Think Oregon

Partners in Diversity

All in for Diversity

Partners in Diversity seeks to draw professionals of color to the Portland area—and keep them there You don’t have to live in Los Angeles or New York to know that American demographics are changing. According to Mari Watanabe, the executive director of Portland-based Partners in Diversity, it’s in everybody’s—and every company’s—best interest to keep up.  “As the demographics of the country shift, businesses have an opportunity to meet the demands of a more diverse customer base,” Watanabe said. “Likewise, as a company’s customer base becomes more diverse, so should its workforce.” Partners in Diversity is a nonprofit organization that helps companies recruit, support and retain professionals of color in both Oregon and Southwest Washington. For individuals of color, it’s also a lucrative lifeline to connect with others on both a personal and professional level. On the business side, Partners in Diversity offers a robust agenda of educational forums and events…

PNW Businesses Rush to Aid in the Battle Against COVID-19

Across the region, theater companies are making masks, distillers are bottling hand sanitizer, restaurants are making exquisite meals and, of course, a San Juan Island tour company is streaming whales to soothe everyone in quarantine by Cathy Carroll ALTHOUGH COMPANIES THROUGHOUT the Pacific Northwest are feeling the economic pain of the pandemic, they haven’t let that get in their way of duty. Just as businesses had heeded President Franklin Roosevelt’s World War II mandate that “powerful enemies must be out-fought and out-produced,” companies are all in for the fight against the coronavirus. The “Rosie the Riveters” of our day, this group is retooling to manufacture weaponry to crush COVID-19. Theater costume makers are sewing masks. Distillers are mixing hand sanitizer. Global sportswear and aeronautics brands are making face shields, chefs are delivering food to healthcare workers and leading research institutions are searching for the medicine that will stop this scourge….

How the Oregon Trail could change and no one will have known what happened

Stop B2H Coalition, a small nonprofit centered in La Grande is working day and night to preserve the Oregon Trail from Idaho Power n estimated 80,000 early pioneers arrived in Oregon on the Oregon Trail, passing over the American West and etching their journey in miles of wagon wheel ruts. These ruts stand witness to an historic and epic journey, the evidence still visible almost two centuries later. But as Smithsonian magazine put it back in 2016, some of these ruts are in “danger of destruction as municipalities push to stretch bigger and better power supplies across the region.” That’s the case in Oregon, where a long-proposed project could change the view forever. It’s a battle over the desert, farmland, forests and big skies of Eastern Oregon—with scant attention from the rest of the state. It’s a tale of underdogs fighting enormous odds to protect what’s theirs, and what their…

Puppies in Prison

Woman’s best friend is freeing lives outside—and inside—prison written by Shirley Hancock | photography by Shauna Intelisano   AMY DUARTE’S FREEDOM is rooted in Oregon’s postcard landscapes. As a child, collecting bugs in the high desert. As a snowboard instructor, guiding young shredders down a volcano. As a wildland firefighter, lugging 40 pounds of gear up a mountain. But one violent, summer night in 2011, Duarte’s freedom shrank to a 6-by-12-foot cell. Arrested for domestic violence, she claimed it was in self-defense that she grabbed a lamp and swung. Her sentence—almost six years in Oregon’s “big house” for women, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. “I was like a zombie. An empty shell, with no hope,” Duarte said. “Hearing that cell door shut—that was the most traumatizing moment of my life.” Two years later hope arrived, in a wiggly pup named Sonic. Duarte is among sixty-four Oregon women who, since 1995, have…

Tetherow home

An architect and interior designer fashion a modern Tetherow home befitting the high desert

written by Melissa Dalton In this house, the formality of a traditional enclosed entryway is a thing of the past. Step inside the front door and you’re greeted with an immediate view out the back—a 12-foot-high wall of glass that frames a grove of Ponderosa pine trees, desert scrub brush and several Cascade peaks in the distance. Putting that view upfront was a priority for Anne Mastalir. When Mastalir and her family relocated to Central Oregon from Portland in 2013, the move was an opportunity for the interior designer and owner of Pringle Design to craft a house that was not only a calling card for her work, but an ode to her new home. “It was important to us to design and build a home that fit in well with the surrounding landscape and fit the Bend environment,” Mastalir said. I figured out a very long time ago that…

Summit Arts Center

Summit Arts Center’s creativity stems from a desire to preserve history in Government Camp

written by Catie Joyce-Bulay photography by Daniel Stark Most people head to Mount Hood for the epic skiing and hiking, but there’s also a vibrant art community keeping traditions of craftsmanship alive. The story of Summit Arts Center, formerly known as Cascadia Center for Arts and Crafts, began in the 1930s when the cabins housing its studios were first built for U.S. Forest Service personnel. In 1936, construction began on nearby Timberline Lodge as a Works Progress Administration project, providing employment during the Great Depression. As the lodge flourished as a popular tourist destination and historic landmark, the original Forest Service cabins fell into disrepair. Fast forward more than sixty years—the cabins were slated for demolition for lack of funds to repair them. Enter Betsy Valian, a nearby Government Camp resident and glass artist who couldn’t bear to see such an important part of the region’s history disappear. It was…

solar bee

A solar apiary combines solar power and pollination

written by James Sinks Honeybees dance and dip among the lightly shaded wildflowers in this patch of Rogue Valley farmland, zipping between splotches of color and—when filled with pollen—curl back to their boxed hives to offload their cargo, and then start anew. It’s almost a normal agricultural view. Until you look upward. The canopy above the carpet of wildflowers is not made up of tree branches, but rather rows of solar power panels, covering some 40 acres near Eagle Point. The installation came online in 2016 and produces 10 megawatts of renewable electricity—enough to supply the power needs of roughly 8,000 houses.  To Rogue River beekeeper John Jacob, the dual-use solar site—the nation’s largest “solar apiary”—is a thoughtful example of how farms of the future can coexist with renewable energy, and make the world better. And importantly, he said, the sites can act as organic refuges for stressed pollinators, who…

Nataki Garrett

New Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Nataki Garrett seeks to broaden marketing and season

What I’m Workin On interview by Sheila G. Miller The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced earlier this year that its new artistic director will be Nataki Garrett, a veteran stage director and the festival’s first African-American leader. She will be responsible for the artistic vision of the festival, which was founded in 1935 and has grown over the decades to become one of the biggest nonprofit theaters in the country. Garrett isn’t starting out slowly. While she takes over as the artistic director in August, she has been on site since April and will also direct a play, “How to Catch Creation,” at OSF in July. What exactly goes into being the artistic director?  I am the figurehead for artistic leadership, but I am also responsible for basically two-thirds of everything that happens in our organization. I’m responsible for all things in production such as choosing plays, hiring artists for plays…