sara's word blog

Me as photographer!

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:32:39 -0800

Me as photographer!

It's been a long, long time...

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:32:04 -0800

Which, of course, reminds me of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

“And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time…”

Anyway, it has been a long, long time and I apologize to anyone who potentially reads this blog. I’m not sure if that’s anyone. So I may just be apologizing to myself.

Anyway, lots has been going on. I’ve been acting in a play (Community theater! Woo!) and I’ve been taking lots of pictures and hanging out with my sweet friends.

A new revelation is that I’m really interested in portrait photography. I have really loved it for awhile, but I mean to take more portraits. I’ve got a couple shoots lined up with my personal guinea pigs back in PDX pretty soon, so I’ll post photos from those on here.

Anyway, I will be writing again soon and I don’t intend to abandon my poor Tumblelog anytime soon. Peace out!

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:07:37 -0800

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:06:53 -0800

I am a fast reader. I always have been. But it’s been a long time since I devoured a book this fast. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it and wondering when I could get back to it. We went to our friends’ house out of town over the weekend, and I brought it with me.

Finally I finished it off last night, and it is really a great story.

A couple of days ago, I was trying to explain the premise of this book to my husband, Eric.

“It’s about this guy who time travels involuntarily,” I told him.

I went on to explain that this makes everything circular for him. In his 30s and 40s, Henry spends a lot of time going back and visiting his wife as a child, which means that she knows him intimately (literally) before they even meet in any sort of normal timeline. So when they do meet, she scares the crap out of him by knowing everything about him.

Then, when they’re later married, she spends a lot of her time waiting for him, as he time travels.

Eric looked at me and said, “So it’s Sci-Fi.”

No way. I don’t read Sci-Fi.

“No, it’s definitely Sci-Fi,” he said. “It’s about time travel.”

So I guess we’re classifying this book as Science Fiction. But it reads like a really heartfelt story about two people whose relationship is, shall we say, unconventional. But something about their unique arrangement makes their love much more meaningful and deep.

One thing I really like about the book is that it doesn’t romanticize the characters. They get mad at each other, they get distracted and frustrated and have very painful periods in their life. But altogether, it makes things mean more to them.

I totally recommend this book. If you like Sci-Fi, it might be a little wimpy for you, but if you like sort of sweet, but not overly romanticized love stories, it’s going to be a refreshing change from what you’ve been reading.

"I am not a benevolent God.I am watching myself writhe in a puddle of my own urine, and I offer no..."

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:27:38 -0800

“I am not a benevolent God.
I am watching myself writhe in a puddle of my own urine, and I offer no response. I have not slept or eaten for days. My cries go unrecognized and my loneliness is ignored.”

- Chuck Klosterman on playing The Sims

Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa...

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:28:25 -0800

Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:27:05 -0800

Oh, Chuck.

I love your columns in Esquire. I love your essays. And I love your book.

I don’t just love your book because it’s hilarious, or because it’s sort of poignant in a campy way, or because you relate the most strange events and objects together in a way that makes them seem cosmically aligned.

I love it because you write about Saved by the Bell. That show which no one considers to be consequential enough to even mention. You don’t shy away, you dive in. You analyze, you pick apart, you tell us about Zack Morris. And I love you for that.

A moment of explanation. I love Saved by the Bell. It’s a crappy show, yes. But I don’t love it because I like to sit and watch it, I love it in that it was what I was watching when I went to Cooper Mountain Elementary School, back when life was simple and I was boy crazy to the point of concerning my teachers. I watched Saved by the Bell when I was young, when I was young enough to not be able to imagine what high school would be like. I imagined that one day, I would be just like one of the kids at Bayside High.

That’s not where the significance ends for me: My husband and I singlehandedly credit the series with our meeting.

We were sitting at a long table of people. There were probably four people between us, and I was just talking to the people around me. I was new, a freshman at WSU, and Eric was in his second year there. We were all sitting at the late-night snack spot called “Flix.”

