Writing class

I'm offering a writing class: Kickstart Your Writing. 10 weeks. Mondays, 6:30-9 p.m. Jan. 18-March 22. $200. Northeast Portland, OR. www.nancywoods.org.

Taking part in reading on November 23, 2009

On Monday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m., I'll be reading an excerpt from my short story "That Day on the River," which won honorable mention from the 2009 Oregon Writers Colony contest. The reading will take place at Looking Glass Bookstore, 7983 S.E. 13th Ave., Portland, Oregon.

That Day on the River

I just found out my short story "That Day on the River" won honorable mention in this year's Oregon Writers Colony contest. Contest winners will take part in a reading Nov. 23, 2009 at Looking Glass Bookstore, 7983 S.E. 13th Ave., in Portland, Oregon. Here's the story:

That Day on the River

The day Twerp fell in the river I remember wishing I hadn't yelled at her like that. I mean some of us are just born a pain in the you-know-what; and the rest of us are, well, easier to get along with. We were up the Badger River in central Alaska on a family fishing trip, which we did almost every weekend in the summer. By “we” I mean Mom, Dad, my sister Twerp, my brother Twig and me.

The Badger is a dangerous river, cold and swift, with invisible whirlpools, backwashes and sweepers (low-hanging branches just waiting to scrape some poor kid off a boat). It was a nice day in June, though, so it didn't seem like a day when anything bad could happen. I was about ten years old, which meant Twerp would have been seven.

The ride to the cabin took a couple of hours. Once we got there, Dad tied the boat to the water pump, and I started fooling around with it. It was fun to pump the handle hard until river water gushed out all over the place. The minute I started having some fun, though, Twerp started horning in.

"My turn!" she insisted, trying to pull my hands off the pump handle. "You have to take turns."

"No I don’t," I said. "There's plenty of stuff to do around here. Go find your own fun."

"It's not fair," Twerp said, stomping her feet. To listen to Twerp, she was always getting the short end of some stick. "I'll tell Mom," she said. Now, there was nothing that made me want to do my sister's bidding less than her threats to take things to upper management. I maintained a firm grip on the pump.

"Mom!" Twerp yelled toward the cabin. "Twyla isn't sharing! It's my turn to play with the pump."

"Back off," I hissed. "Stop copying my life."

"Stop it right now, you two," Mom called from the top of the bank where she stood with a dishtowel in her hand. "I don't want to hear another word. Not one. Not on such a fine day. Twyla, you share."

"Let me, let me," Twerp said, pulling at my arm.

I could hardly see her, what with the sun shining off her teeth because she couldn't keep her big mouth shut.

"Oh, take your damn turn," I said before walking away. I didn't even bother to look back. Instead, I wandered out onto the boat to watch Dad. He was working on the motor. Several minutes passed before he said, "Where's Twerp?"

I shrugged my shoulders. What did I care, right, as long as she wasn't in my hair? But then I noticed the silence and realized something wasn't right. Twerp was never quiet. Never. Dad must have had the same idea I did. We looked at each other, then turned and looked back toward shore. There, by the water pump, all we could see were white bubbles in the water.

Dad pushed me out of the way and took what seemed like impossibly big leaps back to where Twerp had been. He stepped right on the duffel bags and tackle boxes and fishing poles, something that at any other time he would have yelled at us kids for doing.

What he pulled out of the water didn't look like anything living. It was all loose. The only things that looked familiar were Twerp's yellow boots.

I remember looking at them and then up at Mom. She must have come out to call us for lunch or something, but when she saw Twerp and Dad, her mouth fell open and stayed that way. Dad was holding Twerp upside down and pounding on her back. And that moment, for the first time in my life I realized what life would be like without her, how it would leave this big hole that we would have to walk around for the rest of our lives. And I realized how quiet everything would be. Too quiet.

