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News
Briefs: James Edward Ulrich | Coming
Unplugged | Undercovered | Theory in
Practice | Activists Return
News:
God and the Land -- Ecumenical group holds global warming conference.
News:
Faces of the Dead -- Personal reflections on New York City, six weeks later.
Happening
People: Deb Lynch
James
Edward Ulrich
Nov.
28, 1949-Oct. 31, 2001
In the spring of 1998, painter James Ulrich exhibited a
series of oil on canvas paintings at LCC's Art Department Gallery. The work was an
allegorical depiction of the seven deadly sins: gluttony, lust, sloth, anger, pride,
envy and greed. Here's his artist's statement:
"It intrigued me to use an old concept (a medieval organization
of all human wrongdoing into seven major categories of sin) and to attempt to make
something from it of interest to a contemporary audience, even those who are not
religious. ...
... making a series of self portraits solved several problems:
it provided a visual and thematic unity to the series; it offered a ready model;
it made the whole undertaking much more personal and I hope, it causes the viewer
to put himself or herself in a similar situation: that is, to reflect upon whether
or not one is prideful, envious, etc.
A word may be necessary about the form of allegory which the paintings
employ. Allegory is the depiction of something which is immaterial by material images.
So that "lust" may be pictured as a supple lizard which persistently licks
its whisperings in the ear; or "envy," which is the inner state of being
jealous or spiteful towards someone else, may be represented by a poisonous snake
(the envious words coming out of a person's mouth), which bends back to bite the
forehead (or, in allegorical terms, poisons one's own mind) and results in a wintry
inner life, and a destruction by contempt of one's own worldly possessions (symbolized
by the burning house).
As an artist one hopes that the struggle and fun that has been
had in creating the work engages the viewers long after they leave the show."
Jim Ulrich was beloved by many people -- his wife, Kathleen Caprario;
his son, Andrew Ulrich; his family; his friends, neighbors and members of his church.
But many people in the arts community will miss him in a particular way, because
his death also means that there will be no more paintings from this gifted, gentle
artist. His final works of art will be exhibited at the new Eugene Public Library.
-- Lois Wadsworth
Coming Unplugged
Coburg Power recently announced that it would withdraw
plans to build a huge power plant north of Coburg, although other investors may still
attempt to build a smaller plant.
Congressman Peter DeFazio in an interview last month, predicted
energy giant Enron, which was expected to buy the Coburg generator, wouldn't pursue
the plant. DeFazio warned that with electricity prices falling, Enron is looking
at newer, more dangerous ways to exploit ratepayers.
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Slant
-- A few weeks ago, vandals trashed our red boxes and ripped up
some Annual Manuals in an apparent protest of a Fantasyland ad in the back
of our new magazine. The messages left by the vandals were "Smut" and "Sleaze,"
words that indignant moralists (both men and women) have used for generations to
try to quash sexy magazines, strip joints and X-rated movies. Our editorial response
("Buy a dildo. Have some fun.") was directed at that prudish attitude,
and not meant to discount some people's offense at the imagery in the ad. Our job
at EW is to defend freedom of the press, which is being attacked every day,
and to stir meaningful debate on serious topics. Sexually suggestive images in advertising
raise many complex issues regarding, gender oppression, the psychology of violence,
and the role of media in society. Let's have those discussions in our newspapers
and across dinner tables, rather than sneaking around at night damaging property
-- which is just another form of violence.
-- Does Eugene really offer an unfriendly business climate? The
local Chambers of Commerce would like you to think so in order to ease environmental
controls and restrictions on development. In the end, our livability, schools and
skilled workforce will draw and keep more small businesses here than any loosening
of our building standards or property tax giveaways.
-- The Campaign for Labor Rights (CLR), based in D.C. and founded
by Eugene's Trim Bissell, reports an "amazing union victory" a few weeks
ago in Mexico when workers at the Kukdong factory in Atlixco finally won their independent
union and signed a collective bargaining agreement with the factory's management.