Flix has lots of neon lights and great 90s vibes. Movie posters on the wall, red glittery plastic upholstery on the chairs. Big booths. It reminded everyone of “The Max.” You know, the diner on Saved by the Bell. So naturally, that kicked off a conversation about the show and soon someone asked what everyone else’s favorite episode was. Eric and I began to answer at the same second, and we both cited the same episode. The rest is history.

Klosterman’s book is a hilarious compilation of essays that talk about these kind of things. Things you fondly remember. The “Left Behind” series with Kirk Cameron. Saved by the Bell. Et cetera.

My favorite essay, personally, is one about journalism and journalists. It talks about how “media bias” doesn’t exist, and what people should really be concerned about is random circumstance. Generally, a reporter will put out four calls to four people, and whoever calls back has the first say and the say that will shape the article. I felt like that essay was written to me. Thanks, Chuck.

Read this book. Read this book especially if you happened to be born in the late 70s (like Klosterman) or early 80s (like me) or if you’re a journalist. You will laugh. You will think. You will remember Saved by the Bell.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:12:57 -0700

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:12:26 -0700

What a very strange book, I thought, as I closed this one. I liked it, sure, but it was very strange.

I like talking about books with other people. I mean, I really like it. I think I’m especially fond of it because it’s not very often that I get to just sit and talk books. But my friend Krister and I went to an event about a month ago and on the way home, we were talking books.

“Do you like Dave Eggers?” he asked me. I knew who Dave Eggers was, but at that moment it occurred to me that I’d never actually read anything he’d written. So, on Krister’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of Eggers’ first work, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.”

AHWOSG is a memoir, about Eggers’ own experience losing both his parents to cancer within about 6 weeks of each other, and then becoming the guardian of his young brother, Toph. It’s a great story, and Eggers certainly tells it well.

The way he tells it made my head spin, however. His storytelling is very stream-of-consciousness-driven, and to support this, he writes in extremely (EXTREMELY) long sentences.

One of the things Krister said to me while endorsing the book was: “No one can write a three-page sentence like Dave Eggers.”

I agree. No one can, I suppose. But the act of reading three-page sentence after three-page sentence becomes very exhausting after a short period of time, and it’s not a short book.

Good for the story, good for the honest and imaginative introspective moments, good for the occasional very, very dark joke. But you need to be ready to commit to long sentences in order to power through this one.

Clam digger at Ocean City, WA.

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:33:41 -0700

Clam digger at Ocean City, WA.

Razor clams

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:32:02 -0700

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to photograph a razor clam dig. These are really big in Washington state, and I only learned about them when I moved here a little more than a year ago.

People here take their razor clams seriously. They dig with special shovels, they use clam guns, and in Ocean Shores, they even host an annual razor clam festival, which got started last year.

The uber-professional journalist that I am, however, I went out on the beach with an only half-charged battery in my camera and began to shoot about 40 minutes before the sun set. I wanted that classic, clam digger against a radiant Pacific Ocean sunset shot, but before the sun even approached the horizon, my camera died.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, because when I got home I saw that the other paper in town (who owns us, business-wise, but we compete with, news-wise) ran a sunset clam digger photo on their front page. So I feel pretty good about my pre-sunset shots. I’ll post one here.

Sweet apple pie.

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:27:42 -0700

I know it seems really random, since this is my word blog, but it does tie in: I am a writer, and as an aspiring magazine writer (aspiring, beginning, whatever) I subscribe to a lot of magazines.

Mostly it’s magazines I would like to write for: Budget Travel, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Coastal Living, Seattle, Sunset etc. But I also subscribe to food magazines. This is for several reasons. First of all, I’d love to do a little food writing. Second, many of them feature travel stories in their pages and so it kind of becomes a hybrid travel-food writing mix. And third, because I love the pictures.

There’s something about food photographs in glossy magazine spreads that’s so sensual and makes you want to eat it right off the page.

Now the other connection is that I am also a beginning photographer. It’s funny to me that I’m a beginning photographer who is also, technically, a professional photographer. When I started at the newspaper, I was positively terrible. I mean total crap. But since I have taken a class, and I’m feeling like I’ve become, maybe, a mediocre photographer now.