Just then, Twig walked around the corner of the cabin carrying an ax. When he saw what was happening, he dropped the ax. It landed on the dirt and raised a cloud of brown smoke. Dad put his finger in Twerp's mouth and yelled, "Breathe, you little shit kicker. Breathe!" She must have heard him, because just then Twerp started to cough and choke, which made us laugh, which made her angry. Twerp hates to be laughed at.

That night, inside the cabin, after the sun had gone down and we’d finished eating dinner, we continued to sit around the table as Dad lit the Coleman lantern that hung overhead. The shiny table threw back the yellow light as, for the first time, Dad told the story we would come to call “The Day Twerp Almost Drowned.”
"Someone must have been watching," Dad whispered as he lit the first of the two bootie-shaped mantles. "Otherwise, how do you explain my turning around just then to check on Twerp?"

And we all nodded, knowing something mysterious had happened. We'd almost lost Twerp but she'd been saved. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Her braids were all washed now and freshly combed and she was wearing her flannel pajamas so clean and soft. She was enjoying all the attention, of course. Almost made you think she'd done the whole thing on purpose. Ever since the accident, she'd refused to leave Mom's lap, where she sat with a big smile on her face.
###

Pen in Hand

Blind spots

One day several months ago, a writer friend and I were taking a walk. He was telling me about how his father hadn’t loved him and how that relationship was holding him back, stopping him from writing.

Well, write about that, I thought. Write about being rejected. That’s your story, your wound. It might not be the only thing you could write about, but maybe you need to write about that so you can write about other things.

But I didn’t tell him what I was thinking. Why? Because, in my experience, when it comes to our own stories, self-discovery is vital. It’s just not the same thing when someone tells us what they think we might need to write about. In addition, as my friend and I were walking along, I could actually sense his writer’s block. It felt heavy and solid, like it had a lot of history behind it and wasn’t going to move.

The whole incident made me sad, because, when it came to writing, my friend was just as talented as a lot of writers I know. But sometimes our stories are so close to us, so embedded into our bodies and psyches, that we can’t see them. That’s why they’re called blind spots, I guess.

Joseph O'Neill

I drew the above sketch while watching a TV show in which Charlie Rose interviewed novelist Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland: A Novel. The story is about two cricket players (which is why you can see the words "play cricket" on O'Neill's forehead). When asked about his writing process, O'Neill said that, unlike some writers who compare writing to chipping away at a piece of marble to reveal a human figure, he makes random chips at the stone to see what happens.

Office supplies

The only things I like more than Pilot G-2 07 pens (Ah, the comfort of the rubber grip, the easy release of the black ink) are blank, 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards (Just the right size for cupping in the hand while jotting down a writing idea) and file folders (Buff color only, please, letter size).

Other people may prefer hanging out in coffee houses, dress shops or taverns, but I spend my off hours in office-supply stores, those big- and small-box outlets crammed floor-to-ceiling with all things clerical and writerly.

Heading down an aisle inside Office World or Paper Emporium, I breathe in the scent of 10-inch-by-13-inch mailing envelopes with their reinforced eyelets and long-life clasps. Then it’s on to the next row, where I fondle packages of red-edged address labels, Super Sticky florescent-green Post-it® notes and laminated maps of the world.

Extra-strong storage boxes that support up to 350 pounds beckon me on, followed by the perforated notepads, disappearing-glue sticks and bags of size 16 rubber bands. Who could bypass the pencil pillows, desk pads and leather-bound journals, the high-back chairs with lumbar support or ignore the briefcases (leather and plastic, with and without wheels), computers and printers, calculators and shredders, scissors and letter openers?

Eventually, I stumble out the door, feeling uplifted, as if life mattered somehow.

Plein Air

At about this same time last year, I took part in a Plein Air event during which writers and painters wrote and painted outdoors in the Columbia River Gorge. It took place on a beautiful day with the sun shining brightly overhead, but I was carrying with me a certain feeling of sadness, a result of something that happened the night before.

