March 25, 2004
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Writers reading at the CR/HSU
event, "In a Town This Size," gather on the steps of
the Morris Graves Museum.
Front L-R: Cecelia Holland, Dick Day, Jim Dodge, Ruth Mountaingrove;
second row: Jude Nutter, Pat McCutcheon, Julian Lang, Dick Stull;
third row: Jeff DeMark, Amy Stewart, Celia Homesley, Vinnie Peloso,
Jerry Rohde;
back row: Roy Parvin, David Holper.
(Not shown: Daryl Chinn, Ellen Givins, Freeman House, Laura Koskinen,
Jerry Martien, Ray Raphael.)
Photo by Bob Doran
THIS WEEK WE'VE TURNED THE JOURNAL
COVER STORY OVER TO WRITERS.
This is not to say that our
own skilled staff of journalists are not writers, but these six
are some of the stars of Humboldt County's literary community.
The prose and poetry they've written for us is a preview, in
a way, of a truly unique event taking place next weekend at College
of the Redwoods: A marathon reading by a score of North Coast
authors and poets.
The gathering is the brainchild
of CR English professor David Holper, who has a knack for energizing
local writers -- a couple of years ago, for example, he commissioned
Jeff DeMark's "Hard as a Diamond" monologue. The inspiration
for "In a Town This Size," as the April 2 performance
is called, came from Kent Haruf's Plainsong, last year's
CR Book of the Year. The novel told a spare, simple and beautiful
story of small-town life. Holper realized that Humboldt County
authors had their own stories to share about living in a small
town and should be given an opportunity to do so.
The reading is a CR Visiting
Writers Series event organized in conjunction with Humboldt State
University -- the first such joint venture since the series began.
It begins at 7 p.m. at CR's Forum Theater. Admission is free
and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
The writers/performers include
Daryl Chinn, Dick Day, Jeff DeMark, Jim Dodge, Ellen Givins,
Cecelia Holland, Celia Homesley, Freeman House, Laura Koskinen,
Julian Lang, Jerry Martien, Pat McCutcheon, Ruth Mountaingrove,
Jude Nutter, Roy Parvin, Vinnie Peloso, Ray Raphael, Jerry Rohde,
Dick Stull and Journal columnist Amy Stewart.
A few weeks back Stewart sent
me an e-mail suggesting the event "might make a great cover
story," and adding that she'd "be perfectly happy"
if it wasn't her task. After batting around a couple of ideas
with Stewart, Holper and Dodge, head of the creative writing
program at HSU, we settled on a mini-anthology with a subset
of those who will read at CR waxing poetic on the communities
they live in. (What follows is not what these writers will present
at the reading.)
The results are as varied as
the writers group. Dodge chose to focus on the writers' community.
Jerry Martien figured he would "get in trouble again"
if he wrote about his town, Manila; instead he sent one of his
bioregional poems. Novelist Cecelia Holland offered a paean to
Fortuna; friends Dick Stull and Jeff DeMark focused on family
and their lives in McKinleyville and Blue Lake, respectively.
Stewart, author of The Earth Moved, a book about earthworms
that is drawing raves, wrote about the blessed lack of distractions
in Eureka -- compared at least to big cities.
-- Introduction & photos
by Bob Doran
Working in a Small Town --
by Amy Stewart
My
husband Scott has a terrible sense of direction. He can get lost
on the way to the grocery store. We lived in the Bay Area for
six years and he never did learn his way around. He told me that
he wanted to live in a small town because he'd be able to get
his mind around it. He could hold the whole of it in his head,
like a single thought, and then he wouldn't get lost.
I was worried about losing my
way too, but in a different way. We couldn't afford to buy a
house in the Bay Area, and between the real estate and the tony
shopping and restaurant districts a short drive from my house,
I was always tempted to spend my money on stuff I couldn't afford,
a practice that was keeping me chained to a day job.
Then there are all the other
big-city distractions that can get in the way of writing. When
I page through the entertainment listings in the New Yorker,
I'm enormously relieved that I don't have to choose between sitting
alone at my desk or, say, going down the street to hear Diana
Krall sing or heading to a bookstore to meet Philip Roth. Sure,
we have a thriving arts and cultural scene here on the North
Coast, but when I had a deadline to meet last Saturday, I skipped
Arts Alive without giving it a second thought.
