New Essay

The following essay is a memoir written by Greg Ashe.  Greg is a writer and student at Southern Oregon University and plans to attend graduate school next year, focusing on nonfiction writing.  In this essay, Greg takes us back in time to some of his early years growing up in Michigan.  Enjoy.

 

Michigan Hillbillies

By Greg Ashe

Getting out of bed was the hardest part of the day. It was so cold in our house the air looked blue, and just pulling the blanket down enough to see made my eyes all blurry and my nose hard.  And since the bed my brothers and I slept in was on the floor, every time I moved, even a little bit, the cold grabbed me from underneath. So, the best place to be was in that bed, with Billy and Gary, who could put out enough heat to make the morning tolerable. The good part of being the only one awake was that I could look around the room and think about my family.

I was the second oldest of us boys. Billy was five years older, Gary was two years younger, and Ronny was just a baby. He got to sleep with Mom and Dad in the big bed, and that’s when I wished I were a baby again. We used to have Janet, and she would have been two years older than I, but she got killed in a car wreck we were all in. Some sailors ran a stop sign and hit us in the side, and since Janet always rode standing up between Mom and Dad, She just flew out the front window and was killed. Mom kept Janet’s clothes in a cedar chest, and my favorite thing to do was to look in that chest and imagine what my sister must have been like.

Our house wasn’t really a house though, it was just a little travel trailer turned sideways, or so it seemed, since it faced broad side to every other part of the yard. It had a shack framed onto the side of it, ant that’s where we all slept. The shack was what we called our ‘house’, but it was just one room. It held the one bed my parents slept in with Ronny, and a chest to keep some clothes in. The blankets my brothers and I used at night were folded each morning and put on top of the chest. The walls were just open studs, so there wasn’t any wallpaper or anything, but my mom did hang a plastic cross with Jesus on it over the bed. Jesus had one arm hanging down where Billy shot it with his b-b gun. The little copper pin that was supposed to be a spike still pierced His hand, but the rest of His arm just swung loose from His shoulder.  Billy would have done more, but Mom caught him and gave him a whipping. The floor was dirt.

The trailer part of our house had a sink in it, but no running water, so Mom heated up what we needed on the hotplate furnished by the landlord. The walls had boards on the outside, but they were cracked and rats would come in at night. Mom would laugh and say, ”Let’s call this place the rat house,” and my brothers and I would laugh along and somehow think we were in a special place.

Poor Dad was an alcoholic and couldn’t hold on to enough money to get us into a real house with a bathroom and everything. We had a bathroom when we lived in Vanport, Oregon, but we only lived there a few months before coming back to Michigan, so we didn’t really miss it. Mom probably did though, but at five I was too busy discovering life to worry about whether we had a bathroom or not.

I loved our dad, and because he was our leader, I had every confidence in him. He made vanilla extract on the hot plate every night in a big old blue porcelain tub. He had his own bottles and labels, so after he cooked up his batch, filled the bottles, and put on the labels, he had six cases of the best baking vanilla in the state of Michigan; Bakewell Vanilla was its name, and he would go out and sell his product, door to door, to the housewives of Flint. He was sad because of Janet, and he always drank up his vanilla money, but he was a natural born salesman, and he sold us on the idea that a better day was just around the corner.

Ever since I turned five in August of 1947, it became my job to bring water in from the well, and that meant taking our bucket outside and filling it from the pump. That damned pump was hard, cold, and mean. It was bigger than me, and taller, but it was my job to get water out of it, and that’ s what I was going to do—a tall order for a little fellow, but my dad said I could do it, and that was good enough for me.  At night I would fill a number ten can with water and put it in the house to use as a prime in the morning.  If it froze, I’d have to put it on the hotplate to thaw it out, so I always had to get up before the rest of the family to get a head start on my chore.

From the trailer window over the sink, I could look out at the yard. We were in the country, and lived on an acre of land owned by the couple that lived in the house at the front of the property. They were really nice, and would let us come to their house when big thunderstorms came through; they were afraid our little house would blow away.

