portland magazine winter 2012

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THE BEST SOCCERPLAYER IN THE WORLDSat at a rickety table the other night, behind the looming south wall of MerloField, on which there is a fifteen-foot-high photograph of herself in her Universityof Portland jersey, and signed autographs for, by my count, two hundred chil-dren. The children were mostly girls but there was a startling number of boysand they had the same look on their faces as the girls did, something like antici-pation and awe and delight and trepidation and wonder that they were actuallyno kidding about to shake hands with and be smiled upon by the Best SoccerPlayer in the World, who looked remarkably like a regular human being, withscruffy sneakers and surfer shorts and a shy smile, despite the fact that she isthe Best Soccer Player in the World, and millions of people around the planet hadjust stared at their screens in amazement as she had the greatest performancein Olympic soccer history, and soon she will score more international goals thananyone ever, this after having one of the greatest college careers ever on thefield near where she sat at the rickety table, signing programs, scraps of paper,a baseball mitt, hats, shirts, two casts (both left arms, oddly), photographs, anda proof-of-insurance card that a dad hurriedly pulled out of his wallet when his

daughter was about to burst into tears because she had nothingfor Christine Sinclair to sign.

I stood there for a while and watched the children shufflecloser and closer until they were in the Presence, and a remark-able number of children stood and stared down at their shoesas their moms and dads urged them to at least say hi or some-thing after waiting in line for so long for heavenssake, and Ihave to say that the way most of them then utterly shylyglanced up at the Best Soccer Player in the World and foundher grinning gently at them and quietly saying hey, you excitedfor the game tonight? you love soccer too, don’t you? isn’t it thegreatest game? gave me the happy willies, because the children’sfaces then lit up like lamps! because She was talking to them!and She was friendly and gentle and not officious and cockyand self-absorbed in the least! She’s like a regular person!

Most of the children then did proffer something to be signed,but more than a few just stood there thrilled and agog as theyshook Her hand, and beamed even more as She said some-thing gentle and friendly to them as their moms or dads edgedthem past the rickety table, because the line must keep moving,there are lots of other kids waiting to talk to Her, but I watched

a few kids, as they got past the table and were steered toward the field by theirmoms and dads, stare at their autographed scraps of paper like they were objectsbeyond any calculation or measurement of value, which they were. One girl wholooked about six years old kissed her scrap of paper before she tucked it awaycarefully in a stunning pink purse.

After about an hour it was time for the Best Soccer Player in the World to wrapup, and the table was dismantled, and She ambled off to watch her alma materopen another season with another victory, but I stayed where I was, watching herwade through a shallow sea of small children who reached up to touch her handsas she passed through them like a tall dream. Then She turned the corner andvanished, and it was time for the game to begin, but you would be surprised howmany children stayed right where they were, there in the concourse, even astheir moms and dads were chivvying them toward the field. I watched one smallgirl be expertly herded toward the stands by her dad, who angled himself so shecouldn’t see the huge candy bars for sale, but just before they entered the tunnelthe girl turned and looked back, as if perhaps Christine Sinclair would againmagically appear, looking like a regular human person! You wouldn’t believe thatthe Best Soccer Player in the World is a regular human person with scruffy sneakersand surfer shorts and a shy smile, but this is so, and She was back on campus theother night, and there are hundreds of children who will never forget the momentthat She leaned down and said something gentle and funny to them and shooktheir hands and looked them in the eye and saw them for the holy astoundingshy beings they are.

Some moments, it seems to me, are beyond any calculation or measurementof value. I saw a few, the other night, behind Merlo Field.

Brian Doyle

Cover sculptures, back andfront, by Mary Miller Doyle.

14 / Food Forward, by Todd SchwartzHe served 140 million meals last year. He changed the way Americans eat. He’s not a tenth as famous as he ought to be. Who is Fedele Bauccio ’64?

20 / The End of Cooking, by Michael Pollan“You want to eat less? Here’s a diet for you, short and simple. But it’ll never catch on, because we’re cheap and lazy…”

30 / Confessions of a Hophead, by Robert Michael PyleNotes in a righteous Northwest treasure.

32 / The Providers, photographs by Steve HambuchenSome of the men and women and children who grow and make the University’s food.

46 / On Not Eating, by Pico IyerOn doing without, to see what is within.

50 / The Foodie Roadie, by Isaac Vanderburg ’02The adventures of soccer star turned food activist Matt Domingo ’02

58 / How to Brine an Elk Steak, by Ana Maria SpagnaWhy do we talk about food so much these days? What are we really talking about?

62 / This Is How to Forgive, by Joan Sauro, C.S.J.It is impossible to have the grace to forgive. And yet…

64 / The Top of the Continent, by Edward HoaglandOne of America’s finest writers wanders through the wild state

that has sent thousands of students to The Bluff.

68 / A Christmas Psalm, by John DanielSinging a song of the glorious What Is.

4 / A foggy day…in Pilot town...

5 / ‘But we are vulnerable’: University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C.

6 / Seven Meals: University superchef Kirk Mustain

7 / THIS WAY TO U.P.!

8 / January 12, 2010, 5:50 p.m., Port-au-Prince, Haiti

9 / The willing hands of Rebecca Chavez ’13

10 / Engineering’s Zia Yamayee in Afghanistan, 2001-2012

11/ Matthew Cole ’14: two photographs

12 / Sports, starring marathonist Colleen (Salisbury) Little ’06

13 / News & notes: Top ten in the west again...

Winter 2012: Vol. 31, No. 4President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C.

Founding Editor: John SoissonEditor: Brian Doyle

Testy Argumentative Designers: Matt Erceg & Joseph Erceg ’55Whimpering Assistant Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95

Fitfully Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe

Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2012 by the Universityof Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. WillametteBoulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-7202, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address:[email protected], Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203.Canada Post International Publications Mail Product—Sales Agreement No. 40037899. Canadian MailDistribution Information—Express Messenger International: PO Box 25058, London, Ontario, Canada N6C6A8. Printed in the USA. Opinions expressed in Portland are those of the individual authors and do not

necessarily reflect the views of the University administration. Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland,The University of Portland Magazine, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, OR 97203-5798.

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JOE PASCARELLIThe energetic and revered education professor JoePascarelli died in June, at age77, after a terrific career asteacher of teachers fromGuam to Portland to Canadato Notre Dame. A former stu-dent sings his memory.I remember the first class I took from Dr. Pascarelli;we were eight months intoour master’s program stud-ies, and we were feelingpretty good about our abilityto do graduate work. Joewas describing for us theseemingly onerous processof conducting action re-search: formulating a ques-tion, writing a literature re-view, conducting research,writing a substantial re-port.... One of my class-mates put up his hand andasked if we couldn’t justread something and reflectin a journal instead of en-gaging in this exactingprocess. Joe was horrified.“Certainly not,” he said.“This is a master’s program.A master’s degree meansthat you have learned howto do ethical research. Thatis what you must and willdo to complete this course.”We knew then that hemeant business! He sethigh standards for us—andthen he happily providedsupport so that we couldengage in rigorous learningand meet his standards.He worked with us one-

on-one to frame our ques-tions. He suggested certainauthors we should consid-er. He asked so many ques-tions! “What do you really

want to know? What willyou do differently in yourclassroom? Is there any-thing in the literature to in-form your practice? Howwill you know if you havemade a difference?” By theend of that term, we hadsweated bullets over our re-search papers, but we wereaccomplished; we knewhow to ask good questions,how to find information toanswer those questions,how to measure impact.We had shifted our practiceand expectations. We hadworked our way throughcycles of inquiry. We hadhad built relationships withour students as we helpedthem learn better. We hadimproved our teaching. Wehad become researchers.That class with Joe waspowerful learning thatchanged my teaching andgot me hooked on research. Joe also modelled an-

other principle: the notionof working with studentsinstead of doing to them.Despite his considerableexpertise, he didn’t lectureextensively. He told storiesfrom the field, he showedinspirational films, he in-troduced us to the ideas ofother scholars, and thenengaged us in conversa-tion, creating opportunitiesfor us to connect these newideas to our backgroundknowledge and experience.He allowed us to shape ourassignments so they weremeaningful for us in our di-verse work contexts. Usinga wide variety of learningactivities, he challenged usto explore and articulatewhat we believed aboutteaching and learning, andinspired us to put it intopractice in our work. Heset the bar high, and alsoprovided choice and flexi-bility so that we couldreach it. He pushed us touncover and articulate ourfoundational values as edu-cators, and celebrated oursuccess when we did. Perhaps the greater tes-

timony to his influence

was that so many of uswanted to introduce him toour friends and colleagues.Many University graduatestudents engaged him to dofurther consulting workwith groups of principals,assistant principals, andstaffs opening new schools.“There is no one here whocan do what Joe does,” wewould say, and we wereright. It wasn’t that he gaveus some silver bullet tomake teaching and leadingeasy. Rather, he inspired usto reflect deeply, question-ing how we could be betterpeople and better educa-tors, in the service of children.Whether he was workingwith two people or fourhundred, he created an ef-fective space for learning.Sometimes he would tellstories about some ineffec-tive or inappropriate prac-tice, and then he wouldsay, “But I’m sure thatnever happens in Canada.”We would shift in our seats,laughing nervously, be-cause of course it did; buthis rebuke was gentle, anddone in a way that we wereinspired to make sure thatdidn’t happen on our watch. Such was his influence

that if Joe was in town, I wanted to be a part ofwhat was happening. Itdidn’t matter the topic orhow big the group, if Icould be a part of his learn-ing community I wanted tobe there. Whatever bookshe placed on the table atthe back, I bought themand read them. He ofteninvited me to share mylearning journey withother University of Portlandcohorts, a small contribu-tion I was happy to make.Through story, I wanted tosay, “Listen to Joe, trusthim, and engage fully. Thislearning can change yourlife. It changed mine.” Alongside his passion

for teaching and learningwas a deep connection tohis family. Joe spoke oftenwith deep respect for hiswife Betty; for the support

that she provided to him,and of her partnership inthe work. He talked abouthis daughters with pride,describing their challenges,insights, and accomplish-ments. He demonstrated adual commitment to mak-ing a difference in theworld, while also lovingand honoring family. Andhe lived this until the end.He continued to work aslong as his health andstrength would allow.During one session he saidthat he continued to teachand consult because it kepthim learning. Many peoplebenefitted from his sharpmind and teacher’s heart,and the learning he was sopassionate about. I hope that people on

The Bluff know how signif-icant his legacy in Edmon -ton is. The news of hispassing spread quickly.Another former studentarranged a celebration inhis memory at one of hisfavourite restaurants. Wegathered, we told stories ofhow we knew Joe, weraised our glasses to honorhis influence in our lives.Because of our time withJoe, there are many educa-tors here and around theworld who will continue touse their minds and heartswell to promote excellentteaching and learning. Icontinue to be grateful thatI knew Joe Pascarelli, andwas a witness to and bene-ficiary of his life of signifi-cance and service.Katherine Toogood, ’05 M.Ed.Principal, Parkallen SchoolEdmonton, Canada

LETTERS POLICYWe are delighted by testy or tender letters.Send them to [email protected].

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ING BY LAURIE HEINZ-JENKINS

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ILAN ERCEG

THE SEASON“Late lies the wintry sun a-bed/ A frosty, fiery sleepy-head /Blinks but an hour or two; andthen/ A blood-red orange, setsagain,” says the greatest of allwriters in English, RobertLouis Stevenson… “Black aremy steps on silver sod / Thickblows my frosty breath abroad/ And tree and house, and hilland lake / Are frosted like awedding cake….” ¶ Winter isthe biggest break in the aca-demic year on The Bluff; fi-nals end mid-December, andclasses do not begin againuntil mid-January. ¶ AmongJanuary’s saints: the freshlyminted Brother Andre Bessette,C.S.C., the very first, and surelynot the last, saint among themen and women of theCongregation of Holy Cross,the University’s order. Rivetinglad, Andre: son of a woodcut-ter, an orphan at age twelve,and a lifelong jack-of-all-tradesat Notre Dame College inMontreal. To his credit he wasmuch annoyed at his fame asa healer, and snarled that hehad nothing to do with it, thatit was faith and Saint Josephthat moved mountains. Wemuch admire the gnarl andblunt of the man, for whom acampus chapel is named.

STUDENT LIFEWinter is basketball and vol-leyball season on The Bluff;both teams start officially inNovember, and wrap up inMarch. Baseball also starts inwinter, curiously; the Pilotsopen their long season (52games) in February. See page12 for sports news. ¶ TheUniversity’s Chapel of Christthe Teacher Choir will be ontour in the Seattle area in mid-

January; call Andy Sherwoodin the alumni office for de-tails, 503.943.8327. ¶ TheUniversity’s annual letterfrom the president about aslight tuition increase is usuallysent in February; the Uni ver -sity’s tuition remains the low-est among its peers, and belowthe national average. ¶February 15-17: Junior Parents& Families Weekend, a greatchance to dive into the seethingenergies of your child’s life onThe Bluff. For details call theadmissions office, 503.943.7147.¶ April 9: the University’s annual Scholarship Lunch,during which donors of samemeet recipients of same, andchat, and get to know eachother, and are photographedlaughing together. It’s so inti-mate and moving. Info: DianeDickey, 503.943.8130.

THE UNIVERSITYA University night at PortlandCenter Stage: I Love to Eat,playwright James Still’s loveletter to Portland’s own JamesBeard. A complimentary dinnerouting with Bon Appétit starchef Kirk Mustain (see page6), is offered before the show.Tickets are $35; contact thealumni office at 503.943.7328.¶ March 6 through 11: Pilotmen’s and women’s basketballat the West Coast Conferencein Las Vegas. Discountedrooms are available for alumniand friends at the Orleans,Palms, and Bellagio Hotels. ¶March 1: Tuition FreedomDay on The Bluff; this is theday the University makes noteof the fact that the averagestudent’s tuition “runs out”and the rest of his or herschool year is covered by giftsof all amounts from theUniversity’s donors, as well asgrants and income from theendowment. Approximately20 percent of the cost of a UPeducation is covered by fundsother than tuition dollars.Students gather on the west

quad to sign thank-you notesto donors and annihilate thou-sands of doughnuts. It’s wild.Info: Trevor Harvey,503.943.7826. ¶ April 9:Founders’ Day, the Univer sity’sannual celebration of itsfounder, Archbishop AlexanderChristie of Portland, and theinvaluable essential co-founder, Father John Zahm,C.S.C., who provided booksand teachers for Christie’sdewy university. Nearly athousand student presenta-tions and performances fillthe day; classes are canceled,events are rife, and creativityis the coin of the campus.

ARTS & LETTERSOn Hunt Theater’s stage thiswinter: the drama TwelveAngry Jurors, February 27through March 2, and the mu-sical Bat Boy (April 12 throughApril 20). Information:503.943.7287, email [email protected]. ¶Reading from their work oncampus this winter: novelistLois Leveen, on March 5 (at7:30 p.m., in BC 163), and poetJames Logenbach, on April 8(also 7:30 p.m., BC 163). ¶ Forthe whole slate of visitingwriters, performers, pontifica-tors, brilliances, gurus, and visionaries, see www.up.edu,and wander through the eventlistings; most events are free,and those that cost cash are al-most always a roaring bargain.Trust us.

FROM THE PASTBorn December 26, 1911, old-est of ten children of a steel-worker in Chicago: SteveKordek, who invented thatclassic work of American genius, the two-flipper pinballmachine, on which you, yes

you, spent a thousand hours.“I had more fun in this busi-ness than anyone could everbelieve,” said Mr. Kordek, whodied last winter at age 100. ¶Passing into the Light lastDecember 13: the quiet gener-ous Fred Fields, who gave theUniversity Fields and Schoen -feldt halls, the SchoenfeldtVisiting Writers Series, andmuch else. Raised on a farm inIndiana where he and hisbrother farmed 100 acres ofcorn while their dad workedin a factory, Fred served in theArmy Air Force, played profootball in Canada, earned hisengineering degree, and even-tually owned and ran the CoeCompany, a wood and tech-nology firm. He had a coolsidelong grin that we miss. ¶January 12, 2010: the Haitiearthquake. More than100,000 people were killed, amillion made homeless, andamong the dead were MollyHightower ’09, in whose namea scholarship blooms on TheBluff; see page 8. ¶ February 1,1902: the great poet LangstonHughes is born in Joplin,Missouri. ¶ February 3: theFeast of Saint Blaise, to whomwe turn when we are sore ofthroat. Riveting man, Blaise: adoctor and bishop in what istoday Turkey, he lived in acave, healed animals as wellas people, could talk to wolves,and is the patron saint of wildanimals. ¶ February 9, 1964:the Beatles on The Ed SullivanShow. ¶ February 10, 1952:The Blanchet House ofHospitality opens in Portland,founded by University alum-ni. What a great idea. ¶February 12, 1809: the great-est of Americans is born inrural Kentucky: AbrahamLincoln. ¶ February 21, 1902:the University wins its firstbaseball game ever, 3-1,against Bishop Scott Academy,an Episcopal school. ¶February 25, 1956: NikitaKhrushchev condemns hissavage predecessor, JosefStalin, for “intolerance, brutali-ty, abuse of power,” and othervices and crimes. Sometimessomeone calls something byits true name.

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Ah, we hardly ever run campus photographs just because, but if ever there was a shot that caught a winter morning onThe Bluff, this is the one. Our thanks to Steve Hambuchen.

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HANDS &HEARTSFrom University president Father BillBeauchamp’s opening speech to the fac-ulty this year — blunt and eloquentsoul, is Father Bill.

These eight years during which I haveserved the University as its presidenthave been remarkable ones. We haveexperienced some of the most won-derful and successful times in theUniversity’s history. Yet at the sametime, the downturn in the nationaleconomy and the rapidly changinghigher education landscape have cre-ated an environment unlike any thatwe have seen in our lifetimes.For us on The Bluff, it has been the

best of times, because of the evolu-tion and maturation of the University,its growing strength and confidence.Now, 111 years after our founding, wehave the luxury of planning our ownfuture. No longer are we in survivalmode, when each new year wasfraught with anxiety about whetherwe would enroll enough students tomeet our budget. Our applicationsfor admission have quadrupled in thelast ten years. Ten years ago we hadone student Fulbright scholar in ourwhole history; today we have forty.In the last ten years we have two newresidence halls, a bell tower, and 35acres of riverfront property, as wellas vast renovation and expansion ofextant buildings. And there is muchelse that does not meet the eye: risingretention rate, steady faculty tenurerate, a wildly successful Rise Campaignto date, much else.Yet you only have to read the news

every morning to know that these areextremely difficult times for highereducation and those who aspire to it.The news is sobering. We are in thefourth year of a recession that hasshattered dreams and that is corrod-ing hope. Families are reducing theirspending. Household net worth isdown and the number of college stu-dents who live at home is up 9% thisyear alone. For-profit institutions aresiphoning billions of educational dollars away from traditional schoolslike ours. The technological revolu-tion has caused many people to challenge traditional methods ofteaching and learning, and an aggres-sively pragmatic culture is abettingthat challenge. Meanwhile, the cost of a college

education has risen dramatically,driven in large part by skyrocketinghealth care costs, improved salaries,and a ‘facilities competition,’ puttingeducation out of reach of many worthystudents; our own tuition has nearlydoubled in the last decade, to keep upwith those costs. Around the countrymany students and families are tak-ing on significant debt to attend col-lege, and this in one of the worst eco-nomic times in American history.So in 2012 we find the University

enjoying remarkable success, whilehigher education in the U.S. is ingreat distress; and it is this I wish tospeak about today.

We are vulnerable. There are forcesfar beyond our control to which wemust be ever alert so that ten yearsfrom now we do not find that wehave moved from strategic planningto emergency planning. We don’thave the luxury of a large endowmentor deep reserve funds to provide ameasure of protection. Conse quently,we must plan carefully and thoroughly

and act wisely to responsibly stewardour resources and blessings.And we must stay true to the secret

behind all our successes: a steadfastfocus on our mission and a carefuladherence to the charge given to usmore than 175 years ago by BlessedBasil Moreau, the founder of theCongregation of Holy Cross. ForFather Moreau, true education re-quired a balance of mind and heart—the balance between knowledge andskill, inspiration and discipline, infor-mation and insight, learning for itsown sake and learning for the sake ofutility. Through a century of enor-mous change in higher education, inthe midst of the clamoring voices ofthe technological revolution, we havecontinued to provide a vocabulary fordiscussing ultimate questions thatare of special importance to youngpeople. True to Moreau’s charge, wehave steadfastly helped students todevelop their character, we havehelped them learn how to live, just aswe have helped them learn how tomake a living.

This is a crucial contribution to thelandscape of higher education, I be-lieve. But it is in serious danger.Consider these facts: over the pastten years the University’s budget hasincreased by 7% per year; during thatsame period, our tuition has increasedby 5.7% per year; 83% of our operat-ing budget comes from tuition, room,and board; and we have a deferredmaintenance requirement over thenext four years of more than $17 mil-lion. My point: Because we are soheavily dependent on tuition, howwe manage our enrollment influ-ences everything we do. Enrollmentaffects salaries and benefits, it affectsnumbers of faculty and staff, it affectssize of classes and size of classrooms,and it affects our aspirations, our vision, and our mission.It does not require the keen minds

of our math or finance faculty toshow us that expenses are increasingfaster than income, and have beenfor decades, and that such a methodof operation is not sustainable. Ourenrollment is twice what it was adozen years ago, yet on the whole, ourfinancial situation is about the same. The good news is that we are not

faced with a crisis, as are many schoolsaround the country today. We are in agood financial position. The badnews, however, is that we are vulner-able to factors far beyond our control.And that is why we, all of us, will de-vote this year to meticulous analysisof resources. We need your thinking— in a very real sense the University’sfuture depends on your creativityand ideas this year.A few days ago the campus was

filled with families who were entrust-ing us with their sons and daughters.They believed in us enough to allowus to continue the work they havebegun in forming the character ofthose young men and women. Ourchallenge—our responsibility—is tolive up to that trust every day. That iswhat has been done so well here atthe University for 111 years, and I vowit is what we will do so well in theyear that lies before us now. It is a sacred calling, what we do, andtoday, in this room, we recommitourselves to that vocation. We do sowith Blessed Basil Moreau’s wordsringing in our ears: “An educationthat is complete is one in which thehands and the heart are engaged asmuch as the mind. We want to let ourstudents try their learning in theworld, and so make prayers of their education.” Amen to that. n


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SEVENMEALSWe asked the University’s food guru,Bon Appetit manager Kirk Mustain, tothink about meals and memories, and…

Food has been my professional life,my social life, my family life. I comefrom a big family (ten kids), and din-ner especially was front and center;dinner was at six, and you did notmiss dinner, period.So, first great meal: my dad’s chick-

en tacos. Still my favorite thing to eat.He would start by boiling a couple ofchickens and pulling all the meat off,and then fry a fresh corn tortillaaround the chicken to make a shell.Serve with fresh guacamole. I makethem for my kids this same way, andnow my daughter Grace (Class of2014) makes them the same way andnothing reminds me of home asmuch as dad’s chicken tacos. My dadalso taught me that a great meal isbetter when shared with more people;my dad was legendary among myfriends for saying “you’re staying fordinner, right?” Yes, my friends lovedmy dad. Me too.Second: Katz’s deli in New York

City—you know, where Meg Ryanand Bill Crystal have lunch in When

Harry Met Sally. Pastrami on rye withmustard, pickles, and a DoctorBrown’s Cream Soda. One of the fewplaces on earth where they still hand-cut the brisket. You walk up to thecounter to order and the first thingthe cutter does is put a chunk of pas-trami on a plate for you to eat withyour fingers. It’s greasy, peppery,and beyond good.Third: Charlie Trotters’ in Chicago.

Charlie Trotter was Thomas Kellerbefore Thomas Keller. This guy wasso far ahead of his time that allcelebrity chefs owe him a drink. I atethere one night with four other chefs,one being my good friend and theUniversity’s head chef James Green.We ordered the eight-course. I do noteven remember what we ate as muchas I do the whole tone of the evening;the food and presentation was impec-cable, the service was perfect, and westayed until closing time talkingabout how happy we were that theexperience was even better than theanticipation. The maître d’ overheardour conversations and gave us a tourof the kitchens and wine cellars; youwould’ve thought we were all kids inDisneyland for the first time. Jamesand I used this experience as thebasis for our Chef’s Table dinners inBauccio Commons to this day.Fourth: Christmas Eve Dinner at

the University’s Salzburg campus.

While visiting my daughter, who wason the Salzburg Program, I volun-teered to cook dinner. Universityevents director Bill Reed and I wentthrough the Metro—the Austrianequivalent of Costco, like two kids ina candy store, planning a baked hamdinner for students and their families—90 guests in all. As we were in thekitchen prepping, some of the par-ents came in to help—what kindness!Fifth: The Lotus, Minneapolis,

Minne sota,1983. This was the firsttime I ever had Vietnamese food. I had eaten “Chinese food,” in theAmerican style—chop suey ,chowmein. But this—this was real. Saladrolls with fresh lettuce and mint, phowith rice noodles and sliced beef in abroth that topped with fresh herbsand sprouts and a dash of chili pasteto give it a kick. Bahn xao, a crispymung-bean crepe with shrimp andbasil and mint. I was amazed. I atedinner there every day for the nexttwo weeks until I had tried every-thing on the menu twice. I couldn’tget over how fresh everything was,how it was presented with such sim-ple grace. Those meals shaped theway I would look at food for the nextthree decades.Sixth: In and Out Burger. I grew up

in southern California. There was anIn and Out about a mile from myhouse. It had two drive-through win-dows and one walk-up window and aline down the block from the minutethey opened until the minute theyclosed at one in the morning. Thetaste and smell of those burgers still,to this day, takes me immediatelyback to the house, and to warmsunny days at the beach.Seventh: The Velvet Turtle. My first

time ever in a “fancy” restaurant.Lamb chops and vichyssoise. As I re-member I didn’t love the meal, but I took away a real sense that dinner istheater, that presentation was an im-portant part of the experience. Yearslater I discovered that Fedele Bauccio’64 was in charge of that chain ofrestaurants, as well as a few others;Fedele, of course, then started BonAppetit, which is now one of thebiggest and best food providers in theworld [see page XX]. Funny howthings work out. n

Note: Kirk and James Green’s nextChef’s Table (ten courses, with terrificwines) is Friday, February 1, starting atsix p.m. in Bauccio Commons, $75 perperson; call the alumni office for seats,503.943.7328.


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Three years ago, Joe Kuffner ’05 had acool idea: why not help new studentsmigrating to the University with somewell-placed signs along the way? Andimmediately the idea flew far, as yousee. The distance record so far isAmerican Samoa, the funniest is prob-ably the annual sign placed onGonzaga’s campus (left), the mostpoignant perhaps the ones from alum-ni serving in the Army and Air Forcein Afghanistan. Thanks, Joseph.


Winter 20127


LIKE I WASBORNAGAINFrom an essay by Jean-Francois Seidefor his freshman literature course. Jean-Francois is the first recipient of theMolly Hightower Scholarship, namedfor the young alumna killed in the 2010Haiti earthquake. The scholarship aimsto bring one Haitian student to theUniversity every year.

It was a Tuesday, January 12, 2010, at5:50 in the afternoon. I was comingfrom my usual activities, going toschool and visiting friends and family.Once home, I put my bag away and I was enjoying my favorite spot, thebest spot in the whole room, facingthe small white television on a tablewhere my dusty books and school papers have been for what seems likeforever. My friends and I are waitingfor a Mexican drama called Frijolito,while the smell of spaghetti was in-vading the whole room and spread-ing into the neighbor’s apartment.Suddenly, it was quiet. We felt thatsomething strange was occurring. Wewere moving and the house wasshaking. We were used to earthquaketremors, but this was different. It firstwobbled the building but then be-came heavier. We were all staring ateach other. “Run out!” I shouted. Weall jumped for the door. We left every-thing: the spaghetti ready to eat, thetelevision with the show just starting,my laptop, my books, school sup-plies, my clothes. The building was two floors with a

basement. It was made of walls that if

you hit them too hard would crumbleinto your hands. I felt as if there wereno beams in the building and thewalls would fall instantly. We knewthat if the house collapsed with us in-side, there would be no chance of sur-vival, as was the case for a lady in theapartment next door. I was in themiddle as we ran down the stairs, onefriend in front and another behind;we were holding hands until we gotto one of the places free of trees andbuildings.So here I was, standing on a road

with only a soaked shirt, shoes, andjeans to my name; one friend hadonly one sandal and the other hadonly one shoe. But we had been onestep from death and now we weremiraculously alive.It was after a couple of minutes

standing there that I felt like I wasborn again. I was running away fromdeath and a past that was not accept-able. From that time, I decided to puta boundary between my new life andmy old past—not to forget about thepast, but rather to make somethingdifferent now. Looking back to thepast now that I have had all these opportunities from leaving it behind, I can see that it was only the life I wasborn into. I made the right choice bystarting over again on a new path.After a couple more minutes I felt

like I had my feet back on earth. Myfriend slapped me on the back but I wasn’t paying attention. Instead I was thinking deep inside myself:Who am I, what am I doing here,what has just happened to me? Whydo I feel like I am drowning? I feltlike there was no air. There was aheavy humid gust of wind carryingall the sand of the shore into the city.The blue sky I knew was replaced by

one as dusty and grey as an old coalfactory. In the distance I heard peoplecrying but I had no clue about theirgrief. Their voices were filled withpanic and pain and fear and despair. I looked up and saw that the buildingwhere my apartment was had brokenin half. I saw people gathered wherewe used to play soccer every after-noon and gathered in other placeswhere there were no trees and build-ings. I was wondering what they werefleeing from. Everything seemed tomingle in my mind. I couldn’t picturewhat was really going on. If I wasdreaming, this was the most frighten-ing nightmare I ever had.I started to calm down when my

friend shouted “watch out!” and I feltit again, the heavy, powerful, under-ground movement that makes youfeel as if you’re surfing and lose allyour equilibrium and are about to falldown straight down. You could feelthe emptiness of the undergroundlike a balloon that lost its air.Then I knew I was not dreaming.