This is the first successful organizing in Mexico's maquiladora sector. Sitemex is
the name of the union, and the company has changed its name to Mex Mode. What about
Nike? CLR says Nike intervened on behalf of the workers. They ask that we all write
to Phil Knight, Nike Inc., One Bowerman Dr., Beaverton, OR 97003-6433 , to thank
him for Nike's positive intervention and to urge him to place new orders at Mex Mode
so the factory can stay in business.
SLANT includes short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes compiled
by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted Taylor at 484-0519, editor@eugeneweekly.com
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"The state of California, instead of admitting its mistakes and
going back to regulated cost-based power, decided it too was going to try and play
in the market and went out and bought a bunch of power in an attempt to keep their
two big private utilities afloat," DeFazio said. "They have purchased more
power than was necessary. I was told by BPA about a month ago, at one point, California
was giving away power. They have further compounded mistakes, which are going to
be extraordinarily costly to the taxpayers and ratepayers of California."
But California's mistakes, DeFazio said, "have reigned in
to some extent this wild west energy market we had going. That makes speculative
merchant plants like this [Enron] one in Coburg look a lot less desirable."
"The game has actually moved beyond manipulating generation,"
DeFazio said. "That was fun for a while, a few companies made billions of dollars
and screwed millions of people. But they have figured out a bigger, a more lucrative
game and that is to get control of the transmission system and to make it into a
for-profit system as opposed to a common carrier system."
DeFazio said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is pushing
for a regional transmission organization in the Pacific Northwest. The model is a
"screw the consumer" system being set up in the Southwest, DeFazio said.
"It's much more lucrative to gain the transmission system,
potentially, than it was to turn your generators on and off and drive the market
price up," DeFazio said. "You can build a generating plant to help with
the local shortage in a fairly short period of time. But it takes many years to build
transmission."
"The current transmission system was not designed for deregulation.
We can identify 53 points of congestion in the Pacific Northwest. If we go to a system
that's market based, that auctions it off according to congestion, and you live on
the wrong side of one of those 53 congestion points, which all of us do, you're just
going to see huge increases larded onto our bills for transmission that has no economic
value.
"My major efforts in energy are turned to trying to slow that
whole [transmission deregulation] rush down. Until recently nobody understood it.
We are beginning to understand the potential problems with transmission. That's really
where this game is headed for Enron. They are really moving away from acquiring generation
to looking toward manipulating the transmission system. It's so much more lucrative
and so much less identifiable. The companies that were manipulating the generation
were getting hit hard and publicly for what they did. But if they can gain control
of the transmission system, there's much less accountability and it's much less obvious,
but perhaps more lucrative." -- AP
Undercovered
-- Oct. 28: U.S. Psychological Operations radio advised Afghans
"to exercise special caution when approaching yellow objects," since yellow
rectangles are food packets and yellow cylinders are unexploded bombs.
Broadcasts assured people that food packets and cluster bombs are
being dropped in different places (BBC). According to the Taliban, U.S. planes bombed
Barina and Baluch, villages near Jahalabad, and a child in Herat was blown up by
a cluster bomb (Reuters). A 13-year-old boy in a Kabul hospital regained consciousness
and asked for his family. No one wanted to tell him that all eight of them had died
in a morning air strike (The New York Times).
-- Oct. 29: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Myers claimed U.S.
bombing has been effective. "We are in the driver's seat." Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld added that civilian casualties have always been part of war. Bombs
dropped in Kandahar and Gora Tangi killed four people, according to local reports
(Reuters).
