Every Friday from 6 to 8pm, bring your portable handwork and join us
for companionship and conversation.  Needle and fiber crafts, small
home decor projects, model railroading, and many other activities have
put in appearances at our Craft Night.

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Allison Cobb and Kaia
Sand will read from their newest collections. Each just-released book shares
several features: each combines essay-writing with poetry to investigate the
political history of a specific place (for Cobb, Green-Wood
Cemetery in Brooklyn New
York; and for Sand, the Expo
Center in Portland), making connections to our present
moment.

In Green-Wood,
Allison Cobb wanders Brooklyn’s famous nineteenth century Green-Wood Cemetery
and discovers that its 500 acres--hills and ponds, trees and graves--mirror the
American landscape: a place marked by death but still pulsing with life.
Through the lens of Green-Wood, the book explores the history of the American
landscape, changing attitudes toward the land, and the impacts of private
property, industrial poisons, and war. This is history and poetry, a
testament to what survives and an elegy for what is lost--the long dead, the
landscape itself, but especially those who died in the twin towers and in the United States’
ongoing wars.

Sand takes the reader
on a guided tour of Portland,
Oregon's hidden histories—those
of the internment of Japanese-Americans, the shunting of African Americans into
the part of the city that floods. “Do we need our ruins visible?” asks Kaia
Sand.  “I carry old maps, but sometimes the space seems illegible because
reclaimed wetlands and construction changed the shape of the land.  I
cross-check books and oral histories and photographs.  I imagine.” Her
book is composed of essays, a poetry walk, and poems that rise out of documents
like histories from a nearly-forgotten past.  Sand shows us how a past can
be re-visioned through research and the poetic imagination.

Allison Cobb is the
author of the poetry collection Born2 (Chax Press) about growing up
in Los Alamos, New Mexico,
(birthplace of the atomic bombs) and the just-published Green-Wood,
a work of poetic nonfiction (Factory
School). She lived for
many years in Brooklyn, New York, where she worked for an
environmental organization. She now lives in Portland.

Kaia Sand is the author of a poetry
collection, interval (Edge Books 2004), and co-author with Jules Boykoff of
Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space (Palm Press 2008), and
she has created several chapbooks through the Dusie Kollektiv. Her poems lotto
and tiny arctic ice comprise the text of two books in Jim Dine’s Hot Dreams
series (Steidl Editions 2008). She lives in Portland, Oregon,
with Jules Boykoff and their daughter, Jessica.

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Toni Partington is a poet, editor, collage artist, life/career coach,

and grant writer. Her new book, Wind Wing, a collection of poems

dedicated to the women who transformed her life, will be available for

$10. Toni’s poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, Selected

Poems of the River Poets’ Society, The Cascade Journal, VoiceCatcher

(editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink.net and others. She is the author of a

poetry chapbook, Jesus Is A Gas (2009). She serves as an associate

editor on the collective of VoiceCatcher, an annual Pacific Northwest

anthology of women writers. Toni is a regular columnist for Writing

The Life Poetic, an online Zine that complements the print version of

the book by Sage Cohen, http://writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com.

Wind Wing

Sweet breeze

scented with orange blossoms in early summer

caress my face pressed against the

open wind-wing in her Impala.

These rides; a secret time to talk

while we forget she is crazy –

top down, headed home with drippy cones

her, strawberry

me, maple nut.

Just enough time to adjust the wind-wing

while the red leather seats grow warm

she lets me push buttons to find

the right song for our sing-along.

These are the times I remember now

in melancholy middle age –

her hair cut short, dyed blonde

shoulders tanned above the halter-top

while shorts sprout bare legs

down to bright red toenails.

I picture this as her departure from upstate New York

and Catholic School rules

when California set her free

and took her down.

I watched her ricochet between two worlds –

safe home or padded room

delicacies or dry-mouthed delirium

green lawns or barred doors

Sunday Mass or shock treatments

her sanity – barely or not at all.

I long for the Impala

it is easier than longing for her –

a drive along Victoria Avenue

lined with orange groves and old songs

while we drift between dark nights and darker days.

Her life, like the wind-wing

unlatched slowly, one inch at a time

till the wind arrives at high pitch.

Throw it wide open and watch everything fly away.

Have you ever imagined owning a bookstore, or just thought booksellers have the most awesome job in the world?  (We do, we do.)  Join us for an insider's look at the daily operations of a small bookstore, hosted by St. Johns Books owner Nena Rawdah.  This is your chance to find out how bookstores are really doing these days, what their prospects are for the future, and what it takes to get one going.  Nena will also discuss

• the economics of new and used books
• where the money comes from--and where it goes
• why shopping local really does make our entire regional economy healthier
• resources for planning your own bookselling venture

Participants will be invited to apply for 3 part-time, 10-week internship openings--great opportunities to experience the work and fun of bookselling.

You've put your name, your contact information, your school stats, and your last 3 jobs.  What more could an employer want to know? Technical writer and queen geek Laura Ridenour will discuss the finer points of writing resumes and cover letters for a viciously competitive job market.  Learn to tailor your resume for different positions, and speak the language employers need to hear.