Vogue Knitting

"Cash for books?!
That's the coolest!"
"What are your
weekend plans?"
"Maybe I could pay
Sally Sue to go out
with me."
"Bobby couldn't pay
me enough to go out
with him."
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
EDITOR
Catherine Ryan
Ally Burguieres
MANAGING EDITOR
MANAGING EDITOR
"heh...sweet."
Josh Lintereur
COpy EDITOR
Holly Homnick
ART DIRECTOR
Emma Zaratian
Kaitlin Paul
RESEARCH EDITOR
. LEAD FLASH DESIGNER
Justin Gast
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Meg Krugel
Karla Schack
Dan Beyer
ASSISTANT FLASH DESIGNER
Aaron Heirtzler
DESIGNERS
EDITORIAL INTERNS
Ursula Evans-Heritage
Ashley Griffin
Margaret McGladrey
Andrew MacKenzie
Shaina Sullivan
VIDEOGRAPHER
And rew Maser
ART DIRECTOR
Stacy Wanless
ADVISER
Tim Coulter
ART ASSOCIATES
Ada Mayer
Tom O'Toole
Brianne ShoHan
Kirk Wedekind
Crispin Young
ART INTERNS
Jessica Nelson
Hannah Shanks
Paul Weinert
PHOTO EDITOR
Sam Karp
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Lindsay Abbott
Ben Anderson
Ryan Falley
Rebecca Kennedy
Alex Pajunas
LaBree Shide
Kai-Huei Yau
PRODUCTION MANAGER
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--
[ your campus news source]
elcome to another issue of the School of Journalism and
Communication's Flux. This year's magazine focuses on
nonconformists who brazenly challenge boundaries. Three
fishermen temper risk with humor in their search for the valuable
Dungeness crab. In the Belizean jungle, atour guide uses ecotourism and
education to protect the country's precious biodiversity. By retaining her
Mexican heritage, ayoung woman fosters cultural pride in her rural Latino
community. And a peacekeeper in the Middle East exercises nonviolence to
help improve the lives of Iraqis.
W
Just as the subjects of this issue's stories refuse to settle for the status
quo, the Flux staff found unconventional alternatives to the challenges of
producing a magazine. Aphotographer shot
the stunning photos for the crabbing story
despite aviolent bout of seasickness during
his eighteen-hour trip on the Delma Ann. When
we decided not to use photos for the Belize
story, a designer created the mixed media
illustrations that perfectly complement the
piece. An editorial intern who speaks Spanish
as asecond language fact-checked the story
about the Latino community. The author of
"Waging Peace" managed to interview her
source multiple times despite the difficulties of
contacting him in awar zone.
This completely student-run magazine is
designed to showcase the exceptional talent
of the industry's next leaders. Creating a
professional magazine in seven short weeks
gives students the opportunity to build a
portfolio and gain experience in what it's really like to edit, design,
photograph, and write for a premium publication.
It is my hope that these stories inspire you as much as they have spurred
us to create a unique magazine.
~~
Catherine Ryan
O I
SCHOOL OF JOURNALrSM
AND COMMUNICATION
Unl••rsltyofOregon
The online version of Flux, inFlux, is available
at http://influx.uoregon.edu/2005.
06
An Itch to Stitch
Young men break stereotypes by picking up knitting and
crochet needles.
08
The Upside of aDownload
Defying conventional thought about MP3s, some indie
bands use free music to boost sales.
12
The Dumpster Divide
Bridging the gap between waste and charity, a high school
teacher salvages and donates goods found in the trash.
32
Prospectors of the Pacific
Three fishermen on the Oregon Coast harvest Dungeness
crab from the volatile sea.
38
46
AHome without Borders
Adedicated young woman encourages a burgeoning Latino
community to embrace its heritage.
Falling Big for the Little White
Aphoto essay reveals the spiritual connection and thrills
of a dangerous yet alluring river.
On the Cover:
At the end of a long day,
two fisherman pull crab
16
Labor of Limbs
Patience and passion guide an artist to create sculptures
and furniture from living trees.
from the Pacific Ocean.
52
Blood of Honey, Bones of Steel
While working through his own pain, a rheumatologist
treats patients for their life-threatening disease.
On the Back Cover:
At sunset, fisherman
Tony Fultz returns to the
docks in Newport, Oregon.
Photographs by Ryan Falley.
20
The Royal Treatment
With boundless enthusiasm, a coach develops talent and
sportsmanship in young basketball players.
26
Waging Peace
Pledging to renounce violence, ayoung American pursues
peace in Iraq.
58
62
The Kingdom Next Door
Adiverse group of people finds camaraderie in a
pre-seventeenth-centu ry world.
The Thin Green Line
ABelizean conservationist searches for a middle ground
between tourism and environmentalism.
"Slowly but surely, we're getting over gender-specific crafts and jobs,"
says Sara Asher Morris, the copresident of the University Student
Fibers Guild at the University of Oregon. Roughly 20 percent of the
group is male. "[Men say], 'If my sister can do it, if my girlfriend can
do it, why can't I?'"Today, some young men are defying the gender
roles assigned to knitting and crocheting, one stitch at atime.
uren started knitting eight years ago to pass the time during
food cooperative meetings and fraternity gatherings. At thirty,
he now teaches in a Portland, Oregon, yarn store, but he first taught
mentally ill, homeless people to knit.
G
In a Chicago YMCA residential psychiatric program, Guren used the
opportunity to share something he loved to help boost patients'
confidence. He taught men and women to make scarves and change
purses in his newly formed knitting circle. Although only one student
at the facility finished ascarf, Guren believes that learning a new
skill increased their confidence and helped them use their time
constructively.
He also worked at asimilar program in New Jersey. One of his
favorite students there, Bill, was expelled from the facility for selling
anti-anxiety medication. After he was asked to go, Bill stood in the
entry way and said goodbye to his many friends. Guren spotted him
leaving and met him in the parking lot.
AN ITCH TO
Todd Guren, a rugby player, looked up from his half-finished sock
and smiled. He continued to add stitches to his project as the
meeting progressed. The fraternity passed amendments banning
his hobby every week, but Guren always ignpred their jokes and
reJentless teasing.
"Luckily, I was bigger than them," he laughs.
Disregarding machismo, some men challenge convention
with balls of wool
story_Catherine Ryan
photography_LaBree Shide
A
iry~ ath!etic ~an stood ~n front of the assembled Brown
University Phi Kappa PSI members. Following proper
parliamentary procedure, he solemnly began the
meeting. "We, the Social Chair, propose to have
a party on Saturday. House funds of four hundred dollars are
requested to fund the party. And Todd will be forbidden to knit in
any and all of the Sunday night fraternity meetings."
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The Craft Yarn Council of America has no statistics about men who
practice the craft, but yarn store employees and Internet blogs
can attest to the rising popularity of the hobby. Despite a lack of
male-targeted knitting groups or how-to books, men throughout the
nation crochet and knit. Athree hundred-pound offensive tackle
at Indiana's Ball State University knits washcloths. An air filter
repairman in Maine knits while waiting to finish ajob. Some male
knitters in California use tackle boxes and tool boxes to store their
needles and yarn.
Men wielding needles may raise afew eyebrows today, but societies
didn't always restrict yarn crafts to women. In seventeenth-century
Europe, financially struggling men knitted and sold stockings to
supplement their meager incomes, and both genders knitted gloves
for soldiers during the two World Wars. For generations, men have
darned socks, mended nets, and sewn clothes~
"Don't you want your needles?" Guren asked.
Asmile spread beneath Bill's strawberry-blond beard. "Oh, great.
Thanks," he said. "I'm definitely gonna need these."
Guren was glad that his student took the needles. "I hope Bill's still
knitting," he says. "He had scarf potential."
ames Walker isn't likely to grace the cover of Vogue Knitting
anytime soon. He wears comfortable, wide shoes and baggy
jeans that enable movement when he learns new skateboarding
tricks. Awry smile constantly plays at his mouth, suggesting a
perpetual joke only he understands. And his right-hand pinkie is still
recovering from a minor skateboarding accident. The cast was only
atemporary setback to his hobby, though. He has been hooked ever
since his girlfriend taught him to crochet in November 2004.
J
The twenty-year-old started so he could stitch hats as holiday gifts
for family members. He later crocheted beanies with ear flaps to
keep himself warm while skateboarding in the Eugene, Oregon,
winter rain and wore his handmade headbands during tennis class.
Walker sets his aspirations much higher than hats and sweatbands,
though. He plans to learn a new stitch, a pattern for mittens, and
some knitting techniques. Ultimately, he dreams of making a pair of
crocheted trousers - or maybe a pair of woolen underpants.
His ambitious projects stem more from his irreverent sense of
humor than his love of yarn clothing, yet he says he is addicted to
crocheting. "I think it's the wave of the future," he says.
"It's fashion."
ami Elshafei has become accustomed to the confusion his yarn
crafts inspire. One evening, Elshafei sat on the couch in his
living room with agroup of friends who had gathered to smoke from
his bong. The twenty-year-old brought out his water pipe, covered
in a light- and dark-blue wool jacket he crocheted. The words "The
Cozie" were embroidered on its base.
S
"I hope
Bill's still
knitting.
He had
scarf
potential. "
Elshafei's friends stared at the strangely attired pipe.
"Whoa. Why's the bong wearing asweater?"
The bong cozie, Elshafei's most prized accomplishment, certainly is
unusual. After trying several techniques, he invented his own pattern
to cover and protect the pipe's irregular shape. The design evolved
as Elshafei later added the boxy lettering, astrap to hold the cozie
tight, and a lighter holder.
Elshafei uses the same innovation to perfect patterns for his
other creations. When learning to crochet from his mother, he
experimented with designing hats and insulators for beer cans.
After about ten attempts, he perfected the "can cozie" pattern. He
gave his mother a"Diet Coke
holder," as she calls it, in
gratitude for her help.
BELOW_James Walker demonstrates
how to crochet abeanie.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Todd Guren knits during slow
moments at work in aPortland yam store.
Although his friends tease
him about his unusual craft, it
seems that they can accept
his hobby as long as he
crochets gifts for them. They
often wear his hats to parties
and carry chilled beers in
green and yellow cozies,
crocheted using the University
of Oregon's colors, to school
football games. Elshafei loves
to see people use his creations
but has not yet consented
to the many requests for
more bong sweaters. For now,
the cozie remains a one-of-akind creation.•
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abil Ayers's band, Alien Crime Syndicate, is moving
with the times. Its Web site links to Amazon.com
and Ayers's label's online store, where a listener
can buy a CD with the click of a button. The same
site offers afree, downloadable track from each of the band's
five albums for immediate aural gratification. It sounds like a
savvy idea for a band to offer as many access options as possible
to would-be listeners, but there's more to Ayers than just his
drums and his label: Ayers also co-owns Sonic Boom, asmall,
independent music store chain in Seattle.
N
At atime when the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIM) is complaining abou·t dwindling CD sales, Ayers's digitalized
game plan sounds like a serious contradiction, not to mention a
recipe for small-store sales disaster. But Ayers's record store has
expanded three times in the past eight years, his Control Group
label has signed twelve bands in athird of that time, and he
still manages to tour with his band. And he's not the only one in
the independent music community tapping into the promotional
possibilities of free MP3s. It may seem unconventional, but for
smaller, lesser-known bands, MP3s are an incorruptible demo
tape to the world, the counterculture's answer to the mediabroadcasting giant Clear Channel.
"We really just want people to be able to hear the bands'
music, pass it around, and tell people about it," explains Nate
Krenkel, cofounder of Omaha's Team Love, a maverick indie label
whose iconoclastic marketing strategy includes complimentary
downloadable albums from the label's Web site. That's an entire
album for nada, and although it might have worked for an
exasperated, label-less Wilco some years back, it's still as far off the
recording track as anyone can get these days. With all of the majorlabel hype about MP3 downloads hurting CD sales, most people are
likely to find the concept absurd. But Krenkel, who grew fed up with
his former job at Sony/ATV Music Publishing because of its hard-line
posture against file sharing, is willing to take the risk. He argues that
just because Sony (or any major label) assumes that file sharing is
the equivalent to online stealing doesn't make it gospel.
isn't simply contained to the four largest recording companies
that control more than 80 percent of the U.S. recording business.
Independently owned labels, which share the remainder of the
" [People] want to be identified by
more than just what's in their iPod. "
market, also worry about their copyright property being exploited
and undervalued - the fundamental reason why only the spunkiest
are using the controversial MP3.
But there's more to this controversial distribution method than
just risky-venture jitters, as the clashing of reputable economic
analyses reveals. Arecent report compiled by two University of
Pennsylvania professors found that for every five albums (not
tracks) college students downloaded, the U.S. music industry lost
one CD sale. This conflicts with a 2002 market study by Harvard
Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, which indicated
that downloading music has relatively no impact on CD sales.
But the seeming incongruity of the two studies might have more
to do with methodology than anything else. While the University
of Pennsylvania's study represents solely the behavior of 412
college students, Oberholzer-Gee's represents total popular
downloads against total album sales (in other words, overall
consumer behavior). His 2002 report concluded that the majority
of downloaders either sampled music before purchasing or would
never have bought the CD anyway because they couldn't afford to.
This makes perfect sense to Krenkel, who reasons that just because
someone has access to more music doesn't mean that they have
more purchasing power. "Before, you might have bought ten records
ayear and got afew copies from friends. Now you have access to
BELOW_Nabil Ayers plays at alive concert
in Portland, Oregon.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Ayers stands next to the
entrance of Sonic Boom's Vinyl Annex
in seattle's Fremont district.
Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman of the Sony Corporation of
America, likened downloaders to shoplifter Winona Ryder in an
interview with the New Yorker in 2003. "That actress wandering
around Hollywood helping herself," he said, "should have adopted
the Internet defense - 'I was downloading music in the morning,
downloading movies in the afternoon, and then I thought I'd rustle a
few dresses out of the local department store. And it's been agood
day, and. all of asudden I'm arrested. How is that fair?'" Asimilarly
hostile sentiment against downloaders resonates throughout the
major labels, with more than nine thousand lawsuits filed against
unsuspecting individuals since September 2003. And this feeling
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everything, but I don't know
why that would stop you from
going out and buying those
ten new records." Many people
with Internet access do buy
CDs, and not just moral zealots
dissatisfied by iTunes' digital
rights management. In fact,
according to the RIM's 2004
year-end report, CD sales rose
by 2.8 percent since 2003.
So what's keeping the CD
pressers pressing? It's
possible that there's more
to music than just music.
Kianna Alarid, avocalist and
percussionist for Tilly and the
Wall, Team Love's premier
band, argues that it's about
people identifying with a community, especially for indie fans. "Indie
kids in general really like to support their bands. If people have a
chance to listen to [our album] and they're into it, I have faith that
indie kids will be excited to go out and buy it afterward." Confidence
in listeners seems prevalent among Team Love's members: "People
are still going to want to buy a record occasionally, or buy aT-shirt,"
affirms Krenkel. "They want to be identified by more than just what's
in their iPod."
Krenkel's label, which he cofounded in 2003 with Bright Eyes's
frontman, Conor Oberst, currently carries two pop-rock albums
and a hip-hop album. So far, everyone on the label feels positive
about what they're doing, stressing that they're not in the music
business to make a killing. "I wouldn't want someone who didn't
like [our] album to buy it," insists Nick White, Tilly's keyboardist.
"For most indie bands, if you're going to make a living [in music],
"CDs are too expensive now, and you can't
just run out because you've heard of
something and say, 'Great. I'm going to
spend fifteen to twenty dollars
on this disc I've never heard. '"
it's all about playing at shows and selling T-shirts." Tilly has been
touring relentlessly since the release of its full-length debut album,
Wild Like Children, and Krenkel attributes a lot of the record sales
to the band's van mileage. Since the album's launch in June 2004,
Tilly has sold more than ten thousand copies and momentarily
outranked Scotland's new-wave sweetheart Franz Ferdinand in
sales on Amazon.com last August. As any small label will attest, the
publicity garnered from touring is paramount to cash flow. Even if
people haven't heard a band's album, they might go to ashow on
the tip-off of adownload, and if the band's live performance knocks
some socks off, the merchandise table always offers aquick fix.
