By Nancy Varekamp | CNews Editor

John Kozel believes the opioid epidemic is stemming in Oregon. He’s encouraged by the increase of medical providers willing to prescribe pain management protocols with less emphasis on addictive drugs.

Effective alternatives include acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, massage, craniosacral techniques, myofascial release, trigger point therapy, cupping and gua sha.

Those are provided by YesYes Healing Garden (YYHG), a business he co-founded last year at 1626 N.E. Alberta St.

John earned a master’s degree from the College of Oriental Medicine, is a licensed acupuncturist, offers Chinese herbal consultations and manages the acupuncture and wellness practice.

Two licensed massage therapists also ply their skills, and one of them offers interpreting for Spanish-speaking patients.

John and co-founder Katherine Sullivan are making YYHG into an inclusive and accessible wellness practice.

“We reach out to the underserved, those who often have not been treated respectfully by other medical communities,” Katherine said.

The two-story building is on a rise above the Alberta Street sidewalk. A ramp is planned for this summer for easier physical accessibility.

Convenience is assured by walk-in hours for massage. And financial accessibility is the hallmark of Saturday and Sunday drop-in community acupuncture sessions.

Treatment is made more affordable for many because YYHG accepts health insurance. “Many policies cover acupuncture, and people just don’t realize it,” Katherine pointed out.

For John, the discovery of the benefits of healing arts came during his college days as a pre-med student in Vermont. There, he lived and worked for three years within an intentional community where he received intensive training in mindfulness and Taoist qi gong.

“I began to think there was a different way,” explained John, who moved to Portland in 2013 for his studies.

He isn’t surprised when out-oftowners visiting the Alberta Arts District drop in. “Some have their luggage and are on their way to the airport,” he reported. “Then they go home and seek this out.”

Katherine’s move to Portland from Virginia six years ago was for the culture and progressiveness.

“It was four years ago I learned respect for alternative healing practices,” Katherine said. The poet, editor and book publisher sustained an injury to her back that caused pain and reduced mobility in one arm. Neither were helped by physical therapy, but quickly responded to acupuncture.

She selected the name of the new practice. It carries the moniker of YesYes Books, her publishing company, which promotes poetry, literature and art for healing.

“Both projects are all about affirmation.”

Nancy Varekamp is semiretired from her career in journalism, public relations and – her favorite work engagement – writing and editing targeted newsletters.

By Astrid Furstner | CNA Chair

A few updates on our current developments from our board meeting in February include:

• Potential development of the old Adams/Whittaker site
• Confirmation of our application to the Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) for this summer’s Concerts in the Park series
• The February deadline for people to apply for lowincome housing
• A report from the Land Use & Transportation Committee regarding the update provided by the Portland Bureau of Transportation on the status of the Lombard and Columbia Corridor plan

It appears that our little neighborhood has many events and issues coming up. Lack of a quorum slowed us down in February, but won’t stop us going forward.

To continue to be here and serve you, we need your help. Don’t worry, I won’t put you to work (yet), but I would like to see more of our neighbors take an active interest in what goes on in our neighborhood.

CNA needs you to help by actively participating in the future of our neighborhood. There are a few fun and exciting events in the works. The CNA Annual Spring Egg Hunt is Saturday, April 11.

When our family moved to Concordia, it was one of the first events we attended. Our daughter loved it – we loved it! It was so much fun to see so many of our friends and neighbors out enjoying the event.

This annual event is organized by volunteers, and we need your help Friday, April 10, to stuff hundreds (thousands) of eggs and early the next morning to hide them. This year we are also asking for prize donations and candy donations. The children will find some eggs that are eggstra special – they contain tickets redeemable for prizes! Children take the special eggs to the booth to trade them in for prizes.

CNA usually purchases all of these prizes – and we will again – but, if any of you have an unopened kid-friendly gift that you would like to donate as a prize, please contact SoniaGF419@gmail.com.

Other awesome events we are working on are the Concerts in the Park. We submitted our application to PP&R and hope to be selected so we can put together three Friday night concerts at Fernhill Park in July.

We hope to line up bands/musicians for the blues, Latin, and bluegrass genres.

Historically, this has been a wonderful series for our community. If we are awarded the opportunity to host it again this year, we will need volunteers. Do you have ideas for bands? Pass them on to me at Chair@ConcordiaPDX.org!

CNA’s goal is to enhance the livability of our neighborhood and maintain an open line of communications and liaison among the neighborhood, government agencies and other neighborhoods.

Help us meet those goals by: participating in meetings and events, sharing your ideas, and engaging and investing in Concordia and its residents.

If you become aware of events or issues that pertain to our Concordia neighborhood, I encourage you to reach out and send me an email letting me know what the issue or question is and anything else you would like to share. Together we all make a difference. Together we all make Concordia our home.

