CRR October 2020

CRREADER.COM • Vol. XVII, No. 183 • October 15, 2020 • COMPLIMENTARY Helping you discover and enjoy the good life in the Columbia River region at home and on the road

Dispatches

FROM THE DISCOVERY TRAIL People+ Place page 17 page 26

COLUMBIA RIVER

dining guide

THURSTON BOUNTIFUL BYWAY • MISS MANNERS ON POLITICS • TIT FOR TAT

COLUMBIA RIVER READER COLLECTORS CLUB

LEWIS AND CLARK REVOLUTIONIZED What really — truly — happened during those final wind-blown, rain-soaked thirty days of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s trek to the Pacific? Southwest Washington author and explorer Rex Ziak revolutionized historical scholarship by providing the answers: day by day and week by week. We’re delighted to offer In Full View, and Rex’s other two books, one with an extraordinary fold-out map, as our inaugural offerings from CRR Collectors Club.

CRREADER.COM Helping you • Vol. XVI, No. 176 • discover and enjoy March 15 – April 15, the good life in the 2020 • COMPL Columbia IMENTARY River region at home and on the

road

MOSS IN YOUR LAWN ?

What to do page 15

ONE RIVER MANY VOIC , ES WASHINGTON POET LAUREA ’S TE COMES TO WAHKIAKUM COUNTY page 14

People+Plac

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IN FULL VIEW Rex Ziak

$29.95

COLUMB

The art of

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page 19

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ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION 11 issues $55.

Order by mail using the form below, or via credit card on our website www.crreader.com/crrpress.

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THE TIDEWATER REACH

The newly edited and annotated by Rex Ziak version of Franchére’s 1820 journal, Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the Years 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814, or The First American Settlement on the Pacific.

Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures

The

Tidewater Reach

Robert Michael Pyle and Judy VanderMaten.

Field Guide to the

Lower Columbia River in

Poems and Pictures

A unique fold-out guide mapping dayby-day Lewis and Clark’s journey from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean and back.

Boxed Signature Edition, Color and BW $50 / Trade paperback $25 “It’s a different way of seeing.” A one-of-a-kind Field Guide to the lower Columbia, in poems and pictures. Now available from Columbia River Reader Press in two editions.

Field Guide to the

DOWN AND UP Rex Ziak $18.95

Lower Columbia River in

Poems and Pictures

Robert Michael Pyle Judy VanderMaten

Robert Michael Pyle Judy VanderMaten

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A true and accurate account of Lewis and Clark’s arrival at the Pacific Ocean, and their search for a winter camp along the lower Columbia River.

EYEWITNESS TO ASTORIA Gabriel Franchére

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IA RIVER

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LEWIS & CLARK: DISPATCHES FROM THE DISCOVERY TRAIL

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To use credit card, visit www.crreader.com/crrpress or call 360-749-1021 2 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

M

ore good news this month from Columbia River Reader Press! The Tidewater Reach is now in its second printing, thanks to popular demand, and this month it’s my pleasure to announce publication of our second original work, Lewis and Clark: Dispatches from the Discovery Trail.

When I bought the Columbia River Reader in early 2004, I had in mind to document the Lewis and Clark Expedition month-by-month in conjunction with the national Bicentennial Commemoration launching that April. I asked Michael Perry, about to retire as an environmental technician at Weyerhaeuser, if he had any interest in telling the story. “Yes,” he said, then rose to the occasion by exploring, researching, writing, and filling the trunk of his jaunty Mini Cooper with Lewis and Clark books.

It turned out that “Dispatch from the Discovery Trail” became a very popular 33-episode feature in the development of CRR, helping to define and shape our readership, content mix and zeitgeist.

Fast forward a few years. After we’d re-run the series twice, in response to reader interest — coupled with the early success of Columbia River Reader Press — it seemed a no-brainer to assemble the series in a book, bearing the

Publisher/Editor: Susan P. Piper Columnists and contributors: Tracy Beard Hal Calbom Alice Dietz Joseph Govednik Jim LeMonds Doris Mask Gary Meyers Michael Perry Ned Piper Perry Piper Robert Michael Pyle Alan Rose Alice Slusher Greg Smith Debra Tweedy Production/Graphics Manager: Perry E. Piper Editorial/Proofreading Assistants: Merrilee Bauman, Michael Perry, Marilyn Perry, Debra Tweedy, Advertising Manager: Ned Piper, 360-749-2632 Columbia River Reader, llc 1333 14th Ave Longview, WA 98632 P.O. Box 1643 • Rainier, OR 97048 Office Hours: M-W-F • 11–3* *Other times by chance or appointment Website: www.CRReader.com E-mail: publisher@crreader.com Phone: 360-749-1021

Sue’s Views

It’s a positive omen... start the presses! look, feel and quality of The Tidewater Reach. Further, we’ve amplified the original prose with new commentary and notes by the author and our editorial team. We are publishing D i s p a t c h e s i n m i d - D e c e m b e r, annotated with Mike’s observations and commentary designed for easy reading and reference.

Lewis and Clark: Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, will be available in two editions before Christmas. Check your gift list and pre-order now (see page 2)! And don’t forget Bob Pyle’s and Judy VanderMaten’s The Tidewater Reach in its spectacular signature edition.

Michael Perry’s layman’seye-view searches out significance and will resonate with the general reader. We’ve accented his meditations on mood and meaning with the brilliant woodcuts of artist Debby Neely, another favorite, and friend, of Columbia River Reader Press.

We hope you’ll enjoy this different way of seeing and experiencing the 29-month, 8,000-mile Expedition, and gain a new appreciation for its accomplishment.

This month’s People+Place feature

serves as an “appetizer” for what we hope will be a tasty holiday treat for many.

Who would have thought it: TWO books in one year, and a launch for Columbia River Reader Press beyond our best hopes and dreams? Thank you for your continuing support!

Sue Piper

In this Issue

Michael O. Perry at Prescott Beach, a Lewis and Clark campsite, near Rainier, Oregon. photo by Hal Calbom.

Columbia River Reader is published monthly, with 15,000 copies distributed in the Lower Columbia region. Entire contents copyrighted by Columbia River Reader. No reproduction of any kind allowed without express written permission of the publisher. Opinions expressed herein, whether in editorial content or paid ad space, belong to the writers and advertisers, are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Reader.

Woodcut by Debby Neely, one of several featured in Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, available by Dec. 10. In animal symbolism, seeing a red-winged blackbird is said to be a positive omen...we hope this applies to readers of the new book!

Columbia River Reader . . . helping you discover and enjoy the good life in the Columbia River region at home and on the road.

ON THE COVER

Cover Design by

Red-winged Blackbird

2

CRR Collectors Club

5

Civilized Life: Miss Manners

7

Dispatch from the Discovery Trail ~ What Happened to Sacajawea?

Pomp’s Circumstances

9

11

Northwest Gardening ~ Imagining Your Yard

14

Out & About ~ Thurston Bountiful Byway

15

Museum Magic: New Exhibit at Cowlitz Historical Museum

16

Provisions along the Trail: Tracy’s Spanish Tortilla

16

Quips & Quotes

17-20 People Place ~ The Layman’s Lewis & Clark 21

People+Place: Michael Perry’s Favorite Books

22

Where Do You Read the Reader?

23

The Natural World ~ Tit for Tat

24

Besides CRR, What Are You Reading?

25

Cover to Cover ~ Book Review / Bestsellers List

Submission guidelines: page 30.

26

Lower Columbia Dining Guide

General Ad info: page 21

27

Me & My Piano

Ned Piper 360-749-2632.

29 Lower Columbia Informer: Getting Good News Out 30

Outings & Events Non-Calendar / Hikes

32-33 Astronomy / The Sky Report

CRREADER.COM Visit our website for the current issue and archive of past issues from 2013.

34

The Spectator: Autumn Amusements

34

Plugged In to Cowlitz PUD: Thinking outside the Box

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 3

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Let’s Review!

Reminders

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Using this time of social distancing to organize your garage, closets and attic?

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Civilized Living

By Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I hold different political beliefs than many of my friends and family, although I don’t generally advertise them.

This election cycle is causing me a considerable amount of anxiety. I stopped following social media once I realized it no longer brought me joy.

Now family members have started sending me political messages directly via email or texts. When this happens, I politely state that I am not interested in hearing more on the subject and ask them to refrain from sending me further messages of this kind.

Usually, the sender complies, but sometimes I am treated as if my request is unreasonable and rude. Is it?

GENTLE READER: No; their persistence is. But if your current method continues to fail, Miss Manners would also endorse your deleting these messages without comment.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it necessary to cover your mouth with your hand while yawning if you’re wearing a face mask?

GENTLE READER: Not if you yawn quietly.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My mother died seven years ago. Her sister, who is in her 90s, is the only family member of her generation still alive. She and my mother were not close and I have not had good relations with my aunt.

When my aunt dies, am I, as the oldest member of the next generation, obligated to send flowers or make a donation to her designated charity?

If so, can I send it on behalf of her sister, my mother, even though she is deceased? Or can I simply send a short note to my cousin, with whom I am not close, offering her my sympathy?

My mother was a paragon of good manners and I feel obligated to make sure she would be represented well.

GENTLE READER: You are right to represent your mother’s feelings, rather than your own, on the death of your aunt. But the name at the bottom must be your own: Anything made to look like it comes from your deceased mother will be alarming, and might also be seen as disrespectful.

Write a letter to your cousin expressing your own condolences. Although such letters are not typically long, there will be plenty of room to include the kind words you believe your mother would have said to mark the occasion.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I often enjoy margaritas on the rocks with salt on the glass rim. He has a habit of first licking the salt on the rim and then taking a swig.

I think this habit is rude, but he thinks it is no problem. I simply take a drink normally, enjoying the salt while drinking (not licking!). Is his habit socially acceptable, as he claims, in the context of margarita drinking?

GENTLE READER: Licking is the prerogative of those not old enough for margaritas — and, even then, it is limited to popsicles, lollipops and other inherently silly foods.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a middle school teacher, and although we are not

beginning classes in person yet this year, I cannot stop thinking about something that always bugs me at the beginning of the school year.

Many of my students walk around campus with some type of earbuds in.

It is an expectation of mine that when talking or listening, students take them out. This is because the other person involved cannot know whether the person with earbuds is listening to audio or to them.

I explain this to the students, and emphasize that it is an issue of showing respect to the person you are conversing with. They often fight back on this rule and insist that turning off the audio when conversing is enough.

Am I missing the mark on what’s important here? Do you think removing earbuds is something that shows respect or lack thereof?

GENTLE READER: These students will also probably try to convince you that they can listen while playing video games, texting their friends and playing with slime, but the optics are still rude.

Proper etiquette is so often shown through symbolism. Taking one’s cap off in school provides no practical purpose, but it shows reverence for the institution. Demanding that ear pieces be removed when talking to others is, Miss Manners assures you, entirely within your jurisdiction. You are the teacher. It is your duty (as well as the parents’) to teach your students respect. In fact, it is probably the most valuable and practical lesson they can learn.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When a person is facing someone behaving badly, your advice is invariably to politely/quietly distance yourself from that person. This is certainly excellent for avoiding a confrontation, but also does very little to actually improve the situation in the future.

As a society, we enforce good manners socially (and very rarely legally), but if we constantly avoid confrontation, how can that enforcement actually work?

Avoidance/mild comments do send a message, but many times these behaviors are not practical — nor, frankly, are they obvious enough (without being rude) to actually influence poor behavior.

I am not asking permission to be rude or unnecessarily confrontational, but there must be some middle ground. How do we successfully operate in that middle ground without unintentionally being rude? cont page 6

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 5

Miss Manners

from page 5

GENTLE READER: No, no, Miss Manners must first correct your premise. She cannot even imagine a life in which there are no confrontations.

It would have to be either unbelievably conflictfree, or hopelessly amoral and spineless.

The key questions about confrontations are “why” and “how.”

One problem, as you realize, is how to stand up forcefully for oneself or one’s principles without stooping to rudeness. But there is also an intensely practical aspect: Does the form of confrontation serve the purpose? Will it change bad behavior?

In some cases — as, for example, when citizens strive for a systemic change — it takes perseverance and fortitude. In others — such as dealing with one’s bigoted old uncle — the wiser course may be to refrain from prodding him by keeping off the offensive subjects. And scolding strangers in the street just makes them act worse.

In none of these situations does rudeness lead to success. That is why official arenas handling conflict — courts, legislatures, sports — have strict etiquette rules so that both sides are supposed to restrain from unproductive antagonisms.

Protesters win adherents by cultivating empathy, not by attacking potential supporters. Individuals are not open to instruction from people who do not show them some basic respect.

Typically, when Miss Manners advises avoiding confrontation, it is in situations where there is nothing to be gained — and possibly much to lose,

as these often escalate to fights and possibly violence. Sometimes it is an associate with whom a conflict would be unproductive as well as disruptive. Nowadays, the most common instance is the person who wants to chastise a stranger for not wearing a mask, but whose presence is exactly what must be avoided.

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Miss Manners’ advice is not to be understood as a failure to defend oneself or to stand up for what is right. While it is meant to discourage unnecessary abrasiveness in everyday life, it is also meant to discourage wasting emotion counter-productively. And letting offensive or unsafe people get in your face.

Yet she thoroughly understands the satisfaction of registering objections to misbehavior. That is why she is happy to supply polite ways of doing so: responding to unwarranted criticism with “I’m glad you like it,” and to nosiness with “Thank you for your interest in my private business.” These can provide dignified withdrawal from what are obviously losing battles. Inevitably, some Gentle Reader will then denounce these approaches as “passive-aggressive.” Not really; the point is clearly made. And we could all use a little less aggressiveaggressive.”

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Lewis & Clark

What happened to Sacajawea?

See related story, “The Circumstances Surrounding Pomp,” page 9.