Jason Kulbel, manager of Saddle Creek Records, firmly believes in
this theory: "Our bands have to tour. If you're in any band and not
touring and not selling T-shirts, then there's no way. Don't even try,
'cause bands that don't tour don't sell records."
Obviously, Team Love represents an extreme (and tiny) end of the
recording industry spectrum. With its lean single-track helpings,
Ayers's band practices a more tempered approach to free MP3s, as
do afair number of other indie bands, such as Franz Ferdinand and
Saddle Creek's the Faint. Saddle Creek has been posting sample
MP3s from each album it's released since its Web site's inception
in 1998, and Kulbel believes the gains have outweighed the losses.
"It's certainly been a part of our success," claims Kulbel. "That's
how a lot of people have heard of our bands." After all, hearing,
even possessing, one or two songs from an album is nothing new.
Kids have been taping hit singles off the radio since the advent of
cassette recording. And although an MP3 might sound clearer than
astatic-laden cassette, the marketing effects remain the same: as
word spreads, so do sales.
the main idea, but also just creating a homegrown sense of
anticipation or excitement," Bazan explains. "People can listen to
[the live tracks] and make a decision whether they want to come
see the show." But Bazan isn't sure he'll keep comping live tracks.
With more than 150,000 downloads the summer of 2004, it's
plausible that heavy traffic like that could yield him another small
revenue stream. "People are going to share music, and I don't
have aspecific problem with that, but [how] that affects the way
people value music can be detrimental. So I think we'd like to
encourage people to buy music." As everyone in the music industry
presumably would.
But while some indie labels' are willing to explore the possibilities
of MP3s, the majors condemn the perennial, ever-obliging digital
format as a cancer eating away at the muscle of their collective
empire. The music industry columnist for the Village Voice, Douglas
Wolk, believes the steadily merging major labels are using file
sharing as ascapegoat for market stagnation. "They're focused on
file sharing in part because it's something that's new, that affects
the way music is experienced, and that they can seize on as a
reason why their business is in trouble," Wolk explains (even as he
disputes the notion that they're actually in trouble). "But it also
means that they can't really embrace the particular technology
they're demonizing." Sony, which was unavailable for comment,
doesn't support the MP3 format at all, but does sell protected
media files through its online store, Sony Connect.
Although the recording association claims on its Web site that
"expanding the portability and use options of music is an exciting
part of future growth," it's clear that the RIM is adamantly opposed
to any insecure file sharing technology that might hinder copyright
royalties - or shareholder relations. If anything, the majors would
like to harness digital technology purely for measurable revenue. For
them, promotion is Clear Channel's job.
Back in Seattle, Ayers's Fremont store is bustling on asunny April
afternoon. Two twenty-somethings stand at two listening stations,
headsets on, sampling the latest from the Decemberists and Yo La
Tengo. Awoman sifts through the used-CD racks nearby, and another
four searching souls are scattered about the small poster-laden
space. The shop isn't exactly hopping like an Alabama Wal-Mart, but
it's far from dead. Although it's easy to chalk up success to Seattle's
music-committed community (Ayers definitely does), Sonic Boom
has worked ardently to get this far. "There has to be away for people
to find out about what they want to buy and be excited enough to
go get it - and we can do that," says Ayers. "I think the reason we
haven't had as many sales problems is because [our clientele] grew
up buying records. The thing I worry about is in five or ten years when
the generation that is spending money has grown up not knowing
how to do so on records." After all, ageneration of iTunes and iPods
could drastically alter the way we relate to musicians, relegating
music to a purely ethereal function. But, at least for now, it seems
not everyone is ready to give up the tangible.•
BELOW_Alien Crime Syndicate pertonns
at aPortland concert.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Even with the rising popularity
of MP3s, some customers still prefer
to purchase tangible albums.
or most musicians, getting their music onto public airwaves
is half the battle, but there's little promotional funding or
airtime support available to the working-class recording bracket.
Except for college and listener-funded radio stations, which generally
attract niche audiences, the airwaves are predominately reserved for
major-label artists. Ayers, who thinks more than ten dollars a CD is
asking too much, is convinced that MP3s are the marketing wave of
the future, at least for smaller labels. He can recall countless times
when customers have come into Sonic Boom looking for aspecific
album after hearing an MP3, and he welcomes this new trend in
educated music consumption. "CDs are too expensive now, and
you can't just run out because you've heard of something and say,
'Great. I'm going to spend fifteen to twenty dollars on this disc I've
never heard.' You have to be able to hear it. You have to feel safe
because there [are] also a lot of bad records out there."
F
David Bazan's band, Pedro the Lion, experimented with another
MP3 ploy in 2004: daily snippets from its summer tour. All afan
had to do was buy the latest album for a username and password
to access the sonic freebies. Whether it boosted album sales is
conjectural, but this type of reward system undoubtedly fosters
favorable fan relations. "I think attracting people to our site was
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In one swift motion, Horowitz props his stomach on the dumpster's
edge and tips his body inward. Arobed woman walking an overweight terrier appears puzzled by the sight of an inverted torso
protruding from her trash but says nothing and continues on her
way. Horowitz returns to the surface clutching a powder-blue pillow
streaked with tapioca. Undeterred by the mess, he simply discards
the soiled pillowcase and tucks the pillow under his arm. "There's
still something good down there. I think I'll try the grabber," he says,
walking back to his aging Toyota pickup.
Horowitz unloads the salvaged items onto the bed of his truck and
returns with the grabber, atwo-pronged mechanical gripping stick.
Reaching into the back of the bin, he snags an abandoned bath
towel with surgical precision. "It's kind of like fishing," he notes,
"Even people with no
money throwaway
quality stuff."
slinging the find over his shoulder. So far, the morning's catch is
piled into the back of his truck. The bounty includes afleece jacket,
afull-length mirror, five cans of sardines in hot sauce, atwo-disc
DVD set of World War II movies, T-shirts, a plastic bowling pin, and,
yes, afishing rod. Not bad for a brief search before the start of a
school day.
uring the creep of dawn, while the residents of
Eugene, Oregon, remain burrowed in their blankets,
Michael Horowitz peers over the edge of a dumpster
and examines its contents. During the week, someone
has managed to jam acouch into the receptacle by breaking it
into three pieces, creating an obstruction for the fifty-three-year-old
physics teacher. Horowitz reaches between splintered shards of
wood and retrieves six unblemished coffee mugs from agarbage
bag, carefully lining them up on the lip of the dumpster like aset
of ceramic teeth. Something in the far corner of the bin draws his
attention. "I'm going in," he says.
D
Trash can alchemist
Michael Horowitz turns waste
into something that matters
story_Brian Burke
photography_Kai-Huei Yau
Without fail, Horowitz scours more than two hundred dumpsters
every week in hopes of giving reusable items asecond chance. In
the nine years since Horowitz began his crusade against waste, he
has yet to miss asingle weekend. Not for rain, not for holidays, not
for a broken toe or the temporary loss of vision in his left eye. Once,
when his truck broke down, Horowitz went so far as to spend
seventy-five dollars on a rental car to complete the ritual. "A
worthwhile investment, considering it was a better-than-average
weekend," he says. And these weekends add up. In asingle year, the
soft-spoken high school teacher finds, washes, and donates more
than eleven thousand dollars in household items to local charitable
organizations. Because of Horowitz, these throwaways end up in the
arms of people in need, instead of the local landfill.
On Monday morning, cardboard boxes begin to pile up on the living
room floor. By week's end, there are enough of them to block the
entry way to the one-bedroom ranch house. Inside lie neatly folded
jackets, jeans, sweaters, socks, T-shirts, and towels. For one week of
scavenging, the amount of reclaimed goods is staggering.
Aside from the constant sound of awasher and dryer humming in
unison, the house is painfully quiet. Christmas poinsettias and other
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abandoned plants crowd the
living room window, depriving
the area of its natural light.
Horowitz found most of the
house's furniture and many
of its appliances in the trash.
Broken items are relegated to
a backyard shed, where they
await the discovery of their
missing parts.
ABOVE_Michael Horowitz requested alate
start to his teaching day in order to facilitate
his mid-week dawn dumpster runs.
PREVIOUS PAGE_Horowitz spends thirty hours
each week searching dumpsters for discarded
treasure, including clothing, furniture, school
supplies, and other salvageable goods.
Although many of his dumpster
discoveries are functional,
Horowitz also relies on the
edible. The freezer is consistently packed with steaks,
ground beef, and chicken
breasts, all in their original
packaging, found frozen in the
garbage. Slightly bruised fruits
and vegetables fill the refrigerator, as does a large Mason
jar full of applesauce, made
from reclaimed apples. Horowitz stands in the center of the
small kitchen, showing off his
well-stocked shelves with all
the pride of a hunter and his
quarry. "I haven't bought a
loaf of bread in five years, and
I don't eat white bread," he says. As a homeowner with no family to
support, Horowitz lives off thirty-five hundred dollars each year, a
mere fraction of his salary. In fact, the physics teacher spends more
money on snacks for his students than he does feeding himself.
For a man who devotes thirty hours each week to picking through
garbage, Horowitz has a penchant for cleanliness. In preparation for
a day of dumpster diving, he puts on no fewer than four shirts and
two pairs of gloves. The soles of his black sneakers are smooth from
walking hundreds of miles along the city's streets. On his way out of
the door, Horowitz brandishes a pair of plastic safety goggles, which
remain affixed to his face until the end of the day. With his lanky
frame and just atouch of gray in his dark, wavy hair, Horowitz looks
younger than most men his age. "All this climbing in and out of
dumpsters gives the abs agood workout," he quips.
With an hour to spare before school and still plenty of room in the
back of the pickup truck, Horowitz steps out of his vehicle and onto
the streets of Eugene's University neighborhood. Nearby, a dumpster
overflows with bags of refuse, but before approaching, the teacher
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instinctively reaches down to scoop up aflattened beer can from the
pavement. During a day of dumpster diving, Horowitz picks up litter
within his line of sight and then deposits it in the proper receptacle.
Continuing past his dentist's office en route to the trash, Horowitz
exchanges brief pleasantries with a woman entering the building.
"That's my dental hygienist," he says. "She doesn't know what to
make of me."
Horowitz fine-tuned his environmental ethic while studying nutrition
at Colorado State University in the early 1980s. "I had one of those
roommates who was into natural foods and sustainability," Horowitz
says. "He ended up having more of an influence than I realized."
After graduation, Horowitz chose to pursue ateaching career, a decision that would lead him to Eugene. There, Horowitz thought he'd
discovered "Ecotopia."The progressive college town was nothing like
the concrete-coated neighborhood in the Bronx where he grew up,
and the mix of open space and intellectualism was exactly what he
was looking for. However, as the years pressed on, Horowitz
"When people ask me if
I'm having a good day,
I say 'yeah, I'm not
finding anything.'"
discovered that although Eugene was full of ideals, action was in
short supply. "Here they talk the talk, but it's all too superficial," he
says. "Even people with no money throwaway quality stuff."
The dumpster revelation came to Horowitz while attending a physics
teachers' conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "I had just read
an article called 'My Twenty Foot Swath,' which said that if you keep
your little path clean, the people coming behind you can enjoy it.
I was appreciating this city [Minneapolis] and started picking up
trash." The simple premise of the article appealed to Horowitz's
sensibilities, and when he returned to Eugene, he stuck with the
philosophy. One day, while walking downtown to meet friends for
coffee, Horowitz began to collect litter along the sidewalk. Before
long his hands were full, and he took the trash to a nearby trash bin.
To his surprise, inside was a pair of discarded T-shirts. "I said, 'If it's
in this dumpster, it must be all over town,'" Horowitz recalls.
Soon enough, the respected physics teacher was snaking through
back alleys and apartment complexes every Saturday and Sunday as
part of an intricate and ever-evolving collection route. To avoid missing
reliable recoveries, Horowitz soon incorporated midweek collections
into the routine. "It's become kind of an obsession," says Whitey Lueck,
a landscape architecture professor at the University of Oregon who has
known Horowitz for more than twenty years. "People want to know how
he can do what he does and still have a life. Well, it is his life."
he cardboard boxes that fill Horowitz's living room have also
accumulated in the corners of his classroom at Winston
Churchill High School. Astack of seven boxes, each one filled with
binders and backpacks, stands taller than any of his students.
Across the room, an ethically emblematic quote on the chalkboard
reads, "No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible." The
students, however, appear more interested in the chocolate milk and
apple juice from one of the room's three mini-refrigerators. Despite
suspicions, the snacks Horowitz provides to his students come from
the supermarket, not agarbage can. "It costs me athousand dollars
ayear, but they have something good to drink instead of Mountain
Dew and the stuff in the machine," he says with satisfaction.
T
Around the holidays, Horowitz decorates his classroom and sends
the rest of the supplies to the Assistance League of Eugene. He is
delighted that the organization relieves him of the hundreds of feet
of Christmas lights that he saves, but even more so, he's happy to
help someone. When the lunch bell rings, asurprising number of
students remain in the classroom, either to feast on the available
snacks or to peruse the "free table" for a book or CD their teacher
picked up over the weekend. While the kids get comfortable,
Horowitz walks the halls of Ch.urchill High, pulling recyclable bottles
out of the garbage cans. "The only problem is [that] kids think I'm a
custodian," he says. Though some students laugh at the sight of their
teacher digging through the trash, Horowitz believes others quietly
acknowledge his commitment to waste reduction. "I believe the best
thing ateacher can be is a role model."
For Horowitz, the week of dumpster diving all leads up to Saturday
morning. The routine begins when Horowitz transfers box after box of
goods from his living room floor to the back of his trUCk. This week,
four boxes of men's shoes and clothing are destined for the Eugene
Mission; the rest is divided among nearby family shelters. Horowitz is
a regular at the Assistance League where he donates a considerable
amount of clothing every week. "Mike is methodical and serious,"
says shop Chairman Shannon Allen. "He folds everything neatly,
labels the boxes, and even brings in the plastic hangers." The ten to
fifteen loads of laundry Horowitz washes each week are unloaded
in a matter of fifteen minutes. Next Saturday he'll
do it all over again. Those who benefit from his
actions will never meet the man, and the revolving
cast of charity workers seldom recognizes this
humble donor. But Lueck has witnessed the steady
progress of Horowitz's charitable actions through
the years. "The effect one person makes is just a
drop in the bucket," he says. "But with Mike, it's a
big drop."
Although Horowitz's salvaged items have brought
relief to many lives, the modest physics teacher
has bolder ambitions for the future. "I'm just sitting
on all this money right now. Sooner or later I'll
find the right way to use it." For Horowitz, the "right
way" won't be a new convertible or avacation in
the islands. Two years ago, Horowitz began helping
aformer student pay his way through college as a
more direct way of reaching out to those in need.
Although Horowitz is occasionally tempted to
break the nine-year streak of dumpster diving, the
knowledge that he's bringing a bit of comfort into
the lives of others is enough to keep him returning
to the trash bins week after week. "When people ask me if I'm having
agood day, I say, 'Yeah, I'm not finding anything.'" And as long as the
dumpsters continue to bear fruit, Horowitz will be out there peeking
under their lids.•
BElOW_Horowitz donates his weekly
collection of towels, pillows, and blankets to
Eugene's First Place Family Center.
------........-ABOR OF
Richard Reames bends living trees into works of art
story_Carey Connell
photography_Rebecca Kennedy
rom the winding roads of Williams Highway, trees line the hilltops in a blanket of
green as far as the eye can see. Among the lush background of Richard Reames's
tree farm, one tree, vastly different from the others, stands out from the rest. Instead of
growing straight and tall, its midsection curves into a peace sign. The cherry tree is one of his
intricate sculptures that zig, zag, and swirl in ways that defy logic. While nature has inspired
artists for centuries, Reames takes this one step further: he turns living trees into art.
His dogs nip at the heels of his sturdy brown work boots as Reames,
forty-seven, strides from his self-built log cabin to the adjacent
Arborsmith Studios, his workshop and gallery. Agraying beard
frames his leathery face, and his coarse, unkempt hair is tied in
astubby ponytail at the nape of his neck. His army-green clothes
almost blend in with the trees around him. The clear, silver-blue
eyes of this quiet, unpretentious man display afierce belief in the
potential of his unique art to change how humans relate to
the landscape.
