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Masquerade:
Mask makers conjure up the New Year with revelry, mythical mysteries. News
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Antlers | EW Takes a Break
love and goodwill to all. But when it comes to the city's new policy limiting Christmas trees in public places, a horde of people have gotten downright nasty. City Manager Jim Johnson has received a death threat and city Human Resources Director Lauren Chouinard received a threat to burn down his house, Johnson and Chouinard say. Scores of other callers, e-mail and letter writers, irate at what they consider the city's affront to the "Christmas spirit," have called Johnson and Chouinard "asshole," "jerk," "stupid," "Nazi," "communist," and a host of other personal insults, according to an EW review of hundreds of e-mails, letters and notes on telephone calls received by the city over the tree issue. "We just didn't anticipate the nastiness," says Chouinard, referring to a "substantial" number of the messages city officials received. "Especially coming from those who said they were so attuned to the spirit of Christmas." "You've lost the spirit," charges one man in an e-mail. "You can take your political correctness and all that it entails and put it where the sun don't shine. That's how angry I am." "Sensational asshole!!!!!!!!!!!," writes another man. "You must be a scumbag Clintonista national Socialist Democrat." "You Jim Johnson are the sorriest excuse for a human being that ever lived," says an anonymous writer in a handwritten letter. "Your heart must be the most shriveled up prune in existence. To cancel the very spirit of Christmas for 'a few'? A few??? I feel sorry for you. You will rot alone in your old age, you communist pig." Many of the most angry messages came from out of town, but many were also home grown. One local nursery owner writes in an e-mail, "tell Jim Johnson he is the stupidest jerk that ever landed on the planet. He is a terrible person who is a real Scrooge who lost touch with reality." "It's hard to read the e-mail and letters and not feel a little beat up," says Johnson. But he says he still thinks he did the right thing for religious minorities with the tree policy. "I'm going to stick with it." Just what policy did Johnson come up with to enrage so many people? In response to complaints from some staff concerned about the separation of church and state, Johnson banned a few Christmas trees in a small number of city reception areas and employee lounges. The ban is so limited and has so many exceptions that neither Johnson nor Chouinard can actually think of a single specific tree in city facilities that was there last year and banned this year. Johnson says he believes that about half of the city's 10 firehouses may have had a tree, but the city never did an inventory. Light strings, wreaths, garlands and other non-religious ornaments are not effected by the ban. Firefighters can have a tree in fire house lounges on Christmas eve and day. The city's main Senior Center can have a tree. The Hult Center can have a large tree because its placed there by performance companies that rent the hall. Any employee with a private cubicle, office or desk can have a tree or any other religious ornament in his or her own space. "You want to dress up like a Christmas tree and you can do your business and do it effectively, fine," says Chouinard of the employee policy. But the facts of the city's limited, internal workplace policy on Christmas trees soon became lost in the media hype and resulting public outrage. "The media has sensationalized this," Johnson says. The sensationalism started with The Register-Guard. Steve Deutch, a member of the city Human Rights Commission faults the R-G's first headline on the story, "City says no to Christmas trees." A better headline would have been, "City says yes to respect for all celebrating diversity," he says in an e-mail. Other members of the HRC agreed. Another member writes, "I feel that the R-G is out of line with headlines too many times. We business people pay enough for advertising that the R-G really doesn't have to resort to those kinds of tactics to 'sell papers.'" From the Guard, the story went out on the news wires to newspapers, conservative talk radio shows and Internet sites across the nation. As the Johnson "Grinch" story was retold over and over again, it began to take on mythic proportions and distortions. "We heard things like you're banning Christmas trees in the entire city as if you couldn't put one up in your home. It got that crazy," says Chouinard. Mr. Chouinard even got changed into "Ms. Chouinard" somewhere along the line, according to nearly a dozen messages. One person called him a "dike bitch," says Johnson. Right-wing talk show hosts, columnists and conservatives here and across the nation, jumped on Eugene's tree policy as a prime example of, as Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey writes in an e-mail agreeing with one angry citizen, "'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS' run amuck." Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel writes in a story forwarded to the city that Johnson isn't just the Grinch that stole the Christmas tree, "He revved up the chainsaw, doused the fallen tree with kerosene and started a great big bonfire." In reality, thanks to such sensationalism, some fear it may be more likely that someone sets fire to a synagogue in Eugene than a Christmas tree. One woman called the city worried about anti-Semitism in the backlash against the policy. "She is afraid and thinks the new synagogue could be firebombed!" a city staff person writes in notes from the conversation. "What it [the hype] did was spark a lot of bigotry and hatred in the community," says Deutch. Some of the people who wrote and called the city may be just crazy enough to get violent. One anonymous person e-mailed an 11-page rant full of conspiracy theories and Bible quotes supposedly proving how the Jews are working with the government in an "antichrist purge of God's people" aimed at "forcing Gentiles to join the Talmudic Jewish religion or be killed." Other messages weren't as nuts, but still displayed deep intolerance. "Either adjust to the American way or get out and go back to where you came from," one person writes in an unsigned e-mail. A similar "get out" sentiment was repeated in many other messages. In some it took a more threatening tone. "I sure am glad Jefferson thought of the 2nd amendment … because pretty soon this country is going to require a COMPLETE house cleaning," says an unsigned e-mail. Many other people expressed the view that, despite the Bill of Rights, the majority view should supercede minority concerns. One man writes in an e-mail, "150,000 people have to suffer because of the whiners. Awwwww, poor babies … shut up." Many writers also linked the tree issue to their belief that the government shouldn't tolerate anarchists, homosexuals and even "weird" entries in the Eugene Celebration parade. "The police aren't allowed to do their job, Boy Scouts have to defend their beliefs, homosexuality is now taught in our schools, and finally no Christmas trees in public buildings," a man writes in an e-mail. Chouinard says he's concerned that the backlash "could be a stumbling block" for the city's ongoing major effort to diversify and promote tolerance in the city workforce. Under Johnson, the minority share of the city workforce has increased 25 percent. Some employees and citizens opposed to the affirmative action efforts "will feel this is the way they can speak out about diversity in general," Chouinard says. The Eugene firefighters union has angrily denounced the tree policy. Last week the firefighters ran a half-page ad in The Register-Guard depicting firemen struggling to erect a Christmas tree, like the flag at Iwo Jima. Eugene's firehouses are among the least diverse work environments in the city. Although the vast majority of the messages the city received were negative (only 15 of the 296 calls received before Dec. 14 were supportive) there is a rising backlash against the tree policy backlash. "It is an abomination for this secular/religious symbol to become a source of violence or threat," says Greg Flint of the First Congregational-United Church of Christ in Eugene. Flint joined other religious leaders involved in the national Interfaith Alliance in commending Johnson's tree policy last week. Dan Bryant, senior minister at the First Christian Church in Eugene, also writes the mayor that he is "disturbed" by the lack of support for Johnson. Bryant says that although he would prefer a policy that allows the display of a diversity of religious symbols, he completely agrees with Johnson's intent. "The claim of those who do not see the Christmas tree as a religious symbol is about as credible as the claim that the cross on Skinner's butte was not a religious symbol." Indeed, although some writers and callers claimed the tree wasn't religious, many more argued that the ban was, as one man writes, a "symptom of the overall attack on Christians and Christian principles." Many compared the tree ban to the removal of the cross. "First the cross, now the Christmas tree," a woman called to say. The city got about two dozen e-mails and letters in support of its policies, compared to hundreds opposed. "I am ashamed of our town," writes one woman, who blames Mayor Torrey for his role. "He [Johnson] took a courageous stand on this issue and you stabbed him in the back -- on the 6 o'clock news no less!" A Jewish city staffer who works on housing issues, writes, "I've come to realize that there is much less tolerance and respect for the rights of the minority than I had believed or expected." He writes that he's "saddened" by the attacks and lack of support for Johnson, "a decent, thoughtful and caring man." he says, "people who never had a tree in their office now want to put one up. People have suggested that the city is robbing them of Christmas! Give me a break." Chris Powers, another supportive city employee writes that he hopes for a better Christmas spirit after the holidays. "There is so much heat and so little light about this that I look forward to the discussion that we will have AFTER the New Year."
