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.