel’s first effort to make something out of the spiritual arc of his childhood, a cinematic story of devotion, conflict and exile.

Before settling in Portland in 1995, Biespiel lived in eight states in nine years, searching for the meaning of home in each temporary city but unable to shake the first one: Meyerland, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Houston. There, Biespiel describes speaking Hebrew with a Southern accent and living comfortably within every aspect of Jewish life and tradition.

Then a bout of intellectual rebellion in his teenage years led to a heated debate with a rabbi and a dramatic expulsion from Hebrew school.

Forty years later, Biespiel reflects on the subtleties of this time of his life, now with the confident lyricism of a writer who has spent the better part of his career as an award-winning poet. Today, Biespiel’s time is spent as the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters, an independent writing studio in Southeast Portland, and as the first poet-in-residence at Oregon State University.

But pieces of Texas still work their way into his Pacific Northwestern routine, a constant reminder of the stubbornness of cultural roots.

“You can’t get away from it,” he says.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

WW: Some authors feel called to publish deeply personal memoirs after full careers of writing about other things. Was this always a story you wanted to see published?

David Biespiel: I’ve been writing about this material in one iteration or another all along. The problem that I had when I was younger was that my emotions toward it were pretty hot. I couldn’t cool down enough when I started to write to really get at the nuance I would have expected for myself. Now I’m older than the principal adults in the book, so that gave me some emotional leverage. I write in the book about going home and running into these old friends of mine, and them having this question: “David, where have you been?” as if I’d stepped out one night and didn’t come back for 40 years. And that was another stimulant. That’s where I found my question: Why didn’t you go home? And the only way to answer that question was to dramatize why I left.

How did you want to write about Texas for a reader who might not be familiar with that reality?

As a friend of mine once said, “To say that Texas is a state with a reputation for being a home to Christians is like saying the Sahara is made up of sand.” I’ll say I’m from Texas, and people will say, “There are Jews from Texas?”

In a state that is really identified with the Protestant roots of the American story, to talk about a gigantic minority Jewish community is a story people don’t know. No one’s at fault for that, it’s just not a story that’s been told.

One of the things you bring up in the first few pages is this idea that being a writer and being a rabbi both involve “purifying your principles.” Did the process of writing this memoir feel theological?

By calling Texas “the place of Exodus” and blurring Texas and Judaism, I am calling my late 20th century American story another one of the stories of the children of Israel that came out of Egypt. In that way, it is theological. It’s another version of events, bringing to life qualities that aren’t present in the Old Testament.

For people who grow up in highly observant communities, there is this common experience of a crossroads where you either grow into or grow out of your faith. How did you want to convey that experience?

The quarrel with the rabbi—that was volcanic, and when you’re writing about it, you have to go into it. I had to reinhabit my own thinking, my own arrogance, my own combativeness, and also portray his. It was a fight to the end. When I was rereading those parts to myself as I was working on them, I was hot. I felt that anger again. I felt both the triumph that I achieved and the shame. I feel like, for many people, it’s hard to locate something in your life where you feel an experience as simultaneous triumph and shame.

You write about being a retired Jew, rather than a lapsed or an ex-believer. What were you hoping readers would get from this branding of identity?

I think of it as an ebb, a withdrawal, because Judaism isn’t just a faith system. It’s something you’re born into. You can convert to the practice, but so much tension and commentary surrounds the idea of being born into it as a people.

“Retired” conveys that I don’t go to the office anymore.

There’s a boxing-in that goes into Judaism, where to practice Judaism is a Jewish act, to reject Judaism is a Jewish act, to swear never to return to Judaism is a Jewish act. No matter what you do, that’s the most Jewish thing you can possibly do. The only way that I can think of linguistically to say that I’m outside of that paradigm is saying that I’m retired from that narrative.

Does it feel as though you have retired from Texas in the same way?

I miss that more. I don’t miss the practice of religion, but I miss barbecue ribs on Saturday. A few years ago, I was on the Rio Grande writing a book. One day I went for a walk by myself down in Marfa, Texas, and I was trying to describe the sky to my wife because the sky in West Texas is enormous. You can see as far as the North Pole. The clouds are in motion and they’re very low. And as I was describing this to my wife, she said, “You’re coming home, right?” And I said, “Well, I am home. But I will be returning to Portland.” I have a feeling for the place that is really underneath my skin.

MORE: Powell’s Books presents David Biespiel in conversation with David Naimon on Thursday, Oct. 8, on Zoom. 6 pm. Go to powells.com/eventsupdate for registration information.

