Dave Dahl is remarkably composed as he recalls the decades when addiction and depression ruled his life. His résumé at one point was a rap sheet chock full of crime and drugs. But even more remarkable is the way he turned his life around. Today, as the president of the Dave’s Killer Bread juggernaut, Dahl’s story of redemption has become intimately intertwined with the bread he makes—in fact, a bit of his story is on the package of every loaf.
In the early and mid 1970s, hundreds of dory fishermen set off from Pacific City in a quest that generously produced fishing legends. Ray Monroe had been there then, alongside his father and grandfather. As a young man, Monroe was one of the 300 or so commercially licensed salmon fishermen sailing dory boats out of Pacific City to harvest the bounty for which the Oregon Coast is renown. The old salts recount stories of making thousands of dollars in a single haul, full of fish, prized for its fight, profit and taste.
This was not what Kendall Cook had in mind when he dropped out of the University of Oregon in 1993 to be a ski bum. When he was visiting a friend who was teaching adaptive skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado, an instructor left, and Cook filled the spot, helping people with disabilities learn to ski a different way. Cook had grown up ski racing in Montana, but had never taught skiing and didn’t even know any skiers with disabilities.
Though there was no rainy outdoor concert to commemorate it, no tie-dyes made for the occasion and no ten-bong salute, the combination of Two Old Hippies Guitar and Breedlove Guitars was acoustic harmony with roots in the ’60s.
Perfect as a cultural aprés ski evening, a Spanish comida will be made by 1859’s Home Grown Chef, Lisa Glickman, who, for years, lived and cooked in Barcelona. In an intimate wooden cottage on Bend’s west side, expect a tapas menu with an Oregon twist.
Neal Keny-Guyer could tell you what it feels like to go fly-fishing in Kamchatka. He could express the lasting impact of his trip to the Thai-Cambodian border at the height of conflict in 1980, or what it feels like in Beirut after a car bomb explodes in the middle of an otherwise pleasant afternoon.
The plan for Jesse Lange was already in the soil of tiny Dundee when he moved there as a 9-year-old. It wasn’t preordained determinism. Oregon’s wine industry back then couldn’t yet be called much of an industry. The soil was new to the noses in the wine world, and most clear thinkers were clearly skeptical of its potential. Oregon wine was what Californian wine-growers considered to be the hooch of a few hippies who had lost the points on their compass, errant souls swept up in a northerly trade wind.
Mat Kearney was born in Eugene, played soccer at South Eugene High and again at Chico State University, a Division II program in California. It was there that he picked up his roommate’s guitar and distinguished himself as a talented crooner and balladeer.
Wei Wang sat down in his lab at Oregon State University with an inkjet printer and an interesting question. Why can’t solar cells be made simply by printing them with an inkjet printer filled with a solution of solar-transmitting compound? His answer was the subject of a four-page research paper published in the industry journal Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells and the focus of an article from the BBC. The 28-year-old Ph.D. candidate from Shanxi Province, China had discovered an easy process for making solar cells with a printer, a substrate and a combination of metal salts called CIGS. Wang’s discovery could revolutionize the solar industry as a cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional siliconbased solar cell, and, as a by-product, bring inkjets back into the avant garde.
