Northern Spotted Owl: Reed as Culture and Place, Quakers as Culture and Place, Reunions for Connecting

Reed as culture, Reed as place


Reed College in Portland, Oregon, attracts and creates a faculty, and student body, in an unique way relative to many colleges in the U.S. As the current dean said in a Friday evening talk, Reed explicitly seeks students who are "intellectuals," "geeks," "nerds," or "pinheads," in contrast to other liberal arts' colleges, which he characterized as seeking students with potential leadership qualities. Reed has neither sports' teams, nor fraternities or sororities, and drinking alcohol isn't a central part of attending this college for 4 or more years for many, in my experience.

Reed aims to create a life of the mind in many ways, which is one way of characterizing its culture. It does this through its required Freshman humanities course (Hum 110) focusing first on mostly ancient Greek classics (academic.reed.edu/Humanities/Hum110/syllabus/index.html), as extraordinary books by which people can learn how critically to think and write, as well as learn about the emergence of a remarkably far-reaching set of cultural processes - democracy, philosophy, drama, history, ethics, mathematics, science, the arts, reason, logic, etc. These inform the culture of Reed, as well; ancient Greece's writings and culture (and later classical Roman writings, too) are central to Reed. And it then pursues a fairly rigorous, traditional, academic curriculum. "Distribution requirements that include the arts and humanities, social sciences, mathematics, foreign languages, and natural sciences expose the student to many different methods of intellectual inquiry" (http://www.reed.edu/catalog/edu_program.html). Reed is strong at the college level in physics, chemistry, biology, math, sociology, anthropology, history, English, philosophy and languages, among many other subjects. Reed is also bookish. And it has attracted a lot of smart hippies over the past few decades, as well, and still does, I think.

Reed as a place isn't geographically distributed. Instead it's located in a comfortable, suburban neighborhood in sometimes rainy, southeast Portland, Oregon, and is partly defined by its canyon, a somewhat wild, natural habitat, and body of water, in the center of campus. And the canyon influences Reed's culture, as part of the natural world (naturalism, secularism, evolutionary biology?), and as a quiet place (where study can occur in an institution of higher learning), and as a kind of contrast to the buildings and built part of Reed (in a kind of Taoist way, for me?, and by making possible a contemplation of the natural world?). Reed is a pretty campus, which is also very green due to the Pacific Northwest's climate, with many red brick buildings. The life of Reed emerges from this one place, a campus, in Portland, but Reedies (minds) around the world shape a kind of distributed network, which isn't place-based.


{By comparison, the Society of Friends (Quakers) - I started occasionally attending silent meeting while at Reed - is also a culture, with a shared discourse. Silent meeting, peace issues and consensus-oriented decision-making processes and meeting for business have consistently played a role in perpetuating Friends over 350 years. The Quaker discourse I'm fairly familiar with is very nontheistic, and not very religious, and it focuses on making the world a better place. It's an all age community, with a history of pacifism and peace work (Quakers received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947), and silent meeting is a space where I explore the relaxation response. I think about Quakers loosely in the context of evolutionary biology, where Meeting communities could be considered as troops of primates, echoing what might have taken place among our ancestors over millions of years. (Swarthmore College with its Quaker roots, near Philadelphia, is somewhat similar academically to Reed, but without the explicit Humanities' central focus).

In the unprogrammed tradition of Quakers there are meeting houses in many places around the world, and these locations help give form to a world wide network of unprogrammed Friends, many of whom are gems of people}.


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Connecting with old friends, and Reed's progressive thinking

I made contact while at Reed just recently with a few old friends, - it's so nice to reconnect.

Some of these old friends lived in Reed houses together, which weren't owned by Reed, but called this because many of the people living in them went to Reed. In the early 1980s, most of us had very progressive outlooks, dovetailing with ideas that emerged widely in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Sunflower Recycling was a very progressive, cooperative business in Portland, and in a kind of countercultural way, it attracted a number of my Reed friends as a place to work. In the 70s and 80s, recycling was becoming widespread in the Pacific Northwest. My friends working at Sunflower Recycling believed in its vision of making the world a better place through recycling, and they also earned money via this cooperative business of picking up and recycling people's refuse. As a great friend from Reed whom I just saw, and who worked with Sunflower Recycling for years, said about working at Sunflower: "We were living the revolution," - of making the world a better place, of consensus-based, worker-owned businesses, of doing something which is necessary societally (garbage) in a visionary way, - and especially of pragmatically realizing an ideal.


Around the same time I got involved in the Cathedral Forest Action Group, a group of activists working to preserve Old Growth Forest in the Pacific Northwest, through direct, nonviolent action and organizing. Something like less than 1% of these magnificent forests remained at the time, because timber companies had cut the remainder over the previous 100 years. One friend at the Quaker Meeting, Joe Miller, a retired medical doctor living in a house he and his wife had built on the edge of the Bull Run Reservoir, which supplies water to the city of Portland, and which water is so pure because this reservoir is in Old Growth forest, was working as an individual activist to protect the Bull Run. {The northern spotted owl, click on title above, is an indicator species of the health of old growth forests}. Timber interests wanted to remove downed timber in the Bull Run, and perhaps remove more timber at a later date. In his decades-long effort to preserve the Bull Run Reservoir, Joe Miller wrote and self-published, at his own expense, a pamphlet entitled "What Good Is Free Speech in a Closet?," which he wrote in order to explain his approach, and constitutional right (which he felt was jeapordized), to continue to protest timber removal, and thus protect the Bull Run. (A single old growth Doug Fir tree - the dominant species in Old Growth Forests {a kind of ecosystem} in the Pacific NW - might have brought in $10,000 dollars each in the early 1980s). The removal of this downed timber threatened water quality. While in Portland this weekend, one person at Meeting (June 7, 2009) thought that no downed timber had been removed from the Bull Run Reservoir. (I learned also that Joe Miller died about 2 years ago, living well into his 90s). Progressive environmentalism was, significantly, in the air at Reed, Portland, and Oregon, with so much forest. At the same time the Cathedral Forest Action Group was meeting with officials from the National Forest Service and Willamette Industries, and carrying out civil disobedience to protect spotted owl habitat and these magnificent forests. We held one CFAG business meeting in beautiful Old Growth forest on the Middle Fork of the Santiam River.

