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With summer comes the weather we all love here in Oregon. Raincoats are removed, flip-flops are slipped on and outdoor patios open up. No one knows this last part better than local winery patrons. Summer is wine time. Continue reading
“Student-athletes are often recognized for their accomplishments in their respective sports. However, UO student-athletes are well-rounded students with diverse interests that extend beyond their athletics pursuits.” These are the words of Rob Mullens, director of Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Oregon, lending his perspective on a remarkably unique new exhibit that just opened at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Continue reading
“I try not to paint eyelashes, unless they are really important,” says artist Lynda Lanker, whose portraits of women of the West are as intimate and forthright as the flesh-and-blood women they depict. Though some of Lanker’s work is so detailed that for a moment the portraits appear to be photographs, even her more abstract pieces capture a sense, a feeling, of these generations of ranch women and cowgirls. Continue reading
In the age of the quick fix and pop-up porn, you gotta hand it to E.L. James for hoodwinking the hoi polloi into dicking around with something as atavistic and temperate as on-the-page erotica. Fifty Shades of Grey — the first installment in a trilogy of erotic novels that started online as Twilight fanfiction — sold more than 10 million copies in six weeks in the U.S. alone. This, despite repeated assaults by high-brow literary critics as well as pop sexpert Dr. Continue reading
It seems indie music is experiencing a movement of flannel-clad gents strumming vintage guitars while tugging at scruffy beards. A token petite blonde with amazing pipes singing backup over sweeping, rootsy tales about vagabonds is standard fair. But if you can wade past all the skinny jeans and saddle shoes you will find your way to Hey Marseilles, and you won’t be sorry. Continue reading
Minutes after walking away from the oldest coffee tree in the world, Silje Heyland, a German college student studying fair-trade coffee practices in Ethiopia, had a sudden urge to go back. “Perhaps we can eat lunch under the tree,” she suggested. The rest of our expedition party — wet, tired, muddy, hungry — looked at her with unsympathetic eyes and decided it would be better to eat lunch at a nearby village, where there were primitive huts to duck into for shelter against the afternoon thunderstorm. Continue reading
When Peggy Kelsey met a group of 14 Afghan women in the fall of 2002 in Austin, Texas, she was inspired by their strength, motivation and activism. In 2003 Kelsey traveled to Afghanistan, and from her experience there grew her photography project “Portraits of Afghan Women.” Kelsey says that when she first arrived in Afghanistan, she was discouraged by the political events affecting the country. Upon meeting the women, however, she experienced a feeling of optimism. Continue reading
At first, it seemed possible that what started as a military mutiny on March 22 might simply blow over. After a few days of sheltering in my apartment, I emerged to find Bamako, the capital of the West African nation of Mali, just as I had left it. Besides an underlying uncertainty over just exactly how Mali’s government would shape out, the mood was bright and the city would be as colorful as always. At work, a USAID youth-development project, most of my colleagues insisted the coup could be a positive step for Mali. Continue reading