I’d gone out for dinner with a friend, a member of a writing group I’d belonged to for many years. After we ate and talked, Beverly was walking me to my car when she told me she thought our writing group might be ending, that the whole thing had run its course. I didn’t say so at the time, but I felt sad, to think what Beverly said might be true. In typical fashion, I dealt with it by making a joke, about how I would send an e-mail to the members with a subject line that read, “Writing Group Dies Slow, Agonizing Death.”

It was true. Signs of the group breaking up had been showing up for months, if not years. Still, for some reason, I didn’t want to give up on the group. In addition to the fact that I just liked hanging out with writers, many of the group members had become my best friends. So that’s what I was thinking about during Plein Air – about loss and endings and giving up; but although I was feeling sad, at the same time, I was aware of the bright sun overhead. And I wrote this poem:

Fallen Fruit

Narrow shouldered and
Bottom heavy
The ripened pears
Fell like copper buddhas
Onto the welcoming earth

Where they
Kept each other company
After having given up on summer
Allowing gravity to do its work

Offering comfort
For lonely souls
Passing by
Revealing secrets
Hidden in the shadows of branches
Reflecting the strength
Of the sun overhead

Free copies

One morning not long ago, I unlocked and opened my post-office box to find three thick, glossy copies of Oregon Home magazine stuffed inside, along with a copy of Oregon Home's Get Guide, and a kind note from the editor. The day before, I received two copies of Oregon Humanities, with a colorful cartoon on the front.

As I wrestled the magazines out of the small box, I gave thanks for one of the benefits of being a freelance writer — free copies of magazines.

Small-town news

Other people may be addicted to sugar or sex. Me, I’m addicted to small-town newspapers, the more picayune the better. Whenever I visit a tiny town, the first thing I do is find a newspaper stand, where I plunk down two or three quarters for a copy of the local gazette, to find out what’s going on, what the residents are talking about.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the small town of Fairbanks, Alaska — where I cut my journalism teeth on the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, with its articles about moose sightings and curling bonspiels and its regular “Sourdough Jack Sez” column — that I have a soft spot for what other people might dismiss as insignificant rags.

Whatever the reason, I still enjoy reading everything from the Skamania County Pioneer to the Goldendale Sentinel, with their fuzzy photos showing someone handing someone else an oversized check and their features on everything from rooster-crowing contests and spelling bees to county fairs and students making the dean’s list.

Maybe it’s the relatively low percentage of crime stories combined with the unpretentious prose that makes the papers so appealing. Maybe it’s their neighborly, we’re-all-in-this-together tone combined with the outspoken letters to the editor and weekly recordings of births and deaths. Now what could be more significant than that?

Making fun of myself

Last night, I took part in a reading at Blackbird Wineshop (blackbirdwine.com) in Portland, Oregon. The audience clapped in all the right places, perhaps because I had more than one plant in the crowd, including two members of my writing group and their spouses, a former writing student and my painting teacher and her husband.

Only a humor writer, I suppose, would understand what fun it is to be laughed at, something a more well-adjusted person might try to avoid. I read two pieces: “Hooked on Antifreeze,” about my tendency to return, again and again, to my hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska; and “New York Agent,” about my inability to schmooze.

E. B. White fan

E.B. White's house. Photo by Nancy Woods

“It’s another E.B. White fan!” Mary Gallant called out to her husband.

The fan she was referring to was me. I’d shown up, unannounced, at White’s 19th-century Maine farmhouse with its barn and boathouse to see for myself where one of my favorite writers had penned everything from Charlotte’s Web and newsbreaks for The New Yorker to essays for Harper’s Magazine.

I’d arrived at White’s place in a rental car. White had died several years before; his home (where he lived for many years with his wife Katharine, who also had died), was now owned by Mary Gallant and her husband Robert.

It was all part of an East Coast trip I made that included stops at the homes of several other writers and artists, including the homes of Louisa May Alcott, Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth, L. M. Montgomery, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (well, in Thoreau’s case, I visited a replica of his cabin at Walden Pond).

