Peg Herring Oral History Interview, March 8, 2023

CHRIS PETERSEN: Okay, so today is March 8, 2023, International Women's Day, and we are here in the Valley Library with Peg Herring. This is HC 407, "Hidden History of Women at OSU." This is a group interview and we are going to start at the beginning with Peg's life and talk a lot about her path through her career and her years at extension as an extensions communications faculty member and later on as a children's book illustrator as well. But, we'll beginning at the beginning, and Lily-Marie you'll get us started.

LILY-MARIE LYTLE: Alright, so we'll just start from the beginning. Tell us about your parents.

PEG HERRING: My father was a pilot in the Marine Corps. My mother was a college graduate, relatively unusual at that time. She was a bookkeeper and a librarian. The most interesting thing, I think, happened to them before I was born. My father fought in the South Pacific and then was stationed in China during a reconstruction of Asia. My mother took two tiny little kids, my older brother 00:01:00and sister, on a slow boat to China to be with him for 2 years. Then they were suddenly evacuated because the Chinese Revolution was happening. Nothing that interesting to me happened to me as a kid, but growing up on military bases was always a thrill.

LL: Could you tell us more about what it was like growing up on military bases and moving around frequently, how that affected your life as a child?

PH: Yeah. I think it was really hard on my older brother and sister. They were in new schools every year. Luckily, my dad had retired by the time I was in high school. I loved moving around. My mother made sure that, you're going to have a new neighborhood-she'd always put a happy face on it, although I think it was horrible for her. But it was a great place to just wander, almost limitless wandering under military security. It was just a very safe place to grow up as a 00:02:00curious kid.

LL: That sounds amazing. You also mentioned you enjoyed exploring rivers. Did you have a favorite area or river or place in nature growing up?

PH: It was always fun to be near the coast. The one that comes to mind is the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina, was on the mouth of the Neuse River, that's n-e-u-s-e, which is one of the widest rivers in the country. The estuary was full of things to explore, especially during hurricanes, because the hurricane would push-first of all, the hurricane pushes all the water up. The houses were flooded, and then pushes all the water out. If you can get out in those few times, you can see stranded sharks and oysters, all 00:03:00kinds of wonderful, wonderful things. That was a really fun one. We also lived on a Marine Corps base in Southern California, very close to the ocean. That was a thrill. In the later years, my dad worked at the Pentagon, and we lived on the Potomac, which was, at the time, well, still it's an urban river, and at the time it was terribly polluted. That was a change in relationship that I had with rivers at that point.

LL: Then we also wanted you to tell us about the importance of the Apollo 8 Mission that you mentioned, and its importance on your future interests.

PH: My father was a contemporary with some of the first astronauts. He was a test pilot as well, but he was a helicopter test pilot. He had no interest in going to space, but he's friends with John Glenn who was also a marine. I grew 00:04:00up just idolizing the astronauts. I was sure that I wanted to be an astronaut. I remember, I don't think I remember this happening, but I remember being told about it so many times that it's deeply ingrained, about the John Kennedy speech in 1962, where's announcing the Apollo Program. He says something to the effect that we're not doing this because it's easy, we're doing it because it's hard. I was just a little kid, but that really challenged me. It kind of stuck with me for the rest of my life. Nobody ever told me you can't do that. You're a girl. That was never a conversation that was encouraged, but it became clear to me that because I got dizzy on the playground swings, I was not really astronaut material. I eventually changed my plans.

Let's see, I don't want to get ahead, but the moon landing was incredibly 00:05:00moving. That was many years later. Well, actually, even before that, a very pivotal year was 1968, and that's when the Apollo 3, I think, the first astronauts went around the moon. There they're orbiting the moon and they take this picture of the earth rising above the surface of the moon, just like we see the moon rising above... and that, I mean, it still kind of chokes me up. It's a beautiful photograph, and meaningful to, I think, everyone on the planet at that time. It was broadcast on Christmas Eve 1968, and it was just a teenager then, but it really was scary, because there we were. That's all we had, and there was nothing beyond it. But it was also challenging, like what can we do to save this?

LL: I can't imagine how it would be growing up in that era. I'm going to jump a 00:06:00little forward to your high school experience. Did you have an interest in environmental science in your high school, like were you involved in any clubs, school activities, or classes that made you realize it was the field for you?

PH: I liked math and science growing up, but I don't remember any environmental science courses. I don't think environmental science was really a thing back then. The laws that began an interest in environmental law and environmental protection were really developed in the late '60s and early '70s. So, they hadn't really gotten into the curriculum for people like me. The biggest thing about my high school was that it was an experiment in integration. It was just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., and it pulled from a wide range 00:07:00of demographics. We had kids from, whose parents were in congress or running the government agencies or worked in the embassies. It was really a diverse group, and the human relations council was the biggest club in our high school. It was a brand new high school, state-of-the-art high school, and it was meant to prove that integration could work. Funny thing is, they made a movie about this school a few years ago with Denzel Washington. It was called Remember the Titans. I don't know if anybody ever saw the movie. It's not really worth seeing, because the only thing that was really accurate about that was the marching band, because we had a really high stepping, soulful marching band. They nailed it in that movie, but everything else was a little off. But it was fun to see anyway.

LL: Alright, well, you answered my questions, so I guess we can move on.

PH: Okay.

EMMA CIECHANOWSKI: So, jumping ahead to college. Why did you decide to attend the University of Virginia?

PH: University of Virginia is a public university started by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, but they didn't allow women to go there until 1970 when I graduated from high school. I applied to be in the first class of women in this all-men's highly conservative university. Probably Virginia Tech would have been a better suit for me and my interests, but I felt really challenged. By God, we're going to storm the troops and we did. We changed everything at the University of Virginia. That was why I ended up there. I also got a good scholarship. But, it 00:09:00turned out to be a good fit for me after all. I don't know if I'm getting ahead with your questions, but I found, I think I mentioned, and you mentioned it, too. I didn't have to major in anything, or I didn't have to declare a formal traditional major, which back in those days, that was sort of a bone that they would toss to basically kids with good grades. Not that we had any ability to foresee what we needed to learn or to even design a program that had all the prerequisites that are there for a reason. I was just kind of a kid in a candy store taking classes, but then I hooked up with two scientists who really were helpful, Carl Spirito, who was a neurobiologist. I really enjoyed his, well neurobiology, that's the brain and behavior, and Bill Odum, who was a wetlands ecologist. Bill Odum was a brand new professor. He was not much older than his 00:10:00students. He was the son of Eugene Odum who wrote the book on ecology. So, this was the big ecology family. That was exciting to be with these two people and that coalesced into a program of behavoiral ecology for me.

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTEN: What is behavioral ecology? What would that, how would that be used?

PH: I used it in studying animal communication, animal migrations, just the interaction of, it doesn't have to be animals, either. People nowadays apply it to humans as well, but it was looking at the way animals interact with their environment. A lot of ecology at that time was a little bit more like 00:11:00bookkeeping. It was energy balances. It was like balancing a checkbook. Here's the energy coming in. Here's the energy going out. All these formulas. I wanted something that was more interactive, more interesting, more engaging, more outside, which was really important to me to work outside. That's why I was more interested in behavioral biology, or behavioral ecology.

TEM: Thank you. Sorry for jumping in.

PH: It actually has grown into the sciences that led to a lot of the work that women were doing in Africa-Dianne Fossey and Jane Goodall, a lot of the first really interesting behavioral ecologist in primatology were women. That was happening at that same time.

