ty u t/n
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G o su teb
Victoria Stopplello
Don’t throw the fish out with the bath w ater
The Reverend Hults told me the responsibility for
penning a short eulogy falls squarely on my
shoulders. I’m not good at these things. They
seem to catch us up with an alarming frequency
these days.
Several weeks ago a mutual friend told me
Terence had undergone surgery. In the days that
followed, he bequeathed his beloved prayer beads
to a close friend. 1 felt say knowing what that
meant.
I first encountered Terence at the Wavecrest
Inn, a coastal outpost harboring a rare cut o f
characters indeed. He had just drafted in behind a
swarm o f weekenders in his aged red Fiat sports
car. Seated in the small roadster, tweed driving
cap, round wire-rimmed glasses, boyish smirk, he
looked for all the world like Mr. Toad o f The W ind
in the Willows just swirled in off the High Road. At
dinner that evening he regaled us with stories o f
the old Iran he loved so dearly, dandling
Gray C , the cat,
on his knee.
Poem for People who Love Poets
T his poem is dedicated to the people wh<i lo v e the people w ho
love. Y ou know w ho you are. Or m aybe, you don't.
Y ou cou ld be on e o f the ten thousand m om ents w e write about
or the breath w e wake to every morning. Y ou are every hand
that has touched us, from the First to slap us into the world to
the o n e to c lo se our ey es for the last time. T h is is for you , w ho
are our peace and our fire, our safety and our cage, the ones
w e cry for alon e and the on es w e push aw ay, you are the
needle and the bottle and the knife and the gun. Y ou arc the
hand that pulls us up w hen w e are s o far d ow n , and the kiss
that lo v es us w hen w e have forgotten to lo v e ourselves. Y ou
are safety and misunderstanding. Y ou are the danger that w e
lick o f f the ed g e o f the knife named life. Y our nam e is on e o f
the ten m illion w ords for god , and your body is our tem ple and
our crypt. Your dreams are what w e fear, and your fear is our
every day and night o f exhaled stars, you are our creation and
our undoing.
T his is for you. T h is is for you w h o allow' you rselves to be
transported by our dream y sigh s, w h o bleed the revolution w e
have co n ceiv ed , w h o shut o f f the television and turn on your
minds. T h is is for those w h o giv e us the silen ce to speak into,
w h o listen and hear the ech o es w ithin your hearts.
A short,
com pact man,
Terence would sit
astride a stiff chair. His body
canted slightly toward one side,
favoring legs attenuated by childhood
osteomyelitis. Like an ebullient Emir at a desert
east, Terence held complete sway over a dinner
audience with his storytelling. When he
com m enced a savory story, his face gleamed like a
child at Christmas. At those times, one could
glimpse the boy within the m an. He loved to dance
and favored a flagon or two o f an evening.
In m y m ind’s eye, I can see him as he
appeared one special evening, a beer brewing night
at the Wavecrest. Don Thompson, the innkeeper,
and Mike Knop were brewing beer under a covered
outdoor deck. Gusts o f wind and fits o f rain
whirled around the bubbling pot o f ale wort. Don,
Mike, Ron Logan and I hunched over the beer pot
inhaling its pleasing vapors. Suddenly Terence
materialized out o f the darkness behind the inn’s
huge wisteria bush. Worsted up in woolens from
toe to chin, his jaunty tweed cap scrunched to his
eyebrows, he bid us “good evening” and joined us
over the brew.
“ M y, that smells good!” he exclaimed. A
thick fog settled on the lenses o f his wire
spectacles. We com m enced a round o f stories as
the south wind soughed through the old wisteria
limbs.
Last summer Ron Logan and I visited him at
his Seaview, Washington home, Crank’s Roost. We
offered to take him to dinner at the Depot or the
Shelboum e Inn, but he declined, telling us he
could only swallow milkshakes. We sat in the
serenity o f his little garden sipping Vodka tonics.
Bed-ridden for a great part o f his childhood,
Terence became, like Odysseus, a man o f many
turns, a passionate traveller. While the three o f us
sat in the summer air, Terence reminisced: a night
in a Mexican brothel as a teenager (the fam ily he
stayed with thought he was in church!) a dhow ride
in the Middle East, his days on a pomegranate farm
in Iran.
That was the last time I saw Terence. He
was m y favorite kind o f historian, a story teller o f
great merit. His engraved words on the Vietnam
Memorial, a painful juxtaposition o f Oregon events
and the facts o f that war, detail in a special way
how the unfurling present becomes our history. I
complimented him that evening on his latest book,
Seven Shades o f Mem ory.
“That’s very nice,” he said, “ but, really,
none o f it’s true.” I told him it felt very true to me.
