Online Editor and Assistant Art Director, Michael Elias, is pursuing a master's degree in mass communication studies. He hopes to start a career that integrates technology with design. Visit his homepage at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~melias

Serious researcher Tracy Picha tripped over the light fantastic with ballroom dancers in the course of writing (Dance Hall Days). "Anytime I asked one of them about ballroom dancing they beamed," Picha says. "They were the happiest people I've ever met."

Diane Schuirman is pursuing a master's degree in jounalism and plans to work as an editor for a trade or hobby magazine. She also has experience in public relations and community newspaper journalism.

Rosemary Howe Camozzi's visits to the HORSES ranch permanently altered her definition of disability (Taking the Reins). Disabled people don't see themselves as disabled, she says. "The need for adventure is universal. They're determined to experience adventure despite all obstacles."

Paige Bills (Without Her) was present when her own mother was taken off life support three years ago. She and Angela Nurre spent many afternoons curled on a couch in Angela's apartment, talking about a subject seldom discussed in society.

Samantha Martin visited the pioneer of hair research, Dr. Robson Bonnichsen, at his office in Corvallis, Oregon, to piece together the strands of her story, Back to Our Roots. "I look at my hairbrush in a whole new light," Martin says.

"She just sees life," Colleen Pohlig says of Sue Ryan, the woman she profiles in Lioness in Winter. Pohlig describes Ryan's effort to give breast cancer a face as tremendously inspiring. Somebody's finally talking back to the "silent killer" by speaking, showing and exposing.

Sonja Sherwood infiltrated the glamorous world of Oregon's prison system to research Prison House of Style. Hobnobbing with well-dressed felons taught Sherwood a valuable lesson: "If I ever decide to take up a life of crime, I'm going to make sure I have a good publicist."

Stacey Croll (Art Associate for Lioness in Winter) will be graduating in the fall of 1996. She hopes to find work that integrates her journalistic talents with her background in the sciences.

Lori Anna Hinton (Art Associate for Without Her) is graduating from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College. She hopes to combine her love for travel and the great outdoors with a career in magazine writing or design.

Photo Editor Laura Goss is a junior at the University of Oregon. She also works as an intern for Upstarts, the non-profit newspaper of a writing program for elementary, middle and high school students.

"There's a brilliance to people who live outside the sphere of normalcy," says Jennifer Andrews (Her Majesty's Secret Service). Fringe specialist Andrews hand-picked her Queens during a ball at a local gay club, finding "the most vivacious, bold and kick-ass Queens in town."

Cathleen Hockman trailed along after Spalding Gray for an afternoon during his stay in Eugene, Oregon (Confessions of a Family Man). "How do you interview a man who makes a living out of talking about himself? How do you find a question for the man who's been asked everything? I still don't know."

Standing Water represents Derek Martin's reflections on the fragile interaction between science and nature. He contrasts the meaning that can be found by people who view life through a microscope against the wonders that can be discovered by those who dedicate their minds and bodies to simply looking.