Columbia River Reader October 2022

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.

IN FULL VIEW

Rex Ziak $29.95

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 $21.95

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.

DOWN AND UP

Rex Ziak $18.95

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

THE TIDEWATER REACH

Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures

By Robert Michael Pyle and Judy VanderMaten. In three editions:

• Boxed Signature Edition Color and BW $50;

• Collectors Edition,Trade paperback. Color and B/W $35

• Trade paperback B/W $25

DISPATCHES FROM THE DISCOVERY TRAIL

A Layman’s Lewis & Clark

By Michael O. Perry.

In two editions:

• Boxed Signature Edition, Color and BW with Souvenir Bookmark $50

• Collectors Edition,Trade paperback. Color and B/W $35

All book and

Washington State sales tax.

at 1333 14th, Longview 11-3 M-W-F or by appt. Or Call 360-749-1021

360-749-1021

As we’ve been working on People+Place

Then and Now, for some reason I’ve kept a particular photo, yet un-used in the series, on my pasteboard, in view off to the side on my computer monitor. It’s a charming photo taken near the Monticello Hotel in 1927. It warms my heart, partly because like these girls, I, too, was a doll lover as a child.

Still tucked away in the attic, my beloved Lori —who received a full body transplant at the Portland Doll Hospital after I took her into the bathtub with me — lies alongside dear Toodles, a “baby” doll with fully jointed arms and legs who arrived wearing a frilly pink dress. I can still recall my utter delight, inhaling the delicious “new doll” (vinyl) scent as I opened the box on my birthday when I was about 5.

As Fall progresses with an equally-delightfullyscented, lingering Indian Summer, it is good

to see local performing arts and other activities coming back onto the scene.

The Clatskanie Arts Commission kicked off their new season the day before CRR went to press —

I scrambled so I could take time out to go hear the Astoria Tuba Quartet and Brownsmead Flats — and will present another great show, a Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons tribute, on Nov. 13. The Southwest Washington Symphony opens their season Oct. 22-23 with a classical concert at Lower Columbia College. And Longview’s Columbia Theatre shows “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with live music(!) Nov. 19. (See event ads and listings, pages 36-37.

Meanwhile, baseball fans are enjoying an afterglow following the Mariners’ thrilling win on Oct. 8 and can look forward to the exciting, pre-World Series playoff games on the horizon.

Combine all this with Halloween festivities, early holiday bazaars, community theatre, art exhibits and studio tours, and football in all its manifestations … surely, nobody can deny this is a wonderful time of year!

But wait! There’s a surprise bonus! Don’t miss the Annual Doll Tea, organized by members of Epsilon Sigma Alpha, on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 3 (see story, page 37). I’m looking forward to it and will be taking Lori and Toodles along. If you go, look for me there and I’ll be delighted to introduce you to my girls.

Happy Fall!

Sue Piper

We will

Date was wrongly stated in Sept. issue. See corrected full-size ad, page 9.

Publisher/Editor: Susan P. Piper

Columnists and

Tracy Beard Hal Calbom Alice Dietz Erin Govednik Joseph Govednik

Jim LeMonds Michael Perry Ned Piper

Robert Michael Pyle Marc Roland Alan Rose Alice Slusher Greg Smith Jeff Stookey

Debra Tweedy Judy VanderMaten

Editorial/Proofreading

Bauman, Michael Perry, Marilyn Perry, Tiffany Dickinson, Debra Tweedy, Sue Lane-Koontz

Manager: Ned Piper, 360-749-2632

Columbia River Reader,

NORPAC CEO Craig Anneberg at the mill’s recycling facility.

is North America’s top-producer of pulp and paper products in terms of

according to industry sources.

by hal Calbom

Columbia River Reader is published monthly, with 14,000 copies distributed in the Lower Columbia region. Entire contents copyrighted; No reproduction of any kind allowed without express written permission of Columbia River Reader, LLC. Opinions expressed herein, whether in editorial content or paid ad space, belong to the writers and advertisers and are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Reader.

Submission guidelines: page 36. General Ad info: page 42. Ad Manager: Ned Piper 360-749-2632.

In this Issue

CRREADER.COM

Girls at the doll contest after Easter eggs had been distributed by the Lions Club. Courtesy of Longview Public Library digital archives.

AND

Jaime Tovar

REFERENCES

Lawn Maintenance, Tree Planting, Cutting & Disposal, Blackberry Removal, Fence Repairs, Painting, Moving, Cleaning & Pressure Washing

By Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Are cowboy boots appropriate for a barn wedding? Attire is “cocktail dress,” and I’m wearing a belowthe-knee dress.

GENTLE READER: Go right ahead. What would be out of place in a barn, for reasons Miss Manners does not care to mention, would be satin heels.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What do you think about entertainers, celebrities and “common folks” on stage and TV, especially on game shows, applauding themselves?

I’ve always thought this was selfaggrandizement, but it seems to be increasingly commonplace.

GENTLE READER: Yes, selfaggrandizement is rampant, and not just on social media.

Miss Manners knows that it is commonplace to declare that it is important to love oneself. But that does not make public displays of that affection palatable to others.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I don’t drink coffee. I have no objection to it, I just have never liked it. But I am a tea drinker.

Some friends acknowledge this; others don’t -- and who, truly, can keep track of all the likes and dislikes of our friends? I don’t mind.

So, after a meal at the home of friends, whether old or new, when coffee (and only coffee) is offered, I always decline. However, I

long for a cup of something to join the rest. Usually I just sip from my water glass, but that’s difficult if coffee is served away from the dinner table.

I always have tea bags in my purse -- a habit from years of traveling for work. When offered coffee, could I reply that I don’t drink coffee, but ask if I could have a cup of hot water, since I have a tea bag to use?

(I did this once, some time back, and was told by the hostess that she had no means of boiling water -- even though a microwave and stove were in the kitchen -- but that she could give me some water from the faucet. It made a lousy cup of tea.)

GENTLE READER: The etiquette rule that prevents guests from asking for things not offered is not absolute. You can ask if there is pepper when offered salt. You can ask for mustard when there is ketchup. And you can ask for tea when there is coffee -- without, please, offering your own tea bag.

Miss Manners also allows guests to ask for water so long as they do not tell us about the pills they are taking, and for the bathroom so long as they do not tell us why they need one.

In all such cases, the question should be phrased apologetically, and a negative answer received gracefully. In no case should the guests offer their own

solutions -- although, in the bathroom example, they may need to apologize for an early, hasty departure.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it ever OK to use poor etiquette intentionally?

When my sister married someone who already had a child, I went out of my way to include the child at holidays and remember her birthday. I sent her many gifts, but never once got a thank-you or even an acknowledgment that she had received them.

Now that she’s an adult, I have sent her wedding shower gifts (I live very far away and didn’t attend the event), and still never received a thank-you. I have now received an invitation to her wedding, even though I had told my sister not to invite me as I knew I could not attend. Space is limited, so I suspected the bride would rather invite someone she actually knows, anyway.

Out of obligation, I went to the website for the wedding registry, and there was not a single gift that cost less than $350. I decided that I was not spending that much money on a person who hasn’t ever bothered to acknowledge or thank me for any gift I have ever given her. In fact, I decided I was not sending a gift at all.

I know it is impolite, but I don’t care anymore. Is this behavior of mine justifiable?

GENTLE READER: While she will never countenance poor etiquette (also known as rudeness), Miss Manners can relieve you of buying yet another a present for your niece, who is evidently not grateful to receive them.

You will be astonished to hear that, contrary to almost universal belief, a wedding invitation is not a bill. Presents are voluntary, although it is thought that if you care enough about the couple to attend the wedding, you will want to send them a remembrance.

Understandably, you do not. So don’t.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is there a correct way for a customer to act at the checkout counter?

I usually stay silent, except to answer and return pleasantries if the cashier offers them. I occasionally glance at the total and assist in bagging if the cashier is alone. I have had similarly quiet cashiers; often, the only exchange during the whole process is “Have a nice day” and “Thanks, you too.”

FROM THE DISCOVERY TRAIL

EPISODE 18 Shooting the Rapids

By Michael O. Perry

October, 1805, after fighting their way up the Missouri River and across the Rocky Mountains, the Corps of Discovery must have been happy to float down the Snake River to present-day Pasco, Washington. Clark wrote the Columbia “river is remarkably clear and crouded with salmon in many places… Salmon may be seen at the depth of 15 or 20 feet.”

In

Hot Dog!

Thinking they were diseased, the men were afraid to eat dead, spawned-out salmon lying along the shore, so they purchased 40 dogs as they began their journey down the Columbia. More than 250 dogs would be eaten during the journey. Lewis wrote that he preferred dog meat to lean venison or elk, but Clark wrote, “I have not become reconciled to the taste of this animal.”

The abundant fish allowed for a dense population of Indians in permanent villages. It was a rare day that the Corps didn’t see settlements while floating down the Columbia. There were no trees as far as the eye could see, so they had to purchase firewood from the Indians.

.... happy to float down ...

At first it wasn’t exactly easy street. They weren’t used to making dugout canoes. Their axes were crude for making boats. If the Indians hadn’t shown them how, it would have taken longer to come up with something resembling a boat. The hull was not shaped anything special. It was just a log floating down the river with men in it and a bunch of baggage. If it got a little bit off kilter, it turned over. They had a lot of trouble even getting down the Clearwater, until they got to the Snake. The boats would get hung up on sand bars and gravel bars and get cross-wise and lose their cargo or lose the men. One of the most amazing things to me was when they chose the people to go on this expedition, they didn’t choose people who could swim. That was not a criteria. Half of them couldn’t.”

On October 22nd, they reached Celilo Falls, where the river was funneled through a series of drops totaling 38 feet. Indians were hired to help portage the cargo around the falls while the men rode their five dugout canoes down all but one of the drops. Shooting the rapids was a foolish thing to do, but Lewis and Clark were in a hurry to reach their goal and were reluctant to spend the time to portage around every rapid. There would be several more dangerous sections on the Columbia in the next 55 miles.

On October 24th they found nine miles of narrow channels with fast currents and eddies at The Dalles. Clark wrote, “at this place the water of this great river is compressed into a Chanel between two rocks not exceeding forty five yards wide and continues for a ¼ of a mile when it again widens… The whole of the Current of this great river must at all Stages pass thro’ this narrow chanel.” Clark was dismayed by “the horrid appearance of this agitated gut Swelling, boiling & whorling in every direction.”

… they reached Celilo Falls…

The Falls were the beginning of more than 50 river miles that also included the Short Narrows and the Long Narrows, which today we know jointly as The Dalles. This difficult passage through lava flows and columnar basalt ended with the Cascades of the Columbia. Moving quickly downstream in the autumn of 1805 — even though slowed by the portages — the Corps passed through this region approaching the Cascades of the Columbia in 13 days.

Michael Perry enjoys local history and travel. His popular 33-installment Lewis & Clark series appeared in Columbia River Reader’s early years and helped shape its identity and zeitgeist. After two encores, the series has been expanded and published in a book. Details, pages 2, 43.

There was no easy portage, so the non-swimmers walked along the shore while the rest of the men shot the rapids. The Indians were astonished and lined up to watch the crazy white men drown themselves, undoubtedly waiting for the chance to help themselves

The Columbia River Plateau is formed by basalt flows, in present Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Retreating glaciers of the last Ice Age left an ice dam trapping glacial melt water. This ice dam broke and re-formed as many as 40 times, releasing vast torrents of water westward with an estimated force 60 times that of the Amazon River.

in april 2021 we introDuceD a reviseD version of Michael Perry’s popular series which was expanded In the new book, Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, edited by Hal Calbom and published by CRRPress. It includes an in-depth author interview and new illustrations and commentary.

A

Native Americans fishing at Celilo Falls prior to the Falls being flooded in 1956 after construction of The Dalles Dam. U.S. Army CorpS of EnginEErS

Lewis & Clark

to their equipment after the canoes capsized. Amazingly, all five canoes made it through without serious incident.

While visiting the many Indian villages, the men were exposed to a new problem. Clark wrote, “The Flees which the party got on them at the upper & great falls, are very troublesom and dificuelt to get rid of, particularly as the me[n] have not a Change of Clothes to put on, they Strip off their Clothes and kill the flees, dureing which time they remain neckid.”

The end is near

After passing Celilo Falls, Clark observed what he described as sea otters and seals. Since sea otters never enter fresh water, they were undoubtedly seals and sea lions. As the scorched, barren hills transitioned into moist, green tree- covered mountains, it began raining. Forty five miles below The Dalles, they reached “The Great Shute,” now called Cascade Locks. After portaging around the cascades on November 2nd, they passed “Beaten Rock” (today’s Beacon Rock) and camped at Rooster Rock. Clark noticed 9-inch tidal effects on the river at Rooster Rock, and 18 inches the next day.

On November 3rd, they passed the “Quick Sand River” (today’s Sandy River) and camped on Government Island where I-205 now crosses the Columbia. Joseph Whitehouse wrote, “we met Several Indians in a canoe who were going up the River. They Signed to us that in two Sleeps we Should See the Ocean vessels and white people.”

On November 4th, they saw an Indian village on Sauvie Island, near St. Helens, with 25 houses built of straw and covered with bark. Clark

noted he saw increasing amounts of “uriopian” goods: guns, powder flasks, copper and brass trinkets, and tailored clothes. John Ordway wrote, “one of the Indians could talk & Speak Some words English such as curseing” picked up from encounters with sailors. They camped near today’s Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge where Clark wrote, “I could not sleep for the noise kept by the Swans, geese… ducks.”

He added, “they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.”

Urban sprawl – and an urban legend

On November 5th, they passed 14 wooden plank houses at the Cathlapotle village near Ridgefield, and another Cathlapotle village at the mouth of the Lewis River. Clark wrote the Lower Columbia region was “certainly a fertill and handsom valley, at this time crowded with Indians.”

At the mouth of the Kalama River was an abandoned village. Capt. Clark called it “Cath-la-haws Creek” while Joseph Whitehouse wrote, “we continued on & passed the Mouth of a River called by the Natives Calamus.”