So I’m going to start taking some food photographs, I’ve decided. Because it looks fun, and yummy. And since I’m a newlywed, my husband and I have been cooking almost every night with our shiny new pots, pans and knives, so there should be lots of opportunities for that kind of thing.

The sweet apple pie picture was also taken by my husband, Eric (who’s so new as a husband that it’s weird to write the word ‘husband’) long before we were married or even engaged. I was baking him an apple pie for his birthday.

So if they come out alright, maybe I’ll post them here. We’ll see.

Sweet apple pie.

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:20:35 -0700

Sweet apple pie.

Kite fest!Every once in awhile, I get to go out and do a...

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:52:16 -0700

Kite fest!

Every once in awhile, I get to go out and do a photography assignment like this that reminds me it’s great to be working on the beach, where I get to spend legitimate working hours in my bare feet with a camera.

Chapter One?

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:15:10 -0700

Here is a quick piece of something I’ve been working on. It’s eventually working its way into the shape of a memoir — albeit, a very different one than Gilbert’s “eat pray love.” It’s about my first year on the job, running a small newspaper on the Washington coast.

Blue Tongue

Today, I went to a management meeting. With a blue tongue.
It was a management meeting about our newspaper’s Web site, and it made me want to barf. The guy who manages the Web site sat back in his chair while he explained ad placement on a Web site. These advertisers paid more because their ad was placed on every page. Those advertisers got more click-thrus because they were located in the Real Estate section of the site.
While he talked, I found it increasingly difficult to look at the projected image on the wall. The ads, blocky and stacked in a cacophonous way, made my head spin. Flashing pictures of apples and pumpkins on a local grocer’s ad made me cringe.
The rest of the managers — other weekly editors, managing editor, IT manager and the publisher, perched at the head of the table and croaking his way through a cold, all ate it up.
“Wow, this stuff is really incredible,” John said, rocking back in his chair. “Isn’t it amazing how far the Internet has come?”
I felt the usual boredom of the generation gap looming closer, and so I reached into my purse and popped a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher into my mouth. Thus, the blue tongue.
John suddenly turned to me.
“Sara, what do you think of our Web site? Does it need an overhaul?”
“Yes.”
“What don’t you like about the site now?” he asked, and everyone looked on. I thought about being tactful, but decided I was probably the only hope they had of hearing what a young person thought.
“It makes me cringe,” I said.
Everyone sat silent for a moment, looking at the Web site up on the wall in the darkened conference room.
“It makes you cringe?” he asked.
I then started to explain that if they really wanted to market this thing to anyone, it had to be sleek and cool and really easy to navigate.
“Congratulations, Sara,” John said to me mid-sentence. “You just got yourself elected to the group that’s going to work on this redesign.”
At least I sounded credible, I thought to myself. It didn’t appear to me that anyone had spotted the blue tongue and taken my advice as adolescent — although let’s be honest, a little adolescent opinion is what they could really use right now.

eat pray love - and I love the cover design.

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:45:32 -0700

eat pray love - and I love the cover design.

eat pray love

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:44:24 -0700

Finally finished “eat pray love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a really great book.

Basically, this woman (Elizabeth Gilbert herself; this book is a memoir) goes through this really terrible divorce and decides that what she needs is to take a year off, travel and get her life back in order. So she spends a year traveling to the three Is: Italy, India and Indonesia.

It reminded me a lot of “Under the Tuscan Sun.” This terribly hurt woman has become someone she doesn’t like, and she wants to find herself again. And find herself she does: She eats like a horse in Italy (who wouldn’t?), lives in an Ashram in India and studies with a medicine man in Bali during the course of her journey.

This book is really popular right now, so I’m sure no one needs a recommendation from me, but this is one of those books that’s going to stick in my head for awhile. Especially my favorite scene, where Elizabeth and her Swedish friend trek from Rome to Naples just to eat some pizza - and once they’re eating this famous, fabulous pizza, she looks across the table at her friend who is almost in tears, she’s so happy. They each eat two pizzas. Hysteria over pizza. My kind of scene.

