On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Steve from Mendocino
I hate children. They’re noisy and messy and, above all, inconvenient. I had a vasectomy at 24 years old and never regretted it.
In my late forties, as a gift to my wife who really loves and wanted children, I offered to get a vasectomy reversal. Nothing happened, despite our enthusiastic attempts, so I flew to St. Luis for a second reversal by a doctor who had the reputation as the best in the country for reversals. Nothing happened, so we decided to adopt. After a mountain of paperwork for both the American and Chinese governments, we boarded a plane for a two week stay in China dedicated to retrieving the child selected for us by the Chinese government, resolving any medical issues that might crop up, and finalizing paperwork for the Chinese and the American governments.
We changed planes in Beijing and landed in the afternoon at Wuhan (yes, that Wuhan), where the group of prospective parents ate a nice lunch and then prepared to pick up the 10 or 12 babies that had been designated for us. The babies were ferried from orphanages around that part of China to this central location because some busy-body American wrote an article about the appalling conditions in the orphanages without noting that China was a poor country that genuinely loves children but has to get by with far less than Americans are accustomed to.
At 7:00 o’clock in the evening, the new parents gathered at the elevator landing of our floor and waited with eyes glued on the elevator movements. The doors finally opened and out came a flock of orphanage workers carrying bewildered and squalling babies. The name of our assigned baby was called out (in Chinese, of course), and my wife stepped forward, took our daughter, and was promptly peed on. We whisked her off to our room to clean up, and my wife set to reassuring our terrified and outraged daughter who’d just been kidnapped by strange looking aliens. That only made matters worse, of course, so we gave her space on the bed and I started playing a game of I would look away when she looked at me and she would look away when I looked at her. She was glued to my chest for the next two weeks.
Three years later, we got pregnant, of course, and finished our family making. Over the course of the following years, I discovered that, in addition to being loud and messy and inconvenient, kids have magic and joy and charm and love. Who could have known?
At Thanksgiving of 2014 my wife, my younger daughter, and I drove to Reed College to visit our elder daughter. Reed is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that there are fewer than 1,500 students total. It’s small and odd and, yes, persistently radical in its politics. While my daughter found this last quality tedious, the education is excellent and respected.
My tour of the campus lasted roughly 20 minutes but I came back with quite a few nice pictures. It was one of those rainy days where the sun pops out periodically and casts incredible patches of light on the late fall leaves. Those conditions are special.
This is the ODB (old dorm block), which, I understand, was one of the original 3 Reed buildings. Now it’s just one dorm of several.
The PAB (performing arts building). Used to be the newest building but they just built a new dorm last year or the year before or something. (My daughter’s words).
Interior of the PAB.
Elliot Hall. It has classrooms and offices. It was one of the original buildings. “Actually now I think about it there might have been just 2 originals.”
The blue bridge and Bragdon (dorm). My daughter lived here.
The blue bridge spans this watercourse — the Reed canyon. “I think there’s all sorts of biology/ecology fun facts about it but I don’t know any. Google it. I think it sometimes has beavers. People go do drugs in it. I think people have even OD’d and died in it or nearly.” Have I mentioned that I love my kids?
The Reed administration has determined that having students eat the bulk of their meals in their dorm room doesn’t work out very well, so they built this facility. For me, I found that, when eating here, sticking to bacon for breakfast and mediocre Mexican food the rest of the time keeps me full. Fresh food salad goes down OK as well, and makes me feel virtuous.
There are several large areas here, all very attractive, but I found this one to be the most photographically interesting.
An outdoor space next to the PAB building. I don’t know how much it’s used by students, but this photo brings me a zen-like sense of peace. Decidedly abnormal, but entirely pleasurable.
SiubhanDuinne
It looks like a charming and welcoming campus. I especially like the older buildings and the Reed Canyon watercourse. And I love your family’s backstory!
Gvg
My great grandparents got pregnant after they adopted too, and a couple who are my parent’s friends and an aunt and uncle. It seems to be pretty common, yet they all had years of no pregnancies before adopting. Always seems funny though.
