Olde Reed – The Riffin' Griffin

Fig Tales at Reed

Deep in the Reed College canyon lies the orchard, home to various fruit trees. But the orchard is not the only place on campus to forage fruit. Below is a tale from Tracy Poe ’91 about the old fig tree by the Reed College Apartments (RCA) and her endeavors to care for it.

There’s this fig tree, see, down at the RCAs. When I was a kid living at 36th and Knapp in the 70s/80s, before RCAs or even many of the Canyon-adjacent parcels even belonged to Reed, I used to forage from that tree in the summers. Summer-time in Portland was a child-forager’s dream, from the crawdads in Johnson Creek to the old orchards that used to surround the Canyon, yielding plums, cherries, apples, quince, and of course blackberries.

Reed has a lot of legacy trees from the days when the surrounding area was all homesteads and truck farms. 40 years ago they were still harvestable, but it was the beginning of the end of anyone looking after them on any kind of regular basis. Development and neglect encroached on a lot of our old foraging territory over the years. Reed campus still has some thriving black walnut trees, and the remnant of the old orchard just below 39th at the south end of the Canyon. When I was a student, the Grove Dorms were a giant community garden.

Fruit trees are domestic plants, and they need care in order to keep giving food, but sadly a lot of those caregivers are gone and the trees just get old and die if no one attends to them.

Anyway: the ReedFig was still bearing beautiful fruit well into the early 90s. As a Dorm Mom at the RCAs, just a few years after it was acquired by Reed for student housing, I was still harvesting grocery bags full of fruit every September/October.

I graduated in ’91, left for grad school on the East Coast, where I live now, and didn’t think about that tree until many years later, when I attended a Reunion and decided to go give the tree a visit. That must have been 2015 or so …

When I did, I discovered that the tree had at some point been hacked way back. Not pruned, but chain sawed down, so that it was being choked by undergrowth and blackberry runners. I was very sad to see this, and was sure the tree would die.

The undergrowth of the Reed fig, choked out by other plants

But I kept visiting, and what do you know, that tree just kept sending out new growth, and searching for the sun. It was too weedy and starved to give much fruit, except in the very upper story where it was only good to feed the birds. Invisible, probably, to anyone who happened by. Every year, I thought, if that tree doesn’t die, I should find someone who cares enough to prune it properly and give it a new life.

In the meantime, I did a little research. The tree has a sister, across 28th Ave behind the farm stand and food trucks. Both of them were planted by the Japanese immigrant family who owned the farm that used to cover the whole curve of the road from Bybee to the Rhododendron Garden, sometime between 1900-1920, from what I’ve been able to gather.

That tree is huge—almost 40 years older than it was when I was harvesting it in my Reed days. And it still produces beautiful fruit in the late summer/early fall. Both sisters are 100, maybe 125 years old now. Standing so near to one another, and yet so different in their fates.

The sister fig tree behind the fruit stand

So I put the word out on a Facebook page: Reed Culinaria. And to my surprise, a lot of people remembered the RCA tree and wanted to bring it back to life.

So we got some folks together —alum Hilary Trzynka ’91 agreed to teach a Paideia class about pruning and taking cuttings from the tree. We did that in January. Ten people showed up, but we made cuttings for a bunch of alums around the country who plan to pick them up at Reunions this year. Amanda Waldroupe ’07 helped us get funding to pay for the supplies from the Portland Alumni Chapter.

For now, we are posting on Reed Culinaria and hoping we’ll be able to continue to care for the tree. Our long term goal is to get a group in to clear the understory and prune it back to a place where it can begin to flourish and produce fruit again. We’d love for current students to take an interest and help us re-establish the tree’s health. We’ve been keeping it lowkey, but we’d be really happy to have other caretakers.

It’s been a cool journey to get other people involved, and I’ve been moved by the level of enthusiasm my fellow alumni have shown. I think just for its connection to the historic farms around it and its sister tree, it deserves to be noticed and commemorated by the community in some way.

I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t think that is a good idea.

