RASP Ten-Year Celebration

Introduction

The following essay was originally written for an event at Stone House Café on March 17, 2007, celebrating not only the return of RASP readings to Redmond (after a time in Woodinville) but also the tenth anniversary of RASP as a nonprofit organization. (In the true RASP fashion of eccentricity, it was also an Irish celebration with the “first annual RASP Team Limerick Writing Contest.”) It blows my mind that in 2027 we’ll be celebrating thirty years! RASP has now surpassed me in writing years—in 2017 I went back to school to get a masters in social work and am now a high school mental health counselor. My oldest son is 24, almost as old as I was when I started RASP. I no longer consider myself a writer, but the camaraderie, inspiration, and community I found during those early RASP years has shaped who I am as a person and how I support young adults searching for their own identity. I said it twenty years ago and I’ll say it again: I am so incredibly grateful to see RASP cared for by others and grow into something I never in my wildest dreams expected. Thank you!

Cora Goss-Grubbs

December 7, 2025

RASP Ten-Year Celebration

March 17, 2007

by Cora Goss-Grubbs

A few of you, but I don’t think many, have heard the story of RASP’s conception: the first quickening of something I never imagined would last ten years. That’s the story I’d like to tell tonight, to pass it on. To remind us that little whispers of a dream can grow more real than we ever imagined when fueled by the passion of a few. Or, to put it more bluntly: Be careful what you ask for. People might be listening.

In 1995, I moved to Redmond from Berkeley, California with David, my brand-new husband, and rented a house tucked behind the bank across the street from Victor’s Celtic Coffee. I was desperate to find some culture close to home, and Victor’s looked to be my only hope. Sometime in 1996 I saw a flyer for a poetry reading there. I was just starting to take my writing seriously, so I decided to attend and read something. I was absolutely terrified. Really really nervous, to the point that I couldn’t eat or drink or hold my paper steady. But I did it anyway, because I was desperate to share my writing, to connect with like-minded people.

You know what? I didn’t die of anxiety. As a matter of fact, maybe it was the adrenaline rush, but the experience gave me such a high I wanted to do it again. I told Brian Shore, who organized the reading for his community college writing class, that I’d like to help make it a regular thing. He and I, and a few others, kept a flyer up at Victor’s and continued to meet twice a month, dragging our friends along as often as possible. Eventually, with the urging of Rick Shank, who was on the Redmond Arts Commission at the time, we held a meeting to talk about how to make these readings more official, how to draw more people in, how to share our little secret with the whole Eastside and beyond. David and I, Rick Shank, Adam Beales, and Brian Shore met at our house to divide tasks and vote on a name. If the gatherings prior to this meeting were the gestation of RASP, this meeting was its birth.

Just as I’ll never get rid of that first crayon mark drawn on construction paper by my first child, so too will I never throw out RASP’s first artifacts. One of them is the original list of names we voted on. I’d like to pause here and ask you to imagine, just for a moment, what RASP would be like today if it had been named Ampersand, or Chicken Scratch, or Spitting Row. How about Howling Buddha (Brian’s favorite) or Shut Up and Speak (Dave’s top pick). Frankly, I’m still perplexed why this one didn’t win: Western States Drag Racing Association. Go figure.

Another artifact I dug up this week was our beloved little leather address book. Looking through this is a journey back in time, a record of who’s who in the first two years of RASP. In early ’97 there was Penny Orloff, Dawn-Marie Oliver, Paul Nelson, Rebecca Meredith, Allison Ohlinger. We tried to pull all these people into volunteering with us. Some of them took the bait. Rebecca and I became partners in crime, convincing John Ringler to walk us through becoming a nonprofit and forming a board.

Rebecca matched my energy with her creative ideas and together we pulled off some interesting stunts. Or, in some cases, did not pull them off. The Redmond Arts Commission vetoed the original cover of our first compilation of short story contest winners—apparently the photo of Rebecca’s mouth was a bit too obscene. Eventually the commission approved an equally attractive but somehow less offensive tongue that belongs to my dog, Grendel, who is still wreaking havoc in our household.

One of the people who came to our first reading recorded in this book, in January of 1997, was Bill Nolan. Any of you remember Bill? Motorcycle, leather jacket, Microsoft retiree. I haven’t seen him in years, and I couldn’t believe it when a few weeks ago I just happened to be listening to Rick Steve’s travel show on KUOW. Apparently, he reads travel haiku submitted by listeners, and he read one by Bill! They said he wrote it at a rest stop in Kansas on his way to Indianapolis. It refers to his good-luck ritual of kissing his tabby cat on the head just before heading off on one of his long motorcycle trips. It goes:

On my black jacket

1,800 miles from home

One orange cat hair

Just like any ten years picked at random from our lives, the vibrancy of RASP has waxed and waned. But there is no doubt it has endured much longer than any of us ever expected at that first meeting. Except maybe Rick Shank, who once confessed to me his vision of RASP being known across the nation.

Let me pause here to show one more artifact: a Wordsplosion! pen. Does anyone else still have these lurking around their homes? I think the reason they’ve lasted so long is not because of their unusually superior quality, but because they are so crappy—no one ever actually uses them. Of course, we don’t have the heart to throw them out so they just sit in the pen cup, usurping valuable space that could otherwise hold a useful pen.

RASP has endured because of the time, the energy, the passion, and perhaps the pure insanity of so many people, I’m not even going to try and name them all here. When I, David, Rebecca, John, and Rick were worn out, other people were there to take the torch from us and run with it: Paulette and Alan Rousselle, Chris Eboch, Laura Lee Bennett, Dawn-Marie Oliver, and Michael Dylan Welch. Now Allison Ohlinger and Michael Heavener have put their heart and soul into this organization. Most importantly, they’ve found a place for RASP that feels more like home than ever before. Thanks so much to the Stone House Café owner for embracing RASP and its mission.

I am so incredibly grateful to see RASP coddled and cared for by others who love our mission as much as I did, and still do, though in a much less attached way, like my child has grown up and made a life of his own. I get to sit back in my old age and watch him grow and change, do things in surprising ways I never would have done myself.

But ultimately, RASP’s accomplishments come back to the same thing it did before it ever had a name, before we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into: It has dragged us from our journals, away from our computers, out of our solitary writing to a place where we can create a community. Now that community spreads far and wide, from Redmond east to Duvall, west to Seattle, south to Auburn, north to Vancouver, and thousands of miles away to wherever Bill Nolan might be cruising on his Harley.

Let’s toast to another ten years!