Reiko Hillyer, Rick hits the road, introducing Barbara

Hello Fishtrap Friends,

May 24, less than four weeks before the Summer Solstice, and I’m still burning my wood stove. People are starting to grumble. What better excuse to come to an (indoor) discussion this Wednesday evening, May 26, at 7 pm, led by Reiko Hillyer, an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project scholar, on the topic "Marking Our Territory." Here’s the intriguing blurb from the Oregon Humanities catalog:

"The big house and the quarters; the front door and the back door; lunch counters, water fountains, the back of the bus. One of the most persistent ways people exert power over others is to control their access to space. Drawing upon the fields of architecture, environmental studies, urban design, and public policy, this discussion will pose the following questions: How do we mark our territory? How do the built environments we create reflect our values and aspirations? Whom do we include and whom de we exclude in the process?"

Touching on gentrification, the decline of public space, historic preservation, residential segregation, and suburban sprawl, Hillyer (who recently won a Teacher of the Year award as a history professor at Lewis & Clark College) will lead a conversation about how to read the history of our communities through the landscapes we build, and consider how we can be more aware of and more engaged in the creation of our surroundings. Please join us for what promises to be an engaging evening with Reiko Hillyer.

Well, the time has come.

This is the last email you’ll receive from me as the Executive Director of Fishtrap. This week marks the transition from me to Barbara Dills, who is stepping in as the Interim Executive Director here while the search continues for a long-term replacement for me.

Barbara’s got a great combination of qualities that suit her admirably to the task at hand. A skilled writer, a management professional with lots of experience working with non-profits, and a long-time Fishtrap participant and former Fishtrap Fellow, Barbara has already brought her great skills and attitude to bear here. Fishtrap is in good hands. Let’s all join in giving Barbara our thanks and support during her tenure.

Your emails to director@fishtrap.org will now be answered by Barbara, or you can email her directly at barbara@fishtrap.org. If you would like to correspond with me personally, you can reach me at rick@mossyoldtroll.com. I’ll be spending much of this summer in the Wallowa Mountains as a wilderness ranger with the US Forest Service, so I may not always be quick to respond. But I will respond.

Thanks to all of you for everything you have shared – your stories, your writing, your support, your engagement – with Fishtrap. Keep on!

Best wishes,

Rick Bombaci

HELLO FROM BARBARA:

Greetings Fishtrap Fans, Supporters, and Family, near and far,

First, let me say what an honor it is for me to have been asked to step into the Interim Executive Director role here, to provide a bridge until the next right person for the permanent position is identified and hired. I cannot begin to fill either Rick or Rich’s shoes (sizeable in both cases!), but hopefully I can at least protect their separate, amazing legacies here and keep the river flowing somewhat smoothly while the Governing Board’s search and selection process continues.

My discovery—and deep love—of Fishtrap goes back more than 20 years to a 1989 Jonathan Nicholas column in the Oregonian announcing that year’s Gathering. I headed east to Wallowa County for what turned out to be a wonderful weekend, and three years later found myself blessed with a fellowship for the entire week of Summer Fishtrap events. The work I did that week remains the basis for a memoir I am now working on—with John Daniel’s generous help—in this year’s yearlong workshop. And so the circle goes ‘round.

In between 1989 and now, I’ve attended Summer Fishtrap at least ten times and Winter Fishtrap once. The memories so plentiful and rich, I’ve lost count.

Since 1980, when I first moved to Oregon, I’ve gone from a tipi-maker in the hills outside Hood River to a corporate executive. Hopefully, the moss I gathered through all of that will serve Fishtrap’s needs—and yours—adequately over the next few months.

I look forward to seeing many of you at this year’s Summer Fishtrap, at local events here in Wallowa County, for tea or a meal on my jaunts to Portland to check in on my home there. Some of you I will meet first by phone or in email. I look forward to linking arms with all of you to ensure that Fishtrap continues to grow and thrive.

Until we meet...

