A summary of our September 2010 speaker, Charles Wohlforth
By Kay Vreeland

Charles Wohlforth’s subtitle for his recent book, The Fate of Nature, is “Rediscovering our Ability to Rescue the Earth” and in his talk to the APC luncheon meeting September 2, 2010, he marked out the paths toward this rescue. Chief among these is being grounded in our communities and in the stories we tell about our world. Writers, especially journalists, create and define culture in large measure, and culture is the key to solutions of environmental issues. We have known for some time that we are using up our biosphere and know the solutions for preserving it, but we have not gone very far toward rescuing the earth. In the end, said Wolhforth, it is culture rather than science, engineering or technology that will lead to rescue.

Culture grows out of stories we tell and our trust in these stories. Wohlforth’s early journalism career was at the Homer News where he learned his readers accepted what he wrote as true, since he saw the subjects of his stories every day. He learned then what statistics continue to show, that we believe people around us are most trustworthy, and that the message of corporate and government elites has far less influence. How stories are presented to us affects our actions; sadly, the current sensationalist climate in journalism skews reality by creating the perception that many others are not working for the good of society.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill ignited Wohlforth’s passion for the environment by the happy coincidence that he had a four-wheel-drive vehicle that could take reporters from Anchorage and the Valley to the scene. As a journalist there, he learned that the government, the Coast Guard and the oil company stood in adversarial conflict and many bad decisions were made. The shutdown of scientific studies through project cancellation and enforced secrecy meant that true stories were hard to come by and we still lack a lot of clear answers to the mystery of ongoing ecosystem damage.

Moving oversight from hierarchical institutions into the hands of the local community through organizations such as the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council (RCAC) was successful in the aftermath of the 1989 oil spill. Unfortunately, although the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill had different physical aspects, the initial response was the same. Local involvement means a big company cedes power, but in the latest spill scenario, community involvement and scientific contribution are needed for real solutions to emerge.

Alaskans are strongly connected to place, as Wolhforth’s background slide show of nature scenes around the state emphasized. This relation to nature is part of the network of values that gives meaning in life. Values reside in connection, not only to nature, but to family and community. As Wolhforth quoted from his book, “The [environmental] problem is unimaginable in scale, nonlinear in shape, and infinite in complexity, and so may be the solution – in the interlocking relationships of human societies. And the solution may also be small enough for a single person to choose, which is important, since individual people alone are capable of making choices.”

Individual choices create new cultural norms, and individual action contributes most to changing culture, as we’ve seen in shrinking family size, facing race questions or environmental ethics such as less littering, or rescuing the earth. Journalists contribute to creating the cultural norms we live by, and they need to use this power well and conscientiously. Wolhforth’s message is that the fate of nature lies in great part in their, and our, hands.

About Wohlforth

Charles Wohlforth is a life-long Alaska resident and prize-winning author of numerous books about Alaska. His work includes writing about science and the environment, politics and history, travel, and as-told-to biography. A popular lecturer, he has spoken all over the United States and overseas. Wohlforth lives with his wife, Barbara, and their four children. They reside in Anchorage during the winter, where they are avid cross-country skiers, and in summer on a remote Kachemak Bay shore reachable only by boat.

Wohlforth, 46, graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1986 before returning to Alaska to work six years as a newspaper reporter, including covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill for the Anchorage Daily News. He became a full-time freelance writer in 1993, publishing articles in The New Republic, Outside, Discover and other periodicals,and writing three travel books published by Wiley. He also served two 3-year terms on the Anchorage Assembly.

In 2004, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published Wohlforth’s widely acclaimed non-fiction account of climate change in the Arctic as experienced by the Eskimos and the scientists studying it, titled The Whale and the Supercomputer. The book won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, among numerous other national and regional citations for science, culture, and journalism. His current projects include an upcoming book from Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press titled, The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth.

