Entering a local Eugene bakery in a rush, she takes a quick look at the pastries. Nothing tempts her. She is short, her curly brown hair waves in the air. She takes a mug of coffee and joins the table. She is wearing an elegant long black coat with a beautiful red scarf that gives color to her overall black outfit. On her right shoulder is a pin representing Eeyore, the donkey in Winnie the Pooh. In the bakery full of North Westerners in their colourful but boxy rainjackets, her cosmopolitan look stands out..

“I am still not 100% American, and I can feel that,” she says. In fact, Barbara Walraet, 41, looks very French, which she is. Anyone who is interested in French culture in the Eugene area has probably met her. She teaches at The Little French School; she helped with the Roosevelt Middle School exchange trip to France last year; she is also involved in “Camp Rigolo”, a French immersion program at Fox Hollow elementary school.

“Education of the children is one of the most important things that the country needs,” she says. Walraet earned a Master’s Degree in Foreign Affairs and Languages as well as the equivalent of a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. She has been teaching in Eugene for the past eight years.

Walraet is also a backer and an entrepreneur. In 2009 she opened Caramel French Pâtisserie, the only patisserie in town owned by a French person. She cooks at home and delivers her creations, an arrangement that allows her to be close to her two teenage children.

“I want people to get to know French desserts,” she says, “what we eat through the seasons.” Walraet says that American desserts, with their unnecessary icing and bright decorations, are usually sweeter than French desserts. “If it’s tasty you don’t need to make it green or blue,” she says. In fact, if she was a dessert, Walraet would be a Raspberry Bavarois, because it’s simply “light and tasty”, you do not need to make it “pretty”.

Walraet’s patisserie includes a “dessert club.” Twice a month she delivers pastries to members. She redistributes 10 percent of her profits to the two schools she works with to help them avoidcutting hours of teaching. This is her way of supporting the schools and it is also her way of bringing together her passions, children and desserts.

While talking in the café, Walraet exudes “Frenchness”. Between sentences she sometimes inserts a “olala” or a “voilà”. When she talks in details about pastries with French names, she does not pronounce them in the American way, but in French. Occasionally she even blurts French sentences. “Un bon éclair à la vanille, c’est bon aussi, yes I love eclair,” she says.

She says that people often ask where she’s from. Laughing, she recalls the time she was talking in her store and a man said “You are not from here. Are you from Corvallis?”

Actually, Walraet grew up in Ardèche, the south east part of France, in a bilingual Dutch-French family. She studied English, German and Russian, and married a German man. After living in Eugene from 1995 to 1998, when her husband was at the University of Oregon; they moved back to Germany. In 2004 they returned toEugene, her husband became the director of the University of Oregon’s Zebrafish International Resource Center.

Walraet keeps herself busy. “I don’t sleep much,” she confessed. She continues to teach every morning. She says it’s not unusual to find her in her classroom on a Saturday morning preparing for the next week. Last year her assistant at the school called her “hyper” she says. Her director at The Little French School, Sara Bowmanhas told her more than once to “slow down,” but Walraet insists she needs to stay busy.

Last fall, when her plans to open a store front for her patisseriefell through, Walraet took a break from the Pâtisserie. “I wanted to know how much I miss it,” she says. The biggest challenge to opening a store was finances.She wouldn’t take the risk of loosing her house if the business did not work. “It was not a hard decision, because my family is really important,” she says.

“She is all about her family,” says Cindy Matherly, a long-time friend of Walraet. At home Walraet pushes her children to speak French with her. Even if they speak English at school, at home her kids speak German to their father and French to her.

“My heritage is important, it defines who you are, and I think it’s important to be able to pass it down,” she says, “even if it’s not easy.”

Walraet looks forward to spending good family time, either playingboard games or watching movies. She shares her heritage with her children by having them watch French movies on movie nights.

Caramel French Pâtisserie will re-open in April, but only for the farmer’s market and big events like Art and Vineyard. But Walraet has not given up on her dream to have a front store. “Even if it’s not today; tomorrow, maybe in the year, in a couple years. We’ll see, voilà!”

