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Bounce: An occasional rant by a mixed bag of local Duck nuts Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes News: News: Commentary: Architecture: INTERFAITH GATHERINGS One key to achieving world peace is through learning about and respecting all cultures, including religions, which is what the Two Rivers Interfaith Ministries (TRIM) has tried to accomplish since its first meeting on Oct. 11, 2001. Since then, about 300 people regularly attend monthly gatherings to honor many faiths through a shared bond of unity and respect.
Sunday, on the fourth anniversary of 9/11, about 550 people gathered at the First Christian Church for an interfaith service. And Friday morning, Sept. 9, the Lane Institute of Faith and Education and TRIM sponsored a breakfast catered by Café Soriah at the First United Methodist Church. Representatives from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu religions offered blessings in different tongues and chanted to a crowd of about 70 Lane County community members and elected officials. Mayor Kitty Piercy participated in both the Friday and Sunday gatherings. The overall sentiment Friday morning was rooted in a desire to mend the world's affliction. Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield of P'nai Or, a Jewish renewal congregation of Portland, played an acoustic guitar and led the singing of "Salaam Aleikum." Later, he voiced concerns for religions of the world. "We need to go back into our scripture and determine anything that might have been misinterpreted. The scripture is where the fuel is," he said. "We must hear each others' prayers. We must sing each others' songs." Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque Association in Portland, said people are already finding ways to bridge the gap between religious beliefs. "We don't have to build bridges of interfaith," he said, "They're already here. All we have to do is walk." — Julia Carr
VANDERFORD REMEMBERED
Community artist, husband, father and friend Anthony Vanderford died of liver cancer Aug. 29 at the age of 34. A memorial celebration of his life is planned for 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 18, at Armitage Park in Coburg. Vanderford has given countless hours and boundless energy to local arts nonprofits such as Lane Arts Council, Saturday Market, Circle of Hands, and the Oregon Country Fair. In 1999, Vanderford founded Survival Arts for Empowerment (SAFE), a project that provided art opportunities, skills, and supplies to at-risk youth at the Downtown Eugene Mall. Survivors include his wife, Audrey, and son Isaiah; his parents of Otis, La.; and three siblings. Memorial donations may be made to Lane Arts Council's Youth Arts Program, 99 W. 10th Ave., No. 100, Eugene 97401.
OREGON POOR GET SHORTED Total spending in Oregon on welfare reform programs, such as child care subsidies, employment services, cash assistance and emergency assistance, has collapsed since welfare reform began in the mid-1990s, according to a report released this week by the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP). Because funding for these programs has not remained at 1993-95 levels, Oregon's low-income families have lost a total of $861 million in support over the last decade. "As Oregon families left the cash assistance caseload following welfare reform, Oregon could have devoted the savings to help low-wage workers build their skills and achieve true self-sufficiency," says Michael Leachman, policy analyst with the OCPP. "Instead, Oregon has spent a large chunk of the savings filling other budget holes." The report documents that nearly a quarter of welfare reform-related spending in Oregon is going to pay for programs related to child protective services, not to promote self-sufficiency through traditional welfare services. Some of the savings from cutting self-sufficiency programs has been spent on K-12 education and the Oregon Health Plan. "Facing a state budget under pressure from increasing costs and inadequate revenue, Oregon has taken advantage of the increased flexibility under welfare reform to siphon money away from self-sufficiency programs to fill budget gaps in other programs," Leachman says. "When policy makers talk about welfare reform's 'increased flexibility,' they really mean 'more shell games.' "Rather than taking money from poor people to help poor people, Oregon should raise more revenue from the corporations and rich people who have seen their taxes decline," he says.
BURLEY QUITS PARTY POST Ron Burley, PR and communications chair of the Democratic Party of Lane County (DPLC) announced this week that he's resigning his post in protest of gubernatorial candidate Pete Sorenson being denied podium time at the upcoming Oregon Summit of Democratic leaders. Burley says he's not decided who to back for governor in 2006, but, "This time around, state and local party officials are attempting to shut out diverse opinions by limiting speaking opportunities to incumbent statewide office holders only. Gov. Kulongoski will get to speak, but his opponents will be silenced. This is not the open and progressive Democratic Party we have been promised."
