Hello Fishtrap Friends,
I’ve been carting around a copy of the Next Whole Earth Catalog for the past thirty years. The 608 page, 5 pound, 11 x 14 compendium was published in 1980. Its subtitle is “Access to Tools.” I suppose that’s what Fishtrap does, too – we give writers and readers access to tools to think clearly, write well, and appreciate the writing of others.
Lately, I’ve been leafing through the Catalog while eating bachelor meals. The big, dense pages lie flat, filled with illustrations and quotes and opinions and examples of tools for the mind, tools for the body, tools for society. The Nomadics category is further divided into sections on Bicycling, Road Life, and Foraging. Remember Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons? $3.95 ppd.
The afterglow of the the tumultuous 60's was still strong in 1980. It hadn’t been long since we had first landed on the moon, since Martin Luther King and Kent State and the Kennedys. There were still dreams walking the land.
Maybe they still do. La Grande native Steven Bender will be reading from his fine book, One Night in America: Robert Kennedy, César Chávez, and the Dream of Dignity. The reading will be tonight, Wednesday, May 19, 7 pm, here at Fishtrap’s Coffin House. Suggested $5 donation. (Maybe you’re getting this email on Thursday, in which case you either loved it or are regretting you didn’t go!)
When I first sent out the news about Steven’s reading, I got this reply from Molly Cook, a former Fishtrap Fellow:
“In 1969, those of us working at Chief Joseph Summer Seminars at the Buhler ranch [in Wallowa County] had gathered in the mess hall on the Sunday evening before camp for the usual orientation meeting. We were a bunch of hippies, of course, very sympathetic to the Farm Workers’ movement. As was Don Buhler, who flew in every summer from California.
“We had just begun the meeting when the door to the mess hall burst open and there was Don with a big grin on his face and a wooden crate in his hands. He walked to one of the tables, plunked that crate down and said, ‘Union grapes!’ The place went nuts. We enjoyed some of the very first union grapes thanks to people like Don and people like Cesar Chavez.”
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One captivating feature of the Catalog is a small panel at the bottom right of each spread, called the “Rising Sun Neighborhood Newsletter,” with wonderful tidbits like this one on page 417: “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”
Remember, the Catalog was published in 1980. Starting halfway through the Catalog, the Rising Sun panels feature a backdrop of a majestic mountain, which, when you fan the pages like a deck of cards, can be seen to emit, first a pencil, then a plume, then a cloud of ash and smoke. Mt. St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, thirty years ago.
To celebrate the event, Jerry Franklin and Ursula Le Guin joined Gary Snyder (who will be at Summer Fishtrap) at a special event in Portland sponsored by Illahee, “a forum for environmental innovators.” As the Illahee blurb said, “We often forget that the human enterprise is puny compared to nature writ large.” According to one Fishtrapper who made it there, the event, if puny compared to the event it commemorated, was a fantastic success. Thank you Ursula, Jerry, and Gary for sharing your stories about Mt. St. Helens.
And, what the heck, we’ve all seen it a hundred times, but it’s such a stupendous sight, I figured you wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
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A couple more note before going. I got this message from Emily Harris, the host of “Think Out Loud” at OPB (91.5 FM, www.opb.org/thinkoutloud). Like Gary Snyder, Ehud Havazelet will be one of our faculty at Summer Fishtrap.
“Ehud Havazelet, author of Like Never Before and Bearing the Body (both Oregon Book Awards winners) will be our guest on Think Out Loud, Thursday, May 20 on Oregon Public Broadcasting. The program is live on OPB radio from 9 to 10 AM, rebroadcasts at 9 PM and is archived online.
"We’ll talk about his work, writing and teaching, his novel-in-progress (his first set in the West), his own family history and the burden central in all his books: how hard it is to truly communicate.
"Listeners can call in during the show or post questions or their thoughts about his work any time on our website: http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/northwest-passages-ehud-havazelet/”
Finally, poet Penelope Schott invites everyone to hear The Cool Women Poets of New Jersey on their third Oregon visit. Says Penelope, “This group of nine outrageous women will be reading at Looking Glass Books in Portland (7983 SE 13th Ave, Sellwood) on Thursday, May 20th at 7 pm and on Friday May 21st at the Trash Bash in Manzanita. And you know what people say about Jersey girls. These poets – authors of four anthologies and 1 1/2 CDs as well as many individual books – will stop at nothing.”
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Until next week,
Rick Bombaci
Executive Director, Fishtrap
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