a fipril 9, 2003 Features the other press “They filmost Quench Your Thirst” —excerpt from Three Songs by Hank Williams by Calvin Wharton Today I walked the whole way from Keremos to Osoyoos. I got tired of holding my thumb out, trying to look all right, a safe bet for anyone with a little kindness in their heart. Hell with them. No one even slowed down, so after an hour or maybe more, I started walking past the fruit stands into that dry, hot landscape, while trans- port rigs and RVs with bicycles strapped on the back roared past, whipping sand up into my eyes. Wind almost shoving me to the dirt. A bunch of cows stood beside an old broken-down shed and stared at me. | threw a rock at them, hit one right in the face and it hardly flinched. I threw another, but missed and shouted at the cows: “Go fuck yourselves, goddam worthless beasts,” and kept walking. The sun was baking me, so I took my extra shirt out of the pack and tied it over my head. Must’ve looked like an Arab. Lawrence of the Okanagan. Below the highway, in the Kettle River valley, are fields of vegetables and orchards so green they almost quench your thirst just looking at them. What would it be like to live there? I wondered. I wished | had an apple as red and juicy as the one painted on the sign that was nothing but that apple and an arrow pointing toward those green fields. “Fruit and veg” it said under the arrow. | threw a rock at the sign, too. Over and over I filled my lungs with the sweet sage air, filled my head with it so | wouldn't think of anything else. My heavy boots followed each other along the shoulder of the road, dusty, remote. | wanted to keep my mind in the pres- ent, but when I saw the sign for the turnoff to the Night Hawk border-crossing, I suddenly pic- tured you sitting on the bed in that shitty little room above the Avalon. What did you think when you woke up and realized I was gone? Did you make the bed, as usual? Go down to the café, buy a pack of Rothman’s from J-J and ask casually, while light- ing your first smoke of the day, if 'd come in yet? Just before the highway begins its last long downhill into Osoyoos, there’s a patch of what look like salt pools, crusty white and filled with green-blue water. I remember when we passed them on the bus to the coast you said, “How can something be so ugly and so beautiful at the same time?” I laughed then because | wasn’t sure if you really wanted an answer. Now, I’m not cer- tain I know what you meant by the question, or whether you were even talking about the pools. All I know is, tomorrow I’m sticking my thumb out—I’m never going to walk that far again, not if I can help it. © page 16 http://otherpress.douglas.bc.ca he asterful tility of alvin Wharton Neill Jeffrey OP Contributor Ask any overworked and underplayed Print Futures student about their favourite course from the two years of their professional writing studies at Douglas College. Invariably, they'll answer: Calvin's classes. That’s a tribute to the man—Calvin Wharton. One side of Wharton's shared office was as empty as a monastic study; the other was loaded with a writer's goods: magazines, papers, folders, more books on the desk and on shelves (including Linda Svendsen’s Marine Life), a \eather violin case propped beside the desk and the artwork of a child on the wall above the book shelves. Calvin Wharton seemed at home in his side of the office, which was replete with the belongings of his life as a writer, instructor, musician, husband, and father. “I think of myself as—what do you call it in base- ball, the guy who can play all the positions?” Wharton asked, and then answered himself. “The utility player! He can do this, he can do that. I like to do lots of things.” Wharton ran down the list of what he enjoyed doing, including playing music, gardening, carpentry, car maintenance, cooking, and writing (he'd hear a two-stroke engine in those ing-ings). “I’ve written poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Even play-writing intrigues me,” Wharton said, maintain- ing eye contact while he spoke. “I think it’s probably better, if you really want to be great at something, to just focus on one or two things, but that’s not really my nature. I like to do lots of different things. I know that about myself. That’s how I am.” Two thousand and three marks Wharton's tenth year of teaching at Douglas College. He came to the college to teach a creative writing course on feature articles for magazines and trade publications in the Print Futures: Professional Writing Program. By an odd coincidence, the tenth grad class from that pro- gram completes their sentence as Print Futures stu- dents this week. “I like Print Futures students,” Wharton said. “Every semester I feel really lucky. The majority of people I really enjoy teaching.” In a Calvin Wharton classroom, the regular two- person tables are lined up around the room, with the instructors desk in the open end of the U-shaped arrangement. This is conducive to face-to-face discus- sions in a literary workshop setting, and exemplifies Wharton's inclusive approach to teaching creative writing. Every student in class is expected to partici- pate in the workshop, which facilitates feedback on student writing. Wharton described a moment from his teaching day, in which his writing class was intent on reading some short article examples. “Everybody’s really quiet, and I’m looking around, and I’m thinking, this is amazing,” Wharton said, leaning forward, reliving the moment, eyes alert through his glasses. “Here’s this class, this room full of intelligent people, all concentrating on this one thing. How lucky could I be, you know, to be in this situa- tion. It’s like a gift to be in that situation, to be able to teach people.” For any instructor, teaching is especially enjoyable when students want to learn. Wharton said, “I like being involved with people who are really interested in learning something that maybe I can help them learn. And when people aren't interested, it bugs me, but most students aren't like that. I really like teach- ing the kinds of students that we get here. That they're serious—thar’s all I ask.” Print Futures student and published writer, Jennifer Aikman Look, found Wharton’s teaching built up her confidence as a writer. His criticism was honest, but considerate. “He won't tell you it’s crap,” she said. “He'll tell you if it is, but he has a way of doing it so you don’t walk out wounded.” She compared Wharton's class to others she has taken in two years at Douglas College. For other instructors, she said, “I just figure out what the teacher likes, and produce reams of that. I get my B and I walk away; I’ve learned nothing.” But she could not get away with that, in Wharton's class. “I’ve never figured out specifically what he likes. So, it makes you actually write. He always sees right through crap. There's no fooling him.” Aikman Look remarked that in the workshop por- tion of Wharton's writing classes, in which students offer feedback on student writing, Wharton “always finds something everyone else misses.” Adam Honsinger, published writer, and Editor of the Other Press, agreed. Even after a whole class of students has offered comments, Wharton “still man- ages to come up with insights that nobody else had, and that’s the amazing thing,” Honsinger said. “That's what makes him a real professional.” The knack of seeing how a piece of writing can be improved is a working knowledge. Students develop this capability in Calvin Wharton's creative writing classes, partly from watching Wharton diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of the writing under discus- sion, and partly from refining their own use of lan- guage to a heightened sense of perception. In Wharton’s workshops, student writers acquire a focus—call it Calvinism—that works like a corrective