W

hen the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned to the Mandan villages in 1806, Toussaint Charbonneau (Sacajawea’s husband) was given a voucher for $500.33 for his services, Lewis & Clark Encore but Sacajawea We are pleased to present received nothing.

Installment #29 of Michael In a letter to Perry’s popular 33-month Charbonneau, series which began with CRR’s Clark wrote, April 15, 2004 inaugural issue.

“Your woman who “Dispatch from the Discovery Trail” helped define and accompanied you shape Columbia River Reader that long dangerous in its early years during the and fatiguing rout Bicentennial Commemoration to the Pacific Ocean of the Lewis and Clark and back diserved a Expedition. Each installment greater reward for covered their travels during her attention and the corresponding month 200 services on the rout years prior. We are repeating than we had the the series for the enjoyment of power to give her at both longtime and more recent the Mandans.” readers.

Clark offered to take Pomp back to St. Louis where he would educate “and raise him as my own child.” Sacajawea and Charbonneau agreed to let Clark raise their 18-month old son but felt it was too soon to do so.

In a letter, Clark wrote, “Charbono, if you wish to live with the white people, and will come to me, I will give you a piece of land and furnish you with horses, cows, & hogs.”

a putrid fever. She was a good and the best woman in the Fort.

Aged about 25 years. She left a fine infant girl.” Even though her actual name does not appear in the record, many people believe it was Sacajawea who had died about four months after giving birth to a daughter.

Was this really Sacajawea? Probably. Sacajawea would have been about 24 years old in 1812. Toussaint Charbonneau had gone to Fort Manuel in 1811 shortly after leaving his son, 5-year old Pomp (Jean Baptiste), with Captain Clark in St. Louis. Believing Charbonneau to be dead, Luttig took Charbonneau’s daughter to St. Louis in 1813, where the Orphan’s Court made Luttig legal guardian of two Charbonneau children (one-year old “Lisette” and ten-yearold “Tousant”). Who was this “Tousant”? Most people believe this was an error and the records actually refer to seven-year old Pomp (“Jean Baptiste”). Why would a judge have allowed Luttig to become legal guardian for Pomp? Pomp had been under Captain Clark’s care for two years, attending a private school, but Clark was away on business at the time. And why do the records show the boy was ten years old when Pomp was only seven? In any case, Luttig’s name was later crossed out in the court records and the name of William Clark substituted.

So, who was the ten-year-old “Tousant Charbonneau” shown on the legal papers?

Some people believe Charbonneau’s other Shoshone wife (Otter Woman) gave birth to a son in 1803, three years before Pomp was born. Thus, it is uncertain which Shoshone wife Luttig’s obituary pertains to. Charbonneau may have abandoned Sacajawea after returning to the Mandan villages from their 1811 visit to St. Louis when Pomp was left with Clark. Perhaps he took Otter Woman and her son to Fort Manuel.

William Clark’s cashbook for 1825-1828 showed the status of all the Expedition members and states “Se car ja we au Dead.”

However, since that same cashbook erroneously lists Sergeant Patrick Gass as being dead (he lived to be 99-years old, dying in 1870), some people think Clark could have been wrong in listing Sacajawea as being dead.

cont. page 8

Michael Perry enjoys local history and travel. His popular 33-installment Lewis & Clark series appeared in CRR’s early years and began its second “encore” appearance in April 2018.

Three years later, Charbonneau, Sacajawea, and Pomp traveled to St. Louis to cash his voucher. Charbonneau was given 320 acres of land, but after a year he decided he was not meant to be a farmer and sold the land back to Clark for $100. He left 5-year old Pomp in the care of Clark in 1811 and took Sacajawea back up the Missouri River.

However, since Clark had married two years earlier, he did not actually raise Pomp as his “own child” as he had promised. Instead, he put Pomp in a boarding house and paid for his schooling.

Will the “real” Sacajawea please stand up?

On December 20, 1812, John Luttig, the clerk at Fort Manuel, a trading post on the upper Missouri in present-day South Dakota, included a terse obituary in his daily log: “This evening the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw, died of Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 7

Dispatch

from page 7

In 1884, on the Wind River Indian Reservation in present-day Wyoming, a Shoshone woman named Porivo, said to be about 100 years old, was laid to rest. Sacajawea would have been about 96 years old in 1884. The burial records said Porivo was “Bazil’s mother (Shoshone).” When the Lewis and Clark expedition reunited Sacajawea with her Shoshone Indian tribe at Three Forks in 1805, she learned most of her family was dead, so she immediately adopted the young son of her dead sister. Could this be “Bazil”?

Bazil was living with his mother when she died. For years, this woman had told people she had been with Lewis and Clark on the expedition to the Pacific Ocean and that her son Baptiste was a little papoose whom she carried on her back from the Mandan villages across the shining mountains to the great lake. It seems odd an Indian woman living in Wyoming could have known so much about the woman who accompanied the Corps of Discovery 80 years earlier. One has to wonder if she might indeed have been the real Sacajawea!

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Pomp’s Circumstances Following the footsteps of

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M

ention “Sacajawea,” and most folks associate the name either with the Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, or the U.S. dollar first minted in 2000.

Longview residents will also associate the name with their beautiful lake in the center of town.

Clark’s affection for the boy was, perhaps, best measured when the expedition reached a prominent sandstone butte on the Yellowstone River that Clark named Pompy’s Tower (now called Pompey’s Pillar). Pompey’s Pillar remains today the only existing evidence of the Corps of Discovery along the trail; Captain Clark carved his name and date — Jul 25, 1806 — into the body of the rock.

While Sacajawea Following the Corps of is known to Statue of Sacajawea and Pomp Discovery, Captain Clark generations of in Washington Park, Portland. provided Pomp with what students and It was sculpted by Alice Cooper has been described as, “the history buffs, oddly, from Denver, Colorado and best education that money few remember her unveiled in 1905 at the Lewis & could buy.” At age 16, with son, Jean Baptiste Clark Centennial Exposition. It his education completed, Charbonneau. depicts Sacajawea pointing the Pomp struck out on his own His remarkable way westward. as a fur trader. He made a beginning with the Wikipedia image: CC BY-SA 3.0 chance acquaintance that Corps of Discovery, would have a profound effect on his combined with his later experiences future. as a trader, guide, interpreter, miner, adventurer and world traveler remain an Prince Paul Wilhelm was a German extraordinary story, even today. noble who was visiting the United Jean Baptiste was born at Fort Mandan (North Dakota) on February 11, 1805. His father was a French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, who had joined the expedition as guide and interpreter.

Within months of birth, Jean Baptiste began his odyssey, bundled and strapped to his mother’s back. Accounts indicate that he was a happy and healthy baby, well protected and treated as very special by the expedition members. Captain Clark took an immediate liking to the toddler and nicknamed him “Pomp” or “Pompy” (spellings differ).

By the time the expedition eventually reached the Pacific Ocean and returned to North Dakota, Pomp was nearly two years old and had ridden over 5,000 miles, enduring along the way hardships unimaginable by today’s standards.

States on a nature study. He and Pomp immediately became friends and Pomp accepted Prince Wilhelm’s invitation to accompany him back to Germany.

As a guest of the prince, Pomp traveled throughout Europe and North Africa, meeting royalty, enjoying the perks and privileges of the aristocratic class and also finding the time to learn several languages. After six years, however, he had tired of the rarified life of royalty and returned to his roots on the Great Plains.

For the next 15 years, Pomp roamed the west, living off the land as a “mountain man.” He hunted.

He trapped. He served as a guide for groups moving west. He did a short stint in the Army leading a Mormon battalion from Sante Fe to San Diego. He served briefly as

This was the first piece written for CRR by Gary Meyers, originally published Feb. 15, 2005. As a child, Meyers lived in Ponca, Nebraska, where his curiosity about Lewis and Clark was piqued by three nearby sites mentioned in their journals. Meyers moved to Longview, graduating form R.A. Long High School, then completing careers with the U.S. Marine Corps and Northwest Airlines. Retired, he enjoys Honolulu as his home base while he continues exploring the world, with frequent visits to SW Washington.

The gravesite of Sacajawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau (“Pomp”) in Jordan Valley, Oregon.

To visit Pomp’s grave requires more than a simple day trip, since it is more than 450 miles from Portland. But if you are near Boise, you might consider a side trip. Take US95 south from Boise 80 miles to Jordan Valley, Ore., then continue west for 17 miles to Danner Loop Road. The second entrance, identified by a Lewis and Clark road sign, points visitors to the gravesite 3 miles north. Visitors should be aware that the gravesite and the Inskip Station ruins are on a private land. Please be respectful of the residents’ privacy. Warning: Weather conditions can make the Danner Loop Road treacherous; be alert to abrupt weather changes, particularly in winter. the Alcalde (mayoral or magistrate status) of Mission San Luis Rey in Southern California.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Fort, California, in 1849, the fever swept up Pomp and he headed north to seek his fortune.

The fortune never materialized and little is known of Pomp’s activities for several years thereafter.

In 1861, he re-surfaced as a clerk in the Orleans Hotel in Auburn,

AGENT SPOTLIGHT ~ A gradate of the University of Idaho, Amanda studied interior design with a minor in architecture. Joining the Windermere Kelso/Longview team, she has gotten off to a great start! Listing her first property within a matter of days, she is ready to work and excited to help her clients!

California. When news of another gold strike in Montana reached Auburn, Pomp grabbed his bags and headed toward the El Dorado that had eluded him earlier.

Sadly, his hope was not fulfilled.

Pomp contracted pneumonia and died at Inskip Station, near Danner in Southeast Oregon on May 16, 1866, at age 61. He was buried there (see sidebar, above).

•••

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Northwest Gardening

Envision what you’d like in your future yard

Make plans now for your garden’s next season

By Alice Slusher

O

ne of the things I love about fall is you can start planning for next year. Walk around your yard. Is there a corner that could use some shade or color? Something outside your family room window to light up the winter? Have you always wanted a privacy hedge? Fall is the very best time to plant trees and shrubs. The soil is still warm, the rains will be starting, most of the bugs that attack in warm weather aren’t around, and heat stress won’t be a problem. The roots can put their energy into getting established over the winter instead of supporting new growth.

Horticultural Golden Rule Some of the most common problems I’ve seen while working in our Master Gardener Plant and Insect Clinic stem from simply failing to abide by the horticultural Golden Rule: Plant the right plant in the right place. If a plant is not growing in its preferred cultural conditions, it becomes stressed, and it’s prone to insect damage and plant disease.

Here’s a little story My husband had his heart set on a weeping Alaskan cedar tree. He knew exactly where he wanted it— tucked in a little corner on the north side of the house, partly in the shade of a nearby tree. At the nursery, he looked at the plant label at my insistence.

This tree needs full sun and well-drained, moist soil. It can grow to 50 feet tall and has a 20-foot spread. He insisted it would be fine. Fast forward five years…the cute little Alaskan cedar is now about 25 feet tall, and still growing. Every spring it looks like

it’s going to die with massive leaf die-off. It’s had spider mites and needle blights. It’s brushing up against the house, and next year it’s going to take out the gutters. Wrong tree, wrong place. And I haven’t even said, “I told you so!” (Editor’s note: Until now) Step back and look at the space where you want to plant. How much sun does it get in the summer?

Will existing trees or shrubs give it a lot of shade?

How well does the soil drain? Do deer treat your yard like their favorite buffet? Get out your tape measure: How close is it to your house, fence, neighbor’s garage or house? Are there power lines or other trees above the area? Are there water or utility lines in the ground? Make a drawing, and write down your notes.

Now for the fun part One of my favorite things to do is wander around a nursery, searching for the perfect plant to fill that empty space. Do you want your plant for shade, color, winter interest? Do you want an evergreen or deciduous tree or shrub? Are you working toward a succession of flowering trees or shrubs from spring through fall? Do you want to attract birds and pollinators? Are you trying to create a privacy screen? Are you looking for a drought resistant, edible, or native plant? So many criteria, so many choices!

The best advice I can give you is to read the label. I know, it’s akin to reading the directions, and who likes to do that? But a tree or a shrub is an investment, and you will save yourself untold trouble if you check on the plant’s attributes

and requirements. Does it have messy fruit, like crabapples? Is it prone to disease or insects? Will it work at your elevation? We live at 1,000 feet, and Daphne, a lovely fragrant shrub that does so well in the valley, freezes out up here. Study those labels. Even do a little extra research on your cellphone while you’re deciding.

Once home, planting your treasure correctly is paramount!

The rule of thumb is to never plant a hundred dollar tree in a ten dollar hole. In fact, don’t dig a hole—dig out a shallow “saucer” in the soil. It should be two to three times wider than the root ball, and slightly less deep than the container it was in. If you see circling roots, return it to the nursery. For a tree, look for the slight flare where the roots meet the trunk. That should be above the ground and never buried. Never put anything back into the hole but water and the soil you took out—no fertilizers or compost.

Tamp down as you are filling it to eliminate air pockets. Once the rains start, your new tree should be fine until summer. Your plant will need additional summer irrigation for at least the first two years until it establishes a good root system. And save your receipt. Reputable nurseries offer a guarantee, assuming you’ve done your part.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but you’ll be enjoying that new plant for years to come. Enjoy the possibilities—get out there and grow some lasting beauty!

•••

OSU Extension Opportunities • 503.397.3462 Small Farm Online School: Oct 15: Sustainable Hemp Production; Oct 22: Equitable Food Access: Oregon’s Food Sovereignty Network; Oct 27: Running a CSA: Know Before You Grow; Oct 29: Farm to Vase: Growing and Designing Specialty Cut Flowers; Nov 3: Vegetable Weed Management; Nov 5 and 19: Racial and Food Justice Series; Nov 10: Bookkeeping for Farmers; Nov 17: Soil Ecology for Small-Scale Vegetable Production Register at blogs.oregonstate.edu

WSU Extension Opportunities

Kalama resident Alice Slusher volunteers with WSU Extension Service Plant & Insect Clinic.