PERFORMANCE

Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com LINDSEY MANTOAN

“We really encourage people to respond to the performance in the YouTube comments,” Mantoan says, “in that democracy is a participatory system, right?”

As Mantoan led the final online rehearsals, WW caught up with her to discuss what has helped her find balance when not teaching during a highly unusual year.

1. Family walks My wife and kids and I go for family walks or hikes a few times a week, and it keeps all of us from bouncing off the walls. We really enjoy Oxbow Regional Park, although I hesitate to say that, because the reason we enjoy it is because no one else is going there. And mostly just different neighborhood walks that we’ve now labeled the “Duck Pond Loop” or the “Tree and the Rocks Loop”—things that have different points of interest or opportunities for climbing.

My Essential Seven: Lindsey Mantoan

2. Reading After my kids were born, I kind of stopped reading because who has time for that with twins? But shelter-in-place helped me rediscover reading, and I think I’ve read 30 books since the stay-at-home order first came down. I’ve been jumping around a lot, but I think that reading Black science fiction right now feels very important. Afro-futurism feels very important. We need to be able to imagine better futures, and there are really smart, innovative people doing that through literature. Living in those worlds feels good and inspiring.

From Black sci-fi to Zoom trivia nights, the Linfield University theater professor is finding balance as we approach the election.

3. Reconnecting with friends Zoom fatigue is real, and yet some of my favorite moments in the last seven months have been video calls with friends—especially friends I’ve not been great at keeping in touch with.

I have standing weekly FaceTimes with some of my favorite people, and I’ve even written a few “pub” trivia games that we’ve played on Zoom. The theater trivia was really fun. There was a musicals round and a quotations round. I also did “Trivia Is So Gay,” and it was all queer trivia for an eclectic group of people who didn’t know each other but were all gay.

BY AN D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek.com

As anyone who’s paid attention to the news lately knows, there is no longer a question the United States’ standing as a democracy is threatened.

Given the weight of this moment and the significance of the outcome Nov. 3, it’s worth taking a step back to examine and appreciate democracy itself—from the abstract ideals to the resulting policies when in practice. That’s just some of what Lindsey Mantoan hopes you’ll glean from two upcoming performances of Democratically Speaking.

“It’s all things that have been written or said before about democracy,” says the assistant professor of theater at Linfield University in McMinnville, “and how great it is and how problematic it is and how people have used it for good and for bad.”

Mantoan is familiar with the found-text production, which includes speeches and writings from figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Howard Zinn. She directed the premiere at Stanford University during the last election cycle, though that’s not to say this version will replicate the original.

Every presentation since sees voices added to reflect the changing political climate.

Of course, the major difference will be pulling off the production during a pandemic. Democratically Speaking will be the department’s first fully online performance following an earlier show this year in which masked actors played to an empty house. The students will now deliver lines via Zoom before stage managers process that footage with a software program and incorporate slides as well as other video. Mantoan says the format fits the material.

“It lends itself to this medium,” says Mantoan, “because while there are some things that feel like scenes, for the most part these speeches talk to each other in their juxtaposition.”

And, in the true spirit of Democratically Speaking, she asks the audience to engage with the production rather than passively watch.

4. Backyard/driveway hangs While virtual connections with friends bring me tons of joy, physically distanced driveway or backyard hangouts with local friends is also rejuvenating and necessary. Relaxing outdoors in the company of good people reminds me that we don’t need complicated or large-scale events to find happiness.

5. Dance breaks Let’s just admit that this moment is too much.

It’s too much fascism and racism and pandemic and fire. I’m grateful to live with people who take turns remembering to turn on music and dance it out.

Family favorites include Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” Lady Gaga’s “Stupid Love,” Jonas Brothers’ “What a Man Gotta Do,” and, of course, anything from Frozen or Frozen II. 6. Working out I’ve never been so glad I have an elliptical and weights at home. I work out in my basement every day, and it’s essential to my physical and mental health.

7. Dates at home We miss restaurants so, so much, but my wife and I have had some really lovely dates at home.

After the kids are asleep, we pour some wine, throw together some fancy cheese plates, and play board games or talk about our day or dream up trips we want to take.

SEE IT: Democratically Speaking streams on the Linfield Theatre YouTube channel Friday and Saturday, Oct. 9-10.

7:30 pm. Free.