CUNNINGHAM PLANS TO FILE Rich Cunningham of Eugene says he's planning to file later this week for the Democratic primary race for House District 14. The Republican incumbent is Debi Farr, who outspent her Democratic rival Bev Ficek 2-1 in the 2004 elections. "I believe that Debi Farr's terrible record on supporting public education will be a primary issue in my campaign," says Cunningham.
COURSES IN GREEN LIVING Politicians make policy, but people make change. That's the message from the Northwest Earth Institute (NWEI), a Portland-based nonprofit that offers courses on sustainability in communities across the nation, including Eugene. The local chapter started out small and sporadic, but now it's picking up steam. Last spring, about 150 people participated in 15 discussion groups around Eugene, each exploring one of six themes: Voluntary Simplicity, Healthy Children, Choices for Sustainable Living, Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism, or Globalization and its Critics. This fall, coordinators anticipate 15 more discussion groups. The groups meet at places where people naturally gather around Eugene — public and private workplaces, centers of faith and neighborhood meeting centers. Each group consists of about 10 people and meets about eight times over six months, setting its own schedule. The courses are self-facilitated, like a book circle. Each participant leads one meeting, using an anthology of course readings as a jump-off point for discussions. Participation is free, except for printing costs for the anthology (about $15). Local volunteer coordinator Per Kielland-Lund, a UO architecture student, says that the over-arching goal of the courses is to help Eugene become a more sustainable community. "The courses bring people together around issues that are important to them and allow them to connect on a deeper level," he says. "And they can help to transform workplaces, churches and neighborhoods from the inside out." Jeanne and Dick Roy, a Portland couple, founded NWEI in 1993 with the mission "to motivate individuals to examine and transform their personal values and habits, to accept responsibility for the earth and to act on that commitment." The nonprofit's six courses are the main vehicle for achieving that mission. To date, about 65,000 people have participated in courses in all 50 states. "Through these programs is how lasting change is going to happen," says NWEI spokeswoman Joan Rutkowski. "Politics follow where the public's at, and this is a grassroots program that really can change a culture. People take these courses, and the effects ripple out into their communities." To get involved in a local discussion group, contact Per Kielland-Lund at putali@efn.org or 349-0499. For more information, visit www.nwei.org — Kera Abraham
BISON SLAUGHTER The Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) is coming to Eugene Thursday, Sept. 15 to garner support for the Yellowstone Buffalo Preservation Act, a bill that would make wild bison a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The BFC is a non-profit organization committed to saving the last remaining genetically pure wild bison herd in the U.S. According to the BFC, bison slaughter is condoned and performed by branches of the Montana government in and around Yellowstone National Park because ranchers are concerned about transmission of brucellosis to their livestock. However, there is no confirmed evidence that brucellosis, a disease that infects both livestock and humans with flu-like symptoms, can be transmitted from bison to livestock in a natural setting. Ranchers are concerned because Yellowstone bison were exposed to the disease by commingling with domestic cattle, but the BFC says that the bison have not been affected by the exposure to brucellosis and seemed to have developed immunity to the disease — unlike elk and other native animals, which have been known to transmit brucellosis to livestock but have not been similarly massacred. A recent proposal by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks would allow at least 25 permits for hunters to shoot buffalo outside the borders of Yellowstone. But unlike game animals like deer and elk, buffalo are not afraid of humans and will not give fair chase, which may be why more than 4,000 bison have been slaughtered since 1985. For more information, attend the BFC road show on Sept. 15 at Tsunami Books from 7 to 9:30 pm, or visit www.buffalofieldcampaign.org — Sara Brickner