Cities are full of writers who
manage to get their work done in spite of all the temptations
and the demands on their time and money. I'm just not one of
them. I love the feeling of driving home to Humboldt County after
I've been away. The garish and noisy world recedes, and the fog-shrouded
redwoods actually do feel like a curtain I'm slipping behind.
Living here is like being on retreat. It feels like I've stepped
back from the crowd so I can get a better look at it.
Now Eureka's grid of streets
is firmly fixed in Scott's mind; he can say, "You know that
building at the corner of Third and E?" and while I struggle
to picture it, he sees it perfectly. Finally, a layout that makes
sense to him. Our lives have gotten smaller, too. On most days,
my longest trip is between my house and the Co-op, four blocks
away -- and even on that walk, I'll probably run into someone
I know.
I wish I could say that this
smallness, this intimacy, suggests stories and characters to
me. But I don't write novels, I write nonfiction. I need silence,
a room with a door that closes, and the patience and presence
of mind to bring the details into focus. I've found what I need
here, and so has Scott. Neither one of us loses our way anymore.
Amy Stewart is the author of
From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden and The
Earth Moved: On the Remarkable
Achievements of Earthworms.
She also writes a gardening column,
a book column and theater reviews for the Journal.
Fortuna's Honest
Heart -- by Cecelia Holland
Fortuna
is the perfect size -- small enough that everybody knows everybody
else's business, large enough that there's always somebody whose
business is interesting. The little city has had a number of
different names, and its center of gravity has moved considerably
over time, according to the dictates of the Eel River, which
has been known to exercise authority over the landscape; Fortuna
currently sits on the sunny benches and slopes east of the river,
a little north of where the Eel gathers in the Van Duzen, and
behind the perhaps illusory safety of the 12th Street levee.
The views from the second story of River Lodge, which sits on
the levee looking south, are among the loveliest in the world.
Fortuna is a contentious town,
ground zero in the redwood wars, with an active political life,
although not perhaps as politically correct as Arcata's. Civic
life is often noisy. Once, during a lull in the endless timber
battles, the pious wing of Fortuna society took out after the
party wing, domesticated the rodeo, and nearly toppled perennial
councilperson Mel Berti. The rodeo has never truly recovered,
but Fortuna's irrepressible urge to party has reasserted itself
in the Autorama, a week of sheet metal gothic, incredible traffic
jams and overheated tail pipes, which also thoroughly reconfirms
the city's claim to be cowboy capital of the county, if not the
known universe. We have our art and wine tasting in the park,
and the monthly concerts at the Monday Club, but Fortuna's heart
belongs to pick-up trucks, cowboy hats and deer season.
I came up here from Los Angeles
30 years ago and knew right away I was home. One early clue was
when I got into a conversation with the clerk at the Safeway
and the person behind me in line not only didn't object, but
joined in. I loved Clendenen's cider. I liked that the kids rode
their horses down Main Street and cars stopped at crosswalks
even before somebody stepped off the sidewalk. In a pasture above
the old park, behind what was then Goble's, a deer had a relationship
with a German shepherd; they would stand side by side watching
the cars go by on Main Street, the deer sometimes licking the
dog's face. There were more mills in town then, and the big one
belonged to Louisiana Pacific. Where the shopping mall is now
was an open field, with a billboard on which some wag had crudely
drawn, in red paint, a smoking joint.
These are not easy times for
Fortuna. It's hard to watch a way of life destroyed, whomever
you blame for it, and it's hard not to see change as loss. The
kids still ride their horses through town. The deer is gone,
victim of an overzealous Fish and Game agent. The old fields
are full of new houses. Mel is still mayor. The rowdy, hard-working,
outdoor town still lives, where some misguided cowboys can turn
a herd of horses loose on Main Street and spend the rest of the
afternoon trying to round them up, and a pick-up girls softball
team can go all the way to the national championships, but it's
sometimes hard to figure where the jobs are going to come from.
