November 2007 Stories

From Math Models to Film Reels

Craig Webster ’05 seemed well on his way to a physics or mathematics career when he left Willamette. Now he’s making movies about math in Hungary.

Movies about math? What happened? Well, he put his liberal arts education into practice. During his senior year, as he finished up a double major in math and physics, he was named a finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship and a UK Fulbright grant. He didn’t win either. But he went to Oxford University on his own to obtain a master’s in applied mathematics, and finished in September. Along the way he realized his interest in filmmaking, something he explored as an undergraduate, was more than just a hobby.

Last year Webster won a Fulbright to explore his new path in Hungary. He recently took time out from his work in Budapest to explain his journey.

Q: What made you switch gears from a possible math career to film?

A: For me, math is a secure and ordered career path, but I didn’t feel my heart was in it. My heart was in the creative endeavors I did during my free time: writing stories and plays and making films. I’d invested so much time in formal mathematics and I had so much opportunity to be funded to study and research, but I felt it would be wiser for me to do what I want, even if it is more difficult.

I’ve been interested in film for awhile. I like artsy films such as “Taste of Cherry” and “Close Up” by Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian film director, and also I like films from the French new wave, such as “Masculin Feminin: 15 Faits Précis,” “Vivre Sa Vie” and “Notre Musique” by Jean-Luc Godard.

I was influenced by my dad, who likes to watch slow foreign films, and Professor Ken Nolley, whose History of Cinema II class I attended at Willamette. The class focused on experimental films and videos, i.e., non-narrative, non-character driven. I started to see film in a new light and became interested in how films challenge conventional expectations. A film doesn’t have to have a plot. It can explore the physical properties of light shining on a screen, for instance. We watched films that employed “functional boredom,” where the author is intentionally trying to bore the audience in order to make them aware of what it means to go to a cinema or watch a film. The best example of this is “Wavelength” by Michael Snow, which is essentially a 45-minute zoom-in shot to a picture on a wall. Of course, only a handful of people are interested in this kind of stuff.

I shot two short films while in Oxford. The first was about an autistic girl who had to get a tetanus shot, and the second was a narrative plot built on the idea of Schrödinger’s cat.

Q: What are you doing in Hungary with your Fulbright? Why did you choose Hungary?

A: I will be making videos and films that involve mathematical ideas. I quite often write with structures and sequences and symmetries in mind, even if the audience is not aware of these structures. In particular, I want to use some ideas of the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős as the basis of my work. I hope to create a body of work in this spirit, perhaps 10 short videos/films. It may be confusing that I seem to have renounced math but am making it the center of my creative work. I like riddles and problems, and I especially like to think about words and letters in math-like ways.

I chose Hungary because a lot of great scientists and artists (Teller, Bartók, Rubik, Moholy-Nagy, Karoly, etc.) are from Hungary, including Erdős, and the language is difficult, interesting and obscure. There’s a lot of neat video art and art in general happening here.

Q: What are your plans for after the Fulbright?

A: My plan is to do an MFA in filmmaking. I’m becoming more certain I will do this at the University of Iowa, which has a wonderful creative community and a small, open-minded filmmaking department.

Q: What were you involved in while at Willamette?

A: Everything. I had a very neat group of friends. We started calling ourselves the family, a family of seven. I learned a tremendous amount from these people, and I owe my interest in pursuing creative projects to them. They were the actors in my first movie, “Life Is.”

Two other influences in my life at Willamette were my math and physics advisors, Johnner Barrett and Rick Watkins. They spent an inordinate amount of time helping me one-on-one, teaching me how cosmology, quantum mechanics and differential equations work. And they were kind enough to be in my films, too. Rick starred as the doctor in “Life Is.” His role was to tell a patient that he had a fatal illness, but he couldn’t help bursting into laughter each time. It took us 10 takes to get through his 20-second scene. And the sound wasn’t even being recorded, so he didn’t have to memorize any lines! He would try to cover his mouth like he was really concerned, but you could see the smile under his hand. Rick also let me use his house to make two other films the following year.

