In the initial job description, if there had actually been one, I would have been doing some basic reporting, including the lead for Crossroads, the weekly religion tab section we ran on Saturdays.
I was also working nights and weekends, including one Saturday or Sunday night when I wound up in the copy desk slot rather the rim after Belcher handed it over to me after he had had it with superiors’ memos. We finished pasteup with one minute before the 12:30 deadline. I’m a whiz.
My basic schedule seems to have been day shifts, 10-7 tues-fri, then late weekend Saturdays while Gil’s in slot. So I do scrub work on advertising-driven special sections and love it … He’s appreciating my willingness and flexibility … he asked about weekend slot, “Kent was in Sat.” and then asked if I was comfortable there, adding he has plans … so things looking good (did new TV listings logo last night, it’s OK) …
One reporter’s husband had Keogh as his PhD chairman at IU… turns out Rash is the top man in his field in the country, yet one more humble Quaker in my exposure.
In retrospect, the early office was more conflicted than I recalled … my erratic hours did give me most Mondays off …
Kent’s big dream, with me being assigned much of the effort, was a weekly outdoors tab to be called Action Northwest. At this stretch, it was still in the early planning stage.
Essentially, I was learning the local ropes first.
My journal entries from the Yakima years weave together — or more accurately jump among — a half-dozen major fronts in my life. In revisiting these in the upcoming postings, we’ll focus on one front at a time, hoping to gain a little more context of what was happening at the office, at home and my marriage, in the great outdoors, in my literary efforts, in my spiritual life especially as a Quaker, and with a grab bag of extras. The result will mean overlapping the chronology in advancing the timeline, but it’s the best I’m coming up with.
I should introduce Yakima, however briefly, by noting it’s the name of the River and Valley, the County, the City, the Avenue. Sometime after we left, the tribe and its large reservation altered its spelling to set itself apart from all of these other usages. They use Yakama, rather than Yakima. Fair ‘nuff.
Hardly anything grows without irrigation, so water becomes a significant consideration. The economy is principally agricultural — a fifth of the apples sold in the U.S. are raised there, with another fifth in Wenatchee County to the north. Peaches, pears, apricots, cherries, and plums are also prominent, as well as hops for beer brewing, barley, hay, and, after we left, wine vineyards. Cattle, sheep, and horses were the primary livestock, and logging was also a major industry.
It was unlike anyplace I had ever been before. Amazing photo by Tom Fisk at Pexels.
Getting used to the arid landscape was a challenge … “like living on the inside of an ashtray,” as I read somewhere, describing another interior Far West scene.
The big snowy mountain to the west, which we could view almost everywhere, was Mount Adams, which we initially confused with Mount Rainier, which was visible from a few points.
Steve Groom via Wikimedia Commons.
Politically and socially, it was conservative, yet participated in a high level of collective action. Perhaps it was pragmatic more than ideological at the core.
~*~
Produce, produce
clear dry air
and everyone a gardener
It’s amazing how much piles up in a short time. As they say about moving every five years to get clear of unneeded possessions? Here’s what went out in this relocation.
Newspapers pages from places I almost worked.
Notes to myself.
Narrow neckties, worn-out belts.
Love letters and photos.
A wooden finger. Yes, that one.
Rough drafts and manilla folders.
Torn-up mat board.
Crayons.
Cardboard boxes, wrapping, and stuffing paper.
A half ream of employment rejection letters.
Topographic maps of Monroe and Lawrence counties, Indiana.
Also, Catskills trails maps, Upstate New York.
Day campers’ cartoons of “Fat Steve.”
Duplicate copies of my college journalism or the embarrassing mistakes.
~*~
As I also noted:
After three months of unemployment, dejection, and waiting, we’ve made it … to Yakima, WA.
No Friends Meeting, but perhaps someday … Lord will make a way
The first of my extra-long spiral notebooks was a, Citadel, 8-by-12½ medium ruled with a 3-inch wide margin.
Begins on the new moon, 28 June 1976, “as we await our future.”
We were back house-sitting on Harrison Lake, just a sliver of that moon against caps of rosy storm clouds over the hardwood hills at the end of the water, one of a series of lakes backed into the first of the “Brown County mountains.” Elsie Sweeney’s palatial contemporary temple overlooked everything, facing the sunrise. [She was a spinster philanthropist from the Cummins diesel engine family.]
Also:
Nervous about job interview, Center for Law and Poverty. Bought new pants (fancy but I can live with them) and tie. Actually, for Yakima, if that works out but will do the dry run with this.
Indianapolis more active, dressier, cosmopolitan than I’d seen it before. The director was pretty mellow, surprisingly so. The job was $9,500 to $10,500 a year, with four-weeks’ vacation. I would have to develop contacts, write my own material, edit, etc. Doesn’t look too bad, if Yakima doesn’t come through. Some PR and video work, too.
Fourth of July fireworks in Woodsville, after worship in Waynesville earlier in the day. Different corners of the state.
