ASJA PACIFIC NORTHWEST NEWSLETTER
For ASJA members in
Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon and Washington
April 2025
https://asjapnw.org
In This Issue
From the Prez, Happy Endings, M. Carolyn Miller, ASJA PNW President
Substack is a Reasonable Option, Randy Stapilus
Tools and AI, Bruce Miller
Timeshares and Turtles, Rosemary Keevil
Member News and Announcements
Our April chapter meeting at 11 am:
M. Carolyn Miller is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Time: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87898612924
Meeting ID: 878 9861 2924
This newsletter publishes the first day of each month and welcomes article submissions and photos. Please email the ASJA PNW Newsletter Editor, Maxine Cass, at maxinecass@gmail.com .
From the President
by M. Carolyn Miller
ASJA PNW Chapter President
Happy Endings
I recently published an essay on relocating to Portland from Denver with Business Insider. The editor gave me a template and I wrote the essay. And rewrote it. And rewrote it again. Each time, I got more frustrated. By the time the last rewrite loomed on the horizon, we’d both had enough and she rewrote the essay and gave it a happy ending. We haven’t communicated since.
Only later did I realize why I could not appease this editor. The editor wanted facts, tips and a happy ending. I wanted to understand, at a deeper level, why the move here was and is still challenging. And it took all those rewrites for me to identify that.
Unlike my move to Colorado when I was 26, my decision to move to Portland was made with my head. It made sense practically and financially. My move to Colorado was a “heart” decision and one I made in an instant. Realizing that distinction helped me understand and make peace with the angst I’ve wrestled with since moving here.
What surprised me about publishing this essay is that I heard from readers. Those in Portland wanted to meet with me. Those considering moving here wanted a conversation. I had hit a nerve. I was not alone.
My editor also wanted a happy ending. She added one. But the truth is I don’t know how this chapter in my story will end. None of us does. We can attempt to “future proof” our lives as a younger friend calls it, but the gods have their own agenda. Too many transitions (and moves) have taught me that.
And happy endings? That’s a matter of definition. For me, at least, it’s more about finding meaning even in the most challenging chapters of our lives, to bravely go into the Forest of the Dragons, often because we have no choice, and come out the other end redeemed. That too is a lesson I’ve learned.
The essay didn’t pay much but the emotional ROI made up for that. And that is, for me, a happy ending.
M. Carolyn Miller, MA, spent her career designing narrative- and game-based learning. Today, she consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.cultureshape.com
by Randy Stapilus
Substack is a Reasonable Option
There is no perfect platform, but there are reasons many nationally well-known as well as many lesser-known writers have been flocking to Substack in the last couple of years. Chief among them, it offers distribution and payments, as well as location on a widely known site.
There are four key elements to it that, taken together, offer real advantages. It functions like a blog, with ease of use in posting successive writings available in a specific location. It offers multi-media access; many people post videos and use streaming through it as part of their offerings. It is also an e-mail distribution system, almost like Mailchimp, pushing out posts and more to subscribers so you’re not reliant on readers finding their way to your postings online.
Finally, these pieces can be controlled within a fee system: People can pay for subscriptions to what you offer, or some pieces of what you offer. You can control how much of what you write is available for free access. Most people allow some open access and then keep some special parts – often videos or streams but also longer or specialized posts or articles – behind a paywall. You can decide whether an individual post is available to all comers or payees only.
Most often, individuals set up their own “substacks,” but groups can do it too.
There is no cost to set up (or keep going). Substack makes its money by taking a 10% portion of whatever subscription payments you receive. (The most common subscription fees charged are $5 a month or $50 a year, though the system allows for other amounts.)
The reader payments go to Substack, but Substack in turn pays you through a financing company called Stripe, which – somewhat like what PayPal does – also takes a slice of your income. What you’re left with is a little more than 85% of what people pay in.
As with a blog, there isn’t any editing on their end. Use appropriate care prior to posting.
One of the best-known current Substackers is Paul Krugman, who was for many years a New York Times columnist. Earlier this year he quit and started a substack, which has a large and often paying audience. Follow the link and you can get a good idea of what he’s done with it so far.
On a more modest and newer level, my substack is at https://stapilus.substack.com/. Most of us don’t start with the kind of national platform people like Krugman or numbers analyst Nate Silver (who also has a highly active Substack) had going in, but some modest amounts of money can be made by those who put some effort into it. Before even getting properly started on the system, I received my first paid subscription. That in turn encouraged me to accelerate my efforts.
Part of the effort is the writing. There are no formal requirements for amounts of material posted, but a number of commenters have suggested at least one a week. If generating revenue is on your mind, you’ll probably want to shoot past that rate; some of the most popular providers post almost daily.