-- Oct. 30: Human Rights Watch asked for an investigation into
the Oct. 22 U.S. airstrike against Chowkar-Karez, in which 25 to 35 villagers died,
many of them children. Bombs hit people in houses, and airplane cannons killed people
running outside. Survivors were sure no Taliban or al-Qaeda positions were nearby
(Human Rights Watch). Bombing attacks killed four civilians and wounded 10 in Kandahar,
according to Afghan Islamic Press. A poll showed a majority of Britons favoring a
military pause to deliver humanitarian aid before winter snows (Reuters). Without
food aid, 1.5 million people will have little or no food by late December (Oxfam).
-- Oct. 31: A U.S. bomb struck a Kandahar clinic. According to
a doctor, 11 people died and 15 were wounded. The Pentagon insisted planes had bombed
a nearby terrorist target, not the clinic. Foreign reporters, who paid about $2,000
each for the trip to Kandahar, viewed the clinic while a crowd shouted, "Death
to America!" (New York Times). CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson advised his staff
it is "perverse to concentrate too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan."
He recommended that videos of suffering Afghans always be accompanied by mention
of the 5,000 Americans who died Sept. 11. (Associated Press)
-- Nov. 1: U.S. B-52s began carpet-bombing northern Taliban positions,
targeting the villages of Qalai Nasro and Qalai Gulai. Carpet-bombing, aka "the
long stick," is a planeload of unguided 500-pound bombs dropped all at once,
covering an area 2 by 3 miles with large craters (Guardian). Taliban officials numbered
1,500 civilian deaths so far; the Pentagon said it does not target civilians and
the Taliban exaggerates (Associated Press). Save the Children and Refugees International
asked for carefulness in U.S. military strikes, citing concerns about cluster bombs,
power plant strikes that have caused health and sanitation troubles in Kandahar,
and heavy impact on people "'tottering on the edge of famine" (Reuters).
-- Nov. 3: Asked again about the bombing of Chowkar-Karez, Rumsfeld
replied, "I cannot deal with that particular village." Unidentified Pentagon
officials told CNN that Taliban and Al-Qaeda sympathizers lived in Chowkar-Karez,
"a fully legitimate target ... The people there are dead because we wanted them
dead" (Toronto Globe & Mail). -- Kate Rogers Gessert
Theory
in Practice
The West Coast's largest sustainable business conference is
coming to the UO Thursday, Nov. 8 through Sunday, Nov. 11. The conference provides
a gathering place for business, environmental, social, academic and civic communities
to work toward a sustainable and profitable future.
The workshops, talks and other events are free except for The Natural
Step Workshop all day Friday at the EMU.
Keynote speakers include Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain
Institute and authored or co-author of 27 books including Natural Capitalism
with Paul Hawken. The Wall Street Journal named Lovins one of 39 people worldwide
"most likely to change the course of business in the '90s."
Beverly Stein, candidate for governor of Oregon, will speak, along
with Heather Howitt, founder of one of Oregon's fastest growing businesses, Oregon
Chai. Anthropologist and author Ed Thorsett of Shenandoah University in Virginia
is on the keynoters' list, along with Bill Shireman, who has been called "a
master of environmental entrepreneurism," and Geoff Ashton, senior vice president
of Calvert, the family of Fixed Income Socially Responsible Mutual Funds.
A complete schedule is in last week's EW and at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sbs/ and at the registration desk at the EMU Ballroom.
Activists Return
Former UO student activists Chad Sullivan and Agatha Schmaedick
have returned safely from Indonesia following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The
two will give a presentation about their experiences, entitled, "Eating Our
Own Tears," at 6 pm Tuesday, Nov. 13 in Willamette 100, on the UO campus.
The two spent this past summer interviewing workers in Indonesia
with a team of two other students from the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS).
Back to Top
God
and the Land
Ecumenical group holds
global warming conference.
By Aria
Seligmann
And God took and placed man in the Garden of Eden, to till it
and to tend it.
-- Genesis 2:15
For years, many Christian churches have steered away from the topic
of environmentalism. Some churches have members who do not want to get "too
political" while others have believed that all of the worries over environmental
concerns are mere doomsday prophecies.
But all that is changing.
