My Oregon II
“I love Welch’s writing. It’s accessible, authentic, warm.”
-Cartoonist Jan Elliot
“Welch seizes us with riveting analogies and enrapturing energy.”
-Author and Olympian Kenny Moore
“Welch’s work is outstanding for what it’s not: sensational, wordy, one-sided; and for what it is: unpretentious, clear, honest…”
-Essayist Dorcas Smucker
This is Welch’s second collection of Register-Guard columns, 108 stories he wrote between 2005 and 2009.
“Bob Welch is refreshingly witty and writes without the egotism that mars the efforts of so many others. He never fails, with grace and skill, to help the reader find the larger lesson.”
—Dave Frohnmayer, former University of Oregon president
“I love Welch’s writing. It’s accessible, authentic, warm. He has genuine empathy for his subjects. And the ability, perhaps more important than the desire, to show us the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary people and events around us. It’s a noble pursuit, and I admire him for it.”
— Jan Eliot, syndicated cartoonist:
“Shaped by Yachats fogs and treacherous geldings; half Duck, half Beaver, Welch seizes us with riveting analogies and enrapturing energy. Equal to the complexity of the world, he mulls, he gnaws, he sorts, he sees the way ahead. Three times a week, he escorts us from what we thought the trivial to the transfigured.”
— Kenny Moore, Olympian, author
“Rich and provocative, evoking laughter and tears.”
— Ed Coleman, University of Oregon English professor emeritus
“Welch’s work is outstanding for what it is not: sensational, wordy, one-sided; and for what it is: unpretentious, clear, honest, with just enough personal details to show us that he is deeply invested here.”
— Dorcas Smucker, author, Register-Guard columnist
Among the columns:
Oregon at 150
Steens Mountain
Naming our rain
Sprummertime
Yachats Big Band
Hayworth Saddle
Loving Eugene, kind of
Oregon in limericks
The fish packer
Elk hunter returneth
Climbing South Sister
My first “marathan”
The exploding whale
Bill Hayward
The Olympic Trials
Don’t tell me the score
Coach Shakespeare
Autzen’s Sunshine
Snip City
Paying it forward
Queen of the “Y”
Laughing off death
Mother at the cemetery
The last wish
King of the Siuslaw
Tears of Darth Vader
Shooting star
Professor Rea
Before the lake freezes
It’s a Wonderful Life
Fathers and sons
Easy Co. reunion
Night on the beach
Poison Oak
Letters to Cade
Life at 55
The Veil
