Saerom

 

Eric Howald is a sto­ry­teller with a heart for the social­ly dis­en­fran­chised.

That’s a good mix for a jour­nal­ist.

Eric, an asso­ciate edi­tor with Keiz­er­times, first got into comics as a child, when his dad exposed him to Bloom Coun­ty strips.

Then he came across G.I Joe’s issue 21, an entire com­ic with­out words.

“When I saw some­one tell a sto­ry with­out any words, it blew my mind,” Eric said.

The St. Louis native moved to Eugene for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon grad­u­ate jour­nal­ism pro­gram, and was shocked by the ubiq­ui­tous nature of its home­less pop­u­la­tion. At the same time, he used comics to escape from his aca­d­e­m­ic read­ings, and noticed a con­nec­tion between comics and social issues.

At TEDxSalem, Eric will show us some exam­ples of how comics can change minds and in turn bring about social change.

Eric actu­al­ly end­ed up nev­er fin­ish­ing his jour­nal­ism mas­ter’s. Instead, he got a mas­ter’s of fine arts in cre­ative writ­ing from Anti­och Col­lege’s  low-res­i­den­cy pro­gram. He was drawn to the school for its ties with social jus­tice, he said.

For his field study, he start­ed a cre­ative writ­ing club at McNary High School and the group is in its third year.

Eric hopes to expose TEDxSalem atten­dees to comics as an art form that is unique­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive — not just between the writer and the artist, but with the read­er as well.

“You real­ly have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to change hearts and minds,” he said.

Peace, death and beau­ty. Does one of these words seem out of place to you?

To Kei­th Seck­el, those three words are often one in the same.

Kei­th is a reg­is­tered nurse and clin­i­cal man­ag­er at Willamette Val­ley Hos­pice. That means his job and that of his col­leagues at the Salem non­prof­it is to serve peo­ple near­ing death and their fam­i­lies.

That may sound like a dark way to spend your days, but Kei­th is a glow­ing, calm­ing spir­it.

And at TEDxSalem next month, Kei­th will share with you why death is not a scary thing. In fact, by avoid­ing death, you avoid life, he says.

Kei­th grew up in Ore­gon City. After high school, he went into the Navy and even­tu­al­ly set­tled in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area — where his wife, Cathy, is from — for about 20 years.

In the Navy, he ran nuclear reac­tors. When he left the ser­vice, he did­n’t want to stay in engi­neer­ing. But when his wife told him he’d make a good nurse, Kei­th shrugged it off.

Turns out, his wife was right (aren’t they always?). Nurs­ing turned out to be a good pair­ing of his com­pas­sion­ate side and his love for the tech­ni­cal and the sci­en­tif­ic.

And just a few weeks into nurs­ing school, he watched a video about hos­pice saw on the screen his call­ing. In 2007, Kei­th and Cathy moved to Salem, and he start­ed to work for WVH.

Unlike oth­er types of med­ical care, Kei­th says, “Hos­pice is patient-dri­ven.”

Instead of the doc­tors telling patients what to do, patients decide how they want to spend the end of their lives in hos­pice.

“You have six months to live. If you want to eat McDon­ald’s every day, go ahead,” Kei­th said.

When Kei­th was reg­u­lar­ly in the field, car­ing for patients in their homes, he would lose a patient on his case­load every week.

I asked him sev­er­al times if the con­stant death and loss was dif­fi­cult. His reply each time was: “Some­times.”

But when the patients are ready, and their fam­i­lies are ready, death can be a beau­ti­ful and peace­ful thing, he said.

“And that’s OK.”

Patrick Spencer says he has had two epipha­nies in his life.

One was when he met his wife, Lib­by. Anoth­er was when he walked into the cork for­est of Por­tu­gal.

At the time, Patrick was the sus­tain­abil­i­ty coor­di­na­tor with Willamette Val­ley Vine­yards in Turn­er. He was invit­ed by one of the win­ery’s cork sup­pli­ers to see close up how cork is har­vest­ed for wine bot­tle clo­sures.

“It was an ah-ha moment for me,” Patrick said.

At TEDxSalem, Patrick will take us to that moment of illu­mi­na­tion.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and oneophil­ia are two of many things that make Ore­gon spe­cial, and often we and the rest of the coun­try have com­bined the two pas­sions.

At some point, that has led to an avoid­ance of corked bot­tles and a pop­u­lar­iza­tion of plas­tic clo­sures and alu­minum screw caps.

Well, what if there isn’t a short­age of cork? What if cork forests are strong and thriv­ing? What if I told you that those who are in the cork indus­try are prob­a­bly the great­est stew­ards of this nat­ur­al resource?

