Summer Fishtrap News, Writing on the River, and a special traveling exhibit "Oregon Is Indian Country"

Dear Fishtrap Friends,

At last, the newsletter resumes. We took a hiatus in the weeks leading up to Summer Fishtrap, but I'll be writing at least twice-monthly now as we head into fall and the calendar fills and ripens. Thanks for your patience as I settled into my new role here as Fishtrap's Interim Executive Director...

Summer Fishtrap 2010
We’re coming back to earth at the Fishtrap house after a glorious, spirited ride through the week of Summer Fishtrap, July 11-18. Those of you who had the chance to spend all or part of the week of readings, workshops and Gathering with us know how this year’s theme—"Matter and Spirit"—took us in some amazing directions, at times cracking us open… or cracking us up. The weather was perfect, the faculty inspired, the discussions deep, the readings lovely and provocative, and Gary Snyder all that we had hoped for and more. On Saturday night, he offered up a sampling of poetry from his earliest published work to recent poems in manuscript form. And he reminded us during his visit, through words and actions both, what clear thinking and good writing really mean. Gasho, Gary!

There is so much more to say about the experiences shared at the Wallowa Lake Camp and Billy Meadows Ranger Station this summer… look for our recap page on the Fishtrap website, which will be up soon and evolving over the next few weeks, with photos, participant and faculty comments, and other highlights. Thanks to all who supported the event with your participation, instruction, financial assistance, volunteer efforts, words of encouragement, and kind thoughts sent to us from afar. We could never pull Summer Fishtrap off without all of you and all of that.

A wonderful summary of the week through an outsider's lens was published in The Observer last Thursday. Thanks to Joyce Osterloh and her husband Ron for the thoughtful coverage.

Reminder to Summer Fishtrap instructors, special guests and participants: Please help us make the 2010 Fishtrap Anthology a rich reflection of the inspiration we all received at this Summer Fishtrap by sending your submissions to us, postmarked or email stamped by August 10. Anything written at or stimulated by Summer Fishtrap Workshops or the Gathering is appropriate. Please refer to the full submission guidelines for further details.

Save These Dates
Winter Fishtrap 2011: February 25-27, 2011 at the historic Wallowa Lake Lodge. Theme: “Getting Small.”
Summer Fishtrap 2011: July 10-17 at Wallowa Lake Camp & Resort. Theme to be announced this fall.

Film showing: The Practice of the Wild: A Conversation with Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison This film was a big hit at Summer Fishtrap recently. An Official Selection of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival but not yet available to the general public, The Practice of the Wild came to Fishtrap courtesy of Summer Fishtrap faculty member Jack Shoemaker, one of several long-time friends and associates of Snyder interviewed in the film.

The film follows Snyder and novelist Jim Harrison (Dalva, Legends of the Fall) as the two old friends wander along the trails of the central California coast. They debate the pros and cons of everything from Google to Zen koans. The discussions are punctuated by archival materials and commentaries from Snyder's literary contemporaries, friends and intimates. The film runs just under an hour. A half hour of additional interviews not shown at Summer Fishtrap but available on the DVD will be included in this showing.

Please join us for this special screening of The Practice of the Wild on August 2, 7:30 pm, at the Fishtrap Coffin House, 400 E. Grant Street in Enterprise. This event is free, but donations are always appreciated. Popcorn and other light refreshments will be served.

For more background on the film, check out the San Francisco Film Festival blurb and the YouTube trailer.

Writing on the River with Annik Smith
August 26-31: For the second year, Fishtrap brings you Writing on the River. Spend five glorious days on the Snake River in the company of writer and film producer, Annick Smith, writing in the mornings and evenings and rafting down the river in between. As a participant in this river adventure, you'll be in the good hands of our friends Paul and Penny at Winding Waters River Expeditions. This event is a fundraiser for Fishtrap, so you can do what you love best and help Fishtrap stay afloat at the same time! Call Fishtrap at 541-426-3623 for more info or to register. (Space is filling fast and limited to 12, so don't delay.)

OHS Traveling Exhibit -- Oregon Is Indian Country: The Nine Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon
Starting in September, Fishtrap and the Josephy Library at Fishtrap will co-host the Oregon Historical Society's free traveling exhibit entitled Oregon Is Indian Country, which provides text and historical and contemporary photographs about the nine Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon. Themes include: The Land, Federal Indian Policies, and Traditions that Bind.

The exhibit will be installed on September 8 and 9 with special events to follow, and it will remain up for approximately one month. Dates, times and other details regarding the exhibit and related events will be included in our next newsletter and on the Fishtrap website.

