Street roots., January 07, 2011, Image 1

“D aves K iller
Bread” owner
Dave D ahl's
trials and
triumphs aY&
chronicled in
a new hook by
a woman with
her own story
to tell
BY LAURA MOULTON
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
t first glance, Varinthorn Christopher and
Dave Dahl appear to have nothing in
common. She is a Thai artist born in
Bangkok, and he is a 6-foot-tall ex-con with a
sheet that could paper a trail to the moon and
back. But a closer look at their unlikely
partnership reveals what they have in common: a
collaborative project in the form of a book
containing stories from prison, bread recipes and
advice to drug addicts. They also share a belief in
the possibility of redemption in life and in the
power of second chances.
Varinthorn Christopher was born in Bangkok,
Thailand during a coup de’etat, in 1977. Because
of a strictly enforced curfew at sundown, no one
dared venture out, for fear of being shot or killed
by the military. During all this, Varinthorn’s
mother went into labor, and her father loaded her
in the car and went out into the city. Soon they
were pulled over by Thai soldiers, but instead of
being shot on sight, the soldiers saw that her
mother was in labor and formed a cavalcade of
A
tanks and cars around her family’s car, escorting
them to the hospital. H er father saw this
procession as a very auspicious beginning to a life
and assumed she would be a boy.
Meanwhile, in the United States that same
rap year, Dave Dahl was an awkward pre-teenager,
working in the family bread business, but already
beginning to struggle with the depression that
would plague him into his 20s and 30s.
When Varinthorn was three years old in
Bangkok, Dave was dropping out of high school in
Gresham, Oregon. As a 12-year-old in her
hometown of Pathum Thani with extended family,
one of.Varinthorn’s favorite rituals was to gather
at sunrise to offer cooked jasmine rice to monks
clad in saffron robes. By now, Dave had married
and divorced, fathered a daughter, and gotten
good and hooked on methamphetamine, a habit
he financed by committing armed robberies and
break-ins.
When Varinthorn was 20 years old, she moved
to the United States to attend college. Dave was
SEE BREADMAKER, page 4
Top, Dave Dahl, in the foreground, as a child on the
cover o f his new book, “Good S e e d ”. Above, Dahl at
his bake shop in Milwaukie.
That's w hat
The white
The tim e
she said
man’s burden
doesn't f it
Notable quotes from
'the year gone by from
Storm Large and
others who lent their
Christian Lander
spins ‘w hiteness’
with hum or and
honesty.
the crim e
voice to Street Roots
Page 8
Page 10
Page 7
Why criminalizing
the homeless is
hurting us all