Author: Louie Opatz

Peter Tomsen, the former special envoy on Afghanistan for President George H. W. Bush, will speak tonight in the Smith Memorial Student Union to promote his new book, The Wars of Afghanistan.

Tomsen’s book is an exhaustive, 700-plus page examination of Afghanistan’s modern role as what Tomsen calls a “shatter zone,” a term he uses to describe a country that has successfully withstood invasions by, most recently, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Tomsen argues that the American government’s inability to understand modern Afghanistan has led to the ineffective, often ill-advised military and intelligence operations that have undermined the U.S.’s status in the region.

When I met Elise Wagner, she was working her nine-to-five job as the language requirements specialist and office coordinator on the fourth floor of Neuberger Hall. She excused herself to a co-worker, and we found a quiet place to talk.

“I’m in my day job, and nobody knows who I am,” Wagner said.

When she’s not working at Portland State, Wagner creates celebrated contemporary abstract art from her North Portland studio using a technique known as encaustic.

Harvard professor and preeminent East Asia scholar Ezra K. Vogel will deliver a lecture Friday at Portland State’s Lincoln Hall to promote his new book, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, published last month by Harvard University Press.

Attracting an author-scholar of Vogel’s stature to the university was a big accomplishment for PSU’s Institute for Asian Studies and the Confucius Institute, the two organizations sponsoring the event.

The Northwest Film Center will celebrate the final weekend of its 29th annual Reel Music Festival with three days of music documentaries, including Keirda Bahruth’s 2011 documentary Bob and the Monster.

Bahruth’s film chronicles the life of Bob Forrest, erstwhile rock star and current drug treatment counselor. Some may know him as the lyrically brilliant, oft-intoxicated front man of Los Angeles “drunk-rock” group Thelonious Monster. Others will remember him as the longhaired, bespectacled addiction specialist on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

“The Creative Writing M.F.A. is a meteor,” said Portland State fiction professor A.B. Paulson, motioning skyward. “We’re headed into deep space.”

Last weekend, however, Paulson and the rest of the creative writing contingent were relegated to planet Earth—more specifically, booth 614 at the 2011 Wordstock Festival, held at the Oregon Convention Center.