Open Spaces Newsletter, Fall 2011

Dear Reader,

What follows is a newsletter in several sections.

The first is a little tale of a failed escape albeit with some compensations.

The second is an update of Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest, including a few anecdotes from author readings, some quotes from the book, and a link to additional information (content, authors' bios, where to get it both in book and Kindle format, etc.). We are quite proud of this beautiful book published by the University of Washington Press, and suggest that it makes a nice gift for yourself and other thoughtful readers you may know.

The third is a link to a new posting called “Anatomy of an Accident” by Emory Bundy, relating an unfortunate meeting of bicycle and car and thoughts that flow from it.

The last section offers some links for those interested specifically in literature, law, politics, and getting away more successfully than we did.

All best to you and yours,

The folks at www.open-spaces.com

So there we were, caught in just the latest of a series of disasters--this one as we were later told the result of a flaw in the design, rather like a miniature version of the economic and political nightmare we had been trying so hard to escape.

Now “trying” was refocused to just getting back to shore safety, so my captain husband lowered himself into the small, inflatable dinghy, and with the bow line secured under his foot, proceeded to row the disabled sailboat back to the mooring. The success of this venture was far from a given. There was a current just beyond our disabled vessel, and the tide was running. There were ferries and tankers and barges coming and going. Against these challenges, strength and confidence finally won the day.

Still, it was with considerable disappointment that we lugged our gear back onshore, and helplessly watched our means of temporary escape being towed away by a little tug named appropriately “Vessel Rescue.”

My husband has been a lover of boats since childhood, when at age thirteen, he sent away to Boys' Life for plans and built himself a sailing surfboard. In this love, he clearly has much company, from John Steinbeck in The Log from the Sea of Cortez , leant by a friend, “Some have said they have felt a boat shudder before she struck a rock, or cry when she beached and the surf poured into her. This is not mysticism, but identification;….” To E.B. White in The Sea and the Wind that Blows, “Waking or sleeping I dream of boats—usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail” to John Updike in Hugging the Shore, “Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.”

Unlike my husband, I started life as a dry-lander, fond of the feel of solid earth beneath my feet, but excited by the challenge of a new adventure and believing that to love someone is to support their dreams, I agreed to pooling our savings for our first boat--a 470 class sailing dinghy complete with harness and trapeze--and soon learned to “hike out” thereby turning into human ballast. Then something happened. Leaning out over the water, only the soles of my feet on the gunwale, feeling the boat lift and plane, spray in the face and the top of the mast bobbing against the clear, blue sky filled me with joy.

The ride is slightly slower these days, a little less athletic, but the gliding away from the cares onshore into the harmony of wind and water, and the creatures of sea and sky still brings peace to the heart. For sailing is more than an escape, a running from; it is a return to roots, a time-out to be in harmony with the rest of the natural world.

The view from shore was still magnificent, but watching is not the same as doing, so we checked back in. The first set of headlines to hit us announced a spate of protests around the country, that each pundit and leader of a pressure group immediately began interpreting according to his or her own particular soapbox, quoting protesters signs and comments to prove their points: “I'm a human being, not a commodity.” “Our movement is too big to fail.” “I'm part of the 99%” and “How do we pick ourselves up when Wall Street is stealing our bootstraps?” to name a few.

Yet in the bakery, at the hardware store, walking along the street, we heard a different set of themes: “Why do they keep playing political games when people are suffering?” “Why do we get entertainment instead of information and slogans instead of action; do they think we're idiots?” “I do my job everyday; why can't they do theirs?” “Why are single issues and identity politics all we ever hear about? Who is looking after the common good?”

We shall see.

In the meantime, the rains have come again, darkness descends early in the evening, and there is a chill in the morning air, but the grass browned in the summer sun is suddenly green again, and there are some sun breaks in the autumn sky, holding out the promise of rainbow days and the pure pleasure of armchair reading and reflection ahead.

Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest

Contributors continue to participate in readings and public conversations, where they have been enjoying meeting people engaged by the book. Many of these readers expressed their appreciation to the writers for pieces that provide “context,” “credible information,” and “ways to use what we know;” still others have talked of being moved on a more personal level: the young mother who spoke of the comfort of “Deadheading,” a piece on the value of ordinary tasks, the accomplished professional encouraged to rekindle an old love by an essay on trying “Ballet in Bifocals,” the corporate head who gives a copy of the book to all those contemplating a move to the Northwest so that “they understand the spirit of the place,” and the parents whose child living miles away referred to the book as “like a letter from home.”

