Story by Starla Pointer. Photo by Marcus Larson.
McMinnville News-Register/N-R, Aug 2, 2018
Soon after new Linfield College president Miles Davis
announced his plans to colleagues at his former school, Shenandoah University
in Virginia, he started hearing about Oregon’s climate.
Rain, specifically. Everyone warned him about how wet he’d
be after he moved West.
Davis arrived in McMinnville in July to find drying,
extremely hot weather. Back in Virginia, his friends were experiencing a
three-week bout of rain.
The culture, as well as the climate, is different than he
experienced on the East Coast, he said. Oregon is a little less formal,
somewhat more relaxed.
“I’m a bit less inclined to wear a tie here,” he said.
Davis saw an interesting example of the difference between
Willamette Valley culture and that of the East Coast when he attended the International
Pinot Noir Celebration on campus in July.
Guests at a similar event in the East would be wearing
seersucker or linen suits and dressy gowns with fancy hats, he said. Here, they
wore a range of Northwest attire, from shorts to jeans to sundresses, mostly
with bare heads.
As a former Virginian, he has a collection of hats to wear
at parties and other gatherings, he said. Now he plans to add a Linfield
baseball cap and maybe a cowboy hat, as well.
“But my hats are not just about form; they’re about
function,” he joked, noting that he needs them to keep the sun off his smooth
scalp.
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