Two days, hundreds of writers. Oceans of coffee, old friends and new acquaintances. The Willamette Writers Conference of 2008 was rewarding and well done.

From Elizabeth Lyons I learned that midwesterners learn a form of language that is destined to kill their writing - a zingless, bland style that calls for many conferences, writing books, classes, and editors. Sigh.

Ms. Lyon did two sessions that filled a morning with manuscript makeover techniques and tips, and she filled my brain to overflowing. She also gave out lots of handouts to help us remember her advice. Elizabeth Rusch’s magazine query session was not so much new as it was supportive, helping to nourish my nonfiction writing.

Patricia Smith Hill, a YA author, came up with a topic I hadn’t seen before: Managing Exposition. Since I’d had a critique on the first 20 pages of my novel that highlighted my telling rather than showing, I was eager to hear Ms. Smith and she didn’t disappoint. A powerpoint presentation of examples of each of her points gave visual reinforcement to her message. Her examples were from classics and popular fiction, both YA and adult. Coming early in the conference (before brain cells were exhausted), and at a time I’m grappling with exposition, this session was rich stuff for me. Many thanks, Ms. Hill!

Recently I had two episodes of severe chest pain within days of each other. The first lasted an hour and the second lasted all morning. After agonizing over my lack of health insurance I decided to get help, as the online medical advice urged. You see it all the time: See your doctor.

Following this advice will probably cost my husband and me over $10,000. I had an ambulance ride ($1,300), one night in the hospital ($5,000), and numerous tests all leading to a result of no diagnosis. The good news is that nothing is wrong with me. The bad news is that we are being wiped out financially.

On public radio this morning I heard a report comparing Swiss and US systems of care. While the reporter focused on disabled children her conclusion struck me with sharper than ever perspective. The Swiss system is based on trusting the patients (doesn’t that sound great?) and on offering cradle to grave care. A parent with a disabled child needn’t worry. When the parent dies the government social workers will make sure the disabled person is taken care of.

While I, a working, well-educated citizen of this rich country will face the next health crisis with no savings and no health insurance. Millions of our fellow citizens must grumble in frustration when they hear the advice “seek medical attention.” We can’t afford to. It costs too much to get treatment. Personally, I’m hoping for a quick death. I can’t afford to linger.

Oregonian editor George Rede has decided to “promote” Community Writers into a new blog arrangement in which we can post without editorial supervision. There will be an announcement in the newspaper and I’ll put a notice here, too. Conversations in the blogosphere drew some amazingly intense input, and I look forward to continuing to poke around in the future of humankind by sharing words at oregonlive.com. See you there!

Have you even wondered where “away” is? Throwing things “away” doesn’t make them disappear, but usually just removes the items from our sight. Now we know where some of that “away” stuff has gone.

Far from our daily lives there is a belly button of the Pacific. It’s an area around which the ocean circulates, and once something gets to the center it tends to stay. According to an article I saw recently, our casually tossed away plastic blows and bobs its way down wind and down stream, eventually joining a vast collection of companions in a truly horrible construct.

The waste has formed a continent-sized area of ocean full of our junk plastic. While overall this enormous mess stays put, pieces of it move through the food chain and have huge impacts on the living creatures of the sea. Over time the big pieces break into small pieces, creating a soup of plastic that not only can’t sustain the lives of creatures that eat it, but can poison or clog them up. Hundreds of thousands of birds and sea mammals have died and autopsies have revealed stomachs filled with things like cigarette lighters and bottle caps.

Industry contributes a lot to this mess and needs to be call to account, but right now you and I can get our plastic use under control. Recycling and reusing are both important, but reducing plastic purchasing is essential!

One tip: stop buying water in plastic bottles. I’m re-using a few and they last a LONG time. Get a small funnel to make filling the bottles easy. The water you buy in bottles isn’t any better than tap water (often actually IS tap water), so stop buying the plastic, please.

I recently read the following bit of data. In the past three decades the average pay for CEOs has gone from 40 times the average worker pay to over 400 time what workers earn.

Is that astonishing? Why aren’t US workers staging sick ins, marching in the street, singing protest songs, or writing letter to the editors? In addition to many other reasons, I think one basic reason is that our society it so big and power seems so far away from ordinary people that we’ve sortof given up. Not entirely, but regarding the rich, I think the fight has been mashed out of us. Clearly our politican system is as flawed as any other, our leaders as corruptible, the rich working to get richer, and whoever the average worker is just gets left by the side of the road.

This isn’t to say that I want to be rich. Quite the opposite. I got into voluntary simplicity and found many benefits. What I think is sad is that people get sucked into the over-consuming lifestyle, defining themselves with their designer handbags (do you know what some of them cost!!!?), exotic cars, enormous homes, and so on. Those things don’t actually fill one’s heart and spirit.

Soon I plan to write about genetic roots of greed. Until then I say, pity the rich and powerful. Camel, eye of needle, you get the drift.

