Lindsey Treffry | blot
It’s on bumpers, buttons and stickers. It hangs from
buildings and businesses, and is displayed in the University of Idaho
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender office. The rainbow flag is even
tattooed on Julia Keleher’s arm.
Keleher, the UI LGBT Office and Programs Coordinator, got the tattoo at 19.
“Our LGBT community back in the ‘70s … had the
idea of pride,” she said. “It’s all about pride. It’s being proud of who
you are.”
In 1978, the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride
Parade commissioned artist Gilbert Baker to design a new symbol for its
marches. Baker taught himself to sew and began crafting the banner.
“The rainbow is a part of nature and you have to
be in the right place to see it,” Baker told a CBS Chicago reporter in
June 2012. “It’s beautiful, all of the colors, even the colors you can’t
see that really fit us as a people because we are all of the colors ...
all the genders, races and ages.”
Paige Davies, the AmeriCorps women’s mentoring,
service learning and volunteer coordinator, said Baker probably chose
rainbow colors because they are obnoxious.
“It’s in your face. There’s no hiding it,” she said.
Davies’ interpretation has changed throughout the years.
“To me, now it’s annoying,” Davies said. “Everything has to be rainbow-colored.”
But Davies said the loud colors led her to
Inland Oasis, a volunteer organization that serves LGBT communities.
“The logo had rainbow flag colors. Now it says
‘open, accepting, affirming,’ but it used to only have the rainbow,”
Davies said. “I knew, then, that that was a place I could go. It was
reassuring.”
She said it was just as reassuring to see
rainbow flag stickers in UI professors’ offices — part of the UI Safe
Zone project.
“They didn’t have to tell me that it was OK to be gay,” she said. “I just knew.”
Katie Noble, UI Women’s Center administrative
assistant, said the flag represents a unity of all differences in the
community.
“Before coming out, you’re hiding who you are.
But with the flag, you’re not gonna hide from that anymore,” Noble said.
“The flag is so vibrant and solid.”
And each vibrant color has a meaning.
Red means life. Orange, healing. Yellow, sunlight. Green, nature. Blue, harmony. And purple for spirit.
The flag once had pink for sex, and turquoise
for art or magic, but the colors were later dropped to simplify
production.
“The flag is our connection to our history,”
Keleher said. “There are symbols (like the flag) and it’s important in
understanding where (they) come from.”
Noble said interpretations aren’t always positive.
“For those who are not supportive (of the LGBT
community), they’re like ‘Oh, there’s another rainbow flag,’” she said.
“There are two sides of it.”
Davies said she might understand why the rainbow was chosen.
“It’s happy, rich and full of life-colors,” she said. “It’s the hope after the storm.”
As seen in February issue of Blot Magazine.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Monday, December 3, 2012
Surviving death
Lindsey Treffry | blot
Everybody dies.
“Death sucks no matter what,” University of Idaho student Britnee Packwood said. “Death is the worst thing that is on this planet.”
Packwood knows death up close. She has since May 16, 2011.
“My dad was 61 when he passed away,” she said. “We knew we were gonna lose him earlier than a lot of other kids.”
Packwood was in eighth grade the first time her dad went to the hospital for a heart attack. Doctors estimated he had two years to live. The attack was followed by years of heart complications, more heart attacks and congestive heart failure. Her dad even had an attack in the left anterior descending artery, known as the Widow Maker.
Sharon Fritz, a licensed psychologist and professor, works at the UI Counseling Center and helps students deal with grief.
“At my age, you’re expecting to see friends sick and grandparents dying,” Fritz said. “You don’t expect it in the 18 to 25 group range, but I see it a lot. In my caseload, at least half a dozen a semester.”
Nationally, personal experience facing death is not uncommon among young people. According to National College Health Assessment surveys gathered in Fall 2011, 15.5 percent of students had experienced the death of a family member or friend. At UI, 15.8 percent of students have experienced the same.
In spring 2011, Packwood’s parents took a trip to Houston. One day, her dad wasn’t feeling well and called her from the hotel.
“I had probably had the weirdest conversation I had ever had with my father,” Packwood said.
Out of nowhere, he asked what she was going to do if they weren’t on the same “time zone clock” anymore.
“Who are we going to call all the time? … No matter who you are, where you are or what you’re doing, I’m always going to be with you,” he told her.
She didn’t think much of it.
“I thought he was doing his whole Dad thing,” Packwood said. “When they got back from Lewiston the next day, I called my mom to ask if their flight went OK. I heard him in the background. He said, ‘No I talked to her yesterday. Just make sure she knows I love her.’”
