Fundraising Day 5

The reality hits, then the exhaustion.

Of course, there are already more stories to tell:

1. The story of visiting Al Onteroa’s office this Thursday morning, and how good it felt and how much thinner he looked and how he approved of our work with a single nod and a smile: “I see you’ve done your homework,” he said, holding up our map.
2. The story of THE MISSING FOOTBRIDGE IN CELO, which in fact does exist. To add to the intensity of the week, the DOT folks sent an aerial photo this week of the bridge we couldn’t find. Fitting, then, that right before Shane leaves next week (he’s moving to New Orleans), we’ll have one more excursion to make.
3. The story of going to McKinney Tire, Terry’s Kwik Lub, Creekside, Dot’s, and Sallie’s Mountain View Restaurants to ask for money. The story of seven workers laid off at Grassy Creek Hardware in just one winter (therefore, we blushed like fools when we asked for money). The story of Grassy Creek Outfitters, and how we were given 60 seconds to give our pitch…
4. The stories that keep coming…

But right now, there is one thing:

The story of putting ourselves out there. Besides this blog and our closest friends, this has all been relatively quiet for the past five months. Now the word is out. There were 39 hits on the website within one hour this afternoon. And yes, I did a happy dance around the desk. It feels good to see that this project DOES have power in the real world and that it DOES have the power to evoke responses from people. And it’s utterly scary thinking that we have so far to go, so many dollars to raise, and so little experience doing so.

When I crossed that first swinging footbridge and had a notion, I never thought I’d find myself here. Now with Shane moving away and the financial pressure becoming very real, I feel edgy for hours at a time. Not anxious. Not unpleasantly nervous. But on the cusp – waiting, with held breath, to see how the universe will respond to this great effort we’ve put out there.

A friend wrote to me in support of the project. She’s a poet, so of course she summed it up just right. Here is what she said:

“This is an extraordinary endeavor. It makes me want to go there and walk the bridges. Such a beautiful, simple, but important undertaking. A tribute to the dwindling contemplative, conservationist spirit that desperately needs to be nurtured now.” ~MBA

I can only hope that others can see it that way to. Here goes world…show we weren’t fools to have faith in following our hearts!

Fundraising Day 4

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Shane Darwent and Katey Schultz proudly present:

LOST CROSSINGS.

Fundraising Day 3

Working, working, working on the website…Over 40 phone calls have been made and the fundraising letter has been proofed to go out tomorrow. Shane and I meet with Al in the morning to plead for money, though initial conversations do not look positive. Tomorrow’s the big day!

Fundraising Day 2

Onward to the nitty-gritty: THE FUNDRAISING LETTER.

The phone calls have been placed, the email addresses and permissions granted. If all goes well, we'll email the following letter to everyone on our list by this Thursday. I am posting a draft of the letter here for two reasons:

1. Feedback! Feel free to comment or ask questions. I've never done this before!
2. It's nice to have an example to follow, in case anyone else out there is trying to do something like this - I thought I'd share our attempts.


Dear friends, business owners, and residents of North Carolina,

Thank you for your interest in our fundraising efforts for this project.

Lost Crossings: A Contemplative Look at Western North Carolina’s Historic Swinging Bridges is a collaboration between photographer Shane Darwent and author Katey Schultz. Our work includes approximately 45 pages of text, 15-25+ images, and an interactive map. In September 2009, this work will be featured at Crimson Laurel Gallery in Bakersville, in Our State Magazine (distribution 110,000), and the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville.

As a writer and photographer team, we set out to cross every swinging bridge in Mitchell and Yancey Counties. There are 23 swinging bridges in North Carolina, 13 of which are in Mitchell and Yancey Counties—including the oldest swinging bridge in the state, dated to 1947. During the course of our fieldwork, we interviewed primary sources, crossed each swinging bridge, and took the time to photograph and write the stories of each place.

The writing is a literary excursion told through personal narrative. The photos are interpretations of the swinging bridges and everything that came together to make each setting unique in its own right. Together, these works seek to make meaning of the remnants of an older way of life and what the abandonment of these swinging bridges can teach us now. Our project includes quotes from direct sources, narrative descriptions, facts backed up by the Department of Transportation databases, archived photos, and directions to each site.

