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About me:

I'm an Oregon history hobbyist, you could say. I was a newspaper guy from about 1990 until 2008, when I went back to grad school chasing a master's. I missed having a regular deadline, and I wanted to build an area of expertise and a body of work I could point to and be proud of -- so I started a weekly series of newspaper articles titled "Offbeat Oregon History."

I research and write one of these articles each week and send it off to every non-AP-member newspaper in the state (and a couple AP members too) to publish or not, as it sees fit. Currently several newspapers run it regularly, including

The Creswell Chronicle
The McKenzie River Reflections
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
The Douglas County News
The Douglas County Mail
The McMinnville News-Register
The Coquille Sentinel
The Junction City Tribune
The Redmond Spokesman

and probably a couple others that haven't told me they're running it. I do not charge for it; the minute you start cashing checks, everything changes -- it becomes a job rather than a hobby.

The newspapers get the articles exclusively for two months; then I put them up on my Web site at www.offbeatoregon.com.

I got started editing Wikipedia after finding errors in an article one day. I've been having fun with it and slowly learning more about the markup code used.

Hey, I just remembered what the article was that got me started. You will now want to skip this graf, or prepare for a total geek-out. The article on Herbert Hoover stated that Emile Francqui was the actual director of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, but that Hoover was its de facto leader. Actually, the two men were head of two separate organizations, the CRB and the Comite National de Secours et d'Alimentation, that were forced to work together to keep food coming into Belgium. Having seen this error, I couldn't just walk away from it, so I had to set up an account and edit the article.

Hey, don't be a stranger! If you're ever in the Corvallis-Albany area, drop me a note (e-mail below) and let's have a cup of coffee.

Chief vitalstatistix:

Real name: Finn J.D. John
From: Corvallis-Albany area of Oregon
E-mail: finn (at) herberthoover-dot-us

Websites:

More biographical info:

http://www.offbeatoregon.com/D_AboutMe.htm

Thanks for stopping by!