My best,

Barbara Dills

FISHTRAP FRIENDS...

This Saturday, May 29, at 6:30 pm, Gwen Trice of the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center invites you to an impromptu gathering at Fishtrap’s Coffin House with Marv and Rindy Ross, where they will be presenting a possible collaborative musical theatre project about the historical logging culture of the 1920's and 1930's in Wallowa County.

Marv and Rindy have also generously offered to perform a few songs from their previous musicals for your enjoyment.

Access to tools, puny human enterprises, and stupendous sights

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.”

*****

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.

*****

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.”

*****

Until next week,

Rick Bombaci
Executive Director, Fishtrap

Fishstock 2010 cancelled

Dear Fishtrap Friends,

So I’ve been cajoling you to buy tickets to Fishstock in The Dalles on May 15, where you could hear Rosalie Sorrels, Robin Cody, Dan Maher, Clem Starck, and the Ukalaliens ...

And now I need to tell you that we had to cancel Fishstock 2010. Rosalie Sorrels gave us a call, saying she’s sick with a flu that just won’t give up. She’s doing well enough to get around, but didn’t feel like a trip from Idaho to The Dalles would be wise. Instead she’s going on a trip to the local doctor’s office to get some antibiotics.

Join us in wishing Rosalie a quick return to spring happiness!

All tickets that were purchased directly from Fishtrap at our website have already been refunded to you. If you purchased tickets in person, please go back to the place you bought them to get your refund.

Thanks very much, and we are very sorry to disappoint you. Think about next year!

Cheers,

Rick Bombaci
Executive Director

Uncle Sam, Enron thieves, and dreams of dignity

Hello Fishtrap Friends,

Wednesdays are a big deal at Fishtrap for the next few weeks.

UPCOMING READINGS & LECTURES

When Literary Arts contacted us last year about their Oregon Book Awards Author Tour, we had the clever idea of holding the event outdoors on a warm August afternoon at the gazebo by the courthouse. We’d do it in conjunction with the farmer’s market, right after the Thursday music concert. It was probably a childhood memory of an old LP cover of the Boston Pops at Tanglewood that inspired that notion.

The clouds lowered, the wind blew, the mercury shriveled, and everybody stayed home – everybody but the poor authors and a handful of diehards. So this year, we had the more clever idea of holding the 2010 Literary Arts Oregon Book Awards Author Tour inside, at Fishtrap’s Coffin House, on Wednesday, May 12. Maybe it’ll snow 6 or 12 inches, like last week, but who cares? Come on over to hear three fine authors read from their work, at 7 pm. It’s free.

John Kroger, Attorney General of Oregon, will read from his book, Convictions: A Prosecutor's Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves, which won the Sarah Winnemucca Award in Creative Nonfiction.

Joining John will be Donna Matrazzo of Portland, finalist in creative nonfiction for Wild Things: Adventures of a Grassroots Environmentalist. Matrazzo’s work has appeared in numerous publications, on PBS and the Discovery Channel, and in national park visitor centers and museums around the country.

We’ll also be hearing from Jon Raymond of Portland, winner of the Ken Kesey Award in Fiction for Livability. Raymond is an editor at Plazm magazine and his writing has appeared in Bookforum, Artforum, the Village Voice and other publications.

Despite the gray chill last August, we liked one of the readers, Steven Bender, so well we’ve invited him back to read at greater length from his fine book, One Night in America: Robert Kennedy, César Chávez, and the Dream of Dignity. Stephen will be reading on Wednesday, May 19, 7 pm, at the same old place, Fishtrap’s Coffin House. Suggested $5 donation.

And a week later, on Wednesday, May 26, Reiko Hillyer, an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project speaker, will be visiting to talk about “Marking Our Territory.” Here’s the intriguing blurb from the Oregon Humanities catalog:

“The big house and the quarters; the front door and the back door; lunch counters, water fountains, the back of the bus. One of the most persistent ways people exert power over others is to control their access to space. Drawing upon the fields of architecture, environmental studies, urban design, and public policy, this discussion will pose the following questions: How do we mark our territory? How do the built environments we create reflect our values and aspirations? Whom do we include and whom de we exclude in the process?