In the area we called our yard, there was an outhouse, a crabapple tree, a clothesline, and the pump. Next to the clothesline, and under the tree, Billy laid out a marbles arena, which consisted of a circle within a square about three feet on each side. At the corners of the square, Billy dug holes like you might see on a pool table so we could play a variety of games with our marbles.

It was November, so in the morning, ice covered the ground, and ittle puddles of water were covered in white, just like the paraffin covered preserves in my grandma Taylor’s pantry over in Mt. Pleasant. The Crabapple tree didn’t have any leaves, and the clothesline just sagged, its lines covered with ice, lying dormant till Mom would come out later in the day to give it purpose. The outhouse was the coldest thing of all as it stood in its arrogance, reminding everyone who could see that we could not do without it—It had frost all over it.

And quietly, mulishly, almost, with more than a hint of challenge, stood the pump. I sensed the device expected a man to confront it, but man or not, it was going to give me water. It was a ferocious looking thing. It didn’t’ just give you water, you had to take it, just as a mule won’t volunteer to pull a plow. That obstinate hunk of metal would simply ignore me till I let it know I meant business. I’d been five for three months, so I was getting on top of the situation, but November in Michigan can be a hard month for a little kid.

The first step was to free the handle from ice and get it moving. The handle was almost as long as I was tall, so it took all my strength to pump it, but once I got it going, and the piston on the shaft started building up pressure, all I had to do was pour the prime water down the center of the pump, and after some furious pumping action from me, the cold, clear, delicious well water would come gushing into my waiting bucket. Victory never got stale, and one can only imagine the pride I felt when I handed that first bucket of water over to my mom.

In 1910, Mom was born in Sayer, Oklahoma. After high school, she moved to Detroit, Michigan and took a bookkeeping job at the G.E. home appliance store where, wouldn’t you know it, my dad was their top salesman. Mom saw Dad’s name on so many contracts she became curious about him. So, when he came upstairs to the accounting department, sat on the edge of her desk and asked her for a date, she couldn’t say no. The rest is history, as they say, and now she had four boys, an alcoholic husband, a dead daughter, and a ‘rat house’ with no running water.

She got us through, though, and somewhere she found a little book about positive thinking, so she was always saying things like, “Greg, when we get to California, you won’t have to work that pump any more. We’ll have water coming right out of a hose, and there will be an Orange tree right in our yard. And grass will grow right outside our door.” As a child, I believed everything my parents told me, so even though I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, I knew we had some great events coming.

Dad said we were Michigan hillbillies. I really liked that label, and was happy to know what to call myself. Not that it mattered, really, because my mom never even hinted that we were poor. Dad was a good-looking man with a Ronald Coleman mustache and the gift of gab. Mom was thin and pretty, and had the attitude that even if we were poor, we were as good as anyone else.

I started school in flint. Our school had two classrooms, so the first through third graders met in one room, and the fourth through sixth met in the other. Billy was a sixth grader, so Mom let me walk to school with him—life was kicking in, and I liked it.

The road to school was dirt, and there were nothing but fields along the way. One day we found a honeycomb in a tree, another day we found a dead dog under a bush, and another day we got in a fight with some other kids just to see who was the toughest. And one day, we looked down the road and saw our car coming right at us. It was loaded with all our stuff, and Mom, Dad, Gary and Ronny were all in the front seat. The sun shimmered off the road, so the car looked kind of wavy, and the dust blocked out any view of what was behind the car, but once it came even with me and Billy, every one was smiling and Mom said, “Hop in, We’re heading for California!”

That was the last I saw of Michigan until I was grown. We didn’t go back to the house, but just drove away. The time we spent at that little shack helped shape the person I am today and though I have no desire to relive my experiences, I am thankful for them. So, I really did come from a special place; I’m a Michigan hillbilly.

Not So Fast: Rethinking Jury Duty

This piece is part of a longer nonfiction essay that Kim Blossom wrote for her senior Capstone Project at Southern Oregon University in 2008.  The Medford Mail Tribune published the following excerpt on  July 27, 2008 . Kim graciously allowed me to reprint it here.