Charles Wohlforth

A summary of our February 2010 speaker, Tracy Sinclare. By Arlene Lidbergh-Jasper. Tracy Sinclare, best known locally as a weekend meteorologist with KTUU, began her presentation at Alaska Professional Communicators’ February luncheon with an ice-breaker. “It’s much easier to talk to a camera than to a room full of people,” she said. “At KTUU, it’s just me and the camera.” After we all laughed, she told us about yet another world not often exposed to the public: Her experiences with the local chapter of Romance Writers of America (RWA), and what she has learned about the art of writing romance novels.

Tracy’s family moved to Anchorage in 1972 when her father was transferred to Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her love for writing began at home and then developed during junior high school. In Tracy’s family, all her siblings were readers except her; she preferred to listen to stories first. If she liked a story, then she would read the book.

However, in 7th grade she read Victoria Holt novels, bodice rippers with deep dark heroes. Next, she read contemporary romance—even in geometry class. By 11th grade, she was writing romances during trigonometry classes. During her last year in high school, when the seniors dressed up as what they would be in 20 years, she showed up as a romance writer wearing a long gown and floppy hat with pen and paper in hand.

For about 16 years, Tracy said, she had great story ideas and read her work to her best friends. In 1992, she joined the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and finished her first book but never submitted it.

In 2002, just before her 20th class reunion, she would publish Silver Dagger. Since then she has written 15 novels and eight short stories, each in the range of 50,000 to 80,000 words.

Tracy also pursued professional communication training by more traditional routes. She received her B.A. in English and Broadcasting from Gonzaga University in 1986, and her B.S. in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi University in 2007. She has stories in her head all the time, Tracy says.

She doesn’t write linearly but jumps around. Characters reappear from book to book, including in the dragon-themed romance novels she writes as a series, which she says sell really well. One such series is up to five books and another is up to seven. She has no agent, and explained that in the romance genre, it is common for a writer to sell his or her first book without an agent. Romance novels are a $1.37 billion industry, she told us. It’s three times as popular as religion with eight billion.

In 2008 there were 7,311 romance novels published, with total readership calculated at 748 million. Romance books hold more than 50 percent of the mass market in paperback fiction. Women are the book buyers 90 percent of the time. This is one genre that is written for women by women.

When people mention to Tracy Sinclare, “I never have read any of your books,” her response is usually “you are not my target.” Her target audience: 31 to 59 year-old women, who “like to read about relationships and how much care you put into them. And, of course, we need a hero and heroine.” Tracy then mentioned an essay by Jennifer Crusie, “Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women,” reprinted on Crusie’s blog, which gives its praise in particular to women who write romance. She paraphrased: The last line these women write is that the heroine lives happily ever after. As girls, they read Sleeping Beauty, who got everything she’d ever wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Then there was Snow White, who got everything she wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Or there was Cinderella, who should be given some credit for staying awake through her whole story, but who got everything she wanted because she had small feet.

Girls have been taught to be more passive to get the “crown in the castle.” But in romance novels, women are active participants—and there is a hunky man. Romance books, Crusie concludes, create an “emotionally just universe.”

And then there are the “TSTLs, Too Stupid to Live Heroines,” added Tracy. “My stories are character-based, and I like happy endings.” But there must be a believable pace even in the happy-ending storyline, she said.

In re-writing Silver Dagger, Tracy said, she realized that the heroine can’t take her clothes off too early in the book until the love is established.

Tracy writes under a pen name and is not public about her works in her home state–but shared her time with us to encourage other romance writers. She recited a list:

• “You might be a writer if, before you get on a plane, you make sure you have several books to read and pen and paper in case your computer battery dies.
• You might be a writer if you hold conversations with the voices in your head, but your friends aren’t recommending that you up your medication.
• You might be a writer if, when relaxing at a spa, you open the locker and think, I could stuff a body in there.
• OK, that makes you a writer—or a psychopath!”
• And finally, “You might be a writer if you understand when I say, ‘My characters won’t do what I want!’”