It was only a couple of hours later that her parents were in an ambulance to the hospital — for the last time. Packwood and her sister later followed.
“We said goodbye, kissed our dad and left,” she said.
Soon after, he passed.
The sisters had last heard that their dad was feeling better. Packwood’s mom returned home to bring them the news.
“We all come in the living room. And all she can say is ‘He’s gone,’” Packwood said. “She is blubbering. My sister starts screaming and bawling her eyes out. And I’m standing there holding a grown woman and a junior in high school in my arms and having them cry on my shoulder. I’m emotionless. I don’t know what to do. I’m more concerned with them instead of myself at the time.”
Fritz said the grieving process is complicated when a person knows they are dying and the end comes suddenly.
“People deal with it different ways when it comes,” Fritz said. “When it is sudden, they either didn’t have a chance to prepare for it or understand it. (It’s a sense of) lack of preparedness.”
In cases like Packwood’s, Fritz said the stages of grief are dragged out more.
“There is a sense of shock.” Fritz said. “It may take a longer time (to grieve). The peaks and valleys are more intense … more ebbs and flows.”
Packwood said knowing he would die soon was worse.
“To lose someone suddenly is awful. It’s terrible,” Packwood said. “But to have to see somebody in a prolonged state of deterioration and just losing it, I think it’s worse. A little piece of your soul gets eaten away, knowing there is nothing you can do.”
She helped her mom make phone calls to family members, and the next morning departed for a UI Conservation Social Sciences field studies trip.
In the Mammoth area of Yellowstone National Park, Packwood spotted a moose.
“I just sat on a rock next to it,” she said. “... I looked up and I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna be OK. Things are gonna be fine.’ Maybe that was my moment of acceptance.”
The trip ended, she returned home and helped her mom with funeral home planning, transferring the body and figuring out funeral expenses.
“The weirdest thing for me was he was near his chair,” she said. “But he was in a really tiny box next to his chair. I thought, ‘So this is what’s left — a tiny little box of ashes.’”
Those ashes, later sealed in a vault, were surrounded by heirlooms that Packwood and her sister placed inside.
“There was a little wooden box in a bag and the bag wasn’t closed all the way,” she said. “I’m like putting stuff in there. I move the bag, and it’s closed but it wasn’t closed (all the way). I was like, ‘I have my father on my hands.’ I laughed. It was the first time I had truly laughed in such a long time … My sister and I were gut rolling.”
Packwood said returning to UI solidified her belief that her dad wanted the family to keep living.
“That was really when I accepted what it was for what it was,” she said.
They buried him in a family plot in Montana, where Packwood was raised and where her parents met.
“And if there is a cool part to this, I’m pretty certain about this — at the exact time (of my dad’s death), the chime went off that a baby was born,” Packwood said. “My mom said ‘I didn’t have the heart to go down there, but if it’s a boy — oofh, those parents are going to need some help.’”
Packwood said the death of her father has opened her eyes and pushed her to live more.
“Don’t forget that there is always someone who has a shoulder,” she said. “Don’t forget that you need to do what you need to do for yourself and don’t forget to live. If you have to take a month to just let it all out, go for it. But go back to work. Go back to school. Go back to having girls’ night. Whatever it is. Normalcy, at first, (will) feel weird but it’ll get better.”
Fritz agreed.
“We tell our students to solicit support,” she said. “Death makes you depressed and you want to pull away. But you have to tell your friends, ‘I need you to call me, I need you to take me out.’”
Packwood said there isn’t an easy way to deal with death.
“It’s death. It happens,” she said. “You can’t revel in it and you can’t live in it … you can’t stay there forever. You gotta move on.”
As seen in December 2012 issue of blot magazine.
Everybody dies.
“Death sucks no matter what,” University of Idaho student Britnee Packwood said. “Death is the worst thing that is on this planet.”
 |
| Amrah Canul | Blot |
Packwood knows death up close. She has since May 16, 2011.
“My dad was 61 when he passed away,” she said. “We knew we were gonna lose him earlier than a lot of other kids.”
Packwood was in eighth grade the first time her dad went to the hospital for a heart attack. Doctors estimated he had two years to live. The attack was followed by years of heart complications, more heart attacks and congestive heart failure. Her dad even had an attack in the left anterior descending artery, known as the Widow Maker.
Sharon Fritz, a licensed psychologist and professor, works at the UI Counseling Center and helps students deal with grief.
“At my age, you’re expecting to see friends sick and grandparents dying,” Fritz said. “You don’t expect it in the 18 to 25 group range, but I see it a lot. In my caseload, at least half a dozen a semester.”