The kids all seem to be leaving town. Half the kindergarten speaks
Spanish.
Just before the last election
I went to a candidates' debate for the 2nd District Supervisor.
The election's hot button, of course, was the Gallegos recall,
propelled and financed by outsiders, a brutal campaign to which
I had added more than my share of acrimony, and which had left
me feeling ugly about politics. But the supervisor's race had
drawn an unusual crowd of candidates, and since Fortuna is the
heart of the 2nd District, I couldn't stay away.
The debate was wonderful. At
various times I wanted to vote for all four candidates -- intelligent,
knowledgeable, well-spoken, forthright, and engaged with the
problems. Above all, in spite of the sharp differences among
them, they treated the audience and each other with a profound
civility -- the civility of knowing that, after the election,
win or lose, they would all have to walk down the same streets,
among people who would know everybody else's business. I left
reassured and grateful for the honest heart of a small town.
Cecelia Holland is the author
of 28 novels, including The Soul Thief, The Angel and
the Sword, and Lily Nevada. She is working
on a nonfiction book on the Railroad Riots
of 1887.
the ones close in -- by Jerry
Martien
the
ones close in
we can get to
to pull off mussel
drag in seaweed
pry loose abalone
otter didn't get or
stand on to
fish into holes
for the big old ling
living off the rock
in the slippery lap
of your intertidal zone
overlooked by the
well-to-do we are most
thick most
fat down here
thighs of anemone
wave us on in
levered crustacean
take us & run
life at the margin
sweetie better
shake your barnacle
Jerry Martien has taught creative
writing and nature writing for the past seven years at Humboldt
State University. His published work
includes Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in
North America, and a collection of poetry, Pieces in Place.
How We Ended Up in Blue Lake
-- by Jeff DeMark
We
had never planned to leave our cozy little house on Buttermilk
Lane in Sunny Brae. My wife Gayle and I had lived on that bucolic
street since 1990. Like many Sunny Brae houses, it's a modest
place, just 850 square feet plus a garage. However, we could
look out our kitchen window and see horses grazing and a terraced
backyard overflowed with roses. It was a prefect house for two.
Then, a child named Alice entered our world and our house felt
happier but smaller. A few years later Jesse appeared. Our house
felt much smaller. Things accumulated: furniture, books,
papers, art, CDs, cats, toys and clothes. Our cozy little house
morphed into a crazy little house. We still loved living on Buttermilk
Lane but, to misquote the Jimi Hendrix song, "The wind cried:
SPACE!"
We embarked on a search for
a new home that lasted more than five years. We backed out of
three or four escrow situations, a few verbal agreements, and
passed on numerous situations that now look like amazing deals.
Realtors put us on a black list of clients to avoid. We scoured
real estate magazines and attended open houses. We toured scores
of homes everywhere but nothing clicked. Regret and self-doubt
followed us like street dogs.
Then we went to a potluck at
Kate's house in Blue Lake. There we met a gang of young kids
running around, friends who'd recently moved there, and felt
the warm sun. I noticed alleyways everywhere, like those I used
to ride back where I grew up. I thought "Our kids could
ride their bikes here much easier than dangerous Buttermilk Lane."
We looked around and saw a few stately old houses. Gayle and
I later said to each other, "Why didn't we ever think of
Blue Lake? Now it's probably too late." More regret.
A year after that potluck Kate
called and said a two-story house was for sale three doors down
from hers. We raced out to Blue Lake and saw a gorgeous East
Lake-style Victorian built in 1903 with white trim, corbels,
high windows and porches. It looked a little battered, but graceful
and spacious.
We went for the jugular and
bought the place. It turned out to be more than a little battered.
After a year of renovation and gnashing of teeth, we moved in
this past December. Gayle said, since it was exactly a century
old, "We gave it a 100-year makeover."
On a recent Sunday we understood
exactly why we were attracted to this little town with no commercial
district or grocery store. With the sun shining brightly we went
to the Mad River Grange for a delicious breakfast where neighbors,
friends and Dell'Arte students brought us our pancakes and eggs.