The biggest real question is: How do you get people to subscribe, whether free or paid? (Free subscribers can and periodically do convert to paid.) The answer is much like that of building friends or contacts on social media, on Facebook or LinkedIn, or expanding your visibility generally. Substack itself helps only a little in this area; you’re included in their search system, but people need to know you’re there. One way to build is to subscribe to other people’s substacks, notably those who either you know or write in the same general field you do. The big names (like Krugman or Silver) probably won’t subscribe back (same as with Facebook) but some of the smaller ones will.
Downsides? You’ll be getting more email (although at this point, that’s simply an ongoing stream many of us have learned to cope with). It seems a little less visible to search engines than some other platforms, but not entirely so. Setup is not entirely intuitive – plan on spending a little time poking around the system to get the hang of it – but once you get its logic, it’s simple to use.
If you’re looking for a way to distribute and – to some extent – monetize your writing, Substack is more than worth checking out.
Randy Stapilus is a writer and publisher at Carlton, Oregon. He has written and published a number of books and weekly columns about Oregon and Idaho, which with other writing appears on Substack. https://stapilus.substack.com/
by Bruce Miller
Tools and AI
The 2025 Northwest Events Show (NES) — aimed primarily at event planners — was held in Seattle on March 26 and 27, 2025. Not surprisingly, AI (Artificial Intelligence) was not ignored.
Here are a few useful tidbits gleaned from three sessions that even writers can use.
Tell the AI model — such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude — to assume a role. For example, “You [the AI system] are a medical doctor with expertise in internal medicine and I want a list of . . .” rather than a generic request like “want a list of . . .”
Be specific about what you want, such as “develop a list of publications that publish personal essays.”
Tell the AI model what you don’t want, in addition to what you do want.
Short prompts are not necessarily the best at getting AI results. Don’t be afraid of providing details of what you want.
Associated with AI are automations of recurring processes. One tool discussed at the NES was Microsoft’s Power Automate. Microsoft’s AI Copilot describes it thus: “Microsoft Power Automate is a tool that helps you automate tasks and workflows to save time and effort. With it, you can create processes—called “flows”—that handle things like sending emails, organizing files, or automating apps, all without needing coding skills.”
There are many tutorials and here’s a good introduction:
And here is Microsoft’s site:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/console
One of the AI sessions used https://quietevents.com headphones in the middle of a noisy exhibit floor. Quiet Events rents or sells the headphones to groups. A company staff person reported that conferences are their biggest market, then churches. The headphones have a 900 MHz receiver built-in that receives a broadcast signal on the unlicensed 900 MHz band. (Want a home system? Similar products are found on Amazon, such as https://www.amazon.com/VocoPro-Silent-Party-102/dp/B0DYKNCR3T).
Speakers and attendees both used the headphones. This arrangement worked surprisingly well. However, if you record session audio on a phone or digital recorder for personal notes you will need an additional piece of equipment.
Coming to the rescue is the Olympus TP-8 Telephone Pick-up Microphone at an affordable $19 or so from Amazon. Insert the earbud into an ear, connect to the digital recorder, and then put on the headphones. Many writers use the TP-8 under headphones for a backup recording when conducting interviews.
Seattle resident Bruce Miller has been leveraging AI to speed development of web-based database applications and continues to run some of the AI models on his local computers.
by Rosemary Keevil
Timeshares and Turtles
My husband and I both received the same email last spring with the enticing subject line: “6-Day Stay in a Hawaiian Paradise from $1,199 USD.”
What’s not to like? It’s a direct six-hour flight from Vancouver, Canada. The weather is perfect. The beaches, delightful. The ocean, inviting. Why not take a short break in the middle of our frigid winter and go to a “Hawaiian Paradise”?
I forwarded the email to my husband, Doug, and wrote, “I THINK WE SHOULD BOOK THIS!” He replied, “Have to endure 90-minute sales presentation to get discount??”
Doug had nailed the only hitch: “While you’re here, discover the benefits of (our timeshares) and learn how to create your best vacation life during a 90-minute timeshare sales presentation.”
We reserved our February 2025, holiday with a deposit for travel within the following 15 months.
The very first clue that this might actually be too good to be true was the promotion promise: “6-Day Stay in a Hawaiian Paradise.” It was, in fact, five nights, which does not mean six days as day one and day six are both long travel days.
We ended up reserving one more night out of pocket, meaning we would indeed have six days. But, that one night was about the same price as the other five nights combined.
We were booked in a two-bedroom “villa.” It was not a villa. It was a two-bedroom hotel room in a 14-floor tower.
The three towers on the property were chock-a-block full. Unbeknownst to us Canadians, we had booked our holiday during the US Presidents’ Day week! The entire island of Oahu was extremely busy.
