Community mourns Midas Well: a young activist, chef and friend to many
Midas Well dreamed of helping people and feeding their community.
When Eugene-area activists began protesting the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Well stepped up as a leader. Well could be found day after day in bright outfits, riding a longboard and yelling into a bullhorn. They also helped distribute survival gear to people experiencing homelessness and worked to get food to those who needed it.
A look back:Young Black activists leading Eugene’s 2020 BLM protests
A little more than a year later, Well left Eugene to study at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley to pursue a dream of becoming a professional chef.
“I have a lot of big ideas with food that are only going to be easier to accomplish with that pesky slip of paper,” Well posted on Facebook, announcing the news. “Can't wait to show y'all some of the sh*t that I've got planned.”
Well later returned to Eugene, and began fundraising and testing recipes for a new food truck, Curry Up.
In November, weeks from opening the business, Well unexpectedly died. Their social media was flooded with an outpouring of mourning. Friends, some of whom wrote that Well used they/them pronouns, shared memories of a person described as fun, passionate and generous.
Friends of Well are organizing a Celebration of Life that will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 26 at The Hybrid, 941 W. Third Ave. in Eugene. Organizers also set up a GoFundMe for the event. Donations have already surpassed the fundraising goal of $1,500.
After speeches and music, there will be a candlelight march to Curry Up, where Well’s recipes will be served for one night only by local business owner and chef Ben Maude.
Well was going to use Maude’s food truck to start Curry Up.
“If they made a decision that they were going to do something, they jumped right in and did it,” Maude said of Well. “If it was the right thing to do, well then that's just what to do, almost like it's not an option."
Maude said the story of how the two connected about a year ago is “pretty epic and very Midas.”
The two were both in the Facebook group Eugene Foodies, where a hospice worker posted asking for advice on creating low-budget recipes for a client’s wedding. Strangers to each other, Maude and Well both volunteered to cater the event for free. Maude brought his food truck, and the two met for the first time at the wedding.
After that, Maude followed Well’s culinary journey.
“I was looking forward to having kind of a mentor relationship with them because they’re young and talented, and I’m old and salty,” Maude said. “It was fun to watch somebody at the beginning of their career with passion.”
He was hoping his truck could be an incubator and launchpad for Well. Maude said the loss is heavy, but he looks forward to honoring Well through food.
“I met them for the very first time in this food truck, and then a year later, they were supposed to open up their very first business in that food truck,” he said. “For me, to get to say goodbye to them by cooking their recipes in that food truck feels like the right thing to do."
Fentanyl education and resources
Local organizations have noticed an uptick in a synthetic opioid fentanyl in the community. There are many resources for testing drug supplies, getting emergency overdose treatment Narcan and being on the phone with someone while using.
CORE is a Eugene-based organization that serves youth experiencing homelessness. They regularly provide harm reduction tools such as Narcan, a nasal medication that can treat opioid overdoses. More information is available online at coreeugene.org/
Local nonprofit HIV Alliance provides free trainings to the community including Naloxone and opiate overdose awareness training and a training about harm reduction philosophy and its practice in agencies like HIV Alliance. More information is available at hivalliance.org/educate/community-education/
Black Thistle Street Aid is a collective of outreach workers, herbalists and medical practitioners providing access to free health care through pop-up clinics and medical outreach to people experiencing homelessness in the Eugene-Springfield area. At bi-weekly clinics, they provide an array of supplies to people, including harm-reduction tools. More information is available at blackthistlestreetaid.org/
The Brave App connects people who would otherwise use drugs alone with remote supervision and overdose support, while protecting their privacy, anonymity and autonomy. More information is available online at brave.coop/
Never Use Alone provides “loving confidential overdose response support” for people when they use drugs. A person calls 800-484-3731 and an operator will stay on the line and call for help if the caller becomes unresponsive. More information is available online at neverusealone.com/
Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-338-2454, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Eugene community mourns young activist, chef and friend to many
