Introduction

Waxing Rhapsodic: Developing an Ear for Writing

I might have become a songwriter, but when I was eight years old, my older brother, Scott, got a guitar and guitar lessons, and I got…a flutophone. Now don’t get me wrong (Mom and Dad), a brand-spankin’-new, white flutophone with a children’s songbook accompanying it was a fine gift, and a nice consolation for being too young to begin serious music lessons. But I envied my brother’s large, curvaceous, wooden instrument whose twangy strings he would soon tame to produce real, grown-up tunes, the likes of those sung by John Denver, Peter, Paul and Mary, and (my then personal favorites) Simon and Garfunkel.

I don’t know how this happened, but somehow, before the colors even wore off its plastic frets, that flutophone got cracked, leaving me not just envious, but also flutophoneless.

Time went on and I soon discovered a different kind of instrument, one so commonplace that when I picked it up and moved it across a blank piece of notebook paper, I did not realize what I was initiating. That this word “initiating” alludes to a larger process of initiation is no mistake because writing is a lifelong progression with its own mysterious rites, ceremonies, ordeals, and instructions.

My father’s mother, known to me as “Granny,” stands out in my memory as the wise elder who invited me into the sacred circle of storytellers. Long before the days of musical instruments and envy, my substantial Granny and her slight sidekick, Gramps, would arrive seasonally at our home, the trunk of their Buick stuffed with dime-store toys. My brother and I would eagerly await our invitation to “help bring in the luggage.” Later on in the evenings, after the excitement of company coming and gluttonous gift consumption had exhausted us, Scott and I would collapse at Granny’s feet, in front of the fire (no less) to listen to her stories. Granny did not discriminate. She told tales about her own childhood, as well as everyone else’s in our extended clan, including my own business-suit-wearing, briefcase-toting father.

“Well…” Granny would begin, her mouth opening wider than most people’s in conversation—so wide you could see all her perfectly capped teeth. “Well” meant she was either leaning back in her let-me-see-where-should-I-start? mode, or leaning forward, on the edge of the rocker, and popping out a “Well!” with lots of air behind it to let you know the climax was coming. No matter how many times we had already heard the story about Granny’s younger sister throwing the butcher knife at her head, the one she actually heard go whizzing by her ear; or the time she and her siblings knocked over the china cabinet just before Nana returned home; or the tale of my young father being dragged across the gravel lot by the school bully; we never tired of hearing them, or that my father came home bloody, yet smiling.

No doubt about it, my grandmother had a quicksilver tongue and she knew how to use it. Sadly, Granny passed away last year and, although I often told her how much I loved hearing her stories, I never got to say that her stories were the music that activated my storyteller’s ear. I sure hope she’s listening now.

Another memory connected to my initiation into the writing life is related to my struggle to speak “Shakespearese.” Remember when you were in high school, probably a freshman, and you were introduced to the star-crossed-lovers, Romeo and Juliet? How many of you dutifully toted home your Shakespeare readers and tried to puzzle through the poetic iambic pentameter? Well, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know what the heck this Shakespeare fella was trying to say, which only made all the hoopla about how great he was more frustrating.

Through four years of high school, I tried to hide how the masterpieces of the bard plagued me, carrying my frustration along with me when I matriculated into the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. Though the campus was familiar (I attended the same college as my father) I felt intimidated by the lay of the intellectual landscape. My teachers were revered professors in historic classrooms, and anything worth reading had to be “Literary” (with a capital “L”), and all Literature was to be approached in a decidedly critical manner.

Incidentally, I didn’t learn much about becoming a writer in college, but I came dangerously close to having the natural writer schooled right out of me. Which brings us to the one illuminated professor who finally cracked the Shakespearean code for me.

“Here are the assigned plays for the quarter,” announced a petite, bustling blonde on the first day of class. Professor Boose was the polar opposite of my mostly male, monotone, gray-faced, slack-shouldered professors (who, indeed, wore tweed, while she wore skirts in bright colors and blouses with frills). This woman was practically on fire about this dead English playwright. I doubted whether I would ever survive the English major I had dragged my feet to declare, but then, just as my Granny before her had, Professor Boose handed me the key that would unlock a river of understanding about the written word. “If you have trouble keeping up with the reading, at least listen to the recordings I’ve placed on reserve in Sanborn Library.”