It's the wrong dome, but at least Darleen and Raphael Simon survived to watch their football team play this week. Rather than from their usual seats at the Louisiana Superdome (21 and 22 of row 17, section 633), the Simons were watching the New Orleans Saints from folding chairs pulled up around a television in the Houston Astrodome, the mass shelter that has been their home for the last two weeks since being evacuated from their flooded city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the hall where they've been standing in lines all week to register for food stamps, child support services and FEMA assistance, about 20 evacuees gathered to watch the team that is their city's one currently active symbol. With but seconds to go, the game with the Carolina Panthers is tied, the Saints having hung in there against a superior team, inspired by the fate of their fans. Their kicker lines up for what could be the winning field goal. "Hollywood!" calls out one evacuee, jubilant for the unlikely scenario of the Saints winning one for their fallen city. "Katrina on the line!" calls out another. "They'll miss it," insists Raphael, 54, though he is dressed in a Saints T-shirt. "They always find a way to blow it." His pessimism isn't surprising. The Saints have always been terrible — since their inception in 1976, the "Aint's" own the worst record in the league, a fitting symbol for a city whose corrupt officials many evacuees feel left them to die in the face of one of history's worst storms. Darleen, 52, is confident, however. She is buoyed by the sort of optimism that leads her to describe how beautiful the stars were the night after the storm, a night she and her husband spent floating on a queen-sized inflatable mattress, clinging to the ceiling of their carport in the dark, powerless city. Although terrified, they were relieved not to be trapped inside their submerged house. "I hear they're gonna have to tear the Superdome down," says Darleen, 52, referring to the city's most recognizable building. Darleen herself attended the very first Saints game held there on Sept. 28, 1975, fittingly, a blowout loss. "They'll have to," says Milton Martin, sitting nearby. Martin, 41, spent three days in the lawless Superdome after the storm in its role as the city's primary storm shelter. He describes the holes torn in the roof, the 100-degree heat, rapes and the smell of feces from backed up toilets. "People were throwing up, just from the smell," he says. "The city won't be the same when we get back." Nonetheless, Darleen says she plans to return to New Orleans as soon as they are allowed back in. She says she can't imagine living anywhere else. Martin agrees. Raphael, however, is intent on the action on screen. "They'll find a way to lay down," he yells, baiting the crowd. For once, he's wrong, however, as the New Orleans kicker sends the ball between the goalposts as time expires, earning the Saints an inspired win. The evacuees cheer, leaping to their feet, congratulating each other. But Rafael doesn't mind being wrong. After all, if even the Saints can win one, perhaps there's hope for New Orleans after all. — Frederick Reimers
Dirty
Lessons We just love it when readers put us in check. A recent cover story ("Rethinking Lunch," 9/1) looked at a growing movement to bring local, organic foods into public school cafeterias. The most shining example is in Berkeley, Calif., where the district is pairing school gardens with nutrition education and a farm-to-school lunch program to encourage healthier eating. In Eugene, school lunches are less inspiring, but the district does have a network of school gardens that only got passing mention in the article. Several readers contacted EW to encourage us to write more about them.
