Collision of Cultures > Cultural Richness

I recently spent a large part of an afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles waiting to renew my driver’s license. While waiting, I was reading about the collision of cultures of three peoples on three continents—Europeans, Africans, and indigenous...

Shadows of History

On November 13th, 2018, the Urban League of Portland commemorated the 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw with a multi-hour conference addressing racial- and religious-based hate. Seraw was bludgeoned to death on the street in Southeast Portland by white supremacist...

Kavanaugh & Chaos

My partner Ken and I are downsizing and slowly moving to a smaller house, so my life has become chaotic. My eReader got lost in the shuffle. Did I leave my hat at the new house or the old one? Is that book I need packed away for the movers, or is it at the other...

BlacKkKlansman: 1970s & 1920s

The New York Times, August 2, 2018, still from DW Griffith’s 1915 The Birth of a Nation, Smith Collection/Gado, via Getty Images      Spike Lee’s new film BlacKkKlansman, based on the true-life account of Ron Stallworth’s experience as the first African-American cop...

The Rule of Law…If You Can Keep It

image from SPLC Report: “Guest Commentary: It can happen here” by Elden Rosenthal, Summer 2018, Vol. 48, No 2. When I began writing Medicine for the Blues, I was inspired by the 1990 trial of Tom Metzger, the American Nazi, and his white supremacist hate group, White...

Preserving our History, Preserving our Truth

image from “LGBTQ Institute in Germany Was Burned Down by Nazis,” by Lucy Diavolo, Sep 20, 2017  –  teenvogue.com   During this Pride Month, I am working with others toward a possible grant for the Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest...

1920s Prohibition in Portland, Oregon

Temperance Worker with Portland Police, c. 1920 Photo from The Oregon History Project The long struggle for passage of alcohol prohibition was bound up with the long struggle for women’s suffrage. Opponents of prohibition knew that once women got the right to vote,...

Birth Control & Early 1900s Radicals

Emma Goldman’s mugshot In the 1870s, a social purity movement led to the passage of the Comstock laws, which forbade the distribution of obscene materials through the US mail. Birth control information and devices were considered obscene materials. Women of...