With the steady and careful hands of asculptor, Reames starts his
day's work. As his strong, calloused fingers coax the supple wood of
aseven-foot alder sapling, one of fourteen young trees that form a
semicircle around the peace sign tree, the sun breaks through the
clouds and shines brightly on the plant's dewy leaves.
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OPPOSITE PAGE_This tree, one of Richard
Reames's earlier experiments, is astudy of
how to create aliving staircase.
RIGHT_Trees of the same species can share
resources when they are grafted together.
In every direction, arborsculpture projects stand in varying stages of
growth. Two birch trees weave together to form a hole resembling the
portal into Alice's Wonderland. On the opposite end of Reames's gallery, an alder twists into acrooked, three-dimensional cube before
merging into asingle leafy treetop. Scattered throughout the yard,
thin, young "experiment trees" shoot up from the rich soil, weaving,
winding, and connecting. In another corner, living benches and
chairs grow strong enough to support afull-grown man. To prove it
can be done, Reames sits on a chair made from an Oregon ash, and
with the proud look of a king atop his throne, he tells his favorite
joke: "See? After all these years, I can finally just sit on
my ash."
While Reames enjoys the simple life, he is dedicated to expanding
the practical possibilities of his art. After experimenting with grafting
trees into simple shapes like hearts, peace signs, and curlicues, he
is working on a living house made of pear, peach, and apple trees.
Located in the center of Arborsmith Studios, his project reaches ten
feet high and is in full springtime blossom. It's just in the beginning
stages of growth, but in about fifty years, the trees' bark will grow together into asingle treetop roof. Reames hopes that once the house
is full grown, he will be able to pluck the fruit right off the walls.
"You can extrapolate on this idea," Reames says, gesturing to a
living staircase growing five feet from the fruit house. "You could
"The first year, they sleep.
The second year, they
creep, and the third year,
they leap."
grow living furniture out of the house's walls and floors. You could
have an entire house that forms one connected tree." He grins. "And
maybe in fifty years, when the fruit house is done, it'll be time to
grow the nut house."
After years of wandering the Wes~ Coast, Reames found his life's
work in his unconventional art. He knew he would never be happy
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working a normal nine-to-five job, so as aUvolunteer homeless
person," he spent ten years thumbing rides and hiking through
forests. Along the way, he met his future wife, Maya. But settling
down was far from his mind - until he found
out his wife was pregnant. Shaken by this news,
Reames went into the woods near Williams
Highway to contemplate the direction his life
should take. As he watched the trees swaying in
the midsummer breeze, he prayed for answers. ul
asked the universe for guidance," Reames recalls.
"And I flashed back to Axel Erlandson's Tree
Circus I had visited as a child. I knew I wanted
to discover the secrets to his trees and spread
[them] to the world."
Although Reames grew up ten miles away from
the Tree Circus in Santa Cruz, California, he
never considered the impact it would have on
his life. Axel Erlandson, the enigmatic creator of
the exhibition, developed an amazing display of
living trees on his property that he turned into
a roadside attraction. When asked how he got
his trees to grow so impossibly, Erlandson would
whimsically reply, Ult's simple - I talk to them."
Erlandson later regretted that he hadn't found an
apprentice and that his art was doomed to wither
and die trapped inside his neglected giants. He
never witnessed the work of Richard Reames.
"With his trees, Erlandson opened up the door to afield of possibilities," Reames says. "I understand why Erlandson kept his art a
secret, but if we try to keep our art to ourselves, it only leads to our
own constriction. Sharing attracts open people, and that's when a
synergy of ideas can happen."
The philosophical roots of Reames's arborsculpture are synergy and
growth. Instead of emulating nature, his sculptures become nature.
His trees counteract the ideas behind modern artificial and wasteful
culture and prove that humans don't have to destroy the environment to use it for comfort, shelter, and enjoyment. While art by
definition implies human workmanship rather than natural creation,
Reames's sculptures demonstrate that humans and nature don't
have to exist in opposition.
Reames's philosophy formulates the motto of Arborsmith Studios:
"Growing trees into forests of ideas." Through arborsculpture,
Reames seeks to foster a love and deeper understanding of the
environment by working with the trees to create his vision. Yet it isn't
always easy to work with nature. Curious, hungry deer often nibble at
the delicate bark of his sculptures, and insects feast on the wood,
causing them to rot. His trees also sunburn easily under the fierce
summer sun because he strips the trees of their protective lower
branches to form his designs. When one tree dies, Reames weaves
in a new sapling and it eventually merges with the older trees. "All
trees of the same species have the same root systems," Reames
explains. Ult's evolutionary altruism. Different species compete for
the best soil and nutrients, but trees of the same species merge so
that they can spread their type of seed."
Despite the difficulties, Reames earns asuccessful living crafting
arborsculptures for clients. When customers contact him, he makes
travel arrangements and starts his projects using a pair of malleable
five-year-old trees he transports in wine barrels. He plants the sap-
Reames explains that trees grow in three stages. "The first year,
they sleep," he says. "The second year, they creep, and the third
year, they leap." Reames is in his own leaping stage. He has
finished planning his exhibit for the World Expo Fair, which is open
until November, and the ambitious Reames doesn't show any
signs of slowing down. Next year, he will publish his second book,
ArborsGulpture: Solutions for a Small Planet, the sequel to How to
Grow a Chair, which he published in 1995. Reames will also teach
his first class on arborscultpure at the John C. Campbell Folk School
in North Carolina and hopes to begin a lecture tour of universities
around the country. Reames's devotion to spreading his art has
been fruitful, and the possibilities for his ecological vision seem as
vast as the forest surrounding Arborsmith Studios. •
"If we try to keep our art to
ourselves, it only leads to our
own constriction. "
lings on location, puts frames into the ground to control the trees'
growth, and grafts the branches so that they grow together into the
shape of a chair, atable, or an abstract design. Once the initial
grafting is finished, he returns once ayear - all clients pay his travel
and lodging fees - and prunes as needed. After three years, the
living furniture is strong enough to sit on. Prices vary depending on
the size and intricacy of the project; clients pay $700 for chairs,
$1,000 for athree-person bench, and $5,000 for agazebo. In
eight years, Reames has created more than twenty-five
arborsculptures for clients: gazebos, tables, benches, houses,
nightstands, and sculptures. Individuals can even order pre-shaped
trees from his catalog.
"When you have children, you can start planting their houses,"
Reames says of the possibilities available to his clients. UBy the time
they are full grown, their new house will be, too."
When he isn't serving his clientele, Reames contributes to the
GroWing Village in Japan, a project with even greater artistic
scope than Erlandson's original Tree Circus. This project, avillage
composed entirely of living trees, contains play structures for
children, chairs and benches upon which elders can tranquilly
repose, and beautiful arborsculptures for everyone to enjoy. Reames
also worked with John Gathright, creator and chief producer of the
Growing Village, to grow asimilar park called Mokshow-en, which
means "Laughing Happy Tree Park." It is home to hundreds of trees
and won the Ecological Design Award from the Japanese Ministry
of Industrial Design in 2002. "In general, arborsculpture has huge
potential," Reames says. "We've just begun scratching the surface."
RIGHT_Reames stands
next to his sculpted peace sign tree.
OPPOSITE PAGE_The three-dimensional
cube crafted from an alder shows a
lighthearted side to Reames's art.
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oelho was born on Terceira Island, a Portuguese island in the
Azores Archipelago, located in the middle of the North Atlantic
Ocean. His family lived in asmall home without indoor plumbing
where he remembers digging holes in the living room floor to play
marbles with his siblings. When he was ten years old, the family
moved to Harrisburg, Oregon, and they didn't speak aword of
English. The rural community, in which fewer than athousand people
lived, didn't offer a language program for immigrants, but Coelho's
fourth-grade teacher selflessly taught the entire family English on
her own.
C
While the family slowly adjusted to American culture, Coelho's
parents grappled with his decision to try out for the local high
school basketball team. "We all came from the old country, as
The early morning practice sessions and dribbling marathons paid
off. By Coelho's senior year, he had transformed himself from the
worst player on the team to one of the best. Despite his accomplishments, his parents never attended asingle practice or game during
his four years on the team. After the birth of his own children, he
vowed not to do the same.
With plenty of encouragement and support, each of his five children
became involved in youth sports, such as soccer and basketball,
and Coelho often volunteered as coach. The majority of youth
leagues they participated in emphasized the games, with little time
for practice and lots of pressure on the kids to win. The competitive
nature favored the more talented players, which Coelho found too
reminiscent of his experience as ayoung athlete.
By his mid-forties, after accumulating more than
twenty years of experience as ayouth sports
coach, he began exploring the idea of starting
his own basketball academy - where kids would
be given the opportunity to constantly practice
rather than watch from the bench. He researched
other local programs and realized that most kids
in his neighborhood would never be able to pay
for them. His idea was to launch an affordable
basketball academy, that emphasized fundamentals and sportsmanship. He set the price at one
dollar per session.
ABOVE_Joe Coelho reads abook to the
players between Saturday afternoon sessions.
PREVIOUS PAGE_Coelho leans against the
mural at his home in Eugene.
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everybody calls it. We were raised to work and not to play," Coelho
says. His mother still often puts in afull day of work. "This is the way
all of the kids were brought up."
In June 2001, Coelho began setting aside time
from his handyman business and opened his
academy with asingle group of eight kids, two of
whom were his own boys. Feeling guilty that his
daughter was too young to participate, he quickly
opened aseparate session for younger boys and
girls. The kids couldn't always make it, and often
attendance was thin. He still keeps a picture of
an early practice session that shows him with his
daughter and one other girl posed in front of a
set of empty folding chairs intended for parents
to watch from. The photo serves as a reminder of how far he's come.
In three-and-a-half years, the initial group of eight kids has
ballooned to more than three hundred.
Without any support from his parents, Coelho arrived at the tryout.
Despite his embarrassing display, the coach kept him on the team
because of his height and athleticism. Determined to improve,
Coelho regularly rose at dawn to practice alone in the high school
gym. His motivation stemmed from spending each game on the
bench. One minute and forty-six seconds was the longest he played
in asingle game his first season.
Some parents drive their children more than an hour just to attend
Coelho's practices, while other players depend on volunteer coaches
or friends to drive them. "I can spot those kids a mile away. I love to
help all kids, but those that are less fortunate bring back memories
of when I was young," Coelho says. "They don't have the fancy shoes,
the cool basketballs, or hoops in the front yard. They don't get to
attend several summer basketball camps each year."
Sitting down for a quick break during a recent Saturday practice,
Coelho smiles and says he's tired. Within fifteen seconds he excitedly
springs to his feet and sets up avideo of a recent middle school
basketball game he plans to screen for the kids. The video shows an
RBA player offering a hand to afallen opponent. Coelho, beaming
because it was caught on tape, brought atrophy for the player
- just one of many acknowledgments presented at each
session for players exemplifying good sportsmanship.
The message rubs off. During an intense scrimmage, agirl throws a
bad pass to an open teammate and immediately says, "I'm sorry."
The teammate smiles and says, "That's okay."
Part of the reason Coelho's athletes behave so well is because he's
selective. They come by invitation or recommendation but aren't
accepted into the RBA until Coelho feels assured that the players
treat others politely, listen to coaches, and work hard. He often
relies on the advice of other coaches and players but values the
behavior of an athlete's parents most. "Considerate parents have
considerate kids," he explains.
~~ I
love to help all kids, but those that are
less fortunate bring back memories of
when I was young."
people." Lee recalls when Coelho decided to have the kids pick up
trash on the bike path. The idea, Lee explains, was to teach kids to
take care of their community.
Coelho's success in developing talented athletes with valuable life
skills has several major college athletic coaches taking notice.
Ernie Kent, head coach of the University of Oregon men's basketball
team, recently wrote Coelho a letter praising the RBA, as did UO
head football coach Mike Bellotti. During the past year, Bev Smith,
head coach of the UO women's basketball team, and Jay John, head
While attending a recent middle school basketball game, he sat
next to an "unruly" parent who incessantly complained about the
officiating. When the parent later approached Coelho about enrolling her daughter in the academy, he sensed trouble and talked her
out of it. According to Coelho, he can discerningly choose players
because he isn't trying to make money. Without the burden of
increasing the RBA's profits, Coelho feels comfortable turning away
kids who may not heed his instruction.
Once he assembles agroup of kids, Coelho's work begins. "What
makes his program so unique is his ability to teach children to be
disciplined, highly skilled, and aggressive competitors, while simultaneously maintaining asoft-spoken gentleness in his coaching style,"
says Mary Holo, whose eight-year-old son, Ty, is an RBA member.
"He'll never say you did that wrong but instead says, 'Thank you for
reminding me that I need to teach that better.'"
Coelho adjusts his coaching style to each individual, Holo says. He
knows every athlete's name, home situation, personality, and skill
level. "It is as though he personally remembers each stage of his
own development and recalls what it felt like to be an eight-year-old
and is able to relate to them like few adults I have ever met."
Under Coelho's guidance, the RBA goes a long way toward reversing
the pampering culture of modern sports, in which young athletes are
exploited for their talent but grow up woefully unprepared for the
real world. "He's got a dream," Stacy Lee says, whose two daughters
attend the academy. "Yes, he wants them to become great
basketball players, but he also wants to see them go on to be great
RIGHT_RBA members practice dribbling skills.
Coelho bases practices on all-inclusive drills so
that no player sits on the bench.
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coach of the Oregon State University men's basketball team, both
visited RBA practices.
"We talk a lot as coaches about how you should be a good person a
lot longer than you should be a good basketball player," says Smith.
~~What
hooked me was failure and not
getting to participate. I want to leave my
community better than what it was."
What is so special about the RBA, she explains, is that by reinforcing
"caring about others and ateam attitude," Coelho does more than
just talk about it.
BELOW_Micah Robinson, fourteen, practices
ball control.
Smith also values Coelho's emphasis on fundamental skills and
participation. During RBA practices, rather than holding scrimmages
involving only ten players at once, Coelho focuses on all-inclusive
drills emphasizing passing, defense, and footwork. Only parents
watch from the bench, and Coelho insists that all players hold a
basketball in their hands throughout the practice session.
had just been diagnosed with cancer and was given afew weeks to
live. "/'11 give him the royal treatment," Coelho told her. Immediately
after the boy arrived at the camp, Coelho put his arm around him
and introduced him to all of the players. At the end, Coelho took a
picture of all the children in attendance and placed the boy front
and center. Afterward, he insisted on meeting the boy's mother to
show her the photo and reassure her that her son would always have
afamily of friends waiting for him.
"A lot of us forget it's a process to become agood player. We are so
focused on the outcome rather than the process," Smith says. "It is
really about the journey," she says. "Joe understands that."
Coelho feels proud of the recognition, but his focus always remains
on doing more for the RBA, which takes up an increasing amount
of his time. In addition to accompanying kids while they dribble a
basketball down the bike path during the summer, he runs atwoweek camp for all of the players every August. Coelho's year-round
nine-hour practice marathons each Saturday make many parents
worry he'll grow tired. When they find out he spends ten to twelve
hours a day, seven days a week on RBA matters, they assume he's
exhausted. He dismisses the idea, saying, "When you're passionate,
it energizes you."
Alot of that passion comes from the letters he gets from players and
the teary-eyed parents thanking him for all he's done for their kids.
Holo sees the RBA's effects firsthand through the transformation
of her son, who before joining the academy couldn't talk to adults,
shake their hands, or look them in the eye. After eight months in the
academy, Ty now raises his hand in class, volunteers to sing a solo in
the choir, and speaks with confidence to adults.
Parents are increasingly grateful for Coelho's impact on the
community, and they continually ask him why he doesn't charge
more money, but Coelho remains ambivalent about turning the
RBA into a solvent endeavor. He currently charges each player ten
dollars per month, and those who can't afford that get scholarships.
Most of the fee goes toward covering the one thousand dollars
per month rental cost for the gym and the prizes he gives away at
each practice. Yet, Coelho says, the academy still costs him money
out of his own pocket, not to mention the hours it takes away from
his handyman business. Coelho realizes that many of the families
could easily afford more, and his closest competitors often charge
anywhere from $35 to $175 per month.
That group of friends means a lot to Coelho and has become his
extended family. Coelho's own family remains supportive of his work,
despite the time he puts into it. His children regularly attend RBA
practices each Saturday, along with his wife, who is heavily involved
with running the program. But not everyone approves.
