Tom Crabb, the pastor of the Cowboy Church, recalls: “In my life, long ago, I really got turned off to religion and the legalisms of religion . . . I wanted an atmosphere that wasn’t focused on the outer appearances of man, but the inner appearance. God looks at the heart, not the clothes.”
A glance at the hundred-or-more churchgoers in attendance at a typical Tuesday night service of the Cowboy Church would seem to reinforce Crabb’s lack of fashion emphasis. No suits or ties. None! Well-worn denim dominates, accessorized with boots, big buckles, and a smattering of baseball and Western-style headwear.
Then there’s the whole matter of the church hall.
Picture a concrete interior, fluorescent tubes illuminating a small, tiered amphitheater. Folding seats overlook a 10-by-20-foot sunken livestock pen thick with wood chips. The back wall of the corral features twin garage doors used for livestock entry and egress; above the doors, hand-painted signs advertise equestrian, meatpacking, farm implement, and animal feed services.
You’re surveying the sales arena of the Eugene Livestock Auction Barn. No surprise that Crabb finds comfort in such humble
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surroundings. He steers the course of services from a lectern in the livestock pit. A headset mic is tethered under his cowboy hat, an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder.
Early in a Cowboy Church service, Crabb and bandmates string together a succession of familiar country-and-western and rock tunes rewritten with lyrics reflecting gospel values. The drummer sometimes taps out clippity-clop accents on a woodblock. This is not your traditional interdenominational ministry.
The music ends and Crabb strides to the podium. He acknowledges a churchgoer suffering pain in his ribs: Congregation members descend on the man, laying hands on his frame in hopes of inspiring a miracle cure. Throughout the evening churchgoers spontaneously stand to shout out hopes for divine intercession: one seeks a personal cure for cancer; another, a soul mate; a third prays for employment. A multitude of arms continuously wave praise to Jesus and the heavens as choruses of amens and hallelujahs echo across the hall.
“I want this to be a rescue mission just a mile from Hell,” says Crabb. “That’s about reaching out, trying to save people before it’s too late, before death sets in on them.” Perhaps it’s also about marking a trail to everlasting life.
Swift and surprising
They are known as Vaux’s swifts. Nightly near sunset, for several weeks in April and September, the diminutive birds appear over our city in staggering numbers, their sharp, chipping voices echoing over streets and yards as they speed toward a tall, brick landmark rising up from the East University neighborhood.
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As darkness envelopes Eugene, thousands of swifts fill the sky east of Hayward Field. Their aerial acrobatics gain speed, and their swooping collective mass builds momentum over nearby Condon School like a gathering cyclone. Suddenly, hundreds of swifts dive in a furious spiral that disappears into the mouth of the school’s three-story chimney like tendrils of smoke sucked into a vortex. Within minutes, 8,000, 10,000, or perhaps even 15,000 winged creatures have followed much the same trajectory into the same brick column. The skies are eerily silent and empty again until morning.
Such daily spectacles are part of the Vaux’s swifts’ twice-yearly migration extending from Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest to Mexico, Central America, and Venezuela. And as many nightly observers at Condon School discover, it’s a fascinating, if somewhat perplexing, phenomenon.
Dan Gleason, a local ornithologist and one of the Lane County Audubon Society members who provide information to bird watchers at the Condon School, says experts are uncertain as to how Vaux’s swifts communicate with one another. Despite the appearance of flock-like behavior when the creatures congregate for nightly communal roosts, Gleason suggests that they probably don’t travel in flocks or exchange cues about migration routes. “Ducks and geese, you see big flocks moving over tightly,” says Gleason. “Swans move in small units, so we see family groups there. But songbirds and other migrants? We don’t really know!”
What ornithologist do know, however, is that despite the Vaux’s swifts’ attraction to Eugene and other cities along their migratory route, they are still, by and large, a wilderness species only recently prone to roosting (and nesting) in chimneys. Roosting swifts have long been attracted to the refuge of tree snags and other natural cavities with vertical entries. But as forestlands have dwindled, the agile birds have adapted by finding man-made structures affording similar comfort and protection.
A path to peace
Tom Attig, 72, a retired history teacher and classroom games designer, is convinced that most of us would have a tough go if asked to name even a half-dozen of the 23 Americans awarded the Nobel Peace Prize over the past century. “Some of them are prominent,” suggests Attig, “but then there are others who are fading into obscurity.”
