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This website is an informal communication forum for staff members of the University of Oregon Library Staff Association. Contents and opinions expressed herein or on linked personal or external pages are those of individual authors and do not represent official statements, policies, or positions of the Library, the University of Oregon, Oregon University System, or State of Oregon.

Autumn Story

"Your Honor, may I approach the bench?"

The judge nodded. Perry Mason leaned over the desk and whispered something in her ear.

The judge looked taken aback. "Most irregular! However, you may proceed."

Mason turned and strolled over to the jury box. He handed the foreman a slimy walnut in its shriveled hull. "Please inspect the evidence carefully," he cautioned. The jurors giggled and said "e-w-w!," wiping the green walnut dye onto their coats and jeans.

Hamilton Burger exploded in fury. "I OBJECT! I OBJECT!" he screamed. The judge banged a rock on her desk. "Mr. Burger, you are in contempt of court! Bailiff, remove this man!"

The bailiff, portrayed with vigor by my older brother, jumped off the back porch and wrestled Hamilton Burger to the ground. Puffs of hot breath escaped them as they struggled and made brief clouds in the crisp autumn air. Some of the jury were unable to restrain themselves, and they, too, jumped on the famed prosecutor. The judge remained behind the bench, an old stump, banging her rock gavel and yelling for order.

My Uncle Ed stuck his head out the back door. "You kids! Quiet down! Grandma is going to call the cops!" He was holding a coffee cup and chuckling, so I knew he wasn't mad. I heard my aunts and uncles in the kitchen, laughing and talking. My grandparents' old house was filled with all nine of their children and most of the grandchildren, a rare event. It meant that we kids could play Perry Mason with a full jury. Besides Mason, Burger, the judge, the jury and the bailiff, we also had the accused, a hostile witness, Della Street, and the corpse.

It was a sunny, golden morning, the temperature not much above freezing outside, or inside, either. Through the window, I could see my mother and my aunts sitting at the tiny kitchen table, dressed in coats and scarves. My frail grandmother was bundled up in a Pendleton robe. Everyone held a steaming cup of coffee, and, since this was the nineteen-sixties, most of the grownups had a cigarette, too. In the yard, under the winey smell of windfall apples and decaying leaves was the heavier smell of blood.

Order had been restored in the court. "Mr. Mason, do you have any remarks to address to the jury?" asked the judge sternly.

"I only wish to say, your Honor, that my client is completely innocent. The real murderer is in the courtroom at this very moment!" Mason paused dramatically. The courtroom fell silent, and everyone listened eagerly.

"The person who committed this heinous crime is ..." Mason paused, looking around for a likely suspect. We were all in suspense, hoping for him to pick me, pick me! "...the BAILIFF!"

My brother had a real aptitude for portraying bad guys. He sprang to his feet. "Yes, I did it! And I'd do it again! YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!" he hollered, and sped away, with the entire court at his heels, the younger jurors yelling waitup! waitup!.

We ran across the street in a mob, clumping in our heavy leather shoes and winter coats, ignoring the traffic on that quiet back street. Della caught up with the perpetrator on a convenient pile of raked up leaves on the lawn of the high school. There was another pile-up with my brother at the bottom. The game was over.

But there was no going in the house. The women were in charge of the kitchen, and they were sterilizing all of their instruments in a big pot of boiling water on the stove. My grandpa, who still worked at the turkey plant in those days, had brought home a giant roll of butcher paper and an enormous cone of string. These stood ready on the Formica-topped kitchen table, which had been scrubbed spotless. The smell of Clorox brought tears to my eyes. The aunts scolded us and shooed us outside again.

My brother and my cousin Eddy, the erstwhile Perry Mason, were daring each other to go into the woodshed at the back of the yard, but neither could get up the nerve. The men were working in there, with axes and knives. Three deerskins were already nailed up on boards outside. The men made frequent trips into the house for this and that, enduring the teasing of my sharp-tongued aunts. My Uncle Jim came by with a bundle of rags and crumpled newspaper. We could see a dark line extending from under the cuff of the leather glove on his right hand. The stiff leather was gashed open between the index finger and thumb. We stood in an awestruck kid gang and stared. Blood.