"My mom today is seventy-five, and says, 'Joe, you're foolish and
you're wasting your time,'" Coelho says. But rejection is something he
overcame long ago, and he would like to pass the lesson on. "What
hooked me was failure and not getting to participate," he says. "I
want to leave my community better than what it was. It is my passion. If I die today, I die happy." •
BElOW_ Joey Peterson, four, concentrates on
his dribbling.
ABOVE_Jordan Alexander, nine, was Oregon's
champion in the national free-throw competition and continues to participate in the RBA.
"I wouldn't need my handyman business if I charged more," he says.
"I just don't want anyone to ever think this is about making money."
Knowing he can't operate in the red forever, he explains that his goal
is to raise more money through donations and sponsors rather than
increase prices.
Though he recently found several local sponsors to offset the
financial burden, Coe1ho brings two donation jars to each session.
The first, no larger than aspaghetti sauce jar, is for the RBA, and
the larger one, a replica of a real-size basketball, will be donated to
Womenspace, a local shelter for battered women. "I want to teach
our kids to give back," he says.
Chris Nystrom of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce found
out how much Coelho is giving back when several RBA parents
nominated the coach for one of the organization's Emerald Awards.
Nystrom says the chamber received letters from parents emphasizing how Coelho is "changing kids' lives with selflessness and
persistent dedication to the community." Nystrom also pointed out
that the dedication many parents described surpassed Coelho's
duties with the RBA.
"We always say he's like an angel," Holo says. This past summer,
she approached Coelho about bringing Ty's best friend, a non-RBA
member, to the academy's summer camp for a day. The boy's mother
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25
Matt Chandler adopts a nonviolent
approach to eradicate injustice in Iraq
story_Meg Krugel
photography courtesy of Christian Peacemaker Teams
he remnants of war - of fear and loss - melted into the parched
Middle-Eastern landscape. Weeks ago, an improvised explosive device
targeting the Iraqi police detonated in front of asmall video shop in
Baghdad. Businesses surrounding the shop were brutally damaged by
the force of the explosion. Like bone-deep scars, severe cracks were permanently
scribed into the stone walls and storefronts that lined this once busy street. Slowly and
steadily, the foundation of the video shop crumbled into the pale brown silt of the Iraqi
earth.
T
Ablackening sky began to fall on the war-torn country of Iraq, signaling the end of
another day of conflict. For thousands of Iraqi and American families, the closing of
the day brought another sleepless night without aloved one and another morning of
uncertainty, danger, and heartache. Beneath the night sky, a man in a red baseball cap
walked along the wounded street. He approached the video store with caution until
he saw afriend inside. The Iraqi video shop owner embraced his American friend with
one arm. His right arm, which was injured by gunfire near his home in Sadr City, was
bound in a makeshift sling. It had been an important day for the twenty-three-year-old
American, Matt Chandler, and the two men had much to discuss.
LEFT_Matt Chandler photographs a
demonstration by followers of Moqtada
AI-Sadr, aShiite cleric who has led uprisings
against the U.S.-led coalition.The protest
came after the coalition banned AI-Sadr's
newspaper and arrested several of his aides.
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hat was Thursday, September 30, 2004. After hundreds of interviews with Iraqi victims and their families, Chandler had spent
the day finalizing reports detailing the abuse of Iraqi detainees.
According to these documents, military actions designed to ensure
the short-term security of the American guard, such as strict control
of detention camps like the Abu Ghraib prison, actually compromised the long-term security interests of Iraqis. The reports of
extended abuse and the work of Chandler's human rights advocacy
would soon spread to media outlets around the world. It would
T
and conduct face-to-face interviews with detainees to understand their perspective. On May 11, 2005, Chandler returned to
his Springfield, Oregon, home following his fourth, but not final,
peacekeeping mission.
The walls and ceiling of Chandler's street-side apartment were
cracking. The effects of the war had shaken this building too many
times to count. But Chandler called this rundown apartment home.
On September 23, 2004, he stood in front of the apartment's
window overlooking a row of
businesses. At 10:30 P.M.,
there was little to observe on
this darkened street.
But, suddenly, gunfire ripped
through the still air. The loud
and rapid shooting lasted for
three long minutes. Pressing his hands to the glass,
Chandler watched civilians flee
as several armed men barged
out of a building directly
across the street from where
he stood. Impulsively, Chandler
thought to race out and help
awounded man lying face
down on the ground. Before
he turned, the armed men
carried the wounded man to
a nearby van and drove away.
Then, as it was before, the air
became still, marred only by
the memory of this short,
violent episode.
ABOVE_Chandler participates in ahuman
rights demonstration for detainees. CPT
workers held regular demonstrations with
family members of detainees before the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal first surfaced.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Chandler gives blood at a
Baghdad hospital aday after witnessing the
bombing of the Kadhum shrine in the city's
AI-Kadhamiya district.
ignite the emotions of both pro- and anti-war proponents. The
September Report on Detainees, published in 2004, would become
one of the milestone achievements for Chandler and his ongoing
work with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).
Four months after his college graduation, Chandler made his
first trip to Iraq as afull-time member of CPT's Iraq Project team.
Inspired by the idea that peacemakers must be willing, just as
soldiers, to die for their cause, Chandler has completed four round
trips to Iraq since September 2003 as avolunteer with the nonprofit human rights organization. The group strives to serve as a
watchdog of military actions in conflict zones throughout the world.
CPT workers hold peace activist training groups for Iraqis
The next day, Chandler's
landlord arrived and explained
that the previous night's shooting was unrelated to insurgent
activity; it was only street crime. He urged Chandler and his five CPT
coworkers not to worry - the apartment's security guard had plenty
of "machine guns to keep us safe." Somehow, Chandler and the
team found little solace in the idea of more firearms at the ready. In
a conversation with a neighbor and friend, Chandler explained that
the current level of danger might not subside until after the January
2005 Iraqi elections - still four months away.
Chandler couldn't seem to shake the memory of the shooting. The
recent violence and its emotional after-effects seemed too familiar
to the Thurston High School graduate. When gunshots rang out on
the Thurston campus on May 21, 1998, Chandler was eating
breakfast off school grounds with friends from his church youth
group. During his absence, piercing screams ricocheted across the
campus as fellow classmate Kip Kinkel opened fire on the student
body. Just as Chandler witnessed unarmed Iraqis fleeing the building across the street, he remembers arriving at school and seeing
hundreds of terrified students flooding from the cafeteria.
During the weeks and months that followed the Thurston shooting,
Chandler and his community grieved the death of two Thurston
classmates. He saw the city of Springfield unite in support of the.
twenty-two students who were injured, and he sensed the underlying
dismay of his own friends and the general public because of this
unjust act of violence. As awitness to the effects of the shooting on
both the individual and the community at large, Chandler began to
develop a deep personal ethic to resist violence at all costs.
In the fall of 1999, Chandler enrolled in George Fox University, a
small Quaker-run college near Portland, Oregon, to study Christian
ministries and philosophy. His classes led him through deep
religious, political, and philosophical discussions that helped
shape his emerging views on the nonviolent approach. "Violence
didn't seem to square with Jesus' teachings about mercy, grace,
forgiveness, and love for friends and foes alike," Chandler says. This
spiritual conviction became the foundation for Chandler's ongoing
work in Iraqi war zones.
On the morning of Friday, April 4, 2004, Chandler tied the laces of
his worn brown shoes but left his signature red cap, embroidered
with "CPT" in black thread, at home. He and his teammates only
wear their hats to signal the organization's presence while conducting human rights work, but not for personal business. On this day, he
had been invited to the house of Musa, agood friend of the team.
When he arrived, Musa welcomed Chandler through the front door
and into the sitting room. Acurious four-year-old girl peeked at
Chandler from around the corner. Fatima, Musa's daughter, walked
cautiously toward him as she attempted to tame her thick, black
hair with asmall comb. Because of the language barrier, the two did
not share any words.
Musa walked into the sitting room carrying a pot of hot liquid and
ushered Fatima away. The stories he was about to tell Chandler were
not suitable for the innocent ears of his young daughter. He began
to talk about his work as astationery and map printer, but soon the
discussion delved into Musa's experiences under Saddam Hussein.
"He told me that he spent thirteen months in prison between 1999
and 2000 for reasons of which he is still unsure," Chandler remembers. "Then he demonstrated how he was forced to hang from the
ceiling by his hands tied behind his back for long hours."
Even five years later, Musa felt the effects of Hussein's dictatorship
- he still suffers from intestinal problems from the poor prison
conditions. "I give thanks [to] my God I am alive," Musa says with a
small smile.
"When they saw the retaliation
and abuse of American soldiers
toward detainees, they asked us
· d emocracy.'? '"
. . . 'Th·IS IS
According to Doug Pritchard, codirector of CPT, Musa's story is all
too common among the Iraqis whom team members interview. "The
people in Iraq had horrible experiences under Saddam Hussein,"
Pritchard says. But there is another side to the story, which CPT
members learned through their interactions with the locals. "When
they saw the retaliation and abuse of American soldiers toward
detainees, they asked us ... 'This is democracy? We knew this kind of
treatment under Saddam, but we didn't expect it from you [the U.S.
troops] ,'" Pritchard explains.
Pritchard says that CPT members travel only into regions' where
Iraqis will welcome their human rights work. On January 27, 2005,
volunteers conducted atraining session for Iraqi peace activists in
the city of Karbala. The day began as nine Iraqis and four CPT
workers stood in asmall circle discussing their traumatic experiences. Ared piece of construction paper, neatly trimmed into the
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29
ecause of this family tension, Chandler and his parents rarely
discuss the detainee abuse situation. Since he's been serving
in Iraq, however, both Chandler and his parents have learned to set
aside their differences. The safety of her son is, above all, Brenda's
main concern. "I spend each day wondering what he's doing and
worrying about him." Her warm voice shakes as she speaks.
B
Three weeks before Chandler was scheduled to return to his Springfield home in October 2004 for ashort leave of absence, insurgents
intensified retaliatory strikes against the U.S. presence. Kidnappings
of both soldiers and foreign aid workers increased. The country was
distraught with the ongoing violence by both the U.S. troops and the
anti-Western insurgents. Chandler knew that it was too dangerous
for the entire CPT team to be in the country at this time.
As Iraq Project Coordinator, Chandler advised Pritchard and the
other CPT directors to reduce the team size to two individuals.
Soon after this decision, several volunteers packed their meager
belongings into small suitcases and boarded planes to return home.
Chandler and coworker Tom Fox locked themselves inside their
apartment for several days as kidnappings became more frequent.
ABOVE_Chandler stands with the family of
adetainee in Abu Sifa, avillage just north
of Baghdad.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Chandler listens as aman
identifies the family members of an Iraqi
detainee in aphotograph.
shape of a heart, passed from hand to hand around the circle. Each
individual was to tell a memory about trauma and then tear asmall
piece from the heart. Looking at the red paper, one Iraqi said, "The
heart isn't big enough to show all the pain we have experienced."
Slowly, the stories unfolded. Tears flowed freely as Iraqis shared
memories of life under Hussein and of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A
young man named Assad shared this: "In the Iraq/Iran War, people
died all around me. I slept with dead bodies until they were carried
away. I helped bury the bodies after the 1991 resistance [against]
Saddam Hussein. In this war [the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq], I
watched afriend explode before my eyes as he defused U.S. cluster
bombs." As his words slowed, his fingers ripped acorner from the
heart and pushed the small piece of paper into his pants pocket.
At the conclusion of the day, Assad reflected, "I am an angry person,
easily agitated." As he looked at the training team, he said, "I am
"The heart isn't big enough to show
all the pain we have experienced."
a different person because of you. I want to participate in a CPT
action." The volunteers smiled. Assad's comment was the highest
form of praise.
The team often works with the U.S. military in its peace-building
efforts, enabling workers to balance their anti-war conscience with
the military's perspective. In January 2004, CPT suggested that the
U.S. military demarcate unexploded ordinance zones with brightly
colored tape to warn civilians of possible danger. Army Captain
Matthew Wheeler's rejection of the idea angered several of the
volunteer workers and spurred asmall conflict between U.S. troops
and the CPT unit. In a letter, however, Wheeler proposed that the
group use its resources as a non-governmental organization to train
and assist Iraqis with cleaning up the bombs.
In his letter to CPT, Wheeler explained that he understood the
team's anger and frustration over his unwillingness to compromise,
but drawing attention to the peacemaking cause did not include
attacking "low-level officers {and fellow Christians)." He wrote,
"We do not set national policy, and often we are torn between a
trichotomy of what are orders, what is best, and what is ethical."
Wheeler recognized that CPT could have significant influence on
the peacemaking cause by simply employing "a warm smile with
demonstrated action."
Understanding the military comes somewhat naturally to Chandler,
who hasn't always been surrounded by pacifists. Chandler's father
was raised in a military family and his grandfather served in Vietnam.
His parents, Bill and Brenda Chandler, say that there are just some
conflicts that require military action. When Chandler announced
his decision to join CPT, dissent bubbled in the family's home. His
parents, particularly his father, had difficulty showing support for
their son in light of the U.S. military's invasion of Iraq. "It's been hard
because we all love him," Brenda Chandler says of her son, "but we
are just different."
Chandler remembers a discussion he had with aShia cleric and an
accompanying translator during the somber
period. The cleric told Chandler that Iraqi terrorists wouldn't know the difference between the
intentions of armed and unarmed Americans.
"Don't be victims," the cleric told Chandler and
Fox. The simple words stuck with the two men during their quiet three-week stay in Baghdad.
Sunday. The audience attentively listened as Chandler, the evening's
guest speaker, shared his experiences as aChristian peacemaker in
Iraq. His hands gestured easily as he described his interactions with
the Iraqi men, women, and children he had met.
As Chandler read quotations from his interviews with detainees,
photos of him in Iraq circulated the room. In one, he stands beside
the Sunni imam Sheik Moayed - often said to be the most influential Sunni imam in Iraq. In other photos, the effects of war are more
vivid. One depicted CPT workers lining a busy but dilapidated street
corner holding poster-sized images of missing detainees. The photos
aroused asense of urgency concerning the Iraqi detainee situation,
but Chandler's stories also spread hope to pacifists seeking to end
the war.
Chandler doesn't know where he'll go after CPT. Shortly before he left
for his fourth trip to Iraq, Brenda Chandler overheard her son telling
his younger brother that he'd like to write a book about his work as
a peacekeeper. That might be years away - there is still much work
to be done in order to bring peace to the Middle-Eastern country.
For now, Chandler continues to make his footprint in the war-torn
Iraqi soil for four months at atime, inspired and comforted by the
experiences of his brave, spiritual journey. •
When the time came for Chandler to leave Iraq
and return to Oregon on November 6, 2004,
his flight was delayed at Baghdad International
Airport. Abomb had exploded nearby, and all
flights were postponed. He escaped the incident
without injury but was emotionally traumatized
and exhausted. He had seen similar violence on
innocent victims before - both at home and in
Iraq. And, though anxious to return to his family
and friends, the terrified expressions of those at
the airport and the shards of broken glass that
littered the front entrance sent aclear message:
Chandler's work in Iraq was not complete.
Shortly before Chandler left for Iraq in January
2005, he gathered with agroup of Oregonian
peace activists in the small sanctuary of the
Eugene Friends' meeting house, where the local
Quakers gather to hold silent worship every
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nthe coastal waters of Oregon, men
- some barely out of high school - work
around the clock to earn the kinds of
paychecks that doctors see. For afew
months amid the unforgiving winter
swells of the North Pacific, they pick their way
along the rocky Oregon coast, hauling crab pots.
Claude Badet, a Frenchman who fell into fishing
half a lifetime ago, says life on the boat is like
the Wild West. Trade buffalo for migrating gray
whales clipping along at twenty-six knots per
hour and dusty leather chaps for orange rubber
suits slick with rain and fish guts, and the image
is apt. These men are governed by few rules, and
they work in awild and dangerous place. The
time the men spend beyond the jetties at the
mouth of Oregon's Yaquina Bay may be the only
thing that holds them together in their boomand-bust lifestyles. But one day, they will return
from a run, look into the hold at too few crabs,
and realize that the season is almost over.
ABOVE_Functioning on little to no sleep,
blockman Claude Badet spends
eighteen-hour days aboard AI Pazar's boat.