More and more mainstream Christian organizations are adding their
ranks to those of other religions that typically honor the earth by celebrating seasonal
holidays or focusing on nature, by embracing environmentalism as a church issue.
This means huge numbers of people adding their political pressure to ecological concerns.
It's not that individual members of churches haven't been fighting
for cleaner land, air and water; but bringing the agenda to the deacon's table is
another matter. This weekend, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon hosts an Interfaith
Global Warming Conference entitled "Cool Congregations: People of Faith Caring
for God's Climate."
Teams of people from every religious background are invited to
attend and bring ideas back to their houses of worship for implementation. Those
ideas will begin with how churches, synagogues and mosques can lower the power bill,
then work up to mass mobilization for putting political pressure on world governments
to sign the right treaties and think about the entire Earth as one creation.
"We want to be the best stewards we can of God's great gift
of energy. All congregations in Springfield, Eugene and beyond are invited, including
Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish," say conference organizers. The event will
include speakers from various religions.
"The conference is about faith-based concern for the Earth
and its creatures, about the hard science of global warming. It's about what faith
communities have begun to do and how we can support one another to dream more and
do more," say organizers.
The movement is national. In May of 2000, the United Methodist
Church passed a resolution making the precautionary principle a matter of church
order. "[It is] helpful in engaging the church in environmental advocacy on
the local, national, and international levels," writes Dorothy Anderson in The
Networker. "A pronouncement made by an entire church body carries some weight
in political decision making."
In Oregon, a broad diversity of denominations, including United
Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, Unitarian and Presbyterian, began organizing in November
1999 as part of the Oregon Interfaith Global Warming Campaign. More than 90 congregations
became involved, addressing the issue through sermons, classes and religious studies.
Then this past April, the groups became even more mobilized when
President Bush announced he did not support the Kyoto Protocol, the international
global warming treaty, and broke a campaign pledge to limit emissions of carbon dioxide
from power plants. Members of the Oregon groups added their names to hundreds of
others who sent Bush a letter stating their outrage at his actions.
"We are deeply distressed by the president's statements, which
appear to indicate only what he is not willing to do to address global warming. We
have yet to hear how the president plans to address this urgent problem, which threatens
God's children, God's creation, and future generations," wrote Jenny Holmes,
Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon Campaign Coordinator in a statement released at the
time.
Locally, churches have stepped up their involvement, as well. Eugene's
First United Methodist Church Associate Minister John Pitney points out that for
the last two years his congregation has had special worship services on Earth Day
"totally focused on celebrating God's creation and challenging us to a role
of stewardship and restoration." The church's Sunday morning class offerings
teach broader environmental concerns and simplifying lifestyles.
Pitney finds the focus on the environment compelling. "God's
word comes to us in a particular time and place and this time and place is our particular
one," he says, adding, "Oh, duh, we're consuming way more than our share
of Earth's resources including energy, and not paying attention to the waste, and
not caring about its impact on creatures around the world. Whatever faith perspective
is compelling to me has to challenge that."
Biblical references to the interaction between humans and the environment
are many. "It's said over and over again in the Bible that we don't own this
place," says Pitney, pointing to the Old Testament's stories of being strangers
and guests. "Jesus refers to that. Now, saying the land, climate and Earth's
resources belong to God is also saying it's for the common good of all who live here."
Pitney believes the move toward environmentalism will bring a broader
image to both the church and what concerns are legitimate territory, as well as what
it means to be a faithful person.
"I'm proud of the churches that are getting involved with
this," he says.
The conference will be divided into breakout sessions where topics
will include: education and action in congregations; how to be better energy stewards
in existing and new houses of worship; and how to mobilize families to conserve energy
at home.
The conference will be held from 1:15 to 6 pm on Sunday, Nov. 11
at the First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive St. Cost: $20 for groups. Individuals
$10. Childcare available. Organic local foods available for snacking at 12:30 pm.
