OLD Whidbey Life Magazine

Author: Stephanie Barbé Hammer

Magically Real || What To Do When You’re Feeling Extraneous
BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
July 12, 2014

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I feel extraneous these days. The political situation (which, is distressing, if not downright depressing, no matter where you stand politically), combined with the long ferry lines to and from the island, and the losses of the Whidbey MFA program, the Coupeville radio station, and the Coupeville pharmacy (I’m not sure that’s related, but I’m throwing it in anyway because I really miss it), along with the financial threats to the local hospital make things feel difficult here. I can’t, for the life of me, get a community college to hire me as an adjunct lecturer, although I’ve won two teaching awards and have three graduate degrees.

Yup, it’s time to face facts: I’m extraneous.

So, what am I doing? I’m reading a bunch of books — novels and poetry — I’m writing (working on three or four different projects), and I’m going to volunteer at the Island Shakespeare Festival in Langley.

OK, Langley people, I admit it. You do have very cool events in the “southern” part of the island.

Downtown Coupeville at 1:17 a.m. (Photo by Stephanie Barbé Hammer)

The Island Shakespeare Festival is staging one of my favorites, “Hamlet,” as well as “Comedy of Errors” and Chekov’s “The Seagull.” I am crazy for “Hamlet.” I’ve seen it, read it, and taught it multiple times. It’s the perfect play for our dysfunctional political moment (“Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark”). “Comedy of Errors” is great too. The missing link for me is “The Seagull,” which I’ve never read or seen. So, now I’ll have to read and learn about it this summer.

It’s important to remind yourself every day that, even if you’re extraneous, you can still educate yourself about things that interest you.

As a volunteer at the festival, I will get to see the plays for free and come early to get a great seat. If you haven’t seen a play in a while, allow me to remind you that seeing plays is awesome. There’s something about live performance that is, well, enlivening. I just talked to my daughter, who went to a professional wrestling event with her spouse out in Long Beach, California, and she tells me that she’s still “high” about it. And if New Japan Wrestling isn’t theater, then I don’t know what is (Will Shakespeare would dig it for sure).

Live performance connects us with others in complex and interesting ways. First, we are members of a collective group (a.k.a. the audience), and there is a real pleasure in being with other people at a live performance. If the performance is outside, and especially if it is during daylight (which lasts till past 9 p.m. here), we can really see our fellow-watchers, unlike when we go to the movies. Watching others as we see the show is meaningful.

I remember kids gasping last year, their eyes widening in fear, when Julius Caesar got assassinated in last year’s production of that play. I got to witness these kids’ reactions and, as a result, I shared them. I felt a fear and sorrow at the assassination of Julius Caesar that I had never felt before when watching that scene (and I’ve seen that play many times). I felt something new because I experienced those kids experiencing the play in such an intense manner.

Island Shakespeare Fest actors in last year’s Julius Caesar (Photo courtesy of Island Shakespeare Festival)

Second, there are the ways in which we connect with the on-stage actors as we watch them perform. It’s fascinating how we come out of a live performance, feeling as though we have “lived” it ourselves, even though we’ve just been watching the whole time. That’s the magic of performance. We get to live lives we’ll never know through our regular, limited means.

When I watch a live performance, what my friend Robert calls “the heat of the real” takes over, and I feel engaged and intensified. I forget myself and my extraneousness, and I lean in and drink in the energy of the performers. I come away feeling not just better, but somehow like I matter more. Like we all matter more.

I’m looking forward to my volunteer time at the Island Shakespeare Festival. And it sounds like they need volunteers. So, for a little while at least, I will not feel extraneous.

To learn more about the Island Shakespeare Festival, see their website. You can learn more about Shakespeare here.

Stephanie Barbe Hammer is writing a new magical realist novel, a new collection of poems, and a possible biography in poems and prose about her best friend from the university where she worked. You can follow her on Twitter and read 13 sonnets by wonderful poets for 13 different senators on her website, Magically Real.

Read the other stories published this week
- Drew Kampion: The Man Behind Drewslist
- Vermicomposting: Worm-Wrangling in the Cedar
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Enjoy more articles in the print edition of Whidbey Life Magazine, which you can purchase at local and off-island retailers or receive in the mail via subscription.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, please contact us.
July 12, 2017
Magically Real | How About a Little List?

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
May 10, 2017

Friends, I just finished taking a wonderful nonfiction writing class in Coupeville with my former Northwest Institute of Literary Arts teacher, essayist Ana Maria Spagna, and her friend, the amazing novelist Laura Pritchett. They were big on having us make lists, then asking us to use them creatively.

Lists can be a great way to clean out your brain. You dump the data in those numbered rows, and then you have it all there in front of you for safekeeping.