Photo of Torchlighter and Rosemary courtesy Rosemary Keevil
The room, although it was not a villa, was deluxe—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a full kitchen. “Luxury” was severely muted by location. We were on the fifth floor directly above a screaming-child infested swimming pool, one of the many pools on the site. We later discovered one that was labelled “Quiet Zone.” Huh! And the “Loud” pool was open 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM.
We went to the front desk to try to change rooms, but once the attendant noticed we were part of the “promotion package” she basically said that we were “shit outaluck.”
We did have to endure a 90-minute sales presentation from an Australian fellow named Pierre, who cloistered us into a small room on the 14th floor of one of the towers. With a large screen projection, he boasted of the travel deal of the century: a “vacation ownership,” as opposed to a “timeshare.” I let Doug, an accountant, absorb the details.
I told Pierre how unhappy we were with our room and inquired as to how one would avoid that on future vacations. He just mumbled something about knowing what to ask for.
I told him we were not interested.
What I was interested in was the seductive lagoon in front of the hotel, which we had a peekaboo view of from our room. I scurried down to the lagoon’s beautiful beach at the first hint of dawn every morning for my daily swim.
It was a tiny bit cool, but upon immersion it quickly became most palatable. And there I was, swimming in a crystal-clear Hawaiian lagoon at sunrise. Other people appeared on the beach, but no one disturbed my Zen—my communing with the sun rising behind the palm trees—for my 50-minute escape from the reality of Oahu during the holiday week.
What made the experience even more surreal was that a bale of at least five green sea turtles, known in Hawaii as honu, appeared in the lagoon almost daily. They go there to eat the algae that washes into the lagoon when rough winter waves crash on the reefs at the lagoon entrance.
It was alluring but a little unnerving. It was not completely light out yet and I was concerned I would bump into one of these hard-backed creatures. They were quite large! As AI reports, “Adult honu can reach lengths of 3 to 4 feet and weigh over 300 pounds.”
This was not my only encounter with these surprisingly bold reptiles.
We tried to go snorkelling one day at Kahe Point Beach Park, also called Electric Beach because warm water is discharged into the ocean there from the nearby Hawaiian Electric Power Plant, which supposedly attracts hordes of sea life.
Alas, the beach was closed due to high surf. We headed to the North Shore, known for its spectacular waves. We witnessed the impressive swells, with expert surfers inside the curls. What was not impressive was the damned traffic throughout the entire island.
Next day, we returned to Electric Beach, but the surf was huge. How do you greet a six-foot wave about to smash on top of you when you are encumbered by a mask, snorkel and fins? It’s challenging at the best of times when you try to dive under it. It took courage but we managed to scramble through the surf. The water was murky with fish few and far between. Then we faced the challenge of getting through those giant waves and back to shore.
Having survived that, we went to Paradise Cove, an inviting small, shallow lagoon. Lots of people were clustered at one end, standing in thigh-high water watching large, green sea turtles tootle about.
We did not need our snorkels, masks and flippers as these docile beings meandered around us as we stood there. One fellow swam up to me, popped his head out of the water, looked right at me, and opened his mouth as if to say, “Hi, pet me, please,” and just hung out. Our faces were about three feet apart. It was the most natural move in the world for me to gently pet the back of his shell. He seemed to revel in the attention and thank me for it, just hanging around me, asking for more.
Yes, some voice lurking in my head told me this was probably illegal, me petting a sea creature. Indeed, a voice from outside my head—the white-bearded man standing next to me—explained that there is normally an official on the beach using a megaphone to yell at anyone mauling the sea life. Sure enough, the Internet explains: “The Endangered Species Act and Hawaii State law protect sea turtles, making it illegal to touch, harass, or disturb them.”
My close-up turtle encounter was definitely the highlight of my “6-Day Stay in a Hawaiian Paradise from $1,199 USD.”
And the moral of the story: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Rosemary Keevil is a freelance journalist and the author of The Art of Losing It: A Memoir of Grief and Addiction. She has been a TV news reporter, a current affairs radio show host, and managing editor of a professional women’s magazine. She was a can-can dancer, in Dawson City, Yukon, and drives a mean motorboat. Rosemary lives in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, with her partner and two doodles.
Yellowleaf Iris (Iris chrysophylla), native wildflower, Gold Hill, Oregon.
© Maxine Cass
Member News and Announcements
Joanna Nesbit (joannanesbit@comcast.net) is seeking ideas and contacts for future ASJA PNW meeting speakers.
NEWSLETTER PRODUCED BY
EDITOR: Maxine Cass
PROOFREADER: Catherine Kolonko
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE: Bruce Miller
*All stories are copyright by their respective writers.
*All photographs and illustrations are copyright by their creative makers.
*All rights are reserved to each of them for their own material.