Please visit our website to see a sampling of images and excerpts from the text:

[LIVE LINK STARTING THURSDAY]

In order to publish Lost Crossings and the accompanying map, print and frame 15 photos for the exhibit, and recoup expenses for our project, we need to raise a minimum of $2,500 by March 1st. There are three levels of giving:*

Friend: A donation of $50 is recognized on our donor list in Lost Crossings.

Supporter: A donation of $100 is recognized on our donor list and by an advance copy of Lost Crossings.

Patron: A donation of $175 is recognized on our donor list, by an advance copy of Lost Crossings, and a full-sized map of the swinging bridges in Mitchell and Yancey Counties.

Sponsor: A donation of $250 is recognized on our donor list, by an advance copy of Lost Crossings, a full-sized map, and public acknowledgement of your support during our Crimson Laurel Gallery and Carolina Mountains Literary Festival lectures.

*If you represent a business, you may write your donation off as advertising dollars and we will print the name of your business in the book. If you prefer not to have your name printed, please let us know.

Please make checks payable to Katey Schultz by March 1st. Donations may be mailed to:

Lost Crossings
c/o Katey Schultz
xxxx xxxx xxxx
Bakersville, NC 28705

Prompt support of our work will be most helpful, as we are already laying out the pages of the book and selecting photos to frame. Prior to September, will mail your book and map to the address on your check unless otherwise noted.

Lost Crossings is a strong fit to receive support for numerous reasons. Our work represents a survey of part of North Carolina’s heritage that is largely un-documented. Using the most current DOT records and various maps, we struggled to find all 13 swinging bridges. Our fieldwork sent us knocking on the doors of many residents as we searched for each swinging bridge, and it was ultimately their stories (and their directions) that got us to the place we are now. With written commentary, photo documentation, and a hand-designed map, Lost Crossings has the potential to rekindle interest in these historic landmarks.

We sincerely thank you for your time and support and encourage you to forward this letter to others. If you have any questions, we may be reached by phone at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email: footbridges@gmail.com.


Sincerely,

Katey Schultz
Shane Darwent

Fundraising Day 1

Get ready, dear readers, for new adventures in footbridges this week.

Call it Phase 3, call it begging on our knees, call it delusions of grandeur. When it’s all said and done, I can only hope we meet our minimum budget. I’ll be posting reflections on this process, updates, and a sample letter for those interested in learning from our mistakes (!) or reading over our shoulders as we venture out into the wild world of the F word:

F-U-N-D-R-A-I-S-I-N-G.

To start, Shane and I learned this week that 3 major donors who expressed bucket loads of enthusiasm for our project, with near promises to find funding, all failed to come through. In short, this means we have an exhibit in September 2009 that will cost us between $1,250-$2,500 to put on (with little to no return) and not a penny to do it.

We divided a list of 30 people, businesses, and organizations and made Monday our calling day. Initial phone calls serve two purposes: 1) To ask permission to email the potential donor a fundraising letter on Thursday. 2) To confirm the correct email address. This might sound like an unnecessary step, but our rationale is that people don’t want to be put on the spot on the phone – but they also don’t want to receive an email or letter out of nowhere. Placing initial calls is our way of politely giving folks a head’s up. So far, initial responses have been positive.

Tomorrow? I’ll draft the fundraising letter and follow up on a few more calls. By the end of the week, we’ll go live with a new webpage that features preview photos of the project, and excerpts from the text for potential donors to peruse. Of course, the link will be posted here for loyal readers as well.

More to come….keep your collective fingers crossed for us!

Questions? We now have an email address: footbridges@gmail.com. Fire away!

Oh Geez...

Gads! More soon...I swear...Balance seems beyond me these past few days.

Genre Specifics and MFA Head's Up

Yet another “memoirist” has shat on the genre of creative nonfiction, leaving us all wondering how hard fact checking can actually be. Read this excerpt from an LA Times article , which quotes one of the most respected scholars of the genre:

One obvious question (aside from "why won't book publisher's hire fact checkers?") is why don't these authors simply present their books as fiction? After all, many novels are truer than their authors often admit. So why not play it safe and replace the word "memoir" with "novel" on the title page?