In 1811, Gabriel Franchere wrote in his journal that the river and village was called “Thlakalamah.” In the Cathlamet dialect of the Chinook language ,“Kalama” was the Indian word meaning “beautiful.” Today, many people mistakenly believe the Kalama River was named after John Kalama, a full-blooded Hawaiian who lived near the mouth of the river and worked for the Hudson Bay Company. However, since John didn’t arrive until 1837, there is no connection.

The Corps camped between Prescott and Rainier on November 5th, near where the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was located.

This postcard, printed in 1913, looks upstream towards Pillar Rock, a basaltic column that extends from 50-foot deep water. Clark first saw the ocean from here, and wrote, ”a remarkable rock about 50 feet high and about 20 feet Diameter is situated opposite our Camp about ½ a mile from Shore.” In the late 19th century, the Army Corps of Engineers blasted the top off the rock in order to install a navigation beacon.

Pillar Rock as it exists now, truncated to accommodate a navigation beacon.

On November 6th, the men saw abandoned villages on both sides of the Columbia near the mouth of the Cowlitz River. Clark wrote, “The Coweliskee river is 150 yards wide, is deep, from Indian information navigable a very considerable distance for canoes.” Lewis later said the principal village of the Skillutes was on the lower side of the Cowlitz a few miles from its entrance into the Columbia. They passed two lodges on the Oregon side across from Mt. Coffin, downstream from the present-day Lewis and Clark Bridge at Longview-Rainier. Clark described Mt. Coffin (named by Capt. George Vancouver’s 1792 expedition) as “a verry remarkable knob riseing from the edge of the water about 80 feet high” (it was actually 240 feet tall). They camped that night near Cape Horn, east of Cathlamet.

The next morning the fog was so thick they could not see across the river, but they set out with great hopes of soon arriving at the ocean. They passed four large houses near Cathlamet. The houses were raised off the ground, with beds four feet above the floor. They saw another seven houses at a village near Skamokawa, and when the fog lifted, they could hear the roar of the ocean.

Ocian in view! O! the joy

At last, on Nov. 7, 1805, near Pillar Rock (12 miles downriver from Skamokawa), Clark wrote, “we are in view of the opening of the ocian, which Creates great joy.” The men saw a magnificent vista – the river had widened to about five miles and they could see that the sky met the water at the horizon where the Columbia flowed into the Pacific Ocean between Point Adams and Cape Disappointment. But they were still more than 20 miles from the actual coastline, and getting there was going to be a most miserable journey.

Postcard from Michael O. Perry’s private collection

River

BOOK BOUTIQUE

Where to find the new Reader

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

LONGVIEW

U.S. Bank

Post Office

Bob’s (rack, main check-out)

In front of 1232 Commerce Ave

In front of 1323 Commerce Ave

YMCA

Fred Meyer (rack, service desk)

Teri’s

Grocery Outlet

Gifted Kitchen (711 Vandercook Way)

Fibre Fed’l CU - Commerce Ave

Monticello Hotel (front entrance)

Kaiser Permanente

St. John Medical Center (rack, Park Lake Café)

LCC Student Center

Indy Way Diner

Columbia River Reader Office 1333 14th Ave. (box at door) Omelettes & More (entry rack) Stuffy’s II (entry rack)

KELSO

Visitors’ Center / Kelso-Longview

Chamber of Commerce

KALAMA

Fibre Fed’l CU

Kalama Shopping Center corner of First & Fir

McMenamin’s Harbor Lodge (rack)

WOODLAND

The Oak Tree Visitors’ Center

Grocery Outlet

Luckman Coffee Antidote (rack)

CASTLE ROCK

Lacie Rha’s Cafe (32 Cowlitz W.)

Parker’s Restaurant (box, entry)

Visitors’ Center 890 Huntington Ave. N., Exit 49, west side of I-5 Cascade Select Market

RYDERWOOD

Café porch

TOUTLE

Drew’s Grocery & Service

CLATSKANIE

Post Office Mobil / Mini-Mart Fultano’s Pizza

WESTPORT

Berry Patch

RAINIER Post Office Cornerstone Café Rainier Hardware (rack, entry) Earth ‘n’ Sun (on Hwy 30)

El Tapatio (entry rack)

Grocery Outlet Senior Center (rack at front door)

DEER ISLAND

Deer Island Store

COLUMBIA CITY - Post Office

WARREN

Warren Country Inn

ST HELENS

Chamber of Commerce

Sunshine Pizza

St. Helens Market Fresh

Olde Town: Wild Currant, Tap into Wine, Molly’s Market Safeway

SCAPPOOSE

Post Office Road Runner Fultano’s Ace Hardware

WARRENTON, OR Fred Meyer

CATHLAMET

Cathlamet Pharmacy

Tsuga Gallery

Cathlamet Realty West

Puget Island Ferry Landing

SKAMOKAWA

Skamokawa General Store

NASELLE

Appelo Archives & Café Johnson’s One-Stop

Murder mystery with action and a twist plays in

L

Street Playhouse is proud to present the murder mystery, “Miss Holmes,” a play by Christopher M. Walsh playing October 7-23 at Love Street Playhouse, 126 Loves Avenue in Woodland, Wash. Single tickets are $22 and are on sale at www. lovestreetplayhouse.com.

Taken from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes and Watson are back on the case of what is a clearcut murder, at least it is, according to Sherlock Holmes. For fans of Holmes

and Watson, Love Street’s production will have all the mystery and action that you expect but this time the author has added a twist that even Sir Arthur would find compelling, especially today.

Single tickets to “Miss Holmes” start at $22 and are on sale now. Purchase online at www.LoveStreetPlayhouse.com or by phone at 800-966-8865. Performances run through October 23, Fri-Sat 7:30, Sun 2pm.

Get the best care for your loved one.

readers are: Community-spirited Curious and gracious Appreciative Generous Warm-hearted Thanks for reading CRR!

PREMIER SENIOR

Havens is a group of 11 premier, independently owned and operated homes.

Happenings

New

Alston Cleaning

1338 Commerce Ave. Ste A Longview, WA 98632 360-261-9148

Lisa Thompson & Ken Blanchard

Keller Williams Premier Partners 1140 11th Ave.

Longview, WA 98632 360-431-4645

Upcoming Events

A to Z Options 872 15th Ave. Longview, WA 98632 360-423-8223

Fosterful 101 E 8th St. #270 Vancouver, WA 98660 360-569-7296

Oct. 14 7:30 am - 9:00 am Boot Camp Fall Series - final class

American Workforce Group Event Center, 1145 14th Ave., Longview Oct. 14 Product Shortages, Delays, Shipping Issues? Let’s Make a Plan Jerry Petrick, Senior Certified Business Advisor, Small Business Development Center, WSU. $35 per individual class. Register online at www.kelsolongviewchamber.org

Oct. 20 9:30 am - 3:30 pm

Cowlitz & Wahkiakum Counties Career Expo

MEDICAL MATTERS

Local Surgeon Donates Hair to Children With Hair Loss

By Jim LeMonds

Sponsored by:

Sponsored by: (rescheduled from Sept. 16)

Cowlitz County Conference Center, 1900 7th Ave., Longview Over 3,000 students expected! We have room for 80 local businesses to inform our 9th, 10th and 11th grade students from every school district in Cowlitz and Wahkiakum County on what you do, what careers are available in your organization and what education is needed to be hired into those jobs. Show our local students that they can be successful in our own region! Help educate our kids for their future employment and ensure your continued growth and success. Be part of something amazing! Sign up today - no cost to participate. Call 360-423-8400 or www.kelsolongviewchamber.org

Nov. 4 11:45 am 1:30 pm Quarterly Luncheon

Featuring Chris Thomas of Divert

Kelso Longview Elks Lodge #1482, 900 Ash St., Kelso

Join us and learn about Divert. Divert is developing a state-of-the-art Inte grated Food Recovery facility at the Mint Farm Industrial Development Park in Longview. Learn about how Divert helps food companies improve their waste diversion efforts and how they are processing food that can’t be sold or donated into carbon negative renewable natural gas. $25 in advance, $35 at the door. Register online at www.kelsolongviewchamber.org

I

took Jake McLeod a while to get his most recent haircut. But when he did, he made the most of it. McLeod, a foot and ankle specialist at Longview Orthopedic Associates, donated his locks to Children With Hair Loss (CWHL).

“All the barbers and hair salons were closed in early 2020,” McLeod said. “I hadn’t initially intended on growing my hair out, but after those first few months of the pandemic I just decided to go with it.”

McLeod learned that his hair had to be at least eight inches long to qualify for a donation. As a bonus, his daughter, Addison, also decided to donate her hair after learning about CWHL’s mission.

Founded by Regina Villemure, CWHL opened in South Rockwood, Michigan, in September 2000. Its goal is to provide human hair replacements to children at no cost. Initially, the

organization’s focus was on helping children fighting cancer. However, it soon became apparent that kids dealing with alopecia, burns, trichotillomania, and other rare diseases and disorders also needed assistance. Currently, CWHL provides hair replacements to 600 children per year.

Villemure’s quest is a personal one. Her niece Sarah was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age three and underwent chemotherapy for five years as a result. During that time, Villemure saw many children at the hospital who had lost their hair and were wearing adult-size synthetic wigs. Human hair replacements look the most natural on children, but they are also expensive and out of reach for many families. From that point forward, she has made it her goal to “Cover young heads to heal young hearts.”

Dr. McLeod’s practice focuses on the treatment of issues related to the foot and ankle, including bunions, flat feet, and arthritis. He is double board certified in foot surgery and reconstructive ankle surgery.

Former R.A. Long High School English teacher Jim LeMonds, now a semi-retired writer, editor, and marketer, rides his mountain bike whenever possible. His published books are South of Seattle and Deadfall. He lives in Castle Rock, Wash.

Dr, McLeod before (top) and after, with daughter Addison.

THE TIDEWATER REACH

Poem by Robert Michael Pyle • Photograph by Judy VanderMaten • Field Note by Hal Calbom

All Fall Down

Along the river shore lies a forest of boards, salmon-red and brown, bobbing on the high gray tide, soaking them a little darker than their faded state, as if the river splintered into kindling to feed the fire, the cold fire of the flotsam with all that’s left of Altoona Cannery. Waves flap at its wreckage, slapping the remnants of broad floors whose pilings gave way when the land’s loose logs came down. The flood that took this house of salmon was time.

LOWER COLUMBIA: CANNERIES

Between 1866 and 1870, 35 canneries on the Lower Columbia packed more than 60,000 cases of salmon yearly, 48 pounds per case. Difficult and labor-intensive businesses, canneries were plagued with contentious issues, including use of immigrant workers and struggles over wages and union representation.

On this page we excerpt poems, pictures and field notes from our own “Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures,” The Tidewater Reach, by Gray’s River resident and renowned naturalist Robert Michael Pyle, and Cathlamet photographer Judy VanderMaten. The two dreamed for years of a collaborative project, finally realized when Columbia River Reader Press published color and black and white editions of The Tidewater Reach in 2020, and a third, hybrid edition in 2021, all presenting “a different way of seeing” our beloved Columbia River.

information on ordering, as well as our partner bookshops and galleries, see pages 2 and 43.

A wedge of geese flies over Megler Bridge, across the far reach. One more old one down, one more forest to the sea, in a land where the sea is cheap and all the rest is long gone.

Fall Fun on Sauvie Island

Hike, gather harvest treats, pick out your pumpkin

Sauvie Island is a fabulous place for fall fun. Whether you enjoy picnics in the sun, hikes along the beach, or meandering through markets, there is something for everyone. Autumn is the time to pick out your pumpkin, get lost in a corn maze, or cook some tasty autumn fare.

What to Know

My husband Steve and I recently made a trip to Sauvie island. We drove over the Rainier Bridge and east on Highway 30 to the ramp to the Sauvie Island Bridge. Once on other side of the Columbia River’s Multnomah Channel, we followed the road west. Soon we spotted a little market and a large parking lot on the left side of the road.

To hike or sit on the beach, you must have a Sauvie Island parking permit.

your bike. Park your car and check out a large map of the island on the east side of the lot.

In 1947 the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area was established to provide a public hunting space and to protect the wildlife habitat. The Wildlife Area hosts a variety of birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish, and plants. If you are interested in migratory birds, hundreds of thousands of waterfowl come to the island each year. Hundreds of Canadian geese, swans, bald eagles, and Sandhill cranes stop by in the fall. There is plenty to do on the island. I recommend making a large loop around the island and taking a few less-traveled roads for outdoor adventure. The island is approximately 32 square miles, about the size of Manhattan.

Where to Hike

Our first stop on the island was the Oak Island Nature Trail. We drove to the trailhead before realizing we needed the $10 parking permit, so we could not do the hike that day. I hiked the trail years ago. It is an easy 2.7-mile loop famous for running, walking, and birding, so keep an eye out for eagles, ospreys, and hawks. Another easy hike, although much longer, is the 6.5-mile, out-and-back Warrior Rock Lighthouse Trail. This trail follows the Columbia River to Oregon’s smallest lighthouse, the old Warrior Rock Lighthouse.

Tracy Beard writes about luxury and adventure travel, traditional and trendy fine dining and libations for regional, national and international magazines. She is in her seventh year as CRR’s “Out & About” columnist. She lives in Longview, Wash.

Story & photos by Tracy Beard

There are plenty of beaches where you can walk, relax, or bring a picnic. Walton Beach is the most accessible and popular it is the first beach, nine miles after crossing over the bridge. North Unit is further away and more private. It is three miles long and naturally beautiful. Warrior Point Beach is only accessible by boat or on foot. You have to hike 3.5 miles to reach this secluded destination.

Farms to Visit

Visiting the local farms is another favorite activity on the island. Steve and I stopped at The Pumpkin Patch, Bella Organic Pumpkin Farm, and Topaz Farm. Each farm has a produce market, and many people come to pick fruit and vegetables directly from the fields.

•The Pumpkin Patch has been a family destination for more than 50 years. Visit the animal barn, the Patio Café, the produce market, and Portland’s Original Maze. There are free daily hayrides in October.

