Content
Fall/Winter 2011 : Encore
Get together, share ideas, listen, think, grow.
Sign up to be the first to hear about what we’re doing around the state.
Encore
Oregon Humanities: Fall/Winter 2011
Letter from the Editor
New Again
This issue marks my tenth year of editing Oregon Humanities magazine. Ten-year periods are good, solid chunks of time. They seem compact and complete, almost like an object you can hold in your hand and dispassionately consider from all angles.
Writing
Clinging to the Dream
Why do Americans have such a hard time talking about class?
In April 2008, Just weeks after mesmerizing the country with a speech that candidly addressed the issue of race in America, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama found himself tripped up by the language of class. With a single comment that rural Pennsylvanians, stripped of job opportunities and thus mobility, “get bitter; they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama’s lead shrank amid public outcry. Was what he said elitist? Definitely, said presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Was it accurate? Some media pundits believe so. Obama didn’t back down from his position, but noted, “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.”
Under God
Frances Bellamy and the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance
America, we like to think, is different from the rest of the world. It is our nation’s great conceit. We have patriotism; they have nationalism. Ours is a nation founded on and held together by a rational commitment to political ideas and principles, whereas other nations are held together by pre-rational blood ties and inherited customs. One is born German or Japanese, but one chooses to become an American.
Firing a Friend
When friends and politics don't mix
I first saw Emelia at a carnival run by our neighborhood school to raise money. She was a striking woman with dark hair and blue eyes like mine, but seeing her made me feel a little like the sister who seems pleasant-looking enough until you meet her beautiful sibling. A few months later, Emelia and her daughter walked by our house while my daughter, Charlotte, and I were in the front yard. Our kids hit it off, dancing around with twigs. We arranged a playdate. After that first playdate, there was a second, then a third, then a fourth. We seemed to have a lot in common—we’re both working moms (she’s a lawyer, I’m a professor), and we parented in similar ways. Emelia and her daughter began strolling by our house regularly, stopping for a few minutes so the kids could play together upstairs. I liked the neighborly quality of those impromptu visits.
My Brother, the Keeper
A woman tries to understand her brother's need to hoard
I just saw my little brother, Jack, digging through a Dumpster at our neighborhood grocery store, and I pretended I didn’t know him. He was in the dirty, torn clothes he likes to wear for what he calls “collecting.” Sometimes his flannel shirts and fleece jackets are hanging in shreds on his thin, middle-aged frame. I know he doesn’t eat well, even though I buy him food, and every time I see him, he looks thinner. Though he can afford a haircut, he lets his hair grow long and stringy; when he perspires, it clings to his face and the old, thick glasses he wears.
Immobile Dreams
How did the trailer come to be a symbol of failure?
Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, in the late 1960s, I was aware of two types of trailer parks—the ones along the northwestern lip of town that were often decorated with neat pathways of white stones and the ones farther out, at the margins of our community, that were clusters of tan and brown metal rectangles linked by dusty, unpaved roads. Snowbirds and retirees of modest means lived in the white stone trailer parks. The people who lived in the others were what my family and neighbors referred to as “trash.” They were not just poor; they were bad. Dangerous. Possibly criminals, though we didn’t know for sure.
Home Economics
Using the house to bridge the public/private divide
Out at the back corner of my house sit two old oak whiskey barrels attached by a series of hoses first to the downspouts and then out again to the garden. The barrels fill up quickly: sometimes a heavy rain shower fills them with enough water to handle our modest garden for a couple of dry weeks. Harvesting rainwater is surprisingly satisfying, an almost uncanny way to make a difference, given the complexities of the world, the simplicity of the process, and the meagerness of the scale (a few hundred gallons at a time). My relationship to these rain barrels and the fact that they are now part of my home has provoked a surprising feeling of hope in me, a feeling derived from harvesting something so innocuous, and one that has left me wondering what it means to be a homeowner in today’s world and if there is something of epochal change at work in how people have begun to look at their homes and the idea of domestic life.
Bright Idea
Dory Stories
Linfield College students and faculty, in partnership with area organizations, reel in the history of Pacific City’s fishing industry.
Fisherman Bill Hook waited two years to keep his promise to spread the ashes of his late stepfather, Bernie, over tuna grounds forty miles off the coast of Pacific City. “We’d gone out and got skunked, and didn’t put any fish in the boat,” he says, “and I just didn’t figure that was his day.” Finally, Hook put Bernie’s ashes in the prop wash behind the boat, along with some Olympia beer and two cigarettes, and watched them fl oat away. Just as the water turned back to azure, Hook says, “Pshh, pshh, pshh…three lines lit up. Damn good joke, Bernie. Thanks.” (Hear audio story below.)
Field work
Power in Numbers
Nonprofits in Bend collaborate on a year of Conversation Project programs
When Ray Solley, executive director of the Tower Theatre Foundation in Bend, heard about Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, the program “A City’s Center: Rethinking Downtown” first caught his attention.
Experiencing Portland
Dill Pickle Club puts Portlanders in touch with their city
Outside the Metro offices in northeast Portland, thirty people boarded a powder blue bus named Cool for a tour called “Where Does Garbage Go?”—part of the Dill Pickle Club’s City Works series that also included tours of Portland’s water, urban planning, news, justice, and river systems.
History by the People
Southern Oregon Historical Society collaborates with community members on traveling exhibits
In 2009, the Southern Oregon Historical Society was in trouble. It had lost its county funding as well as the community’s interest. In response, SOHS conducted public forums to reconnect with the people of Jackson County.
