I was extremely fortunate this week to attend the Oregon Historical Society’s Hatfield Lecture given by Boston College Prof. Heather Cox Richardson (younger daughter is an alumna, Go Eagles). I’m sure all of the customers are aware of her incredible recording of history through her Letters from an American (over 1,600,00 subscribers). I know I look forward to either a late night post arriving in my e-mail box before I go to sleep (she admits to only sleeping 3 hours a night) or first thing in the morning with my coffee. The lecture and following discussion were way better than expected, and my expectations were high. She has a delightful sense of humor, which always helps in digestion of history.

The Sold Out event was held at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, a gorgeous venue in downtown Portland, Oregon. A friend wisely bought us tickets back when they were first released. It got me thinking about such venues and capacity, since crowd size is all the rage right now. Well, The Schnitz capacity is 2,776. We were in row W of the orchestra section, but there was a big screen and great acoustics, of course. So I got to googling the size of the Tucson venue (I will not say the name as its namesake is NOT happy it was used in this way and has come out with a full endorsement of Harris/Walz). Anyway, back to the story, lest I be accused of too much weaving…

The Tucson venue capacity is 2,289. That’s almost 500 fewer bodies for TFG’s sell out. And the dear Professor is not even running for office. I don’t know how many virtual tickets the OHS sold, but I’m sure it was a lot more than it cost to set up and record. That Hatfield series is pretty popular. We won’t even gloat about the size of the crowds at those NC venues used post-debate by Team Harris. That would just be piling on.