TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

Portland State University

Marisa A. Zapata: Rethinking homelessness

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Marisa A. Zap­a­ta is a researcher, edu­ca­tor and plan­ner. She is the Direc­tor of Home­less­ness Research & Action Col­lab­o­ra­tive and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Land-use Plan­ning at Port­land State Uni­ver­si­ty. She holds a doc­tor­ate in Region­al Plan­ning, a mas­ter’s in Urban Plan­ning and a bachelor’s in Anthro­pol­o­gy. When not work­ing, you may find her play­ing flute, read­ing a book, tak­ing a long walk or play­ing a board game. In Jan­u­ary, Dr. Zap­a­ta will take to the TEDxSalem stage to address how we can solve home­less­ness by rethink­ing who has a right to hous­ing.

What was your first TED expe­ri­ence? My first TED expe­ri­ence was prob­a­bly “ille­gal” because it was a TED “style” talk but not offi­cial­ly through TED. One of my friends from col­lege was doing a talk about health care issues that she was study­ing as a med­ical doc­tor. It was won­der­ful to see her, a per­son I had known for awhile, being on a stage and shar­ing her knowl­edge. I learned a lot from the talk!

Do you have a favorite TED Talk? How has it impact­ed your life or per­spec­tive? My cur­rent fave is by Gab­by Rivera who talked about cre­at­ing the first queer Lati­na super­hero. I didn’t grow up read­ing graph­ic nov­els, though my dad talked about his favorite super­hero — Spi­der­man. Like many things I have only real­ized as an adult, my lack of inter­est in a par­tic­u­lar thing was part­ly dri­ven by not see­ing peo­ple like me. I know a lot of peo­ple say rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters, but it real­ly goes fur­ther than an image or a lan­guage. It’s also about ideas and con­ver­sa­tion styles and char­ac­ters who are like your fam­i­ly mem­bers. For me, super­heroes are about imag­ing dif­fer­ent types of futures. A super­verse with white men and hyper­sex­u­al­ized white women could nev­er be a future for me. But a Lati­na? That’s a super I can believe in. I also loved Gabby’s deliv­ery. Like Gab­by, I grew up learn­ing to tell sto­ries and for me, humor was a big part of that. See­ing her laugh on stage is a great reminder that humor can be such an impor­tant part of talks on seri­ous top­ics.

What does this year’s theme “Vision” mean to you? I love this year’s theme. Vision can mean so many dif­fer­ent things, but I think all of those things involved how we share our thoughts, ideas, fears, and hopes. Whether through lit­er­al shared sight or through lan­guage, we cul­ti­vate how we live in com­mu­ni­ty with one anoth­er. For my work, I think about how to envi­sion just futures, and cre­ate path­ways to move us in those direc­tions while prepar­ing for uncer­tain­ty. A lot of this work is about fore­sight — try­ing to think about how our futures might play out based on our presents. I think this is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when think­ing about home­less­ness. We have what can feel like an over­whelm­ing set of tasks in front of us, and list of pos­si­ble options. Envi­sion­ing futures allows us to struc­ture the work and the options.

Tell us some­thing about your­self we could nev­er tell from look­ing at you. My health pre­vents me from work­ing out as hard or often as I want. I’d love to be doing one hour of spin­ning or jog­ging or bik­ing to work, but my phys­i­cal health doesn’t match that. I’ve come to appre­ci­ate a long walk, but also, I just want to go jump on a tram­po­line for an hour!

What is the scari­est thing you have ever done for fun? I rap­pelled down a 28-sto­ry build­ing for a Big Brother/Big Sis­ter fundrais­er with my Lit­tle Sis from the pro­gram. It was for “fun.” It wasn’t real­ly all that fun.

Favorite books? And why. 

Bless Me, Ulti­ma by Rudol­fo Anaya. The sto­ry of a young boy caught between two cul­tures as a young Lati­no liv­ing in the South­west res­onat­ed with me as a cul­tur­al­ly mixed Mex­i­can Amer­i­can from Texas. This book was the first time I read some­thing where mag­i­cal real­ism was inte­grat­ed into the sto­ry, and one of the first times I had seen my cul­ture described in a fic­tion­al sto­ry.

Invis­i­ble Cities by Ita­lo Calvi­no. It’s hard to explain too much about the book with­out giv­ing it away! Maybe I can leave it with — it’s my world view. We all may come from sim­i­lar places and see and expe­ri­ence our com­mu­ni­ties in rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent ways.

Go-to karaoke song? Fan­cy by Reba McEn­tire

Chunky or smooth peanut but­ter? Chunky. All the way.

A ran­dom fact: A fire ant bite could kill me! 

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  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.com

Theresa McCormick: Tomorrow’s fuel may be under your kitchen sink

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Sci­en­tist There­sa McCormick has a few ideas about alter­na­tive fuels, includ­ing one that you may find in your house already. 