On this weekday afternoon the busy Walraet has to leave for a meeting. She stands up and goes for the door. She stops, looks at the coffee still left in her mug and turns around. “I should have taken a cup to go,” she tells me.

“How French of you,” I respond. We both laugh. Anyone who’s French knows that you can’t find cups to go in France.

Biking straight up a hill for nine miles is no picnic, says engineer and avid biker David Browning.  “I keep telling myself I’ve got another pedal in me, and then when I get through that pedal I tell myself the same thing,” he says.

Although acknowledging that it can sometimes be painful, Browning says he loves to be challenged and has risen to the occasion his whole life and will continue to work hard despite being 63.

Browning and his wife are currently the owners of the engineering company Altman-Browning in Portland, Oregon, where Browning develops innovative technology from theory to practice. He describes the nature of his business as “commercialization.” Inventors essentially hire him to take their research or undeveloped machinery and create a workable device that the inventor can sell to companies.

He has engineered elastic shoes for Nike, a breast cancer imagery machine for hospital use and designed an electric motor.  On Browning’s day off he participates in intense, triple digit mile bike rides.

Browning actually found his calling at a much younger age while growing up in Huntsville, Alabama.  In the late 60’s, Huntsville was the home for the design process of the most powerful rocket ever launched, the Saturn 5 Rocket.  Browning’s dad was a purchasing agent for a subcontractor involved with the rockets development.  Browning was in awe of seeing engineers welding together electronic control modules under a microscope and working out problems in Greek letters on a chalkboard.  “That was so cool”, he says.

Browning didn’t think of engineering as a potential profession until working as a mill carpenter at a sawmill. After watching the engineer at the mill design the structural elements of houses and decided he was going to be an engineer.  He attended Linfield College and eventually Oregon State University where he graduated with a degree in engineering.  Afterwards he moved to Portland and worked a number of engineering jobs. Then he started his own company under the name Aetna Engineering Inc. His first big gig was designing a factory for Widmer Brothers Brewing in Portland.

He met his current wife, Kay Altman, in engineering school at Oregon State. They developed a relationship  participating on the Oregon State American Society for Engineers design team.  “He has a fun personality and he makes me happy,” Altman says.

She begun working with him at his engineering company. They changed the name to Altman-Browning.

“She’s the visionary and I’m the implementer,” Browning says.  Altman explains that while Browning conducts the sales and innovation aspect of the business, she takes care of finances and research.

Browning says the most interesting project that he has developed is building a non-invasive breast cancer detector machine.  The inventor developed a high-powered ultrasound, which he originally intended to be sold as a spy network to see through walls.  He then realized that you could use this technology for soft tissue imaging.  Browning says the technology not only doesn’t use the ionizing radiation involved with x-ray technology but provides a three dimensional view of the tissue.

Another project he worked on with Nike based on Nike’s discovery of an elastic fabric was a shoe that could take the shape of a person’s foot.  He designed the steamer cabinet that was used at Nike Factory’s worldwide until it became obsolete a year late.  “I don’t take it personal, it’s the nature of the business, he says.

But Browning hasn’t always been so productive.  During his teenage years Browning was smart but had no direction in life.  He lived with his functioning alcoholic father after his parents got divorced.  During his teenage years he spent his time driving his Pontiac Lemond all over Huntsville drinking beers and racing with his friends.  “We were basically your typical good for nothings,” he said. After years of working as a carpenter and raising children while living in Philadelphia and Los Angeles he made his way to Oregon.

Despite Brownings former fascination with fast cars, he now prefers bikes. To Browning biking is more than just a hobby but that doesn’t mean it isn’t relaxing.  Browning hates sports like golf and pool because he is uncomfortable with the pressure involved with each shot. “I put it all on the line every day at work, why would I want to do that in my free time,” Browning asks rhetorically.  “You get a million tries at everything”, he says of biking.  Browning also loves the feeling of burning muscles and the test of the mind involved with long bike rides.  Along with the nine-mile uphill ride in Portland, Oregon, he participates in the yearly 200 plus mile Seattle to Portland bike ride.