The beginning of a list of animals I’d never want to be (Photo by Stephanie Barbé Hammer)

Here’s one.

What 10 things do you want to write about before you kick the bucket?

Try it. Make a list of 10 things you want to write about before you die. (Things can be people or issues or historical moments.)

Just go. Don’t overthink it. 10 things.

Here’s another one.

Make a list of 10 places that are endangered. They can be outside or inside.

Just go. Don’t overthink it.

How about this one? List the 10 worst possible jobs.

Now what?

My list of 10 or more interesting words (Photo by Stephanie Barbé Hammer)

Write a story.

Write a poem.

Write about a memory that something on the list sparked.

Write about a wish that something on the list made you aware of.

Make another list if you want.

For example: 10 things you love about Whidbey Island.

See? It can be fun.

Happy list making!

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a published novelist and poet. She is working on a how-to-write-Magical-Realism book and is dedicating her blog “Magically Real” to reading seminal 18th-century writers who influenced the founding fathers and other key American figures. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog.

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Enjoy more articles in the print edition of Whidbey Life Magazine, which you can purchase at local and off-island retailers or receive in the mail via subscription.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, please contact us.

May 10, 2017
Magically Real | Paradise No (but What About Some Utopia?)

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
March 15, 2017

Friends – a lot of Whidbey denizens call this place “paradise.”

“Welcome to paradise,” my new neighbors (at the time) told us, and “life in paradise” is something that Coupeville acquaintances say to me all the time (of course Coupeville probably IS very close to being paradise, but I digress).

I grimace a little bit whenever I hear this well-meaning phrase. Probably because I am an ex-professor, and so I have to deconstruct and analyze everything.

When I hear “paradise,” I think of my least favorite English author, Milton.

Here is our friend Wikipedia on the etymology of the word:

The word “paradise” entered English from the French paradis, inherited from the Latin paradisus, from Greek parádeisos (παράδεισος), from an Old Iranian paridayda “walled enclosure.” By the 6th/5th century BCE, the Old Iranian word had been adopted as Assyrian pardesu “domain.” It subsequently came to indicate the expansive walled gardens of the First Persian Empire. The term eventually appeared in Greek as parádeisos “park for animals” in the Anabasis of the early 4th century BCE Athenian Xenophon. Aramaic pardaysa similarly reflects “royal park.”

Whenever I investigate something, I always get more than I bargained for — which is awesome. Did you know that “paradise” was connected to Ancient Assyria? I sure didn’t.

Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder

But the fact remains that most of us associate “paradise” with “Eden.” Thank goodness Wikipedia bears me out:

Later in Second Temple era Judaism “paradise” came to be associated with the Garden of Eden and prophecies of restoration of Eden, and transferred to heaven. The Septuagint uses the word around 30 times, both of Eden, (Gen.2:7 etc.) and of Eden restored (Ezek. 28:13, 36:35 etc.). In the Apocalypse of Moses, Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise (instead of Eden) after having been tricked by the serpent. Later after the death of Adam, the Archangel Michael carries the body of Adam to be buried in Paradise, which is in the Third Heaven.

My point is that “paradise” for many of us is that place that is lost, either through the Christian notion of original sin or the Jewish notion of humans being dumb and doing dumb things. Or it is the place to be found after we die, as it is in Christian texts such as Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” and in the Qur’an, where Wikipedia notes:

In the Qur’an, Paradise is denoted as jannah (garden), with the highest level being called firdaus and used instead of Heaven to describe the ultimate pleasurable place after death, accessible by those who pray, donate to charity, read the Qur’an, believe in: God, the angels, his revealed books, his prophets and messengers, the Day of Judgement and the afterlife, and follow God’s will in their life.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that where we live is not “paradise” because paradise is a perfect place that we either fell out of or haven’t yet gotten into.

“But still,” I can hear you saying. “Shouldn’t we be able to dream of perfection?”

Absolutely. And that’s where I’d like to invite you to think, not about paradise (about the place we lost and/or the place we’ll go after we die (if that’s your belief system), but about utopia.

Utopias are fictional societies that are ideal. Utopia is Greek. It means “nowhere.”

Thomas More coined the term in 1516.

You may remember what happened to Thomas More. He was executed by Henry VIII.

But gosh, he thought big. In his book “Utopia,” there are free hospitals, freedom of religion, and free food for everyone; the equivalents of college dining halls are open to all. His utopia has its flaws — slavery, punishment of pre-marital sex, and the unacceptability of atheism. But considering when it was written, it’s not a bad attempt to think out of the box.

I’d like to invite you to imagine Whidbey Island as a utopia. What would an ideal Whidbey Island society look like?

We already have a free bus service! That’s pretty utopian actually.

What other things would make Whidbey Island a utopia?

