Object Poetry

Hey All,

I came across this poem while reading Laura Purdie Salas’s children’s poetry book AND THEN THERE WERE EIGHT: Poems about Space. It’s about a very cool THING.

 

Aiming High

Silver arrow to the skies, you’re my mighty mirrored eyes

Finding stars and Saturn’s bands, you place them gently in my hands.

 

Okay, so what’s that thing? 

Think about it. It’ll come to you.

Laura has a few other books of children’s poetry out that are lots of fun, including:

DO BUSES EAT KIDS? Poems About School

FLASHY CLASHY OH-SO SPLASHY Poems About Color

She was our guest poetry speaker in the Craft of Children’s/YA class through the MFA program of the Whidbey Writers Workshop, and she was great! Poetry forms have always befuddled me, but between her guest presentations and A KICK IN THE HEAD: AN EVERYDAY GUIDE TO POETIC FORMS by Paul B. Janeczko a whole new world (complete with singing angels, blues brothers, and pickle bucket bangers) opened up for me.

I’m still no genius poet, but I have a much greater understanding of the challenges of both forms and free verse. Pick up those books at the library or bookstore, and you will too.

COLUMBIAKids is here!

I’m delighted to announce that the premiere issue of COLUMBIAKids is live and thriving at http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/kids. It’s an awesome new online magazine for Pacific Northwest kids (about 4-14 years) who love stories AND for kids around the world who want to know more about the Northwest.

COLUMBIAKids is scheduled to come out twice per year, with one general issue (as you’ll find posted) and one theme issue per year. A publication of the Washington State Historical Society, it’s funded through grants and sponsorships so you won’t find a lick of advertising competing with the stories on the page. 

COLUMBIAKids is mainly nonfiction, but includes one historical fiction piece per issue. Here are some of the great stories you’ll find in the Fall 2008 issse:

One Day in History (historical fiction): “Capture at Penn Cove” 

Notorious NWesterners: Grub for Giants (about logging camp cooks)

What is That?: Pigs at the Market (about Rachel, the Pike Place piggy bank)

Making History: Washington’s Goodwill Ambassador (about artist Dale Chihuly’s installation in Jerusalem)

NW Legends: How Salmon Finds His Way Home (an original legend about the salmon’s sense of smell)

Collections Conundrum: Unraveling the Mystery of the WSHS Mummy (by yours truly)

Try This: The Union Railroad’s “Hurry Up! Apple Cake”

Homework Helper: Washington’s State Symbols

NW Book Swap: Reviews of books by Pacific Northwest authors written by KIDS

Lastly, you’ll find some secret “doorways” into “Amazing Places” and “Word Play,” but I’ll leave you the thrill of exploring and finding them on your own.

COLUMBIAKids has been called as “the coolest new kids’ zine on the web.” We agree and hope you do too.

Check out “about COLUMBIAKids” to download the latest writers and illustrators guidelines.

The Gloria

A Tall Ship Extraordinare

I had seen the massive Columbian flag billowing from her stern. At night, as I drove down Tacoma’s Dock Street, I had seen the lights strung amidst her masts and yardarms. They beckoned, as sailing ships and the sea do. She was the tallest Tall Ship I’d ever seen and there was a familiarity about her too. I searched my mind to figure out why.

It came to me as I stood on the dock studying her, half way through my evening walk. She looked like a picture I knew, of a ship that was the subject of a story in the upcoming issue of COLUMBIAKids. A bark too, that one had been plying the waters in the 1890s, and word on the ’Net says this one was launched in 1968 specifically for cadet training. At one hundred and seventy-eight feet long, she’s so big she must be guided in and out of the Sound, for (if I heard right) she has no engine accept for her sails.

The Gloria sports a crew of about 135, and I’d seen the cadets walking in groups along the sidewalk the night before. I saw a handful of them now. Those on board were dressed in their “whites” to meet the public, while carloads of others were carrying bags and boxes of American “treasures” aboard. Cups-o-noodles, backpacks, play stations, toys, and tennis shoes to be buried amidst berths and bunks down below. As I stood in line to go aboard, a volunteer entertained us with stories of cadet adventures. They’d been supplied a van and driver, and when asked where they wanted to go, they all cried “Walmart.” So, to Walmart they went. When asked where they wanted to go to lunch, they cried “Hooters!” And so to Hooters they went. Rumor has it, they garnered much attention there.

