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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 27, 2018)
A8 OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Thursday, December 27, 2018 Neighbor: Couple moves to Pendleton to teach music with Oregon East Symphony Continued from Page A1 One of those side gigs for the couple was driving down Interstate 84 to play for the Oregon East Symphony, so when the strings instructor position opened up at the nonprofit, they decided to take the plunge and move to Pendleton in August. Strings in Pendleton The Pendleton High School music room is a world away from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, but dozens of string instruments filled it nonetheless on the afternoon of Dec. 13. About a dozen elemen- tary school students are learning the cello under the tutelage of Banks this year while Block is teaching more than 50 kids the art of violin and viola. The groups were doing their last practice ahead of a winter recital the following week, which meant Block and Banks were breaking down “Jingle Bells” to its most basic parts. “F-sharp, F-sharp, F-sharp, rest. F-sharp, F-sharp, F-sharp, rest,” Banks told his students to demonstrate both the notes and timing of the iconic opening notes to the holiday standard. Beyond note reading and measure counting, the pair reminded their students about how to conduct them- selves as musicians and stay on task. At one point, Block wouldn’t let her stu- dents proceed to the next song until enough of them showed how to properly rest their instruments when not playing them, an exercise that elicited a few exagger- ated sighs from her young pupils. In the next room, Banks gave his students a brief pep talk about the recital. “It’s going to be fun and it’s supposed to be fun,” he said. “But we play as a team.” While Banks had some experience leading youth camps and teaching music theory to kids, this is Block’s first experiencing teaching large groups of students. But the pair is finding value in their new profes- sions as well as their new surroundings. Pendleton’s clear streets mean they spend less time in traffic and more time doing Staff photo by E.J. Harris Instructor Viet Block, right, talks with student Lizzie McBride-Gardner, second from left, while tuning a violin recently at Pendleton High School. productive activities. And the couple enjoyed their first Round-Up, pointing to the Westward Ho! Parade as one of the highlights. It also satisfied one of Block’s burning questions when she first moved to Pendleton. While she ini- tially wondered why there were so many massive park- ing lots in a small rural com- munity, a week’s worth of Round-Up tourists satiated her curiosity. Antarctica: Oregon man first to solo across Antarctica unaided Continued from Page A1 sister and wife — I prom- ised them I will stop when I need to.” Though others have tra- versed Antarctica, they either had assistance with reinforced supplies or kites that helped propel them forward. In 2016, British explorer Henry Worsley died attempting an unas- sisted solo trip across Ant- arctica, collapsing from exhaustion toward the end of the trek. Worsley’s friend and fellow English adventurer Louis Rudd is currently attempting an unaided solo in Worsley’s honor and was competing against O’Brady to be the first to do it. Besaw said O’Brady plans to stay on Antarc- tica until Rudd finishes his trek, hopefully in the next few days. “It’s a small club,” she joked. “His intention is to wait for Louis and have kind of a celebra- tory moment with the only other person on the planet to have accomplished this same thing.” O’Brady described in detail the ups and downs along the way since he began the trek on Nov. 3. He had to haul 375 pounds of gear largely uphill and over sas- trugi, wave-like ridges cre- ated by wind. “Not only am I pulling my ... sled all day, but I’m pull- ing it up and over thousands of these sastrugi speed bumps created by the violent wind,” he wrote in an Instagram post on Nov. 12. “It’s a frustrating process at times to say the least.” On Nov. 18, he wrote that Colin O’Brady via AP In this photo provided by Colin O’Brady, of Portland, he poses for a photo while traveling across Antarctica on Wednesday. he awoke to find his sled completely buried from an all-night blasting of wind and snow. That day he battled a 30 mph headwind for eight hours as he trudged along. “There were several times I considered stopping, putting my tent back up and calling it a day,” he wrote. “I wanted so badly to quit today as I was feeling exhausted and alone, but remembering all of the positivity that so many peo- ple have been sending, I took a deep breath and focused on maintaining forward progress one step at a time and man- aged to finish a full day.” Though O’Brady had ini- tially thought he’d want a cheeseburger at the end of his nearly impossible journey, Besaw said her husband has been fantasizing about fresh fish and salad, since he’s mostly been eating freeze- dried foods. As for what’s next for O’Brady, who also has sum- mited Mount Everest, Besaw said she’s not entirely sure. “We are just so in the moment celebrating this right now,” she said. “Then we’ll see what’s next on the horizon. Tech: ‘Hi, my name is ____, and I’m addicted to tech’ Continued from Page A1 “I’m like an alcoholic