3. Vandalism and Pride
Thursday Sept. 15, 2005. I get into Portland around noon pacific time. After picking up a rental car, I make my way to the older, western part of the city, and (in order to be sure I can find it later) drive down to Lewis and Clark College, which is where my niece Ari goes to school. Then I find a hotel and, a few blocks away, the Oregon Historical Society Museum, a handsome four-story building with a research library and several floors of interactive exhibits, well chosen to hold one’s interest while bringing out a firmer sense of the reality of other times. I am fortunate enough to be there on almost the last day of the seven-month long exhibition, “A Fair to Remember: The 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition.”
In museums, I gravitate toward films. Film provides more information, in a shorter time, presented in a way that makes that information more meaningful, than does any other means of visual education. An old film shows you two things at once: How things used to be, and how the people at the time thought things were. These can be two very different things.