December 28, 2012 · 10:04 PM

A Bookish Year (2012) in Photos

Over the past week, I’ve been realizing how much I have to be proud of this year. My friend who goes by Mudlips over at Peregrination inspired me to post a year in photos like she recently did. I thought it would be tough to fill up the year in photos on both this blog and Bikish without having holes—I was wrong. There were times I was doing more booking than biking, or more biking than booking, but I managed to get at least one photo per month this year of both.

JANUARY

Began my MPub project report, aka Masters thesis, Publishing to Inspire: The Role of Publications at Adventure Cycling Association. My progress threatened to be derailed by someone coming back to rub salt in an old wound, but fortunately my project report didn’t suffer too much as a result.

FEBRUARY

Did some work as an extra on NBC’s show Grimm in February and a couple more times in the spring. This shot was from my first day on the set, when we weren’t released until about 11:30pm that very chilly night. The second and third shoot days were much more interesting, but they don’t like people taking photos on the set so I kept it to a minimum.

MARCH

Putting the finishing touches on my project report. Those almonds inspired a blog post.

APRIL

7174197632_70eedc5fdb_o

Traveled to Vancouver and turned in my thesis! Closed my bank account, and even found a “I ❤ NB” T-shirt for Linnet at my favo(u)rite Vancouver thrift shop.

MAY

Visited Trappist Abbey Bookbindery thrice. The final visit resulted in my picking up a library-bound copy of my project report! Atticus and I also discovered their grounds make for a great hike.

JUNE

Graduated! Unfortunately due to yet another error on SFU’s part, I didn’t get to go to graduation. At the end of the month, I gave an hour-long presentation about my project report at Central Library in Portland. I had 10 attendees, a couple of whom I hadn’t met before. A woman I know who regularly gives free talks to the public says that was an amazing turnout for my first time.

JULY

Took Atticus to one of the most remote spots I know in Oregon for the July 4th weekend, to get away from fireworks. Not only did I get this photo, which I think is my favorite photo of Atticus to date, but I started reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Before I started reading I didn’t have high expectations, but it turned out to be the most memorable book I read all year. A new favorite.

AUGUST

Combined my love of bikes and books one afternoon at the Reed Library. The final product can be seen on the Super Relax website.

SEPTEMBER

There were more bookish happenings in September than helping Portland Fruit Tree Project harvest 14,000 pounds of pears in Hood River. For example, my high school friend Courtney Miller Santo hit Powell’s Hawthorne promoting her debut novel, The Roots of the Olive Tree. But—Bartlett pears! Hood River! The setting was fantastic, the weather warm but not hot, and the pears I tested were so delicious. How could I not include a photo?

OCTOBER

Finally met the woman behind The Doris Diaries, Julia Park Tracey, at History Pub. Also started my new job! RMLS pays me to write official communications, manage all their publications and social media, and drink jasmine tea and root beer all day. They’re really nice and did I mention, I’m now paid to write and edit things? It’s like my advanced degree actually got me somewhere!

NOVEMBER

Atticus and I continued our hiking project in November, when this photo was taken.

DECEMBER

Mad Libs, anyone? My mother gifted me a pad of “Undead Mad Libs” on Halloween, complete with a googly-eyed spoof of the Twilight movies on the cover. In December I started forcing people to play, and six people helped me complete all the stories in just a few weeks. Thanks to Sarah and Josh in Missoula, Emily, Ceri, and my mom for participating. : )

One thing you can definitely say: Kick More Ass? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

1 Comment

Filed under books

Tagged as , , , ,

December 23, 2012 · 9:00 AM

Happy Holidays from Bookish

Happy holidays from Bookish!

I hope my readers—hi, spambots!—are having an excellent holiday season filled with opportunities to enjoy an engaging book next to a fire or under a blanket.

Things have been crazy at Bookish HQ the last two months, resulting in few new blog posts. This trend may continue—Bookish may soon be embarking on a capital campaign and/or finding a new HQ. These things do not come easy, but the blogging will continue whenever possible.