By Kim Blossom

We have all heard the jokes about jury duty. Even David Letterman does a comedy bit about how he gets out of it. It is an American commonplace. When summoned for jury duty, we groan at the inconvenience. We laugh at how little remuneration is offered for our valuable time, check an exemption box, scribble an excuse, return the form, and (except for a quick pat on the back for our cleverness) forget all about it. But I experienced something last summer that changed my view of jury duty. As I entered the Douglas County courtroom with a group of potential jurors, I saw the defendant waiting for her trial. Her chance at justice, I realized, rested in our hands. The charge was felony drug possession. The defendant — we’ll call her Jamie — was a young woman originally arrested for unpaid fines. An ensuing search found a half-tablet of prescription pain medication. The small piece of pink oxycodone tablet was in the watch pocket of Jamie’s jeans. A friend had offered it earlier that day, assuring her it would relieve muscle pain. Jamie had accepted but taken only half, tucking the other away for later. The familiar prescription pain medication Vicodin is a mixture of oxycodone and acetaminophen. Oxycodone is a Schedule II controlled substance.     

Possession is illegal without a prescription. If you were in pain and accepted the Vicodin tablet your husband offered from his prescription, you would both be breaking federal law. Did we intend to spend our tax dollars prosecuting such trivial infractions? Did Jamie deserve a felony drug conviction? Reality dictates anyone of us could find ourselves in a similar position. You may think no jury would convict you. Think again. In his article, “Covert Advocacy,” Victor Gold, law professor at Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School, says attorneys are trained to use psychological techniques on juries. Designed to work at subconscious level, the techniques convince jurors to make decisions based on improper legal precepts. In our case, the prosecutor effectively colored the jury’s perspective. The defense attorney was unable to fully undo his handiwork. Indeed, most jury members entered deliberation fevered to convict, even though they had admitted during jury questioning to taking others’ medications. They judged Jamie’s character through speculation about her life choices, then rushed to convict. That wasn’t their job. The jury’s job is to discern what has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Only then should jurors decide whether to convict. Researchers estimate that happens in only 35 percent of cases.

Not all citizens fully understand how the system should work. Court-provided juror training in proper deliberation could help secure the integrity of jury verdicts. As presiding juror in this case, I spent nearly two hours helping my fellow jurors to separate impressions from presented facts, to understand the burden of proof rests with the state, and to see the validity of “not guilty” based on insufficient evidence even if they had difficulty perceiving Jamie as “innocent.” Had I decided my time was too valuable for jury duty, Jamie might easily be a convicted felon today. Our jury found her not guilty. Should I ever find myself in Jamie’s position, I hope my peers consider jury duty important enough to serve. It is inarguable that a day in jury duty is costly, and jurors are not well compensated. But we depend upon our jury system despite its imperfections. It is our responsibility as citizens to accept jury duty if it is within our power. Some people can’t serve jury duty. A single parent whose loss of a day’s pay means no food on her family’s table that night has a valid excuse. But a professional with the ability to serve who seeks a dishonest exemption commits a crime against society and, by extension, against herself. We need juries that represent the entire community, including those well-educated professionals who have been acculturated to consider their time too valuable for jury duty. While our laws are carefully written to protect our freedoms, it is the folks who show up for jury duty who must put these safeguards into practice. Because many of us don’t take jury duty seriously, our fate as defendants could rest in the hands of people unversed in legal concepts, unschooled in reasoning skills and unaware of the tactics lawyers use to sway their opinions. Our right to a jury trial is guaranteed by the 6th Amendment to the Constitution. But there is no guarantee that the jury deciding your case will be competent. You cannot depend upon a jury of your peers if your peers avoid jury service. Maybe it’s time we stop laughing at the jokes and rethink jury duty. Someone is depending on a fair trial. Someday, it may be you.

Ragged Torso to Kick off New Year

Hello,

We’ve gotten a slow start here at Ragged Torso, but we are finally ready to accept nonfiction pieces for publication here. So, if you have something you are interested in seeing up on the blog, pass it on to me.  I will read, suggest edits if necessary, and publish it.  Please send a short bio with your piece.