BOOKS

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

FIVE VIRTUAL BOOK EVENTS TO ATTEND THIS WEEK

Maaza Mengiste Mengiste’s The Shadow King lives within layers of conflict— set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, the book invites readers into the lives of women soldiers wrestling with the complicated glory and liberation of war. At the heart of the novel is Hirut, an orphaned maid who moves from servant to soldier to hero and symbol of Ethiopian resistance, questioning each role as her life evolves. Mengiste writes with remarkable clarity and depth, a skill which has gotten the book long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize.

She will be joined in conversation by Hannah Giorgis, culture writer at The Atlantic. 6 pm Wednesday, Oct. 7.

See powells.com for streaming info.

Joanna Rose Longtime Portland author and onetime curator of the Powell’s Books reading series, Rose has released her second novel, a hard look at the impulses that lead us where we are meant to go and whom we are meant to go with. In A Small Crowd of Strangers, Rose’s eccentric protagonist leaves a life of convention for a host of what-ifs. What if Buddhism really is the voice of reason? What if the right place is a convenience store on Vancouver Island and a lively game of Bible Scrabble? Rose will be joined by author and co-host of the Pinewood Table critique group Stevan Allred. 7 pm Thursday, Oct. 8. See annieblooms.com for streaming info.

David Gessner If there is anything we have learned from the coast burning to a crisp, it’s that it’s worth preserving.

This ethos is writer David Gessner’s mission in Leave It as It Is, alongside his other mission, to spiritually connect with the late, great President Theodore Roosevelt. For the book, Gessner traveled from the Dakota Badlands to Bears Ears, Utah, and just about everywhere in between, looking for clarity in Roosevelt’s vision of human stewardship of the places we live in. The title comes from Roosevelt’s own words as he viewed the Grand Canyon for the first time: “Leave it as it is, the ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” 5 pm Monday, Oct. 12. See powells.com for streaming info.

Tana French The beauty of the new wave of virtual author events is that you are no longer confined to those who pass through Portland. A short trip north, author Tana French speaks as part of Seattle Arts & Lectures, discussing the crime novels that have branded her the foremost “mystery writer for people who don’t read mysteries.” Her latest release is The Searcher, the story of a missing child and a hardened detective in the unspoiled Irish countryside. French will be joined in conversation by fellow crime novelist Ruth Ware. 7 pm Monday, Oct. 12. See lectures.org for more info.

Helen Macdonald When Helen Macdonald wrote H Is for Hawk in 2014, she managed to convince a wide spectrum of readers that a 300-page book on the relationship between grief and the northern goshawk is worth the read. Consistently praised for her uncanny ability to describe the natural world and all its creatures, Macdonald has become a golden name in nature writing—and, at a different set of parties, raptor research. Her latest book, Vesper Flights, is a collection of essays on ostriches, nests, swifts, migrations and the delicate art of swan-catching. 6 pm Tuesday, Oct. 13. See literary-arts.org for streaming info.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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MOVIES

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com N I L I YOS H A

SCREENER

GET YO UR REPS I N While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. For the month of October, we highlight all the best horror for your Halloween movie marathons. This week’s theme is East Asian horror, a massively influential subgenre that offers so much more than just ghost girls with long black hair creepy crawling toward the camera.

House (1977) A seminal staple of Japanese horror, this psychedelic ghost story centers on a girl who travels to her aunt’s rural home with six friends. One by one, the girls are picked off by the haunted house, be it via a killer grandfather clock, a ravenous piano, or even a portrait of a cat that spurts enough blood to flood a room. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, HBO Max, iTunes, Vudu.

FILMING NEVERLAND: A troupe of teens and 20-somethings dissected Peter Pan and then produced their own take of the story.

Lost Boys Found

A Portland-set take on Peter Pan has empowered a group of young people who were houseless.

BY C H A N C E SO L E M - P F E I FER

@chance_s_p

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

SEE IT: The Lost Boys of Portlandia streams at vimeo. com/170202065. You can watch all of Outside the Frame’s shorts at vimeo.com/otfpdx. Free.

After returning home from a mental institution, a teenage girl discovers her house is haunted by the ghost of her late mother. But all is not what it seems; a series of mind-bending and disturbing twists propelled this psychological puzzle to become the highest-grossing Korean horror film of all time. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, Shudder.

Ringu (1998) In this blueprint that inspired all those J-horror American remakes of the early 2000s, a reporter must quickly solve the mystery of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer within seven days. What makes Ringu stand out from the crowd is that it manages to be outrageously terrifying with minimal gore and violence. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Kanopy, Shudder, Sling TV, YouTube.

IMDB.COM

The Lost Boys of Portlandia (2016) was once a snapshot of the lives and minds of unhoused Portland youth. Now, it doubles as an origin story.

