snowbirdredux

Somewhere between Nimble Thimble and Slide Rule, you will find the group photo of the Wilson High School club called Scripters in the 1956 yearbook. I do not appear because I was out sick the day they took the pictures, but I was a member.

If you look closely you will see John Leonard, second from the right, who became the editor of the New York Times Book Review, along with writing for every prestigious publication in America. That’s the kind of quality our little group harbored and encouraged. Scripters was the most exclusive club on campus, even more so than any uppity sorority or fraternity which thrived amidst and in spite of the academic culture. You didn’t just sign up as if it were Future Farmers of America or even the Philosophy Club. You had to be “asked out” before becoming a member and have your scribblings read and reviewed. I felt privileged to belong.

Yesterday I attended the Lake Region Writer’s Network annual conference in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. I was privileged to attend.

Will Weaver, author of “Red Earth, White Earth,” “A Gravestone Made of Wheat,” and “Memory Boy” (to name a few) was the keynote speaker and also hosted a workshop entitled “How to Make Your Stories Live and Breathe.” And he does.

There were authors selling their books, information on publishing and all things linguistic, highlights of literary events. And there were writers, writers, writers. “What do you write?” “Are you in a writing group.” “Oh, here’s my blog address.” “Are you going to the open mic reading?” “Have you read…?” “Have you heard…?”

It was difficult to decide which groups to attend. “Why Writer’s Need an Author’s Platform” (Linda Lein) or Memoir (Leon Ogroske). “Roadside Poetry” (Paul Carney) or “Point of View” (Ann Schwalboski). All in all there were 18 choices and only four time slots.

My favorite and lucky choice was a workshop entitled “The Art of Description” led by Barry Lane, author of “Walk in their Dust” and “It’s Uphill Most of the Way Down.” I particularly enjoyed his exercise involving the five senses. We were told to use two minutes writing quickly about a scene that represents the Fall season from the standpoint of sight. Then using two minute intervals, rewrite the paragraph from the perspective of sound, then touch, then smell and finally, taste. We ended the exercise by doing a final quick edit, again in two minutes, writing the paragraph using all five senses together.

Here’s my example: (with apologies, but no first-quick-draft excuses)

SIGHT: My backyard is looking naked, embarrassed by the open patches through the trees and shrubs, allowing scattered peeks into life across the street, into the river, denuded of foliage and lush cover which normally envelopes our yard.

SOUND: As I walk across the yard my feet crunch, crack, crunch on dead fallen leaves – surprisingly sharp, overriding even the traffic hum along the street. Woodpeckers squawk and the sprinkler swishes.

TOUCH: I reach down into the pile of newly raked leaves and try to scoop them up into the slick plastic bag. They are sharp and biting against my chilled hands and the early snow flurry has left them sticky and damp.

SMELL: There is an emanation of deep earth, plants at their last gasp, as they reach the end of the growing season. Fetid, old, ready to enhance the compost pile.

TASTE: I pull the spent annuals out of the soil, knocking the dirt from their root ball as I go, and some flies into my mouth. I choke and cough on the earthy filament that coats my throat, tasting silt and sludge.

COMPOSITE: The backyard looks naked, open patches between the towering trees and once dense shrubs. I crunch across the grass, crushing the leaves which litter the lawn, then stoop and scoop them into the slick plastic bag. They cut and bit into my chilled hands, bits of filament flies up and coats my throat, tasting of silt and sludge. The leaves settle into the musky compost, to be returned to earth.

Okay, not publishable. But a good exercise. Now you try.

After the conference a number of us met at The Spot, a local wine and panini bar which holds “open mic” music and readings. That was the intent, but we ending up sitting around two pulled together tables in the back room, talking and talking of – writing. I felt especially priviledged.

I returned last week to Northcroft, the sheep farm owned by Joanie and Dave Ellison just outside of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. I was last there on a wintry February day to witness and help (for what it was worth) with their annual sheep shearing.

And on a beautiful, unusually warm end to September, they held their annual fall Fiber Day which drew some 40 women and a few men. All for the love of fiber.

There is an archetypal paradigm about the idea of a circle of women coming together to create. To knit, to spin, to stitch. It is powerful and comforting at the same time. I took my little piece of a half-finished potholder as my part of the day, but mostly I watched and listened.

I knew only a few of the participants – Meg and Joanie and Katy and Kate and Marguerite – and I felt a bit of an interloper for my inexperience in all matters of the craft, but I absorbed the companionship and came away refreshed and enlivened. A circle of women is a powerful thing.

Meg and Katy spinning –

                                       The Weaving Spot –

The felting table –

Joanie stoking the fire –

Stirring the dye pot –

Drying the yarn –

Joanie says it best in the conclusion of her book, “From Sheep to Shawl, Stories and Patterns for Fiber Lovers” –

“On fiber days, people make new friends and renew old friendships. They share their skills with newcomers. Don’t you know how to spin? There’s always an open wheel to try out. Problems with the collar on your sweater? One of the expert knitters will have advice or a new pattern. Interested in color but unsure of how to begin dying? The dye pots are always going, with lemon lime Kool-Aid, or onion skins or one of the brilliant commercial dyes.

The fiber workers have brought me a new kind of community, one of shared interests, rather than the more common definition of community as people who share the same space. Politics aside, hometown aside, career aside, fiber people gather because they love the soft slide of wool fibers through their fingers as they spin raw wool into yarn, or the surprise when they pull an ordinary skein of yarn from the woad dye pot and it changes color from green to blue. Fiber people gather because of a shared love of fiber, because of shared experiences.

On fiber days, people walk the fields to see the flock, pick Common Mullein for dying, or willow for baskets. They share food and conversation, taking a day out of time to add another shot of weft to the fabric of their lives with a thread that connects them to other women, other fiber artists, back through time and into the future, learning and teaching, sharing and absorbing, but mostly doing.”

Thank you Joanie. “From Sheep to Shawl” was printed by the Wandering Minstrel Press. You can also find her book, “Shepardess: Notes From the Field” on Amazon Books.