PREVIOUS PAGE_Guiding the line through
Delma Ann's hydraulic pulley, Badet and
crewman Tony Fultz prepare to pull acrab pot
from the Pacific's waters.
The work is dangerous: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics
and depending on the year, fishing and logging vie for the title of
most perilous profession in the United States. In the beginning of
the crabbing season, which opens December 1, crews spend weeks
on the ocean derby fishing - working night and day with no respite.
To add to the danger of difficult work on zero sleep, the Dungeness
crabbing season can be the most volatile fishing time of the
year, with sudden swells periodically capsizing boats led by weary
skippers. Most fishing fatalities occur in December and January
- the two most profitable months of the season.
Perhaps danger, and its payoff, is the draw. Dungeness crab is
the most valuable single-species fishery in the state of Oregon.
Last year, fishermen caught an unprecedented thirty-one million
dollars-worth of Dungeness. AI Pazar, aforty-nine-year-old lifetime
fisherman, holds one of the 350 coveted permits that allow Oregon
fishermen to catch the crustaceans commercially. He inspires
my confidence with his paternal mien and a kind, knowledgeable
bearing when he agrees to let me come along on an eighteen-hour
run.
I meet Pazar in Yaquina Bay at 7 A.M. (an atypical late start) near
his boat on Dock 5. Delma Ann, afifty-one-foot crabbing boat,
can be retrofitted with equipment for fishing Chinook salmon and
albacore tuna during Dungeness off-seasons. He leads me through
the cramped cabin of the forty-two-year-old boat, up a ladder
precariously mounted to the cabin wall, and through atrap door.
We enter the top house, acontrol room and an office rolled into
one - with the spaciousness of a handicapped bathroom stall. It
contains a Global Positioning System, asonar Downsounder that
doubles as aTV, a laptop, a CD player, a FISH 12 MK-11 (a device
that records Delma's path, or "slug trail"), and about a dozen other
gadgets either tacked to the ceiling or balanced on the dash. This is
where Pazar spends most of his time on the boat, shouting orders
through an open window to his two-man crew, joking with other
fishermen over a CB radio, tracking weather conditions, keeping an
eye on currents, and navigating Delma Ann over swells as smoothly
as possible.
Pazar leans against an upholstered swivel chair bolted to the floor,
and I sit down next to him on a matching blue vinyl bench, its color
corroded by the briny ocean air. Aschool portrait of his sixteen-yearold daughter is mounted to the front windshield. He engages the
throttle, flips afew rusty switches, and we're off to sea.
Pazar explains through his coarse gray mustache that the first leg
- crossing the bar - is the most dangerous part of the journey. "I've
had some experiences on this bar that have made my knees weak,"
he says. The blood drains from my face. To cross the bar, Pazar must
navigate through two jetties that redirect the Yaquina River into the
Pacific Ocean. The competing currents of the two bodies of water
can cause thirty-foot swells. Noticing my white hands death-gripping
the vinyl bench, Pazar assures me that things are pretty calm today.
As we make our way out to sea, we pass Hallmark Fisheries, a large
seafood distributor where fishermen can load bait directly onto their
boats and unloa"d their catch at the end of their run. As agift to
the fishermen, Hallmark commissioned a mural of awell-endowed,
topless mermaid on one of its large facades facing the bay. On the
side visible to tourists is a breaching gray whale.
Pazar confidently maneuvers Delma Ann under the Yaquina Bay
Bridge and "between the jaws," or the jetties, as he tells me his
life story. "You know, there are old fishermen and there are dumb
fishermen. But there are no old, dumb fishermen," he says with a wry
smile. Pazar's father was aschoolteacher in Tacoma, Washington,
who ran a charter boat in the summers, so Pazar
has been fishing since he was eight. He bought his first boat at
sixteen and fixed it up in his high school shop class. Pazar enrolled
in the fishery science program at Oregon State University but
dropped out after running out of money. There, he met his wife, a
business major, and they began fishing for salmon together
in Washington.
Shortly after the Boldt decision passed in 1974, which allotted half
of harvestable salmon to Native American tribes, they moved to
Florence, Oregon, and continued fishing together until they had kids.
In 1986, they bought the Krab Kettle, aseafood market in Florence,
which Pazar's wife runs during the labor-intensive Dungeness
crabbing season.
ABOVE_From the top house, Pazar looks
west into what he calls areverse sunrise - a
bad omen for fishermen, signaling astorm
on the horizon.
LEFT_A quiet laborer, Fultz carries 125-pound
crab pots to the boat's stem.
ythe time we're safely through the jaws, I feel a little queasy.
Pazar recommends I get some fresh air. I climb down into the
cabin where ayoung crewman is sleeping and head to the back
deck. There, Badet, thirty-nine, is leaning against the railing. He pulls
a cigarette from a blue box of American Spirits, offering one to me.
B
Badet looks no older than thirty - which he attributes to the sea
air - despite a penchant for chain-smoking. He is friendly, yet he
smiles rarely and unconvincingly. Badet amuses me with stories
of his recent five-week transatlantic adveoture as he pulls on his
cigarette between sentences. After spending the summer traveling
Europe, he hitched a ride on a French charter boat to make it back
to the United States before the Dungeness season began. He landed
in Annapolis, Maryland, and made his way to Newport in time to help
Pazar ready Delma Ann for the start of the crabbing season.
In preparation for the season, the men baited six hundred buoyed
crab pots, each weighing up to 125 pounds when empty. They
positioned the traps on the ocean floor by attaching them along
strings. Each buoy has a number, identifying the fisherman who
owns the trap. The boat moves along astring, and each successive
trap is emptied. Some strings have as few as a dozen pots, others
more than one hundred. When fishermen find agood spot to place
astring, they hold onto it for seasons to come. "Crabs are like the
swallows at [San Juan] Capistrano or the butterflies at Monterey,"
Pazar explains. "They come back to the same place at the same
time every year."
One thing
has become
routine
in Badet's
life - he
always
comes back
to the same
little coastal
town to
crab with
Pazar.
The same could be said for Badet. After a couple months of
eighteen-hour days, he has the money, hence the freedom, to do
things he enjoys: traveling, playing guitar, silk-screening T-shirts with
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....
had a near-death experience at sea. "I had a boat sink on me once."
He shrugs. "So I went for aswim for awhile."
We enter the cabin, and I lie down in ashoebox of a bottom bunk,
still feeling nauseous. Badet steps into his rubber suit - bright
orange overalls that rise midway up the chest - seeming to
intuitively anticipate that the first pots will soon be unloaded.
He sits down at atiny galley table littered with heavy mugs, their
bottoms crusted with hot chocolate dregs, and flips through an
issue of the Smithsonian. After afew minutes, Pazar disengages the
throttle, turning off the soothing hum of the John Deere engine in the
hull. The silence stirs Tony Fultz, twenty-two, who has been sleeping
soundly for the two hours since we left port.
ABOVE_Exhausted, Fultz and Badet take a
brief break while Pazar pilots the boat to his
"secret spot" to drop off one last string before
heading home.
OPPOSITE PAGE_An orange glow emanates
from overhead lights, illuminating the boat
and surrounding waters. Weather permitting,
Delma Ann and her crew sail through the night
and into the next day.
~~I
had a
boat sink
on me once.
So I went
for a
swim for
a while.
jj
a homemade printing machine, and picking up new hobbies on a
whim. But one thing has become routine in Badet's life - he always
comes back to the same little coastal town to crab with Pazar.
Badet is a renegade among renegades. "I'm a minimalist," he says.
"That's the thing about fishermen - they're not very smart," he
comments, referring to the many who blow all their money early in
the season on big trucks and alcohol.
Badet started fishing as a"freak accident" in Alaska. He was living
in San Francisco and bought atwenty-dollar book entitled How to
Make a Lot of Money that directed him to travel to Seattle and
join an Alaskan fishing crew. After three months at sea working
eighteen-hour days fishing for black cod, he received the biggest
paycheck he'd ever seen. "I brought it to the bank and was like, 'Is
this ajoke?'" Badet says. When they cashed it, he succumbed to the
impulse common in other fishermen - he threw a party and bought
a motorcycle, riding it home to San Francisco.
With Dungeness crab meat selling for up to fifty dollars per
pound, the money is good - paychecks for crewmen in the first
two weeks average ten thousand dollars. Pazar cuts his crew 25
percent of the boat's revenue. But about 75 percent of the season's
Dungeness crop is caught in the first two months, so profits quickly
dwindle. Although Dungeness fishing season is long - running from
December 1 until August 14 - few fishermen find it profitable to fish
the "scratch," the meager harvest left after the first few months.
Like gold, the Dungeness is a potentially exhaustible resource
despite strict industry-imposed regulations that attempt to maintain
the crab's population. Furthermore, the West has a monopoly on
the crustacean; the Dungeness can only be found along atwentythree hundred-mile swath of coast from central California to the
Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the most dangerous North American
region for fishing.
Even after two decades in the profession, Badet claims he's never
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scruffy goatee sprouts from Fultz's chin and thick metal hoops
pierce two earlobes and one eyebrow. He is initially a little
reticent around me, probably because women rarely board crabbing
boats. He hops off the top bunk and suits up in orange rubber,
concealing the flame and skull tattoos adorning his lean arms. Fultz
and Badet slide on shiny, brown rubber boots and wrap themselves
in hooded jackets, readying themselves for the first pots of the day.
They slip on cotton gloves, then blue rubber ones, and take their
places on deck.
A
I ascend the ladder to the top house, and Pazar yells explanatory
notes as I watch the crewmen's maneuvers. Badet, the blockman,
dips a hooked ten-foot stick called a buoy stick into the ocean
and fishes out a rope attached to a buoy. He winds the rope
around the block, a hydraulic pulley on an adjustable metal arm.
As the contraption whirls, sputtering saltwater, it pulls up the first
crab pot. There is a one-way trap door, called atrigger, and two
escape rings the precise size to allow small, unharvestable crabs to
flee the pot.
Badet and Fultz hoist the pot onto the ledge of the boat and chuck
the usable crabs into the dump box, an open-topped wooden box
on four legs. They toss the females and small males - which are
illegal to harvest - back to sea and pitch the large males into the
fish hole, a 280-cubic-foot pit filled with circulating seawater for
storing live crabs. Fultz, the "baiter" (generally prefixed with an
obvious joke indicating his proficiency of skill), slaps avile handful
of chopped sardines, razor clams, and squid into the bait jars atop
the crab pots.
Even though they're working with the most repugnant materials
- fish guts, acrid base detergents, and all kinds of sea scum
dredged up by the pots - the men move together in a graceful pas
de deux, each of their quick gestures silently interpreted by the
other and reciprocated by an appropriate response.
Between strings, Badet shoots pictures of the shoreline with a
35mm camera. "Every day you see things that no one else sees," he
says. The Oregon shoreline is exquisite: misty coves with waterfalls
spouting from jagged cliffs, green, wooded mountains, and fogeclipsed bluffs. Then Fultz approaches me: "So, you're from Eugene?
There's some good reefer there, eh?"
Fultz grew up near Newport in Siletz, population 1,133, and has
never been more than a hundred miles from home. When he
graduated from high school, he went into logging. Shaken after
witnessing a gruesome accident involving his father's best friend, he
took a couple of weeks off and never went back. He then decided to
try his hand at another dangerous profession - crabbing.
Badet offers his couch for me to crash on. His place is meticulously
clean and uncluttered - avast contrast to the cramped, chaotic
cabin on the boat. He brews peppermint tea and I quickly pass out
to the sound of the ocean winds.
I awake early, the foggy sky outside aglow with awarm sun. Badet
emerges from his bedroom. He smiles at me and walks to a large
window facing west. There, a pair of binoculars sits near the window.
He raises them to his eyes and stares out to sea. •
But, for Fultz, greater dangers may lie on solid ground. In the last six
months, he has attended two funerals of friends who died in drunkdriving accidents and has blown up or totaled three automobiles
of his own. "I fuckin' like to party real hard, and I fuckin' hate being
tied down," he declares. Apicture of the most recent incendiary
vehicle - aglossy, raised red truck - is taped to the ceiling of his
bunk as a memento.
I head into the cabin to chug some water, dehydrated from the
salt and sun so ubiquitous on deck. Pazar descends the ladder. "I
guess I haven't explained the bathroom situation," he says. "We have
a bucket."
The men continue to work the strings until dark, repeating the
same graceful motions with precision and complete concentration.
Between pots, Fultz rips up razor clams with bare hands, saws
through partially frozen sardines, and slices up afour-foot
squid - its vivid red, green, and orange viscera oozing from its
rubbery body.
nthe muted watery plain, streaks of purple clouds obscure
the setting sun, suffusing their edges with afiery orange glow
- the same colors as the Dungeness.
O
Delma Ann covered about a hundred miles that day, zig-zagging
deeper out to sea, from Newport to Neskowin. We sail back to port
on an obsidian landscape - chipped black water heaving beneath
our feet. The men's boots dry on electric boot warmers, Fultz's with
"Fultzy" scrawled in black marker.
It is 1 A.M. when we reach harbor and unload the day's catch under
the mermaid at Hallmark. Badet descends into the fish hole and
crates up crabs, as Fultz hoists them onto Hallmark's platform. Fultz
shouts to Badet in a mock French accent, "Claude-eel Claude-eel"
Badet ignores him and continues to work earnestly with Pazar. "You
can see the bottom," Badet says disappointedly, pointing to the
bright aqua floor of the fish hole peeking through atangle of legs
and claws. Scratch season has already begun.
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AHOME
WITHOUT
BORDERS
In achanging land, aLatina immigrant keeps her heritage alive
story_Sara Wachter-Boettcher
photography_Lindsay Abbott
Editor's note: This story takes place in November 2004. For an
update, please visit influx.uoregon.eduj2005.
amilies spill through the door, rushing
to escape the icy fog that chokes
the air outside and turns the dusky
autumn evening into athick November night.
Young mothers herd ruddy-cheeked children through the heavy
doors and seat themselves in wooden pews, unwinding their scarves
and removing their coats. Some whisper to one another, saying
hello. Others stare ahead, eyes fixed upon the warmly lit altar. They
cross themselves reverently in Jesus' presence, droplets of holy
water still glistening on their foreheads.
Ahush falls over the crowd of thirty or so worshippers - not nearly
enough to fill the large, wood-paneled church - as Liliana Ortiz
stands at the edge of the altar, her round face partially obscured
by a music stand. Her voice is quiet, almost timid, as she begins to
speak, welcoming the crowd with asmile and an offer of song. She
flicks on atape player behind her, and the hollow sound of recorded
drums and horns fills the near-empty room.
"Creo en Jesus, creo en Jesus. £1 es mi amigo, £1 es mi alegria, £1
es mi amor," the congregation begins to sing. I believe in Jesus, I
believe in Jesus. He is my friend, He is my joy, He is my love.
Ortiz stops the tape as the song begins to fade, taking her seat
for the start of Mass, and Father Charles Zach begins to recite the
Lord's Prayer. "Padre nuestro, que estas en los cielos, santificado
sea tu nombre," he says, his voice tinged with a Latin accent from
years of teaching the dead language. No one seems to mind, though
- least of all Ortiz, who sits calmly, her face radiating joy.
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OPPOSITE PAGE_Liliana Ortiz works in her
church to unite her Latino community.
ere, at Saint Helen's Catholic Church, Ortiz leads a flock
of Latinos - first-generation immigrants still reeling from
flights across the border and former migrant workers who have
settled in the towns where they have harvested crops for years.
Every Saturday these families come here, to Junction City - one of
the many Oregonian farming and mill towns that have transformed
into bedroom communities - to attend Mass and receive
Communion in their native language.
H
she notices a new family from neighboring Monroe, a six hundredperson hamlet one-tenth the size of Junction City. She smiles at
them, making sure to say hello before the family bundles up to
face the suffocating fog outside.
LA FAMILIA
As Father Charles's assistant, twenty-eight-year-old Ortiz serves as
a liaison between the Latino community and the church, giving the
solace of Spanish services to those who feel isolated or homesick.
