As 2021 comes to a close, OPB Weekend Edition host John Notarianni sat down with several reporters to look back at the most memorable stories they covered in 2021.
Hear conversations with each reporter in the audio players below.
Farmworkers preparing blueberries they picked in Albany, Oregon, on June 28. A farmworker elsewhere was among dozens who died in a recent extreme heat wave.
Monica Samayoa / OPB
I thought I was super prepared, but all of a sudden I started feeling all the symptoms of heat exhaustion: I started feeling dizzy, I was feeling weak... heat exhaustion really creeps up on you. One minute you’re feeling OK, the next minute you’re down on the ground like I was.
— Monica Samayoa on reporting from an Oregon blueberry farm during this summer’s deadly, record-breaking heat wave.
In this video, we meet Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, who wants his colorful, life-sized portraits to stop you in your tracks.
It was really quiet. His studio is right next to the railroad tracks in southeast Portland, so it was just the sound of him painting, and trains going by outside his window. It was kind of a meditative experience.
— Eric Slade on his one-on-one time in the studio with painter Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe.
Students from the Liberation Scholars program attend a philosophy seminar at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, July 22, 2021. The two week program introduces Latinx students from Woodburn High School to college and gets them acquainted with philosophy and literature.
Hanin Najjar / OPB
The stories that really gave me joy focused on schools and programs that worked to support under-represented students: the pandemic only accentuated the issues that were already a part of higher ed, so institutions had to address that.
— Meerah Powell on how higher education managed the twists and turns of keeping students engaged in the midst of a pandemic.
In this video, we see how a thousand-year-old tree can tell us a lot about our earthquake risk.
Every 20 minutes, a storm cell would come across and dump a bunch of rain on us, and the wind would pick up and so the boat wants to start spinning out again... it was a gauntlet, I will say.
— Jes Burns on the behind-the-scenes struggles of capturing the footage for a story on how scientists are uncovering the seismic history of the Pacific Northwest.