Lee Gutkind, editor and founder of the journal Creative Nonfiction and by some accounts the "godfather" of that genre, believes "creative" and "nonfiction" can fuse without posing ethical difficulties; the idea is to use the narrative techniques of traditional fiction to tell stories that are true. "Professionals know that, and the best do it extremely well," Gutkind said, "but the bar may be lower for someone who has an amazing story of tragedy and restitution.

"I don't think [Rosenblat's story] is a particularly terrific story compared to the fictional worlds created by most fiction writers today," Gutkind added. "It's a cute story ... but it doesn't have the scope and depth required of fiction. But once you say it's true, it becomes the kind of thing a publisher can take to the bank."

Avoiding the label "fiction" may also be the result of a more complicated set of cultural factors, namely that society's taste for finely crafted storytelling seems to be waning. How else to explain TV audiences' apparent preference for reality and talk shows over scripted sitcoms and dramas? How else to explain Seltzer's defense, which suggested her story would have no impact unless it was perceived as true. "I just felt there was good I could do, and there was no other way that someone would listen to it," she told the New York Times.

Once upon a time, I had a nonfiction story accepted to an anthology. This must have been late 2005, as I was preparing to apply to grad schools but had not yet received formal instruction in the nuances of creative nonfiction. Since anthologies notoriously take ages from acceptance to publication, I had a lot of time to think about the piece I had submitted. It’s safe to say I had a few worries about the story in the back of my mind, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.

Meanwhile, I continued writing nonfiction vignettes about growing up, all for the sake of exercising the memoir muscle to come up with a gem I could include in a grad school portfolio. Mind you, a publication credit in an anthology would have looked mighty fine on my CV at the time.

When the anthology was finally ready to go to press, a contract came my way. I read the fine print and those questions that had been steeping in the back of my mind could no longer be ignored: Did I remember the event correctly? Was that really all on the same night, or did that happen over the course of several weeks? This was not long after the Frey controversy.

I didn’t know enough about the craft of writing to articulate my doubts much more than those two questions, but I did know enough about gut feelings and the difference between right and wrong. Something felt very wrong about the story I had written and, after all that time to think about it, I was finally able to articulate it: The story accepted for publication presented a series of small events happening over the course of one evening when, in fact, the events had happened over the course of a few weeks.

I immediately emailed the editor of the anthology and didn’t sign the contract.

The editor wrote back swiftly with one question: “Do you mean to say that your memory is a composite memory?”

This, perhaps, was my first formal lesson in the craft of writing. Yes, I replied, it was a composite memory. Everything I wrote about is true, but it didn’t happen in that time frame.

The editor responded with the news that she could not publish my story and I reacted with much relief. Later, I would learn that composite memories are acceptable in some cases. In the case of the story that I almost had published, however, cramming everything into one night drastically changed the tension in the story. In my mind and in the mind of the editor, this strayed too far from representing the essence of the memory to the best of my abilities.

Want to hear more from Gutkind? See his latest blog post , which is a warning to all prospective and current MFA in Writing students.

A New Era

Oh, glory be!

W is history!

Obama is victory!

And three cheers for Rev. Lowery!

Oh Boy

Redbeard doesn’t snore.

And his house is clean but lived in. He has an affinity for symmetry that is so embedded, he’s hardly aware of it. This is evidenced by his fridge magnets, wall hangings, towels, and door posters. Things appear around his house with intention and I recognize this because I, too, and comforted by order and intentionality in the home.

He only has one clock in his entire house with a second hand (score!) and he wears Old Spice (double score!). My affinities may be odd, but they are distinct enough that when I see something that’s always felt like home, I recognize it.

He has an entire room devoted to making music: electric and acoustic guitars, keyboard, soundboard, recorder, and mandolin; all of which can be hooked up to his extremely cutting edge Macintosh computer with Garage Band software.