•Bella Organic Pumpkin Farm boasts a corn maze, produce market, animal petting area, grill, and a cow train.

•Topaz Farm is not far down the road from the bridge if you are heading west, and it can be seen directly from the road. Kid-centric, this farm features a children’s sunflower maze, farm animals, a grill with picnic fare, a cow train, and a produce market.

•Kruger Farm is another popular stop. However, Steve and I did not make it to this one.

We enjoyed driving around the island and looking at the farms and flowers. Be sure to purchase the permit and pack a lunch to enjoy on one of the many beaches.

Seeing all the fall produce inspired me to make a yummy fall lasagna and a delectable cocktail for the season. Maybe you’ll be inspired, too!

By Tracy Beard

PROVISIONS ALONG THE TRAIL

Autumn Lasagna

1 package oven-ready lasagna

2 medium yellow onions, sliced; you will need ¾ cup carmelized onions

6 Tablespoons olive oil

4 Tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed; you will need 1– 1- 1/2 cups, cooked

2 heads roasted garlic; you will need 10 cloves roasted

3 cups Alfredo sauce, homemade or store-bought

6 ounces fresh shredded or diced mozzarella cheese

3 ounces goat cheese

6 slices Proscuitto, diced and fried til crisp

Salt and pepper

Grease an 8x8 Pyrex or other oven safe glass dish. Toss the cubed butternut squash in the Canola oil and lay in one layer on a rimmed cookie sheet. Cut off and discard the top ¼ of the two garlic heads. Place heads in an oven-proof dish and drizzle with olive oil. Roast the garlic and the squash in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Set both aside.

Divide the olive oil between two separate large frying pans. Add half the onions to each pan. Lightly salt the onions. Cook on medium for approximately 30 minutes or until soft and brown. Stir frequently. Do not burn. Add a little water while cooking if necessary. Set aside.

Alfredo Sauce

3 Tablespoons butter

4 Tablespoons flour

3 cups half and half

¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 ounces cream cheese

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and cook until light brown. Add the half and half. When it thickens and coats the back of a spoon, add the cream cheese and Parmesan, salt, and pepper to taste. Squeeze the roasted garlic into the sauce and blend with an immersion blender. Set aside.

Assemble the Lasagna

Place a little Alfredo sauce on the bottom of the glass dish. Place a layer of lasagna sheets on the sauce. Add the butternut squash and mash down a little to cover more space. Add some onions and some mozzarella. Top with some Alfredo sauce. Continue to layer. Your final layer should be the lasagna sheets topped with Alfredo sauce, mozzarella, and goat cheese, not veggies. Cover with foil. Bake in the oven for 3040 minutes at 375 degrees. Top with crispy Proscuitto. Let sit for 15 minutes before cutting and serving. Top or serve with arugula tossed in a light lemon vinaigrette.

Peanut Butter Cup Cocktails

Makes 2 2 Tablespoons peanut butter

¼ ounce 72% dark chocolate bar

1 cup ice, plus more for the shaker

6 ounces peanut butter whiskey (like Screwball)

2 ounces chocolate liqueur (like Godiva)

¼ cup half and half

2 pinches sea salt

Spread the peanut butter on a plate and grate the chocolate bar with a Microplane onto another plate. Dip two whiskey glasses into the peanut butter and then the chocolate.

Pour the whiskey, chocolate liqueur, half and half, and salt into the cocktail shaker. Fill with ice. Shake for 20 seconds and pour over ice into glasses.

CATERING

Take an Autumn Stroll

Longview’s Historic Old West Side features fall foliage, architecture

Autumn is my favorite season. The crisper mornings, leaves turning colors, and an excuse to cozy up to a fire brings many nostalgic feelings. For this month’s Museum Magic, I invite you to walk in your own or another neighborhood to enjoy the ephemeral colors which, like spring blossoms, last but a few weeks. One of my favorite neighborhoods to walk is Longview’s historic Old West Side, which abounds in colorful trees, ever-changing as the days progress.

The Old West Side is a neighborhood of great architectural diversity, with large mansions along the lake dating to nearly a century ago, along with mid-century construction a few blocks inbound towards Longview’s City Center. Classical brick apartment buildings found near Vandercook Park add to the historic richness.

On some of the streets you may notice peculiar hexagonal segments of concrete laid during the city’s construction, intended to prevent cracking (see photo, facing page ), some now overlaid with asphalt. According to John M. McClelland, Jr’s book, R.A. Long’s Planned City, by June 1924 there were 89 homes and two apartments built in what was then known as “The West Side,”

testament to the vintage of the neighborhood. The Old West Side is a level walk, with the entire neighborhood in a triangle footprint approximately four-fifths of a mile by half a mile, and six blocks by nine blocks. A person could readily walk the whole neighborhood, or if time and stamina dictate, an abbreviated walk may be your preference.

Recently, I walked a course of 2.2 miles, starting and ending at the recently- erected new Longview Log Arch at Kessler and Hemlock. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in history, architecture, or just seeing some fall trees in all their glory.

Scenes from Joseph’s recent walk. The log arch is a good place to begin your walk. Marked with a red star on the above map, it’s located at Hemlock Street, near Martin’s Dock and the Footbridge at Lake Sacajawea.

Story and photos by Joseph Govednik, Cowlitz County Historical Museum Director

Map by Erin Govednik

A

on the Lower Columbia ViewLong

PEOPLE+PLACE ~ THEN AND NOW

Richelle

QUIPS & QUOTES

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

--Alfred Adler, Austrian doctor and psychotherapist, 1870-1937

The habit of shutting doors behind us is invaluable to happiness; we must learn to shut life’s doors to cut out the futile wind of past mistakes.

--Marjorie Holmes, American columnist and author, 1910-2002

When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it. --Amanda Gorman, African-American poet and activist, 1998-

The most valuable player is the one that makes the most players valuable. --Peyton Manning, American former football quarterback, 1976-

There’s absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go very slow. --Robert Frost, American poet, 1874-1963

Selected by Debra Tweedy

You know you are in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

--Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), American children’s author and cartoonist, 1904-1991

Do you know what I like about comedy?

You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.

--Stephen Colbert, American comedian, writer, actor, and TV host, 1964And when the rain beats against my windowpane, I’ll think of summer days again And dream of you.

--Chad and Jeremy, 60s British musical duo, from “A Summer Song,”

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.

Michelle Mury Volleyball Head Coach Kelso High School

JOE FISCHER

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Lumberjacks and Papermakers

W hen I Was play I ng high school basketball there were 14 teams in a league with two divisions.

That’s a lot of teams. But remembering who was who was pretty simple. Mostly the team you played wore the name of the town you played — Centralia, Chehalis, Olympia, Hoquiam, Aberdeen. Heck, even Kelso.

The mascots tended mostly to be animals: tigers, bears, grizzlies, eagles.

Except, of course, those two aspirational cities on the Columbia — Longview and Camas. We were what we did. Longview the hewers of trees, the Lumberjacks, and Camas the pressers of pulp, the Papermakers. Hence the theme of this month’s People+Place, and Longview’s transformation from one to the other.

where we’ve Been

The Long View project pairs history with modern context. To celebrate Longview’s 100th

then: early environmentalists now: leaning green

The advent of the kraft paper process and the utilization of waste wood in Longview is probably more impactful, historically and economically, than the harvesting of Long-Bell’s forests. We may have been built on the timber business but it’s paper making that sustains us today.

On this month’s cover we trumpet the somewhat astonishing fact that — pound for pound and combining the production of our three local papermaking companies — we are the number one paper producing city in the entire country. And we’re still employing, inventing, and evolving. That’s pretty good news.

Camas, by the way, still produces a reduced amount of paper, but flourishes as a Portland and Vancouver bedroom community, with a charming downtown and plenty of coffee and croissants. And they retain the name of their high school mascot, the Papermakers, until they adopt “Lattemakers,” perhaps.

Lumberjack mascot

As for that burly Lumberjack who greeted us as we trotted out onto the basketball court, carved in wood and eight feet tall? I hear he’s still there. But for accuracy’s sake, he should now have a white lab coat, a laptop computer, and a degree in chemical engineering.

• where we’re GoinG

birthday, Columbia River Reader is expanding its monthly “People+Place” feature to contrast the historical “Then” with the contemporary “Now.”

“It’s important to look back and celebrate the past,” said publisher Susan Piper, “but equally important to track the changes that make us what we are today. How close are we to the founders’ vision? What remains? What’s entirely new?”

Thanks to tremendous community support (see Partner Spotlights, page 26), the Reader will present 12 months of “People+Place Then and Now” reportage, then combine and expand these features into a commemorative book. The Long View: A Planned City and

America’s Last Frontier written by Hal Calbom, with a foreword by John M. McClelland, III.

The Reader is coordinating with the Longview Centennial Committee, led by Reed Hadley, to publicize civic activities and celebrations (see Centennial Countdown, page 26) and will host a Book Launch Gala June 30, 2023.

THEN AND NOW

Developing Dreams

of Trees

Heavy Lifting

Force

Not, Want Not

Stories

and Trade

Power and Energy

Education for All

Sustaining the Spirit

Well-being

Dreams Developing

5.

people+place then

Early Environmentalists

The Northwest’s clearcuts are easy targets for knee-jerk environmentalists — they’re hard to miss, visually arresting, and often just ugly. And without question indiscriminate clear cutting worldwide is among the gravest of our environmental problems.

The logging and growing practices developed here — which became a kind of evolved art, a uniquely Northwest forestry — are not so easily categorized and condemned. Cutting great swaths of trees courts controversy, of course. But among other industries based on extracting a natural resource — mining and fishing come to mind — today’s foresters can make a good argument for sustainability, efficiency and stewardship.

Rarely do economics and environmentalism collide, or collude, so dramatically as they do in the hundred-year saga of the world’s largest sawmill town.

The founders of Longview were hardly environmentalists, at least as we define the term today.

But the economic strategies embraced by those founders — to limit waste in their mill processes, derive new collateral products from those processes, and attract additional industries to diversify Longview —- have had undeniable long-term environmental effects, too, many of them beneficial. And they’ve helped the town survive.

THE COMPANY NEEDED TO BEGIN CIRCULATING MONEY THAT WASN’T ITS OWN

Diversify or Die

Logging and lumbering were inherently expensive and wasteful. Even setting aside the colossal costs of their big mills, Long-Bell faced a daunting task. Rarely had loggers attempted to extract and export logs and lumber from such forbidding terrain in an isolated forest at the far corner of their own country.

It would not be enough to simply produce “big numbers,” up to a million board feet a day by the time the mills hit full stride. Long-Bell would have to become much

more efficient and cost-effective.

First, limiting waste: memorably cited by Vandercook in his initial report as an annual loss in the fir region alone of around six billion board feet a year. The sheer amount of wood fibre lighting up the skies in the notorious wigwam burners frustrated the practical engineers and dismayed the accountants and financiers.

A second company goal was product diversification, spurred by two technological innovations in the wood products industry.

One was the discovery in 1909 of the sulfate or Kraft process to transform commercially worthless wood like western hemlock into newsprint. For many lumbermen it was like finding a whole new forest.

Carlos Schwantes

The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History

In time the Pacific Northwest would become the leading source of pulp and paper products in the United States. Schwantes continues:

A second innovation was plywood, developed in 1904 at a box and barrel factory near Portland, but that industry did not become commercially important until the mid-1920s. The development of plywood made it possible to recover millions of board feet of wood, once thought lost to forest fires.

The Company Town Gets Company

Finally, the company badly needed to begin circulating money that wasn’t its own. Not counting the giant mill, Long-Bell by 1926 had invested $6.5 million in Longview. It owned the bank, mercantile store, hotel, newspaper, concrete company and the dredging operation. It provided the water pipes, sewers, and electricity.

Waste Not Want Not THEN Long-Bell needed more efficient industrial processes, less waste, and other industry on the Columbia NOW Longview embraces green, clean and lean

People+Place Then and Now

A year later, thanks to a national advertising campaign, developers had attracted a few solid businesses, including a San Francisco-owned bank, a paint manufacturing plant, a concrete brick plant, and a Standard Oil marine distribution center. But the big opportunities — and the weaning off the co-dependence of city and company — would come via the huge commercial sites and deep water port facilities adjacent to Long-Bell’s new mills.

The Long-Bell brain trust had one primary candidate in mind.

The Two Longs

George S. Long of the Weyerhaeuser Company managed its western operations from his office in Tacoma and a palatial home overlooking Commencement Bay. It was George Long who sold Long-Bell its original

Cowlitz and Lewis County timber stake, making barely a dent in the company’s formidable 900,000 acres it had purchased from James B. Hill of the Northern Pacific Railway Company in 1900 for $6 per acre..

Though in photos he tends to resemble a cross between an undertaker and a college dean, Long was a legendary lumber and businessman with a zest not just for success in the marketplace, but an inherent love for the game of business and for his rough and tumble industry.

George Long, Sr. looked like a cleric in his formal portrait. In real life he smoked cigars, used salty language and commanded the respect of loggers and mill hands.

J.M. McClelland, Jr. R.A. Long’s Planned City

Mark Morris decided to call on Long and reported that yes, Weyerhaeuser was looking for a site on the Columbia and might consider Longview. A long game of cat and mouse began between the two companies, featuring Robert Alexander Long, who found it worrisome and stressful, and George S. Long, who seemed to revel in it. There were meetings and negotiations in St. Paul, Weyerhaeuser headquarters, verbal hints and commitments, but insistence that news of any deal come from Minnesota, not Washington or Kansas City.

THE LONG-BELL BRAIN TRUST HAD ONE PARTICULAR CANDIDATE IN MIND

The Long Game

Eventually in July, 1925, George Long notified Mr. Long he was exercising his purchase option, but still withheld a public announcement. The price for 544 acres along two miles of Columbia River waterfront was $227,500 plus $5,000 interest on the option. Still, the game-playing continued.

Photos:

Facing page: On the Stump. Huge trees yielded great yields for early loggers and timber companies, but a culture of waste dogged the industry.

