NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 2)

The second half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local restaurant owners in NW Portland is now posted on the NW 23rd Ave Blog!  Phil and Danny share how NW 23rd has changed in the past 25 years along with how their businesses have grown.  Find out about their business philosophies and commitments to family and food.

Click here for a direct link to part two the interview or visit nw23rdav.wordpress.com

 If you missed part one of the interview, click here to read it or check out my earlier blog post on the interview and the process of putting it all together.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

On Punctuation

From today's Writer's Almanac, shared with me by a friend:

On Punctuation by Elizabeth Austen not for me the dogma of the period preaching order and a sure conclusion and no not for me the prissy formality or tight-lipped fence of the colon and as for the semi- colon call it what it is a period slumming with the commas a poser at the bar feigning liberation with one hand tightening the leash with the other oh give me the headlong run-on fragment dangling its feet over the edge give me the sly comma with its come-hither wave teasing all the characters on either side give me ellipses not just a gang of periods a trail of possibilities or give me the sweet interrupting dash the running leaping joining dash all the voices gleeing out over one another oh if I must punctuate give me the YIPPEE of the exclamation point give me give me the curling cupping curve mounting the period with voluptuous uncertainty "On Punctuation" by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010.

Visit:   http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org


Listen:

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 1)

Usually these interviews are a piece of cake.  Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post.  That's it.  So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual.  Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that.  I ended up with a LOT to work with.  What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there.  There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual.  So instead I did nothing.  For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.  

As usual, I learned my lesson.  You just have to dive into it.  You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it.  You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it.  And before long, great things begin to happen.  Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it.  It's a great thing. 

In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself.  Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away.  In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have.  Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been.  Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it.  I suppose that's why they call it marinading.  

Regardless of how I got here I'm here now.  Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview.  But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood.  Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.

Find this and past interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

For a direct link to Phil and Danny (Part 1) click here.

Thanks for reading!

Words for Writing and Life

"There must be no gap between expression and meaning, between real and declared aims... It means not saying or thinking, 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' when there really existed a desire to hurt.  It means not saying 'luncheon' or "home" for the purpose of appearing upper-class or well-educated.  It means not using the passive mood to contribute to no one in particular opinions that one is unwilling to call one's own."

- Donald Hall 

Inspirational Listening for Writers and Readers

Almost as great as reading what a writer has written about writing is listening to a writer talk about writing.  Every few weeks, Oregon Public Broadcast show Think Out Loud brings listeners into the minds of local writers with its series Northwest Passages.  Writers share their ideas, inspirations and philosophies on writing with host Emily Harris and even read a sample of their work.  They also answer questions emailed or called in by curious listeners who are writers and avid readers themselves.  

Northwest Passages is always one of my favorite listening experience if I am lucky enough to catch it live.  But fortunately for those of us who are not always tuned into OPB at 9am and for those of you who live outside of Oregon, past broadcasts are available to listen to online.  I hope you find them as enjoyable and inspiring as I do.  Happy Listening!

Click here for September 30th interview with Oregon writer Brian Doyle

Click here for past Northwest Passages broadcasts

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Scott Seibert

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Portland's 36th Rose Emperor, Scott Seibert.  Check out the NW 23rd Ave Blog to learn more about Scott, why he loves living in NW Portland and why the people of NW 23rd love Scott and don't even know it.

Click here for a direct link to the interview.
Thanks for reading!

"What the Hell is Water?"

This past Sunday marked the two year anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace (who it just so happens that I Write Like).  A friend shared this excellent example of his work.  It makes me wish he had given my commencement speech.  Enjoy:

A speech by the late David Foster Wallace

A Northwest Gem and Some New Finds

Two weekends ago Matthew and I took a ten hour round-trip drive down to Ashland, Oregon on the California border.  Oregonians know that Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and America's first outdoor Elizabethan theatre.  This year Ashland is celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Shakespeare Festival, but sadly our brief afternoon in Ashland did not coordinate with the performance times.

Ashland, however, caters in many other ways to the Shakespeare enthusiasts and book lovers who are drawn by the festival.  Among a slew of antique and book stores, one of our finds was Antiquarium Books & Antiques.  The shop is packed with interesting antiques, but the walls were lined with every kind of book a collector could dream of.  In the classics section I found a 1937 edition of Oscar Wilde Selected Works and a (not-so-antique) reprint of the original 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights.  Matthew found a 1975 Baseball Encyclopedia.  One of the owners checked us out and was very kind to give us a little bit of a discount on our stack of books which amounted to getting Wuthering Heights for free.  Can't complain about that.

After perusing Antiquarium the rest of our time in Ashland consisted of window shopping, dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, a walk through surprisingly expansive Lithia Park and dessert from a local homemade ice cream shop.  We questioned whether such a short visit would be worth the long drive, but while we do plan to return and see a show at that outdoor theatre we were certainly satisfied on the long drive back to Portland.  I would call Ashland a must-see for lovers of Shakespeare, antiques, books, and quiet little towns with plenty of character.