There­sa is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Port­land State Uni­ver­si­ty who holds a BSc Chem­istry from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty (2004), a PhD Chem­istry from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty (2008), with Post­doc from Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester (2009–2010) and Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to (2011–2013). Orig­i­nal­ly from Cana­da, her favorite hob­by is curl­ing (more on that below), and now lives in Port­land with her hus­band, Omar El Akkad, and their daugh­ter. She once per­formed in an immer­sive rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Julius Cesar that took over the entire chem­istry build­ing at her uni­ver­si­ty. Curi­ous? Us too…read on and learn more about Dr. McCormick then join us in Jan­u­ary for her idea worth spread­ing.

What was your first TED expe­ri­ence? My broth­er intro­duced me to TED, I don’t remem­ber what video he sent to me first, but he was devour­ing TED talks and send­ing me sev­er­al a day that he loved. 

Do you have a favorite TED Talk? How has it impact­ed your life or per­spec­tive? Isabel Allende, her talk is so empow­er­ing, every once and a while I need to hear amaz­ing women talk about their lives. After watch­ing her talk, I start­ed read­ing her books, which are great, and where I learned why the Gold­en Gate Bridge is called the Gold­en Gate Bridge. 

What does this year’s theme “Vision” mean to you? To me, vision means see­ing things for both what they are and what they could be. When I think about see­ing things for what they are I think about see­ing the whole pic­ture, what the prob­lem is, and how to solve the prob­lem, and what new prob­lems that solu­tion will make. And when I think about what things could be I imag­ine how the world could be with the ide­al solu­tion to prob­lems. 

How has your life been dif­fer­ent than what you’d imag­ined? My life is dif­fer­ent from what I imag­ined in almost every way. I was raised on a farm out­side a very small town in rur­al Ontario. Most women I knew grew-up to become farmer’s wives. I knew I didn’t want to do that. I loved math and sci­ence, so I thought I would become a med­ical doc­tor, and work in my home town, and my farmer hus­band would look after the farm. When I went away to uni­ver­si­ty I found out that if you liked math and sci­ence you could become a sci­en­tist (I pre­vi­ous­ly thought all sci­en­tists were dead white men). That start­ed me down the path to become a chemist, and as is com­mon in aca­d­e­mics when I final­ly found a job as a pro­fes­sor I was very far from the farm I grew up-on. I nev­er thought I would leave Cana­da and move to Ore­gon (I didn’t real­ly know where it was until I inter­viewed at PSU). I nev­er thought I would be a chemist, teach­ing and research­ing, mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies and try­ing to solve the big world prob­lems.

Tell us some­thing about your­self we could nev­er tell from look­ing at you. Most peo­ple are pret­ty sur­prised to find out I was the cap­tain of the wrestling team in high school. I joined the team the year after they first allowed women to wres­tle. I had an amaz­ing coach who sup­port­ed the women as much as the men on the team. It was a great expe­ri­ence for me. Trav­el­ing for tour­na­ments was the first time I was on a plane. I learned a lot about how to lead a team that has been invalu­able in lead­ing a research group. I learned how to throw some­one, not quite as use­ful most of the time, but good to remem­ber. 

What is some­thing unex­pect­ed that has changed about you in the last few years? My daugh­ter came into my life two and a half years ago, which changed every­thing. Before her, my work was one of the most impor­tant things in my life, but now my fam­i­ly takes top-notch. Dahlia brings a new per­spec­tive, focus and joy to life to life.  

Do you have any com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties? I love curl­ing. I am a mem­ber of the Ever­green Curl­ing Club in Beaver­ton and have curled on the same team since I came to Ore­gon six years ago. I play lead, which means I throw the first two stones for my team. It’s a great com­mu­ni­ty and a fun sport.

If you could live in the set­ting of any book or movie, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly being involved in the sto­ry, which would you choose? Anna Karen­i­na – I fell in love with 19th cen­tu­ry Rus­sia. I loved the farm­ing scenes, I want to go to the operas and par­ties. I read it because I felt like I need­ed to read it to be a well-round­ed adult, but I loved it. If you haven’t read it go read it. 

What is the scari­est thing you have ever done for fun? I went sky div­ing once. It was a late night in the lab and the whole group decid­ed it would be fun to go sky­div­ing. We all agreed to go togeth­er, but then every­one else backed out so I con­vinced my soon-to-be hus­band to go with me. I loved it and would do it again.

Would you rather have a rewind but­ton or a pause but­ton on your life? Pause, as long as it lets every­one else stop and I can still do things and don’t age while things are paused. 

Favorite book(s)? And why.
Amer­i­can War: it’s very good and every­one should have at least a dozen copies.

Time Trav­el­ers Wife: I love any­thing with time trav­el, so it was already off to a good start, but the char­ac­ters are great. Most great books I can’t put down, but this one I refused to pick up when I only had one chap­ter left because I didn’t want it to end.

Oryx and Crake, Mad­dAd­dam, and Year of the Flood: it is an immense­ly immer­sive imag­i­na­tion of a world where peo­ple didn’t take care of the earth.  

Make one change in the world? I would get rid of all car­bon emis­sions and have only sus­tain­able ener­gy. And while I’m at it, just cool the world down a bit. 

Chunky or smooth peanut but­ter? Smooth

Great­est fear? Bears and bees 

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  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.com