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EVIL HISTORY IS TOO PAINFUL FOR STUDENT READING?

July 11, 2021 by

Evil history includes a list of everything you wish you’d never heard of. It’s the story of man’s injustice to his fellow man, and woman, and non-binary person. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve heard some evil history; add a few more years and you’ve lived some of it, and the aftermath. Everyone has a […]

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HISTORY MATTERS WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING

June 2, 2021 by

History matters more to history majors? We like to think so, but history matters to everyone else, too. It matters with personal history, house history, town history, business history, and the big history between nations. The key to remember is that it always starts small. And it starts with one question: What happened?

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BROKEN STAIRWAY? HOW TO REPLACE IT

October 15, 2020 by

My mother in law walked down a broken stairway for sixteen years. I’d replaced treads and firmed up the handrails, but we still joked about it. “An independent observer might think my son in law is trying to kill me by falling through these steps,” she laughed. “If the fall doesn’t kill you, my snake […]

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TWITTER TALK DONE RIGHT

October 13, 2020 by

Twitter talk quoted: replying to @DavidGillaspie Museums are shit places to gain an understanding of history because colonizers build and fund them. T. Roosevelt is famous for that “Only good Indian is a dead Indian” quote, but apparently not famous enough. You are an old white man with a colonizer perspective. Some nerve. Me: Hey […]

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HISTORY LESSONS? WHO SKIPPED THAT CLASS

October 13, 2020 by

History lessons come the hard way. All the dates and names pile up. We give up on history, and stop paying attention when history reads like a phone book. But once the connections hit and we start linking names, dates, and places, we seek out history lessons. I walked between the Portland Art Museum and […]

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HOPEFUL HISTORY THE OREGON WAY

September 14, 2020 by

Opening a book to find hopeful history is pure folly. It’s not history if all the good and bad parts get the whitewash treatment. Too often Oregon history is a mashup of wagon trains and farmers, of noble people of the land, salt of the earth, staking out new ground on behalf of their godly […]

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HISTORY MATTERS MORE THAN OPINIONS? USUALLY

August 2, 2020 by

History matters when someone starts explaining things beyond their grasp. If you don’t understand the basics of a single topic, then everything sounds authoritative. So how is it possible to tell the difference between a crackpot and a legitimate source? If you trust a blogger who gets with it an a daily basis, you’re on […]

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PORTLAND FOX THEATER HISTORY UP IN THE AIR ON A RAINY DAY

April 3, 2020 by

For Portland history, or any history, like the Fox Theater history, the events remain the same. It’s the interpretation that changes. This is why you trust your sources in regard to what you hear and believe, and what to reject. Primary sources make the difference. But what is a primary source? Take this, for instance:

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OLD PORTLAND BECAME NEW PORTLAND RIGHT AFTER I MOVED THERE

April 2, 2020 by

The term Old Portland usually applies to the city with pictures of a flood, like the flood of 1861, or the floods of 1894, 1948, 1996. By the way, it rains in Oregon, sometimes a lot. Will that ever change? No, but attitudes will change, have changed. But that’s not the Old Portland on boomerpdx.

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THE HISTORY WRITER YOU NEED, THE STORY YOU GET

March 29, 2020 by

Every history writer has a To Be Read stack of books. I like to think most people have the same stack. The difference for a writer is most of their books To Be Read explain how to write. I’m finally able to say they helped me. How? Thank you for asking.

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