This page: Above: Tree topper, circa 1925.

Right: Under construction, this “wigwam” burner opposite the Long-Bell power plant stacks was the largest of a breed common throughout logging country.

Longview: Keep on Flying High!

Longview Airport

Spectators gather at the 5th Anniversary Air Circus, 1928

Michael & Marilyn Perry

Proud Sponsor of People+Place Then and Now

Lake Sacajawea and Kessler School circa 1925

To Long’s associates it seemed as if George Long relished keeping Long-Bell in suspense, and in the process keeping R.A. Long in a continual state of apprehension. Even the civilities of lighthearted conversation succumbed to misinterpretation. Whenever the two Longs met, George worked in a mildly offcolor joke, then slyly studied the expressions of the straightlaced Robert — or so thought Long-Bell’s executives.

Lenore Bradley Robert Alexander Long

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From Michael Perry’s private postcard collection

imAgE

The Heavyweights:

Back row, left to right: H.H. Rock, Sumner T. McKnight, Wesley Vandercook, Bill Ryder, Rudolph M. Weyerhaeuser.

Middle row: Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser, F.S. Bell, Dr. E.P. Clapp, Horace H. Irvine, Charles A. Weyerhaeuser, George S. Long, Jr., William Carson, C.R. Musser, S.M. Morris.

Front row: John P. Weyerhaeuser, company president.  May 27, 1924.

page 19

More time passed, more anxiety mounted, until in June, 1926 an advertisement suddenly appeared in an issue of the Saturday Evening Post stating that Weyerhaeuser intended to build three new mills in Longview! There had been no notification to Long-Bell, and there was no mention of when such building might begin. “Long was desperate to know,” said Bradley. “By 1926 he and his company were troubled financially.”

At last, in October 1927, the game long grown tiresome (and three years after meeting with the Weyerhaeusers in St. Paul), the first pile was driven for

COWLITZ PUD

three Weyerhaeuser sawmills and a shingle mill on the Columbia River at Longview. The first mill went into operation 20 months later.

MR. LONG’S BIOGRAPHER HIGHLIGHTS THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THESE TWO GIANTS

As it had five years before, the entire town turned out to celebrate. Mr. Long’s biographer highlights the contrast between these two giants of their industry, the momentous bargain they struck in the 1920s, and her own picture of those tense days in Tacoma:

George tipped back his desk chair, settled his tall, lanky frame at ease, and lighted a cigar. Across from him, dressed in his summer uniform of white trousers and navy blue blazer, red carnation in lapel, sat Robert, straight and stiff in his chair, appearing controlled, but anything but relaxed

Lenore Bradley Robert Alexander Long

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Since 1936

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CLEAN

1936

Nosing Around New technologies would help Longview diversify, and renew its resources, as much as business development. These innovations would involve both sophisticated chemical processes and a very human quality control process which came to be known as “de-stinking.”

In 1925 Monroe A. Wertheimer came to visit Long-Bell to explore sourcing wood chips for a kraft paper plant he was considering, possibly in the Northwest. Wertheimer headed the Thilmany Paper Company in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. Anxious for business diversification and waste utilization all in one fell swoop, the Long-Bell team was enthusiastic, with one caveat.

cont page 22

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Walter G. Mezger

Fertile ground on Longview’s experimental farm

Despiteits colossal machines and innovative new industrial processes, the city also would depend on more traditional resources —notably, agriculture and animal husbandry. In the 20s the country was still overwhelmingly rural, and most everyone coming to Longview had either been raised on a farm, worked on a farm, or bought foodstuffs from a place down the road. Most homemakers anticipated a backyard garden as essential to their livelihood.

The founders wished to demonstrate and advertise that the Cowlitz delta would not only facilitate this, it was indeed a fertile garden of earthly delights. Let the word go out: No one with a spade and bag of seed would starve in the model city, that the very land itself was rich!

The remarkable fertility of the soil in Columbia Valley Gardens and the mild, equable climate of Longview make this district a gardener’s paradise where a wealth of produce can be raised to meet the growing demands of Longview.

Photo caption, Longview News, circa 1924

Hence, a model farm program located on the lower slope of Mount Solo . Or, in the best entrepreneurial spirit, an Experimental Farm Program, suggesting new techniques brought to bear and a grand public relations push.

One individual, Walter Mezger, was given license by Long-Bell to grow whatever he could as quickly as he could. In the rich alluvial land of the delta, he produced spectacular results.

The livestock side flourished as well, at least in the newspaper accounts. The astonishing production beginning with a mere 1,200 chicks, nourished since one day old —- some 385 eggs a day! — warmed the hearts of oologists and real estate hucksters alike.

On October 18th, the day they were 6 months old, the 485 pullets laid 353 eggs or 72.8 per cent. The lowest days production—inNovember,themonth of high egg prices — was 363 eggs! or 74.8 percent, the highest was 416 eggs or85.7percent!Mr. Mezger had tried to cut down production a little, as he was afraid an 85 percent lay was too much for the health of the fools, but from the looks of them it was hard to believe they could be injured by this lay. They averaged well over 4 pounds and were exceptionally strong and vigorous.

From article “LONGVIEW EXPERIMENTAL FARM MAKES REMARKABLE RECORD WITH ‘HENACRES’ LEGHORNS

News, circa 1924

Don & Andrea Cullen

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Photos: Clockwise from top: Walter Mezger and a prize cabbage from the demonstration farm. Mezger beat out five other Louisiana farmers to come to the planned city and plant; Mezger and cattle. His grandson Skip, six years old, was in charge of three cows; The legendary Leghorns. Their “85 percent lay” in November 1925, was heralded as one of the great successes of the Mezger / Long-Bell Experimental Farm.

St. Helens across the river in Oregon had a kraft mill, and it could be smelled miles away. They did not want such an odor to waft over their model city. A new process had been developed to reduce the odor, Wertheimer assured them. He would send them samples to sniff.

Virginia Urrutia

They Came to Six Rivers

Thus followed one of the more unusual exchanges in the history of industrial development. In return for Wertheimer’s sniff samples sent to Longview, Long-Bell sent several carloads of fir waste to experiment with back in Wisconsin.

The Craft of Kraft

The kraft paper process may have had as much, or more, to do with the development of industrial Longview as saw-milling, log exporting or aluminum making. The raw material for paper is wood pulp. In the kraft process wood chips are reduced to almost pure cellulose fibers, and become paper through a process that’s both chemical and mechanical. The word “kraft” is German for “strong,” the competitive advantage long claimed for paper produced this way.

The chemistry is critical. Wood chips treated with a hot mixture of water, sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide, known collectively as “white liquor,” are freed from the chemical linkage of lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose. The process requires vast amounts of water, which is why paper plants are usually situated on lakes or rivers, and is known for its often odorous emissions.

The advent of the Longview Fibre Company, as it came to be known, was the result of three fortuitous circumstances. First, the Long-Bell team was frantic for diversification of the industrial base, and willing to propose attractive terms; second, Longview was already awash in wood waste, chips and sawdust, and could afford to offer a perpetual supply of the papermaker’s raw material; and third, Monroe Wertheimer called upon an influential and astute friend, Harry M.Wollenberg, an oil company president, to assist him in negotiations.

The site was selected, east of the Long-Bell plant where the Cowlitz flows into the Columbia River. A bottle of sulfate pulp made by the new “destinking” process worked out at Kaukauna was mailed out to Longview, where it was sniffed critically in S.M. Morris’ office. It was bad but not too bad, it was decided, so the contract was signed.

John M. McClelland R.A. Long’s Planned City

A Powerful New Industry

The Wertheimer-Wollenberg collaboration proved fruitful, and eventually Wollenberg and his successors joined, and ultimately succeeded the Wertheimers as owners of the successful enterprise.

Photos:

This page, clockwise from top: Longview Fibre Company plant; Women working at completed plant in the late 1920s; Plant under construction.

Facing page, top: Ryderwood farm raising tree seedlings, later destroyed in a 1933 fire; Bottom: Early replanting on a recently-logged site. Weyerhaeuser would later supplant LongBell as apostles of the high yield or “reforested” forest.

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LOngview’s

Before the end of the decade, Longview had gained its second major industry. When ground was broken in 1927, the city ensured a degree of future prosperity based on a significant new enterprise.

And an overlooked and useless byproduct, waste wood, had become a renewable resource still valuable today.

A town founded on choker setting, high climbing, log ponds and lumber would now welcome a different species of worker — chemists and environmental engineers. The band saw, planer mill and storage shed would share prominence with the digester, the evaporator, the boiler.

CHANGING ITS CHEMISTRY, LONGVIEW EVOLVED A NEW LANGUAGE FOR LIFE AT THE MILL

Changing its chemistry, Longview evolved a new lexicon for life at the mill: cutting, planing, drying and stacking now joined by cooking, recovery, blowing, screening, washing and bleaching.

Farming Trees

Long-Bell’s thousands of acres of trees seemed vast and boundless. But the founders soon realized they were a finite resource. They also knew that natural regeneration of the huge firs — their dense canopy limiting light and moisture — was a centuries-long process.

They also were inhibited by the hilly terrain: in the South, standard practice had been to log land then repurpose it for agriculture, virtually impossible on the precipitous slopes of the Cascades. Timberland would remain just that.

Long-Bell, having already suffered the loss of timber in the South, began to think early of planting new trees on logged over land, just as Europeans had done years before.

Virginia Urrutia

They Came to Six Rivers

The company started a nursery in the Ryderwood tract to nurture trees that would grow to cutting size. Unfortunately, a fire swept through the nursery in 1933

TECHNOLOGY OVER THE YEARS

We’ve come a long say since Russia’s Sputnik-1 on Oct. 4, 1957. Satellites gained GPS after 1978 and hit the consumer market generally a decade later, though the devices we might remember were closer to the 2000s.

Satellites today are getting cheaper to launch thanks to reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s, as well as their tiny design, “CubeSats,” about the size of a 4-inch long, 4.5-pound box.

Our Earth-orbiting friends assist in tracking weather, mapping the planet, and providing military intelligence, among other things.

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Perry E. Piper

and destroyed most of the seedlings. Then the depression hastened what Virginia Urrutia calls “the extravagant cutting of trees” as lumbermen struggled to break even despite deflated prices.

Still, the idea of “tree farming” began to gain more traction. Since Douglas fir seedlings needed full sun, unhindered by the shade of nearby trees, the foresters could justify clearcutting whole swaths of forest which could then be replanted more productively.

Cropping Up

The idea that trees might be considered a “crop,” first floated by Ryderwood forester John B. Woods, would not really take hold until after World War II, and it was Weyerhaeuser, not Long-Bell that would take the credit.

Utilizing burned-over land in the Grays Harbor area for experimentation, the company set up a program dedicated to resource protection, reforestation, and sound economics:

The experimenting foresters, considered half-crazy and certainly visionary by many, were able to practice these methods without disturbing any methods in the surrounding area hallowed by history and carried on without question.

Virginia Urrutia

They Came to Six Rivers

Tree Farm Number One, dedicated in 1941, made national news at its inception. Eventually all the forest lands in Cowlitz County would sustain tree farms.

With the successful implementation of its high yield forestry program, Weyerhaeuser would capitalize on its dual identity as both tree cutter and tree conservationist, using “The Tree Growing Company” as a tagline in the 1980s.

There followed decades of new technologies and innovative conservation strategies. It’s an unlikely paradox: An industry founded on the exploitation, and likely extinction, of this vast natural resource would find a way to renew itself.

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Waste Not Want Not THEN

Long-Bell needed more efficient industrial processes, less waste, and other industry on the Columbia NOW Longview embraces green, clean and lean

people+place now

Leaning Green

Few industries have seen such relentless use, re-use, re-purposing, recycling and rederiving from their core product — the towering citadels of cellulose we call trees — as has the timber business.

It’s now simply the wood products industry.

The effects on Longview have been lucrative, chaotic, fickle. The change, the retooling, the opening and ebbing of new markets, the uncertain supply and demand, not just of trees but the “waste” from trees, have kept executives and engineers on their toes, and sometimes reeling.

NORPAC RECYCLED

NORPAC CEO Craig Anneberg goes out of his way to credit his Longview team.

“We had to sit down and figure out how we were going to adjust to a shrinking market,” said Anneberg. “NORPAC has always considered itself to be the thinking person’s company and it has certainly proven to be the case. The entire organization has pulled together to make this happen.”

“

Started more than 40 years ago to manufacture newsprint, the company has responded to the times themselves. It’s transformed itself from a newsprint mill feeding the world’s daily newspapers to a pulper and paper maker helping put those delivery boxes on your front door. In September they put into full-time operation one of the most sophisticated recycling systems in the country, able to re-process and re-use a greater percentage of cardboard and waste paper than with previous technologies.

“Very few mills want to handle big volumes of mixed paper anymore,” said company CoPresident Tom Crowley, pointing to the new drum pulper, “but we will.”

There is no roar of band saws and whirr of chippers feeding the operation. Just a vast warehouse filled with bales of paper and cardboard ready to take another turn around the block. Which makes NORPAC about as “green” as you can get, relying virtually 100 percent on recycled feed stocks, including waste streams other recyclers are rejecting. “Everybody is talking about how do we do better packaging,” said Anneberg. “We figure we can be part of that solution.”

WE HAD TO SIT DOWN AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO ADJUST TO A SHRINKING MARKET

WHITHER WEYERHAEUSER

“Longview is still a wonderful place to work and live.” said NORPAC’s Anneberg, his own company originally a joint venture between Weyerhaeuser and Nippon Paper. “We get a lot of talent from this town, part of our legacy, I guess.”

The Weyerhaeusers were entrepreneurs extraordinairé. They bought and sold like madmen, especially timberland, of course. At the end of World War I they realized Uncle Sam had unused troop ships languishing at the docks, so they bought them to carry their lumber all over the world. They developed innumerable subsidiaries — from mortgage banking to personal care products, financial services, and information systems consulting — then divested themselves periodically. At this juncture, it’s a wood products company with a whole lot of real estate. And the saga continues.