Then we meandered over to the Mad River, a place everybody walks
to almost daily, and watched the kids toss rocks and splash around
for hours. As dusk approached friends called and we enjoyed a
delicious barbecue. My 5-year-old son, Jesse, said, "Daddy,
I don't know why they call it Blue Lake. They should call it
Blue Skies because the sun's always out."
Jeff DeMark has worked as a
factory worker, a cab driver, a substitute English teacher, and
an ad salesman for the San Francisco Giants.
His monologues include "Writing
My Way Out of Adolescence," "Went
to Lunch, Never Returned," "Making Every Mistake Twice,"
and "Hard as a Diamond, Soft as the Dirt."
Meditation on McKinleyville
-- by Richard Arlin Stull
Our
family moved into the new Heartwood development in McKinleyville
in 1993. There was a lot of open space. We watched outside our
kitchen window as new houses sprouted up and young families moved
into our cul-de-sac. In the evenings our families, kids and dogs
would sit on our front lawns. The neighborhood dads made beer
together. We had regular Fourth of July barbecues and fireworks.
When friends or relatives flew in, we would wait for the plane
to fly overhead, jump in the car and be at the airport in time
to greet them. When my wife's aunt visited, she wanted to see
the tallest totem pole in the world. "Well, I'll be!"
she said in her Texas drawl.
When our son started playing
Little League, we could hear Coach Lonn's boom-box voice reverberate
from a just few blocks away, not far from the totem pole, so
we always knew how practice was faring. We watched on opening
day as kids in uniforms of all colors of the rainbow stood on
the infield, said the pledge, had our own Coast Guard helicopter
fly-over, and then listened to the cry, "Play ball!"
On game day you could sit with your neighbors and friends in
the stands, watch your kids, and always catch up with the local
gossip at the snack shack.
Our family could drive for seven
minutes and walk for an hour along Clam Beach, let our yellow
lab frolic in the ocean, and never have to worry about a crowd.
And we always enjoyed watching our kids march down Central Avenue
each year for Pony Express Days.
There was a good deal of Norman
Rockwell in the life we'd been privileged to live. But our eyes
weren't closed to how quickly the community was growing, and
how the difficult questions of development and of incorporation
were central to the long-term health of McKinleyville, whose
rural atmosphere was so appealing. We saw old families move out
and new families move in. We saw families break up. There are
things that occur that divide communities and things that bring
communities together. We are no different in these respects than
any growing community anywhere in the United States.
When our 9-year-old daughter,
Camilla, was diagnosed two months ago with leukemia, our world
changed. One day Camilla was racing down the basketball court;
the next day her mother and I huddled around her in a hospital
bed in San Francisco with a team of doctors, nurses and social
workers explaining how her life and ours would be different.
And while her potential for cure is high, we understand how difficult
it will be for her and our family in the next years.
Immediately, we were inundated
with telephone calls from friends in the neighborhood, the schools
and in the community with offers of help. Flowers, balloons and
stuffed animals started arriving at Children's Hospital. A caravan
of friends, neighbors and schoolmates from McKinleyville came
to San Francisco -- so many that for a week we were almost never
without visitors.
Judy Johnston, our daughter's
fourth-grade teacher at Dow's Prairie School, drove down on her
break with a carload of pictures and gifts from all the fourth-grade
classes, including a 4-foot stuffed rabbit buckled beside her
in the passenger seat, allowing her to make good time driving
in the carpool lanes. By the end of the week, there was so much
stuff in my daughter's hospital room people mistook it for the
gift shop.
Meanwhile, neighbors arranged
for dinners to be delivered for six weeks in advance and came
by to help decorate and clean our house for my daughter's homecoming.
Once Camilla was home, Mrs. Johnston came by the house on a regular
basis to check on her and tutor her. Our daughter's basketball
team had her number (#7) stitched on their uniforms and sent
a giant photo of the team pointing to her number. Parents videotaped
the games for us to watch. Friends, close and casual, coaches,
teachers and parents offered to help raise funds and donate time,
services, hair for wigs, and blood. Families whom we'd barely
known through community activities five years previous called
and asked if they could help. It didn't matter, rich or poor,
young or old, single or married -- everyone showed us the face
of a community that truly cared, offering love, concern, support
and prayers. My wife kept saying in astonishment, "But Dick,
we barely know them."
