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| Bowman Museum lecture series returns |
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| Popular free series meets Friday nights at the library |
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"Looking Back" is the theme for this year's Fall Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Crook County Historical Society and Friends of the Crook County Library.
"People love these things," said Bowman Museum director Gordon Gillespie. "They are free, scholarly, and entertaining. These people are vetted, so they are good speakers."
The first lecture is this Friday and is about the Redmond Caves, Gillespie said. The caves are located near the Redmond Airport. Lecturer Patrick O'Grady conducted an Archaeological Field School at the caves during the summer of 2005. The research was done as a course taught by O'Grady, a member of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History Staff Archaeologist at University of Oregon.
The project was a cooperative effort between the BLM and the City of Redmond to develop a 40-acre parcel of public land into a community park.
The caves include five subterranean lava-tube caves located on 40 acres within the Redmond Industrial Park. Prior investigations suggest that the caves were periodically occupied by Native Americans.
Up next for the series is the October 13 presentation "True Stories and Other Fictions in Northwest Oral History" by Tom Nash. Nash examines the elements of folklore embedded in supposedly nonfiction stories of frontier Oregon and the West. His material is drawn from Oregon oral histories that were recorded primarily in the 1930s and 40s, and are now held at the State Library in Salem.
This is Nash's third program for the lecture series. He teaches at Southern Oregon University.
"Mapping the West: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Cartography" will be presented Oct. 20 by Robert Hamm.
As the U.S. expanded west, cartographers were busy making sense of the world by drawing maps showing rivers, mountains, and Native settlements. While these maps helped educate people about the unknown West, many of their features were inaccurate or completely fictitious.
Hamm has been collecting historic maps for nearly twenty years, beginning with a gem found in a small shop in Greenwich Village that showed Oregon bordering Nebraska. He currently heads the education program at the Oregon campuses of the University of Phoenix.
The final lecture in the series is on October 27. "Abraham Lincoln: With Charity for All" by Richard Etulain, traces the political skill of the man many consider the United States greatest president.
Historian Etulain outlines Lincoln's experiences as a prairie lawyer, state legislator, party leader, and commander and chief. He brings to light the political genius and generosity of our sixteenth president, whom more than 1,000 biographies have been written about Lincoln.
Etulain first lectured on his background as a Basque and his talk on Oregon's Basque history. He holds a PHD from the University of Oregon and has taught for many years and is the author of many books.
Gillespie said the lectures almost always include some visual presentation and he encourages anyone interested in history to attend.
The material is suited for high school students and above. |
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