Back to Top
Faces
of the Dead
Personal reflections
on New York City, six weeks later.
By Tony
Lystra
Meet Paul McCartney. Paul says he changed his surname to McCauley
because the chicks kept calling and wouldn't leave him alone.
He lives in Battery Park City -- a Manhattan neighborhood far enough
from the Twin Towers to survive, close enough to have everything covered in fine
dust. It's also close enough for residents to be evacuated and become homeless for
weeks on end. National Guard troops forced everyone out of Paul's building, but he
stayed, huddled there like a rat inside the drywall and unknown to the world.
Paul is fat with a scruffy mustache and jowls that flap excitedly
when he talks about the drugs. His apartment was nearly wrecked, but from Sept. 11
to Sept. 15 Paul stayed there and free-based cocaine. He had no electricity, little
food and no running water. When he had to shit he put a shoebox in the toilet, covered
it with a Hefty bag and dropped the mess down the garbage chute.
He had a battery-powered clock radio and he heard on the news one
day that the facade was falling off his building. Still, Paul stayed. He finally
left when he ran out of drugs. He climbed into daylight to search out the Dominican
dealer he'd patronized for more than a decade.
Now that he has surfaced, Paul bounces giddily on a barstool as
he tells this story. He is proud of how long he held out. Proud that the authorities
never knew he stayed. He talks of the fun he had free-basing. His jowls flap.
The stories keep coming. One friend hasn't seen Paul since the
attacks and the two hug. The friend says he was near the towers when the first plane
hit. As the jet ripped through the building an engine the size of a Volkswagen bus
dropped off the wing and fell however many stories to the concrete -- almost flattening
him. The engine, says the friend, rolled up the street. You never know what to believe,
but anything seems possible now.
You listen to enough of these stories, the way people tell them
again, again and again, and you realize the war in New York wasn't just on Sept.
11; it has been fought in the weeks after, too. Paul is a good example. He free-bases,
yes, but really he is like everybody else here. The terrorists swooped in and died.
They took thousands with them and left the rest to fight inside their heads, to argue
with themselves, to imagine blunt death. That's what we do out here these days.
You wait for it to come again. You read about the anthrax and you think,
"Here it comes." You read about a Russian airliner exploding over the Black
Sea and you think, "Here it comes." You feel the subway lurch to a stop
in a dark cavern and you think, "Here it comes."
You pretend you're safe. When you talk to people at work you pretend
it's OK. You pretend, even for yourself. But then you meet up with someone you haven't
talked to since the attacks and you ask, "How are you feeling?" and they
say, "Shitty." And then you want to cry because you realize you've been
kidding yourself; you really feel shitty, too. Cool droplets of sweat, meanwhile,
slither out of your armpits and tickle the skin around your ribcage. You go nuts
with the antiperspirant every morning, but it doesn't matter.
You get the reminders everywhere. You read and see the same stuff
that everyone else in the country reads and sees. Then you step outside and there
are the Kinko's flyers with the faces of the dead taped to stone. "Missing."
There are the flowers and the votive candles at the fire stations. And there is the
smell and the fine concrete dust down on Canal Street.
The phone rings at 5 am. It stops ringing by the time you shake
off the sleep. But you check the voicemail because calls at 5 am usually mean bad
things and you are now built to cope with bad things. After Sept. 11, you're like
a car that has been newly fitted with a high-performance carburetor. Instead of gasoline,
it mixes adrenaline. The adrenaline blends with the oxygen much more efficiently
now and makes you rev, makes you bury the needle in the red. You mix the adrenaline
with alcohol and you rev even harder.
It's your longtime friend in Seattle on the voicemail, a Gulf War
veteran, drunk and still worried -- even two weeks and one conversation after all
this business. "I love you guys and I'm -- I'm so glad you're alive," he
says. That makes you want to cry, too.
