Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival, Sunnyside cafe, July -Aug

Journal entry, 2/29/92, Leap Day deadlines

2/29/92 Leap Day, dropping off artwork, deadlines. Yesterday was one of those days straight from hell, mainly because I was racing against the clock to put together a manuscript for the Yale Younger Poets award, this was my last year to enter.

I had to re-organize my manuscript, some techniques that Lee Perron showed me the other night, over dinner, dropping the buts the ands, and the whiles from my poems—all those articles and particles conveyed uncertainty. It also meant I had to reread every poem and make changes and reprint them all but my printer wasn’t working right and neither was Adobe Type Manager. The start-up icon went missing and it took me a while to figure it out. 

This last step was crucial, because he said to reprint my manuscript using a good type face. Geneva 12 point is too big, and 10 point is too small, 11 point doesn’t quite do it either, and since I have a true type printer, my font choices are limited, even with ATM running. I put 64 pages of poetry into Goudy typeface and it took me the entire day to run them off. I couldn’t use the Mac while it was printing. I was supposed to have my Ann Woodhead story done yesterday as well and I’ve only typed a few lines, it’s overdue. I need two Macs.

I just found out that two of my photos, The Lament for the Women of Russia, and Volcano Goddess Erotica/Madame Pele, that I sent in to the Sonoma County Arts Council at the end of December, 1991, were accepted for the Women Depicting Women art exhibit. Late, I was, second to last to drop off my pieces, but Diane Shulkin was still at the Arts Council. She said my writing has become famous. I was puzzled, then she showed me Mary Silverwood’s bio and I am quoted in it—a big paragraph at the top. So, as Mary’s career takes off, Canada, Britain, etc., my words travel with her. They become her official mascot.

Simone Wilson invited me over for a hot tub, and a disk swap. Lo and behold, she had the impossible to find ATM version, as the normal Palatino font won’t work with my printer. So now I have two typefaces I can use, at the 11th hour. But I think I like Goudy typeface better, it’s more elegant. There are literally hundreds of fonts available for the Mac, I have disks full of fonts, but there are less than a handful that are acceptable as a poetry typeface.

I also sent out 10 batches of poems and wrote a 2000-word article on Ann Woodhead. I usually don’t turn in my articles on the same day I write them, it’s too new and too raw, and I can’t see where it needs work, but I was already a day late, and had to turn it in. It takes me about three hours to pull it together, to add only 300 more words. Talk about leaping into the day, a day in the life of…

River of Time, book review, Simone Wilson, The Paper, Aug 30, 1990

RRWG Coffee & Co. reading, Marianne Ware, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson, Jonathan London, Zara Altair, Zelda Balchowski, Lee Perron,

Whale of a Gala, Poets & Humorists, Pat Nolan, Eula Long, Marianne Ware, Andrea Granahan, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson

RRWG 3rd annual Erotic poetry reading, Franklin St. Clubhouse

The Paper and the Sonoma County Stump

Since I've discovered that I can now backdate my old blog posts that were crammed into the years 2007, and 2008, when I first began blogging, I've been rearranging old posts. However, they no longer have context. So here's a bit on the newspapers I worked for during the 1980s and 1990s, to give you some kickoff perspective.

See also Old Posts, New Posts

The Paper was first launched in 1979 by Elizabeth Poole and Nick Valentine, in Guernewood Park, and later moved to Monte Rio. After Bliss Buys and Joe Leary's Sonoma County Stump folded around 1981, Simone Wilson and I began working for The Paper. Somewhere along the way, it became the West Sonoma County Paper. Nick Valentine, or the new owner, John Boland (of KQED fame) may have changed the name again. John Boland moved The Paper from Monte RIo to Forestville to Freestone, to Santa Rosa and it became the Sonoma County Independent.

It was purchased in 1994 by Silicon Valley-based Metro Newspapers Group (a chain of 10 weeklies: AAN Metro Silicon Valley and Metro Santa Cruz).  Soon after that, I left The Paper, the thrill was gone, micromanagers and myopic editors, and turfy journalists including Gretchen Giles, ran roughshod over us. I didn't survive the politics. The jerk with whom I was sharing darkroom duties (I was on the road a lot in those days) stole my negatives and  job. And that was that.

The Sonoma County Independent morphed into the Northern California Bohemian in 2000, or rather, The North Bay Bohemian. Alas, the archives only date back to November of 1995. I use the same name throughout, though I worked for at least three iterations of the paper. I got some good stories, I learned a lot. For that I'm grateful.

More here on The Paper.    THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2011

Remembering Nick Valentine & Phil Osborn at The Paper

Activist Mary Moore wrote to the Bohemian editor: Your birth was in Monte Rio around 1979 as The Paper and I still have many articles saved from that time. With Nick Valentine as editor and Tom and Elizabeth as publishers, this brave little weekly with beautiful graphics and extraordinary layout (before computers) became must reading for all us counterculture types. It replaced Bliss Buy's previous paper, the Sonoma County Stump as the activist publication, and was one of the reasons that we were so successful in 1980, the first year that we protested at Bohemian Grove. It took us through the early 1980s protests at Rancho Seco, Diablo Canyon and the Livermore labs as well as covering all our doings here at home.

Impossible to find anything online about The Sonoma County Stump. But I found this:

Patrick K. Lanzing, Editor/Photographer/Life StudentSonoma County Stump1972 – 1975 (3 years) Russian River, California
Learned how to run a local-area community newspaper in the beautiful Russian River region of Sonoma County, CA, alongside one of the great unsung heroines of the American Free Press: Bliss Buys (ne: Cochrane). Helped organize a benefit featuring the Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter Bands. Photographed the Russian River Rodeo and stomped grapes with folks who nowadays own their own wineries. Walked in the redwoods, happy but dirt poor. Wrote stirring editorials and knew my community. Then I went to the big city and got a "real" job.

I found this reference in the March 1978 Oak Leaf: Jerry Garcia Band and Robert Hunter’s band Comfort will be appearing at the Sebastopol Veterans Auditorium on March 22 to do a Benefit for the Sonoma County Stump, a local newspaper. Tickets are on sale now so if you’re interested, go get ’em while they’re still available.