WorkingOnIt
Nice story andthe pictures! Good friends of mine got pregnant within a year of adopting two infants from Central America (after years of trying).
Barbara
My daughter considered Reed and we visited. Love these pictures. I would lay money you were an insufferable know it all at 24.
Laura Too
Lovely pictures and cool story. Thanks!
cope
What a nice set of pictures. They evoke strong memories of the buildings and ambience of my own college. Now I want to go back. This time, I promise to graduate higher than in the upper 9/10ths of my class, honest. It is also a small liberal arts college, somewhat radical in its politics having been the site of one of the Lincoln/Douglas debates. When students seizing administration buildings was all the rage in the ’60s, the group that took over our admin building included a guy named John Podesta.
I hope your daughter’s memories and experiences of college life at Reed are as wonderful as mine (with a better academic outcome). Thanks.
HinTN
The architecture and layout of the ODB is very much the same as the older buildings at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, TN. It used to be in the boonies but civilization has come to that lovely region of rivers and hills.
Thanks for the backstory and the trip to Reed.
sheila in nc
The original buildings remind me very much of Grinnell College. Similar size student body and pretty similar radical politics. No canyon, or mountains in the distance, of course. But one view across campus through beautifully placed arches that when you line them up, goes on into infinity…
susanna
Such an intimate-appearing campus with impressive range of architecture.
Your family-building recollection was charming with your willingness and later utter joy to having a family was a warm delight to read.
TomatoQueen
Love your family story and that’s a charming campus. I will never forgive Reed for kicking out James Beard in the bad old days before the Before Times.
mvr
I very much enjoyed my time at Reed in the mid-70s. I had gone to the University of Illinois for a year and found it too grade-oriented and that a school that was that Frat-oriented was not for me. So I dropped out and worked for a year before hitch-hiking to Portland and going to school at Reed. They had a very good Philosophy department at the time and it fit me well.
Pretty intense place with lots of focus on school work while also being very social and political activism oriented. I never lived on campus (one of the attractions for me compared to U of I was that it wasn’t required). But I spend a good bit of time socializing in one of several Reed Houses where students shared a big old house.
Wanted to teach at a liberal arts school like that but wound up at a large university instead.
Roger Moore
My parents met when they were students at Reed, and when my father finally retired they wound up moving back to Portland because they loved the area so much.
Kathleen
Beautiful pictures and lovely story. I went to University of Portland in the 60’s and I’m sure we were the most reviled college in Portland because the school was very Catholic and very conservative (and I think it still is).
DCA
As the parent of a Reedie (now out and about), I’ll just say, great place: manages to combine a hippiesh vibe in the student life with academic rigor. The only downside of the latter is that they have avoided grade inflation, which can be a problem if you want to go to grad school (though all transcripts come with an explanatory statement about this). Best of all, though, is that every year, when they get the survey form from the US News ratings people, they throw it in the trash. Not being on the list hasn’t done them any harm.
Steve from Mendocino
@Barbara: I’m an insufferable know it all today.
randal m sexton
Hmm, My oldest went to Reed at about the same time — Worth a mention what Reed’s (unofficial) motto is: “Communism, Atheism, Free Love” — it turns out pretty interesting people.
JanieM
These pictures invite a lecture on architecture and landscape that I would love to listen to. There’s an almost haunting feel of long ago about them — even the “formerly newest” PAB in the second picture. And the scenes look familiar — and yet they aren’t, quite.
I’d love to see that cafeteria with a fire in the fireplace and no other light. The fenced-in space in the last one: it looks like they’re growing something…?
I considered Reed for college because of it’s academic standards but ended up going east instead of west. Massachusetts was apparently far enough away from Ohio for me at the time. Later I spent a summer in Portland and found Oregon very beautiful.
PS. Great story-telling.
