Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 20
September 18, 2012
Next Stop: Cannon Beach
Blue Thread is traveling to Cannon Beach this Saturday, in the next leg of the Crazy 8s Author Tour. This stop is hosted by Cannon Beach Book Company and will take place at the Cannon Beach Library (131 N. Hemlock St.) on September 22 at 2 p.m. Former Oregon governor Barbara Roberts is part of the tour. Really! Come on over and see for yourself.
Oregon Historical Society, CN 018785
Back in 1912, the town that is now Cannon Beach was called Elk Creek, and to understand why you have to go back ab...
September 14, 2012
Pendleton Round-Up: 1912 and Now
Imagine the scene where Eastern intellectual Anna Howard Shaw arrives in Oregon for the “Wild West” doings at the Pendleton Round-up. Shaw was no prim and proper lady despite her early work with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and this elegant pose taken in 1914. She was the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), had graduated from Boston University’s School of Theology and School of Medicine, and knew how to work a crowd.
Shaw toured Oregon in the final weeks bef...
September 11, 2012
Blue Thread Goes to Baker City
Blue Thread and I are off to Baker City this Friday (September 14) as part of the Crazy 8s Author Tour. We’ll be joining up with seven other Oregon authors at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center (2020 Auburn Avenue) at 7:00pm for a wild, slam-dunk, speed-dating, totally raucous good time. Author George Wright put this all together, and Betty’s Books is hosting the event.
Postcard of Baker City, circa 1917
Back in Blue Thread days, Baker City was a train ride away from Portland and the center of one...
September 7, 2012
Mary Pickford, America’s Sweetheart
Today Blue Thread goes to the movies. Or, rather, goes back to the movies. If you had visited the cinema in 1912, chances are you would have seen film star Mary Pickford. Pickford was in about thirty films in that year alone! And she had so many fans that she was dubbed “America’s sweetheart.” No wonder, when Lillian Josefsohn is thinking of a Halloween costume in Blue Thread, she considers dressing as Mary Pickford.
Born Gladys Smith in Toronto, Canada in 1892, Pickford played her first role...
September 4, 2012
New Book on “Doctor to the World”
Esther Pohl Lovejoy gets only a mention or two in Blue Thread. Fictional Miriam Josefsohn and fictional Charity Osborne attend a real event–the September 29, 1912, rally in Portland to honor national suffragist leader Anna Howard Shaw. Miriam tells us that Charity:
…told me about Suffrage Day at Oaks Amusement Park the previous Sunday. And she explained in detail how Esther Pohl Lovejoy had persuaded Dr. Shaw to come to Oregon. ‘Well, they are both physicians, Miriam, so it stands to reason. I...
August 31, 2012
Milliners, Madness, and a McGuire
We have a McGuire to thank for this Labor Day weekend. Was it Peter McGuire, the co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, or Matthew McGuire, an officer with Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists? Both men have about the same idea at about the same time. New York City hosted the first Labor Day celebration on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. But the first state to pass a law establishing Labor Day as an official holiday was Oregon (yay!) back in February 21, 1887.
In this...
August 28, 2012
Just a Little about Jot and Tittle
Meanwhile, back in Blue Thread, typography-loving Miriam is angry at her parents (for good reason) and thinks:
Stop controlling every jot and tittle of my life!”
Jot and tittle. Those of you familiar with the King James version of the Bible might remember this from Matthew 5:18:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
Jot comes from the Greek letter iota, and has come to mean the smallest letter of th...
August 24, 2012
Suffrage at the State Fair
Today marks the opening of the Oregon State Fair, which takes place in Salem through September 3.
We have the Oregon Fruitgrowers Association to thank for the state’s first unofficial fair, which took place in 1858. Two years later, the association joined with agricultural societies to form the Oregon State Agricultural Society. The society hosted Oregon’s first official state fair in 1861 on four acres of property along the Clackamas River in the Gladstone/Oregon City area.
Fast forward to 191...
August 21, 2012
What’s with the Goats?
When fictional Miriam Josefsohn meets Serakh for the first time in 1912, Miriam tells us:
She was thin, like me, but a head shorter, and she exuded a faint odor of farm animals. Goats?”
Goats indeed. Whenever Serakh enters a room, the smell of goats is not far behind, clinging to her body and her clothes—even clothes she has worn for a relatively short time:
A familiar gray dress hung near the men’s trousers. I stepped closer until I was sure, until I smelled goats. I pulled the dress from its h...
August 17, 2012
Taffy from the Sea?
Taffy, the sequel. OK, so in last week’s post I mentioned that taffy (or toffee) has been around awhile. Saltwater taffy likely originated in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the 1880s and became so profitable that there was a U.S. Supreme Court case about it.
Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and boardwalk in Atlantic City during the Blue Thread era
There’s a colorful—and perhaps true—story behind saltwater taffy. As a writer of fiction, I appreciate a good yarn, so here goes:
David Bradley sold taffy—ju...