EC: My last question about your college experience is as you approached the end of your time at Virginia what did you think you might do next?

PH: [Laughs] I just wanted to work outside. I probably didn't mature very much over those 4 years, but I learned a lot. My goals didn't change that much. As it turned out, I was intellectually educated, but I didn't have a very practical biology background, so when I moved to Oregon and got a job at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife as a salmon biologist, I knew all about conservation and behavior. I could tell you everything that the salmon were thinking about, but the department really wanted to know how many we could catch and kill. So, my background in population ecology wasn't really the same as statistical population biology. So, I had a lot of catching up to do, and I was a bit of a 00:13:00fish out of water for a while. But, it was still fine. It worked out okay.

CARLY SHANKLIN: So, talking about your time with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. First of all, tell us about how you came to Oregon and what were your initial impressions of the state.

PH: Well that was the time when Tom McCall was governor. I don't know if any of you guys know anything about Tom McCall, but he was a god among us environmental kids. There are pictures of him working in the statehouse under an oil lamp during the gas shortage and he made this big invitation: come to Oregon, but don't stay. Come visit us and don't stay. Well, you can't tell a 21-year-old to come and not stay. An entire generation of us came and stayed. At least, we were looking for an ecological life and Oregon 00:14:00seemed to offer that with a bottle bill, with the land use laws. Oregon was ahead of its time and in some ways still is in environmental laws and sensibilities and it just felt like the right place to be. With a job at studying wild pacific salmon, it was just heaven. I just thought I landed in just the right place.

TEM: Was that in Salem? Were you based in Salem at that point?

PH: I was based in Newport.

TEM: Oh, okay.

PH: Yeah, so shortly after that my husband and I bought a piece of land in the 00:15:00coast range and built our house. Am I getting ahead of the questions?

CS: No. So, what was your work experience like with the Oregon Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and do you have a favorite memory from your time there?

PH: Oh, okay. Let's see. Yeah. ODFW was mostly men at the time, but I had just come from a school that was mostly men at the time, and most of my career I've worked with mostly men, just because of the subject matter not so much because women were excluded. It just happened to be that way, so it was not an uncomfortable situation for me to be there. Like I said, I had to do some remedial learning about statistical methods of calculating harvest. I had to get used to, you're going to kill those things? I had some east coast, west coast reconciliation that needed to happen. Let's see, some of my best friends I made at that time, friends that I've kept for the rest of my life. We were outside all the time and I just plowed the fields, the streams up in the mountains of 00:16:00the Cascades and the coast range and I had a little boat for my work in the estuaries, which was really fun having my very own boat. It was a sweet life. Somewhere in here I talk about one of the first research papers that I wrote for ODFW, in my whole career. This was my big, first research paper. I had all the statistics and all the r-squares and everything was just dandy and I get back one of the blind reviews from this journal saying you're chatty conversational style is inappropriate for this science journal. So, I had to rewrite the whole thing in passive voice. I had to, I did this and we did that. You don't say that-this was done, and that was done. So, it got published, but I kept that 00:17:00review for a long time because I felt like, yes. Because I wanted to be chatty and conversational about science. I've continued to be more chatty than passive.

CS: You mentioned that the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife tended to be a little more male-dominated field. Do you want to tell us your experience there specifically as a woman?

PH: My first boss was a woman, and she was the highest-ranking woman in the whole department. That, if there was going to be any trouble, she would have sheltered me from that, but there wasn't. I think that the people who were, who might have resented having women in the field quickly found themselves on the wrong side of history. We were fine. We did good work, and we were accepted.

EC: Moving on to your connection with UC Santa Cruz, why did you decide to leave your job at ODFW and move to Santa Cruz?

PH: Because of the salmon crash. Salmon is iconic species for the Pacific Northwest, and under our watch at ODFW the population absolutely crashed. It was an existential crisis for some of us. What did we miss? Because we were counting all those fish and we knew exactly how many we could harvest and kill and eat but they crashed anyway. I wrote a couple of papers on it and the media got a hold of those papers. I was pushed to talk to the media about it. That's when I needed to be conversational, but I was young and lacked confidence and thought, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going to explain science to the media or a 00:19:00perplexed government, I need some training. So, the man who ran this program at UC Santa Cruz, which is one of the only 2 programs at the time in the country, saw some of my work and invited me to apply to his program. So, I went down to UC Santa Cruz for a year, which was really like a vacation. If you've ever been to UC Santa Cruz, it's beautiful. Learned a lot, and built confidence that I could do this, which I needed because if I, I had worked hard to become a scientist. You have to have a lot of experience and letters behind your name, but anybody could be a writer. I thought, dang, I just gave up all this career 00:20:00that I worked really hard to establish just to hang up a shingle saying, I'm a writer. So, I needed that confidence building to go to Santa Cruz and to make this change. I took my year old son with me. My husband and I had a son at the time, and I couldn't be away from him for a year, so I took him with me. Boy, that's a really good way to go to graduate school-have a toddler. That toddler had to play every afternoon outside and we had to have dinner at the same time every night. So, I got a little bit of fresh air and I always had dinner, and you don't procrastinate when you've got a one and a half year old running around in the house. He sleeps, you work, and you work, and you work, and you work, and you get it done. It worked out just fine.

EC: While you were at UC Santa Cruz, were you there entirely for graduate study?

PH: Yes. I had no time to do anything else, which was fine. It was lovely. I got 00:21:00to the beach often enough. I don't know if you've ever been to the UC Santa Cruz campus. It's built in the redwoods up the hill from Monterey Bay. So, you walk to class through redwoods. Then you go to a classroom and there's Monterey Bay out in front. It's like a resort. Or, it was at the time. I think it's overbuilt now. But it was quite nice then.

EC: How do you think your time at UC Santa Cruz helped your career?

PH: It gave me the confidence to say that I was a writer. It also introduced me to my first, or my next, dream job, which was writing for University of California Natural Reserve System. Part of my graduate program was 00:22:00I had to do an internship, so I chose to do an internship with them. That was wonderful, that connection. I worked for the Natural Reserve System for at least 15 years. I could live in Oregon and work for them, which was real key. We had kids and we had a farm. I had roots here. I didn't really want to be in California all the time. So, I managed to land this job that allowed me to go down to California to do research trips a few times a year.

YUKTA NARYAN: Speaking of the Natural Reserve System, tell us about the transition to the new position.

PH: Well, it was pretty easy transition. A lot of it was what I had been doing in graduate school with a lot of the same people, because I was still working in 00:23:00California. There's 20, I think there's more now, but at that time there were 20 natural reserves that they called the library of natural areas for California, which is a very diverse state anyway. So my job-they paid me to do this-was to go spend a week or two in some beautiful place and follow the scientists around and draw pictures and produce a booklet that could then be used for grant applications or luring more research and use of these sites, get support for them. That was a lovely way to do it. When I was at UC Santa Cruz, I studied both science writing and science illustration, so when I got this job I felt like I was this full-service team, that I could do everything, which was kind of exhausting and only possible when the technology was just at the beginning and 00:24:00not too crazy. That was a nice way to start to combine words and pictures.

YN: You talked about the different places you visited, so what was the most interesting part about visiting the different reserves?

PH: Just the variety and the ability to be taken, to be shown these special places. So, I would work with the scientist for a day or two. He or she would take me to some beautiful place where they were doing their fieldwork. In every case, this was the most important place in the world to that scientist and they were sharing that with me. They were sharing their passion and their exuberance for the natural world. My job was just to follow them around.