Jim grunted. "Let that be a lesson to you kids. Play with knives, and see what you get?" He took off his other glove, and transferred his cigarette from his mouth to his hand. He appeared unconcerned. He pinched the cut in his right glove shut with his left hand, and headed for the house. "You kids stay away from the shed! Play out front!"

In the front yard, I ran after my cousin Sarah. She was a teenager, and a natural for the role of Della Street, as she had actual bosoms. She often had new ideas that intrigued me. I had nothing to offer her in exchange, which is why she didn't wait up for me when I called. She was walking tensely toward the far corner of the block, her arms crossed tightly across her stomach.

"It's stupid! Why do they have to go deer hunting, anyway?" she said defiantly, when I caught up to her. I was astounded. I thought everyone's family went deer hunting in the fall, the way I thought everyone's dad was tattooed, like my dad. I had never thought of it as optional.

"It's not like we need the meat. The Great Depression is over. Nobody needs to hunt anymore." Sarah kicked at a rock on the sidewalk moodily. "It's uncivilized and cruel to kill animals, if you don't have to. It's disgusting and mean." I didn't know what the Great Depression was, but I wasn't about to ruin everything by asking. I assumed an expression of concern, although I wasn't sure how I felt about what she said.

I had always thought that hunting sounded fun, like a really great game of tag. I wanted to go with the aunts and uncles when they went on their annual hunt and camp out in the woods. I wanted to go crawling on my belly right up to the browsing deer, then leap to give chase after the wounded animal. I wanted to carry a gun. I wanted to join the aunts in the kitchen, drink coffee and tease grown men until they blushed.

I had been surprised at the pool of blood we found on the paved walkway in front of the house when we arrived. I was a little shocked by the stiff deer head on the front porch. Its vacant eyes seemed to be staring elusively past me, no matter where I stood in front of it. The smell of fresh venison reminded me of the punched nose I'd had in second grade, and the sight of purplish meat oozing in the kitchen sink was horrible.

Sarah, of course, had processed these emotions and found words to describe them. I admired her more than ever, whereas she was giving me now giving me a look of disdain.

We heard Grandpa yelling at us to come on for lunch. I turned to go, but Sarah didn't follow. "Tell them I'm not hungry. Tell them I'm not coming near the house until we go home," she told me, her voice taut with anger. I wanted to be not hungry, too, but I was hungry, and Sarah was now walking away from me in a rapid way that meant she didn't want to be followed. So I ran back to the house.

Except for Sarah, we all ate standing in the front yard. We had Velveeta sandwiches and we had to share drinks of green Kool-Aid out of jelly jars. In the kitchen, the women were working harder than ever, grinding meat into sausage, putting steaks and stew meat up into packets of butcher paper wrapped with string, ready for the meat lockers. The work, once it started, had to be finished quickly.

My Uncle Jim was smoking silently on the front porch, next to the deer head. Jim had grown a beard for the Oregon Centennial a few years ago, but he had never shaved it off. This worried my Grandmother, who afraid that Jim, one of her younger children, might have hippie leanings. Through the windshield of his battered blue-and-rust colored pick up, among the loose tools and car parts and whatnot, could be seen a paperback copy of The Dharma Bums. Nobody knew what to make of him. Yet he seemed to be the right person to ask my question of.

"Is hunting uncivilized and cruel?" I asked him.

"Yes," he responded at once.

"Then why do you do it?" I wanted to know.

"Three reasons," Jim said, dropping his cigarette on the porch and crushing it out with the toe of his brown leather boot. "One, I like to eat venison. Two, because hunting, now that we're civilized, is a ritual that puts us in touch with an ancient way of living. We all used to be hunters. Now people buy their food in cans. They've forgotten where it comes from. When you hunt, you never forget that. You may be cruel when you kill an animal, but you're grateful, too. You don't take food for granted, because it cost you a lot of trouble to get it."

