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Spectacle
Oregon Humanities: Spring 2013
The Good Fight
Can letting our children roughhouse lead to a better democracy?
Upstairs, the boys are fighting in the bedroom where my two younger sons sleep and play, the one I have just cleaned so well that there is a wide open space of carpeted floor and relatively few obstacles that could split open a head or bloody a nose. Everett, who at nine has his own room, is throwing Monroe, four and a half and built like a Future Farmer of Urban America, onto the bed. For Truman, six and a half and his brothers’ sensitive counterpart, the game is to intervene with either brute force or tricksterism.
I cannot help but photograph them. I catch an artful blur on the sixth try and type with my index fingers into the photo app’s interface, “They’re like lion cubs.” It’s true. They are not just expressing their pent-up energy through playful aggression or “being crazy,” as we say in the family when we have had enough of the chaos. They are at work, learning how to fight. And this is work that they love.
It has not always been so easy, to let them fight and memorialize it on Instagram. Their father, who is out this evening, often discourages such play because he was raised by men who found it horrifying: children were not to be heard, fighting or otherwise, and as our marriage counselor said, your parenting gut comes from your childhood. My childhood sense of fighting was entirely different, usually conducted in tears and screams instead of punches: I was the oldest of four girls and one boy. At home, our work was in nurturing and cookie-baking and small work with needles and hooks and safe scissors. When I did roll and wrestle and toss fists, it was only with my brother; when he finally pestered me enough, my temper exploded, and it was miserable. I hated both the provocation and the eventual physical humiliation, because he always won those battles. But outside of home I argued, usually simply by standing up to the bigger kids, on the bus in defense of my brother. “Sarah’s always fighting for everyone!” a younger girl said once, of me, and I was thrilled. Each time, I savored a feeling of exhilaration in my courage and valiant safekeeping of my siblings, which lasted until the next time my brother got me in a choke hold over a “Shut up!” game or some such mockery.
I feel differently today: I wonder if quashing the fight in my brother hurt him, even in some small way, if it stifled a natural impulse until it was so fiery that he could only express it in boiling anger. The more I watched my boys fight, the more I saw that flash in their eyes that looked like pride, like courage, like exhilaration. And so when Monroe became old enough to take whatever his brothers could dish out, I stopped resisting my boys’ wrestling and inventive martial artistry.
Everett teaches moves to the younger two and constructs rich imaginary rules for the physics and metrics of their battles, which have become more fair as he has become more patient and mature. I have seen how the fighting has developed from an outburst in anger to a give-and-take, to a careful system of physical play that looks like training, like apprenticeship. Gone is the quest for domination, replaced by the necessary development of his partners’ skills. Just as chess is dull with an inexperienced opponent, the fight is nothing without an even match. Now Everett’s tenets include accommodation for age and strength, compassion and—yes—nurturing of the brawling talents his brothers display.
I have a rule, too: “When someone gets hurt, you stop.” So they pretend that they are not hurt, or yowl and quickly take a deep breath to calm themselves and say, “I’m okay!” so I will let them return to their jumping and kicking and rolling. I’ll hear a cry of pain and come running, only to see Everett comforting his younger brother. “That’s okay! You did great! Try it again,” he’ll say, “but like this,” demonstrating a flying kick or an elbows-tucked-in roll. And his little brother will return to his position near the canning rack and come charging past the pantry into the kitchen with a battle cry and throw himself at Everett, who smiles. “Yes!”
I’ve come to see empathy and love in their fighting. I see joy. I have come to see this physical fighting as a pre-verbal expression of arguments and negotiations to come, and I wonder if there’s a connection between a fear of conflict that has parents intervening during roughhousing and an authoritative style of education. Perhaps we do not know how to argue because we have not been given the opportunity to practice, both at home and in the classroom.