Browning has no plans to retire from his business or to quit biking. “I don’t see myself past the age of 40”, he says.  He plans on continuing his engineering pursuits for another 20 years and will bike until his body won’t let him make that next pedal.  Browning adds, “I feel lucky to have run into a profession that I’m no hurry to retire from.”

In August of 2005 Andrea Rosselle, then 29, was driving her jeep with her dad behind her in the moving truck, heading north, from Houston, Texas, to what would be her new place of residence in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Shortly after a pit stop, an odd feeling came over Rosselle. She first thought that it was the soda she drank. Then her head began to hurt. She picked up the walkie-talkie next to her and paged her dad. “We have to stop at the next rest stop,” she told him. “Something’s wrong.” She drove a little further hen paged her dad again, more urgently, “We need to stop now.”
Her father drove her to The University of Michigan Medical Hospital where they ran several tests trying to find the cause of Rosselle’s migraine, numbness, and inability to function. One hospital visit, several rounds of testing, and ten months of waiting anxiously, Rosselle was finally given a diagnosis. She has multiple sclerosis (MS), an auto-immune condition she would live with for the rest of her life.
At first, Rosselle was angry with her diagnosis. However, she has found her own way to work through her feelings of hurt and anger and to confront the illness face forward. “I’m learning to find the beauty in that which I cannot change. Because I have to,” she says.
Rosselle’s MS is called relapsing-remitting, which means that when she has a disabling attack, she recovers some, but not to the health she was before. She loses more of her abilities with each attack. Rosselle’s first known attack was during her drive up to Mt. Pleasant. After some reflection she thinks she may have been having minor attacks since she was 17 years old.
Rosselle says she feels her MS “every minute of every day.” A lot of her body is numb. A line from her armpit to her knee hurts in varying degrees constantly. “I live in a state of depletion,” she says. MS robs her of her energy and dexterity and affects her brain, causing headaches and loss of memory. “Sometimes you feel like you just want to die,” Rosselle confesses.
Everyone handles challenges in their lives differently. Rosselle’s outlet is art which she has loved ever since she unknowingly spent from dawn till dusk working on a painting for her high school class. “I had never experienced something that you could get so lost in,” Rosselle recalls. Today, she holds three degrees: A Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in ceramic sculpture and a minor in secondary education; A Master of Arts in ceramics; and a Master of Fine Arts in visual arts.
Rosselle, a tall woman with a bubbly personality and short strawberry blond hair, has a studio in the basement of her Portland home. It’s small and cluttered with incomplete work and tools. The walls and windowsills are lined with drawings, art from her past, and supplies. Clay covers the floors where her wheel is and a shelving unit carries clay molds strapped together, different colors of paints, and various miniature clay forms to be used later.
Before Rosselle’s diagnosis, her art consisted of paintings of religious icons. When she learned she had MS she stopped painting completely. Her final piece, painted before her silence, hangs on her living room wall. It’s one of her icon figures, filled with sorrow. The figure is trapped in the image of a big red barn, a common structure in Michigan where she received her diagnosis. “Here I am in this place which to me feels exceptionally desolate,” explains Rosselle, “I had literally been diagnosed with MS in a place where I knew nobody and I was completely alone.”
Rosselle is slowly coming out of her painting silence, but only when necessary. A good friend, Michelle Flora, asked her to paint at her wedding, and then again at her daughter’s dedication ceremony. “She has the ability to walk into a situation and be able to speak to that situation through the form of art,” says Flora. Both paintings now grace the Flora household’s walls.
Since her diagnosis Rosselle’s art has moved its focus from religious icons to her disease. “My art became almost like my psychiatrist,” she says. “It was my counseling, it was my food, it was my everything. It was how I dealt with it.”
Rosselle often uses forms resembling living organisms, such as barnacles, to represent disease, which she describes as something that is invasive, evasive, uncontrollable, but beautiful. “Disease is not what we think of as a beautiful thing,” Rosselle says, “but if you start to look at it microscopically, it’s really quite stunning.” She tries to think of her relationship with MS as symbiotic, as a way to find a truce, to maybe get something out of her disease.
Rosselle’s most recent piece, “Inside Out,” is on display at an art gallery in Portland, Oregon. The piece is two sets of doll heads cast out of clay. The heads are cast from the same mold to show that anyone can have a disease. The first set, Rosselle says, shows how chronic illness isn’t immediately visible. It’s skin deep, but close to the surface. The second is about disability caused by chronic illness and what it does to the body. Rosselle wants people to see her work and “to realize that life is that fragile and kind of a blessing,” which is something she has learned herself through her disease.
Her art wasn’t the only thing that changed with her diagnosis, Rosselle had to completely readjust her lifestyle. Before her diagnosis she was a spontaneous, adventurous woman who never felt truly settled and travelled to wherever God sent her. Instead of spontaneity, Rosselle now has to plan every day to avoid becoming exhausted or overwhelmed. If she overexerts, she risks another attack. She’s had to change her eating habits, cutting out dairy, gluten, MSG, and processed sugars. She has to stay out of the sun lest she faint. She sleeps more and has to be very careful with exercise.
Rosselle’s art is beginning to show her moving beyond the struggles of MS and into world issues. For the first time since her diagnosis, she is about to start a piece that is not about MS. It will be called “Death of Water.” It’s about water born diseases that are the leading killers of children aged zero to eight. “I think that’s a breakthrough for me,” she says.
As things are, Roselle lives day to day, moment by moment, but is constantly moving forward. “My life is just uncertain and I’ve learned to live in that uncertainty.”