The Quaker meetinghouse in Waynesville, Ohio, in a 1937 photo by E. Schrand and J. Mitchell via Wikimedia Commons.
Waynesville Quakers — Miami Monthly Meeting. The house of worship was built in 1810, during Madison’s administration. It originated with South Carolina Friends (Quakers) who nearly all relocated north in reaction to slaveholding. Many came first to Waynesville and then moved on within western Ohio and all of Indiana. Miami Monthly Meeting held their memberships until new meetings were established, resulting in Waynesville’s being the largest monthly meeting in all of Quakerdom by 1805 and explaining the large size of the house, with three rows of facing benches (the ministers and elders’ gallery). It’s the oldest meeting west of the Alleghenies. (A detail that may allow Friends in Tennessee some leeway.) The meeting was central to the Underground Railroad, I was told.
Worshiping there was a fine way to spend the Fourth of July 1976, the bicentennial of the nation.
Do note, the Underground Railroad was founded and organized in the South.
Followed by limbo
Feeling of hopelessness, of inutility, a faith-draining thing. This waiting, suspension, is costly: can’t send any poems out (mss), we don’t expect to be here long. Kat can’t sign up for summer school, we need the funds and must be prepared to run. Plus the energy lost sending our job applications, etc. the money in samples and resumes (a quarter each) and postage. “We’ll be back to you in a week,” the liars, so polite.
Waiting for mail that doesn’t come, telephones that do not ring.
And then the whirlwind
Weir Cook airport, same rotunda where I departed on my first-ever flight (the Florida Easter). Put together the details for the Yakima trip yesterday afternoon.
Sentimentality now about Daffodil/Bloomington. Figured out what’s bugged me: everyone is so slow — the farmer syndrome.
Is the Waynesville Meeting working its magic again? (The Fostoria job came through after I worshiped there …)
Can we afford the move ($1,000 loan from my parents?). Will all of our goods fit into an 18-foot U-Haul?
Washington state newspapers seem to have the fanciest letterheads: color print jobs, imaginative graphics. A good sign, it seems.
Bill and Mig stopped in Chicago, hoping to see his brother still alive. Instead, Bill arrived in time to conduct the funeral.
The interminable earwash of airport lounges. Last time I flew American to the Northwest was breaking up with Nicki.
Bob Suter’s advice: “Don’t stick your finger in front of any turtles”
Long trek at O’Hare to new international section — Customs and all the rest — not much traffic, empty inside — airlines share the gates — glassed-in halls within halls — was beginning to wonder if this flight was going on to Japan or if I had the wrong gate designation …
Midwestern farming towns, seen from the air: two parallel tracks cut through: one the highway, the other the railroad tracks Can hardly tell which is which, shining in sunlight: white concrete, white gravel, plus white blazing roofs.
2½ more hours to Seattle
Over central South Dakota, at 35,000 feet the outside temperature was minus 59 — Centigrade!
Flying over Billings, Helena, Great Falls — echoes of that futile trip to lure Nicki back … my first Far West exposure …
~*~
The sky scudded over from there. Only gray below me. But then, at one point, I looked down at something incomprehensible and amazing.
Rainier from above by Feed Me Paper at Wikimedia Commons.
Yes, we had flown directly over Mount Rainier and its glaciers.
~*~
As for the rest of the trip?
Don’t think things today could have gone much better. Spent six hours with Kent, the m.e. Lunch with him and Gil, the assistant m.e. (who was critical of some of my layouts with Marcy’s photos … and one pic I should have cropped). Gil telling about almost grabbing rattlesnakes beside lost golf balls … sluggish, unmoving bastards, sez he …
Good meeting with Human Resources, too. (Is the department always headed by a woman?)
A short meeting before I left. Accepted the offer, $260/week … more than double what I had been earning …
Sounds like I’ll be doing mostly editing, special sections and weekend news, as well as lead articles for Crossroads …
[I should note that this flight was also at my own expense. If the job had not come through, we would have been screwed.]
Back home
Received a letter from Indianapolis, no dice, as if everything were working with Divine plan …
Maybe they didn’t like my looks? You never know.
Indianapolis? I’d just as soon live in Scranton.
Got a few nice poetry rejection letters but mostly silence …
The intense depth of color in a frigid winter sky stirs up memories of living in the interior Far West, where its usual lack of humidity produced similar firmaments through the hottest seasons. Consider this, then, from coastal Maine, a preview of some journal entries ahead.
In my novel Nearly Canaan, Joshua and Jaya settled into a place unlike anything they would have imagined. It was (and still is) desert, for one thing, where nearly everything has to be irrigated, for another. Quite simply, it’s a lot like Yakima, in the middle of Washington state.
But they did repeatedly visit the Queen City of the Pacific Northwest, over where the endless gray and its rains were. The enlightened residents had a propensity for dark German movies in some unique art film houses, and I doubt that I’d recognize the place if I ever go back. Remember, I left well before “Sleepless in Seattle” or Dr. Frasier Crane’s arrival from Boston, not that I’d been there, either.