Eldorado illustration from the novel “Candide,” by Voltaire

I suggest this because we have never needed to think more creatively, more positively, and more utopianly than now. Remember that Voltaire’s Eldorado is set in that horrible mess of a world that is his novel “Candide.” When Voltaire wrote his novel in 1759, women had few rights, Jews were segregated and often set upon violently, and protestants were actively persecuted in France. If you were not white, living in France was dangerous and hard. And forget being gay. Yet Voltaire imagines a perfect democracy where everyone lives in abundance in the middle of his dark satire.

Book cover of “Herland” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Same for Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She wrote “Herland” in 1915, when women in the U.S. didn’t even have the right to vote. She imagined a technically sophisticated feminist society inhabited only by women, who reproduce through parthenogenesis. Some men crash land in Herland and have quite a learning experience. It’s a pretty interesting book.

So please write a story or a poem about your ideal Whidbey Island. What problems need to be solved? How would you solve them? Have fun! Think big and think positive! Share with friends, and if you like, share in the comments below.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a published novelist and poet. She is working on a how-to-write-Magical-Realism book, and she is dedicating her blog “Magically Real” to reading seminal 18th century writers who influenced the founding fathers and other key American figures. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog.

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Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

March 15, 2017
Magically Real || How About a Poem?

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
January 18, 2017

Friends – I was talking to my t’ai chi teacher Lynne last week, and she told me that she usually didn’t “like” poetry, but she liked mine because I wrote about things like dishwashers.

I hear this all the time. Not the dishwasher part. I mean the part where people say they “don’t like poetry.” They tend to make this statement in an ashamed and embarrassed way (Lynne didn’t, but then, you have to remember that she is very Zen and enlightened). When most folks make this confession, they say it like they might be admitting “I don’t like broccoli,” meaning “I know it’s good for me, and it’s wrong for me not to like it, but it doesn’t taste good!”

In my humble opinion poems ought to taste good. That means be interesting, accessible, and somehow nourish us. Art — even the most provocative, controversial art — nourishes us in some way, even if it’s by challenging us to do the right thing. A poem can be tangy and surprising. It can be sad and scary. But the vitamins have to be there.

Last Sunday night at the Writers Workshoppe in Port Townsend, my friend, poet Gary Lilley read a sad poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay. Here it is:

Poet Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

If you want to get technical, McKay’s poem is a sonnet. It’s got 14 lines, 3 quatrains, and a concluding couplet. In other words, he’s using a fancy Renaissance poetic form beloved by poets like Shakespeare. This was a gutsy thing for him to do, as a black poet writing in 1919.

It’s great, isn’t it?

In honor of Martin Luther King, and in honor of any person you admire and love and miss, how about writing a poem yourself?

Your poem can be in a form, if you want to get fancy, or you can just write in something called free verse. That means, that you put the line breaks where you want them.

That’s the way Walt Whitman wrote. Here’s a piece from a quite famous poem of his:

Poet Walt Whitman

Lo, body and soul — this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

Whitman is writing a type of poem called an elegy, and these are poems about people who have died and whom we admire and miss. Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is an elegy for President Lincoln, but as you can see from just this snippet, the poem opens up to become a poem about America as a whole. Elegies expand in that way — using the occasion of one person’s death to envision a bigger, deeper picture.

Your poem can be about something very small too.

Here’s a poem I wrote about my niece’s cat, which she recently had to put down.

It was just a little life
So small that many of us
Never met this sleek
Creature of Halloween dreams.
The last time I saw her she was
Watching you tumble — her
Giant human sibling — her tail curlingly
Alert in taut minuscule physicality
As
She followed every move of
your exercise routine
Aptly named “animal.” It’s amazing how much
Intensity can be generated in the
Gaze of one so miniature but
There it is — the smallest life
Garners gives so much
Power.

I’ve shared three very serious poems, because we’re living in a serious time, but you can write about whatever you want.

Think you can’t do it? Wrong! We all have it in us to make poems. We are hardwired to make word-art because we’ve been making it since we first started using words. Every culture has poems. So that means we all can make them.

Personally, I find making poems energizing, exciting, therapeutic, and deep. I’m a terrible cook but I like cooking with words. I learn something about myself and what I believe when I make a poem. And then when I’m finished, I have this snack that I share with other people if I want. I do that sometimes. But sometimes I just keep it for myself. Not all broccoli is meant to be shared.

So, I’d like to invite you to write a poem today.

I think it will taste good to you. And perhaps it will nourish someone else too.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a published novelist and poet. She is working on a how-to-write-Magical-Realism book, and she is dedicating her blog “Magically Real” to reading seminal 18th century writers who influenced the founding fathers and other key American figures. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog

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To read more WLM stories and blogs, click here. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

January 18, 2017
Magically Real || Who Is “Us?”