I don’t have Facebook but that story just might make me create an account to join Reed Culinaria…

Feeling inspired,

Taliah Churchill ’25

Historical Hijinks

Wacky hijinks and antics are part of the Reedie lifestyle. I’ve heard rumors that in the 70s, the Yale Insider’s Guide to Colleges said, “Reedies are a strange lot and they know it.” Pranks, goofs, and straight-up oddity has often been a part of the Reed ethos for eons, but many of the April Fool’s Day pranks rule them all: toothbrush gardens, swiped owls, and geodesic domes in Eliot Circle.

These photos from ye Olde Reed highlight Reedie antics perfectly…but now that I’m thinking about it, what prompted these photos/events? No seriously, does anyone know??

Confused and intrigued,

Taliah Churchill ’25

Ye Olde Reed

Photo of graffiti in the steam tunnels from 2015 that reads, “Schrodinger’s old reed is alive. Schrodinger’s old reed is dead”

“Olde Reed is dead.”

A phrase every Reedie knows, but few truly understand. This sentiment has been shared for decades, from Reedies dating back to the classes of the 60s (likely even further) to present day (guilty as charged). We repeat it back for the incoming years to hear, we post it on social media, and dedicate entire blogs (blogception!) to it, so the mantra lives on unchanged while its meaning is ever evolving. You see, everybody knows that:

Olde Reed=n-1, where n is your freshman year.

While my time as a Reedie has been comparatively short, I’ve had the honor of hearing tales of Olde Reed from many an alum. Some, like the giant snowball of ‘14, are wild but believable, but many others, like the car supposedly buried underneath the library, are more in the vein of myths. While I fear the traditions I took part in at Reed are less eventful than those aforementioned, I hope that one day they too can become “Olde Reed” lore such that I have legends of Olde to pass down to young Reedies. What are your favorite tales of Olde Reed, either from your time here or that you heard when attending Reed? Submit your stories in the comments below!

Awaiting new rumors to spread,

Nü Reedie

Taliah Churchill ’25

Love Is In The Air

‘Tis the season…of love! Many a couple has been formed at Reed college, and while not all of them make it out of the bubble intact, there are still so many others with tales sure to make even the most cynical Reedie’s heart melt.

This Valentine’s Day I want to share with you the story of (to my knowledge) the oldest living Reed couple, Eva Labby ’51 and Arnold Labby ’51. Arnold recently celebrated his 100th birthday with his wife of 67 years, Eva, in their lovely home just outside of Portland and near their mutual alma mater: Reed College.

Arnold and Eva on vacation in the French Marquesas in 2006

For an oral history project with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, Arnold recounts their first date: “…my brother Bob had a blind date with Lorie, his wife, Lorie Carrow. She wasn’t quite sure about him…So she brought along Eva, and the next thing I knew Bob was yelling up the stairs to me, “Get dressed! You’re going out.” “Who am I going out with?” “You’ll find out when you come down.” It was Eva, and that’s how we met.”

While they attended Reed at the same time, and even went on that date before they both graduated, they didn’t really get together until years later, when they reconnected in San Francisco.

In San Francisco, they were only “buddies” at first, as Eva called it. One day, Arnold mentioned he was going back up to Portland to visit family and offered Eva a ride if she wanted to come along. She ended up forgetting about his offer….until the next morning, when he showed up at her door with a pot of hot coffee. He told her “If you want to go, I’ll wait,” and that he did. They drove to Portland together and later in the week even attended the same party. On the way back down to San Francisco, Eva realized she suddenly saw Arnold in a new light.

Some time later, after a night in with a home cooked dinner, the pair was watching The Maltese Falcon and Arnold proposed! Three days later, Eva accepted, and the rest is history. The happy couple has since spent the last 6 and a half decades together, with their three children.

You can read more about these sweethearts and others here in the Winter 2007 edition of the Reed Magazine.

Are you a #Reedie4Reedies person? Refuse to ever date another Reedie? Married four times but just keep coming back to other Reedies? Tell me about it and give me hope?

Awaiting my reed romance,

Taliah Churchill ’25

Here’s to the misfits…

“Here’s to… the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently…”

Enjoy an unaired version of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” commercial that was narrated by Steve Jobs (via laughingsquid.com).