It was so, I was so privileged to be able to be introduced to the world in that 00:25:00way in those special places by those passionate people. The one example, I suppose, I should use is going to Santa Cruz Island, which is one of the channel islands off the southern California coast. The university owned a reserve there and so you had to fly over, take a very long, bumpy boat ride. I took my son, who was about 8 at the time. I don't think there had been, in fact, people told me, all the people who worked at the field station said there's never been a child on this island before. So, here he was. I mean, he was oblivious to how special this was, but the scientists were so kind to him. We were all over that island. You had to get to a lot of places by horseback. So, he was riding horses and help to tag island foxes. I would have loved to have had his childhood, but 00:26:00it was fun to just have him as a field assistant on my 10 days on Santa Cruz Island.

YN: You previously mentioned that you were able to live in Oregon while having this job. What was it like working remotely in the 1980s?

PH: Well, most of my work was at home. I would collect all the information I needed to, the sketches and the data, and then I'd come back for months and months at home and write. But I'd be communicating back and forth. This was before the internet, so I had to set up, with the help of the University of California, who had what was called ARPANET, which was, I can't remember what it stood for, but it was the department of defense system that predated the internet. We had modems. Do you remember? You guys probably don't remember this. You had to put the phone on a modem and then you'd dial in this special number 00:27:00which probably went through the Pentagon and back again, and they made these god-awful sounds, these clicks and whirs and [imitates noises]. But suddenly, you could type in real time back and forth with people and I could ask them my questions or send them my latest work or whatever. It was all very much, very primitive and very noisy, but kind of fun. Looking back on it, it was just amazing to me that I could do this from Eddyville, which, I don't know if any of you know where Eddyville is, but halfway between here and Newport, just in the middle of the coast range. I know that the Pentagon must have had a little flag on Eddyville, like why is this person using our defense department internet? Anyway, that's how we communicated.

YN: Moving on to the Science Writers Group. Why did you decide to start your own 00:28:00business and were you holding multiple jobs at the same time?

PH: I was holding multiple jobs at the same time. I had to equip myself with a lot of stuff, ARPANET equipment and all of the machinery and the printers and the applications, all of that, I had to work in order to work for California. I might as well do more, and I was curious to do more. I wanted to know what was happening. I had gone to the University of California to help with explaining the salmon problem but by the time I got back there was a new problem, and it was the spotted owl. That was a full employment deal for science writers. There was a lot of people knocking on my door asking me to write articles about spotted owls and old growth forests, because it was just coming into the news at 00:29:00that point.

YN: How did you learn to effectively run your own business?

PH: [Laughs] Really the seat of my pants. I had people to help me set up, and the technology really wasn't all that hard. You just read the manuals and you sit there and you make the mistakes that you had to make. I wasn't a very good business person, as it turned out. I always hated to charge people money. I would love to be paid to go to these beautiful places, but sometimes non-profits would ask for something and I thought I'll just do it for free, because, you know, they're as poor as I am. I'm not going to take their money. So, I wasn't a real red hot business person. The rest of it came easily enough, until it didn't. As those programs got more and more sophisticated, they were being 00:30:00updated it seemed like every 15 minutes. It was certainly every 6 months. There were new versions that changed everything, and then I realized that the university agencies I was working for had whole teams of people doing what I was trying to do at home, and I thought I can't keep up. So, that's where I began to focus more on working with agencies who had better equipment than I had.

YN: Tell us about your work on the Natural Areas report.

PH: I'm trying to remember how Sarah and I started. I think that she saw one of my articles and came to me and said let's do this periodical. Newsletters were a very big deal in the '90s, and she wanted one. She was the head ecologist for 00:31:00the Natural Area Program for the U.S. Forest Service. So, I said, sure. It sounded like a ticket to some pretty places. That's what we did. We worked together for about 10 years and she's still a real close friend. We ended up writing a book together on one of the sites. It introduced me to environmental issues across the whole country, which would come into play later on in my career. I guess that's it. It was another place where I wrote and illustrated, because I had complete, I was the only staff person that was there. I could do anything I wanted. So, I really wanted to have an illustrated words and pictures, chatty, conversational newsletter for and about science in public lands. So, that's what it was.

YN: Can you also tell us about your work with colleagues in Australia?

PH: Oh, yeah. I'd have to skip ahead a little bit because David Bunkhurst is an ecologist in New South Wales, Australia. He had been following the Norwest Forest Plan pretty closely and all the bioregional assessments that flowed out of that in the '90s. He wanted one. He wanted to do that for Australia. He wanted a bioregional planning model. He contacted me to see if I would work on a book that would provide that model. So, I went over to Australia. We were working remotely for a while, and I lived in Australia for about 2 months working on that book. It was lovely being in Australia. It's an amazing country, 00:33:00but it was July and August when I was there, which is the middle of winter, and New South Wales is way up in the mountains. I was freezing cold, but besides that it was really fun. I ended my time there by meeting my family who came over and we went up to the north where it was much warmer and snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef and did some just amazingly beautiful tourism things. The book ended up being published in Australia, made quite a hit in changing some of their environmental policy and David became one of the chancellors of the education system there. I'm sure I had a lot to do with that [laughs]. Not really.

TEM: I want to rewind and ask you a question about the spotted owl, old growth forest time period and what was it like to be speaking to that or speaking about 00:34:00that? I remember it being very, there was a lot of conflict around it, both from the labor industry side of it and the environmental. So, what was that like to be the bridge that communicated all of that?

PH: I was not the bridge that communicated all of that. I was writing for popular magazines. I was writing for Pacific Discovery and a periodical that was called Science '85, Science '86. My kids always thought it was "Sci and Sadie." So, when it got to be Science '90, they said, well, where's Sadie? [Laughs]. Okay, so the people who were really involved in bridging that were the people who were involved with FENAT. I was on the outer, far outer orbit of that. But I had been living in the coast range since 1975. That was the height of logging. I 00:35:00mean, we just watched the private forests just getting whittled down to nothing. In our house, it was a common thing to hear the beep, beep, beep of the logging machines behind our house. If they were close enough then you could kind of hear the [makes noise], the chainsaws, and if they were a little closer you could hear the whoosh as the trees fell. It was just always happening and logging trucks were a constant thing. But, the conflict was in the Cascades. We kind of went through that whole owl wars thing in the coast range with not a lot of animosity among neighbors. I had neighbors who were loggers. I had neighbors who were mill workers. I had neighbors who were tree planters, and I had neighbors who were tree huggers, but we, the real conflicts were on the public lands. We 00:36:00lived in the coast range where it was mostly private timber. All of the owl wars were fought on public land and affected public land. My job was more commentary from the sidelines rather than embedded in the war.

TEM: Makes sense. Thank you.

CS: A little bit of a shift, but we would love to hear more about your creation of the book Bioregional Assessments: Science at the Crossroads of Management and Policy? What was the partnership like in working with Norm Johnson and Fred Swanson?