Those tips led me to Eastside Elementary School in northeast Eugene, where I met with Sharon Blick in the school's colorful, fruiting garden. Blick, whose daughter is a fourth-grader at Eastside, is the executive director of the School Garden Project of Lane County (SGP), a 5-year-old nonprofit that aims to get kids dirty in nature's classroom. The project runs on a shoestring, charging participating schools minimal fees to design organic gardens and give kids hands-on lessons in growing. So far, 16 local schools in three districts have signed on to work with the SGP, and 15 more have installed gardens on their own. The efforts have paid off at Eastside. The school's 45 by 55 ft. garden plot is bright with edible plants, including wheat, pumpkins, tomatoes, onions, raspberries, sunchokes and corn. Sunflowers tower over the deer fence, and a newly-built arbor awaits a mess of grape vines. Students plant most crops in the spring and harvest them in the fall and winter. Parent volunteers weed and water in the summer. Digging in the dirt is fun, but the richest reward is in the tasting. Last year, kids in Eastside's gardening class made pumpkin muffins, strawberry-rhubarb crisp and even sautéed parsnips from their harvest. "And they loved it!" Blick says. "This year we'll grow even more parsnips." Parsnips? I didn't know kids could like parsnips. But gardening changes a child, gives her a new appreciation for the slow miracle of agriculture, makes her want to try the foods she nurtured for several patient months. "We find that kids are more likely to try new fruits and vegetables that they helped to grow, harvest, and prepare," Blick says. The Eastside garden produced so much food last year that SGP donated 105 pounds of produce to FOOD for Lane County, even after kids proudly took home morsels from their harvest. In addition to her work with the school gardens, Blick, a former biology teacher with ecology and entomology degrees, visits local schools as a guest speaker. Then, she is known as the "Bug Lady," because she raises giant bugs and shows them off to wriggling, squiggling kids. But Blick says that bugs are best observed fresh. School gardens provide hands-on lessons in the biology of bugs, the chemistry of compost and the poetry of photosynthesis. "It's very enlightening," Blick says. "When I bring kids out here, you never know what they'll find. There's so much biology in the garden." Despite its blossoming accomplishments, the SGP has money troubles. Blick only works quarter-time, and the nonprofit relies on community volunteers to make up for labor shortages. The district allows SGP to install the gardens and lead field trips at participating schools, but 4J hasn't partnered up as a sponsor. Blick would like the district to pay for irrigation equipment, integrate the school gardens into more lesson plans and make them a central part of the federally-mandated Wellness Plans that every school must implement by fall 2006. A local nonprofit, Lane Coalition for Healthy Active Youth (LCHAY), is developing a toolkit to help the district formulate its Wellness Plan. Could the district could use school gardens as one of those tools, to teach kids about healthy eating and exercise? LCHAY Chairman Dr. Jimmy Unger is hesitant to make that leap, but he acknowledges that learning where food comes from is an important part of nutrition education. For Blick, it's a no-brainer. By working in school gardens, she says, students get exercise and fresh air while learning first-hand about agriculture and nutrition. Pair up the gardens with healthier school lunches featuring locally produced, organic foods, and 4J can help its students form healthy habits for life. On Sept. 18, Down to Earth will donate 5 percent of all sales made from 10 am to 5 pm to the SGP. Donors and volunteers can sign up to help online at www.efn.org/~sgp
Submerged
II EDITOR'S NOTE: Michael Tisserand is the displaced editor of Gambit Weekly, an alternative newspaper with offices still under water in New Orleans. He is sending dispatches from the home of friends. The first half of this story appeared in this week's print edition. "I can't go back there," says my wife, Tami, talking on the cell phone. We're driving from Carencro into Lafayette to find an insurance office and check out the food stamp line.
She listens to the caller, a friend of mine from high school. "That would be great," Tami says. They're talking about Minneapolis. Every day now, Tami keeps going to pediatrician job websites, calling out the names of cities that have work. Champaign-Urbana. Somewhere in central Wisconsin. How about the West? Now, Minneapolis. The week after the storm, those who love us now want to enfold us. They've cleared out their guest rooms and they tell us about their school districts. There are good reasons to go. But there's a price, watching others leave for work every morning when you're carrying unfamiliar pains inside. "My dad died a few years ago," says an old neighbor who's now with family in Pittsburgh. "This is like that." My wife and I cross Interstate 10 and enter Lafayette's new daily traffic of evacuees. I start to wonder about post-hurricane divorce rates. About how a couple can wake up one morning to find themselves rebuilding in different directions. I speak loudly enough to be heard by everyone. "We don't know what we're doing," I say. The death toll — the amount of bodies found in New Orleans' streets, on porches, in homes — is still being calculated. So is the growing catalogue of known horrors, such as. St. Rita's Nursing Home in Chalmette, where the bodies of more than 30 residents were