He also has an upright piano in his living room, antique furniture from his grandmother throughout the house, Earth Balance (non-dairy butter substitute) and organic eggs in his fridge, and quotes from Alan Watts on the wall. He’s particularly fond of his cat, who acts like a dog.

He opens doors but without fanfare. He picks up the tab. He notices my handmade scarf. He reaches for my hand. He asks if I need cough syrup. He says, “You’re intense but you’re also really fun,” which seems accurate to me though I wouldn’t have said it that way myself. He asks to read my stories. Then he reads them. Then he tells me what he thinks and asks for more.

In other words: so far, he’s passing every test…even the ones I didn’t even know existed.

Well, Who Woulda Thunk It

It is Friday night and I am on a date with Redbeard. He’s super connected with local environmental non-profits and so received an invitation to this:

The documentary, "Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People," will air nationwide on PBS in April, but the premier offered a sneak-peak of the four-part series and a reception with filmmakers Jamie Ross and Ross Spears is Friday, January 16th at the Diana Wortham Theatre. "This is the first environmental series of any region ever on film," Ross said. "It gives a picture of the region as never seen before, in all its beauty and complexity." Ross said after she and Spears began working on the project, they quickly realized that "the only way this story was going to make sense was to make the mountains the main character."

At his suggestion, we meet an hour before the movie so we can visit. At my suggestion, we go to The Vault, my friend’s bar and one very happening little spot right downtown. The place is loud, crowded, and active but we hunker down in a little corner and sip glasses of red wine. We talk about his poetry and music, my writing and art essays. We talk about jazz decades, Andrew Bird, and Suzuki training. We talk about Redbeard’s upcoming trip to Oaxaca. Conversation is easy—after all, we’ve known each other for five years, though the pretense of this evening is markedly different.

The movie is fascinating and Redbeard introduced me to several of his friends that we ran into. He held the door and paid for my ticket. He complimented my jacket and told me how much he liked the short story I’d sent him (at his request). With temperatures in the single digits, the idea of going on a walk after the movie was nixed. So I suggested the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, which was the perfect fit because by some lovely miracle, Redbeard seems to love chocolate even more than I do. He’d never been to a chocolate bar so this was some treat.

Inside, there was standing room only. We placed our orders (pistachio encrusted shortbread dipped in dark chocolate and a liquid Buddha truffle hot sipping drink that comes with a spoon). We talked more as the night went on, and Redbeard asked me if I wanted to go to Jack of the Wood (my favorite bar, incidentally) to see a musician who was playing there tonight. With the 1 hour 20 minute drive home and the 1/2 mile hike (due to ice) in –5 degree weather on the mountain, I declined. But he offered to walk to my car, and I wholeheartedly accepted.

“So,” he said.

“So.” I said, fiddling with the lock on the car door.

“So…”

“Yes?”

“I’m used to being your friend, Katey, and I like that. But I’m open to dating you. I think we have good chemistry and I want to spend more time with you.”

“Yeah.” Really? Direct expression of emotions in a succinct, mature, yet flattering way? This is even better than I thought!

“Yeah?”

“Sorry, I mean…” Oh, words, don’t fail me now. How perfectly ironic! “I think we should give it a try. Dating, that is. I mean, yes. I’d like to.”

I swore I wouldn’t make the first move, but before I knew it my body moved towards his and we were toe-to-toe, jacket-to-jacket, face-to-face. I smiled, and thought about pulling back, but didn’t.

“I want to put time into this,” he said.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“Why are you scared?” His tone was calm. Mature. Totally unafraid and easy.

I mumbled a few things, completely unrelated to him, then cut myself off. “That’s about two paragraphs worth of confession. That’s enough for one night, eh?” I smiled.

“Hah,” Redbeard laughed. “Yeah, I suppose so. So, I’ll see you Sunday?”

“Definitely.”

And with that, the simplest little direct kiss goodnight.

* * *

There is something inherently different about this new beginning and I think it might be the best thing on the planet for me right now. Slow and steady. Straightforward. Mature. Honest.

As for the blog, I told him it’s off limits. This is my personal sketchpad of drafts and feelings, and while it’s in the public domain, it’s not in the first date’s domain. He gave me his word without a flinch, and I trusted him.