The 23-minute film has become the urtext of Outside the Frame, a nonprofit that has produced hundreds of video projects as a means of engaging, educating and employing young people living on Portland’s streets.

The short film depicts the fateful day in 2009 when Outside the Frame founder and executive director Nili Yosha substituted as leader of a group of unhoused youth for a screening of Disney’s 1953 animated version of Peter Pan. Though she’s loath, then and now, to take any focus off the students, Yosha suspected the allegory of the Lost Boys—the disappeared, rudderless orphans headed by Peter Pan—could resonate deeply.

“They’re the real Lost Boys,” says Yosha of the cohort documented in her film.

By far the profoundest takeaway is the students’ readiness to analyze and create. The teenagers and early-20-somethings dissect Peter Pan with a depth many college English courses couldn’t muster. Days later, they spring into action producing their own Portland-set riff on J.M. Barrie’s tale.

“When your entire life is constantly focused around basic needs—like what you’ll eat and where you’ll sleep that night—it’s really easy to forget about creative outlets,” says Joey Whiting, one of the houseless students in the original film, who eventually became an OTF peer mentor and is now a full-time outreach worker with Washington County’s HomePlate Youth Services.

“I think homeless youth are the most underestimated people in our society,” Yosha says. “They need something to do, something to feel a part of, something to feel successful at, and the momentum just goes from there.”

Momentum, indeed. What began as a movie day has snowballed into regular workshops and intensives (with the next one beginning Oct. 27), large screening events, contracted video work for organizations like Metro and Oregon State University and numerous jobs for program alumni.

Anecdotes abound exemplifying how far OTF and its “Lost Boys” have come.

Yosha remembers taking a group to the Portland

Art Museum early on in the project, where they were conspicuously (and dispiritingly) tailed by security. In 2017, their own documentary work on homelessness was exhibited at the museum.

Whiting, who grew up adoring Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, is yet another success story. They initially ended up homeless after expressing their queer, nonbinary identity in front of their conservative family. In 2012, the acclaimed Portland director presented Whiting’s film work to a packed house at the Armory.

“When he came to another event, [Haynes] actually remembered me,” Whiting says. “That was a trip.”

This year, OTF filmmakers have documented wildfire evacuations and a housing justice town hall featuring U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Rashida Tlaib. Having served over 100 youth in 2020 thus far, the organization is also currently piloting a paid video production internship.

Beyond its tangible growth, Yosha says many of the organization’s strides connect back to an interpretation of Peter Pan—or, rather, fighting one particular interpretation. In one late-blooming moment in The Lost Boys of Portlandia, a student earnestly asks whether the group’s Pan pastiche should end with the Lost Boys not returning home. It’s a fair question: In the literal world, home is all too often synonymous with abuse and abandonment.

Given that “dilemma,” Yosha insists a kind of forgiveness underlies many of OTF’s success stories.

“The most important thing is that the young people in the film started to come back to the mainstream,” she says. “The fact that they want to be part of society, despite being thrown away and stereotyped with the myth that it’s all their fault, shows how much hope and resilience they have.”

Whiting says their arduous, decadelong journey to stable housing and employment can “absolutely” be attributed to working with OTF. Confidence, a marketable skill, the space to reflect—it’s all traceable to first flipping a camera’s “on” switch.

“All that shit that I’ve been through,” says Whiting, “it means something.”

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Audition (1999) Infamous as one of the most disturbing films in cinema history, this gruesome nightmare from Takashi Miike follows a widowed film producer who sets up bogus auditions to find a new wife. When he selects the enigmatic Asami, he soon gets what’s coming to him: Kidnapping, torture and dismemberment ensues. Amazon Prime, Shudder, Sling TV, Tubi, Vudu.

Marebito (2004) A cameraman obsessed with the phenomenon of fear ventures into Tokyo’s labyrinthine subway tunnels, where he finds an underground world and rescues a mysterious woman chained to a cave wall. Directed

by The Grudge’s Takashi Shimizu, this Lovecraftian vampire story is steeped in a brooding atmosphere and chilling ambiguity. Kanopy, Vudu.

MOVIES TIME.COM

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Save Yourselves!

Alien invasions are often fraught with drama, but co-writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s debut can make even the most ruthless kill seem…cute?

Though their script overloads on violence, there’s still a warm tone that drives this science fiction-comedy hybrid. When Su (Sunita Mani of Glow) and Jack (John Reynolds of Search Party) realize they are spending more time on their phones than with each other, the Brooklyn couple make a pact to go upstate and turn off their electronics. What a week to unplug: Aliens take over the world, but they don’t get the news. They are too busy learning how to fish, hike and chop wood to notice the invasion. The extraterrestrials, overseen by visual effects supervisor Jeff Desom, are a marvel of dexterity, with 10-foot tongues that shoot out of their round, furry bodies.

