A Year in the Life--Refocusing

A look back at 2011 and the life of Round Bend...

I took a little break from RBP in the spring as Deemer and Bacon worked on their books.

I'd left Portland State University in 2007 after falling one class short of earning a history degree, but this last spring I decided to return and finish what I'd started.  I needed an elective to finish up a general history degree that had focused on sequential work in three primary areas--Native American history (Eastern and Western), the history of the Middle East, and the American Revolution.

I'd finished seminars on the Japanese Diaspora, the Mexican Revolution,  and the Cold War.

I turned to Africa, finding a gem of a class taught by Jennifer Tappen on historical health and healing issues from the colonial era through various independence movements.

The class consumed a lot of my time and energy--my posts here slowed to a trickle in April and May as I concentrated on the academic work and helped Deemer and Bacon push their books toward the finish line, contributing what I could through email contact, reading drafts, and obeying the whims of the great poets caught in the throes of their creativity.

(Okay, I'm being obnoxious).

The best way to illustrate what the spring and early summer brought to the world of RBP might be for you to read the self-explanatory entries from June, after I'd finished up at PSU and refocused on the press.

My blog posts for June, 2011.

There's some filler among them, but also considerable evocation of the progress of RBP.

(to be continued)

TS