Tracy highly recommends belonging to a writing group. “Like the group MENSA for people with high IQs,” she said, “joining a writing group does give you support. You want a writers’ group that understands you,” she said. “It’s important to work with people who are working in the same genre.” A number of writing groups in town meet once a month. The romance writers meet at Jitters in Eagle River and schedule a craft talk once a month with the other three weeks given to the members’ critiques. She only attends the craft talk, which helps motivate her to want to write.

Her self-evaluation: “I’m a good storyteller and an OK writer.” Visit the Alaska chapter of the RWA.

A short Q&A period followed. Did she use a dedicated writing computer, i.e., one not connected to the Internet and used only for writing? “No,” she said. She writes on a normal computer in evenings and on days off, an hour a day with four pages an hour on average.

Tracy was then asked about Nora Roberts, a favorite of one woman’s mother and many others in the room. “What separates Nora from the pack?” Tracy answered. “I’ve met her at national conferences, and she is so popular that it’s hard to weave through the crowds of people, just to hear her. She is successful, writing for a number of years, has a fan base, and started when there were bodice rippers. She got in on the ground floor. Nora Roberts writes in different genres: romance, paranormal—and her toughest character is a female cop with a dark past. The In Death series is written under her pen name of J.D. Robb.”

A summary of our December 2009 speaker, Bill Sherwonit
By Dianne O’Connell

At the monthly luncheon Thursday, December 3, held at the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, nature writer Bill Sherwonit took Alaska Professional Communicators on a tour of some of the journeys–psychological, spiritual and natural–experienced during the writing of his most recent two books.

Speaker Sherwonit grew up in a strict Lutheran home located on the fringes of urban and rural Connecticut. Though he left behind the stern dogma of his youth, he said, a general spirituality and nature continue to inform his life and writing. His book, Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness, published by the University of Alaska Press (September 2009), chronicles his life and personal development along these lines. His book, Living with Wildness, (not “wilderness”), also by UAA Press (June 2008) focuses on the opportunities for living with the wild right here in the Anchorage bowl.

“Wilderness is a place or an idea,” he explained. “Wildness is a quality or a state of being – something within us. … It is only when we begin to get to know something that we can really begin to value it. The Coastal Wildlife Refuge in South Anchorage is so much more than treacherous mudflats, for instance. But you have to get out and experience it to understand it.”

“Writing requires me to pay attention to what is going on around me, promotes a kind of hyper-awareness. I’m going to be writing about this, so I have to keep alert.”

Sherwonit recalled an experience in the Chugach Mountains when a wolverine appeared and stayed close for about thirty minutes. “This was not the time to jump for my journal or camera,” he said, “but rather to just stay with the experience.”

“Absorb first, write second,” he suggested.

“I’m a very introspective, sensitive guy,” the writer told his audience. “I stand before you as a fallen Christian and a failed geologist,” venturing into a rambling, yet interesting, exchange regarding the human species, a bear’s right to act like a bear, and the bundle of contractions which represent humanity – from incredible compassion to horrific terrorism.

Sherwonit holds a Master’s degree in geology, as well as an impressive history as a journalist and writer of essays and narrative non-fiction works. He has called Alaska home since 1982, when he began work at The Anchorage Times. He’s been a fulltime freelance writer since 1992 and has contributed essays and articles to a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies. His essay “In the Company of Bears” was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007.

Sherwonit is also the author of 12 books about Alaska. He lives in Anchorage’s Turnagain area, where he writes about the wildness to be found in Alaska’s urban center as well as in the state’s most remote wilderness areas.

Sherwonit is the December 2009 guest blogger at 49 Writers, a literary blog for and about Alaskan writers. You can also learn more about his books and life at Bill Sherwonit’s website.

The meeting was the first Alaska Professional Communicators luncheon to be held at the AHFC building. The location is, to date, a temporary meeting place until the Board has determined long-term options to replace the former Golden Lion arrangement, explained Board president Connie Huff. A member survey will be forthcoming to solicit membership input.