I felt like that was the moment that I was waiting for. I felt like a voice in-side me said “Don’t go back! Take thisnew path!” Sometimes now, I thinkback on the last moments of my oldlife: I had wanted to do somethingdifferent in my life, because I wastired of the same old life, but I had nomotivation. Since the earthquakehappened, and I lost everything, I leftit behind. Instead of going back torescue my belongings, I walked awayto find out about my family andfriends. My counter was back to zeroand I thought that it was the besttime to try something different, like I had always wanted to do. I decidedto leave the past in the past and walkinto the future. n

AVICTORIA CHRISTEN


Portland8


The third recipient of the annual Molly Hightower Award, honoring seniors who encapsulate the verve and zest andgrace and grinning generosity of the 2009 graduate killed in the Haiti quake: Rebecca Chavez, whose first volunteerwork, she says with a smile, was wheeling disabled adults to Mass when she was nine years old. “My dad taught usabout our obligation to stand with those in need,” she says. Future plans: try for a Fulbright Award for a year or two inChile, working with bruised girls and young women.

Winter 20129



TEN YEARS LATERFrom a longer essay by engineeringdean emeritus Zia Yamayee, an Afghannative who earned his first college de-gree at Kabul University. Zia was a ter-rific dean here from 1996 to 2011.

In 2001, when the Taliban ranAfghan istan, the only productive factories in the country were thosewhere artificial limbs, crutches, andwheelchairs were produced by inter-national aid agencies. Women werebarred from work outside the house.All girls’ schools were closed. Femaleemployees of the government agen-cies had been dismissed. All enter-tainment was banned, includingmusic, television, playing cards, andflying kites. Men were jailed for hairthat was too long and beards thatwere too short.I visited Afghanistan in June of

that year, to see my aging parents. I saw life under the Taliban. Therewas despair. There were checkpointseverywhere. There was little electric-ity. There were no phones. At onecheckpoint I was nearly arrested: mybeard was too short. I was releasedbecause my beard was gray.The only positive aspect of Taliban

control was security: no more war-lords. But the price for security wasthe loss of dignity and freedom. In October of that year, U.S. and

British forces began air strikesagainst the Taliban, who had shel-tered Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida terror network. In November,

the northern alliance entered thecapital, Kabul, after the Taliban fled.In December, a conference of Afghanrepresentatives created a transitionalgovernment, and Taliban rule ended.

I visited again this past spring. Themost dramatic change is in the livesof women and girls. Today, girls cango to school, walk and jog in public,go shopping, and do almost anythingmen can do. Most roads are nowpaved, many villages now have elec-tricity (some have solar power) andclean water, and women serve ongoverning councils. My granddaugh-ters are going to high school, andteaches in a secondary school. Anumber of my nieces have finisheduniversity and are also teachers.There are more women teachers inHerat than there are places for themto teach. There is so much interest inschools that many schools run threeshifts to deal with the influx of stu-dents. Because of so much interest ineducation, private schools have beenestablished across the Herat. At theuniversity level, women are now onthe faculty and almost 40% of the stu-dents are women. My niece who waskicked out of college by the Talibangovernment is now a professor in thesame college, Herat University.

Consider this. Afghanistan was afailed state for 30 years, from 1973 to2002. Most Afghans, including thecurrent president, were children ornot even born when war, fighting,and destruction began. The worldcommunity, I believe, needs to con-tinue to help to rebuild Afghanistanas a nation to avoid another tragedy

with disastrous consequences for thehuman family. There has been muchgood done since the fall of the Taliban,but there is more to be done beforeAfghanistan can survive as an inde-pendent nation and stand on its ownfeet. The process of nation building will

be a long one. I think Afghanistannow has a functioning government,but it needs our help and support foryears to come. When I was in Afghan -istan this spring, President Obamacame to Afghanistan, and he andAfghan President Karzai signed astrategic alliance treaty between theUnited Sates and Afghanistan afterour troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.That treaty was ratified by the Afghanparliament by a huge majority votesoon after the Presidents signed it. I believe this action shows that mostAfghans have a very positive view ofthe United States, and they want ourcontinued support and assistance asthey make progress toward a func-tioning democracy. I believe the world (especially

Russia, United States, China, andSaudi Arabia) has a moral responsibil-ity to help rebuild Afghanistan as anation/state, because those countriescontributed directly or indirectly toits destruction. Finally I would advo-cate patience as a virtue as we try tohelp Afghanistan become a function-ing democracy. Here in the U.S. we have the best

democracy the world has everknown. But we have been at it for 235 years, and still work to improveit. By comparison, Afghanistan hasbeen at it for less than 10 years. Weneed your help. n

And speaking of rebuilding, the University is indeed slowly chugging away at the new river campus north of the bluff; first upwill be a new baseball field, but eventually fields and trails and a science lab and a boathouse and…ask Colin McGinty for details, 503.943.8005.

Portland10



Matthew Cole was one of the student photographers savoring a show of their work this fall on campus; he caught boththe balloon man and the gentle pedestrians in downtown Vancouver, a stone’s throw (well, a heroic throw) from TheBluff. Our thanks to the University’s superb photography teacher Patricia Bognar for jazzing her students.


Winter 201211


S P O R T S

Cross Country The Pilot men werefifth in the nation at presstime, bestin the West; the women were rankedsixth in the West; and both were aim-ing at not only their WCC titles butnational honors. Among the high-lights: the men sweeping the top fourspots at the Charles BowlesInvitational in Salem, one point awayfrom a perfect team score (StephenKersh (was sixth by a hair), andMerel van Steenbergen running awaywith the Warner Pacific Open 5K in17:22, first by 11 seconds.Volleyball Among the highlights forthe Pilots, 6-17 at presstime: a run offour consecutive wins early, and howrefreshing to see an excited team andcrowd; Ariel Usher’s 1000th winningshot, making her only the tenth Pilotever with 1000 kills; and a thrillingwin against UNLV to win their ownPortland Invitational title. Soccer The Pilot women, ranked13th nationally after their early 2-1defeat of North Carolina and a tensetie with Notre Dame, were 8-4-3 atpresstime, led by Amanda Frisbie’s28 points. Among the highlights:

roaring sold-out crowds for NC, ND,and BYU, and Rebekah Kurle’s twogoals on five total shots so far: a terrif-ic conversion percentage. ¶ The Pilotmen, led by Steven Evans’ 24 points,were 5-7-1 as we went to press;among the highlights was a 4-1 drub-bing of Gonzaga at Merlo Field. ¶ It isinteresting to note that the Pilotwomen will lead the nation in atten-dance for the ninth straight year, withan average 3,567 fans per game, be-fore any playoff sellouts. Wow. Themen are averaging 1,170, which ismore per game than any of theirWCC opponents.Women’s Basketball It’s a young(six sophomores), quick (eightguards), and internationally flavored(two Finns, an Italian, and a BritishColumbian) Pilot team this year, butaccomplished; all-WCC Kari Luttinenis back, as are junior wings AlexisByrd and Cassandra Brown. And thenewcomers are tall and deft: redshirtcenter Erin Boettcher joins new for-wards Sara Ines Hernandez (whoplayed on Italy’s national team) andAnnika Holopainen, who played onFinland’s.Men’s Basketball The Pilot men arealso a young squad (guard Derrick

Rodgers is the only senior) but thekids are experienced: junior forwardRyan Nicholas, who averaged 12points and 8 rebounds last year, willbe joined by slashing wing KevinBailey and David Carr, from Portland’sCentral Catholic High, at the point.For once the Pilots have the luxury oftwo good centers, Thomas van derMars and Riley Barker, and the newfaces are fascinating players, amongthem guard Oskars Reinfelds fromLatvia, Oregon 5A Player of the YearJake Ehlers from Corvallis, and BrycePressley from Sacramento. The menface 15 teams that went to playoffslast year, among them UNLV,Kentucky, New Mexico, and archrivalGonzaga (in the Chiles Center onJanuary 17).Baseball Back for the Pilots, 27-25last year, are freshman All-Americanpitcher Travis Radke (against whomWCC batters hit a spindly .197), andall-WCC outfielder Turner Gill (whohit .314, with 88 total bases). Amongthe new faces for Chris Sperry’steam, which opens play in February,is pitcher Zach Torson, fromMountain View High in Vancouver,Washington, where he struck out 65batters in 55 innings last year, withan ERA of 1.40 (and also hit .390).Among the games not to miss at JoeEtzel Field: Oregon State (March 5and May 7), BYU (April 11-13), andOregon (April 16 and 23). Tennis First impressions from theopening matches of the season: forthe men, sophomore Stefan Micovand junior Ratan Gill look good, andall-WCC Michel Hu Kwo returns; forthe women, all-WCC senior ValeskaHoath and star sophomore NastyaPolyakova return to join talentedfreshmen Saroop Dhatt (from BritishColumbia), Milagros Cubelli (Argen -tina), and Tori Troesch (San LuisObispo).RowingHighlights for the womenthis fall: a close match against OregonState on the Willamette in Corvallis, awhopping eight rowers namedNational Scholar Athletes (grades of3.5 or better), and a new assistantcoach, Todd Vogt, who recentlyhelped Lewis and Clark win the North -west title and Willamette Universityto rise to twelfth in the nation. Hehas also coached a U.S. Rowing Clubnational champion team.

INFORMATION, TICKETS,SCHEDULES:PORTLANDPILOTS.COM,503.943.7117

For Clive! The women’s winner of the 2012 Portland Marathon, in 2:51: ColleenSalisbury Little ’05, who ran with 4 CLIVE on her jersey, honoring the wry coachshe had as a Pilot soccer player on both the 2002 and 2005 title teams. “Every timeI compete, I compete in remembrance of him,” she said. “He taught all of us to begood athletes, but also to be amazing people. His suffering pushes me toward every-thing I do.” Little, now a physical therapist in Lake Oswego with her marathon sightsset on the 2016 US Olympic Team, cooled down after her win and then came up toThe Bluff for…a soccer game and celebration honoring the 2002 national champs.

Portland12



B R I E F L Y

Sixth in the West, says U.S. News &World Reportmagazine about the Uni -versity’s general excellence among its121 Western peers; it is the eigh-teenth year in a row the Universitywas ranked in the top ten. U.S. Newsalso ranked the University sixth inthe West for “bang for the buck”—ex-cellent education at reasonable cost.Other recent national rankings: firstfor Fulbright grants among its peers(Chronicle for Higher Education), andthird in America for service to thecommunity (Washington Monthly).The University was also namedamong the best ten large companiesin Portland, by The Oregonian, andone of the healthiest, by The PortlandBusiness Journal.The Class of 2016, the second-biggest ever at 880 students, averagedan average high school GPA of 3.64and SAT score of about 1200. Fortypercent were from outside Oregonand Washington. Total enrollmentthis year was nearly 4,000, includingsome 700 graduate students.Student & Faculty Feats The Beaconstudent newspaper earned a whop-ping nine national awards from theColumbia Scholastic Press Association,headquartered in Columbia UJournalism School in New York; nearly1,000 other student papers competedfor the rings. Wow. ¶ Nursing profes-sor Carol Craig was named one of thenation’s top 100 nurses by BSNtoMSN.org, which lauded her passion forrural health issues. Our congrats. ¶And German professor LaurieMcLary was named the top foreignlanguage teacher in Oregon; Lauriewas the energy behind the Univer -sity’s booming German Studies major,a major factor in our recent burst ofFulbright grants. Wir gratulieren!The RISE Campaign, launched inDecember of 2010 with a $175 milliongoal to abet scholarships, a rebuilt library, and a new recreational center,among other adventures, is up to $140million at presstime, with two yearsto play. ¶ Among recent generosities:$30,000 from Michael Nelson ’76, tocreate the Walter Nelson Professor shipin business, honoring his dad, a Navyveteran who founded the NelsonCompany while home on leave dur-ing the Second World War. ¶ And$100,000 from another Navy veteran,the late William Isaac Phillips ’50, tocreate scholarships in arts and sciences.¶ And $858,000 from M.J. Murdock

Charitable Trust to renovate the ClarkLibrary, which reopens next summer.Raised by senior Sam Bridgman:$30,000 from Ride Ataxia Portland, abike ride on Sauvie Island to gathercash to fight Friedreich’s Ataxia, thedisease that clocked Sam when hewas 15. For more see a short film byUniversity videographer Jeff Kennelat vimeo.com/43579515.The National Science Foundationand the Noyce Foundation ofCalifornia awarded the University$1.2 million to create the NoyceProgram to aid science, technology,engineering, and mathematics stu-dents and teachers. The program is awildly creative partnership amongthe College of Arts and Sciences, theShiley School of Engineering, theSchool of Education, the MoreauCenter for Service, Portland’s SaturdayAcademy project, and the Portlandpublic school system; its captain willbe the University’s exuberant mathprofessor Stephanie Salomone.Doctor Doctor The University’s sec-ond new Ph.D. program, in education(joining nursing) will begin in May2013; Ed.D. students can concentratein neuroeducation or organizationaldevelopment. Previous doctoral pro-grams on The Bluff, long gone: psychology, and yes, education.

The New Blanchet House ofHospitality opened in September, onGlisan Street downtown; the gleam-ing $13 million structure is adjacentto the ragged old barn that housedthe mission for the past 60 years.Blanchet was started by Uni versitystudents in 1952, kids who tookChrist’s message to heart and set towork without ado; their brainchildhas served over 15 million meals sincethen, and temporarily housed thou-sands of men in need. It’s one of thebest examples of the University’s en-ergy in blunt hourly action. Congrats.Retiring this fall, after 41 years ofquick, efficient, creative, amused,and thorough service as Universityhistorian and archivist: MarthaWachsmuth, who tried to retire in1991 but wasn’t allowed to, becausewe would have lost our collectivememory altogether. What a woman.To call archives (503.943.7116) andnot get Martha…unthinkable.This Magazine raised some $94,000last year, by asking politely; amongthe highlights, at least for the editor,were gifts from Richard Nixon (of SaltLake City), gifts from Lebanon,Japan, Canada, Greece, Switzerland,Australia, Brazil, Norway, Indonesia,and New Zealand, and five thousanddollars from regent Darlene Shiley.

Sometimes there are people who are so good at what they do and so unassumingand unegoish and untrumpeting that they don’t get the shouts they deserve. Here’sone: University chemist Sister Angela Huffman, of the Order of Saint Benedict, whohas, count ’em, four international patents for her work with anticancer substancesin trees and plants. She was just named an American Chemical Society Fellow, animmense professional honor. She’s worked with hundreds of University and highschool students. She’s changing the universe. She’s a treasure. We are shouting this.

Winter 201213



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My recorder dances around likewater in hot olive oil as Fedele Baucciounconsciously taps hard on his deskwith every third word. He is talkingabout nothing less than the future offood production, preparation, quality,and sustainability in America, andhe got excited about the subject in lesstime than it takes to sear a scallop.This is a man for whom good (real,local, safe, delicious) food is his love,his life, his business, his mission. Thisis a man who, long before food jour-nalists like Michael Pollan and EricSchlosser put the local-sustainable-healthy food ethic back on America’stable, was building a company basedon fresh, flavorful, from-nearby eating— farm-to-fork eating, as he named itback in 1999. How much influencedoes he have? This is a man whosecompany, Bon Appétit Management,serves more than 140 million mealseach year.At 70, Bauccio is a wealthy man

who could easily dial down the flameon his business and retire to largeboats and fast cars. Instead, he oftenleaves his car in the garage and ridesa red scooter around the streets of SanFrancisco, where he lives with hiswife. Now, here in his Palo Alto office,he launches into his thoughts on im-proving farmworker safety and fairwages. I reach for my recorder, whichis threatening to flip like a piece ofgrass-fed, antibiotic-free beef beingturned on the grill.But make no mistake, Fedele Bauccio

is a serious market-analyzing, revenue-revering MBA business guy. There’snothing flakey about him. He is anoverflowing marketbasket of unexpect-ed ingredients: a one-percenter who’salso an activist for good, a restaurantguy who’s also a number-cruncher,a corporate CEO who likes nothingbetter than giving his employeesfreedom and opportunity. He’s anItalian-American with a deep, gravellyGregory-Peck-meets-Gary-Cooper voice.He’s the builder of an $800 million-a-year company who has never em-

Bauccio with Julia Child, 1998.

ployed a salesperson. He’s a verygenerous University donor (see, forexample, the gorgeous Bauccio Com-mons) who cares less about his nameon the building than the flavor andquality of, say, the heirloom tomatoesor the petrale sole in grape leaves orthe pepper-crusted tombo tuna servedwithin it. He runs one of the world’slargest contract food service companieswith more than 500 locations and14,500 employees in 37 states; he ab-solutely hates the word “cafeteria.” Yet very few people know who

Fedele Bauccio is, which concernshim...not a bit.“I don’t care at all that most people

haven’t heard of me, he says, tappinglike someone sending Morse Code,“But I do want them to know that BonAppétit Management is doing extraor-dinary work, and we will continue toraise hell until we can see a moresustainable future.”

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942and raised with his two brothers inthe orange-grove-serene SouthernCalifornia of the late ’40s and early’50s, Bauccio had gone to a Holy Crosshigh school, which is how he heardabout UP. His family didn’t have a lotof money — Bauccio’s first job wasshining shoes in his father’s barbershop— and they made it clear that Fedeleneeded to get a job to pay for someof his college expenses. “My first day on campus,” he re-

members, “I walked over to the dininghall, and by that evening I had a jobwashing dishes. I think that same dishmachine is still there” — in the build-ing which now bears his name overthe door. After a few months Baucciomoved up, or rather over, to the potsink, which came with added respon-sibilities, one of which was to lock thekitchen up after the students and thepriests had left.By the end of his freshman year,

Bauccio had decided that dentistrywasn’t for him, and switched to eco-nomics and business. At about thesame time, the UP chef, an older Frenchgentleman named Vern Mansau, took

Bauccio aside and asked if the prideof the pot sink would like to come inafter classes and learn to do prep workin the kitchen. “He said he wouldteach me how to use the French knifeand cut vegetables and so forth,”Bauccio says. “He was a tough boss,but he liked me and he spent a lot oftime with me in the kitchen. We hada baker named Booker T. Washingtonwho was also a terrific guy, and beforelong the Commons was my secondhome. It seemed like I lived there morethan I lived in my dorm room.”Food had always been big in Bauc-

cio’s life — é Italiano, dopo tutto. “Mymother was a great cook,” he says. “Ispent a lot of time with her in thekitchen. The first thing I learned tomake was her spaghetti sauce. Wewould all go to Mass on Sunday, thenas soon as we got home — I can stillsee that big pot with the olive oil andthe onions just starting to brown, thenthe tomatoes going in. It would cookfor hours, and at 4 p.m. we’d have thisbig family meal with all the relatives.God forbid if we weren’t at that tableon time; my mother would kill us!”One of his earliest memories is

driving up to the fields of Santa Barbarawith his grandmother to pick mus-tard greens. “She would have this bigapron on, and she’d hold it open aswe filled it with fresh greens. Thenwe’d go home and she’d make a hugepot of minestra, kind of a beans andgreens soup, made from just whatwe could find in the fields, and we’deat and enjoy that dish for days. Redmeat was seldom on the menu inthose days.”The proclivity was in place, then;

but Bauccio was still floored when,after the manager of the dining hallquit, University president Father PaulWaldschmidt called the junior in andsaid “Fedele, here are the keys to theCommons. You run it with the chef.”“I was scared to death,” Bauccio recalls,“But I figured I knew enough to pullit off. So for the last year-and-a-halfof my undergraduate time on the BluffI ran the dining hall as a student.That’s how I got into food service. It

Winter 201215

Food ForwardFew people, if any, have ever done more to get

America eating better, healthier, and more sustainablythan Fedele Bauccio ’64. A visit with a visionary.

By Todd Schwartz

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was really an amazing recipe for opportunity.”And nearly 50 years later, Bauccio

is still enjoying that dish.

“At first it was difficult,” Bauccio saysof starting Bon Appétit in 1987, “and I realized very quickly that my conceptwasn’t for everyone. We didn’t makeany money at all for the first four orfive years. My vision was to create aunique restaurant company that wouldwork in the contract environment. Ifelt strongly that the whole idea ofcans of vegetables and mystery meat,menu cycles and recipe boxes, andwhat students and employees wereeating at their cafeterias 25 years agowas disgusting. I wanted to hire greatchefs and let them create customseasonal menus. I wanted great flavorfrom fresh, local, authentic ingredients.I wanted cafés, not cafeterias, placesthat were true to their locations andhad a baseline of great food and thebest ingredients and social responsi-bility. I wanted to change the indus-try and at the same time build a distinc-tive brand. Of course people thoughtwe were crazy.”For his potential clients, corpora-

tions and colleges and anyone else within-house food service, the bottomline was, and had always been, cost.No one knew that better than Bauccio,who was a veteran of 20 years witha very large contract food service com-pany when he left to start Bon Appétit.

He had steadily risen to the heightsof the California-based company afterearning his M.B.A. at UP in 1966. Hisbrother Michael Bauccio was also anexecutive of the company, and neitherone of them figured they’d ever workanywhere else.Until their company was the subject

of a hostile takeover by the Marriotcorporation.“Everything changed,” says Fedele

Bauccio. “My brother was on a planewith his new boss, and Michael offeredto tell him about his key people. Theguy looked at my brother and said,‘I don’t care about your people. WhatI want to know is if you are going tomake your numbers.’ We knew it wasjust a matter of time before we’dleave.”And it wasn’t long before Bauccio

found himself gone from the goldbathroom fixtures and the putting greenof his old company’s lavish offices,working at a card table in a warehouseacross from the San Francisco city jail.He took a legal pad and wrote downthe Kitchen Principles that are rela-tively unchanged today: Make every-thing from soups to salad dressingfrom scratch, cook what you want,make it great. Bon Appétit, such as itwas, was born.His first client was the executive

dining room at the now-defunct BearSterns investment bank. Eventuallya call came from Xerox, whose type-writer plant in Fremont, California,

had 2,000 employees and lousy food.Two years later, the demise of type-writers closed the plant, while BonAppétit was still struggling to make aprofit. But the very technology thatkilled the typewriter, plus an explosionof enterprise that came to be knownas Silicon Valley, was about to changeeverything.“People knew we were going to

spend more money on our model offlavor and sustainability,” Baucciosays, “and why would they want to paymore? But I knew that if we stayedtrue to the vision and delivered onour promises, it would someday takehold. And more than any other group,I thought young people would get it.That they would care about the sameissues we did. The trick was stayingin business until it happened! Weworked like hell, and we also got lucky.”Michael Bauccio joined his brother

at Bon Appétit early on, and with himcame the first educational account:the four nuns who ran the SantaCatalina School in Monterey. And thencame the luck: just down the roadthe technology boom hit a rolling boil.The competition for top young techemployees was furious, and food, thekind of outstanding food that thesenew companies could offer employeesto keep them “on campus” for lunch,became a recruiting tool. Oraclesought out Bon Appétit, and so didCisco. Eventually Yahoo and eBay and,more recently, Google and Twitter

Portland16

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followed suit. And as those companiesspread to other cities and states,Bauccio went with them. Always,Bauccio used his chefs and managersto convince new accounts, never asales team. Mostly, people came look-ing for him.The message of delicious, local,

sustainable food also resonated, asBauccio had guessed, with that othergroup of young people who eat oncampuses: college students. Over theyears more and more private schools,from UP to U Penn and Duke, cameinto the fold. Today, some 140 milliontimes each year, people sit down at acollege, a corporation, or a museum(like the Getty in Los Angeles, or theSeattle Art Museum) and have a mealthat no food service company couldhave even imagined 25 years ago.An upscale-restaurant-quality, locallysourced, nutritious farm-to-fork mealserved with a healthy side of passion-ate food culture and ethical beliefs,from sustainable seafood to cage-freeeggs, rgbh-free dairy to zero trans fat,low-carbon diets to food waste reduc-tion, student gardens to farmworkerrights and protections.All which have been championed

by others — but, for better or worse,a lot more people in power take noticewhen the message comes from aleading national corporation that buys,for example, more than 10 millioneggs per year.“I have to say,” Bauccio emphasizes,

“that these initiatives were most oftenculinary acts for me, rather than po-litical acts. We started Farm-to-Forkbecause I was concerned with flavorand quality, but when I started to seelocal farmers coming to me to thankme, the light bulb went on. We had apowerful social responsibility role toplay. I started to immerse myself inthe issues of soil and water and mono-cropping and antibiotics. I learnedabout the science of factory farmingand the environmental and healthimpacts of how we eat today. I part-nered with a number of NGOs to getthe messaging out there. Our job isto act differently than anyone else inthe industry. To be better; to thinkabout the future of people, not justthe business. It’s harder, it costs more,but it’s so much more rewarding.”They argue with each other about

profit vs. the people all the time:“They” being Fedele Bauccio, M.B.A.-trained business guy and FedeleBauccio, food and future guy.“Oh, I have that conversation with

myself all the time,” the head of BonAppétit says, laughing. “My philosophyhas always been that even if it costsus more on the bottom line, if we stay

true to our mission and focus, andthe dream we imagined in the verybeginning, then I’m not going to worryabout that bottom line. It will payoff. Which I think we’ve proven. We’venever tried to grow by cutting costs.We’ve always worked to create valueto drive revenues — always attackedthe top line. Which, of course, is ex-actly the opposite of what my M.B.A.professors would have advised backin the day!”

A few days after I meet with Bauccio,I’m standing with Kirk Mustain, whoruns the Bon Appétit café in theBauccio Commons at UP. He’s proudlyshowing off the gorgeous Oregon Starheirloom tomatoes from a nearbyfarm — he’ll buy 1,800 pounds of themthis week. Which leads us to pizza:it’s Wednesday, which is pizza nightfor the 30 Holy Cross priests who

live on campus, and Mustain and chefJames Green are thinking margherita.Mustain takes a quick call from a

local farmer who needs help (“Allmy eggplant has to come off today!”),and Mustain is happy to buy it. Thentwo Muslim students come up tohim and ask if he has found a sourcefor halal meat, which he has. It’sclear that Mustain and his chef makethe decisions without a lot of corpo-rate control.“Fedele is the source of the passion

we all have for preparing great food,”Mustain says. “I’ve known him 20years and he’s a very inspiring guy.He hasn’t changed the original vision.All he asks is ‘make it local, make itgreat.’ And he always asks ‘What’sthe next thing we can do to be betterand get the message out about healthyeating?’”So I asked Bauccio that question:

What is the future of healthy, local,seasonal eating in America? Will it besomething determined by class? Today,

it’s expensive; will only people withmoney be able to really eat well?“That’s a good question,” he says.

“I believe that this food revolution isn’tgoing away. We have huge issues withobesity and Type 2 diabetes, withfactory farming and pesticides, on andon. And the world will soon have 10billion people to feed. I think thatyoung people in particular really getit, and as more and more people un-derstand that the real costs of bad,cheap food in our agricultural modelare hidden: in health care costs, en-vironmental costs and more. Add thosebillions of dollars to food directly, andlocal farm-fresh produce and meatwould look pretty cheap. Eating fewer,better calories is a pretty inexpensiveway to buy improved health andwellness. And we also have changeour ag model to treat our farmworkerswith more dignity, better conditions,better housing. We barely mention thepeople who harvest our food in thiscountry. I don’t have an answer forall the immigration issues, but I doknow we have to solve them in a waythat makes sense.”Bauccio is leaving the next day for

Washington, D.C., to help push thestalled Farm Bill and incentives forsmall farmers. He still works six daysa week and loves it all, even whenhe’s fighting uphill. Celebrated foodpioneer and Chez Panisse restaurantlegend Alice Waters, who along withBauccio was honored with the Leader-ship Award of the James Beard Foun-dation in 2011, has said of Bauccio’sefforts to drive good with a big corpo-ration, “It takes a superhuman personlike Fedele, someone who is willingto take a lot of risks. He admits that hecan’t do everything he wants to do;that’s the unfortunate part. Until there’sreform at a high level, he can’t evenfind enough antibiotic-free meat tofulfill his needs.”So he’ll keep looking. And serve

less red meat. And, of course, keepgrowing and making a profit. “Look,” he says, tapping so hard on

the desk I fear he may jam a finger,“it’s not one or the other. We have tomake a profit to do good! We’re notstopping, and we’re getting big enoughthat people have to listen to us. I’moften asked when I’m going to retire”— the look he gives me makes meglad I didn’t ask that — “but everymorning when I get up I have a mil-lion ideas. I’m excited as hell.” n

Todd Schwartz ([email protected]) is an Oregon writer who has con-tributed a dozen lively profiles to thismagazine over the years, for which wethank him, for once.

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Pears

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For nine years now, Sam Asai hasloaded 46-pound boxes of his HoodRiver pears – Anjou, Bosc, Asian,Concorde, Bartlett, Starkrimson, andComice – into his truck and driventhem along the Columbia River to theUniversity of Portland, to be sure theyare fresh and safely handed over tothe school that was his first collegeaccount. Sam also raises apples andcherries, continuing a family traditionfour generations strong. A&J Orchardsis named for his son, Aron, and hisdaughter, Jessica; Aron and a cousinare fourth generation of Asais to tendto their trees, keeping the legacyalive through poor growing seasons,internment of Sam’s grandfather bythe United States government duringthe Second World War, and whateverelse the world threw at them.