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
November 23, 2016

Friends — greetings from San Antonio. I am here at the society of biblical literature with my husband Larry, who writes about interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians.

Dialogue is good. On Whidbey, we like to talk to our neighbors and our drinking buddies and pretty much anyone we happen to meet.

Or that’s how it was, anyway.

On our island, we like to think that we are removed from the greater problems of our country and our planet. But imagine this: right after the election, Larry and I were scared to go to our usual Thursday wine tasting event because we didn’t know what to say to our drinking friends who didn’t vote the way we did. We made ourselves go, but friends, I felt afraid. And while the conversation was pleasant, it was strained.

I still feel afraid.

Full disclosure: I am a Jew by choice and therefore am technically white. So, I’m not going to get deported. I’m not going to get rounded up. Likewise, I tell myself I don’t have anything to fear. And our neighbors are nice.

But what about the confederate flag I saw here on the island when I drove to the beach this summer? Where are those people, and are there more?

What about my friend in Seattle who is trans? What about my Muslim friends at MAPS — the Muslim Association of Puget Sound? What about my friends who are aren’t white? What about my husband, who looks very Jewish?

I confess to you that I feel different walking in downtown Coupeville now. I’m wondering — for the first time ever — who would claim me as a fellow citizen and who wouldn’t? It feels like an open question.

What do we stand for on Whidbey island? That’s my question to myself and to you.

I do not want to be a part of any society that registers Muslims and seeks to deport people who are here, trying to make it here. I am for same-sex marriage too.

But I feel like I’m living in a different country, now. One where I and my husband are no longer welcome.

I hope I’m wrong.

So I think about this in a city that belonged to Spain, and then to Mexico, and then to itself, and now to “us.” Who is “us?” Who should “us” be? I know the answer to the second question. It’s the first one that stumps me.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She is the author of a poetry chapbook “Sex with Buildings,” a full-length poetry collection “How Formal?” and a comic magical realist novel “The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior.” You can follow her on Twitter, or read her blog “Magically Real” as she tries to read “100 Years of Solitude” in less than 100 years.

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The views, opinions, and positions expressed by Whidbey Life Magazine bloggers, as well as those of the people who comment on their blog posts, are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of Whidbey Life Magazine.

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To read more WLM stories and blogs, click here. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

November 23, 2016
Magically Real || It’s all happening at the Coupeville Dump

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
September 21, 2016

I mean the recycling center. Well, it’s the recycling center AT the dump.

Read on.

Friends: now that I live on an island, I find myself thinking about where things come from. Like electricity. And where things go. Like our garbage.

The visit to the dump is my husband Larry’s job. Mind you, he doesn’t complain about it; he is a wonderful man. But he’s also a sophisticated intellectual who blogs about religion and who is working on a memoir. This kind of work takes him away from his writing. Which would account for the fact that he does a lot of sighing when this job comes around.

He makes a great deal of organizing sounds, which involve opening and closing the back door, opening and closing cabinets, more sighing, then opening of the car trunk. These are accompanied by the melancholy sounds of plastic bags rustling and then glass clanking. The back door slams shut in what can only be called an existential manner, and the car backs out of the driveway. It proceeds slowly, with gravitas, towards the highway.

“This is a time-consuming, somewhat intricate operation, you know,” my husband informed me yesterday as he prepared to leave.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I’d better come along and supervise.”

Going to the Coupeville dump is a complex adventure, because the recycling area isn’t just the blue can that we were used to in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. No sir. It’s a huge space, the size of a couple of tennis courts (not that I play tennis—I’m a poet, for Pete’s sake!).

When you bring your recycling items, you must sort them into subcategories and place them in the appropriate receptacle/bins/stacks.

There are a lot of them. Green glass goes one place. Aluminum goes someplace else. Cans go someplace else. Cardboard, as opposed to paper, goes someplace else. The good news: brown paper shopping bags go with cardboard! There are even spots for batteries and printer cartridges.

“Why are there so many subcategories?” I asked the person with the orange vest who was in charge for the day. I was told that as many as five different trucks come on different schedules to haul away ONE specific type of recyclable. These then go off-island back to the Seattle area.

Did I mention that there is also a thrift shop at the dump? You can buy a bicycle! A man in a very fancy sports car stopped by and did just that while I was there supervising.

You can also donate clothing.

There’s a kind of beauty to the recycling area at the Coupeville Dump. Things are not being wasted; they are being exchanged. There’s something cool about actually seeing all the stuff we use, get sorted and readied to be reused.

The person in the orange vest smiled and waved as we left.

I think I will go to the dump with my husband next time.

I might even offer to help!

