Storytelling on a Radio on a Ship

On May 24 I pulled on my yoga pants, a fraying shirt from a long-ago running race, and the pair of boots I used to wear on snowy days in Minnesota but that I now clomp around in when I fear I might be going somewhere where something heavy might get dropped my toes. May 24 was a writing day.

So, this writing day was not going to be about actually putting pen to paper but about supporting the greater community, the greater writing community and the greater arts community.
I traveled to North Portland, to Green Anchors, a boat dock just north of the St. Johns Bridge, where a slate-colored 150-foot tugboat built for World War II was being transformed into a studio for the Steam Radio Syndicate, an audio recording collective. Specifically, the project's leader and his merry band of volunteers, among whom I was about to be counted, was readying the ship for its ambitious inaugural event, a four-hour live radio broadcast of music (a set orchestra and a lineup of bands big and small) and storytelling.
As a writer and editor, I was most interested in the latter--that Portland transplant Brian Benson, whose memoir is soon out from Plume, would be reading fiction alongside Joanne Rideout of the famous Ship Report radio program out of Astoria, Oregon, among others, and that they'd be doing so on a converted ship, one had been scheduled for the scrapyard, was so exciting to me.

Repurposing an old ship is a lot like wordsmithing, metaphorically, at least. I selected right-size pipe from the pile onshore and carried the tubes--some a little dinged but still serviceable, some jazzed up with fittings--to the ship, where they'd be used to repair a railing. I pulled electrical cable, choosing the right kind for the job, daisy-chaining when I came up short, taping the ends to protect against the weather. I might have been finding previously cut sentences that hadn't been useful in their original homes but would beautifully fill in gaps in new stories; I might have been writing transitions and shoring up the weaker parts.

And, of course, I was interested in being a part of an exercise in diverse storytelling. We may create alone, but expression only happens in relationship.

Learn more about the Steam Radio Syndicate


Kristin Thiel is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. She reads from her most recent publication, an essay in the collection Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship to Shopping, at Powell's on November 4, and fills her days helping others with their words, editing for independently publishing authors, publishing houses, and universities and other businesses. She can be reached at kristin@kristinthiel.com