Members should take note of the location, as the January 7 meeting will be there as well. AHFC is located at 4300 Boniface Parkway, at Tudor Road (next to the Alaska Club). The catering company has also changed, with food provided by Dianne’s Restaurant, of downtown Anchorage.

Bill Sherwonit

A summary of our April 2, 2009 speaker, Stan Jones by Barbara Brown Twenty years ago, on March 24, 1989, 11 million gallons of crude oil were dumped in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez tanker went aground. At the time, Stan Jones was a reporter with the Anchorage Daily News, covering the spill. Now, Jones works his “day job” as the Director of External Affairs for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council (RCAC), the nonprofit body designed to serve as watchdog for the safety of crude oil transportation in the Sound. For the 20th Anniversary of the spill, Jones teamed with oral historian Sharon Bushell to write The Spill: Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster. He delivered a PowerPoint presentation and remarks at the April 2 luncheon. Jones began by discussing prevention strategies put in place post-Spill. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires the phase-out of single-hulled tankers by 2015. If the Exxon Valdez had had a double-hull, the spill would have been reduced by 60 percent, which illustrates that this is not a fool-proof method: 4 million gallons would still have polluted the Sound. Combine double hulls with the two-tug escort system now in place (the Exxon Valdez was unescorted by the time it reached Bligh Reef) and prevention is much improved. However, the Oil Pollution Act allows the phase-out of escorts as double-hulled tankers are brought into operation. The RCAC is fighting this phase-out. The Exxon Valdez left the tanker lanes in 1989 to avoid icebergs. A later risk assessment identified icebergs in tanker lanes as “among the most significant risks to crude oil tankers,” so RCAC funded research and computer software development for ice-detection radar (to distinguish ice from water). Improvements have been made to response, training, and contingency planning for any future spills. In 1989, fishermen were using five-gallon buckets to pick up oil; now, oil-skimming systems can pick up 12 million gallons in 72 hours. In 1989, there were five miles of containment boom; now there are 71 miles. But asked whether there have been advances in clean-up technology, Jones replied, “Not really.” That’s why the emphasis has to be on prevention. Nowadays beaches may be left oiled because clean-up can do greater damage. The fallout from the Spill remains with us today. Whether it’s oil on the beaches, economic impacts on fishermen, or lasting effects on wildlife, the disaster lingers. Witness this photo, taken on Smith Island Beach June 26, 2008, and tell us the Sound has “healed.”

In identifying the personal stories Jones and Bushell planned to include in their book, they decided to interview only people “with oil on their boots,” the people up close to the disaster. Several highlights from Stan Jones’ PowerPoint (including quotes from the book) follow:

Gary Bader

          “The window of opportunity was in the first forty-eight hours, and for the first forty-eight hours we at Alyeska were trying to figure out what the hell to do.” — Gary Bader, Alyeska

Adm. Clyde Robbins

“We had to do something, even if it was just looking busy.” — Adm. Clyde Robbins, USCG

Tom Copeland

“There was a seal that had been screaming for hours, trying to get on her boat, trying to get out of the oil. The sound of a seal’s scream is exactly like that of a baby, and it kept hitting the side of the hull, trying to get on board.” — Tom Copeland, Cordova fisherman

Captain Joe Hazelwood

“I would like to offer an apology, a very heartfelt apology, to the people of Alaska.” — Joe Hazelwood, captain of the Exxon Valdez

Stan Jones

April 2006: Lesley Thomas
by Judy Griffin

Author Lesley Thomas refused to let publishing trials and distribution travails ground her novel Flight of the Goose: A Story of the Far North. The former Alaskan who now lives in Seattle told attendees at the Alaska Press Women lunch meeting on April 6, 2006, about her experiences launching her book in a lecture titled “How Flight of the Goose Flew: the Migration of an Alaska Book.”

Sales of Thomas’ novel, which integrates “the spiritual and mythical parts of Alaskan northern life,” have reached 1,000 copies. The novel is self-published by Far Eastern Press, a business founded in 2001 with her husband, Eric Oberg.