found. Some of the dead of St. Rita's can no longer be recognized, but you can read their final moments in the way they are positioned throughout the home. At a benefit in Lafayette, I find John Blancher, who owns Mid-City Lanes, a combination bowling alley and music club on flooded Carrollton Avenue. John used to hire Paul Accardo to do police detail work, before Accardo became a spokesman for New Orleans Police Department. Paul lived in St. Bernard Parish, John says. In the hurricane, he lost everything. He couldn't reach people who needed help. Then he shot himself. "Good fellow," John says. "Good cop." Then John says, "This city was sicker than I ever realized." What do we really know, those of us who got out? We know the storm hit. We know that many of the very weakest of us didn't get help until it was too late. Those final days of our city, our president put a face on obliviousness. He offered an awkward joke about his younger days, when he had a little too much fun on Bourbon Street. People were still dying in New Orleans that day. Others were still waiting for rescue, the nighttime rooftops in some neighborhoods lit up in a constellation of flashlights. We know our anger. But we know something else, too. We knew the levee could break. We knew the planning hadn't been done. We knew the coast was disappearing. Have we changed? Some of us have. The storm transformed The Times-Picayune into a street fighter that stayed even after the levee break, publishing articles and editorials on nola.com that are more scathing than anything the daily ever wrote before the city was ruined. Local news anchors are suddenly speaking their minds. So is Mayor Ray Nagin. "I saw stuff that I never thought I would see in my lifetime," Nagin told The Times-Picayune last week. "People wanting to die. People trying to give me babies and things. It was a helpless, helpless feeling. There was a lady waiting in line for a bus who had a miscarriage. She was cleaning herself off so she wouldn't lose her place in line. There were old people saying, 'Just let me lay down and die.' ... It's unbelievable that this would happen in America." Those who escaped, we're still finding our places. We shift rooms and houses, trying to set up for the long term. For some, the road back to the city seems to have disappeared. Last week, Ouida Forsythe, who works with the Lafayette public school district, walked through the Cajundome, signing up children for classes. Ouida told me about a 5-year-old girl in the shelter. "I asked her where she was from. She said, 'Well, I used to be from New Orleans, but I'm not any more.' Then she looked at her mama and said, 'Where are we from?'" In only know of one person who's still inside the city, who's defied all calls to evacuate. Roger Hahn, who like me once came to New Orleans to write about music and culture. He's single and, as far as I know, he's still in his house. I found this out from my friend Scott Jordan, who spent days trying to reach him. Then Scott tried calling Roger's phone. Not a cell phone. A line that led directly into Roger's New Orleans residence. "Hello?" "Roger!" "Oh, hi Scott, what's up?" Scott wanted to go in himself and rescue him. Then he arranged a fire truck to pick Roger up that afternoon. Roger and I talked for about an hour. He was my first line into the city, and I had questions. What did it sound like when it struck? What did you see? I told him what I knew from the news, about those in the country who now seemed to want to cast off New Orleans like a used-up mistress. He reminded me that the courtesan metaphor dates to Faulkner. --- Roger went out right after the storm and felt pretty happy about his running water and gas stove. He took in three tourists from a nearby guest house. Before the levee broke, they walked around the city together. Even strolled to the Superdome. He had groceries for a month. At home, he listened constantly to the talk radio station WWL 870 AM. For days, the station served as a public 911 line, with DJs answering survival questions. Nagin would break in to talk about the 40,000 troops he's not seeing on the ground. Roger calls the whole thing genocide. "The largest black population in the South, it's the poorest, it's the most culturally rich, it's the most disposable." Halfway through the conversation, Roger adds that every day around 2:30 in the afternoon, the heat overwhelms him and he has to lie down. When he needs water, he taps his upstairs water heater, opening the faucet with a flathead screwdriver and twisting his body just so, allowing him to fill teacups. "I had a little episode of irrational exuberance," he says. "I finally figured out the water tank, I was carrying a three-quart sauce pot, I wasn't paying attention. A little water sloshed out, and my foot went out, I hit my hip, hit my back, my head snapped back. I may have cracked my rib, actually." Roger gives tips for cleaning a refrigerator. He comes up with a hurricane joke: How do you tell if an unrefrigerated egg has gone bad? It starts looting. It's around this time that I start thinking I might be talking to a dying man. He goes on, about the poor blacks who ran into downtown hotels at the last minute. "When I got down there, the managers were trying to get all those people out," he says. Then he's talking about the difference between New Orleans jazz and Dixieland. About how New Orleans makes money by things passing through it, how it really is Blanche DuBois, depending on strangers. How he isn't really ready to take that firetruck out today, maybe tomorrow. For evacuees, nothing stops conversation like a first-hand account