Well, so much for posting here regularly! I’ve been keeping busy though, and have some exciting announcements.
I’ll be presenting on December 17 at 10 am as part of the San Diego Chinese History Museum‘s Chinese American Experience and Beyond Speaker Series! The presentation is titled “Eureka’s Chinatown and the Curious Case of Wing Hing v. the City of Eureka”. The presentation will be taking place over Zoom, and you can register to attend here. I believe this will be recorded as well so if you sign up but can’t make it, you can view the recording afterward. This is big! This is a really popular speaker series with folks tuning in from around the world and I’m excited to be able to share my research on such a big stage.
I recently finished up the last class I needed to start my Masters program and the final project was to create a HistoryPin collection based on research conducted over the course of the semester. This collection, titled Eureka’s Historic Chinatown Businesses is now live! The link is also on my Current and Past Work page as well. I hope to add more pins to this and related collections to provide another outlet for the Eureka Chinatown story and the story of the Eureka Chinatown Project.
One thing I wasn’t able to invest much time into in over the course of the HistoryPin project was a thorough investigation of the Census records for Chinese residents in Eureka and Humboldt County as a whole. When I dipped my toes in, there were some very interesting stories that popped up so I hope to spend more time this winter working on transcribing and analyzing those records. Transcribing is a great rainy day activity after all!
Back in mid-November, the Eureka Chinatown Project made the front page of the LA Times. How crazy is that! I was interviewed for part of the story, and the visual aids from the ECP walking tours I started back in May 2021 appeared in the article, along with quotes from dear friends Brie D’Souza and Jeannie Pfaelzer. Many other Eureka Chinatown Project folks worked behind the scenes to meet with the journalist and photographer to put together that article and we were all blown away at the result. It’s amazing to see this work resonating on a level like that.
Coming down the road, I have applied to present another class on Eureka’s Chinatown for OLLI at Cal Poly Humboldt in the spring so keep an ear out for that. With grad school looming large, I may be stepping back from doing big presentations for a bit, but we’ll be playing that by ear.
Happy holidays! -Katie
Katie Buesch 