Call 360-5773014, ext. 8, or send question via cowlitzmastergardener@gmail.com.

ONLINE Workshops. Call Extension coordinator Gary Fredricks, 360-577-3014 Ext.3, for connection info.

Workshops Wednesdays, 6-7pm Oct 14 Best Plants for Fall Planting Oct 21 Tips for New or New-to-PacificNW Gardeners Oct 28 Affordable Landscaping Nov 4 Critter Control in the Garden How-to Tuesdays 12-12:30pm Oct 13 Making a Rain Garden; Oct 20 Beginning Bonsai Oct 27 Flower Arrangement for Fall Nov 3 Fall and Winter House Plant Care Nov 10 Winter Container Gardens Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 11

MEDICAL MATTERS

Pacific Surgical Center adjusts to pandemic, expands services

By Jim LeMonds Being a healthcare professional during a pandemic can be complicated to say the least. For Michele Peterson, Nurse Manager at Pacific Surgical Center in Longview, the ride has been challenging but successful.

their surgeries in the place that is right for them, whether at our clinic or a hospital,” Peterson said.

Peterson, who has been at PSC since its inception, is most proud of the clinic’s 98 percent patient satisfaction rate.

T h e a r e a ’s f i r s t “I think our high rate outpatient surgery is largely due to the fact center, PSC that we take the time handles orthopedic, to listen to what our podiatric, urologic, patients say,” she said. gastrointestinal, “Our patient response and general surgical form has plenty of procedures that do not room for comments. require an overnight Michele Peterson These comments hospital stay. Prior are the guideline we to COVID-19, PSC follow when it comes to making staff met with 99 percent of surgery improvements.” patients before their procedures.

Peterson personally reviews every “Now, to minimize the number comment and shares the information of people in our facility, we do all with PSC staff. “We are very screenings over the phone,” Peterson innovative in coming up with new said. “This is a very time-consuming ways of doing things that best meet process, but it’s necessary to give patient needs.” patients the time they deserve to ••• ask questions and go through basic protocols ahead of surgery.”

Former R.A. Long High School English teacher Jim LeMonds is a When PSC opened in 2006, it was writer, editor, and marketer who rides not able to handle total knee, hip, or his mountain shoulder replacements because these bike whenever required an overnight hospital stay. he gets the Advances in technology and surgical chance. He techniques now make it possible lives in Castle for many of these procedures to be Rock, Wash. performed in an outpatient setting.

His published books are “The preoperative process employed South of

by Longview Orthopedic Associates Seattle and and PSC ensures that patients have Deadfall.

Freedom is not a privilege.

It’s a right.

Do you want a stable life with prosperity and liberty?

T

he American Bill of Rights that drew people from so many cultures of the world to America is under attack from political radicals. Their goal is to dissolve the cultural bonds of diversity that make America unique and prosperous. We have a rich heritage of American sacrifices, ingenuity, generosity, perseverance, and faith that Americans have celebrated, defended with the sacrifices of many, and lived by for almost 250 years.

• We believe in Law & Order adjudicated by non-partisan judges.

• We believe in the right to own property and use it as we see fit;

Private property ownership is essential to individual freedom.

• Our school system must honor parents’ rights and responsibilities.

• We believe that the government cannot restrict religious activities.

• We believe that all people who break laws must be tried in a court of law & held responsible for their criminal intent and harmful acts • We reject discrimination against all people based on social media dictates • We want the opportunity to practice a strong work ethic.

• We want a strong economy & tighter control of taxation burdens.

• We support a Republic form of govering as defined in the U.S. Constitution.

T

he Washington State Republican Platform for 2020 is based on serving the people of Washington State with honor, respect for all human life, and promotion of the well-being of Cowlitz County citizens. The Cowlitz County Republicans invite you to join us in improving on the great aspiration we will share as being “Cowlitz County Strong.”

We ask you to join us in answering the call to support our local police, recover our failing healthcare system, attract new businesses to our county, and resist the Marxist assaults on our current way of life. Our success is based on the traditional family life, a strong belief in the religion of our choice, and years of hard work supporting our families and our rural community lifestyle.

Join us in building and maintaining an exceptional community living environment that is safe and prosperous. We are not Seattle or Portland. We are hard working people who want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without fear of oppression from state government or violent radicals and we reject political radicals who do harm to our citizens in Cowlitz County.

Cowlitz County Republican Central Committee

ENDORSEMENTS

President Vice Pres.

acrylic & ink painting by Gallery Member, Susan Supola

“I want my art to tell stories of my experience with nature or another culture”

the-broadway-gallery.com In Historic Downtown Longview

Your Local SW Washington Artist Co-op since 1982

New Hours! Holiday Opening Tues-Sat 11-4 November 14th 360-577-0544 1418 Commerce Longview, WA

12 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Donald J. Trump Mike Pence

3rd Congressional Dist. Rep.

Jamie Hererra-Beutler state offices: Governor Loren Culp Lt. Governor Joshua Freed Secretary of State Kim Wyman Treasurer Duane Davidson Auditor Chris Leyba Commissioner of Public Lands

Sue Kuehl Pederson Attorney General Matt Larkin Insurance Comm Chirayu Patel

20th Legislative District: Senator John Braun Representative Pos. 1 Peter Abbarno Representative Pos. 2 Ed Orcutt 19th Legislative District: Senator Jeff Wilson Representative Pos. 1 Jim Walsh Representative Pos. 2 Joel McEntire County Commissioner Dist. 1

Arne Mortenson

Superintendent of Public Instruction Maia Espinoza

Paid for by the Cowlitz County Republican Party PO Box 462, Kelso, WA 98626 https://www.cowlitzgop.com/

223 NE 1st Street, Kalama 9–8 M-Sat, 10–7 Sun • 360-673-2200

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Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 13

OUT • AND • ABOUT

TRAVEL SCENIC BY-WAY FOR AUTUMN FUN

A corn maze, wine tasting, crisp air

T

Story & photos by Tracy Beard

hurston Bountiful Byway, lying south of Olympia, Washington, offers a scenic 60-mile loop of numerous places to stop and enjoy delicious culinary delights, view the area’s wildlife, walk or ride a bicycle and purchase beautiful plants to add to your garden. Pack up a lunch, bring your bike and join me on this exciting loop about an hour’s drive from Longview, Washington.

Rutledge Farm This September, Rutledge Corn Maze hosted its first sunflower festival.

Sunflower stalks reaching 10-feet tall or more filled the west side of the property. Brick red, copper, brown, and bright yellow blooms stood in rows like a cornfield. The festival was a success, and the Rutledge family plans to repeat this festival in the upcoming years.

The yearly corn maze and all its fall fun runs into the first week of November.

The Rutledge farm is a spectacular place to bring the entire family. It boasts a haunted maze and a themed

Vancouver, Wash. resident Tracy Beard writes about luxury and adventure travel, traditional and trendy fine dining and libations for regional, national and international magazines and is a regular “Out & About” contributor to CRR.

maze each year. This year’s theme is Big Foot. The farm offers several activities to keep guests engaged. The cow train chauffeurs guests around the farm, and tents with firepits are available to rent.

Get lost in one or both mazes or play a game of horseshoes or cornhole. I have heard that shooting the corn cannon is quite an exciting activity. No autumn festival would be complete without a wagon ride, and the Rutledge farm does not disappoint.

Lael’s Moon Garden Nursery If you are interested in adding to your family garden, make a stop at Lael’s Moon Garden Nursery. Owner Larry Lael has labored for over 40 years creating this magnificent Eden-like paradise. Meander the garden and then pick out a few plants to spruce up your garden at home. Larry is ingenious with plants and flowers; he has even managed to grow a banana tree that is over 10 feet tall.

Medicine Creek Winery Medicine Creek Winery produces delicious wines.

Bring a picnic lunch or buy some nibbles along the way to pair with a glass or bottle of wine. The tasting room offers comfortable seating, and outside you will find tables and chairs for your dining pleasure.

Trails Along the Way The Chehalis Western Trail and the Yelm-Tenino Trail are great places to get out and walk or ride a bike. The two trails were once railroads. Today they are paved and converted into bicycle and walking IF YOU GO: Thurston Bountiful Byway trails. The Chehalis Western Trail Visitor Information Center 103 Sid Snyder Ave SW, Olympia, WA 98501 passes through Olympia, South Bay, Toll Free 877-704-7500 Download a map and self-guided tour guide at Lacey, East Olympia, Skookumchuck www.experienceolympia.com/thurston-bountiful-byway. and Rainier, Washington.. The YelmRUTLEDGE CORN MAZE • 302 93rd Ave SE, Olympia, WA 98501 Tenino Trail is 14.5 miles long and 360- 357-3700 Website: RutledgeCornMaze.com runs parallel to State Route 507, and it MEDICINE CREEK WINERY • 947 Old Pacific Hwy SE, Olympia, WA 98513 intersects with the Chehalis Western Trail. The Monarch Sculpture Park, 360-701-6284 Website: MedicineCreekWinery.com located along the Yelm-Tenino Trail, LAEL’S MOON GARDEN NURSERY • 17813 Moon Rd SW, Rochester, WA 98579 features exciting and extravagant 360- 273-9567 LaelsMoonGarden.com sculptures. I particularly enjoyed the MONARCH SCULPTURE PARK 8431 Waldrick Rd SE, Tenino, WA 98589 enormous sculpture of a hand holding 360-264-2408 MonarchSculpturePark.org pickup sticks. The little dragon was DON JUAN’S MEXICAN KITCHEN 639 Lincoln Ave E, Tenino, WA 98589 cute too.

360.264.8226. Open ‘til 8 or 9pm Tues thru Sun. Don Juan’s Mexican Kitchen The staff at Don Juan’s Mexican Kitchen makes a killer Cadillac weaves through the grassy marsh. If The Refuge margarita. The chips and salsa are you are not in a hurry, continue past Billy Fran Jr. Nisqually Wildlife perfectly seasoned, and the chili verde the trail to the dirt road. Make a left Refuge is a fabulous place to spend a made with pork bathed in tomatillo and keep walking for 30 minutes few hours or even the entire day. If you and serrano pepper sauce is fantastic. until you reach the next boardwalk. are looking for a short walk, venture This wooden walkway expands over out on the one-mile boardwalk that cont page 15

14 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Local Culture

from page 14

the estuary and out to an excellent viewing area where you can look out over the Sound. When the water is out, the site is filled with wildlife and birds. The trails and boardwalks have minimal elevation gain and are wheelchair accessible. Make a day of it and seek out the local wildlife.

Thurston Bountiful Byway has something for everyone. You can drive the loop and enjoy the scenery or get out and explore nature, the local shops, restaurants and more.

When you get home, or if you just read about this outing and decided to stay home, why not enjoy my Spanish Tortilla? It’s nothing like the Mexican tortilla! (see page 21).

•••

ALONG THE TRAIL

T

he Cowlitz County Historical Museum re-opened last month with some new exhibits for visitors to enjoy. As we transition to cooler and wetter weather, consider stopping by to visit the museum.

The museum’s current rotating exhibit, “Memories of a Lost Landscape,” was installed during the closure this summer. This exhibit chronicles life at Spirit Lake prior to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

To: Centralia, Olympia Mt. Rainier Yakima (north, then east) Tacoma/Seattle

Raymond/ South Bend

Chinook

•

Grays River

The car was in storage for several years and, with the help of volunteers, we had the gas tank removed, drained fluids from the engine, installed new tire inner tubes, and cleaned and sanitized.

The museum adheres to local and state health guidelines so you will notice a few changes to our exhibits and wayfinding

Cathlamet 4

Astoria

• Kelso-Longview Chamber of Commerce Kelso Visitor Center I-5 Exit 39 105 Minor Road, Kelso • 360-577-8058 • Woodland Tourist Center I-5 Exit 21 Park & Ride lot, 900 Goerig St., 360-225-9552

Birkenfeld

Vernonia

Longview

Ape Cave •

Kelso

Rainier

Woodland

503

Columbia City St Helens

• Ridgefield

rnelius NW Co ad o R s s a P

To: Salem Silverton Eugene Ashland

Sauvie Island

Vancouver 12

Portland

• Wahkiakum Chamber 102 Main St, Cathlamet • 360-795-9996 • Castle Rock Visitor Center Exit 49, west side of I-5, 890 Huntington Ave. N. Open M-F 11–3.

• Naselle, WA Appelo Archives Center 1056 SR 4, Naselle, WA. 360-484-7103.

Local in

for

Points o mation f In Recre terest Special ation Dinin Events Arts & Eg ~ Lodging ntertain ment

• Pacific County Museum & Visitor Center Hwy 101, South Bend, WA 360-875-5224 • Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau 3914 Pacific Way (corner Hwy 101/Hwy 103) Long Beach, WA. 360-642-2400 • 800-451-2542 • South Columbia County Chamber Columbia Blvd/Hwy 30, St. Helens, OR • 503-397-0685 • Astoria-Warrenton Chamber/Ore Welcome Ctr 111 W. Marine Dr., Astoria 503-325-6311 or 800-875-6807

Col Gorge Interp Ctr Skamania Lodge Bonneville Dam

Troutdale Crown Point

97

Goldendale

• Seaside, OR 989 Broadway, 503-738-3097; 888-306-2326

•Yacolt

Scappoose•

Oregon

Cougar •

Kalama

•••

FREE Maps • Brochures Directions • Information

Mount St. Helens

Clatskanie

signage on your next visit. The museum, established in 1953, is easily accessible from Allen Street in Kelso, and admission is free. The museum is open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10am4pm, and Saturdays by appointment. To make a Saturday appointment call the museum at 360-577-3119. The location is 405 Allen Street.

