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Change Your Day

A revitalized blog with one mission: to present a moment that jolts your day, triggers new thinking, gets you through traffic tangles, and relieves job stress. Or, more prosaically, accompanies you through the early miles of bike touring through France and Italy. Wherever you are, I aim to change your day.

Credit to @illuminatethearts for lighting the skies from the Ferry Building down Market Street. 

Marie Equi Anchors Early LGBTQ History

8/28/2016

 
The life of lesbian doctor and political activist Marie Equi anchors Oregon’s early LGBTQ history and reflects how a sexually transgressive individual made a life for herself during the late 19th and early 20thcentury in the Pacific Northwest. Equi managed to do so by seeking an independent financial and personal life – and a thick skin – as a defense against social norms, hostility, and discrimination.
 
Born to working class, immigrant parents – her father was Italian; her mother, Irish – in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1872, Equi was forced to drop out of high school to work in the city’s harsh textile mills. She escaped with the assistance of her older girlfriend who invited her to live on an Oregon homestead in 1892. For five years Equi helped manage the 120 acre site two miles outside The Dalles along the Columbia River.  It was where she first made her public debut, and it was sensational.
 
The new biography Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, published by Oregon State University Press in 2015, describes the explosive occasion when 20-year-old Equi horsewhipped a school superintendent who was also a Baptist minister in the center of town. The ruckus captivated the town. But the incident also provoked a closer look at Equi’s relationship with her girlfriend. Newspapers reported the women’s “ardent affection” and “singular infatuation between them.” The public read that Equi’s friendship with her companion “amounts to adoration.”
 
By 1906 Equi was well-known as one of the Oregon’s few women doctors. She was successful and respected for her relief work following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Afterwards she became entangled in a family inheritance dispute involving her new girlfriend, a younger woman who was an heiress to the Olympia Brewing Company. Equi was portrayed as a gold-digger seeking the family’s money and wielding an unhealthy, hypnotic influence over the younger woman. The newspapers employed every innuendo to suggest the lesbian relationship. It was the second occasion that a same-sex, intimate relationship was presented to Oregonians.

​These two “outing” incidents – in 1893 and 1906 – were the first to establish Equi’s life as a sexual outsider. The remainder of her life story reveals her several love affairs with prominent women of the early 1900s as well as her being the first publicly known lesbian to legally adopt a child, in 1915, and create a same-sex alternative family. She also provided medical care to a woman who gender-identified as a man, was associated with colleagues implicated in Portland's 1912 gay sex scandal.
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Hear Equi biographer Michael Helquist discuss her remarkable life on Portland community radio KBOO-FM with Alan Silver, host of the Preference program at 6:30 pm, August 30, 2016.  A link to the recording will be provided for later listening.
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Equi’s radical politics became as controversial as her private life. She was committed to defending the downtrodden and fighting for social and economic justice. Her advocacy led to arrests, battles with police, litigations, and finally federal imprisonment for opposing World War I. Federal prosecutors maligned her as “an unsexed woman” and “a degenerate.” Equi became the only publicly known lesbian imprisoned for anti-war dissent.
 
Marie Equi’s passion for living her life true to herself and to upholding her beliefs serves as a model and inspiration for all Oregonians and especially for the LGBTQ community.

MARIE EQUI Tour Travels East: Boston and New Bedford Next for Award-Winning Biography

8/25/2016

 
On September 10, 1892, the Times-Mountaineer, one of the local newspapers in The Dalles, Oregon, announced a new arrival from Massachusetts. “Miss Aque, of New Bedford, is in the city and will spend the winter months with her friend, Bessie Holcomb." The notice had to please Equi. She was twenty years old with no high school diploma, little or no money, and scant work experience, but her appearance in the West was treated as an occasion of interest.

- From “
Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions.”
 
On the very same day as Marie Equi’s arrival in the West, but 124 years later, the Massachusetts book tour for her biography will begin. Over a two-week period, I will present four book talks and appear on AM radio in Boston and New Bedford. Here’s a quick look at the schedule:
  • September 12, Monday, 9 am, WBSM 1420 AM Morning Show, New Bedford
  • September 13, Tuesday, 7 pm Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum, New Bedford 
  • September 19, Monday, 12:30–1:20 pm Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston
  • September 19, Monday, 6 pm, The History Project, Boston
  • September 21, Wednesday, 7 pm, New Bedford Free Public Library, Main Branch 
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Rotch-Jones-Duff House
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Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
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New Bedford Free Public Library

Memories of Eugene from a Returning Author

8/4/2016

 
Mention Eugene, Oregon and my mind floods with memories – University days, anti-Vietnam War protests, coming out, the Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy presidential campaigns, and my first professional job.
 
This upcoming Saturday, August 6 I will give a talk with slides of my biography of Oregon’s fiercely independent firebrand Dr. Marie Equi at the Eugene Public Library downtown. As I prepare my presentation, I can’t help but think of the late 1960s when I studied history at the University of Oregon’s Honors Program. I never expected to return to campus decades later with an historical biography published by Oregon State University Press.
 
I lived off-campus my first two years at the university. The administration granted me and half-dozen housemates an exception to the rules since we had already clocked four years of dormitory life at Mt. Angel Seminary High School. We rented a small house near the old mill run within easy walking distance of classes.  This was the fall of 1967, and the protests against the Vietnam War and against President Lyndon B. Johnson accelerated. Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy visited the campus prior to the Oregon presidential primary election. They both opposed the war. For some students, the choice between backing McCarthy or Kennedy resembled this year’s choice between Sanders and Clinton. I switched from McCarthy to Kennedy, mostly due to Kennedy’s passion for social justice and his reaching out to poor Americans.
 