Just another Class, Or Was It?

I am finishing up my online memoir class this week and plan to spend some time on Ragged Torso.  It needs some sprucing up.

As usual, I am never quite sure how students feel about me as a teacher or about the courses I teach.  It is my nature to feel uneasy and unsure about what I do.  I tend to think I have the power to destroy a person’s whole notion of themselves, when I think the truth is that as a teacher I have a minimal effect on my students.  The students come and go talking of Micheangelo.

I had some very good writers in the memoir class and my greatest hope is that those writers will continue on with their writing.  I thought it was interesting that I had students from several different majors take the class.  Some of them took the class because they were genuinely interested in memoir and others took the class because it was there.

People ask me all of the time about teaching online.  This was my third online course and so I still feel very new at it.  One good thing it has done for me is to make me more organized.  It is necessary to have the whole class planned out ahead of time.  It is not that I don’t plan my classes, but over the years I have become much more comfortable with letting them take their own direction.  I have a sense of where I would like the class to go, but I am always surprised at where we end up.  In an online class, you don’t have all the normal clues about how people are perceiving things.  It is difficult to use irony or satire–two of my favorite weapons.  I am never sure how my humor is working and I tend to use lots of exclamation points!  The online courses have been great in terms of  allowing me to experiment and to teach from home.  I have a 30 mile trip into school and travel eats up a lot of my time; it is often difficult to stick around for evening events.  With online, I only have to go to my home office and type.  I did add podcasts to my class this time and I think that helps to make the course more personable, but students would have to say whether this is true or not.  For sure, the online course focuses more on the work and I think that is a good thing.  I miss the face to face though.  I always feel something is missing when I finish the class.

I am growing more confident with online teaching and I have increased my technological proficiency.  I can’t see online teaching as the sole approach I will use, but it keeps me in the game and helps me to think about and frame what it is I do.  What is it I do?

What I Have Learned about Blogging

What I Have Learned about Blogging

Meta Anxieties

Several months ago I began this blog, which I named Ragged Torso after a creative nonfiction book one of my creative, nonfiction classes made.  I became very excited about the idea of creating a blog when I completed two online courses from the Sloan-C workshops.  One of the courses was about using video and collaborative Web 2.0 tools, and the other was about podcasting.  During these courses, blogs, web sites, wikis and social networking naturally came up.  I decided that blogging was a way to merge my work in creative nonfiction with the work I was doing with online tools.

I looked at some other blogs from SOU.  Dennis Dunleavy, a professor in the Communication Department, Miles Inada in the Art Department, and Terry Longshore in Music, all professors at SOU, have wonderful blogs.  I saw they added content often and used the blogs to write their observations and to discuss their classes and ideas.  My old colleague and friend Warren Hedges also has a blog and I was intrigued by all of his photography and film work.  Then I began to notice that several students from my department have blogs.  Most of them are related to poetry and I think they are influenced, in part, by the fine work of Kasey Mohammed, a colleague of mine in the English and Writing Department.  His blog, Lime Tree, is a well-known blog which is constantly updated and has lots of very interesting poetry content.  I have learned a great deal from all of these blogs.

I created Ragged Torso and put some information about a new course I had designed and several links to resources related to creative nonfiction.  I sent out an invitational email to all of the English and Writing majors at SOU.  Several students must have looked at the blog because the counter showed considerable activity.  That is, it showed activity for a while.  Then nothing happened.  I expected something to happen, but nothing happened.

Well, nothing happened because I did not make it happen.  One of the most important lessons I have learned is that the most interesting and perhaps best quality of blogs is not self-presentation as much as it is collaboration and linking.  Not so much presentation as collaboration. Not so much clever insights of a single author, but association. When you design a blog, you depend upon others to interact with that blog and create the content.  The idea is so simple that I missed it completely.  I know I expected that everyone, especially my students, would see Ragged Torso and would instantly become devoted followers and participants; however, I think most students are more familiar with blogs and social networking than I am.  Why should they react to Ragged Torso without my prompting?