I’ve been doing some reflecting on literary themes as well, and hope to serve up a year-in-review next week. Watch for it!

There is a bit of a story behind the photo. Earlier this week the Chicago Manual of Style released a guide to making a CMOS mini-book ornament. When I decided to take a few minutes on Friday morning to make one, I discovered a contest they were running. A half hour later, I had a garland of mini-CMOSes and a photo that they shared online. 

Leave a comment

Filed under books

Tagged as , ,

November 14, 2012 · 8:28 PM

I Need a Copyedit, Charlie Brown!

Yes, this is real. Normally I wouldn’t bother posting something like this, but it’s sad to see everyone’s favorite beagle can write a la Edward Bulwer-Lytton but struggles with the greengrocers’ apostrophe. It happens to the best of us, little guy!

As of press time, no statement on the issue had been released from Snoopy’s spokesbird.

Leave a comment

Filed under books, dogs

Tagged as , , ,

November 11, 2012 · 6:00 PM

Gonzo Blogging

Surely you’ve visited Bookish and wondered, ‘who writes this crap?’ Perhaps you saw a post that had a missing “the” or a sentence with a subject-verb agreement issue. Yep, I’ve spotted those too.

Given you are a bookish audience, you’re likely also familiar with Hunter S. Thompson and his “gonzo journalism.” In a complete misappropriation of the term, I often think of and refer to my blogging activities as gonzo blogging.

Ideally, a piece of writing goes through some amount of editorial work before it is published. The piece is drafted, revisited, copyedited, and scheduled for publication. Usually there is at least one reader aside from the writer. The longer it takes from first draft to publication, and the more eyes that see it, usually the more polished the final piece can be.

Not here at Bookish!

More often than not, Bookish posts tend to get written in minuscule pockets of time, and published almost immediately. If I revisit the post hours or days later, copy problems will often jump out at me and I’ll fix them. That’s the magic of the internet: once something is “published,” you can change it pretty easily.

Why are we all about gonzo blogging here at Bookish?

Like the little blue guy above, I like to throw myself whole-heartedly into an idea when real inspiration strikes (“lunatic daring”), but there’s usually not a lot of time. If the inspiration has passed by the time I’m able to sit down and work, I usually write about something else. (Or watch IT Crowd videos on YouTube.) But if I do have a pocket of time, watch out! Over at Bikish I recently wrote a piece about the death of Working Kirk Reeves (aka “trumpet guy”) in about an hour.

Blogging is also a way to continue developing my non-professional writing skills, and promote projects I’m working on. Perhaps someday my blogging will need to step it up a few notches as the audience builds, but for now launching my motorcycle into the rafters at a moment’s notice is just fine by me.

(Apologies and much ‘don’t sue me’ boot-kissing to Disney, new corporate overlords of the patron saint of Bookish.)

Leave a comment

Filed under history

Tagged as , , ,

November 9, 2012 · 12:00 PM

It’s Not Quite There Yet: The Right Story for the Right Time

Recently I got myself into yet another sticky situation.

My friend Temple organizes a regular storytelling event in Vancouver, WA (aka The Couve). Anecdotal Evidence features several people who tell true stories related in some way to a pre-determined theme. She had posted the theme for that month’s event on Facebook: “You want me to WHAT?”

That has been the theme of the last few years of my life, as it turns out. Given ten minutes I could fill pages with examples of being expected to perform feats of great strength over the last few years. I had gotten myself into these situations more often than not, but I had gotten through everything pretty well considering.

“Um…me?” I commented on Temple’s Facebook post.

Temple took to the idea of me doing her event like wolves to the meat in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s underwear, and that was that. I figured out how to work preparation into my schedule, and there it sat while I took care of other projects.

I gave myself about a week to prepare. Each time I sat down to work, anxiety started bubbling up from my gut. One afternoon I utilized the assistance of a friend to brainstorm, and then sent Temple a list of potential story ideas. She was keen on the two that my brainstorm buddy was also most excited about. One of those two had the potential to be uproariously hilarious and personally empowering. It would also have sent me straight to hell…but I would have loved every minute.