The English department also was very helpful. They let me take independent study classes to make films even though I was a math and physics major. Ken Nolley supervised me on my second film, which was a documentary of Willamette (2003). That was a very successful film because it opened on campus to a 200-person audience of Willamette students and faculty. So the film was about a community, and that community actually showed up to watch the film.

I read a lot of books for leisure. I took a lot of classes outside my discipline. I played ultimate Frisbee.

I hung around [Director of Student Academic Grants and Awards] Monique Bourque’s office a lot. Does that count as an activity? She is very helpful and nice, and the most relaxed scholarship person I have met.

To watch some of Craig Webster’s films, including a clip of his Willamette documentary, visit www.vimeo.com/user273103.

For information on the Fulbright grant and many others, contact Monique Bourque in the Student Academic Grants and Awards office on the second floor of Putnam University Center.

Angels Along the Way

Olympia Vernon didn’t always have a title, a Pulitzer nomination, a novel on The New York Times Editor’s Choice list, or as many awards as her years.

Her beginnings were much more humble. Born on the edge of Louisiana, the fourth child of seven, she wrote her first words in the dirt. She would stretch out on her belly by a garden “held together by stones from the river.” Her step-grandfather would come out and pluck watermelons with his thumb and ring finger to test the heart. If the heart was good, all the children would come running. And after a few bites of sweet red fruit, Vernon would return to her words. “I wrote them in my head and on my fingertips and sometimes, a breeze would blow through the curtains and I’d write every word I had held in my mind as quickly as I could.

“I’d like to think that gifted writers swim in their mother’s bellies with an oxygen of a different kind,” says Vernon, who holds Willamette’s Hallie Ford Chair of English. “I have very few memories where a pen does not exist.”

Vernon got off to a charmed start, one born of hard work and a burning gift — words so “powerful and raw,” according to reviewers, it’s as if she is “reinventing the language.”

Not realizing one could write for a degree or for a living, Vernon got a bachelor’s in criminal justice, but was steered toward a master of fine arts at Louisiana State University. On a used computer that alternated between functioning and crashing, she tapped out the opening line of a story: “One Sunday morning, during Bible study, I took a tube of fire-engine red lipstick and drew a naked lady on the first page of Genesis.” The raw coming-of-age tale that emerged was set in the rural black Southern countryside, and its characters were limited by poverty and prejudice.

When she submitted the story as credit for an independent study course, an LSU professor sent it to a New Orleans writing festival. Within a week New York City agents were on the phone vying for rights to a novel that would be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and land on The New York Times New & Noteworthy list. Reviewers across the country praised Vernon’s writing as explosive and lyrical, fearless and erotic.

Three novels, a string of short stories and numerous awards later — including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award — Vernon follows an obsessive rhythm. “When my characters want to write, they wake me up in the middle of the night and they keep talking until they are finished,” she says. “I like to have a constant thread that connects.” She creates her first draft in nearly one sitting and doesn’t edit it until she’s signed a contract.

“I dive into this grand ocean and I don’t like to come up for air until I absolutely have to,” she says.

Vernon is trying to immerse as many Willamette students in the “ocean” with her as possible. “At first her methods seemed a little unorthodox,” Cassie Huntley ’07 says. On Huntley’s first day of class, students were asked to trace their hands on paper and draw in details that didn’t show up in the tracing. Vernon then randomly passed around the prints, and students were asked to write careful descriptions, guessing at likes and dislikes, majors, jobs, family background. “When we checked it out, some descriptions were dead on,” Huntley says. “The exercise made us think.” Vernon also takes her students to the Bistro for coffee and talks about life and, always, about writing.

“I never intended on ‘being’ a writer,” she says. “I was simply writing. It was a part of what I always was.” She remembers chatting with authors at the writing festival that kicked off her career. “There was an energy around us. Something was happening to me that I had not been aware of.”

It’s proof, Vernon says, that gifts are part of who we are. They’re something we can’t live without, but often overlook. “I’m grateful,” she says. “Thank God there were angels along the way to push me forward.”