When one makes a blog and begins to investigate the possibilities of online communication, especially Web 2.0 tools, one begins to understand the new world that presents itself.  One of the things that has become obvious to me is that blogs are wonderful interactive and associative tools that allow everyone to be a creator.  For a blog to be successful, it must have the spirit of creativity, collaboration, and association that is not always necessary in face-to-face teaching.  A blog is not complete until there is some pattern of communication and association taking place.  Blogs are beginning to change my whole notion of my self as a teacher and creator.

Summer Online Memoir Class

There are still four seats left in my summer online creative nonfiction memoir class

SS 399: Creative Nonfiction Memoir  CRN 8022

June 22-July 17

Dr. Bill Gholson, Instructor

Questions?

gholson@sou.edu

bildore@gmail.com

A Recent New Course Proposal

The following is a new course proposal which I wrote recently.  The course has been approved by the department curriculum committee and so I plan to teach it soon.  Tentatively, I will unveil a version of the class online this summer.  I hope to be able to teach it in person at least once next year in person after I return from sabbatical.

 

New Course Proposal

 

1.    Course Prefix/Number and course title:  Writing 450: AdvancedTopics in Nonfiction Essay.

 

2.    Abbreviated Title:  Advanced Topics in Creative Nonfiction

 

3.    Credit hours and course fees:  Credits: 4.  No course fees

 

4.    Is course repeatable?:  Yes.  Students may repeat the course for course credit if the course is offered under different topics.

 

5.    Six-digit CIP code: unsure

 

6.    Catalog description:  Writing 4_____: Advanced Topics in Nonfiction Essay:  The difference between Wr. 350 and Wr. 4_______ is one of degree rather than kind.  This course is designed for advanced students who are serious about pursuing the nonfiction essay genre, with an eye towards publication or to round out a portfolio of sample work for employment or graduate school. The course format is much the same as Wr. 350, but the amount and expectations for the writing are much higher.  Prerequisites:  All students must submit a portfolio of work (please see main office for portfolio expectations) and have completed Wr. 350 or an equivalent, or have permission of the instructor.

 

7.    Rationale:  Current trends show a marked interest by students to have more creative nonfiction courses.  Creative nonfiction has never been a required course in the creative writing concentration.  This course would provide serious students with the opportunity to spend more time with a piece of writing in a seminar and workshop format with an eye towards publication or as a sample for a work or graduate school portfolio.

 

A.   Needs Statement:  This course fits into the rest of the curriculum by offering all majors in L, L & P an opportunity to write in a very popular genre and to prepare for employment or graduate school with solid examples in a portfolio and possibly for publication.  Each year, a number of students want to take more courses in creative nonfiction.  In the past this need has been satisfied through independent courses.  An established course would offer these students the experience they seek and would be more productive for faculty teaching the course.  It would end the need for independent courses in this area.

B.   Student Interest: High.  The student limit for 400-level writing courses is 14.

C.   Impact Statement:

1.    What is the expected effect of this course on existing courses (both within your department and elsewhere in the university)?  This course will strengthen and expand our creative writing concentration.  If the course is approved, we would have creative courses which cover most of the major types of creative writing.  It will help to make the creative writing concentration in our department a complete program.  Creative writing has always been a popular subject for students in many other disciplines.  I think this course will be attractive to students in other majors because creative nonfiction is interdisciplinary by its nature.  Not only does it combine elements of fiction, poetry, and journalistic truth, it is a genre of writing in which students must work in several different modes.  This means that students have a strong grasp of occasion and audience when they leave the course.

