Category: Reed Traditions

Sweep the mind

clean

like a field of dry stubble

when the constellations

of daisies have been mown

–Mary Barnard

Mary Barnard ’32 is arguably Reed’s most prominent creative artist. Her original poetry and translations of classic poetry influenced generations, including the Beat poets who followed her by one generation. Her 100th birthday was celebrated in 2009, so it is appropriate that the Reed Centennial honor her with a full day of lectures about her life, her work, and her influence (see “Alumni College: Letters 100: Experiencing Mary Barnard ’32” on Thursday, June 9).

It is also fitting that pre-eminent Barnard scholar, our own Sarah Barnsley ’95, should return to lead this seminar. Sarah was an exchange student from University of East Anglia for one year, and she now teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her other research interests include American literature, poetry and poetics, modernism, gender and queer theory. Following her tenure as H.D. Fellow in American Literature at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, Sarah has completed a book manuscript, “‘A bright, particular excellence’: Mary Barnard, American Imagist.” She is also a poet in her own right.

Mary Barnard ’32 was born in Vancouver, Washington, and attended Reed College, where she discovered modernist poetry and Ezra Pound; she later initiated a long-distance correspondence with Pound that was to last nearly 40 years.

As noted by the Beinecke Library, “With Pound’s encouragement, Barnard began translating Sappho’s poetry from the Greek. Her translation, published in 1958, has never been out of print. Barnard’s own poems won her Poetry magazine’s Levinson Award when she was only 26 years old. Her shorter fiction was published in Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, and The Kenyon Review. She later composed a book-length essay in verse entitled Time and the White Tigress and researched and published her own genealogy and various essays on mythology.”

The delightful and spirited memoir of her school days, Erato agonistes: Writing a creative thesis at Reed College in “The Golden Age”, is available in the bookstore.

Other speakers in the seminar will include Professor Anita Helle, Oregon State University, on Mary Barnard’s original poetry, and Professor Ellen K. Stauder, dean of the faculty and David Eddings Professor of English & Humanities, on Mary Barnard’s Sappho, in the morning sessions.  Afternoon conference leaders will include, in addition, Elizabeth J. Bell ’87 MALS, Mary Barnard’s literary executor; and Anita Bigelow ’67, illustrator of Mary Barnard’s work.

THE LADD AND REED LEGACY: Building Portland 1851-2011

Tuesday, June 7, from 8 a.m. through 12:45 p.m.

The Ladd and Reed Legacy talk and tour during Centennial Reunions, organized by Richard Ross ’69 MAT, explores and celebrates the lasting impacts of two remarkable Oregon pioneer families on Portland’s development over a century and a half. William S. Ladd was Portland’s most prominent 19th-century business and civic leader, and Simeon Reed was Ladd’s foremost business partner and friend. Ladd and Reed shaped Portland and the Northwest by joint ventures over four decades, in public service, steamboats, telegraphs, macadam roads, model farms, railroads, and iron. Ladd and Reed both arrived in Portland in the 1850s, starting as pioneer liquor dealers, and served on the city council  in the crude frontier village known as “Stumptown.” Their sturdy spouses, Amanda Wood Reed and Carolyn Elliott Ladd emigrated together by sea from Boston in 1854 and  became lifelong friends. 

As they prospered together, the Ladds and Reeds pursued a common vision of building a thriving Renaissance city out of soggy Stumptown. In turn, they were driving forces in the formation of Oregon’s educational, cultural, economic infrastructure, and model communities. Amanda Reed’s 1904 will set in motion the final Ladd and Reed partnership, the creation of Reed College (1911), with help from Ladd son and college trustee William M. Ladd.  This program shows how the Ladd and Reed family vision built Portland’s strong neighborhoods, its civic, educational, and economic institutions, and the vibrant downtown of today. 