Continue reading Here’s to the misfits…

Mary Barnard ’32: found in translation

Sweep the mind

clean

like a field of dry stubble

when the constellations

of daisies have been mown

–Mary Barnard

Mary Barnard ’32 is arguably Reed’s most prominent creative artist. Her original poetry and translations of classic poetry influenced generations, including the Beat poets who followed her by one generation. Her 100th birthday was celebrated in 2009, so it is appropriate that the Reed Centennial honor her with a full day of lectures about her life, her work, and her influence (see “Alumni College: Letters 100: Experiencing Mary Barnard ’32” on Thursday, June 9).

It is also fitting that pre-eminent Barnard scholar, our own Sarah Barnsley ’95, should return to lead this seminar. Sarah was an exchange student from University of East Anglia for one year, and she now teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her other research interests include American literature, poetry and poetics, modernism, gender and queer theory. Following her tenure as H.D. Fellow in American Literature at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, Sarah has completed a book manuscript, “‘A bright, particular excellence’: Mary Barnard, American Imagist.” She is also a poet in her own right.

Mary Barnard ’32 was born in Vancouver, Washington, and attended Reed College, where she discovered modernist poetry and Ezra Pound; she later initiated a long-distance correspondence with Pound that was to last nearly 40 years.

As noted by the Beinecke Library, “With Pound’s encouragement, Barnard began translating Sappho’s poetry from the Greek. Her translation, published in 1958, has never been out of print. Barnard’s own poems won her Poetry magazine’s Levinson Award when she was only 26 years old. Her shorter fiction was published in Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, and The Kenyon Review. She later composed a book-length essay in verse entitled Time and the White Tigress and researched and published her own genealogy and various essays on mythology.”

The delightful and spirited memoir of her school days, Erato agonistes: Writing a creative thesis at Reed College in “The Golden Age”, is available in the bookstore.

Other speakers in the seminar will include Professor Anita Helle, Oregon State University, on Mary Barnard’s original poetry, and Professor Ellen K. Stauder, dean of the faculty and David Eddings Professor of English & Humanities, on Mary Barnard’s Sappho, in the morning sessions. Afternoon conference leaders will include, in addition, Elizabeth J. Bell ’87 MALS, Mary Barnard’s literary executor; and Anita Bigelow ’67, illustrator of Mary Barnard’s work.

Ladd and Reed legacy tour

THE LADD AND REED LEGACY: Building Portland 1851-2011

Tuesday, June 7, from 8 a.m. through 12:45 p.m.

The Ladd and Reed Legacy talk and tour during Centennial Reunions, organized by Richard Ross ’69 MAT, explores and celebrates the lasting impacts of two remarkable Oregon pioneer families on Portland’s development over a century and a half. William S. Ladd was Portland’s most prominent 19th-century business and civic leader, and Simeon Reed was Ladd’s foremost business partner and friend. Ladd and Reed shaped Portland and the Northwest by joint ventures over four decades, in public service, steamboats, telegraphs, macadam roads, model farms, railroads, and iron. Ladd and Reed both arrived in Portland in the 1850s, starting as pioneer liquor dealers, and served on the city council in the crude frontier village known as “Stumptown.” Their sturdy spouses, Amanda Wood Reed and Carolyn Elliott Ladd emigrated together by sea from Boston in 1854 and became lifelong friends.

As they prospered together, the Ladds and Reeds pursued a common vision of building a thriving Renaissance city out of soggy Stumptown. In turn, they were driving forces in the formation of Oregon’s educational, cultural, economic infrastructure, and model communities. Amanda Reed’s 1904 will set in motion the final Ladd and Reed partnership, the creation of Reed College (1911), with help from Ladd son and college trustee William M. Ladd. This program shows how the Ladd and Reed family vision built Portland’s strong neighborhoods, its civic, educational, and economic institutions, and the vibrant downtown of today.

Tour visits five Ladd and Reed living legacies:

1. Oregon Iron Company, Oregon Iron and Steel (1865-1894) Lake Oswego

Guides: Marylou Colver, Susanna Kuo, Lake Oswego historians

Dominant Northwest iron producer for the “Pittsburgh of the West.” Company town supplied construction of Northwest railroads, pipelines, bridges, and Portland’s ironfront buildings. Iron lands around Lake Oswego (Sucker Lake) became the basis of the 20th-century suburb.