Today, Patrick is the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Cork For­est Con­ser­va­tion Alliance, a Salem-based glob­al non­prof­it that works to edu­cate on and pro­tect the cork forests of Europe and North Africa.

The 5‑year-old orga­ni­za­tion runs the largest cork recy­cling pro­gram in the U.S. and it was recent­ly award­ed spe­cial con­sul­ta­tive sta­tus to the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil of the Unit­ed Nations.

So why is a Salem-based man advo­cat­ing for cork forests and their stew­ards thou­sands of miles away from home?

“What we do local­ly real­ly affects the world glob­al­ly,” Patrick says.

Con­cerned about how human rela­tion­ships have changed in the mod­ern world, a Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty Con­tin­u­ing Instruc­tor used tech­nol­o­gy to bring out the strangers on the oth­er end of the com­put­er screen.

Court­ney Dil­lard and Matt Web­ber mar­ried last year and decid­ed to go on an uncon­ven­tion­al hon­ey moon that they felt suit­ed them as a cou­ple. For five months, they trav­eled from Port­land, Ore., to Port­land, ME, to have break­fast with strangers, despite protests from Court­ney’s pro­tec­tive moth­er.

They shared 60 or so break­fasts with strangers that they recruit­ed through Red­dit and oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions and came back with a sim­ple con­vic­tion. Stranger dan­ger may not be a thing.

The cou­ple is now work­ing on a book, Break­fast with Strangers: 50 Meals Across Amer­i­ca, which is set to pub­lish on Nov. 1. At TEDxSalem a cou­ple weeks lat­er, Court­ney — who teach­es rhetoric and media stud­ies — will share with us some lessons she has learned from her con­ver­sa­tions with strangers.

Court­ney said she was struck by the will­ing­ness of peo­ple to take risks, their patri­o­tism and how mul­ti­fac­eted peo­ple are. Even those whom she might’ve writ­ten off have sur­prised her and inspired her.

To learn more about Court­ney and Mat­t’s jour­ney and project, vis­it their web­site at breakfastwithstrangers.com.

Dr. Pamela Wible (rhymes with Bible) played doc­tor from when she was 5 years old.

Her father was a pathol­o­gist and her moth­er a psy­chi­a­trist. There were babysit­ters, of course, but Pamela was one bossy kid. They could­n’t han­dle her.

So she end­ed up going to work with her par­ents, some­times hang­ing out with corpses in the morgue like it was no big thing.

Pame­la’s par­ents advised her not to go into med­i­cine. But she had a dream of being a small town fam­i­ly doc­tor, mak­ing house calls.

At one time, Pame­la’s dream was the norm. But not today. When Pamela start­ed prac­tic­ing med­i­cine, she found her­self rush­ing patients through in 10–15 min­utes, not form­ing a rela­tion­ship with patients and not ful­ly address­ing their prob­lems or answer­ing their ques­tions.

It was not the type of med­i­cine Pamela had in mind.

She tried all sorts of dif­fer­ent work­ing arrange­ments — small clin­ics, part-time, full-time, hos­pi­tal-owned clin­ics — and noth­ing worked.

It was a num­bers game. See more patients. Pro­duce more. Bring in more rev­enue.

“The doc­tors weren’t hap­py and the patients weren’t hap­py,” Pamela says.

Pamela nev­er grew out of her bossi­ness and inde­pen­dence. She knew that heal­ing was still her call­ing. So instead of being beat­en down by the sys­tem, she cre­at­ed a new one.

Well, it’s not entire­ly new. She’s going back to the patients, ask­ing them what their ide­al clin­ic would look like. The result looks very much like the small town vil­lage doc­tor that seems to have dis­ap­peared.

Pame­la’s med­ical prac­tice shows today that health care does not have to be frus­trat­ing and con­fus­ing and scary. Going to the doc­tor can be a joy­ful expe­ri­ence — one that heals you phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. One that does­n’t have to break the bank.

Today, Pamela helps doc­tors all over the coun­try revive their pas­sion of health care by cut­ting out the lay­ers that have mys­ti­fied it for so long. And at TEDxSalem, Pamela will share some of her secrets to run­ning the ide­al med­ical prac­tice.

Oh, and what is the three naked peo­ple rule?

You should nev­er have that many wait­ing for you at the same time.

Bio

Name: Dr. Pamela Wible

Occu­pa­tion: Fam­i­ly doc­tor

Wrote: Pet Goats & Pap Smears 

Born in: Philadel­phia

Raised in: Lucas, Texas

Lives in: Eugene

School: Welles­ley Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch in Galve­ston, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona (res­i­den­cy)

Words of wis­dom: “It’s just not right to have three naked peo­ple wait­ing at the same time.”

– Saerom Yoo, TEDxSalem sto­ry­teller