Cheers to Grays River naturalist Robert Michael Pyle who gets his own movie.
September saw the release of "The Dark Divide," a film based on Bob's book, Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide.
You can watch the trailer to the film here.
|
|
|
Actor and writer David Cross ("Arrested Development," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") plays Bob Pyle in the film "The Dark Divide."
|
|
|
Congratulations to Patti Rae for realizing a life dream with the publication of her fantasy novel.
Patti says, "As far back as I can remember, I’ve been enchanted by the magic of the fey and fascinated by anything Scottish. My love for literary fantasy and storytelling began at an early age, and I knew I was destined to share this incredible tale with the world someday. I just hadn’t expected 'someday' to take so long. But as life will do, it threw some obstacles in my path as an author."
|
|
|
About the book:
An epic tale about a young mother, Isaboe McKinnon, who accidentally passes through a portal into the world of the Fey. With no memory of the event, she returns to discover her life and her family are gone. Twenty years have passed like a summer’s breeze, yet she hasn’t aged a day. Terrified and confused, a friend from her past tries to help, and they set off on a journey to find Isaboe’s family. But the power-hungry fey queen who used her threatens to take the gifted half-fey child she carries, destroying Isaboe and everyone she loves.
|
|
|
The $18.00 paperback is available in Longview at Posh on Commerce Clothing store, 1262 Commerce, also available online via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and can be ordered from your local bookstore. Visit www.markofthefaerie.com.
|
|
Mother and son film makers Bethany Glenn and Casey McDougall celebrate their creative collaboration with the Obon Society.
For several years, Bethany and Casey have been working with the Obon Society, headed by Rex and Keiko Ziak in its mission to return the flags of fallen Japanese WWII soldiers to their families in Japan.
|
|
|
Japan's public media organization, NHK, produced a moving report on the Obon Society's work, "Bringing Closure, One Flag at a Time."
You can watch it here (click on #US unless you speak Japanese fluently.)
You can also watch Casey's equally moving film, "What Remains," about seeking and burying the remains of his 21-year old great-grandfather, killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, here.
Photo: Casey and Bethany with WWII veteran Marvin Strombo returning a soldier's flag to the soldier's family in Japan.
|
|
What local writers are working on...
|
|
Auto Edit
Fred Hudgin on his current project: "Janet is a young adult whose parents are murdered, apparently a robbery gone bad. As she goes through her mother’s stuff, Janet finds her mother’s laptop. On the laptop, is a diary written by her mother about raising Janet.
|
|
|
As Janet edits the diary, it keeps being changed back. Janet realizes that the spirit of her mother is communicating with her through the laptop. But her mother won’t tell her what happened or why. Janet begins her own investigation, which leads her to China, a self-defense class, discovery of marital infidelity, who the murderer was, and why the murder happened. This should be ready for reading this winter."
|
|
Geared Up
Jaimee Walls is working on her first novel. She’s been published in the Reader’s Write section of The Sun magazine. During her college years at WSU Vancouver, she had an editorial column where she used self-introspection and observation to write uplifting pieces.
|
|
|
|
The story centers on Jax, a teenage girl growing up in the 1970s. After one of the too many altercations with her alcoholic mother, she uproots herself to live with a father she barely knows. She is submerged in his life of cars and racing as she tries to figure out who she is and who she wants to become. As her own love of cars grows, she decides to take auto shop class. This is the beginning of how she'll upset the school as she fights to become a woman in a man's world, a thin line but Jax has the courage to cross it.
|
|
Share your "work-in-progress" or other literary news for November by sending to me at alan@alan-rose.com by October 30.
|
|
Poetry Corner --
"Dear Friends"
|
|
|
|
Now retired from a career in public affairs and marketing, Karen Bonaudi is still writing poetry and prose in the Seattle suburbs. Her poem “Exiles” was published this year in Take a Stand: Art Against Hate from Raven Chronicles. Her Editing a Vapor Trail was published in 2010 with the Pudding House Press Chapbook Series.
|
|
|
|
Here she reflects on missing, and appreciating, friends during a pandemic.
|
|
|
"Dear Friends"
You may not have known
or realize it even now
but all this time over all
these years, I took you for granted,
never appreciated our bar hops, long coffees,
dancing, margaritas, crash padding, secret shares.
Never did I hit the road without
who-else-is-in-between stops
caroming, kissing, catching up.
A photo of an idle beach, a restaurant door,
a rocking chair by a summer window
will bring your face close to mine.
I didn’t think I could love you more.
