TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Laura Fosmire

TEDxSalem entertainment fuses yoga, Broadway, Latin jazz, and Middle-Eastern folk dancing

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For those of you who have been to TED con­fer­ences in the past, you’ll know it’s more than just speak­ers (although they are cer­tain­ly a high­light!). It’s a whole day of inno­v­a­tive think­ing, engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion, mak­ing new friends, stretch­ing your brain, par­tic­i­pa­tion and enter­tain­ment. Beyond our ros­ter of speak­ers, we have break­out ses­sions and per­for­mances lined up to real­ly round out your day.

And if you’ve been to a TEDxSalem event before, you’ll know our enter­tain­ment always rocks.

This year is no dif­fer­ent. We have Mik­ki Trow­bridge teach­ing yoga; Ishtar Sumar with Iraqi folk danc­ing; Edna Vazquez per­form­ing folk, rock, pop and Mari­achi music; and a sur­prise per­for­mance from the folks at Enlight­ened The­atrics!

Mik­ki Trow­bridge

Mik­ki Trow­bridge has been teach­ing a flow­ing, vinyasa style of yoga since 2010. She received her 200 hour Yoga­Works cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2011 and also have com­plet­ed cer­ti­fi­ca­tions or advanced train­ings with Strala, Yoga Med­i­cine and Street Yoga. Her class­es are anatom­i­cal­ly informed and soul­ful­ly inspired and promise to be fun, flow­ing (often a lit­tle sweaty) and leave you feel­in’ good. She aspires to infuse her pas­sion for the prac­tice, her love of music and gen­uine, life-inspired mus­ings into each class.

Mik­ki teach­es pri­mar­i­ly in the Salem, Ore­gon area with stu­dio class­es at Indi­go Well­ness Cen­ter and pri­vate class­es at Ore­gon State Hos­pi­tal and at a vari­ety of local busi­ness­es and orga­ni­za­tions. In addi­tion, she hosts reg­u­lar Yoga + Beer events at local brew­eries around the state and offers StandUp Pad­dle Board Yoga class­es in Pacif­ic City.

Ishtar Sumar

Ishtar Sumar is an Iraqi folk dancer using move­ment to con­nect with cul­ture. She is a dance and fit­ness instruc­tor at Chemeke­ta Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege with expe­ri­ence in Mid­dle East­ern dance, as well as jazz, hip-hop and mod­ern dance plus health and fit­ness.

With cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and degrees in his­to­ry and sports fit­ness, Ishtar uses her danc­ing to teach move­ment and the his­to­ry of Mid­dle-East­ern folk dance. Ishtar is also the vice pres­i­dent of the Iraqi Cul­ture and Arts Asso­ci­a­tion in San Diego, as well as the chair of the Iraqi Jour­nal­ist Union in Amer­i­ca.

Edna Vazquez

Edna Vazquez is a Port­land-based Latin Amer­i­can singer-song­writer who per­forms orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions that pay homage to her inter­na­tion­al influ­ences with a pas­sion that comes through in every note of her music. She lifts the audience’s spir­its dur­ing her cathar­tic live per­for­mances with a vocal range that allows her to tran­si­tion seam­less­ly between folk, rock, pop and Mari­achi, all while explor­ing jazz stylings. Edna’s songs are deeply root­ed in uni­ver­sal human emo­tion and she has trav­eled far and wide spread­ing her mes­sage of light, love and cul­tur­al heal­ing.

Born in the Mex­i­can state of Col­i­ma but raised in Jalis­co, Edna spent half of her life immersed in the cul­ture and music of Mex­i­co and Latin Amer­i­ca, mov­ing to the Unit­ed States as a teenag­er. Her pas­sion for music and per­for­mance was born from these bicul­tur­al roots and has led her on a path of self-dis­cov­ery through song that has brought her suc­cess at each turn in the road. Whether shar­ing the stage with her musi­cal influ­ences or win­ning the first prize on Saba­do Gigante with her ren­di­tion of Cucur­ru­cucú Palo­ma, Edna’s spir­it and pow­er­ful vocal per­for­mance have been the cor­ner­stone of her career.

Enlight­ened The­atrics

Found­ed in 2013 by the­atre pro­fes­sion­al Vin­cen­zo Meduri, Enlight­ened The­atrics, a 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that aims to fur­ther the cul­tur­al enrich­ment of Salem by pro­vid­ing pro­fes­sion­al musi­cal the­atre expe­ri­ences and edu­ca­tion for all.