The “poofballs” are a perfect metaphor for the seemingly innocent, cutesy-themed social media sites that suck us dry (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). After all, this is a film about a couple disconnecting to reconnect. When Su and Jack unplug, they are no longer alienated from each other. R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

SAVE YOURSELVES! OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC 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 WATC 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.

ALSO PLAYING Beau Travail With Criterion Collection’s new 4K restoration of French auteur Claire Denis’ 1999 tour de force, her already stunning imagery is enhanced to reach its full potential. Set in a French Foreign Legion camp in Djibouti, the verdant greens of soldiers’ uniforms and the vibrant blues of the Indian Ocean contrast even more brilliantly against the igneous heat of the African sun. Loosely based on Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor, this blistering drama focuses on former Legion officer Galoup as he reminisces about his career leading the troops.

Specifically, he recalls the time a younger, stronger and more charismatic man joined the squad, consuming him with jealousy, implied to stem from his own repressed sexuality. Unafraid to probe the pressures and pitfalls of masculinity, Beau Travail, which translates as “Good Work,” argues that intensive athleticism can be both elegant and brutal. Abstract images of shirtless men relentlessly performing training rituals are rhythmic and hypnotic, yet devoid of glamorization—Denis opts to cultivate an authentic atmosphere rather than the typical propagandistic action that dominates domestic military movies. It’s why she remains one of the best working directors. NR. MIA VICINO. Cinema 21’s Virtual Theater.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets While most Oregonians haven’t set foot in their local for months, we’ve all passed that one obscure watering hole and thought, “Has this place been open the whole time?” Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is an ode to just that kind of dive. Experimental filmmak-

ers Bill and Turner Ross train their lenses on Las Vegas’ Roaring ’20s on its final day in business, and we meet the affable barkeeps, trauma-soaked vets, wayward youngsters and shaggy loners toasting farewell to their only sense of community, no matter that it feeds on their marginalization and addiction. The weeping, the slurred professions of love, the gallows humor, the last dances—it’s as profoundly affecting as it is authentically scuzzy, but there’s a trick afoot. The amateur performers are clearly operating from some vague script, even if they are completely plastered. The sad-bastard country soundtrack is a little too on pitch and, in fact, the interior of the bar is not even in Vegas. Winner of the True/False Film Festival’s True Vision Award, Bloody Nose waltzes at the forefront of creative cinematic nonfiction. And this premise blurs the line between fact and fiction perfectly. After all, there is no stark reality for the spiraling barfly. The tears look damn real, and they flow like swill. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

Eternal Beauty Opening on the heaving sobs of a lovely young fiancée just informed of her groom’s disappearance, Eternal Beauty’s first scene tells us all we need to know about our abandoned bride-never-to-be. Summarily dismissed by her older sister Alice (a deadeyed Alice Lowe), co-opted by younger sister Nicola (Billie Piper as an aging sexpot), and blamed by her vicious mother (Penelope Wilton), the film’s tragic heroine collapses in absolute despair.

Somehow that may have been her high point. Flashing forward a few decades to an IG-filtered swath of Britain’s dreariest suburb, we learn that unrelenting familial abuse and ruinous psychiatric treatments have rendered the former beauty

queen (played by Sally Hawkins) an unrecognizable electroshock casualty shuffling through uninterested doctors. Even as the pace slows and the depths of Jane’s disorder become clearer, there’s still a nervy thrill to rooting along such ill-fated plans, which include abducting her drowsy young nephew or shacking up with David Thewlis’ curdled punk. But following the inevitable split of that engagement, Eternal Beauty loses the plot during an interminable succession of cruelties, detailing what Jane has suffered without the slightest care for why.

Preserve the mystery or examine the motives, but showing the same mistakes made over and over again and expecting emotional resonance feels like the definition of inanity. R. JAY HORTON. On Demand.

The Glorias A bus. Black and white. The only color is the yellow of the road. The only passengers are four women of different ages. These are the titular Glorias, liminal representations of legendary feminist Gloria Steinem. Two of them are Academy Award winners Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander, the latter portraying Steinem from ages 20 to 40, the former from 40 onward. Using the bus as a narrative framing device, this biopic chronicles her journey from troubled childhood to underappreciated journalist to political activist to co-founder of the groundbreaking Ms. magazine. Julie Taymor’s direction is at its most compelling when indulging in whimsical fantasy sequences reminiscent of her Beatles musical Across the Universe (2007). Her huge swings don’t always hit as intended, but they at least differentiate it from the boiler-plate biopics that inexplicably dominate the cinema landscape.

