Guidance of Youth and the Ideology of Pioneer Mother Monuments

Guidance of Youth, Bush Park

A friend of the blog saw a Salem statue, "Guidance of Youth," in a notice for an interesting history talk sponsored by the Lane County Historical Society. Cynthia Prescott will be giving a pub talk in Eugene on "Myth and Memory in OR's Pioneer Monuments" on July 15th.*

Prescott is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Dakota and author of Pioneer Monuments in the American West. Her current project Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in Spring 2019.

In Salem:
May 23rd, 1919

A different Pioneer statue on the UO campus has been in the news this spring, and so the subject is a timely topic in Eugene.

Last month the Daily Emerald wrote:

[I]n the early 20th century, pioneers were depicted in statues across the country to “valorize” their achievements.

On the day of the statue’s instillation, May 22, 1919, the president of the Oregon Historical Society gave a speech to dedicate the statue that praised the Anglo-Saxon race and its ability to assimilate other races and cultures to become a part of it....

In 1919 it was big enough news that Salem newspapers covered it also.

But interestingly, the lead image for the pub talk is not that Eugene Pioneer or any other statue in Lane County, but instead is "Guidance of Youth," the statue in Bush Park, right here.

And it happens that "Guidance of Youth" appears prominently in Prescott's book, Pioneer Mother Monuments, as well as on the home page of the book's blog, the monument database, and sections on the sculptor, Avard Fairbanks, and the cluster of pioneer monuments in the Willamette Valley. So it has a substantial place in the book's argument.

The publisher blurbs the book this way:

In recent years, Americans have engaged in heated debates about Confederate Civil War monuments and their implicit racism. Should these statues be removed or reinterpreted? Far less attention, however, has been paid to pioneer monuments, which, Prescott argues, also enshrine white cultural superiority—as well as gender stereotypes. Only a few western communities have reexamined these values and erected statues with more inclusive imagery.

"Guidance of Youth" provides the lead and structure for Chapter 3, "Memory and Modernity in Postwar Family Monuments, 1940 - 1975."

Thanks Especially to Kathy Lincoln on her Cherriots Retirement

One of the consequences of all the politics around new funding for Cherriots is that the Board will be appointed by the Governor. Next month Cherriots will have four new Board Members, who will serve admirably. As this note from Cherriots suggests, there will be a generational shift and Cherriots will lose a great deal of institutional knowledge. There will be benefits to youth and fresh perspectives, of course, but the loss will also be real.

Biking and walking more than transit is the focus here, and so three of the four have contributed in ways that have regrettably not been visible for our interests and attention. But Kathy Lincoln's contributions to critique of the Salem River Crossing's folly have been important and should be singled out. She also served on the Policy Committee of our MPO, SKATS, and was often an important voice of dissent and critique when they were going down their autoist roads.

It is, then, a little unfair to Directors Kelley, Thompson, and Evans, and maybe you will know more about their particular accomplishments, but Director Lincoln deserves our special thanks for her focus on rational transportation and anti-boondoggularity. Cheers and Thanks!

Rail History and Art in Salem and Eugene

The Downtown Advisory Board is meeting today - right now, in fact - but there wasn't a meeting packet to flesh out the agenda items. They are talking about congestion on Front Street and about the mid-block parklets pilot. There will be more to say later.

Buried a little in the minutes from May also is a note about "Handout: Capital Cornerstones – Outdoor History Panels." Unfortunately the handout itself is not bundled into the meeting packet. But it sounds like the utility wrap project that went in the SCAN SESNA neighborhood is being extended to the downtown area. That could be very nice!

So here's a couple of related notes not themselves on the DAB agenda. If you haven't been to the Train Depot lately, you might not have seen the new historical signage at it and the Baggage Depot next door.

Newish historical interpretive signage at the Train Depot

On one of them was a photo I hadn't seen before. Or, I had, but the scan from the photo in the Library's Historic Photo collection is terrible. Unfortunately the caption at the Depot is also a little thin. Without any compass direction, it's hard to orient yourself. If the photo dates from the 1870s, it must be from Waller Hall, though. Was there any other structure tall enough and early enough to give that view? The Capitol is another candidate, but it would have been a little more directly north of the Depot.