But, for me, seeing White’s house and attached barn (where it was easy to imagine Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig hanging out) was the highlight of my trip.

After pulling my car into the driveway, I got out and walked up to the front door. Dark-green lilac bushes grew on either side. There was no doorbell, so I knocked and then stepped back.

“Hello!” someone shouted.

“Hello!” I shouted back, following the voice around to the side of the house just as Mary Gallant, an auburn-haired woman, stepped out.

When I told her I was an E.B. White fan, she smiled and said “Come on,” before leading me to the water side of the property and pointing out where I could stand to get a good shot of Allen Cove.

“You have to see the barn” she said next, explaining that that's where White kept his chicks. The interior of the building was high, wide and clean and conveyed a sense of safety. As Gallant showed me the corner where she potted her plants, her husband walked in.

“It’s another E.B. White fan!” she told him, before turning back to me and saying, “When people say, ‘I don’t know how you put up with it (visiting fans),’ I tell them, ‘Well, I don’t know if I could if I were living in Stephen King’s house, but I figure E.B. White was fairly benevolent.’”

I think E.B. White would be pleased to know that a woman with a sense of humor is living in his house.

The Gift

I just finished reading (well, okay, skimming) The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde.

Originally published in 1979, the scholarly book left me with these takeaway thoughts:

Most artists need to somehow "make some peace with the market."

"...the artist who wishes neither to lose his gift nor to starve his belly reserves a protected gift-sphere in which the work is created, but once the work is made he allows himself some contact with the market."

Being an artist "is most often a way of getting by, not a way of getting rich."

"No matter how the artist chooses, or is forced, to resolve the problem of livelihood, he is likely to be poor."

Do I feel better yet?

Readings, wine tasting

July 1. 7–9 p.m. Co-hosted by Oregon Literary Review. This month’s readers and performers are Barbara Blossom Ashmun, Samantha Waltz, Karen Flagstad and Nancy Woods. Free. Blackbird Wineshop, 3519 N.E. 44th Ave., Portland, OR (just north of Northeast Fremont Street). www.blackbirdwine.com. (503) 282-1887

Kickstart Your Writing: A Writing/Coaching Workshop

I'm offering the following class, beginning on Sept. 28, 2009:

Kickstart Your Writing: A Writing/Coaching Workshop

September 28 – December 7, 2009
10 weeks/No class November 23
Mondays, 7-9 p.m.
Northeast Portland, Oregon location
$200

Part writing workshop, part coaching session, Kickstart Your Writing was designed to help beginning to intermediate writers improve their writing skills while they take positive steps toward completing specific writing projects. During the 10-week session, students will receive:
· Individual help in setting their own meaningful, measurable, long- and short-term writing goals
· Positive, helpful feedback on their writing
· Frequent check-ins and ongoing editorial and emotional support

By the end of the workshop, students will have:
· Increased how much, how well and how often they write
· Achieved a feeling of accomplishment from having reached their writing goals

About the Instructor:

Nancy Woods (M.A., Journalism, University of Oregon) is a freelance reporter, editor, humor writer, essayist and writing coach whose articles and essays have been read on Oregon Public Radio and published in The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, katu.com, Northwest Palate, Nostalgia, Oregon Home, Oregon Humanities, Oregon Quarterly, Portland Physician Scribe, Portrait of Portland, Raven Chronicles, GreenPrints, shortmemoir.com, UU World and Zephyr.

For more information or to be put on a mailing list: (503) 288-2469; wordpics@aracnet.com; www.nancywoods.org.

Keeping score

“People say all kinds of things online,” my editor warned me, “especially when they can be anonymous.”

He’d called to tell me my article on couponing would be posted the next day and to give me a heads up about the fact that people might post critical comments.

The idea that anyone would spend one second of their time commenting on the value of something I wrote definitely got my attention. First thing the next morning, I went online to check the article which, it turned out, already had received five comments. The readers had rated the article, too.

About the topic of couponing, Missy wrote, “I love it! …I think I’ll change my ways and save even more!” before giving the article a +3.

