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.