PH: They're great guys. Norm was one of the battle scarred generals from the Northwest Forest Plan, and he also was a neighbor of mine. So, I knew him in lots of ways. He was also, I think an assistant dean, he was very high up at the 00:37:00College of Forestry at the time and was approached by then president of OSU, Paul Risser, to help put this together and Norm came straight to me and said we need a science editor for this. So, wait a minute, I'm on the State of the Environment Report. I'm sorry, you asked about the regional assessments. So, Norm came to me for that as well. It was a conversation that said that we saw that after the Northwest Forest Plan all these other parts of the country were starting to do similar grand-scale studies, science-based studies, to set policy. That was revolutionary. It changed everything in the Pacific Northwest, that moment when the scientists were in charge. In other places were picking it up. That's why I knew some of these other people, because I had worked on the 00:38:00Natural Areas Report. I had met folks in the Everglades. I had met folks in southern California. So, when those assessments were coming up, we said let's put together a conference, bring in some of these people and talk about their experience on these big-scale assessments. The conference was great and it led to the book that Island Press published, which was important at the time, but I think even more important now because we don't do those big science experiments anymore. Science has had their moment. The managers didn't like it, because they were excluded from the planning. So, the science-based plan was put on their doorstep like a foundling child they had to implement. They had responsibility 00:39:00for it, but they had no role in developing it. The policy makers didn't like it because it was science-y. It was all about levels of uncertainty, which is the last thing a politician wants. They want certainty. There was a flurry of about a decade when these science-based assessments were happening, and then they weren't. I think that book is still in print because historically it's a record of this moment when science held the keys to the kingdom.

CS: Then you had mentioned about the Oregon State of Environment Report. Was this part of your freelance work, or was it a whole separate job?

PH: Well, freelance work is my job. That was my job at the time. I was a freelance science writer, editor, illustrator. So, this was another freelance piece. But what it did was introduce me to all the scientists in my own backyard 00:40:00right here in Corvallis. Working with the president of the university and some of the top scientists around the state was really an opportunity for me to say, I'm tired of traveling all over the place. I want to work with these people. It was a thrill to be doing that report for the governor. Kitzhaber was a very environmentally-focused governor and this was to be his blueprint on future environmental policy in the state. So, it was an important piece of work and it was fun to do and it led me to OSU.

CS: Then you had already mentioned about collaborating with Paul Risser, the president of OSU. What was it like working with the president of OSU.

PH: He was a gentleman and a scientist. He was a very serious man. In retrospect, I realize I had unprecedented access to him as a university 00:41:00president. So, we met often to talk about this report. He took the report very seriously. I remember I wrote a draft of the executive summary for him to look at, and he was very terse. He said, this is a science report not a sermon [laughs], which goes in with the chatty and conversationalist. He was right, and I learned a lot from him and I think he learned a lot from me. When the report was published, we had a big hoo-hah at the capitol and the governor handed us all these trinkets and Paul said at the time that something very kind about me, he said you need to listen to Peg. She's always right, which is not true, but it was very kind of him to say that.

KARLIE BUNTING: Can you explain more about how you ended up at Oregon State University and tell us about your first positions at OSU as a grant writer and later as science communications Specialist?

PH: Okay. Let me look at my notes. The State of the Environment Report introduced me to a lot of folks here, and one of them, Carol Savon, was going on sabbatical and she said, why don't you come fill in for a year, and that was fine with the department and it was fine with everybody. So, I did. That was an interesting year. That was in 2001. I started in July and in September, 9/11 happened. My job was writing news. So, I was right in the thick of this. Okay, what does this mean for OSU? For Oregon? For the world? What does this mean? Luckily, I was right down the hall from people who were much better reporters 00:43:00than me. So, I learned a lot from the university research communications group, Mark Floyd's group. I don't know if you knew him. Then 2 months after that, 3 months, I guess, because it was Christmas Eve, everybody was off except for the new guy and Mad Cow Disease hit the State of Washington. Then the phone is ringing off the hook. I'm the only one there on Christmas Eve and I'm trying to handle these queries about, is this going to kill everyone in Oregon? The questions were off the wall. I didn't have enough information but I learned enough in my few months to, I'll get back to you on this and made a million phone calls. It was sort of a lot of hot water at the very beginning, which I handled okay and sought out the advice that I needed from people who could give 00:44:00it to me. So, when a tenure track position came open, I was a pretty strong candidate for that. I shouldn't probably say that. I got the job whether... I got the job. It was with the Department of Extension and Experiment Station Communications. It was paid half by OSU Extension and half by the College of Agricultural Sciences. Extension is a wonderful organization. One of your questions later on is working with women in Extension, or were there very many women in the Extension Service? Yes. Extension is a calling, I think. In the same way that teaching and ministry are. The people who work for Extension work wholeheartedly. I liked working with researchers better, because I couldn't 00:45:00match the passion. I enjoyed supporting Extension. Extension does really good work.

In 2008 the big recession happened. That was talking about with that food issue. You know, we were just going all hog on this great food issue and this food great, and all of a sudden there's a recession and there's not enough food. People are going hungry and people who had never thought that they would ever need food stamps. They had jobs. They didn't know how to manage the system, suddenly needed extension's help. That's when extension got really interesting to me, because it was just there on the frontlines of helping people through a crisis. OSU Extension, I can't say enough about the people there. They're so good, and it was really a pleasure working with them. But my roots are in research and so working for the College of Ag Sciences was equally wonderful in 00:46:00different ways. They had field stations, so I could be outside, field stations all across the state. The work was very diverse with the College of Ag Sciences. A few of you are in that college. The college has got economics. It's got Fisheries and Wildlife. It's got Food Science. It's so diverse. If you have, if you're interested in chemistry thinking that you're going to be a wine maker someday, you could be a chemistry major or you could be a food science major and learn exactly what you wanted to learn. If you're kind of interested in whales, we have a Marine Mammals Institute. It's a great college for practical application of science, and I really enjoyed that, too. When I first worked at OSU, well, for the whole time I was working for OSU almost, I worked with both organizations. It got complicated, though. When the university was restructured, 00:47:00and there was a new division of outreach and engagement that our department was put into with E-Campus. So suddenly I had a boss over with the Dean of College of Ag Sciences and the Vice Provost for Extension, and now the Vice Provost for Outreach and Engagement. I just had too many bosses asking too many things of our small, small but mighty, department. That was a hard time for just sorting out who gets the pound of flesh from our staff. But that was later on.

KB: Can you tell us about your time with the research magazine with Oregon's Agricultural Progress? This was a big undertaking for you that lasted many years.

PH: Yeah. That was another dream job. It's a beautiful magazine. For the first time I think I mentioned I was working with a real group. It wasn't just science writers group, which was just me. This was a whole team of really talented people. I inherited the team. I inherited a magazine that had already been going for almost 50 years. It was really well-established. I just got to polish it and, you know, click it here and click it there and make it better. It was just a joy, and every time I got some kind of promotion administratively, you know you're going to have to give up that magazine. I said, you kill me first. That was really a joyful activity with wonderful people to work on. We won tons of awards with that, which was just kind of icing on the cake. It was fun.

TEM: I have a question for you. So, how did you decide what to feature in issues? You talked about the food issue coming out at the time that it came out. Were you looking ahead in time at, was it seasonal? Was it thinking about legislation, like how did you decide what to focus on?

PH: The magazine was started in the early 1950s as an annual report for the Agricultural Experiment Station, which his funded federally and demands a federal annual report. So, an editor before me decided these annual reports are stupid. Nobody reads them. They're just full of numbers. Let's do stories. That's what I inherited, was a magazine that told stories but was still thinking about being an annual report. It was a lot of accomplishments of this year: what have we done for you lately? That was fine for a while, but I got interested in 00:50:00doing theme issues. So, we would organize all the stories around themes, like the food issue was over there. I think there's a water issue over there. I think there's a future issue over there. We did one just on fish, because I like fish. But, also, there was a lot of fish research going on, including aquarium veterinary work. It was so easy just to pick out of the hat, well, this time, let's work on weeds, and there's weeds everywhere. Or let's look at soil. It was so easy to come up with thematic, well, themes and thematic stories that would make up an interesting issue. That worked to our advantage, on the other end, because users were picking up the magazine for particular content. So, the U of 00:51:00O Law School really liked our magazine and they would use it, like the water issue was really useful to them. They used it in their classroom, in their water law classroom. Oregon Field Guide loved that magazine because they were going to do a story on fish. There it is. It's all the research. They just have a few phone calls to make. So, we were able to peddle that story beyond just a general readership to people who would then use stories in their own ways and kind of take the OSU story a little bit farther.