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. She is the author of a poetry chapbook “Sex with Buildings” (dancing girl press 2012), a full-length poetry collection “How Formal?” (Spout Hill Press, 2014), and a comic magical realist novel “The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior” (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2015). You can follow her on twitter (stephabulist) or read her blog “Magically Real” as she tries to read “100 Years of Solitude” in less than 100 years at http://www.stephaniebarbehammer.net.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

September 21, 2016
Magically Real || Islands

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
July 20, 2016

Dear friends,

Well, here I am on my home island, the island of Manhattan, attending a wedding for my step-niece, Leah. The wedding will not take place on the island of Manhattan, but rather in Brooklyn, which is not an island, exactly. Read on.

I seem to have a love affair with islands. I grew up in Manhattan and spent summers on Whidbey Island and its coastal opposite—Long Island. I attended a small women’s college, which was a feminist island, I was a professor in the Ivory Tower Island, and I’m a poet and avant-garde fiction writer living on my own personal island of strange imaginings. Perhaps it’s true that “no man is an island,” but this woman is sometimes—for sure.

The author in her frum outfit with her other sister-in-law, the famous Rebbetzin Tap, orthodox tap dancer and teacher (who told her to “wear your red glasses!”) (photo courtesy of the author)

The wedding I’m attending takes place on a figurative and spiritual island: the island of Orthodox Jewry. My step-niece Leah is Orthodox, as is her stepmother, my sister-in-law (also named Leah), her husband, and their large extended family.

Orthodox Jews prefer the term “Observant” or frum (Yiddish for ‘devout or pious’), and they tend to live in communities that appear to hold themselves apart from the secular society in which they’re rooted. This has to do with dietary rules as well as the rules for keeping Shabbat (“Sabbath”), which goes from sundown on Friday night to a bit past sundown on Saturday night. If you follow these regulations, it’s helpful to have stores in the neighborhood that carry kosher food and that open and close in ways that follow religious guidelines. It’s also good to have neighbors who are on the same page with you because, in an emergency, they can help you and you can help them.

There is also—clearly—protection in numbers. Observant Jews are wary—with some justification-—of being the victims of anti-Semitism, particularly because they are often visibly “different.” The men, in particular, can stand out with their black hats and suits.

The bride, escorted by her stepmother (in gold) and her mother-in-law (in blue), as they circle the bridegroom. (photo courtesy of the author)

I have to be honest: I tend to visit this particular island with trepidation. I am not frum and, to make things more complicated, I am a convert to Judaism. Since I converted under Reform auspices, my conversion is not necessarily recognized as “kosher” (aka valid) in the community my step-niece, my sister-in-law and her family live in. So, when I step onto this island, I feel out of place and foreign.

I also have to dress quite differently. I have to wear a special long-sleeved, high-necked, ankle-length dress and, as a married woman, I’m expected (although not obliged) to cover my hair. I’ve also learned recently that the color red is not particularly favored by frum communities, which means that I may have to leave my beloved signature red glasses in the hotel room and wear my spare pair, which is a discreet dark brown.

But the fact is, my frum family treats me with respect and love, despite the fact that in my regular life I wear pants, use cuss words, and eat bacon.

So, am I really going someplace so different or is this an island I have created in my own imagination? Remember, I like to do that. Make stuff up.

The bride and groom with the bride’s immediate family (photo courtesy of the author)

As I put on my long dress and my hat and my closed-toe shoes, I invite all of us to consider what islands are real islands and what islands are islands that we make up in our own minds. What separations and distances do we create out of our own unease with people who are different than us?

I visited MAPS (the Muslim Association of Puget Sound) this past spring, and I felt fine wearing a scarf. So maybe I need to get over this internal island thing.

Still, I’m looking forward to getting back to Whidbey. I might even put on some shorts! BLT, here I come!

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. She is the author of a poetry chapbook “Sex with Buildings” (dancing girl press 2012), a full-length poetry collection “How Formal?” (Spout Hill Press, 2014), and a comic magical realist novel “The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior” (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2015). You can follow her on twitter (stephabulist) or read her blog “Magically Real” as she tries to read “100 Years of Solitude” in less than 100 years at http://www.stephaniebarbehammer.net.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

July 20, 2016
Magically Real || Make yourself at home. Or don’t.

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
May 18, 2016

It’s an interesting expression isn’t it? “Make yourself at home” is an invitation, but it’s also a sort of command.

Behave in this strange place as though it were your place. And transform yourself too, while you’re at it. As though you could create an internal mechanism where you—the stranger, the visitor—would, through an act of will, metamorphose into someone who actually is at home. So, when you make yourself at home, you are necessarily remaking yourself.

