11 JULY 2002: KARIN AND
ALIASS ARRIVE IN OAK RIDGE…

Karin Bolender and her donkey
Aliass,

a member of the American
Council of Spotted Asses Inc.,

visited the American Museum
of Science and Energy

Tuesday on their two-day
stop in Oak Ridge.

Quest
brings artist/writer to OR

by Beverly Majors

Oak Ridger staff

Karin Bolender and her friend,
Aliass, stopped in Oak Ridge Tuesday and could be seen Wednesday traveling
toward the Museum of Appalachia in their quest for imagination.

Bolender and Aliass, a donkey,
started their quest in Oxford, Miss., the home of William Faulkner, and
will end their journey in about three weeks in Roanoke, Va.

Bolender said she started
her “literary pilgrimage” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center. She is a writer who lived about an hour outside of New York
but worked inside the city. On Sept. 9, she had decided to move to Portland,
Ore., and was in the Badlands of Nebraska when she heard about the attack.

She calls her pilgrimage
“an urgent manifestation of the imagination.” and said she has learned
a lot about people and, along with Aliass, has helped open up some people’s
imaginations. She said she has had to turn down invitations from people
wanting to give her a place to sleep.

In Oak Ridge she has visited
the American Museum of Science and Energy and the International Friendship
Bell. She said she decided to stop here because of her interests in the
“historical aspects of Oak Ridge.”

She said she learned of Oak
Ridge from her grandfather, who flew over the “Secret City that was not
on any maps” during the early World War II years while he was in the military.

Bolender said her next stop
will be Knoxville, home to two of her favorite authors, James Agee and
Cormack McCarthy.

“I plan to cross the border
at Bristol,” she said. “I have only three more weeks because Aliass is
due to foal.”