VISITOR CENTERS

Washington

Skamokawa

WestportPuget Island FERRYk

101

101

Pacific Ocean

who walked through a desolate and dark landscape rolling film during his escape to safer ground.

Castle Rock

• Naselle

Warrenton •

Seaside

Photo courtesy of Cowlitz County Historical Museum.

504

Long Beach

Columbia River

Photojournalist David Crockett abandoned this car and walked out while filming the Mt. St. Helens eruption and aftermath.

Vader

Ocean Park •

Ilwaco

“Memories of a Lost Landscape” exhibit ready for visitors

Cowlitz County Historical Museum Director

The Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center was closed nearly four years ago.

This is the first time in several years the public can see some of these interpretive materials. Another exciting addition to our exhibits includes a Hoffstadt Bluffs favorite, the highly popular “KOMO-4 Car.” This car was abandoned during the 1980 blast by KOMO-4 News photojournalist David Crockett,

As is her custom, Tracy includes an outing-worthy recipe with her Out & About stories.

See page 21.

Now Open Again!

Story and photos

by Joseph Govednik

“Memories of a Lost Landscape” includes interpretive panels of the exhibit that was on display at Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center, combined with artifacts from the museum’s collection and additional interpretive material and images.

PROVISIONS

Oysterville •

MUSEUM MAGIC / COWLITZ COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

Maryhill Museum

Stevenson Hood River Cascade Locks Bridge of the Gods

The Dalles

To: Walla Walla Kennewick, WA Lewiston, ID

Map suggests only approximate positions and relative distances. Consult a real map for more precise details. We are not cartographers.

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 15

PROVISIONS

Thank You! P+P Sponsor Partners

ALONG THE TRAIL

By Tracy Beard • See related story, page 14

Tracy’s Spanish Tortilla 5 eggs 3 potatoes, diced or sliced ½ small onion – sliced thinly 3 Tbl. heavy cream 4 Tbl. extra virgin olive oil 10 spears asparagus – diced 3 ounces goat cheese 2 Tbl. grated Parmesan cheese ½ cup shredded cheddar cheese Salt and pepper to taste

Add the onions and cook on medium heat until transparent. Do not brown.

Remove from pan to a medium bowl. Add one tablespoon oil to the pan and add asparagus. Sprinkle with salt and cook on medium 3 minutes until bright green.

Remove from pan and add to onions. Add three tablespoons oil and the potatoes to the pan. Cook on medium heat until tender, approximately 15 minutes.

Season and scramble the eggs, mix with Parmesan and cheddar cheeses. Add cooked onions, asparagus and seasoned cheesy eggs to the potatoes in the pan.

Cook on low for five minutes until eggs begin to set. Drop dollops of goat cheese onto the set eggs. Place the pan on the second shelf in the oven and broil until cooked through, approximately 5 minutes. Remove pan, let sit for 5 minutes before cutting to serve.

Serving suggestion: The tortilla is delicious hot, cold or room temperature. Serve with Preheat the broiler in your oven dressed greens (with a light vinaigrette) and position rack on the second and enjoy with a glass of pinot grigio or shelf. Place one tablespoon olive chardonnay. oil in a heavy ovenproof frying pan.

•••

Q

UIPS & QUOTES

Selected by Debra Tweedy

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book. ~Benedict Cumberbatch, English actor, 1976Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants and honeybees provide food for the winter, but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. ~Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, 1809-1865 The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ~Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, 1875-1961 Only the pure in heart can make a good soup. ~Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer and pianist, 1770-1827

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people.

It is a never-failing spring in the desert.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. ~Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, 1835-1919 We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes, season after season, without thinking of the grapes it has borne. ~Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, 121-180 AD Command, deprived of personal judgment, can win no battles. ~Barbara Tuchman, American historian and author, 1912-1989 You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right. ~Rosa Parks, American civil rights movement activist, 1913-2005 Longview native Debra Tweedy has lived on four continents. She and her husband decided to return to her hometown and bought a house facing Lake Sacajawea.“We came back because of the Lake and the Longview Public Library,” she says.

16 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Community leaders supporting excellent journalism while spotlighting worthy organizations and programs.

people+ place For information about joining the P+P Partners Circle, call

Ned Piper, 360-749-2632 or Sue Piper, 360-749-1021.

“Here for you...because of you.”

We count on PeaceHealth for quality care. Please join us in supporting our hospital with a gift to help meet urgent needs created by COVID-19, and to help save lives, mend hearts and restore hope during this unprecedented time.

PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center Foundation Donate online at www.peacehealth.org/sjgive or mail check payable to PHSJMCF, Lockbox 1096, PO Box 35146, Seattle WA 98124-5146

100% of your gift stays in our community

The Evans Kelly Family One of Longview’s pioneer families.

Proud supporter of People+Place

October is Bat Appreciation and Pineapple & Pear Appreciation Month!

My Halloween treat for you: A recipe reminiscent of my mother’s

Pineapple-Pear Preserves:

Bring to a boil, then simmer 1 cup crushed pineapple (with juice), 1 cup fresh pears, chopped, 1 Tbl orange juice, and 1 cup sugar for 20 minutes until thickened. Serve with toast, over ice cream, or alongside meats.

Paul W. Thompson CRR’s Man in the Kitchen Emeritus

ProudSponsor sponsorofofPeople+Place People+Place Proud Please join us in supporting

Community House on Broadway Community House on Broadway is a clean and sober homeless recovery center. Residents receive the help they need to overcome the causes of homelessness, transform their lives and www.choblv.org • 360.425.8679 become self-sufficient.

Donate online or mail check to 1105 Broadway. PO Box 403. Longview, WA 98632. For other ways to help or volunteer, call or visit website.

Proud Sponsor of People+Place

A monthly feature written and photographed

by Southwest Washington native and Emmy Award-winning journalist

Hal Calbom

Production Notes

people+ place The Layman’s Lewis & Clark: Michael O. Perry

Unfolding History

William Clark, hearing that his partner Meriwether Lewis was shot dead, most likely by his own hand, in a forlorn Tennessee lodging house called Grinder’s Stand, had lost more than his 35-year-old former co-captain.

a despairing

Clark had waited three years for Lewis to pen the great tale of their exploits, entrusted him with all his own journals and maps. Three years for the grand summing up, the immortalizing last act. Instead, to his chagrin (and we assume that of Thomas Jefferson, as well), Lewis had written not a single word. There would be no definitive history, at least in the first person.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, as well as a couple of their journal-keeping fellow discoverers, seem to have written almost everything down, except the most important stuff. They were so busy measuring, mapping, describing and diplomatting, they had little time left over to summarize or conclude.

That was for afterward: the book. The 19th Century preservationist’s tool was the written memoir, the first-person narrative.

From the voyages of Charles Darwin to the bloody campaigns of Grant and Sherman, the great personages chronicled their own exploits, affirmed or modified the popular narrative, carved their own particular place in history.

Michael Perry has two complementary traits. He’s curious, with wide interests. And to satisfy that curiosity, he can be thorough. To the point of, dare we say, obsession.

As an environmental technician at Weyerhaeuser, he measured air and water quality and filed meticulous monthly reports required by the company and its regulators. As a collector he’s amassed albums full of stamps since boyhood. And as an amateur historian he prizes hundreds of hand-tinted postcards illustrating the early history of Cowlitz County.

Some twenty years ago, with retirement looming, Perry got an interesting offer. The new owner of a local newspaper, the Columbia River Reader, proposed a series of articles marking the coming bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Might the curious collector have an interest?

“Dispatch from the Discovery Trail” premiered April 15, 2004, following the Expedition’s timeline and documenting its commemoration. Two reprintings later, it remains the most popular series ever run by the Reader, which both delights and amazes its author.

MP: I didn’t really know where it was going when I started. I was just hoping I could keep up with it.

HC: One piece a month? How long?

MP: One piece a month, six or seven hundred words, more or less tracking their progress for the whole

expedition, over two and a half years, stage by stage. So, I went out and bought the Moulton edition of the Lewis and Clark Journals, and it scared the daylights out of me!

I mean it’s about a foot and a half long set of books, and you start reading that and you realize these haven’t been edited for the casual reader. Any reader, for that matter.

HC: Aren’t there interpretive books, too?

MP: Oh yes, dozens of them.

But they’re all over the place. And as my colleague cont page 18

NICE TO MEET YOU Michael Perry resides

In Kelso, Washington, on a piece of his grandfather’s 120-year-old farm occupation

Retired Environmental Technician, Weyerhaeuser Company (paper division) from

Longview, Washington Playing golden oldies incessantly in his car

known for reading

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

by Richard Rhodes for fun

Travel. philately (study and collecting of stamps and postal materials), genealogy and reading Pacific Northwest history. recommends

“Travel. As Dinah Shore sang, ‘See the USA,’ but don’t stop there. Visit western Scotland, Ireland, Italy, France, Sicily, and Switzerland.”

cont page 17

Today’s accounts of Lewis and Clark, especially on the Lower Columbia, are still subject to shifting sands and contrary currents. Modern histories can be convoluted and in places still speculative.

The professors, publicists and pundits have all had their cracks at it, but in truth they, and we, still rely on those obscure primary sources — the patchwork of scrawled observations in the journals. It’s a history that remains uniquely open-ended and still evolving. It sprawls over three years, four thousand miles, and two centuries.

It entices us still and reveals its meaning in fits and starts. And it offers an irresistible subject for this month’s People + Place.

••• Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 17

People +

from page 17

Rex Ziak — a guy who really influenced this project — found out, some of them are just flat wrong. It’s just a lot of material, a ton of material, and it’s based largely on these very raw journal entries.

“ I went out and bought…the Lewis and Back in 2003 and 2004 the country went to great lengths to commemorate Lewis and Clark. But like the Expedition itself, the Bicentennial spawned mixed results and messages. The Corps of Discovery has always confounded an overarching narrative: Mike Perry’s division into 33 monthly installments is as useful a way as any to piece together a story that remains fundamentally episodic, a series of dramatic moments strung together with sweat and perseverance but lacking a central story line. Many of its landmarks are lost to the contemporary viewer or traveler. Inevitably modern “commemorations” devolved into local or regional events celebrating various dramatic links in the huge, and unwieldy, narrative chain. Those looking for a sense of the whole — intention, meaning, significance — are frustrated even from its very inception.

HC: Did you use some of the other journals, besides Lewis’s and Clark’s?

MP: Yes, and in some ways the journals of the corpsmen were more interesting — they didn’t have the burden of naming and classifying everything, following Jefferson’s really precise instructions.

MP: I think we always tend to think that everything that was discovered was discovered by an American.

Down deep we knew the Spanish had been here forever, and the Russians.

Look at all the Russian settlements up and down California, and the French and the English presence.

HC: But the journals remain your primary sources?

MP: Yes, but with exceptions. They’re literally hard to read, and they’ve been mis-read and misinterpreted. But I also wanted to find things people today might be interested in. I said, ‘What can I pull out of here that is different? That might have happened this month two hundred years ago?’

HC: Were you actively trying to correct the historical record?

HC: Give me an example.

MP: Well, there’s all this time, a lot of time, when not much is going on but hard, hard work. Just trying to get up the Missouri River is agony.

But guys are also sneaking off to get whiskey, and they’d be punished with actual beatings, fifty lashes sometimes, which appalled the Indians, by the way. So I picked up on those types of things, that interested me, not a scholar, just someone who might see this all from a different view.

Things that hadn’t been given a lot of attention perhaps.

HC: So you were looking for the significance of things, not just the events? The stories, maybe?

MP: Yes, I think that’s a fair statement. In this case, we need to remember this was a military expedition under military rules, and people were subjected to some pretty tough discipline and punishment.

Probably why they all survived.

People+ Place trails Lewis & Clark.

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+ Place

d Clark Journals and it scared the daylights out of me! ”

~ Michael O.Perry

HC: You start the series with a couple of pretty bold statements, that Jefferson basically deceived Congress in planning and funding the trip?

MP: Jefferson kept trying to stir up interest for the project, and finally when he became president he wrote a letter to Lewis, a cryptic letter, telling him that we’re going to do this and you’re the man, but we can’t tell anybody because this was against the law.

HC: How so?

MP: We’re invading a foreign territory, owned — he thought — by Spain. But in the meantime — and of course everything takes months or more likely years to be communicated — Spain has ceded it back to France. And there’s no way Jefferson wants Napoleon owning that huge piece of North America. When he finds this out he sends representatives to France with authorization to try to buy New Orleans and as much of the Mississippi Valley as they can get.

MP: Not at all. This information was all there already, I simply shined a light on it. And I have the luxury of not being a professional historian. I find things I’m curious about, interested in, and hopefully the readers share that curiosity. So we find out that Alexander Mackenzie had made the trip across the continent in 1793, and didn’t even bother writing about it for eight years. And finally Jefferson reads it for the first time in 1802, I believe it was. And he’s been wanting to do this for fifteen years, even when he was a relative nobody. And that plants the seed for the Expedition.

“

It is not the strongest of the species that

survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.

HC: And France is in a selling mood?

MP: One of those miracles of history.

Napoleon needs money to fight continental wars, and sells all of Louisiana for $15 million, about three cents an acre. So the ground shifts, literally, and all of a sudden Lewis and his party become trade representatives and surveyors rather

“

It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” ~ Charles Darwin

than foreign invaders. Jefferson still equips them with French and Spanish passports, too, just in case.

HC: And lest we forget, “Louisiana” was considerably bigger than the state that bears its name today.

MP: From the Mississippi to the Rockies, and from the Mexican to the Canadian borders. But Jefferson continued to have ambitions beyond that. That’s where he came up with another convenient fiction, that the purpose of the Expedition was to find the water route from Atlantic to Pacific.

HC: The fabled Northwest Passage.