A Salem native and grad­u­ate of Sprague High School, Vin­cen­zo earned a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts in Musi­cal The­atre from Elon Uni­ver­si­ty in 2011. Fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion, he pur­sued his dreams in New York City dis­cov­er­ing a love for direct­ing and teach­ing, which inspired him to return to Salem to estab­lish an orga­ni­za­tion for artists, stu­dents and dream­ers ded­i­cat­ed to instill­ing hope, edu­ca­tion and inspi­ra­tion in gen­er­a­tions to come.

Enlight­ened The­atrics brings the Broad­way expe­ri­ence to Salem, while con­tin­u­ing to breathe new life into a rich, his­tor­i­cal insti­tu­tion at the cen­ter of the city’s cul­tur­al, social and eco­nom­ic evo­lu­tion.

In Jan­u­ary 2015, the Meduri fam­i­ly acquired Salem’s His­toric Grand The­atre. Con­struct­ed in 1900 and list­ed on the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places, the the­ater has served as a sta­ple of Salem cul­tur­al life for more than a cen­tu­ry hous­ing and host­ing every­thing from per­form­ing arts to enter­tain­ment, retail, restau­rants and more.

It’s not too late! Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. You can also buy tick­ets at the door! The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Vanessa Timmons: Resiliency throughout domestic violence, activism, survival and revolution

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Some­times, the word “rev­o­lu­tion” brings to mind a kind of vio­lence, the kind asso­ci­at­ed with wars and revolts and mas­sive upris­ings. But for oth­ers, the real rev­o­lu­tion­ary work is the work that goes into pre­vent­ing vio­lence — and help­ing its sur­vivors heal.

vaneesa2bOne such per­son is Vanes­sa Tim­mons, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ore­gon Coali­tion Against Domes­tic and Sex­u­al Vio­lence, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that works through­out the state to end vio­lence in all com­mu­ni­ties. Tim­mons is also a moth­er, a grand­moth­er, a sur­vivor of sex­u­al abuse, and one of the speak­ers at this year’s TEDxSalem.

“I real­ly see domes­tic vio­lence work as rev­o­lu­tion­ary work,” Tim­mons says. “Rev­o­lu­tion hap­pens in a com­mu­ni­ty when all indi­vid­u­als are able to thrive.”

For Tim­mons, the rev­o­lu­tion lies in the com­mu­ni­ty, not just in the indi­vid­ual. She sees heal­ing as a com­mu­ni­ty-wide action, not just some­thing that indi­vid­ual assault and vio­lence sur­vivors must do.

“My talk is focused on resilien­cy for activists and self-care as acts of rev­o­lu­tion,” she says. “It’s real­ly look­ing at how we sus­tain brav­ery and be engaged in rev­o­lu­tion­ary acts. How do we keep our brav­ery and resilien­cy and vision vig­or­ous­ly engaged while we’re in that effort of chang­ing the world.”

Tim­mons fur­ther explains that a lot of her work is char­ac­ter­ized as anti-vio­lence, anti-racism or anti-oppres­sion. But it’s also pro- work, too; it’s work­ing toward a bet­ter world for every­one.vanessatimmons

“The weari­ness of peo­ple as we’ve gone through this elec­tion cycle, in a lot of ways that weari­ness inhibits our abil­i­ty to sus­tain and main­tain our efforts,” she says. “I am real­ly hop­ing that peo­ple walk away from my talk with some prac­ti­cal skills that I use to sus­tain my own brav­ery and resilience in times of dif­fi­cul­ty.”

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Gina Ochsner: Wielding the power of words for a (peaceful) revolution

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Gina Ochsner is a sto­ry­teller (just like us!).

The Salem native is an award-win­ning nov­el­ist and fic­tion writer. She’s the writer-in-res­i­dence at Cor­ban Uni­ver­si­ty, where she teach­es writ­ing and lit­er­a­ture and directs the annu­al Por­tals Writ­ing Con­fer­ence.