Nationally, personal experience facing death is not uncommon among young people. According to National College Health Assessment surveys gathered in Fall 2011, 15.5 percent of students had experienced the death of a family member or friend. At UI, 15.8 percent of students have experienced the same.
In spring 2011, Packwood’s parents took a trip to Houston. One day, her dad wasn’t feeling well and called her from the hotel.
“I had probably had the weirdest conversation I had ever had with my father,” Packwood said.
Out of nowhere, he asked what she was going to do if they weren’t on the same “time zone clock” anymore.
“Who are we going to call all the time? … No matter who you are, where you are or what you’re doing, I’m always going to be with you,” he told her.
She didn’t think much of it.
“I thought he was doing his whole Dad thing,” Packwood said. “When they got back from Lewiston the next day, I called my mom to ask if their flight went OK. I heard him in the background. He said, ‘No I talked to her yesterday. Just make sure she knows I love her.’”
It was only a couple of hours later that her parents were in an ambulance to the hospital — for the last time. Packwood and her sister later followed.
“We said goodbye, kissed our dad and left,” she said.
Soon after, he passed.
The sisters had last heard that their dad was feeling better. Packwood’s mom returned home to bring them the news.
“We all come in the living room. And all she can say is ‘He’s gone,’” Packwood said. “She is blubbering. My sister starts screaming and bawling her eyes out. And I’m standing there holding a grown woman and a junior in high school in my arms and having them cry on my shoulder. I’m emotionless. I don’t know what to do. I’m more concerned with them instead of myself at the time.”
Fritz said the grieving process is complicated when a person knows they are dying and the end comes suddenly.
“People deal with it different ways when it comes,” Fritz said. “When it is sudden, they either didn’t have a chance to prepare for it or understand it. (It’s a sense of) lack of preparedness.”
In cases like Packwood’s, Fritz said the stages of grief are dragged out more.
“There is a sense of shock.” Fritz said. “It may take a longer time (to grieve). The peaks and valleys are more intense … more ebbs and flows.”
Packwood said knowing he would die soon was worse.
“To lose someone suddenly is awful. It’s terrible,” Packwood said. “But to have to see somebody in a prolonged state of deterioration and just losing it, I think it’s worse. A little piece of your soul gets eaten away, knowing there is nothing you can do.”
She helped her mom make phone calls to family members, and the next morning departed for a UI Conservation Social Sciences field studies trip.
In the Mammoth area of Yellowstone National Park, Packwood spotted a moose.
“I just sat on a rock next to it,” she said. “... I looked up and I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna be OK. Things are gonna be fine.’ Maybe that was my moment of acceptance.”
The trip ended, she returned home and helped her mom with funeral home planning, transferring the body and figuring out funeral expenses.
“The weirdest thing for me was he was near his chair,” she said. “But he was in a really tiny box next to his chair. I thought, ‘So this is what’s left — a tiny little box of ashes.’”
Those ashes, later sealed in a vault, were surrounded by heirlooms that Packwood and her sister placed inside.
“There was a little wooden box in a bag and the bag wasn’t closed all the way,” she said. “I’m like putting stuff in there. I move the bag, and it’s closed but it wasn’t closed (all the way). I was like, ‘I have my father on my hands.’ I laughed. It was the first time I had truly laughed in such a long time … My sister and I were gut rolling.”
Packwood said returning to UI solidified her belief that her dad wanted the family to keep living.
“That was really when I accepted what it was for what it was,” she said.
They buried him in a family plot in Montana, where Packwood was raised and where her parents met.
“And if there is a cool part to this, I’m pretty certain about this — at the exact time (of my dad’s death), the chime went off that a baby was born,” Packwood said. “My mom said ‘I didn’t have the heart to go down there, but if it’s a boy — oofh, those parents are going to need some help.’”
Packwood said the death of her father has opened her eyes and pushed her to live more.
“Don’t forget that there is always someone who has a shoulder,” she said. “Don’t forget that you need to do what you need to do for yourself and don’t forget to live. If you have to take a month to just let it all out, go for it. But go back to work. Go back to school. Go back to having girls’ night. Whatever it is. Normalcy, at first, (will) feel weird but it’ll get better.”
Fritz agreed.
“We tell our students to solicit support,” she said. “Death makes you depressed and you want to pull away. But you have to tell your friends, ‘I need you to call me, I need you to take me out.’”
Packwood said there isn’t an easy way to deal with death.
“It’s death. It happens,” she said. “You can’t revel in it and you can’t live in it … you can’t stay there forever. You gotta move on.”
