Upcoming Events
Willamette Valley History Series: Salem’s Early Chinese Community with Kimberli Fitzgerald MA, RPA
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The eighth presentation in this series is on Salem’s Early Chinese Community, presented by Kimberli Fitzgerald, Historic Preservation Officer, City of Salem.
Inside the Salem Pioneer Cemetery is a relatively unknown shrine that was used by residents of Salem’s Chinatown from the late 1800s through the 1940s. Join Ms. Fitzgerald, archaeologist and historic preservation officer with the City of Salem, to learn about the public archaeology project that uncovered the shrine-one of the few remnants of the city’s early Chinese immigrant history-and how the practice of public archaeology can help amplify the stories of Oregon’s historically marginalized communities.
Ms. Fitzgerald has been a resident of Oregon for almost thirty years. She is an American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Certified Planner and a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA). Currently, she is the Historic Preservation Officer and City Archaeologist for the City of Salem, where she has worked since 2009. Fitzgerald is a co-author of the 2009 Images of America: Hillsboro, the 2011 Images of America: West Salem, and several articles published in the Alliance Review (published by the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions) relating to historic preservation planning. In 2020, she was awarded the third place Mark E. Mack Community Engagement Award by the Society for Historical Archaeology for her work with the community on the project that uncovered Salem’s Chinese funerary table within Salem’s Pioneer Cemetery and reinstated the Qingming celebration.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Willamette Valley History Series: Rethinking Jewish Pioneers with Dr. Ellen Eisenberg
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The seventh presentation in this series is “Rethinking Jewish Pioneers”, presented by Dr. Ellen Eisenberg.
Western historians have long framed the high level of acceptance and inclusion experienced by early Jewish settlers in the region in celebratory terms. Yet over the last several years, this story has begun to shift, as tales of heroic pioneers have been called into question by narratives of settler colonialism, land theft and genocide. In this presentation, Eisenberg will explore the impact of these shifting historical narratives from the point of view of a western Jewish historian, sharing how she rethought, revised and reframed her own work on Oregon Jewish pioneers in response to recent racial reckonings in western history and society.
Dr. Eisenberg is the Dwight and Margaret Lear Professor of American History at Willamette University, where she has taught since 1990. She teaches courses on the U.S. since the Civil War, with an emphasis on immigration, ethnicity and race, particularly in the West. She has recently developed several new courses that partner with local historical institutions as they work to diversify the stories they tell.
Her published work includes five monographs, one edited anthology, and a number of articles, focusing on history of Jews in the American West and their relationships with other ethnic/racial minorities. Jewish Identities in the American West: Relational Perspectives, was published in 2022 in Brandeis University Press’s series on American Jewish History, Culture and Life. Her two volume history of Jews in Oregon, titled Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849-1950 and The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2015, was published in 2015 and 2016. The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII was a 2008 National Jewish Book Award finalist.
WU webpage https://my.willamette.edu/people/eeisenbe
Jewish Identities in the American West https://brandeisuniversitypress.com/title/jewish-identities-in-the-american-west-relational-perspectives/
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
Willamette Valley History Series: Oregon's Cultural Landscapes, How to Better Understand and Protect These Special Places with Laurie Matthews, FASLA
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The fourth presentation in this series will be on Oregon’s cultural landscapes, presented by Laurie Matthews, M.A., Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture & Historic Preservation at the University of Oregon.
Laurie Matthews, FASLA, is a nationally recognized expert in cultural landscapes. She will share her insights on some of Oregon’s diverse cultural landscapes focusing on what opportunities they invite and what challenges they present, contextualizing them within the broader framework of the practice of cultural landscape preservation and management in the US and internationally.
Laurie is Director of Preservation Planning + Design at MIG and an adjunct professor with University of Oregon’s landscape architecture and historic preservation departments. Her exceptional accomplishments and contributions to the field of landscape architecture have earned her the designation of Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA). Her work on cultural landscapes helps maintain and manage some of the most iconic historic places in the country such as Yosemite National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, and Crater Lake National Park. She is fascinated by the complexities and stories associated with landscapes and the history they reveal, and her work is guided by the principle that landscape preservation requires managing rather than halting change. Laurie has an M.L.A. and B.L.A. from the University of Oregon, a B.A. from Lewis & Clark College, is former president of the American Society of Landscape Architects Oregon chapter and serves on the board of Restore Oregon.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Want to help us promote this event? Here is the Facebook link.
Willamette Valley History Series: 450 Years of Black History in Oregon with Mariah Rocker of the Oregon Black Pioneers
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The fourth presentation in this series will be on Oregon's Black History, presented by Oregon Black Pioneers’ Public Programs and Exhibits Manager Mariah Rocker.
Oregon Black Pioneers is Oregon’s only historical society dedicated to preserving and presenting the experiences of African Americans statewide. For more than 30 years, they have illuminated the seldom-told stories of people of African descent in Oregon through engaging exhibits, public programs, publications, and historical research.
