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It’s PR, Not ‘ER’

It’s 1:30 a.m. in Eugene, and I’m wearing a bad wig and a bad attitude, still salty from the impromptu team nightcap my boss called “forced fun.” All I want is to face-plant onto the plush bed of my boutique hotel room, order up a $450 Pendleton from the room’s complimentary “blanket menu,” and mummify my body in warmth. But a certain celebrity’s kid just sparked up a blunt in his room, and I’m one of his closest babysitters. This is the life of working in big-brand influencer marketing and PR. 

The group chat blings in rapid succession with the final message calling for a team huddle in our hotel-suite war room. 

“I’m going to kill [redacted]. He’s supposed to be handling [redacted] so shit like this doesn’t happen,” my boss says, while Siri dutifully transcribes every threat.

At nearly six feet tall with a cascade of dark braids yanked into a taut, high ponytail, my boss looks even more beautiful and deadly than usual, and I can’t help but sleepily stare in awe while trying to stifle an aggressive, tear-inducing yawn. I want sleep so badly, I’d be willing to pay for it. Hell, charge it to my room. But alas, sleep is a fantasy when you work in PR—that and actually using your “unlimited” PTO. 

As if waiting in the wings for its cue, the skunkish aroma of marijuana creeps in, threading through wood and drywall. Thankfully, the C-suite of the brand has long retired to their rooms—undoubtedly enjoying their blanket menu orders—so our collective cortisol levels take a brief dip. As fixers, we are the night shift of reputation, absorbing the mess before anyone important even notices.

By 2:30 a.m., I’m weeping into my own yawn, mascara painting my cheekbones. The handler says, “Relax. Nobody cares.” So we pivot from damage control to what PR people do best: gaslighting reality. It’s funny, because my whole job is caring on behalf of people who refuse to care. We run the crisis playbook—opening windows, placing towels under doors, sending the preemptive “We’re so sorry!” email. The message is forwarded to three executives who will reply, “Thanks for handling.” 

Handling is our ministry. 

Asia Rose Phua, Dallas

Alkali Lake    

In the summer of 1975, when I was twenty-one, I worked as a logger for part of a summer on a reservation in central British Columbia. I wailed through lodgepole pines with my chainsaw and hauled the logs out with an old green tractor, crashing through the undergrowth, leaving a swath of smashed alders and brush. Keening, crushing. I was a skinny, tender girl in a yellow hard hat, and it still shocks me to remember the scream of that saw, and the god-awful mess I made in the woods. But I was mad.

I was, in fact, furious—at my father. He’d left my mom four years earlier, but he had just remarried. This was somehow the last straw. I had no idea, however, how mad I was. It was not a feeling I knew how to have. My anger squeezed out sideways, into the defiant release of slashing down trees.

These woods adjoined the summer hay meadows of the Alkali Lake Band, or Secwépemc
people, and the logs I was hauling would become fencing for the hayfields. I was living on the reserve for the summer with seven other young people from all over—Africa, South America, Europe. We were there to do construction, logging, whatever the chief wanted. We were all so young and didn’t even share a language—some spoke English, some French, a few spoke both. Our little multiethnic raft was a leaky craft. But that’s another story.

It was warm, dry, open country: the Fraser River plateau. Racks of salmon dried in the sun. The air smelled of sagebrush, dust, coffee, fish. The chief, Andy Chelsea, who drove us around in the back of his pickup, eventually led his band into sobriety, and a movie was made about it in 1986. That’s yet another, and much bigger, story.

It was a complicated summer, and hard. But the work helped me out in my need. I needed to crush something, and to roar. I wouldn’t cut trees in that way again, but it taught me a lot. More than I know, perhaps. It let me in on the cost of ignoring my feelings. It taught me not to judge how people handle their pain.

Tina Tau, Portland

Power in a Union 

My union, United Academics of Oregon State University, was certified on June 27, 2018. On this same date, the US Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, a landmark court case that upended the long-standing practice of agency fees for public sector unions, in which nonmembers contribute financially to the maintenance of the collective bargaining agreement that they benefit from. Our day of celebration coincided with a calculated blow to organized labor nationally. 