New News

Website updates! Including a national cover story and an author invitation to a regional festival.

That's What Friends Are For

My friend Amy gave me a homework assignment this week: Call the guy at the meditation center who has a crush on me, instead of avoiding him like I have been.

“No,” I told her.

“Why not? He’s there. Right there,” said Amy. “He writes poetry. He plays guitar and piano. He has an environmental career and a house. He meditates. He has a red beard – you’re crazy about red beards!”

“No. I can’t because I don’t have my shit together. I’m not ready to be with someone. My desires are all twisted up into this ball of worry and lust – not dating material by any means.”

“It’s never going to be perfect. You have to start back in sometime,” she said.

“But I don’t want to lead him on,” I said.

“Who says you will be? You’re honest, right. You want to try something, right? There’s no harm in coffee or a movie. Just keep is simple. Go slow.”

“Ok. But then what if there’s no chemistry, and I’m the one who asked him out and then I have to say NO in the end? That seems unfair.”

“It’s not unfair at all. That’s life. Just be upfront from the very beginning,” she said. “Listen – are you nervous around him?”

“Yes,” I confessed.

“Hah!” She laughed. “I’m giving you one week.”

“What?”

“One week to call him and make plans.”

“Fine,” I said. And maybe I smiled, a little.

The Big 3-0!

Today I turned 30 years old!

And yesterday I had the best party ever! How do I know? My jaw hurt from smiling so much!

I feel uplifted and appreciated. Thank you, friends and family!

The Next Phase in Footbridges

Shane and I took a big step today, submitting our first proposal for publication to a literary journal. The title of our combined efforts is Lost Crossings: A Contemplative Look at Western North Carolina’s Historic Footbridges. If accepted, all 45 pages of revised writings and 20-30 images could go online with an interactive click-and-go map that will guide users through the footbridges.

We also prepared a minimum and maximum budget necessary to fund our September exhibit. Bottom line, we need $1,150 to pull off the show, and in an ideal world we’d get $2,200. That’s if we publish only 50 books and up to 100 maps, and frame just 15 photographs.

It’s a little daunting, but I’m certain there has to be some organization out there that will sponsor a pet project like this, especially one with such regional focus.

Next on the list: Call potential sponsors. We have a few in mind. Got any ideas?

For Lis

Over the holidays, Nate and I carpooled to the dojo since he lives near my parents’ house where I was visiting.

For almost five weeks straight, Hanshi has had us doing jui jitsu during our “karate” class, with sessions running 40 minutes overtime. Don’t get me wrong. I dig it – I really do. But the perfectionist in me worries about what’s happening to my karate basics when we don’t practice them as a group with much regularity. I can practice at home, and sometimes do, but I’d prefer to cross-train. My knees prefer that, too. Furthermore, doing karate basics in the dojo means I get feedback and that makes a world of difference.

“Worry about something like that is like paying interest on a debt you don’t owe,” Nate told me on our drive home one night. He’s the nidan (2nd degree black belt) in our class and now that Lis had to move to Virginia (I’m still in denial), he’s often the only black belt in class.

One night, after nearly 2 hours of jui jitsu kimenokata (one-step sparring forms), I told Nate I was going to go home and practice my front kicks for the Shuri White Pine Tree test.

“You’re not doing them full force, are you?” he said.

“Hardly. Just enough to get the form right. And I can’t do 500 decent ones yet. Only 400,” I said.

“Yeah, I thought about training for that test,” Nate said. “But I think it’s crazy. We didn’t have anything like that in my old school and that place was even more traditional than Hanshi’s.”

“Oh,” I said.

We talked a little more about his old school; days when Nate had to keep his martial arts training a secret to keep the football players at school from picking fights with him. He hardly struck them, he said, because he always knew he could get away if he had to. Knowing was enough. And the damage those players did do when they got their hands on him was minor, he said. Better to take a slug than take one guy down and have to deal with his whole team for weeks afterwards.

Today, however, we actually practiced karate at the dojo.