“Touching on gentrification, the decline of public space, historic preservation, residential segregation, and suburban sprawl, Reiko Hillyer will lead a conversation about how to reading the history of our communities through the landscapes we build and consider how we can be more aware of and more engaged in the creation of our surroundings.”

Join us on the 26th at 7 pm. Suggested $5 donation. Just don’t mark the territory.

OTHER FISHTRAP NEWS

Last week I mentioned that we have a couple of new writers’ groups going – one is for all genres, and is held on 1st and 3rd Tuesday evenings here at Fishtrap. The second is poetry only, and is held on 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. Free, open to all regardless of experience, and typically graced with a bottle of vino.

Sure enough, that mention brought another bug to my ear: I forgot to mention that there is a children’s literature writers’ group, which meets once a month, on the first Sunday, from 1-3 pm, here at Fishtrap. If you’re interested in participating, contact Joan Madsen at jcreative@eoni.com. Her email address is not accidental. Joan is the graphic design expert who has been putting together our Summer Fishtrap brochures for years. So if you liked the “Matter & Spirit” brochure for this year, you can give Joan a shout out and a big thank you.

Speaking of Summer Fishtrap, if you think kids (8-12 years old) and teenagers (13-17 years old) deserve to enjoy the beauty of Wallowa Lake and the bounty of Summer Fishtrap, we need you to get the word out. At roughly $200 for 15 hours of workshop time in the wonderful setting of Wallowa Lake and the Eagle Cap Wilderness, these sessions are a great opportunity for budding writers. And we do want them to bud, don’t we?

The kids’ workshop will taught by Kirsten Rian, who has used poetry in places like Sierra Leone as a tool for literacy, healing, and storytelling within refugee and immigrant communities. Her anthology of Sierra Leonan poetry, Kalashnikov in the Sun, was the recent focus of a very powerful group reading in Portland. Just ask Rich, he was there. And that was all he could talk about for a couple of days.

The teens’ workshop will be offered by the energetic writer and teacher Beth Russell, who received a Presidential Scholars Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009. Those of you who came to Winter Fishtrap can vouch for the suitability of that award. Just the kind of person we want to engage those young folks.

Send out the word! (I thought of sticking in a photo of the famous “Uncle Sam wants you” poster, only to find hundreds of versions, take-offs, and parodies on the Internet. This one in particular caught my eye, because it’s NOT TOO LATE to get your tickets – from http://fishstockoregon.net/ – to Fishstock, May 15 in The Dalles, featuring Rosalie Sorrels, Robin Cody, Dan Maher, Clem Starck, and last but not least, those Ukalaliens Steve Power and Kate Einhorn. Which one posed here as Uncle Sam?)

And that is enough words from me for now.

Until next time,

Rick Bombaci
Executive Director

Fishstock: A Celebration of Words and Music, May 15

Dear Fishtrap Friends,

I woke up the other morning with a vivid dream burning behind my eyelids. Was it Steve Einhorn, up on a stage in rainy, rural, upstate New York, playing the Star Spangled Banner on a ukelele, then lighting it on fire in front of a crowd of half a million Ukalaliens?

Or was it Steve and his partner Kate Power emceeing the fabulous Fishstock II at the historic Civic Auditorium in The Dalles on May 15, before an audience of, well, hundreds? Yes, it’s Fishstock time again – a celebration of words and music.

This year you can catch the legendary Rosalie Sorrels, whose recent album Strangers in Another Country, featuring songs by Utah Phillips, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2009. The prolific Sorrels has recorded over 20 albums, and has written three books. An Idhao native who still lives in the log cabin her father built, she began her career as a folklorist in the 1950s. Studs Terkel wrote introductory liner notes for her albums; Robert Creeley wrote a poem about her. She was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966, and the University of California at Santa Cruz has set up a Rosalie Sorrels Archive as part of its Beat Generation Archives.