But there’s a further implication. “Make yourself at home” also implies that you will have to make yourself a home out of the material that is in front of you. That material is foreign to you and it may not belong to you, but you’ll have to take possession of it all the same, and then re-form it according to your needs.

Making yourself at home presents an interesting challenge here on Whidbey Island.

When I first started working on this blog post, I was feeling melancholy about the closure of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program—of which I am a graduate, and which is the reason I came to Whidbey Island in the second place. I say the “second place” because the first time I came to Whidbey Island I was five years old.

Author (right) at the beach on Whidbey in 1959 with cousins Mary (left) and Anne (center) Froberg (photo by Leonard Hammer)

I’m at the beach on Whidbey (above) with my cousins Anne and Mary Froberg. My dad was born in Seattle and, although we lived in Manhattan, we used to spend summers out here.

Anyhow, when I came to Whidbey Island this second time, I fell in love with the place, as many visitors do. My husband and I moved here, in large part, to be close to the twice-a-year MFA residencies. I taught occasionally for the program after I graduated, so that was another reason to stay involved.

With the death of the MFA program and its biannual communal meetings, the place I’ve moved to doesn’t feel so much like home anymore.

I was going to write something properly sad about this.

But then I went to the Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville.

In a new part of the museum, you can see an impressive exhibit of artifacts and canoes belonging to the folks who lived in this area long before you and I and other non-Native people came and made ourselves at home here.

“Making ourselves at home” is, from a historical perspective, a pretty kind way of putting it.

I looked at the plaques in the museum that told about Native Americans who lived here, and I recognized a name.

Chief Snakelum.

I live a couple of streets up from Snakelum Point.

Chief Snakelum is buried up the hill from my house.

A section of one of the displays at the museum with photo of Chief Snakelum on the left. (photo by author)

As a Jewish person, I am moved and challenged by the idea of displacement and by the reality of the remnant of a people, dispossessed by other people who were deeply determined as well as technically advanced in the ways of forcibly making themselves at home.

I walk around our neighborhood and I realize there’s a lot I don’t know about the people whose home really was here. For thousands of years.

Snakelum Point Road sign at Snakelum Point in Coupeville (photo by the author)

I am curious about them. I want to know my neighbors, and indeed—from a certain point of view—I want to get to know my hosts. Because if anyone is a guest here, I am.

So maybe it’s ok that I haven’t made myself at home on Whidbey Island. Maybe I can’t, and maybe I shouldn’t. And anyway, home for tribal people often isn’t stationary. We’re talking homelands rather than homesteads. Places where we roam and camp and circle back to, rather than houses with garages and patios.

I wrote a poem a couple of years ago about how in the 21st Century we are all nomads to some degree. Recently, I remember reading that author Rabbi David Wolpe, when he was selling his house, explained to some prospective buyers that he was— like them—just “passing through.”

That works. I, too, am passing through.

Snakelum canoe in the Island County Historical Society Museum (photo by the author)

To learn about the Lower Skagit Tribe, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Skagit_tribe.

For a little information about Chief Snakelum, along with variations on the spelling of his name, click here: http://www.gsswi.org/cemetery/Snakelum.php.

A portion of the front door of the Island County Historical Society Museum (photo by the author)

To visit the website of the Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville, click here: https://coupevillehistoricwaterfront.com/community-partners/island-county-historical-society-museum/.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. She is the author of a poetry chapbook “Sex with Buildings” (dancing girl press 2012), a full-length poetry collection “How Formal?” (Spout Hill Press, 2014), and a comic magical realist novel “The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior” (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2015). You can follow her on twitter (stephabulist) or read her blog “Magically Real” as she tries to read “100 Years of Solitude” in less than 100 years at http://www.stephaniebarbehammer.net.

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May 18, 2016
Magically Real || 24-hour Wind Advisory Diary: Sunday, March 13 (or… ‘this time I’m ready for the storm—sort of’)

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
March 16, 2016

12 Midnight – Texted best friend in Seattle. Text reads: “High winds make me think we may not make it to Puget Sound’s MusselFest. You better stay home.”

Response: “OMG, ok. Hope you don’t lose power.”

12:05 – Shuddered in bed, remembering when power went out for four days and nights last August.

12:30 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. – Anxiety dreams about losing power.

9:15 a.m. (really 8:15 a.m. because of this idiotic “Spring Forward” nonsense that drives me crazy every year until I get used to it, and then really like that it gets dark later, and then become super depressed when it’s time to “Fall Back,” until I get used to it, and then really like it and on and on it goes until death comes) – Email received from Whidbey Life Magazine. Text reads: “We won’t [set up] the magazine table today at MusselFest but thanks for offering to person it!”

9:30 a.m. – Texted best friend in Seattle. Text reads: “I MISS YOU!”

Response: “I MISS YOU TOO!”