S am A bsher
V Conafr
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T h is is a m essage for you , the lovers o f those w h o love. Y ou
have ch o sen a d ifficu lt path. In our hearts w e are gy p sies w h o
cannot know safety. W e feed on the tension that w ould kill
others, w e poison ou rselves for enlightenm ent and are
transformed, w e see the depth and beauty w ithin your hearts
m ultiplied in the infinite reflections o f a ch ild ’s eyes.
F orgive us. W e are incapable o f your version o f sanity and
w ould spit at it if it were offered.
F orgive us. For the dam age w e cau se, for our thoughtless
trampling through your unsuspecting liv es, for our tears and
blood and sex and rapture that w e cannot help but heave at any
standing clo se enough to sm ile.
Forgive us. W e are treading an unknown path, playing a gam e
with n o rules, dressed as soothsayers w hen w e are on ly idiot
children, seek in g a hom e s o we'll have som ew here to g o to
break the dishes.
Protect yourselves. W e ch o o se to live d eep ly rather than long,
w e cannot accept the safety you offer, but rather dance with
m adness and her gifts o f tainted prophecy.
Forgive us, protect us, inspire us. L eave us to curse our muse
and the blood y sacrifice sh e dem ands.
T his is for the lovers o f those w h o love.
T h is is dedicated to you.
Gabrielle Bouliane, copyright 1998
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I was up on my high horse recently, riding
around the electronic universe moaning about the
sorry state of affairs regarding salmon, electricity,
hot water and how dumb we’ve all been, when I had
a conversation with my friend Ed. Ed has seen way
more of the world than I have, and although he
claims he’s more pessimistic, I notice he always
makes me feel better and a bit more hopeful. As Ed
metaphorically helped me down from my high
horse, he noted there was a soap box for me to land
on, and from that relatively lowly perch (compared
with my high horse of at least 22 hands) I might
inject a little humor and romance into my diatribe.
Indeed, there truly is opportunity for both in our
situation. We can do something good for us, good
for our pocketbook, good for fish, and maybe even
good for our love life, all at the same time. Here's
the situation:
You've undoubtedly noticed the wonderfully
mild winter we've had - half our normal rainfall,
and virtually no snow pack in the Cascades. As a
result, the Bonneville Power Administration
believes there won't be enough water behind its 29
dams to spill water for young salmon heading to the
sea and at the same time generate all the electricity
we humans typically like to use. So they're saying,
let the salmon get ground up in the turbines like
usual, don't spill any extra water for them,
otherwise BPA will have to buy very expensive
electricity from some moguls down in Texas (those
are the guys who have been buying up California
power plants at a rapid clip the last few years) and
maybe go broke in the process (a terrible idea for a
federal agency), or, and here's the big threat, we
will have black-outs in the Pacific Northwest. This
is the word from an agency that stopped all its
energy conservation programs about eight years
ago.
Of all those choices the one I like best is
blackouts, but that's because I like to see the stars at
night and I'd like someone younger than me to catch
a few salmon 30 or 40 years from now. But I don't
think BPA has exhausted their options. They're just
too chicken to suggest some of the alternatives.
They 're probably afraid of a backlash because one
alternative could lead to a dirtier, sexier, hip, cool
and groovier population.
It all springs from the fact that hot water
consumes 25% of a household's energy budget. If
you're paying $100 a month for electricity, $25 is
going just to heat water. If you cut your hot water
use in half, you'll immediately save 12% of your
electricity. That's more than is generated by all four
dams on the Lower Snake. So, shower with a friend,
as they used to say, or with one of your kids, or
even your dog. Yes, 1 used to shower with my dog;
there was no tub, and I think he sort of enjoyed it.
Even dogs are intrigued by nude women.
If you're a parent, think o f how much less
conflict there will be when the struggle getting a
seven year old to bathe happens only two or three
times a week instead of daily. Yes, the child may
start to look like an urchin from Dickens, but so will
all the other kids in town so you won't have to
worry about what the neighbors think.
You have no friends to shower with? Too
modest? Then cut your showers in half. If you
shower every day, try every other day. Take three
minutes, not ten. If you're a Finn, go to the old
system: Sauna on Saturday and sponge bathe the
rest of the week.
Insulate your water heater and put a $40
timer on it so it only heats up a few hours when you
need it: on at 5:00AM and off at nine when you go
to work. Wash your clothes in cold water. When
you leave town, turn off the water heater at the
breaker. Besides cutting your hot water use, turn off
all that stuff you're not using, like your computer
with those fish swimming across the screen, and the
lights.
Now there's an idea. We're moving into
spring; pretty soon it'll be light until nine. After
showering with your sweetie, a romantic dinner will
be just the ticket. In Ilwaco, a town built on salmon,
are we better off with salmon or electricity? I figure
you can't eat electricity, so I'll take salmon by
candlelight.
Victoria Stoppiello writes from Ilwaco, at the tower
left corner o f Washington siale.
JOHN
PULLIAM
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