A rare image of the first Depot of 1870

Down in Eugene it was interesting to see the brand new mural (several more images in the painter's FB note) on the circa 1910 "trolley stairs" on Willamette Street at College Hill.

New Safe Routes to Schools Plan Released

Earlier this week Ride Salem, the rental bike program, launched and yesterday Safe Routes to Schools published their 2019 Visioning Plan for Salem-Keizer. These are auspicious beginnings for the summer!

The committee
(Councilor Cook is identified with County only)

The plan is worth a look, but it's also a vision, and still early in the process. There's not a lot of concrete detail on actual plans. It's more about hopes and ideas and potential.

The main thing is to hire a full-time coordinator and to establish programs at four schools.

Chief Goal: Hire a full-time coordinator,
then install programming at four schools

Then there's a whole wish-list of things that might be done.

Failure at the Legislature and a Bridge's Name

There is sad and infuriating news on the front page today, even as the interior pages have at least two stories about climate-related disruption.

Front page today

Interior page today

Also interior today

There are many dimensions to the story, and I'm sure more will be written, but one of them has to be about the basic failure in exercising power by our Senate President. Apparently he chose collegiality over hardball, and his colleagues chose nullification rather than reciprocating. In trying to play nice he failed badly. A little bit of Charlie Brown to Lucy, in fact.

Last spring, there was another instance of a pattern where he apparently chose collegiality with peers over justice and protecting more vulnerable charges. It seems necessary now to read these two stories together.

It may be we need to consider a different name for the Minto Bridge.

As the scandal at the Legislature unfolded, and again as Cap and Invest appears dead, and the minority party practices Legislative nullification at this very moment, it is reasonable to ask whether it was best to dedicate the bridge to a still active, still living Legislator, before his legacy could adequately be assessed. 

Though the SJ evaded it, WW highlights the Minto Bridge

Willamette Week's story from last spring opened:

When Leah Mangis walks the Peter Courtney pedestrian bridge in Salem, the beauty of the new span across the Willamette River conflicts with her ugly memories.

It's been hard to tell if the "Peter Courtney" bridge name has really taken in the popular imagination. Here it has seemed like the enduring name was going to remain the "Minto Bridge."

However that may be, it's probably early still to say outright that we should pull the "Courtney" epithet from the bridge, but it's also now more of a legitimately open question whether the prior act of naming might have been premature. Maybe we will come to have buyer's remorse. Or maybe we will judge that on balance Courtney's legacy remains positive, despite what appear to be grievous missteps at the Legislature and at WOU.

Ride Salem Rental Bike System Opens with Soft Launch

While the Cap and Invest bill to curb carbon pollution now seems dead, Ride Salem, the rental bike system, launched over the weekend.

In that context, the launch is definitely one small step forward while we take two or three or more giant steps backwards.

In this we are consistently celebrating small ornamental wins while we fail and lose on the bigger structural change.

via Twitter

Still, there is opportunity for the system to grow and for it to help catalyze change, especially on downtown streets, which are currently ill-suited to a public bike system.

via Facebook

Check out the system and consider making it part of your own transportation toolbox. The more who use it, the better it and the better our whole system will be.

Idaho Stop on Front Page and a Third Reading Today

The piece on the front page today about the "Idaho Stop" bill is mostly pretty good!

But the headline's frame about "letting cyclists roll through stops" might not be the best, as it hits the tropes of the lawless cyclist and of special privileges for cyclists. It might better to have framed it as a measure for safety, efficiency, and climate.

Still, before the piece got to the autoist recalcitrance of some Legislators, it cited data. The juxtaposition implies a little shade, that some Legislators might be ignoring evidence even as they called for more support from the public.

It was also great to see a little journalistic conversation with BikePortland. (See BP here and here.)

Front page today

But it might have looked at problems with stopping cars. Even well away from stop signs, responsible stopping remains problematic for those who operate cars.

A couple days ago - but where's the driver?
A person crashed into the watermelons!

There's a long list here of local crashes where people crashed into inanimate objects well off the roadway.