Tour visits five Ladd and Reed living legacies:

1. Oregon Iron Company, Oregon Iron and Steel (1865-1894) Lake Oswego  

Guides: Marylou Colver, Susanna Kuo, Lake Oswego historians

Dominant Northwest iron producer for the “Pittsburgh of the West.” Company town supplied construction of Northwest railroads, pipelines, bridges, and Portland’s ironfront buildings. Iron lands around Lake Oswego (Sucker Lake) became the basis of the 20th-century suburb.

2. The Ladd Carriage House (1883) SW Broadway

Guide: Jim Heuer, Friends of the Ladd Carriage House 

Last remnant of the Ladd family’s former downtown estate and an elegant, rare survivor of prestigious 19th-century South Portland, where the Ladds and Reeds both lived. 

3. The Reed Building (1890) SW 1st and Ankeny

Guide: Amy Kohnstamm, Mercy Corps

Simeon Reed’s solid four-story brick and stone warehouse, once in Portland’s business core at Skidmore Fountain, houses Mercy Corps world headquarters today.  

4. Ladd’s Addition (1891) 

Designed by William S. Ladd himself, thrives today as a national and regional icon for green and walkable neighborhoods and “New Urbanism.” First of many notable Portland neighborhoods created by the Ladd Estate Company under William M. Ladd out of Ladd farms and holdings: Laurelhurst (1909), Eastmoreland (1910), Dunthorpe, and Lake Oswego, all landmark communities of the 20th century.  

5. Reed College (1911) 

Celebrates its centennial in 2011-12, was endowed by Amanda Reed, on part of William S. Ladd’s Crystal Springs Farm donated by trustee William M. Ladd. 

Schedule: 

• 8 a.m.  PowerPoint Talk at Vollum Lounge, Reed campus 

• 8:30 a.m.  Board a Raz bus at Eliot Circle for Lake Oswego

• 11:15 a.m. Ladd’s Addition, coffee break and restrooms at Palio (the Elm Room), Ladd Circle 

• 12:45 p.m. Tour concludes with wrap-up comments on the founding of Reed College 

The cost for this half-day tour is $20.  Sign up by sending email to alumni@reed.edu.

Presenter and guide (except where noted):

Richard N Ross ’69, American Institute of Certified Planners         

H: 503/235-8194  C: 503/807-0612   richardnross@earthlink.net

• Urban and regional planner in Oregon 1977-2011, teacher of Oregon and US history 1970-79

• BA in History Middlebury College, MAT Reed College, MUP Portland State University

• Led regional coalition to restore the Historic Columbia River Hwy (1986-92)

• Ladd’s Addition community leader and resident 1976-2011 

I recently caught up with Travis Greenwood ’01, kitschy shirt connoisseur, to get the scoop on his efforts to collect and document Olde Reed t-shirts.

Please give us your vision for this project? 

This project mixes personal and professional interests. I’ve always had collector tendencies, progressing from comic books to records and then, later, bicycles. These days, it’s all of the above, plus t-shirts, which is convenient because I write and edit a blog, “It Goes to 11,” for my employer. It’s focused (somewhat loosely) on t-shirts, t-shirts from the reel world, t-shirt trends, movie memes, the overlap there between and whatever else I stumble across on the web. Combine all of that with extremely fond memories of my Reed experience (I majored in history and managed KRRC) and here you have it, my contribution to the college’s collective history. Don’t say I never gave anything back to the community!

Seriously though, it dawned on me that the typical Reed experience was accompanied by several t-shirt traditions (experiential mile markers if you will), namely O-Week, Renn Fayre, and Beer Nation, but also encompassing several smaller events and tropes. Following from that, it seemed that someone–namely, me–should consolidate and archive material of this type online. If the Internet has room for LOL Cats, defamatory weekly newspapers (zinger!), and second-tier social networking sites, then certainly we can carve out a niche for our humble t-shirts, which when taken collectively, constitute an enormous and revealing trove of Reed minutia.

Does it have a catchy name?

I haven’t given much thought to the moniker, but a simple bit of brainstorming yields this bastardized gem:

“Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: A Pictorial History of Reed T-Shirts”

(groan…)

Continue reading Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: Reed T-Shirts Unite!