Mmmhmm wasn’t so convinced, saying, “…coupons are never really for more than $1 off of the usual things you don’t need. Never on carrots and tomatoes...” Rating: +2.

To Middleroader, however (who gave the article a +5), the article was “Just more concrete evidence and fallout from 8 years of out-of-control Bush/Cheney/GOP economics that favored the rich time and time again until the system imploded.”

Hello?

During the day, I found myself strangely attracted to the comments (which varied from thoughtful to silly) and ratings. I returned again and again to the posted article, lured back to see if anyone else had said anything. It felt a bit strange. A traditional print journalist, I was used to turning an article in and never hearing another word. But Missy, Mmmhmm, Middleroader and 18 others had taken what would have been a static story and turned it into a living, breathing thing.

My article wasn’t the only one being read and rated that day.

“Portland jobless rate spikes to over 11 percent” earned 19 posts, with a highest rating of +7.

But it was “Search on for man and monkey in biting case,” about a pet monkey that bit a six-year-old child in a park, that captured top honors, with a total of 53 posts and a highest rating of +8.

The ABCs of Writing

Walking to work

Some days, walking to my office feels like the best part of the day. Overhead, the bluebirds and seagulls call to each other, while the scent of alyssum and lilac fills the air.

Ahead of me on the sidewalk, early morning shadows form angular lines, pulling me foreword.

From behind, I hear the pleasant rippling sound of two bicyclists coming up the street.

“Wait for me!” the young girl calls out to a man (her father?) as he bicycles ahead.

I’m still several blocks from my office where, in my mind, the day will officially start; but, in fact, I’ve already edited an essay while sitting in my living room and drinking a cup of coffee.

As a result, I feel as if the day has started before it started, as if my work is done before I get to work.

Writer's bouquet

Parade day

Fred Meyer Junior Parade in Portland, Oregon. -- Photo by Nancy Woods

It all starts with the tweet of whistles and the shout of hawkers ― the annual Fred Meyer Junior Parade, a kids’ parade that rolls through Northeast Portland each June as part of the Rose Festival. The parade passes right by my office, within just a few feet of my desk. My second-story office windows look down on the parade route, sidewalk and street.

Every year, I forget about it until it’s too late. I’m sitting at my desk, working away, often under deadline, when I start to hear signs of a ruckus outside.

What’s that?! I think. Oh, no! The kids’ parade!

By then, city employees would have blocked off all the streets, so I wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere. There was no getting away from the noise.

Peering out my window, I would see hundreds of people, many of them with smiles on their faces, many of them adults with young children, setting up camp with their blankets, towels and lawn chairs, some using sidewalk chalk to mark their spot.

A pink stripe painted earlier by a city crew lines both sides of the street, an attempt to keep the youngsters from stepping too far out when grabbing for the candy that will be thrown from the floats.

The parade forms about five blocks from my office, where the marching bands, Boy Scout troops and bicyclists get into formation before strutting their stuff. By 10 a.m. the noise starts to ramp up, as police cars, with their sirens blasting, clear the parade route. By 1 p.m., when the parade actually starts, the sound is deafening.

Whatever article I’d planned to work on that day is a lost cause. It’s too noisy to think.

So I give up and enjoy the parade, which includes the Sherwood Middle School students in their blue shirts and black pants playing a song from a 1970s movie I can’t quite remember. James Bond? Then it’s the Cascade Middle School, in red-and-blue outfits, playing “76 Trombones,” followed by a bob-haired girl on a bicycle with tiny U.S. flags fluttering from her bicycle handles.

After her, a troop of Brownies in their patch-festooned brown vests passes by, followed by middle-school unicyclists, some holding an adult's arm, some peddling on their own, one wearing a helmet covered with fresh flowers, another wearing a clown jester-type hat.

