In our introductory conversations with Liz Eslinger, the CEO of Write Around Portland (WAP), we learned how the organization fulfills its mission of “changing lives through the power of writing.” We—co-liaisons for this nonprofit—decided the best way to learn more about WAP was to participate in writing workshops ourselves. WAP sponsors a variety of participant-centered writing workshops, including bi-weekly 1½ hour workshops open to anyone in the community. These workshops (currently offered via Zoom, on a sliding scale, $5 to $30 each) provide funding for BIPOC, disenfranchised and incarcerated people with opportunities to express their voices through writing.
Postcards in the Time of Pandemic
Postcard by Azul Tellez
Along with just about everything in all of our lives, Covid-19 put a major crimp in the member-to-member engagement that makes our organization special. With summer socials and World Cafes off the table, the membership team at ninety-nine girlfriends wanted to find a way for members to feel connected that didn’t involve screens. The Postcard Project was the result, where team members hand-illustrated blank postcards to send to one another. Take a look .
There were drawings, such as Heidi’s Yewman’s poignant sketch of two faceless humans in an embrace. The caption read, “I miss hugging.” Lan Fenders sent three pictures of the smiliest dog you have ever seen. In “Things I’ve Learned To Do or Started Doing During Quarantine,” Amy Vargas revealed that she now cuts the hair of everyone in her family, grooms the dog, colors her own hair and is taking an online meditation class. My own postcard depicted the Eiffel Tower, along with a plaintive note (en francais) about how much I miss traveling. Nancy Johnson designed the postcards and assembled a slideshow of the whole project. Vaune Kemp donated the printing. For anyone who wishes she could have been part of this, girlfriend Kaye Gardner O’Kearny (klokearny@gmail.com) has volunteered to coordinate an expanded postcard project.
— Grayson Dempsey
Postcard by Nancy Johnson
Postcard by Grayson Dempsey
Put a Stamp On It: When an Envelope Makes a Statement
Thanks to girlfriend Heidi Yorkshire for reminding us, in an earlier blog, to watch this month’s PBS documentary in observance of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. I had my own memory-jog about this important occasion as I stood in line at the Savier Street post office in NW Portland. (Yes, I was masked, yes I was socially distanced and yes the guys at the counter were also masked, and working behind giant plastic shields. But that is not the point of this post.)
‘Fess up: Are you a creature of the Pleistocene, like me? Do you still, occasionally, write actual checks from an actual checking account at your bank? Do you put them in an envelope and mail them? Here is where I fall into whatever geological age came before the Pleistocene: I send birthday cards, graduation cards, congratulations-on-your-new-job/home/spouse cards. I have a wide array of cards designed to say thank-you. I have been through enough tragedy to know the meaning of a sincere, hand-written sympathy note. I would shoot myself before I would stoop to e-sympathy.
The glass case in the center of that small post office branch houses what used to be known as “special edition” stamps, more formally called commemoratives. My theory is, if you’re going to mail something, at least make it look interesting—colorful and possibly even artistic. I have a drawer full of cool stamps that I hoard for various missives. My collection of Wonder Woman stamps is especially impressive.
Kay, the nice guy who has been franking my packages since I moved to Portland, said he had never seen wrapping quite like the configuration I placed on his scale. “Trapezoidal,” I said, explaining the ziggurat of puzzles clad in brown Fred Meyer bags and headed for our granddaughters in California. Then I asked if I could please buy several sheets of the new forever stamps I had spied in the glass case, marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.
The stamp was designed by Postal Service art director Ethel Kessler, with original art by Nancy Stahl. Alas, said Kay, not yet. Although the glass case label said “available in August,” what it meant was sometime in August. Maybe that means Aug. 18, the actual ratification anniversary date.
The new imprint is the Postal Service’s latest acknowledgment of the fight women waged to prove that when our country’s founders crafted that phrase about all men being equal—oops, it simply slipped their mind to mention women as well. A 32-cent stamp in 1995, for example, took note with the words “Freedom/Equality/Progress” of the fact that for more than a century, women had been denied the right to vote. The same year, a 78-cent stamp honored suffragist Alice Paul, founder of the National Women’s Party. It was Paul who organized a march of 8,000 people down Pennsylvania Avenue, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.
As a compulsive package-mailer, I will likely be back on Savier Street by mid-August. I will scoop up many sheets of the new suffrage stamps, just so Wonder Woman will have some company in my desk drawer. Meantime, Kay advised me to consider grabbing some of the new Bugs Bunny stamps. “They’ll go fast,” he counseled. So I sent off a sheet of Bugs and his pals to our 6-year-old granddaughter Annie, in hopes that she will become a letter-writer, too.
— Elizabeth Mehren