Speaking of hooters, I tried to catch a glimpse of the Gloria’s figurehead, but the dock was too short and I not nimble enough to leap into a passing boat to catch a waterside view. I find figureheads a bit magical as they embody the spirit of the ship. I imagine the Gloria’s figurehead is as strong as the bronze emblem that is apparently the symbol of the Spanish Armada. Once I stepped aboard, I paused to study the huge polished bronze plague at mid-ship that bears the Spanish or Columbian seal. In it, is a crossed combo consisting of a sword, a quill, and a trident—intriguing ode to the Greek god Poseidon, ruler of the sea.

I walked the spotless teak decks from bow to stern, wondering at the tremendous masts, the web of complex rigging, and the aft deck that was large enough to host its own shipside version of Dancing With the Stars. Speaking of stars, I stopped to listen to a cadet explain, through a visitor who translated for his group, that while they had all the best navigation equipment aboard, they still learned to rely on the stars. Each sailor was trained to look to the stars first, electronics second. And the stars are never so bright as on a clear, dark sea.

As I padded down the steep stairs to the dock, I looked again to the pristine green and white paint, the Columbian-king sized blue, red, and yellow flag, and the metal hull. But it was the comment about the stars that stuck with me. I left the dock thinking that maybe, if we all made a practice of looking to the stars first, we might one day clear the air enough to see them.

 

 

Off My Shelf…

Arrivals and Inventions: A Two-Book Review

By Stephanie Lile

 

The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Published in the United States by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc., 2007. Copyright 2006.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Published by Scholastic Press, New York. Copyright 2007.

 

There is a land somewhere far away from each of us where the language is unknown, the symbols unidentifiable, and the social structures unseen. And yet we must go there. For reasons that lurk larger than life, that threaten our very existence, we must go. We must travel to another place, and make our way in unfamiliar territory. Still, memories linger, and merge with new experiences. Do we despair at the differences, or do we celebrate survival? Whether going to a new place or learning a new thing, we are all in some small way, at risk of becoming The Arrival.

 

Shaun Tan, in his extraordinary work The Arrival, explores what it is like to arrive in a new place not knowing the language or the geography or the people. His is a story of a man who must leave his wife and daughter to go find work in another country. Through pictures and gestures, the man finds a room to rent, a job to work, and food to eat. All is strange and confusing, but he learns to survive and make friends. Through it all, a lone family picture and an origami crane symbolize memory and hope for a happier future. Tan does all this without placing a single word on the page.

 

In The Arrival, pictures tell the entire story. But these are not just any pictures. They are both universal and exclusive to every reader. Rendered with an unparalleled imagination and emotion, Tan’s story in pictures touches the soul of anyone who has ever felt out place anywhere. It reveals the complexity of the immigration story with detail and insight pulled from actual stories and references of migrants to Western Australia, Britain, and the United States. From the frustration and discrimination of being tagged as an immigrant, to the joys of being befriended by an unexpected pet, to the compassion expressed through the sharing of arrival stories, Tan gives us a personal glimpse of what it takes to survive in a new place. Faces of sixty immigrants line the endpapers like a high school annual—each black and white pencil drawing alluding to another life story, another story of Arrival.

 

This moving work, published in the United States by Arthur A. Levine Books, begs the question, “Why no Caldecott for this one?” This year, in 2008, the Caldecott Medal for illustration went to Brian Selznick’s clever and intriguing book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. While “Hugo” is without question a compelling work of art and story, highly deserving of its honor, The Arrival stops any Caldecott follower in his or her tracks. Like Hugo, its pictures speak as loud (actually louder) than the words, and the images are rendered with a similar technique and style. But the catch of the coveted Caldecott is that it “shall be awarded to the artist of the most distinguished American Picture Book for Children published in the United States during the preceding year. The award shall go to the artist, who must be a citizen or resident of the United States, whether or not he be the author of the text.” The Arrival fails these criteria on two counts. Shaun Tan is not American and the book was not originally published in America. It was first published in Australia by Lothian Books in 2006.