member of a ritual-loving tribe, or you have ever gone trick or treating ... at some point in your life you have probably considered the potential of masks as agents of transformation, camouflage or myth-making. Maureen Culligan has been dealing with masks and their applications for about two decades, but her Eugene Mask Makers Guild only appeared only in the past year. This coming New Year's Eve, it will be the centerpiece of our First Night celebrations. The pageantry begins with a bit of theatrics followed by a Masquerade Ball (included free with the purchase of your First Night pin) in the downtown Broadway Mall's Center Court Building from 7:30 p.m. The first half hour includes a performance duplicating that done by the Guild in Jacob's Gallery at this month's First Friday art walk. Called "The Moon, the Sun, and All of the Above," it takes references from the Diamond Sutra, the Upanishads, and a monologue from a 94-year central Oregon ranch woman who arrived here in a covered wagon. It then weaves them into a resurrection myth which includes the lines: And so you should view this fleeting world:/ A star at Dawn,/ A bubble in a stream,/ A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,/ A flickering lamp,/ A phantom ... and ... a dream. Expect to see a chorus of rainbow faces called "the color people," a spirit and a death mask, and Maureen, who performs in, narrates and directed the piece. She designed it "to ask questions and especially to examine the limits of human understanding." Maureen is an entirely self-taught artist. She is something of an herbalist who grows her own garden and picks wild ingredients for the teas she blends. Her outlook on art often reflects images taken from the nurturing, blossoming world of gardening. She began mask making as a young single mother with no work experience trying to support three children. She looks back at those days and recalls, "I really had to be inventive by necessity." Art had always been her passion, but Maureen began her serious and individualistic production of a unique mask style in 1978. "I created the sewn technique of layered reverse applique to make these incredibly intricate felt masks. They became very popular." "The Saturday Market nurtured a vibrant craft scene then," she went on, "and I moved from there directly into a national market. I've sold thousands of masks under my business name of Mask Hysteria." Last New Year's Eve, she made a single giant mask of a woman named "Eugenesis, Guardian of the Future." It was paraded with great fanfare through the streets accompanied by 24 masked performers just before the fireworks. A major heading in Maureen's work is the influence of author Joseph Campbell who asserted the cultural importance of contemporary mythology. Campbell's position expressed by Maureen is that, "Since ancient stories carry little relevance in our modern world, there is a longing for new allegories which make the still unexplained mysteries of life coherent using a fresh symbolic language." The more Maureen explored the primeval world of masks and their global historic precedents, the more she recognized that she was creating an indigenous American mask-form which exemplifies the way our modern community of Eugene celebrates living. "My masks refer not to another culture, but to this time and place," she avows. "More than any other factors," Maureen continued, "it is important that the Mask Makers Guild create works that are both original and universal. These two aspects coax the bigger questions, encouraging a new mythology to take root and sprout in the fertile soil of Eugene's camaraderie." "That is the challenge," she adds, "that will fuel my own work for the rest of my life." The Guild was formed in 1999 when Maureen decided to write a Community Arts Grant. Other Guild members include Jeff Lake, Tamara Crafts, Lisa Gorzinski, Quint Ehley and Sara Adkison. Its mandate is "To create heirloom-quality masks and an enduring mask tradition in Eugene." The first year was hard going with only a handful of participants responding, but they became the core for an explosion of activity this past summer. As a result, Maureen proudly remarked, "Our Eugene Celebration parade entry this year really blew away a lot of people. They captured many imaginations and I heard comments about how some folks had never seen anything like them before." Maureen provided the fundamental inspiration and Guild members responded with generous enthusiasm. Her technique in this case was based upon the venerable Asian reed or bamboo-and-paper lantern method. "What is so awesome," she points out, "is that, although they are masks meant to be worn, they can also be made luminous with inner lighting. On First Night we can invoke a full-blown revelry in the dark." At the start of the evening, the luminous masks will be on display as an installation in the Center Court gallery and atrium. As the night progresses, guild members will begin wearing them and uniting them to the musical festivities. This will be a first for Eugene. "Previously," notes Maureen, "masquerade balls were seldom seen in Lane County outside of Halloween. This one will eventually spill out onto the street, snake its way through downtown as midnight approaches, traverse the Hult Center, and then end up at the park where the fireworks will be held. It is a new context for masquerade here and we hope everyone will show up wearing their best masks to join us."
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