Why I Give
Retired professor Phil Hanni gives monthly to protect ideas and conversation
Phil Hanni moved to Oregon in 1963 with his wife, Erin, to take a teaching position. After almost fifty years, Hanni says, “We are very much Oregonians.” Now retired, he is active in Willamette University’s Institute for Continued Learning. “I’m almost eighty, and I’m more of a learner than I’ve ever been before,” he says.
Posts
Oregon Is a Verb
Well, it’s like this in Oregon. It’s wetter than the inside of a horse. There are so many houses popping up so fast now that we think maybe the houses mate with each other at night. Most people are from somewhere else than here but once they are here they stay here because there’s some kind of green zesty possibility here, a way that human beings might be that we haven’t been before. Mostly we fail miserably at trying to be great but we are trying awful hard. I guess what I am trying to say is that Oregon isn’t a noun, Tom – it’s a subtle verb, which is pretty cool. You know what I mean: You were always dreaming of what our country might be at its best, what kind of utterly new fair even-handed wild generous free imaginative creative burly graceful rich open-handed strong gentle joyous honest country we might be, and I regret to note that as a nation we are not there either, Tom my friend, but we are thrashing toward greatness still, trying to grow up and stop being a greedy bully, and I have hopes. High hopes.
From Spring 2004 Rediscovering Lewis and Clark, the first issue to include Posts. Writers were asked to describe Oregon to President Thomas Jefferson, in response to his 1803 “Letter of Instruction” to Meriwether Lewis.
The Goal of Community
History can be viewed as a constant shifting of balance between the individual and the collective. There are as many variations on this theme as there are, or have been, cultures. The poorest and most technologically primitive people, hunter-gatherers, are the most egalitarian and among the more collectively organized. They have to be to survive. From the beginning, we humans have always had to come together in some form of extended family—band, tribe, village, city, and upward—to make a living for ourselves.
Connecting Outside the Classroom
It’s 8:00 in the morning as I sit in my classroom reading my curriculum for the day. Really I’m waiting for 8:10, when I’ll go to the corner where two halls meet to greet students as they walk to class. I used to sit in my room during this passing time, grading papers, planning, writing—anything to avoid hall duty.
Watching Ourselves at Our Worst
From Elvis to Eminem, each new wave of popular culture has been seen by established society as a herald of the decline of civilization. One of the essential roles of Art is to disturb—what Robert Hughes dubbed “The Shock of the New.” As society absorbs each shock, each new generation is forced to expand the boundaries to achieve the same shock value.
The Standards of Civility
The standards of what is considered to be civil or uncivil, proper or improper, vary according to time and place. Political and socioeconomic conditions affect how courteous we are to one another. How people behave is a reflection of the human condition in a given time and place. Good conditions generally bring out the best in people, and they will likely behave with civility, courtesy, and decency.
(Not) Talking about Class
I grew up in the 1960s in a middle-class household near the Jersey shore and Fort Monmouth. My mother was a night-shift nurse from western Pennsylvania and my neighbors’ parents were business owners, Bell Labs physicists, lawyers, small-town police, machinists, and retirees with nice lawns. One friend’s mother was a Superior Court judge. Another was an Italian bride who married a GI.
The Away Child
I was the away child, the one who did not live close to my family. I migrated with my husband and our two young sons from Pennsylvania to western South Dakota. With hard work and great enthusiasm we developed a herd of purebred cattle. The land dictated that these animals be bred for structurally sound legs and hooves to cover two-thousand-acre pastures, bred to develop tight sheaths to prevent accumulating burrs. Selective genetics for natural muscling and the strong dry-land gramas, wheat, and buffalo grasses contributed to hearty calves at weaning.
Directory
Links for this page
Subscribe
If you reside in Oregon and would like a free subscription to Oregon Humanities magazine, please sign up here. You will also be signed up to receive our monthly e-newsletter.
Masthead
Staff, advisors, etc.
- Kathleen Holt
- Editor
- McGuire Barber Design
- Graphic design
- Eloise Holland
- Communications Coordinator
- Allison Dubinsky
- Copy editor
- Editorial Advisory Board
- Tom Booth
- Brian Doyle
- Debra Gwartney
- Julia Heydon
- Guy Maynard
- Win McCormack
- Kathleen Dean Moore
- Camela Raymond
- Kate Sage
- Rich Wandschneider
- Dave Weich
Oregon Humanities magazine examines topics of broad public interest from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Recent issues of this publication have focused on stuff, nostalgia, and civility. Through good and thoughtful writing, Oregon Humanities magazine enriches our understanding of important subjects and stimulates conversation and reflection among readers, their friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors.
Contributors
Dmae Roberts
Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.
Jennifer Ruth
Jennifer Ruth is a professor of English literature at Portland State University and the author of Novel Professions, a book of literary criticism.
John Holloran
John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “After the Fall” (Spring 2011).
Leigh van der Werff
After ten years in Oregon, Leigh van der Werff now lives in central California, where she runs a record store with her husband and their dog, Edgar. When she’s not at the shop, she’s writing essays and music criticism.
Rebecca Hartman
Rebecca Hartman is an associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon University. She received her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2004. Her current research is focused on twentieth-century U.S. rural history.
Richard J. Ellis
Richard J. Ellis is the Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. In 2008 he was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in 2007 he was chosen as Oregon Scientist of the Year by
the Oregon Academy of Science. His book The Development of the American Presidency is forthcoming from Routledge in January 2012.