Once his pears reach the Univer-sity, they are immediately cooled; Sampicks his pears when they are mature,but not ripe. Pears can be kept coolfor weeks, if necessary, without anydamage; finally the Bon Appétit chefsbring the pears to room temperatureover three days, and when they areperfectly ripe they are eaten as is andin soups, smoothies, salads, sand-wiches, and sauces. Most popularamong students: red pears (especiallyBartletts and Starkrimsons), says ex-ecutive chef James Green. Greenand general manager Kirk Mustainwrite menus that play to the seasons.In late summer, as students trickleback onto campus, they are servedfresh water with slices of red pears.When the rains begin in November,students huddle by the Commons’fireplace with pear and chèvre pizza.Spring, when the rains hint at ending:roast pear salads. Pears are poached,sautéed, baked. Paired with pork, cran-berries, chicken. Sliced, cubed, whole.The pear, says James Green with asmile, is a lovely block of marble ina menu-sculptors’ imagination...

Brittany Wilmes

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Iwas only eight years old when “TheFrench Chef” first appeared on Amer-ican television in 1963, but it didn’ttake long for me to realize that thisJulia Child had improved the qualityof life around our house. My motherbegan cooking dishes she’d watchedJulia cook on television: boeuf bourgui-gnon (the subject of the show’s firstepisode), French onion soup gratinée,duck à l’orange, coq au vin, mousseau chocolat. Some of the more ambi-tious dishes, like the duck or the mousse,were pointed toward weekend com-pany, but my mother would usually testthese out on me and my sisters earlierin the week, and a few of the others—including the boeuf bourguignon,which I especially loved—actuallymade it into heavy weeknight rotation.So whenever people talk about howJulia Child upgraded the culture offood in America, I nod appreciatively.I owe her. Not that I didn’t also oweSwanson, because we also ate TV din-ners, and those were pretty good, too.Every so often I would watch “The

French Chef” with my mother in theden. On WNET in New York, it cameon late in the afternoon, after school,and because we had only one televisionback then, if Mom wanted to watchher program, you watched it, too. Theshow felt less like TV than like hang-ing around the kitchen, which is tosay, not terribly exciting to a kid (exceptwhen Child dropped something onthe floor, which my mother promisedwould happen if we stuck around longenough) but comforting in its famil-iarity: the clanking of pots and pans,the squeal of an oven door in need ofoil, all the kitchen-chemistry-set spec-tacles of transformation. The showwas taped live and broadcast uncut andunedited, so it had a vérité feel com-pletely unlike anything you might seetoday on the Food Network, with itsA.D.H.D. editing and hyperkineticsoundtracks of rock music and clashingknives. While Julia waited for thebutter foam to subside in the sauté pan,

THE ENDOF COOKING?

There are endless food showson television…but Americans cook

less than ever before. Why?By Michael Pollan

you waited, too, precisely as long, lis-tening to Julia’s improvised patterover the hiss of her pan, as she filledthe desultory minutes with kitchentips and lore. It all felt more like lifethan TV, though Julia’s voice was likenothing I ever heard before or wouldhear again until Monty Python cameto America: vaguely European, breathyand singsongy, and weirdly suggestiveof a man doing a falsetto impressionof a woman. The BBC supposedly took“The French Chef” off the air becauseviewers wrote in complaining thatJulia Child seemed either drunk ordemented.Meryl Streep, who brings Julia

Child vividly back to the screen in NoraEphron’s charming comedy, Julie &Julia, has the voice down, and with thehelp of some clever set design andcinematography, she manages to evoketoo Child’s big-girl ungainliness—thewoman was 6 foot 2 and had armslike a longshoreman. Streep also cap-tures the deep sensual delight thatJulia Child took in food—not just theeating of it but the fondling and affec-tionate slapping of ingredients intheir raw state and the magic of theirkitchen transformations.But Julie & Julia is more than an ex-

ercise in nostalgia. As the title suggests,the film has a second, more contem-porary heroine. The Julie character(played by Amy Adams) is based onJulie Powell, a 29-year-old aspiringwriter living in Queens who, castingabout for a blog conceit in 2002, hiton a cool one: she would cook her waythrough all 524 recipes in Child’s Mas-tering the Art of French Cooking in 365days and blog about her adventures.The movie shuttles back and forth be-tween Julie’s year of compulsive cook-ing and blogging in Queens in 2002and Julia’s decade in Paris and Provencea half-century earlier, as recountedin My Life in France, the memoir pub-lished a few years after her death in2004. Julia Child in 1949 was in someways in the same boat in which Julie

Powell found herself in 2002: happilymarried to a really nice guy but feeling,acutely, the lack of a life project. Livingin Paris, where her husband, PaulChild, was posted in the diplomaticcorps, Julia (who like Julie had workedas a secretary) was at a loss as to whatto do with her life until she realizedthat what she liked to do best was eat.So she enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu andlearned how to cook. As with Julia,so with Julie: cooking saved her life,giving her a project and, eventually,a path to literary success.That learning to cook could lead

an American woman to success of anykind would have seemed utterly im-plausible in 1949; that it is so thorough-ly plausible 60 years later owes every-thing to Julia Child’s legacy. JuliePowell operates in a world that JuliaChild helped to create, one wherefood is taken seriously, where chefshave been welcomed into the repertorycompany of American celebrity andwhere cooking has become a broadlyappealing mise-en-scène in whichsuccess stories can plausibly be set andplayed out. How amazing is it that welive today in a culture that has not onlysomething called the Food Networkbut now a hit show on that networkcalled “The Next Food Network Star,”which thousands of 20- and 30-some-things compete eagerly to become?It would seem we have come a long wayfrom Swanson TV dinners.The Food Network can now be seen

in nearly 100 million American homes,and on most nights commands moreviewers than any of the cable newschannels. Millions of Americans, in-cluding my 16-year-old son, can tell youmonths after the finale which con-testant emerged victorious in Season 5of “Top Chef.” The popularity of cook-ing shows—or perhaps I should sayfood shows—has spread beyond theprecincts of public or cable televisionto the broadcast networks. It’s nowonder that a Hollywood studio wouldconclude that American audiences

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had an appetite for a movie in whichthe road to personal fulfillment andpublic success passes through the kitch-en and turns, crucially, on a recipe forboeuf bourguignon. (The secret is topat dry your beef before you brown it.)But here’s what I don’t get: How is

it that we are so eager to watch otherpeople browning beef cubes on screenbut so much less eager to brown themourselves? For the rise of Julia Childas a figure of cultural consequence—along with Alice Waters and MarioBatali and Martha Stewart and EmerilLagasse and whoever is crowned thenext Food Network star—has, para-doxically, coincided with the rise of fastfood, home-meal replacements andthe decline and fall of everyday homecooking.That decline has several causes:

women working outside the home; foodcompanies persuading Americans tolet them do the cooking; and advancesin technology that made it easier for

them to do so. Cooking is no longerobligatory, and for many people, womenespecially, that has been a blessing.But perhaps a mixed blessing, to judgeby the culture’s continuing, if notdeeping, fascination with the subject.It has been easier for us to give upcooking than it has been to give uptalking about it—and watching it.Today the average American spends

a mere 27 minutes a day on food pre-paration (another four minutes clean-ing up); that’s less than half the timethat we spent cooking and cleaning upwhen Julia arrived on our televisionscreens. It’s also less than half the timeit takes to watch a single episode of“Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “The NextFood Network Star.” What this sug-gests is that a great many Americansare spending considerably more timewatching images of cooking on televi-sion than they are cooking themselves—an increasingly archaic activitythey will tell you they no longer have

the time for.What is wrong with this picture?

2. THE COURAGE TO FLIPWhen I asked my mother recentlywhat exactly endeared Julia Child toher, she explained that “for so manyof us she took the fear out of cooking”and, to illustrate the point, broughtup the famous potato show, one of theepisodes that Meryl Streep recreatesbrilliantly on screen. Millions of Am-ericans of a certain age claim to re-member Julia Child dropping a chickenor a goose on the floor, but the memoryis apocryphal: what she dropped wasa potato pancake, and it didn’t quitemake it to the floor. Still, this was aclassic live-television moment, incon-ceivable on any modern cooking show:Martha Stewart would sooner com-mit seppuku than let such an outtakeever see the light of day.The episode has Julia making a

plate-size potato pancake, sautéing abig disc of mashed potato into whichshe has folded impressive quantitiesof cream and butter. Then the fatefulmoment arrives:“When you flip anything, you just

have to have the courage of your con-victions,” she declares, clearly a tadnervous at the prospect, and then givesthe big pancake a flip. On the waydown, half of it catches the top of thepan and splats onto the stovetop.Undaunted, Julia scoops the thing upand roughly patches the pancakeback together, explaining: “When Iflipped it, I didn’t have the courage todo it the way I should have. You canalways pick it up.” And then, lookingright through the camera as if takingus into her confidence, she utters theline that did so much to lift the fearof failure from my mother and hercontemporaries: “If you’re alone in thekitchen, WHOOOO”—the pronounis sung—“is going to see?” For a gener-ation of women eager to transcendtheir mothers’ recipe box (and perhaps,too, their mothers’ social standing),Julia’s little kitchen catastrophe wasa liberation and a lesson: “The onlyway you learn to flip things is just toflip them!”It was a kind of courage—not only

to cook but to cook the world’s mostglamorous and intimidating cuisine—that Julia Child gave my mother andso many other women like her, and towatch her empower viewers in episodeafter episode is to appreciate just howmuch about cooking on television—not to mention cooking itself—haschanged in the years since “The FrenchChef” was on the air.There are still cooking programs

that will teach you how to cook. Public

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television offers the eminently useful“America’s Test Kitchen.” The FoodNetwork carries a whole slate of so-called dump-and-stir shows during theday, and the network’s research sug-gests that at least some viewers arefollowing along. But many of these pro-grams—I’m thinking of Rachael Ray,Paula Deen, Sandra Lee—tend to beaimed at stay-at-home moms who arein a hurry and eager to please. Theseshows stress quick results, shortcuts,and superconvenience but never thesort of pleasure—physical and mental—that Julia Child took in the work ofcooking: the tomahawking of a fishskeleton or the chopping of an onion,the Rolfing of butter into the breast ofa raw chicken or the vigorous whiskingof heavy cream. By the end of the po-tato show, Julia was out of breath andhad broken a sweat, which she moppedfrom her brow with a paper towel.(Have you ever seen Martha Stewartbreak a sweat?) Child was less interestedin making it fast or easy than makingit right, because cooking for her wasso much more than a means to a meal.It was a gratifying, even ennoblingsort of work, engaging both the mindand the muscles. You didn’t do it toplease a husband or impress guests;you did it to please yourself. No onecooking on television today gives theimpression that they enjoy the actualwork quite as much as Julia Child did.In this, she strikes me as a more liber-ated figure than many of the womenwho have followed her on television.

Curiously, the year Julia Child wenton the air—1963—was the same yearBetty Friedan published The FeminineMystique, the book that taught millionsof American women to regard house-work, cooking included, as drudgery,indeed as a form of oppression. Youmay think of these two figures as an-tagonists, but that wouldn’t be quiteright. They actually had a great deal incommon, as Child’s biographer, LauraShapiro, points out, and addressedthe aspirations of many of the samewomen. Julia never referred to herviewers as “housewives”—a word shedetested—and never condescendedto them. She tried to show the sort ofwomen who read The Feminine Mys-tique that, far from oppressing them,the work of cooking approached inthe proper spirit offered a kind of ful-fillment and deserved an intelligentwoman’s attention. (A man’s too.)Second-wave feminists were often am-bivalent on the gender politics ofcooking. Simone de Beauvoir wrotein The Second Sex that though cookingcould be oppressive, it could also be aform of “revelation and creation; anda woman can find special satisfaction

in a successful cake or a flaky pastry,for not everyone can do it: one musthave the gift.” This can be read eitheras a special Frenchie exemption forthe culinary arts (féminisme, c’est bon,but we must not jeopardize those flakypastries!) or as a bit of wisdom thatsome American feminists thoughtless-ly trampled in their rush to get womenout of the kitchen.

3. TO THE KITCHEN STADIUMWhichever, kitchen work itself haschanged considerably since 1963, judg-ing from its depiction on today’s how-to shows. Take the concept of cookingfrom scratch. Many of today’s cookingprograms rely unapologetically oningredients that themselves containlots of ingredients: canned soups, jarredmayonnaise, frozen vegetables, pow-dered sauces, vanilla wafers, limeadeconcentrate, Marshmallow Fluff.This probably shouldn’t surprise us:processed foods have so thoroughly

colonized the American kitchen anddiet that they have redefined whatpasses today for cooking, not to men-tion food. Many of these conveniencefoods have been sold to women as toolsof liberation; the rhetoric of kitchenoppression has been cleverly hijackedby food marketers and the cookingshows they sponsor to sell more stuff.So the shows encourage home cooksto take all manner of shortcuts, each ofwhich involves buying another prod-uct, and all of which taken togetherhave succeeded in redefining what iscommonly meant by the verb “to cook.”

I spent an enlightening if somewhatdepressing hour on the phone with aveteran food-marketing researcher,Harry Balzer, who explained that “peo-ple call things ‘cooking’ today thatwould roll their grandmother in hergrave—heating up a can of soup ormicrowaving a frozen pizza.” Balzer hasbeen studying American eating habitssince 1978; the NPD Group, the firm

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he works for, collects data from a poolof 2,000 food diaries to track Americaneating habits. Years ago Balzer noticedthat the definition of cooking held byhis respondents had grown so broad asto be meaningless, so the firm tight-ened up the meaning of “to cook” atleast slightly to capture what was reallygoing on in American kitchens. Tocook from scratch, they decreed, meansto prepare a main dish that requiressome degree of “assembly of elements.”So microwaving a pizza doesn’t countas cooking, though washing a head oflettuce and pouring bottled dressingover it does. Under this dispensation,you’re also cooking when you spreadmayonnaise on a slice of bread andpile on some cold cuts or a hamburgerpatty. (Currently the most popular mealin America, at both lunch and dinner,is a sandwich; the No.1 accompanyingbeverage is a soda.) At least by Balzer’snon-too-exacting standard, Americansare still cooking up a storm—58 per-cent of our evening meals qualify,though even that figure has been fallingsteadily since the 1980s.Like most people who study con-

sumer behavior, Balzer has developeda somewhat cynical view of humannature, which his research suggests isever driven by the quest to save timeor money or, optimally, both. I keptasking him what his research had tosay about the prevalence of the activityI referred to as “real scratch cooking,”but he wouldn’t touch the term. Why?Apparently the activity has become sorarefied as to elude his tools of meas-urement.“Here’s an analogy,” Balzer said. “A

hundred years ago, chicken for dinnermeant going out and catching, killing,plucking and gutting a chicken. Doyou know anybody who still does that?It would be considered crazy! Well,that’s exactly how cooking will seemto your grandchildren: somethingpeople used to do when they had noother choice. Get over it.”After my discouraging hour on the

phone with Balzer, I settled in for acouple more hours with the Food Net-work, trying to square his dismal viewof our interest in cooking with thehyperexuberant, even fetishized imagesof cooking that are presented on thescreen. The Food Network undergoesa complete change of personality atnight, when it trades the cozy precinctsof the home kitchen and chirpy soft-ball coaching of Rachael Ray or SandraLee for something markedly less femi-nine and less practical. Erica Gruen,the cable executive often credited withputting the Food Network on the mapin the late ’90s, recognized early onthat, as she told a journalist, “people

don’t watch television to learn things.”So she shifted the network’s target au-dience from people who love to cookto people who love to eat, a considerablylarger universe and one that—impor-tant for a cable network—happens tocontain a great many more men.In prime time, the Food Network’s

mise-en-scéne shifts to masculinearenas like the Kitchen Stadium on“Iron Chef,” where famous restaurantchefs wage gladiatorial combat to seewho can, in 60 minutes, concoct themost spectacular meal from a secretingredient ceremoniously unveiledjust as the clock starts: an octopus ora bunch of bananas or a whole schoolof daurade. Whether in the KitchenStadium or on “Chopped” or “The NextFood Network Star” or, over on Bravo,“Top Chef,” cooking in prime time isa form of athletic competition, drawingits visual and even aural vocabularyfrom “Monday Night Football.” On“Iron Chef America,” one of the FoodNetwork’s biggest hits, the cooking-caster Alton Brown delivers a breath-less (though always gently tongue-in-cheek) play by play and color commen-tary, as the iron chefs and their teamof iron sous-chefs race the clock topeel, chop, slice, dice, mince, Cuisinart,mandolin, boil, double-boil, pan-sear,sauté, sous vide, deepfry, pressure-cook, grill, deglaze, reduce, and plate—this last word I’m old enough to re-member when it was a mere noun. Aparticularly dazzling display of chefly“knife skills”—a term bandied asfreely on the Food Network as “passinggame” or “slugging percentage” is onESPN—will earn an instant replay: anonion minced in slo-mo. Can we get acamera on this, Alton Brown will askin a hushed, this-must-be-golf tone ofvoice. It looks like Chef Flay’s goingto try for a last-minute garnish grabbefore the clock runs out! Will he makeit? [The buzzer sounds.] Yes!These shows move so fast, in such

a blur of flashing knives, frantic pantryraids, and more sheer fire than youwould ever want to see in your ownkitchen, that I honestly can’t tell youwhether that “last-minute garnish grab”happened on “Iron Chef America” or“Chopped” or “The Next Food NetworkStar” or whether it was Chef Flay orChef Batali who snagged the sprig of foliage at the buzzer. But impressiveit surely was, in the same way it’s im-pressive to watch a handful of eageryoung chefs of “Chopped” figure outhow to make a passable appetizerfrom chicken wings, celery, soba noo-dles and a package of string cheesein just 20 minutes, said starter to bejudged by a panel of professional chefson the basis of “taste, creativity and

presentation.” (If you ask me, the keyto victory on any of these shows comesdown to one factor: bacon. Whichevercontestant puts bacon in the dish in-variably seems to win.)But you do have to wonder how

easily so specialized a set of skills mighttranslate to the home kitchen—oranywhere else for that matter. Forwhen in real life are even professionalchefs required to conceive and executedishes in 20 minutes from ingredientsselected by a third party exhibitingobvious sadistic tendencies? (Stringcheese?) Never, is when. The skillscelebrated on the Food Network inprime time are precisely the skills nec-essary to succeed on the Food Networkin prime time. They will come in handynowhere else on God’s green earth.We learn things watching these

cooking competitions, but they’re notthings about how to cook. There areno recipes to follow; the contests fly bymuch too fast for viewers to take inany practical tips; and the kind of cook-ing practiced in prime time is far morespectacular than anything you wouldever try at home. No, for anyone hop-ing to pick up a few dinnertime tips,the implicit message of today’s prime-time cooking shows is, Don’t try thisat home. If you really want to eat thisway, go to a restaurant. Or as a cheffriend put it when I asked him if hethought I could learn anything aboutcooking by watching the Food Network,“How much do you learn about bas-ketball by watching the N.B.A.?”What we mainly learn about on the

Food Network in prime time is culi-nary fashion, which is no small thing:if Julia took the fear out of cooking,these shows take the fear—the socialanxiety—out of ordering in restau-rants. (Hey, now I know what a shisoleaf is and what “crudo” means!) Then,at the judges’ table, we learn how totaste and how to talk about food. Forviewers, these shows have becomeless about the production of high-endfood than about its consumption—in-cluding its conspicuous consumption.(I think I’ll start with the sawfish crudowrapped in shiso leaves...)Surely it’s no accident that so many

Food Network stars have themselvesfound a way to transcend barriers ofsocial class in the kitchen—beginningwith Emeril Lagasse, the working-class guy from Fall River, Massachusetts,who, though he may not be able tosound the ‘r’ in “garlic,” can still cooklike a dream. Once upon a time Juliamade the same promise in reverse:she showed you how you, too, couldcook like someone who could notonly prepare but properly pronouncea béarnaise. So-called fancy food has

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always served as a form of culturalcapital, and cooking programs help youacquire it, now without so much aslifting a spatula. The glamour of foodhas made it something of a class levelerin America, a fact that many of theseshows implicitly celebrate. Televisionlikes nothing better than to serve upelitism to the masses, paradoxical asthat might sound. How wonderful isit that something like arugula can at thesame time be a mark of sophisticationand be found in almost every saladbar in America? Everybody wins!But the shift from producing food

on television to consuming it strikes meas a far-less-salubrious development.Traditionally, the recipe for the typicaldump-and-stir program comprisesabout 80 percent cooking followed by20 percent eating, but in prime timeyou now find a raft of shows that flipthat ratio on its head, like “The BestThing I Ever Ate” and “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” which are about noth-ing but eating. Sure, Guy Fieri, thetattooed and spiky-coiffed chowhoundwho hosts “Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives,”ducks into the kitchen whenever hevisits one of these roadside joints to doa little speed-bonding with the startledshort-order cooks in back, but mostof the time he’s wrapping his moutharound their supersize creations: a16-ounce Oh Gawd! Burger (with theworks); battered and deep-fried any-thing (clams, pickles, cinnamon buns,stuffed peppers, you name it); or abuttermilk burrito approximately thesize of his head, stuffed with bacon,eggs and cheese. What Fieri’s critical

vocabulary lacks in analytical rigor, itmore than makes up for in tailgateenthusiasm: “Man, oh man, now thisis what I’m talking about!” What canpossibly be the appeal of watchingGuy Fieri bite, masticate, and swallowall this chow?The historical drift of cooking pro-

grams—from a genuine interest inproducing food for yourself to the spec-tacle of merely consuming it—surelyowes a lot to the decline of cooking inour culture, but it also has somethingto do with the gravitational field thateventually overtakes anything in tele-vision—or educational television, asit used to be called. On a commercialnetwork, a program that actually in-spired viewers to get off the couch andspend an hour cooking a meal wouldbe a commercial disaster, for it wouldmean they were turning off the tele-vision to do something else. The adson the Food Network, at least in primetime, strongly suggest its viewers dono such thing: the food-related adshardly ever hawk kitchen appliancesor ingredients (unless you count A.1.steak sauce) but rather push the usualsupermarket cart of edible foodlikesubstances, including Manwich sloppyjoe in a can, Special K protein shakesand Ore-Ida frozen French fries, alongwith fast-casual eateries like OliveGarden and Red Lobster.Buying, not making, is what cooking

shows are mostly now about—thatand, increasingly, cooking shows them-selves: the whole self-perpetuatingspectacle of competition, success andcelebrity that, with “The Next Food

Network Star,” appears to have enteredits baroque phase. The Food Networkhas figured out that we care muchless about what’s cooking than who’scooking. A few years ago, Mario Batalineatly summed up the network’s for-mula to a reporter: “Look, it’s TV!Everyone has to fall into a niche. I’mthe Italian guy. Emeril’s the next exu-berant New Orleans guy with the bigeyebrows who yells a lot. Bobby’s thegrilling guy. Rachael Ray is the cheer-leader-type girl who makes things athome the way a regular person would.Giada’s the beautiful girl with the nicerack who does simple Italian food.As silly as the whole Food Network is,it gives us all a soapbox to talk aboutthe things we care about.” Not to men-tion a platform from which to sell alltheir stuff.The Food Network has helped to

transform cooking from something youdo into something you watch—intoyet another confection of spectacle andcelebrity that keeps us pinned to thecouch. The formula is as circular andself-reinforcing as a TV dinner: a sim-ulacrum of home cooking that is soldon TV and designed to be eaten infront of the TV. True, in the case of theSwanson rendition, at least you getsomething that will fill you up; by com-parison, the Food Network leaves youhungry, a condition its advertisersmust love. But in neither case is theremuch risk that you will get off thecouch and actually cook a meal. Bothkinds of TV dinner plant us exactlywhere television always wants us: infront of the set, watching.

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PAINTING BY WAYNE THIEBAUD, “BOSTON CREMES”, 1970 / THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART / ART RESOURCE, NY ART © WAYNE THIEBAUD / LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, NY

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4. WATCHING WHAT WE EATTo point out that television has suc-ceeded in turning cooking into a spec-tator sport raises the question of whyanyone would want to watch otherpeople cook in the first place. Thereare plenty of things we’ve stoppeddoing for ourselves that we have nodesire to watch other people do on TV:you don’t see shows about changingthe oil in your car or ironing shirts orreading newspapers. So what is itabout cooking, specifically, that makesit such good television just now?It’s worth keeping in mind that

watching other people cook is not ex-actly a new behavior for us humans.Even when “everyone” still cooked,there were plenty of us who mainlywatched: men, for the most part, andchildren. Most of us have happy mem-ories of watching our mothers in thekitchen, performing feats that some-times looked very much like sorceryand typically resulted in somethingtasty to eat. Watching my mothertransform the raw materials of nature—a handful of plants, an animal’s flesh—into a favorite dinner was always apretty good show, but on the afternoonswhen she tackled a complex marvellike chicken Kiev, I happily stoppedwhatever I was doing to watch. (I toldyou we had it pretty good, thanks partlyto Julia.) My mother would hammerthe boneless chicken breasts into flatpink slabs, roll them tightly aroundchunks of ice-cold herbed butter, gluethe cylinders shut with egg, then frythe little logs until they turned goldenbrown, in what qualified as a minormiracle of transubstantiation. Whenthe dish turned out right, knifingthrough the crust into the snowy whitemeat within would uncork a fragrantooze of melted butter that seepedacross the plate to merge with theMinute Rice. (If the instant rice soundsall wrong, remember that in the 1960s,Julia Child and modern food sciencewere both tokens of sophistication.)Yet even the most ordinary dish

follows a similar arc of transformation,magically becoming something greaterthan the sum of its parts. Every dishcontains not just culinary ingredientsbut also the ingredients of narrative:a beginning, a middle, and an end. Bringin the element of fire—cooking’s deusex machina—and you’ve got a tastylittle drama right there, the whole thingunfolding in a TV-friendly span oftime: 30 minutes (at 350 degrees) willusually do it.Cooking shows also benefit from

the fact that food itself is—by definition—attractive to the humans who eat it,and that attraction can be enhancedby food styling, an art at which the

Food Network so excels as to make JuliaChild look like a piker. You’ll be flippingaimlessly through the cable channelswhen a slow- motion cascade of glis-tening red cherries or a tongue of flamelapping at a slab of meat on the grillwill catch your eye, and your reptilianbrain will paralyze your thumb onthe remote, forcing you to stop to seewhat’s cooking. Food shows are thecampfires in the deep cable forest,drawing us like hungry wanderers totheir flames. (And on the Food Networkthere are plenty of flames to catchyour eye, compensating, no doubt, forthe unfortunate absence of aromas.)No matter how well produced, a

televised oil change and lube offersno such satisfactions.I suspect we’re drawn to the textures

and rhythms of kitchen work, too,which seem so much more direct andsatisfying than the more abstract andformless tasks most of us perform inour jobs nowadays. The chefs on TVget to put their hands on real stuff, notkeyboards and screens but fundamen-tal things like plants and animals andfungi; they get to work with fire andice and perform feats of alchemy. Byway of explaining why in the worldshe wants to cook her way through“Mastering the Art of French Cooking,”all Julie Powell has to do in the filmis show us her cubicle at the LowerManhattan Development Corporation,where she spends her days on thephone mollifying callers with problemsthat she lacks the power to fix.“You know what I love about cook-

ing?” Julie tells us in a voiceover aswe watch her field yet another incon-clusive call on her headset. “I love thatafter a day where nothing is sure—and when I say nothing, I mean noth-ing—you can come home and absolute-ly know that if you add egg yolks tochocolate and sugar and milk, it willget thick. It’s such a comfort.” Howmany of us still do work that engagesus in a dialogue with the materialworld and ends—assuming the soufflédoesn’t collapse—with such a gratify-ing and tasty sense of closure? Cometo think of it, even the collapse of thesoufflé is at least definitive, which ismore than you can say about most ofwhat you will do at work tomorrow.