It’s exactly these sporadic, creative risks that make the frequent expository dialogue and bloated storyline that much more exasperating.

There’s an engaging film buried in the 139-minute runtime, and it’s a treat when it occasionally rears its head, be it in the form of co-stars Bette Midler and Janelle Monáe or the crucial amplification of intersectional feminism. Though this road trip is undeniably necessary, it’s a bit of a slog nonetheless. R. MIA VICINO. Amazon Prime, On Digital.

LX 2048 The image of the lone figure wandering a deserted metropolis is as old as our modern idea of the apocalypse. Yet you could have approximated such iconography in many West Coast cities last week. That’s to say, the criteria for credible near-term science fiction sharpens quickly, and indie auteur Guy Moshe is a mostly believable architect in LX 2048. Twentyeight years from now, the sun sears skin on contact, humans cling to the indoors and their VR, antidepressants are basically mandatory, and insurance companies offer cloned replacements of deceased loved ones. But Adam Bird (James D’Arcy) resists it all—a real 1999 man, who likes to drive to the office, brew coffee and thumb his guitar. What’s missing here is not imagination but a more nuanced observation of human relationships as a mystery unfolds. Adam’s marriage to Reena (Anna Brewster) is hyperbolically vindictive mostly to move plot, a blur of suggested world-building by way of accusatory monologues about Adam being a loser and a dinosaur. The expository cheapness stands in stark contrast to patient, demonstrable moments of futuristic alienation—particular kids’ devotion to VR. Ultimately, all movies are better with Delroy Lindo bit parts, but LX 2048 still feels like the one before Moshe’s breakout. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

She’s in Portland First-time director Marc Carlini makes his debut with this meandering film about meandering people.

Low-key indie She’s in Portland has some touching moments in its story of two friends at a crossroads, but it feels like an initial draft whose script could have used some cuts, particularly in the road-trip sections. When former college buddies Wes (Tommy Dewey) and Luke (François Arnaud) reunite in Los Angeles, they have a lot of catching up to do—26 hours of catching up. That’s how long it takes to drive from L.A. to Portland, where they hope to find Wes’ college crush. Along the way, they stop by UC Santa Barbara, Big Sur and San

Francisco for high jinks that don’t add much to the plot, except that all of this time gives Wes and Luke the chance to prattle on about their midlife crises. This is the kind of film where rich, handsome white guys complain about life, sex and marriage for two hours, then realize they have everything they ever wanted at home. It babbles along, never achieving any emotional highs or lows, soaking up the California coast and late-afternoon sunshine until all the contrived issues are sorted out and everyone gets their way. Well, everyone except the audience. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play.

Spiral The potential for a retro paranoia thriller presents itself early in this new Shudder Original. Circa 1995, partners Malik and Aaron move to the country with Aaron’s teenage daughter and immediately encounter the leering microaggressions of their white Midwestern neighbors. The setup is interesting enough. Kayla is warming up to her dad’s partner while Malik ghostwrites the biography of a slowly revealed homophobe. From there, action and social commentary alike are lost in the execution. Spiral can’t decide whether it’s driven by trauma, schizophrenia, blood sacrifice, sexual entrapment, hauntings, immortal killers, conspiracies or just bad ol’-fashioned Newt Gingrich xenophobia. With choppy scenes that seldom last longer than two minutes before cutting to black, it’s both much too easy (another screeching jump scare) and too hard (is any of this really happening?) to figure out what’s going on.

The drama hangs on Malik playing detective, yet Spiral seems determined to strip him of not just reliability, but coherence. Certainly, the time is ripe for horror films about covertly embedded American hatred. But whether shooting for an M. Night voilà, a Peele puzzle box, or a bludgeoning Craven allegory, canny choices catalyze the blend of politics and terror. Pick something, not everything. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Shudder.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

29

COMICS!

Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any style is welcome!

Let’s share your art! Contact us at art@wweek.com.

FEATURED ARTIST: Kelly O’Grady

Kelly O’Grady was conceived and born under an air-hockey table in Salinas California and was later raised by a troupe of traveling Renaissance faire actors. As a teen he worked as a rodeo clown and discovered a pile of “The Far Side” books in a dumpster and has been in love with the comic medium ever since. His short comic “Drunk Trek” has run on vice.com and has worked as a writer and illustrator for the bay area culture sites “thebolditalic.com and “Brokeasstuart.com with an appearance in Maximum Rock and Roll punk rock magazine.