He paused for a moment and shrugged. "I forget what three is. Never mind. Did I answer your question?"

"Kind of," I said. I was getting tired of the answers. I was ready to go play again. I could see my cousins counting up sides for Red Rover across the street at the high school, and I didn't want to be left out.

"Well, don't worry," said my uncle, smiling. "I don't think there will be too many more hunting trips in this family. It's getting too crazy out in the woods. Not enough deer, too many nuts with guns."

And he was right. That was the last of the big annual hunting trips. It was also the last time we had enough kids for Perry Mason. I never went deer hunting, and I never got to sit with the aunts in the kitchen. Quarrels and new jobs and divorces and funerals all did their bit to drive my family farther apart from each other.

We're civilized people now. Sarah would be pleased. In the autumn, when the leaves fall, I am glad the deer are safe from us. But I wish there were another ancient ritual to take the place of the big hunt.

LR Sexton

We are fortunate this month to have two essays on the fall season. We'd like to bid farewell to Catherine Heising, who is leaving the Library this month after serving in the Preservation Unit for several years, and to remind her: Please write! --ed.

You know the kind of day-mid-October in the Willamette Valley, after a light frost, so clear it is all you can think about, so quiet you can hear the rains that will be coming. A mountain was not necessary, just somewhere with fresh air and sun, away from the sounds of the city. Somewhere to fit in between a two-year-old's nap and dinner. We emerged from our car at the end of Royal Avenue after the short drive past dry late-summer farmland. A breeze bringing in wisps of high clouds rustled the dried grass seed heads.

Not ten feet down the trail Elsa, my five-year-old daughter, spotted a praying mantis and bent down to let it climb on her hand. We stopped many times down the short trail to look at seed fluff, feathers, even gravel-of interest to the two-year-old, Rose. Practicing and showing kids how to use binoculars I saw an unusual large bird gliding southward, heading swiftly out of view. A minute later a couple returning down the path helped us identify the Black-shouldered kite, consulting their Petersen's Guide. They hadn't seen the bird but were clearly happy for me and for this place, as the kite was a bit north of its typical range.

White egrets I'd seen many times from Highway 126. There was a group of them standing in the shallow water with a Great blue heron about five-hundred feet away. This was something a five-year-old could practice aiming the binoculars at. I lifted Elsa up so she could see over the cattails. Then we continued walking until just after the first crossing of shallow water to snack, listen to the wind, watch the egrets, and sink sandals into the mud. Elsa knew how to walk around the mud, moving from grass tuft to tuft; Rose just waded in and became dismayed at the state of her sandals so I rinsed them off with some of our drinking water. The golden color of our surroundings grew richer and redder with the ripening of the afternoon.

After checking my watch I knew we had to begin heading back. The scrubby trees we hadn't noticed before were filled with Red-wing blackbirds. Later, using our guide at home, we identified the brown birds with them as female Red-wing blackbirds. Our eyes lifted above the flat prairie as a riotous honking of Canada geese split into four separate flocks as they neared the reservoir. Just above the tops of the grasses and scrub, we watched a female Northern harrier hunting.

Late afternoon on an Indian summer day, the voice of the wind sweeping clean city minds, the dried seeds food for countless birds, we found a kind of food for our over-busy family. Just a few miles outside of town, we spent an hour, walking at a compromise between a five-year-old's and two-year-old's pace. This area west of Eugene appears healthy if birds are any indication. The children a little healthier, too. They walked back to the car hand-in-hand.

Catherine Heising

John Flynn, local photographer, will be in the Knight Library November 15th with his slide show presentation on northern lights. Details will be posted soon.

Library Walks Away With Trophy

These commuters were among those who biked, bused and walked the Library into first place in this year's City of Eugene Commute Challenge 2000. Thanks to Tamara Vidos, who coordinated the Library's efforts. She commends everyone who made a special effort to find an alternative to driving to work. The Library System performed splendidly, with 65% of staff out of 140 in attendance using alternative transportation on the day of the challenge. Our category was not-for-profit organizations with over 100 employees.The trophy will be on view in the staff lounge sometime in November.