In the past seven years, I’ve participated in negotiating two collective bargaining agreements and a handful of MOUs (Memorandums of Understanding). I’ve served as an officer and a steward. I’ve had a lot of conversations with my colleagues. And I’ve also witnessed broader attacks not just on unions and workers, but on the basic elements of democracy. In recent months, powerful men have said that women should not be able to vote; the president has sought to challenge birthright citizenship; and access to due process has been challenged in the courts and on the streets. In higher education, free speech is directly under attack through attempts to withhold research funding to institutions that do not agree to limit activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion—activities that are never defined. All of these restrictions seem to be part of a push to consolidate power in the executive branch, among the very few. 

Unions, in contrast, are a place to build power among the many. In my union, I have learned to practice democracy at a local and granular level. My union has taught me to treasure the practice of democracy in small ways. Sometimes, change starts with showing up to a meeting, picking three names off a list, and having conversations with each of those three people—and then coming back to the next meeting to debrief and get another set of names. To bargain a contract, you have to talk to all your coworkers to find out what they need. When you understand what the problems are, you get creative together to come up with possible solutions. Then, the union bargaining team meets with management’s team and works out an agreement that everyone can live with—that union members will vote yes on, and that management will assent to. Sitting across the table from management transformed my working experience, both because we achieved a contract that now guides my working conditions and because it showed me that decision-makers in a hierarchy are also just people. None of us is perfect, and all of us are pushing for what seems best from our perspective. 

Union power derives from all of us, and it grows when more people get involved. 

Kelly McElroy, Corvallis

Hot, Heavy, Can’t See

I have been studying shishimai, the traditional Japanese lion dance, with my Tokyo-based teacher for over twenty years. Many people outside of Japan don’t know that this art form exists or how shishimai has been used for hundreds of years to chase away evil and bring good luck. 

“Atsui, omoi, mienai” is how my teacher describes performing the shishimai. Hot, heavy, can’t see. The dance has many different movements that bring life to the shishi, a mythological creature resembling a lion. The gestures include jumping over the mountain, biting the chest, walking in a circle, licking the leg, scratching the ear, biting the butt, eating the mandarin, chasing the butterfly, and on and on. It’s one dancer inside an ornate costume featuring the brilliantly golden shishigashira, the head of the shishi. 

Shishimai is hard work, so why do we do it? Maybe we were inspired by watching an amazing performance. Maybe we hope learning the dance will make us better musicians. Or maybe we want to introduce this art form to a wider audience.

For me, it’s all of the above and more. I want to help preserve this cherished tradition for future generations to appreciate. During the pandemic, I had extra time to reflect on life’s priorities, leading to the realization that I must create Portland Shishimai Kai to engage in this mission.

At the end of the performance, the dancer makes a dramatic reveal. My teacher jokes that the big applause is the payoff for all of our hard work. It’s undeniably fun, yet there are deeper, more meaningful reasons to continue studying and performing: helping students reach their goal of a stage debut; the expressions of wonder and delight in the audience from small children and seniors alike; the astonished looks I get in Japan when I tell people that shishimai is being performed and taught all around North America. 

If shishimai was easy, would it feel as special? Perhaps traditional arts can survive across generations only because they require effort and dedication. If shishimai was described as “comfortable, lightweight, easy to see,” I don’t think I would be doing it now. Maybe it has persisted for so long only because it is hard work.

Eien Hunter-Ishikawa, Portland

Garden Cart Conversation 

I volunteered at the Eugene Public Library one March. I was studying library science at the time, and also processing the recent estrangement of my mentally ill brother. A large community of unhoused folks lived in Eugene’s downtown mall area. While I didn’t think my brother lived there, he was rarely far from my mind. 

Working with books and people who loved books as I did gave me solace. I sorted and repaired volumes, cleaned book covers, and walked through the downtown mall from the bus every day. I spent time overcoming my fear of the people I saw there and learning their stories: the travelers passing through on their way to Portland and places east, older folks looking for warmth alongside buildings, lonely adolescents. I started a program at the library in which, once a week, I pushed a garden cart full of paperback books downtown to give to the people who lived there. I wasn’t there to save them or change them. I didn’t look for my brother in the faces of everyone I saw. The best I could do for them was to bring them the camaraderie of a book.