9:45 a.m. – Drank coffee.

10 a.m. – Checked AccuWeather. Got dressed. Went to gas station, filled car with gasoline and purchased large jug of purified water.

10:20 a.m. – Drove to Coupeville Coffee and Bistro. Ordered breakfast. Realized that poetry assignment for online class needed to be posted before power theoretically went out and walked into lady’s room and recorded comical video about attempting to write a sonnet in private. Flushed toilet for dramatic effect.

10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. – Hung out in coffee shop. Drove home.

12:54 p.m. – Watched wind whip through trees, thought, “I’m glad I’m not outside.”

12:57 p.m. – Considered lunch.

1:20 p.m. – Sun came out. Tempted to do victory dance and run outside, but knew better. Continued to contemplate lunch as an imminent possibility.

1:56 p.m. – Bainbridge friend checked in on Facebook and articulated concern about weather. Best friend reported on FB that winds were high in Seattle.

1:57 p.m. – Decided to eat tuna casserole before power went out. Charged phone, iPad and emergency electronics charger; wondered where jug of water is. Scratched head. Looked out window. (Better check AccuWeather again.) Kindle! Had to quickly download copy of “The Soul of the Octopus.” Wondered where hardcover version of “100 Years of Solitude” was.

2:02 p.m. – Rain pouring down.

2:24 p.m. – Sun came out. Reheated tuna casserole.

2:40 p.m. – Watched episode one of season three of “House of Cards.” Had to turn it off, felt too much like real politics.

3:12 p.m. – Wind literally howled. Trees shook. Thought of “Wuthering Heights.” Lawrence Olivier. Kate Bush.

3:30 p.m. – Phoned best friend to tell her about attempts to listen to “100 Years of Solitude” on Audible. Our conversation:

Her: “What’s it about?”

Me: “Gypsies, flying carpets, giant tattooed men, alchemy, dads going mad and speaking Latin, firing squads, rigged elections and a little girl who appears, complete with rocking chair, and who only eats dirt. And that’s just the first six chapters.”

Her: “A tree just fell on the garage!”

Me: “What??!???!?!?” (No one injured. Landlord called. Donald Trump discussed.)

4 p.m. – Listened to some more of “100 Years of Solitude.” Fell asleep because everyone in the book has the same four names, varied slightly.

5 p.m. – (although technically it was only 4 p.m. because of the Great Leap Forward—no, that’s Mao—ridiculousness, so it was still really too early to eat.) Performed cardio routine in bedroom while watching YouTube on smart phone plugged into wall (so as to keep charging).

5:30 p.m. – Husband observed that wind was dying down. Refused to believe him because of last August. Got out candles. Retrieved huge jug of water from car. Placed flashlights on kitchen counter.

5:50 p.m. – Watched “Victor Victoria” with husband. Loved the gender bending. And the dinner jackets.

6:38 p.m. – Sun began to set. Bainbridge friend checked in on FB and shared that Lummi Island ferry was stopped and sitting in the middle of the channel. Panic attack at thought of being stuck on ferry in middle of water. Tried to remember life saving dive techniques from 44 years ago.

6:50 p.m. – Kindle charged. Emergency charger charged. Computer charged. Dishes washed. Time for beer and nachos.

7:30 p.m. – Chomped. Sipped. Watched a segment about assisted suicide on “60 Minutes.” Somehow not a good idea, given general anxiety about power.

10 p.m. – AccuWeather said the wind would be dying down, particularly after 4 a.m.

10:30 p.m. – Poems from last week’s assignment came online. Read poems. Poetry students are writing fantastic iambic tetrameter pieces. It’s ridiculous how good they are. Amazing how traditional forms can compress people’s words and make them sing.

11:20 p.m. – No rain. But it felt very dark. I tend to miss people when it’s night. Dad used to take me for walks very late with a flashlight. He said the night made him feel large and small at the same time. He spent his childhood summers here on Whidbey Island—how I learned about it.

11:46 p.m. – AccuWeather said it would begin to rain in four minutes.

11:57 p.m. – Wished Dad was here although he might turn out to be a Donald Trump fan and terrible argument would ensue.

11:59 p.m. – AccuWeather reset and said rain would start in 82 minutes. Husband writing in other room. No wind. Refrigerator humming.

12:04 a.m. – Decided that if power stays on until 4 a.m., all will be well. Husband dictated tax advice to daughter into iPhone. He told her the kinds of forms she needs. Only four hours til 4 a.m.

That’s not a long time at all.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer has published short fiction, poetry and nonfiction and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times. She is the author of a poetry collection, “How Formal?” and the novel, “The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior,” as well as scholarly books and articles. She lives in Coupeville mostly, but makes frequent forays into Los Angeles. You can read her blog here: www.stephaniebarbehammer.net and follow her on twitter (@stephabulist).