We worked Anaku in particular, and Hanshi emphasized keeping your back straight and your hips tucked in the form. He reminded us that “Tony Knows,” which means that in your shut block position, your toe, knee, and nose are all lined up and aimed directly at the target. For the split block, he said to keep the hands separate enough to mark each one as an upper block and middle block – rather than a sloppy inbetween. And most importantly, he reminded us what we always need to hear more than once: Your head does not bob up and down in kata. This is especially true in Anaku when you crescent step from one horse stance to another.

“Imagine,” Hanshi said, “that a master teacher has given you his most precious teacup to balance on your head. Now, execute Anaku kata and don’t break that teacup.”

I’ll take teacups any day over jui jitsu. Boy did it feel good to workout today, despite the fact I’m still hacking up half a lung. Osu!

Sick

Down and out for the c-o-u-n-t.

Survey and Assessment

Current reading material spread about my house:
Rolling Stone Magazine
Air Guitar by David Hickey
Follies by Ann Beattie
THE WEEK
Vanity Fair (which includes Joseph E. Stiglitz’s esteemed essay on the recession)
Cosmo (still)

Current books in a pile to loan to mom:
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Benjamin Fountain
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Current book on loan from dad:
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff

A book I really want to get my hands on but it costs too much:
Still Looking by John Updike (essays on modern art)

Current books I really want to write:
Okay So Check This Out (a collection of my lyrical essays)
A collection of my art essays (untitled)

Top two ideal places to be hired by:
Gettysburg College (waiting)
Emory University (waiting)

Top two residencies to get into:
Fine Arts Work Center (8 months) (waiting)
Vermont Studio Center (full fellowship) (applying)

Top four literary magazines I want to see my lyrical essays in:
Seneca Review (no sim.sub.)
Narrative (rejected)
Fourth Genre (rejected)
Creative Nonfiction Journal (waiting)

Top priorities:
My health
My writing
My family

Visualization: The Morning After

Visualization is powerful. The thought that in the next year (give or take) I will leave this mountain followed me all day.

In many ways, my world felt bigger, as though giving myself the chance to envision another life instantly expanded my mindset—the possibilities seemed endless! But the thought of leaving also made much of the day seem crystal clear, as though it were my duty to soak it all up while I still could. Somewhere between fantasy and nostalgia resides a healthy medium; a grounded and wise sense of vision. It is this kind of vision I seek.

When I think of specific places, I think of the Berkshire Mountains (Amherst, Great Barrington, or Northampton, Massachusetts). I think of Athens, Georgia—but only in the summertime. I also think of Marshall or Asheville, North Carolina, not much over an hour away. I think of Santa Fe, a place I’ve never been but think about often because of the art community there. I think of Keene or Saranac Lake, New York in the Adirondacks, but then think twice because I felt isolated when I lived there before. I think of New York City, I think of Atlanta, I think of Charlottesville or Roanoke or Damascus, Virginia. I think of Shasta, California and Joseph, Oregon but worry they’d be too small, though my heart would swell to be there. I think of high desert Colorado in the same breath that I think of winning the lottery.

I think, also, of an entirely new ecosystem: Portland, Maine and the Atlantic Coast. I think Provincetown and Providence. I think of Naples, Florida, but then I feel uncertain. Oh, to live and write, oceanside! There’d be page after page of discovery, just as my initiation into Appalachian living was charted in the early entries of this blog a few years back.

Likewise, visualizing about my career sent me spinning this afternoon. I am going to make it to age 30 without having worked a 9-5 M-F job. It’s not as though I tried to avoid that. Just that I was either fully immersed in community (Writing House, Resident Life, AmeriCorps, Intentional Community near here) or balancing writing with part-time low-stress work (aka my job at the coffeehouse). If I get a shot at teaching college kids, I’ll take it. But otherwise I’m going for the part-time low stress job and the full time writing life, as I’ve worked it out this many years so far. It’s the location and stimulation that needs a shift, but I like the balance as I have it now (Seasonal work? Yes please!) .

And so it goes. I engaged in these thoughts all day with delight. Occasionally, I experienced dread—as I said, visualization is powerful. As for my hair: today I let the curls go wild. No part. Just a head of curls going whatever way they wanted. And guess what? Four people told me my hair looked the best they’d ever seen it today. Funny, how the universe can talk back so quickly on the lighter matters, when all the while your heart is knocking on the walls of your chest, just begging for somebody to answer.