working at a bar,” the 27-year-old laments. “The drugs of old are now repackaged. We have a new foe,” Cosette Rae says of the barrage of tech. A for- mer developer in the tech world, she heads a Seat- tle area rehab center called reSTART Life, one of the few residential programs in the nation specializing in tech addiction. Use of that word — addiction — when it comes to devices, online content and the like, is still debated in the mental health world. But many practitioners agree that tech use is increasingly intertwined with the prob- lems of those seeking help. An American Acad- emy of Pediatrics review of worldwide research found that excessive use of video games alone is a serious problem for as many as 9 percent of young people. This summer, the World Health Organization also added “gaming disorder” to its list of afflictions. A sim- ilar diagnosis is being con- sidered in the United States. It can be a taboo subject in an industry that frequently faces criticism for using “persuasive design,” inten- tionally harnessing psycho- logical concepts to make tech all the more enticing. That’s why the 27-year-old who works at the tech com- pany spoke on condition that his identity not be revealed. He fears that speaking out could hurt his fledgling career. “I stay in the tech indus- try because I truly believe that technology can help other people,” the young man says. He wants to do good. But as his co-workers huddle nearby, talking excit- edly about their latest video game exploits, he puts on his headphones, hoping to block the frequent topic of conver- sation in this tech-centric part of the world. Even the computer screen in front of him could lead him astray. But he digs in, typing determinedly on his keyboard to refocus on the task at hand. The demons are not easy to wrestle for this young man, who was born in 1991, the very year the World Wide Web went public. As a toddler, he sat on his dad’s lap as they played simple video games on a Mac Classic II computer. Together in their Seattle area home, they browsed the internet on what was then a ground-breaking new service called Prodigy. The sound of the bouncy, then high-pitched tones of the dial-up connection are etched in his memory. By early elementary school, he got his first Super Nintendo system and fell in love with “Yoshi’s Story,” a game where the main char- acter searched for “lucky fruit.” As he grew, so did one of the world’s major tech hubs. Led by Microsoft, it rose from the nondescript sub- urban landscape and farm fields here, just a short drive from the home he still shares with his mom, who split from her husband when their only child was 11. The boy dreamt of being part of this tech boom and, in eighth grade, wrote a note to himself. “I want to be a computer engineer,” it read. Very bright and with a head full of facts and fig- ures, he usually did well in school. He also took an interest in music and act- ing but recalls how playing games increasingly became a way to escape life — the pain he felt, for instance, when his parents divorced or when his first serious girl- friend broke his heart at age 14. That relationship still ranks as his longest. “Hey, do you wanna go out?” friends would ask. “No, man, I got plans. I can’t do it this week- end. Sorry,” was his typical response, if he answered at all. “And then I’d just go play video games,” he says of his adolescent “dark days,” exacerbated by attention deficit disorder, depression and major social anxiety. Even now, if he thinks he’s said something stu- pid to someone, his words are replaced with a verbal tick — “Tsst, tsst” — as he replays the conversation in his head. “There’s always a cata- lyst and then it usually bub- bles up these feelings of avoidance,” he says. “I go online instead of dealing with my feelings.” He’d been seeing a ther- apist since his parents’ divorce. But attending col- lege out of state allowed more freedom and less structure, so he spent even more time online. His grades plummeted, forcing him to change majors, from engi- neering to business. Eventually, he gradu- ated in 2016 and moved home. Each day, he’d go to a nearby restaurant or the library to use the Wi-Fi, claiming he was looking for a job but having no luck. Instead, he was spend- ing hours on Reddit, an online forum where people share news and comments, or viewing YouTube vid- eos. Sometimes, he watched online porn. Even now, his mom doesn’t know that he lied. “I still need to apologize for that,” he says, quietly. The apologies will come later, in Step 9 of his 12-step program, which he found with the help of a thera- pist who specializes in tech addiction. He began attend- ing meetings of the local group called Internet & Tech Addiction Anonymous in the fall of 2016 and landed his current job a couple months later. For a while now, he’s been stuck on Step 4 — the personal inventory — a chal- lenge to take a deep look at Special Offer SAVE 20% SPECIAL OFFER! ONLY $23 99 himself and the source of his problems. “It can be over- whelming,” he says. The young men at the recent 12-step meeting understand the struggle. “I had to be convinced that this was a ‘thing,’” says Walker, a 19-year-old from Washington whose parents insisted he get help after video gaming trashed his first semester of college. 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