However. This story was very, very messy, and I just couldn’t put it together the right way in time. I brainstormed some notes, which my usually very supportive, very trusted brainstorm friend said weren’t hitting the mark. I tried to make myself sit and BE FUNNY, DAMMIT, but it just wasn’t happening. Instead I was sad and very, very angry.

Less than 24 hours before I was supposed to be performing in front of an audience of strangers, I decided to switch my story. The new story was about puppies. Everybody loves puppies, right? There’d be no way I could bomb, because everybody loves puppies.

The evening of the show, I stayed late at work to prepare my material a little. Over the course of an hour and a half I prepared notes and told the story to two coworkers. I printed out photos (here and here) to show to the audience members. Because EVERYBODY LOVES PUPPIES, RIGHT?

Then I went over to The Couve and told my story to a full room. Sadly I didn’t catch a lot of the audience’s reaction–I was putting more attention into remembering which details came next. All I really remember was fearing I had sobered up the room by mentioning the dead puppy in the story (uh-oh), and people laughing at one thing I intended as funny, and one instance of people laughing at me.

But then I showed the photos. And let me tell you: everybody loves puppies.

– – – –

One of my MPub instructors often used the phrase “it’s not quite there yet.” That was his way of remaining supportive of an idea while saying something still needed work. My other story is obviously not quite there yet.

It’s likely not quite there yet because it’s not the right time. This story is part of a larger epic that makes me furious on a daily basis. It makes me want to go to the internets and say “look everyone, look how I got the short end of the stick despite being a really good person.”

It would probably work better in written form—possibly even a full-length memoir. The problem: when you are completely invisible as a human being to your intended audience, you believe your effort is useless.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

November 4, 2012 · 5:00 AM

Hiking by the Book: 100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I needed a new goal to tackle, ideally some sort of physical activity I could do with Atticus. It seemed pretty natural to buy a copy of William Sullivan’s classic 100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon and make a goal of checking off every hike in the book. William Sullivan has a booth at Wordstock each year, so I bought my copy from the hiking guru himself a few weekends ago, which he signed for me.

Not long before our first planned hike, I did the (very easy) math. Even if we tackled one hike per week it would take nearly two years to work our way through this book. That’s quite a commitment for a “fun” goal!

Not to mention that this book includes such “hikes” as climbing Mount St. Helens. Doing that requires obtaining a permit, as only a certain number of people are admitted up per day. Mount St. Helens is only considered a difficult hike because climbers don’t usually need mountaineering equipment, but it does count as climbing a glaciated peak which will earn you entrance into Mazamas.

Another daunting hike in the book: Nesmith Point. I’ve dreamt about someday hiking to Nesmith Point, but imagining myself doing so as “just another hike” seems unrealistic. This is a route that is used by mountaineers in the off-season for training. It’s some pretty serious climbing: 3706′ in about 5 miles. YIKES.

So far I’ve done two hikes, both with Atticus. Not all of the hike locations allow dogs. Since I’m now needing to leave him alone five days a week I’ve been choosing hikes on which he can accompany me.

We went to Memaloose Lake and South Fork Mountain on Atticus’ birthday a couple of weekends ago. Hiking to the scenic lake was fairly uneventful, but the additional mile from the lake (where the snowline was) to the summit was a bit trickier. Not only was the trail unmaintained, but the snow occasionally left me puzzling where the trail went. Eventually we did make it to the top. We even managed to find the four foundation pieces for the old fire lookout despite the snow!

The following weekend we took a hike in the Columbia River Gorge that we’ve done at least a few times before: the Horsetail Falls/Oneonta Gorge loop. In the past we’ve hiked it when there was snow and ice on the ground, so this was pretty uneventful except for seeing all the gorgeous fall foliage in the gorge.

One trail I’d like to do, which parallels the Clackamas River for over seven miles, requires a buddy with a second car (or over 14 miles of hiking) which is kind of difficult for me to secure. And some of the in-town hikes, like Oaks Bottom, are positively blasé—Atticus and I could save those for the worst of Portland’s winter weather and do perfectly okay. Now and again I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have bought Sullivan’s Hiking Oregon’s History instead.