On the business side, the spin-offs, carveouts, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions have been endless. And made a professional class of bankers, investors, and attorneys a happy living along the margins.

Longview’s empire of trees has given way to a vast commonwealth of companies. Few are locally owned anymore. They stretch around the world but still write substantial paychecks for local labor, tradecraft, and executive talent.

In Longview, the Weyerhaeuser lineage is three main inheritances: NORPAC, the company created in partnership with Japanese interests in the seventies to manufacture newsprint; now independent and producing a variety of printing and writing grades; Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a subsidiary of Nippon Paper Industries of Japan which manufactures liquid packaging used for cartons of milk, juice and similar products as well as market pulp sold and converted into consumer products globally; and Weyerhaeuser, still on the old site, cutting some lumber, but shipping most logs overseas.

Above: NORPAC CEO Craig Anneberg (front) and Recovered Fiber Superintendent Kit Corrigan at the new recycling center.

WESTROCK AKA “THE FIBRE”

Today, one of Longview’s founding industries is owned by WestRock, a multinational that lists more than 300 properties among its holdings, and markets everything from home and garden supplies to media and electronics , as well as container board and kraft paper.

Quite a change from its inception.

“Permitting was a little different in those days, among other things,” said Rick Wollenberg, former CEO, speaking at a recent Rotary meeting. “Nowadays you spend five years answering a lot of questions, but it still takes them only a few minutes to say no.” This drew an appreciative laugh for a whole host of reasons.

Wollenberg and two Westrock executives were there to share news of a modern box plant to be built in Longview, which will replace the existing facility, and be greener than green, of course.

“Timing couldn’t be better,” said mill manager Steve Devlin, “People are eager to replace plastics, so it’s a great opportunity for our packaging side.”

Like his former colleagues in the paper and packaging business, Wollenberg tells a remarkable story of market changes, raw materials shortages, financial crunches, and technical innovation. “When my forebears started this business everything was packed and shipped in wooden boxes. Corrugating more or less changed everything.”

IT WAS IMPORTANT TO DEMONSTRATE YOU COULD GROW THINGS AND RAISE ANIMALS

MEZGER ON MEZGER

Walter “Skip” Mezger III happily shares memories of his Grandpa Walt, he of the Experimental Farm and the record pullet lay.

“He was a hard working, incredibly proud man. He only told you one time what to do.” Skip has an entire portfolio of Mezgerania, including handwritten letters from A.L. Gibbs, Longview mayor, and J.D. Tennant, who would oversee the experimental farm from his lordly porch at Rutherglen. “Mr. Tennant offered him $125 a month to run the farm, and $150 moving expenses. Pretty good money in those days.”

“They built that house expressly for my dad and his family,” said Mezger, “That’s how important it was for the company to demonstrate you could grow things and raise animals.”

He has memories both cherished and slightly anguished, from his grandpa’s love of music to his insisting Skip learn how to behead and gut a chicken at age six.

“Grandpa wasn’t all work. He loved music. Today our family still has a sax and a clarinet he handed down to us. And he was a drummer for a swing band that played all around the area.”

Favorite memory? “He gave me my nickname “Skip “when I was three years old. And it’s stuck ever since!”

PEOPLE ARE EAGER TO REPLACE PLASTICS SO IT’S A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

FROM FARM TO CROP

Tree farming has been intimately linked with public relations and company imaging since Long-Bell started talking about it in the 1930s. The notion that trees could be a “crop” not a ravaged resource was ballyhooed about the country for years. In 1967, Weyerhaeuser would take the lead in what later because an industrywide sustainability movement by announcing a “highyield” forestry plan, with improvements in everything from seed propagation to wildfire control.

The evidence of their success is all around us.

Clearcuts, yes. But by the end of the century America’s tree farm movement would include 95 million acres and enlist over 70,000 members, from corporate giants to enterprising families.

Cropping up everywhere.

Hal Calbom is a third generation Longview native who works in public affairs television and educational publishing. This is his fifth year photographing and writing Columbia River Reader’s People+Place feature. Reach him at hal@ halcalbom.com.

“

Rick Wollenberg Longview Fibre Co. President,

WestRock’s Longview site, formerly Longview Fibre Company

Walter “Skip” Mezger III

Renewing the Bond and the Brand

John Stirling and his father Jim have built a powerful brand in Longview and Southwest Washington. And it’s paying dividends.

Stirling Honda has revitalized Longview’s Auto Row both with a sparkling new building and an old-fashioned commitment to faceto-face sales and service.

“The new building has helped business a lot,” said son John. Observers notice that most everybody wandering onto Stirling’s lot soon gets a smile and a handshake. “That’s what we hope we do,” John said. “It’s part of what we do.”

John was raised in Pocatello, Idaho, but came to Longview in 1972 when his dad and mom bought the Pontiac dealership, formerly owned by the Sudders family. John served as his dad’s partner in the business before taking over management in 2004. As an appreciator of local history, he’s pleased to help sponsor “The Long View,” and “People+Place Then and Now.”

“I like history.,” Stirling said. “And this seemed like a really interesting project.”

If you wander by Stirling Honda, expect a handshake and a smile.

Michael & Marilyn Perry

By Michael O. Perry

Their sponsorship honors his grandfather, Lawrence Perry

My grandfather, Lawrence Perry, came to Cowlitz County in 1895. In 1907, while selling Watkins products from a horse-drawn wagon, he met his future wife, a school teacher in Castle Rock. Lawrence served as Cowlitz County Clerk and Treasurer between 1913 and 1919,

and operated a real estate and abstract business in Kelso from 1920 until he died in 1947. In 1938, he tried to buy part of Lake Sacajawea.

Long-Bell let taxes on city parks they owned become delinquent during the Great Depression, owing almost $80,000 on their lake property. A plan was conceived to allow the City to buy the property for $10 at a county tax sale — if nobody else bid. Someone made a map showing how many 50-foot lots could be created along Nichols and Kessler Boulevards. At the tax sale, Lawrence ran the bidding up to $10,000 before dropping out. At the time, many people didn’t think the City needed so much park area, but today, most would be glad my grandfather didn’t succeed in buying a large portion of Lake Sacajawea!

My father, George O. Perry, graduated from Kelso High in 1932; after serving in Alaska during World War II, he married June Beck, whose family had come to Cowlitz County in 1878, homesteading in the Coweeman Valley. In 1900, my maternal grandfather, John Beck, bought

a 50-acre piece of the farm and lived there until he died in 1965. The timber industry was important to the Perry family. George worked at Weyerhaeuser for 39 years; Mike worked there for 38 years, his sister for two summers as a tour guide, and his brother worked as a forester for International Paper, which had acquired Long-Bell in 1956.

After graduating from college and seeing a brochure with a picture of Lake Sacajawea, Marilyn Pounds moved to Longview in 1969 to teach at Broadway School. She was familiar with the Long-Bell name since they operated a lumber yard down the street from her home in Clovis, New Mexico. Having grown up in a dry climate, her first drizzly winter in Longview was a shock, but come spring, the blooming trees lining the streets of Longview won her heart. And soon after, Mike did, too. The two were married in1972.

Upcoming Events

Merchandise

Lawrence Perry, Watkins products peddler. circa 1907

Founder Jim Stirling, and his son John Stirling

Clatskanie, Ore.

770 E. Columbia River Hwy

Family style with unique pizza offerings, hot grill items & more!

Dine-in,Take-out and Home Delivery. Visit Fultanos.com for streamlined menu. 503-728-2922

Ixtapa Fine Mexican Restaurant

640 E. Columbia River Hwy

Fine Mexican cuisine. Daily specials.

The best margarita in town. Daily drink specials. Dine-in, curbside pickup. M-Th 11am–9:30pm; Fri & Sat 11am–11:30pm; Sun 11am–9pm. 503-728-3344

Rainier. Ore.

102 East “A” Street

Microbrews, wines & spirits 7am–8pm Daily. Inside dining.

Interstate Tavern

119 E. “B” St., (Hwy 30)

Crab Louie/Crab cocktails, crab-stuffed avocados. 17 hot and cold sandwiches. Amazing crab sandwiches. Full bar service.

Catering for groups. 503-556-5023. interstatetavern@yahoo. com 503-556-5023

El Tapatio

117 W. ‘A’ Street

Mexican Family Restaurant. Open Fri-Sat 11am-11pm, rest of week 11am-10pm. Full bar. Karaoke Fri-Sat 8-11pm. Patio seating. 503-556-8323.

Longview, Wash.

1335 14th Avenue

18 rotating craft brews, pub fare. M-Th 11am–8pm. Fri-Sat 11am–10pm; Sunday 11am–6pm. Local music coming soon. 360-232-8283. Inside dining

See ad, page 43. Follow us on Untappd.

Broadway Barrel Room

1133 Broadway

Family friendly tap house and eatery. 18 taps local craft beverages, hand-crafted soups, sandwiches, flatbread and desserts. Live music on Thursdays. Hours: Tues-Sat 11am–10pm. 360-353-4295. Sun & Mon available for special events.

Bruno’s Pizza 1108 Washington Way. Pizza, breadsticks, wings, salads, fish & chips. WE DELIVER.

Four beers on tap. 360-6364970 or 360-425-5220,

The Carriage

Restaurant & Lounge

The Carriage Restaurant & Lounge 1334 12th Ave. Open 8am–9pm (sometimes later, call to check). Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Full bar, banquet room available for groups, special events. Happy hours daily 9–11am, 5–7pm. 360425-8545.

COLUMBIA RIVER dining guide

The Corner Cafe

796 Commerce Ave.

Breakfast & Lunch. Daily Soup & Sandwich, breakfast specials. Tues-Sat 7am-3pm. Closed Sun-Mon. 360-353-5420. Email: sndcoffeeshop@comcast.net

Eclipse Coffee & Tea

In the Merk (1339 Commerce Ave., #113) 360-998-2139. Mon-Fri 8am–4pm. Specialty coffees, teas, bubble teas and pastries....drinks with a smile. Takeout and on-site.

Freddy’s Just for the Halibut

1110 Commerce Ave. Cod, Alaskan halibut fish and chips, award-winning clam chowder. Burgers, steaks, pasta. Beer and wine. M-Sat 10am–8pm, Sunday 11am–8pm. Inside dining, Drive-thru, outdoor seating. 360-414-3288. See ad, page 12.

The Gifted Kitchen

711 Vandercook Way, Longview “Celebrate, create, inspire.” Soups, salads, sandwiches, wraps, entrees, sides, pot pies, quiche, grazing boxes & more. M-F 11–6; Sat special events only; Sun closed. 360-261-7697.

Hop N Grape

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. Worldfamous mac & cheese. 360-577-1541.

Kyoto Sushi Steakhouse

760 Ocean Beach Hwy, Suite J 360-425-9696.

Japanese food, i.e. hibachi, Bento boxes, Teppanyaki; Sushi (half-price Wednesdays); Kids Meal 50% Off Sundays.

Mon-Th 11-2:30, 4:30-9:30. Fri-Sat 11am10pm. Sun 11am-9pm.

Lynn’s Deli & Catering

1133 14th Ave.

Soups & sandwiches, specializing in paninis, box lunches, deli sandwiches and party platters. Mon-Fri 8-3, Saturday 10-2. 360-577-5656

Roland Wines

1106 Florida St., Longview. Authentic Italian wood-fired pizza, wine, and beer. Casual ambience. 5–9pm Wed-Fri, Sat. 1–9. 360-8467304. See ad, page 30.

Scythe Brewing Company 1217 3rd Avenue #150 360-353-3851

Sun, Tue,Wed, Th 12noon -8pm; Fri-Sat 12noon -10pm Closed Mondays Family-friendly brewery/restaurant with upscale, casual dining, lunch and dinner.

Stuffy’s 804 Ocean Beach Hwy 360-423-6356 8am–8pm. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. American style food. Free giant cinnamon roll with meal purchase on your birthday with proof of ID. Facebook: Stuffy’s II Restaurant, or Instagram @ stuffys2.

Teri’s, 3225 Ocean Beach Hwy, Longview. Lunch and dinner. Burgers, steak, seafood, pasta, specials, fresh NW cuisine. Full bar. Tues–Fri, 12Noon–8pm. Sat 5:30–8:30pm.. Curbside pickup. Inside dining. 360-577-0717.

Castle Rock, Wash

Luckman’s Coffee Company

239 Huntington Ave. North, Drive-thru. Pastries, sandwich es, salads, quiche. See ad, page 30.

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

Lunch, Dinner. Burgers, hand-cut steak; seafood and pasta. Restaurant open 1-8pm Tue-Th, 1-9pm, F-Sat. Lounge Happy Hours 4pm. 360-967-2333. Call for status/options.

Vault Books & Brew 20 Cowlitz Street West, Castle Rock. Coffee and specialty drinks, quick eats & sweet treats. See ad, page 34

Kalama, Wash.

Scappoose, Ore.

Fultano’s Pizza

51511 SE 2nd. Family style with unique piz za 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. 503-543-5100. Inside Dining.

215 N. Hendrickson Dr., Port of Kalama. A Northwest pub and unique bars serving breakfast, lunch & dinner daily.

Info & reservations, bar hours at mcmenamins.com. 8am–midnight daily. 360- 673-9210. Indoor dining, covered outdoor seating, curbside take-out.

St. Helens, Ore.

Sunshine Pizza & Catering 2124 Columbia Blvd. Hot pizza, cool salad bar. Beer & wine. Limited inside seating, curbside pickup and delivery. 503-397-3211 See ad, page 14.

Big River Tap Room

313 Strand Street on the Riverfront. Lunch/Dinner Tue-Thurs 12–8pm; Fri-Sat 12–9pm. Chicago-style hot dogs, Italian beef, pastrami. Weekend Burrito Breakfast, Sat 8-11, Sun 8am3pm. See ad, page 14.

Plymouth Pub 298 S. 1st Street, St. Helens, Ore. Family friendly, food, 14 tap handles. Open daily 11am-10pm. See ad, pg 14.

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 & din ner. Full bar. Call for hours.503-410-5479. Check Facebook for updates. Dine-in.