KB: Why did you choose to pursue an MFA in journalism and communications at UO?

PH: In my position at OSU in Extension and Experiment Station Communications, it was a big job. It was all the extension publications and all of the news that's 00:52:00coming out of extension and the College of Ag Sciences and all of the educational materials that were being fed into E-Campus, not all of E-Campus, just-but we were doing a lot of things, and I didn't have much of a technical background. I taught myself the rudiments back in the day, but I needed more. So, I started sniffing around, where can I get this education that I need? I landed in Lauren Kessler's literary non-fiction program at U of O, and she and I just hit it off. She's a wonderful teacher, and I had this epiphany, thinking I will never be more than a mediocre web developer. There's no bone in my body that's going to make me better than among the worst. But I'm a good writer. So, 00:53:00I decided just to pour into that program and become a better writer, and I'm glad I did, because technology is so advanced now that even the smartest technologist need a team of people to understand all the bits and pieces that are put together. All I needed to know was enough to be their administrator to hire the right people and get out of their way. But writing was always something that, from the very beginning, as a student at the University of Virginia, I realized you can be a really good scientist, or you can be a good scientist and a good writer. Sometimes having both those things was the distinctive advantage for me. It was a good choice.

KB: Can you tell us a little bit more about what it was like working with Lauren Kessler and how did she provide inspiration for you?

PH: Oh, Lauren is an excellent writer. The class that she designed, this program that she designed, was only for 6 people. So, we were 2 years together with 6 people and then our dissertations after that. But you get to know people really closely. Then she sets you free. We meet once a week and then go do it. I liked the design of her program. I liked her spirit. She was just a very generous editor and critic, always listening for the voice. That helped me as an editor, too. I've edited a lot of other writers, and I learned from Lauren how to listen for what that writer is trying to say. A lot of editors say, say it my way. Passive voice, or whatever. I got some rules you've got to follow them. You 00:55:00really squelch a lot of creative work by not listening first to what a writer is trying to say and then helping them say it in their own voice. So, I learned that from her.

EMMA CRUM: Can you tell us a little bit about moving into an administrative role first as the associate department head and then later on as department head of extension and experiment station communications?

PH: Let's see, I mentioned a little bit about the restructuring and the challenge of having so many bosses and really a moving target on where we fit in. It's nice to be an administrator in that you have a certain say in the 00:56:00future of your staff, your colleagues, your work, but it does take a lot of time. That was okay. It was a pleasure to work with the deans that I worked with over at the college and with the vice provost that I worked with over in extension. The family, sometimes I felt like I was the child of divorced parents, but mostly they got along fine. The biggest time when everybody got together was the legislative materials. Extension and the experiment station both are funded, largely, by federal and state grants. So, you had to go to the state legislature every other year with a package of proposals on what we're going to do and understanding of what the state needs at that time and what extension or the experiment station, or together, they can provide to meet those 00:57:00needs and then ask to be put in the state budget to do that work. It was sort of like writing a $5 million grant every other year. It was a big job.

EmC: Can you tell us what led to the Aquafish Lab and the Hillary Egna collaboration? And tell us a little bit more about this project and the travel that you did with it?

PH: I had done a couple of stories with Hillary. Her program was under the aegis of College of Ag Sciences. I was fascinated by her work. She develops, or she did, the Aquafish Lab is closed now, but she worked internationally with USAID to provide science-based solutions for developing countries in feeding themselves through aquaculture. I did a couple stories, fish stories. I was 00:58:00interested. Then she came back to me and said, why don't we collaborate on a big grant with USAID sending out your journalists to all these places and get the stories of what's happening on the ground? So, we did and we got a grant from USAID, and I brought in two of my colleagues from my department and we split up the world. Tiffany Woods, who now works at Sea Grant, took on Central America. She's fluent in Spanish. It was a perfect connection for her. Jeff Hino, who's now retired but was a videographer, went to East Africa and I went to Southeast Asia. So, I was in Vietnam and Cambodia and the Philippines in that first trip, just in the hinterlands. I would take a boat down the Mekong and then a 00:59:00motorcycle up into the mountains to find these small villages where fish farmers were working and the downside was that the state department labeled this the journalism project. Journalists are endangered in much of the world. It's not always to your advantage to be labeled as a journalist. In some places, like Vietnam, I had to go through a lot of interviews before I was allowed to go anywhere beyond the confines of office building. I mean, not very threatening. They said that they didn't want any pictures, which was really hard to do a story like this so vividly beautiful, classic fishing boats. These carved 01:00:00fishing boats that look like they could have come out 1,000 years ago. So, I had to work out a way that I was taking pictures and not looking like I was taking pictures. I ended up taking a lot of pictures and I took a lot of sketches, too. They didn't care if I sketched, so my sketchbooks were of use at that point.

It was a lovely experience. We came back and published a lot of articles, but more to the point, the scientists that we were there helping began to write their own stories and got more support from, mostly NGOs. Cambodia is run by NGOs. The government is weak there. But, by giving them and helping them with the skills of writing their story, they were able to write more effective grants. Cambodia was interesting. We traveled from the mouth of the Mekong 01:01:00Delta, which is endangered because of all of these dams going in and China, thousands of miles away, limiting the amount of fresh water coming down. So, they've got more saltwater coming up. We started there and saw some of those issues and then made our way to the Tonlé Sap, which is the big lake in Cambodia and visited some of the fish wheels, big bamboo structures, Rube Goldberg. I mean, they looked like they were just spaghetti straws and people working the fish wheels. Then there was a day off and we went to the Angkor Wat Temple in Phnom Penh. It's not in Phnom Penh but it's up in Cambodia. The scientist that I was working for, the Cambodia scientist, wanted to show me some of the carvings. I don't know if you know what Angkor Wat is. It's a 01:02:00900-year-old ruin of castle, the Cambodian castle. It's all carved, all the walls are carved. All of this is beautiful. He was dragging me around, and I'm-I want to look at this. I want to look at this. Come on. Finally, around the corner, around the corner he said, look at this, and there was a wall that was about 10 feet high and probably 100 feet long all carved 900 years ago and it was exactly the same technology that we had been working with with these fish farmers-the same fish wheels, the same structures, but the fish that we had been catching were this big, and the fish on the walls were this big. It was just a matter of over fishing, over fishing, over fishing, over fishing. The fisher's dying because there's no big fish there. That was a real eye-opener, just being there in Cambodia and seeing that history right in front of me and the urgency 01:03:00of the scientist to show me that history.

EmC: Would you be able to tell us about some of your service activities at OSU? We are particularly interested in hearing about the diversity advancement that you did with the College of Agricultural Science.