  For her 24^th birthday Ruby Holmes bought herself a skydiving trip.  She had previously hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, bungee jumped in South Africa off and kayaked in crocodile infested waters, and this was just one more adventure to add to her list.  She wasn’t nervous about the jump.  In the plane, she was strapped between the legs of her guide and once they reached they reached the right altitude, they scooted towards the door and jumped.

 “They don’t really give you time to get too scared,” said Holmes. “Its weird, you’re going so fast you almost don’t even feel like you’re moving. Your perception is kind of skewed. Then, when the parachute opens it just super peaceful.”

Just two years after graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in International Studies with a focus in Human Rights, Holmes found her ideal career as an assistant events coordinator for Mobility International USA, or MIUSA, an organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities all around the world gain leadership skills to help their local communities. This position helps Holmes link her interest in human right and her love of international cultures that makes a visible difference. Even in high school, Holmes spent her summers traveling to underdeveloped nations on service trips with a high school club. She is passionate about helping other just as much as she is about adventure.

            Bundled in warm clothes due to the flu that forced her to end her workday early, Ruby Holmes’ eyes light up as she at her kitchen table in her Eugene home and talks about her travels abroad to India, Brazil and multiple countries in Africa, as well as her experiences while working with Mobility International USA. At first glance, Holmes’ fiery, red hair and high, child-like voice fill the room, but her energy radiates when she begins talking about Tanzania, where she studied abroad during college.

           “Tanzers!” says Holmes.  During her time there, she immersed herself in Swahili while volunteering at a preschool. “They called it teaching, but other than teaching them English numbers, I taught them Ring Around the Rosy,” said Holmes. “I just called it playing.”  

Immediately following graduating from the University of Oregon, Holmes began searching for an internship.  She landed a summer internship with MIUSA and, after it ended, begged founder and CEO Susan Sygall for any paid position. Since then she has worked her way up to full time, and last March she became a permanent staff member AS A WHAT? 

Holmes works directly with the men and women whom MIUSA flies to Eugene from all over the world.  She helps group members organize their time and activities, which include time with their host families and workshops for job and leadership training. Sometimes her job requires her to be on call for 24 hours a day for up to a month at a time.

Holmes’ love for helping others reaches further than her work with MIUSA. “She is one of the most passionate people I know,” said Evan Bosch, A former coworker and friends with Holmes for more than five years.  “All the work she takes on is because she really cares about the issues, and she is so funny and nice, what’s not to like about her?”

            In high school, Holmes’ said her mother told her that she could only plan so much and that life is crazy and things change.  This advice has stayed with her as her plans for herself have steered off track since graduation. 