 

Testament to Levine’s eye for signing international books with groundbreaking impact, The Arrival is stunningly produced. Harkening back to turn-of-the-century leather bound photo albums, even the pages possess a gritty texture and faux crackled edges to suggest the original documents that provided much of its inspiration.

 

Production for Hugo was groundbreaking, too. Echoing the old wide-angle to tight shot movie imagery, the book’s hefty 530 page count stunned booksellers and buyers. But its message, innovation in production, and early film inspiration moved readers beyond those hurdles as quickly as a 30-second film trailer makes a person want to sit through a three-and-a-half-hour movie. Unraveling the mystery of a broken automatron and a young, orphaned Hugo Cabret, this story weaves a magical tale of life’s desires and disappointments as seen through the eyes of Hugo. After the death of his father and uncle, he secretly takes over the maintenance of the clocks in Paris’s grand train station. The story evolves from what he sees and hears while secreted away inside the station’s walls.

 

In comparing these two books, one significant difference is the speed at which you find yourself reading. I found myself wanting to read Hugo film-flicker fast and The Arrival sightseer slow. Yet interestingly, while these two books vary noticeably in dimension, production, and pace, their messages are largely the same. Theirs is a message of invention—and reinvention—of our selves. And yet the bigger question both stories pose is, “How will you do it—how will you get there?”

 

If we follow Tan’s and Selznick’s lead, we invent and reinvent ourselves by unlocking the stories captured in life’s pictures. Their works make it seem deceptively simple.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

This review first appeared on the Whidbey Writer’s Workshop student site at www.whidbeystudents.com.

 

 

 

Pieces: A Letter to My Friend

Terri Radcliffe Hunziker and I went to high school together and managed to keep in touch through the twenty something years that have followed. She was the last one we ever thought would go first. It was non-smoker lung cancer, that mysterious disease that’s creeping into the lives of more and more people, that took her on July 4, 2008. It was her Independence Day after almost five years of fighting. The doctors had originally given her six months.

You can read more about her and all she did to try to extend her life and raise her kids at www.mybumpintheroad.com. She, in her quiet way, was a doer.

I found out after she was gone that she had asked for me to read at her memorial–a reading of my choice. I couldn’t find anything that truly captured her spirit, so I dared to write my own. It’s called “Pieces,” and it was inspired by David Wagoner’s poem “Going Back to the Sea.” It’s a story from the heart—bad freeform random poetry at worst, a hopeful monologue at best. I’m posting it here for everyone who was lucky enough to know or even hear of Terri. She touched the lives of many.

———————————————-

Pieces: A Letter To Terri

 

Dear Ter,

 

You’ve left us in pieces. Shattered like colored glass on hard cold marble.

Our worlds hung suspended when you left,

Until the knowledge of what was coming

Clashed with the disbelief that it had actually arrived.

And then all the glass bubbles of hope we’d

launched day after day, treatment after treatment

came crashing, crashing

Crashing to Earth.

 

And now, Ter, as I stand amidst this

Kaleidescope of your life, I have some questions for you.

Questions about you and about stuff you should know now

That you didn’t know when you were here.

 

For example, why when my poetry teacher sent a poem to me

For you called “Going Back to the Sea”

why did it bring me to tears for the rest of the afternoon?

 

Why? Was it the beginning?

 

“It will seem strange at first

going back under water,

            but soon your difficult breathing

            will feel like a birthright,

and you’ll settle down

to a more buoyant life

            where each step and each touch

            will be an easy impulse

to give in to. Your body

will discover old proportions….”

 

Was it the poem’s title and the recollections it inspired of pilgrimages

we all made to Cannon Beach? That place where the

sand stretches endlessly, the pizza is fresh, seabirds swirl,

and the waves roll far offshore, white against gray.

 

Or was it because we had all wanted your lungs to clear

And your breathing to be easy? And you to be well.

 

Why did that poem bring on such stinging tears?

Maybe it was the middle.

 

“…In place of speech,

            you’ll have your exclusive silence.