People of African descent have lived and worked in Oregon since before the founding of the earliest English-speaking settlements in the Americas. Despite this, the popular narrative of our state's history excludes the experiences of African Americans before the mid-20th century. This erasure is the result of historic legal and social marginalization that contributes to the ignorance of Oregon's Black heritage, as well as influences contemporary disparities in housing access, community investment, and policing. For this presentation, Oregon Black Pioneers will attempt to correct the record by highlighting key individuals and events that characterize Oregon's unique and centuries-old Black history.
Oregon Black Pioneers will also be hosting a Black History Walking Tour of Salem on Saturday, September 13th. You can sign up to attend that, or any of their other Black History Walking Tours, here.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Want to help us promote this event? Here is the Facebook link.
Willamette Valley History Series: Chemawa Indian Training School with Dr. David G. Lewis
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
Dr. David G. Lewis returns for the fifth presentation in the Willamette Valley History Series to discuss his research on the Chemawa Indian Training School, with a focus on Harwood H. Hall, the superintendent from 1916-1924.
Dr. Lewis is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies at Oregon State University, who in 2001 began publishing his extensive research on the Tribal histories of the Northwest Coastal peoples, specializing in the Western Oregon Tribes.
While most publications and stories omit over ten thousand years of human history in the region, Dr. Lewis’s most recent work, “Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley,” focuses on the region’s First Peoples and their experiences as their homelands drastically changed in a short amount of time.
You can find more information about Dr. Lewis and the book here, and more of his work can be found here.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Want to help us promote this event? Here is the Facebook link.
Art Therapy Presentation with Debra Irizarry, MA, ATR-BC, LCAT
Debra Irizarry (MA, ATR-BC, LCAT) is a full time art therapist at the Chemawa Indian school in Salem. Originally from Puerto Rico and NYC, now living in Salem, Oregon. Debra has exhibited around the Southwest, the East coast and at the Biennale in Florence, Italy.
This presentation details the immense benefits of art therapy, as it facilitates the expression of difficult to express emotions in a visual way without needing words.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Want to help us promote this event? Here is the Facebook link.
Willamette Valley History Series: Fairview and Oregon’s Radical Eugenics Program in the Twentieth Century with Dr. Kimberly Jensen
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The third presentation in this series is “Fairview and Oregon’s Radical Eugenics Program in the Twentieth Century”, presented by Dr. Kimberly Jensen, Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University.
The Oregon State Institution for the Feeble Minded (OSIFB), renamed Fairview in 1933, was at the center of the state’s eugenic sterilization program in force from 1917 to 1983. This presentation will provide an overview of eugenics in Oregon and the nation and Oregon’s broad eugenic categories related to “feeblemindedness” and “degeneracy” that targeted people of color, gender nonconforming people, people who challenged social norms, and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We will consider how state-coerced sterilization impacted OSIFB and Fairview residents, including policies about parole and discharge, and how the institution’s hospital became a destination for dozens of girls and young women who were inmates of the Oregon State Industrial School for Girls (later Hillcrest) for their own coerced sterilizations between 1926 and 1951.
Dr. Jensen received her Ph.D. in U.S. and women’s history at the University of Iowa and is professor of history and gender studies at Western Oregon University. She is the author of Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (University of Illinois, 2008), Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (University of Washington, 2012), and Oregon’s Others: Gender, Civil Liberties, and the Surveillance State in the Early Twentieth Century (University of Washington, 2024) and a number of book chapters and articles. Several articles have been recognized with awards including the Charles DeBenedetti Prize in Peace History, 2019-2020 and the Joel Palmer Award from the Oregon Historical Quarterly in 2008 and 2018. Dr. Jensen works to make history accessible to diverse and broad audiences as a member of the executive and editorial boards of the Oregon Encyclopedia.
Personal webpage https://kimberlyjensen.net/
WOU webpage https://wou.edu/wp/kimjensen/
Oregon’s Others: University of Washington Press https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295752587/oregons-others/
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Willamette Valley History Series: New Dreams in Old Buildings with Cara Kaser
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The second presentation in this series on the history of the Willamette Valley, including Pringle Creek and Chemeketa (now called Salem), is by Cara Kaser, M.A., member of the City of Salem’s Historic Landmarks Commission. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Kaser served as an Architectural Historian with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office.
She has worked on various historic preservation projects throughout the west coast, including the Ernest Bloch House (Newport), Joseph Jacobberger Country House (Portland), Weston School (Weston), the Roba Ranch (Paulina), the Egyptian Theatre (Coos Bay), and Sacajawea State Park (Pasco, Washington).
Ms. Kaser will be presenting on New Dreams in Old Buildings, a focus on early building practices in Oregon.
The SLC appreciates any help we can get to continue hosting events like this! A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated, but feel free to donate what you are able to. You can donate online or in person at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Join on Zoom
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates
Mother Earth Fair
Join us for this family friendly event on Mother’s Day in our newly acquired fir grove! We are partnering with other local businesses and groups to make this a fun day for everyone in the family. Make sure to stop by Prismatic Coffee and Root Cellar Market while you’re at the fair!