about home. One evening, we were meeting in a New Iberia living room with other parents, making plans for our kids' school year. Another parent came in. He'd just returned from New Orleans, he'd gone in armed, he had the cell-phone photos of his office. All talk stopped while we stared at some miniature image of a building with a gaping hole. Friends call me daily to say they're going in, or they've just been in. One tried to duct tape his refrigerator shut and move it out of the house. It wouldn't fit through the doorway. So he tried to clean it out. He threw up five times before he was done. I could go in myself. I can get a press pass. But I understand what I'll see: soldiers armed with M16s, military bases on our old playgrounds. Trees eviscerated, wintry. Quiet neighborhoods punctuated by burned houses, felled oak trees, tableaus of destruction. They say it's an abandoned movie set, it's apocalyptic. One friend calls it an acquired taste. He just left for Austin, Texas. I don't want to see my house yet. I don't want to see our block, silent as a graveyard, which in New Orleans is called a city of the dead because they're built above the ground. But for the first time since the storm, I did drive east this week on Interstate 10, to Baton Rouge. A friend of mine from New York is here. She used to live in New Orleans, and we'd play noisy games of Scrabble at a Magazine Street coffeehouse. She helped out after 9/11 and now she's in Louisiana to do the same. For the past week, she has been rescuing and counseling, moving through the city with purpose. She drove down with a friend who's an EMS worker and some real estate agent they met over the Internet. When I drove up, she was wearing sweat pants, an oversized red T-shirt and cheap flip-flops. She went to the trunk and pulled out a new Scrabble board. We're in the main parking lot of the Jimmy Swaggart Family Worship Center, which is servicing as a portal for first responders — doctors, cops — who are going into New Orleans. Maroon tents cluster across manicured lawns. Many volunteers wear T-shirts emblazoned with NYPD logos. People talk of counseling and tetanus shots; the air smells of hand sanitizer. Next to framed pictures of Swaggart and Jesus are taped-up hand-written signs that start out, "After contact with N.O. Water ..." We walk past a New York City cop. He nods at my friend. "I heard you did good work in there," he says. She warns me against notebooks. She talks about a reporter that got in her face right as she was evacuating someone. The reporter called her gestapo, then went to the man in the house and asked him if he was mad about having to leave. She says the reporter's eyes were dilated, his mouth was turned in, he was losing it. "This city is a petri dish," my friend says. "When did the story become that people shouldn't be gotten out of here?" My friend talks about the Canal Street hotel where they were stationed, the smell of death and sewage, the dysentery. She got someone out of his Ninth Ward home by promising to board his windows, and everyone jumped out of the emergency vehicle to stand in the putrid heat and pound plywood. Then, at the Convention Center, she watched him take the helicopter out. Others were too far gone to reach. Living without medications, on salt and beer. They're all going back to New York now, my friend, her friend, the real estate guy. The Fraternal Order of Police is setting up here. Things are in better hands. We hug each other good-bye. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. Labor Day in Lafayette's Girard Park. An old-time microphone is suspended from a tent roof. The Lost Bayou Ramblers Cajun band has set up in the sweltering afternoon heat. The band's fiddler cranes his neck and sings out an old tune: Tu peux me dire y a un ouragan quand le soleil est bien chaud, mais tu peux pas mettre un macaque sur mon dos. It means: "You can tell me there's a hurricane when the sun is shining bright, but you can't put a monkey on my back." A local group called Healing House sponsored this festival for evacuee kids. One volunteer tells me that they'd hoped the children sheltered in the Cajundome might be here. So did I. Last week, I stopped by, hoping I could try to find anyone I knew. They wouldn't let me in; if I had a name, they'd page someone. The Cajundome kids didn't come. There were separate activities scheduled for them. This might explain why people in Girard Park keep coming over with more and more ice cream sandwiches. The Healing House is set up to help children who are grieving. There are shaded places here to draw and write and play board games. We meet up with New Orleans friends and make the rounds. My 4-year-old son, Miles, takes off his sandals and climbs into the spacewalks. Cecilia, my 7-year-old daughter, gets her face painted. I read a brochure titled "How to help child victims of disaster." It advises not to give more information than a child is asking. I already learned that. The previous day, I'd been bike riding with my daughter. I thought I should tell her that there is a chance we might not return to New Orleans to live. I figured that she'd hear us talking about it, and I should be honest. I told her and then I asked if she had any questions. She didn't. That evening, as we pulled down the sofa bed and got ready for books, Miles started to say, "When I get back to New Orleans ..." He started to talk about his favorite babysitter, how he looked forward to playing with her. "Miles," Cecilia said. "We might not ever live in New Orleans again." I held him until he stopped crying. I haven't heard him talk about his home again.