Also, per @Steve from Mendocino: I beg to differ. Steve is editing some of my photos and teaching me stuff as we go along. At this stage in my life I have far less than zero tolerance for insufferable know-it-alls, and we’re still at it. QED. :-)
Miss Bianca
Nice photos. I wanted to go to Reed, but my parents wouldn’t let me apply, because a couple of my high school friends they didn’t approve of were going there. Well, by the time I would have gone they had already dropped out. Ended up at the Residential College of the University of Michigan instead, which at the time (probably still is) was housed in East Quad, which looks an awful lot like that first dorm pictured. Had a great time there, but still wonder what my life might have looked like if I had gone to Reed instead…
Kent
Hey! Reed Grad here (class of 86). We live 30 min away but I don’t get over there much anymore. My daughter who is a HS senior visited but ultimately scratched it off her list. She is looking for someplace not quite so single-focused on academics to the exclusion of all else and has her eye on Whitman and UW among others.
For those who want to read a quirky bit of history about Reed. One of their most famous alumni is the famous Italian fashion designer Pucci who when exiled from the war in Europe came upon Reed and talked them into letting him attend. Here is the story: https://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/march2014/articles/features/pucci/pucci1.html
JanieM
@Miss Bianca: Wow. University of Michigan was my second choice by a hair. Who knows with 18-year-olds, but in my conscious mind I chose MIT in part so I could try another part of the country and in part because the MIT admissions materials were so down-to-earth and welcoming. But I’ve often wondered what path my life would have taken if I had gone to UM instead — for one thing, a couple of my high school friends were there. For another, the program I was invited into would have given me immense academic freedom — which I now know I wouldn’t have had a clue how to use wisely.
Weird echoes!
oldster
Another Reed grad. It’s a good place.
I also wound up in academia, and can say with MVR above,
“Wanted to teach at a liberal arts school like that but wound up at a large university instead.”
Reed used to boast a really disproportionate number of advanced degrees among its alums, like second or third highest per capita PhDs of all 4-year programs in the country. I don’t know whether that’s still true. But that was certainly the atmosphere when I was there.
I haven’t been back to the campus in many years — the constraints of a teaching career meant that I had to take jobs wherever I could find them, and there are many more on the East Coast than in the Pacific Northwest. Now that we are retired, though, we sometimes get a hankering to move back westward. I wish we had bought one of those Southeast houses when they were going for dirt cheap during the Reagan depression.
williamC
This is great! And they really.capture the warmth of the college! Before the start of the fall semester, I rode through the Reed campus on my morning bike ride every day, since it’s three blocks from my house! Never really noticed the buildings before, mostly because I’m a University of Ga alum and our building were even older and more grand, but I can appreciate the beauty of a classic campus.
Ironically, everyone in the area received postcards in August notifying us all that the Reed College campus was closed to all visitors except students, staff, and faculty for the rest of 2020 due to the pandemic, which ended my ride-throughs.
Kent
@oldster: It still does, but they’ve also caved to reality to some extent by establishing a new Computer Science Department and major so it isn’t just hard-core classical liberal arts majors anymore. I guess they want to keep the Steven Jobs types on campus rather than see them leave for Stanford
Talking about cheap SE Portland homes during the Reagan recession. My off-campus housemate my senior year (85-86) was a few years older and a newly minted HS teacher returned from the Peace Corps. That year he and his girlfriend bought a nice Victorian on about 28th and Salmon a couple blocks north of Hawthorne for $20,000. Wasn’t even a trashed fixer-upper. Just needed new paint and appliances. The same home is probably pushing $1 million today.
mvr
I resonate with that! You could have gotten the sort of foursquare I live in and can afford in Lincoln Nebraska for around $40K back when I moved to Portland. And now it would go for somewhere closer to a million dollars there. Portland is still a place I would love to live, but I got priced out long ago.
Unfortunately I rented back then. Did get to live in some pretty cool houses & apartments though, when I did live there.
beckya57
What a great story, and lovely pictures. We also know a couple that adopted a boy from Korea after years of trying, and then the wife got pregnant and they had a daughter. Someone should do a study to see if this really happens more than would be predicted by chance, or if it’s a spurious “finding” that reflects our tendency to focus on interesting events (and thus ignore all the times when this doesn’t happen).