2. The Ladd Carriage House (1883) SW Broadway

Guide: Jim Heuer, Friends of the Ladd Carriage House

Last remnant of the Ladd family’s former downtown estate and an elegant, rare survivor of prestigious 19th-century South Portland, where the Ladds and Reeds both lived.

3. The Reed Building (1890) SW 1st and Ankeny

Guide: Amy Kohnstamm, Mercy Corps

Simeon Reed’s solid four-story brick and stone warehouse, once in Portland’s business core at Skidmore Fountain, houses Mercy Corps world headquarters today.

4. Ladd’s Addition (1891)

Designed by William S. Ladd himself, thrives today as a national and regional icon for green and walkable neighborhoods and “New Urbanism.” First of many notable Portland neighborhoods created by the Ladd Estate Company under William M. Ladd out of Ladd farms and holdings: Laurelhurst (1909), Eastmoreland (1910), Dunthorpe, and Lake Oswego, all landmark communities of the 20th century.

5. Reed College (1911)

Celebrates its centennial in 2011-12, was endowed by Amanda Reed, on part of William S. Ladd’s Crystal Springs Farm donated by trustee William M. Ladd.

Schedule:

• 8 a.m. PowerPoint Talk at Vollum Lounge, Reed campus

• 8:30 a.m. Board a Raz bus at Eliot Circle for Lake Oswego

• 11:15 a.m. Ladd’s Addition, coffee break and restrooms at Palio (the Elm Room), Ladd Circle

• 12:45 p.m. Tour concludes with wrap-up comments on the founding of Reed College

The cost for this half-day tour is $20. Sign up by sending email to alumni@reed.edu.

Presenter and guide (except where noted):

Richard N Ross ’69, American Institute of Certified Planners

H: 503/235-8194 C: 503/807-0612 richardnross@earthlink.net

• Urban and regional planner in Oregon 1977-2011, teacher of Oregon and US history 1970-79

• BA in History Middlebury College, MAT Reed College, MUP Portland State University

• Led regional coalition to restore the Historic Columbia River Hwy (1986-92)

• Ladd’s Addition community leader and resident 1976-2011

Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: Reed T-Shirts Unite!

I recently caught up with Travis Greenwood ’01, kitschy shirt connoisseur, to get the scoop on his efforts to collect and document Olde Reed t-shirts.

Please give us your vision for this project?

This project mixes personal and professional interests. I’ve always had collector tendencies, progressing from comic books to records and then, later, bicycles. These days, it’s all of the above, plus t-shirts, which is convenient because I write and edit a blog, “It Goes to 11,” for my employer. It’s focused (somewhat loosely) on t-shirts, t-shirts from the reel world, t-shirt trends, movie memes, the overlap there between and whatever else I stumble across on the web. Combine all of that with extremely fond memories of my Reed experience (I majored in history and managed KRRC) and here you have it, my contribution to the college’s collective history. Don’t say I never gave anything back to the community!

Seriously though, it dawned on me that the typical Reed experience was accompanied by several t-shirt traditions (experiential mile markers if you will), namely O-Week, Renn Fayre, and Beer Nation, but also encompassing several smaller events and tropes. Following from that, it seemed that someone–namely, me–should consolidate and archive material of this type online. If the Internet has room for LOL Cats, defamatory weekly newspapers (zinger!), and second-tier social networking sites, then certainly we can carve out a niche for our humble t-shirts, which when taken collectively, constitute an enormous and revealing trove of Reed minutia.

Does it have a catchy name?

I haven’t given much thought to the moniker, but a simple bit of brainstorming yields this bastardized gem:

“Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: A Pictorial History of Reed T-Shirts”

(groan…)

Continue reading Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: Reed T-Shirts Unite!

Boar lore

Have you heard the Reed myth about a group of people dressed in black druidic robes, marching in a hallowed procession that includes a cappella singing, torches, and a boar’s head on a pallet? Or perhaps you’ve witnessed it yourself on a frosty winter’s night? This curious scene isn’t just lore; it remains a beloved feature of the annual alumni holiday party. This yuletide celebration dates to the college’s early years, with the boar’s head procession appearing in the 1920s and becoming quite the beloved tradition.

Continue reading Boar lore