MP: Yes, but — spoiler alert — trappers and traders and the Indians themselves had known for years there was no contiguous route from east to west, and by the time Lewis and Clark had wintered at Fort Mandan, and talked to all these people, they knew it, too.

HC: Didn’t the Purchase make it easier to justify the expedition?

MP: It did, with limits drawn around it. The Purchase made it easier for Jefferson to get the money from Congress, because trade came to the fore. He wanted to go out and establish relations with the Indians and let them know that we’re the new owner of the land, and to quit trading with the British and the French, because our people are coming out.

Our businesspeople will come out and set up the trading posts. But still, the Congress’s instructions said you can only go as far as the drainage of the Missouri. Going to the ocean was not something they contemplated or authorized. cont page 20

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Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 19

People + Place HC: These were pretty substantial trading centers?

MP: Very important. And they traded information, too, which was just as critical, on the edge of a frontier. This was the first tribe that Lewis and Clark had come upon that lived in the same place all year.

It was the central trading village, and the French and the English had been trapping and trading up there for forty years already, constantly bringing in trading goods, news and useful information.

HC: And Lewis and Clark built a fort there for the winter?

from page 19

Given the difficulty of getting up the Missouri, with a clumsy 55- foot keel boat and tons of supplies, the last thing the Corps of Discovery thought about as they left St. Louis, Missouri on the 4th of May, 1804, was the mythical Pacific Ocean. Making as little as two miles a day, with currents, portages, logs and brush inhibiting their progress, the “run” up the Missouri was relentless and unspectacular. Today, one feels instant sympathy for anybody who might have tried to set up a gala Bicentennial event among these vast empty prairies and scrublands.

For the Corps of Discovery, the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, a trading center 60 miles north of today’s Bismarck, North Dakota, were a welcome way station as snow began to fall and the river to freeze. As they paused to set up winter quarters, the Expedition’s first five months could be described as arduous, frustrating, and generally unremarkable.

Hal Calbom is editor of The Tidewater Reach, Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures, recently published by Columbia River Reader Press, and the forthcoming Dispatches from the Discovery Trail,

by Michael O. Perry.

Reach Hal at hal@halcalbom.com

MP: Fort Mandan, pretty primitive but by the time they got there the snow was already falling, late September or October of 1804. And they’d never felt cold like this before. They broke their last glass thermometer in 1805. Even before that, there were days they couldn’t record the temperature, because the thermometers would only go down to 45 degrees below zero. That’s as cold as they could measure.

HC: You’ve said that by the time they’d been at Mandan for awhile they knew there was not the hoped-for water route to the Pacific?

MP: The Indians, the trappers, the traders, all told them the same thing. And this was more than just a disappointment to Jefferson’s dream. It meant they were going to need horses if they were to get all the way to the ocean. They knew who had the horses, but they couldn’t communicate with them. They were called the Snake Indians. Today we know them as the Shoshone.

kidnapped and bought by the Hidatsas.

Charbonneau had no skills, whatsoever, but would be invited to the Expedition if he brought one of his wives to translate. They didn’t care which one. But what’s so ironic about the whole thing — Charbonneau chose Sacajawea, who was 7-8 months pregnant, to go on the journey. Why would Lewis and Clark allow a baby to join them on the trail? Why not choose the other wife?

We’ve never learned the answer.

HC: So this was the communications link they needed?

MP: It was still awkward. Charbonneau could only speak French and a little bit of Hidatsa. Sacajawea could speak Hidatsa and Snake, or Shoshone. So it took four people to get through to where you could get down to the person you were actually talking to.

HC: But the groundwork was laid for the rest of the trip?

MP: Once they’d wintered, and sent part of the party back to St. Louis and a report to Mr. Jefferson, the real adventure was about to begin.

••• This is the first of two parts. In Part Two the Expedition encounters the Great Falls, the Continental Divide, starvation and revelation on the Columbia River. See page 2 for information about the forthcoming collection of Dispatches.

HC: Enter two of the more wellknown players in the drama...

M P : Ye s , i t ’s h e r e w e m e e t Charbonneau, a French trader with two Snake Indian wives, one of whom is the young, and pregnant, Sacajawea. They were actually

Editor’s Note: Interviews are edited for length and condensed for clarity.

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Michael Perry’s Favorite Books

History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark 1804-1806 by Paul Allen, Esq. A twovolume reprint of the 1814 edition Nicholas Biddle worked on after Capt. Lewis committed suicide.

Interesting because, besides using the Expedition journals, Biddle interviewed Clark and at least one other member of the Expedition, providing firstperson accounts not found in the other editions of the journals.

In Full View by Rex Ziak. The most revealing of all the Expedition books available; no other book brings to life the miserable conditions the Corps experienced at the mouth of the Columbia in November, 1805.

Across The Snowy Ranges by James R. Fazio.

This book presents a day-by-day account of the Expedition’s time between Lemhi Pass (in western Montana) and the Snake River (at Lewiston, Idaho). While nowhere as captivating as Rex Ziak’s book, it is quite well done.

Cataclysms on The Columbia by John Allen, Marjorie Burns and Scott Burns. The definitive story of the Great Missoula Floods that impacted the geology of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley (and the Longview-Kelso area). Pioneer geologist Thomas Condon first proposed the idea of a “Willamette Sound” in 1871. In 1919, J Harlen Bretz was the first to recognize the effects of catastrophic flooding on the Columbia Plateau were the result of multiple failures of an ice dam near Missoula, Montana during the last ice age (15,000 years ago).

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Where do you read

THE READER? On top of the world Nancy Stone of Longview, Wash., and Bob Horness of Clatskanie, Ore., share a copy of the Reader on the goat rocks as Mt Rainier looks over their shoulders.

WHERE DO YOU READ THE READER? Send your photo reading the Reader (high-resolution JPEG) to Publisher@ CRReader.com. Include names and cities of residence. We make it a practice to acknowledge photos received; if you don’t hear from us within 5 days, please re-send. If sending a cell phone photo, choose the largest file size up to 2 MB.

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The Natural World

Tit for Tat

By Dr. Robert Michael Pyle

A

mtrak Cascades train #510, northbound for a holiday getaway, Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. Morning alpenglow pink on the entire eastern rampart of the Olympics. Puget Sound plashing trackside, and just yards from the freshly washed windows, harlequin ducks. How beautiful the drakes, all rust and gunbarrel blue, clean-striped and sickled with black and white. How utterly indifferent they were to our wowed attention. Even the rushing locomotive, similarly striped in cream, brown, and teal green, caused them no distraction from their winter morning’s forage. We looked at the harlequins, but they didn’t look back.

the most colorful of North American titmice. Their mobile mantles of fluff glowed the same rich russet that graced the harlequins.

But unlike the ducks, these birds were anything but aloof; they clearly sought our attentions. We had nothing for them, and anyway, feeding wild animals is seldom a favor in the long run. Helping snowbirds and stay-behinds through a killing cold snap is one thing, but helping to habituate trailside dependence is another.

The following day, we rounded Beaver Lake in wild-in-the-city Stanley Park. A wet snow was falling, and wildlife thronged the path — spotted towhees, varied thrushes, and both the black and the grizzled forms of the introduced eastern gray squirrels. Most of the creatures, well conditioned to begging by walkers free with foodstuffs, were importuning us. Then a pack of little birds appeared in the salmonberry beside the path. I first thought bushtits, but their buzzy deeee-dee-dee and the habitat, more coniferous than deciduous, gave them away as chestnut-backed chickadees,

Nonetheless, I saw the opportunity that presented itself, removed my glove, and raised my left hand. In a feather’s flutter, a C-B C-dee flapped to my finger and remained for a second or two; then another did the same. At one point three of the tits flirted with three different fingers at once. I knew it wasn’t fair. I was exploiting their hopes of a free lunch to get a cheap thrill. But I did it shamelessly, for some time, and was deeply charmed. I think I will always be able to see those black onyx eyelets in the ebony cap, to feel the prickly tingle of the teensy talons on my fingertips. Pure magic.

What do you suppose the chickadees got out of this encounter? Sheer frustration at unmet gratification of a learned behavior, I’ll bet; nothing more. And yet, we all want more than that from our natural encounters.

People seek reciprocity wherever they can get it, and many places they cannot. I have noticed that many ardent nature lovers take it as an article of faith that their beneficence bounces back: sort of the pantheist’s version of “Jesus Loves Me.” Then when they have a bad day with mosquitoes, they feel spurned. When we hug a tree, does the tree hug back? Or is our love of nature unrequited? We all wish for two-way traffic on the highway of life,

Robert Michael Pyle is a naturalist and writer who has resided along Gray’s River in Wahkiakum County for many years.

His 24 books include the Northwest classics Wintergreen, Sky Time in Gray’s River, and Where Bigfoot Walks. His newest titles are The Tidewater Reach: Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures (with Judy VanderMaten, recently published by CRRPress, see page 2 and 35) and Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays.

Photo by David Lee Myers This is the 27th in a series of selected essays to appear in Columbia River Reader. These were originally published in Orion Afield or Orion Magazine in the author’s column, “The Tangled Bank” and, subsequently, in the book of the same name published by Oregon State University Press in 2012.

but does it really work that way? Bison biologist Dale Lott considers this desire to be “part of our romantic illusion about other animals,” and he doubts that they “reciprocate our tender regard or much of anything else.” But does it matter, as long as we imagine that nature cares about us?

Bennett Cerf, the great humorist and founder of Random House, liked to tell a hoary joke about a wizened old bachelor who decided he should have some company at home, so he attended an auction for a parrot. The bidding started low, but each time he bid, someone raised him until the price grew much higher than he’d ever intended to pay.

When he got home, he commanded the parrot to speak.

Silence. Again he called for some company; again, silence.

Finally, the man erupted: “Blast! I paid a thousand dollars for a parrot who can’t talk?”

Can’t talk? squawked the parrot perfectly. Who do you think bid you up to a thousand bucks? Of course, the question of whether a parrot has anything to say or is merely parroting its trainer is an old one, and in modem times the latter interpretation has prevailed. But lately, some ethologists have wondered whether the answer is quite that simple. Few people expect colloquy with a goldfish, but we all believe beyond a doubt that we experience emotional exchange with our cats and dogs. And when it comes to chimps, the work of Jane Goodall, Roger and Deborah Fouts, and others makes it quite clear that a genuine exchange of thought and feeling takes place. And why should it be otherwise, between ourselves and our closest living relatives?

As in most other so-called dualities, a continuum connects these two states: sapient response did not evolve wholecloth with Homo sapiens. So while we may be justified in supposing that most insect behaviors toward us are impersonal, red admirables picking out the same person to alight on over and over and monarchs making decisions during migration really make you wonder. And no one reads Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water and imagines that the otters he keeps (or that keep him) do not engage in lively, thoughtful interchange with the author. It’s a long way from a Skinner box to a meaningful relationship; but at what point does conditioned response become affection, curiosity, or regard, apart from any reward? cont page 24 Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 23

Tit for Tat

cont from page 23

Even if we imagine ourselves going hand-in-paw with the animals, we would be wrong to expect all such encounters to be pleasant ones.

Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. After all, many of the face-to-faces between humans and large animals, throughout much of our history and prehistory, ended with someone eating someone else’s face. Hunting cultures often praise, beseech, and honor their quarry; but when humans become the hunted, reciprocity takes on a whole different tang. David Quammen’s tour de force, Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind, tells in visceral detail just how far this particular sort of one-on-one has gone. I wonder if anyone has ever submitted happily to such a fate, as hunters bid deer and salmon do for them? Now that would be unconditional love.

I’ve experienced just one scrape with actual predation, but it was definitely enough to make me reconsider the desirability of give and take with all that creeps. Canoeing in the bayous of the Trinity River estuary east of Houston, I was peacefully paddling bow in the lead canoe, bewitched by the dwarfish forms of the bald cypress knees and the Gothic arches of their buttresses.

And then...Wham! I was a foot out of the water, leaning at an angle that felt like an imminent roll, screaming an epithet that furnished Our Saviour with a whole new middle name. There was the eye of the most massive alligator I have ever seen—no more than eighteen inches from my face. Happily, my sternsman was expert at keeping a canoe upright, and he maneuvered with his paddle to do so as we slammed back down and the ‘gator slithered slowly out from under us in the mud. Then it burst into deeper water and we watched it power off upstream, the full twelve feet of it visible until it dove. Had we capsized, I would have been dumped right onto the giant herp’s back. Its response, if not to twist and bite, would have been at least a mighty tail-thwack. With a nervous laugh and an expletive of his own, my swamp-rat host pronounced that I was indeed a lucky man.

On the whole, I think I’ll stick with chickadees. And recalling their impatience with my extended but barren digits, I am driven to ask: Is this a fair way to regard the world and its creatures, to ask what’s in it for us? None of us wishes to be out on this great big limb alone, and sometimes a magic moment actually allows us to imagine otherwise. But it might be that the best way to love nature is without expectations. If we can accept that the world doesn’t actually give a fig about us, and love it just the same, then maybe we’re getting somewhere worth being •••

BESIDES COLUMBIA RIVER READER...

What are you reading?

By Alan Rose In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

By Lindsey Hilsum

C

heryl Nelson is fascinated by war correspondents and what drives them to place themselves in harm’s way. And she admires them. “I think it’s important that correspondents go into war zones.”

She enjoyed this biography of Marie Colvin (1956-2012) who was killed covering the siege of Homs in Syria. Some believe Colvin was targeted because of her reporting on the atrocities of the Syrian government.

Her story was made into the 2018 film, “A Private War,” with Rosamunde Pike in the role of Colvin.

Colvin also covered wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka & East Timor, where she lost her right eye.

“My job is to bear witness,” she said.

“This was where her energy came from,” says Cheryl. “It was what she wanted to do.”