Fire
Storm As water engulfed New Orleans in early September, fire consumed Black Rock City, the temporary artistic community that springs up once a year during the Burning Man festival. And oil fueled both events.
Nobody can prove that fossil fuel burning created Hurricane Katrina, but scientific consensus is that global warming increases coastal flooding and extreme weather events worldwide. Rising ocean temperatures help create the conditions for more frequent and ferocious hurricanes. It's quite likely that our vehicles, machines and power plants drove the wheels that spun into Katrina. Black Rock City, too, is facing its fate as a carbon-constrained civilization. The numbers of Burning Man participants fell this year, and founder Larry Harvey suggests it's because of rising gasoline costs. Most Burners (including me) rely on big, burly gas-guzzlers to schlep water, shade structures, camping and kitchen supplies, costumes, bikes and art installations out to the desert. The city arrives in a caravan of SUVs, RVs, buses, trucks and trailers. Once settled on the desert "playa," Burners do what they do best — burn things. This year, the hottest fire-inspired art pieces included a huge metal bird with 10-foot feathers that shoot plumes of fire, a ring of kneeling mannequins in yellow jumpsuits with flame-spouting nozzles instead of heads and a steel sculpture of a 30-foot woman walking with her 20-foot child, a liquid flame blazing in their hands. During the day, some Burners poofed big black rings of smoke into the air, creating cool, if gratuitous, dark halos against the blue sky. At the end of the week, Burners torched just about everything flammable, from the wooden Man to the intricately carved clock tower to the mounds of paper cups that held all manner of cheap cocktails, pouring gasoline on the bigger sculptures to get them sparkin'. Burning Man is, after all, a fire festival, in the tradition of the Pagans and the Greeks. There is a cleansing in burning down the art that took enormous time, money and labor to create. There is a release in watching a monument burn, in dancing around it and letting your own attachments drift away with the smoke. After every burn, I could smell the exhaust in the air and feel it in my over-partied, under-slept body. But knowing what we know about fossil fuels and the destruction they wreak, is the party justified? It depends on the context. In one sense, Burning Man is a subversion of mainstream society. Though it takes at least a few hundred dollars to get there, Black Rock City is a "gift economy" that shuns cash. Though fossil fuels power the festival, the fire symbolizes a rejection of our oil-based economy. Burners torch symbols of war, burn effigies of Bush and Cheney and generally send a whooping "screw you" to Washington, D.C. All told, the cumulative pollution from the week-long event pales in comparison to the toxic emissions from just one day of the Iraq War. But if Black Rock City is an alternative society, one that values gifts over cash and makes "leave no trace" a near-religious commandment, one that places no limits on the creative power of human ingenuity, we can do better. I envision a Burning Man that evolves faster than our carbon-clinging society, that demonstrates true alternatives not just artistically and socially, but ecologically as well. Black Rock City LLC, the corporation that runs the show, could allocate a small percentage of ticket revenues for solar panels that could generate more than enough electricity for the whole city. The regular face-pelting dust storms are testament to the potential for wind energy, and the crusty heat flow beneath Nevada's dusty surface makes geothermal power a perfect fit for Black Rock City. With the blessing of the BLM, the company could leave that infrastructure out there all year long to generate energy for the people of neighboring Gerlach, Nev., who patiently welcome the yearly pilgrimage of freaks. Now, that would be revolutionary.