As seen in December 2012 issue of blot magazine.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Christian author goes undercover to understand homosexuality
Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS
“After all, God destroyed two cities over it,” he said.
Kurek was a self-proclaimed bully. The same kind of bully, he said, you read about in the news when a kid commits suicide for being gay.
Then, a friend came out to him one night during karaoke.
To view the complete story, visit SpokaneFAVS.com.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Touring St. John’s Cathedral
Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS
A British voice echoes through a cathedral nave made of stone and mortar, topped with solid California redwood. The source of the voice is a lean, white haired man, pointing to a south window. He slides his glasses towards the bridge of his nose, describing every detail and color the stained glass creates. This window, he says, depicts the Book of Revelation.
Michel Campbell is one of a dozen volunteer tour guides for The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist which overlooks Spokane’s South Hill.
St. John’s was designed by architect Harold Whitehouse and built by Fred Phair in 1925. Additions to the church were made by Henry George and Sons in 1948 and Sceva Construction of Spokane in 1960. Whitehouse followed the suggestions of Bishop Edward Makin Cross and created a cathedral in early English Gothic style.
“This cathedral compares very favorably with all the Gothic churches of the period that I’ve been in,” Campbell says.
To read the complete story, visit SpokaneFAVS.com.
A British voice echoes through a cathedral nave made of stone and mortar, topped with solid California redwood. The source of the voice is a lean, white haired man, pointing to a south window. He slides his glasses towards the bridge of his nose, describing every detail and color the stained glass creates. This window, he says, depicts the Book of Revelation.
 |
| Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS |
St. John’s was designed by architect Harold Whitehouse and built by Fred Phair in 1925. Additions to the church were made by Henry George and Sons in 1948 and Sceva Construction of Spokane in 1960. Whitehouse followed the suggestions of Bishop Edward Makin Cross and created a cathedral in early English Gothic style.
“This cathedral compares very favorably with all the Gothic churches of the period that I’ve been in,” Campbell says.
To read the complete story, visit SpokaneFAVS.com.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Diet and religion come together at vegetarian outlet
Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS.com
 |
| Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS |
The shelves of Bibles next to aisles of activated charcoal powder, cashew cream, agar agar sea vegetable flakes, Minit-meat and vegan gelatin may seem unrelated. But at the Adventist Book Center and Vegetarian Food Outlet, the diet lifestyles of Seventh-day Adventists closely relate to the religion — and have since the church’s inception in the mid-1800s.
Seventh-day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg, famous for his development of breakfast cereals at the turn of the century, was a health pioneer in manufacturing vegetarian products like Worthington, Loma Linda and Morningstar Farms, which still remain today.
Seventh-day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg, famous for his development of breakfast cereals at the turn of the century, was a health pioneer in manufacturing vegetarian products like Worthington, Loma Linda and Morningstar Farms, which still remain today.
To view the full story visit SpokaneFAVS.com.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
UCC couple retire after 2 decades of service
Lindsey Treffry | SpokaneFAVS.com
As pastor of Veradale United Church of Christ for nearly 18 years, Linda worked through the church’s recent transition to become “open and affirming” to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, including the lead in a booth and banner at Spokane’s Pride Parade.
To view the full story, visit SpokaneFAVS.com.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Half-ass clone not half-assed
Lindsey Treffry | blot
This equine may be stubborn, but he’s not your average mule.
This equine may be stubborn, but he’s not your average mule.
Utah Pioneer is a clone — an echo of his brother Idaho Gem and predecessor of his brother Idaho Star — born in 2003 as a product of University of Idaho and Utah State University research. He is the only clone still living on UI’s campus.
The mules were created to mirror Taz, an award-winning racing mule owned by Idaho businessman Don Jacklin, who partially funded the clone research.
“Jacklin wanted a clone as close to Taz as you could get,” said Bill Loftus, UI journalism professor and science writer.
Loftus said Utah began as a mare’s unfertilized egg.
Genetic material was removed from the egg, and mule fetus skin cells produced by Taz’s parents were inserted into the egg, placed in a dish and electrically shocked. Once the cells divided, the mule embryo was inserted into Idaho Rose, Utah’s surrogate mother. Nearly 360 days later, Utah was born.
But Utah and his brothers took more than five years to get right. Loftus said embryo transfers are difficult, especially when mares only produce one foal a year.
“(The embryo clones) didn’t have enough horsepower to follow through like a normal embryo would,” Loftus said.
After three years of trying, there had been no success.
