Oregon Humanities

For nearly forty years, Oregon Humanities has provided Oregonians with new ideas and opportunities for O. Hm. moments—times of insight or surprise that change the way we see the world. As an independent, nonprofit organization, we need your help to continue offering dynamic humanities programs in every county to thousands of individuals.

Monthly Giving

As a monthly donor, you will help more than 60,000 Oregonians get together, share ideas, listen, think, and grow!

Imagine how good you’ll feel about increasing your impact on the community, and going green in the process.

Why Give Monthly?

It’s convenient. Through Network for Good, Oregon Humanities will automatically deduct your contribution from the account of your choice. If life unexpectedly changes, you can easily update or suspend your monthly gifts.

It’s rewarding. Your support strengthens Oregon Humanities’ ability to offer dynamic programs, our award-winning magazine, and public grants that help Oregonians to think critically about the issues that directly affect their lives.

It’s sustainable. Spreading your gift over time allows you to commit at a level that is affordable for you. Plus, you will feel good knowing that you’re providing Oregon Humanities with steady, reliable support.

It’s easy to become a monthly donor. Just visit our giving page to set up a recurring donation. Please contact the Development Director with any questions. Thank you for your support!

By increasing her most recent gift to Oregon Humanities, board member Sona Andrews has effectively doubled her impact on Oregon communities throughout the state. That’s because through April 30, 2012, the National Endowment for the Humanities is matching all new and increased donations, up to $10,000.

Sona supports Oregon Humanities because she believes in giving to organizations that make a difference in people’s lives and use their funds effectively. “I believe that everyone should be challenged to think about the world we live in and experience its past, present, and future,” she says. “Oregon Humanities gets people thinking and that is a good thing.”

Andrews has served as the vice chancellor for academic strategies for the Oregon University System since 2010, and this July she will begin a new position as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Portland State University. Later this month, she will deliver the commencement address for the 2012 Humanity in Perspective graduates. She says, “I can only imagine the determination it takes for Humanity in Perspective students to make the commitment the program requires. I will challenge them to do something with what they have learned.”

We invited Sona to spin the Wheel of Cogitation:

Describe a place you love:
I love going to visit my parents in the summer in Rhode Island. It is the state I was born in and even though I have lived in so many places, there is something tranquil about the sounds of the waves on the rocky shore and the muffled foghorn of a lighthouse, and the care and exuberance of my family.

Super power of your choice? What would you do with it?
I would live to be able to twitch my nose like Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie such that I could eliminate the time it takes to get from meeting to meeting. I would much rather spend that time having a few minutes to be lost in thought instead of worrying that I might be late for the next meeting because I did not build in any travel time.

Describe somebody unlike you whom you’re curious about.
Thank goodness for everyone that no one else is just like me. It would be a boring world if that were the case, and I would lose all curiosity about others.

Please join Sona by increasing your support. With $7,500 in new and increased donations this spring, we are 75 percent of the way to receiving the full $10,000 match from the NEH. If you’ve been thinking about increasing your annual gift or becoming a first time donor, now is the perfect time.Give online today.

Poet Laureate of Oregon Paulann Petersen is an award-winning poet who has published several chapbooks and five collections of poetry, including her latest The Voluptuary. She travels the state, giving readings and teaching workshops for colleges, high schools, and libraries.

Paulann gives because she says, “The work of Oregon Humanities is basically the work of literature: to explore and relay what it is to be human, to be alive and aware at a particular place in a particular time. Who wouldn’t want to give to such an endeavor?”

We invited Paulann to spin the virtual Wheel of Cogitation:

To what do you devote yourself?

The everyday life of poetry.

Super power of your choice? What would you do with it?

The power of absolute persuasion. I’d use it to convince people that war generates only more war, and that peace will never prevail without justice.

A ridiculous idea that you love:

The idea that I—or anyone else—could possess such a super-power and not be corrupted by it. That’s a ridiculous notion, I’m sure, but I find it attractive, nonetheless.