And as a speak­er at TEDxSalem, she’s going to tell you an incred­i­ble sto­ry about a series of events between 1987 and 1991 in Latvia, Esto­nia and Lithua­nia that became known as the Singing Rev­o­lu­tion.

ochsner_gina_credit-annie-beedy_catalog-author-photo“These peo­ple band­ed togeth­er to say to their Sovi­et occu­piers, ‘We’ve had enough, it’s time for you to go home,’ ” Ochsner explains. “They band­ed togeth­er and made a human chain over 400 miles long and held hands. It stretched from the cap­i­tal of Esto­nia to Lithua­nia. They sang songs and recit­ed poet­ry and this made a dif­fer­ence. With­in 18 months, the Sovi­et Union com­plete­ly pulled out and they were among the first to declare their inde­pen­dence.”

Ochsner learned about the chain of singers while research­ing her lat­est nov­el, released just four weeks ago, called The Hid­den Let­ters of Velta B. The book is about a fam­i­ly in Latvia, a boy who hears all, and the pow­er of sto­ries, words and secrets.

“I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing about Latvia,” she says. “But I got to know a Lat­vian woman who lives here in town, and she was telling me her fam­i­ly sto­ry and I start­ed doing research there and real­ized this world that has opened up to me that I nev­er knew exist­ed. I was so struck by the rich­ness of the cul­turgina-bwe and the love for song and dance and poet­ry, it just over­whelms me.”

These are all themes that Ochsner plans to explore in her TED talk.

“It’s inter­est­ing to think about rev­o­lu­tion and how big change hap­pens with some­thing as small as words and how we use them,” she says. “I think peo­ple some­times believe they have no voice or pow­er and that’s sim­ply not true. These were ordi­nary peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in these events. They were just hum­ble, ordi­nary peo­ple who got togeth­er and said, when we are togeth­er, our voic­es are strong.”

 

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem IV

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for a stu­dent. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

An ode to the annual event t‑shirt

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If you’ve been with TEDxSalem since the begin­ning, you’ve prob­a­bly noticed some­thing that occurred to me the oth­er day:

I’m build­ing up an impres­sive col­lec­tion of t‑shirts.

Not just reg­u­lar t‑shirts, obvi­ous­ly, but TEDxSalem offi­cial swag t‑shirts.

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We accu­mu­late t‑shirts all our lives. High school clubs, col­lege mas­cots, sum­mer camp uni­forms, fundrais­ers, fam­i­ly reunions, home­com­ing theme days, some­times even Hal­loween cos­tumes.

Some peo­ple purge these extra­ne­ous pieces of cloth­ing with clock-like reg­u­lar­i­ty. Oth­ers have decades of his­to­ry buried deep in their clos­et, unearthed in a wash of nos­tal­gia dur­ing a move or rig­or­ous spring clean­ing. I’ve known cer­tain crafty folks to stitch their shirt col­lec­tions into quilts; the ulti­mate trib­ute to mem­o­ry.

When I grad­u­at­ed from col­lege, I had enough spir­it­ed appar­el for at least two weeks of out­fits. I kept only a pair of sweat­pants and, of course, a cou­ple t‑shirts.

We’re now four years deep into the grow­ing TEDxSalem tra­di­tion, and we’re grow­ing the t‑shirt col­lec­tion that goes along with it.

There’s some kind of mag­ic with these shirts. Each event had its own swag out­side the shirt: Cof­fee mugs, bags, pens. But there’s a per­ma­nence to the sym­bol and the sto­ry you lit­er­al­ly wear on your back.

Maybe you wear them to oth­er TED events, to proud­ly rep­re­sent from where you came. Maybe you wear it to the gym or to sleep in.

With­out them, would you remem­ber the themes and logos of pri­or years? Would you still be able to trace the nar­ra­tive of an evolv­ing TEDxSalem, from new­born Illu­mi­na­tion to sopho­moric Mox­ie and swag­ger­ing Fear­less?

If last year’s Fear­less was our junior year, grow­ing in con­fi­dence but not quite estab­lished yet, then we come into senior year, tri­umphant, with Rev­o­lu­tions. Our vic­to­ry lap. Only, we aren’t fin­ished yet. Next year we’ll have anoth­er TEDxSalem, with anoth­er theme and anoth­er logo.

And anoth­er t‑shirt.

Get your tick­ets for TEDxSalem 2017

Tick­ets are on sale now for Salem’s annu­al TEDx event Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2017. Tick­ets are $50, $40 for stu­dents. The all-day event includes talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.us.

Save the date! Our next annual event is…

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… Jan­u­ary 7, 2017!