Toutle, Wash.

DREW’S GROCERY & SERVICE

5304 Spirit Lake Hwy (10 mi. fr Exit 49) 24-hour fueling (gas & diesel, card at pump, cash at Jule’s Snack Shack (when open). Red Leaf Organic Coffee. See ad, page 38.

Woodland, Wash.

1350 Atlantic Ave. Rotating craft brews, pub fare. Open M-Th 11am–6pm; Fri–Sat 11am–10pm; Sunday 11am–6pm. 360-841-8941. See ad, page 43.

Luckman

Coffee Company

1230 Lewis River Rd. Small batch on-site roasted coffee, breakfast, lunch. Inside seating. M-F 5:30am–6pm, Sat 6am–5pm, Sun 7am–3pm. See ad, page 30.

THE OAK TREE

1020 Atlantic Ave. Break fast served all day. Famous Bankruptcy Stew, Oak Tree Salad, desserts baked in-house. Full bar. Happy Hours 1-3, 7-9pm. Live music. 360--841-5292. See ad, page 33.

Restaurant operators: To advertise in Columbia River Dining Guide,

Fultano’s Pizza

Retain

COMMUNITY LEADERS AND CITIZEN ENDORSEMENTS

Doug Barney

Sharon Barney

Ray Betts

Justine Blake

Joerg Bleeck

Diana Boaglio

Jamie Boaglio

Myke Brady

Nancy Breeden

Jo Brewer

Travis Brinkman Amy Brudi Eric Brudi

Dina Buchanan

Amber Buck Travis Buck Rick Butterfield Ray Caldwell Kristen Carroll Kristi Casey Wyatt Casey Craig Chilton Robin Chilton Debra Christian Jeff Christian Emilie Cochrane Dick Cole

Janet Cole

Twylla Corrie Tom D’Aboy Steve Dahl Hayden Davis Jackie Davis Linda Davis Robin Davis Scott Davis Scott Derosier Jean DeWitt Darold Dietz Evayln Dietz Greg Drew

Jeff Dumke

Natasha Edinger Scott Edinger

Alan Engstrom

Margaret Engstrom Frankie Enriquez Nathan Enriquez Nolan Enriquez

Allan Erickson, Port of Longview Commissioner Bea Ericson Keith Ferguson Will Finn, Woodland Mayor Rich Fletcher Theresa Fletcher Tim Fowler Danni Franett Kristi Franett Matt Franett Pete Franett Doug Franks Mildred Franks Jennifer Fuller Ted Fuller Eric Gann Susan Gann Clark Gardner Joe Gardner, Former Commissioner Sharon Giberson Dan Gillihan Judy Gillihan Kalena Gillihan Seth Gillihan D.r Tony Grafton Karen Grafton Martin Green Bob Gregory Former Longview City Manager Jane Gregory Dana Gustin Jon Gustin Robert Gustin Tara Gustin Thomas Gustin Mike Haas

Cherie Hadaller Jamaica Hadaller Jason Hadaller Linda Hadaller Shawn Hadaller Barb Hagdahl Bret Hagdahl Carrie Hall Randy Hall Adam Hamer

Community and business leaders from both sides of the aisle have witnessed my performance during the past 10 months in office, and know my commitment to the citizens of Cowlitz County. Working as a team with city and county leaders, we can address our challenges. I’ve worked hard in my business and will work hard for YOU.

PLEASE RETAIN ME AS COWLITZ COUNTY COMMISSIONER FOR DISTRICT #3.

Al Hamer

Brad Hamer

Delores Hamer

Jeanne Hamer Vonnie Hamer Winston Hamer Sammi Hampton Jason Hannah Jennifer Hannah Maggie Hannah Dr. Byron Hanson Irene Hanson Beth Hayes Brad Hayes Robert Hays Paul Helenberg Castle Rock Mayor Matt Hellem Pam Hellem Mik Hendrickson Kathy Herlocker Larry Herlocker Shannon Herndon Terry Herndon Jess Hight Vickie Hight Ben Jabusch Dave Jabusch Jake Jabusch Judy Jabusch Kirk Jabusch Leslie Jabusch Leslie Jabusch Lillian Jabusch

Margaret Jabusch Rhonda Jabusch Shana Jabusch Steve Jabusch Sydney Jabusch Evelyn Jackson Larry Jackson Julie Jacobsen Warren Jacobsen Cory Johnson Jim Johnson Kari Johnson Nancy Johnson Debbie Kaps Mike Karnofski, Kelso Mayor Erin Kelsey

Jake Kelsey

Julie Kendall Ruth Kendall Ann Krause John Krause

Amy Lafave

Dave Lafave Kathleen Landau Loren Landau Alison Latham Bob Latham Jesse Latham John Latham Megan Latham Norma Latham Dr. Ed Laulainen Chris Lemmons Clara Lemmons Dale Lemmons Dean Lemmons Deanna Lemmons Don Lemmons Joan Lemmons John Lemmons Kim Lemmons

Larry Lemmons Mike Lemmons Steve Lemmons Jim Libby Sherry Libby Debra Luchau Brian Magnuson Maria Magnuson Colton Mahnke Craig Mahnke Dr. Steven Mahnke Kim Mahnke Brandon Martinez Billy Maslowski Christie Masters Dennis McCrady Mark McCrady, Former Longview Mayor Theresa McCrady Bill McDonald Dolores McDonald Jeanne McDonald Ken McDonald Bryan McElligott Kris McElroy Weber Denise Mcloughlin

Terry Mcloughlin

Cal Miller

Kim Miller

Jennifer Murphy Patrick Murphy Francis Naglich Denise Nicholson

Shawn Nyman

Dave Orr Leslie Orr Donna Painter John Painter Doug Palmer Linda Palmer John Partridge Vickie Partridge Karen Pickett Janet Powers Steve Powers Denise Quigley Kirk Raboin

George Raiter, Former Commissioner Russ Rambo Pat Rauth Peggy Renaud Tom Renaud Keith Richards Susan Richards Travis Richards Colene Risner Toby Risner Ann Rivers, State Senator Mike Rueter, Kalama Mayor Nikki Ruhland Scott Ruhland

Joel Rupley, Former Commissioner Joe Rynevich Kathleen Rynevich Tim Salberg Chris Searing Alex Shuttleworth Collen Shuttleworth Melissa Shuttleworth Wayne Shuttleworth John Steppert Sherry Steppert Kevin Storedahl

Kimball Storedahl Ronnie Strode

Mark Studebaker Dick Stumph

Jan Stumph Dr. Terry Tack RuthAnn Tack Dean Takko, Former State Senator Elaine Theriault Robert Theriault Ben Thomas Derek Thomas Brad Thurman, Cowlitz County Sheriff Bobbi Tressler Mike Tressler Melissa Vandervalk Ray Vandervalk Steve Vincent Dennis Wagner Diane Wagner Frank Wagner Joan Wagner Sharon Wall MaryAlice Wallis, Longview Mayor Cindy Wardlow Kellie Watase Dennis Weber, Cowlitz County Commissioner Dr. Dave Westrup Menetta Westrup

Christi Whipps Tony Whipps Steve Wilcox Kurt Williams Joe Willis Kevin Willis Diana Winther

Washington Education Association / Lower Columbia Uniserve

Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council

Lower Columbia Contractors Association Lower Columbia Association of REALTORS

WHERE DO YOU READ THE READER?

Send your photo reading the Reader to Publisher@ CRReader.com. Include names and cities of residence. We strive to promptly acknowledge photos received; if you don’t hear from us within 5 days, please resend. For cell phone photo, choose the largest file size up to 2 MB. Please pose near the camera; the background scene will still show in the frame behind.

Where do you read THE READER?

Hooked on phonics? Longview residents Jim & Christi Davis, and Rocky & Patty Williams reading the reader after enjoying dinner at Visconti’s restaurant in Leavenworth, Wash. Patty referred to Jim as a “scoundrel” for holding the paper upside down. Hey, Patty, be nice! Maybe he just can’t read!

Never leave home without it (CRR) Kalama resident Walter Pistor viewing the Holy Lance, said to be the tip of the spear referenced in the New Testament (John 19:34) when the Roman soldier pierced the body of Jesus during his crucifixion. The Holy Lance and other relics are displayed at Imperial Treasury (Weltliche Schatzkammer) at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. Walter could hardly take his eyes off of these items long enough to resume reading CRR!

A big catch! Fishing in Petersburg, Alaska with Secretcove Charters. Ricky Sett of Camarillo, California; Pat Murphy of Meridian, Idaho; Joe Murphy of Longview, Wash; and Mike Murphy of Camino, California.

Stepping up to art Pat Spencer of Longview and her granddaughter, Edie Vautier of Seattle, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Looking UP

Fall is here. The summer constellations are moving out to the southwest. The summer triangle is leaving its overhead dominance. The Constellation of Pegasus is starting to take the prominent position in the Autumn sky. It will be in full command by 8:30pm in the evening.

The Evening Sky

Jupiter is very bright as it is now at its closest approach in 70 years. By 7:30pm Jupiter is well above the horizon in the southeast. You can see the moons in binoculars or a spotting

By Greg Smith

scope, as many as four tiny dots in a row on the sides of Jupiter. Saturn is still bright in the south. A small telescope or spotting scope will bring out Saturn’s rings.

This is the prime time of the year to be viewing the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). M31 will be almost right overhead. The Great Square of Pegasus is overhead and to the left of Jupiter. Follow the two stars that trail off the left corner of the square and go up two more stars and you will find the galaxy, a fuzzy smudge. A spotting scope will show you a dust bunny looking haze with a “bright center.” This in reality is just the center of the galaxy. If you could see the whole thing, it would be the width of six full moons. Some depictions of the M31 show what it would look like if we could see it in its whole size, looking like an eye in the sky. At

The Pleiades

the end of October Orion will be rising after 10:30pm with Mars above its outstretched arms. Mars is visible all night from here on into winter.

The Morning Sky

Mars is the bright reddish point of light high in the western sky before sunrise. It is just over the top of Orion. Also still visible is The Pleiades (M45).

NIGHT SKY SPECTACLES

The Pleiades (M45)

Moon Phases:

New: Tues, Oct 25th 1st Quarter: Mon, Oct 31st Full: Tues, Nov 8-9th 3rd Quarter: Wed, Nov 16th

End of twilight - when the stars start to come out:

Sat. Oct 15th, 6:56pm

Fri, Oct 31st, 6:30pm

Sun, Nov 6th, 5:28pm Sat, Nov 12th, 5:15pm

This is very noticeable in the sky after 9pm in the eastern sky. It will be visible all night long. This star cluster is one of the oldest known star clusters. It looks like a tiny cup. Do not confuse this with the little dipper constellation. The Pleiades is not a constellation but an asterism (small definable group of stars within a constellation). It is part of the constellation Taurus the Bull, which is part of the Zodiac. When The Pleiades are viewed in binoculars, you will see that it is a group of six bright stars with many other dimmer stars all around it. It is very lovely to see.

Orionids Meteor Shower

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.

SHOP LOCAL!

Traditional Toys, Games & Books

The Orionids meteor shower is active from September 26 to November 22. Peaking on the night of October 20-21, it often produces 10-20 meteors per hour. The moon does not rise till just after 3:00 am and is only a slim crescent of 17% illumination. The shower is called the Orionids due to the fact that the meteors appear to come from the constellation of Orion, but they can be seen all over the sky. The Orionids are the debris left over from Halley’s Comet.

ATTENTION LAND OWNERS

We buy cedar boughs. Do not damage trees. We pay depending on the quality of your trees. We do all the work!

Free estimates. For more info call or text Jorge Martinez 360-751-7723

OF CHINESE ART

A gift from Dr. and Mrs. H. Minthorn to the community via Lower Columbia College Foundation, The Minthorn Collection of Chinese Art encompasses a wide range of styles and is displayed in the upper level of the art gallery in LCC’s Rose Center, open Tues-Thurs, 10–3. Free.

Huge Shout Out & Thank You

Roland on Wine

By Marc RolandA Mind Opener?

Merlot may surprise you

I don’t want any F-ing Merlot.” If you saw the movie “Sideways,” you

will remember the moment that the character Miles, a self-professed enofile and certified wine snob, told his friend and everyone in the tasting room that he would not lower himself to drink merlot. In his mind the only wine that mattered was pinot noir. The movie has been credited with the fall from grace of one of the most popular grapes in the world.

I don’t know about you, but for me merlot is the wine I love but don’t want to admit it to anyone. Why? Because it is not a wine that wine enthusiasts consider interesting or complex, and no one wants to admit that it is delicious, at least not around so-called connoisseurs. But let’s stop for a minute and talk about a grape that makes every list as a noble grape.

In the US and most “new world wine,” which includes everything outside

of Europe, wines are named after the place they are grown, not by the variety of the grape. I personally like this nomenclature. It gives credence to all the factors that make up the characteristics of the wine. For example, the soils, the climate, the weather, and the hand of the winemaker.

They call this terroir in Europe. I don’t have to tell you that not all Merlots, or rieslings taste the same. Here is a challenge to you: Instead of refusing to taste a wine variety that you think you don’t like, give it a try. Sometimes our bad past experiences with a wine can close off our minds.

If Cabernet Sauvignon is the king of wines, then Merlot is the queen. People love it for its smooth mouth feel and controlled tannins. Admit it or not, we all like a wine that is velvety and smooth. The dark fruit flavors pair well with an array of meats as long as the sauces or seasonings aren’t too strong. Merlot grapes have a distinct black and

blue color and the blackbird (merle in French) is its namesake. It is originally from France, found in the Bordeaux region. It is a principle grape there but you wouldn’t know it by the label. It is buried with cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, petit verdot, and malbec. So it is almost always blended with other grapes, with the exception of maybe the most famous Bordeaux of all, Petrus Pomerol, a Bordeaux which

Longview resident and former Kelso teacher Marc Roland started making wine in 2008 in his garage. He and his wife, Nancy, now operate Roland Wines at 1106 Florida Street in Longview’s new “barrel district.” For wine tasting hours, call 360-846-7304.

is often purely Merlot. Wines made on the “Left Bank” south of the Garonne and Gironde Rivers are predominately Merlot.