A recent study from the University of Virginia finds that teenagers who argue—not just argue, but argue well—with their parents learn skills that will help them resist peer pressure. Teenagers who have learned to vociferously and passionately, but in the end, successfully, persuade their parents to let them have their way will also speak up when it comes to the encouragement of irrational and unwise behavior that is part of pubescence. They will be more likely to resist their friends who ask them to drink alcohol or take drugs; they will be more likely to say “no” to sexual experiences for which they are not ready. Teenagers who argue badly—who are incommunicative, who give up easily, who are not listened to or supported in their arguments with their parents—are more likely to take drugs if their friends do. They are more likely to engage in petty crime.
The headlines seem impossible: Fighting is good? How can this be? Hasn’t our public discourse already devolved enough? Yet when we look to the highest, most respected minds in history we find voices raised in argument.
In college, I learned the Socratic method, which has enriched me in ways that manifest even now, some twenty years later. Another mother and I compare notes from the past few months: her fifteen-year-old has failed a class, and my nine-year-old has long struggled with his behavior in school. We have both had to reevaluate our dreams for our boys. Her college education was also steeped in conversation: she majored in philosophy at St. John’s, a college famous for its use of classic texts and classroom debate as a framework for all disciplines.
Though we do not disagree, we argue fiercely. We ask, “Can my grief be more or less worthy than your grief?” We examine the very nature of comparison and then the nature of grief. We are both grieving our children’s departures from the paths we’d imagined for them. Can we develop a new conception of the path to success? What is success? Can we redefine this?
We leave one another opened up, breathless, and vulnerable, but stronger in the core. We have tested our friendship through argument.
But argument is not something that is necessarily taught or modeled in schools, most of which have curricula based on lectures, not Socratic methods. Several studies in a variety of disciplines have demonstrated that few students are capable of learning material through lectures; two to three times as many learn more through in-class peer argument. Even the smallest argument—between a student and the person sitting next to him over the answer to “What is a covalent bond?”—will greatly increase recall of the material and understanding of the concepts.
Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur told KQED in early 2012 about the time when he first began experimenting with peer instruction. He said that 50 percent of the students in his class understood a concept on a test, which, in his opinion, was a dismal result. After trying to explain the concept, he gave up and asked them to discuss it among themselves. Ultimately, he said, “The 50 percent who had the right answer effectively convinced the other 50 percent.” He has used this teaching method ever since.
Because these sorts of teaching philosophies are considered radical and avant-garde, they are looked upon with suspicion, and the lecture remains the dominant form of education for university students in the United States. I believe this has led us, as citizens, to become not only more viciously divided in opinion, but also very, very bad at arguing.
I believe there is good in the fight. It is good to make the argument, to take the questions lilting from big picture to smaller picture to detail to essential nut of our existence. I practice argument everywhere. I am thinking of a counter to my husband’s latest financial scheme in the shower. I rehearse my response to an argumentative comment on my blog as I bike to pick my child up from school. I plot a persuasive essay in defense of food stamps as I run seven miles. I shout at Rick Santorum’s voice on the radio as I wash dishes. “That argument makes no sense!” I stop the movie I am watching with my kids to describe how the villain has made a grave error in logic. We all practice: I point out the insufficiencies of politic discourse, Everett persuades me, Truman negotiates a footrace with his little brother, Monroe wrests a small toy from another child saying, “What if I give you this?” in a sweet, winsome, practiced way.
Perhaps today’s most epic arguments occur because we have not learned to fight well. We, as a nation, have not had as models the sort of arguments favored by researchers, those in which listening and empathy are practiced, in which the winner is the one who is most persuasive. Does the more logical orator win a presidential debate? No, says Jim Lehrer on a radio program as he discusses his book on presidential debates; the one with the best sound bites wins.
I believe the illogical outbursts that occur everywhere today—whether on the Internet or in my laundry room—are a result of decades of poor education and fear, both of physical fighting and of controversy. The society that sends children to their rooms and bans dinner-table discussions of religion and of politics is a society where resentments and misinformation grow bitterly like infections under the skin, until they invade the entire system. If we want to regain our much-mourned civil discourse, we must begin with our young children: We must teach them how to fight. We must teach them to be persuasive in nonviolent ways. But first, we must let go of our fear of the fight itself. We must give our children a chance to practice. We must raise them to argue for what they believe in—in their bedrooms, on the playground, in the classroom, and on the Internet. Only if we fight from a place of core strength and self-confidence, following a system of negotiated principles, can we fight fairly and well.