Now the dissolution of shadows

and the scattering of the sun

into ribbons and broken crescents

            will show what swims around you —

            diatoms, plankton, the suspense

of colloidial particles—

and will blur your vision

            momentarily

            into the visionary….”

 

You, Ter, were our science visionary,

With bits of wisdom and humor dancing in the ether.

My favorites, as I’m sure you’d guess, are the

“Weird & Wacky Science Facts” from the Terimore Institute.

 

Like this one…

 

“A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can. Next time I have to cross the Sahara desert, I will be certain to go by giraffe.”

 

And this one….

 

“Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. If this doesn’t work, the management is not responsible.”

 

A crocodile passed through the front entry

The night Shan and I stayed with you.

You weren’t afraid and we didn’t have to run in a

Zig zag line. Instead, you watched it go by

with an Audubon eye

and then slept. You made me brave.

 

What’s it like, where you are?

I imagine it’s a place of possibilities

Like the poem’s near end…

 

“…If you go back

to glare and the wind, if you flounder

            ashore on the sand and lift

            your shape on surprising legs

and finally stand once more….”

 

I know it frustrated you no end

Those last weeks, not being able to stand on your own.

 

But when we watched that last movie Blue Crush.

We dreamed up lives as hot, strong surfer chicks.

What it must feel like to stand on a board

And ride those waves…

Maybe now you know.

Have you found your footing in another world,

While we all struggle to find ours in this?

 

Dang, girl. You left us all in pieces.

You were supposed to be our miracle.

But you left us all in pieces—a quivering

mass of molecules,

atoms, dancing particles of light.

Elements on the periodic table.

Electrical impulses.

Mysteries of life.

 

What wisdom can you share with us now?

 

Maybe it’s this truth,

Channeled from you through me, to this room

Where we’re meant to remember and say good-bye.

But we can’t fully let you go

because now we know this one true thing…

 

You were made up of pieces of us, and we are made

Of pieces of you. Memories, touches, smiles,

even those people

You never met, hoping and praying

for your miracle—our miracle.

That we all thought would come.

 

But maybe, just maybe YOU are our miracle.

Left for us in tiny pieces.

In us.

Those little ways you

Entered our lives that help us to remember

and to know you in ways you were

too humble to reveal.

 

You think we think you’re gone? Ha!

Ter, we can find you in a grain of sand.

We can find you in the lines on our hands

We can even find you in Bryson’s green eggs and ham.

 

I suppose one day we will let you go, but only

Because you left us pieces.

Pieces of bravery,

Of intelligence

Of determination

Of laughter,

Of kindness.

 

Pieces. Because of those we will remember.

 

Because of those we will all find a beginning in a poem’s end.

 

“You’ll find what’s left of yourself

sinking slowly, easily,

into a half-sleep once more.”

 

But we know you aren’t sleeping.

We know that you’re astride a giraffe galloping across

The Sahara. That you’ll Go Back to the Sea, with an

Evolutionary flair, swimming with the birds and the fishes

In your favorite Saint’s care.

 

We know you’re everywhere—

 

“in the scattering of the sun

into ribbons and broken crescents…

         that will show what swims around us—

diatoms, plankton, the suspense of colloidial particles…”

 

All blurring our vision momentarily, into the visionary.

 

Thanks Ter, for sharing pieces of you with all of us.

 

 

Written by Stephanie Lile for

Terri Radcliffe Hunziker –December 26, 1962- July 4, 2008–

Inspired by ”Going Back to the Sea” a poem by David Wagoner.

 

Memorial Service July 10, 2008

Book Talk: The Wednesday Wars

Middle-Grade or YA: WHERE’S THE “WAR” IN WEDNESDAY?

by S.T. Lile

“All of my friends were Irish Catholic or Jewish, and there were some years I was the only Protestant kid in the entire class,” says Gary Schmidt in an article posted on the Calvin College website. He’s an English professor there with a particular interest in investigating the ways that “our individual life stories reveal underlying patterns” – patterns that are both universal and transpersonal, that bind us together as human beings who are trying to make sense out of the ups and downs of life.