I recently read two articles in the British press about two towns in which the citizens had decided they wanted to become as food self-sufficient as possible. I don’t have the links at the moment, but will try to post them when I find them.

I love the concept. A group of citizens coming together to talk about feeding their town from their own land and labor. I’d love to know if there’s more of this happening and where. According to a recent piece I wrote for the Oregonian blog, the loss of cheap energy will require the US to find/create/train Fifty Million new farmers in order to feed ourselves. Maybe in Britain, where they suffered food shortages and direct danger (unlike the US) in WWII, they can see more clearly that food will soon be a very big issue. Growing your own is such an obvious, straightforward solution. Hurrah for those gardeners!

The scale of destruction in Myanmar is beyond my ability to grasp and I am deeply saddened by the misery and destruction. As rich as the US is, we were unable or unwilling to restore New Orleans and the other Gulf coast areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina. I don’t know the math, but the Myanmar losses appear to be many times larger than ours in the Katrina aftermath and if a rich country can’t fix the damage, what will become of the tens of thousands of homeless in Myanmar?

I know there are millions of committed people around the world each contributing to some aspect of sustainability, but huge disasters like this leave me feeling overwhelmed and powerless. I’m afraid that as global warming continues, we’ll see more and more lowland destruction, leaving the survivors not only homeless, but suffering disease and hunger as well.

Before I could even post something about Myanmar’s disaster, the big earthquake in China hit, Florida faced fires, and US tornado season was becoming a record-setting one.

I remember a friend telling me in the nineties that there were prophecies about the first decade of the new millennium being characterized by more frequent and more deadly disasters. At the time it sounded unlikely (but not unbelievable, given what we suspected about global warming) and attributable to her high “woo-woo” quotient. Now it sounds like spot on prediction.

I think each of us needs to listen for our own inner voice, find a way of helping to move toward a sane, sustainable future, and always aim at expressing our own personal best. Some of us will travel to disaster sites to help in person, some will give money or goods, and others will pray. Perhaps we will reach out to local needy populations, help someone learn to grow their own food, or share useful information. No matter how daunting the obstacles we need only reflect on how many hands are reaching out along with our own, giving what they can, helping others. Generous caring hearts are everywhere.

I spent last week flying coast to coast to attend a writing workshop. It turned out like a Crackerjack box full of prizes. The entire week met or exceeded my expectations, with a surprise bonus of snow in the Berkshires. My Oregon winter had been snowless and a brief, civilized exposure to snowy winter woods was just right. A final sigh of winter before the weather actually warms up.

The reason I was able to go to the class is that a dear friend decided she wanted to go and wanted to have me come with her, so she offered me a scholarship. In other words, she paid my way. Is that great or what? So in addition to a good workshop, we had a chance to spend some girl-time together, which we’ve never done before. What a treat!

The workshop was led by Gillian Kendall, a reader for the Sun Magazine and resident of Australia. She blended exercises to stimulate our right brains with skill building ones like writing dramatic scenes. There was plenty of gentle critique, reading our own or each other’s pieces, and the pleasure of hearing the work of other good writers.

I encouraged Gillian (pronounced like “Jill” and not with the hard ‘g’ of garage) to submit a proposal for a class at the Willamette Writers’ conference here in Oregon. I’d love to have a chance to take another of her classes. The cherry on my sundae was winning one of three free critiques from Gillian. Now I have to push to get a piece of my novel-in-progress to the point that I’d want her to read it.

Daniel Quinn, author of books that include a philosopher gorilla, comments about the futility of expecting humanity to act better than it has. I think he actually says that there’s no point in creating a society based on the hope that humanity will act in any way better or different than we have in the past.

I find this thought depressing, because as I struggle with what a sustainable society might be like, I keep thinking that we need to find ways to change human behavior. We’ve tried prisons, death penalties, endless variations of religions, new years pledges, the power of positive thought, and what do we have? War, greed, poverty along side unconscionable wealth, drugs, gunslinging kids in schools, and lots of unsung kindness and creativity.

There are too many of us, and the style of over-consumption that the US promotes is now taking hold in places like China. It’s beyond my imagining: so many millions of people striving to have SUVs and credit cards while oil production is not increasing (and will dwindle away) and the world food system may be headed toward catastrophe (not enough arable land, droughts, etc).

I’ve read a lot of fantasy and science fiction and an image of a shape changer comes to mind. If humanity could, like magical, fictional creatures, transform itself just a split second before a fatal encounter, into a completely different being we could whisk away from peril. The world would be a better place, pollution would be gone, and … hmmm. Maybe better to look for mundane little changes, and not expect miracle, eh?

My first piece on the Oregonian blog has just come online at: http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianopinion/community_writers/susan_clark/

I’m one of 15 Community Writers who will post opinion pieces for 3 months - the larger audience is both a thrill and daunting. Come see me there for a while. As usual, I’m writing about sustainability.