5. THE END OF COOKINGIf cooking really offers all these satis-factions, then why don’t we do moreof it? Well, ask Julie Powell: for mostof us it doesn’t pay the rent, and veryoften our work doesn’t leave us thetime; during the year of Julia, dinnerat the Powell apartment seldom arrivedat the table before 10 p.m. For manyyears now, Americans have been put-

ting in longer hours at work and en-joying less time at home. Since 1967,we’ve added 167 hours—the equivalentof a month’s full-time labor—to thetotal amount of time we spend at workeach year, and in households whereboth parents work, the figure is morelike 400 hours. Americans today spendmore time working than people inany other industrialized nation—anextra two weeks or more a year. Notsurprisingly, in those countries wherepeople still take cooking seriously, theyalso have more time to devote to it.It’s generally assumed that the en-

trance of women into the work forceis responsible for the collapse of homecooking, but that turns out to be onlypart of the story. Yes, women with jobsoutside the home spend less timecooking—but so do women withoutjobs. The amount of time spent onfood preparation in America has fallenat the same precipitous rate amongwomen who don’t work outside thehome as it has among women who do:in both cases, a decline of about 40percent since 1965. (Though for mar-ried women who don’t have jobs, theamount of time spent cooking remainsgreater: 58 minutes a day, as comparedwith 36 for married women who dohave jobs.) In general, spending onrestaurants or takeout food rises withincome. Women with jobs have moremoney to pay corporations to do theircooking, yet all American women nowallow corporations to cook for themwhen they can.Those corporations have been trying

to persuade Americans to let them dothe cooking since long before largenumbers of women entered the workforce. After World War II, the food in-dustry labored mightily to sell Ameri-can women on all the processed-foodwonders it had invented to feed thetroops: canned meals, freeze-driedfoods, dehydrated potatoes, powderedorange juice and coffee, instant every-thing. As Laura Shapiro recounts in“Something from the Oven: ReinventingDinner in 1950s America,” the foodindustry strived to “persuade millionsof Americans to develop a lasting tastefor meals that were a lot like field rations.” The same process of peace-time conversion that industrialized ourfarming, giving us synthetic fertilizersmade from munitions and new pesti-cides developed from nerve gas, alsoindustrialized our eating.Shapiro shows that the shift toward

industrial cookery began not in re-sponse to a demand from women en-tering the work force but as a supply-driven phenomenon. In fact, for manyyears American women, whetherthey worked or not, resisted processed

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PAINTING BY DICK KET, “THE THREE BREAD ROLLS”, 1933 / THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

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foods, regarding them as a derelictionof their “moral obligation to cook,”something they believed to be a paren-tal responsibility on par with childcare. It took years of clever, dedicatedmarketing to break down this resist-ance and persuade Americans thatopening a can or cooking from a mixreally was cooking. Honest. In the1950s, just-add-water cake mixes lan-guished in the supermarket until themarketers figured out that if you leftat least something for the “baker” to do– specifically, crack open an egg – shecould take ownership of the cake.Over the years, the food scientists havegotten better and better at simulatingreal food, keeping it looking attractiveand seemingly fresh, and the rapidacceptance of microwave ovens—whichwent from being in only 8 percent ofAmerican Households in 1978 to 90percent today—opened up vast newhorizons of home-meal replacement.Harry Balzer’s research suggests

that the corporate project of redefiningwhat it means to cook and serve a mealhas succeeded beyond the industry’swildest expectations. People thinknothing of buying frozen peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their children’slunchboxes. (Now how much of atimesaver can that be?) “We’ve had ahundred years of packaged foods,”Balzer told me, “and now we’re goingto have a hundred years of packagedmeals.” Already today, 80 percent ofthe cost of food eaten in the home goesto someone other than a farmer, whichis to say to industrial cooking andpackaging and marketing. Balzer isunsentimental about this development:“Do you miss sewing or darning socks?I don’t think so.”So what are we doing with the time

we save by outsourcing our food pre-paration to corporations and 16-year-old burger flippers? Working, commut-ing to work, surfing the Internet and,perhaps most curiously of all, watchingother people cook on television.But this may not be quite the para-

dox it seems. Maybe the reason we liketo watch cooking on TV is that thereare things about cooking we miss. Wemight not feel we have the time orthe energy to do it ourselves every day,yet we’re not prepared to see it disap-pear from our lives entirely. Why?Perhaps because cooking—unlike sew-ing or darning socks—is an activitythat strikes a deep emotional chord inus, one that might even go to the heartof our identity as human beings.What?! You’re telling me Bobby Flay

strikes deep emotional chords?Bear with me. Consider for a mo-

ment the proposition that as a humanactivity, cooking is far more important

—to our happiness and to our health—than its current role in our lives, notto mention its depiction on TV, mightlead you to believe. Let’s see whathappens when we take cooking seri-ously.

6. THE COOKING ANIMALThe idea that cooking is a defininghuman activity is not a new one. In1773, the Scottish writer James Boswell,noting that “no beast is a cook,” calledHomo sapiens “the cooking animal,”though he might have reconsideredthat definition had he been able to gazeupon the frozen-food cases at Wal-Mart.Fifty years later, in “The Physiologyof Taste,” the French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin claimedthat cooking made us who we are; byteaching men to use fire, it had “donethe most to advance the cause of civi-lization.” More recently, the anthro-pologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, writingin 1964 in “The Raw and the Cooked,”found that many cultures entertaineda similar view, regarding cooking asa symbolic way of distinguishing our-selves from the animals.For Lévi-Strauss, cooking is a meta -

phor for the human transformation ofnature into culture, but in the yearssince “The Raw and the Cooked,” otheranthropologists have begun to takequite literally the idea that cooking isthe key to our humanity. RichardWrangham, a Harvard anthropologist,published a fascinating book called“Catching Fire,” in which he argues thatit was the discovery of cooking by ourearly ancestors—not tool-making orlanguage or meat-eating—that madeus human. By providing our primateforebears with a more energy-denseand easy-to-digest diet, cooked food

altered the course of human evolution,allowing our brains to grow bigger(brains are notorious energy guzzlers)and our guts to shrink. It seems thatraw food takes much more time andenergy to chew and digest, which is whyother primates of our size carry aroundsubstantially larger digestive tractsand spend many more of their wakinghours chewing: up to six hours a day.(That’s nearly as much time as GuyFieri devotes to the activity.) Also, sincecooking detoxifies many foods, itcracked open a treasure trove of nu-tritious calories unavailable to otheranimals. Freed from the need to spendour days gathering large quantities ofraw food and then chewing (and chew-ing) it, humans could now devote theirtime, and their metabolic resources,to other purposes, like creating a culture.Cooking gave us not just the meal

but also the occasion: the practice ofeating together at an appointed timeand place. This was something newunder the sun, for the forager of rawfood would likely have fed himself onthe go and alone, like the animals. (Or,come to think of it, like the industrialeaters we’ve become, grazing at gasstations and skipping meals.) But sit-ting down to common meals, makingeye contact, sharing food, all served tocivilize us; “around that fire,” Wranghamsays, “we became tamer.”If cooking is as central to human

identity and culture as Wrangham be-lieves, it stands to reason that the de-cline of cooking in our time wouldhave a profound effect on modern life.At the very least, you would expectthat its rapid disappearance from every-day life might leave us feeling nostal-gic for the sights and smells and thesociality of the cooking fire. Bobby Flay

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and Rachael Ray may be pushing pre-cisely that emotional button. Interest-ingly, the one kind of home cookingthat is actually on the rise today (ac-cording to Harry Balzer) is outdoorgrilling. Chunks of animal flesh searedover an open fire: grilling is cookingat its most fundamental and explicit,the transformation of the raw into thecooked right before our eyes. It makesa certain sense that the grill wouldbe gaining adherents at the very mo-ment when cooking meals and eatingthem together is fading from the cul-ture. (While men have hardly becomeequal partners in the kitchen, theyare cooking more today than ever be-fore: about 13 percent of all meals,many of them on the grill.)Yet we don’t crank up the barbecue

every day; grilling for most people ismore ceremony than routine. We seemto be well on our way to turning cook-ing into a form of weekend recreation,a backyard sport for which we outfitourselves at Williams-Sonoma, or atelevised spectator sport we watch fromthe couch. Cooking’s fate may be tojoin some of our other weekend exer-cises in recreation atavism: campingand gardening and hunting and ridingon horseback. Something in us appar-ently likes to be reminded of our dis-tant origins every now and then andto celebrate whatever rough skills forcontending with the natural worldmight survive in us, beneath the thincrust of 21st-century civilization.To play at farming or foraging for

food strikes us as harmless enough,perhaps because the delegating ofthose activities to other people in reallife is something most of us are gen-erally O.K. with. But to relegate theactivity of cooking to a form of play,something that happens just on week-ends or mostly on television, seemsmuch more consequential. The fact isthat not cooking may well be delete-rious to our health, and there is reasonto believe that the outsourcing of foodpreparation to corporations and 16-year-olds has already taken a toll on ourphysical and psychological well-being.Consider some recent research on

the links between cooking and dietaryhealth. A 2003 study by a group ofHarvard economists led by David Cut-ler found that the rise of food prepa-ration outside the home could explainmost of the increase in obesity inAmerica. Mass production has drivendown the cost of many foods, not onlyin terms of price but also in the amountof time required to obtain them. TheFrench fry did not become the mostpopular “vegetable” in America untilindustry relieved us of the considerableeffort needed to prepare French fries

ourselves. Similarly, the mass produc-tion of cream-filled cakes, fried chickenwings and taquitos, exotically flavoredchips or cheesy puffs of refined flour,has transformed all these hard-to-make-at-home foods into the sort of every-day fare you can pick up at the gasstation on a whim and for less than adollar. The fact that we no longer haveto plan or even wait to enjoy theseitems, as we would if we were makingthem ourselves, makes us that muchmore likely to indulge impulsively.Cutler and his colleagues also sur-

veyed cooking patterns across severalcultures and found that obesity ratesare inversely correlated with theamount of time spent on food prepa-ration. The more time a nation devotesto food preparation at home, the lowerits rate of obesity. In fact, the amountof time spent cooking predicts obesityrates more reliably than female par-ticipation in the labor force or income.Other research supports the idea that

cooking is a better predictor of ahealthful diet than social class: a 1992study in The Journal of the AmericanDietetic Association found that poorwomen who routinely cooked weremore likely to eat a more healthful dietthan well-to-do women who did not.So cooking matters—a lot. Which

when you think about it, should comeas no surprise. When we let corpora-tions do the cooking, they’re boundto go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; theseare three tastes we’re hard-wired tolike, which happen to be dirt cheap toadd and do a good job masking theshortcomings of processed food. Andif you make special-occasion foodscheap and easy enough to eat everyday, we will eat them every day. Thetime and work involved in cooking,as well as the delay in gratificationbuilt into the process, served as animportant check on our appetite. Nowthat check is gone, and we’re strugglingto deal with the consequences.The question is, Can we ever put the

genie back into the bottle? Once it hasbeen destroyed, can a culture of every-

day cooking be rebuilt? One in whichmen share equally in the work? Onein which the cooking shows on televi-sion once again teach people how tocook from scratch and, as Julia Childonce did, actually empower them todo it?Let us hope so. Because it’s hard to

imagine ever reforming the Americanway of eating or, for that matter, theAmerican food system unless millionsof Americans—women and men—are willing to make cooking a part ofdaily life. The path to a diet of fresher,unprocessed food, not to mention toa revitalized local-food economy, pass-es straight through the home kitchen.But if this is a dream you find ap-

pealing, you might not want to callHarry Balzer right away to discuss it.“Not going to happen,” he told me.

“Why? Because we’re basically cheapand lazy. And besides, the skills arealready lost. Who is going to teach thenext generation to cook? I don’t see it.“We’re all looking for someone else

to cook for us. The next American cookis going to be the supermarket. Take-out from the supermarket, that’s thefuture. All we need now is the drive-through supermarket.”Crusty as a fresh baguette, Harry

Balzer insists on dealing with the world,and human nature, as it really is, orat least as he finds it in the survey datahe has spent the past three decadesporing over. But for a brief moment,I was able to engage him in the projectof imagining a slightly different reality.This took a little doing. Many of hisclients—which include many of thebig chain restaurants and food manu-facturers—profit handsomely fromthe decline and fall of cooking in Am-erica; indeed, their marketing hascontributed to it. Yet Balzer himselfmade it clear that he recognizes allthat the decline of everyday cookinghas cost us. So I asked him how, in anideal world, Americans might beginto undo the damage that the moderndiet of industrially prepared food hasdone to our health.“Easy. You want Americans to eat

less? I have the diet for you. It’s short,and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan:Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anythingyou want—just as long as you’re will-ing to cook it yourself.” n

Michael Pollan, who delivered a tart andhilarious talk on food and nutrition onThe Bluff last year, is the author of manybooks, among them Second Nature, aquiet masterpiece. This essay is drawnfrom a longer article that originally ap-peared in The New York Times Mag-azine; we reprint with Michael’s cheerfulpermission, for which thanks.

Winter 201229

“We’re cheap andlazy. We’re alllooking for some-one else to cookfor us. The nextAmerican cook isthe drive-throughsupermarket.”

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After I finished a talk about butter-flies recently, a man in the audienceasked me whether any butterflies feedon hops as their host plant, as monarchbutterflies do on milkweed. “Yes,” Ireplied, and as I shuffled the facts inmy mind for an accurate response, Ifound myself smiling at the meremention of that golden word: hops!One of the great ingredients of life,

the noble hop, and long recognizedas such. Humulus lupulus is one of themain components of nearly all beerbrewed today. In fact, hops are oneof only four ingredients in beer that’smade traditionally. Germany’s six-teenth-century Reinheitsgebot, or beerpurity laws, limit the fixings to purewater, malted barley, yeast, and hops.Nowadays many big brewers substi-tute cheaper rice for barley, some rec-ipes call for wheat or oatmeal as thefermentable, and boutique brewersemulate the Belgians’ penchant forcherries in their beer by adding suchimpurities as raspberries, honey, pump-kin, and spices — all fine on theirown, but nothing to do with beer, inmy palate’s opinion.Being a botanical, Humulus lupulus

originated in the wide world beyondthe brewer’s yard. It belongs to themarijuana family (Cannabaceae), butits finger-lobed leaves more resemblethose of the related mulberry or figs.The common hop abounds in openhabitats around Eurasia and is natural-ized in parts of North America, whereit is sometimes hybridized with thenative subspecies H. l. americanus forthe taste and the hardiness it bringsto the mix. Linnaeus named the genusHumulus from the Latin for hops, thespecies lupulus for its habit in Romantimes of growing wild among willowslike a wolf among sheep. It is a long-lived perennial vine with chartreuse,papery flowers or “cones” borne onthe female plants. These possess glandscalled lupulin, which produce thecomplex volatile oils and resins cov-eted by brewers. The ancient Greeksemployed hops medicinally to calmdigestive troubles and ward off leprosy.For the First Peoples of North America,they serve as everything from a pick-me-up to a sleeping pill. Hops shootshave been prepared and eaten likeasparagus, though the hop tea I oncetried was wretched.

Confessions of aHopheadNotes on righteous Northwest treasure.

By Robert Michael Pyle

Hops, cultivated for beer-makingat least since the eighth century, servetwo purposes in brewing. The first ispreservation, since their essentialoils have a naturally retardant effecton microbes that might spoil beer.The second is flavor: hops, in a word,are bitter, which is why the basicBritish ale is known far and wide as“a pint of bitter.” Malted barley, whenfermented through the action of yeast,turns into soluble sugars and alcohol.In the absence of a bittering agent toprovide balance, beer would be cloy-ingly sweet, sticky, or heavy on thepalate. By boiling hops into the wort(an aqueous infusion of malt) “thedesired mellow bitterness and delicatehop aroma” are imparted to the beer,according to the 1956 Britannica. Beforehops, beers were probably molasses-like; coriander, bay, and juniper servedas bittering agents at one time or an-other, and when hops weren’t availableon the new frontier, new-growth sprucetips sometimes sufficed. Spruce beeris still brewed by Siletz Brewery on theOregon coast, and by moonshiningloggers and hoedads practicing thegentle art of zymurgy in the foggyevergreen outback of the beer-richNorthwest.Hops are an acquired taste, but once

acquired, much beloved — a “righteousjoy,” in the words of the Stone BrewingCompany. Botanist and chili-loverGary Nabhan has told me about theover-the-top chili addicts who pop thesupra-hot wild chilipequines as if theywere popcorn. Similarly, your truehophead nibbles his herb raw, and canbe seen snitching hop flowers on brew-ery tours. The humulophile’s preferrednectar is a subspecies of English bitterknown as India pale ale. During thedays of the Raj, British authorities hadto ship ale around the cape to thesubcontinent for Her Majesty’s troops,and it often went bad in the tropic latitudes. Brewers found they couldprolong its life by making strong beerin the city of Burton-on-Trent, whosewaters contained a lot of gypsum, likealcohol a natural preservative; andby adding extra hops both in the recipeand after fermentation (“dry-hopping”).The malt used was not roasted blackas for porter or stout, but left pale:hence, India pale ale.Because hopvines twist clockwise

to a length of twenty-five feet or more,they are grown on rows of poles strungwith high wires and twine known ashopbines. The best growing districts,in England, Germany, Washington,and Oregon, produce distinctive typeswith names like East Kent Golding,Fuggles, Tetnang, Hallertauer, Cascade,and Willamette. English hops are driedin kilns shaped like beaked cones,called oasts. Much of the Cockney pop-ulation used to evacuate London dur-ing late summer, as whole familiestook a working holiday picking hopsin Kent. It was a laborer in the North-west hopfields, inspired by the suc-cessful Campaign for Real Ale in theU.K., who launched the modern mi-crobrewing movement in the U.S.: BertGrant worked to produce and improveHumulus lupulus for forty years, most-ly for large brewers whose anonymous,watery products didn’t deserve him.As a great authority on the subject,he knew he could make better beerthan the gassy yellow norm. So in1981 he launched Grant’s Ales out ofan old opera house, and from this riv-ulet sprang a river of ales, all flowinginto the ocean of microbrews weknow today.Though Bert is gone, the descen-

dants of his well-hopped beers live on,and other brewmasters have takenhis favorite herb to heights he neverdreamed of. Beers with wonderfulnames like Hop Pocket Ale, Hop Ottin,and of course Hopalong all turn informidable ratings as expressed inInternational Bitterness Units (IBUs).At the apogee is Stone’s RuinationAle, weighing in at 100 IBUs: “a liquidpoem to the glory of the hop,” readsits bottle. A Bud or a Coors, by con-trast, would manage a mere 8 to 10IBUs. I am lucky to have a couple offine locals, the Fort George and WetDog, that field truly redoubtable IPAs;my own personal favorite, however,for sublimity of both flavor and name,turned up in Austin, Texas: DennisHopper Ale. n

Renowned lepidopterist and raconteurBob Pyle, the University’s SchoenfeldtSeries visiting writer in 1996, is the au-thor of many books, most recently TheTangled Bank (Oregon State UniversityPress), from which this essay is adapted.Thanks, Roberto.

Winter 201231

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TheProvidersWe asked the noted Oregon photographerSteve Hambuchen to wander off into Oregonand Washington and chat with some of themen and women and children who grow andbake and ferment and raise the University’sfood, and he did so with his usual grace in thepages that follow.

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Peter and Sheila Kasebergat their Omega Farms inRidgefield, Washington, wherethey grow 15 tons a year ofterrific organic Bartlett pears.“I love teaching people tounderstand when a pear isripe and how to enjoy fruit,which is a way to shareGod’s spirit,” says Peter.“We can't supply everybody,so we choose people whowill appreciate our fruit. It’sfun. As is farming; if youget bored you can always goout and prune some trees.”

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Jeff Rosenblad and his sons Johnnyand Sam at their Happy HarvestFarms in Mount Angel, Oregon. Jeffand his boys have grown broccoli,celery, peppers, cauliflower, berries,melons, and more for the Universityfor seven years, in which time theirfarm has doubled.

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Suz Warjone ‘00 left hercorporate desk job eightyears ago to be a baker.“I can’t sit still, I love beingexhausted at the end ofthe day, and baking is socentrally human; whenpeople are sad they bake,when they are happythey bake…”

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Brian Tansy ’85, hiswife Monika, and theirson Erik in the vine-yard at their OlequaCellars in Ridgefield,Washington. Right afterthis photograph wastaken, Brian and Monikaput Erik on the bus forhis first day of first grade.

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Mike and Missy Stucky of Millennium Farmsin Ridgefield, Washington, with their peppersand their goat Megan. The Stuckys also raisepotatoes, apples, pears, herbs, tomatoes, tur-keys, chickens, and, unforgettably, emus.

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Dave Flynn and CoryCarman, of CarmanRanch near Wallowa,Oregon, with theirchildren Roan, Ione,and Emmet. The ranchdates back four gen-erations in Cory’s family.Unlike today’s crowdedfeed lots where cowsconsume high-caloriecorn, Carman’s herd of400 Angus and Herefordcattle grazes on grass,period. No other grain,hormones, or antibiotics.

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Hal Medici ’55 (left) and DickFerraro ’64 at Medici Vineyardsin Newberg, Oregon. Hal wasa teacher and engineer, Dick aU.S. Forest Service man, beforethey saw the light. They andother winemakers all share Hal’sfacility to make their elixirs, andfine wines they are; we testedthem carefully.

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Shari Raider, founder of Sauvie IslandOrganics near The Bluff, with her crew.The company started with one acre;today it farms 18 acres, and providesnot only the University but some 30Portland restaurants with fresh produce.

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Brewmaster Chris Oslin ’81stirring a batch of CopperMoon ale in his mash tun atthe McMenamin Brothers’Cornelius Pass Roadhouse –the very pub where he hadhis first “real beer” as a Pilotcross country runner.

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I step into one of the most celebratedZen temples in the world, two hoursfrom my home near Kyoto, Japan, andI walk into the luxury of emptiness.The rock garden in Ryoanji is reveredacross centuries and continents forwhat it doesn’t tell you: the fifteenrocks, placed in a seemingly irregularpattern, around a bed of dry rakedsand, might represent planets; or (somesay) a tigress leading her cubs acrossa stream; or (I increasingly think)the way they defy every explanationyou bring to them. But whatever thepattern means, or doesn’t mean, therocks reflect back to you what isstrongest in your mind. From nowherecan you see all fifteen stones simul-taneously. Visitors sit, usually in si-lence, on a platform over the gardenand look out at the space, and it readsthem more than the other way round.Around the corner, a simple stone

basin outside the same building hasa single character at each of its cardi-nal points, to make up the message,What you have is all you need. Don’tlook elsewhere, it’s telling you; don’tgo round the world to count the catsin Zanzibar. Don’t succumb to the luresof greed or desire. Everything youneed is right here, right now. God, ortruth, or your Buddha nature (every-one has a different way of puttingwords around a light) is present atevery moment; you come upon thisnot by getting more, moving faster,accumulating fame or money or ac-complishments, but by stripping away,cutting back, seeing what’s essential.The poetry of classic Japan is an

exercise in simplicity; a sumi-e brush-and-ink drawing holds you becausethe empty space at the center of thepaper is often more charged than thefew brush-strokes that impinge on it.A haiku asks you to complete itsmeaning, the space around the wordsagain as vast and inviting as the fewcharacters at its core. A Japanese room,traditionally, was empty — save forone small item — so that those cominginto it would bring all their attentionto that single item and find in it every-thing they needed.

I moved to Japan from an officein midtown Manhattan — a center ofthe world, it could seem — in orderto learn how much we’re defined bywhat isn’t there, or at least by whatisn’t visible and isn’t spoken. I sensedthat all the lines I was accumulatingon my resume, the checks I was de-positing in the bank, the miles I wasgathering on my flights, weren’t takingme closer to who I am, or somethingchangeless, but further away. We’redefined, I thought, less by what wehave than by what we don’t need; in-deed, if our needs are simple and met,then we’re living in a contentmenthard to deface.

I write, of course, as the rare humanbeing who’s never known hunger orhomelessness or war; I have the luxuryto think about simplifying my lifebecause I‘ve never wanted for the basics. Only those who have satisfiedtheir material needs can begin to seethrough them and then cut back onthem. But the Japanese — like theDesert Fathers, or the Shakers, or thesages of China and India — have al-ways sensed that, given our limitedtime and energy, we can fill our daysand minds with hungers, or fill them,rather, with an acceptance that opensup more space in our lives. It’s surelyno coincidence that the most luxuri-ous and expensive hotels these daysoften volunteer to take away yourcell-phones upon check-in, or offerrooms without televisions: beingwithout can, more and more, be theultimate luxury in glutted lives. Forall the things I’ve been lucky enoughto have in my life, it’s the things Ican do without that have sustainedme at the deepest level.How might this all apply to food?

I love the small portions they serve inJapan, because I don’t feel dauntedwhen they appear, or guilty (andwasteful) when I can finish only halfmy hamburger. I generally feel betterwhen I eat less than when I stuffmyself, a principle I’m painfully re-minded of every time I take mymother on a cruise ship and, for the

first day at least, rarely leave theround-the-clock buffet. A few yearsago, my doctor suggested I cut downon sugar and cholesterol-rich foods;I halved the amount of sugar I put intomy drug of choice — strong black tea— and now I wonder why I everthought I needed more. SometimesI think I’ve been hypnotized — mostlyby myself — to think I need to domore, add and add, buy stuff and as-sume that bigger is better; sicknessor circumstances force me the otherway, and I’m slapped awake andwonder why I ever thought five mealsa day might be better than two.Friends of mine who go on fasts

always speak of sharper minds, clearerbeings, healthier bodies. Others I knowdeliberately go on walks for five daysinto the woods or leave their phonesand their laptops at home, and theworld opens up to them so that thedescent of a Steller’s jay through aglade becomes an epiphany. A Japan-ese monk pours tea into a visitor’scup, and keeps on pouring and pour-ing until it overflows. What’s goingon, the visitor asks? It’s only whenyou’re empty, the wise man says, thatyou can be filled by something new,outside yourself.In the Benedictine monastery where

I regularly stay, the monks put out ahot meal every day at lunch time; forthe rest, they place bowls of soup andbowls of salad and cups of yoghurtand apples and cereal and loaves ofbread in a communal fridge. I’ve neverbeen hungry there. If I wanted, ofcourse, I could snack all day; but justbeing in a place of silence reminds youof how full you feel, how nourished,by not having clutter in your life, andby simply sitting in a room, andwatching the light pass across a patchof garden outside.When, returning to “my” monastery

last winter, I found they were puttingout hot meals now at dinner-time too,a part of me felt sad.

Fasting, of course, is only a metaphor,a gateway, for some deeper kind ofrenunciation: I’ve done without words

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ONNOT EATING

In doing without, to see how much we have within.By Pico Iyer

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Fasting, I came to understand, was akin to the seventh dayon which God rested, or the pause in a piece of music

that gives the melody that follows extra breadth and resonance.It’s like taking a deep breath, the better to see what’s aroundyou; it’s only when you step out of your life – or the world –

that you can better see what’s within them.

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for days at a time and what I find,when I emerge from silence, is thatthe sentences that come forth are al-most as deep and clear and polishedas a monk’s, pebbles made smoothand clean by long immersion in a wella thousand fathoms deep. I’ve goneon long bouts of chastity, and beenreminded, as in any monastery, hownothing is more sensual, in terms ofsharpening the senses and putting themon alert, than holding back a little.On the occasions when I live with-

out e-mail, I feel the space within myhead growing larger and larger, slower,more spacious, richer; what seemedto be a congested convenience-storehas become a great open space, withmystery and depth and light streamingthrough it.The ideal of fasting has to do with

restoring meaning and deliberationto our acts and gestures, and givingclarity to what we too often take forgranted. In Egypt, three years ago,I endured the long, hot midsummerfractiousness and itchiness of Ramadan.As our boat slipped out of Alexandriajust as night was falling, fireworksbegan to go off across the clusteredcity, and the exploding lights mighthave spoken for the sudden release ofexcitement after long hours of restraint.Mardi Gras or the classical Feast ofFools are both ways of recognizing thissame cycle and need in us for empti-ness and repletion.Fasting, I came to understand, was

akin to the seventh day on which Godrested, or the pause in a piece ofmusic that gives the melody that fol-lows extra breadth and resonance.It’s like taking a deep breath, the betterto see what’s around you; it’s onlywhen you step out of your life — orthe world — that you can better seewhat’s within them. Pull back yourbow, an archer says, and the furtheryou pull back, the stronger and clearerthe arrow will fly. Be silent for a while,I tell myself, and the words that ulti-mately emerge will be truer.Gandhi once said, I gather, “This

is going to be a busy day. So I shouldnot meditate for an hour. But for twoinstead.” Fasting, he might have beensaying, is not a penitential act, similarto forty days in the wilderness or self-denial; it’s a kind of preparation, forbringing quality instead of quantity tothe world, putting a frame around theday’s events. Besides, in doing with-out food, what we’re really giving upis will-power, or the illusion of con-trol; we’re surrendering to the aware-ness that something much larger —call it God or Nature or Fate or Time— is wiser than we are; we don’t haveto fight for our share, our share will

come to us.In that sense, fasting is a leap of

faith, an act of trust; it’s a kind ofprayer, which involves laying downwhat one has and going naked to thedoor. It says, “Give me this day, orwhatever comes of it, and I will acceptit and find in it my sustenance.” Itis the reason Emerson, in his essaycalled “Self-Reliance,” wrote, “Who hasmore obedience than I masters me.”And it’s the reason that Moslems,Christians, so many give up food attimes; it’s a Sabbath of the senses, andso an act of love. I’ll seek for nothing,but be found, you’re saying. I won’tbother about my welfare, but will trustthat what comes to me is sufficient.Those without enough food in their

lives need not fast (though I’ve seenvillagers in Ethiopia, barely able tofeed themselves, go for long stretcheswithout food so as to honor the holycaves and churches they walk for daysto visit); fasting has meaning only ifit’s voluntary, and there’s an alternative.Fasting itself, if it becomes an emptyrite or form of immoderation, can beas bad as gluttony: as Leonard Cohensings, in one of his typically suppleinvestigations of desire, “I need somuch to have nothing to touch/I’vealways been greedy that way.” Fastingasks us why we’re doing without — forourselves or for someone else? WhenI see the excruciatingly thin fashionvictims around me in Japan (as inCalifornia), I wonder if they’re deny-ing themselves as a form of vanity,rather than of real compassion. Fasting,after all, is not about how you lookto the world; it’s about how you lookat the world, and how you makespace in your life for the many thingsthat will always be beyond you. It’s aclearing out of an overfull fridge soyou can see what remains and evencherish it. “None can be an impartialor wise observer of human life,” writesEmerson’s friend Thoreau, in the“Economy” section of Walden, “butfrom the vantage-ground of what weshould call voluntary poverty.” In doingwithout, we see how much we havewithin. A child steps away from hisfather and finds that, if the father hasbeen strong and selfless enough, he,in his infancy, has everything heneeds. Give us this day our dailybread, we sometimes say, and, whenwe’re at our freest and most generous,we add, and let us give it back, sothat Lent can lead to Resurrection. n

Pico Iyer, the University’s visiting writerin 2010, is the author of many books,most recently The Man Within MyHead, about the great English writerGraham Greene.