PH: I'm very proud of the College of Agricultural Sciences. I think that they are a humble, quiet organization that doesn't toot its own horn but does very good work. This was early on, I think in 2002 maybe, that the associated executive dean, Bill Boggess, formed this committee. I was on it and there were lots of others on it, but what was important to me, and significant, I think, is that Dean Boggess headed that community, that committee. Those committees 01:04:00traditionally back then, they were all people of color, minorities, throw in a few women and you guys work out the diversity thing. It's your issue. You work it out. Boggess is a white guy in a very prominent position. He took this on as being essential work. I really appreciated his backing of this, because it made it harder for some of the other people who might not buy into the importance of diversity. They couldn't ignore it when their boss was endorsing it. That was good work. The other piece of good work, I guess, I was on the faculty senate. I was voted as a senator, I think, because a lot of people, a lot of our faculty off campus knew me and they wanted a voice on campus for their issues off campus.

But I liked being on the faculty senate, and then I was elective to the executive committee, which is the president, the past president, the president elect and 3 members at large. There were 6 faculty members and we met with the provost every week and the president every other week. That, again, unprecedented access to the highest level of administration in the university. I think it speaks highly of OSU that these administrators take the time and appear to be very interested in what's going on with faculty. We met with the coaches every year to talk about academic success of student athletes. We met with a lot of folks, and that was a really interesting time to be on the executive committee and just beyond the inside of how a good university stays good.

TEM: I want to ask a question about service. Did you feel like you were called to speak as a woman on committees? Was that something that was part of your service portfolio or at that point were you, it sounds like you were involved in other stuff, too?

PH: I never felt like I was singled out as a woman. I might have been and didn't notice because I was so used to being one of the few women around anyway, just demographically. There just weren't that many of us to go around. But I never felt like the token woman.

TEM: Yeah, thank you. Sorry, go ahead Emma.

PH: You know, I've been at this career for a long time, and things have changed. I mean, I would be really curious to know if you guys feel marginalized or 01:07:00prejudiced against because you're women. It was a rare thing for a woman to show up at an all-men's university or a Fish and Wildlife Department, a lot of the things that I've done. But it's not rare anymore, and I think that there are people my age that just kind of flooded the system. We flooded it so quickly and so thoroughly that it's not really noticeable anymore, but that's just my perspective from one angle, and you all would have a different angle. I would really like to know that from you.

EmC: Can you tell us a little bit about your work to develop the legislative briefing materials and the impact that this work had?

PH: It was all about impact. That was easy to do because extension is all about impact. That's their entire modus operandi. What is the need in the community 01:08:00and how can we fill it? Writing about extension was pretty easy. The College of Ag Science was also very problem-solving organization. Again, if you wanted a general biology degree you could get that, but you could also get a degree that was focused on plant pathology or animal science. You could really focus on the application of your education in the College of Ag Sciences. It was all about impact, writing and explaining the value, the importance, of the work that goes on here in a way that you could loosen up a little loose change from the legislature, because you're competing with a lot of important things. So, that's what it was. I think I mentioned it's sort of like writing a $5 million grant 01:09:00every other year. It was usually a big job.

MARYANN ACKERMAN: How did you start working with Judith Li on children's books and can you tell us more about that collaboration and its impact?

PH: I knew Judy just in passing. I didn't know her well. I had gone to the Amazon with a handful of scientists from Fisheries and Wildlife in OSU's department. We were working with a Brazilian scientist who was studying the abundance and distribution of aquarium fish that live in the wild in the upper Rio Negro River, which is a tributary to the Amazon. Well, that was a ticket to a nice place. So, a lot of us, to be fair, the Brazilian biologist was funding 01:10:00his research by bringing some of his American colleagues to help pay for the boat and the time and we helped with the sampling. My job, well, it wasn't my job, I just felt to keep a journal of our time there. That was a hit and everybody liked looking at the journal. So, when we got back to OSU, Judy saw the journal and thought, I've been wanting to do an NSF grant. The NSF grants at the time were being funded for the LTER program, Long Term Ecological Reserves. There's one in Oregon. It's the H.J. Andrews. So, Judy wrote a grant and got the grant to write a children's book about the H.J. Andrews and she brought me in as a collaborator and as an illustrator. That was Ellie's Log. That was the first 01:11:00one we did. It was going to be the only one we did, but it was so fun and it was such a hit and it won all kinds of awards. We thought, well, shucks. We should do more of these.

So, we planned 3 more and they were focused on, one was focused on eastern Oregon and each one had a different science that it introduced. This one was fire ecology in eastside Oregon. We did one on Oregon coast, on ocean conservation and we did one in urban conservation set in Portland. So, they were really a treat to do, and I had never written for kids before, but I'm chatty and conversational and it wasn't that hard. The same kind of things that are interesting to kids are interesting to people. Kids are not that strange of an 01:12:00animal to work with. I had been doing a lot of journal work with the graduate students in the college. So, I had a lot of activities that I had worked out with 24-year-olds that worked really well with 10-year-olds. The books all include a journal page after each chapter that is supposed to be done by a 10-year-old on what we saw that day, what we measured that day, what changes did we see or whatever, to encourage kids to get outside and pay attention to what they see. I think that was the superpower of those 4 books, was the teachers and parents saw immediately this could be an inspiration to kids. Judy and I have continued to meet with classrooms and with teachers who are reading those books with their kids. Then we show up, oh, man. We're the authors. Take the kids out and draw and measure and explore the ecosystems around their schools.

MA: How did being a science communicator for OSU translate to being a science communicator for kids?

PH: Simple. No problem. The same interest. You give some gee, whiz stuff to anybody and they'll take the hook. It's just fun to share something as wonderful as nature with kids of all ages.

MA: Can you tell us about your personal experience living and working in Corvallis? What does Corvallis and the surrounding area mean to you?

PH: Well, I love being in Corvallis. I love to travel. I love working outside, but I always love coming home to Corvallis. For a lot of years when we lived in 01:14:00the coast range and the timber wars were happening and the salmon wars were happening and there was a lot of stuff, it just felt like Corvallis reminded me of Charlottesville where I went to undergraduate school. Charlottesville was real haven for me. High school had been all about protesting the Vietnam War and protesting environmental pollution and protesting for civil rights and protesting for women's rights. It was just so intense in this big experimental high school. Everybody watching everything that you did. Are you becoming liberal? Are you becoming conservative? It was nice to get to Charlottesville. The same thing happened when we moved to Corvallis. It was nice to be in Corvallis. We have a farm and my kids are and their families are both in 01:15:00Corvallis a bicycle distance away. It couldn't be more perfect.

MA: How has OSU changed during the years that you have been connected to it?

PH: Well, I think I have gushed enough. I'm very proud of OSU and the College of Ag Sciences in particular and Extension. I think that it's changed in that it's bigger and it's drifted a little away from its land grant roots. When I have been in committees with lots of different colleges, I'm surprised that some of the colleges are kind of unaware of that important root. It was started, the land grant universities were started in the middle of the Civil War because 01:16:00Abraham Lincoln thought that public education was a matter of national security, and we are it. So, I think that that's an exciting and humbling beginning for OSU and I think, we just celebrated a few years ago the 150th Anniversary of that. I think that the spirit is still alive and well. I remember one of the million media campaigns that we've had for OSU. One of the complaints was we're just too humble. Well, you know, we have a lot to be humble about. It's okay. So, I'm not a sports fan. Sorry, but I'm not out there rooting on Beaver sports, but I am an OSU fan. I think it's a good place. So, I'm happy to be here.

TEM: I have a follow-up question, hold on. So, I'm curious, though, do you feel like there has been a shift in the way that the general public is interested or engaged with agriculture in, say, I don't know the last 10 years? It seems like there's...

PH: A growing interest?