If you go down to the wreckage, stand at the barricades and look over the shoulders
of National Guard troops at the twisted steel, you go numb all over again -- just
like the day you saw the planes hit, saw the people run, saw the flames, not on TV,
but right there in front of you. You look at the broken, metal ribs of the towers,
at the cranes working away. The sun parts the clouds. The tourist cameras flash and
camcorders record and, just for a moment, you feel like you're already dead. Then,
when you think about it later, something inside hurts.
All this stuff, day in, day out, sparks a sort of metaphysical
dialogue, an urgent, stream-of-conscious evaluation of your life and your world that
you can never seem to reconcile. The thoughts feel like a long suicide note that
won't end, as though someone can't get around to doing the deed because there's too
much to evaluate and never a good place to finish the writing, to sign off and say,
"I'm done." So it just keeps going.
When you talk with your wife about it, the tone is desperate and
you say things like "They flew planes into the buildings," and "They
tried to kill us." When your eyes well up, you get mad, and then you say things
like, "Fuck this!" Your wife tells you later that you almost cried three
times during that conversation but every time you nearly broke you got mad and the
swelling around your eyes went down and the brimming tears were nowhere to be found.
Everything cheapens the deaths. They were cheap deaths, anyway.
Someone forwarded an e-mail that said, "Can you see her?" in the subject
heading. There was a picture of the World Trade Center coughing smoke and in the
smoke was the shape of an angel with huge, glorious wings. Below the picture you
could click a "play" button and when you did, it played "In the Arms
of The Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. Word of advice: Do not send these e-mails
to people in New York.
The street vendors have switched from selling knock-off watches
to selling tiny, bootleg American flags on tiny, bootleg sticks. They sell "God
Bless America" music that wails from sidewalk boom boxes. The opportunism and
the kitsch make you sick. A sticker in an electronics store window says "Lose
weight now. Ask me how." And for some reason that makes you sick, too.
So you try to focus on the good things. You go to the Met and you
stare at Emanuel Leutze's George Washington Crossing the Delaware. You watch
your wife as she sleeps, her sweet, Irish face pressed against the old pillow, her
auburn hair trickling to the sheets. You bury your face in your cat's fur as she
languishes on the dresser and you feel her purr. You go to Mass and you listen to
Father quote Christ: "I leave you peace," he says. "My peace I give
you." You devour slices of pizza at midtown stop-ins where the worn Formica
and the orange everywhere makes it look like a Dairy Queen in rural Oregon.
And on another night, at a bar, you go to the bathroom and stand
over a urinal. The smoke rises from the Camel Light dangling from your mouth. The
smoke makes your eyes water. And, for some reason, it's the closest to real crying
that you can manage.
Tony Lystra is a financial writer living in New York City. He grew
up in Corvallis and graduated from the UO. He has written for The Los Angeles
Times, the Corvallis Gazette-Times, America Online and other publications.
He can be reached at tony@userplane.com
Back to Top
 Deb Lynch
"I've been a professional mom and an amateur artist,"
says mother-of-four Deb Lynch. "Now I'm switching in the other direction."
A Pennsylvania native, Lynch first took art classes in Philadelphia in the '70s.
She returned to school at the UO three years ago and earned a BFA in painting last
spring. "When I needed models for my graduation exhibit, I thought of the Eugene
Mission," she says. "The women would sit for me -- I got a wealth of practice."
Lynch became acquainted with the mission through five years of volunteer work with
Victims' Services, a division of the Lane County District Attorney's office. "I'm
part of the 24-hour team," she explains. "I put in a minimum of two shifts
per month." During each shift, Lynch is on call, ready to dash out to the scene
of a crime or an accident. "We really can offer assistance, can stay with people
until they're in a safe place," she says. "We're always looking for volunteers.
It's a wonderful way of giving back to the community." Lynch is currently working
on several portrait commissions. Her work can be seen at the Robert Canaga Gallery
(www.robertcanagagallery.com).
-- Paul Neevel
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