The author relied heavily on her diaries and interviewed many people who knew Colvin personally. The book is well-written, says Cheryl (“You feel you were there with her, whether trying to escape from Russia in the snow or in Malaysia with tigers.”) and captures the high energy and danger, and the camaraderie among the correspondents.

“She had a flaky side,” Cheryl admits, reflected in relationship troubles and a drinking problem, but Cheryl admires Colvin’s bravery and courage, despite her flaws. “She had a passion and compassion for the people, especially the children, caught in the midst of war.”

Cheryl believes readers who enjoy biographies and especially those interested in war stories and war correspondents will enjoy this book.

••• Retired from the Longview and Wahkiakum School Districts as an educator, Cheryl Nelson is the office manager for Cathlamet Realty West, tap dances with Tapestry NW, takes violin lessons from Patsy Harbargh, and volunteers for Project READ.

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www.rodmanrealty.com

Cover to Cover Brought to you by Book Sense and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Assn, for week ending Sept 27 2020, based on reporting from the independent bookstores of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. For the Book Sense store nearest you, visit www.booksense.com

Top 10 Bestsellers PAPERBACK FICTION 1. The Overstory Richard Powers, Norton, $18.95 2. The Testaments Margaret Atwood, Anchor, $16.95 3. The Starless Sea Erin Morgenstern, Anchor, $16.95 4. The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead, Anchor, $15.95 5. Little Fires Everywhere Celeste Ng, Penguin, $17 6. Dune Frank Herbert, Ace, $18 7. Normal People Sally Rooney, Hogarth, $17 8. Circe Madeline Miller, Back Bay, $16.99 9. A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles, Penguin, $17 10. Homegoing Yaa Gyasi, Vintage, $16.95

PAPERBACK NON-FICTION 1. My Own Words Ruth Bader Ginsburg, S&S, $18 2. White Fragility Robin DiAngelo, Beacon Press, $16 3. Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $18 4. So You Want to Talk About Race Ijeoma Oluo, Seal Press, $16.99 5. The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson, Vintage, $17.95 6. The Color of Law Richard Rothstein, Liveright, $17.95 7. Born a Crime Trevor Noah, One World, $18 8. My Grandmother’s Hands Resmaa Menakem, Central Recovery Press, $17.95 9. The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander, New Press, $18.99 10. Decisions and Dissents of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Selection Corey Brettschneider (Ed.), Penguin Classics, $1

BOOK REVIEW

By Alan Rose

Hamnet

by Maggie O’Farrell Alfred A. Knopf $26.95

A

ccording to church records, William Shakespeare’s 11-yearold son was buried on August 11, 1596. The cause of Hamnet’s death is not known, but historical speculation leans toward the bubonic plague, even though the plague rarely struck only one or two people from a village and there were few other deaths recorded.

(Kenneth Branagh’s 2018 film, “All Is True,” offers darker speculations on the boy’s death.)

The Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell opts for the plague explanation. In Alan Rose’s new novel, As If Death Summoned, will be released in December.

You can sign up for his monthly WordFest newsletter at www. alan-rose.com

HARDCOVER FICTION 1. The Evening and the Morning Ken Follett, Viking, $36 2. All the Devils Are Here Louise Penny, Minotaur, $28.99 3. The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, $27 4. Next to Last Stand Craig Johnson, Viking, $28 5. Anxious People Fredrik Backman, Atria, $28 6. The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante, Europa Editions, $26 7. Piranesi Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury Publishing, $27 8. Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens, Putnam, $26 9. Transcendent Kingdom Yaa Gyasi, Knopf, $27.95 10. American Dirt Jeanine Cummins, Flatiron Books, $27.99

HARDCOVER NON-FICTION 1. Rage Bob Woodward, S&S, $30 2. Caste Isabel Wilkerson, Random House, $32 3. Solutions and Other Problems Allie Brosh, Gallery Books, $30 4. Untamed Glennon Doyle, The Dial Press, $28 5. How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi, One World, $27 6. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine K. Wilkinson (Eds.), One World, $29 7. Disloyal Michael Cohen, Skyhorse, $32.50 8. Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates, One World, $26 9. Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation Anne Helen Petersen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26 10. Me and White Supremacy Layla Saad, Sourcebooks, $25.99

MASS MARKET 1. Dune Frank Herbert, Ace, $10.99 2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou, Ballantine, $7.99 3. 1984 George Orwell, Signet, $9.99 4. Dune Messiah Frank Herbert, Ace, $9.99, 5. American Gods Neil Gaiman, Morrow, $9.99 6. Lord of the Flies William Golding, Perigee, $11 7. Children of Dune Frank Herbert, Ace, $9.99, 8. The Shining Stephen King, Anchor, $8.99 9. Good Omens Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Morrow, $9.99 10. Animal Farm George Orwell, Signet, $9.99

EARLY & MIDDLE GRADE READERS 1. Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure Jeff Kinney, Amulet, $14.99 2. A Whale of the Wild Rosanne Parry, Lindsay Moore (Illus.), Greenwillow Books, $17.99 3. Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky Kwame Mbalia, Rick Riordan Presents, $8.99 4. Skunk and Badger Amy Timberlake, Jon Klassen (Illus.), Algonquin Young Readers, $18.95 5. The One and Only Bob Katherine Applegate, Patricia Castelao (Illus.), Harper, $18.99 6. Witches of Brooklyn Sophie Escabasse, Random House Graphic, $12.99 7. When Stars Are Scattered Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed, Dial Books, $12.99 8. Guts Raina Telgemeier, Graphix, $12.99 9. Notorious RBG Young Readers’ Edition Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik, Harper, $17.99 10. Stepping Stones Lucy Knisley, Random House Graphic, $12.99

Re-imagining Mrs. Shakespeare one masterful chapter, reminiscent of the end scene in the 2011 film “Contagion,” she traces the plague’s transmission from a flea on a monkey in Alexandria who climbs on an English cabin boy, to Venice, then London, and finally to Warwickshire, where Shakespeare’s family resides.

O’Farrell works with the few facts that are known of this period in Shakespeare’s life and imagines the rest to fashion a historical novel about his relationship with his wife, Anne Hathaway, and their family.

Shakespeare was 18 when they married; Anne was eight years older and already pregnant with their first child. Shakespeare spent much of his adult life in London, where he found enough success as a playwright to be able to purchase the finest house in Stratford-on-Avon for his family. In a codicil to his will, he famously left Anne his “second-best bed.”

From these facts, many have believed that it was not a happy marriage.

O’Farrell has a different interpretation: In her re-imagining, Shakespeare is a restless youth, smitten with the older and unconventional Anne (“Agnes” in the book, as she was called in her father’s will), mysterious and suspect to the town’s people, an herbalist

Mary inhales, shutting her eyes for a moment, as if mustering the final shreds of her patience. “Agnes,” she says, opening her eyes and fixing them on her son, “is with child. Says it’s yours.”

He gives a nod and a shrug, all at the same time, eyeing the broad back of his father, who looms behind his mother, still facing the street…

“Is it?” his mother says, her face white, stretched.

“Is it what?” …

It is Agnes who is the more intriguing and interesting figure. A strong independent woman, she ignores many of the customs of the day, and is quite able to care for her family without a husband nearby. She also has the gift of foresight and, even as a young woman, knows that she will live a long life and that her two children will be standing at her bedside as she is dying. She is confident in this knowledge, and at peace with her destiny. It is we, the readers, who are made uncomfortable, knowing that she will give birth to three children.

•••

“Yours.”

“Is what mine?” …

Mary presses her lips together. “Did you put it there?”

“Did I put what where?”

~ from Hamnet

given to solitary walks in the forest.

Unhappy and frustrated in Stratford, Shakespeare does depart for London, leaving his family behind, but it is to escape his brutish father who wants the sensitive youth to follow him in the glove-making trade, and as much Agnes’ decision as Shakespeare’s.

Drink Good Coffee, Read Good Books Located in the historic Castle Rock Bank Building 20 Cowlitz Street West

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 25

COLUMBIA RIVER

dining guide

Clatskanie, Ore. Fultano’s Pizza 770 E. Columbia River Hwy Family style with unique pizza offerings, hot grill items & more!

Sun-Thurs 11am–9pm. Fri-Sat 11am–10pm. 503-728-2922

Kelso, Wash.

El Ranchero Kelso Ixtapa Fine Mexican Restaurant 640 E. Columbia River Hwy Fine Mexican cuisine. Daily specials.

The best margarita in town. Daily drink specials. Sports bar.

M-Th 11am–9:30pm; Fri & Sat 11am–11:30pm; Sun 11am–9pm. 503-728-3344

Rainier. Ore. Alston Pub & Grub 25196 Alston Rd., Rainier 503-556-4213 11 beers on tap, cocktails.

Open daily 11am.

503-556-9753 Conestoga Pub Cornerstone Café 102 East “A” Street Microbrews, wines & spirits Prime rib Friday & Sat. Open M-F 6am–8pm; Sat-Sun 7am–8pm.

503-556-8772.

1626 West Side Hwy Family Mexican restaurant. Full Mexican menu. Daily specials. Liquor, beer & wine.

Mention this listing for $5 off purchase of $30 or more. Open Mon–Sat 11am–9pm.

360-423-3704.

Longview, Wash.

1335 14th Avenue 18 rotating craft brews, pub fare.

M-W 12 Noon–9pm, Th–Sat 12 Noon– 11pm. Sun 12 Noon–8pm. Local music.

Follow us on Untappd.

See ad, page 13.

The Carriage

Goble Tavern

70255 Columbia River Hwy. (Milepost 31, Hwy. 30) Food, beer & wine + full bar, Live entertainment. 2–10pm M-T-W; 11am–10pm Th-F-Sat 503-556-4090.

117 East 1st Street, Rainier 503-556-4213 Pizza, spaghetti, burgers, beer & wine.

614 Commerce Ave., Longview. 18 varieties of pizza, prepared salads. Beer & wine. Open 11am every day. Inside seating by reservation only.

360-353-3512.

Porky’s Public House 561 Industrial Way, Longview Slow-roasted prime rib Fri & Sat, flat iron steaks, 1/3-lb burgers, fish & chips.

33 draft beers. Full bar. Family-friendly, weekly jazz and acoustic dinner hour sets on Weds. 360-636-1616.

Roland Wines

1106 Florida St., Longview. Authentic Italian wood-fired pizza, wine, and beer.

Casual ambience. 5–9pm Wed-Fri, Sat. 11–3.

The Carriage Restaurant & Lounge 1334 12th Ave. Open from 6am to close. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Full bar, banquet room available for groups, parties, family reunions, etc. in lounge, open 6am. Three happy hours daily (8–10am, 12–2pm, 5–7pm). Group meeting room, free use with $150 food/drink purchases.

360-425-8545.

Teri’s, 3225 Ocean Beach Hwy, Longview. Lunch and dinner.

Burgers, steak, seafood, pasta, specials, fresh NW cuisine. Happy Hour. Full bar.

360-577-0717.

Castle Rock, Wash.

Freddy’s Just for the Halibut.

Cod, halibut & tuna fish and chips, oysters & clams, award-winning clam chowder.

Prime rib every Thurs. Sunday Brunch 9am–1pm. Beer and wine. M-Sat 10am– 8pm, Sunday 11am–8pm.

1110 Commerce 360-414-3288.

See ad, page 27.

Hop N Grape

Luigi’s Pizza

The Original Pietrio’s Pizzeria

215 N. Hendrickson Dr., Port of Kalama.

A Northwest pub and unique bars serving breakfast, lunch & dinner daily.

Handcrafted beer, wine & cocktails, burgers, specialties, incl Kamikaze Seared Ahi & more. Live music, art, history & riverfront hotel rooms. Info & reservations at mcmenamins.com. Bars hours vary; see website for details. Pub open M-Th 7am – midnight; Fri-Sun 7am– 1am. Reservations required for dinner. 360- 673-9210.

St. Helens, Ore.

Sunshine Pizza & Catering 2124 Columbia Blvd.

Hot pizza, cool salad bar. Beer & wine.

503-397-3211 See ad, page 13 .

Scappoose, Ore.

Restaurant & Lounge

Evergreen Pub & Café

115-117 East 1st Street Burgers, halibut, prime rib, full bar.

503-556-9935

Kalama, Wash.

924 15th Ave., Longview Tues–Thurs 11am–7pm; Fri & Sat 11am–8pm. BBQ meat slow-cooked on site. Pulled pork, chicken brisket, ribs, turkey, salmon. World-famous mac & cheese. 360-577-1541

Grant’s at the Monticello Hotel on Longview’s historic Civic

Circle. Casual upscale dining. Seafood, steaks, pasta, burgers. Happy Hour specials 3pm. M-Th 11-9, Fri-Sat 11-10.

360-442-8234. See ad, page 8.

26 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Parker’s Restaurant & Brewery 1300 Mt. St. Helens Way. I-5 Exit 49.

Lunch, Dinner. Burgers, hand-cut steak; seafood and pasta. Restaurant opens 11am, Lounge 12 Noon. Closed Monday.

360-967-2333.

Vault Books & Brew 20 Cowlitz Street West Coffee and specialty drinks, quick eats & sweet treats. See ad, page 25.

Fultano’s Pizza 51511 SE 2nd.

Family style with unique pizza offerings, hot grill items & more! “Best pizza around!”

Sun–Th 11am–9pm; Fri-Sat 11am– 10pm. Full bar service ‘til 10pm Fri & Sat. Deliveries in Scappoose. 503-5435100.

Ixtapa Fine Mexican Restaurant

33452 Havlik Rd. Fine Mexican cuisine.

Daily specials. The best margarita in town. Daily drink specials. M-Th 11am–9:30pm; Fri & Sat 11am–11:30pm; Sun 11am–9pm. 503-543-3017

Warren, Ore. Warren Country Inn 56575 Columbia River Hwy. Fine family dining. Breakfast, lunch & dinner. Fri Prime Rib special, Taco Tuesday. Full bar. M-Th 8am–9:30pm, Fri-Sat 8am–10:30pm, Sun 9am–9pm. Karaoke Fri & Sat.503-410-5479.