Vernon’s most recent award is the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, for her book, A Killing in This Town.

Peter Wogan: Sharing the Magic

Associate Professor Peter Wogan once fled from an Ecuadorian woman who wanted money in return for removing his name from a deadly witch’s book. But he didn’t run to avoid death. He ran to save his friend’s poncho before the woman’s daughter stole it off the poor man’s back.

On a much tamer assignment, Wogan spent hour upon hour sitting at a local Mexican video store. Watching. Interviewing. Taking notes.

Such is the glorious life of the anthropologist. As someone who studies culture for a living, Wogan’s job begins with field observations — whether in an exotic village in Ecuador or a quieter video store in Salem.

Wogan approaches his job with a sense of humor, something he tries to convey in his classes and in his writing — like the story of his Ecuadorian friend’s nearly pilfered poncho that opens the introduction of his book, “Magical Writing in Salasaca: Literacy and Power in Highland Ecuador.” The incident wasn’t funny at the time, but once Wogan and his friend escaped, they laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. “I see humor as connected to anthropology,” Wogan says. “Humor should be connected to any intellectual activity. If we’re examining ourselves, we should be able to make fun of ourselves as a way of introspection.”

That sense of humor is just one characteristic that led Willamette students to vote Wogan Professor of the Year last spring. In an article about the award in The Collegian student newspaper, a student said Wogan “is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.” Another advised that “everyone should take a Wogan class.”

Humbled by the award, Wogan sees his anthropology classes as a chance to show students that other cultures may not be as alien as they think. “There’s a lot of stuff that happens around the world that is pretty shocking to people at first glance,” he says. “It’s fun to bring that all back and show students how it is similar or relevant to something in their own lives. That really blows them away.”

So why is Wogan crossing witches in South America? It has to do with his longtime research interest in the use of magical writing by indigenous people in Ecuador’s Andes Mountains. For about 10 years, he spent summers living with the Salasaca people and examining their belief that writing has a supernatural nature. That includes the belief that if your name is written in the local witch’s book, you will die unless you do something about it (pay a fee, usually). Typically your name gets into the book after an enemy pays for the witch to kill you.

The ritual may sound crazy to outsiders, but Wogan observed that the book served as a form of law enforcement in an area so remote that police officers were not available. If someone steals or cheats on a spouse, for example, the book might be the only recourse for the victim. “We take people to court, but they use witchcraft instead,” Wogan says.

The power of the written word to the Salasacas also helps them understand their relationship with the church and their government, Wogan says. When their government tells them they must get a birth certificate to “exist” or that they must register to pay their taxes, for example, they start to look at written archives as “the ultimate symbol of power,” he says.

Wogan no longer travels to Ecuador, but he continues exploring his interest in Latin American cultures. He teaches a course on the subject and leads students in volunteer work at nearby Bush Elementary School, which has a large Latino population. To bring his research to the local level, Wogan decided to study Salem’s Mexican-American population through their interest in film. “I’m really interested in movies, and I wanted to know what’s going on with Mexican film,” he says. “I think you can use movies as the window into the psyche.”

He found a local video store owned by a Mexican-American family that rents out lesser-known Mexican films. These aren’t films that anyone would see in American theaters; they don’t even have English subtitles. “When you first see them, you might think ‘What the heck is going on here?’ There might be a long shot of a horse, just a horse. It’s hard to get into it initially, but you have to get into the ethos that inspires it.”

After spending so many hours hanging out at the shop, Wogan’s research took an unexpected turn. He became extremely close to the owner who runs the store. “This guy is very funny. At the same time, he’s very hard driving. He wants to make it big. So my work has kind of become this story of a small video store and the American dream. I’m still interested in the movies, but now I’m really interested in his story.”

And now for the question on everyone’s minds: How did Wogan’s name get into that witch’s book? Supposedly an angry ex-girlfriend was responsible. “I found that hard to believe, given that we’d broken up a long time ago and I couldn’t see her flying all the way to Ecuador to put my name in the book,” Wogan says. “But that’s what they said, and it’s a pretty common explanation in these cases. Anything about jealousy is usually a pretty safe bet.”