Check it out, it’s a good read and a good journey to follow along on.

On a related note, if any publishers out there would like to pay me to travel for a year and write a book, please let me know immediately.

A sad state of affairs

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:16:22 -0700

Aberdeen, Washington is my new hometown.

I have been living here for more than a year now, and recently I’ve been having some conversations about this town and how sad-looking it is. In addition to that, there is no good place to go shopping, to eat out (well, there are two, but how long can that last you?) and no place cool to hang out. The bars are all sort of sleazy, and there’s just not a lot to do if you’re in your 20s and looking to have fun with your friends.

We’ve met some really cool people in the year I’ve been here. (Actually, most of them are high school friends of my fiance). But there are some people with some amazing vision for this town.

One of the sad things they keep doing is knocking down old buildings. I know some of them need to be knocked down — a building needs to be safe, and so many of them have been sitting in disrepair for so long, that it would be really tough to rescue them now. But I think the ones that can be saved should be saved.

Aberdeen could be right on the verge of a renaissance. It could redefine itself as a cute touristy town, instead of the logging town it was during its more prosperous days. There could be cool places to live (historic condo conversions, anyone?) and cool places to eat and hang out. That would be an Aberdeen I would want to live in.

As we speak, negotiations continue between Chester Trabucco and a Bellevue investor (Aberdeen native) to move ahead on the Morck Hotel project. Meanwhile, the investor has gone ahead and purchased the D&R Theater and is starting to fix that up. He’s also made public a desire to purchase two of the more renowned buildings in town (the Elks Building on Broadway and the Becker building) and convert them both to condos.

The cool thing about some of these old buildings is that there are a few for sale, and you can’t get this kind of square footage for this price anywhere else in the country, I’m pretty sure. It’s small town prices, and it’s a bit of a testament to how desperate the town is getting for someone to come in and give it a bit of a makeover.

Here’s to a group of young people, making something happen in a town that desperately needs it.

It’s a nice looking book! And if you’ve got more...

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:11:53 -0700

It’s a nice looking book! And if you’ve got more imagination than I, it may be the perfect buy for you.

See Jane Write

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:11:16 -0700

See Jane Write: A Girl’s Guide to writing Chick Lit. Sounded like a good idea. And maybe it was, actually.

I sat down to read this book - and I love this kind of book because it’s very hands-on, the kind of book you can read in one hand and have a pen and paper in the other, taking notes and scrawling brilliant ideas.

The problem was, none of the ideas coming out of my head were very brilliant. They basically break down Chick Lit into what it usually is, which, without much more imagination, is extremely boring.

”Girl wants something. Girl pursues what she wants, only to find out it’s the last thing she needs. In the end, girl finds what she needs.”

So I started scrawling down some ideas. I can do this, I thought. I love to tell stories. I love to hear stories. I am a girl. I have seen girls in myriad situations and I think I have a handle on the whole creativity thing. But the more I brainstorm, the more my ideas all look the same. Basically, she’s me. Except just a little bit different. Like, maybe her boyfriend broke up with her (which nauseated me, because even though I thought giving chick lit a try would be sort of fun, I really didn’t want to write a book about how men complete your life.)

I’m not saying that men can’t complete your life. But you have to have your own free-standing life first, your own identity, and only then can you bring a man into the situation.

So I have about 40 pieces of legal paper scattered all around my apartment now, with these trite ideas scrawled on them. You’re supposed to write about a world you know, and could recreate, so I have a list that reads: Journalism. College newspaper. Private school. Theater. Camp.

I think the main problem is that when I want to write fiction, I usually end up coming up with an idea that is a very, very thinly veiled version of me, going through a problem I went through oh, about 5 minutes ago. And I don’t want my own life to read like a chick lit novel.

The book, however, is great. It offers a lot of solid writing advice that can be a reminder to anyone who writes for a living or a solid basis for future projects for the beginning writer. Besides, it’s pretty and it’s printed on thick paper. All in all, I’m glad I bought it.

So I’ll be over here in the corner, trying to think up an original idea.