Astrid Furstner is a mother, a wife, an immigrant, a local artist and an artisan. She lives with her luthier husband, Brent, and her artist-in-the-making daughter, Luciana. Together, they call Concordia their home.

By Michael French | CNews Special Writer

Activist and Alameda resident Karen Wells carries a business card with the job title “change agent.” It’s a phrase that sums up her approach and five decades of social justice work aimed toward a long-term goal.

“What keeps me going is hope,” she said. “Hope that the walls of isolation will be dismantled. Hope that the pitfalls of white supremacy will be eliminated. Hope that the differences between people will be respected instead of disparaged.”

Exposure to TV coverage of civil rights movements, coupled with surviving and navigating incidents of racism while growing up in San Diego, awakened Karen to the importance for social change.

Throughout the years, episodes of racism and white supremacy erupted in her life – sometimes overt, sometimes subtle – which continue even today in Portland. By her late teens, Karen became an activist.

After moving to Oregon in the mid1970s and through the 1990s, Karen was involved in local women’s culture and the progressive political scene, was a performance artist and poet, and served on boards of gardening-focused nonprofits Groundwork Portland and Our Garden.

Karen said within these organizations, she was often the only black woman. She was often subjected to the covert pressure to fulfill the unwanted and awkward role of representing the entire black community of Portland.

As part of her journey, she embraced different approaches to social justice work over the years.

Emotionally exhausted, she changed tactics. “I decided ‘each one teach one’ was the best way to go.” “Each one teach one” is an African-American proverb that originated during slavery. When few enslaved people were literate, those who could read felt a duty to teach others. Karen’s approach to each one teach one is aimed at broadening perspectives, one person at a time.

Today Karen continues to work to improve the lives of oppressed or marginalized groups and writes for Concordia News on public art, education and other topics.

She still practices each one teach one, and in recent years she has volunteered with Health Care for All Oregon and Nasty Women Get Shit Done.

Karen is active on the planning committee for Portland Womxn’s March 2020, which sprang from the 2017 women’s marches following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

She encourages others to join in. Details are at WomxnsMarchPDX.com. You can also find/follow the effort on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with the same handle.

For potential allies who want to support Karen and others pursuing social justice and social change work, she asks for a change in mindset. “Believe us. See us. Respect us,” she said. “The number one thing you can do is step up.”

Michael French is grateful to live on 28th Avenue in Concordia, a place where neighbors talk to each other and he can get most places on foot, by bike or transit. Contact him at MFrench96@gmail.com.

By Astrid Furstner | CNA Chair

Greetings Concordia Neighbors! I am honored to have been elected as the 2020 chair for our Concordia Neighborhood Association (CNA). Many of us begin a new year with resolutions or goals that we wish to accomplish. CNA is no different.

At our January board meeting we held a meaningful discussion of various items we would like to see continue and others we wish to begin. With the help of the board members, our committees and our neighbors, I am sure that we can make that happen.

Let me begin by thanking our former chair, Chris Lopez, for his leadership and dedication over the past few years. Chris has faithfully fulfilled his service through his leadership and guidance. CNA successfully put together a few wonderful events last year, such as the spring egg hunt at Fernhill Park, the neighborhood clean up, the neighborhood-wide yard sale, the holiday event at Cerimon House, concerts in the park, and various mixers at local businesses.

In this new year, we hope to continue to provide you with the annual spring egg hunt, the every-other-month mixers, the concerts in the park through our association with Portland Parks & Recreation. And we are also committed to ensuring we have speakers at our general meetings who can help address various community concerns.

We are working on potentially hosting a barbecue event in the summer to provide an opportunity for our neighbors to come together, have fun, meet each other and generally create more community bonds.

We also hope to be more involved with our community businesses and nonprofit organizations. In doing so, our association is hoping to launch the community partner designation. The details are still in the works but, in essence, we hope to foster relationships with organizations that work in partnership with CNA to provide services such as education, advocacy at low or no cost, and that foster an equitable and inclusive relationship with those who reside or work in and/or near Concordia.

We are hoping to have an announcement soon, so that all can provide input.

As you can see, we have set a few goals for ourselves. I would really love to have more participation from our neighbors and hear more voices.

If there is a particular event that you have enjoyed every year, we could use your help! Come to one of our meetings and let us hear from you. What makes our neighborhood great? What ideas do you have?

Concordia is already an awesome place to live, but is there something more we can do to continue to foster relationships with our community? Feel free to email me your ideas at Chair@ConcordiaPDX.org.

Astrid Furstner is a mother, a wife, an immigrant, a local artist and an artisan. She lives with her luthier husband, Brent, and her artist-in-the-making daughter, Luciana. Together, they call Concordia their home.