“I am in a constant battle with myself… I need to get out of my comfort zone,” says Holmes.  “My biggest regret would have to be if I never took off a chunk of time to travel.” After graduation she wanted to travel the world, and especially visit the Philippines where her parents met while in the Peace Corps. Then she planned to go to grad school. But as her mother told her, life doesn’t follow plans.  Holmes has no regrets about the decisions she has made in her life.

“I love my job; I love getting up in the morning and going to work,” says Holmes. “I love my coworkers, the positive change it has in the community, MIUSA’s mission and everyone’s passion.”

One of her goals in life, is to start a family. She wants to adopt at least one child. “I want a little African baby,” says Holmes. “I want a little African baby and a little ginger baby.” 

She credits moving from her hometown of Denver, Colorado and leaving behind her parents and two older brothers to study in Oregon as a major turning point in her life.  Establishing a new life in a city where she knew only one other person forced her into maturity, but she eventually wants to return to Denver, settle down, and be closer to her family. 

“I love life, I love my job, I love knowing I’m making a positive impact,” says Holmes.

By Haley Martin

A little boy squeals and smiles at his reflection in the mirror where he holds a metallic gold bowtie up to his shirt collar. To make sure he found his favorite, he rummages through the display one last time. The vibrant colors of the bowties pop against the rustic wood of the vintage coca-cola crates that hold them. Folk music plays through the speakers; saxophone and fiddle tunes softly fill the high vaulted ceilings. “I want this one mommy!” the boy says.

“Or you could have a nice jazzy one like this-wow!” says bowtie maker, Kelly Durian as she shows off another one of her creations, a fluorescent orange and polka-dotted bowtie.

Durian, who is hosting the sale in her Eugene living room, is as colorful as the bowties she creates. This morning she is wearing green pants, a denim jacket embellished with an orange daisy brooch, mismatched wool socks and dangly earrings shaped like chickens. A suede fedora rests on her pixie-short brown hair. Her glassy blue eyes light up as she giggles with the boy over his soon-to-be very own bow tie.

“I’ve always wanted one just like daddy’s!” the boy says.

“We’ll take it,” his mom tells Durian, handing her $15 and walking away with her elated son.

Like most indecisive 20-somethings, Durian, 24, spent several years pondering what she should do with her life. She’s been an art student in Italy, a wilderness therapy guide and a full-fledged wanderer, but, she has finally realized that in order to be happy, she needs to create art. Now a modern day haberdasher with a specialty in bowties, Durian has found what makes her tick.

Durian founded her bowtie business, Durian and the Lyon, in September of 2010. She had always enjoyed crafting and sewing, but after seeing a friend’s band perform while outfitted in bowties, she was inspired to make some of her own. Her business has flourished ever since. She has created an impressive array of bowties in every color and for any occasion. Durian now sells her bowties online, at the Eugene Saturday Market, and various craft fairs throughout the Northwest.

Anna Bird, who bought a bowtie headband from Durian’s Saturday Market booth said, “It’s just the right combination of girly and spunky. I’m happy to support a local artist.”

It wasn’t clear to her at the time, but art and self-expression have been calling Durian for years. During her junior year of college, Durian studied abroad in Cortona, Italy.  Thinking the trip would give her a reason to escape, she realized that running away wasn’t the answer to her problems. “I wanted to feel free, but instead I felt sad. I was so homesick.” While in Italy, Durian studied art and bookmaking. To distract herself from the uneasiness she felt while abroad, she became consumed by her studies. “I got really into my art because it made me feel better,” she says.

After graduating from University of Richmond where she studied art and art history, most of Durian’s classmates jumped right into their lifelong careers at various business firms. “I didn’t want that, but I didn’t know what else there was. I really had no clue,” she says. Instead of following the same guidelines as her classmates, she decided, “Im going to go find it.”

From there, Durian took to the road for the next year. “I just got in my car and drove wherever I wanted. It was so freeing,” she says. “I had total control of myself and my decisions.” That was the beginning of what she calls her “freedom stage” which has continued ever since. “Once you’re allowed to make your own decisions, you have to figure out what they actually are. That’s what it was about for me,” she says.

