Author Archives: M.L. Schepps

I have been intrigued by the life of pioneering Chinese-American immigrant Seid Back ever since I first was “introduced” to him in The Oregonian archives. Here was a fascinating man who straddled multiple realms of identity in Oregon’s early history, who protected his community in the face of virulent persecution, who made a fortune inContinueContinue reading “Seid Back for Oregon Encyclopedia”

I’ve got an op-ed (written with my father) out in my hometown newspaper The Santa Fe New Mexican today on the necessity of preserving a mural that has a deeply primal hold on my subconscious. Something about it has always felt Jungian, the figures and forms looming large over flashes of my sun-baked southwestern childhood.ContinueContinue reading “On preserving Gilberto Guzman’s “Multi-Cultural” mural in Santa Fe, New Mexico”

“Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.”–Victor Hugo Last week I climbed higher than the Sears Tower in a near-fugue state, brought on by a Netflix series. “The Circle” is a surreal distillation of our zeitgeist, oneContinueContinue reading “The Circle Come Round At Last”

This next story just breaks my heart. Seventy years of veneration, smashed up in an instant by vandals in Baker, Oregon. All work courtesy Oregon Historical Society, OHS photo file # 238-A,“Chinese in Oregon” This reproduction is entirely non-commercial. Baker City has a long history of Chinese-American settlement, with a population of nearly 10% of the communityContinueContinue reading “Anti-Chinese vandalism in Baker, Oregon- 1956”