Jason Baker
When it comes to history, I'm still very much a novice. But I turn to it for perspective on our collective present: no matter what the world looks and feels like, it has been darker and it has been brighter. It has been more oppressive and more permissive, more and less brutal, more and less literate. We may wish we lived in another epoch, but we're products of our own time. History wiggles through us—and it's communicable. We're passing on history and its layers of meaning to everyone around us and to the next generation. Human beings are meaning-makers and pattern-finders, so it's hard to overstate history's importance for us.
As for my own wiggle through history, I grew up in a small southern Oregon town in another river valley—the Rogue. I'm a storyteller and a published poet, and I've parlayed my writing background into careers in NYC book publishing and global design consulting. I've lived in five different states (and visited all of them except Alaska), and in 2020 I moved to Red Hook with my wife. From 2023 to 2024, I served on Village Green, the committee dedicated to protecting and expanding Red Hook’s urban canopy. When I'm not reading, playing records, or cooking, I'm cycling through farmland and listening to my favorite podcast, The Rest Is History.