At an event for the book at Powell's Books in Portland, Kim Stafford followed his reading from his piece, “Calling the Past into the Future with Stories”-- about the stories told to him by an older Native American friend--with an anecdote about driving this friend back to his home country in eastern Oregon. (The agreement was that Kim would drive; his friend would tell stories.) On the way, a hawk flew towards them, and his friend said that when the shadow of a hawk passes over your car, all your past transgressions are erased. We left hopeful at the possibility, but a little worried about cars going down roads in all directions trying to get under the wings of a hawk.

Below are some samples of the variety, depth, humor and beauty of a few pieces included in Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest:

Mount Everest is not Mount Rainier. Even so Everest and Rainier have much in common, including the opportunity for tragedy. An example with great personal meaning was the death of my friend, Willi Unsoeld, on Mount Rainier in 1979. In March of that year, Willi and a student from Evergreen State College were buried in an avalanche while the group Willi was leading were attempting to descend during a storm. Willi and I had shared many summits together, including Everest's. Such moments when nature is calling the shots are not limited to the Himalayan giants but are part and parcel of an uncertain destiny in many settings.

--Tom Hornbein, “Life is a Mountain,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest

I want to be a woman of purpose, to mash the bowl of berries and to fill the solid glass jars with the wildness and the sweetness, months of eating that can trickle down my kids' chins, just the way the milk once did. Food is love, my mother said.

--Sandra Dorr, “Blackberries,” Open Spaces: voices from the Northwest

‘Can't you talk to them?' she asked, referring to the newest owners of a nearby tear-down (about to build a huge new home obstructing the views of their neighbors). ‘Can't they see they are making a mistake?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'we can talk to them, but no, they can't see they are making a mistake. They are too young, and they have the money to do what they want; the combination seems to make people oblivious.'

--Eric Redman, “One's View of Mount Rainier,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

Among their many gifts to Anglo American settlers, the region's Native inhabitants transmitted their memories of convulsive temblors, huge sea waves, and mountains that thundered and blazed, manifestations of the irresistible forces that rule nature and impose limits on human striving.

--Stephen L. Harris, “Volcanoes and Superquakes,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

The historian Barbara Tuchman once observed that as you look through the long course of history, at all the civilizations that have come and gone, you find that despite their great differences in culture and achievement, whatever different things they did best, they did the same thing worst, and that was government. You look at a historic culture that's perfectly competent in art, in commerce, in architecture, and if you were to ask them how they govern themselves, you would get something like, 'we give absolute power to a dimwit because he's the oldest son of the homicidal maniac who used to be in charge.'

--William D.Ruckelshaus, “Science and Public Policy: The Twain Must Meet,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

When a judge is swayed by his own sentiment rather than considerations of deference, predictability, and uniformity, he fails by definition to apply the law faithfully. This is the essence of judicial activism.

--Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, “On Judicial Activism,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

But in this greening place of ashes and springs, I begin to understand that time cannot move in a circle, coming again to where it was before. Time sweeps in a spiral, going round and round again—the cycles of the seasons, the flow of the cold springs, the growth of a forest or a child, but never returns to the same place.

And shouldn't I be grateful for this? That birds will nest in the Davis Lake basin, even though that particular pair of owlets will never fly again. Trees will grow beside the creek, as my grandchildren will grow on the green-banked stream. Willow thickets will tremble with morning ice, the songs of red-winged blackbirds, the slow unfolding of next year's dragonfly's wings. And we who love this world will tremble with the beauty of the spiral that has brought us here and the mystery of the spiral that will carry us away.

--Kathleen Dean Moore, “Fire and Water,” Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

We aren't much given to irony or alienation.  We're given to the possibility of Redemption. 

-- John Daniel, "Writing West," Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest. 

Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest Events

Penny Harrison will be talking with readers and signing books at Griffin Bay Books in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, WA on Saturday, Oct. 22nd from 2-4 p.m.

and

at Darvill's Books in Eastsound, Orcas Island, WA on Sunday, Oct. 23rd from 1-2 p.m.

Enjoy a new article from Emory Bundy about the plight of urban bikers.

Literary Adventures and Opportunities

For current activities of Northwest Association of Book Publishers, visit www.nwabp.org.

For a deeper understanding of the issues behind the headlines, see www.aaupnet.org/booksforunderstanding from the Association of American University Presses.

Political Facts and Polls

For checking the facts of weekly news stories, visit www.FactCheck.org, a site of the Annenberg Public Policy center of the University of Pennsylvania.

For checking the facts of political claims (rated between 1 Pinocchio for a shading of the facts and 4 Pinocchios for whoppers) and submitting your questions to be fact checked, visit The Fact Checker, a blog of the Washington Post.

PolitiFact vets statements made by the campaigns in ads, speeches and debates. The St. Petersburg Times is Florida's largest newspaper and the winner of six Pulitzer Prizes. Washington-based Congressional Quarterly that covers Congress and politics. CQ and the Times are affiliates of the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education in St. Petersburg.

www.nwhiker.com

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