Late fall was a time to wind down on my reading tour: Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on October 24, Sun Valley Center for the Arts on November 5th, and Willamette University on December 11th.
Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park combines the best aspects of bookstores - a huge collection of books, cozy nooks to sit in, a restaurant, even a stage for large events. I read in one of the corners where chairs could be set up for a small or medium sized audience. We began small to medium and grew to medium and then medium to larger. Cozy became crowded.
While our mining music played and Gerry set up my mother’s painting and the photographs and mining gear, friends, acquaintances and soon-to-be friends wandered in. A couple, whom I hadn’t seen since high school, traveled from Olympia. Several women friends who had come to Elliott Bay Books were back with their friends or co-workers in two. In the front row sat two bikers (as in bicycles) whom I didn’t know, but who viewed the Idaho panhandle as a bike mecca. A colleague and his wife who were hosting a party after the reading, brought their invitees. Autumn, the bookstore employee in charge of me, sold more and more books. Several former high school classmates who lived around Seattle came early to chat.
Here, I read again about the people who arrived in Kellogg from around the world and around the country, about the mining, about the day the smokestacks came down, about our town. When I finished, the questions and comments came. It felt like a mini-reunion of Kellogg students. At the back of the room, one of the visitors who came late and stood the whole time, asked “Do you still play the flute?” It was a fellow band member, a trombone player. I had to admit I didn’t, but I still owned my flute.
Back again, I went to Idaho, this time to a different home ground--Hailey and Ketchum in south-central Idaho. The Sun Valley Center for the Arts was in the midst of an extensive multi-disciplinary exhibition on mining–and I was part of the program in early November. The topic assigned to me was what happened to a mining town when the mining ended.
Mining in the Wood River Valley, where Hailey and Ketchum lie, began in the late 1800s, just as it had in the Silver Valley, home of Kellogg and Wallace and dozens of mines. While most mining ended in south central Idaho in the early 1900s, it continued in the northern panhandle for almost 100 years. Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg closed in 1981/82, reopened in 1990/91 for a brief period when I traveled down into it, and closed again.
Once more, I talked about the people of Kellogg, the mining and what it did to the land, the closing of the mine, the Superfund Site. Around me in the Center gallery were photographs by Sebastio Selgado of miners in Brazil, where the open pit mining conditions made the working conditions in Kellogg and surrounding mines look like a walk in the park.
Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park combines the best aspects of bookstores - a huge collection of books, cozy nooks to sit in, a restaurant, even a stage for large events. I read in one of the corners where chairs could be set up for a small or medium sized audience. We began small to medium and grew to medium and then medium to larger. Cozy became crowded.
While our mining music played and Gerry set up my mother’s painting and the photographs and mining gear, friends, acquaintances and soon-to-be friends wandered in. A couple, whom I hadn’t seen since high school, traveled from Olympia. Several women friends who had come to Elliott Bay Books were back with their friends or co-workers in two. In the front row sat two bikers (as in bicycles) whom I didn’t know, but who viewed the Idaho panhandle as a bike mecca. A colleague and his wife who were hosting a party after the reading, brought their invitees. Autumn, the bookstore employee in charge of me, sold more and more books. Several former high school classmates who lived around Seattle came early to chat.
Here, I read again about the people who arrived in Kellogg from around the world and around the country, about the mining, about the day the smokestacks came down, about our town. When I finished, the questions and comments came. It felt like a mini-reunion of Kellogg students. At the back of the room, one of the visitors who came late and stood the whole time, asked “Do you still play the flute?” It was a fellow band member, a trombone player. I had to admit I didn’t, but I still owned my flute.
Back again, I went to Idaho, this time to a different home ground--Hailey and Ketchum in south-central Idaho. The Sun Valley Center for the Arts was in the midst of an extensive multi-disciplinary exhibition on mining–and I was part of the program in early November. The topic assigned to me was what happened to a mining town when the mining ended.
Mining in the Wood River Valley, where Hailey and Ketchum lie, began in the late 1800s, just as it had in the Silver Valley, home of Kellogg and Wallace and dozens of mines. While most mining ended in south central Idaho in the early 1900s, it continued in the northern panhandle for almost 100 years. Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg closed in 1981/82, reopened in 1990/91 for a brief period when I traveled down into it, and closed again.
Once more, I talked about the people of Kellogg, the mining and what it did to the land, the closing of the mine, the Superfund Site. Around me in the Center gallery were photographs by Sebastio Selgado of miners in Brazil, where the open pit mining conditions made the working conditions in Kellogg and surrounding mines look like a walk in the park.
My audience was full–even a wall had to be moved–and included a respected local historian, a woman who had been born in the Wardner Hospital in Kellogg where my father doctored, a couple who had graduated from Kellogg High School some years before I did, and friends and acquaintances. The questions extended my scheduled time period. Everyone was interested in the mining subject, a heritage of so many Idahoans, largely supplanted in the Wood River Valley by sheep and then by a successful four seasons resort. Perhaps Kellogg will follow in the same vein, without the sheep.
In December, I read at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Mining wasn’t such a hot topic there, but there was a respectable audience at Putnam Hall for a brown-bag presentation. Although mining took place in Oregon, the primary industry in that state was logging. Both depleted the land, but in different ways. I compared the loss of that industry in recent years, and the dying logging towns to my town, the town that keeps on trying. A short review in The Oregonian made the same connection.
In December, I read at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Mining wasn’t such a hot topic there, but there was a respectable audience at Putnam Hall for a brown-bag presentation. Although mining took place in Oregon, the primary industry in that state was logging. Both depleted the land, but in different ways. I compared the loss of that industry in recent years, and the dying logging towns to my town, the town that keeps on trying. A short review in The Oregonian made the same connection.
For now, we are at rest in Hailey, Idaho. My thoughts once again turn to writing and stray from promoting my book. On Christmas Eve, the power went out and stayed out half of Christmas Day for us and all day for many others. The temperatures outside hovered in the teens and lower. We warmed by the fire, absent-mindedly reached for light switches that didn’t work, read books, watched Bald Mountain through our telescope for signs of life in the chairlifts, and I wrote with pencil in a writing tablet. Power returned. Children and grandchildren arrived. Life returned to normal.
Snow fell outside my window on New Year’s Day. A decade of war, economic disaster and perilous leaders is behind us, although war continues and we wait for good economic news. On New Year’s Eve, a blue moon shone down, a white gold coin with edges blurred by fog, through a sifting of snow. A harbinger of good luck, I’m told, for the next decade. I do hope so.
Snow fell outside my window on New Year’s Day. A decade of war, economic disaster and perilous leaders is behind us, although war continues and we wait for good economic news. On New Year’s Eve, a blue moon shone down, a white gold coin with edges blurred by fog, through a sifting of snow. A harbinger of good luck, I’m told, for the next decade. I do hope so.