This kind of work, and activism, are examples of the interests that some Reed College students engaged in, - and still engage in, I'm sure.

Students at Reed could and can be very anti-establishment oriented, - something which emerges en masse particularly with the 1960s and early 70s, I think. For example, I moved off campus after my first semester, partly due to this way of thinking. My friend mentioned how another friend of ours, who also worked for Sunflower Recycling, felt some anger at Reed, perhaps for similar reasons. There was a lot of anger at the system, at authority, at structure, at racism, at injustice, and at war in the 1960s and 70s. (Many, many university presidents' offices were taken over in the late 1960s and early 70s). For whatever other reasons, this antiestablishmentarianism was a kind of sign of the times (the Chicago-based "Sign of the Times" was also the name of a radical newspaper we read).

The group house I lived in for many years was very close to People's Food Coop, a member-owned cooperative. I worked on developing its bylaws at one point in the early 1980s. Making bylaws transparent, and modifiable by members and community due-process, is still part of People's Food Coop's culture - http://www.peoples.coop.

And many of us repaired our bicycles at the Bicycle Repair Collective, where you could use its tools {the BRC s still functioning - bicyclerepaircol.net}, with assistance, if you wanted it. The BRC was organized on egalitarian principles, as well.


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The Reed Reunion weekend

One theme throughout the reunion weekend had to do with the question, "What is the utility of the Humanities in a Reed education? The brief answer is that society and individuals benefit from students who can think rigorously, and are knowlegdeable, - about literature, art and science. It's a question which defines Reed, and which makes 'the classics' central, as a starting point. Its orientation to the Humanities has been a key component of a Reed education for nearly 100 years, and makes Reed distinctive as an undergraduate center for learning. There were a number of lectures and panels about this over the weekend.


The current dean suggested in a Friday night talk that Reed's goal is to educate students to think, that thinking occurs best with a disciplined mind, that academic disciplines are the best way to achieve disciplined minds, and that these then can lead to ongoing conversations, as ongoing ways of learning.


On Friday night in the beautiful Reed chapel, with arched ceilings and wood paneling, there was a talent show in which I briefly played my bagpipe.


On Saturday, Michael Bérubé, who had led a three day seminar on the Humanities for Reedies during the week, gave a talk which explained the utility of the Humanities. It was great to see Professors Walter Englert (classics) and Bob Knapp (English) here.

I especially enjoyed seeing sociology professor John Pock (in a sociology of religion class, he once asked us to create our own religion, after doing field work by visiting places of religion around Portland) over the weekend.


There was a lot of hanging out in the Reed Student Union when I went to Reed, as well as this past weekend. The Student Union (SU) has always been a student space, apart from Reed College spaces, and apart from adult spaces. Students could sleep over night there; the Reed SU was more free than most college's student unions. And hippies, both Reedies and non Reedies, would come there to hang out, sleep over night, etc. Reed's school newspaper, "The Quest," had its offices in the same building. The SU tended to be a space which the Reed administration didn't touch.


Rhys Thomas, a skillful and witty juggler, entertained both adults and kids on Saturday afternoon outside the Winch dormitory.


Good vegetarian food was served at dinner.


Before and during the fireworks, a band played music which was a little like the Grateful Dead's ... It was cool to synthesize the music and the fireworks in my mind, while dancing a little.



Modeling by faculty of independent thinker at Reed

On Saturday night there was a 3 person panel (2 Reed faculty members) in Reed's chapel. One faculty member was a philosopher, and the other had taught English at Reed. The Reed philosophy faculty member modeled in many ways independent thinking and argumentation, drawing perhaps on Greek examples of philosophers. This Professor, who has taught philosophy at Reed for decades, can also appear curmudgeonly and stubbornly argumentative, but does engage in alternative, rigorous argumentation, which can result in beneficial new ideas, and the development of critical thinking. (He had let his body go a little, - he looked a little unhealthy).

{The clinical benefits of flax seed oil - Omega 3 fatty acids (3-4 times a day with food), with food are multiple, with very few side effects, and might possibly benefit him}.


Dr. Demento, a radio disk jockey in L.A. for years, and a Reedie, who in his career often played very innovative and off-beat music, such as rock parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic and Frank Zappa, staged a very amusing and enlightening show for us in Vollum Lecture Hall on Saturday evening.


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Scroungers at Reed

Scroungers were a kind of institution at Reed. Reedies and non-students would wait in the cafeteria tray window as food trays were being returned for washing at the end of a meal, and take the uneaten food from your tray. This reduced food waste, and is a sensible form of recycling, but some people, like parents, thought it unhygenic. And people get free food. I think it still happens.


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Reunions - the word, also - create connections, and can be very positive, - for networking, as well as for regenerating friendship. (Independent-minded as I am, I haven't always thought about reunions like this). I think connecting like this may be due partly to troopbonding (viz. John Money's Concepts of Determinism), a relatively unexplored explication of reunions.

But reunions, as a form of connecting, are very different from the kind of connecting, or the relaxation response, which I explore in the particularly lovely Harbin Hot Springs' warm pool.