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WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

March 16, 2016
Magically Real || Don’t cry for me, oh, South Whidbey

BY STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER
January 13, 2016

A few months ago a Langley acquaintance told me he felt sorry for me because I live north of Classic Road. That is to say, he pitied me because I live in Coupeville, which—if you’re reading this blog and aren’t from these parts—is in the middle of Whidbey Island.

Now friends, don’t get me wrong. I love spending time in South Whidbey. The Clinton Ferry gives me a thrill every time I ride it and I’m a denizen of the Star Store and Star Store Annex, as well as all the Langley bookstores. I’m a huge fan of the Bayview Taproom and the Bayview Famer’s Market.

Kettle Drive will put you on the trail to see the kettles in the area. (photo by the author)

I love that walk past the statues near the bench in downtown Langley where you can see the water. And who doesn’t dig the Music for the Eyes boutique? Last time I was there, I snagged an amazing pair of hamsa earrings that I lent to my daughter and then never saw again; she loved them so much she, uh, requisitioned them. The South Whidbey libraries are gorgeous, and I’ve heard wonderful concerts and attended neat writing workshops at the high school in Langley.

But listen—if you take the time to drive a little bit further up the road, it’s pretty nifty here, too.

Last Thursday is a case in point. I took my usual walk past the kettle in Pheasant Farm Acres. We have a couple of kettles in our neighborhood and they’re super cool to look at. They’re huge bowl-like holes that were created by the melting of detached, buried glaciers. Over time, the holes have filled in with trees. (To learn more, you can check out http://www.britannica.com/science/kettle.)

Looking down into one of the kettles (photo by the author)

Then I turned up the road and took in a view of the prairie that’s managed by the Pacific Rim Institute. The Institute’s volunteers are bringing several endangered plants, endemic to the area, back to health and they have an owl barn that’s home to several BIG owls. You can see them, sometimes, flying around the neighborhood. The birds, not the volunteers. Just to be clear.

I came home, put on some nicer clothes and went off to Thirsty Thursday at the bayleaf wine shop in downtown Coupeville. “Gosh,” my husband said, “hope it’s not too deserted there. It can get pretty quiet here in the winter.”

Here’s a picture of the scene:

Thirsty Thursday wine tasting at bayleaf (photo by the author)

I think it’s safe to report that the joint was jumping. Our friend Sara joined us in this packed-to-capacity tasting room. FYI, Beth, the owner, is an incredible connoisseur of wines from Washington State and beyond (like Greece), and she’s the most nicely knowledgeable person I know regarding what libation to try and what yummy cheese to pair with it.

Then Sara and I drove further north to go see “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Oak Harbor. A young dad and his tiny son held the doors for us as we came in from the cold and stood in a line of about six people.

“You see?” Sara said. “It’s not complicated going to the movies here.”

The lobby at Oak Harbor Theater (photo by the author)

I won’t say that the Oak Harbor movie theater is grandiose. But it’s clean, the seats are comfortable and they show first-run movies without a hitch. The sound was great and the projectionist was on point.

And the folks in the theater with us—let me tell you about them.

I’ve already mentioned the man and his son. There was another man with an even tinier daughter. And there were lots of youngish guys who were each sitting alone throughout the room.

I asked Sara about them. “Well,” she said. “Remember, this is a military town.”

Then the movie began. I chomped on popcorn and wished my mom was still alive to see the movie with Sara and me. My mom and I saw three of the original Star Wars movies together and she loved watching handsome Harrison Ford in action. (Sara and I do too, just for the record).

As I looked around the room, I noticed the guys in the audience raptly watching the X-wing star fighters, and realized that many of them would actually know how to fly fighter planes. Or repair them

I probably should confess, at this point, that I’m one of those leftist-leaning hippy-pacifist types, and I’m not crazy for the airplane noise that we get sometimes on my part of the island. But I have to tell you—there was something moving about being in the room with those guys, watching Star Wars. Because—like it or not—they are our Jedi.

So friends, remember this: when you go further up Highway 20, past Langley and Freeland and, yes, even past Greenbank (technically, a central-island community), you’ll see owls and deer, and navy guys and gals. You can also drink some incredible wines, visit delicious restaurants, and still see some inspiring views of the water and the land.

And, by the way, we don’t have a rabbit problem here. At least not yet.

Stephanie is a published poet and novelist who loves teaching. She is offering a class on the origins of magical realism on Jan. 23 at the Writers Workshoppe in Port Townsend. Visit here for more information: http://www.writersworkshoppe.com/workshops.

To learn more about Stephanie, visit: http://www.stephaniebarbehammer.net.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

January 13, 2016