People: Profiles + Culture

An old-school book scout

Few days pass during which Wayne Pernu does not buy a book, or several hundred. During the summer, he hits as many as a hundred book sales per day in and around Portland, Oregon, cramming volumes into every inch of his car, stacking them on his lap if he runs out of space. For the last twelve years, he’s made a comfortable living reselling titles he’s purchased for quarters at thrift stores and at yard, estate, and library sales. As a book scout who listens to his instincts rather than to technology, Pernu is one of the last of his kind—an old-school purist in a digital world.

For the Record

Behind the sales counter along the back wall of Clinton Street Record & Stereo, an ’80s synth-funk album spins on the turntable beside R. Jared White. A DJ whose expertise ranges from gangsta rap to goth, White and his business partner opened the Southeast Portland record store two years ago despite the fact that record stores everywhere else were closing.

Since music moved from physical to digital formats in the early 2000s, the record-store industry in the U.S. has been struggling. The number of record stores has declined an average of 22% per year over the past five, according to industry analyst IBISWorld, and it’s expected to continue declining an average of 4% per year until 2017.

Working from the Inside Out: Inmates on a Maine prison farm

Escaping this prison would be as easy as crossing the front lawn, stepping off the property and hitching a ride to Moody’s Diner down the road for a slice of four-berry pie and a phone call. At the Bolduc Correctional Facility, Maine’s prison farm, the fences serve to keep the cows in the pasture and the porcupines out of the apple orchard, not the inmates in the yard. Rather, it’s Maine’s State Prison, better known to inmates as the “supermax,” which looms behind a chaos of chain-link fences and razor wire across the road, that reminds Bolduc inmates where they’ve been and where they could end up if they’re not careful.

Waiting Game: College student bides his time until a healthy heart arrives

Adam Swafford, a 17-year-old Chattanoogan, lies in bed on the seventh floor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville waiting for a new heart.
When he arrived at the hospital, his heart, which should be the size of a human fist, had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. Dr. Frank Scholl, his cardiac surgeon, said that it was one of the largest he has ever seen.
Adam’s heart still beats, but his blood flows through the four canisters of a mechanical pump that enter his body at his abdomen. The canisters click and shudder as the machine vacuums blood from the main chambers of his heart and delivers it back through his circulatory system.

Presents Of Mind: Satya Vayu knows the reason for the season. It’s not under the tree.

Satya Vayu and I are sitting across from each other on floor pillows in the sparse living room of the house where he’s staying in Southeast Portland. His legs are crossed and his feet are bare, the bottoms calloused and dirty from walking around shoeless outside. He’s telling me how he’s gotten by without working for an income or spending a substantial amount of money for almost two decades.

Salt of the Earth: Sand Mountain man’s shaker collection tops 5,000

The salt and pepper shakers on James Thornhill’s kitchen table are cheap, plastic and far from remarkable. Looking at them, you might assume that he has no taste in spice dispensers. But you would be wrong.