So what are some reasons you may not like Merlot? The grape poses two problems for the winemaker. If the growing season is not hot enough, the resulting wines take on an herbaceous flavor, often referred to as “green.” A more common problem for California Merlot is too much heat. This creates a blah and uninspiring wine that Miles in “Sideways” detested.

I don’t think any of us can afford — or want to afford — a $5,000 bottle of Petrus, but don’t give up on Merlot. Try a bottle this week.

BREAKFAST

HAPPY HOUR

LIVE MUSIC

FOOTBALL

“

What are you reading?

Monthly feature coordinated by Alan Rose

Drink Good Coffee, Read Good Books

Located in the historic Castle Rock Bank Building

Cowlitz Street West Mon-Sat • 8:30–5

Auto, Home, Flood,

A. ST. SW

RV, ATV

CASTLE

Mt. St. Helens Gifts

By Jeff Stookey

n immense book, in size, content, and ramifications, dealing with the greatest issue of our time: the climate crisis. It begins with a severe heat wave in India that kills millions of people. Frank, an American working for an NGO, is one of the survivors. The other main character is Mary, named to head the newly formed Ministry for the Future, a UN agency mandated to protect future generations of humans and animals, and essentially Earth’s biosphere. These two characters collide and form the primary relationship in a story that moves glacially from horror to hope.

A

I enjoyed the way this book ponders many different possibilities for CO2 mitigation and planetary survival, and as speculative fiction, it describes how such ideas might play out. That’s where the hope comes in. I value Robinson’s impressive and far-reaching research, which will teach you things you never imagined and never thought

Born and raised in the Okanogan River valley, Jeff Stookey is the author of Medicine for the Blues trilogy, now available from audiobooks.com, libro.fm/audiobooks, bookmate.com, as well as in paperback and eBook versions. You can sign up for his email newsletter at JeffStookey.com.

RYDERWOOD

FALL 2022

possible. This book makes me view our world differently—now with a glimmer of hope, while still recognizing the enormous perils.

Although I agree with Ezra Klein’s recommendation that “policymakers and citizens, everywhere” should read this book, I admit it may not be for everyone. As a novel, it is not satisfying, but if you have a thirst for learning and are interested in getting “down in the weeds” regarding what it might take to get us out of the climate crisis, Robinson’s tome will give you some reason for optimism.

ATTENTION, READERS

Read a good book lately? To be mini-interviewed by CRR Book Reviewer Alan Rose for a future “What Are You Reading?” spotlight, please contact him at alan@alan-rose.com or the publisher/editor at publisher@ crreader.com.

ARTS & CRAFTS FAIR !

RYDERWOOD

OCT 21 & 22 10-4 pm 30+ Vendors!

FALL 2022

ARTS & CRAFTS FAIR !

Bake sale!

OCT 21 & 22 10-4 pm 30+ Vendors!

Lunch at the Cafe 11-2!

Bake sale!

Lunch at the Cafe 11-2!

Ryderwood Community Hall, 301 Morse St Email RyderwoodEvents@yahoo.com for further details

Ryderwood Community Hall, 301 Morse St Email RyderwoodEvents@yahoo.com for further details

Or call 360-214-0455 (text)

Or call 360-214-0455 (text)

Exit 59 to SR 506 west for 9 scenic miles

Exit 59 to SR 506 west for 9 scenic miles

Low-impact

Exercise Classes

Nov/Dec

Tai Chi/Qigong Lunch Break

Tuesdays – Noon.

Tai Chi for Beginners

Tues & Th – 10:00 AM.

Register through

NASM Certified Senior Fitness

Longview Parks & Rec 360 442-5400

Instructor LaNay Eastman

Tai Chi for Health and Senior

and Fall

TCHI Certified Tai Chi for

(Standing/Seated)

Tai Chi & Qigong for Health and Wellness (Standing/Seated)

The Administration on Aging (AoA) has rated the TCHI

Tai Chi for Arthritis and Fall Prevent (TCA) program as the highest evidence-based program for older adults and wellness. More information at www. taichiforhealthinstitute.org.

PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Cloud Cuckoo Land

Anthony Doerr, Scribner $20

2. It Ends with Us

Colleen Hoover, Atria, $16.99

3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Taylor

Jenkins Reid, Washington Square Press, $17

4. The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman, Penguin, $17

5. Verity Colleen Hoover, Grand Central, $16.99

6. The Sentence

Louise Erdrich, Harper Perennial, $18

7. A Court of Thorns and Roses Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $18

8. The House in the Cerulean Sea

TJ Klune, Tor, $18.99

9. Circe Madeline Miller, Back Bay, $16.99

10. Where the Crawdads

Sing Delia Owens, Putnam, $18

PAPERBACK NON-FICTION

1. Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions $20

2. The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., Penguin, $19

3. Finding the Mother Tree

Suzanne Simard, Vintage, $17

4. Fuzz

Mary Roach, Norton, $16.95

5. The Love Prescription

John Gottman, Ph.D, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Ph.D, Penguin Life, $15

6. All About Love

bell hooks, Morrow, $16.99

7. Solutions and Other Problems

Allie Brosh, Gallery Books, $22

8. The Book of Delights

Ross Gay, Algonquin Books, $17.99

9. Entangled Life

Merlin Sheldrake, Random House, $18

10. Astoria Peter Stark, Ecco, $16.99

BOOK REVIEW

The Trees by Percival Everett Graywolf Press $16

Paperback

This book is very funny. It is also horrific in its subject matter, the history of lynching in the United States. A finalist for this year’s Booker Prize (to be announced on October 17), The Trees reminds one of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout , which won the Booker Prize in 2016. Both employ sharp satirical humor, but Trees has more of a conventional narrative.

Ed Morgan and Jim Davis are Black detectives sent to Money, Mississippi, to investigate the gruesome murders of two White men, as well as the mystery

Alan’s haunting novel of the AIDS epidemic, As If Death Summoned, won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award (LGBT category.)

He can be reached at www.alan-rose.com.

Top 10 Bestsellers

FICTION

1. The Golden Enclaves

Naomi Novik, Del Rey, $28

2. The Winners

Fredrik Backman, Atria, $28.99

3. Fairy Tale

Stephen King, Scribner, $32.50,

4. The Bullet That Missed Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $27

5. Shrines of Gaiety

Kate Atkinson, Doubleday, $29

6. Lucy by the Sea

Elizabeth Strout, Random House, $28

7. Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus, Doubleday, $29

8. Babel

R.F. Kuang, Harper Voyager, $27.99

9. Nona the Ninth Tamsyn Muir, Tordotcom, $28.99

10. Treasure State

C.J. Box, Minotaur Books, $28.99

NON-FICTION

1. I’m Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy, Simon & Schuster, $27.99

2. What If? 2 Randall Munroe, Riverhead Books, $30

3. Starry Messenger

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Henry Holt and Co., $28.99

4. Dinners with Ruth Nina Totenberg, Simon & Schuster, $27.99,

5. Healing Through Words Rupi Kaur, Andrews McMeel, $24.99

6. The Divider Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, Doubleday, $32

7. Dinner in One Melissa Clark, Clarkson Potter, $29.99

8. The Myth of Normal Gabor Maté, M.D., Daniel Maté, Avery, $30

9. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Charlie Mackesy, HarperOne, $22.99

10. Crying in H Mart Michelle Zauner, Knopf, $26.95

Brought to you by Book Sense and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Assn, for week ending Oct. 2, 2022, 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

ILLUSTRATED

1. Room on the Broom

Julia Donaldson, Axel Scheffler (Illus.), Dial Books,$8.99

2. The Pigeon Will Ride the Roller Coaster!

Mo Willems, Union Square Kids, $17.99

3. Goodnight Moon

Margaret Wise Brown, Clement Hurd (Illus.), Harper,$8.99

4. Construction Site Gets a Fright!

Sherri Duskey Rinker, AG Ford (Illus.), Chronicle Books, $12.99

5. Little Blue Truck’s Halloween

Alice Schertle, Jill McElmurry (Illus.), HMH Books for Young Readers, $13.99

6. The Crayons Trick or Treat

Drew Daywalt, Oliver Jeffers (Illus.), Philomel Books, $9.99

7. Creepy Crayon! Aaron Reynolds, Peter Brown (Illus.), Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, $18.99

8. Farmhouse Sophie Blackall, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $18.99

9. Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak, Harper, $19.95

10. Little Ghostie: Finger Puppet Book Emily Dove (Illus.), Chronicle, $7.99

The comedic and the horrific

of an unidentified Black corpse found at both crime scenes. Once in custody, the Black corpse disappeared, only to re-appear at the next gruesome murder. It turns out that the victims, Wheat Bryant and Junior Junior Milam, were the adult sons of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, the men who brutally murdered 14-year old Emmett Till in 1955 while the boy was visiting his aunt in Money. Both men were found not guilty by an all-White jury.

More suspicious deaths occur, accompanied by the mysterious corpse, which again disappears. Soon, similar murders are happening across the country, in Chicago, in Wyoming, where Chinese workers had been lynched. The key to these murders may be a 104-year old Black woman called Mama Z, who has meticulously recorded every lynching in the US since 1913—the year her father was lynched for trying to vote.

Everett, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California, has fun playing with cultural stereotypes associated with the South: the deputy sheriff who “puts on airs” because he had a year of junior college; the local funeral home that was formerly a Dairy Queen; a character who refuses to read People magazine because she can’t stand those “intellectual elites.”

(Damon Thruff looking through Mama Z’s files of lynchings since 1913)

“You did all this?” Damon asked. Mama Z poured the tea. “Yes.” “It’s incredible,” he said. “I have chronicled the work of the devil.”

“The devil?”

“I don’t believe in a god, Mr. Thruff. You can’t sit here in this room, touch all these folders, read all of these pages, and believe in a god. I do, however, and I’m certain you do, too, believe in the devil.”

“And hell?”

“This is hell, Mr. Thruff. Haven’t you been watching?”

-- from The Trees

The book is sure to offend southerners in general, White supremacists in particular, and most of the state of Mississippi.

The humor is wrapped in snappy dialogue that’s natural and authentic— which is to say much of it can’t be quoted in a family magazine.

“I just want you to know that I ain’t like a lot of folks around here.”

1. The Stars Did Wander Darkling

Colin Meloy, Balzer + Bray, $17.99

2. Odder Katherine Applegate, Charles Santoso (Illus.), Feiwel & Friends, $16.99

3. The Tryout: A Graphic Novel Christina Soontornvat, Joanna Cacao (Illus.), Graphix, $12.99

4. Hatchet

Gary Paulsen, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, $9.99

5. Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy Jonathan Hill, Walker Books US, $14.99

6. The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean (Illus.), Harper, $8.99

7. Garlic and the Witch Bree Paulsen, Quill Tree Books, $13.99

8. Ghost Squad

Claribel A. Ortega, Scholastic, $8.99

9. The Last Cuentista Donna Barba Higuera, Levine Querido, $18.99

10. Guts: A Graphic Novel Raina Telgemeier, Graphix, $12.99

By Alan Rose

“Is that right?” Jim asked.

“I went to junior college.”

“Good for you,” Ed said.

“Know what I think?”

“I should hope not…”

“Don’t mind him,” Ed said. “Tell me what you think, Jethro.”

Philip Roth once defined satire as moral outrage transformed into comic art. The Trees is a masterful work of comic art, balancing the horror with humor as it explores a bitter chapter in our country’s saga of race.

At St. Stephen’s Church

1428 22nd Ave., Longview

MIDDLE GRADE

HOW TO PUBLICIZE YOUR NON-PROFIT EVENT IN CRR

Send your non-commercial community event 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

Submission Deadlines

Events occurring: Nov 25-Jan15 by Nov 4 for Nov 25 Holiday issue. Jan 15 - Feb 20 by Dec 25 for Jan 15 issue. Calendar submissions are considered for inclusion, subject to lead time, relevance to readers, and space limitations. See Submission Guidelines below.

Mt St Helens Hiking Club

(E) - Easier: Usually on relatively flat ground (up to 5 miles and/or less than 500 ft. e.g.)

(M) - Moderate: Longer and more elevation gain (over 5 miles and/or over 500 ft. e.g.)

(S) - Strenuous: Long hikes and/or elevation gain (over 8 miles and/or over 1200 ft. e.g.)

Call leader to join outing or for more info. Non-members welcome.

Oct 15 - Saturday

Cinnamon Peak (S)

Drive 110 miles RT. Hike 8 miles with 1800’ e.g. through old growth trees and old harvest areas to a viewpoint of Mt. St. Helens. Leader: Bruce (360) 425-0256

October 19 - Wednesday

Lacamas/Round Lake (E)

Drive 110 miles RT Hike 4.6 miles with 544’ e.g. Leader: John R. (360) 431-1122

October 26 - Wednesday

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

Jazz Series Thursdays, 6-8pm at Roland’s Wine, Longview. “Thursday’s the new Friday,” says drummer/musician coordinator Alan Cook. “Excellent music, food, and drink in the warm & welcoming environs of Roland Wines. All welcome! “Oct 13, 20, 6–8pm. 1106 Florida St., Longview.

Cowlitz Community Farmers Market Sat, Oct 15,22,29. 9am–2pm, 1900 7th Ave, Cowlitz Expo Center, Longview, Wash.. cowlitzfarmersmarkets.com

Community in the Crossfire: Seeking Civil Dialogue in Uncivil Times (5th in 5-part forum),Oct 22, 7:30pm, LCC Health & Sciences Bldg,, along Maple St. behind Longview Library.

Ryderwood 2022 Arts & Crafts Fair Oct 21-22. 10–4. 30+ vendors, Lunch at the Café 11–2, Bake Sale, Ryderwood Community Hall, 301 Morse St., Ryderwood, Wash.

Info: 360-214-0455 (text).. I-5 Exit 59 to SR-506, west for 9 scenic miles.

Strawberry Island (E)

Drive 150 miles RT Hike 4 mile loop with 150’ e.g. along an easy path with views of the Columbia Gorge. Tour of Bonneville Dam after hike.