Restaurant operators: To advertise in Columbia River Dining Guide, call 360-749-2632

ME AND MY

COLUMBIA RIVER DINING GUIDE

PIANO*

During Coronavirus restrictions, restaurants’ operations may fluctuate. Expect mask requirements and seating / occupancy limits in accordance with State guidelines. Call first if in doubt. Please support our local restaurants — they are vital in the economic and social life of our community!

The Freshest Seafood in Town

Now Serving Beer, Wine, Spirits, Cocktails

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

M-Sat 10am–8pm • Sun 11am–8pm Indoor dining Drive-up window Outdoor Seating

Longview’s premiere seafood restaurant!

Mom sacrifices to replace cardboard ‘piano’ created by daughter, now 86 and still yearning to play

By Doris Mask I’m an 86-year-old lady living in an assisted living facility in Longview.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wished I could take lessons and play a piano.

When you think “Fish!” think Freddy’s. We’re the one with the boat out front.

360-414-3288 360-431-6286

*or other instrument

1110 Commerce Ave. Longview

When I was about 7 years old, I took a cardboard box and with a black marker pen, made a piano. My mother saw my piano box. One day a piano appeared.

It was an ugly-looking upright job. Mom worked at Korten’s music store so I suppose they gave her a good price deal.

She must have sacrificed a lot to buy it.

We were very poor so she didn’t buy any books and of course no lessons.

I am not anywhere near a genius so the best I could do was pick out a few chords and tunes.

There is a beautiful piano in this facility...I would love to take lessons and play it. Unfortunately I don’t have a ride to go anywhere for lessons.

I don’t know where that upright went...?? Anyhow, people who can play piano are so blessed.

A WISH TO COME TRUE

I’m the Umbrella Man, here to make a wish come true!

Market swings making you uneasy?

Let’s talk.

NMLS# 186805

Committed to helping you find

THE RIGHT MORTGAGE.

Programs available to qualified borrowers. Rates and programs subject to change without notice. Underwriting terms and conditions apply.

Longview piano teacher Karla Dudley has let it be known that, once the pandemic conditions allow, she will visit Ms. Mask at her residence, and provide a “Sampler of Lessons” for her on the facility’s piano. Perhaps Mrs. Mask will be performing her favorite tune — tickling the ivories, so to speak — in early 2020. CRR will report the outcome in a future issue.

Carrie Lynn Medack Sr. Loan Officer 360.431.0998

Nick Lemiere CFP®

NMLS#190268

1541 11th Ave., Suite A Longview, WA NMLS#1164433

Member SIPC

“Me & My Piano” Reader Submissions Invited Share your unique story of you and your relationship with a musical instrument in 500 words or less and mail to CRR, 1333 14th Ave., Longview, WA 98632, or email to publisher@crreader.com. Note “Me and My Piano” in the subject line and if possible attach/include a current mugshot and/or a photo of you with your instrument.

Don’t worry about perfect spelling or syntax. If your story is chosen, we will provide editing services and will contact you for additional details or embellishments as needed.

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 27

First-Class MRI Services Available at PIC

P

acific Imaging Center features experienced techs, state-of-the-art imaging equipment, and rapid return of results to your primary care physician.

PIC also offers some of the region’s shortest wait-times. At other imaging facilities, wait-times can be several weeks, while at PIC, they are typically just a few days.

PIC partners with the renowned radiologists at National Orthopedic Imaging Associates.

This means if you have a shoulder scan, it will be analyzed by a radiologist who specializes in shoulders.

PIC is located at Pacific Surgical Institute.

Call 360.501.3444 for more information.

We welcome Kaiser patients with a referral! www.pacificimagingcenter.com

360.501.3444

28 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

the Lower Columbia

Informer

by Perry Piper

At right: Our newest location: Cathlamet Realty West, Cathlamet.

Getting good news out

D

uring these pandemic dark ages when people are feeling isolated and apprehensive, it’s more important than ever to get the good news out to via the Reader.

We’d like to thank the box hosts for welcoming the Reader at their businesses. It’s part of my job, alongside our regional delivery crew, to distribute CRR each month. My route is the

Where to find the new Reader

THANK YOU

to our Sidewalk Box hosts!

You are more important and more appreciated now than ever!

Photo by Cheryl Nelson

Goble/Columbia City/St. Helens/ Scappoose loop. It takes a full day for my route and involves cleaning many of the Reader boxes, one of which is pictured to the right. Every so often, the boxes can become utterly filthy with a coat of mud that must be scraped off. You’d never know this though, because we usually clean things up before it gets as bad as the Brand X “competition” boxes next to ours...*cough* *cough*.

It’s delivered all around the River by the 15th of each month. Here’s the list of handy, regularlyrefilled sidewalk box and rack locations where you can pick up a copy any time of day and even in your bathrobe ...

WESTPORT LONGVIEW Wauna mill U.S. Bank parking lot Post Office Bob’s (rack, main check-out) RAINIER In front of 1232 Commerce Ave Post Office In front of 1323 Commerce Ave Cornerstone YMCA Rainier Hardware Fred Meyer (rack, service desk area) (rack, entry) Teri’s Earth ‘n’ Sun (on Hwy 30) Grocery Outlet El Tapatio (entry rack) Fibre Fed’l CU - Commerce Ave Grocery Outlet Monticello Hotel (front entrance) DEER ISLAND Kaiser Permanente Deer Island Store St. John Medical Center (rack, Park Lake Café) COLUMBIA CITY - Post Office LCC Student Center WARREN Indie Way Diner Warren Country Inn Columbia River Reader Office ST HELENS 1333 14th Ave. Chamber of Commerce KELSO Sunshine Pizza Heritage Bank Post Office Visitors’ Center / Kelso-Longview Olde Town (Wild Currant) Chamber of Commerce Safeway KALAMA SCAPPOOSE Fibre Fed’l CU Post Office To find the 24/7 Kalama Shopping Center Road Runner pick-up point

corner of First & Fir Fultano’s nearest you, McMenamin’s Harbor Lodge Ace Hardware visit crreader.com and click “Find the WOODLAND WARRENTON, OR Magazine” tab.

Visitors’ Center Fred Meyer CASTLE ROCK Lacie Rha’s Cafe (32 Cowlitz W.) CATHLAMET Cathlamet Pharmacy Parker’s Restaurant (box, entry) Tsuga Gallery Visitors’ Center Cathlamet Realty West 890 Huntington Ave. N. Puget Island Ferry Landing Exit 49, west side of I-5 RYDERWOOD Café porch CLATSKANIE Post Office Chevron / Mini-Mart Fultano’s Pizza

SKAMOKAWA Skamokawa General Store NASELLE Appelo Archives & Café Johnson’s One-Stop

The best part about the job, and this is more common in the “heartland” of St. Helens and Scappoose, is being recognized on the street and congratulated for our involvement with the Reader. It’s great knowing we touch the lives of

many people in the community! Say “Hello next time you see me or one of the Reader delivery crew fill up our mighty monoliths.

••• Editor’s note: We have long joked that our SidewalkBoxes and outside racks allow Reader readers to pick up a copy any time of day or night, even in their bathrobes. Since the Covid-19 closures and protocols, we’ve been unable to distribute to all the usual indoor p l a c e s . We ’ v e modified distribution to make sure the boxes are santitized and refilled regularly.

Perry Piper keeps his “electric thumbs” on the pulse of emerging technologies.

He is CRR’s IT manager and graphic designer. He is Auto, Home, Flood, Boat, RV, ATV also available Business & Commercial Insurance & Bonding to assist with 360-274-6991 computer and 25 A. ST. SW • CASTLE ROCK • 866-514-3356 technology LIFE • DISABILITY • LTCI needs. See ad, BUSINESS CONTINUATION FUNDING page 21.

INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP MEDICAL

FAST FRIENDLY SERVICE!

Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 29

Miss Manners

Outings & Events from page 6

would send more money for a college graduation gift than a high school graduation gift — and therein lies our dilemma.

The girls are both currently living at home, and while we would obviously send a separate card/check to each of them, it feels odd to send one greatniece more money than the other. As I mentioned, they are both very mature, and I don’t think they would question the differing amounts, but I still haven’t been able to write the checks.

GENTLE READER: Then refrain.

That is the problem with giving money as a present: The beneficiary knows exactly how much the gift is worth.

While your great-nieces may not question it now, it will soon occur to the younger one, at least, that her status is not going to change. You can avoid this with equal checks, but Miss Manners instead recommends

Submission Guidelines Letters to the Editor (up to 200 words) relevant to the publication’s purpose — helping readers discover and enjoy the good life in the Columbia River region, at home and on the road — are welcome. Longer pieces, or excerpts thereof, in response to previously-published articles, may be printed at the discretion of the publisher and subject to editing and space limitations.

Items sent to CRR will be considered for publication unless the writer specifies otherwise. Writer’s name and phone number must be included; anonymous submissions will not be considered.

Political Endorsements CRR is a monthly publication serving readers in several towns, three counties, two states and beyond and does not publish Letters to the Editor that are endorsements or criticisms of political candidates or controversial issues. (Paid ad space is available.)

Unsolicited submissions may be considered, provided they are consistent with the publication’s purpose. Advance contact with the editor is recommended. Information of general interest submitted by readers may be used as background or incorporated in future articles.

Outings & Events calendar (free listing): Events must be open to the public. Non-profit organizations and the arts, entertainment, educational and recreational opportunities and community cultural events will receive listing priority. Fundraisers must be sanctioned/sponsored by the benefiting non-profit organization. Businesses and organizations wishing to promote their particular products or services are invited to purchase advertising..

choosing presents that reflect their differing tastes — not the relative value of the recipient’s achievements.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Out of habit, when I make a purchase, I routinely say “thank you” at the end of the transaction.

It is my expectation that the person on the other end of the transaction say the same thing, and most do. But some, mostly younger people, respond with “You’re welcome.”

I am rather put-off by this. I would expect the customer to be told “thank you” even if the customer says it first.

Thoughts?

GENTLE READER: Is there not enough rudeness around, that you must quibble with courtesy?

It is pleasant, but not obligatory, for cashiers and customers to thank each other. But the correct response to “Thank you” is “You are welcome.”

Miss Manners is pleased that it has not been entirely replaced by “No problem.”

••• (Please send your questions to Miss M a n n e r s a t h e r w e b s i t e , w w w. missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

Performing & Fine Arts, Music Art, Theatre, Literary Recreation, Outdoors Gardening, History, Pets, Self-Help As we re-open in Phase 2 and 3, please submit info (deadlines below), and watch these pages for Outings & Events details!

See ad, page 12

Featured artists:

BROADWAY GALLERY

Oct: Gallery members Mary Fortner-Smith, jewelry; Adrienne Stacey, watercolor & multi-media art

1418 Commerce Avenue , Longview, Wash • Tues-Sat 11–4 Social Distancing will be observed, Gallery Members will wear masks & Cleaning procedures followed according to state mandates. We will require our customers to wear masks. Keep updated on our website.

See new work on our FaceBook and Instagram Page: the-broadwaygallery.com , Broadway Gallery on Facebook, and broadway_ gallery_longview on Instagram.

Nov: Gallery members Lorena Birk, wildlife paintings & clay sculptures; Susan Supola, acrylic & ink paintings First Thursdays and classes are canceled until further notice, due to Pandemic.

We have Artisan Masks $7

Voted one of top 3 Galleries in SW Washington! Free Gift wrapping plus Layaway!

Holiday Opening Nov 14

TAKE A

HIKE

HOW TO PUBLICIZE YOUR NON-PROFIT EVENT IN CRR Send your non-commercial community event basic info (name of event, beneficiary, sponsor, date & time, location, brief description and contact info) to publisher@crreader.com Or mail or hand-deliver (in person or via mail slot) to: Columbia River Reader 1333-14th Ave Longview, WA 98632

Submission Deadlines Events occurring: Nov 25 – Jan 15:

by Nov. 10 for Nov. 25 Holiday issue Jan 18 – Feb. 15:

by Dec. 26 for Jan. 15 issue.

Calendar submissions are considered for inclusion, subject to lead time, general relevance to readers, and space limitations. See Submission Guidelines, at left.

30 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

This friendly club welcomes newcomers.

For more info please call the hike leader or visit mtsthelensclub.org.

RT(round trip) distances are from Longview.E=easy, M=moderate, S=strenuous, e.g.=elevation gain.

with Mt. St. Helens Club Due to the uncertainty of the pandemic, please note the following: 1) Hikes will take place only if the hike leader thinks it is safe to do so on that date.

2) Hiking groups may be limited, at the discretion of the hike leader.

3) Call the hike leader for any further information or instruction.

4) Always be safe and protect yourself, be considerate of others during this pandemic.

Wed, Oct. 21, 16 Lake Sacajawea (E) Walk around the whole lake (3+ miles) or walk half the lake (1+ mile).

Leaders: Trudy & Ed 360-414-1160.

The Club’s new Hike Schedule is in the works. Check next issue for updates or visit mtsthelensclub.org for more info about the club.

Raindance

Acupuncture & Bodywork, Inc.

Healing in a time-honored and holistic way Acupuncture & Chinese Herbal Medicine Most Insurances Accepted

Amy L. Schwartz, L.Ac, LMP 208 Church Street Kelso, WA

360.751.0411

Community Pride

RAINIER CEMETERY DISTRICT: ON THE BALLOT NOV 3

‘We can only pay our bills if somebody dies’ Submitted by the Rainier Cemetery District Volunteer Board of Directors

T

he Rainier Cemetery District gets 50 percent of its income from tax income, and 50 percent from sale of graves and services.