Am I going to continue working on these hikes? I’m largely undecided. So far they’ve been a good way to get out of town and have a nice outing with Atticus once a week. Adventure, new ideas, and exercise have been the best benefits so far, and until the trail conditions outweigh those, I imagine we’ll keep up with it as much as we can.

1 Comment

Filed under books, dogs

Tagged as , , , ,

October 13, 2012 · 8:19 PM

Kindness to Strangers at “a Convention for Introverts”: Wordstock 2012

Wordstock and I go way back. Portland’s annual literary festival introduced me to the MPub program, and it was at Wordstock I met Peter Sagal, for starters. I’ve been going pretty consistently since 2006, except the last two years when I was away from Portland. Naturally then, I was quite excited to get back to Wordstock this weekend!

The day was very nearly derailed before it even really began. In the morning I was feeling crummy, but that mostly dissipated while biking to the Oregon Convention Center. Once on site, I found the nearest ticket booth and started rifling around in my bag for my wallet.

It was soon my turn at the window, but I was still looking for my wallet. Where was my wallet? Teetering on the edge of a very bad day, I excused myself from the ticket area and walked toward a quiet area where I could keep looking, and start strategizing. Biking the hour back home and another hour back was not how I had planned to spend the day.

Behind me, a voice called out “excuse me…!”

Before I knew it, a random woman was offering me a ticket. She spoke of wishing more people would do nice things for strangers. Incredulous, I told her nobody had ever done any such thing for me and gave her a hug. She handed me the ticket and started walking back toward the crowd. When I finally did find my wallet (it had shifted to the back of my bag), I walked toward the crowd to see if I could catch her. I did! And I offered all the cash I had in my wallet—a paltry $3. I think sometime I shall try this “being nice to a random stranger” business—even though my wallet wasn’t actually back at home, her kindness completely floored me and turned my day around.

Inside, Wordstock was its lovely, literary self. Their theme this year seemed to be vice—describing the festival a “book-fueled bender.” The exhibit hall even sported a “red chair district” that was an 18-and-over area with romance writers, a hotel, and SheBop, the local sex toy/erotica store.

At the Friends of Multnomah County Library booth, I bought a copy of The Help for $1.50—paid by check because of course, I had given away all of my cash. At William Sullivan’s booth, I purchased the most revised edition of his 100 Hikes in Northwestern Oregon. I’ve been thinking about working through all the hikes in order to resurrect Adventure Saturday (shout out if you’d like to join me on any!). I also picked up a free arts preview magazine called Artslandia, which aims to provide a unified season guide for all the major performing arts organizations in Portland.

Then, there was the CNN truck, where I got angry at Anderson Cooper and threatened to deck him!

Okay, not really. But I did get a photo print and an electronic version of this photo to download. Visitors brave enough to step into an enormous truck at the back of the hall were offered to have a photo of them debating either presidential nominee. As Elly was later musing, people don’t generally want a photo of the nominee they don’t like, and indeed—I wanted Obama in my photo instead of Mittens.

Then I happened upon a vaguely familiar face in a Boston Red Sox cap, running a homey booth with a dining table, cookies, and shelves full of handmade books. As it turns out, it was my long-lost MHS classmate Jake Wasson! I think the best way to describe his project, The Storybank Exchange,  is literary conceptual art—he envisions a world where your work is your currency, tangible and made by each individual. He has made many books out of various found objects, and even constructed a homemade e-reader this way (in jest, of course)!

At the end of the day I snuggled into the Stealing Time Magazine booth to participate in their flash memoir contest. Headed by the lovely Sarah Gilbert and aimed at literary-minded parents, Stealing Time is just getting off the ground and features some notable parents in its first issue, including Steve Almond. As a non-parent, I chose to write my flash memoir about Atticus—I’m sure it won’t win, but in my world, Atticus is the closest thing to a child I’m ever going to get.