That said, here are ten high points to consider.
Unlike most American urban areas, there’s more poverty outside the city limits rather than within them. That probably reflects racial dynamics elsewhere or even gentrification conflicts in older cities.
Seattle has some outstanding opera and symphony experiences. The Wagner’s Ring Cycle in summertime week-long festivals is legendary, even in English. The art museum, meanwhile, is third-rate despite the presence of visually intriguing local artists, at least when I was there.
Yes, it can be gray for six months or more in stretches. Residents simply dodge the ongoing light rain. It can drive some people over the edge, though.
When the clouds break, breathtaking views of the Olympic Range appear to the west and Mount Rainier to the east, the latter of which is technically within Seattle’s metropolitan statistical area covered by the U.S. census. Elk and bears are not enumerated.
The city is the home of Starbucks coffee and the glorious Pike Street vendors’ market.
That said, eat Dungeness crab early and often. It’s a delicacy found from San Francisco north to Alaska, and is at its best before shipping elsewhere.
The U.S. military is a huge economic influence, even before Boeing executives fled for Chicago and the company’s reputation went into decline. Microsoft, meanwhile, keeps booming.
If you visit, ride the ferries that many commuters ride daily. Puget Sound is a very active waterfront. You don’t even have to take your car if you simply want to ride out and back.
I won’t even touch on the history of Grunge etc., but I will recommend wool Pendleton shirts. They’re the choice of the region’s loggers, who know wet “cotton kills.”
I also recall the prevalence of mossy roofs and huge garden slugs.
They are a memory, more as an emblem and ideal than creature. I never tasted elk flesh, though I heard praises. Nor have I stroked the fur. What I’ve known has appeared only on the forest floor as track and scat – no ticks on the neck or patchy summer skin like the moose where I now live. That, and winter encounters viewed from a distance.
The deer who frequent our yard these days are so small by comparison.
Will I ever revisit the Pacific Northwest where I lived? Would I even recognize most of it?
My second brace of fiction, ultimately three books in all, addressed the dozen years in the aftermath of the hippie outbreak, though I’ve tried to fudge the era precisely. I do think much of it is continuing.
Naturally, for me, they were semi-autobiographical, even though the protagonist is now a woman named Jaya who winds up with a much younger lover who becomes her husband.
The pivotal piece is Yoga Bootcamp, with her now as a central character, along with the guru they sometimes called Elvis or Big Pumpkin. My residency in the ashram was a transformative period in my life, even in the face of details I’ve since learned. We were a rogue outfit in the period when yoga took root in America. This down-to-earth story will probably scandalize your local yoga studio instructor, but the experience did reshape many of our lives, hopefully for the better. I’ve certainly carried many of its lessons far through some other faith traditions.
The central piece is now compressed into Nearly Canaan, originally an ambitious triptych that comprised the hefty novels Promise, Peel: As in Apple, and With St. Helens in the Mix. At the outset, a sense of place was central as Jaya relocated from a small town on the prairie in the American Midwest to the hardscrabble Ozarks to the apple orchard country in the desert of the Pacific Northwest, but the central theme now condenses as the question of how much influence one person can extend over others, hopefully for the better. I can ask now whether it would have been more compelling if she’d been conniving and manipulative.
The third book, The Secret Side of Jaya, is a set of three novellas, each one set in the places she lived after leaving the ashram. Each one, quite different, is premised on hearing and seeing figures in a locale that others don’t. Maybe you encounter them, too, where you are.
You can find these books in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.
Let’s consider fourth place, as far as length in time. That is, realizing that I’ve been dwelling in Eastport four years now strikes me as a bit of a shock. I’m finding it difficult to make sense of the fact, at least in light of earlier landings.
Quite simply, I’m still settling in here, even if it’s in my so-called sunset years. And, yes, I’m still feeling this is it, a very suitable end of my road, even if I am being greeted by name by people I don’t recall knowing, this is in sharp contrast to earlier locales.
For perspective, those shorter spans were in my early adulthood: Bloomington, Indiana (four years in two parts); Binghamton, New York (1½ years, in two parts and three addresses); the Poconos of Pennsylvania (1½ years); the town in northwest Ohio I call Prairie Depot (1½ years); Yakima, Washington (four years); a Mississippi River landing in Iowa (six months); Rust Belt in the northeast corner of Ohio (3½ years); and Baltimore, my big-city turn and turning point (three years). You’ve likely met many of them in my novels and poems.
Looking back, each of those addresses was filled with challenging turmoil and discovery, soul-searching yearning as well as glimmers of something more concrete and fulfilling just ahead.
In contrast, my longest period of living anywhere was Dover, New Hampshire (21 years), my native Dayton, Ohio (20 years), and Manchester, New Hampshire (13 years).
Jnana's Red Barn 