''Spokane Natural'' was an

underground newspaper The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group. In specific rec ...

published biweekly in

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the ...

from May 5, 1967 to November 13, 1970, by the Mandala Printshop, and edited by Russ Nobbs. It belonged to the

Underground Press Syndicate The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that operated from 1966 into the late 1970s. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate cre ...

and the

Liberation News Service Liberation News Service (LNS) was a New Left, anti-war underground press news agency that distributed news bulletins and photographs to hundreds of subscribing underground, alternative and radical newspapers from 1967 to 1981. Considered the "Asso ...

. The first issue was produced out of a converted barbershop storefront cum bookstore and hangout called the "Hippie Mission" on a cul-de-sac in Spokane, where Russ Nobbs and a visiting friend from the SF Bay area, Ormond Otvos wrote and produced the first 8 page issue on a hand-cranked

Spirit duplicator A spirit duplicator (also referred to as a Rexograph or Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine in the UK, Gestetner machine in Australia) is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld that was commonly used for much of the ...

. After several issues of pale blue "Ditto" print on white paper, The ''Natural'' moved to colored papers and occasionally colored ink with a Gestetner

Mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a copy made by the pro ...

duplicator. Ultimately, the newspaper was printed on newsprint by sheet fed or web presses by various printers in Spokane, Seattle and Davenport, WA. Part of the Spokane community was hostile and the storefront's windows were broken or shot out several times. One early contributor, George (Martin) Maloney Jr, replaced Ormond Otvos as co-editor and later edited the arts oriented Second Section of the Natural. Many local teenagers and college students helped with writing and street distribution/sales, leading to clashes with police and ACLU supported free speech efforts. The paper published "Letters from Jail" by

catherine yronwode Catherine Anna Yronwode (née Manfredi; May 12, 1947) is an American writer, editor, graphic designer, typesetter, and publisher with an extensive career in the comic book industry. She is also a practitioner of folk magic. Early life Catherine A ...

, who, along with 15 other people, had been arrested at nearby Tolstoy Peace Farm for growing marijuana. The staff and locals also served as a casual debriefing point for Vietnam war veterans, due to the paper's strong pacifist editorial bent. The original intent of the paper was to bring news of the

Summer of Love The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury ...

and opening of the culture taking place "on the coasts", and eventually the paper's circulation grew to about 3000 copies. By late 1970 Nobbs gave the paper away to local people who changed the paper's name to the ''Provincial Press'', keeping it alive under that title until May 1972. As the ''Provincial Press'' it began to focus on gay issues, becoming Spokane's first gay paper."A Glimpse of Spokane's LGBTQ History"
by Joyce Crosby and Maureen Nickerson, ''Stonewall News Northwest'', May 2, 2007, p. 4. Retrieved June 11, 2010 Never achieving much of a national profile, the ''Natural'' was a lively but isolated outpost of the hippie counterculture in eastern Washington State. In 2010 Nobbs gave his full set of copies, photographic negatives, paste-ups and the original hand-cranked Gestetner mimeograph to the Eastern Washington Historical Society for their research library located on the grounds of the

Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, formerly the Cheney Cowles Museum and the Pacific Northwest Indian Center, is located in Spokane, Washington's Browne's Addition. It is associated with the Smithsonian Institution, and is accredited by ...

References

{{reflist Newspapers published in Washington (state) Mass media in Spokane, Washington Publications established in 1967 Publications disestablished in 1970 1967 establishments in Washington (state) 1970 disestablishments in Washington (state)

See also

References