But when next we meet, I will.
|
|
|
People wishing to purchase a copy of her chapbook can contact her at kbonaudi@earthlink.net for details, using the code WF1020.
|
|
Conversation between Robert Michael Pyle and Hal Calbom on Tidewater Reach.
|
|
|
|
Robert Michael Pyle is the author of more than 20 books, including Wintergreen, Sky Time in Grays River, Chasing Monarchs, and Where Bigfoot Walks. A Yale-trained ecologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, he lives in rural southwest Washington.
|
|
|
Photo: Bob Pyle and Judy VanderMaten review photographs for The Tidewater Reach.
|
|
|
About the book:
Robert Michael Pyle’s work transcends genre and region. His voyages seem migratory, like the butterflies he so loves. Yet, at the same time, he reveres a sense of place, and the intimate details of places. His collaboration with photographer Judy VanderMaten for their book, The Tidewater Reach, combines forty-four of Bob’s poems with color and black & white photos by Judy, all focused on the Lower Columbia River region, “the reach” where tidal salt water and fresh river water intermingle.
|
|
|
Film producer, educator and Emmy-award winning journalist Hal Calbom talked with Bob about his newest book. The following excerpts are from that discussion which appears in full in The Tidewater Reach, published by The Columbia River Reader Press, and used here with permission.
|
|
|
Hal: What do you want people to take away from this latest work, this pairing of words and pictures?
Bob: Both Judy and I love this river. We love its working parts, and we love how the people depend upon it, from the gillnetters to the writers and photographers, even the damned cruise ships. … Everybody who comes here knows the river is essential. They care for the river — or they certainly should! The river makes us feel like caring. And to feel like caring is a better way to live than to be oblivious.
You can read Bob and Hal's conversation here.
Copies of The Tidewater Reach (paperback $25, Signature edition $50) are available through the Columbia River Reader Press, crreader.com/crrpress..
|
|
Vikki J. Carter produces the Podcast Authors of the Pacific Northwest, interviews with writers, editors and publishers, at www.squishpen.com
|
|
|
Episode 95: Donna Miscolta (https://donnamiscolta.com) Three-time published author Donna Miscolta, talks about race, gender, and equality, themes in her books, and her publishing journey.
Episode 96: Kit Bakke (https://kitbakke.com) Vikki talks with Seattleite Kit Bakke about her three books and her years as an antiwar activist in the '60s.
|
|
Book Review:
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
|
|
Re-imagining Mrs. Shakespeare
...It is Agnes (Anne Hathaway) who is the more intriguing and interesting figure. A strong independent woman, she ignores many of the customs of the day, and is quite able to care for her family without a husband nearby.
|
|
|
She also has the gift of foresight and, even as a young woman, knows that she will live a long life and that her two children will be standing at her bedside as she is dying. She is confident in this knowledge, and at peace with her destiny. It is we, the readers, who are made uncomfortable, knowing that she will give birth to three children.
You can read the full review here.
|
|
Books People Are Excited About...
Cheryl Nelson recommends this biography of Marie Colvin (1956-2012) who was killed covering the siege of Homs in Syria. Some believe Colvin was targeted because of her reporting on the atrocities of the Syrian government. Her story was made into the 2018 film, “A Private War,” with Rosamunde Pike in the role of Colvin.
|
|
|
Read Cheryl's full recommendation in the October 15 issue of The Columbia River Reader.
|
|
Retiring from the Longview and Wahkiakum School Districts as an educator, Cheryl Nelson is office manager for Cathlamet Realty West, volunteers for Project Read, tap dances with Tapestry NW, and takes violin lessons from Patsy Harbargh.
|
|
|
Excited about a book?
Email me at alan@alan-rose.com with the title and why you liked it, and we'll share it in What Are You Reading? in The Columbia River Reader.
|
|
|
|
The Washington Post's Style Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are some winners:
1. Bozone (N.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
2. Foreploy (N.): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
3. Cashtration (N.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
4. Giraffiti (N): Vandalism spray-painted very, VERY high.
5. Sarchasm (N): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
6. Osteopornosis (N): A degenerate disease.
7. Karmageddon (N): It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
8. Glibido (N): All talk and no action.
9. Dopeler effect (N): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
10. Ignoranus (N): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
|
|
Photo-reflection
Poe's Hummingbird
|
|
|
|
"Quoth the raven, Nevermore."
--Edgar Allan Poe
|
|
On a dreary afternoon in bleak December,
I, made snowbound by a sudden storm,
was writing at my desk when I experienced that
uncanny sense of one being secretly surveilled.
Pausing my pen, I turned with growing dread
to the darkening dusk beyond my window,
and there didst behold two glowing orbs
staring at me from out of the gloaming.
"Fiend!" I cried, "Infernal fowl who haunts my
dreams!" (Okay, maybe a bit melodramatic)
"What message bring you from that other world?"
and braced myself for the spectre to speak
its ancient curse of "Nevermore..."
Or maybe "Anymore"? "Furthermore"?
But spake it not. Neither did the apparition depart,
but kept its unholy vigil outside my window
staring, staring, forever staring
with its red demonic eyes...
(which actually turned out to be the ruby
underparts on a hummingbird's throat.
But still kind of spooky.)
|
|
Note cards from my photo reflections now available.
By popular request (okay, only two, but one was Jan Bono!) note cards created from the photo reflections are available on my website. View the current note cards here.
|
|
|
Find more news, reviews, interviews, and photo-reflections at www.alan-rose.com. and feel welcome to contact me at alan@alan-rose.com.
Previous newsletters available here: September 2020, August 2020, July 2020, June 2020, May 2020, April 2020, March 2020.
|
|
|
|
|
