The Case of the Sinister Slice

NSP Meditations

My Dad and I sat around the dinner table eating a cheese pizza ordered from a local hippie joint. Delicious!

The great Elmore Leonard once wrote that a writer should never use the word “suddenly” is a piece of writing. Ever.

But as another writer once wrote, when it comes to writing, “there are no rules.”

Suddenly, my Dad began coughing and gasping. I recognized instantly he was choking to death because exactly the same emergency took place across the table from me during a Christmas snack in 2018. Then, I raced into action and saved a friend’s life with a Heimlich Maneuver.

I stood up calmly from the table and asked Dad if he was choking and couldn’t breathe. He nodded. I went around behind him and applied the maneuver several times.

Everything slowed down during the procedure and I ran scenarios through my mind: I might have to really pound his chest; the neighbor was mowing the lawn and I might need her immediate assistance; what if I wasn’t successful and this was the end of the line?

A chunk of pizza dislodged from Dad’s windpipe and landed on the plate. He quickly regained his breathing and relaxed, apologizing and saying he was embarrassed.

Embarrassed!

I cleaned up and we later talked about the incident. I suggested the scene might work itself well into a Perry Mason episode. “The Case of the Sinister Slice!”

Killing Time

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , ,

I have always detested the phrase “killing time.” Time is to be savored, sauteed, not killed while waiting around to do something.

Over the years, I have made it a point to arrive early to various appointments or openings and wander around, say, along a river, inside a thrift store, along a jetty or inside a liquor store. It always astonishes me that interesting, even fascinating incidents/findings occur in these moments of savoring time.

Such a moment occurred a few weeks ago and I rank it as one of my greatest, if not the greatest.

I was early to the opening of a second hand book store, 45 minutes early. So, I decided to visit a library a block away and peruse their fine reference section of Oregon history. I knew about it because I had perused it several times before and struck gold every time even though I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. This is why I love roaming the shelves and stacks in libraries and second hand book stores, as well as weird thrift stores and remote liquor stores. One never knows what you’ll find. It’s something an algorithm will never replace. You might also meet Peter Fonda like I did one afternoon in a Manzanita liquor.

I entered the library and went straight to the reference section. I started looking around. In short order, something arrested my attention: handwritten titles that read Oregon WPA. There were multiple volumes with secondary titles like Religion, Transportation, Biography, etc. I pulled the Biography volume off the shelf, sat down at a table, and opened it .

In the course of my long study of Oregon and American history, I was familiar with the WPA and the New Deal era Federal Writers Project and had used many of their material in my own articles and books. I also had traveled around Oregon and visited many of the more famous and still-going-strong monuments/edifices/parks/etc of that incredible era of socialism. Indeed, a vast majority of Oregonians have their lives enhanced by these projects every single day or weekend of their lives, but of course no nothing of their historical context. I always have to laugh when a Trumpian sort of Oregonian enjoys hiking at Silver Falls State Park or a cozy fire in Timberline Lodge and then rails against socialism.

As I said, I knew my WPA Federal Writers Project history, particularly in connection to Oregon, but these volumes were a total mystery. All the volumes contained typewritten articles on the subjects listed above from Oregon City newspapers from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. In other words, someone had been tasked to read all the pioneer papers of Oregon City, and retype articles on certain subjects and then paste them into a single large volume. The whole project amounted to a massive clipping file that was of course invaluable because many of these papers never went to microfiche. .

I asked the reference librarian about them and she didn’t know anything about them.

It wasn’t so much what I read in the volumes that blew my mind, but what it roiled in my creative imagination about a future novel I plan to write called The Watershed. I’ve thought about the book for years and amassed quite a bit of research materials for it, but was struggling with a few key plot/narrative points and these WPA volumes instantly supplied the solution. I think the word is EUREKA!

I took a few notes about the volumes and then hit the road. Later, I discovered these volumes were one of 14 in Oregon counties/locales where a Federal Writers Project writer typed and collated articles from local newspapers.

All of it supported by the federal government trying to get people back to work.

May 7 Writing Workshop in Portland: “Firing Up Your Writing Project”

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , , , ,

Writers:

On Saturday May 7, I will teach a writing workshop in a Portland back yard. The workshop is called “Firing Up Your Writing Project” and the idea is to take whatever writing project you are working on (or contemplating) and move forward. I’ve taught this class multiple times in recent years and it seems to have helped writers derive some much needed energy to get going on an idea, myself included.

We will sit outside on a lawn and think, write, talk, share, pitch, laugh, listen. We will complete exercises that will help stimulate your creativity and discover new ways to fire up your project. Sometimes writing one sentence in practice or hearing a tidbit of discussion can help unlock an idea.

I feel it essential for writers with projects in mind or development to come together in a relaxed setting, write for writing’s sake and articulate your passion for your project. I believe it helps writers finish and build a community for the projects. It’s also how we make new friends and support other writers’ endeavors.

The workshop will run from 1-4 p.m. And hopefully we can have a little social time afterward.

The cost is whatever you want to pay/can afford and you can pay at the workshop. Let me know if you are interested. The class is almost full.

Oregon Tavern Age: Revenge of the Watershed

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I sat in a booth of an OTA joint called the Sextant Bar & Galley that overlooked the mighty Columbia River. To think that Woody Guthrie wrote a classic folk song imploring it to roll on and turn darkness to light. It was from an era less than century ago when humans did everything in their power to harness the river, and thereby wrecking its ecology and spirituality in the name of progress.

