Pulse Editor
Jacquelyn Lewis
jacquelynlewis@dailyemerald.com
Tuesday, June 3,2003
Oregon Daily Emerald
On Thursday
Pulse gets cozy
with the Neighbor's
Homemade
insects add
Kafkaesque
visual flair
Nika
Carlson
D.I.Y. living
I have a friend whose vision of the
perfect room is four white walls, no win
dows, one fluorescent light and a bare
metal desk. While my own decorating
vision tends to be a little less “One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” historically it
has not been much more sophisticated.
I went through the teddy bear theme
at five and plastic crates of crap at nine.
I thankfully skipped over the teen idol
wallpaper phase, but ended my high
school career in an embarrassing explo
sion of gaudy 70s. I was going for a casu
al, lounge-like feel, but my only step in
that direction was an orange-brown
thrift-store find resembling a La-Z-Boy
upholstered in Elmo.
Fortunately, my taste has matured
since then. I have a picture in my mind
of how my room
and house should
look — all cream
and black and bits
of red — but I
rarely have the
time or funds to
achieve it. The
transformations on
best-show-ever
Trading Spaces are
shock-and-awe un
til you realize
they’re created by
professional designers with #1,000, and
the shit they make falls apart in a week.
I always wondered how those plywood
beds, could survive a night of anything.
Anyway, I don’t have #1,000 to turn my
room into a Moroccan bazaar, even if I
wanted to. Did you see that episode? It
looked like someone vomited up the
Arabian Nights.
My current decorating scheme is an
amalgam of tastes slowly moving toward
a unified design. Finally, it’s less college
residence hall and more ELLE DECOR.
My walls, however, still struggle with a
residence hall-style motif, suffering from
the occasional unframed poster or
tacked-up photo. There are a few high
lights: An enormous frame filled with
portraits taken out of the magazine Col
ors, a framed dinosaur print painted by
a friend’s father and an Italian propa
ganda magazine from the 30s. But
something is missing.
I decided to make some prints my
self. I checked out a few insect books
out at the library and photocopied sev
eral drawings of beetles and wasps. I
cut them out using an X-Acto knife. I
suppose there’s something childish
and maybe even creepy about an in
terest in bugs, but I think they are fas
cinating — complex and fragile and
delicate, just like lace. The combina
tion of the two seems natural, so I
copied several patterns out of a book
on the history of lace.
One is a black Chantilly, embroidered
with fruits and flowers. Another is a pat
tern of lilies sprouting from the ground
on which I placed my bugs. I also fash
ioned a frame from a lace border that I
placed around several beetle prints. The
effect is reminiscent of mounted insect
specimens. I made the copies on a
Turn to Carlson, page 8
Danielle Hickey Emerald
Alton Baker Park is home to picnic areas, rest rooms, playgrounds and the Cuthbert Amphitheater — all which make the 3- to 4-mile park east and west of the Ferry
Street Bridge a procrastinator's sunny-day paradise.
From polar to solar
Eugene and the surrounding areas offer
outdoor escapes including hikes near
waterfalls and dips in hot springs
Hot spots
Mark Baylis
Pulse Reporter
I do it every year. It’s the middle of the term,
I’m in the belly of the six-month gray season,
and I’m registering for classes — full load.
Then early June rolls around; the sunshine
soaks my serotonin in levels of irrational joy,
and my Frisbee is whistling at me from its clos
et hibernation. If only I had time instead of
tests staring me down. Fortunately, Eugene is
packed with hikes, excursions and outdoor
Shangri-Las that can be customized to fit into
any class schedule, be it two or 22 credits.
Here’s a brief sampling:
Best place to escape
for an afternoon:
Brice Creek
Towering old growth Douglas Fir and Red
Cedar trees, small waterfalls, gorgeous view
points, and swim-able pools greet you on this
5.5 mile hike (one-way) in Cottage Grove. An
afternoon here will let you congratulate your
self for coming to Eugene to study instead of,
say, Dallas. A paved yet unobtrusive road pro
vides easy access points.
Best biking trail:
Row River Trail
Before you ride the Row, you must first
tackle its devious pronunciation: Row rhymes
Turn to Spots, page 10
Magazine compiles lost snips of humanity
Inspired by a misplaced note, writer
Davy Rothbart established the ironic,
reader-driven Found Magazine
Jacquelyn Lewis
Pulse Editor
Shreds of humanity can be found in
everything we touch. We leave behind
traces of our essence in discarded personal
belongings: notes, photographs, ticket stubs
and other scraps. Found Magazine creator
Davy Rothbart has amassed a towering col
lection of this memorabilia, either lost or
trashed by the owners, and he has also cre
ated a way to package it — all in the pages
of one publication.
The concept is simple. Rothbart and his
friends in Ann Arbor, Mich., open piles of
envelopes containing found objects that
readers mail to Rothbart. They choose their
favorites, and Rothbart slaps them onto
plain paper and sends the pages off to a
printer in Canada. The result is a home
made-looking creation exuding a patch
work of human emotions — everything
from laughter to sorrow. Rothbart said the
publication has a voyeuristic feel that
evokes powerful reactions from readers.
Its natural to be curious about what
other people’s experience being human is
like,” Rothbart said. “It’s a real rush to see
that we’re not all so different.”
Rothbart said he has always enjoyed col
lecting random items, but the idea for
Found came from a misguided note left on
his car in 1999. The letter-writer, “Amber,”
apparently mistook Rothbart’s Toyota Cam
ry for the one her boyfriend owned. “You
said you had to work then whys your car
HERE at HER place??” the note demanded,
ending in a scrawled “I fucking hate you.
RS. page me later.” Rothbart said he was
amazed at the letter’s ability to convey both
disgust and tenderness. Two years ago, he
included the note in the first issue of
Found. He sold 800 copies of the first maga
zine — and even more of the second — and
is now working on a third, which will ap
pear in the fall.
Rothbart encourages readers to send him
anything they find, along with a note nam
ing the “work of art” and explaining how it
was discovered.
“It’s neat to feel connected to someone
you’ll never meet but you just cross paths
by picking a note up off the ground,”
Turn to Found, page 8
Courtesy