It turns out that wasn’t the only time I’d write about Atticus. The Attic Institute had a booth with another writing contest—a prompt was randomly selected, and the participant had nine minutes to create and submit a story on one of two of their provided laptops. Unfortunately the prompt I drew was ominous, so poor Atticus didn’t fare well in my story.

Year after year, I’ve come out of Wordstock energized and happy, even when I’ve gone in feeling low. Perhaps it’s the low-key energy combined with plenty of opportunity to show my nerdy side that keeps me coming back. As one of the Stealing Time staffers said, “it’s like a convention for introverts.”

See more photos from Wordstock 2012.

Leave a comment

Filed under books

Tagged as ,

September 25, 2012 · 8:18 PM

Vintage Library Ads

Generally I try to have more substance than just reposting others’ material, but I just couldn’t keep this one to myself. Bust recently shared a series of vintage library ads and posters which are worth checking out.

Thanks to Coriana, lovely MPub classmate, for sharing!

Leave a comment

Filed under books

Tagged as , , ,

September 16, 2012 · 7:00 PM

Geeking Out on The Doris Diaries

Damn!! I’m beginning to rebel. I crave adventures. I want to live. Not merely exist. -Doris Bailey Murphy, age 17

One thing you may not know about me, at least through this blog, is that I am a bonafide history detective. (In fact, at one point I almost got to work as a researcher on History Detectives.) When presented with a historical question or problem, my brain can instantly achieve laser focus and not let up for hours. Days, even. This skill has been put to use on scads of educational projects, from Bridging World History to the Muhammad Ali Center. My favorite historical topics are social history (studying traditionally marginalized groups, such as women) and local history.

Meaning it was either fate that I discovered The Doris Diaries, or editor Julia Park Tracey’s worst nightmare.

Twitter suggested I follow @TheDorisDiaries one evening, and soon I was engrossed in short quotes from the diaries of Doris Bailey Murphy, a 17 year old girl who lived here in Portland in the 1920s. When she died, a lifetime’s worth of diaries were entrusted to her great-niece, Julia Park Tracey. When I discovered the feed was advance publicity for I’ve Got Some Lovin’ to Do: The Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen 1925-1926, I was chomping at the bit to read the entire book. Doris has totally captivated my imagination.

Readers are introduced to a spunky teen in this volume. The daughter of a well-off Portland architect, Doris regularly skips school, bangs up the family’s car, and goes necking with a string of boys. She curses. Eventually she is plucked out of Lincoln High School for a more structured religious school, St. Helens Hall (now Oregon Episcopal School). Come summer she is wrangling at a dude ranch in Central Oregon, where she rescues a horse near death and sneaks into off-limits buildings. Naturally she keeps adding to a long list of infatuations which are enumerated and ranked in her diary.

One mystery man haunts these entries: Micky. He is the handsome classmate that Doris mentions again and again, melodramatically imagining his fate after he is expelled from Lincoln High School, and sighing wistfully over his whereabouts:

I’m never going to kiss another boy. I’m going to have nothing more to do with them, because I’ve discovered the only one. He is my aim in life. I shall keep my lips fresh and clean only for him, and SOMEDAY he’ll come back. -May 11, 1926

[Ed. note: five days later, on May 16, Doris was kissing another crush, Jack Hibbard, in the back seat of a car.]

One thing is lacking in the book: a confirmed photo of Micky. A mystery! Naturally then, at 5:00am I started hunting down an archive that would have a 1925 Lincoln High School yearbook. Surely it would have a photo of Micky, right? And this history detective could help close a case! Archives aren’t open before sunrise on Sunday though, but Ebay was—I found the listing linked above, shared it with the author, and shortly after receiving her enthusiastic response, noticed the listing is now sold. 🙂

While the diaries mostly revolve around Doris’ love life, a number of place references are sprinkled throughout. Doris regularly visits her best friend who lives in Oak Grove. She swims at The Oaks (now Oaks Park) and notices the traffic congestion due to the opening of the Hollywood Theater. Doris even visited my alma mater, Milwaukie High School, on April 12, 1926! That was when the main building was just one year old.