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“Growing up, my family spentour money on two things,” says MattDomingo. “Traveling to soccer tour-naments, and eating. Can you imaginehow much food four boys playing soc-cer ate? It wasn’t just about gettingenough calories, though. Food was partof our family identity. On my dad’sside of the family we are Pacific Island-ers, and all the family gatherings onthat side were centered around feasts.Both my parents are great cooks, mygrandparents were great cooks. We’reall in love with good food. We ate to-gether to be together. It’s always beenthis way. My grandpa would comeover with a cooler of some crazy pro-tein — maybe half a dozen porterhousesteaks or live Alaskan king crabs ora whole salmon. He’d just drop it offand say this is for those boys. Thatwas one of the ways he showed hislove. And my parents used to packall four of us boys up and go to HogIsland oyster farm north of San Fran-cisco. We’d order several dozen oystersand sit there next to the water eatingthem fresh...sooo good...“It kept going in college. We all went

to the University, and when I livedin Haggerty Hall my brothers wouldcome over to cook leg of lamb, seabass, stuffed pork loin. Not your typi-cal dorm food, right?“The original intention of Farm to

Fork Event Company was to be partof the marketing and public relationswing of Oregon’s local food movement.We help local, small-scale, familyfarmers tell their stories and we helpre-connect guests to farmland andfarmers. These farmers, growers, wine-makers are my heroes. Their storiesand passion is what moves me. Theystake their livelihoods on producingfood that is good for people, that im-proves the soil. They talk about farm-ing in almost revolutionary terms.

THEFOODIE

ROADIEA chat with the cheerful and eloquent

Matt Domingo ’02, founder of Farm to Fork Events.By Isaac Vanderburg ’02

They say farming is a way to solvesome of our biggest health and envi-ronmental problems, a way to strength-en our communities, to heal ourselves,to live right. Take, for example, Joeand Karen Schueller, who owns RainShadow El Rancho. Theirs is one ofonly a few USDA-inspected poultryplants in Oregon. They raise chickens,turkeys, and buffalo. Beautiful buffalomeat. I remember Joe talking duringone of our dinners about his longpersonal journey, basically back to hisboyhood, farming in Iowa. He talkedabout the struggles setting up his op-eration, finding the right property,getting state and USDA inspections,dealing with tiny profit margins andthe constant worry about his animalsand his property — and then he saidhe was amazed and delighted to be afarmer. Why? Because he loves grow-ing good, clean, fair-priced food forpeople. He wouldn’t trade it for any-thing, and he was proud to be a partof the event. “Each Farm to Fork event is a 72-

hour push of absolute crazy intensework. It’s a full day of travel, a fullday of set-up, then hosting, schmooz-ing, entertaining, and cleanup. Eventhough it’s a bear, I enjoy it. I get tocreate my own reality. I like food andI like being on the road and I likeeating with friends. I guess I’m a foodieroadie. I enjoy the manual labor andI like doing something that has cre-ativity and theater involved. Basically,I like to entertain people. I like to bein the mix. I like to be in front of anaudience. And to be outside in amaz-ing places with amazing people.“Each dinner has five acts: Welcome,

Small Plate, Small Plate, Main Dish,Dessert. The goal is to create an ex-perience for our guests, and yes, there’sa certain look and feel to the event.Before each dinner, I send a letter to

staff describing the food we’re serving,why we’re serving it, why this par-ticular farm is special, who some ofour guests will be. I remind them totrim their nails, take off rings, wearclose-toed shoes, carpool. I also letthem know that sunglasses are totallyacceptable and highly recommended.All of this is a way to honor and cele-brate the land, the farmers, and thepurity of the food; and there’s an ele-ment of theater to what we do. Ourvibe is sort of old-school vintage rusticshabby chic meets urban — but we alsopore over fonts and logo placementand every tiny detail on the menu.“These events are about so much

more than food. At a private dinnerin the Gorge, I worked with DominioIV winery. Their wines are amazing,and they practice biodynamic agri-culture. We poured a syrah, pinot noir,tempranillo, and viognier — all ofwhich were made with grapes sourcedfrom the Columbia Gorge and otherselect regions in Oregon. All of ourproduce came from local farms. Andthe coolest part of the event was thefisherman we invited named DougRigdon. Doug supplied the fish. Ididn’t know what to expect from Doug,but when he got up to tell everyoneabout the fish they were eating, heblew everyone away. His speech ex-ceeded all expectations. He told usabout his business, Wild ColumbiaSalmon, which he started after leavingthe Department of the Interior to finda way to support rather than hinderhis community. He sources theseamazingly beautiful fish — steelhead,coho, tyee — from native fishermen,and then sells them to restaurantsand events like mine. But the thingthat surprised me is that these fishare caught using the traditional longwooden dip nets on the Klickitat River.Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve

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Photographs from a Farm to Fork Event at Kiyokawa Orchards in Parkdale, Oregon, on the northeast shoulder of Mount Hood – or Wy’east, as the first people ther ventures, see farmtoforkevents.com. Photos by Jen Jones (www.jentakespictures.com) and Bryan Mikota (www.mikotaphotography.com)

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ople there called it, before an English navy lieutenant named William Broughton named it for an English admiral in 1792. For more on Matt Domingo’s food ad-

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ever heard? And picture this, the eventwas at the Columbia Gorge Interpre-tive Center, and behind Doug as hespoke was a replica of the rocks on theKlickitat where they dip net, com-plete with a First Peoples fishermanat the top, holding a dip net. So as heexplained how the salmon were caught,he could point up behind him and say,‘like that.’ Perfect.“He talked about the Yakama people

and what the river and the salmonmean to all the Columbia River tribes.He talked about his people’s historyon the Columbia, and the history of thesalmon, and about how the efforts torestore salmon to the river are helping.He is hopeful. ‘By having a dinnerthis way, featuring salmon caught thisway, you honor me and my people,you honor salmon,’ he said. A speechlike that drives home the whole ideaof Farm to Fork: reconnecting peopleto the food on their plate, remindingthem that food comes from a place,food has a powerful story. “Sure, there are a lot of dirty dishes

after each event. It’s always terrible.It’s the worst part about what we do.After our first dinner, we filled up atruck, a station wagon, and a jeephauling dishes to my mother in law’shouse, where we borrowed her dish-washer and it took us 24 hours to washeverything. Right then we decidedwe needed a trailer and we got a spon-sored one from the Party Place inMedford, Oregon. They let us use theirfantastic dishwashing facility andequipment after our events. Afterevery event we still spend five hoursdoing dishes, but it’s a lot better than24 hours.“And sure there are snafus. We ap-

proached one of our host poultry farmsonce and offered an experiment; ifthey would raise a new product, we’dbuy it. They chose ducks. But raisingis extremely labor- intensive, and get-ting them ready for the table is a realhassle. So the farm decided not toraise ducks again — although we didbuy those ducks and seared them for120 people on our cast-iron griddles.Delicious. Another time we found themost beautiful buffalo shoulder fromFull Circle ranch. Our plan was forthe chef to braise it, let it sit in itsjuices overnight, and then bring it backup to temperature right before serving.Letting it slow-cook breaks down allthat connective tissue into pure unrealflavor. Unfortunately, for that event,the chef decided to cure and coldsmoke it, almost in the style of pas-trami. Smoking this particular cut ofmeat can turn it tough as a tire if you do it wrong. The chef did it wrong.He didn’t smoke it hot enough. I re-

alized what happened right beforethe dinner was supposed to start, andspent the next half hour salvagingthe good pieces of meat. In the endwe could only serve half of it. Somepeople got really small portions orbig gristly bites. It was heartbreaking.It’s the single worst food incident we’veever had.“One of the things that drives me

nuts is what I call ‘local washing.’ Arestaurant buys 20 pounds of beetsfrom a store and 5 pounds from a localfarmer, mixes them together, andmarkets a new “farm-fresh salad.” Therestaurant gets to say they’re support-ing such-and-such local farm, which isgreat marketing for them. But the farmonly sold 5 pound of beets. There’s alot of this kind of thing, and it makesme angry. It’s one reason why somepeople think the eat-local movementis elitist: a $15 hamburger next to a‘local-washed’ salad. Ridiculous. That’snot eating local. Eating and cookinglocal means working with the seasons,tailoring your menu to produce as itarrives, supporting local businesses,farms, cheesemakers, brewers. Keepingyour dollars local. You might pay alittle extra up front, but there are coststo non-local food, too, of course —environmental damage, health dam-age for you and those you love, eco-nomic damage to our communities,our moral and spiritual and culturalrelationships. Those costs are exorbi-tantly high, insanely high. Why shouldwe continue to pay those costs?“I challenge anyone who believes

that local food is elitist to meet a localfarmer in his or her community. Askthe farmer about his work, meet herfamily, get to know them. Watch howthey treat the food we eat. Then tellme, if you can, that the local foodmovement is elitist. You’ll see that theprice they charge for their productis more than fair.“The future? I hope to grow a busi-

ness that works for the greater good.Like Bob’s Red Mill — that guy is asaint. He’s using his business for good.I’d like to try to do good, make a dif-ference, use the influence of ourbusiness to move us all towards some-thing more healthy and sustainable.Essentially we want to put money backinto local communities, and we’retrying to create new income streamsfor local family farms and craft winer-ies. Essentially we’re trying to rebuilda local food infrastructure. We’re tryingto figure out what role the govern-ment should play, what a healthy foodsystem should look like, how we canrecreate all those things, how we setourselves and our kids up for the fu-ture. Things are broken right now in

the food world — subsidies, the farmbill, the commodification of food, ratherthan the genuine appreciation of it,where it came from, who grew it, thelocal work of it.“One Farm to Fork dinner story?

There’s an orchard along the HoodRiver Valley fruit loop that I had ad-mired for years called Kiokawa FamilyOrchards. They have more than 80varieties of Heirloom apples, and Ialways wanted to do an event there.We finally did. At the event, RandyKiokawa told everyone about hisfamily and their orchard. His great-grandfather left Japan in 1906 to workon the railroad here. After five yearshe started an orchard, and grew itslowly by buying up small plots ofadjacent land, one by one, and plant-ing more trees. During the SecondWorld War his family was rounded upand placed in the internment camps,and Randy spoke eloquently of hisfamily returning to the orchard after-wards. In the 1980s prices from largepacking plants fell, farms began failing,and their orchard was in trouble.Randy came home to try to save thefarm. He decided to sell apples rightoff the orchard, he planted more va-rieties, he added pear trees, he prunedtrees lower so people could reach andpick the fruit themselves. It worked— it beyond worked, and Randy hadsaved his family’s legacy and history,really. “Perfect story to begin the meal.“For the first small plate we servedbeet-pickled apples from the orchard,heirloom tomatoes, smoked andpoached Oregon albacore tuna, a greatwine. Delicious. But as this is beingserved a dark cloud forms over MountHood. Second small plate: beet andapple salad with a gorgeous yogurtsauce, jalapeno jam, hummus andcrostini. The cloud descends themountain and heads right for us. Maincourse: roast leg of lamb, braised lambshoulder, seared lamb loin, with pre-served lemon and salsa verde. Thecloud looms closer. As we started serv-ing dessert the rain hits lightly, butsomehow, someway, it doesn’t getheavy. Randy stands up and says‘Enjoy the rain! We live in Oregon!’Everyone was laughing. I got up tospeak a minute later and there’s atremendous lightning flash andthunderclap. People cheered. Nowthat was a great dinner...” n

Isaac Vanderburg ’02 is a director ofthe Alaska Small Business DevelopmentCenter in Anchorage; he and MattDomingo were Pilot soccer teammates,and Isaac and his marital teammateKelly DuFort ’00 are the new parents ofMargo Jane ’34.

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On EatingHealthyBy Donald Erceg

When I visited Croatia recentlywith my son and nephew, it was greatto see our relatives still making theirown wine from grapevines that mydad planted there almost a hundredyears ago. They also served us home-made cheese, fresh-baked hearthbread, ušipaka (Croatian doughnuts)and sarma (stuffed cabbage rolls).

For centuries, each household inImotski depended on its own food-making and preserving skills to sur-vive. When our mom and dad set uphousehold on Woolsey Street, a milenorth of the University of Portland,they did what came naturally, raisingcows for milk and cheese, chickensand rabbits for meat, vegetable gar-dens, and fruit trees.

In 1956 an international group ofscientists studied the diets and healthof seven countries and concludedthat the world’s healthiest diet was tobe found on the Greek island of Crete,where heart ailments were almostunheard of and cancer rates were low.The similarity of the food we ate whenwe were growing up bore a strikingresemblance to the Crete diet: usuallysmall portions of meat with a weeklychicken or rabbit from our coop andcages, lots of olive oil, fresh gardenvegetables, wild greens, home-madesauerkraut, legumes, fresh fish or driedcod on Fridays, fresh or home-cannedfruit, nuts and homemade bread.

Thanks to mom and dad and theabundance of nature itself, the familyate an incredibly healthy diet evenwith little or no money in the middleof the Depression.

Mom’s cooking represented thedistillation of survival skills honed bygenerations of Ercegs and Perics in themean, rocky soils of the Croatian andBosnian outback. Life was not easythere, but people learned to live off theland and how to grow food and cookthose foods in a way that providednourishment for both body and soul. n

Donald Erceg is the author of Ruža PericErceg, a history of his Croatian immi-grant family from which this text, therecipes and photos are taken; theErcegs sent two children and two broth-ers-in-law to the University, and arethe creators of the Erceg FamilyScholarship on The Bluff.

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Beef kidney stew (Bubriga) Deep fried pastry strips (Krostule)

Portland56

RECIPE

3 eggs3 tablespoons olive oil3 tablespoons brandy or sherry½ cup sugar½ tsp salt3+ cups flour

Beat the eggs well. Add the oil, brandy orsherry, sugar and salt. Mix well. Addenough of the flour to make a firm dough.Knead well.

When glassy and smooth, roll the doughout to ¼ inch thickness on a well flouredcounter or pastry board. With a knife orpastry wheel cut into strips.

Fry strips in hot oil (350 degrees) untilgolden brown. Drain on paper towels anddust with confectioner’s sugar while stillwarm.

*Mom’s hand-written recipe on the top isher endearing mix of Croatian and English.Fritule (another name for Krostule)Pola Kop Sugar – half cup sugar3 jaja – 3 eggs3 Kasike ojel – 3 spoons oilmalo Soli – a little saltmalo Rakije – a little whiskeyBrasno neke Stoji – flour let it standneke Stoji 30 minuta – let it stand 30 minutes

*

RECIPE

3 beef kidneys(about 2½ lbs.)

3 15 oz. cans oftomato sauce(unsalted)

3 c. water2 large potatoes

1½ tbs. apple cidervinegar

1 tsp. dry basil1 tbs. olive oil

Trim and discard all the white core out ofthe kidneys and cut into bite-size pieces.Place in large sauce pan with the 3 cupswater and cider vinegar. Bring to boil andsimmer for 30-40 minutes (this stage doesnot smell wonderful).

Drain. Place olive oil and chopped onionin sauce pan and cook onion until translu-cent. Add fine diced garlic and cook oneminute more. Add tomato sauce, kidneys,potatoes, bay leaf, basil, sugar, sherry vine-gar, cay-enne. Bring to boil and lower tosimmer. Simmer for 1½ hours stirring fre-quently to prevent burning. If sauce gets toothick, add quarter cup of stock (or water) ormore as needed. Add salt and pepper to taste.Serve with rustic bread and a good red wine.

1 tsp. sugar1 large yellowonion

1½ tsp. sherryvinegar

2 cloves garlic1 tsp. salt1 bay leafpinch ofcayenne pepper

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Croatian doughnuts (Ušipaka) Stuffed cabbage rolls (Sarma) Nut-filled sweet bread (Polatica)

Winter 201257

RECIPE

4 c. all purpose white flour4 tsp. baking powder½ c. sugar1 tsp. salt5-6 Eggs lightly beaten1 c. warm water

(or milk for a richer taste)1 c. white raisins (optional)—soak

in water for half hour beforehand¼ c. Sherry or Brandy

Mazola Oil for deep frying(2½” deep)

Blend flour, baking powder,sugar and salt.Add eggs, milk, sherry and raisins (if using)and stir (like biscuits, they should not beover stirred). Heat oil to 375°- 400° degrees.Add tablespoon of batter at a time. Cookabout 6 at time for 3 minutes and then turnover and cook for another 3-4 minutes untilgolden. Using a slotted spoon, drain onpaper towel and dust with confectioner’ssugar (granulated sugar is fine also). Forvariation, try adding lemon zest or a tea-spoon of vanilla.

**PolaticaVolnac 4 Cop – walnuts 4 cupsHoni Pola Cop – honey half cupSugar Pola Cop – sugar half cupmilk 1 Cop – milk one cup3 jaja – 3 eggs

Note: There are some differences betweenthe hand-written and the printed recipes.

**

RECIPE

1 head cabbage1 tbs paprika1 c. uncookedlong grain rice

½ lb ground beef2 cloves garlicdiced

1 cup tomatojuice

½ lb ground pork1 onion finelydiced

Fry the bacon. Add onion and sautée for fiveminutes. Drain excess fat and allow to cool.Add ground beef, ground pork, diced ham,rice, egg, paprika, garlic, salt and pepperand mix well. Place head of cabbage in largesoup pot and cover with water. Bring tosimmer on stove and, using tongs, separatethe leaves as they soften and cut from stemwith a knife, set aside to cool. Continue untilall leaves are removed from the head. Usingyour hand, form a small football shapedpiece of meat mixture and roll into the cab-bage leaf, tucking the edges in to hold theroll together.

Spread the sauerkraut on the bottom ofa large sauce pan or wok. Layer cabbagerolls on top of the sauerkraut., seam sidedown. Pour tomato juice over the rolls andadd enough water to cover. Simmer forabout three hours on top the stove, addingmore water as needed.

1 tsp salt½ lb ground or

diced ham1 egg, lightlybeaten

1 tsp freshlygroundpepper

1 slice bacon,diced

1 lb sauerkraut

RECIPE

4 c. all purposewhite flour

4 eggs½ c. sugar2 oz. or 2 pkg.

active dry yeast1 c. milk

½ tsp. salt

In a saucepan, scald the milk until bubblesform around the edge of the pan. Add butter.Remove from heat and cool until lukewarm.Add yeast and set aside for five minutes.

Beat the eggs with the sugar for twominutes. Add the rest if the ingredients andmix. On a floured surface, knead dough untilsmooth and elastic (5-8 minutes) addingenough flour to keep it from being sticky.Form dough into ball and place into an oiledbowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size(1-2 hours).

While dough is rising, make filling. Scaldmilk for filling. Mix walnuts into milk. Blendin sugar and milk. Add beaten eggs one ata time and let cool.

Roll dough out on floured, clean cloth orbaking sheet, spread filling over the dough,and roll up using the cloth or baking sheet.Place onto greased baking pan and let riseagain. Then bake @ 325° for one hour.

FILLING1 lb. walnuts½ c. honey½ c. sugar1 c. milk3 eggs

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HOWTOBRINEANELKSTEAKWhy do we talk

about foodso much these

days? Whatare we reallytalking about?

By Ana Maria Spagna

Last spring I took a road trip. Itraveled from my home in the PacificNorthwest to Death Valley hoping tomeet with the Timbisha Shoshonepeople, a small tribe that has reclaimeda sliver of their ancestral homelandin a place of seeming scarcity, andalong the way I ended up in MarinCounty.

Marin County, like many fertilenooks in the region once dubbed Eco-topia, is devoted to food. Land setaside in agricultural trusts supportslocal dairies, who support local cheesemakers, who support local restaurantsthat serve local wine and organicvegetables. All of it is admirable: it’sgood for the land, good for the peoplewho own the land and work the land,and good, too, for the people who sellthe food, buy the food, eat the food.

I’m telling you: landing in Marinwas like landing in Eden, only with nofruit forbidden. When I drove downthe curvy redwood-lined road, headedfor Death Valley, I left behind pun-gent chevre and fresh oysters the sizeof gorilla toes.

Oh, you can try to eat healthy onthe road. You can carry a bag of al-monds and when you tire of those, youcan stare bleary-eyed at the posteron the fast food wall that lists all thevariables to consider in making yourchoice: sodium, fiber, protein, calories,fat, cholesterol. You can get a veggieburger at Burger King, fish at Wendy’s,a personal pizza at Subway, thick andspongy and white, which is exactlyhow you feel after seventeen hoursin a seatbelt. But at some point, it allseems futile. PHO

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So you get back in your ancientBuick and scan the radio from preach-ers to public radio, and stumble, in-evitably, on a cooking program. Nextthing you know, you’re taking mentalnotes on how to brine an elk steak,and thinking about your mother, andwell, that’s when things begin to un-ravel.

On Monday mornings my mother vol-unteers at the pantry, which is whatshe calls the food bank at the localparish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.Maybe they do not call it a bank be-cause they don’t want to call attentionto the fact that the church buildinglooks so much like a bank. Maybe abank is for saving up, for hoarding,while the pantry is for giving away.Or maybe it’s just that pantry is a moregentle homey term with warm kitchenconnotations. Mom has gone to thepantry every Monday since she retiredfrom teaching a decade ago except forthe year when she was in and out ofthe hospital with cancer. As soon asshe was on her feet, she was back at it.

It’s the same drill every Monday:

before she goes to the pantry, shedrives to a bakery downtown to collectthe day-olds in a Tupperware, andthen to Starbucks for the same, andfinally to a funky new grocery storethat caters to individual shoppers,older people, and sells items in plasticwrap — one green pepper and onered one, say, or two zucchinis orsometimes premade meals, small-sized— where she picks up everythingnearing expiration. Then she takes itall to the pantry, to supplement thestaples already stored there, and shespends the morning stocking paperbags with peanut butter and tuna,loaves of bread, fruit and vegetables,and an occasional pastry, and passesthem out to those who wait in lineeach day, hungry.

Demand at food banks has risenexponentially in recent years, andthere is no end in sight. During theweek, Mom and her friends shop forthe pantry with coupons they clipfrom the Sunday paper. They watchfor deals and drive around town tostock up on staples at the maximumallowable purchase — ten bags of po-

tatoes for a buck, say — or sometimes,on the best days, they use doublecoupons and walk away with a carloadof food and a refund. Each year I sendher fifty bucks to spend at the pantry,a modest gift, nearly feeble, and shestretches that fifty thin as gauze. Shecan feed several families for the costof a round of drinks in the city. It’sher version of loaves and fishes, andit leaves me in awe.

Here’s the problem: Mom wouldlook askance at Marin. Those cheesesprobably cost a pretty penny, shemight say. And she’d be right. I would-n’t dare tell her how one day at thegrocery store I bought four potatoes,two apples, and a chocolate bar, andmy twenty didn’t cover the cost.

The question that plagues me asI drive east through blooming almondgroves, the one so obvious that it al-most always goes unspoken is this: howcan you justify paying so much to eatright when so many can’t afford toeat at all? And quick on its heels comesthe rebuttal: But what are the costsof not eating right, of abusing the landand our bodies? And why do we al-

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ways talk about costs anyway, talk asthough the earth itself is a bank andnot a pantry?

Food talk is everywhere. Click throughthe channels, surf the Internet, flipthrough a magazine at the doctor’soffice and you’ll find recipes for low-fat fettuccine, color photos of posole-with-cilantro, growing tips for aspara-gus. There’s food minutia on The TodayShow, in the local newspaper. Why?Is it pure entertainment? Or is theresomething missing in our lives, a voidwe try to fill with food or by denyingourselves food? Or is food the onething that we can control in a worldhurtling toward chaos? We can’t solvethe Israeli-Palestinian crisis, say, butwe can choose to be vegan or gluten-free. There are plenty of diagnosesand plenty of diets. There are big ideasand big words: egalitarianism vs. local-ism, fairness vs. righteousness, psy-chology vs. physiology. Mostly thereis talk.

On the way to Death Valley, I switchthe radio off and continue in silence:crawling through notches in greygranite mountains, tire tracks in slushswerving around wind-blown pinelimbs, then pines giving way to junipergiving way to Joshua trees, until noth-ing is left but cloud shadows on alluvialfans.

Before heading into the park, Istop at a Nevada mini-mart and scourthe shelves for something, anything,healthy to eat, but after a few minutesI give up. Label-reading at a gas stationwith the smell of stale cigarettes inthe air and the jangle of slot machinesin the background seems somehowwrong. Pretentious. So I grab Fritosand bean dip and head for camp. WhenI was a kid if I saw a person sittingalone in a restaurant, I would weep.Nothing seemed sadder. Now I sit aloneon hot sand by my tent, watchingsunset illuminate lime-green mesquiteblossoms, scraping the hot metal canwith the Frito edge, and thinkingabout the Timbisha Shoshone.

The original inhabitants of DeathValley survived on pinion nuts andmesquite beans, bighorn sheep andquail. They focused no less on foodthan we do, but they were closer to it.They watched these blossoms migratefrom desert to mountains, and comefall, they followed the harvest theother way. They ground the seeds andsaved the paste and remembered theold ways; they do it still. TraditionalEcological Knowledge, the anthropol-ogists call it, TEK. Maybe that’s whatwe crave, not entertainment or controlor even righteousness. Maybe wejust want to be closer to the source.

After dinner, I walk a windblownridge, feeling not quite hungry but notquite right, and think about the peoplewho’ll line up in the morning at thepantry and the dairy farmers who’llwake at dawn and how we’re all con-nected, in the end, by long freewaymiles and radio airwaves, by rainfalland drought and elected leaders. Inthe fading light, the desert landscapeappears stark and empty, as thoughit could not possibly produce enoughfood to go around.

But it did. For centuries, it did.

It’s possible that I’ve misunderstoodthe allure of cooking shows. Maybethe focus on food is not self-serving,but the opposite, a focus on what wecan most easily share. Which bringsme to the elk steak. Which I got wrong.This steak — the kind of clean leanred meat that would cost a small for-tune at Whole Foods — was a gift tous or more specifically to Laurie, mypartner, who maintains a historic appleorchard. Each winter, around the fullmoon of February, a herd of elk visitsthe orchard to stand on the hard crustof snow and eat bark off the trees.They are lovely animals, yes, regal,majestic even, but Laurie, on balance,cares more about the trees. She’s eagerfor local hunters to get lucky, but theyrarely do since hunting season isNovember, not February, and the elk

are wily besides.One day when we stopped to pick

up milk from neighbors who keep acow, there it was, a single steak wrappedin butcher paper and labeled with aSharpie: “Apple-fed. Merry Christmas.”We took it home and fried it in a pan,and even though it was the bestChristmas gift Laurie received, eventhough it was the best meat I’ve everhad in my life, we could have donebetter. Pan fried? Really? When, on theroad to Death Valley, I heard aboutthat brine on the radio, I knew: thatwould’ve been the way. That slowbrine would’ve been an act of honor,

of gratitude: for our hunter-neighbor,for the elk, for the apple trees thatfed them.

In the morning, under a salt cedar tree,I listen to Timbisha elders talk aboutthe mesquite beans and pinions, aboutTEK, which seems to them an acro-nym for the obvious; of course foodand land and home are connected.Duh! Then they talk about survival,how the miners and government triedfor decades to run them off, and howtroubles remain: the pressures ofgaming, corruption in the BIA, un-employment which runs as high, attimes, as eighty to ninety percent.Sometimes it must seem like the sit-uation cannot possibly improve. Dothey ever feel like giving up?

“It’s easy to feel like giving up,”one elder says, “but it is very hard togive up.”

Sand blows against trailer homes.Mourning doves call.

As noon approaches, grandchildrenappear and serve us bologna sand-wiches with potato chips, and coldwater in plastic cups. The first bitetransports me instantly to the dayswhen I’d sit at a picnic table with aScooby Doo lunchbox, or maybe theFlintstones, days when bologna washealthy for kids, like liverwurst andchocolate milk. Times have changed,and we know better, or think we do.We want to make right what’s gonewrong. But it’s complicated. It’s notjust what you eat, but how. Not justwhat you grow or hunt or choose tobuy, but what you share. We are inthis together, and we can do better.

There are still many miles left, forme, on this trip. Three more Buickbreakdowns. Several more snowy pass-es. There will be more veggie burgersand French fries, smushy store-boughtapples, and once, just once, a can ofRed Bull. Later at home, we’ll returnto doing the best we can. We’ll plantSwiss chard and tomatoes, buy grass-fed beef from a friend and whole-grainbread from the local bakery. We’llbring the best stuff to potlucks or saveit for company. And when we haveextra money, we will send it to Momfor the pantry.

Meanwhile, at the table under thesalt cedar, I take one last bite of breadcrust and drain the last of my water,and thank my hosts.

No food, the entire trip, will havebeen so nourishing. n

Ana Maria Spagna is a writer inStehekin, Washington; her most recentbook is the terrific Potluck: Communityon the Edge of Wilderness. See ana-mariaspagna.com.

Winter 201261

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ThisIsHowToForgiveIt is impossibleto have the graceto forgive. And yet...By Joan Sauro, C.S.J.

It is the rite of passage for everyhigh school senior in our small townto head to the Green Gate Inn afterthe prom. Left behind is the schoolauditorium wonderland with its papercarnations and swing band and flashbulbs and the fervent signing of mem-ory books.

It is springtime, the greening ofthe year, and I am in a green gown,sitting in the back seat of a car withmy date, who has his arm slung acrossthe top of the seat and is thinkingabout lowering his hand down to myshoulder in its green faille gown, whichis, of course, another rite of passage,all connected to the green gate throughwhich we will walk to the Inn, andlike adults do, sit in the bar for a drink.Then it’s back out through the greengate and into the car and again thedate’s arm creeping across the seatbecause time is running out.