Joining the Fishstock lineup will be Dan Maher, who, as host of NWPR's Inland Folk for two decades, has opened a window into the world of folk music, tinted with his own stories and anecdotes. And Dan is quite a performer in his own right. I still remember that concert in the old “Medical/Dental” building on Main Street in Enterprise (before it got turned into a law and CPA office), when we had the ceiling joists shaking as we sang along with Dan.

Steve and Kate probably won’t burn ukeleles on stage, but they will undoubtedly “build community with harmony, guitars, banjo and two mighty little ukuleles,” sharing a “rare elixir of spellbinding harmony, eloquent songwriting and seasoned musicianship.”

Then there are the writers.

We are pleased to welcome Robin Cody, author of the novel Ricochet River, considered one of the 100 essential “Oregon books,” and of the award-winning Voyage of a Summer Sun, an account of Cody's 82-day solo canoe trip down the Columbia River. His most recent book, from OSU Press, is Another Way The River Has: Taut True Tales from the Northwest, which collects Cody's finest nonfiction writings, many appearing for the first time in print.

Joining Robin will be Clem Starck, whose poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has given readings in San Francisco and throughout the Northwest and has been a featured author at FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria several times. The man has done a whole lot of different, interesting kinds of work, grist for the poetry mill. His books of poetry include the award-winning Journeyman's Wages, plus Studying Russian on Company Time, China Basin, and Traveling Incognito.

There you have it. A couple of the Pacific Northwest’s outstanding writers, along with a cadre of fine musicians. Toss in some art work, good food and drink, and the company of a bunch of like-minded folk, and you have Fishstock. May 15, more info and tickets ($25) available at www.fishstockoregon.net.

WRITING GROUPS

We have two new writing groups that are meeting twice a month here at Fishtrap’s Coffin House (now you know what that means, remember?). A poetry-only group meets on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month, 7 pm. And an all-genres group meets on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays, same time. Open to all, free, supportive, and friendly. Email info@fishtrap.org if you’re interested, and we’ll put you in touch with either or both groups.

FISHTRAP FRIENDS

Fishstock ain’t all that’s happening on the weekend of May 15. We’ve had Roberta Lavadour to Summer Fishtrap a couple of times, where she has offered bookbinding and book arts classes. She’s one of the most engaging instructors you’ll ever meet, and the stuff she makes and gets her students to make are works of art. In fact, some of her work resides at the Museum of Modern Art. Join the flourishing movement in hand binding of finely crafted books. Roberta's offering a class in Pendleton:

Introduction to Bookbinding, at the Pendleton Arts Center, with Roberta Lavadour, Saturday May 15, noon to 4:00 pm, and Sunday May 16, 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. To sign up, or for more information, call 541-278-9201, or email classes@pendletonarts.org.

Charles Goodrich, our Outpost workshop instructor this year at Summer Fishtrap, was recently fectured on The Writer’s Almanac on NPR. Garrison Keillor read his poem, “Wild Geese,” and you can listen to it online at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

It rained and snowed some today, and the weather forecast gossip is that we’re going to get 6-12" of snow in the next day or two. So it seems appropos to leave you with this poem that a local Fishtrapper sent to me. She thought it was too late in the season, but nature proved her wrong. Doesn’t it always?

WE DELIVER

Winter on the Wallowa waterway, sunny and cold and
All those rednecks and long waders in the river, silent for once.

Winter steelhead are coming. You can track migration by
the herds of dirty pickups and stockdogs parked and panting anywhichway.

It’s nearly noon. In a cloud of gravel and dust,
The faithful FedEx driver pulls his shiny white truck to a sudden stop --
Leaps out! Fishing rod in hand, he takes an uncharted break.

You could get lucky too: Lunchtime, winter, Minam canyon.

– Kathy Bowman

Happy Spring to all,

Rick Bombaci
Executive Director