Then it’s more drummers followed by hoops and hollers from the appreciative crowd, one band fading away to make way for another. A man pushing an ice cream cart passes by. After him come jugglers, jump ropers and joyful bell ringers (high school-age girls wearing black outfits with gold sequins). Underneath it all, the steady beat of drums and shouts from the crowd.

A young girl carrying a bouquet of bright yellow balloons struts by. Then it’s a squad of girls in red shirts and black skirts doing a River Dance kind of number down the middle of the street. The cops are everywhere in their blue uniforms, making sure no one interrupts the fun. The Fowler Middle School Band from Tigard, in white shirts and blue jeans, plays the theme from Star Wars. Girls from the Evergreen School District twirl gold flags. A blonde girl, who appears to be 3-4 years old, dressed in a pink dress, pink sweater and pink tennis shoes, walks down the middle of the street, a gold crown perched on her head.

Another school band marches by, the music dying down only to give way to another whistling band leader or another hawker selling ice-cream bars or balloons in the shape of monkeys.

And then, just as suddenly, it’s over, an annual reminder that life isn’t always meant to be quiet and peaceful, that sometimes it’s important to let the kids take over and for the rest of us to go home with the sound of “76 Trombones” ringing in our ears.

Book

Hollywood Hank

(Hollywood Hank photo by Judy Nelson)

Last week, I received a request from an advertiser of the newspaper I edit, asking if a photo of Hollywood Hank, a five-year-old standard Boxer (yes, a dog) who writes a column for the newspaper, could be used in an ad.

Hank doesn’t really write, of course. His column, which is accompanied by a photo of him in front of whatever local restaurant or shop or farmers’ market he visited that month, is actually written by his handler, a volunteer for the Oregon Humane Society, who takes Hank for walks around the neighborhood while his owners are at work.

Although spending any time deciding whether or not to release a photo of a dog to an advertiser might seem silly, in fact, the decision raised a significant journalist question.

After thinking it over, I decided to turn down the request. If I did, it would have blurred the line between the editorial and advertising departments of the newspaper. Then I posted this blog, along with Hank’s photo, to point out one of the issues editors face while blurring another line ― the one between work and life.

Natural-born Storytellers

I come from a long line of storytellers known for relating funny anecdotes about themselves and everyone else. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where, during cold winter nights, we spent much of our time indoors, entertaining each other with stories that were, funny and sad, true and made-up.

“She didn’t want to stay down,” my brother said, laughing. Roy was telling me the true story about Aunt Helen who, even in death, found it hard to be left alone. I was sitting in Roy’s living room in Fairbanks when he told me the story. I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon, for many years now, but I occasionally return home to visit.

According to Roy, Aunt Helen, who lived near us when we were young, wanted to be interred next to her parents in the old Pioneer Cemetery downtown. Special arrangements had to be made, though, because officially the cemetery was full. Meanwhile, Aunt Helen was cremated and her ashes put in a steel cylinder that Roy, a sheet-metal worker, made and kept in his shop all summer.

“Nobody picked her up,” he said with a smile, referring to the family’s inability to deal with Aunt Helen’s death.

Eventually, though, one fall evening, they decided it was time for a proper burial. Aunt Helen’s son Bert, along with Roy, Roy’s wife Brenda and their son Rick did the honors. Armed with shovels, a pickax, wheelbarrow, cement mix and Aunt Helen, they drove down to the small cemetery, where a hole had already been cut in the cement slab between Grandma and Grandpa Wilbur’s headstones. The four grave diggers poured in some cement and then inserted Aunt Helen’s remains, but the cylinder immediately popped back up. They pushed it down again but it refused to stay put.

That only made sense because Aunt Helen hated to be left alone. I loved her dearly, looked forward to the nights when I was a kid and she’d stop by our house to talk. We’d have just finished our dinner of moose burgers, moose pot roast or moose stew but would still be sitting at the dining-room table when we’d hear this certain jingle jangle and, sure enough, it was Aunt Helen wearing her silver bangle bracelets and walking up the front steps. We’d offer her a seat at the table, pour her a cup of Hills Brothers coffee and listen to her stories, our elbows deep in cake crumbs.

