Capital-P Proud of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program, and specifically the students who read on WhidbeyAIR radio as part of our “Writers Talking to People” class.

Here is the link to the show.

Please take a listen as Alex Clark-McGlenn, Jackie Haskins, Mureall Hebert, Chels Knorr, Nancy Norton, Roz Ray, Martha Schoemaker, and Samantha Updegrave read their work on the air. (Note: As the show’s host says, there’s some adult content in some of these pieces.)

I am at the very end, giving some closing words.  I didn’t think it was possible for me to speak more slowly than I do in real life, but apparently, if I’m speaking on the radio off the top of my head, it’s possible.

Big thanks to co-teacher Stephanie Barbe Hammer for arranging this gig and Gwen Samelson for being such a warm and instructive radio engineer.

When I was twenty-three, on vacation in New Zealand, I was thrown from a horse.  Not thrown, actually.  I fell off.  Slid off.  But it sounds better to say thrown.  More badass and athletic.

We’d decided to go on a guided horseback ride, my sister and brother-in-law and I.  Our other choice for the day’s activity was to swim with seals, but that was more expensive, or all booked up, I can’t remember.  The horseback ride was pretty, the horses walking and trotting and cantering, just for a quick minute, on trails through low hills in countryside that looked a lot like the Pacific Northwestern United States, where I would move four months later, though I didn’t know it yet.  Despite my general fear of horses, I had a good time.

At the end of the ride, the guide’s horse walked over to a field by the little hay barn where we’d started, and stopped.  My sister’s horse did the same, and then Andy’s, with mine bringing up the rear.  Only mine didn’t stop at the field like the other horses.  He steered left, aiming for the pile of hay outside the barn.  I was hungry after our long ride, so it made sense that the horse was too, given that he’d done all the work.  I let him walk over to the hay pile, where I figured I’d dismount with the same grace the guide had dismounted from hers.

Only he didn’t stop.  There was another horse over by the stable, eating her own hay, and my horse, due to a horse-crush or the desire to have the hay piles all to himself or I-don’t-know-what, ran at the other horse.  A short chase ensued, the pursued horse bolting for the little hay barn, and my horse following at a gallop.  Continue reading →

This morning I woke a few minutes before my alarm, so I was fully alert, in that pre-caffeine way, when the radio clicked on, the NPR commentator delivering news I’d been waiting for: Yesterday Lance Armstrong announced he’s stepping down from his role as chairman of the Livestrong Foundation.  “Good,” I said, not very quietly, to my still-waking husband.  We’ve supported Livestrong through donations.  The backpack I use to cart around my laptop is a Livestrong backpack, given to my husband for being such a good fundraiser for the cycling event he did with their organization.  I’ve wanted them to remove Armstrong as chair ever since the United States Anti-Doping Agency went public with evidence that Armstrong was the ringleader of what it calls “the most sophisticated doping program in recent sports history.”  Much of the USADA’s evidence comes from Armstrong’s teammates, who testified of Armstrong demanding that they dope in order to help him win.

Armstrong denies the allegations, and, not surprisingly, still has many supporters, even in the face of a 200-page report of evidence against him.  He’s already lost his seven Tour de France titles, and been banned from competitive cycling for the rest of his life.  Today he lost his Nike sponsorship; other companies are likely to follow suit.

As a mild cycling fan, none of this would bother me too much.  Doping is rampant in many sports, I’m learning, and it’s unsurprising that a cycling star would turn out to be on The Juice.

It’s the Mom in me that’s upset about this news.  Specifically, the Mom of a five-year-old boy who looks like he might be something of a sports star himself.  It’s too soon to tell, of course, but he’s been turning heads at the park ever since he learned to dribble a soccer ball at the age of two, and self-reports that he always wins the running races in gym class.  He’s adopted, which is not really relevant to the story, except to say that, if he did share genetic material with my husband and me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  Continue reading →

Day 11 (Monday 10/15)

A very rainy Sunday evening saw Wiley and I in the living room, bent over our calendars.  We were figuring out the week’s schedule: exercise, kid pickup, birthday parties and soccer games and date night.  For the month of October, my Mondays look like this: put Caleb on the school bus, drop Helen at preschool, get myself to Greenwood and carpool to and from Burien to tutor, then get home with a bit of time to spare before Caleb’s school bus pulls up at the end of our block.

I’ve been doing everything but the 20 miles between Greenwood and Burien on my bike.  But, even though I said I was ready for bike commuting in the rain, I’m not entirely.  I don’t want to leave Helen’s bike trailer in the rain all day at preschool.  And, although biking in the rain is a common activity for me, I’m used to getting soaked and then coming home to a warm shower and dry clothes at the end of the ride.  Tutoring is a five-hour affair, and needs to be done with dry clothes.  So, I either need to bring a change of clothes in my pack, or wear rain pants and broil on the ride up the hill.  I know that this is a conundrum real bike commuters with real offices

I look up from my phone calendar at Wiley.

“I think I’ll take the bus tomorrow.”

Continue reading →

The thick cloud cover this morning was a good ease-in to what’s on tap for later this week: the return of The Rains.  I’m having a lot of conversations that make Seattleites sound like parents whose kids’ come-from-behind team is about to get eliminated from the playoffs.  “We’ve had a good run of it,” we’re all saying about the long strand of sunny days.  “We never thought we’d get this far into October.”  It has been great to pedal from neighborhood to neighborhood with the sun in my face or at my back.

The weather, too, made it easy to have a car-free weekend (days 5 & 6).  On Saturday, we biked up the street to the park for Caleb’s soccer game.  Even though the park where all his games are held is only 5 blocks from our house, this is the first time we haven’t driven, I’m embarrassed to admit.  I was proud for two reasons: Caleb scored his first goal (a great sliding shot right at the whistle), and I was organized enough to pack a picnic lunch so that we could hang out at the park after the game.  The afternoon went by quickly, and then we traveled by foot/scooter/tricycle to our friends’ house for dinner.  They live six blocks from our house in the opposite direction from the park, and we would have driven for fear that the kids would be too tired to get home on foot.  But it worked out fine: Helen on Wiley’s shoulders, Caleb on the scooter, and I carried the tricycle home.  Continue reading →