This volume only covers about a year and a half of Doris’ life, but I’m hooked. It sounds like she only got more interesting as she matured. Eventually Doris went to Reed College—my friendly neighborhood institution of higher learning. True to Reed form, she shocked the community by interviewing prostitutes for her thesis work, and graduated in 1938. Later she became involved with labor union issues and eventually married famous Wobbly Joe Murphy. Two years before her death she wrote a memoir, Love and Labor. (Reed ran a profile in their magazine with a photo!) Mature Doris was just as spunky as her younger self, known for owning a pair of condom earrings and being “blunt, interested to the point of intrusiveness” among her family. After an amazing life, Doris died in 2011 at age 101.

Julia Park Tracey will be presenting The Doris Diaries at History Pub on October 15th. Help me cheer her on that evening at Kennedy School from 7-9:30pm!

4 Comments

Filed under books, history

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 15, 2012 · 5:00 PM

Does Forbes Hate Young People?

Forbes recently ran a couple of pieces online that made my eyes bulge out of my head. “Is Gen Y Underemployed—Or Just Lazy?” was followed by “Dude, Where’s My Student Loan Bailout?” Both pieces paint fairly unflattering portraits of the younger generation.

The first article summarizes some recently released studies, using some quotes that generally seem to make sense. They state that younger workers dislike large corporations and prefer to work in smaller firms with more flexibility, and where their entrepreneurial desires may be given room to flourish. Sounds about right to me! The writer attempts a few jabs at the young throughout, but attempts a surprising knockout in the conclusion:

Though this report says that this is a strong indicator of the underemployment issue in the US today, it seems more like a strong indicator of a generation with an issue of entitlement and extreme laziness – despite the opportunities that await them.

Of course Forbes is probably playing to their demographic (Uncle Moneybags), but there seem to be a lot of other explanations. If the writer had explored the number of US firms outsourcing their labor, taken a look at the scant job listings in local newspapers, or explored market saturation of people with college degrees, maybe an article with more serious exploration of the issue would have materialized. These seem to be pretty obvious factors to the people I regularly talk to.

Nah. It’s that lazy young generation with their long hair and their rock ‘n’ roll music, skipping out on Vietnam. I mean…with their internets. Isn’t that right, Mr. Rockefeller?

(Before his estate sues me, please know that Mr. Rockefeller’s appearance in today’s post is thanks to our friends at the Library of Congress, who provide public domain images to lazy young people such as myself!)

In the second piece, the writer uses current statistics about student loan repayments to paint an equally dark portrait of recent grads. Because the current default rate is 8.8% (and it would be higher if they included those in forbearance), and many grads expressed support for more forgiveness opportunities (if you work in the Peace Corps or teach at a Headstart program for two years, you can get small amounts forgiven on your Stafford loans), this means that recent grads are all a bunch of entitled good-for-nothings. To quote my friend Cat (a recent graduate herself), “I don’t know anyone who is trying to ‘get out of’ their student loans…they pay their loan payments even when they can’t or won’t pay other stuff.”

Personally speaking, I’ve always been eager to pay down the principal of my student loans, so I’ll pay less in interest over the years. This approach allowed me to pay off $25,000 in debt in about six years (instead of the usual ten) after my undergraduate work. At the moment though, I am about a month and a half away from my first graduate loan payment—and I’m living (with extreme frugality) off my savings while taking any temporary work I can. It’s slightly terrifying.

Two other things seem surprising when considering these articles. First, both the writers appear to be early career, meaning they are in fact insulting themselves. Second, why is Forbes running these pieces on the internet, where they invite a deluge of criticism from the very people they are insulting? A quick scan of the comments confirms that the vast majority are from young people defending themselves. Everybody knows that those lazy good-for-nothing youngsters won’t pay newsstand price, and Uncle Moneybags is afraid of people stealing his identity if he is connected on those internets.

What say you, Bookish reader? Are we lazy nogoodniks or does Forbes just hate young people? And do you think they would like me more if I dressed like Alex P. Keaton?

1 Comment

Filed under history

Tagged as , , ,