A few years later, Durian became a wilderness therapy specialist where she worked with at-risk adolescents. Working in wilderness therapy had taken a toll on her; she was ready for a change. “I think being an artist, I got a little over emotional and over invested. I was taking on all this pain and I felt sad all the time,” she says.. To take her mind off the heaviness from her job, Durian made dream catchers with tree bark and other materials she found in the forest. She eventually quit this job in order to devote her time and attention to her new bowtie business.

Looking back, Durian realizes that during all of these periods in her life, she ended up turning to art to make her feel better. “All I know is when I’m not doing creative things or working with my hands, I’m just generally not happy,” she says.

Durian has discovered that making bowties is the perfect way for her to fulfill her creativity. “I have a sense of myself and the kind of life I want to live now,” Duiran says. She has finally reached a place in her life where she is truly happy and doesn’t feel the need to keep on searching. “If I think about it too much, it feels a little silly and I don’t know how I’m going to make a living or how it’s all going to work, but if I just keep doing it, it keeps working out,” she says.

Tucked between a quiet residential neighborhood and an array of quirky local businesses, Sundance Wine Cellars offers the widest selection of wine in the state of Oregon. 

A handful of eager customers lean in as an employee pops open a bottle of Oregon pinot noir. Red and white bottles glisten behind a wine steward. Trendy electric blue and mandarin orange lights frame the exterior of the wine tasting booth, and light jazz is humming throughout the shop.

The shop, located in Eugene, Ore., is home to over 475 varieties of pinot noir, a specialty of Oregon’s climate. Sundance’s modern tasting bar features roughly 15 red wines and 10 whites that typically rotate on a weekly basis.

Photo Credit: http://thecommensalhedonist.wordpress.com

“When I got into the wine business there were about 30 wineries in Oregon,” owner Gavin McComas said. “Now there are over 500.”

McComas, 66, opened the store in the west end of Sundance Natural Foods in 1983. Eight years later, the shop moved Alder St. In 2009 it moved to its current building just around the corner.

Though Sundance Wine Cellars specializes in Oregon wine, McComas’ interest was actually born after moving to Napa Valley when he was a teenager. He began to sample wines in the area when he moved there with his family. 

“They didn’t seem to care that I was 15 or 16 years old,” McComas said with a chuckle.

McComas is partial to Oregon pinot noirat his own dinner table. He explained that Oregon is at the same latitude as the Burgundy region of France (where French pinot noir is made), making it a distinctive climate to grow pinot noir grapes.

Wine enthusiasts can find local pinot noir among a wide-range of other wine varieties and prices at the cellar. McComas explained that while about 10 percent of customers come in looking to buy high-end wines, the majority are seeking bottles for less than $20. The store keeps a cluster of large boxes of closeout varieties in the front of the shop.

Sundance Wine Cellars’ cheapest bottle is a Spanish white for $5.95 and the most expensive is a Bordeaux or Burgundy for over $1000 dollars.

“The recession has really given people a chance to enjoy great wine at a decent price,” McComas explained. He said that around 35 distributors visit the shop weekly, and often offer special deals on wines that have dropped in sales.

McComas truly believes in the wine experience – and has even sent employees to France and Italy for educational purposes.

“Wine allows people share a sensual experience that alters the mind,” McComas explained through his neatly trimmed white beard. “…It also gives them something to talk about.”

Randy Stokes, manager of Sundance Wine Cellars, observed that many potential customers feel intimidated toenter the shop.

“I think sometimes we have the reputation of being snobby,” he said with a grin.

Stokes and the other five employees have many years of wine knowledge he says, and they are eager to share it with those unfamiliar with the craft of enjoying wine.

Sundance Wine Cellars is located at 2441 Hilyard St. in Eugene, Ore. The shop is open from Monday to Saturday from 10am to 7pm and on Sundays from 12pm to 7pm. 

By Cari Johnson

All ears inside the Whiteaker Community Center wait for the silence to be broken.  It is a cold Sunday afternoon.  In this room there is no separation between the audience, musicians and dancers. Thirteen people, a colorful mixture of 2 children, 1 teenager, and 10 adults are assembled around raised wooden platforms called tarimas. The instructor starts stamping her feet in a slow rhythm. The rest of the class follows her as the steps become faster and faster until the room is vibrating like a heart being strummed.  After an hour of dancing, they bring out an extraordinary collection of instruments that make high sharp twangs; the upstroke pattern almost mimics the steps of the dance, which provides the percussion. Everyone is singing. Everyone is smiling.