Perched near the altar, hymnbook in hand, she leads a community
pulled in two different directions in an attempt to find a middle road
between the assimilation of American ideals and the preservation of
Mexican customs.
uring the work week, Ortiz leads a different life. She wakes up
before dawn and works the six-to-six shift at Country Coach, a
recreational vehicle manufacturer, putting the finishing touches on
counter tops and cabinets for one hundred-thousand-dollar motor
homes. It's agood job - one she worked long and hard to get, and
after just a couple of months, her boss has already mentioned that
someday she'll be the one training people. After four years as a
supervisor at the Junction City Arby's, the job - with its higher wages
and four-day workweek - is astep up.
The first time Saint Helen's offered services in Spanish, in the
spring of 2003, four people came. The next week, another family
showed up. As time wore on, more and more Latinos attended
- often at Ortiz's direct invitation. Now, ayear and a half later,
Back at home at the end of atwelve-hour day, she starts her
household duties: cooking dinner for her husband, Martfn, and their
three children; making sure the kids do their homework; keeping the
compact house clean and tidy.
D
Ortiz and her husband bought the house, a cozy, unassuming place
in a quiet neighborhood, six years ago. Filled with plush sofas and
oak furniture, family photos and accent lamps, it looks like the
perfect home for ayoung middle-class family. Only the few Mexicanmade Catholic icons settled on curio shelves distinguish it from a
typical suburban home.
After dinner, Ortiz's husband settles himself on the couch with the
couple's eleven-year-old son, Martfn Jr., nestled at his side. Jylene,
who's five, horses around on the floor with Abraham, achubby-faced
eighteen-month-old who smiles and squeals as they play. The father
speaks to his children in Spanish, settling them down to watch
Shrek 2 on DVD.
Martfn Jr. responds in an English-Spanish hybrid, throwing in
American slang whenever he sees fit. "Sometimes I get confused
between English and Spanish," he says. "It's real hard for me."
But Ortiz won't take that for an answer. "I don't want my kids to
forget my language," she says. So when Martfn Jr. starts adding
English words to Spanish sentences, saying things like "Mami,
yo necesito clothes," Ortiz shakes her head. "I say, 'Tell me en
Espano/,'" she says, adding that holding onto his language is
essential for him to retain his Mexican heritage.
"Es diferente aquf," Ortiz says - it's different here. American
children leave their families as soon as they grow up. They stop
going to church. They stop calling home. They stop making friends
with their neighbors and taking care of their elders. They forget
where they're from.
She doesn't want that to happen with Martfn Jr., but she does want
him to take advantage of the opportunities she sees in Oregon. She
dreams that one day her eldest son will go to college and become
"If you speak Spanish,
you can help more people.
I crossed the border. I
work so hard - I work
so hard so you can go to
school.
jj
a doctor or a lawyer - something important, with lots of education,
where he can use his heritage to help other Latinos.
So far, Ortiz's dream seems to be coming true. Her son does well in
school; he brings home honor certificates and talks about college.
Ortiz knows this could change in afew years, when Martfn Jr. enters
high school, but she tries not to think about that. "I don't worry too
much because I know him," she says - she knows he won't show
up with a lackluster report card or a detention slip in hand. Instead,
Martfn Jr. comes home boasting that his teacher asked for help
translating words into Spanish.
ABOVE_Outside their Junction City house
sit (from left): Jylene, Martfn Sr., Abraham,
Liliana, and Martfn Jr.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Ortiz and afellow church
member converse over tamales at aSunday
church gathering.
This clearly makes her proud. After twelve years of working with noisy
machinery and sizzling oil vats, Ortiz's face lights up when thinking
about the doors that are open to her son. "If you speak Spanish, you
can help more people," she tells him. "I crossed the border. I work
so hard - I work so hard so you can go to schooL"
LA FRONTERA
na late night in 1992, after the desert sun had set and a
crisp, dry coldness had set in the Nogales air, Ortiz crossed /a
frontera, the Mexico-Arizona border. Not quite sixteen years old, she
had married Martfn some months before. While he waited for her
in Monroe, she traveled from her parents' home near Guadalajara,
in the state of Jalisco, to cross the Rfo Grande alone, sinking chest
deep into murky brown water that froze her small frame to the
core. For fifteen minutes, she waded through the cloudy, dirty river,
terrified of what - or who - might be waiting for her in the night.
O
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41
Isolated in a new land and unable to speak English, Ortiz found
herself terrified of interacting with strangers. Her first trip to the
grocery store, asimple errand to pick up aluminum foil, turned
disastrous when she couldn't read the packaging. She felt as if the
whole world was staring at her as she muddled her way through
the market; she felt unwelcome, strange, and out of place. It was
then that she went to work with her husband, finding seasonal jobs
harvesting Christmas trees in the fertile valley around Monroe.
"There's a big Mexican
population here nobody's serving them. "
When she first arrived in the tiny farming town, Ortiz remembers
just two or three immigrant families living there, all of them
from the same area of Jalisco as herself. Most of them were
seasonal laborers or temporary workers - like Ortiz, people who
had crossed the border for a better future - and many of them
struggled with English.
country. Inside, cheap displays piled with everything from masa
(corn flour used for tortillas) to Mexican shampoos and lotions line
the tiled floor. Arefrigerated case carries Coca-Cola and Jarritos, a
Mexican soda.
Rosa Munoz relaxes at the front of the store, her eighteen-month-old
daughter, Itzel, running around the shelves and racks by her side.
She opened La Poderosa in August 2004 with her husband, Rafael
Ayala, after seeing how large the Latino population in Monroe had
become. They don't live in Monroe - their home is in Corvallis, some
twenty miles to the north - but Munoz was interested in reaching
out to this somewhat isolated town.
"There's a big Mexican population here - nobody's serving them," she
says, pointing across the highway toward the residential part of town.
"Even though it's just alittle Mexican store, it's a political action."
In contrast to the hostile-feeling grocery store Ortiz encountered
twelve years before, La Poderosa aims to be awelcoming, safe place
for Latinos to get ataste of home. In addition to selling household
goods, Munoz also volunteers her services as a notary and translator
to those who need help with things such as immigration paperwork
- skills she learned at Oregon State University, where she earned a
bachelor's degree in health and human services in 2004.
Unlike Ortiz, Munoz was born aU.S. citizen. Her mother crossed
the border as a pregnant teen turned out of her parents' home and
eventually settled in Eastern Oregon when Munoz was seven. She
remembers her mother working long factory shifts back then, toiling
for hours to make ends meet. Her mother never had time to teach
her kids about tradition, Munoz says, and so it slipped away.
At seventeen, Munoz was a mother herself. By twenty, she had
two children. Now, at twenty-six, she is the mother of three, each
with a different father. "I had a problem as far as not really being
committed to one individual because in this society you're raised
to say, 'If we can't communicate, let's just split up,'" she says. But
when she met Ayala six years ago, shortly after her second child was
born, things changed.
"There have probably been, like, a million times that I wanted to
leave her dad," she says, nodding toward Itzel. But she hasn't. "When
I met him, I realized how important the family is."
Determined to learn the language of her new land, Ortiz began
taking lessons from awoman she worked with. Her English still isn't
perfect, but it has improved greatly in the months since she started
working at Country Coach. Once she gets warmed up, the sentences
fly out. This is not awoman who likes to stay silent.
Ortiz got pregnant during that first year, and about two years after
arriving, when Martin Jr. was a baby, the family moved to Junction
City to settle down. But the Monroe they left - a poor town, its
formerly picturesque buildings beginning to sag under the weight of
adeclining farming economy - is not the same as the Monroe of a
decade later, the place that agrowing Latino population calls home.
ABOVE_Ortiz kisses her youngest
son, Abraham.
She rose from the water on the other bank, touching American
soil for the first time. Her body shook with cold and fear as
she looked around for the coyote, the helper who would take
her away from the danger of the border. He wasn't there. With
nowhere else to go, Ortiz sat at the river's edge, shivering and
wet, and waited.
The coyote eventually showed up, taking her to her brother-in-law,
who brought her to Monroe. Although her husband had his work
visa before the couple got married, it took the United States two
years to process Ortiz's papers. In the meantime, she had to live
in the shadows.
LA COMUNIDAD
he drive from Junction City's car dealerships and
manufacturing facilities to downtown Monroe takes less than
ten minutes on U.S. 99, the winding north-south route now largely
abandoned for the interstate to the east. Nestled between lush
farmland and tree farms, a small pocket of businesses - a drivethrough coffee stand, a Dari-Mart - adorns a one-mile stretch of
the highway. Tucked into the edge of asmall strip mall at the north
end of town is La Poderosa, astore catering to this burgeoning
community. Meaning "the powerful" in Spanish, La Poderosa
sells Mexican foods, videos, and calling cards good for phoning the
T
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children, Ortiz gets a chance to talk with the priest about her plans
for the feast for the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12.
I
I
The celebration commemorates an apparition of Mary in front of an
indigenous man in 1531, shortly after the fall of the Aztec empire,
I
"People from Mexico
come here with a dream.
But they don't understand
that the price they're
going to pay is a big one."
'I
near present-day Mexico City. The legend holds that a heavenly
being appeared before the man, telling him that she was the Mother
of God and instructing him to build a church on the site. Each
December, Latin American Catholics celebrate her appearance with
early morning feasts, flowers, and aserenade to
the Virgin Mother.
ABOVE_latino and Anglo youth peer into a
duckling-filled font at aSaint Helen's First
Communion ceremony.
OPPOSITE PAGE_ Ortiz serves tamales while
volunteering at aSunday church gathering.
Unlike Munoz and the men she used to date, Ayala grew up
in Mexico, where family ties and marriage bonds are nearly
unbreakable. He crossed the border illegally to settle in Corvallis,
where many of his family members live. At one point, he was caught
crossing and was deported. Now, even though he and Munoz are
legally married, he's still undocumented. Because of the offense, the
United States will not grant him immigration rights unless he can
document himself living in Mexico for afull decade.
Although Ayala lives here without papers, the couple has built
a life here - a life where, like Ortiz's, keeping the Spanish
language alive is essential. When her eldest child was young,
Munoz spoke English at home. Even now, at nine years old, her
son sometimes refuses to speak Spanish. When he does speak
English, Munoz just looks at him with mock confusion and says
"No entiendo" - I don't understand.
She and Ayala only speak Spanish at home now, and the family is
even considering moving back to Mexico to immerse the kids in the
culture of their families. She worries that if they stay here, the same
things will happen to Itzel that happened to her: bad relationships
and misplaced priorities.
"People from Mexico come here with a dream," she says. "But they
don't understand that the price they're going to pay is a big one.
Family values begin to change." She purses her darkly lined lips,
rolling her eyes as she brushes wisps of hair away from her lashes.
She knows she's living proof of the high price of changing values
- proof that without daily struggle, her Mexican heritage could once
again disappear.
"It's a contradiction - we're Mexican and we're supposed to be kind
of American at the same time," she sighs. But Munoz still attempts
to bridge that gap, giving her children the tradition she lacked.
This struggle is exactly what Ortiz is trying to avoid for her children.
She doesn't want to see her kids forget her language, only to have
them realize decades later how much more they really lost. Instead,
she adheres to tradition - and encourages the Latino community to
do the same.
LA TRADICION
ack at Saint Helen's, Spanish Mass has ended and Father
Charles is preparing for the next morning's English services.
As the families put on their coats and scarves and collect their
B
tradition and assimilation - and she's facing the challenge, as
usual, with asmile. "I want to help the people," she explains
simply, before noticing two families still waiting by the door of the
church. She excuses herself from the preparations with Father
Charles and turns to help them, quickly ascertaining in aseries of
Spanish queries that there are two boys who need to be enrolled in
the church's First Communion classes. In the past year, the church
has performed sixteen such communions for Latino youth, and this
spring, Ortiz plans to be involved with at least five more, instructing
Spanish-speaking parents in their responsibilities and incorporating
Latino traditions into the ceremony.
While Ortiz informs the parents of what to expect, Fat~er Charles
begins to talk about the Spanish-speaking community. "Hispanics
feel like outsiders looking in," he says. He stops mid-sentence, and,
turning to Ortiz, asks, "Which is correct, Latino or Hispanic?"
"It doesn't matter. It's the same," she replies with a laugh - as if
semantics meant much to her. But Martin Jr. looks up, sticks out
his chest, and proclaims his preference: "I'm a Latino," he says with
a proud swagger. The look on Ortiz's face shows that it makes her
proud, too. •
Last year, the church celebrated the holiday
with asmall fiesta. But this year, December 12
falls on aSunday, and Ortiz is more excited than
ever. Her cheeks glow and her eyes shine when
she talks about her preparations for the event,
which is seldom celebrated in American Catholic
churches. At Father Charles's suggestion, the
church will invite the English-speak~ng members
to participate in the celebration, which will
include afeast, music, and aSunday morning
Mass held in Spanish only.
For Ortiz, this is the crux of her work: to get the
Latinos involved - to bring Mexican traditions alive
in anew place - without creating awall between
the two cultures. Her American Dream isn't just
wall-to-wall carpeting in asuburban home. Nor is
it just financial security and a better tomorrow for
her kids. It's all of those things - and everything
she took with her from Mexico. It's recognizing that
Mexican heritage and the American way don't have
to be mutually exclusive.
The celebration for the Virgin of Guadalupe is
Ortiz's hallmark achievement in the marriage
between the two cultures - a crossroads of
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45
ike any living thing, the river
changes. During the winter, one
may find it swollen and pushing
to escape its borders. In summer
months, it may dry up to a stream. It dances
to its own rhythm through the forests that line
its banks. But the secrets that lie beneath the
river's surface truly arouse its spirit.
The Little White Salmon River is breathtaking;
its icy blue waters roar over boulders and
falls. But the river is legendary for more than
its looks. Frigid temperatures, swift currents,
sudden drops, and hidden caves make this river
ajoy ride for some and a deathtrap for others.
The Little White, which flows into the Columbia
River Gorge about an hour east of Portland,
Oregon, is only for true Class Vkayakers.
Spirit Falls, the run's highlight, is a dangerous
thirty-three-foot plunge near the end of the
trip. In the last three years, at least five
paddlers have broken their backs from landing
too flat in the pool beneath the falls. Last
summer, a visitor from Norway smashed his
face on the rock wall, resulting in a crushed
jaw and the need for reconstru live facial
surgery. Despite these dang
e Lit~fe
White attracts world-ctass paddlers to its
winding, raging current.
B
efore attempting an especially difficult
run such as Spirit Falls, it is common for
kayakers to scout the drop for any potential
hazards and mentally fortify themselves for the
experience. Billy Jones, twenty-nine, says he
prepares himself by visualizing what he wants to
do. "I just close my eyes and imagine," he says.
Paul Heffernan, thirty-one, says he has no
particular ritual before running the falls. "I just
have to want to do it. I listen to whatever my
body and head are telling me." Heffernan also
says if it weren't for the "comfortable anxiety" he
experiences when kayaking, he probably wouldn't
do it. "I might just hike instead," he says.
RIGHT_Andrew Maser leaves Spirit's lip.
ABOVE_Jesse Bierman and friends carry their
gear to the river to put in.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Ben Rieff adjusts for the
landing halfway down Spirit Falls.
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PREVIOUS PAGE_Paul Heffernan dives off the
Little White's thirty-three-foot-high Spirit Falls.
ones says he loves kayaking primarily because
of the rivers. He believes there is a psychic
connection between the human body, which is
mostly made up of water, and the river. "How you
think affects how you kayak," says Jones. "Water is
receptive to subtle energies. It's the only medium
where you can get that kind of action, you dig?"
J
effernan loves everything about kayaking,
from the friends to the forest. "It's been
in my blood for awhile. I don't know how much
I need it for my personality, or if my personality
needs kayaking. I just love to do it," he says.
Heffernan began kayaking at age fifteen with
his father in the waters of the Appalachian
Mountains, near his hometown of Bristol, Virginia.
Last fall, his father died in a kayaking accident.
Yet he can't imagine not kayaking because the
river forms his only connection to his father,
he says.
H
Many kayakers seem to feel aspecial bond with
the Little White. "It's easy to get to, and it has
unparalleled action," Jones says. "It's so good
you could do it for years and not be bored." He
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says he believes that there is only one other river
in the country that compares to the Little White:
the Green River near Asheville, North Carolina.
"So many kayakers wish they had this kind of
quality in their backyards," says Jones. Heffernan
agrees. He says that although the Little White is
not his personal favorite, "it's the best bang for
your buck."