She entertained us with anecdotes about her day at the post office where she was postmistress. She told us the story about the man who was fired for having B.O. and the one about the employee who got caught with his hand in the till. During the telling, Aunt Helen would, one by one, kick off her dress pumps and remove her clip-on earrings before helping out with the dinner dishes. Often, she would leave a piece of jewelry behind, which was comforting, because it meant she’d be back.

Unlike some members of my family, Aunt Helen openly expressed affection. It was her shoulder I cried on when my father died. In contrast with the other members of my family, Aunt Helen also had a sense of style. She wore nice clothes, dyed her hair and ― after she and Uncle Ken split ―lived in an apartment, which seemed so exotic.

"No one understands how lonely I get,” she told me when, years later, I visited her at the Pioneer Home, a nursing facility at the south edge of Fairbanks. So it wasn’t surprising that it was hard to get her to go underground, even if it meant being close to her parents.

That night in the cemetery, Roy and the rest of the burial party eventually had to break a branch off an overhanging chokecherry tree and use it to poke the metal canister containing Aunt Helen into the ground. Then they slapped a board on top of everything to keep her in place until the cement cured. By then it was dark and starting to snow. They wondered if the snow would prevent the cement from curing and allow Aunt Helen to pop back up. They were laughing really hard but forced themselves to get serious before taking a few minutes to reflect on how much Aunt Helen would have enjoyed their company and closing with a reading from the Good Book.

Compare and contrast

Last Wednesday night, I attended a poetry reading at Blackbird Wineshop here in Portland, Oregon. At times during the evening, I found myself noticing the men in the audience more than the women reading their poems; and more than once, while stroking the stem of my wineglass, I felt how delicate it was and how it contrasted with the solidity of the cement floor.

The Title Wave Used Bookstore

The Title Wave Used Bookstore.-- Photo by Nancy W. Woods

There’s something so comforting, so unassuming, about discarded and used books. With their tattered covers, torn pages and affectionate inscriptions written to unknown readers, they seem to offer all that is good about books while, at the same time, remaining unpretentious.

Every once in a while, to give myself a break from life’s trendy newness, I stop by the The Title Wave Used Bookstore, here in Portland, Oregon. Housed in a 1912 Spanish Renaissance Revival building, the store is filled with thousands of books, CDs, videos, tapes, maps, music and magazines that have been pulled from the shelves of the Multnomah County Library. Run mostly by volunteers, the store features an imposing front door; high, arched windows; and shelves and shelves of affordable books. Since the inventory is constantly changing, there’s no way of knowing quite what to expect.

When I stopped by the other day, the first thing I noticed was a signed copy of Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It by Martha Burk ($5). The book was inscribed “To Judy – Women will change the world! Martha Burk.”

Nearby, sat a paperback copy of Just Desserts: A Bed-And-Breakfast Mystery by Mary Daheim, with a price tag of 75 cents.

Amused and encouraged by the juxtaposition of political outrage and pure escapism, I headed to the Talking Books for Adults section, where I spotted a four-cassette set of Accent English for Russian Speakers ($1) and an eight-cassette set of Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie, described on the cover as a “delicious tale of scandal, gossip, and murder in a small town called Temptation.”

In keeping with the store’s free-thinking, open-minded mix of the silly and serious, classic and pop, practical and esoteric, its shelves included everything from outdated, $.25-copies of The New Yorker to a long-playing record of Vikki Carr’s called Don’t Break My Pretty Balloon ($.10); G. Schirmer’s Collection of Opera Librettos: Don Giovanni, Opera in Two Acts, Music by W.A. Mozart (in Italian and English) ($.01); and a hardcover copy of Danielle Steel’s The Kiss ($2).

Pittman’s map of Harney County ($.25) was shelved not far from Sensational Sex in 7 Easy Steps: The Proven Plan for Enhancing Your Sexual Function and Achieving Optimum Health by Ridwan Shabsigh, MD ($2).

