My mother on her wedding day. Today would have been her 100th birthday. She’s always alive in my 
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Author: Michael N. McGregor
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A Beautiful Woman in Every Way
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Celebrating Black Newspapers in the Pacific Northwest
(image from Wikipedia) There’s a new post up on my WritingtheNorthwest.com site. It looks at the history and vitality of Black newspapers in the Northwest and includes links to the actual pages of some of the oldest ones.
Although there were few African Americans in Seattle in the 1890s, that decade produced 7 new Black newspapers, and while there were almost no African Americans in Portland in 1896, an enterprising young man named Adolphus D. Griffin started a weekly called The New Age for the Black community there that year.
You can read more here.
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Writing About Northwest Wine
Image courtesy of pxfuel.com The latest post on WritingtheNorthwest.com focuses on writing about the history and incredible growth of the wine industry in the Pacific Northwest. It offers a wealth of links to sites that give fascinating facts about NW wines, interviews with wine makers, and books that take a deeper dive into the lives of those who make wine in this rich region.
Click here to check it out.
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Escaping the Winter Blues
A few of my favorite shots from an unusually sunny midwinter jaunt to the Oregon coast.
Three photographers prepare to shoot the sunset near Haystack Rock.
Found art.
More found art.
Enjoying the day’s end.
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A New Essay of Mine Is Online: How an Oregon Basketball Coach Taught Me to Pay Attention to the Little Things in Coaching, Teaching and Life
(photo from Oregon Quarterly)I have a new essay up online–in Oregon Quarterly, the University of Oregon alumni magazine. It’s about the Oregon Ducks and going to college and coaching basketball and teaching and learning to focus on the little things in life that make success possible. You can read it here.
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Two New Posts on WritingtheNorthwest.com: The Pacific NW Through the Eyes of Rudyard Kipling and Ursula K. Le Guin
Over the past week I’ve put up two new posts on my recently launched WritingtheNorthwest.com website, one by me and one by a former student of mine, David Naimon, the host of the popular podcast Between the Covers.
My post is on a visit Rudyard Kipling made to Oregon in the 1890s, when he fished for salmon on the Clackamas River and visited a salmon cannery. You’ll find what he had to say about each of them by clicking here.
David Naimon’s post talks about the importance of Ursula K. Le Guin‘s connection to the Pacific Northwest (and especially Portland) to the writing of her science fiction classics. You can read that one here.
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The Myth of the “Other Place” in Films Set in Oregon
A great new guest post just went up on WritingtheNorthwest.com. It’s by my former student Michael Schepps and explores the myth of the “Other Place” and the Hero’s Journey in Films Set in Oregon. Check it out here.
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New Award: 2022 Donald J. Sterling, Jr., Senior Research Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History
I learned this week that I’ve been awarded the 2022 Donald J. Sterling, Jr., Senior Research Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History. The fellowship, given by the Oregon Historical Society, will fund research in the OHS archives for my next book (a biography of a prominent NW figure–details to come) and 1-2 articles for publication in the Oregon Historical Quarterly.
I’m extremely grateful to the people at OHS for this very welcome encouragement as I move more fully into writing history.
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Where or What Do We Mean When We Say “the Pacific Northwest”–New Post On WNW Site
If you haven’t had a chance yet to check out my new website, WritingtheNorthwest.com, you might find the latest post interesting. It attempts to answer the question of where and what exactly is the “Pacific Northwest.”
The post offers a number of interesting links, including one to the area covered by the culture of the Coast Indian tribes and one to details about the 9.2 earthquake centered in SW Alaska in 1964 that set Seattle’s Space Needle swaying.
Click here to check out the post.
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Audio Version of PURE ACT Released on Audible Today!
TODAY’S THE DAY the audio version of my book, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, is being released on Audible! If you click here, you can listen to a short sample.
I’m excited my book will be available to people who need or prefer to listen rather than read, but it’s strange to hear someone else read words I wrote about my own experiences.