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Contributors
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland.
Alex Behr
Alex Behr is a writer in Portland. Her last piece for Oregon Humanities appeared in the spring 2009 “Nostalgia” issue.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.
Kristy Athens
Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.
Rich Wandschneider
Rich Wandschneider was the founding director of Fishtrap, a literary nonprofit in eastern Oregon, and is now building the Alvin Josephy Library of Western History and Culture at Fishtrap. He writes a regular newspaper column and has written for the Oregonian, High Desert Journal, High Country News, and others. He is on the editorial advisory board of this magazine and on the board of directors for Oregon Humanities.
Ellen Santasiero
Ellen Santasiero is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Sun, Marlboro Review, Oregon Humanities, and in a recent anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She is at work on a memoir.
Caroline Cummins
Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of Culinate.com.
Jedidiah Chavez
Jedidiah Chavez is a visual artist and writer based in Portland. His work has been showcased in a variety of venues nationally and in the Pacific Northwest. Chavez was awarded a 2010 project grant by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Kristin Kaye
Kristin Kaye is a Portland-based writer. Her book, Iron Maidens, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She has recently completed her novel To Catch What Falls.
Lucy Burningham
Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and former communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.
John Frohnmayer
John Frohnmayer is chair of the Oregon Humanities board of directors.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.
Courtney S. Campbell
Courtney S. Campbell is the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. You can try friending him through his Facebook page.
Barry Johnson
Barry Johnson has written about the arts since 1978 when he started writing about dance for the now-defunct Seattle Sun. He has edited arts sections at Willamette Week and The Oregonian, where he recently finished a twenty-six-year stint. You can find his up-to-the-minute thoughts on the arts at http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com.
Nancy Rommelmann
Nancy Rommelmann’s recent books include Transportation, The Bad Mother, and The Queens of Montague Street, a memoir of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn Heights that was excerpted by the New York Times Magazine. She is a long-form journalist whose work appears in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Byliner, and other publications.
Phil Busse
Phil Busse recently took the position of editor of The Source, a weekly paper in Bend. He also continues to serve as the executive director for the educational nonprofit Media Institute for Social Change and is an adjunct instructor at Portland State.
Sarah Mirk
Sarah Mirk is a Portland journalist who often writes about gender, sexuality, and politics as the online editor of Bitch magazine and as the author of the forthcoming book Sex from Scratch (Microcosm, 2014). Her other interests include writing comics and talking to strangers.
Courtney Campbell
Courtney Campbell is Hundere Chair in Religion and Culture and professor of philosophy at Oregon State University. He is also an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project leader for the program “Friendship: Reviving, Surviving, or Dying?”
M. Allen Cunningham
M. Allen Cunningham is the author of the novels The Green Age of Asher Witherow and Lost Son, and the recipient of a 2013 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. His story collection, Date of Disappearance, was recently published in an illustrated limited-edition by Atelier26 Books and his first nonfiction volume, The Honorable Obscurity Handbook, is forthcoming. He leads an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project program on the subject of e-reading.
Dan DeWeese
Dan DeWeese is the author of Disorder, a story collection, and You Don’t Love This Man, a novel. He is also the editor in chief of Propeller, a web magazine.
Margaret Malone
Margaret Malone’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, Coal City Review, latimes.com, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. She lives in Portland with her husband and son.
Dave Allen
Dave Allen is director of interactive strategy at NORTH, a branding agency in Portland. He is also an adjunct lecturer in digital strategy at the University of Oregon, as well as the founding member and bass player of the UK band Gang of Four.
Dmae Roberts
Dmae Roberts is a Peabody-winning radio producer and Oregon Book Award–winning writer. Her work has been on NPR and published widely. She is a USA Rockefeller Fellow and received the Dr. Suzanne Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice from the Asian American Journalists Association. She lives in Portland with her hubby and twin kitties.