A riveting image you’ll never forget:

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

—Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)

Describe a place you love:

The certain Victorian cottage in Sellwood I call home. Lucky me.

What book changed the way you see the world?

Every good book I’ve ever read. But I’ll mention three of them:

Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

Medford resident Larry Slesser is a long-time donor to Oregon Humanities. Larry is a Vietnam veteran and former teacher and coach, who says he most values OH for its support of one of his core values: “looking at various facets of our world and the different people and ideas.” Here, Larry takes a virtual spin of the Wheel of Cogitation. 

Somebody unlike you whom you are curious about

I was brought up in a completely white, conservative, protestant, jock culture. As my mother lamented, I have always been like the bear that went over the mountain to see what he could see. I love to talk with people of different cultures and subcultures.

Describe a place you love

I love any place I am sharing with the people I love. People not places are love to me.



A riveting image you’ll never forget

While serving in the military in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, he and a fellow soldier were driving in a jeep when about 100 yards in front of them, “A Viet Cong rocket screamed in and landed on [a Vietnamese woman on a bicycle]. She simply ceased to exist. It drove home a lesson at a very young age how fragile life is and how chance plays such a role in life and death. I still think of her and wonder if her family ever learned what happened. We say education changes us, and I suggest war is an intense education.”

What book changed how you see the world

Out of the Night, the Spiritual Journey of Vietnam Vets by William P. Mahedy and When God Becomes a Drug, Breaking the Chains of Religious Addiction and Abuse by Father Leo Booth

Join Larry today as a supporter by making a donation.

Oregon Humanities donor Mary Rechner is the director of Literary Arts’ “Writers in the Schools” program, which sponsors creative writing workshops in Portland-area high schools.

A fiction writer herself, Rechner is the author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, a short story collection published by Portland’s own Propeller Books. “I give to Oregon Humanities,” she says, “because I agree that imagining, talking, and writing about our experiences and ideas is what gives life meaning, and makes life worth living.” We asked for her answers to several questions from the Wheel of Cogitation:

What book changed the way you see the world?

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich. This book of poems was a high school graduation present and occasioned the first moment I considered writing about the experience of being a woman.

The title of your memoir & its most interesting chapter?

I can’t imagine writing a memoir; my life is too boring. That’s why I write fiction!

A riveting image you’ll never forget.

The red breasts of a flock of robins flying over the cemetery in Lostine, Oregon, during my husband’s grandmother’s funeral this winter.

Describe a place you love.

The ocean is a source of origin and renewal.

Whose work consistently amazes and inspires you?

The work of artist Kara Walker; I am in awe of her complexity and bravery and willingness to express her singular vision, even when it is met with dismay.

Describe somebody unlike you whom you’re curious about.

Most of the people I meet.

A member of the Oregon Humanities board since 2009, Paul Duden was a trial lawyer for more than forty years. He practices mediation and arbitration of civil actions and is an active member of the Oregon State Bar.

Why does he give to Oregon Humanities? “I believe in the organization’s mission and its programs,” he says, “which promote civility through conversations exploring humanities-related issues.” Perhaps unsurprisingly for a seasoned mediator, Duden says a particular favorite is the Responsive Program Grant, which “brings speakers to a community facing conflict in order that differences may be aired in a civil forum.”

We asked Paul to give us his answers to a few questions from the Wheel of Cogitation:

What book changed the way you see the world?

U.S.A., a trilogy of novels by John Dos Passos. Wandering through life at age seventeen, I came upon this trio of historical and biographical novels that portray American life in the first third of the twentieth century. They no longer are viewed as “great” books, but the trilogy played to my fascination with history, to the importance of the historical context in which events must be placed, and to the need to be critical of societal solutions at odds with historical context. The absence of that world view, as Dos Passos related, left much talent, ambition, love, and idealism stifled and drained away by war, greed, prohibitions, intolerances, and oppressions. What have we learned, and what would Dos Passos say today?

Describe somebody unlike you whom you’re curious about

The Emperor of Japan. Why that person first came to my mind, I cannot say. I minored in East Asian studies in college, and was interested in the enigma of the hereditary monarch of an empire who had no political power.