2.    Will any prerequisites affect other departments/programs?  Not that I am aware.

 

D.   Resource Evaluation:

1.    Faculty:  Who will teach the course?  Dr. Bill Gholson—this course, along with Wr. 350 would be part of his normal teaching load.  Others in the department who teach Advanced Composition would also be able to teach the course.  It would, if fact, be a strength of the course to draw on local writers or national writers in the genre, if money were available for adjunct faculty.  There are many people in the area who make their living in this genre and it would be a very positive connection to the community to consider some of these writers as invited instructors.  I would be anxious to seek out funds which would pay for such adjuncts.  The Association of Writing Programs asserts that outside faculty makes for an engaging and inspirational addition to a program.  There is at least two other faculty in the communications department who teach similar courses and might also be available.

2.    Facilities:  I see no need for additional facilities for this course.

3.    Other:  Hannon Library resources are more than sufficient to meet the needs of this course.  There are many professional local writers who could also be tapped to visit the course.

 

Syllabus Condensed

 

A.   Catalog description:  Writing 4_____: Advanced Topics in Nonfiction Essay:  The difference between Wr. 350 and Wr. 4_______ is one of degree rather than kind.  This course is designed for advanced students who are serious about pursuing the nonfiction essay genre, with an eye towards publication or to round out a portfolio of sample work for employment or graduate school. The course format is much the same as Wr. 350, but the amount and expectations for the writing are much higher.  Prerequisites:  All students must submit a portfolio of work (please see main office for portfolio expectations) and have completed Wr. 350 or an equivalent, or have permission of the instructor.

 

B.   Learning Objectives of the course:

 

1.    To learn to closely read creative nonfiction.

2.    To understand and use the elements of creative nonfiction. i.e.: effective introductions and conclusions, the use of narrative and the construction of scenes, interviewing and researching, and structuring essays for specific publications or topics, evaluation and use of sources.

3.    To become self-reflective about one’s composing practices.

4.    To understand the importance of and methods for rewriting.

5.    To have a working knowledge of key essays, publications, and writers in the genre.

C.  Required Texts

 

There are a number of anthologies and practical guides available.  Students will also be reading and copy editing their own and other students’ work.

 

D.   Course Format

 

The course format will be seminar and workshop.

 

 

 

Approval of proposal

 

 

______________________________   ______________________________

Signature of chair/director                                    Signature of Dean

 

 

 

 

So it begins

Welcome to a brand new blog called RAGGED TORSO.  Ragged Torso began as a small hard copy publication of creative nonfiction by students in my Wr. 350: Creative Nonfiction class at Southern Oregon University.  As you can see, the blog has very little content for now.  Today is the first day and I am just learning my way around the blogosphere.  I imagine that this blog will have lots of interesting items on it.  I see this blog as a virtual place.  In this place we will meet.  I hope that lots of students from SOU use the site, especially my students.  However, I also hope that this blog expands to other students as well.  In my teaching, I feel most in touch when I let students participate in the direction of the class.  I would like this blog to develop and grow through your participation as well.  Right now, the blog is open to most every idea.  I hope you will join in.

Ink Stained Wretch

I always feel envious when I read writers who say they knew they wanted to be a writer since the moment they were born.  Envious, I suppose, because I have never felt that kind of missionary zeal, although I have at times felt a strong desire to be a writer.  I think I have desired to be a writer because I associate authorship with power and control.  And, I have always been a reader.  I think reading and writing are species of the same family, although to write is to put oneself in the chair as some say.  Both reading and writing require attention to detail.  Both require one to slow down.  To read is to construct.  To write is to construct.  To read is to form an original interpretation.  To write is to form an original interpretation.  It is said, however, that one does not really know what they think until they write it down.

When I was a freshman in high school, I joined a group of students who decided to put together a newspaper.  I am not sure who was able to make the contacts, but we were allowed to print the paper at the local newspaper office.  I am old enough to have learned how to make headlines and print articles in type and solder press.  My memory is that we were left to do what we could with all of the equipment at the local daily.  I loved it.  I can still smell the ink.  Although I was terrible at design, I liked the manual parts of lining up the letters and making solder letters to be printed.  My major contribution to the paper was an infantile cartoon page called “Gholson’s Garbage.”  I am happy there are no surviving copies.  But here’s the thing.  I also wrote some political commentary and reported on student government.  So, maybe I can say that I have wanted to be a writer since I was 14.