TEM: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

PH: Yes. Very much, all driven by young farmers. My son is a farmer. We live on the same farm. It's a 3-generation farm. So, I see the passion and excitement and success of young farmers. So, yes. I think the College of Ag Sciences has really risen to that challenge, Extension also with the small farms conference and so many of the younger extension agents who really get it, dry farming. They're doing a lot of exciting things. Boy, there was something that I did 01:18:00think, and now it's poofed out of my mind. It'll come back.

TEM: Maybe it was this follow-up question, and my follow-up question is do you see it being a return to family enterprises? Is it families farming together, so you think about 100 years ago that was the system of farming. It was an entire family system. Do you see that happening now in farming?

PH: Yes. But that's not actually new in Oregon. Most, by far most, 95% of the farms in Oregon are family owned and have always been. Some of there are multiple families. They get to be pretty big, but there aren't a lot of Midwest-style agrobusinesses in Oregon. There really can't be. Oregon has 250 01:19:00commodities. Iowa has 4. So, there's a diversity that's just built into the landscape here and is capitalized by small family farms that know how to grow blueberries or cranberries or filberts or beef. It's not all about corn, soy, and hogs here, thank goodness.

TEM: Sorry Maryann.

MA: No. It's all good. What are some of the changes to science communication and technologies you've noticed over the course of a long career?

PH: Well, when I started right out from being, when I made that big transition from being a salmon biologist to being a science writer, there was a surge, there was a wonderful resurgence of science writing. Every major newspaper in 01:20:00the country had a science section. There were new science publications coming out all the time, and being a science writer seemed like a ticket to see the world. It has diversified in ways that are really interesting now. Science writers aren't necessarily leading the science writing team. It's often scientists who have learned to write, who have learned to speak at Ted Talks, who have learned to engage with podcasts. The scientists themselves have taken the stage. You can dance your Ph.D. now. You can go into competitions, the 3-minute thesis competitions. There's all kinds of ways that scientists are learning to communicate the importance of tehri work on their own. They don't 01:21:00need, so many science writers like I am as an intermediary. You're too full of jargon. Let me write it for you. They can stash the jargon where it's needed on those professional papers that insist, and still talk to their next door neighbor. When I first started, graduate students didn't want to talk to their next door neighbor. They had worked so hard learning the language of that priesthood, you know, that special handshake that only their discipline knew. It took a while to convince them they could and they should. Now it's a ball of fire. It's great.

CP: Well, we're doing really well for time. We've got about 20 minutes. I've got several follow-up questions, but I don't want to be the only person to ask questions if people have them, so please interject, but I'll go ahead and get started with some thematic questions. I have some other moments in time that I'd 01:22:00be interested in asking you about as well if we have the time. The first question is about nature. This is something that permeates your life and seems to have been a driving force from very early on. Where do you think that comes from?

PH: Encouragement from my parents, and probably passive encouragement from my parents. They didn't really care where I went during the day. So, I went outside and I had, generally had protected areas, neighborhoods that I could just dive into. Also, moving around every year meant that almost every year we moved across the country, from one Marine air station to another Marine air station. My dad always took a month off and we had a little travel trailer. My mom would plot these passages across the continent that would pick up on every one of the national parks along the way. So, I grew up thinking that I wanted to be a park 01:23:00ranger. That was the life for me. Although I learned much later that nobody but me really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it. When I got older and I invited my dad, we're going to go camping would you like to go? He said, nope. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was paid to go camping. Unless you pay me, I'm not going. But, when I was a kid he seemed to really enjoy it.

CP: Interesting. Another question is about writing. So, we have these anchor points-Santa Cruz, U of O-these are moments where you're receiving some formal training about writing, but writing is a skill that develops over time. Can you tell us about that? How did you improve as a writer? How did you develop as a writer?

PH: I developed as a writer by being a reader, which is think is the most fundamental way to learn to write. Find the authors that you admire the most, 01:24:00enjoy their writing, and then think, why do I enjoy that so much? For me, it was the New Yorker magazine. I started taking it in college and I haven't let up since. The writing in there is chatty and conversational and I like it. But other people have other things that they like. I think reading good writing is the way to learn to write well. There are other things that you can learn. When I was in the third grade I learned how to diagram sentences. I bet nobody in this room knows how to diagram sentences or why you would even want to, but it helps me because I have sort of an analytical mind to be able to structure a sentence, and I can put it in that little mathematical formula and structure it so that I get the rhythm that I want and the emphasis at the end. You could just do that intuitively. You don't need to have all of those little symbols and stuff. They just pop into my mind because they're harbored there permanently. 01:25:00The training that I got at U of O and UC Santa Cruz was mostly confidence building. I don't know that I'm a good writer until somebody tells me, you know I liked this. I liked this but I didn't like that so much. Then I could become a better editor and being able to do both things, I think, helps me as a writer. It also helps me as an editor, because I spent a lot of time helping other people write.

CP: So, we have writing. We have too, editing. These are two disciplines that one can devote one's life to for their whole life, but then we have illustration as well, and that's not something that's necessarily typical. So, tell us about building that skill set.

PH: Again, that probably started in childhood, probably drawing pictures of my dog and then my cat and then horses. I went through that obligatory stage of 01:26:00girlhood where I was drawing horses and riding horses whenever I could. So, drawing was just something that I doodled with. I remember making notes, this is funny, to my future biographer in my textbooks, and I would make them as motion pictures so that you do a little stick figure on this page. If you had a nice thick math book it worked really well, because then you could run those pictures and it would be going like that. It was always to my future biographer that I did all this. I got a lot of fines, because you had to hand the textbook back in and if there were any marks on it... and there marks on every page as it turned out. So, drawing was always something that I did. That is a skill that you can learn. So, the science illustration program at UC Santa Cruz was really one of discipline and materials that I would not have been able to learn on my own. I 01:27:00should take more classes. I'm the vice president now of the board of directors at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology up in Otis. I've taken some classes there, and I've given, and I've taught some classes there. It's fun to be a part of a community of artists, because there you kind of push each other. I've never been in a writing group. I've never really wanted to be pushed that hard with my writing. I ended up, I would just be editing other people's stuff. That's just a busman's holiday to me.

But the illustration groups have been really fun. I've met with a group artists, natural history artists, for 25 years every year until the pandemic. We went to a different place some place for a week and just sketched together. That is a 01:28:00wonderful experience, because you go to this beautiful-say you're in Yellowstone and you're sitting by the Yellowstone River. You're all sitting next to each other and you're drawing. You would think that everybody's drawing would be the same, because you're looking at the same thing, but it's not. Everybody has a different way of seeing things. It's so wonderful to be in a group to share that multiple perspective in their journals and in their art. That's one thing I've tried to teach when I-I did not have a teaching appointment at OSU. I was research and Extension. There's 3, teaching would be the third, but our department didn't demand it. However, I became everybody's favorite substitute teacher. So, if my colleagues would go off for a conference for a week, would you mind teaching my class everything there is to know about science communication for 50 minutes on Tuesday afternoon? So, of course, I did. I got 01:29:00into doing 50-minute exercises on how to see and my favorite one was to take graduate students, again, outside and say draw what you see. Well, if you tell a bunch of 10-year-olds to draw what you see, they draw anything. They're fearless, you know? Okay. They start drawing. But, boy, you take 20-year-olds, or, even worse, 40-year-olds, they're petrified. Well, what do you mean what do I see? I mean what do you see? Well, do you want me to draw that olive pad? Or you could draw a little of that. Doesn't matter. Just draw what you see. It's so paralyzing for adults to draw what they see. So, I did a lot of drawing exercises and playful exercises so that art and science could live together comfortably in the lives of these young scientists. I think it made a difference.