Fishtrap writers and friends Pamela Steele and Bette Husted featured on OPB's "Think Out Loud"
Last Wednesday, July 21, Fishtrap hosted a session of Oregon Public Broadcasting's live call-in show "Think Out Loud" here at the Coffin House. It looked like a regular recording studio around here, with fancy microphones hooked to the big table in the main room and wires strung here and there. The featured guests were authors and Fishtrap friends Pamela Steele and Bette Husted. Their conversation with hosts Emily Harris and David Miller touched on each writer's relationship to place and people, and the role Fishtrap has played in their writing careers. If you missed the show or want to hear it again, you can listen to the archive and add your comments online. Please pass the link on to others who may or may not know about Fishtrap -- it's about as fine an introduction as you'll find.

We are grateful to Emily, David, Cassie, Julie, and the rest of the Think Out Loud team for taking the time to visit Eastern Oregon and for including Fishtrap in their swing through Wallowa County. And a huge congratulations and thank you to Pam and Bette for being here, for being so passionately real, and for all the good and beautiful words you have written about this special part of the world.

The Nez Perce Tribe's Precious Land Project in Joseph Creek was selected by National Geographic for inclusion in their "Tribal Lands" article in the August issue. It is a two-page spread with the picture and caption. Please let your friends know a picture from a portion of Wallowa County is featured in National Geographic in the August issue. Thanks to our friend Keith Lawrence for this news.

Farewell to Naomi
Finally, we bid farewell this week to our fabulous summer intern, Naomi Gibbs, who has been a delight to work with and without whom we might not have made it through Summer Fishtrap whole. She leaves us for her senior year at Whitman College, where she is majoring in Environmental Humanities under faculty advisor and Fishtrap friend, Don Snow. Naomi brought humor, honesty and energy to her role on our team. In addition to helping us at Summer Fishtrap, she created a guide to the businesses in Joseph and Enterprise and developed an extensive index of the many accomplishments of over 20 years of Fishtrap Fellows, which will be a valuable resource for years to come. Thank you for all that and more, Naomi! We will miss you.

Be well, keep writing, and stay in touch. The thunder is rolling here now...

Barbara Dills
Interim Executive Director

TONIGHT: William Johnson, A River Without Banks ... also, new scholarships available for Summer Fishtrap

Hello Fishtrap Friends,

This is just a quick note to our subscribers in and around Wallowa County to keep you posted on a few local happenings that might be of immediate interest. First of all, TONIGHT:

William Johnson, author of A River Without Banks: Place and Belonging in the Inland Northwest
Book signing and reading
Wednesday, June 9, 7:30 pm
Fishtrap’s Coffin House
400 East Grant Street, Enterprise

Please come in from the garden this evening and join Fishtrap and the Bookloft in welcoming William Johnson, professor Emeritus at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, ID, as he reads from and discusses his new book, A River Without Banks: Place and Belonging in the Inland Northwest.

The book explores one family's encounters with a place still partly wild, whose communities and landscapes teach them how to respect the earth and each other. Moving from a family vacation spent observing moose, to a comparison of the creation myths from Genesis and the Nez Perce, to watching a raptor seeking prey, Johnson meditates on how places, animals, and people teach us “how to see, and how we do, and don’t, belong.”

A River Without Banks will appeal to readers interested in the literature of place, ecology, natural history, indigenous culture, and conservation. Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Conservationist Manifesto, says of the book, "In these resonant essays, William Johnson seeks to reconcile the inner landscape of memory and emotion with the outer landscape of rivers and mountains ... Here is a book to savor and celebrate.”

William Johnson is also the author of three volumes of poetry: Dogwood; Out of the Ruins, which received the Idaho Book of the Year Award; and At the Wilderness Boundary. His poems are widely published in journals, among them Poetry, Mother Earth News, Poetry Northwest, and Texas Review. His long interest in Thoreau resulted in a critical study, "What Thoreau Said: ‘Walden’ and the Unsavable.”

The reading begins at 7:30 pm, and is free to the public. Books will be available for purchase, and William will be signing after the reading. For more information, call Fishtrap at 541-426-3623.

*****

Summer Fishtrap: CALLING ALL KIDS, MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, and SONGWRITERS!

There are still openings in the Summer Fisthrap writing workshops for kids (age 8-12), teenagers (age 13-17) and songwriters (ageless). Some full scholarships have recently become available for these three workshops. Please help us fill these spaces!! Call 541-426-3623 (or visit www.fishtrap.org) to learn more, to inquire about scholarships, or to register.

*****

Gail Swart & Peter Donovan
Piano concert featuring solos and duets
Sunday, June 20, 3:00 pm
At the Dobbin House
Home of Catherine Matthias and Stewart Jones
65605 Dobbin Rd., Joseph

Limited seating, admission by donation
A joint fundraiser for Fishtrap and the Wallowa Valley Music Alliance
Call to reserve your seat: 541-426-0263

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