To safely navigate the Little White, kayakers must
take the time to learn its secrets. They must
understand the power of the river and its ability
to evolve. Most of all, kayakers must respect the
river, which holds their lives in its hands. •
RIGHT_Travis Winn treats acut with iodine
after he smacked his nose with his paddle
when he landed the falls too flat.
ABOVE_Back on land, Billy Jones reflects on
his earlier run.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Spirit Falls is the heart of the
Little White for thrill-seekers.
of Honey;
of Steel
Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan defies his debilitating
disease to treat the illness of others
story_Aleta Cadwallader
photography_Ben Anderson
ive them to old men who look like me. Don't give them to the
healthy, young guys," Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan said through a clear
Pakistani accent across the crowded Newmark Theatre lobby to the
conference director as she hurried to give away extra tickets to his
lecture. He smiled through athick black mustache tinseled with a
few gray hairs, and his shrinking frame hardly filled out his heavy winter coat. Hunched
over, he limped toward the theater doors, looking up through his giant cinnamoncolored eyes to direct his short steps.
Khan traveled two thousand miles from Cleveland to a Portland, Oregon, medical
convention to present clinical research on atreatment that can halt the progression of
and reverse deformities caused by afatal disease. But the treatment has come too late
for Khan. His disease has progressed so far that it would do little to improve his health.
lEFT_Having spent his youth in Pakistan,
Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan now practices
medicine in the United States, treating the
disease he knows so intimately.
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han has Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS, pronounced ang-kiLO-sing spon-dl-I-tis), an immobilizing disease that has
completely fused his spine and skull, causing him to stoop
drastically forward. Achronic inflammatory disease prevalent in
males, AS usually develops in the teenage or early adult years of
genetically predisposed people. Inflammation in the joints between
bones, such as the vertebrae, causes the ligaments and discs to
calcify and harden. AS has fused Khan's pelvis and rib cage to his
spine, up through each vertebra to his skull. His spine is locked
into one long bamboo-like rod so that he cannot turn his head or
nod - or even stand up on his own after kneeling down to pick up a
piece of paper from the floor.
K
BELOW_A condition informally known as
"bamboo spine" fuses the hips, spine, ribs,
and skull of some AS patients and limits the
distance Khan can walk.
OPPOSITE PAGE_Khan advises an AS patient
on how to prevent deformities like his own.
Khan knows that carrying this
disease means decreased
mobility for the rest of his life.
It also can and probably will
kill him one day. AS causes
many complications, including
abnormal and failing heart
valves. Like those of many
other AS patients, Khan's ribs
can no longer hinge open on
his spine. If he were to have
a heart attack, paramedics
would be unable to compress
his chest enough to resuscitate
him. Asimple fender-bender
could crack the brittle, hollow
straw that is his spine, and
the resulting serrated edges
could sever the spinal cord
inside, leaving him paralyzed.
Or it could stop his already
compromised heart.
The condition's complications
are nothing new to Khan. He
has suffered the pain and
problems of AS for almost fifty
of his sixty-one years.
BLOOD OF HONEY
into a Muslim Pakistan, and millions of refugees, left homeless
from the violence, migrated across the nation. At three years of age,
Khan fled with his family from India to Pakistan, carried across the
desert in the back of a moving van. During the next decade, the
Pakistani government established small clinics in rural areas of the
new country, but it inherited the only hospital in the border city of
Lahore, Pakistan, where Khan's family settled. The country that took
in Khan's family and provided him free education and medical care
battled its neighbor over the disputed Kashmir region during the first
decades of his life.
Neither his age nor his
illness would hold him
back. He never failed a
class and never took time
off for the pain.
At twelve, Khan started to notice pain and stiffness in his back but
thought little of it. The symptoms hardly inconvenienced him then
- they were just tiny obstacles in his everyday life. The pain limited
his flexibility and affected his skill at sports, but Khan found ways
to manage. Children all around him played cricket, running and
throwing the ball. Khan chose afielding position close to the wicket
that required him to run less. He soon learned that by practicing
honest umpiring, his peers would choose him to fill the stationary
position. Being brutally honest was already in his nature. "I could
never be a politician. I am as straight as an arrow, even though I
have a humped back," Khan says, chuckling.
As a child, Khan couldn't twist his back to chase and slip through
windows like the other boys. Instead, the twelve-year-old jumped
off three-story-high walls when others would not. In retrospect, his
bravery probably worsened the condition of his hips, Khan says.
As the young boy grew into adolescence, his symptoms worsened.
He finally admitted to the other boys that his back hurt most of the
time. To recompense his pride, he began to excel academically. His
teachers skipped him ahead twice.
frequent bed rests and hospitalizations. Because exercise is crucial
to keeping the joints mobile, Khan's pain only worsened.
Along year passed. The anti-TB medication did nothing to help the
restless child. His doctor ran out of solutions and never reached a
proper diagnosis.
By the time Khan was sixteen years old, his doctor sought anything
that might help relieve the pain. He intravenously injected Khan
with honey imported from West Germany; many Muslims believe, as
it is written in the Qur'an, that honey has aspecial ability to heal
ailments and cure diseases. Risk always accompanies the injection
of foreign substances into the blood stream, though. However
harmless it turned out to be, this treatment also proved worthless.
he purchased aVespa - a motorized scooter designed for girls in
skirts. During hospitalizations, he would climb out of his hospital
bed onto the Vespa, parked next to him, ride through the hospital
halls to class, and then return directly to the hospital bed. He never
failed a class and never took time off for the pain.
Khan was in his third year of medical school and attending rounds
with clinicians when his life changed dramatically. He met a
professor who examined him, listened to the student tell his medical
history, and diagnosed him with AS. The professor immediately
prescribed phenylbutazine, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that
dramatically affected his symptoms. The next day, Khan began to
ride his bicycle again, and within weeks he was even able to run.
BONES OF STEEL
"All the honey I got - that's why I'm so sweet," Khan teases.
hen the British granted
India's independence
in 1946, Calcutta erupted in
violence. Muslims and Hindus
demanded independent states.
Northern India partitioned
W
When the back pain sharpened and spread from his tailbone
upward, Khan's parents searched out the chief of orthopedics at the
local hospital, the highest-held medical opinion available to them.
Rheumatologists (arthritis specialists) were unheard of in Pakistan.
Similar symptoms shared by tuberculosis (TB) patients, including hip
and chest pain, led the doctor to prescribe anti-TB drugs and order
While still sixteen, Khan attended the King Edward Medical College
in Lahore as the youngest in his class. For the first two years he held
the highest placement in his class, despite the chronic pain. Neither
his age nor his illness would hold him back. When Khan lost the
ability to lift his leg high enough to ride his bike to medical school,
fter graduating medical school at the age of twenty-one, Khan
made plans to continue his education by studying a medical
specialty overseas. That year, though, Pakistan entered asecond war
with India over Kashmir. Khan felt spurred to serve the country that
had accepted his family as refugees eighteen years prior and had
provided him with afree medical education.
A
(.(.1 won't
mind
comIng
back to
this world
suffering
from this
disease
again. "
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Adiagnosis of AS would surely keep the former refugee from serving
in the Pakistan Army Medical Corps. But, during a routine physical
to check soldiers for common physical ailments such as an irregular
heartbeat or flat feet, the attending army physician forgot to check
the mobility of his spine. The doctor remembered as Khan was
fastening his last shirt button and asked him to undress again.
"Come on, you want me to do all that again?" Khan asked
discouragingly. The doctor dismissed the task, and Khan slipped into
the corps.
Khan served on the front line, stitching up army casualties. At
night, when the soldiers advanced the line through the desert,
Khan marched with them, opting not to ride in the air-conditioned
ambulance. The ambulance was for patients, he insisted. When
soldiers asked how they could get a ride, he sarcastically suggested
they break their own legs.
BElOW_Despite his limited mobility, Khan
often dedicates more than nine hours aday to
practicing medicine.
The summer after the new physician finished his service in 1967, he
arrived in London for his postgraduate medical studies. Cardiology
was his first choice, but he knew that with his limited ability to bend,
twist, and even walk smoothly, he would eventually be unable to lean
over to administer CPR to resuscitate his patients. Instead, he chose
orthopedics, knowing that one day he, too, would be under the knife
for atotal hip arthroplasty - asurgical procedure that reconstructs
joints using metal implants.
By the 1970s, Khan decided to move to the United States to
advance his academic career. Some of his classmates had already
established themselves there and would be able to offer him a
The inflammation has
nothing left to destroy,
and the drugs can't return
what AS has taken away.
position, but Khan landed in Cleveland on his own terms. There he
chose to study rheumatology - the subspecialty he was so intimately
familiar with as a patient - and began research on AS.
That decade, medical advancements in the human genome project
linked a genetic marker, HLA-B27, to AS. Researchers like Khan and
his team were busy discovering why some people were predisposed
to the illness and how that translated from DNA to disease.
Meanwhile, Khan endured atotal hip-joint replacement, giving him
bones of steel. His surgeons replaced his brittle bones with metal
prostheses. Today, years after this major surgery, the rheumatologist
shuffles with aside-step gait.
Soon after his hip surgery, his doctors found afracture in his cervical
spine, near the skull. They ordered him to wear a medical halo and
vest, aseven-pound metal ring that doctors screwed into his skull
to immobilize his neck so that the fracture could fuse and wouldn't
sever his spinal cord. Khan felt that the vest was too loose. He could
twist and lean his neck too far, and he worried that the fracture
would not heal. His doctor assured him that it was fine.
For five months, Khan slept sitting up. Despite his efforts, the
fracture did not fuse on its own and Khan underwent surgery
to manually fuse it. The determined doctor continued to see
his patients. One frustrated and pain-ridden patient waited six
months to see Khan for his own rheumatic disease. As the disabled
rheumatologist carefully pushed the door open and entered the
examination room, the patient told him that by seeing his own
doctor struggling in the medical halo, suddenly he didn't feel as
bad. Following his spinal surgery, Khan wore the halo for three more
months.
FACING THE ANSWER
h~ landscape ~f rheumato~ogy has i~proved Sig~ificantly. With
biotechnology In gene coding advanCing dramatically during
the late 80s and throughout the next decade, researchers found the
T
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receptors (structures in cell walls) for cytokines (small molecules
that communicate between cells) and later investigated their role
in the inflammatory response. In the last seven years, researchers
have discovered that by blocking one of these communicators,
the inflammatory response that causes the destruction and
calcification in the joints of rheumatic disease patients can slow
down or even stop. By pinpointing the mechanisms of rheumatic
disease on a microcellular level, scientists could finally design a
drug to block that receptor, halt disease progression, and reverse
deformities. In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration announced
the approval of a biologic drug for treatment in Ankylosing
Spondylitis - avirtual cure.
For Khan as a patient, this revelation comes too late. His
disease has advanced so far that his spine is already fused. The
inflammation has nothing left to destroy, and the drugs can't return
what AS has taken away.
Today, Khan works continuously so that his patients' immobility
will no longer mean death. Because the new AS drugs work against
inflammation and the immune system, they are risky and expensive.
Some patients have rare, immediate allergic reactions to the
medication. Some patients' hearts stop. The most common danger
of these life-altering drugs is severe, potentially fatal infections that
can't be staved off by aweakened immune system. Khan travels the
world teaching other rheumatologists the parameters in which to
administer these drugs so that the medications improve the lives of
AS patients, not threaten them.
For Khan's colleagues, his diligence is as impressive as his
accomplishments. "Not everyone can handle their illness and keep
going like he can. You have to be especially tough and especially
smart," says friend and rheumatologist Cody Wasner, M.D., who has
seen many patients become unemployed due to depression
and immobility.
As a patient and a doctor, Khan never expected to see acure in his
lifetime. Although the new biologic treatments are not atrue cure,
they are still overwhelmingly effective, Khan emphasizes.
"I won't mind coming back to this world suffering from this disease
again," he says.
Last year, Khan celebrated thirty years in the United States
and nearly athird of a century working with AS. At the medical
conference in Portland, Khan couldn't walk the ten city blocks from
the Multnomah Hotel to the Newmark Theatre. He took the shuttle.
But every day, Khan shuffles tiny steps toward eradicating his own
deforming disease, knowing that although the cure he pursued for
more than athird of a century has passed him by, it remains, thanks
in part to his efforts, within reach of many of his patients.•
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Explained
A
nkylosing Spondylitis
affects at least one in
two hundred adults, mostly
men. At least a half a million
people in the United States
are diagnosed with AS, but
because it is difficult to
identify, its prevalence is surely
greater than the numbers
reveal. The condition afflicts
more people than multiple
sclerosis, cystic fibrosis,
and lou Gherig's disease
combined. It can damage
joints, such as hips and
shoulders, as well as other
areas of the body including
the eyes, heart, and lungs.
Some patients' spines harden
into one brittle pole when the
ligaments and discs between
the vertebrae fuse together
(illustration). Most patients
endure symptoms for years
before receiving acorrect
diagnosis.
The exact cause of AS is
unknown but scientists have
discovered that genetics playa
major role. Ninety-five percent
of patients have a gene that
produces a"genetic marker"
called HLA-B27, but a person
doesn't have to harbor this
marker to have AS. In fact,
the majority of people with
HLA-B27 do not develop the
condition. Other genes and a
Healthy vertebra
Diseased vertebra
triggering environmental factor
(such as a bacterial infection)
are needed to activate AS in
susceptible people.
Once the disease is properly
diagnosed, a rheumatologist
can prescribe treatments
such as medication, exercise,
physical therapy, good posture
practices to help prevent
the forward-stooping effect,
and, in some cases, surgery
to heal fractures and replace
damaged joints. Treatment
by medication can cause
harmful side effects, such as
damage to the gastrointestinal
tract, so rheumatologists only
prescribe these medications
when the benefits (reduced
inflammation and increased
mobility) outweigh the risks.
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THE
Fantasy meets reality in the Society for Creative Anachronism
story_Ally Burguieres
photography_Sam Karp_Crispin Young
he Kingdom of An Tir stretches across thick
evergreen forests and boasts wild rivers that cut
through mountain gorges with reckless abandon.
In this land of fantasy and intrigue, chivalry is
prized and positions of power are seized with the
tip of asword (and likely aflair of lace). Here, feasts, games, and
great drunken parties reign supreme. Welcome to An Tir - otherwise
known as Oregon, Washington, the northern tip of Idaho, and parts
of Canada.
The year is Anno Societatis XXXIX. The thirty thousand members of
the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) spend their weekdays in
the present and much of their weekends and nights recreating the
lifestyle of pre-seventeenth-century Europe.
Outside of the society, members are students, waiters, historians,
doctors - jobs more fitting for this century than the positions most
members hold within the society. Although there are some who build
social worlds and maintain lucrative businesses entirely within the
SCA, there are also those who participate in societal activities only
once ayear. Even the most casual member can register an SCA
name, afictional history, and a coat of arms.
Rob Alba, athirty-three-year-old resident of Eugene, Oregon, embodies the alter ego of Captain Juan Ramirez and has participated in
SCA events for nearly adecade. In his own history, Alba was not very
social. But now, he considers bringing people together his greatest
talent. His smile broadens as he gazes across his living room,
packed with fellow society members. Among the crowd are afew
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OPPOSITE PAGE_Beneath aheavy coat of
armor, Sir Ambrose engages in heavy-fighting.
Armor is often built by hand, and the most
meticulously crafted pieces can take more
than forty hours to construct.
strays, the unsuspecting friends of afriend who have no idea that
they're surrounded by people with lavish pseudonyms and sharp
fencing skills. Nor do they know the humble home they have crashed
doubles as a merchant ship named "The Devil's Whore."
THE EARLY YEARS
Iba's pre-society life in the Los Angeles suburbs was one of
quiet desperation. "I had nowhere I was going in my life,
nothing that was going on," he says. The organization has been
his vehicle of escape from loneliness and awkwardness. "When I
created that character [Captain Ramirez], I gave him astory that
would lead to the existence of all the traits I felt were lacking in my
life," Alba says. "He would be charming, gregarious, clever, dashing,
dependable, trusting - and social."
Two-and-a-half years since the creation of Captain Ramirez, Alba
says he can now claim those traits as his own. The loud and heavily
attended parties he often throws in his modest two-bedroom house
support this declaration. The dependable members of his "crew,"
the core group of friends that participates with Alba in official
events, also attend his informal fetes. Alba maintains that his
main goal, within the SCA and as an informal host, is to help others
find the confidence and social contentment he struggled so long
to obtain.