Will that wreckage ever be undone? It will be one day, at least in my novel The Watershed, when the Columbia River Watershed finally has had enough of human degradation and enslavement, and takes its revenge. It’s the book I’ve been gearing up my whole life to write.

The Sextant might be an excellent place to write it.

It was a sunny Sunday around noon. My nerves were shot after a harrowing, $27 visit to an RV show at the Expo Center. Yes, I needed a bracer. The grotesque and gratuitous luxury of some of the RVs repelled me. And to think that I once lived in a 44-year old Winnebago with an 8-Track player! It was union made, too. Those were the days.

I sipped a craft malt liquor and inspected the Sextant’s interior. Its almost total lack of nautical/maritime decor mystified me. There was nothing but a couple of fake porthole windows and a helm on the wall.

A blue heron flew over the river. A couple of sail boats plied the channel. An OTA man behind me ordered the French Toast Supreme.

A cormorant flew past the window. Oh the dreaded cormorant, bane of the Columbia River salmon fishermen because the birds eat all the fake hatchery salmon, which accounts for 90 percent of all the salmon in the watershed.

When The Watershed comes out, the cormorant, an avian species slaughtered by shotguns on the order of fisheries biologists, will finally exact their revenge.

I’ve been excited for years to write this novel, so why haven’t I started?

Perhaps I was in the Sextant at that very moment.

Rewatching All the President’s Men

NSP Meditations

I was perusing the DVDs in a library when All the President’s Men caught my eye. Redford and Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein. Nixon and Watergate! Deep Throat! I pulled it from the shelf for examination. It had been at least 30-35 years since my last viewing of the 1976 film. Why not again? It might prove entertaining to see how a newspaper once led the way to bringing a corrupt President and his henchmen to justice. Those were the good ol’ days.

As I thought about the film, it also brought to mind a recent book I’d perused after finding it in a street library: Leon Jaworski’s The Right and the Power, his bestselling account of serving as Special Prosecutor in the Watergate investigation that resulted in almost 50 convictions of Nixon’s underlings, but not Tricky Dick himself. Practically everyone convicted served prison sentences, some lengthy, and much lengthier than the maniacs convicted of storming and breaching the Capitol. Jaworski was a sane Republican from Texas who put country and the Constitution over party, as if there were any other choice. Like I said, the good ol’ days.

It took a few days to getting around to watch All the President’s Men and I can report the film holds up incredibly well, is still relevant as it relates to Trump’s criminal activity while in the White House. The viewing also sent me diving into a vortex of reflection about my relationship to the movie in my Oregon City youth, and later, as a high school journalism teacher.

First of all, let’s start with ace reporter Redford wearing a tan corduroy blazer! (Maybe that’s where my obsession started). Then there the endless scenes of the reporters on the phones trying to dig up the story. Next, all the great spooky scenes in the parking garage with Deep Throat. The movie is so demanding of the intelligence of the viewer in a way I can’t remember a movie demanding in a long time. This is an action film, if you consider racing to uncover a scandal action, and I do.

All the time, you know the good guys are going to win, and you never feel that way about American politics anymore, even though Democrats run two out of the three branches of government.

As for newspapers around the country, thousands have disappeared in recent years and this development represents a serious danger for American democracy and its institutions.

It was impossible not to think of Trump and his edition of henchmen. They ran a different criminal enterprise than Nixon and his goons. The former was to enrich Trump and his family, the latter to crush Nixon’s enemies and secure his reelection. Quite a difference.

I first saw All the President’s Men in junior high, the year it came out. My mom recalls she took me to the film. I don’t remember seeing it then, but I did view it high school on VHS a few years later in a journalism class that changed the course of my life. I wanted to be Woodstein but for some reason never pursued that dream in college by majoring in journalism or writing for the college paper. I still don’t why that is.

The movie reentered my life some 15 years after high school when I started teaching high school journalism and advising newspapers. I showed the film and it didn’t seem to connect to 90s students at all. I’m sure it would bore them to death today, and I never showed it again although I kept teaching journalism for another 12 years.

Perhaps all thinking Americans should watch this film, for the history, and for the critical lessons it imparts. A President is not above the law and both parties should make that a bedrock principle. It should be the office above party, voting above party, the Constitution above party, the nation above cult.

It’s also worth watching to see how hard reporters worked to find the truth. These types are still out there, but it’s certainly not the same in the age of social media. What is?

Sweet Socialism Birthday

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I toured around Silver Falls State Park on a cold and sunny morning that happened to coincide with my 58th birthday. In fact, I had decided to visit the park for the first time in 30 years to celebrate my birthday. It occurred to me admiring the falls, the creek, the forests, the birds, that I wasn’t really their to admire anything connected with nature. I was there to admire the sweet success of Oregon socialism during the New Deal.

The CCC and WPA built this magnificent state park and recreation area during the throes of the Great Depression. Hundreds of men lived on site and worked for $1 a day for seven years because there was no other employment until WW II arrived.

Every man who worked here is dead now but the stone walls, stone buildings, bridges and trails live on, and will live on until it all goes back to seed when human have vanished from the earth.

Just think that they built this place largely by hand in ways not far removed from building the Great Pyramid. Just think how this monumental labor built something tangible, beautiful and useful that anyone can enjoy today. How many of us can say that about our life’s work. I can’t about my teaching career. I can about my career in watershed restoration and publishing.

Thank you New Deal, FDR and the boys (and probably a few women in disguise) of the CCC and WPA for building this for me to enjoy. I’ll never stop spreading the sweet stories of Oregon socialism in my writing. They are all around me.

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