In 2003, with that quiz show–like challenge as a bothersome backdrop, Attig came up with an idea for a special project intended to counterbalance our collective tendency to memorialize national war heroes while neglecting our greatest peacemakers. Call Attig’s notion The Nobel Peace Laureate Project (nobelpeacelaureates.org).
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Today, Attig laughs with self-deprecation when recalling that his fledgling plan for celebrating America’s peace advocates was limited to a desire to “slap some plaques up somewhere.” Over the last five years, his modest ambitions have inspired an impressive public education project anchored by elaborate plans for a “unique in the world” local Peace Park. The plans have garnered endorsements from Nobel winners Norman Borlaug (1970), Elie Wiesel (1986), and Jody Williams (1997), plus a who’s who of Eugene-area organizations and luminaries.
In fact, a veritable army of grass-roots supporters and contributors have coalesced around the Nobel Laureate Peace Project’s objectives. To date, the advocates have helped raise nearly two-thirds of the nonprofit project’s budget, generating cash donations and in-kind contributions that include masonry skills, marketing assistance, and truckloads of rocks, plants, trees, and other landscaping materials, plus the labor to install it.
More on point, the City of Eugene has offered a 2-acre parcel of land for the Peace Park at the entrance to Alton Baker Park. Local firms Presentation Design Group and Kate McGee Landscape Architect collaborated on the winning design for Peace Park, incorporating a scenic walking path, meditation alcove, information kiosk, serpentine stone wall, and series of stonework pillars memorializing all the individual American Nobel Peace Prize recipients. At least one Oregonian, Linus Pauling, is a laureate.
Attig is hopeful that additional near-term fundraising will allow construction to start on Peace Park this summer.
In his 11 years coaching the perennial college baseball power Cal State Fullerton, coach George Horton shaped the Titans into one of the most successful and lauded programs in the country. Nearly every year, Fullerton was expected to be a contender for the College World Series, and they were the national champions in 2004.
Now, after a year of recruiting and preparation to lead the first baseball season at University of Oregon since 1981, Horton is anxious to get back onto the field and do what he does best: coaching ballgames.
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But how these Ducks, most of whom are first-year Division I players, fare in their inaugural Pac-10 Conference season is something Horton can’t fully anticipate. He’s used to dealing with plenty of fresh faces, but when it’s an entire roster full of them, well, he’s unsure how things will unfold. “It’s more of a mystery with this group,” Horton says. “You can be a good practice player, but when it starts to count, everybody’s mentality changes.”
At Fullerton, the Titans consisted of the most finely tuned players in the nation. Horton had them practicing some of the most intricate baseball methods he knew, getting them, he says, to “the center of the onion.” Teaching everything at once to this year’s Ducks, though, could be problematic. “We could ask them to do too much,” Horton says, “and then they become mediocre.”
Part of the problem is that there aren’t any veterans teaching the freshmen what to do. All of his players are developing right from the beginning, which has slowed their progression, especially without a dedicated field to practice on. The team has had to practice at local high schools and has set up makeshift batting cages and bullpens in the Moshofsky Center though January.
Even for freshman third baseman Dylan Gavin, whose high school team in Santa Cruz, California, practiced some of Horton’s methods, it has been a steep learning curve. The practices are long and hard and it’s a challenge to stay focused throughout. Still, it’s all for the best. “I enjoy his attention to detail,” Gavin says of Horton. “It’s going to make me a better baseball player. It’s what makes him such a good coach.”
While he’s heard that—for now—the pressure’s off of having to compete for a College
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World Series berth every year, Horton says the people cutting him slack don’t know him very well. He wants to stay grounded and realistic with a first-year team, but there’s nothing more he’d like to do than shock the world by reaching the postseason.
Junior pitcher Eric Stavert, one of the projected starting pitchers, knows there’s enough talent on the Oregon roster to compete right away. “We don’t look at our teams as a building team,” he says. “We’re competitive right now.”
Stavert wasn’t simply boasting; Collegiate Baseball Newspaper dubbed the Ducks’ recruiting class second-best in the nation. It’s just a matter of how many layers of the onion Horton can cut through without causing his players to weep.
ooks at the heart, not the clothes.”
A path to peace