Alba recalls having a miserable time at the first events he attended.
Later, when he discovered that he could create an alter ego within
the society, Alba began to see the benefits of the SCA. Eventually,
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When the
mast is up,
"there isn't
a single
person
aboard who
doesn't
stop, look
up at the
rigging, and
say, '~VT
wow.f
Look what
I belong
t o. '"
his newfound congeniality allowed him to give back to the society by
helping those who also needed a shepherd in the social sphere.
Luke Langstraat is one crew member who appreciates Alba's efforts.
After the workday, he transforms from a Federal Credit Union teller in
his mid-twenties (with a degree in exercise and movement science)
to Andrew Crowe, an Englishman aboard a sixteenth-century Dutch
galleon with the manual dexterity necessary to tie a mean knot (an
essential talent if the ship is to be seaworthy). "Luke used to be
so quiet," says Kori Beyer, another crew member who shares Alba's
goals of bringing out the extrovert in everyone.
"We're not very good at letting people stay in their shell," says Alba.
He states his goals are to "bring people in and not have them feel
like I did those first three or so years." To build community, official
SCA events usually involve camping, feasting, and drinking - all
done with a pre-seventeenth-century panache. For Alba's crew,
they also involve raising afifty-foot wooden mast on the crew's
campsite. When the mast is up, "there isn't a single person aboard
who doesn't stop, look up at the rigging, and say, 'Wow! Look what I
belong to,'" Alba says.
THE MIDDLE AGES
eau Gardiepy was recently elected for athree-year term as
Baron of Adiantum, a province that includes Eugene and the
surrounding area. The thirty-three-year-old spent fifteen years as
a bodyguard but is now afull-time student training to becoming a
physical therapist. Akind, courteous man who speaks with confidence, Gardiepy takes his job as baron seriously. "Here in Adiantum,
B
we're a working barony," he says, his leather jacket wrapped around
his thick frame. "For the people, by the people. My job is to get
behind the people, to encourage them."
After becoming involved in the SCA when afriend held awedding at
an SCA event about six years ago, Gardiepy gradually came to see
the society as an organization that offers unlimited enrichment and
enjoyment for a diverse group of people. "There is literally anything
to catch your fancy," Gardiepy says, noting that people who join
the group can explore skills and develop talents such as carpentry,
metalwork, alchemy, nobility, and myriad other trades and positions
of authority.
Viscountess Magistra Marian Staarveld, who in the "real world"
answers to the name Marian Harris, has served as baroness in the
past and recognizes the challenges Gardiepy faces. The king owns
the land, but the baron and baroness manage it and serve as a
resource for the people. "It's the job of the baron and baroness to
make sure that the populace is happy, well-fed, productive, and has
someone they can go to when they have problems within the SCA,"
Harris says. Her boyfriend, Sir Ambrose, who once served alongside
her as the baron, adds that the perks, while strong within the SCA,
rarely extend beyond its borders. "My comparison is that it's like being president of the local Moose lodge," he says. "You're a big man
in the Moose lodge and your own town, and you get a lot of respect,
or at least minimal respect, from Meese [sic] the world over - but
it doesn't matter to anybody else. [In you get stopped by the police,
they're not going to care that you're Baron of Adiantum."
Although Gardiepy finds the task fulfilling, he concedes it's not
always awalk in the park. "Sometimes the
coronet can be very heavy," he says with a slightly
weathered smile. The pressures are easier to bear
than those of his previous job, however, where he
had been stabbed and shot at.
THELATER YEARS
ir Ambrose peeks with stony brown eyes
from beneath long silver eyebrows. His slight
shoulders and small stature are hidden beneath a
bulky coat of armor. With a pipe or a pointed hat,
he could be Gandalf or Merlin. Tonight, with his
metal helmet equivalent in weight to a mediumsized dog, he is a heavy-fighter.
S
RIGHT_Two society members cross swords
beneath abridge in Eugene. The winner is
decided when afighter concedes that ablow
landed by an opponent was of sufficient force
to have caused death.
Wednesday nights, under a concrete bridge in
Eugene, silhouettes brandish swords and sticks
in intricate fights that centuries ago might have
decided the fates of countries. Within the SCA,
fencing tournaments determine positions of power in the society's
eighteen kingdoms. But unofficial meetings such as these are merely
chances for fencers and fighters to flaunt their skills and engage
in sport.
While the fencing is relatively tame (an honor-based sport more
focused on flair than brute strength), heavy-fighting, the darker,
more dangerous brother of fencing, evokes combat styles from the
Middle Ages. Langstraat describes heavy-fighting as "guys in heavy
armor beating the crap out of each other with pieces of wood and
stuff."
Ambrose has nearly twenty-four years of fighting under his belt
(which is white, incidentally - to signify his stature as a knight). He
sparkles with an energy that could be a result of the intense physical
conditioning demanded of him as afighter. But his glow may also
be the result of something much simpler - heavy-fighting makes
him happy.
Late in 1982, Ambrose (also known as Karl Kokensparger) often
passed the heavy-fighters under the Eugene bridge. One day, while
walking to a meeting (he won't say where - "That's in the past"), he
decided to change his life. "I just thought to myself, 'They look like
they're having more fun than I am!'"
Although entertaining, heavy-fighting poses significant risks. "I stick
with fencing," says the younger but more reserved Langstraat,
"because heavy-fighting leads to broken bones." He pauses, then
adds, "And we're prettier," referring to the lacey garb of fencers.
"We stay true to the way it was [in the Middle Ages] ," says Gardiepy
of heavy-fighting, "right down to
the helmets made of metaL" The
helmets can weigh from fifteen
to twenty pounds, and although
they're worn in addition to
other armor, the risk of injury
is still high. After one intense
fight, Gardiepy needed shoulder
reconstruction. "I was fighting
two other guys, and, basically,
he took a cheap shot," Gardiepy
says of the opponent who broke
his shoulder. "He came from the
blind spot. The chivalrous thing
to do would have been to announce himself."This cheap shot
resulted in a slew of surgeries.
'There've been people who have
had their necks broken, knees
blown out, backs severely injured - it's a dangerous sport."
Ambrose explains through his wispy storm cloud of a beard that
heavy-fighting schools used to be prevalent in big cities like London,
until the crown started fearing for its head. That civilians would have
the skills to defeat a king in combat was understandably worrisome to any monarch, so schools were shut down and fighting was
forbidden. Perhaps another secret to Ambrose's mischievous smirk is
the knowledge that he's defying a royal decree, no matter how many
centuries the order has been moot. Without further ado, he dons his
helmet, grabs his sword, and
prepares to fight.
BELOW_ Society member Amy Carpenter
prepares dessert while adhering to
centuries-old cooking methods - and
plastic wrap.
ABOVE_Dancing concludes aday dedicated
to learning the roles and traditions of
heralds in pre-seventeenth-century societies.
sthe you nger crowd
parties in historical garb
and the unconventional athlete
sharpens his sword skills, a
key element of the SCA is
illuminated: the organization
appeals to all types of people.
"It's a whole little world," says
Langstraat. And, although this
fantastical world seems to
have little in common with the
modern world occupied by
most, the social need remains
the same: people seek happiness, be it by mastering a
sport, finding a core group
of friends, or sailing into the
sunset on a Dutch galleon.•
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61
"The more visitors that come to a site,
generall the less looting occurs - but
there is greater impact on the cave's
ecosystem. "
ew still clings to grass as Marcos Cucul, athirty-sevenyear-old Qeqchi Mayan guide from Belize, gets out of
his weathered Land Cruiser. With aworn backpack
slung over his shoulder, he holds a massive flashlight
in his left hand and the smoking remnant of acigarette in his right.
The melodies of dozens of bird species float through the air as the
stocky man makes his way to the park's visitor center. Vibrant red
hibiscus flowers offset the lush green of the jungle and the crisp
blue of the Belizean sky. The day is already warm as Cucul's heavy
trekking boots stomp up the cracked wooden steps of the Saint
Herman's Blue Hole National Park Visitor Center in the Cayo District
of Belize. Cucul is one of many Belizeans who work to protect parks
such as the Blue Hole.
D
The 575-acre preserve harbors a range of species surprisingly
diverse for the park's petite size. Orchids, bananas, and mahoganies
thrive in the volcanic landscape that surrounds the park's
namesake, the Blue Hole, awater-filled limestone sinkhole. Species
as furtive as the jaguar and as unassuming as the opossum find
refuge near the sapphire waters.
Belize, the only country in Central America with English as its official
language, attracted 220,500 foreign visitors in 2003. It's roughly
the size of Massachusetts and has a population less than half the
size of Boston. With 48 percent of the country's territory dedicated
to conservation, the government has preserved nearly three times as
much wilderness as eco-conscious Costa Rica has. The combination
of Belize's blossoming tourism industry, asmall population, and
pristine tropical environments enables the country to carry out
progressive policies. But, as conservationists such as Cucul have
come to understand, preserving land in developing nations is atask
riddled with challenges.
Cucul's love for the diverse Belizean landscape began when he was
achild and later grew during his three-year stint as ajungle survival
guide for the British Army. Today, he is a member of the Belize Cave
and Wilderness Rescue Team, acertified first responder, and a
volunteer firefighter.
One of Cucul's favorite trips is through Mountain Cow Cave, one of
several geological and cultural masterpiece of the Blue Hole. He
62
estimates that fewer than two hundred people visit
the cave each year, which is part of the reason it retains a regional
reputation as one of the most unspoiled caves in the area.
Roos Leemhuis and Vincent de Gouw, a Dutch couple traveling by
bicycle through Central America, hired Cucul to guide them through
the cave. To reach the entrance, the group spends an arduous fortyfive minutes climbing atrail that the jungle constantly threatens
to reclaim.
he discusses the faults of Belize's conservation policies.
"They don't replant the broadleaf forest they log with broadleaf
forest," he says, unconsciously slapping a mosquito from his arm.
Faster-growing pine trees, which are native in parts of Belize,
generally replace the logged jungle, says Cucul. The sight of diverse
jungle adjacent to groves of pine trees is not only counterintuitive
and unsettling, but the replanting also leaves the jungle more
homogeneous. If left unchecked, these intrusive species can
overwhelm native plants.
On the hike, Cucul pauses and points to a patch of small, spindly
ferns clumped together on the limestone hillside. The fronds blend
in with the greens and browns of the thick jungle undergrowth, but
Cucul effortlessly identifies them as Maidenhair Ferns. When Cucul
points at them, Leemhuis recognizes the plants immediately. "We
have those in Holland," she says.
, welcome to Xilbalba," Cucul says, as the trail plateaus at
the entrance of Mountain Cow. The Mayan word means "a
place of fright" and refers to all entrances to the underworld, such
as acave.
The plant, which is exclusive to Belize but can grow almost anywhere
with moist soil, has become a popular houseplant in Europe and
the United States. Leemhuis's seemingly benign recognition of the
fern exemplifies achallenge faced by Belizean conservationists:
thieves routinely remove valuable rainforest vegetation and sell it to
nurseries. Once there, either the plant or its seedlings are shipped
to collectors abroad. Maidenhair Ferns sell for as little as two
dollars; rare Belizean orchids can sell for hundreds.
After ashort break, Cuculleads ascramble down aseries of
limestone boulders. As he descends into the chamber, the stale air
muffles sound like athick layer of snow. White limestone formations
that could adorn the walls of agrand cathedral glow softly in
the daylight, which still illuminates the chamber. At what
appears to be a dead end, Cucul stops, flicks
on his headlamp, and removes climbing gear from
his backpack.
But money is not the only reason harvesters illegally enter the
park. Many of the unsanctioned trails cut by plant poachers pass
by groves of pacaya trees and cohune palms. Locals harvest the
pacaya's tender flowers for traditional meals and use the palm's
small, acorn-like nuts to make cooking oil.
One by one, each hiker grabs the rope and descends
into the cave. Cucul, Leemhuis, and de Gouw
begin down a narrow passage, carefully.
lowering their heads to dodge the glittering
stalactites that hang from the ceiling.
"They don't harvest sustainedly [sic]," Cucul said. Poachers typically
remove all of the target species in a particular area, and it may take
years for the plants to return to their original numbers.
Soon, Cucul pauses near acalcified human
skull that most likely dates back to the Late
to Terminal Classic period of the Mayan
Empire - approximately 1,200 years ago. ,
It is the only known skull in the park, and its
presence is an anomaly.
After pausing to look at the ferns, the group returns to the hike. The
thin jungle path begins to climb steeply and soon the screeches
of Aztec parakeets mix with the tired tourists' heavy breathing. The
trail passes the buttressed roots of ceiba trees, over established
highways blazed by leafcutter ants, and under the brilliance of the
quamwood tree's yellow flowers. As Cucul plods up the steep path,
Allan Moore, the director of the Tourism and
Development Project for Belize's National
Institute of Culture and History, estimates
\1 \1\\ ~C\\Qn,
arbors I
.,.
~rn)\)\)~\\~"'~l(e\ta1~~~~~~tilgy~51 nd In the AI~~1 Mc.
dtf rtbDWf
National Monument in southwest Oregon has a budget more than
fifteen times that). The Blue Hole's budget finances everything from
the sawdust used in the composting toilets to the bimonthly, armed
night patrols that scour the park for illegal intruders. "Armed guards
patrol the park's interior and boundaries, but it is difficult to find a
guard willing to shoot or be shot at by poachers," Escalante says.
Despite the presence of special law enforcement officers armed with
M-16s, an arrest has yet to be made. The depleted populations of
pacaya shoots exemplify the continuing violations of park laws. To
combat this problem, the Belize Audubon Society now employs a
different tactic: education.
"We hope that by working closer with local communities we can
convey the importance of preserving the sensitive ecosystems inside
the park," Escalante says. To demonstrate their commitment, on
April 22, Earth Day, the park staff offered awork exchange to local
school children. The staff provided food, free admittance into the
park, and instruction on the importance of preserving biodiversity
while the students helped remove litter within the park.
-;
~~ If
we act as responsible stewards to the
land, then this beauty can be preserved
for generations to come. If not, it could
be gone tomorrow. "
that 10 percent of the artifacts in the area have been looted. Those
that remain either lack financial value or are undiscovered, he says.
"It's a double-edged sword," Moore says. "The more visitors that
come to asite, generally, the less looting occurs - but there
is greater impact on the cave's ecosystem. That's why proper
management is so important."
The Belize Audubon Society, the non-governmental organization
that manages the park, employs only five full-time wardens to limit
the incidences of looting, to control the impact of tourism on the
environment, and to handle the day-to-day needs of the park.
Alex Escalante, the park director of the Blue Hole, says that the park
needs more wardens but understands the unlikelihood of actually
getting more staff. The annual budget for the entire preserve is
only seventy-five hundred dollars (the similarly sized Oregon Caves
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The park employees are making progress in changing the mindsets
of the youth, but the children do not make decisions about
the environment. When the next generation comes into power,
conservationists will finally see the substantial changes they have
effected in the youth, Escalante says.
After nearly an hour of plodding through the darkness of the cave,
the hikers reach the geological highlight of the cave: Wonderland.
The rock formations inside Wonderland look more like icicles than
stone. They grow in every direction. The sight is dauntingly beautiful,
and it feels as if the jagged jaws of the cave are closing. Water
droplets sporadically fall from the stalactites into puddles of water.
The sound, one of the park's many symphonies, echoes off the walls
of the confined space.
On the return hike, Cucul stops at the base of agive-and-take tree.
Dangerous spines line the tree, and a medicinal sap flows just
beneath the treacherous bark. Instead of visiting a modern hospital
for everyday injuries, many indigenous people seek out the pink sap
to stem bleeding and heal wounds. This reliance upon the natural
world is asymbol of a larger ecological ethos held by the Belizean
people. Just as seekers of the sap must fight through an armada
of barbs to acquire their remedy, Belizean conservationists must
struggle through modern-day challenges to protect the country's
ecological treasures.
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more twists to every story.
"If we act as responsible stewards to the land, then this beauty
can be preserved for generations to come - if not, it could be gone
tomorrow," Cucul says. •
influx.uoregon.eduj2005