But my gown gets whiter andwhiter, and the date’s hand does notdescend, and soon my gown adds aconservative collar and long sleevesbuttoned at the wrist, because I haveleft the green gate swinging and amheading through a convent gate, andthe white prom gown becomes mynun’s bridal gown, and the date’s handlies forever on the back seat of thecar, and years later the Green GateInn changes to the French Kiss Inn,but not for us, on the night of theSenior Prom there is no kiss, Frenchor otherwise.

Soon it is summer and I am walkingwith a priest across the parched drylate summer grounds of the school. Wehave never walked side by side beforeand never will again. This is not asummer stroll, although the priest isemoting about seasonal nothings, theair, the sky, the changing leaves, butno word about the nearby conventand the sisters inside whom I love andwhose company I must soon leave.Nor is he talking about the school wehave just passed, and my teachingthere, where he is in charge. On thecontrary, he has informed my religioussuperior that I must leave, much tomy unsuspecting self. He reportschallenges to his authority during fac-

ulty meetings and the teaching ofsubversion like Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseand the Greek play Antigone. Do al-ready-rebellious teenagers need tosee the young Antigone defy the lawand bury her brother, to hear herproclaim, I will obey God and not man?Is it any wonder that some studentsin my class think it just fine to stealChristmas lights off the homes of therich to decorate the homes of the poor?

And so I am dismissed. I am toleave and say nothing about the matterto the priest whose red tight face iscracking like a late-summer tomato.I am to get a move on, which I do,leaving innocence behind, not in theback seat of a car, but on the burntsummer grounds of the Catholic school.

A few years later the conventcloses, the school hangs on for dearlife, the priest elopes with an airlinestewardess, and I am left wonderinghow to forgive the person who stealsyour innocence.

Many years later a new priest in-vites me back to be writer-in-residenceat the school, which by this time hasshrunk to elementary size. The newpriest knows nothing of my history, nordo the children who write poems asif there is no tomorrow, who leap outof their seats waving their poems inmy face with oooo, oooo, oooo, mean-ing call on me!, which of course I do,ooo, ooo, ooo. And thus it happensthat working with children cleansesthe soul, as the subversive author ofThe Idiot once noted.

After school, I walk the May pathto the convent, let myself in, visit theempty rooms. In the barren chapel Itouch the walls embedded with theprayers and hymns of a thousand sisters. I bow to where the Eucharistwas. From the community room comesthe familiar Rachmaninoff, blessingevery room in the house and everymemory. This is how to forgive, I tellmyself, this is how to forgive, bywalking the same ground in a newseason. n

Joan Sauro of the Sisters of Saint Josephis a writer and teacher in Syracuse,New York.

Winter 201263

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One of a series of 26 ads created by Contain-er Corporation of America from 1950 to 1975.A different artist interpreted each ad on thetheme “Great Ideas of Western Man”.

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As a native New Yorker, thirty yearsago, it was my pleasure and my pas-sion to embark for Alaska periodically— that top hat of the continent. InAnchorage, “the closest city to Alaska,”as locals like to put it, once we pas-sengers had debarked past the polarbear, Dall sheep, and caribou situatedin glass cases to welcome us to the 49thState, the baggage carousel presenteda headlong tumult of wooden crates,steamer trunks, huge taped cardboardboxes, tarpaulin sacks, and backpacks,snow gear, tents, stoves, and climb-ing equipment for “assaults” on MountMcKinley or the like that some hadflown in for, as if life were not adven-ture enough already. The militarycontingent retrieved their troop-shipstuff, and civilian berserkers or trophyhunters and gun nuts had rifles incanvas cases to collect, and air mat-tresses, sleeping bags, helicopter partsin cartons. Some of us were here totry solving our problems; others prob-ably to complicate them.

Alaska, twice as big as Texas, had only420,000 people living in it thirty yearsago, half of them around Anchorage,which the rest of the state considered“Los Anchorage,” with its wide streets,shopping malls and negotiable climate,drier than Juneau’s, warmer thanFairbanks. On an Anchorage barstoolyou’d meet a thirty-something fellowwho has flown in from Bangkok witha money belt full of gemstones to sellin the gold, gun, fur, and ivory storeson Fourth Avenue. Another guy hasburned out as a social worker in FortYukon, he tells us, because he was incharge of child welfare and familyrelations, and when children werebeaten up by drunken parents he gotaccused of racism if he tried to inter-cede. Proposing to remove an abusedchild to foster care brought the oldcharge of deracination, cultural impe-rialism, when kids were shipped todistant boarding schools to remove“the Indian” from them—and threatsby the father to shoot him in the mid-dle of the night.

THETOPOF THECONTINENT

A wander through the wild state that has sentthousands of students to The Bluff.

By Edward Hoagland

The Kuskokwim, eight hundred andfifty miles long, heads on the northernslopes of the Mount McKinley massifin Denali National Park and flowsinto Kuskokwim Bay on the BeringSea, but during that shorter span thanthe Yukon’s eighteen-hundred-mile-plus course, roughly parallels a gooddeal of the Yukon. And both rivershad friction points where the coastalEskimos were prevented by the inte-rior Indians from penetrating furtherinland. The salmon runs were gloriousmost of the way up, and elders couldnegotiate a balance of interests, buthothead battles did occur. Red Devil —although a white town with a youngishpopulation of gold prospectors andthe like — lay across the river fromCrooked Creek and Sleetmute, twonative settlements where historicallythe two cultures, upriver Athapascanand downriver Yupik, had rubbedshoulders and either traded or clashed.The Yupik, a separate linguistic groupof Eskimos from the Inupiat or Inuitof arctic Alaska and Canada, weresometimes called “Asiatic Eskimos” byearly anthropologists because theirreal stronghold was over across theBering Sea in Siberia; but the YukonIndians on occasion battled with theInupiat, too, north, across the BrooksRange, about salmon streams or cari-bou plateaus, as well.White towns on these crosswise

rivers in Alaska, like the Yukon andKuskokwim, tend to be on the southbank, with a northern exposure, likeRed Devil was, whereas the ancientIndian settlements like Crooked Creekwere located facing south, for maxi-mum winter sunshine, as well as ona bend where the king and chum salm-ons could be netted more efficiently.Crooked Creek’s hundred-and-ten re-served and tetchy Yupik citizenrylived in chinked log cabins (not barged-in, white man’s prefabs and trailers),in spread-out fashion on a bench atthe Great Bend of the Kuskokwim,where its namesake tributary flowedin, with gold-bearing mountains in

relief on the northern skyline. Fishtraps at the river’s elbow had fed in-numerable dog teams during thesuccessive minor rushes, auxiliary tothose occurring more famously onthe Yukon around the same period.

I met George Willis, 78, who built hisbarrel-stove-warmed cabin in 1945after his discharge from the SecondWorld War. “Georgetown,” a miners’homesite at the mouth of the GeorgeRiver, was named for him. His UncleOswald had been prospecting on theupper Kuskokwim since migratinginto the country from the Nome goldrush, as that flagged out in 1906, andhad discovered some of the first cinna-bar here. Already in Nome at four-teen, Oswald had been digging at alikely placer bench, but stopped a fewfeet higher in the sand than the strikewas — the next guy got the gold. Also,he was shot there by an “outlaw,” butonce he was well, “got his man.” Witha pistol in his hand, old Oswald couldthrow a tin can in the air “and keepher a-bouncin’.” George himself hadfirst arrived in Alaska in 1941 on boardthe S.S. Yukon, docking at Seward. But,trapping in the bush all that winter,he never heard about Pearl Harboruntil he emerged with his furs thenext April. In retirement now, he kepteleven chickens to watch and hadcollected seven eggs the day I visitedwith him. The 3:30 sunset streamedthrough the window, lighting his jut-ting nose and jaw and the white whisk-ers he was trimming with an electricshaver, using a small mirror and agenerator that he cranked with his freehand, opening or closing the damperon the stove meanwhile with his foot.His desk, of fancy oak, had been sal-vaged from a saloon that closed withthe mining. Said last spring’s breakupoccurred on May 10th, and bargescould run until October. At the end ofthe airstrip he’d caught a lynx recent-ly, near the unmarked grave of anoldtimer he knew, and last fall hechased a black bear up the beach withhis headlamp, after it broke into his

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smokehouse and sprang a trap thathe’d set there. The trap didn’t catchit, but in its panic it got tangled inthe chain, whose toggle snagged. Sothe bear went into the smokehouseagain to cure, along with the fish.

I found, when traveling, with partic-ular reference to my handicap of astutter, a more flexible stripe of sym-pathy in Indian towns. This may havebeen a cultural twist, if the originalAthapascan religion left wiggle roomfor aberrant weaknesses that wereperhaps thought to mask strengths —blind or stuttering shamans with clair-voyance, for instance. The climateon the middle-Yukon, with a hundred-plus-degree temperature fluctuating,cascading fish runs, bird life andmammal migrations, allowed for subtlenatural mysteries, laddered prosperityor poverty, and division of labor, avariety of talents. The vise-like Arctic,by contrast, over the centuries allowedless leeway for individuals whosestumbling could endanger the com-munity. Grandpa with the brokenhip was left behind on the ice. So mystutter in the Inupiat village of PointHope, above the 68th Parallel, mightprovoke laughter — certainly no cu-riosity — whereas in protein-rich FortYukon, variegations in weather, bio-

diversity, the very presence of trees,allowed more margin for error, forlimber judgments or an attitude ofwait-and-see. Garbled speech mightflow from or engender intuition. Therelationship of Athapascan Indiansto grizzly bears seemed more complexthan the regard Inupiat Eskimos hadfor polar bears, as well, which werebetter eating and mainly food.

Wolverine pelts brought the trapperfrom $125 to $450; lynx, $150 to $350;otter, $60-$125; marten, $15 to $60, aspread determined by both color andsize. Lighter marten were worth less,or if spruce pitch had gotten stuck inthem. The Holitna River marten wereorange like a fox and averaged $35apiece, while on the main stem ofthe Kuskokwim below Sleetmute, thedarker gene pool could earn $50 forthe same length of skin.The real rhythm of the season: the

stop-start of winter traplines, withsets checked and rebaited, and thenthe yearly balance of moving to SpringCamp, when subsistence people lefttheir winter huts for the marshlands,as the first migrating waves of ducksand geese were returning from thesouth and muskrats emerging fromunder the thawing ice. After all thesawing and boiling scraps off a rooftop

moose — more fresh duck than youcould eat! And succulent black bearscame out of hidden hibernation togorge on wetland greens, on whichmoose also descended from the higherpitches where they wintered to feed.Fresh too, salads, needless to say. FishCamp followed, on the rivers, for themonumental salmon run; and BerryCamp in the fall, where the women,from tents or shanties, filled basketswith the winter’s sweeteners, whiletheir husbands stalked any wildlifefattening on the same bushy slopes.

Before the clang and clash of miningequipment, the donkey engines, andsteamboats on the arteries, people whowere skimming silently downstreamin a bark canoe, a skinboat or a dugoutsaw much more wildlife, includingsometimes the “Hairy Men” or “WildPeople,” who had kinky hair four tosix inches long and left tracks in thesnow or tundra moss seventeen inch-es long by four inches across (thus“Bigfoot”) — remarkably narrow, butblunt-toed, not with the claws markedout in front, like a grizzly bear’s. Andif they stole from your fish camp,they did so neatly, almost “politely,”lifting the latch and taking a row ortwo of filets from the smokehousewithout smashing and slathering every-

Winter 201265

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thing else with claw rips and bitescars, like a bear. The ancestors ofthe interior Yupik Eskimos living herewhen the Russians arrived reportedlyhad been ousted from the KobukRiver area, to the north, and drivensouth by Inupiat Eskimos raidingdown from the North Slope coast: andthemselves pushing out, in turn, thelocal Tuluksak bands. While crossingthe Yukon to reach this less desirablehaven of the Kuskokwim, they’d hadto fight, as well, of course, the nativesliving there — arrows flying betweenflotillas of canoes — after concealingall their children in meat caches nearthe bank so they wouldn’t be kid-napped or killed. A recent battle al-most started again when a boy fromthe Kuskokwim, in throwing a stone,put out the eye of a Yukon boy. Thesecond boy’s clan wanted him turnedover to them so they could gouge outhis eye.

In Point Hope, the wooden framehouses had caribou antler racks on theroofs. The women standing in thedoors, as we drove through from theplane, looked haloed by their white-bear or grizzly hoods, often with theclaws left on. I went on to Joe Towka-jhea’s snug, friendly home. He wasan older, worldly guy who late thelast April, in a skinboat manned byseven paddlers and a rudderman,had harpooned a twenty-seven-footbowhead whale. It was important tothe whole village that somebody landat least one whale every spring — asignature event — whereupon templatehunks of meat, skin or blubber weredistributed to other villages up or downthe coast and perhaps along the Kobukand Noatak rivers, too, for traditionalfeasts. Whaling vastly predated nine-teenth-century contact with whites,and two gargantuan jawbones archedover the entrance to Point Hope’sfestival grounds. If nobody spearedone, a bit of the town’s cultural identitycould be dismasted or dissolved. Inthe bad old days of forced assimilation,schoolchildren might be punishedfor murmuring to each other at recessin Inupiat or another indigenous lan-guage, but lately television had beenmuch more effective at unstringingthe coherence of the North. Caribouhunts continued in motorized form,but not previously central, but eclipsedsubsistence rituals like collectingwild murre eggs by the countless hun-dreds off giddy ledges on the sand-stone cliffs of Cape Lisburne and CapeThompson during the birds’ briefhectic June nesting season. Coloniesof whirling, “growling,” “moaning”thousands had been gleefully, danger-

ously robbed in the village-wide bash— everybody absolutely stuffingthemselves on their only fresh eggsof the year.

Bowheads, like murres, migratednorthward for the wealth of nutritiongenerated when the sun shines round-the-clock. Also gray whales: but beingmore pugnacious, grays were leftalone. The bowheads could weigh aton per foot and grow much largerthan Joe’s last one had been. The earlymigrants were easier to get at becausethe melting ice at first left narrowpassages they had to swim throughwhile keeping their access to air. Thewooden frame of the longboat satprophetically on a whalebone cacheall fall and winter, but well beforethe season, Lucy, Joe’s wife, and thewives of the other men in the crewprepared by painstakingly sewing theskins of eight bearded seals, or“oogruk,” together in leak-proof fashionto cover the twenty-foot ribbed out-line. These special seals can be eightfeet in length, twice the size of theringed seals I saw stacked as larder —nosed into the drifts in people’s yards,and shot at blowholes by young men.They could weigh eight hundredpounds apiece, required more ambi-tious hunting, and their tough hideswere also cut into harpoon lines, bootsoles, and whatnot. Then, with April’slonger, warming days, the men hauledthe big skinboat, with their white tents,Coleman stoves, the caribou skinsthey slept on, out five miles or moreby snowmobile onto the ice, to reachthe open-water leads that had split thewinter’s cap. There, during the thaw,they kept watch night and day for thewhales to arrive, hunting seals, per-haps, in the meantime, and watchingfor a possible shot at a polar bear,prowling, too, after seals.

Joe, after spotting his bowhead lastspring, paddling hard with his crew ofeight, and hurling the harpoon, fin-ished it off, and towed it to where theirSki-doos all together could haul thecarcass onto the ice, then toward land.But first nine squares of skin werecut from its back for the crew to ritu-ally chew, and a piece of the whale’sskull symbolically returned to the sea.

Not only every local received atoken piece of meat, but each Inupiatvillage in the region. Other organsand parts were set aside for Thanks -giving and Christmas, and the tailwould be eaten throughout the villagewhen the fall sea ice began to form.The last of the whale was not con-sumed until the wives sat together nextspring chewing muktuk (skin), whilesewing a new skinboat’s skin. Some

hunters employed walrus skins, in-stead of bearded seals’, for their boats,and after the bowheads had passedthe Point, swimming toward the Beau-fort Sea, migrating walruses becamethe quarry, for their tusks and moun-tains of flesh.

Seal-hunting: you went out for severalmiles on the ice on your Ski-doo towhere the blowholes were, wearingyour white parka, with a single-shot,pump-action rifle and a grapplinghook. Then you lay camouflaged inthe snow for a long while. After finallyshooting one which had hauled outto rest and sun itself, using your spot-ting scope, you remained still, allowingit plenty of time to die in peace andmystification, not diving in terror backinto the ocean under the ice, havingfigured out what and where its enemywas. Ideally, bewilderment wouldkeep it filling its lungs in gasps, soeven if it did slide into the blowholeagain, its body would float. Harborseals were already supplanting ringedseals as the species shot, althoughtheir skins were not as valuable forworking into moccasins and mukluks.Ringed seals, like bowheads, had got-ten scarce.

Eight polar bears had been shot byPoint Hope villagers so far this winter,drawn hungrily close by the smell ofdogs and seal and caribou carcasses.Occasionally you could shoot one outof your window, but last winter it hadbeen the arctic foxes, short of food,appearing in town to surrender theirwhite fur. I went to visit HubertKoonuk, born in 1911 but looking tenyears younger than that and still anace bear hunter. He pursued his pas-sionate specialty far out on the packice solo. Had totted up a reportedthirty-six in his life, including the freshone draped dripping underneath hisskinboat on its rack at the side of thehouse. Koonuk’s hunts could be per-ilous affairs, I had heard, involving notonly the possibility of the huge, ghostlybeast turning the tables and stalkinghim, but the floe they were on break-ing loose and floating away, whilethe same gale blew his skinboat off itand marooned him. More than oncehe’d needed to leap into the waterand fetch the thing back, or else waitfor a plane to maybe spot him aftera day or two, when the storm cleared.

His vendetta against bears didn’tencompass the cultural import, col-lective effort, or sharing of the meatfar and wide of a whale hunt, butbrought him personal fame, tastysteaks, and a saleable commodity inthe creamy hides. A couple of sealskinswere also drying on bearpaw-snowshoe

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frames, along with two caribou, cur-ing in the sun as well. Koonuk was arangier, moodier, pricklier fellow thanJoe, and immediately asked me, “Whatoutfit are you with?” A fair question.My winter jacket with the coyote col-lar might mark me as a kind of wildlifecop nosing around. I explained I wasa writer, and after stories, and there-fore harmless. After opening the door,he had resumed what he was doing,sitting cross-legged on the floor, saw-ing cross-sections off a walrus tusk —which was curved like a saber-toothedtiger’s canine — to insert for decora-tive purposes into the lids and basesof several baskets his wife had wovenout of baleen.

“So you won’t even leave us ourstories, will you?” he remarked. “Nowthat you’ve stolen everything else?You see how we live? And we don’ttalk about how we hunt whales orwalruses or polar bears now becausethey’re trying to stop us from doingthat. So this is how the Eskimos live.They drink coffee and carve ivory,and then they drink some more cof-fee and carve some more ivory.”

Alaska, like America, had been amagic name, but also “The Last Place,”as people said lately who weren’t

here so much because it was a landof opportunity as because they dis-liked the rest of the country, yet didn’tas a rule propose to do much of any-thing different here, just climb outon a limb and saw themselves off. Inthe northern interior one could runinto a state trooper, a school superin-tendent or game warden responsiblefor territory equivalent to six Vermonts.White people arrived to opt out of thegrid for a spell to discipline or dis-tract themselves, as a challenge or anescape, to procrastinate, or simplyvolplaning, putting miles under theirbelts, enlarging the theater of theirlives, fulfilling a personal dream theydidn’t expect to pan out but wouldregret quailing out of. Per capita in-come and divorce rates were the high-est in the country. Statistically, ninetimes the national average of adultshad a pilot’s license and the proportionof people over fifty was the lowest.Hoosiers, Tarheels and Buckeyeswhose foreheads wrinkled when theyrecalled being born on the wrongside of the tracks: their fathers’ drunks,their mothers’ bruises — Alaskanswere generally a goaded group, maskedby the beards they grew to ward offmosquitoes. But the Indians were na-tive, not trippers, and floundering for

footing, having had the rug pulled outfrom under them, as the advent ofsatellite TV made painfully and dailyclear to anybody too dull to have re-alized this by grammar school.

Alaska is a destination created out ofanger and quests, with frequent infu-sions of both, where people decidehow much wildness they want to have,maybe content with a suburb ofAnchorage. Absent its oil, Alaska is akind of coccyx on the body politic,reminding us — if we dream on it —of a Captain Cook, Lewis-and-Clarkpast. As with jazz, the blues, rodeos,we sample a whiff of what has elapsed,in a national dreamscape severedfrom the hourly news. Nature haslong since been knocked to its knees,and to “move on” has become the na-tional mantra. Our callused eyes areinured to such realities as we “rein-vent” ourselves. But what inventionwill equal Alaska? n

Edward Hoagland, the University’sSchoenfeldt Series Visiting Writer in 1994,is the author of many books of fictionand nonfiction; this piece is drawn fromhis newest book, Alaskan Travels(Arcade Publishing).

Winter 201267

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AChristmasPsalmBy John Daniel

Singing a songof the gift and glory

of what is.

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Spirit whose name I do not know,Spirit of darkened meadow and the pointed trees silhouetted around me,Spirit of the great sky strewn with stars,Spirit of streamwater swirling over mossy stones down to the old and ageless river,Spirit of salmon and steelhead facing the current, holding in darkened pools,Spirit of bears adrift in their rank havens and veering bats sounding the night,Spirit of moles and earthworms and the smaller lives thriving underground,

Spirit whose name I do not know,Spirit of vole and plunging owl,Spirit of doe with fawn in her belly, Spirit of cougar who rips the belly,Spirit of the garden and the snake in the garden,Spirit of chance and purpose, of all that has been and all that shall be,Spirit of the one way and Spirit of the many,Spirit of all ends and beginnings,

Spirit whose name I do not know,Though it glints in fire across the sky tonight and speaks itself in silence,Though as near as this clay ground I stand on,Though I hear it in the stream singing in darkness and the river whispering below,Though it is part of me like the breath that clouds and vanishes before me,Spirit within me, Spirit without, Spirit of form and the absence of form,Spirit of these mountains rising and wearing away,

Spirit whose name I do not know,Of all who sleep or wake in these mountains tonightI am the one who doubts and falters, who loses himself in distraction,I am the one who sees and smells and hears the least and stumbles the most,But I am the one who speaks words aloud with mouth and tongue,And tonight I speak to praise you, Spirit,Because in all that I name and cannot nameI know you are born, you are born this night and all nights and all days,And you are here in these mountains, in this river canyon, and in all places of Earth.

Spirit whose name I do not know,Though tonight or tomorrow or a day sure to come I must fall to the clay,To the stones and flowing cold waters,Though my body must burn to ash or dry into dust or molder, tunneled by worms,Though I must relinquish this small light of mind I have thought of as my own,Though I know these things as surely as I now breathe,Though I stand afraid tonight in this meadow,Spirit, I understand tonight and I accept tonight that in this darkness lives your way.

Spirit whose name I do not know,Beneath your fierce stars and the black of spaceI rejoice tonight that you are born,And that Earth and its numberless lives are born of you,And the other worlds and their numberless lives,And I rejoice tonight that in all creatures born, bacterium to blue whale,You yourself are born, you honor us to bear your desire to be flesh and bone and blood,To be the suffering of illness and dying,To be the pleasures and agonies of love,To be the joys of consciousness and also its griefs.

Spirit whose name I do not know,Though I am afraid tonight, and tremble tonight,I am glad beyond measure that in finding your way you have given me life,And I am glad beyond measure that in finding my way I in some small manner give life to you.I thank you this night for the privilege of being.I thank you this night for the mind and heart and voice with which I speak.I thank you this night for my life, my death, and all lives and deaths that may come of me.Though I will not know who I am, I shall serve you and serve your journey forevermore,On Earth and in all the darkness and fire of the heavens.

by John Daniel, twice the University’s visiting writer, from his new collection of poems, Of Earth.

Winter 201269

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A L U M N I u N E W S

Portland70

ALUMNI AWARDSThe University is asking allalumni and friends to nomi-nate candidates for the Distin-guished Alumni Award (no-table accomplishments andcreativity over a life and ca-reer), the Father Tom Oddo,C.S.C., Award (service andspiritual example), and theContemporary Alumni Award(honoring younger alumni).See alumni.up.edufor a list ofpast award-winners, to viewnomination criteria, and to fillout a nomination form. Or callthe alumni office at (888) 872-5867, or email [email protected].

PILOT POKER?Yes, we condone egregiouscard-playing on campus: Fri-day, January 18 is the Nation-al Alumni Board Poker Tour-nament. Your $50 entry feesupports the National AlumniBoard Scholarship Fund. Apre-tournament buffet mealwill be served at 6:45 p.m. At7:30 p.m., the chips hit thetable in this no limit TexasHold-’Em tournament.

THE HIVEThe University’s Hive Entre -preneurs Network is an openforum for alumni of all ages,current UP MBA students, andUniversity of Portland friendsinterested in business and en-trepreneurial activity withinthe University community.The Hive organizes events focused on connecting and assisting people in findingnew business partners,

clients, and investors throughnetworking and interactiveand fun educational presenta-tions. If you have a speaker inmind or would like to host aHive event, please contact theHive committee directly [email protected]. To learnmore about upcoming Hiveevents please visit its websiteat uphive.wordpress.com.

WCC BASKETBALLThe West Coast Conferenceplayoff tournament returns toLas Vegas beginning Wed nes-day, March 6, 2013 and endingon Monday, March 11, 2013.The alumni office is hostingall sorts of events around thegames — a golf excursion, anexclusive spa day, and a stageshow. Join us for pre-gameevents two hours prior to thestart of the first Pilot men’sbasketball game of the tourna-ment. Special rates for Pilotfans exist at The Orleans,Palms, and Bellagio Hotels. In-formation: (888) 872-5867,[email protected]. NOTE: Tick-ets for the tourney itself mustbe purchased through theWCC or the Orleans arena.All-session tickets (which in-clude admittance to all men’sand women’s games) are cur-rently available to the generalpublic. To buy tickets, visit theWCC web site at http://wcc-sports.cstv.com/ ot/west-baskbl-tournament. html orcall the Orleans ticket office at888-234-2334. March is sort oftomorrow; better purchasetickets as soon as possible!

REUNION 2012…...will be June 27-30. Amongthe particular celebrations:the 50th anniversary of theSchool of Education, the Gold-en Anniversary of the Classof 1963, and the Silver An-

niversary of the Class of 1988.Among the many events: aReunion 5K race aroundcampus with cross countryalumni, the legendary barbe-cue, plenty of mini-coursesfeaturing University faculty.Info: (888) 872-5867, [email protected],alumni.up.edu/reunion.

THE SALZBURGERS…of the last fifty years willbegin a year-long golden an-niversary celebration of theUniversity’s oldest and largeststudy-abroad program inAustria; the first event is a tripon the Danube River andthree days in Salzburg, whereguests will be able to enjoy atour of the city and two groupdinners. On September 11,2013 guests will have the option of embarking upon aweek-long cruise of theDanube River beginning inVienna and ending in Nurem -berg. Along the way the shipwill cruise through the vine-yard-rich Wachau Valley andthe Bavarian forest before finally moving through Main-Danube Canal en route to thehistoric city of Nuremberg.Prices start at $3,708 per per-son double occupancy forboth the Salzburg tour andcruise. The University has almost sold out of cabins, soplease hurry! Info: CarmenGaston, 503.943.8506 or [email protected].

ALUMNI SERVICE DAY……across the nation will be Sat-urday, April 27. Pilots fromcoast to coast and their familiesand friends will donate timeand energy to various charitablecauses. Each alumni chapterorganizes a different volun-teer activity, from sorting foodboxes, to serving a meal in a

day-shelter, to sprucing up ayard and doing minor homerepairs. If you would like tocoordinate a day of service inyour area please contact AndySherwood at 503.943.8327,sherwood@ up.edu.

I LOVE TO EATJoin us on January 10, 2013in Portland to spend a delight-ful evening in the kitchen atPortland Center Stage, as itwere, with the charismaticPortland original JamesBeard. Before Julia Child andRachel Ray, there was JamesBeard, the first TV chef. Anoptional dinner outing withUniversity master chef KirkMustain (see page 6) will takeplace prior to the show. Tick-ets are available for $35 perperson. Info: (888) 872-5867,[email protected].

THE STATE OF THE U……is Wednesday, March 19,2013 at noon at the Multno -mah Athletic Club in Portland.This annual event has grownamazingly in recent years tobe a cheerful and often mov-ing hour. University presidentFather Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C.,will speak on the University’sprogress and dreams (look fora Campaign update and noteson the new library and rivercampus, and also see page 5 ofthis issue). We will also honorthe three 2013 Alumni Awardwinners and recognize the student recipient of this year’sTom Gerhardt Award for stu-dent leadership. Info: (888)872-5867, [email protected]. We cannot emphasize enoughhow important alumni are fornominating the most gener-ous and creative among us, assweet examples of what theUniversity so very much wish-es to make of its students.