Exercise in Optimism

I’m starting to visualize a different place to live. In a city, where I can walk to what I need and be exposed to things that force me to think outside the box. In this visualization, I start to get over my hypersensitivity to sound, which both enriches my life and tortures me on a daily basis. (I’m not kidding about that. I hear better than a human should be allowed to hear, and am therefore constantly having to expend energing filtering things out just to attain comfort.)

I’m starting to visualize a different me. One who is actively involved in political and cultural causes. One who lives around more thirty-something’s and has daily interactions with other human beings. One who is more spontaneous and laughs more often. One who makes enough money to travel to see her friends and family, and perhaps a new place each year. One who makes enough money to save and plan and have flexibility.

I’m starting to visualize a different career. One where I teach part time under the best of circumstances, work part time at a hip place (i.e. coffeehouse or restaurant), and write for just as many hours per week. A career where the arts writing can still grow even if I live in a different place, and a career where my editing jobs increase in pay and responsibility, but not in time commitment. A career where I start publishing in the literary journals I respect the most.

I’m starting to visualize my life partner. He’s perfect, of course. Because he is perfect, he never ,ever snores. I’ll spare you the rest of the details. Andrew Bird will play at our wedding (unless of course he’s my husband, in which case Josh Ritter can play).

I’m starting to visualize a different body. Absolutely fit and athletic, despite a history of tough sports and surgeries. I will be strong and sexy in my thirties, yes I will, yes I will! And when I move, there will be a traditional Shuri-Ryu dojo nearby. Yes there will, yes there will. Oh yes, and there will be a haircut. Or at least a style. Something that looks intentional, but is in fact effortless. Maybe even a little color. A little.

I’m starting to visualize acceptance letters. To journals, fellowships, jobs, residencies, you name it. I’m conjuring them, envelope and stamp, their arrival at Fork Mountain.

Yes, I can see things starting to build. Slow and steady, one drop at a time. Mark my words, 2009 will be a year of change. I can already feel the ground moving.

Intros Always Come Last

Today I wrote the draft intro to the footbridges book. Here goes:

The idea came slowly at first, like snowmelt filtering down a mountain stream. I’d been told the swinging footbridges are maintained by North Carolina’s Department of Transportation (DOT). I also learned that Mitchell and Yancey Counties are home to 13 of the state’s 23 remaining footbridges. Nowadays, many of these footbridges lead to a dead end: private property, a cemetery, or an old train depot.

I made a pilgrimage to the Honeycutt Bridge (223W) and it was there, where Bad Creek flows into Rock Creek, that this notion of Lost Crossings came to fruition. Anchored between Highway 226 and a steep hillside, the space begged for interpretation. I could almost hear the stories being told, memories from a way of life nearly forgotten.

Yet it wasn’t enough to imagine these stories. I stood above a confluence of pure mountain waters and understood it would be necessary to trace the story of each footbridge back to its source. Bad Creek had come a long way down the mountain. The families and buildings around these footbridges had come a long way, too.

We began our fieldwork Fall 2008, crossing every footbridge in Mitchell and Yancey Counties. The DOT sent spreadsheets and maps. The Bakersville Library and Historical Society proved helpful. I put together a list of primary sources and started scheduling interviews. We asked around at the post office, the convenience center, the lumberyard, and the local coffee shop. Everyone, it seemed, had a story or two about the swinging footbridges.

We completed our fieldwork by wintertime. Our mountain counties had their coldest November in 50 years, and we worked away at our desks checking facts, organizing photos, and searching archives. DOT records date to the 1960’s but many residents shared stories with us dating back to the late ‘20’s and ‘30’s. We decided to use primary sources as much as possible, but stick to DOT records for construction dates.

At a certain juncture, interest in our project gained momentum. County residents, librarians, friends, tourists, gallery owners, and museum curators alike wanted to know more about Lost Crossings. With encouragement from these parties, we prepared this book and exhibition, developed photos, and organized a legible map of the footbridges.