He is a founding member of The Sweet Baby Angels scooter gang.

You can follow him @smellyoldlady on instagram

JACK KENT’S

Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets.

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

30

Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

JONESIN’

Week of October 15

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"Mew Coup"--didn't see that one coming. [#711, Jan. 2015]

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Would you be willing to meditate on how you might become more skilled in the arts of intimacy? Would you consider reading books and websites that offer guidance about strategies for being the best partner and ally you can be? Are you receptive to becoming more devoted to practicing empathy and deep listening? I'm not saying you're deficient in these matters, nor am I implying that you need to improve your mastery of them any more than the rest of us. I simply want you to know that now is an especially favorable time for you to make progress.

"The hardest thing you will ever do is trust yourself," says Libran journalist Barbara Walters. Really? I don't think so. In my experience, the hardest thing to do is to consistently treat ourselves with the loving care we need to be mentally and physically healthy. But I do acknowledge that trusting ourselves is also an iffy task for many of us. And yet that's often because we don't habitually give ourselves the loving care we need to be healthy. How can we trust ourselves if we don't put in the work necessary to ensure our vitality? But here's the good news, Libra: In the coming weeks, you're likely to be extra motivated and intuitively astute whenever you improve the way you nurture yourself.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) *Entre chien et loup* is a French idiom that literally means "between dog and wolf." It's used to describe twilight or dusk, when the light is faint and it's tough to distinguish between a dog and a wolf. But it may also suggest a situation that is a blend of the familiar and the unknown, or even a moment when what's ordinary and routine is becoming unruly or wild. *Entre chien et loup* suggests an intermediary state that's unpredictable or beyond our ability to define.

In accordance with astrological omens, I propose you regard it as one of your main themes for now. Don't fight it; enjoy it! Thrive on it!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

GEMINI (May 21-June20)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

For 34 years, the beloved American TV personality Mr. Rogers did a show for children. He's now widely acknowledged as having been a powerful teacher of goodness and morality. Here's a fun fact: His actual middle name was "McFeely." I propose that you use that as a nickname for yourself. If McFeely doesn't quite appeal to you, maybe try "Feel Maestro" or "Emotion Adept" or "Sensitivity Genius." Doing so might help inspire you to fulfill your astrological assignment in the coming weeks, which is to allow yourself to experience more deep feelings than usual— and thereby enhance your heart intelligence. That's crucial! In the coming weeks, your head intelligence needs your heart intelligence to be working at peak capacity.

ACROSS

64 Bit of sarcasm

33 Acts as accomplice

1 "American Horror Story" actress Lily

65 Theater seater

35 City in 2016 sports news

66 "_ _ _ perpetua" (Idaho's motto)

36 Solemn words

67 Beats by _ _ _ (brand of audio equipment)

39 Words after "know" or "settle"

5 Outdo by a little 10 Get droopy 13 Just slightly 14 Vice _ _ _ 15 "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" lawman

68 Add fuel to 69 Explanations

37 Writer Beattie

40 Pearly whites 41 "Reward" offered by those who hire artists for no pay

17 Quip, part 1

DOWN

46 Dye used by chemists

19 2007 A.L. MVP, familiarly

1 Flat floaters

48 Get _ _ _ on the knuckles

20 Feller's warning

2 Took the hit, financially

21 Quip, part 2

3 Tropical

49 Reporters and their entourage, e.g.

23 Do master

4 OK to ingest

25 High chairs?

5 Wear out, as a welcome

26 Get in

6 Leftorium proprietor on "The Simpsons"

28 "_ _ _ Can Cook" (former cooking show)

7 Estrada of "CHiPs"

29 Dog's foot

8 Half a fitness motto

32 Floor space

9 Like some fog

34 Metamorphic stage

10 Like most berries and oysters

38 Quip, part 3 42 Bat maker's tool

11 "Fanfare for the Common Man" composer Copland

43 "I'll take 'Cartoons' for $200, _ _ _"

12 "Grand Canyon Suite" composer Ferde

44 Control

16 Adobe creations?

45 Elusive swimmer

18 D¸sseldorf denial

47 3/17 honoree, for short 50 "Nuts!"