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Winter 201271

FIFTY YEAR CLUBLife regent John C. Beckman’42 and his wife Patricia werehonored at Oregon PublicBroadcasting’s (OPB’s) annualdinner on Sunday, September9, 2012. The dinner honored

the Beckmans (along with theArlene and Harold Schnitzerfamily) by presenting themwith OPB’s Leadership in Phi-lanthropy Award. Patricia andJohn Beckman were founding

members of OPB’s Corner-stone Society, which was es-tablished in 1989, and have re-mained leading volunteers.Thanks to their devotion andgenerosity, the CornerstoneSociety now provides morethan 20 percent of OPB’s oper-ating budget. A lovelier, moregenerous couple we havenever met. Jack Hoggins ’44 passed awayquietly on Friday, June 17,2011, at his residence inOroville, California. He livedand worked most of his life inHermiston, Ore., but residedin Oroville since 2007. Heserved in the U.S. MarineCorps in World War II, andwas briefly reactivated duringthe Korean Conflict. He mar-ried Catherine Schummers in1945; she predeceased him in1985. He then married DorothyClary of Hermiston; she died

in 2007. Later that year he re-located to Oroville to be near-er to his family. Survivors in-clude daughters, JacquelinePogue and Maureen Sander;son, John Hoggins; six grand-children; and three greatgrandchildren. Our prayersand condolences to the family.Mary Ellen Lajoy, wife of

Frank Lajoy ’47 died on July18, 2012, in Portland, Ore. Shewas born June 26, 1922, in Istria, Italy (now Croatia). Sheimmigrated to the UnitedStates in 1929, and grew up inNorth Portland. She resided inSalem until moving to theClaremont Retirement com-munity in Portland in 1997.Survivors include her husbandof 65 years, Frank; youngerbrother, Joseph (Kathy); fivechildren, Ron (Sandy), Ken(Barb), Frank (Donna), Karen(Tim Bickler) and Dennis(Robin Bunch); 11 grandchil-dren; 10 great-grandchildren;and two nieces and threenephews. Our prayers andcondolences to the family.Charles Patrick McCarty ’49passed away peacefully athome in Ashland, Ore., onSeptember 5, 2012, surround-ed by his wife and sons.Charles was born to Charlesand Zena McCarty on May 4,1924, in Portland, Ore., andearned a master’s degree atSanta Clara University. Heserved in the U.S. ArmyChemical Warfare Service inboth the European and Pacifictheaters of World War II, andmarried his beloved wife,Rosemary, on July 1, 1950, atthe Church of the Madeleinein Portland, Ore. He was along time employee of SRI In-ternational. He was a memberof the Knights of Columbusand with Rosemary was a vol-unteer for the Society of St.Vincent de Paul. He was along-time parishioner of OurLady of the Mountain CatholicChurch. Survivors include hiswife of 62 years, Rosemary;sons Thomas [Kim], James,Steven [Ellen], and Patrick[Colleen]; grandchildren Caro-line, Michael, Dominic, Claire,and Kathryn; and great grand-daughter Layla. He was pre-ceded in death by his daugh-ter, Teresa A. McCarty Quar-man. Memorial contributionsmay be made to the Society ofSt. Vincent de Paul at OurLady of the Mountain Church.Our prayers and condolencesto the family.Wayne Arnold Olsen ’50passed away on September 8,2012. Wayne’s lifelong occupa-tion was as an educator for theDavid Douglas School System,proudly serving for 31 years,first as a school teacher, later a

principal, and retiring as assis-tant superintendent for DavidDouglas. Survivors include hissons, Ronald and DanielOlsen; and daughters, Karenand Larry Gratreak and Kathyand Todd Sander; brothers,Peter and Lance Olsen; grand-children, Erik Olsen, RickSander, Michael Sander, AlexSander, Casey Stedman, AndyStedman and Jill Stedman,Karia Eichelberger, Grant Gra-treak, and Jeff Gratreak; step-grandchildren, Wendy Isaac,Curt Stirewalt, Laura Stire-walt, Beth Elder and DavidStedman; four great-grandchil-dren; and three step-great-grandchildren. Our prayersand condolences to the family. Edwin Wilson ’53 passed awayon September 10, 2012, in Seattle, Washington, from com-plications from a heart valvereplacement surgery. Ourprayers and condolences to thefamily. Joe T. Namba ’53 passed awayon June 14, 2012, peacefully athome with his family by hisside at the age of 80 after abrief bout with leukemia. Hewas an Army veteran who hada long career as a freight-for-warder with his own company.Survivors include his wife of 48years, Noriko; his three chil-dren, Patty ’83, Craig and Blake(Melissa); grandchildren, KenjiMaeda, Jake and Emma; andhis sister, Rose. Our prayersand condolences to the family. We got a note from Jim Flynn

’55 recently (pictured belowon the old UP tennis courtsbehind the Pilot House), let-ting us know that he was in-ducted into the United StatesTennis Association (USTA) Pa-cific Northwest Hall of Fameon October 20, 2012. Jim washonored for his “significantachievements and contribu-tions to the sport of tennis

tennis in the Pacific North-west” and his many years ofpublic tennis activities in thePortland metro area. USTAhall of famers have made con-tributions as officials or aspeople in some related tennisactivity which are so outstand-ing over a significant period oftime as to justify the highestcommendation and recogni-

Peter F. Sandrock Sr. ’32

CP passed away at the

age of 98 on August 23,

2012. To the best of our

knowledge, he was the

University’s oldest alum-

nus. A Portland native,

Peter graduated from

Columbia Prep, attended

Columbia University

(name later changed to

University of Portland, in

1935) and graduated from Notre Dame in 1939. Peter

served in the Caribbean and Philippines as a naval

officer in World War II, and worked as a telephone

company engineer for 29

years. A lifelong believer

in service to others, he

logged more than 5,000

volunteer hours at Provi-

dence hospital.

Peter was married to

Mary Elizabeth O’Brien

from 1945 until her death

in 1972. Two years later,

he married Lorraine “Lea”

Miller of Portland, who died in 2000. In 2002, he mar-

ried Barbara Collins of Klamath Falls. He is survived by

Barbara; son, Pete Jr.; and many stepchildren; grand-

children; and great-grandchildren. Our prayers and

condolences to the family.

C L A S S u N O T E S

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tion. And that, ladies and gen-tlemen, describes Jim Flynn’slifetime love of tennis. Weonce heard a rumor that Jimwas seen on campus withouthis racket, but the claim wasnever proven. Congratula-tions, Jim!Ronald M. Marshall ’55passed away on August 31,2012. Survivors include hisbeloved wife, Kristen van Kra-nenburgh of Aloha; and broth-er, Rodney of Ravensdale,Wash. His surviving childrenare sons, Jeff and Scott Mar-shall; daughters, Renee, Ther -esa and Julia Marshall; andstepchildren, Karin and EricTooley. His daughter, Cheryl,died in 1964. He delighted inhis grandchildren, Hannah,Josh, Tate and Lincoln. His ca-reer was marked by service topeople, from developing com-munity-based centers for emo-tionally disturbed children toworking as a therapist in inde-pendent practice.Our prayersand condolences to the family. Please remember Arthur

Wiens ’56 and his family inyour prayers after the loss ofhis wife, Ruth Helen AveryWiens, on September 17, 2012,in Lake Oswego, Ore., “hold-ing hands with her loving hus-band and in the presence offamily, with the majesty ofMt. Hood looming in her bed-room window.” Survived byher husband, Arthur N.Wiens, to whom she was mar-ried for 63 years, she was thelove of his life. Survivors in-clude Arthur, her husband of63 years; children, BarbaraAnn Wiens-Tuers, and hus-band, Dan of Altoona, Pa.,Bradley Allen and wife, MollyRingo Wiens, Mercer Island,Wash., and daughter-in-law,Carol Fuller Wiens, Hillsboro;four grandchildren; five step-grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Ruth was pre-ceded in death by her son,Donald Avery Wiens. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family. Prayers, please, for Della

Bachman ’60, who lost her hus-band, Marvin A. Bachman, onJuly 30, 2012. Marvin ownedand operated a blacksmithshop in Iowa before moving toPortland in 1966. He workedas a welder and truck mechan-ic until retiring in 1984. Sur-vivors include Della, his wifeof 44 years; son, Garth; daugh-ter, Joyce; three grandchil-dren; and three brothers and asister. Our prayers and condo-lences to the family. Richard Moorman ’62 passedaway on Thursday, August 30,2012, at his home surroundedby his family. He worked forMercer Steel, then Interna-

tional Harvester Credit Corp.,and became office manager ofWebfoot Truck and Equipmentin Medford, eventually buyingthe business and workingthere until the end, not want-ing to retire just yet. Survivorsinclude his wife of 48 years,Lynnea; sons Paul (Kelly) ofSpokane, Wash., Scott of Sher-wood and Mike (Melissa) ofCentral Point; grandchildrenBlake, Madyson, Rylee, andAddin; sisters Patricia Wester-lund of Beaverton, KathyWilliams of Longview, Wash.,and Marylee Vuylsteke ofBeaverton, along with manyother extended family mem-bers. Our prayers and condo-lences to the family.

’63 SAD NEWSRichard Cooper passed awayon September 8, 2011, accord-ing to a note from our devel-opment office. He died athome with his family by hisside after an extended battlewith Parkinson’s disease. Hegraduated from the Universitywith a degree in music educa-tion, and went on to teachhigh school vocal music. Heretired from Silverton UnionHigh School in 1997. He is sur-vived by his wife, Debbra;daughter, Laura Gobbel; son-in-law, David Gobbel; daugh-ter, Holly Cooper; son, ScottSaylor; sister, Maria Cooper;her son, Mark Cooper; hiswife, Elena Cooper; and theirdaughter, Emilia Marie Coop-er; grandchildren, RachaelGobbel, Darren Gobbel, Math-ew Linderman, Logan Linder-man, and Spencer Linderman.Our prayers and condolencesto the family.

’65 PRAYERS, PLEASEGerald E. Roth passed away onAugust 25, 2012, at St. VincentHospital, surrounded by fami-ly and friends. He is survivedby his wife, Marlene; and hischildren, Tom, Lisa, and Diana.Donations may be made toMacular Degeneration Re-search or St. Luke LutheranChurch Music Fund. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family.

’71 GREETINGS TO ALL!We heard recently fromStephen Jeffries, who writes:“Greetings to all. We moved inJuly from Northern Californiato Valparaiso, Indiana. In Julyand August we were trying toadapt to the extreme hotweather, and now in Septem-ber, it’s starting to get cold, sowe’re getting ready for snow.Both Anne, my wife, and I areretired so now we can pursueother activities while our ten-year-old goes to school and

our twenty-year-old looks forwork. We’re interested inhearing from other UP gradu-ates in the area.” We can prob-ably help with that: Stephencan be reached at [email protected].

’72 EVERYONE KNOWS KENTCarolyn (Van Driesche) Jeschkewrites: “The runner with JimNuccio on page 47 of the fall2012 Portland Magazine surelooks like Kent Nedderman’71, who was on the track teamwhen I was at UP in 1968-1970. Let me know if that’shim.” Thanks for writing,Carol, hopefully more peoplewill chime in and we’ll findout for sure. Well, that didn’t take long...we heard also from Gary Rowles,who writes: “Jim Nuccio’s run-ning mate in the photo in yourrecent edition of the alumnimagazine is Kent Nedderman’71. He’s also mentioned inthe article on Jim Grelle in thesame edition. Although I was-n’t a star, I had the opportuni-ty to run for a season withNuccio, Nedderman, Bowler,

Kirkland, McCabe, Jeff Keene,and Rob Werley in 1968 beforeI transferred to another school.I still enjoy getting your maga-zine.” Thanks Gary. It lookslike Kent Nedderman is in-deed the mystery man in thephoto. And now we hear from Judi

(O’Connor) Nuccio, who writes:“That speed demon next tomy husband is Kent Nedder-man ’71. Didn’t Jim have afine head of hair? p.s. We lovethis publication!” ThanksJudy, and we love to hearfrom our alumni. Mike Olsonwrites: “I’m surethe mystery has long beensolved. My brother Jerry ’74,who lives in Portland, re-ceived his copy of the maga-zine last week and called toalert me about the Jim Grellearticle (We were both on thetrack team in the early ’70s). I just received my copy todayand confirmed Jerry’s suspi-cion that it was Kent Nedder-man ’71 running with Jim Nuc-cio. In fact the image was froma slide I scanned for a class-mate, Diana Foran.” Thanks

We heard from Kathy Lindsay Fritz ’66, who writes:

“My mother and father dated in the late 20s and early

30s. Dad went to Columbia U. from about 1927 to 1929,

and being raised in Canada, he and his future wife

were great friends with fellow Canadian Brother God-

frey Vassallo, C.S.C. My mother would sit at freezing

football games and have at least one hand in Brother

Godfrey’s pocket because he never wore a coat and

was always so warm. She said these two pictures

[above] were of Brother Godfrey taking a picture of her

while she took a picture of him. Notice the great quality

of her picture that he developed himself. My parents

were Harold and Bernice Lindsay.” Thanks so much,

Kathy, we’re always happy to add to our supply of

“B.G.” stories.

Portland72


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Mike, we’ve heard from lots ofyour classmates, and Kent isindeed the man speedingalong with Jim.And proving that it is a smallworld, we heard recently fromDiana Foran, who writes: “Myson Marcos got married onAugust 3, 2012. Bob Edmond-son ’73 and his wife Jan cameto Spain for the event. Also,Nancy ’63 and Ted ’67 Michaudwere here to help us celebrate.It was wonderful to have themwith me as they are, to me,part of my family, as is ManuelMacias, who was with us insprit because he was unable totravel.” Thanks Diane, con-gratulations on Marcos’ mar-riage and we know what youmean about Manolo being abeloved part of the family. Hewas chipper as ever last timewe saw him on campus.

’73 PLEASE NOTEA correction: in the fall 2012Class Notes we made a mistakein the death notice for Dr. DanBeavers. His survivors includehis mother, Tilda; and wife of35 years, Debbie. We regret theerror and apologize for anyconfusion it may have caused.

’76 SAD NEWSWilliam Edward Andersonpassed away on June 27, 2012.Survivors include his wife,Susan E. Cannon; sons, John,Robert, Jeffrey (Karen) andSFC Michael (Jane Satarra)Anderson; stepdaughterEmily Terwilliger Hawkins;and five grandsons. He was aVietnam War veteran and re-cipient of the Bronze Star. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family.

’77 A FINE, FINE MANPrayers, please, for Erik Heimand his family on the death ofhis father, Gerald ThomasHeim, on July 31, 2012. Sur-vivors include Gerald’s wife of

58 years, Marie; seven chil-dren (sons Erik, Mark, Chris,Paul, and Peter, and daughtersMary and Anne Marie), ninegrandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and three sis-ters. Gerald was a firm, quiet, hard-working man whose fam-ily meant the world to him.Their comfort and safety andwell-being came first in hisbook, and the Heim familyhomes (first on North Willa -mette Blvd., then on NorthMelrose Drive) were open,welcoming places for thetroops of childhood friendswho gravitated around theboisterous Heim kids. Geraldloved cars (Barracudas!) andwas known to be somewhat ofa packrat, a happy trait whenhe was proprietor of his ownantique and collectibles empo-rium, Store II. In lieu of flow-ers, donations to: CentralCatholic High School, whichGerald and his sons attended,or St. Mary’s Academy. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family.

’79 LORRAINE’S REPORTWe heard recently from Lo-raine M. Domine, who writes:“I moved back to Oregon inMay of 2010 and built a homeon property southeast of

Prineville, in the central Ore-gon high desert. I have au-thored a three volume historybook of my native county inMontana titled Mettle of Gran-ite County, books one, two andthree since I retired from thePortland VA Medical Center in2001. I now have six greatgrandchildren. I do not haveany pictures of the six togeth-er yet; the youngest one wasjust born and lives in Idaho sohe won’t be included in groupphotos until Christmas. I willattach a picture of the fivetaken on June 16, however: from left to right are HaileiHansen, Zander Baker, RileyEnglund, Brayden Hansenand Gracie Baker. The new-born’s name is Conner En-glund.” Thanks Loraine, theylook like a happy bunch.

’82 A BIG JOBWe heard recently from ScottCruickshank, who writes: “InApril 2012 I was appointed asexecutive director of the Ore-gon Convention Center.” Con-gratulations, Scott! We heard recently from re-tired physics professor KarlWetzel, who writes: “In theSeptember 6, 2012 edition ofthe Oregonian you will find astory about Stuart Palmiter, aphysics graduate, with thestory of his being awarded thePortland Police Bureau’s LifeSaving Medal.” Palmiter, aPortland police officer, wasone of four individuals whohelped save the life of NewYork DJ Jonathan Toubin,who was run over by a cab in afreak accident at Portland’sJupiter Hotel. See the story athttp://tinyurl.com/9eq7tjh.

’83 A MAN ON A MISSIONMark Pelletier has been select-ed as the new director for Cot-tonwood, Arizona’s Old TownMission. Robert Goode, chair-man of the Mission Board,said the recruitment processattracted as many as 80 appli-cants from throughout theUnited States and Europe. Asdirector, Pelletier promises tobring strong spiritual leader-ship, organization develop-ment skills, team-minded con-cepts and a heart for commu-nity service. He served as ex-ecutive director of Hi-VentureMinistries and as administra-tor and a certified relationshipspecialist for Family Life Serv-ices in the Portland-Vancouverarea. He also worked withTransitional Youth, whosemission was feeding, clothing,and otherwise helping home-less people living on thestreets of Portland, targeted to-ward 18- to 25-year-olds. Heand his wife, Catherine, havefour grown children.

’84 PRAYERS FOR CHRISChristopher J. Lumsargispassed away at St. AnthonyHospital in Lakewood, Colo.,on July 19, 2012. He was surrounded by his wife andchildren. Chris was a schoolpsychologist for San Luis Valley Board of CooperativeEducational Services, and en-joyed computers, the out-doors, being a handyman, andespecially time spent with hisfamily. He spent one summer,in 1982, laboring in the kitchenof Camp Howard, a CYO sum-mer camp outside of Sandy,Ore., where he was summari-ly appointed as camp baker.His battles with recalcitrantyeasts, doughs, and batters arethe stuff of Camp Howard

This picture is from Bob Wright ’66, and features the

1962 Mitchell Rifles champions. Bob is working on

compiling a history of the Mitchells; we were able to

gather a group of Mitchell Rifles alumni at Reunion

2011, and hope to do it again. Hosted by members of

the team that won the 1962 Western Region ROTC Drill

Competition, all alumni who were part of the Mitchell

Rifles, the Arnold Air Society, the Angel Flight, and in-

deed all alumni who served in the Armed Forces, were

welcomed back to gather and swap stories. We were

even able to show recovered video of the trophy-win-

ning Mitchell Rifles team in action.” Thanks Ken, and

we look forward to seeing that history of the University’s

crack ROTC drill team.


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legend, but in the end Chrispersevered, and the scent ofhis cinnamon rolls baking oncold, rainy mornings was athing to savor. Survivors in-clude his wife, Julia RebeilLumsargis; three daughters,Marianne, Elizabeth, and AnaElena; two sons, Joseph andMichael; father, Donald; broth-ers, Brady and Donald Jr.; andnumerous nieces, nephews,and cousins. Our prayers andcondolences to the family.

’86 A NOTE FROM FR. PETERWe heard recently from Fr.Peter Mubiru, who writes: “Alot has happened since I leftUP. Here in Uganda I havebeen pastor of one of our cityparishes (Our Lady of Fatima,Jinja and presently I am in Kamuli, 100 kilometers to thenorth, as pastor). It has beenquite challenging but thanksbe to God I took my short stayat UP seriously. As I write, Iam preparing to go to KaliroNational Teachers College aschaplain and lecturer to con-tribute to the formation of thebadly needed new group ofhigh school teachers in ourcountry. Uganda is very faraway from Portland so manythings may not happen likeone would expect, for exam-ple, attending reunions orsporting events. One daymaybe, God, willing but myspirit is firm within UP.”Sad news to report: Kathleen

"Eannie" Henry passed awayunexpectedly on Monday,July 16, 2012, in Salinas, Cali-fornia. Kathleen Gibbons wasborn October 19, 1960 in Port-land, where she spent the firstnine years of her life. She mether future husband, MikeHenry, at the tender age offive as their childhood homesshared a common fence. Mikewas the love of Kathleen’s lifeand she said her greatest ac-complishment was her chil-dren. Survivors include Mike,her husband of 26 years; chil-dren, Kristen (Kamaron) Rian-da, Joseph Henry and JustinHenry; granddaughter, KolbieRose Rianda; sisters, Carla(Mike) Cullerton, Joanne(Kevin) Castello, and KarenGibbons; and nine nieces andnephews. Kathleen was pre-ceded in death by her parents,Joseph ’53 and Nancy Gibbonsand her brother-in-law, RickHenry. In lieu of flowers, thefamily requests memorialcontributions may be sent toThe Leukemia and Lym-phoma Society (www.lls.org/waystohelp/donate/dona-teonline/). Our prayers andcondolences to the family.

’88 LIVING THE DREAMKecia M. Carlson and her hus-band David became strategicpartners when she left hercorporate life and became anentrepreneur, starting a land-scape design firm 10 yearsago. “We had a dream for yearsto develop a retail landscapenursery, working a little biteach winter on a businessplan but never quite pullingeverything together to launchthe new venture,” according toDavid. “In the spring of 2011we decided to fully commit togetting the plan completed.On April 11, 2012 we had agrand opening for MadelineGeorge Garden Design Nurs-ery in Boise, Idaho. ’Madeline’is the little French girl fromchildren’s books, a favorite ofmy wife’s when she was a lit-tle girl. My favorite childhoodcharacter was Curious George,so we joined the two and’Madeline George’ was born.Our goal is to provide peoplewith the guidance and re-sources to help create a stylishand sustainable garden. Theretail nursery site allows us toretail and to showcase designideas and our quality work-manship.” Find out more atwww.madelinegeorge.com/.

’93 A WRITER WRITESElizabeth Zachwrote “In Ger-many, an Unlikely Art HubHoned by Enthusiasm,” an ar-ticle on Ingrid Mössinger, whooversees three museums inChemnitz, Germany, pub-lished in the New York Timeson July 27, 2012. “Truth betold, I’d long aimed to write astory that had both Karl Marxand Bob Dylan makingcameos, and now it’s come topass,” she writes. The article isone of four to run in theTimes since March. Of herwriting career, she says: “It’sbeen a fun ride, wild and hec-tic at times.” See the article athttp://tinyurl.com/8q v9wcj.

’96 GOIN’ TO KATHMANDUDawood A. Luqmanwrites: “Ihave moved to Kathmandu,Nepal with my family (mywife, two daughters, and oneson) and started working asthe chief of the Office of De-fense Cooperation at the USEmbassy in Kathmandu inlate August.” Thanks for writ-ing, Dawood. Sounds like awonderfully rewarding career.Joan Anita Haddix passedaway on September 4, 2012.She is survived by her son,Bryan Haddix (wife, Terry);brother, Mark Scott (wife,Cheryl); and two grandchil-dren, Jacob and Sarah. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family.

’99 SHANDI SAYS: “BEPREPARED!”Shandi (Stracke) Treloar hasbeen promoted to associatewith Dewberry, an architect,engineer, and consultant firmFairfax, Virginia. She has beena project consultant in Dew-berry’s emergency manage-ment, disaster, and mitigationservices branch for sevenyears, with a successful recordin managing projects relatedto emergency managementand homeland security pre-paredness and planning onthe local, state, and federalgovernmental levels. Shandihas a blog at http://tinyurl.com/8cbuljx, for those whowould like to know moreabout emergency prepared-ness.

’00 MOVING ON UPSean Naughton has been pro-moted to the position of direc-tor of engineering at WilliamsControls, Inc. He will be re-sponsible for managing thecompany’s pedal and sensorengineering and developmentactivities worldwide, includ-ing products designed atWilliams’ innovative Concep-tual Development Center inPortland. Naughton joinedWilliams Controls in 2005 as

an engineer and was quicklypromoted to floor pedal teammanager in 2007. Most recent-ly, he was the company’smanager of mechanical engi-neering.We got exciting news from

Mike Tomford, who writes: “I’mmoving to Norway at the endof August to coach the men’sNorwegian National Gymnas-tics team. I never thought in amillion years that the kiddoing flips in the gym wouldone day have the opportunityto take kids to the Olympics. I guess it just shows you whatpassion, hard work, and lovecan do.” Thanks Mike, that itdoes. Please let us know howyour new career is advancing,and we’ll keep an eye out foryou at the 2016 Olympics inRio.

’02 PUTZING IS GOODWe heard recently fromMichael Driessen, who writes:“I am mostly enjoying putzingaround at the moment andmaking fig jam here at homewith my two little rascalbearcub children. We’ve justcome back to Italy (I’m a pro-fessor of international affairsat John Cabot University inRome), after a hot but beauti-ful year in Doha, Qatar, where

We were delighted

this summer when

The Woman Former-

ly Known as Julie

Carleton ’03 strolled

into our offices with a

grin bigger than she

is tall; today she is

Sister Cecilia Rose, of

the Sisters of Visita-

tion, and works at the

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Convent in Manhat-

tan with pregnant

women and new

mothers. This “spiri-

tual tent,” as the sis-

ters call it, allows

pregnant women and

new mothers of any

and no faith a place to

rest, to begin to be mothers, to find refuge when abor-

tion seems the only option. Great idea. For more see

sistersoflife.org. PHOTO BY JOHN CARLETON

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I was a post-doctoral fellow atGeorgetown University’sSchool of Foreign Service, andthought a lot about hummous.I’ve just finished a book onCatholicism, Islam, anddemocracy in the Mediter-ranean and am working onsome interfaith friendshipstuff here in Rome. Our doorsare aways open, the wine hereis cheap, and we love visitors.”Thanks for the update,Michael, that sounds like athinly-veiled invitation for UPalumni to drop by any time.

’03 TOM & MUM & BUBWonderful news to share fromTom Gannon: “My wife and Iwelcomed our son, John

William Gannon, on August28. He was 3.8 kgs and 53 cms,and Mum and bub are happyand well. Dad is pretty proud!”Proud papa Tom serves ascampus minister for the Uni-versity of Notre Dame Aus-tralia in Fremantle.

’04 EVERYBODY’S FRIENDSad news to report; shockingreally: Randall (Randy, DeDe)Alan Stupey died suddenly andtragically in a hiking accidenton August 31, 2012. Randy wasa self-employed businessmanand skilled carpenter and alsoworked in the Stupey Insur-ance Agency with his father,John, and sister, Shellie.“Randy was an incredible fatherwho cherished his childrenand loved spending every pos-sible minute with them,” ac-cording to his obituary.“Randy’s amazing smile, infec-tious sense of humor and loveof family have left giant foot-prints in the hearts of all wholoved him.” Survivors includehis wife, Elene; sons, Landonand Parker; parents, Laurayand John; three brother

and three sisters; and 18nieces and nephews, all ofwhom adored their fun-loving"Uncle DeDe" and will misshim greatly. He is also sur-vived by his grandfather, HerbKnudson, Sr. and his lovingaunts, uncles, and cousins.“Our world was foreverchanged when he was bornand completed ’The StupeySeven,’” according to his family.“He brought joy, laughter, loveand loyalty to everyone whowas lucky enough to knowhim. He was everyone’s bestfriend, everyone’s favorite

uncle; the world’s greatest lit-tle brother; an all-around greatman who could be witty,warm and wise beyond hisyears. He soared like an eagleand is now at home in the lov-ing arms of God.” In lieu offlowers, memorials may bemade to the JSL Trust for Lan-don and Parker Stupey at POBox 1887, Everett WA, 98206or to Snohomish CountySearch and Rescue. Ourprayers and condolences toRandy’s family and friends. Sheena Barclay writes: “I gotmarried in March of 2010 andmy name has changed, it isnow Sheena O’Rourke. I like toread the magazine, it still goesto my mother’s house but ifyou could please update yourrecords with my new informa-tion that would be lovely.” Youbet Sheena, congratulationson your marriage too.

’05 WEDDING BELLSAndrew Willis married KatieGray on June 23, 2012, in Van-couver, Washington. The after-noon ceremony was officiatedby the bride’s brother, WillGray. Katie works as a pedi-atric speech language patholo-gist in Portland, Oregon. An-drew works as a computer en-gineer at Plexsys InterfaceProducts. The couple residesin Vancouver, Washington.We heard recently from Jessica

DeMarre Asay, who writes:John Asay and I wanted to letthe alumni office know of ouraddress change. We switchedapartments in the same com-plex. I would love if our alum-ni records would be updated,as we’d still love to be in theknow about the UP communi-ty.” You bet Jessica.We’rehappy to help you be in theknow. There’s a lot going onhere on The Bluff.We got a Rosco clan updatefrom Eveline Roscoe Mahoney,who writes: “All is well andfine. We (all 7 of the sibs andmy parents) live in ClarkCounty. Can you believe that?Telling of the greatness of thePacific Northwest! And love offamily too! All the hunters’wives are getting hunkereddown up here for hunting sea-son. The guys have been plan-ning and scheming all sum-mer in preparation for deerand elk season. Good grief.Colin, my husband, a previousUW grad, just started the MBAand master of science in fi-nance program at UP lastweek. Finally, I’ll make a Pilotoutta my guy! He’s very excit-ed and very impressed withUP thus far. He’ll be in the2017 class (I think, dependingon how many credits he cansqueeze in each semester

Jen (Swinton) Williams ’00, alumna and former Pilot women’s basketball team

member, writes: “Finally, a fun update for the beautiful Portlandmagazine. After

eight years together and adventures that took us from California to Texas to North

Carolina to New York, I was thrilled to marry Greg Williams on July 20, 2012, in San

Francisco. And the best part is, a number of Pilots were able to join us for the celebra-

tion. Here’s a picture from the best day ever that includes (L-R) Heather (Thibodeau)

Carlton ’00, Jerry Carlton ’01, Todd Spear, Kristin (Hepton) Spear ’98, Jen (Swinton)

Williams ’00, Greg Williams (imagine my excitement when our ladies soccer team

beat his alma mater, UNC!), Heather Reeder, Jud Bordman ’00, Rachel Draper ’99,

Jenny (Francis) Lindsay ’00, Clayton Lindsay, Amanda Stupi ’00, and Trisha (Felts)

Hosley ’01. I love that I found my dearest friends on the Bluff! After a honeymoon in

Italy, Greg and I returned to New York City, where he is an investment banker and I

work in sports marketing. Can’t wait to see these fine faces again soon!”