Brian David Johnson
Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel. His book Vintage Tomorrows: A Historian and a Futurist Journey Through Steampunk into the Future of Technology, coauthored with James H. Carrott, wil be published next year by O’Reilly Media. He is featured in Oregon Humanities’ Bring Your Own video series. This essay was written on a 747 somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
Mott Greene
Mott Greene is a historian of science and technology. He was an Oregon Humanities Think & Drink presenter earlier this year for a program about the future of human and artificial intelligence. A former MacArthur Fellow, he is affiliate professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. He admires Portland’s civic life and wishes Seattle could figure that out.
Jill Owens
Jill Owens works in marketing for Powell’s Books. She enjoys interviewing authors as part of her job and for publications like Oregon Humanities.
J. David Santen Jr.
J. David Santen Jr. has written about books, business, the environment, and communities for the Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal, and other publications. He lives in Portland.
Camas Davis
For more than a decade Camas Davis has been a magazine editor and writer for national magazines such as National Geographic Adventure and Saveur, and local publications such as Portland Monthly, Edible Portland, and Mix. In 2009, she traveled to France to study butchery. Upon her return, she founded the Portland Meat Collective, a traveling butchery school.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is a writer, photographer, struggling urban farmer, mama to three boys, and military wife in southeast Portland. She is editor-in-chief of the new literary magazine for parents, Stealing Time, and is working on two memoirs and at least one novel.
Jim Lommasson
Photographer Jim Lommasson received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms. Previous publications include Oaks Park Pentimento. His photographs have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries.
Margot Minardi
Margot Minardi is an assistant professor of history and humanities at Reed College, and the author of Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts (2010). She is currently working on a history of the nineteenth-century American peace movement.
Jill Owens
Jill Owens works in marketing for Powell’s Books, where interviewing authors is the most interesting part of her job. She’s originally from the South but has lived in Oregon for eleven years and is here to stay.
Dionisia Morales
Dionisia Morales is a freelance writer and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College. Her essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in CAYLX, Brevity, Cream City Review, and Silk Road.
Wendy Willis
Wendy Willis is a poet, Conversation Project leader, and the executive director of the Policy Consensus Initiative and the deputy director for Research and Development at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Her book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, is forthcoming from Press 53 in fall 2012.
Carl Abbott
Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. A specialist on the history of cities, his recent books include Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West and Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People.
Monica Drake
Monica Drake is the author of Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books),which was optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. Her next novel, The Stud Book, is forthcoming from Hogarth Press in February 2013.
Tara Rae Miner
Tara Rae Miner is a freelance writer and editor, former managing editor of Orion magazine, and author of Your Green Abode: A Practical Guide to a Sustainable Home. She lives with her family in Portland.
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).
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.
Dmae Roberts
Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.
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.
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.
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.
Joanne Mulcahy
Joanne Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction and humanities classes at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she is codirector of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. Her book Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz was published by Trinity University Press in 2010.
Marion Goldman
Marion Goldman has passed through the social worlds of Rajneeshees, Jesus People, and Nevada prostitutes. In her latest book, The American Soul Rush (forthcoming in December 2011), she describes how a small group of 1960s seekers at California’s Esalen Institute cultivated and spread spiritual alternatives ranging from transpersonal psychology to yoga to Zen golf. She is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon.
Guy Maynard
Oregon Humanities editorial advisory board member Guy Maynard is the editor of Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, and the author of The Risk of Being Ridiculous, a historical novel of love and revolution set in Boston in the the late 1960s, into which he managed to slip several Red Sox references. He lives in Eugene.
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is an associate professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (from which this selection is excerpted) and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States. He was also a faculty member at the Oregon Humanities Teacher Institute in July 2011.
Tim DuRoche
Tim DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and cultural advocate. He works as the director of programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Tim hosts the The New Thing, a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM in Portland, is currently developing a program on jazz and community values for Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, and is the author of the recently published collection of essays, Occasional Jazz Conjectures.
