Hop harvest 2010

I harvested our hops today!

Thinking about Siletz basketry

A recent Oregonian article got me thinking about Siletz & Siletz basketry.[1] I poked around the Internet briefly and came across some websites selling historic baskets.

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz website has a few images of basket making.

Tribal member Bud Lane makes baskets and is featured in an Indian Country Today article and the video below.[2]



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[1] Karen Rathe, "Basket: Few willing to mess with a sacred item," Oregonian, Sep. 24, 2010, p. E3.

[2]Jack McNeel, "Siletz basketmaker keeps the art alive," Indian Country Today, Aug. 30, 2006.

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I like this look

Now, something from the Meaningless Files . . .

I gotta say, I really like the look that the Redskins have been sporting through week 2 of the 2010 NFL season:

It definitely beats the all-white nonsense they were sporting last year:

One of those relatively rare moments when football and real life intersect

I was struck by the broad applicability of the following section of Sally Jenkins' article "No quick fix for the Washington Redskins" from the Sep. 21, 2010, Washington Post:

[Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan] always told me when I was younger, 'All coaches have their system, and anybody can win with good players,' Kyle [Shanahan] said. 'But true coaches, when they don't have the right players to run the system, can they adjust? Do you have other stuff? You've got to know everything, so that if players can't do what you're asking them to do, you don't just keep beating your head against the wall. You got to figure out what can they do. That's the sign of a good coach.'

That's a pretty cool Zen-like statement about life itself. Its lamentably rare when professional sports and real life intersect in a positive way (see, for example, this post), so, when it does, I feel less guilty about following such a violent gladiator sport as football.

Here's another, from the same article, that pertains a bit more to the fantasy world in which I live where the Redskins are perpetual Super Bowl contenders:

Overall, despite the shortcomings, the Redskins are showing organized progress. It's still early, but it's promising. And anyway, like Winston Churchill said, "I am an optimist, because it does not seem too much use being anything else."

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Newspapers as "the first draft of history"

Tim Lacy at U.S. Intellectual History had an interesting post that asked readers to respond with an overview of how they used newspapers as primary sources in historical research ("Newspapers As Sources For Intellectual Historians: Or, Jack Shafer Doesn't Understand How Historians Work"). Lacy's post was prompted by a recent Jack Shafer article at Slate.com in which Shafer asserted that

"Historians tend to view journalism as unreliable and tend to be dismissive of our work. They'd rather work from primary sources—official documents, photographs, interviews, and the like—rather than from our clips."

His lamentation, however heartfelt, is quite inaccurate, at least from my point of view.

This post got me thinking about the historian's craft -- a topic I'm quite fond of -- and I replied with the following:

1898 (1898!) film footage of the USN battleship U.S.S. Oregon

U.S.S. Oregon in dry dock, Brooklyn Naval Yard, 1898.

(Library of Congress)

Among the many amazing things available on the Internet are the resources at the Library of Congress, and among this sub-category of amazing things is a short film clip of the battleship U.S.S. Oregon (BB-3) from 1898.

I tried to embed this footage in this post, but could not figure out a way to do that. I also wanted to provide a permanent link to the information page, but could not figure out how to bring up the page using anything but a temporary link. I think the LoC staff doesn't want people to do these things, for whatever reason. In any event, the metadata for this film clip is below.

Carronade Beach

Watch the full episode. See more History Detectives.

I was recently reminded of something really neat and fascinating: the Feb., 2008, discovery of two carronades from the U.S.S. Shark at Arch Cape (near Cannon Beach), Oregon. The History Detectives episode above provides an overview of this discovery, and the initial research that went in to determining whether or not the discovery related to the Shark. Greg Shine, who is featured in the History Detectives episode, wrote an article on the life & times of the U.S.S. Shark: ""A Gallant Little Schooner": The U.S. Schooner Shark and the Oregon Country, 1846," Oregon Historical Quarterly 109:4 (Winter 2008), 536-565.

The Oregon Parks & Recreation Department also has a page on this topic: "Arch Cannon Updates."

Also: Nancy Burke, "USS Shark opens portal to the past, Oregonian, Aug. 17, 2008.

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I missed the boat!

On the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 11, the Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group (CAG) held its monthly meeting on a boat touring the Willamette in Portland's harbor. CAG member Jim Robison invited me to this tour in July, while I was out of the state on vacation, and I replied that I would certainly be there.

I had taken a tour of the Willamette this past April, and had earlier biked along the Columbia Slough. I was looking forward to another opportunity to experience the river directly. So, I wrote the tour information down in my planner and settled into another week of vacation in sunny Nebraska . . .

