Seattle Soiree

For the second year in a row following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the University of Oregon Chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America ventured north to Seattle for a professional development tour June 19-22. We visited three leading public relations agencies, Edelman, The Fearey Group and Raffetto Herman Communications Strategies.

We also toured two popular local enterprises, Starbucks and the Seattle Kraken. The photo above is what Starbucks looked like when I first wandered into the little shop in the early 1970s looking for orange spice tea, which was quite popular at the time. I also purchased some of their coffee beans. Today, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse chain in the world.

The first stop on our whirlwind tours: Edelman Public Relations, a global firm with over 6,000 employees in 60 countries. Since the company's founding in 1952, Edelman remains an independent family-run agency. The firm's Seattle office sits atop the 24th floor of the Westlake Tower with stunning views of the waterfront skyline and Elliott Bay (below).

Next was a familiar stop for some of us, The Fearey Group, one of the top public relations firms based in Seattle. CEO/President Aaron Blank has been a great friend of UO PRSSA, hosting our group three times in the last seven years. Executive Vice-President Regan Sheehy and Account Coordinator Ryan Mudgett provide an overview of the agency and fielded questions.

For our final stop of the day, we visited Raffetto Herman Strategic Public Relations, located adjacent to Union Square near the Seattle Convention Center, where we saw UO SOJC grads Kristin Peixotto and Ruby Lewis, both loyal Ducks. Raffetto Herman Strategic Communications focuses primarily on clients in the fields of technology, healthcare and government.

Now four years out from the pandemic, when many started working remotely, all three agencies have reverted to a hybrid schedule of working in the office three days a week, and remotely the other two. The consensus: in the office, the human connection enhances mentoring, while remote schedules provide advantages for agencies spread across multiple time zones.

On Tuesday, UO PRSSA returned to Starbucks Headquarters after touring the facility in January, 2023. Starbucks' Jose Rivas provided a comprehensive tour of the facility, including a visit to the tasting room, where new brews are sampled and evaluated by their "tasting experts." Starbucks is widely acknowledged as initiating the "second wave of coffee culture" in this country.

As a student in the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, I worked my way through college as a wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service at Lake Wenatchee, about 100 miles from Seattle. We would venture to the Pike Place Market on occasion and visit Starbucks, which was basically a small shop tucked away in a corner.

In those days, Starbucks' biggest sellers were orange spice tea and coffee beans. At that time, they did not sell drinks. My, how times have changed. Today, Starbucks, a global enterprise with nearly 40,000 stores in 80 countries, sells hot and cold drinks, whole-bean coffee, expresso, caffe latte, full and loose tea leave, juices, frappuccino beverages and snacks.

Our final stop on the UO PRSSA professional development tour in Seattle was the offices and facility of the Seattle Kraken, the newest franchise in the National Hockey Association. The Kraken are wildly popular in this hockey-starved town, and became the first team to compete in Seattle since the Seattle Totems of the Western Hockey League played their last game in 1975.

Incredibly, the Seattle Kraken qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs in only their second year of existence. In 2023, the Kraken faced off against the Colorado Avalanche, upsetting the defending Stanley Cup champions in seven games. Touring the Kraken complex, we met Doug (above, throwing the "O"), a proud graduate of the University of Oregon.

In addition to continuing to learn about the practice and profession of public relations from professionals in the Seattle market, it was an opportunity to see the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the city for those in attendance. Highlights included a trip to the fabled Pike Place Market, Belltown and the Space Needle, built for the 1962 World Fair.

For me, it was also a chance to visit some of my old haunts when I worked in my first public relations position on the Alpine Lakes Planning team for the U.S. Forest Service. Another highlight was reconnecting with former UO PRSSA President Lily Gordon (below, left), now working in public relations for the American Heart Association in Seattle.

Celestial Sensation

An unusually strong solar storm blanketed the Earth in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 11, producing colorful light shows across the entire Northern Hemisphere. In the United States, the northern lights were visible as far south as Alabama and Northern California, as witnessed in this compelling photo taken by the National Park Service along the Rim Drive at Crater Lake National Park located in Southern Oregon.

The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, May 8, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The flares seem to associated with a sunspot that's 16 times the diameter of the Earth, all part of solar activity ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle. The light show made great viewing for photographers and skywatchers alike.

Known as auroras, the northern lights (aurora borealis) and southern lights (aurora australia) are a natural lighting display of dynamic patterns of brilliant colors that appear as curtains, rays, spirals or flickers covering the entire sky. Most commonly seen in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, the recent geomagnetic storms have pushed to aurora borealis much farther south as the sun approaches its solar maximum.

This type of storm allows for even more opportunities for viewing as the sun reaches the peak of its cycle, which has been more active than experts had originally predicted, and it appears more of these impacts will extend into 2025 and 2026. The bottom photo, courtesy of Lake Wenatchee Fire and Rescue, shows the northern lights in Washington over Dirtyface Peak and Lake Wenatchee under a full moon setting in the west.

Stellar Moment

Scott Landsfield, longtime proprietor of Tsunami Books, called it a "stellar moment." On Saturday, May 11, the Eugene bookstore hosted a reading and discussion of my latest published work, Wilderness Strangers: Adventures in Shangri-La. The book describes the enduring friendship of the narrator, Joe, and the novel’s cynosure, Kerry, a wild man of the wilderness.

Skier, kayaker, backpacker, climber, sailor, backcountry gourmet, and lover of life, Kerry is the envy of many of his fellow U.S. Forest Service trail crew workers and wilderness rangers in the Cascades. The novel builds to a powerful denouement in which Joe learns about Kerry's life-long struggle with dysthymia, otherwise known as persistent depressive disorder.

Friends past and present joined us. Some I hadn't seen since before the pandemic: in a few cases, even longer. Though all scheduled speakers had scripted comments, the event morphed into a seamless and organic open discussion, with many poignant questions from the audience. Thanks to all who attended or sent best wishes. It was wonderful.