Coming Home the Long Way ’Round

He wore an embroidered barong shirt. She wore a lacy gown over the moose-hide slippers her grandma had sewn. His Filipino relatives cooked up a feast of pancit and caldereta, and her family read an Apache wedding song and performed the ceremony that joined their Athabaskan heritage with Filipino culture.

Margaret Hoffman ’03 found her first boyfriend in eighth grade, when “E.J.” David moved to Barrow, Alaska, from the Philippines. She and David linked up again during their senior year of high school and then courted across the globe for 12 years, through her Willamette biology degree and Peace Corp stint, and his doctorate program in psychology in Illinois. Dating sometimes required a 5,500-mile commute.

Their honeymoon this summer was as adventurous as their courtship. After the festivities died down, they guided their kayak into the current of the Yukon River and paddled almost 300 miles downstream to her grandmother’s fish camp. The summer solstice sun lit up the midnight sky as they passed bears, eagles and moose along the banks, along with abandoned villages almost given over to wilderness.

“You can’t drive to any of these towns,” Hoffman says. “We stopped in some of the villages and fish camps, and everywhere we stopped, someone knew my mother or grandmother. It’s a huge area, but a small population, so everyone knows everyone.”

Hoffman now works with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium while David teaches psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It’s no coincidence that she’s practicing health outreach to Alaska Natives; she’s had her mind focused on that goal since her teens.

She studied biology at Willamette and then got her start in community health as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua. “I heard about Peace Corps in high school and always knew I wanted to do it,” she says.

In Nicaragua, Hoffman worked at a health outpost in San Lucas, a coffee-farming village in the northern mountains. Her mud adobe house lacked electricity and running water, but it didn’t feel like a lack to her, and she had plenty of tropical sunshine from the window and door, always left open.

She worked with pregnant women and mothers, discussing health issues — from basic nutrition and hygiene to more sensitive matters such as self-esteem and reproductive health. “We had one overly stretched nurse,” she says, “so prevention was all the more important.” She met mothers in their homes with their babies, and sipped endless cups of local coffee while she taught them how to cook with leafy greens and soy, and explained birth control in her steadily improving Spanish.

“I loved not living with TV, really being connected with people and connected to the land,” she says. “I was never on pavement. Without all the distractions, I felt ‘in the moment.’”

The simple rural lifestyle is reminiscent of the life her Athabascan mother and grandma lead. Two hundred people make a good-sized village, and people keep their doors unlocked in her mom’s hometown of Ruby, Alaska. “It’s a collective culture,” Hoffman says. “Everyone has to work together to survive. Hard work is a common cultural value — with farming in Nicaragua and subsistence living in Alaska — but people are happy.”

She worries about the loss of a rich culture as Alaska Natives transition from a subsistence hunting and gathering lifestyle to a cash economy. “Gas is expensive in the villages,” Hoffman says. “Imagine paying $5 to $6 a gallon, and almost $9 in one village. Now people depend on motorboats to check their fishnets. And culturally, kids want to play video games rather than pick berries. It takes a whole family to sustain a traditional lifestyle.”

Now that she’s back in Alaska, Hoffman hopes to settle in for a while. Since returning from her float down Alaska’s longest river, she’s been busy at her new job with the health consortium. Her outreach position allows her to spend time in the villages, where she surveys people’s diets — always promoting traditional Native foods. She also spends a few hours a week at the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center discussing diabetes prevention and care with the Hispanic community.

The romance that circled across half the globe has found its way home, as has her passion for Native healthcare. “I’m always away — away and further away from the heart of my motivation,” she wrote home from Nicaragua. “My tie is stretching out very thin, yet it’s so important to me and I desperately want to strengthen it. I’m still young and idealistic, and I never want to lose my idealism. I’ve been so blessed in my life, these blessings have to be used to give back.”