Get it on the cal­en­dar now, because you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to be a part of this year’s expe­ri­ence.

We’ll be back at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which did such an amaz­ing job host­ing us last year, with new and improved plans for this year’s event.

We have a phe­nom­e­nal ros­ter of speak­ers, rep­re­sent­ing the absolute best of Salem, the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond. Look for more infor­ma­tion about them in the near future. But we can tell you that they include an Olympic ath­lete, a prodi­gy, a punk rock chemist, a Bud­dhist teacher and many, many more!

We have a brand new theme and incred­i­ble logo to go with it, cour­tesy of a local artist. Stay tuned for the full sto­ry behind why we’ve cho­sen Rev­o­lu­tions as this year’s theme, as well as the sto­ry behind the logo.

And speak­ing of artists, we have anoth­er Artist in Res­i­dence for this year’s event. You’ll hear more about her soon, but trust us, she’s a per­fect fit.

Ear­ly bird tick­ets will go on sale in August, so keep a look out for the for­mal announce­ment and get your tick­et while the get­ting’s good!

We are already so excit­ed for our next TEDxSalem, and we can’t wait to share all of it with you. Get ready!

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Coming to town for TEDxSalem? Here’s what else you could do

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Look, we’re a lit­tle biased. We live in Salem. We love Salem. We think Salem rocks, which is why so many of us work so hard to bring you TEDxSalem, as a show­case for just how cool this city, and our com­mu­ni­ty, is.

But if you’re vis­it­ing us from out-of-town, (wel­come!) you might be won­der­ing: What else is there to do here?

We have some ideas for you.

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The Capi­tol, obvi­ous­ly. Sort of a no-brain­er, but we’d be remiss not to include it. Guid­ed tours occur on week­days only, but it’s worth wan­der­ing in just to see the rotun­da.

The His­toric Elsi­nore The­ater. Oth­er­wise known as the set­ting of TEDxSalem 2014! This beau­ti­ful old the­ater shows clas­sic films, sym­phon­ic per­for­mances and nation­al tour­ing enter­tain­ment.

Eat your way through down­town. You’ll already be down­town for TEDxSalem, so why not do some explor­ing? We have clas­sic, long-stand­ing lunch coun­ters, qual­i­ty Ital­ian, Span­ish and French restau­rants, local­ly beloved estab­lish­ments and cozy cof­fee shops.

Head to the river­front. You could stroll the pedes­tri­an bridge, go for a spin on the Carousel or just soak up the atmos­phere. Or take a dri­ve to sprawl­ing and gor­geous Bush Park and Minto-Brown.

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Taste the best wine Ore­gon has to offer. We’re pret­ty par­tial to Pinots. There are dozens of world class vine­yards and winer­ies just out­side city lim­its, many of them offer­ing wood-fire piz­zas, cheese plates or full kitchen options. Yum!

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Take in a show, comedic or musi­cal. The options are darn near end­less. There’s fam­i­ly-friend­ly improv at Capi­tol City, the hottest indie films at Salem Cin­e­ma, or the lat­est musi­cal at the Pen­ta­cle The­atre (Addams Fam­i­ly launch­es the same week­end as TEDxSalem!).

Feel col­le­giate at Willamette. Our local uni­ver­si­ty has one gor­geous cam­pus, with wind­ing trails and autumn leaves just beg­ging for a leisure­ly stroll.

Art? Check. His­to­ry? Check. See the lat­est exhib­it at the Hal­lie Ford Muse­um of Art, peruse the finest pieces for sale at the Bush Barn Art Cen­ter, see the film-famous Ore­gon State Hos­pi­tal muse­um or soak up local his­to­ry at the Willamette Her­itage Cen­ter.

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If wine isn’t your thing, maybe beer is? Our small but wild­ly tal­ent­ed (and deli­cious) col­lec­tion of brew­eries are win­ning awards and mak­ing head­lines.

Still need a place to stay? May we rec­om­mend the Grand Hotel in down­town Salem? Not only is it right next door to the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, but TEDxSalem atten­dees get a dis­count! Just men­tion that you’ll be at the con­fer­ence and get a room for $129, plus tax.

Look­ing for oth­er must-see tips about Salem? Ask any of our vol­un­teers or team mem­bers! Still need tick­ets for TEDxSalem? Nev­er fear, they’re still avail­able online.