Diversity Doings

Cultural Differences in the Classroom
Submitted by Rose Thomas

What would you do if you were having trouble communicating with another person? Would you speak faster? Talk louder? Give up and walk away?

On September 6th, 2000, the Library Diversity Advisory Group sponsored a workshop on the "Cultural Differences in the Classroom" facilitated by Magid Shirzadegan from the UO Office of International Education and Exchange. Approximately 30 Library faculty and staff attended the workshop designed to allow participants to explore some of the challenges that can arise when people from different cultures come together. The UO Library System, as you know, employs many international student workers, and often serves international students and faculty at its public service desks. This workshop was a unique opportunity to reflect on our services and training methods by watching a short video and exploring questions afterward about different styles of communication and new ways of communicating effectively.

Afterward, I sat down with Magid to ask him some questions about the workshop:

How long have you been teaching this workshop? Was this workshop an original idea or is this kind of workshop normally offered in international student programs across the country?

I started teaching similar workshops when I was at the University of Michigan and I have been teaching the "Cross-cultural Communication" workshop for about eight years at the UO. When I came to the University of Oregon, I was not aware of anyone else was doing this kind of workshop on this campus. So, I suggested the idea of this workshop to Cris Cullinan in the Office of Human Resources and volunteered to help put it together. That was four years ago. I had started out facilitating this workshop for students, but then moved on to presenting it to UO faculty and staff.

Have international students complained to you, or shared with you, their own encounters with the cultural divide?

My feeling was that there has been no one specific problem or incidents, but there have been smaller problems felt by the international student community on this campus. This workshop originally started as a need to raise students and staff's awareness of the values international students bring to our campus community. Many other campuses realize greater communication dialogue is necessary for their international students to feel valued and respected.

Why do you think diversity is important?

I think everything in life is diverse-everything and everybody has some sort of difference. That includes people that come from other countries and other backgrounds and experiences. What are important are our own attitudes toward people and their differences when we encounter them.

What do you think should be the University's responsibility in addressing diversity issues?

One, I think that in order to increase diversity, we need to look for people with differences. That includes hiring people with diverse points of view and ways of thinking and not just looking at the obvious things like race or gender or age. I also think that there should be equity, with equal opportunities for all people within the University system-students, faculty and staff. We all have room to learn about ourselves and about other people. The world is getting smaller and we should intentionally use whatever knowledge needed to create a harmonious and diverse environment, so we can live in this world without isolation.

Could you share any of your own experiences with dealing with a communication problem or a cultural gap?

Magid: Well, when I first came to the U.S. in mid 70s, I did not understand what diversity means. I had a very twisted view of the world. Although my family was very educated and I thought I had a very liberal upbringing, I was extremely underdeveloped and naive in regard to understanding and dealing with differences. My image of ethnic diversity in the U.S. was formed by John Wayne movies. I was shocked when I had my first encounter with a blind student at Georgetown University. At the time in my country, people with any physical disabilities would be hiding in their homes or if they were from wealthy families, they would go to special schools. It is pretty sad to admit, but I had never met or talked to anyone with a disability in my entire life.

Another shock I absorbed came from a fellow student worker in the library. I could not believe my ears when he told me he was gay. I was thinking to myself why would anyone say such a thing openly? In Iran, even today if people admit they are gay, they might be executed.

So I guess, I have learned a little about human differences and a lot about myself and my attitude toward those differences. However, by simply being in the vicinity of cultural or other differences, I don't believe we learn about how to appreciate them. I believe we are by nature intolerant when it comes to differences and diversity. Historically, we gravitate toward similarities and avoid differences. To change our natural tendencies, we need to take serious and intentional steps to learn about what makes us uncomfortable about other people's differences and deal with them. I think teaching about cultural differences is one of the ways I found I could learn and appreciate our "uniqueness" and differences.

