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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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.
Monday, April 27, 2009
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.
“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.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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.
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/
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/
Monday, January 12, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, January 9, 2009
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.
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.
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