Oregon Humanities

There’s an old joke: Did you know that in China they call Chinese food “food?” We could revise this joke to consider our current love affair with “local food.” It would go like this: Did you know that they used to call local food, “food?” Our contemporary vocabulary reveals a revolution in our relationship to what we eat. We have developed a new lexicon to combat the rise of industrial food production—“community-supported agriculture,” “locavore,”... More

09 June 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. | Permalink | Comments? (3 so far)

Last month, Sweden-based wikileaks.org published a classified US Army helicopter gun-camera video on youtube, and my inbox immediately filled with friends and acquaintances and people I didn’t even know asking me what I thought about it. The video showed an American helicopter attack in the “Sadr City” neighborhood of Baghdad. I was sought for comment because I had covered Iraq as a photojournalist in the early years of the war.

Like tens of millions of other... More

01 June 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. | Permalink | Comments? (1 so far)

When my family moved back to Haiti, I was fourteen, the reluctant daughter of a missionary. When I was six, Haiti had felt like paradise: mangoes fell ripe from trees, kamion drivers blared past our house with carnival-music horns, houses were the color of bubble-gum ice cream. But after living in the states and acquiring the knowing condescension of a teenager, I did not want to be dragged back to Haiti. This time, to make matters worse, we wouldn’t live on the... More

24 May 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

There are some days that roll out like a promise. Other days you turn the corner to unexpected joys. And still others where the people you meet along the way surprise you into believing in humanity again.

Last summer, the time I spent in Eastern Oregon re-awakened my belief that preserving where we came from, charting where we’re going, and creating innovative ways to see the journey along the way are the essence of our humanity.

I witnessed volunteers who wear more... More

26 April 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (1 so far)

I’m reading Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. I’d been meaning to pick this book up for about a year now and, as soon as I did, it felt immediately “familiar.”

Bishop starts by recounting his experience of choosing Austin, Texas, as his home. He explains that this was not an overtly political decision. He and his wife just wanted to live where they “fit in.” They wanted a “high-quality” life.... More

15 April 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

I recently completed the Humanity in Perspective (HIP) course and am proud of the accomplishment. It isn’t merely that I completed the course, received the certificate or the credit. It was an achievement that changed my perspective, and a change in one’s point of view can be profound. Often in life our point of view is altered due to conditions outside our control. It seems sometimes that we are but the affected spectator. When we seek and welcome change and it... More

08 April 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

I was halfway through my shift on a quiet night at the bar. To be fair, they were all quiet nights at that bar. I might as well have been tending in a dry county. You’d think a free hotel bar would be full 365, but this bar was silent. Perhaps it was the Merlot?
When I realized my tips were going to be under $10 I started putting the lemons back in the fridge. Then an Inuit man walked in.

I’d love to tell you there were cinematic strings played upon his entry... More

01 April 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (1 so far)

I’m sure most of you have heard of Annie Leonard—creator and host of the insanely popular short animated film The Story of Stuff (now at more than 10 million views worldwide). Leonard has written a book of the same name and is currently on national tour. This last Monday she presented at Powell’s, and I went to go hear what she had to say.

It was standing room only, and even though I got there early, I was one of the people crammed against the bookshelves in the... More

25 March 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

We live in a noisy and intrusive society. Cell phones and electronic devices summon us non-stop. They are addictive. They must be obeyed. But no electronic device I know of can teach us how to think nor can it help us find peace in the only venue that really counts: our own heads.

Be honest here. When was the last time you sat on a hillside, a park bench, or even in your own back yard and just listened—let your mind roll on—waited for whatever popped into your head... More

18 March 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (2 so far)

My freshman year in college, I stumbled into a class on the Holocaust, and four months later, I stepped off a bus in Auschwitz with a dozen classmates, my professor, and a living, breathing survivor of the Nazi camp. This might seem like an incredible journey, but really until I was standing in Auschwitz, the journey had been fairly easy. I read books, I watched films, I cried, and I had found myself hurt and angry at a history that wasn’t mine. But angry and hurt... More

11 March 2010 | Posted in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)