The district is drained of property tax income each year, months before the new property tax payments begin in November. They struggle to meet monthly bills, let alone have extra cash to maintain aging equipment or other unexpected expenses during the busiest time of the year.

What it takes The cost of keeping district equipment running and fueled is a major expense with 39 acres spread over the 30-mile (north to south) district. Staying on a biweekly schedule for each of the 12 locations is difficult while towing a heavy trailer and equipment on narrow, winding country roads, getting from one location to another. The many hours spent on a lawn mower, and swinging a gas edger around thousands of headstones, and picking up garbage and other debris from cemetery grounds leaves very little time for the one employee to spend in the office. Keeping ahead of

messages, paperwork, meetings with the public gravesite sales, burials and the many other services, is almost impossible during the mowing season.

Awaiting funding, the district has put many tasks on a wait list for years; A few of those are major expenses: hiring support staff; replacing aging equipment (mowers, truck; changing the district’s name (mentioned each time we have put the levy on the ballot); updating signage at all cemeteries, i.e. Apiary, Cedar Hill, Green Mountain N & S (above), Hudson, Knights Of Pythias (left), Kobel, Maplewood, Mayger, Murray Hill, Neer City, Stewart Creek, and Woodbine.

Burials in these cemeteries go back to the early 1800s. The maintenance of all cemeteries is done by the Sexton who handles all the business for the Rainier Cemetery District. The sexton’s responsibilities go far beyond digging and covering a grave. Other duties include making recordings of death each time one occurs, as mandated by the State of Oregon; handling inquiries from the public about the location of gravesites; selling gravesites in 10 of our 12 cemeteries; caring for the condition of graves in all 12 cemeteries; caring for all landscaping of all cemeteries;. which means constant mowing April to September, in addition to pruning, clipping, moving dirt, etc; placing headstones and urns for families in all 12 cemeteries; maintenance of all district equipment and property; everything else required of someone handling the business of death.

Proposed Levy The cost of the requested tax levy for a PROPERTY OWNER, would be $0.05 per $1,000 of real property value. Example: A $300,000 property would be taxed $15 a year, a $500,000 property, $25. That would seem a small cost to show respect to the dead — and those who will be dead — and buried Specializing in historic vertical grain Douglas-fir flooring, 3.25” wide.

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in any of the 12 beautiful locations our district owns. Cemeteries contribute to our quality of life and reflect our respect for our shared heritage and the character of our communities.

A lovely place to be buried In Portland, a “premier gravesite” location can cost $10,000, while a spot in some of the most peaceful settings you could ask for, here in the Rainier Cemetery District, is less than $800. And RCD cemeteries come with all the wonderful fragrances and sounds of nature, rather than the smells and sounds of Portland’s civilization encroaching upon it. Isn’t it well worth a few dollars a year per household to keep our cemeteries in the condition our forefathers intended when they made this land available and created our cemetery district in 1950?

More than 8,500 registered voters live within the Rainier Cemetery District boundaries. Last May, 3,350 of them voted on the tax levy measure.

52% of them voted against paying for ongoing maintenance and safe working conditions for the one employee that has to do it ALL. If you want to make an impact in your community, you must VOTE! Please support the Cemetery District Levy on the Nov. 3 ballot. Thank you, from the Rainier Cemetery District Board of Directors.

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Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020 / 31

Astronomy

Mars is back!

Red planet resumes position in opposition to Earth... but exhibits no ill will toward us! By Greg Smith

T

hat bright red dot in the sky is Mars. It is back at its position in line with the Earth and Sun. That means that at midnight Mars is at its highest point in the southern sky. This midnight position is called “opposition,” as it is opposite the Earth from the sun. The evenings make it easy to see in the eastern and southeaster sky. Time to get that telescope out and see if you can spot an ice cap or dark shadowy features on the surface of the planet. The larger the scope, the more detail you will see.

Mars will be rising just after sunset (7:20pm Oct. 15) and through the rest of October and the first part of November it will rise earlier and earlier, so it will be higher in the sky as darkness falls.

REAL ESTATE TIPS

by Mike Wallin

Common defects found during home inspections

T

wo points in every home sale have both the buyer and the seller chewing their fingernails: the appraisal and the home inspection. The results of either may lead to the reopening of negotiations, slowing down the transaction.

Here are three of the most common problems found during home inspections, and the easy, DIY solutions you can undertake before putting your home on the market:

Exterior caulking and sealer are missing This is the most common home inspection problem.

Caulk, applied at joints, around windows and nail holes prevents moisture from entering the home at these points. It also helps keep out bugs and helps with insulating the interior of the home.

Doors need adjusting It’s easy to get used to problems with doors.

A handle that can only be turned one way to open the door? Rather than fix it, a new habit is born – we just get used to turning it the wrong way to open it. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. 15.4% of home inspections surveyed had door problems.

Problems with faucets

Nearly 15% of home inspections surveyed

by RepairPricer.com had a problem with at least one faucet. Leaky, dripping faucets are another easy DIY fix. The most difficult part is determining what’s making it leak.

COMMON HOME DEFECTS

Faulty switches or electrical outlets Cracks, cosmetic issues in sheet rock GFCI deficiencies Light fixture problems Smoke alarms out of date, not working Improper drainage on the lot Exposed nails, problems with shingles

For the full article visit www.mikewallin.com

https://mikewallin.com/real-estate-blog/most-common-defects-found-during-the-home-inspection/

Mike Wallin

Five Star Broker, REALTOR

Highest Rated Locally 360-560-3636 CELL

michaelkwallin@gmail.com 1140-11th Ave., Longview, WA By appointment only

32 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Feel free to reach out to us if with questions on this or any aspect of the home purchase process.

Mars was famous for its canals in the early part of the 20th century. Some very imaginative interpretations of the colorations of the surface of Mars allowed even famous astronomers to try to prove that intelligent beings had created these water channels.

These ideas prevailed when Orson Wells did his famous radio program on the Martian invasion of New Jersey.

The following movies based on that radio program were box office hits.

When the first NASA probes went to Mars, that was washed away as all that could be seen was a dry, dusty, and seemingly dead planet. We now have many landers and orbiters exploring and mapping the surface of this intriguing planet.

China, India, and the US have new probes and satellites on their way right now. Next year will see these

mechanical explorers arrive and begin new tests, even to see if there is or was microbial life at all on Mars.

Autumn is known as the water season, as the rainy season in the northern hemisphere starts. It is the time of the water-related constellations. These include Aquarius, the water barer; Pisces, the two fish; Cetus, the whale or great fish; and Eridanus, the river.

These all lie low on the southern horizon. Mars is located in Pisces this year. When you are looking at Mars, you have found the constellation of Pisces.

As stated in the sky report on the facing page, the star cluster Pleaides (also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45)is easily visible now. It resides in the constellation of Taurus.

It is interesting that the brightest star in Taurus, a red giant known as Aldebaran, has a known planet orbiting it. This planet is several times larger than Jupiter. When Aldebaran was a normal star, this planet is believed to have been in its habitable zone. As stars go, it is “close by” at only 65 light years away. Aldebaran is red because it is in its death spiral toward dying in a nova. It is a large puffball of gas 88 times the diameter of the sun.

Longview resident Greg Smith is past president of Friends of Galileo. Meet him and other club members at monthly meetings in Longview. For more info about FOG, visit friendsofgalileo.com.

FROM THE PET DEPT. Going Trick-or-Treating to drive-thrus this year in my owner’s new white Tesla.” ~Ginger Victoria Findlay’s dog, aka Gretchen

It’s that time of the year again. Call me “Lucky” and don’t be afraid. ~Smokey Man in the Kitchen’s cat

Astronomy

SKY REPORT

Oct 15 – Nov 25

Looking Up

By Greg Smith Evening Sky Halloween will have a full Moon. This will be the second full moon in the month of October and is considered to be a ‘Blue Moon’. This is where we get the phrase of ‘Once in a Blue Moon’.

There is another version, but its definition is complicated and happens even rarer than two full moons in a calendar month. We’ll just go with the simpler version.

Jupiter and Saturn will be gone from the sky at the end of October and will not see them in the evening sky till next summer. They will be visible in the mornings next Spring.

Mars will be rising just after sunset (6:45pm) and is visible all night. Mars will give great views of itself as it is at its closest approach to Earth and will still be just a bright reddish star. A telescope will allow you to see Mars as a round object with maybe some dark markings on it. It is now southern summer on Mars, so the bright ice cap is small and hard to see. The bigger the telescope, the more detail you will see.

Morning Sky Venus bright in the eastern sky by 5:30 am and will remain visible until disappearing in the morning sunlight.

Night Sky Spectacle: Pleiades (M45)

One of the oldest known and most famous star clusters in the sky. To the naked eye it looks like a tiny cup and has been mistaken for the little dipper by those unfamiliar with the night sky.

It will be rising just after Mars and will be located just to the northwest of Mars. The Pleiades is also known as the Seven Sisters, but only six stars are visible without optical aide. Use your binoculars and you will see a large number of stars. It lies 444 light years away. If you have a good size telescope (8” or larger) you may get a glimpse of the wispy dust cloud that is passing through the star cluster. Many photos show this cloud due to the long timeexposure of the photograph.

The Pleaides resides in the constellation Taurus the Bull and is the forewarning of the arrival of the great Orion the Hunter. Which will be rising just be fore 11pm and will be the dominate constellation for the upcoming Winter.

Slow down long enough to plan ahead.

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the spectator

PLUGGED IN TO

COWLITZ PUD

by ned piper

Thinking Outside the Box

Autumn Amusements

A

s we fully enter Autumn, let me suggest a few activities you may enjoy. If you’re like me, you’re itching to explore something that doesn't involve being glued to the news on the tube. I have things in mind for cooks, movie buffs, Robert Michael Pyle fans, and lovers of genealogy/ country drives.

A morning treat I got up earlier than usual this morning to go the grocery store for a couple of pears. I needed them because while proofreading this issue of the Reader last night, I discovered “Man in the Kitchen” Paul Thompson’s best guess at his mother’s recipe for PineapplePear Preserves (P+P sponsor spot, page 16). I decided to whip up a batch of this delicioussounding condiment to have on my toast.

(Editor’s note: It might also be good on hot dogs or as an appetizer with crackers and cream cheese.)

I found a can of crushed pineapple in our pantry and an orange on the counter. I figured any recipe that includes a cup of sugar simply must be good. After bringing the mixture to a boil, I let it simmer for 20 minutes. The spoonful I tasted after it cooled was incredibly tasty. I encourage you try it, too.

Movie premiere in Morton, Wash.

Last month, we drove to the Roxy Theater in Morton for the premier of “The Dark Divide,” a film inspired by renowned butterfly expert Robert Michael Pyle. If his name sounds familiar, you have been paying attention. Dr. Pyle is featured every month in the Reader (The Natural World, page 23).

He is also the poet whose work appears in CRRPress’s first book, The Tidewater Reach: Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures (with Judy VanderMaten).

The storyline of the film traces a portion of Pyle’s life, a one-man summertime adventure and life-changing trek through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, America’s most important unprotected wilderness area.

By Alice Dietz

W

hat has been normal about 2020? Not much, but one things remains consistent if not improved; our community’s generous hearts.

In 2018, we set out to do our Eat for Heat Fundraiser farm to table, family style dinner. The purpose was to create a different type of event that brings people together at one table, sharing plates while supporting our local economy to help provide significant funding to the Warm Neighbor Fund which assists those in need.

When trying to decide if or what we could do in 2020, the idea of a meal kit sounded somewhat terrifying and work intensive. I told my supervisor my idea with the caveat of “I’m not sure I should put this idea into the atmosphere.” I’m glad I did.

This year’s Eat for Heat meal kits were a nicely Visit darkdividefilm. packaged box that included all the local ingredients com for info, the trailer, to make a simple and delicious dinner from the and choices for “virtual comfort of your own home. The idea was met with viewing.” Or wait until a lot of support — from Seattle to Portland — and Nov. 10, when it will be we quadrupled our sales and received an outpouring available on most VOD of support from local businesses in order to put the formats (Netflix, Amazon boxes together.

Prime, etc). Pyle is played The local businesses we worked with included Matt’s by actor David Cross, who Custom Meats, Hop ‘n’ Grape, Roland Wines, is getting good reviews for Kalama Sourdough Bread, Watershed Garden Works, a dramatic departure from Northwest Deli and Sweet Mabel’s Cheesecakes. his usual comedic roles.

I’m hoping by listing these great parrons, you’ll be It’s an enjoyable movie. inspired to support one of them soon!

Drive and wander ••• To get out of the house for a nice autumn drive, head Alice Dietz is Communications/Public Relations Manager to just west of Rainier, at Cowlitz PUD. Reach her at adietz@cowlitzpud.org, or where you can visit three 360-501-9146. cemeteries all with the address 75900 Larson Road: Hudson, Woodbine, and Green Mountain Cemeteries. I have found strolling through tombstones interesting, mainly to look at birth and death dates, family plots and the occasional unique comment etched into the headstone. Something like, “I told you I was sick.”

Some cemeteries are well kept, some not so much.

In the case of the Rainier Cemetery District, they employ only one person to manage the day-to-day business and mow and trim the grounds in their 12 locations, covering 37 acres. All things considered, they look good, and add a lot to the landscape.

If you’d like to see for yourself, drive west from Rainier on Highway 30 toward Clatskanie. Turn left on Larson Road, like you were going to the high school. You might even discover a long lost relative.

If not, the view is still serene and the air fresh.

•••

Paid for by Bruce Pollock4CowlitzPUD • Kalama, WA 98626

34 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020

Longview native and former insurance broker Ned Piper is semi-retired, still assisting with CRR but finding more time to write and to putz in the yard and kitchen.

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36 / Columbia River Reader / October 15, 2020