Fifteen Months on “Dear Oregon”: Professional Time Travel During a Pandemic

Part of those efforts included increasing the frequency of our blog posts on Dear Oregon. In the past fifteen months (or lifetime), 37 authors published 77 posts that include behind the scenes features, highlights of OHS collections, efforts to maintain personal connections during long stretches of social distancing, and important reflections that reinforce how knowing Oregon history is important to understanding our rapidly changing world. The blog would not be possible without the expertise and the combined decades of experience of OHS staff members — I feel privileged and humbled to call them colleagues.

#7: “History is who we are and why we are the way we are” by Eliza E. Canty-Jones

In this blog post, Oregon Historical Quarterly editor and Director of Community Engagement Eliza E. Canty-Jones presented OHS resources that highlight the work of Black scholars, activists, and community leaders who have shared their experiences, insights, and analyses about racism, white supremacy, violence, community organizing, and resistance. Those people she has listened to, worked with, and learned from over the course of over fifteen years working at OHS. Their insights and scholarship help us understand our past with the hope of creating “a present and future that is more equitable for all.”

#6: Preserving History: Caring for the Afro-American Heritage Bicentennial Commemorative Quilt by Helen Fedchak

In October 2020, OHS placed the Afro-American Heritage Bicentennial Commemorative Quilt on exhibit in collaboration with Portland Textile Month. The quilt dates to 1974, when a group of fifteen women sewed the quilt to honor the heritage and contributions of the Black community in U.S. history. In this blog post, OHS Curator of Collections Helen Fedchak describes the many exhibitions in which the quilt has appeared and how OHS ensures the preservation of this and other textiles in its museum collection. On October 11, 2020, vandals removed the quilt from the building and discarded it a few blocks away in the rain. The quilt is now undergoing conservation work to mitigate the damage.

#5: Let’s Bake a (Historical) Cake by Katie Mayer

When the OHS closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, OHS Technical Services Librarian Katie Mayer found herself alone in her house with a batch of cookies. While her colleagues at OHS typically reaped the benefits of her baking habit, this task that once provided comfort became unexpectedly emblematic of the strangeness and grief of the time. Although accessing popular food supplies at that point in the pandemic, such as flour and yeast, was often a stress and a chore, the act of cooking and baking also brought comfort and communion. She pitched the idea of a baking experiment to her colleagues, using a historical recipe from the OHS Research Library collections — with a surprise ingredient — and eleven joined in. In this post, Mayer shares the recipe, some tips, and a slideshow of the 12 cakes OHS staff members baked.

#4: From Whence Did it Come and to Where Did it Go?: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Oregon by Erin Brasell

While Oregonians practiced physical distancing while waiting for the state’s stay-at-home orders to ease, public health experts warned that moving too quickly could have serious implications in terms of COVID-19’s spread — and resulting deaths. Historians are well positioned to echo these warnings, especially when analyzing the 1918 influenza pandemic (which occurred during World War I) and Oregon’s response to COVID-19. Managing Editor for the Oregon Historical Quarterly (OHQ) Erin Brasell reflected on past OHQ articles that helped to provide historical context for the 1918 influenza pandemic, including an illustrated timeline that helps make connections to Oregon’s COVID-19 response.

#3: Breaking News: Footage of the Mount St. Helens Eruption and Aftermath by Matthew Cowan

On the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, OHS Archivist for Photography and Moving Images Matthew Cowan highlighted selected clips from news footage held in OHS’s research library collections. OHS’s moving image collection consists of film and video tape that ranges in date from approximately 1905 until present day, including footage of Mount St. Helens erupting and its aftermath in May 1980.

#2: Power of the Vote: A Brief History of Voting Rights in America by Eliza E. Canty-Jones

The year 2020 marked the sesquicentennial of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. OHS marked that anniversary with the opening of a powerful exhibition, Nevertheless, They Persisted: Women’s Voting Rights and the 19th Amendment, which considers the deeply intertwined histories of citizenship, racism, and the local and national struggles for woman suffrage. In honor of that work, Eliza E. Canty-Jones offered a brief overview of some significant events in the history of voting rights in Oregon and the United States. The exhibit opening day was scheduled for the same day OHS closed to the public due to COVID-19, but it remains on view in our museum through December 5, 2021.

#1: Beached Whale Blow-up: Commemorating the Anniversary of the Florence Exploding Whale by Matthew Cowan

On November 12, 1970, KATU reporter Paul Linnman described “a stinking whale of a problem” on the coast near Florence, Oregon. There, Oregon State Highway Department crews hauled boxes of explosives to the remains of a beached whale with the hope that the ocean and scavengers would clean up the pieces. Linnman and cameraman Doug Brazil captured the explosion on film from about a quarter of a mile away, and decades later, it became a viral internet hit with an estimated 350 million views. In this post, Matthew Cowan described the event and shared details about the original KATU news film footage held in OHS’s research library collections. OHS hosted a conversation between Linnman, Brazil, and OHS Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk on the 50th anniversary of the explosion on November 12, 2020, which is available to watch on our YouTube channel.