This is the festival known as fandango. The popular dance called son jarocho comes from the region of Southern Veracruz Mexico. This fusion of indigenous, Spanish and African music is being studied and celebrated in Eugene Oregon by The Taller de Son Jarocho a local arts and music collective working to unite Eugene’s diverse communities.  

Janice Carraher, a retired dancer from West L.A. fell in love with Ballet Folklórico, dances that reflect the traditional culture of Mexico. Carraher wanted to find out where the steps she learned on stage came from. She traveled to Mexico, and participated in fandangos. Here she discovered how this tradition had almost disappeared due to social corruption and rural areas receiving electricity. This resulted in people listening to the radio or watching television instead of making their own entertainment. When Carraher moved to Eugene Oregon, she had no one to play music or dance with until she met James Daria, a graduate student in cultural anthropology and fan of son jarocho. Together they started this project in November of last year.

“We wanted to create this space where anyone could feel part of a community” says Daria. “We say convivencia which means living together. We wanted to create convivencia through music and celebrate this piece of Mexican culture.”

Carraher is the main workshop instructor, having learned to dance, sing and play the instruments while living in Veracruz. She learned the steps and music for free and she says she feels obligated to teach the tradition of son jarocho without charging. There are bilingual classes every Sunday from 5:15 – 6:00 p.m. Carraher teaches the jarana, an 8-stringed instrument in the guitar family, and the zapateado, the percussive footwork. Since the space is free, the only thing the project has to pay for is the instruments which are handmade in Veracruz and sent to Eugene.    

“Some of them are made professionally and those are expensive,” says Daria, “but some of them are made by poor people in Veracruz whose only tool is a machete. Can you imagine carving such a delicate instrument with just a machete?”

Each jarana sounds slightly different depending on the quality of the wood. The Taller Son Jarocho gives out some of the less expensive instruments so people can practice at home before everyone joins together on the last Sunday of every month for a fandango.

Carraher and Daria hope that the children who are in workshops now will grow to teach a new generation of the community the aspects of son jarocho. They also hope to someday be able to bring musicians from Veracruz to Eugene and likewise send musicians to Veracruz to learn through ­­this active tradition.

“We also want to create a class within the University” says Daria “This is the first ever fandango jarocho in this area. They have son jarocho in Chicago, in Seattle, and even in the South, but we are trying to spread the seeds here in Oregon.”

As the clock reaches 6:00, the instructor leads the class in one last song. She stands in front, feet pounding on the tarima, and her graceful hands directing the class. Each person gets a chance to sing a solo as everyone keeps strumming their jaranas. The cold air from outside dissolves instantly as it hits the heat of swelling sound. The leader shouts out one last phrase and everyone stops on cue. A ringing silence follows before everyone starts to clap. A woman from Brazil sitting in the back says, “minha alma é lavada” (my soul is washed).  

In It to Win It By J.R. Moehringer

I love the way the author uses different parts of the body to tell the story. The opening description of the finger and clothes that he is wearing in the airport is very good. The way that the author ends the piece by describing the fans reactions to his presence shows that although he may not understand why his fans get nervous around him it may simply be because he isn’t like them.

The Chosen One by Gary Smith

The opening scene with the quote from Earl Woods is good starting point to create contrast between other sports stars at the top of their game. The quotes about Tiger Woods being able to affect humanity more than Nelson Mandela and Gandhi gives the reader an insight in to the mind of an emerging super star. The comparison to a machine is just, especially looking back now 16 years later, he has become known as one of the most reclusive athletes of all time. I like the way the author introduces and describes the ethnicity of Earl Woods, like a recipe. My favorite part of the piece is when the author compares Tiger Woods to all the other transcendent figures that his father believed he would have a larger impact than. Asking what will save Tiger Woods? The ending is powerful, talking about Tiger’s importance to American and the turn of the century, and his description of the white woman saying that when she watches Tiger she feels like she is watching her own son is a great ending to a story about the machine.