Activities include:
Vegetable seedlings for sale in partnership with the Pringle Creek Community’s Urban Farm
Perennial plants for sale by Edible Oregon
Cut flowers for sale by Flowers on Quince
Family partner yoga with Chantal Barton of Resonance Yoga Collective - free but donations in support of the fir grove are appreciated! Chantal will host one 20 minute session at 11:30 and another session at 12:30. These sessions will be great for parents and kids under 12, and we encourage bringing a blanket and yoga mat. Chantal will have some mats available to borrow.
Baked goods from Ember & Whisk
Kombucha from Rhythm Craft Kombucha
Samples and info from Willamette Local Food Connection
Sustainable nature crafts
Fir grove scavenger hunt with fun prizes provided by the Marion Soil & Water Conservation District
Live music by Ric Trauernicht
We are hoping for sunny weather but the fair will go on rain or shine!
We encourage walking, public transport, or carpooling if you are able. If you drive, there is limited parking at 3911 Village Center Dr SE as well as street parking. When parking on the street, please only park on one side of the street and avoid parking on the grass.
Willamette Valley History Series: Tribal Histories with Dr. David G. Lewis
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
Update! If you are not able to attend in person, you can view the lecture via this Zoom link. You do not need to RSVP unless you will be attending in person.
The SLC’s mission is to provide a unique living laboratory that educates and encourages sustainable practices in daily life, and we believe that understanding the history of this living laboratory is important to achieving our mission.
The first presentation in this series on the history of the Willamette Valley, including Pringle Creek and Chemeketa (now called Salem), is by Dr. David G. Lewis, member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
Dr. Lewis is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies at Oregon State University, who in 2001 began publishing his extensive research on the Tribal histories of the Northwest Coastal peoples, specializing in the Western Oregon Tribes.
While most publications and stories omit over ten thousand years of human history in the region, Dr. Lewis’s most recent work, “Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley,” focuses on the region’s First Peoples and their experiences as their homelands drastically changed in a short amount of time. We hope you can join us for this presentation on a part of the past that most people are unacquainted with.
You can find more information about Dr. Lewis and the book here, and more of his work can be found here. Books will be available for purchase at the event, and Dr. Lewis will be signing copies.
This is a free event, but we welcome donations to help support events like this and the ongoing work of the SLC. You can donate online or at the event.
Capacity in the hall is limited, so please RSVP by submitting this form.
We are still finalizing details for other presentations in the Willamette Valley History Series; in the meantime check the SLC events page for updates and sign up to receive email updates.
Open House - Wilson Commons
The accessible gardening area is meant to promote outdoor educational/community activities focused on sustainability, gardening and multigenerational engagement.
Urban Farmers - Class Eight
Fall Gardening: Extending Your Harvest & Winter Cover Crops
Urban Farmers - Class Seven
What to Do With Your Harvest: When to harvest, how to harvest and using your vegetables.
Urban Farmers - Class Six
Using Organic Fertilizers & Pesticides & More Hands-On Gardening
Urban Farmers - Class Three
Starting Seeds Organically/Navigating Seed Catalogs. All participants will select free seeds from SLC’s donated seed.
Urban Farmers - Class One
Intro to Urban Farmers: Planning a Vegetable Garden
If you are interested in enrolling for the eight-class program or have questions, contact our fabulous Urban Farmer Colleen Owen: colleen@pringlecreek.com or call (503) 315-1055
WVMS 4th Annual Mushroom Show
This free, educational event open to the public, where experts and lovers of mushrooms will be displaying a variety of fungi found in the Pacific Northwest. Come and explore the fascinating world of mushrooms through special presentations and workshops led by our local mushrooming society!
The event will take place at the SLC’s Painter’s Hall.
Foraging Fair
Join us at Pringle Creek Community for an afternoon of food, family, fun and... foraging! Discover edible plants available locally with an expert foraging guide, taste what you can find foraging in the Willamette Valley, and connect with organizations interested in sustainable practices. We’ll have information on food preservation, art activities for the kids, and more. Come and enjoy all the fun!
Foraging Fair
Join us on the beautiful grounds of Pringle Creek Community for an afternoon of food, family, fun and... foraging! Learn about some of the edible plants that grow wild in our area—and even taste a few along the way—during an expert-led forage walk. Local vendors will also be on hand with samples of tasty foods and products created using fresh and locally harvested ingredients, as well as some delicious local items for sale. We’ll have information on food preservation, art activities for the kids, and more. Come and enjoy all the fun!
Solar Eclipse Uncovered
What should we look for during a solar eclipse? How do eclipses effect the plants and animals around us? How do we view an eclipse safely? Have your questions answered and learn how to make the most of the Solar Eclipse taking place on August 21st, with a presentation by Jed Rembold Ph.D, professor of physics at Willamette University! This hour long presentation and Q&A session will teach you everything that you need to know about this rare natural phenomenon. The first 20 people will also get free eclipse glasses!
Admission is free but we suggest a donation to help us continue putting on events!
The presentation takes place on August 7th from 6:00pm-7:00pm in Painter's Hall at Pringle Creek Community 3911 Village Center Drive SE, Salem, OR 97302
Any questions can be emailed to slcpringlecreek@gmail.com or call (503) 315-1055
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