When we moved to McKinleyville
in 1993 it was a community that already had a tradition, an identity,
a history and local pride. We were the "new arrivals"
in the '90s looking for a place to live our version of the American
Dream -- not to have the most expensive house or car, but to
live with dignity and values. We saw McKinleyville as a growing
community -- a place that offered good schools, access to parks
and the ocean, helpful and friendly local merchants and the promise
of a life oriented toward families. Little did we know how truly
lucky we were -- for ultimately, community is defined by the
goodwill and love of its people.
Dick Stull is an HSU professor
and a poet who has performed at the Morris Graves and other venues.
Some Principles for a
Writing Community -- by
Jim Dodge
Because
writers spend their defining hours alone with their own imaginations
in rooms full of language, it seems almost foolishly hopeful
to speak of a North Coast literary community, especially considering
the North Coast lacks a metropolitan center where the literati
can gather. In fact, during the 40 years that I've considered
myself a North Coast writer, I've been drawn to the relative
isolation of these west-slope Coast Range watersheds precisely
because I would rather write than talk about writing, and I know
many others who share that sensibility. Like me, they either
intuit or have learned from experiences elsewhere that literary
scenes, with rare exception, consume more light than they produce.
For instance, I did my undergraduate
work behind the Redwood Curtain, starting as a fisheries major
at HSU and then attending the notorious University of Iowa Writers'
Workshop. During my time there, Iowa City was a scene, not a
community, and I saw such a Shakespearean "expense of spirit
and a waste of shame," and so many young writers damaged,
that I soon retreated to the coastal hills near the headwaters
of the Gualala to live on a small commune while I worked on my
chops. I'd learned enough through schooling to learn more on
my own, and I worked on poems and poetry every night, and through
readings and correspondence -- many involving old writing friends
in Arcata -- I kept in touch with those of my kind.
Out of my 40 years of experience,
I've evolved some definite ideas about writing communities, which
I'm only too glad to share:
1. A writing community is much
healthier than a writing scene, though perhaps not as exciting.
2. Poetry (all writing for that
matter) is greater than any individual practitioner.
3. The first job of a writing
community is to write; the second is to write well. The energies
of the writing community are best focused on those two tasks.
4. There is no "best"
writer in any community. Writers should aspire to excellence,
and beyond excellence, judgment is really a matter of taste or
interest. Time will decide whose work passes to succeeding generations,
for as Steinbeck so eloquently noted, "Time is the only
critic without ambition."
5. Anyone who tells you poetry
must be written a certain way, or stories told in a certain fashion,
especially if the preferred aesthetic is based upon a French
literary theory, a political position, or some particularly twisted
expression of envy, that person should be summarily executed.
However, because a writing community should be marked by a mercy
equal to its understanding, anyone who claims there is only one
path to the mountain should be properly chastised and then ignored.
Art is always open, and that you can only say the truth beautifully
in your own voice and from your own vantage is the very predication
of an arts community.
6. Criticism is essential for
improvement, and is especially important early on the path. You
should tell the truth, but you should do so like a great teacher,
with abundant generosity and clear, constructive alternatives,
and always temper the truth with tact.
7. Respect each other and respect
the art. Fulfill your debt of gratitude to the elders by helping
those who follow you. Remember and believe what Robert Duncan
said so well: "We are all working on the same song."
Do your part to the best of your ability.
8. A writing community is made
up of writers. Journalists are writers. Secretaries are writers.
The second-grader working on his essay, "Our Friend, the
Beaver," is a writer. All welcome. No snobbery.
9. A literary community is composed
of the writers/speakers and the reader/listeners. If you
speak, also learn to listen. Writing is a collaborative act of
imagination with another human being through the medium of language.
Writers should never forget that they can be no better than their
best reader. That knowledge, along with the stars, should be
enough to keep one humble.
Jim Dodge is the author of FUP,
Not Fade Away, and Stone Junction, as well as a number
of books of poetry. Since 1995, he has
been Assistant Professor and
Director of the Creative Writing Program in the department of
English at Humboldt State University.
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