The Authors of the OE
Carl Abbott has taught at Portland State University since 1978. He has written extensively on the history of Portland and the Pacific Northwest and has been active as a board member of a number of community groups, including the Oregon Encyclopedia, the Historic Preservation League of Oregon, the Oregon Downtown Development Association, and Livable Oregon. He is a contributor to the Oregonian and Portland Monthly and is a frequent speaker to community groups.
J.D. Adams was born in Salem, Oregon, a descendant of Oregon Trail pioneer William Lysander Adams. In his early years, he explored lookout trails in the Santiam Canyon and grew to enjoy hiking and photography, returning frequently to the Jefferson Wilderness. J.D. inhabits Oregon’s high-tech Silicon Forest as an electronics engineer and writer, exploring the realm between science and mystery. He maintains a web presence with a signature presentation in genres including travel, history, and technology. Web site: http://www.virb.com/1862000955474383.
Ginny Allen is an art historian and author. She is the co-author of Oregon Painters: The First Hundred Years, 1859-1959 (OHS Press, 1999) and has written articles on artist Melville Wire for the Oregon Historical Quarterly and American Art Review. Since 2004 she has worked on the WPA art inventory of the state of Oregon, with recent efforts to identify and help preserve and conserve works that were placed on loan to the Portland Public Schools. She is a long-time Portland Art Museum docent and art council member.
Cathy Croghan Alzner is an instructor of history at Portland Community College. She has served as archivist for Portland State University and is a former nurse. With Gordon Dodds, she published Serving Justice: A History of the Oregon State Bar (Oregon State Bar, 2005).
Warren Aney enlisted in the Oregon Army National Guard in 1953 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1958. He served in the Guard until 1996, with assignments as platoon leader, company commander, battalion intelligence officer, operations sergeant, and intelligence sergeant. His last assignment was six years as Oregon Army National Guard staff historian. Aney’s professional civilian career is in wildlife ecology with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and as a private consultant. He received a BS in fish and game management at Oregon State College and an MA in ecological studies from Oregon State University.
Alan Armstrong (Ph.D., Cornell University) is director of the Center for Shakespeare Studies at Southern Oregon University. His research and writing focus on both original staging practices and contemporary performance. He served as dramaturg for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s productions of King John (2006) and Coriolanus (2008) and was co-editor of the international journal Literature and History (1990-2007). Armstrong has directed twelve NEH national summer institutes ("Shakespeare in Ashland: Teaching from Performance") and is a senior scholar for the American Shakespeare Center’s NEH national institute for college and university professors ("Shakespeare’s Playhouses: Inside and Out").
Kay Atwood graduated from Mills College in 1964 and has a master's degree from the University of California, Davis. For thirty years, she as worked independently as a local historian and consultant in southwest Oregon. She is the author of several books and reports on Oregon history, including Illahe, the Story of Settlement in the Rogue River Canyon, Mill Creek Journal, and Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855.
Peggy Baldwin lives in Portland, and is a librarian and professional genealogist doing research for clients via her business Family Passages (www.family-passages.com). She is a descendent of four lines of Oregon Trail pioneers and an Oregon history junky. She graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Business Administration and has a Master's Degree in Library Science from the University of Oregon. She also attended the Institute of Historical and Genealogical Research and Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, taking courses in advanced genealogical research methods.
Val Ballestrem is the education manager for the Bosco-Milligan Foundation/Architectural Heritage Center in Portland. A life-long Oregonian, he has a master’s degree in western U.S. history and public history at Portland State University, where he wrote his M.A. thesis on the Mt. Hood Freeway. Val worked as a graduate assistant with The Oregon Encyclopedia and has assisted with archival projects at the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Military Museum. He has also served on the board of the Hosford-Abernethy Neighborhood Development Association in Portland and has been actively involved in neighborhood historic preservation issues.
Katrine Barber is associate professor of history at Portland State University. She teaches Pacific Northwest, western U.S. history, and public history. She is a member of the Native American Studies faculty and is the director of the Center for Columbia River History (www.ccrh.org), a consortium of PSU, Washington State University Vancouver, and the Washington State Historical Society. She left her home town of Portland, Oregon, for graduate studies at Washington State University, where she earned her doctorate in American Studies in 1999. She is the author of Death of Celilo Falls (University of Washington Press, 2005).