. . . and then I got back to Portland, dove in to the remainder of the Summer quarter with my students, and didn't think about that tour until week after it occurred.

I got wrapped up in the final week of the Summer quarter, which was the week of the CAG harbor tour, and the date simply slipped my mind. After the quarter was over, I found myself thinking about how fun the upcoming harbor tour would be, so I checked my planner and realized that I had missed the boat!

Let this be a lesson to myself that I can't juggle 10,000 things without the benefit of my planner, and my planner isn't any use to me unless I actually refer to it consistently.[1] The cost of this oversight is missing-out on opportunities.

So, having expressed this mea culpa, let's get to some details of this harbor tour . . .

What to think about Rajneeshpuram?

The Oregonian recently ran an interesting Q&A with Win McCormack, author of The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult That Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil that's recently been re-released. Unlike the vast majority of article comments that I've read, the comments to this particular article are actually thought-provoking, and I recommend that you read them.

(For a bit more background on the Rajneeshees, Carl Abbott wrote the Oregon Encyclopedia entry "Rajneeshees.")

I don't quite know what to think about Rajneeshpuram . . .

Walking in the footsteps of sewage

I wish I had known about this contest in time, as I would have quite enjoyed this visit to the Big Pipe:

Nancy Rommelmann, "Superlatives, questions flow in tour of Portland's Big Pipe," Oregonian, Sep. 4, 2010, Community News sec., E1-E2.

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"What If We Ran America By The Poll Numbers?"

Fascinating show recently on KUOW's Weekday program: "What If We Ran America By The Poll Numbers?."

President Obama pointed out that religious freedom is a constitutional right which is guaranteed to all Americans when he addressed the possible construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque near ground zero. Yet any show of support for the cultural center goes against the will of the people — at least according to recent poll numbers. The majority of American's are against the project, if not insulted by it. What if our country was ruled by the majority? What if polls were always the deciding factor in what could, or could not, happen? Which is right: The religious freedom argument, or that the sentiments of the majority should be respected?

The guests on this program discuss the disconnect between what some people believe and what the facts of the matter actually are. This is a conundrum that I've been thinking about a lot recently. Why is it that some people -- most notably a lot of people who associate with the tea baggers, many libertarians, and the extremist fringe of conservative fundamentalist monotheists -- hold the beliefs that they do, even though the facts do not support the belief? Here I'm thinking of issues that are amenable to proof or disproof using factual evidence, such as whether or not President Obama is an American citizen, or claims about the participation of immigrants in violent acts.

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Elinor Langer, A Hundred Little Hitlers

I brought three books with me on our July vacation to Nebraska, and finished 2.5 of them. Of the two books I finished reading, one of them was intellectually stimulating and introduced me to new concepts that I hope to apply in my professional work (see this).

The second book has been on my list for years, Elinor Langer's A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America (New York, Metropolitan Books, 2003) (link). I found the book riveting and learned much from Langer's content and her approach.

This review from The Village Voice provides an effective synopsis of the book, so I won't attempt that here. There are also many other reviews of this book available online and in academic journals, and the Youtube video above in which Langer talks about the book.

Specific aspects of the book that made an impression on me below the fold.

Blogs of Note: H2ONCoast

I recently stumbled upon a great resource: H2ONCoast, a blog about "Water, Climate and Community on Oregon’s North Coast."

From the blog's "about" page:

Twenty-first century Homo sapiens have built dams, laws, ditches, dikes, treatment plants, industries, and agencies to manage our water. Yet it all comes down to a few simple facts with water–we can’t live without it, we have to keep it clean, and we have to understand its cycle on the planet. This blog is mostly about water in a wet place. The North Coast of Oregon is a place balanced between the Coast Range to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. On the north, it is bordered by the mighty Columbia River and in the South by the Siletz River. It is a landscape that is blessed by a super-abundance of water during the fall, winter and spring, and can be as dry as a bone in the summer. What you can expect from this blog:

1. Research-based facts. I am in the business of bringing the best of the academy to the people of the North Coast and Oregon. Expect some social and biophysical science.

2. Opinion. This site takes its cue from the blogosphere, which is quite opinionated. I will, however, always try to back up my opinions with facts. Note that these are my opinions and not always those of my employer, Oregon State University or Sea Grant Extension. If you have a beef with something you read here, contact me.

3. News. Water hits the headlines regularly. Expect to see entries culled from common and uncommon news sources.

4. Other perspectives. Water is both a global and local concern. Expect to see things related to water around the region, continent, and globe. There are usually lessons to be learned in these examples.