That statement is, in essence, the theme of The Wednesday Wars, Schmidt’s 2008 Newbery Honor book. There was talk of this book following in the bi-award footsteps of Schmidt’s earlier work, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy that won honors in both the Newbery and Prinz categories for middle grade and young adult respectively, but that didn’t happen. Why?

The answer to that question lies in how the author deals with the story’s underlying world events and personal issues of the characters. The HOW is what separates middle grade from young adult, in theory as distinct a difference as that which separates middle school life from high school angst. The pressures are different, the perspectives are different, the range of experience is different. If The Wednesday Wars were compared to Prinz medalist Looking for Alaska, the only commonalities one would find is a semi-geeky male main character interacting with a bunch of other kids in school. Everything else is a league apart, and it’s not just because the Alaska characters are older.

Here’s why.

Consider the concept of concentric circles, the old rock-thrown-in-water analogy. For the characters in The Wednesday Wars, their world is the center of the circle. The bigger life-impacting issues such as the Vietnam War, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, and Walter Cronkite’s news reports belong to other people and live in the outer circles. If this had been a Prinz book, these outer life issues would be intimately co-mingled with the lives of the central characters. For example, Holling would have had to register for the draft, not Holling’s sister’s boyfriend. In The Wednesday Wars, each of these outer-life issues is personified by a different character.

Mrs. Baker, the teacher Holling is certain hates him, is portrayed as hard and angry, although we learn later that she’s kind and giving but made hard by the heavy sadness of having her husband sent off to Vietnam.

Holling’s sister Heather, is the high school Flower Child who despairs at the worlds’ injustices and fights against the constraints placed on her by her parents. In her character we see a politically aware and hopeful person who gets shredded by the mean-hearted assassination of presidential hopeful Bobby Kennedy. Her personal loss of hope as a result of that event mirrors the shattering of the collective hope held by millions of Americans at that time.

The interactions between Mrs. Bigio and Mai Thi represent the blind discrimination and hatred that comes from knowing only the idea of a person, not the person herself. Theirs is the type of racism and discrimination that comes from the pain of war—Mrs. Bigio loses her husband in Vietnam and takes out her grief on Mai Thi only to later realize that Mai Thi as an individual had nothing to do with his death. Having lost her family and been transplanted to America, the young Vietnamese girl’s life was as ravaged by war as Mrs. Bigio’s.

Holling’s parents comprise a weird cliché of “typical middle Americans” who follow the news but who never really let it sink in. They are as plastic as the coverings on their prefect couch cushions—impervious to the sorrows of the world around them and immersed in a weird self-absorption that keeps them oblivious to the trials and sorrows of their children. They are the biggest disappointment in the book.

Shakespeare, however, is the voice from the past. He comes through for Holling in the unexpected role of a sort of spirit guide, introduced in the story to help Holling through this difficult transition between seventh and eighth grade. We hear Shakespeare speak through Holling, “Toads, beetles, bats.” We see plot parallels between Romeo and Juliet and Holling and Meryl Lee (fathers with rival architecture firms). We discover, as does Holling, the concept of universal emotion as it applies to lives across time.

And as for the rats, they, too, have their own sub plot, and it’s an important one. They represent the nervous anticipation of the time—the perception that vengeful, unseen things are lurking in the walls of the world. Things that can’t be captured or caged no matter how hard you try. Instead you must wait, and watch the ceiling tiles bulge, listen to the scratching and scrabbling in the walls, and know that the rats are collecting things to use against you in any small-minded way they can.  They are bigger villains than Doug Swieteck’s brother. They are the Villains of Unknown Power, which was largely the perspective on governments of the time.

Each character in the story played an essential role. Each role epitomizes Schmidt’s idea that “our individual life stories reveal underlying patterns” in the bigger world picture. In that sense, the book was a success. But on a larger scale, was it more than a “year in the life” story? What would it take to bump it firmly into the young adult genre? The answer is this—Schmidt could write the sister’s story, complete with political strife, first sex, and parental defiance. Hers would be more of an emotional tale driven by self-motivated action as opposed to the story of a seventh grade boy who spends his days reacting to a whirlpool of events that swirl around him.

The joy of a great middle grade book, however, is that it can maintain that suspended moment between unjaded youth and scared-shitless teenager. The Wednesday Wars does that with humor, a finely woven series of sub plots, language, and the unexpected realization of small dreams.