CP: A few questions about moments, and the first is about-I want to go back to the University of Virginia. I want to know more about what that was like to be part of the first class of women there.

PH: Well, it was a coat and tie university when we arrived. Of course, I didn't have a coat and tie and neither did any of the 399 other women that were there. So, we were disruptive. In celebrations since then, they made a big to-do of it on their 50th celebration how we were carefully screened and groomed for this historic moment. I don't remember any of that. I remember that we were given places to live on the top floor of the men's dorms. That's about all the 01:31:00preparation that I remember that we were given. But, we were by and large welcomed. I was very interested in taking art classes there, and the art department there was more hostile than anywhere else to women. I think there was a more closed community there in the art school and we just didn't fit. I took classes anyway, but it wasn't welcoming. But that was the only place that I can remember wasn't welcoming. Some things were way too welcoming, like the fraternities were way too welcoming. But I was in the sciences, and I was fine. I was really blessed by having those two mentors who probably watched out for me more than I knew, encouraged me to go off to work for the state forest department of forestry. Gypsy moths were a big scourge in the hardwood forests 01:32:00of the Appalachians at that time. So, I did a couple of research projects on biological control of gypsy moths, trapping little mice and stuff like that. They found opportunities for me. They sensed what I liked, what I was good at, and helped me. So, it was a very positive thing and I sort of attract, avoid. There's attractive, welcoming avenue that way, I'll go there. That's not so much, I don't need to go there. You can make your way through the world. Charlottesville is undeniably beautiful, or it was then. Like everywhere else, it's a big city. I did some work up at Monticello, which is a historic house of Thomas Jefferson. They were just at that time restoring his original gardens and that was interesting to me. I think I had a more or less normal, I have nothing 01:33:00to compare it to. I had a fine time, and I guess it was comparable to the fine time that you guys are having.

CP: Well, fast forward to 2001, and I want to know more about 9/11. We talked about the response in general terms, but I'm curious to know what that was like, maybe on that day and the day after. I mean, OSU, there's a massive shock to the system at OSU as an institution trying to figure out how it's responding. Your little corner of the university is a big part of that. What was that like?

PH: Well, a little odd tidbit, I sleep outside every summer. It's just something that I've always done, and particularly when we moved to Corvallis because it's warm and the skies are clear and you can watch the meteors. It's just easier to be lying down and sitting in a chair looking like that. I just ended up getting in the habit of sleeping outside. I remember my husband my coming out. I was 01:34:00outside and he said, Peg. You've got to get up. The country's under attack. So, I was jarred awake, like a lot of us were, just with that news of the initial bombings and all the rumors that were happening on what else was bound to be bombed. I thought, I better get to school. I think I need to be there.

So, when I got to my office, which was on the fourth floor of the Kerr Administration Building, the same floor with the research communication people, all the televisions were going. They were just glued into the news. I said, what can I do? That's a stupid question. Nothing. You just have to figure out what's going on and then figure out what needs to be done, but you got to learn first. I sat with those folks, and these are-they're wonderful folks. They ran the 01:35:00Journalism Department when OSU had a Journalism Department and then when that went away they just stayed as the news writers for the university. They're great journalists. Hard boiled journalists. So, I just sat and watched TV with them for a couple of hours until, then we started contacting all of the faculty across the state, just kind of shell shocked for a while. I had no important role whatsoever in that. I was taking directions from people who had been here much longer, knew a lot more. But I remember walking outside. I don't know if, classes must have been canceled, because just walking across the Quad was sort of like walking across the Quad during the pandemic. There was just nobody out and about. It was quiet. It was the middle of September. It was beautiful. I 01:36:00guess classes hadn't even started out, so that's why it was empty. It was just weird to think, to not know what to think, to not know how much danger we were in. That went on for days, lots of days. We had faculty who were stuck in places, conferences in New York, couldn't get out of New York for a week, not even sure that they were alive. So, there was a lot of concern that way, but, again, that wasn't my direct concern. I was just, you're concerned so I'm concerned. I was just taking all my clues from the people who had been here before.

CP: The last question I have is about the switch to a tenure track position and what were the implications of that for you. I mean, your background was not typical for somebody who winds up on the tenure track. You didn't have a Ph.D. but all of a sudden you're on this tenure track position within Extension, which might be a slightly different model than other units. What was that like for you 01:37:00to make that switch? Was it kind of a significant switch for you? Did you have somebody who could mentor you into this new world?

PH: It was an easy-enough switch, I guess. It was an easy-enough job to take, because the person who was the person of EESC at the time also had gone through the University of Oregon School of Journalism Communications and had the same degree that I had. He had just a standard journalism degree. So, I was able to go in there pretty well. The thing I had to learn was to negotiate a salary. Negotiate your salary. That's an important life lesson that I had to learn. It was made easier for me because it was very clear that, at least academically, we are comparable. I was confident I had a good track record. In fact, I was really 01:38:00lucky in so many ways. I was able to have a family and a career concurrently. That's a tough thing for female professors. It's still hard, but not as hard as it used to be.

This is not your question, but one of the things that happened to me as a professor-we were working on a special issue of the magazine on soil. The cover story was this young woman soil scientist. Everybody loved her, and I was at the printer with the last, getting the magazine off the press when I got a call from my secretary saying Elizabeth has killed herself. I realized, I mean, a lot of 01:39:00things-stop the presses first. Then I had been working with her for weeks on this story, and I had no idea that she had troubles that severe. I thought, what else don't I know about the people that I work with? It got to be really important to me from that moment on to make sure that I, that if I could help I wanted to help, that I didn't just assume that everybody had an easy life because I had an easy life. But you don't want to pry. So, that has been an important life lesson, not to let those little moments of "how are you?" just pass by as routine. There's a time and place, not everywhere, but there's a time 01:40:00and place to really ask and really be able to listen. So, a lot of what I've done in my career as a writer and as an administrator and as a parent, I've learned to listen.

CP: We probably have time for one more question if anybody has one. Do you have anything Tiah you want to ask?

TEM: I peppered mine throughout. I didn't hold mine until the end.

CP: Okay. Well, if not then we'll thank you very much for your time and we really appreciate this.

PH: Sure. Sure. I'm surprised nobody asked about our farm.

CP: Well, please tell us about that.

PH: Yeah. We raise peaches 3 miles out of town, the best peaches you could ever want. That's my husband deal with the orchard and my son grows organic vegetable seed. Our farm is just full of these beautiful lettuces and kales and peaches and it's just a wonderland. You should come and visit.

TEM: Do you take pictures as well as illustrate? Are you out in your wonderland recording in that visual way?

PH: Yeah, snapshots for myself. I had a really nice camera when I worked with the magazine, so I took higher quality photos when I was out and about in the field, because it's sometimes too expensive to send a photographer as well as a writer. So, yeah, I can take photos. I really prefer to draw, and so I have journals. I brought a couple of my journals over here. I brought the journal from the Amazon and a couple of just my sketchbooks. I brought a couple, three of the Oregon Ag Progress magazines if you want to thumb through them. I brought the state of the environment report, the one that was the science report, not a sermon and some of the natural areas reports for University of California natural reserve system brochures. You can feel free to thumb through any of that 01:42:00stuff if you're interested.

CP: Great.

TEM: Yeah. Let's end the camera, or end the film and then the historical record won't get to look at what we get to look at.

CP: Alright, we'll do so. Thank you.

TEM: Thank you.

STUDENTS: Thank you.