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
A good friend of mine and her husband adopted a girl baby from China in the mid-1990s and her Christmas card says what they missed the most in this Covid year was their 25th-anniversary party with their adoption group.
Jess
@Kent: Hey, Kent! Did you start in 1982? If so, we were there at the same time. I only lasted 3 weeks, though, including orientation week. I accidentally pushed a guy through a window at a party, discovered I hated my roommate, and realized I was going to go mad in such a small bubble, despite the excellent academics. The rain didn’t help. I packed my trunk, caught a bus, and landed in SF, where I ended up going to art school. No regrets, but I respect those who made it to the finish line.
Empress of the Known Lute World
Anent the mysteries of pregnancy . . . my mother had several miscarriages and surgery on her ovaries. My parents finally gave up and decided to adopt. Three years later I was born. And in three more years, my brother. And 14 months later, surprise! Another brother!
Go figure.
Comrade Colette
@beckya57:
We also adopted a boy from Korea, after years of trying, and everyone told us we would subsequently get pregnant.
We did not.
We are fine with this, but it was irritating to listen when I was over 45 and it was clearly never going to happen.
tybee
i literally laughed out loud at that. thanks!
mvr
Oh, yeah on the subject of the canyon with the bridge over the stream below. IIRC it is on a spur off Johnson Creek (Crystal Springs) and it once again sometimes gets salmon migrating up it. In my day it was not in its prime and there was some agitation to do something about parking lot water contaminated with oil washing into it. It is in better shape these days from what I’ve heard.
Noah Brand
As an old Reed alum, these photos (except for the PAB) conjure a lovely nostalgia. Thank you.
Oh, and the fun fact about the Canyon is that it’s a registered nature preserve. Reed is the only campus with both a working nuclear reactor and an official nature preserve.
New Style in Parsons
Thx for the write-up and photo tour, and a great family story.
The Reed connection resonates with my impression that many Reed graduates started families later in life; almost none of the Reed students were married or anywhere near getting married.
I graduated forty years ago in biology, leading to a career in science and medicine, like so many of my fellow alumni. As was written above, accommodations have been made to ‘modernize’ the curriculum, but back in my day Reed functioned like a prep school for PhDs, physicians, lawyers and the occasional MBA. Most everyone who graduated continued on that pathway, so much so that we competed with MIT to top the stats for highest percentage going on to post-BA schooling.
Reed’s reputation for smarts is not entirely misplaced. The architecture pictured here should have been a hint to Reed’s fundamental conservatism with regards to academics. Unfortunately I think the beautiful Pacific Northwest environment gave far-away applicants the misimpression that life at Reed revolved around parties and drugs and play-pretending hippy life, but such was decidedly not the case. When i was there, typically almost half the freshman class had transferred out by junior year. Reed also has the distinction of gathering the most geographically distant group of students, i.e., the median distance that the typical undergrad traveled to go there is longer than any other school in the country. Between the stringent academics and the slightly monk-like isolation, we were trained into a relatively high degree of personal autonomy and very hard-edged habits in terms of thinking about ourselves and the world. As much as we Reedies might consider ourselves as great brains, we were probably more like garden-variety, but premature, American intellectuals. We got an early start, were highly selected, and contrasted strongly with the historically white-supremacist, almost completely Caucasian, blue-collar world of surrounding 20th century Portland.
Political Reed has had a decidedly radical reputation, mostly I think for historic reasons having to do with the faculty and administration responses to WWI and the McCarthy red-baiting era. I think it’s true that there are relatively few current right-wingers among our alumni, but I attribute that more to intellectual and moral integrity inculcated in the student body, as opposed to a great deal of on-the-streets political activity by the average undergraduate. Notwithstanding the picture of a classic ‘Ivory Tower’ divorced from the ‘real world’, my impression is that Reed grads generally have been quite successful at having happy lives, and both integrating into America and causing some slight degree of liberal change and culture.