While some would say those realizations of small dreams make the book sappy and predictable, their purpose was to shift the reader’s (and the characters’) expectations. We often expect things to go a certain way and feel that things have failed if they don’t. The shifts in this book help us remember that what you think is true about a person or way of doing something isn’t always so. Holling learned that about Mrs. Baker numerous times. Although Schmidt almost overdid it (Mrs. Baker couldn’t just be a runner, she was an Olympic runner), her role was like that of the Oz—a big tough persona on the outside, an accomplished, kindhearted human on the inside. It just took a few lifts of the curtain to see that.

The “war” in The Wednesday Wars runs throughout the plot, setting, and cast of characters. Everyone is fighting his or her own little battle whether at home or abroad. Sometimes that “war” is merely a matter of perception that changes with time. Sometimes, the affects of war lie in its reverberations and the bonds it creates. Such was the case with Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Bigio opening the telegram from the no-longer Missing in Action Lt. Baker.

From that scene and the one of Holling meeting his sister at the bus station, came one of my favorite lines in the book, “Sometimes you have to let yourself be found.” It was Holling’s wisest line and it applied to his sister, to Lt. Baker, and possibly in some small way to himself as “being found” by Shakespeare.

What that line means in a deeper context, if we follow Schmidt’s idea that patterns in humanness exist that are both “universal and transpersonal, that bind us together as human beings,” is exactly what it says. Sometimes we have to stop fighting and hiding and open ourselves up to being found. It’s hard to do, but that’s what growing up is all about.

War is the pattern that bound these characters together as human beings. How these characters interact is what makes this a middle-grade novel.

Morning on the Murray Morgan

Second in a set of essays about one of Tacoma, Washington’s abandoned bridges.

Ramps to Nowhere

by S.T. Lile

 

In an apparently continuing effort to gentrify Dock Street and the Thea Foss Waterway, they’ve improved the sidewalks all the way to the base of the 11^th Street/Murray Morgan Bridge. They’re wider. There are bolt-studded concrete stumps where streetlights will one day be. Saplings have been planted in yawning squares, their roots reaching for fertile ground. Rising above that last bit of new sidewalk are the steel legs of the bridge. Some grey, some green, some spotted with rust and moss, the legs press skyward to support the span of roadway high above. Yet laced among them are a series of dangling ramps that hang useless and forgotten due to the amputation of their active ends. What were they for?

 

The answer was difficult to find—and there may be more pieces out there still—but old photographs and a morning of urban archaeology revealed the basic story. The clues—old dots in a connect-the-dot urban mystery—were there, hidden beneath the street surface and in the raw edges of the aged ramps themselves. Those crackled layers of wood, asphalt and steel pointed to a second use for the bridge structure, that of access to what had once been a line of Dock Street flourmills on the waterfront below. Hundreds of people worked in those mills until one by one the mills burned and failed to be rebuilt. Albers Mill, blocks away and transformed into loft apartments, is a lone survivor.

 

I knew about the flourmills from photographs found at the Tacoma Public Library. First I searched for pictures of the bridge itself. Then for Dock Street, the road that runs beneath it. Then for Cliff Street, Bayside Avenue, and Schuster Parkway—all streets that do or did once run perpendicular to the bridge’s 11^th Street entrance. I found all sorts of photos—floods of pedestrians walking to work over in the tide flats, Dock Street flour mill workers, postcard shots of the bridge’s mid-span lifted to allow the entrance of Old Ironsides, and a few distant cityscapes showing a ramp sliding down from the underpinnings of the bridge to the street below. Those photographs confirmed my suspicion that cars had once sullied their way from one level to the next on a switch back route beneath the bridge.

 

It’s been a long time, however, since the ramps have felt the burn of rubber tires. Based on the photos, it’s been a good 30-40 years. This morning as I hiked the stairway from docks to bridge, I marveled at the tenacity of Tacoma’s flora. A sword fern fanned out from a crack in the stairway roof support. Moss blanketed whole stretches of buckled asphalt, willing it into fertile soil for grass and blackberry vines. Pigeon poop and rust-defying paint mingled on the metal supports, camouflaging the original latticework of the ramps’ siderails. Nature is winning.

