2
Clackamas Print
News
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Poet pulls from pop
culture, Super-Man
Emily Walters
The Clackamas Print
All photos by Nicholas Baker Clackamas Print
■ Gene Winfield, custom-car builder, demonstrated how to
do a top-chopping on May 19 and 20. There were approxi
mately 100 registered attendees. Various tools and equipment
were donated from local autoshops that were later signed by
Winfield and then auctioned off to members of the audience.
After the event, Winfield stuck around to sign autographs,
answer questions and sell merchandise.
Winfield has appeared on the hit TV show Monster
Garage.
WHAT IS TOP-CHOPPING?
I
I
! Top-chopping is the practice of making very specific !
modifications and alterations in order to lower the roof |
of an automobile.
J
TOP: Assistant Alex Robinson welds as legendary custom-car
builder Gene Winfield makes window fittings on a 1936 three-
window Ford Coupe.
ABOVE: Gene Winfield and Pete Shirley work to reshape a win
dow frame so it fits in the car’s now-smaller exterior.
- Compiled by Nicholas Baker, The Clackamas Print
Next Week:
Profiles on 2007 College Retirees
Trees, elks, ravens, the moon
... and Cher’s tits.
These were a few of the sub
jects of the poems that nation
ally-recognized poet Dorianne
LautTread last Friday to an audi
ence made up of students and
several of Clackamas’ English
instructors, in the Literary Arts
Center.
Laux, who has a Bachelor’s
Degree in English, works as
a professor in University of
Oregon’s Creative Writing
Program, as well as the
Master’s Program at Pacific
University. She has many
awards to her name, including
a Pushcart Prize, an Editor’s
Choice III Award, the Oregon
Book Award and a fellowship
from the National Endowment
for the Arts.
As a single mother in her
twenties, she first started seri
ously writing poetry between
several jobs. Today, she is
married to fellow poet Joseph
Millar and has four poetry col
lections published, with a fifth
soon to be finished.
Laux began the readings
with the slightly raunchy poem
“Cher,” describing her longing
to be like the pop icon, “butt,”
“tits” and all. This is from her
newest book, titled Superman:
The Chapbook, which holds
poems inspired by pop culture,
including The Beatles and, yes,
Super-Man.
Next was what she said is a
favorite of hers, from her fourth
book, Facts About the Moon,
titled “The Life of Trees.” This
poem was inspired by her com
ing to Oregon and falling in
love with the trees here.
The following two poems
were inspired by and written
during trips with her husband.
The first, titled “Ravens of
Denali,” she wrote while in
Alaska, after her husband told
her a lot about the ravens that
they were seeing everywhere.
At the reading, her husband
Jennesa Palmer Clackamas Prij
Award-winning poet Dorianne Laux shaires some of her
work with Clackamas students.
said that when he heard the
poem for the first time, he said
“Jesus, you stole my bird!”
The other, called “The
Crossing,” was a humorous
piece about an elk in the mid
dle of the road, which her
husband tried to get to move
so that their car could pass.
It ended with the line, “This
was how I knew the marriage
would last.”
“I do a lot of writing on the
bus,” Laux said, leading into
her next poem, titled “The
Secret of the Backs,” inspired
by the backs of people walk
ing along the sidewalk. “I
thought, ‘That’s never been
done before’”
Laux finished out the hoar
with the poems “Moon in
the Window” and, last but
not least, “Facts About the
Moon.”
“[‘Facts About the Moor
is] filled with real facts from ,
the Discovery Channel, whiqh
I watch religiously,” she
explained to listeners, laugh
ing-
With her elegant poemk,
sometimes lightly peppered
with swear words, Lauxls
reading provided an enjoyable
stop between classes for many
students. The quick wit and
underlying ponderings of her
poems left the audience with
something to think about. I
The dangers of global warming and hope for the future
Fufkln Vollmayer
| The Clackamas Print
Just in case you haven’t read
the latest U.N. report on glob
al warming, it’s not as bad as
scientists have been predicting
- it’s worse.
The ocean is turning into a
hot vat of nitrogen that’s killing
off plankton and the fish that eat
them. Droughts and Hurricane
Katrina-size storms will become
more frequent on almost every,
continent around the world.
But to listen to philosopher
Kathleen Dean Moore; there is
actually hope. She’s explored
ideas, modernity and the aston
ishing beauty of the Northwest
in Riverwalk, Holdfast and Pine
Island Paradox.
As the featured speaker at last
week’s Sustainability Project,
Moore announced, “I’m going
to give an optimistic talk ...
it’s a survival characteristic.
Optimism is a belief; it’s hoping
with good reason.”
Moore says repairing ecosys
tems is coming from the ground
up, from grassroots organiza
tions.
“Evidence of this ‘great turn
ing’ is not coming, in case you
hadn’t noticed, from the White
House or from Exxon Mobil,”
she said. “It’s coming from the
growing army of individuals and
community groups who, planting
one tree at a time, or cleaning up
one neighborhood at a time ...
are literally planting seeds of
change.”.
Moore has her feet in
two worlds. She’s a philoso
phy professor at Oregon State
University, and she spends sum
mers up in the Alaskan archi
pelago, immersed in the natu
ral world. It’s from one of the
islands there that she wrote Pine
Island Paradox.
In an environmental eth
ics class she teaches, she has
students choose a place within
walking distance to campus, and
they then recommend how to
remedy an environmental justice
issue of habitat loss or pollu
tion.
She says her students, like
society as a whole, can feel
overwhelmed by the scale of
biological degradation around
them.
“In my classes, students ask,
‘How can I change the world?
I’m one person,”’ she said.
“You live a life you believe in,
and you can change the world.”
Moore takes the old bumper
sticker adage, ‘Think Globally;
Act Locally,’ and only half-jok-
ingly puts her students though a
12-step program she’s entitled
“Consumers Anonymous.”
“We are so disconnected
from community [that consum
ing] is a reaction to grief and
stress,” she said. “Step 3 of
Consumer’s Anonymous really
is to reduce what ws buy.”
Through her teaching and
her writing, she invites her
students and her readers tp do
what she does: to start noticing
the natural world around them,
before it’s all gone. Yet, she
does not despair, as she believes
that individuals and even whole
countries are out of denial about
how human activity is poisoning
the planet.
Moorework reflects what
Lydia Bashaw Clackamas Print
Kathleen Dean Moore autographs a personalized note to set-
proclaimed longtime student Sue Andersen in her personal
copy of one of Moore’s books.
has been the truly interdisciplin
ary nature of the Sustainability
Series: biology, oceanography
and literature. So, it’s fitting
that a philosopher would quote
historian Stephen Ambrose, who
declared, “The primary task of
the 21st century will be envi
ronmental restoration or nothmg
at all.”