A ridiculous idea that you like

In the belief that no idea is ridiculous, I propose a sales tax for college education in Oregon. The tax would provide every student who graduates from an Oregon high school a college education at an Oregon state school to which the student is admitted. The tax could either directly fund higher education, or fund a state tax credit for tuition paid by the student or the student’s family. I would not require any particular high school grade average. So many high school students are frustrated, confused, or immature that graduating should be enough. Isn’t having to incur a huge debt to obtain a college education ridiculous?

A riveting image you’ll never forget?

A photograph by a Danish journalist at the American War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. The photograph is of smiling US servicemen seated in front of a row of severed heads.

Describe a place you love?

Hanalei Bay, Hawaii: Incredibly relaxing, reinvigorating and beautiful.

Whose work consistently amazes and inspires you?

New York Times editorial columnists Gail Collins and Paul Krugman: I love Ms. Collins for her astute and very humorous take on our political farces. Mr. Krugman is a bulwark of economic sense against a sea of cynical political rhetoric.

In his own words, Bill Smaldone devotes himself to family, work, and community. In addition to being the husband of Jennifer and father of Sarah and Emily, Bill is a historian at Willamette University and former board member of Oregon Humanities. Bill makes a monthly contribution to Oregon Humanities. It’s a great way to spread your support over time and easy on your budget.

Bill says he supports Oregon Humanities because “all people, regardless of their level of education, spend quite a bit of time pondering their place in the world and thinking about the human condition.” He says that Oregon Humanities “can provide them with more tools to use as they consider their world and enable them to make more thoughtful choices for themselves and their communities.”

We asked Bill to take a virtual spin of our Wheel of Cogitation and tell us more about his inspirations, passions, and the things that intrigue him.

What book changed the way you see the world?

Different books have influenced me at different moments of my life. When I was a kid I read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and have been addicted to German history ever since. When I was a student my reading of volume one of Marx’s Capital changed how I saw economic and human relationships. About ten years ago my encounter with Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate made me constantly think about the choices people face under duress and about the range of responses of which we are capable.

Describe a place you love.

One place I really love is the corner of my backyard under the grape arbor. I live in an old craftsman style house in Capital Park, one of Salem’s oldest “inner-city” neighborhoods. The lot is small (50 by 100 feet, I think) but there are lots of trees around and my shady yard is home to lots of urban wildlife. I love nothing more than to sit in the shady corner of my yard on a hot day watching the “action” and reading a book with a cold beer and good cigar.
You can read the complete story at our website.

Whose work consistently amazes and inspires you?

One of the people I am continually inspired by is George Orwell. Orwell’s great contribution to our world was his effort to tell the truth about the human condition under various circumstances regardless of his own ideological or political predilections. He was relentless in exposing the contradictions of life and politics in places as far flung as England, France, Burma, Spain, and Oceania. At the same time, he was willing to look at himself and come to grips with many (though not all) of his own prejudices. He did it with great literary skill and could be humorous and deadly serious at the same time.

Franz Fallada is another writer whose work I find inspiring. Writing in the midst of the Great Depression and the rise of National Socialism, in works like Little Man, What Now? and Every Man Dies Alone he showed how average people coped with terrible choices that were largely not of their own making. He was a man of many failings (in business, in a moral sense, and psychologically) and he made many poor choices in his life, yet he was relentless in his efforts to show the plight of the German “everyman” and the difficulty of remaining decent in that world. An alcoholic and morphine addict writing in the rubble of Berlin, he died in 1947 after completing Every Man in less then two months.

Describe somebody unlike you whom you’re curious about.

I am curious about a person who likes hunting. I can understand the necessity of hunting for food or to limit animal populations. I can also understand the fun of tracking an animal from place to place. But I am curious about what kinds of people actually enjoy killing an animal and commemorating the moment by mounting it on a wall. This is an activity that seems to set us apart from the animal kingdom, but not in a positive way!