So in order to “rev” up the embryos, UI researchers used a broth-like calcium substance. By 2002, Loftus said there had been three pregnancies within 90 days, although most pregnancies were lost at 60 days. Finally, researchers got just the right amount of calcium concentration and a mule was born the next year.
It was off to the races and training to be the next Taz began. Idaho Gem and Idaho Star won their first races in June 2006, while Utah was left in the dust after a training injury.
“The training method didn’t agree with his personality,” Loftus said.
Since the genetically-identical brothers were not equal athletes, the question of nature or nurture arose. Loftus said it is unclear whether Utah’s cloned DNA prevented his racing success or if the parenting of surrogate mother, Idaho Rose, made him a racing adversary.
“Utah Pioneer is ornery,” said Stacey Doumit, Horse Science and Management instructor. “Not all mules are like that.”
Doumit said Utah and Rose would have been together for three to six months during his infancy. Although she has not seen “learned meanness” in foals, she said foals mimic their mothers.
But just like humans, Doumit said each foal has its own personality.
Utah remains at pasture with four other horses and will remain a university attraction throughout his retirement.
Although racing didn’t turn out to be Utah’s gift, he is still a one-of-a … wait … three-of-a-kind mule.
Clone for the cure
Calcium research didn’t just jump-start embryo production, but was a main theme of the cloning process.
During the cloning, researcher Gordon Woods focused on the lack of cancer in horses. Loftus said prostate cancer is non-existent in stallions and skin cancer in white horses doesn’t metastasize. Woods found horses have one-third the calcium of humans, which is the fuel for cancer cells. Horses bodies have elevated amounts of cadmium, a calcium suppressor, and low quantities of calcium overall. Humans — especially those practicing the Western diet — are quite the opposite with high concentrations of calcium from diets full of dairy and red meat.
Humans may be far from being cloned, but cloning equines may be the right step toward human development.
As seen in April 2012 issue of blot.
The mules were created to mirror Taz, an award-winning racing mule owned by Idaho businessman Don Jacklin, who partially funded the clone research.
“Jacklin wanted a clone as close to Taz as you could get,” said Bill Loftus, UI journalism professor and science writer.
Loftus said Utah began as a mare’s unfertilized egg.
Genetic material was removed from the egg, and mule fetus skin cells produced by Taz’s parents were inserted into the egg, placed in a dish and electrically shocked. Once the cells divided, the mule embryo was inserted into Idaho Rose, Utah’s surrogate mother. Nearly 360 days later, Utah was born.
But Utah and his brothers took more than five years to get right. Loftus said embryo transfers are difficult, especially when mares only produce one foal a year.
“(The embryo clones) didn’t have enough horsepower to follow through like a normal embryo would,” Loftus said.
After three years of trying, there had been no success.
So in order to “rev” up the embryos, UI researchers used a broth-like calcium substance. By 2002, Loftus said there had been three pregnancies within 90 days, although most pregnancies were lost at 60 days. Finally, researchers got just the right amount of calcium concentration and a mule was born the next year.
It was off to the races and training to be the next Taz began. Idaho Gem and Idaho Star won their first races in June 2006, while Utah was left in the dust after a training injury.
“The training method didn’t agree with his personality,” Loftus said.
Since the genetically-identical brothers were not equal athletes, the question of nature or nurture arose. Loftus said it is unclear whether Utah’s cloned DNA prevented his racing success or if the parenting of surrogate mother, Idaho Rose, made him a racing adversary.
“Utah Pioneer is ornery,” said Stacey Doumit, Horse Science and Management instructor. “Not all mules are like that.”
Doumit said Utah and Rose would have been together for three to six months during his infancy. Although she has not seen “learned meanness” in foals, she said foals mimic their mothers.
But just like humans, Doumit said each foal has its own personality.
Utah remains at pasture with four other horses and will remain a university attraction throughout his retirement.
Although racing didn’t turn out to be Utah’s gift, he is still a one-of-a … wait … three-of-a-kind mule.
Clone for the cure
Calcium research didn’t just jump-start embryo production, but was a main theme of the cloning process.
During the cloning, researcher Gordon Woods focused on the lack of cancer in horses. Loftus said prostate cancer is non-existent in stallions and skin cancer in white horses doesn’t metastasize. Woods found horses have one-third the calcium of humans, which is the fuel for cancer cells. Horses bodies have elevated amounts of cadmium, a calcium suppressor, and low quantities of calcium overall. Humans — especially those practicing the Western diet — are quite the opposite with high concentrations of calcium from diets full of dairy and red meat.
Humans may be far from being cloned, but cloning equines may be the right step toward human development.
As seen in April 2012 issue of blot.
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