One day, a girl and her male friend browsed around my cart. At first, he was very against her talking to me or taking anything. Then he tried to physically prevent her from picking up a book. It was obvious to me that their relationship was transactional and that he was controlling in the extreme. I had to decide what to do, fast: Should I intervene, or call the red caps, the security officers who patrol downtown, to get involved? I angled my body around the cart and looked the man in the eyes. He wore a gleaming white tank top and black jeans, but his hands were dirty. I asked him what he liked to watch or read. The man, who looked about twenty-five to her teens, brushed his palms clean on the knees of his pants and then bent to look at the makeshift shelf racks, careful to speak out of the side of his mouth.

The experience transformed from confrontational to respectful and curious. I was able to talk him into a Louis L’Amour western, and she went away with a pink-covered Regency romance. They came back each week for as long as I worked there. 

I think of them every spring.

Jennifer Chambers, Veneta

Work-Life Balance

My friend warned us to be ready a month early. I wish we’d taken her more seriously, but I didn’t think she meant on the dot.

It’s just after dinner on the Tuesday before Memorial Day, and my mantra is If I can make it through the holiday weekend, I’ll be set. (Spoiler alert: I did not.) I feel some discomfort and start tracking. When I call the advice line, the nurse confirms I barely qualify for preterm labor. “Come in,” she says, “but we’ll send you home if your labor doesn’t progress.” What I hear is You have a small window to wrap things up in, and you may not even be in true labor yet. 

So I pack my work laptop and cell. I’m not officially “admitted,” I don’t want to leave my teams in the lurch, and I’m holding on to my six weeks of paid parental leave with a clenched fist and a portable mouse. When I take a break and close my laptop, my boss calls, asking for a financial document. Typically I would send the document right over, but instead I walk her through the steps to find it. She senses something is off.

“Are you in a meeting?” 

No. 

“Are you out in the field?” 

Nope. 

It suddenly dawns on her. 

“Oh my God. Are you in labor?”

Not active labor …

“Well, yeah, because you’re not screaming! Please hang up the phone, stop working, and focus on having a baby!”

I tell this anecdote often. Having a work laptop in your labor-and-delivery room is a great hook for a dinner party story, and it’s a quick shortcut into my psyche. Though I’ve struggled with boundaries most of my life, I always thought it would be a clear decision when faced with this most literal “work-life balance” scenario. But as a child of immigrants, I embody deeply ingrained lessons of economic stability, collectivism, and service. Working more hours wasn’t about earning some shareholders more money, but about helping my fellow public servants, supporting community members and important partnerships cultivated over years, and ensuring I had the resources for my family’s needs. And now, I strive to help break generational cycles by advocating for paid leave, actually clocking out at 5:00 p.m. (most days), and modeling a bit more rest and joy. Toddlers can certainly help with that. At least the joy part.

Aubrey Daquiz, Portland

Hay Season

July. Full summer. I hear him coming before I see him, passing my home as I work out front, planting or pruning or weeding. White beard, overalls, baseball cap, driving a tractor that has worked many decades’ worth of fields. It is haying season.

He has returned to our community from his relocation to the other side of the mountains, where the hay grows better and he has plenty to feed his cows, with some left over to sell to feed himself. I have never been to his place up on the mountain where he still keeps his shop and his equipment. He tells me that some people say he is a hoarder. He says it is a tractor museum.

For many seasons he has worked the field beside my home. Cutting the waving yellow grass, row after neat row. Late afternoon and into the night by headlight, leaving timothy and fescue sitting in long, low windrows so it can dry just right. Returning with another ancient contraption and raking the hay into piles. Then the baler gathering the dried heaps and shooting golden rectangles out into the stubble like cubes of butter. Finally, the old truck and trailer—and perhaps a strong young assistant, if he can find one willing—arriving to lift, throw, and stack the bales in high, neat towers to be delivered and restacked into barns.

One time, on an especially hot day with dust flying and sun beating down, our friendship was forged when I brought him watermelon. For many Julys now, we have had our annual visits in the shade of the tractor. Sometimes, when conversation doesn’t seem finished, we meet on Sunday morning for coffee at the local market. He always tries to pay, says he is old-fashioned that way. We talk about the Fourth of July parades of the past, when he would sometimes enter his oldest tractor, if he could get it running. He wants to visit the Smithsonian, but he is not interested in flying and says his wife doesn’t like to leave their cows. We talk about our dogs, the ones we have, the ones no longer with us. And we get sad together. We talk about getting old and how we’d like it to be at the end. He prefers to be sitting on his tractor. I know what salt of the earth looks like. 

Jennifer O’Donnell, Corbett

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