Last week's guest blogger was Matt Love, editor of Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology. His posts about Oregon history were so popular, we've asked Matt to blog for us on a regular basis! His "On Oregon" posts will appear every other Wednesday, in rotation with Kirsten Berg's rare book posts.

February 4, 2009:
The Greatest Oregon Athlete of All Time

"A lot of people run to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."

So said Steve Prefontaine, who died in 1975 at the age of 24 when he crashed his sports car into a rock and prematurely ended a running career that saw him set 14 American records, including the high school two-mile mark.

Pre hailed from Coos Bay, trained in the dunes, graduated from Marshfield High in 1969, and ran track for the University of Oregon where he turned running into a combination spectacle of performance art, animal instinct, existential abandon, Zen Buddhism, and rebellion that nobody had ever seen before and would ever see again. Loggers and fishermen used to care if he won. He got a whole state to take up running as exercise.

Pre would party all night and then wake up and win with a hangover. He probably got laid before races. He assuredly did after. He had groupies. He took off at the gun and ran competitors into the ground. People flocked to Hayward Field in Eugene to see him race and he made the city the track and field capital of the United States. He didn't have a corporate sponsor. No sweet deals promoting day-glo colored sports drinks. No one did then. It was the sham era of "amateurism" in world track and field (tennis, too), and it amounted to one of the biggest cultural farces of the 20th century....

Read the rest of Matt's post on our blog. Plus, check out our daily Book News and Read It Before They Screen It features, J. Wood's posts on the fifth season of Lost, and more!

Later, much later.

After Morrison's acrobatics in the park, and after the revelations. Getting on dinnertime by then, the streets filled with commuters. The man with his daughter on his shoulders got tired and let her down. Holding hands, they set off for home. Eventually people moved on.

It was dark by the time Zooey suggested they spend the night at the bookstore — "We're already downtown" — and another hour still before Bear volunteered, "I know a way in."

Darker yet and starting to rain when at last Bear led them upstairs to the empty break room.

Hadn't the day veered wildly, wonderfully off course?

The big yellow Lab made straight for his old spot on the couch. On the cushion beside him lay a cat colored like an Oreo cookie. Another cat dozed on the windowsill. The night had gone quiet, but the nervous herding dog tried to keep his eyes and ears alert.

No one could say how late the Siamese cat went on talking with the squirrel. Those two voices outlasted them all.