22 Jazz pianist-singer Diana (and wife of Elvis Costello)

54 Actress Mira

24 Our planet

58 Quip, part 4

27 Cassette parts

60 Of a pelvic bone

29 Good buddy

61 2012 Best Picture Oscar winner

30 Abbr. on a rap sheet

62 Quip, part 5

31 Feature of Algonquin Round Table discussions

50 Key using all the black keys, for short 51 Drew in 52 Deadly sin 53 Citrus peel in a mixed drink 55 Like U2 56 More than mean 57 Non-dairy spreads 59 Cuatro y cuatro 63 "A spider!!"

last week’s answers

CANCER (June 21-July 22) A blogger named Dr.LoveLlama writes, "You may think I am walking around the house with a blanket around my shoulders because I am cold, but in fact the 'blanket' is my cloak and I am on a fantasy adventure." I approve of such behavior during our ongoing struggles with COVID-19, and I especially recommend it to you in the coming days. You'll be wise to supercharge your imagination, giving it permission to dream up heroic adventures and epic exploits that you may or may not actually undertake someday. It's time to become braver and more playful in the inner realms.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) According to author Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, "The body has its own way of knowing, a knowing that has little to do with logic, and much to do with truth." I recommend that you meditate on that perspective.

Make it your keynote. Your physical organism always has wisdom to impart, and you can always benefit from tuning in to it—and that's especially important for you right now. So let me ask you: How much skill do you have in listening to what your body tells you?

How receptive are you to its unique and sometimes subtle forms of expression? I hope you'll enhance your ability to commune with it during the next four weeks.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) In his fictional memoir *Running in the Family*, Virgo author Michael Ondaatje returns to Sri Lanka, the land where he spent his childhood, after many years away. At one point he enthuses that he would sometimes wake up in the morning and "just smell things for the whole day." I'd love for you to try a similar experiment, Virgo: Treat yourself to a festival of aromas. Give yourself freely to consorting with the sensual joy of the world's many scents. Does that sound frivolous? I don't think it is. I believe it would have a deeply calming and grounding effect on you. It would anchor you more thoroughly in the here and now of your actual life, and inspire you to shed any fantasies that you should be different from who you are.

"You can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room," writes author Barbara Kingsolver. That's a useful message for you right now. Why? Because you will soon be exposed to teachings that could change your life for the better. And if you hope to be fully available for those teachings, you must be extra receptive and curious and open-minded—which means you shouldn't try to seem like you already know everything you need to know.

I've decided not to use quotes by famous writers who've endorsed bigoted ideas. In the future, my horoscopes won't mention the work of T. S. Eliot, Roald Dahl, V. S. Naipaul, Edith Wharton, Kingsley Amis, H. P. Lovecraft, Flannery O’Connor, Rudyard Kipling, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. I'm sorry to see them go, because I've learned a lot from some of them.

And I understand that many were reflecting attitudes that were widespread in their era and milieu. But as I've deepened my commitment to fighting prejudice, I've come to the conclusion that I personally don't want to engage with past perpetrators. Now, in accordance with current astrological omens, I invite you to take an inventory of your own relationship with bigoted influences—and consider making some shifts in your behavior. (More info: tinyurl.com/ BigotedAuthors1 and tinyurl.com/BigotedAuthors2)

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Capricorn chemist Tu YouYou doesn't have a medical degree or PhD. Yet she discovered a treatment for malaria that has saved millions of lives. The drug was derived from an ancient herbal medicine that she spent years tracking down. In part because of her lack of credentials, she remained virtually unsung from the time she helped come up with the cure in 1977 until she won a Nobel Prize in 2015. What's most unsung about your accomplishments, Capricorn? There's a much better chance than usual that it will finally be appreciated in the coming months.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) "Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting," says author Gregory David Roberts. If that's true, I expect that a surge of luck will flow your way soon. According to my astrological analysis, fate has grown impatient waiting for you to take the actions that would launch your life story's next chapter.

Hopefully, a series of propitious flukes will precipitate the postponed but necessary transformations. My advice? Don't question the unexpected perks. Don't get in their way. Allow them to work their magic.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Have you formulated wily plans and crafty maneuvers to help you navigate through the labyrinthine tests and trials up ahead? I hope so. If you hope to solve the dicey riddles and elude the deceptive temptations, you'll need to use one of your best old tricks—and come up with a new trick, as well. But please keep this important caveat in mind: To succeed, you won't necessarily have to break the rules. It may be sufficient merely to make the rules more supple and flexible.

HOMEWORK: What belief would you be willing to change your mind about if offered convincing counter-evidence?

FreeWillAstrology.com

Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

©2020 / 2015 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 #JNZ990.

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

1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 Willamette Week OCTOBER 7, 2020 wweek.com

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