Posted: Thursday, April 5, 2007 10:00 pm
War stories shared
at Albany Public Library
The Friends of the Albany Public Library will present an afternoon with Albany native Zed Merrill at 1 p.m. Friday at the main Albany Library main branch, 1390 Waverly Drive S.E.
Merrill will share from his book, "Tales from World War II You Probably Never Heard Before," a collection of short war stories collected during research for Merrill's video documentaries.
He served as a signalman attached to a Navy gun crew aboard the Liberty Ship S.S. Edwin Markham in the Pacific Ocean. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he began a career in advertising that spanned 56 years.
Merrill "retired" at the end of 2002 and has devoted his attention to the video documentary work that he began in 1996. The documentaries he has produced focus on little-known World War II military units and events.
His films have appeared on public television. He has appeared on radio talk shows and was considered for an Academy Award in 2005. He has earned 10 international awards and started writing books. One of his documentaries, "Forgotten Valor," was cited as a force in the Armed Guard receiving recognition and being entered in the U.S. Congressional Record.
Also at the library will be festivities celebrating National Library Week, April 15 to 21. At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Ken Smith with Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services will offer information for first-time home buyers.
OSPA conference
kicks off Friday
ASHLAND - The Oregon State Poetry Association will hold its spring conference Friday and Saturday at Southern Oregon University.
Two award-winning Oregon poets will lead workshops. Attendees will also be able to attend a performance of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" at the nearby Angus Bowman Theater.
The theme of the program will be "Masks, Masques and Unmasking." Two concurrent workshops will be repeated so that all attendees can participate in both.
Clemens Starck will conduct the workshop "Masks and Masques." He will use exercises and examples to show how to put on a mask, how to do it credibly and convincingly so that poems sound true and how to make readers believe you.
Starck is a retired carpenter and construction foreman whose first book of poems, "Journeyman's Wages," won the 1996 Oregon Book Award and the Stafford Memorial Poetry Award. Two of his other poetry books were finalists for the Oregon Book Award.
He has also taught poetry courses at Willamette University.
Ellen Waterston's workshop, "Unmasking," will examine poetry as a nonfiction genre. Participants will make masks as an exercise in presenting a "masked" poetic perspective and then unmasking it through two separate poems.
Waterston is the founder of the Writing Ranch, which supports writers through seminars and retreats and is director of The Nature of Words, an annual event in Bend. Her memoir, "Then There Was No Mountain," was a Willa Literary Prize finalist from Women Writing the West.
Registration is $40 for members and $50 for nonmembers. Complete information, a schedule and registration form can be found on the association's Web site, www.oregonpoets.org.
OSPA is a not-for-profit association.
'Golden Spruce' reviewed at Corvallis Library
"The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed," by John Vaillant, will be reviewed at noon Wednesday at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave.
Barbara Bond will present the review. The free event is sponsored by Friends of the Library. A sign language interpreter can be provided with 48 hours' notice. Please call 766-6928 to arrange this service.
In 1997 on Vancouver Island, former logger Grant Hadwin felled a 165-foot Sitka spruce, unique for its golden foliage. He was arrested for his actions, then vanished mysteriously. Vaillent tells of the Haida Indians who revered the tree, the timber industry's encroachment and of biological, historical, economic, and cultural information.
Bond is a professor in the department of forest science at OSU. She holds a strong interest in interdisciplinary research that spans physical and biological science, engineering, and social science.
Book Awards tour
visits the North Coast
The 2007 Oregon Book Awards Author Tour comes to the coast this week, featuring recent Oregon Book Awards honorees. Readings will take place in these cities:
• Newport at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Newport Public Library, 35 N.W. Nye St.
• Lincoln City at noon Friday at the Driftwood Library, 801 S.W. Highway 101, No. 201
• Astoria at 7 p.m. Friday at the Cannery Pier Hotel, No. 10 Basin St.
Conversation, book sales and a signing follow each reading. The events are free.
Authors appearing in the three-city tour are:
• George Aguilar Sr., of Warm Springs, winner in creative nonfiction for his first book, "When the River Ran Wild! Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and the Warm Springs Reservation." Aguilar is a Kiksht Chinookan and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in north-
central Oregon. Born in 1930, he has lived on the Warm Springs Reservation for 70 of his 77 years.
• Edwin Battistella of Ashland, finalist in general nonfiction for "Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?" Battistella first became interested in dialects in his native New Jersey. He has published three books and is a professor of English and writing at Southern Oregon University.
• Gina Ochsner of Keizer, winner in short fiction for "People I Wanted To Be." Ochsner won a 2002 Oregon Book Award for her first collection, "The Necessary Grace to Fall." A lifelong Oregonian, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
• Floyd Skloot of Portland, finalist in poetry for "Approximately Paradise." Skloot is a two-time Oregon Book Award winner. The author of 12 books, he has won the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award in Poetry and two Pushcart Prizes.
For more information, contact Susan Denning at 503-227-2583.
Nonfiction writer to give reading at OSU
Nonfiction writer Elroy Bode will visit Oregon State University at 7:30 p.m. Friday to give a reading from his newest book, "In a Special Light."
The free event is in the Valley Library's first-floor rotunda.
Bode's visit is sponsored by the OSU Visiting Writers Series, and supported by the Valley Library, the office of the provost and the OSU department of English.
The vignettes in "A Very Special Light" evoke Bode's memories of growing up in central Texas in the 1940s, along with the painful story of his son's suicide. The book also includes essays that reflect on the author's career of teaching public high school in El Paso.
Bode taught English in El Paso public schools for more than 30 years. He is the author of nine books, including "To Be Alive," "Commonplace Mysteries," and "Home Country: An Elroy Bode Reader."
The reading will be followed by a book signing.
- Staff reports