Sitting in Sanborn later that week in an overstuffed chair wearing oversized headphones, I listened to a scratchy recording of “Measure By Measure,” and not only did I listen, but for the first time I heard. A door in my mind that had previously remained closed opened, and I finally got Shakespeare. Not only did I hear the words that brought the play, in full glorious pageantry, to life in my imagination, I could enter that world in my mind’s eye and explore it; and I did in a paper for Professor Boose entitled, “Coining Imagery in Measure by Measure.”

The paper was energetic, fueled by my recent breakthrough. For the first time in college, I enjoyed writing a paper. And that imaginary world, the one I heard on the recording and entered, the one I could move around in and explore, is the same place I write from. It’s the same place my Granny’s stories took me and the same place my pen has always taken me. I write in and from an imaginal realm, one I hear, see, touch, taste, and smell, and then record onto the page. And you can go there too. And you can write about it, just as I do, just as the folks in this anthology do, the ones who have visited their own inner worlds and returned to tell about it.

I will never forget Professor Boose’s response, written in blue ink on the title page of my paper. It said, “Thank you, I really learned a lot from you.” For her excellent example of inspired teaching, I owe Professor Lynda Boose a deep debt of gratitude. I only hope my passion for writing is as contagious as her passion for Shakespeare.

If the seventy-two writings compiled here from three years of classes for Whatcom Community College, Community Education are any indication, perhaps I’m on the right track. When I initially conceived the idea of compiling three year’s worth of my students’ work, my inner ear kicked right in. I could scroll back through my memory and remember the writing-in-progress I’d heard read aloud in class that had caused me to lean forward in my chair, tap my foot along with the writer’s rhythm, and nod my head in appreciation. Just like a catchy tune, writing can stir us, delight us, and transport us.

Let me tell you a bit about the writers themselves who range in age from twenties to seventies. Their writing styles are as diverse as their professions: fishermen, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, social workers, retirees, writing professionals, counselors, and, of course, educators required to take continuing education classes to maintain their certifications. Some are Pacific Northwest born-and-bred, some are transplants, like me. Some are here to stay and some are passing through. All are writers, however, I am sure you will agree, writers through and through.

In these pages, you will discover a signature slice of forty-two emerging Whatcom County voices. For many, this is their initiation into the sacred circle of publication. The title, Rhapsody in Writing, is intended to evoke another memorable composition, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. (While the Pacific Northwest is not particularly known for jazz, several writers have meditated on music and listening here. I’m recalling Cathy Belben’s profile of a punk-rocking firefighter, Laural Ringler’s essay weighing the pros and cons of appropriate music appreciation for her children, and John P. Hale’s musings on the classic rock favorite, “Desperado.”)

While Gershwin’s Rhapsody melded influences that shaped his musical improvisation—Joplin’s piano rags, Harlem club jazz, Yiddish theater folk songs, and post-romantic classical music—this Rhapsody melds many distinct voices, subjects, and genres. Read on to experience an adventure in literary revelry: Personal essays precede how-to articles, which punctuate poetry and prepare you for profiles, followed by a sprinkling of fiction, and a generous helping of memoir. The inner landscapes of these writers will invite you to such diverse destinations as an Israeli airport in Joanna Nesbit’s “Insecurity,” the back of a horse in wide-open Midwestern fields in Barbara Vinna-Johnson’s “Ride of Passage,” the Peterson Park neighborhood of Chicago in Stuart Zemel’s “Solomon School: Inside and Out,” and right into Ann E. Wale’s own backyard, the north fork of the Nooksack River in “Living In the Land.”

If you are a food fan, you will find no shortage of temptations to follow. You may find yourself drooling over Ruth Higgins and Al Krause’s restaurant advice in “Splitting,” or relating to Sue Ann Crockett’s gastronomic misadventures in “In the Company of Fudge,” or recollecting your earthy-crunchy past in Elizabeth Burns’ “The Anahola Granola Story,” or feeling suddenly starving as you peruse Elizabeth Short’s portrait of restaurateur Lynn Berman in, “At Her Kitchen Table.”

I hope you would-be writers (I know you’re out there) will garner some inspiration from within these pages. I sincerely hope that inspiration will compel you to pick up an instrument, be it a simple Bic or a fancy Mont Blanc, or an even sleeker, more industrial laptop, whose motor purrs as you dance your fingers across it, and make some tracks across the page, over and over, across the page and down…until you begin to hear the words that want to be written.

Christina Katz,

Bellingham, Washington,

June 2004