Torn between buying an 1884 copy of Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S., Vol. V, April 1, 1665-April 8, 1666 ($15) or Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley, edited by Susan Sherman ($3), I settled, instead, on something even better, a spiral-bound blank book made from the covers of a 46-year-old copy of Theory and Practice of Presswork: United States Government Printing Office Training Series.

Then, feeling once again renewed and ready to face the brand-new world, I headed back out the door, armed with a sense of history and the comforting feeling that, for me at least, can only come from handling old books.

The Title Wave Used Bookstore
216 N.E. Knott St.
Portland, Oregon 97212
(503) 988-5021
www.multcolib.org/titlewave/

Trying too hard to lighten up

Several months ago, I took a writing-for-the-radio class. During one session, I practiced recording “Lighten Up Already,” an essay about how I think people should lighten up.

The recording didn’t go well. I was finding it difficult to lighten up and come across as my naturally funny self, because, the whole time I was speaking into the microphone, the instructor’s Labradoodle (a dark-haired Labrador/poodle mix) was running around the small room, chewing on a squeaky dog toy and, every so often, humping me and the other students, who included a Jewish woman who’d written a piece about what it felt like to have a Christmas tree during the holiday season and a woman who’d written about her trip to Southeast Asia.

“What’s the matter? You sound angry,” the instructor kept asking me, as I tried a second recording and then a third. “Try to come across as flabbergasted and vulnerable,” the teacher insisted, as her large, untrained mutt continued to run and hump and squeak.

Looking back

You don't have to look very far to find a magazine article promising to tell you how to become a writer. In my case, however, the route was anything but straight.

Fall in love with reading

I started reading at the age of four or five. I spent much of those years sitting on the kitchen floor, slowly sounding out the words in my pink-covered reading book. Nearby, my mother would be washing the dishes. Whenever I came across a word I didn’t understand, I would do my best to pronounce it and my mother would tell me what it meant. Even at that age, I knew reading was a key to worlds I might otherwise never visit. If I could just figure out the secret, I would get in.

Be a bookworm

As a child growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, I spent most of my time reading. I was particularly drawn toward pathetic stories about poor, fatherless families who enjoyed making each other Christmas gifts out of nothing more than bits of used string. I read Little Women in the overhead cab of my father’s camper, read Daddy Longlegs in the bow of my father’s boat, read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in our cabin at Harding Lake.

I gulped books whole, choked them down fast, gobbled down one only to swallow another. I checked books out of the George C. Thomas Memorial Library, bringing them home a bicycle basketful at a time. The library was housed in a log building down by the Chena River, a matronly, broad-hipped building that wore its front porch like a skirt. Inside, way in back, on the other side of the adult section, was a small set of stairs that led to a tiny landing where the children’s books were kept. It was up there while all alone, kneeling before the bookshelves that I made my choices, my coarse hair almost brushing the tin ceiling.

Be curious.

When I left home to go to college at the age of seventeen, I had only two goals, to become a medical technologist and get an apartment. My worst fear was I would die with other cities being nothing more than dots on a map. I wanted to expose myself to new ideas and cultures and people.

Eventually, I got a job as a med tech, but after several years of drawing, spinning, mixing, pouring and pipetting by mouth other people's bodily fluids, I woke up one day scared shitless that I was going to spend the rest of my life drawing, spinning, mixing, pouring and pipetting by mouth other people's bodily fluids, when I wasn’t barely paying my rent or bleaching other people’s blood out of my five white uniforms. So I quit.

Have an inexplicable, life-changing moment

Over the years, I delivered mail, took wedding photos and sold (legal) drugs, but nothing seemed to stick, so it isn’t all that surprising that one day while sitting on the floor of my barely furnished, no-bedroom apartment ― a ground-floor studio with a broken toilet and non-functioning TV ― I pulled out the portable Olivetti my parents gave me for leaving home. I’ve been writing between naps ever since.