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Inga Wiehl
7912 Englewood Crest Drive
Yakima, WA 98908
(509) 966-2765
Email Inga
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Inga Wiehl is a native of Denmark, where she grew up and received her BA at the University of Copenhagen. She received her MA and Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Washington. She lives in Yakima and has extensive teaching experience at Yakima Valley Community College, the University of Washington, Centralia College, and the University of Texas.
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But What Do the Humanities Do?
In a time of general unease and insufficient funds to feed our collective and individual muses, we are prompted to ask utilitarian questions. Hence the title of the presentation, which will seek to answer the query of where to acquire the wisdom to stray judgment, recognize the larger patterns of our worlds, and set standards for our lives. For potential answers to all three we may trust the Humanities.
Literature and pictorial art teach us to tolerate ambiguity, to look at the whole picture before forming before forming opinions and to recognize that choices once made have consequences but are not necessarily irrevocable. Add music to those, and we may make the connections that let us see patterns emerge from seemingly random events to impose on our lives a sense of meaning and direction. Tolerating ambiguity and recognizing patterns, in turn, help us set artistic and personal standards. Exposure to the arts yields discerning eyes and ears and promotes the continuous individual growth we need in the face of life's entry and exit exams.
Audience: elementary through adult
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Radios, Rakes and "Rowing": Life on the Columbia and in the Nation 1928-'29
This presentation originates in an exchange of letters, from 1928-'20, exchanged between two nineteen year old students at the University of Washington home on vacations at White Bluffs and Yakima, respectively. As the title implies, entertainment, work, and transportation are major themes of these letters, which speak of daily challenges and their potential rewards, which both writers found too meager for future pursuits. Nostalgia would refashion the scene as the male letter writer approached his nineties and commissioned a Washington artist to create a series of paintings to illustrate life on the Columbia through the 1920's, bounded by the Great War and the Deep Depression, has been subject to considerable image making. Looking through the eyes of the letter writers and informed by cultural history, we will explore the age of radios, rakes and "rowing."
Audience: elementary through adult
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