 

And after 95 years, perhaps that’s as it should be. One look upward from the lower level of stairs, and you have to fight the vertigo that rickety heights inspire. A train passes on the tracks below and the whole structure shimmies. The pigeons flutter. The wood planks under the buckling asphalt creak. You know then why the bridge is closed to cars.

 

Once at the top, I walk along the pitted roadway now blocked with orange striped barrels and concrete barriers. I’m looking for what I’ve missed twenty walks before—the clue that confirms my suspicion that the ramps once joined Cliff Street for cars and pedestrians alike. Steps to the right of the bridge beckon. I follow them down below the surface of the bridge to a forgotten tunnel that slides past a reeking dumpster and reaches, if only in my imagination, for that old dangling, rotten ramp. I can see the dots of road and ramp connected now, despite the concrete supports of Schuster Parkway. Cars on one side, people on the other. It had been a clever solution for accessing the waterfront far below.

 

Although a quiet relic now that the new 509 bridge is open, the Murray Morgan still owns the waterway. Tall ships must call ahead to have the bridge lifted as its operator has been reassigned to Hood Canal. Its metal skeleton stretches prominently from shore to shore, accented by an operator’s house and a little guard shack. The walls of the shack are streaked with graffiti and a flagger’s SLOW sign peeks through windows blurry with grime. But the bridge still stands, clues to its age evident to those who look.

 

And one doesn’t have to look far. Nineteen twelve appears on the grayed-out commemorative plaques at either end of the bridge. Nineteen fifty-six is imprinted in the concrete balustrades at the tide flat end. Built and modified over time, the Murray Morgan faces potential death despite the efforts of Tacoma’s city council. Rumor has it that certain council members chained themselves to the bridge in an effort to save it, but I can’t say whether that’s true. All that’s visible to me now are ramps to nowhere, except, perhaps, back through time.

 

 

 

Morning on the Murray Morgan

First in a set of essays about one of Tacoma, Washington’s abandoned bridges.

Snow and Wings: Mystery on the 11^th Street Bridge

by S.T. Lile

 

Finally, it was the wings—wing after torn wing—that made me look up. When I walk, I usually look down. Down at the new paving in front of my apartment building, down at the gravel-strewn construction zone nearby, down at the wooden planks of the boardwalk edging the Thea Foss waterway, and down at the broken pavement and cordoned-off sidewalks of the 11^th Street Bridge. I’d climbed up there on a set of wood and metal steps that pass the decrepit underpinnings of a bridge understandably now closed—to cars that is. Feet are fair game if you don’t mind the wings and heads; bird parts strewn across the abandoned roadway like a cemetery of fallen angels.

 

That morning, as I perched on my balcony fastening snowflake lights to the metal gridwork, it snowed. They were tiny flakes, but after a cold dry night, they were actually sticking. Accumulating like powered sugar on the concrete plaza of the Museum of Glass next door, the snowflakes lingered there at five feet above sea level long enough for me to remember how much I love the snow.  So, I’d decided to go for a walk and watch the snowfall from high up on the bridge.

 

As I reached the top of the stairs, a lone figure shuffled toward town, dark pants and tan coat soaked with grime. I walked the other way—over the bridge, toward the Tacoma tide flats filled with warehouses, pulp mills, and shipping yards. It was then that I noticed the wings. Wings are feathers not food. Especially when an abundance of pigeons roost nearby—and you have baby chicks to feed, and you’re a falcon. I remembered the peregrine falcons that got great press when they took up residence on the counterweights almost a decade ago. Evidence suggests they are still there, still hungry, and still hunting.

 

But even with a viable explanation for their presence on the bridgeway, the wings still haunted me. In my last pass across the bridge—I’d lingered on the span far longer than I’d intended, surveying the worn waterfront in the quiet of a snowy Sunday—the Lone Bridge Keeper—for that’s what I’d come to call him—returned in a flurry of wild scratching around the neck and chest of his cast-off Carhartt. We kept a wide berth but swapped greetings as our paths crossed, two strangers on a silent bridge. Why was he there? Why then, in that very moment?

