Last call for Fellowships, and they don't call it the Big Read for nothing

Hello Fishtrap Friends,

You get a two-fer this week.

LAST CALL FOR FELLOWSHIP SUBMISSIONS

This is your last chance to submit prose or poetry for a 2010 Summer Fishtrap Fellowship. The proceess is FREE, it is FAIR, and it gives up to five recipients a full ride to Summer Fishtrap. Submissions must be postmarked no later than February 1. See www.fishtrap.org/fellows.shtml for complete submission guidelines.

THE BIG READ

Kate Loftus and friends at the all-volunteer Mid-Valley Theater will be putting on a live production of To Kill a Mockingbird in March. Kate tells me she’s got a complete cast, but for one person – Reverend Sykes. If you’re interested in a small but important part, with what I think is one of the best lines in the book – “Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing.” – let us know or give Kate a call. She said the pay is great.

Tickets are going fast for our Big Read finale at the Hurricane Creek Grange. As is now tradition, this will be a potluck. Bring your favorite Southern recipe. Fishtrap is supplying pork ribs, expertly barbecued courtesy of Eric Carlson. Southern desserts supplied by our favorite Grange ladies. And the program: South African writer Mark Mathabane, author of the best-selling autobiography Kaffir Boy, a true story of his coming of age under apartheid in South Africa. The book made the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists and was translated into several languages. Today, the book is used in classrooms across the U.S. Tickets are a mere $10, and are available at Mt Joseph Family Foods in Joseph, Fishtrap or the Bookloft in Enterprise, and the public library in Wallowa. And they are about half gone.

One-time Wallowa County resident Katie Kissinger is following The Big Read with us from her current home on the “Westside,” and has shared with us a list of her favorite children’s books that deal with the subject of skin color. Go to http://fishtrap.org/tbrchildren.shtml. Thanks, Katie.

Our friends at KPBX in Spokane will start a serial broadcast of To Kill a Mockingbird on Monday night, February 1, from 6:30 to 7 pm. Susan Creed will read on The Bookshelf program, Mondays through Thursdays, weekly, until she gets to “He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.” Please join us by the woodstove, tuning in to 89.5 FM in Wallowa County or on any one of KPBX’s many translator stations.

Portland lawyer Steven Goldberg asks, “Would Atticus Finch have represented civil rights workers who sat in at lunch counters, or were arrested attempting to register to vote? Maybe not.” Steven will address this question and others in a 7 pm presentation at the Wallowa County Courthouse on Wednesday, February 10.

Goldberg, who has practiced law in Oregon since 1975, has focused on the representation of labor unions and working people. He has also been involved in numerous political cases over the years: Representing prisoners challenging medical and mental health conditions in the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, representing Freedom Socialist Party in gaining access to the ballot, representing Emiliano Santiago in his challenge to the Army’s stop loss policy, and most recently being part of the legal team challenging the National Security Agency’s warrantless wireless wiretap of an Islamic charity in southern Oregon. Steven recommends two New Yorker magazine articles which are relevant to his presentation: "The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism," by Malcolm Gladwell and "State Secrets: A government misstep in a wiretapping case," by Patrick Radden Keefe. You can read them onl ine at:

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/28/080428fa_fact_keefe

FISHTRAP FRIENDS

Nominations are still open for the sixth Poet Laureate of Oregon. Lawson Fusao Inada, the current Poet Laureate, will step down later this year. Nominations will be accepted until February 15, 2010. See the Oregon Cultural Trust’s website at http://www.culturaltrust.org/pdf/Poet_laureate_nomination.pdf

Well, I hear it’s the weekend. Guess I’ll go home.

Cheers,

Rick Bombaci
Executive Director