The protagonist of the novel is a feisty young Native woman in a Bering Straits village who practices shamanism, rejecting the Lutheran ways of her father. She falls in love with a man from another culture, an ecologist studying an endangered goose species and the effects of oil spills on bird habitat.

Thomas grew up on a salmon troller in Southeast Alaska and in rural communities in Arctic Alaska. Her family still lives in Nome. Knowledge of subsistence ways and Native culture, as well as training in arctic ecology, enabled her to weave together her lifelong interests in anthropology and mythology in Flight of the Goose. Thomas holds bachelor’s and master’s degree in East Asian Studies and English, respectively, and has worked in Alaska, Washington, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, and Norway.

The biggest obstacle in publishing is getting distributed in America, Thomas explained. She described rejection a decade ago by New York presses that saw her work as “alien” because she had grown up in Alaska. One company suggested she could make her work saleable by making the female lead a “softer, nicer” person and changing her sad ending to a happy conclusion.

Thomas’ grandmother had always wanted to publish, and the $3,000 she left to her granddaughter seeded Far Eastern Press. The self-published edition of Flight of the Goose was released in February 2005. In the fast-turning world of commercial book distribution, the novel is now “expired.” Said Thomas, “But if your book is self-published, it is never dead.”

Winning first place in the 2005 “Communicator of Excellence in Fiction” category from the Washington Press Association helped to attract buyers. Interest in shamanism has provided further sales impetus. Thomas also counts among her niches scientists, Alaskans, and most surprising, Lutheran missionaries. Mention on a gay web site brought another flurry of Internet orders.

When a member of the Alaska Press Women audience asked Thomas how she learned to write, Thomas replied that she had not finished learning to write. “Sheer volume helps,” she noted, as do repetition and throwing away much of what is composed.

To learn more about Lesley Thomas and read reviews of her novel, visit her website.

Lesley Thomas

Sumner shares stories of women pilots
by Carole Mercer

Sandi Sumner arrived in Alaska on Amelia Earhart’s birthday: July 24 in 1994. “This was a coincidence,” she notes, “but I think it was an omen of what brought me here.”

Sumner spoke to Alaska Press Women at the May luncheon, where she shared stories about 20 of the 37 pilots featured in her new book, Women Pilots of Alaska. She became interested in Alaska’s women pilots while serving on the board of the Museum of Transportation and Industry in Wasilla. Fellow board member Ruth Martin Jefford’s story was known, but many other women pilots’ stories were still untold. When Sumner organized a professional air show in Wasilla in 1997, the seeds for Women Pilots of Alaska really started to germinate. With the help of the Alaska chapter of the International Organization of Ninety-Nines (of which Sumner is an honorary member), she was able to find women to interview. Sumner wanted to learn why each woman desired to fly, what it meant to her, where she learned, and when she soloed.

Sumner’s own background is as varied as the women she’s written about. She started her writing career working on school newspapers and club newsletters as a young person, and graduated to writing stories and publicity in many roles in advertising and marketing, including managing the Saratoga, California Chamber of Commerce. She wrote a weekly newspaper column focusing on business issues, and also did marketing for a hospital at South Lake Tahoe. She launched Healthcare Job Net, a printed medical recruiting magazine and acted as editor and publisher along with doing some of the sales.

Now that Women Pilots of Alaska is published, Sumner is turning her interests to another high achievement: a book about women climbers. She’s already interviewed Barbara Washburn (first woman to summit Denali, back in 1947) and Stacy Allison (first American woman to summit Mt. Everest).

Sumner is making a name for herself with the initial success of Women Pilots of Alaska. It’s true that she may have arrived in Alaska on Amelia Earhart’s birthday, but that’s where the similarities end. For her, there’s no disappearing in sight!

Women Pilots of Alaska is available at Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, McFarland Publishing and at local independent bookstores such as Title Wave and Cook Inlet Books in Anchorage, Fireside Books in Palmer, and Gulliver’s Books and New Horizons Gallery in Fairbanks.

You can read more about Sumner and her work.