 

A few days later, snow had turned to rain, but I went walking anyway. The 11^th Street Bridge provided welcome shelter for about ten steps as I passed beneath it. I had no desire to hike the stairs and cross the bridge in the pouring rain, but that didn’t keep the snowy morning out of my mind. In a strange Skellig* moment, I imagined the Lone Bridge Keeper glance behind him as he reached for a pair of freshly fallen wings. He slung them over his shoulder, shrugged into them, and disappeared into the bridge’s heights.

 

Months later when I walked the bridge again, there wasn’t a pair of wings to be found. The Lone Bridge Keeper had vanished too, gone to wherever snow goes in summer.

 

*SKELLIG is a story by David Almond about a boy who discovers a lost and sick angel hiding in a tumble-down garage.

 

 

 

Tools of the History Trade (Part II)

Excerpted from my book History Lab To Go!, published in 2002 by the Washington State Historical Society. 

The last three “tools” in the “seven concepts, seven tools” of historical inquiry scheme are People, Books & Periodicals, and Electronic Media. Here’s the lowdown. 

People—Oral histories, letters, memoirs, diaries, journals, and expert advice all fall within the people tool. These items, and the people they represent, may provide an eyewitness account or an expert opinion. Many times, the initial investigation of an object, event, or time period begins by asking someone you know who might have special knowledge about a particular subject. 

Books & Periodicals—Perhaps one of the most commonly used sources of historical evidence, books and periodicals lead us on a journey through the printed word. As bibliography bloodhounds, we can follow a trail from a book’s list of resources to magazine and newspaper articles and on to primary source documents such as letters or journals. While a book may cover a topic in a more permanent and definitive way, magazines and newspapers provide immediate and focused glimpses of current and historic issues and events. 

Electronic Media—Encompassing audio recordings, film, video, and the Internet, electronic media provides a unique view into the past. Film, video, and audio recordings allow “instant replays” of past events, the viewing of which would otherwise be impossible. The Internet has become an important research tool for investigating everything from manufacturers to trademarks, and place names to people. Museum collections around the world are getting digitized, too, making objects more accessible than ever (even if nothing beats seeing the real thing). I’ll be writing about some of my favorite online collections in upcoming posts, so stay tuned.

This post concludes the “tools” list. The concepts will follow soon.

Tools of the History Trade (Part I)

Excerpted and updated from my book History Lab To Go! published in 2002 by the ever-so-forward-thinking Washington State Historical Society.

What are the Tools of the History Trade? In short, the “Tools” are sources of historical evidence. Each artifact, image, map, book or periodical, personal account, recording and ephemeral item is a piece to the puzzle that is the past. Learning to use these puzzle pieces and to find the relationships among them is the essence of historical inquiry.

The first four tools are:

Artifacts—Three-dimensional objects made or used by humans. They can be handmade or manufactured, representative of a place, a people, or a particular industry. Works of art can be considered artifacts, especially objects that blend art, craft, culture, and function. Pottery, basketry, textiles, and funerary sculpture are all great examples of artifacts as art.

Ephemera—Printed items, usually made of paper, that are only used for a short period of time. Concert posters, movie tickets, ferry schedules, catalogs, brochures, and even junk mail are all considered ephemera.

Images—Drawings, paintings, and photographs. Images provide visual insight to past events. When using images as historical evidence, one must evaluate the artist’s intent, cultural and educational background, personal beliefs, and medium. Prior to the invention of photography, drawings and paintings provided the only visual record of past events. Today, photography is the most popular choice for recording events as they happen.

Maps—An important means of evaluating change over time of places across the globe. Maps reflect human knowledge of a place—its resources and characteristics as they have been known in different time periods. Maps come in many forms—political boundary maps, aeronautical charts, and topographical maps are a few examples. The kinds of maps used and developed in different time periods and places can provide clues to determining the trends, technologies, and beliefs among people of the past.

That’s it for now…Watch for another exciting episode of “Tools and Concepts” coming soon. In Part II we’ll explore the jumble of People, Books & Periodicals, and Electronic Media that make up the final three Tools of the History Trade.