Events & Opportunities
October 17, 2026
Conversation Project: Can We Get Along?
Rodney King’s iconic question still resonates today. Despite decades of social justice movements, police brutality and divisions persist in the United States. COVID-19 has only added more challenges. How can we connect to each other during these times? What holds us back from connecting with each other? How do our personal experiences contribute to barriers, or and have the potential to break them down? Join facilitator Chisao Hata as she holds space to examine individual questions on race, cultural values, and what brings us together and what separates us.
10:30 a.m., Willamette Heritage Center, Salem
October 17, 2026
Talking About Values Across Political Divides
“How can I be me without making it difficult for you to be you?” This question gets at the fundamental challenge of being in society together. We live in a contentious political world, and it’s difficult to talk about our deepest values and beliefs in safe, civil, and respectful ways. In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that nearly six in ten Americans felt that political conversations with those you disagree with are generally stressful and frustrating, as opposed to being interesting and informative. If we avoid such conversations, we lose opportunities to form a community with others that reflects our best selves. How can we learn to share our values in ways that bring us together rather than push us further apart?
3:30 p.m., Willamette Heritage Center, Salem
October 17, 2026
Saturday Scoundrels
What is a conversation?
This question follows our first Wit & Wisdom of the year, where John Nygaard and Seth Tichenor revisited a conversation they first presented in 2019 about what conversation asks of us, and what gets harder when the world around us grows more divided.
For Scoundrels, we’re looking at the foundation of the question. What actually makes something a conversation?
10:00 a.m., The Catalyst, Astoria
October 21, 2026
What Does It Mean to Be American?
This conversation will explore when and how we define ourselves as an “American.” Does knowing the Constitution make us American? Does living on land controlled by the United States of America make us American? Through conversation and nonverbal exploration, we will share what “American” means to us individually and within the communities we belong to or came from, and what perspectives shaped our understanding of American identity and who is included in “We the People.”
Facilitator Chisao Hata is a performing artist, educator, and arts integration specialist. She has been called a “community weaver” through facilitation, community engagement and creating artistic collaborations. She has been a protector of imagination and personal discovery and a champion for individual expression. Creating engaged learning is her life’s work. She has had the honor of serving hundreds of Portland’s children, youth, and adults across many communities. Chisao believes we are all inextricably linked, and the power of gathering is a conduit to build and heal our understandings between our communities.
6:30 p.m., Community for Positive Aging, Portland
October 22, 2026
The 1930s Jackson County Rebellion
Author, archaeologist, and historian Jeff LaLande will share the study of a fascinating and insightful political movement in 1930s Southern Oregon. The Jackson County Rebellion explores a dramatic if little-known populist insurgency that captured national attention as it played out in rural Oregon. LaLande traces the rebellion’s roots back to the area’s tradition of protest, including the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, then focuses on Jackson County’s politics of upheaval during the worst days of the Great Depression. The broad strokes of the episode may be familiar to contemporary readers, with demagogues fanning rage and relentlessly accusing an elite of corruption and conspiracy.
3:30 p.m., Jacksonville Community Center, Jacksonville
October 24, 2026
Saturday Scoundrels
Why is ritual important?
Birthdays. Funerals. Holidays. Handshakes. Morning coffee. Religious observance. Stadium chants. Humans keep inventing things to do again and again in really specific ways.
What does ritual accomplish that an ordinary action does not? Does repetition change us? Can ritual connect people, preserve memory, mark change, or outlive its usefulness?
Join Scoundrels for a conversation about why humans keep returning to ritual.
10:00 a.m., The Catalyst, Astoria
November 5, 2026
Writing Around Harney County
A public reading at the Harney County Library featuring Oregon Poet Laureate Ellen Waterston.
6:00 p.m., Harney County Library, Burns
November 7, 2026
Are We Created Equal?
This conversation will explore equality. It is a core national value of the United States, even if we have not always lived up to that value. What does it mean to say, as the writers of the Declaration of Independence did, that “all men are created equal” and to declare that this is a self-evident truth? In what ways are or should we be equal? How does this ideal of equality show up in our daily lives, our communities, and our politics? How, finally, has this ideal of equality changed over the past 250 years—and how might it change further over the next 250?
11:00 a.m., Grants Pass Library, Grants Pass
November 10, 2026
To What Do We Pledge?
While the opening of the Declaration of Independence gets the fanfare and the fireworks—“When in the course of human events” and all that—the closing clause contains a quiet promise: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” When we talk about the founding, we often think of it as a severing from a distant power and a proclamation of individual rights. And yet, buried in that big individualistic origin story, there is a pledge of support, solidarity, and mutual aid. Today, as we witness political violence, hostility, and polarization, this conversation invites us to explore what it means for us to be bound to one another and to ask ourselves: Is there any idea, any value, any dream for the future that we care about enough to tie ourselves to one another to protect or pursue it? What would it mean to “mutually pledge” ourselves to one another today? What would it look like? Feel like? Is it even possible?
Facilitator Wendy Willis is the founding director of Oregon's Kitchen Table, a statewide community engagement program housed at Portland State University. She is also a poet, an essayist, a stitcher, and a self-proclaimed democracy geek. Wendy was raised in Springfield, but now lives with her family in Portland.
6:00 p.m., Eugene Public Library, Eugene
November 18, 2026
At a Loss for Words
Join Oregon Poet Laureate Ellen Waterston for a free and public event in the Lincoln City Cultural Center. The event will include a presentation and time for audience Q&A.
6:30 p.m., Lincoln City Cultural Center, Lincoln City