Links:

Ashland Wikipedia

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

www.passporttoashland.com

A Month Later...

No one ever said that being a writer would be easy.  Vacation may not have been best time to try to build a writing habit.  Especially on a vacation with family there is always something to do and someone to talk to and never as much free time as you imagine there will be.  In just under two weeks we hopped from Portland to Rhode Island, New York City, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina and back to Portland.  We saw sisters, best friends, family friends, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and parents.  Needless to say there did not turn out to be a lot of reading or writing time.  On the beach in North Carolina, however, I did manage to sneak some time for One Hundred Years of Solitude and a little bit of writing.

I am still picking my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude and I am loving it.  It is a beautiful story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family over the course of, appropriately, one hundred years.  What is surprising me, and pleasantly, is the whimsical quality of the story.  The superstitions and beliefs of the isolated culture in which the Buendias live defines truth in the novel.  It is fantasy and reality in one package and it is exciting to watch the development of the small culture with changes and discoveries in science and world knowledge.

I am also still slowly enjoying Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and am currently inspired by her thoughts on character description and dialogue.  It makes me think that I should have done more writing while I was with my family or that I should begin paying closer attention to the array of characters that I encounter so frequently at Starbucks.

While on the beach my thoughts were more on description, and of course the natural focus was the rolling waves, the shadows that the seagulls cast as the fly and fight their way along the shore, long lines of pelicans parading over rooftops, white crabs with huge eyes that scurry fearfully trying to blend in to the sand and fishermen with their poles stuck in the sand who may or may not have been compensating for something depending on how important it seemed to make them feel.  Additionally, a common theme was that writing doesn't just appear out of nowhere... you have to actually do something.  I feel like often when I am not writing it is because I'm waiting for some great idea to hit me so hard that it's all I can do not to write it down on the side of a coffee cup or a napkin or my arm if it's the only thing that's handy.  I'm starting to get that it doesn't always work like that.  Maybe it did in school after weeks studying a topic or days of research and agonizing over a subject, but that's not the same as pulling something out of thin air.  You have to do the work and the work means pages of pages of worthless writing before something great starts to flow.  I'm still working on that.

Next on the reading and writing agenda is more reading and more writing... But isn't that always the goal.  This week I'll get Mockingjay, the third and final book of The Hunger Games trilogy in the mail.  Of course I won't have any trouble getting through that ten times faster than I've read anything recently, but just maybe after that I'll get on a role.

Beach Reading (and Writing)

For the next two weeks I'll be vacationing on the East Coast, taking some time to visit with family and friends and spending some considerable time on the beach.  While I plan to take this time off from "work" in the sense of writing that I am doing for others, I do hope to have a good amount of time for personal reading and writing.

I hope to use the change in pace of vacation to start getting in the habit of writing every day.  Essentially it's journal-keeping, but I hope to avoid the "here's what I did today and here's how it made me feel" form of the middle-school diary.  There can be great value in that kind of writing as well, but it has to be meaningful, not forced.  My biggest challenge with journaling is remembering that I'm not writing it for anyone; I don't have to make it interesting, it doesn't have to be about my life or myself or anything in particular.  This type of journal will be solely for practice in writing... essentially just to keep the pen moving.  I hope that doing this will help both my discipline to sit down and write every day and my writing itself. 

There is also a stack of books that I have been wanting to read or that I've started and haven't quite made it through.  I'm excited to have some airplane and beach time to finally sit down with these gems.  Here's what I'm bringing with me:

 

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - I have been plucking through this book ever so slowly.  I think I am reluctant to read it too quickly because I'm loving it so much!  It is great inspiration for anyone who loves to write.

 

Why I Write by George Orwell - This book promises more great inspirations in politics and writing.  I have read parts of it, including Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language," which is was originally published in 1946 and is included as the last chapter of this book.  It is always a pleasure to see what the great writers have to say about writing.  Click here to read "Politics and the English Language" online.

 

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories by Katha Pollitt - My sister gave me this book when I saw her in Denver in May.  It has been rare in the past few years to see my sister more than once a year, so since I will be seeing her again already on this trip it seems only right to take as stab at finishing this one.  I imagine that Pollitt's observations of life will be inspirational, but I also look forward to reading it as an example of a successful publication of personal essays.

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - A very nice local Portlander who I know from working at Starbucks gave me a 1971 paperback copy of this book as a (very belated) wedding gift.  It is in near-perfect condition and very much has that wonderful old book smell.  I've never had the privilege of reading anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so I am really looking forward to this one.

I am also bringing the past three issues of The Sun Magazine that I have been wanting to catch up on.  The stories in these magazines are phenomenal and promise to be excellent airplane and beach reading.

Check out The Sun and read parts of current and archived issues at www.thesunmagazine.org

I hope that with all this I'll have some great recommendations for reading and writing endeavors when I return.  Happy reading (and writing)!