How
Does a Building Mean? A recent front-page article (7/10) in The Register-Guard and a photo showing the gaping hole near Willamette and Broadway struck me. The next photo was presented as a potential remedy — a new mall development in Tualatin. The same developers are planning to renovate a section of Broadway from Willamette to Charnelton.
What made my heart sink was the image of the place — like so many recent developments, the designers patched together a collision of styles: French Empire, Art Nouveau — old Europe in a blender. The word Disneyland came up in the article — an artificial world — architainment. The concept of this new development is very positive — vital pedestrian shops, businesses and residential living downtown. Anything that sucks the life back from the big boxes and into the city center is a good thing in my book. I once told Miller Williams that if I ever wrote a book on architecture I'd like to plagiarize the title of his guide to understanding poetry: How Does a Poem Mean? Like all of the art and craft we produce, buildings have meaning. They are memories — documents of who and what we are at a particular point in time. Some memories are worth forgetting — but in Eugene we've made some lurching surgical mistakes. In the frenzy to be more like L.A. (or everyplace else) — our link to the past has been all but lobotomized — a grand old City Hall razed and replaced with a faceless and aloof building — downtown similarly sliced up and updated. In a fit of nostalgia, the new downtown fire station insistently tries to resuscitate the past. But like the swirling legions of McMansions at our extremities, it falls flat. We can't exhume historic buildings. The technology and methods have changed — the building culture that gave those old structures depth and significance no longer exists. The downtown LTD station, while leaving too much void in the city center, builds a relationship to past and to the present in its quirky exuberant detailing. When architect Renzo Piano was asked to design a new auditorium for Rome, he chose to use the traditional materials of the ancient city: brick, concrete and lead (not a good environmental choice but the lead roofs silenced the cell phone problem). Otherwise the building is strikingly contemporary, but that historical connection adds a layer of meaning and richness to the structure. It develops a relationship to its place while expressing it's presence. At the other end of the spectrum from the fire station is the new federal courthouse: sleek and cool — like a new Ferrari in our garage. L.A.'s Morphosis and the GSA parachuted into Eugene, a quick glance around and — we have our signature building. The fact that the architects overlooked making the entry reasonably accessible shows how thinly they studied Eugene. As a thing unto itself it will be well designed. As it turns its backside to the city, up on it's pedestal — it will be a thing unto itself. So what then works in Eugene? Our attempt at being like Boulder didn't work — the Broadway pedestrian mall failed largely because it lacked the right combination of businesses and vitalizing residential development. One success story is the merchants who were rejected from the mall and regrouped into the 5th Street Public Market. The merchants not-ready-for-Broadway set up in an old factory quirky, funky and fun: Eugene. If we're going to make a cohesive city it's going to take some consensus from the full spectrum of players. The developers of Broadway could accept and celebrate that Eugene is unpretentious, playful and a bit funky. Local materials, lively details (that recall but don't mimic the past) and the integration of local art are things that help define us. The city could firmly encourage denser sustainable development — make "Green Eugene" a part of the aesthetic by tapping into the green cities movement. Architects, designers and builders need to push harder for meaningful design. The area has tremendous talent. The very same designers who worked on the downtown fire station produced a wonderful environmentally sensitive design for the yet unbuilt WREN wetlands education center. Main Street America has always been an eclectic mix — a showcase of our individualism and diversity. But at their best, our cities are tied together with history and meaningful expression of identity. Somewhere between the new fire station and courthouse lies the heart and soul of Eugene. Michael Cockram is an adjunct assistant orofessor of architecture at the U) and has a small practice in Eugene. He is a free-lance writer, musician and illustrator. |
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