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while working two jobs!).Here is a picture of the twonewest grand babies. Mydaughter, Aileen Zenaide, andMatt’s son, Finnegan George.

They were baptized by mydad this spring at our church,Sacred Heart Catholic Churchin Battle Ground, Washington.Aileen was born January 1stand Finn was born January28th. Back Row: Colin (myhusband) is holding BarrettDaniel (Matt’s son), and ofcourse, the one and only JackRoscoe Front Row: Evie Ma-honey is holding Aileen,Colleen is holding Finnegan,Matt is holding Lillian Elise.Mattie Roscoe and my sonWilliam (Liam) Declan werenot pictured.” Thanks as al-ways for letting us knowwhat’s up with the ever-ex-panding Roscoe family. We heard recently from

Mark Driessen, who shared thefollowing with Rev. Art Wheel-er, C.S.C., who shared it withus: “I am very excited that mysister Rebecca chose to attendUP, I now have an excuse tocome visit her and the UPcampus again! I am currentlyworking in Maui, where I ampursuing my maritime cap-tain’s license; I’m planning onfinishing my seatime earlythis winter and I will be ableto sit for my exams then. I’mworking with the oldest sail-ing charter coming here inHawaii, Trilogy Excursions,and guiding dives and takingclients out on sailing charters,which is not a bad life!” Wealso have a note from Mark’sbrother, Michael Driessen ’02,his class year section.

’06 MORTAR & PESTLEShawn Haglandwrites: “I grad-uated from the University ofWashington School of Pharma-cy with a doctor of pharmacy(Pharm.D.) degree in June2012. I then began a one-yearhospital-based pharmacy resi-dency program through the

Franciscan Health System inWashington. Most of my clini-cal rotations and staffing obli-gations will be at St. JosephMedical Center in Tacoma,Washington.” Congratulations,Shawn, and thanks for the up-date. We heard recently from

Joseph “Joey” Bansen, whowrites: “I would like to notethat Cristin Sammis and I weremarried on August 4, 2012.”That’s great news, Joey, feelfree to let us know how mar-ried life suits you and Cristin.

’07 ALLISON’S MARRIED! We heard recently from Alli-son Dale, who writes: “I gotmarried and changed my lastname from Dale to Supnick.My parents have been receiv-ing mail sent to me from UP attheir house so I wanted tomake sure you have my up-dated name and address.Thanks!” Thank you, Allison,and congratulations on yourmarriage. Andrew Elliottwrites: “OnJune 30, 2012, I married mybest friend, Beth Watje, anEnglish/French/educationmajor from the Class of 2008.Our wedding was held at HolyRedeemer Church in NorthPortland. Maureen Briare ’92arranged great music with acouple of our friends.” ThanksAndrew, and congratulationsto you and Beth.

’09 BACK TO CAMPUSCharlie Saarinen writes: “Igraduated in August 2009 andmarried my best friend in Au-gust 2011! I started work atOHSU in September 2009 andI am still working there. Mostrecently I was offered a job atthe University of Portland as aclinical faculty associate andassistant! I will start in Sep-tember 2012 while I also con-tinue my employment withOHSU.” Welcome to the cam-pus family, Charlie, or shouldwe say, welcome back?We heard recently from Ali-

son Burke, who writes: “I willbe starting graduate school atthe University of North Caroli-na, Chapel Hill in August toobtain a clinical doctorate inaudiology (AuD).” Corinne Kugelwrites: “I havemoved and am married.Corinne Rose Rademacher isnow Corinne Rose RademacherKugel.” Thanks Corinne, con-gratulations on your marriage.Alice Rossignolwrites withwonderful news: “AndrewCrane and I, who met and fell in love at UP, were married atthe Oregon Museum of Sci-ence and Industry on August11, 2012. Hooray for love!”We’ll second that motion, yes

indeed. Thanks for sharingthe news and congratulationson your marriage!

’10 DOUBLE TROUBLEWe heard recently from UPchemistry professor WarrenWood, who writes: “I wantedto let you know that Joe andJosh Parks (twins, class of2010) both received 2012 Na-tional Science Foundation(NSF) graduate research fel-lowships. They are both Ph.D.graduate students at the Uni-versity of California SantaCruz. Joe and Josh werechemistry majors while atUP—Joe conducted researchwith me and participated in aNSF funded international re-search experience for under-graduates in France, and Joshconducted research with RayBard and Angela Hoffman. He

also conducted research aspart of a Thailand research ex-perience for undergraduatesprogram.” Thanks Warren,sounds like we haven’t heardthe last of the Parks twins. James S. Rost passed away onAugust 8, 2012, of naturalcauses. A beloved husband,brother and uncle, James isremember as a teacher to all.Our prayers and condolencesto the family. We heard wonderful newsrecently from Jennifer Lofft(Goolkasian): “I recently mar-ried my college boyfriend,Joseph Lofft. We are both alum-ni of UP. We got married at our

alma mater on July 14th, ourfirst time back to the campusafter graduating, and it wasamazing to celebrate our mar-riage at the place that held somuch special significance to

Barbara Farney ’08 and Sarah Carroll ’07 (l-r) smile

for the camera while standing atop Oregon’s iconic

Mount Hood in June 2012. They didn’t ride a chair lift,

either—Barbara and Sarah summited the hard way,

one foot in front of the other, and also helped their

team raise more than $10,000 for charity through a

partnership between their employer, NIKE, and the

Summit for Someone program. Find out more at

www.summitforsomeone.org.

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Winter 201277

us. Father Gary Chamberlandwas our celebrant. Currentlywe are both living in San Jose,California. I work as an RN atGood Samaritan Hospital, andJoseph works as a mechanicalengineer at Air Systems Inc.We would love to be featuredin the Portland Magazine classnotes for 2010!” Congratula-tions, Jennifer and Joseph,and we’re happy to share yourjoy with your fellow alumni.

’11 TAKING THE PLUNGEWe heard from Sam Harris re-cently, who writes: “I am start-ing graduate school at GeorgeWashington University, seekinga master of science degree insecurity policy studies, hope -fully by 2014.” Thanks for writ-ing Sam, and good luck to you!Congratulations to Louis

Piano, who completed basictraining for the United StatesNavy at Recruit Training Com-mand, Great Lakes, Ill., in Au-gust 2012. During the eight-week program, Piano complet-ed a variety of training whichincluded classroom study andpractical instruction on navalcustoms, first aid, firefighting,water safety and survival, andshipboard and aircraft safety.An emphasis was also placedon physical fitness. The cap-stone event of boot camp is"Battle Stations,” designed togalvanize the basic warrior attributes of sacrifice, dedica-tion, teamwork and endurancein each recruit through thepractical application of basicNavy skills and the core values of honor, courage andcommitment.

’12 A GOOD NURSING YEARThe University’s School ofNursing has a lot to celebratewhen it comes to the successof their 2012 graduate stu-dents. One hundred percentof the school’s doctor of nurs-ing practice (DNP) graduatessuccessfully passed their na-tional certification examsqualifying them as familynurse practitioners. They arenow prepared to meet the nation’s growing need for ex-cellent primary health care,especially through theirpreparation in caring for vulnerable populations. Onehundred percent of UP’s master’s graduates have suc-cessfully passed their nationalcertification exams as clinicalnurse leaders, too. These grad-uates are prepared to improvequality and safety at the pointof care in a variety of popula-tions, and are ready to playleading roles in the effort tomake needed changes inhealth care. “These accom-plishments provide external

evidence that our graduateshave met or exceeded nationalstandards determined by thediscipline of nursing,” saysSchool of Nursing dean JoannWarner. “We celebrate our out-standing graduates, and givecredit to our strong team ofnursing faculty for helpingthem achieve their success.”UP senior Sam Bridgmanwasthe driving force behind RideAtaxia in Portland, a bike rideto raise money for Friedreich’sAtaxia (FA) research on Satur-day, September 22. It was thefirst in the Northwest and oneof six Ride Ataxia eventsacross the country to benefitthe Friedreich’s Ataxia Re-search Alliance. The nonprofitorganization is working to-ward finding a cure for the

rare, degenerative neuro-mus-cular disorder. Bridgmanhoped the ride would increasepublic awareness about thedebilitating disease, which affects about one in 50,000people (including Bridgman)in the United States. Theevent raised $______ Find outmore at rideataxia.org/port-land. To read about Sam andhis experiences at the Univer-sity of Portland go to ORne.ws/sam-bridgman. To see a shortdocumentary film by Jeff Ken-nel of the UP marketing teamgo to http://vimeo.com/43579515.

FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDSHoly Cross seminarian MarkDeMott, who serves as Ship-stad residence hall director,will make Final Vows and beordained to the Order of theDiaconate next weekend atNotre Dame, Indiana. In April2013, he and two others willbe ordained to the priesthood.We were saddened to learnof the death of UP educationprofessor emeritus Joe Pascarelli on June 11, 2012. Joehad a long and successful ca-reer serving with distinctionfor almost two decades at theUniversity of Portland. Joecheerfully and graciouslytaught on campus and at off-campus sites in Canada, Wash-ington, Oregon and Guam,


Winter 201277

us. Father Gary Chamberlandwas our celebrant. Currentlywe are both living in San Jose,California. I work as an RN atGood Samaritan Hospital, andJoseph works as a mechanicalengineer at Air Systems Inc.We would love to be featuredin the Portland Magazine classnotes for 2010!” Congratula-tions, Jennifer and Joseph,and we’re happy to share yourjoy with your fellow alumni.

’11 TAKING THE PLUNGEWe heard from Sam Harris re-cently, who writes: “I am start-ing graduate school at GeorgeWashington University, seekinga master of science degree insecurity policy studies, hope -fully by 2014.” Thanks for writ-ing Sam, and good luck to you!Congratulations to Louis

Piano, who completed basictraining for the United StatesNavy at Recruit Training Com-mand, Great Lakes, Ill., in Au-gust 2012. During the eight-week program, Piano complet-ed a variety of training whichincluded classroom study andpractical instruction on navalcustoms, first aid, firefighting,water safety and survival, andshipboard and aircraft safety.An emphasis was also placedon physical fitness. The cap-stone event of boot camp is"Battle Stations,” designed togalvanize the basic warrior attributes of sacrifice, dedica-tion, teamwork and endurancein each recruit through thepractical application of basicNavy skills and the core values of honor, courage andcommitment.

’12 A GOOD NURSING YEARThe University’s School ofNursing has a lot to celebratewhen it comes to the successof their 2012 graduate stu-dents. One hundred percentof the school’s doctor of nurs-ing practice (DNP) graduatessuccessfully passed their na-tional certification examsqualifying them as familynurse practitioners. They arenow prepared to meet the nation’s growing need for ex-cellent primary health care,especially through theirpreparation in caring for vulnerable populations. Onehundred percent of UP’s master’s graduates have suc-cessfully passed their nationalcertification exams as clinicalnurse leaders, too. These grad-uates are prepared to improvequality and safety at the pointof care in a variety of popula-tions, and are ready to playleading roles in the effort tomake needed changes inhealth care. “These accom-plishments provide external

evidence that our graduateshave met or exceeded nationalstandards determined by thediscipline of nursing,” saysSchool of Nursing dean JoannWarner. “We celebrate our out-standing graduates, and givecredit to our strong team ofnursing faculty for helpingthem achieve their success.”UP senior Sam Bridgmanwasthe driving force behind RideAtaxia in Portland, a bike rideto raise money for Friedreich’sAtaxia (FA) research on Satur-day, September 22. It was thefirst in the Northwest and oneof six Ride Ataxia eventsacross the country to benefitthe Friedreich’s Ataxia Re-search Alliance. The nonprofitorganization is working to-ward finding a cure for the

rare, degenerative neuro-mus-cular disorder. Bridgmanhoped the ride would increasepublic awareness about thedebilitating disease, which affects about one in 50,000people (including Bridgman)in the United States. Theevent raised more than$30,000. Find out more atrideataxia.org/portland. Toread about Sam and his experi-ences at the University of Port-land go to ORne.ws/ sam-bridgman. To see a short docu-mentary film by Jeff Kennel ofthe UP marketing team go tohttp://vimeo.com/ 43579515.

FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDSHoly Cross seminarian MarkDeMott, who serves as Ship-stad residence hall director,will make Final Vows and beordained to the Order of theDiaconate next weekend atNotre Dame, Indiana. In April2013, he and two others willbe ordained to the priesthood.We were saddened to learnof the death of UP educationprofessor emeritus Joe Pascarelli on June 11, 2012. Joehad a long and successful ca-reer serving with distinctionfor almost two decades at theUniversity of Portland. Joecheerfully and graciouslytaught on campus and at off-campus sites in Canada, Wash-ington, Oregon and Guam,

Jason Geis ’93 has been

busy since his days on The

Bluff, where he was a base-

ball All-American for coach

Terry Pollreisz ’69 and

earned his degree in com-

munication management.

These days he runs Blue

Chip Tek in Sunnyvale,

California,with his wife

Jessica, who founded the

privately held company in

2002. Blue Chip Tek, which

has doubled its sales every year to over $40 million last

year, is a Silicon Valley IT consulting firm and high

tech integrator focused on selling the products that run

the Internet. It is 20 employees strong (including three

UP graduates), and offers technology solutions to

businesses like Mozilla, YouTube, and eBay, all Blue

Chip customers long before they became household

business names.

“The main core of our business is to build the infra-

structure for internet companies,” Jason explains.

“They tell us what they’re trying to do online, and we

tell them how much Cisco or Dell or HP they’ll need.

We sell them the hardware and software that creates

the website, so if you go to, say, eBay to buy something

you’re going through equipment we sold them to build

their site. Customer loyalty is key to our success. We

listen to them very closely because they literally create

our business. All of our technology solutions are the re-

sult of customer requirements.”

Jason keeps close tabs on the University’s remark-

able growth and progress, and is particularly impressed

with the nationally renowned entrepreneurship center,

ranked first in the nation last year. “My degree pre-

pared me well for the business world, but I wish they

had some of those entrepreneurial programs when

I was there,” he says. “But it’s great to see the evolution

of the University since my time.” The University, he

notes, is a family affair for him; Jason’s father-in-law is

life regent Steve Farley ’66, his brother-in-law is Dan

Farley ’93, and his sister Tina Geis ’95 played basket-

ball for the Pilots. We assume it is only a matter of time

before Jason and Jessica’s children Jake and Jordan

are enrolling, probably escorted by their beaming

grandfather Steve. What a day that will be.


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and was influential in the de-sign and founding of the ACEprogram at Notre Dame,launching and teaching in itsacademic program. His re-search was wide ranging andaccomplished; his vita listsover 70 publications with aworld-wide reach working inthe area of mentoring and fos-tering resilience in youth. Hewill be missed by faculty,alumni, students, and friends.Our prayers and condolences.We got a cool photo fromUniversity Museum coordina-tor Carolyn Connolly ’88, ’90,who writes: “RememberMack’s Market? The neighbor-hood market that was just afew steps away from the cam-pus and served students from1954 until it was torn down in2003? It was located behindHaggerty Hall on WillametteBlvd. Since 2003, the Universi-ty museum has been the care-taker of the original Mack’sMarket sign. Now that a new

‘Mack’s Market’ conveniencestore has opened on the lowerlevel of the Bauccio Commons,the museum has loaned thesign to the new Mack’s Mar-ket. The sign just went up atthe beginning of the fall 2012semester.” Thanks Carolyn,that should stir plenty ofmemories of late-night tripsfor jerky, Funyuns, and vari-ous malt beverages à la thelate lamented Mack’s Market. Prayers, please, for longtimeUP sociology professor BobDuff and his family on the loss

of his wife, Vivian Gedaly-Duff, who passed away attheir home in Portland on Sep-tember 6, 2012, after a four-year battle with breast cancer.Also present at her side wereher younger sister, Alice Wellsof Medford; and dear friendMary Cruise from California.Survivors also include herbrother, Stephen of El Paso,Texas, and many aunts, un-cles, cousins, nieces andnephews. Vivian taught in theSchool of Nursing at the Uni-versity of Portland for fouryears, and for the past 29years she was on the faculty ofthe School of Nursing at Ore-gon Health and Sciences Uni-versity teaching Child andFamily Nursing. She will beremembered by all who knewher. In lieu of flowers, dona-tion will be accepted by theschools of nursing at OregonHealth and Sciences Universi-ty and the University of Port-land to assist student learningwith scholarship support. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family. The loud wail heard lastspring coming from the direc-tion of Waud’s Bluff was theresult of Fr. Bob Antonelli,C.S.C., announcing to his col-leagues that he intends to re-tire from his position as Uni-versity archivist. The editorsof this particular publication,especially, are bereft at theidea of an Antonelli-less Uni-versity of Portland. Since hearrived on The Bluff in 1999,Fr. Bob has worked miracles inthe cavernous UniversityArchives, located in the base-ment of Shipstad Hall. Hisability to inflict quiet, efficientorder on hundreds of thou-sands of documents and arti-facts is a thing to behold. Wefeel much better after meetinghis successor, Rev. JeffSchneibel, C.S.C., who seemsto be a wonderfully able andaffable chap. When pressed toproduce a photo from hisyounger days, Fr. Bob had thisto say: “Attached is a scannedphoto from our Province Re-view from 1965 and it is not ofgood quality. I have none of

my own,I’m afraid.As for re-tirement,there isno rest forthe wickedme. Fr.Schneibelmay becoming asthe newarchivist

this week but I will still behere showing him around forat least the next year and so

there will be no discontinuityin service. We both know thathe has a lot to catch up on, buthe is a quick learner. I was onstaff at the seminary when heentered Holy Cross and sohave known him for a longtime.”

DEATHSPeter F. Sandrock ’32, August23, 2012. Jack Hoggins ’44, June 17,2012, Oroville, Calif. Mary Ellen Lajoy, wife ofFrank Lajoy ’47, July 18, 2012,Portland, Ore. Charles Patrick McCarty ’49,September 5, 2012, Ashland,Ore. Wayne Arnold Olsen ’50, Sep-tember 8, 2012. Edwin Wilson ’53, September10, 2012, Seattle, Wash. Joe T. Namba ’53, June 14,2012. Ronald M. Marshall ’55, August31, 2012. Ruth Helen Avery Wiens, wife

of Arthur Wiens ’56, September17, 2012, Lake Oswego, Ore. Marvin A. Bachman, husbandof Della Bachman ’60, July 30,2012. Richard Moorman ’62, August30, 2012. Richard Cooper ’63, September8, 2012. Gerald E. Roth ’65, August 25,2012, Portland, Ore. William Edward Anderson ’76,June 27, 2012. Gerald T. Heim, father of ErikHeim ’77, July 31, 2012. Christopher J. Lumsargis ’84,July 19, 2012, Lakewood, Colo.Kathleen “Eannie” Henry ’86,July 16, 2012, Salinas, Calif. Joan Anita Haddix ’96, Septem-ber 4, 2012. Randall Alan Stupey ’04, August 31, 2012. James S. Rost ’10, August 9,2012. Joe Pascarelli, longtime UP education professor, June 11,2012. Vivian Gedaly-Duff, wife of

Portland78


and was influential in the de-sign and founding of the ACEprogram at Notre Dame,launching and teaching in itsacademic program. His re-search was wide ranging andaccomplished; his vita listsover 70 publications with aworld-wide reach working inthe area of mentoring and fos-tering resilience in youth. Hewill be missed by faculty,alumni, students, and friends.Our prayers and condolences.We got a cool photo fromUniversity Museum coordina-tor Carolyn Connolly ’88, ’90,who writes: “RememberMack’s Market? The neighbor-hood market that was just afew steps away from the cam-pus and served students from1954 until it was torn down in2003? It was located behindHaggerty Hall on WillametteBlvd. Since 2003, the Universi-ty museum has been the care-taker of the original Mack’sMarket sign. Now that a new

‘Mack’s Market’ conveniencestore has opened on the lowerlevel of the Bauccio Commons,the museum has loaned thesign to the new Mack’s Mar-ket. The sign just went up atthe beginning of the fall 2012semester.” Thanks Carolyn,that should stir plenty ofmemories of late-night tripsfor jerky, Funyuns, and vari-ous malt beverages à la thelate lamented Mack’s Market. Prayers, please, for longtimeUP sociology professor BobDuff and his family on the loss

of his wife, Vivian Gedaly-Duff, who passed away attheir home in Portland on Sep-tember 6, 2012, after a four-year battle with breast cancer.Also present at her side wereher younger sister, Alice Wellsof Medford; and dear friendMary Cruise from California.Survivors also include herbrother, Stephen of El Paso,Texas, and many aunts, un-cles, cousins, nieces andnephews. Vivian taught in theSchool of Nursing at the Uni-versity of Portland for fouryears, and for the past 29years she was on the faculty ofthe School of Nursing at Ore-gon Health and Sciences Uni-versity teaching Child andFamily Nursing. She will beremembered by all who knewher. In lieu of flowers, dona-tion will be accepted by theschools of nursing at OregonHealth and Sciences Universi-ty and the University of Port-land to assist student learningwith scholarship support. Ourprayers and condolences tothe family. The loud wail heard lastspring coming from the direc-tion of Waud’s Bluff was theresult of Fr. Bob Antonelli,C.S.C., announcing to his col-leagues that he intends to re-tire from his position as Uni-versity archivist. The editorsof this particular publication,especially, are bereft at theidea of an Antonelli-less Uni-versity of Portland. Since hearrived on The Bluff in 1999,Fr. Bob has worked miracles inthe cavernous UniversityArchives, located in the base-ment of Shipstad Hall. Hisability to inflict quiet, efficientorder on hundreds of thou-sands of documents and arti-facts is a thing to behold. Wefeel much better after meetinghis successor, Rev. JeffSchneibel, C.S.C., who seemsto be a wonderfully able andaffable chap. When pressed toproduce a photo from hisyounger days, Fr. Bob had thisto say: “Attached is a scannedphoto from our Province Re-view from 1965 and it is not ofgood quality. I have none of

my own,I’m afraid.As for re-tirement,there isno rest forthe wickedme. Fr.Schneibelmay becoming asthe newarchivist

this week but I will still behere showing him around forat least the next year and so

there will be no discontinuityin service. We both know thathe has a lot to catch up on, buthe is a quick learner. I was onstaff at the seminary when heentered Holy Cross and so haveknown him for a long time.”

DEATHSPeter F. Sandrock ’32, August 23,2012. Jack Hoggins ’44, June 17, 2012,Oroville, Calif. Mary Ellen Lajoy, wife ofFrank Lajoy ’47, July 18, 2012,Portland, Ore. Charles Patrick McCarty ’49,September 5, 2012, Ashland,Ore. Wayne Arnold Olsen ’50, Sep-tember 8, 2012. Edwin Wilson ’53, September 10,2012, Seattle, Wash. Joe T. Namba ’53, June 14, 2012. Ronald M. Marshall ’55, August31, 2012. Ruth Helen Avery Wiens, wifeof Arthur Wiens ’56, September17, 2012, Lake Oswego, Ore.

Marvin A. Bachman, husbandof Della Bachman ’60, July 30,2012. Richard Moorman ’62, August 30,2012. Richard Cooper ’63, September8, 2012. Gerald E. Roth ’65, August 25,2012, Portland, Ore. William Edward Anderson ’76,June 27, 2012. Gerald T. Heim, father of ErikHeim ’77, July 31, 2012. Christopher J. Lumsargis ’84,July 19, 2012, Lakewood, Colo.Kathleen “Eannie” Henry ’86,July 16, 2012, Salinas, Calif. Joan Anita Haddix ’96, Septem-ber 4, 2012. Randall Alan Stupey ’04, August 31, 2012. James S. Rost ’10, August 9, 2012. Joe Pascarelli, longtime UP education professor, June 11,2012. Vivian Gedaly-Duff, wife ofUP sociology professor BobDuff, September 6, 2012, Port-land, Ore.

On an Irish pilgrimage of sorts this past spring: Katie

Beaubien ’10, who attended the International

Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. “I was blessed to attend

the closing Mass at the Congress where I saw for my-

self how the Catholic Church stands true to its title of

universal,” writes Katie. “I was surrounded by people

I didn’t know, but during the sign of peace, regardless

of our race, culture, or language, we engaged each

other as one Church—fellow Catholics wishing peace

upon each other. It didn’t matter what color our skin

was, where we were from, or what language we spoke;

we all shared our Catholic faith together as we shared

our peace with each other. It was incredible. I love

being Catholic! Which, I suppose is why I am enjoying

my job as youth minister in Southern Oregon.”

Portland78


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Winter 201279

Br. Fred Williams, C.S.C.

passed away on August 4,

2012, at the age of 74. Stu-

dents who attended the

University from 1978 to

1986 will remember the

quiet, earnest man who

served as head resident in

Kenna Hall and various

student life roles, mostly

counselling and career

placement.

Brother Fred’s teaching

career began at Notre Dame High School in Sherman

Oaks, Calif., where he also served as the attendance of-

ficer. After

a short stay

at St. Fran-

cis High

School in

Mountain

View, Calif.,

he moved

to Long

Beach,

where he served 12 years as a teacher, a department

chair, a director of student activities and eventually as

principal for five years. After that he taught and served

as chair of the religious studies department at Moreau

Catholic High School in Hayward for two years.

While serving in the Portland area he became active

in minority student affairs and in the Willamette Val-

ley Racial Minorities Consortium, the Black Catholic

Lay Caucus and other programs of the Archdiocese of

Portland. He was sought out by many groups as one of

a very few African American religious or clergy in the

Archdiocese of Portland. He spent the latter part of his

career in Portland at the DePaul Center and Provi-

dence Hospital, where he worked in helping those

with chemical dependencies and addictions. When his

health began to deteriorate in the late 1990s, Brother

Fred moved to Austin and the Brother Vincent Pieau

Residence in 2002. He spent the last several years at

Dujarie House at Holy Cross Village in South Bend,

Ind. Our prayers and condolences to his family and

colleagues.

A note from Andy Matarrese ’10, editor of The Beacon

for two years: “After graduation I got a job with the U.S.

Forest Service as a wildland firefighter on the Ochoco

National Forest in central Oregon. I stuck with the job

to pay for graduate school at Northwestern University’s

journalism program, which I finished this past June.

This will be my third season on fires. I’ve been apply-

ing for journalism jobs, but until that pans out, it seems

there will still be plenty of fires to fight. Here are some

photographs; getting good shots of firefighting can be

tough because you’re busy, well, firefighting.”


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L E S S u T R A V E L L E D u R O A D S

Portland80

A note from Sara Sundborg Daubenberger ’04 and her husband Michael ’03: They married in September 2011,in Port Townsend, Washington, and then sailed away through the Bahamas for a year on their boat the Tanqueray.They returned from the coolest honeymoon ever late this summer; Sara to her work as an electrical engineer withBonneville Power, Michael as a structural engineer with Parkin Engineering. Sigh. We could stare at this photographfor weeks. For more on their travels, see sailingthetanqueray.com.

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Or here’s a Campaign story. In 1936, a lanky kid named Kenneth Ford opened a sawmill in southern Oregon, in the Hundred Valleys areaof the Umpqua River drainage. He was not yet thirty years old. His sawmill prospered, and the tiny Roseburg Lumber Company grewprecipitately; today it owns more than half a million acres of sustainably harvested timberland, employs three thousand people in eightycommunities, and is still a family business. In 1957 Kenneth and his wife Hallie Ford, a teacher and artist, started The Ford Family Foun-dation, which now annually provides millions of dollars for Oregonians for education, the arts, and community support of all kinds. In thepast few years The Ford Family Foundation has given University students nearly three million dollars to pursue their riveting educationson The Bluff. Let us type that again: nearly three million dollars of scholarships and grants that our kids do not have to borrow, dollars thathelp them become nurses, teachers, entrepreneurs, engineers, and anything else you can imagine that sparks and jazzes and fomentscommunity in Oregon. That’s amazing. And it all started, really, with a lanky kid with a wild idea. So, let’s review: a kid with a wild ideaworks really hard, and his idea turns out to help thousands of other kids chase their wild ideas. What is theUniversity of Portland’s Rise Campaign really about, down deep? That’s what it’s about. Thank you, Kennethand Hallie Ford, for your dreams and generosity.

Courtesy of Donna Wolford and Norm Smith, The Ford Family Foundation. Our thanks.

University of PortlandPortland Magazine5000 N. Willamette BlvdPortland, OR 97203-5798

Change service requested

THE FOOD ISSUE

Rarely do we run two covers for an issue, but we could not resist here,because the ingredients inside these covers are delicious: Michael Pollanon the decline of cooking, Pico Iyer on the savory aspects of not eating,

Bob Pyle on Northwest ales, Ana Maria Spagna on elk steaks, chats with foodvisionaries Fedele Bauccio ’64 and Matt Domingo ’02, and a lovely spread

of photographs of the men and women and children in Oregon who grow andmake the University’s food. Such an ancient holy crucial sacrament,sharing food; as the mysterious Christ told us to do, many years ago....

Non-ProfitOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPortland, OR

Permit No. 188

T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F P O R T L A N D M A G A Z I N E W I N T E R 2 0 1 2

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portland magazine winter 2012

Documents

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n t e r

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isthe best soccer player

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