Walidah Imarisha
Walidah Imarisha is a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine and has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department and leads three Conversation Project programs for Oregon Humanities on hip hop, the history of race in Oregon, and reenvisioning the prison system.
Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.
Debra Gwartney
Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.
Susan Meyers
After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Matthew Stadler
Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.
Amanda Waldroupe
Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.
John Holloran
John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).
Scott Nadelson
Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. A new collection of his short fiction, Aftermath, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in Fall 2011. He teachers creative writing at Willamette University. His latest essay for Oregon Humanities was “Go Ahead and Look” (Spring 2010)
Todd Schwartz
Todd Schwartz is in reality a very serious and reserved person who divides his time between being a Calvinist minister and a funeral home director. Wait…wait! A funeral home director and a Calvinist minister walk into a bar…
Courtenay Hameister
Courtenay Hameister is the host and head writer of LiveWire Radio, the co-creator of “Road House: The Play!,” a screenwriter and filmmaker. In her spare time, she likes to imagine what it would be like to have more spare time.
Ariel Gore
Ariel Gore is the author of seven books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), from which this selection is excerpted. She is also the founding editor of Hip Mama, and editor of the Lambda-award-winning anthology Portland Queer. She teaches creating writing online at the University of New Mexico and The Attic in Portland.
Jamie Passaro
Jamie Passaro lives in Eugene, where she is a freelance writer and an editor for Northwest Book Lovers, a blog produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Her last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Driving Mrs. Spacely” (Summer 2008).
Andrew Guest
Andrew Guest is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland. When not watching, playing, coaching or writing about soccer, he does research on youth developmental and educational experiences through sports, arts, and service activities.
David Bragdon
David Bragdon served on the Portland regional Metro Council for nearly twelve years and was elected president in 2002. The major accomplishment of his service was an expansion of the regional parks and natural areas network known as the Intertwine. He resigned from the Metro Council in September 2010 in order to accept New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment as director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.
M. Allen Cunningham
M. Allen Cunningham is the author of Lost Son, a novel about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a #1 Booksense Pick and was shortlisted for the Booksense Book of the Year. He’s the recipient of an artist fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a Yaddo residency. His third novel, set partly in the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming.
Bette Lynch Husted
Bette Lynch Husted lives and writes in Pendleton. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press, 2004) and At This Distance: Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010). Lessons from the Borderlands, her collection of memoir essays about teaching, class, gender, and race, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. She is a 2004 Oregon Book Award and WILLA finalist and was awarded a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship.
Bob Bussel
Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on labor history and contemporary labor issues, including a history of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. He is currently working on a book about working-class citizens.
Dave Weich
Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative. The Portland-based company fosters engaging and profitable communication among businesses, consumers, colleagues, and fans. Weich is on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.
Camela Raymond
Camela Raymond is a Portland-based writer whose work has appeared in Modern Painters, Plazm, the Oregonian, and elsewhere. She was previously an editor at Portland Monthly magazine and the founding editor/publisher of the Organ. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.
Scott Nadelson
Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University.
Karen Karbo
Karen Karbo‘s three novels, as well as her Oregon Book Award–winning memoir, The Stuff of Life, have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.
Lisa Radon
Lisa Radon has written about art and design for Portland Spaces (as associate editor), Portland Monthly, Surface Design Journal, SHIFT (Japan), FLAUNT, Hyperallergic, and ultra (ultrapdx.com). She’s written a handful of catalog essays and is working on her first book.
R. Gregory Nokes
R. Gregory Nokes has worked as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press and the Oregonian. His reporting about this incident has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He lives in West Linn.
Christine Dupres
Christine Dupres is the former director of the Office of Sustainability and Community Engagement at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. She is a freelance writer and an Oregon Humanities board member.
Apricot Irving
Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.
Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.
Lucy Burningham
Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.
Vicente Martinez
Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.
Susan W. Hardwick
Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.
Kevin Nute
Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).
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