At some point during the conflict, student demonstrators flooded into the Administration Building on campus for an over-night sit-in. No serious clashes occurred with guards or city police, as I recall, but other protests during this period involved arson and vandalism and involvement of the Oregon National Guard.
 
I returned to Eugene in the early 1970s after graduating from the University at Albany in New York.  I had obtained Conscientious Objector status from the US Selective Service (draft board) and was not required to do alternative service. I settled in West Eugene close to what was then called the Beltline. This was my first house purchase, one that required just $1500 as a down payment.
Upcoming Event:
Author Michael Helquist, a former student at the University of Oregon, will discuss with slides his new biography, Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, at the downtown Eugene Public Library, Saturday, August 6, 2016, 3 – 4:30 pm. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Marie Equi was a graduate of the UO Medical Department in 1903. She advocated for the passage of the university funding measure. 

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Johnson Hall, Administration, UO
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Kaufman Center
I worked at my first professional job as a Program Director of a senior services program for the City of Eugene. My colleagues and I developed an intensive door-to-door outreach covering 163 blocks of inner west Eugene. I was based at the old Trude Kaufman Senior Center, the 6500 square foot former single-family home at the northwest corner of 10th and Jefferson. (The building now houses programs of the Oregon Extension Service).

​One of my colleagues at the Kaufman Center was Ron Wyden, then a young attorney who established a Senior Law Service for older people in Eugene. I remember a more experienced colleague remarking that Wyden was on his way for a career in politics. Of course, he’s now Oregon’s senior US Senator.

 
I remember the Riviera Room, a gay bar and disco at 39 10th Street between Willamette and Olive, replete with strobe lights, a large dance floor, and plush booths. I had heard that the “Riv Room” was the center of gay socializing in Eugene. It became the first gay bar I entered. I was just coming out, nervous but determined to cross the threshold. I chose a Tuesday night, figuring it would be less crowded – and threatening. I told myself all I had to do was enter, go to the bar, order and drink a beer and then leave. Nothing more eventful happened then, but I returned often with relief. 
 
Since then I’ve visited Eugene several times, sometimes to do research for my book in the University Library’s Special Collections. This Spring I gave my first Eugene book talk at the same library. I felt honored to be there. It seemed like I had come full circle. And now this Saturday I get to return with a talk at the new Eugene Public Library downtown. I can’t wait.

“The Night Eugene Went Wild With Joy”

8/1/2016

 
People in Eugene had been agitated for weeks leading up to the Oregon state election on June 1, 1908. The fate of the University of Oregon depended on the electorate. Would Oregon taxpayers approve an appropriations bill for the continued operation of the state’s only publicly funded university? The outcome was far from certain.

Since 1901 the university had depended on an annual appropriation by the state legislature totaling $47,000. The institution had managed to get by with those funds and various fees and interest payments from private funds. Occasionally the university regents requested, and obtained, a supplement to the appropriation. But in May 1908 the regents revealed its financial straits to the readers of Portland’s Oregonian newspaper, the largest in the state. To continue operations and to accommodate various new needs – housing accommodations for women students, increased library support, and building improvements – $150,000 would be needed. Without it, the regents warned that the university would likely need to be closed. 

Opposition to the measure was considerable, especially in the “country” sections of various counties, and support in the cities was uncertain. All eyes were especially on the voters in Portland, the state’s largest city. Significant support in that city and the surrounding Multnomah County could determine the outcome.

Voters went to the polls on June 1st, but the fate of the university appropriations bill remained uncertain throughout the day and evening. Students at the university were unable to study while awaiting the results. They feared their future education was on the line. Supporters retired with one question hanging over their heads: Would the support in Portland hold?

Finally, on the evening of June 2, the vote outcome was certain enough to declare victory for the university bill. Portland held with a majority in favor, along with other cities: Astoria, The Dalles, Pendleton, Baker City, Roseburg, Ashland, Marshfield (today’s Coos Bay) and, of course, Eugene. However, voters in Salem, the state capitol, opposed the measure. Of the nearly 80,000 votes cast, the measure passed with a slim margin of 3500 votes. 
Upcoming Event:
Author Michael Helquist, a former student at the University of Oregon, will discuss with slides his new biography, Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, at the downtown Eugene Public Library, Saturday, August 6, 2016, 3 – 4:30 pm. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Marie Equi was a graduate of the UO Medical Department in 1903. She advocated for the passage of the university funding measure.  
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University of Oregon campus buildings, 1910
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Kincaid Field 1910
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UO Villard Hall and Deady Hall
​The Oregonian reported that in Eugene, “The University and the city went mad!” Revelers staged “demonstrations without parallel.” People packed the streets, bands played, “sky rockets” exploded, and rallies filled Kincaid Field on the university campus. Students lit a monster bonfire that blazed fiercely through the night. 

Sources:
  • “Where Money Goes, Regents Explain Needs of University of Oregon,” Oregonian, May 17, 1908, 12.
  • “Shows Majority of 3569,” Oregonian, June 9, 1908, 10.
  • “The Night Eugene Went Wild With Joy,” Oregonian, June 14, 1908, 2.

    Michael Helquist

    Author Historian Activist 

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