If you would like to get a copy of the handout from this workshop, please contact Rose Thomas rthomas@oregon at 6-1842. There will also be another workshop held on Wednesday, November 29, 2000, 2:00-4:00 pm, in the Alsea and Coquille Rooms of EMU. To pre-register, contact the Office of Human Resources at x6-3159.

The Library Diversity Advisory Group (LDAG) will sponsor two events for the upcoming National American Indian Heritage Month in November 2000. Photographs from the Moorhouse Collection in Special Collections will on display in the low cases outside of the Browsing Room throughout the month. LDAG will also sponsor the following movie event (in two parts): a lunchtime showing of the popular movie"Smoke Signals" [screenplay written by Sherman Alexie, a Northwest author] November 16-17th, 2000, 1-2pm in Media Services, Studio B.

Eerie jack-o-lantern lights lit the Browsing room on Halloween afternoon. Trays of cookies, candy corn, and a cauldron of steaming brew waited to be devoured. News of the Scary Story Reading traveled so wide and far that one pour soul even broke out of jail to attend!

Three witches (normally disguised as Lonni Sexton, Rebecca Fisher, and Jean Murphy) opened the festivities by stirring up the deliciously wicked brew first concocted by Shakespeare in Macbeth.

Jean Fisher, Rebecca's mother, acted out the poem "Little Orphan Annie." She quite effectively warned children about the dangers of goblins.

Linda Zimmerman read "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs. This chilling tale of a monkey-paw talisman granting wishes in unexpected ways was excellent.

Lori Robare read "MacGregor's Tale," a story of a library ghost who has a special interest in the works of Sir Walter Scott.

Dorothy Attneave sang "Holland Handkerchief," a ballad telling the tale of a princess who falls in love with a pauper and the unfortunate events that follow.

Chelle Batchelor performed an engaging dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell-tale Heart."

Everyone present closed the festivities with a round led by Dorothy Attneave, Harriett Smith, and Jean Murphy.

"Have you seen the ghost of
John?
Long white bones with the rest all gone -
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO, John
Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on?

Submit the next part of the story for December's newsletter. The editor will post one submission for next month's Pass-the-Story adventure. Additional submissions may also be posted for entertainment value.

FROM THE FACT FILE

Bookends

This month's contest is a bit tricky; so you could end up as the winner without getting all ten answers correct. But to help you along, we'll permit each participant one Lifeline, in which we'll turn one of the above clues into a multiple-choice format. Submit your answers by November 22 to Fact File. The library staff member whose submission has the most correct answers will win a $5 gift certificate, redeemable at the UO Bookstore. In the case of a tie, a random drawing will be held to determine a winner. The answers, and the name of our winner, will be announced in the December LSA Newsletter.

LSA dues are due by
December 31st
         Please send $6 cash or check to
           Tamara Vidos, LSA Treasurer
                Documents Center

Been to an interesting conference? Send us a brief report for publication in the next newsletter. Thanks!

Kudos and Congratulations!

Congratulations to Shirien (Stevens) Chappell on her marriage September 30.

Terry McQuilkin's orchestral arrangement of "Valses Poeticos" by Enrique Granados has been recently released by Neil A. Kjos Music Company, a major publisher of educational music.

Welcome new staff!

Christopher Lundberg began his appointment as the AV Repair Technician in Media Services on October 25.

David Peterson began his appointment, also in Media Services, as an AV Repair Tech 1, on October 2.

Stan Nelson accepted our offer of the position of Media Technology Coordinator, also in Media Services [which apparently is undergoing some transition (!)], beginning November 1.

Kaiping Zhang will be our new Business Reference Librarian in the Documents Center beginning December 1.

Duncan Barth joined Library Systems as an Information Tech Consultant (Linda Ivy's old position).

Stephanie Michel will be joining the Reference department in Richard's old position next term.

Staff profile:

Dotti Clegg, Preservation