Leader: Bruce (360) 425-0256

October 29 - Saturday

Loowit Trail (M)

Drive 120 miles RT Hike 10 miles out & back with 1500’ e.g. Hike to the roundthe-mountain Loowit Trail. Nice views above the tree line. Leader: George (360) 430-4157

Quincy Grange Halloween Carnival

Oct. 31, 5-8 pm, at the grange hall, 78314 Rutters Rd., Clatskanie, Ore. (Follow signs from Clatskanie). Games, bingo, prize store, Tombstone Cafe for dinner and snacks. Fun, affordable for the whole family. Follow us on Facebook. Info: Barb Kallio 503-728-4143 or Wanda Derby 503-7282704. Proceeds benefit scholarships, youth programs, and community programs.

Reception for 2022 North Coast Writer’s Residency winner, Jennifer D. Munro hosted jointly by Writer’s Guild of Astoria and Astoria Visual Arts (AVA) at Astoria Visual Arts on Saturday, Nov 5, 6pm. Light refreshments. Free event. The focus of Jennifer’s residency was polishing a collection of book-length collection of essays, The Twelfth Mom. Jennifer explores the challenges of being an adoptive parent of a troubled teen through the lens of their shared passion for bird watching.

Rainier Senior Center Holiday Bazaar.

Sat. Nov. 5, 9–4. $6 Stew Lunch 11 to 2. 48 West 7th St., Rainier Ore.

Art by Artiebold through Nov. 7. Alcove Gallery at Community Arts Workshop at CAP. 1526 Commerce, Longview. M-Th, 9–3:30pm. Info: 360-636-0940.

Minthorn Collection of Chinese Art Tues-Thurs, 10-3, Rose Center for the Arts, upstairs art gallery, Lower Columbia College.

Lower Columbia Genealogical Society

Public Zoom meetings 2nd Thurs.

6pm welcome to visitors, instructions, announcements. Program with guest speaker 7pm. For a Zoom link: lcgsgen@ yahoo.com.

Community Yoga In-person M-W-F, 7:45–9am, St. Stephen’s Church,1428 22nd Ave, Longview, Wash. (enter via alley). Led by volunteers. Suggested donation $2 per session; donated to the church. More info: Ruth, 360-430-0420.

Stella Historical Society Museum is officially CLOSED for the season, to reopen the weekend after July 4, 2023. Hours will be 11–4. Watch for news about annual “Kid’s Day” celebration. Located at 8530 Ocean Beach Highway (10 miles west of Longview), the museum is free; donations always welcome. For museum tours in the off season, call 360-423-3860 or 360-423-8663. Also available for Scouting tours, Eagle Scout projects and high school “community service” hours. For more info check Facebook.

Annual Doll Tea helps kick off holiday season

The Annual Doll Tea, organized by members of Epsilon Sigma Alpha, is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 3, from 2 to 3:30pm at the Calvary Community Church in Longview, which is located 2655 38th Avenue.

Proceeds from the event, “A Royal Affair,” will raise money for the Children’s Community Christmas Center (formerly known as the Salvation Army Christmas Center), which provides toys, clothes, and other holiday gifts for local families struggling financially. There is a suggested donation of $15 to attend this high tea. Reservations are required; call Beverly at 360-577-6060.

There will be dolls on display that have been dressed, decorated, and donated by local volunteers to benefit the Christmas Center. There will also be live music, and some collectible dolls to be bid on, along with Queen Elizabeth collectibles on display.

Beverly Gilmore, the coordinator of the Children’s Community Christmas Center, said that the money raised by the tea party is crucial to the success of helping local families at Christmas. Toys, clothes, and gifts are donated by local community members, and money raised from the tea helps to buy special requested gifts.

BROADWAY GALLERY

1418 Commerce Avenue, Longview T-W-F-Sat, 11–4 • Th, 11–6. Visit the Gallery to see new work. For event updates check our website: the-broadway-gallery.com, at Broadway Gallery on Facebook, and broadway gallery longview on Instagram.

Featured artists: October: Gallery members Debra Chase (new paintings) and Mary Kohlschmidt (jewelry).

November: Gallery members Debby Neely (Wildlife print-maker), Trudy Woods (functional pottery), Voted one of top 3 Galleries in Southwest Washington. Free Gift wrapping plus Layaway!

Join Us for First Thursday

Nov 3rd, 5:30–7pm

Join us for new art, refreshments & live music by Steve Harvey

HOLIDAY OPENING

Saturday, Nov. 12

Original Holiday ornaments, cards & MORE for the Season made by our artists.

Find a unique gift! We have beautiful artisan cards, masks, jewelry, books by local authors, wearable art, original paintings, pottery, sculpture, photographs and so much more at your local Co-operative Fine Arts & Crafts Gallery.

Shop Local Saturday (4th Saturday each month) to receive a free gift!

Dr. Robert Davis , Conductor

Wagner Music from Tannhäuser

Borodin Symphony no. 2

Fall Concerts

Saturday, Oct. 22, 7:00 pm

Sunday, Oct. 23, 3:00 pm

Wollenberg Auditorium LCC

1600 Maple Street, Longview

Dvorak Violin Concerto featuring Kaia Selden

FREE admission donations accepted

Find out more at swwsymphony.org or by calling 360-430-0960

PERFORMANCES AT BIRKENFELD THEATRE, 75 S.NEHALEM ST., CLATSKANIE, ORE. TICKETS: clatskaniearts.org or at the door.

More than Just Eye Candy

Story by Alice Slusher

Foryears I’ve been aware of the benefits of using fall leaves in the landscape and garden. Unfortunately, I live out in the boonies, and most of our trees are Douglas firs. Their needles are also great mulch, but have you ever tried to rake up tiny needles that become airborne as you sweep them into piles? And their needles don’t fall all at once like deciduous trees. Occasionally, I’ve begged some bagged leaves from friends’ yards, but that’s so inconvenient.

Last year, our Master Gardeners hosted a Leaf Exchange. Folks who wanted to get rid of bagged leaves from their property brought them to us, and as fast as they came in, people like me who needed leaves took them home! It’s a rewarding opportunity for all concerned.

What can you do with fall leaves?

A thin layer of leaves can be mulched finely into the lawn when you mow to provide nitrogen over the winter. It’s vital to cut the grass when the leaves are dry and thin enough that you can still see the grass beneath them.

Leaving a thick layer will smother the grass. You’ll want to do this during early leaf fall—after that, use your mower to mulch and sweep up your leaves so you can either bag them or use them.

You can use leaves as mulch in perennial beds. Shred them first. Un-shredded leaves can mat down and interfere with soil moisture—and shredded leaves stay where you put them instead of blowing away. A couple of inches of leaf mulch help to moderate the soil temperature over the winter, decrease soil erosion, keep

the spring weeds down, and provide nutrition to your plants. You can also use it to insulate plants like roses. Cover the plant’s crown with shredded leaves. If you encircle the bush with a wire cage, the leaves will stay in place and protect the plant.

Shredded leaves can be the added “browns” to compost piles. Healthy compost must have a half-and-half ratio of browns and greens (carbon and nitrogen). The leaves balance the green vegetable scraps and vegetation you add to the compost pile.

Here is a purpose that hadn’t occurred to me. Leaving (pun intended) leaves on the ground gives over-wintering butterflies, bees, toads, and salamanders a warm and protected winter habitat. If an area of your yard isn’t lawn, simply allow the leaves to remain as they fall.

One of the best ways to use fallen foliage is to cover your veggie garden beds with a few inches of shredded leaves, rake them into the top of the soil, then cover the beds loosely with a tarp. The leaves will compost in place over the winter. Hint—to speed up the composting process, sprinkle some nitrogen fertilizer (lawn fertilizer with an NPK of 21-0-0 works great) on top of the leaves before covering them. In the spring, simply work the composted leaves into the top few inches of soil, and plant according to the weather and what you are planting! Benefits: No weeds, better soil aeration, increased moisture retention, improved drainage for clay soils, and, of course, super soil nutrition.

Programs & Events

OSU Extension Columbia County

503-397-3462

Oct 19 Food Preservation at the Food Bank, Canning Fall Fruits 10:30am–1pm, St. Helens, Ore.

Oct 26 Cooking with What you Have on Hand, 11am,–1pm online

Nov 2 Cooking with What You Have on Hand (in person), St. Helens, Ore.

Nov 9 Cooking with What You Have on Hand (in person), Clatskanie, Ore.

Nov 16 Pressure Canning Meat & Game, 10:30am–1pm at the Food Bank, St. Helens,Ore Other programs: extension.oregonstate.edu

WSU Extension Cowlitz County

304 Cowlitz Way, Kelso, WA 98626

Free Zoom Workshops. Tues., noon online. 360-577-3014 X3, for connection info. Info: cowlitzcomg.com/events)

Oct 18 Dividing Perennial Plants

Oct 25 Lawn Tips for Fall

Nov 1 Winter Care of Houseplants

The WSU Extension Cowlitz County Master Gardener’s second annual Leaf Exchange will be held on November 5 and 12, 10 am-1 pm, at the Washington St. entrance to the Cowlitz County fairgrounds. Bring in your bagged leaves (no weeds, please) and stop by to pick some up if you need them! Master Gardeners will be on hand to assist with this free community service.

My briefcase is full of autumn leaves, going to use them to decorate my dinner table. I have a lady friend coming over! Later, of course, i will compost them.

Kalama resident Alice Slusher volunteers with WSU Extension Service Plant & Insect Clinic. Call 360-5773014, ext. 1, or send question via cowlitzmastergardener@ gmail.com.

Fall foliage flutters down to help around the yard!

Ortho Specializes in

talented staff

Longview Orthopedic

to local prep, club, college,

been providing sports medicine

1983. The LOA staff

you suffer a sports-related injury, we are committed to getting you back in the action as quickly as possible.

athletes.

LOA physicians have sub-specialty training and certification in sports medicine and have provided services to college and professional sports teams in Seattle and Los Angeles, including the Seattle Storm, Seattle Sounders, L.A. Lakers, L.A. Dodgers, L.A. Kings, L.A. Sparks, and USC Trojans.

McLeod, Tony

and physical therapy services are available onsite for your convenience.

is located at Pacific Surgical Institute,

Miss Manners

I work in retail myself, and I despise the empty cheeriness and how draining it can be during a long shift. So I figure that giving the cashier a quiet respite is not unwelcome.

I also glance around rather than watch their work, because no one wants to feel like they’re being observed or judged.

Additionally, I am an introvert and quite shy, so quiet checkouts benefit me, as well. Is this impolite?

GENTLE READER: Brief chattiness between customer and clerk can be charming or intrusive, depending on the people and what is said. Many regular customers enjoy being recognized with a few friendly words where they shop.

Unfortunately, some businesses have discovered this, and mandated forced conversation. It is obvious when this is scripted or required of strangers. Current cliches such as “What are you planning for the rest of the day?” are nosy and annoying.

So Miss Manners agrees that your confining yourself to minimally polite remarks may be as much of a relief to the cashier as it is to you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a 59-yearold woman who carries some extra weight

in just my abdomen. I think I look my age, yet I am frequently asked, “When is the baby due?” “How far along are you?” etc.

I am always astounded when confronted with this, and have no idea of the polite way to respond. Somehow “I’m not pregnant” doesn’t seem to be the most appropriate answer, because both parties just end up being embarrassed.

GENTLE READER: People often tell Miss Manners that etiquette is just a matter of making other people feel comfortable. Well, often, yes. But there are times to make people uncomfortable enough that they stop discomforting others. This is one of them.

Unfortunately, that is not license to be rude yourself. Miss Manners suggests a pleasant, “You’re mistaken about me. How far along are you?”

And yes, you can say it to any gender. It does not specify “how far along” in what -and it might refer to “learning manners.”

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.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.

Take a literary walk in the park

T

he Longview Public Library is pleased to announce the grand opening of the StoryWalk® at Archie Anderson Park, at 21st and 22nd Avenues along Alabama St., Longview. StoryWalk is a fun, educational activity that places a deconstructed children’s storybook along a walking route in the park. The StoryWalk will highlight books at easily-viewable heights for young children and people of all ages. A different picture book will be displayed twice a month to keep the StoryWalk learning experiences fresh and exciting.

The first book is The Little Kitten by Nicola Killen.

Places to go • People to see

Enjoying the Good Life

Good food • Good wine

Good books • Good cheer

Hand-crafted ads

Nice, crinkly paper

No glowing screen fatigue

The StoryWalk, a joint project between the Longview Public Library and Longview Parks & Recreation, is funded through the Washington State Library, IMLS, and the America Rescue Plan Act.

For more information, call the Library at 360-442-5300 or visit longviewlibrary. org or Facebook (www.facebook.com/ Longview PublicLibraryWA).

October 2022 Mayor Mary Alice WallaceCity of LongviewDear Mrs. Wallace

I would like to publicly extend my sincerest appreciation to you and the rest of the Longview City Council for your outstanding handling of the recent challenges involving our community’shomeless residents.

The class and composure that you have been able to maintain and project in dealing with this incredibly divisive issue in the face of such emphatic criticism has been truly encouraging.Our community is lucky to have your hand on the rudder.

Unwaveringly Yours, Brian Fleming, PresidentCutright, Inc.

the spectator by ned piper

Okay, I admit it, I’m a sports nut. A died-in-the-wool sports fan. I grew up in a family of athletes and sports enthusiasts, and am tempted to describe all the details, but I need space to instead tout baseball’s Seattle Mariners amazing comeback in their playoff game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It was Saturday, October 8, the same day we were to proofread the October issue at CRR’s office at 3pm, giving me just two hours to watch the game.

The first two hours didn’t go well for the Mariners. When I left for the office, Toronto led by seven points, an almost insurmountable lead in professional baseball. Before turning the TV off, I hit the “Record” button.

You may assume that I joined the proofreading team, anxious about how the ball game was going. Not true, as the columns, stories, even the ads were so compelling that I gave the Mariners’ fortunes only scant concern.

Sue always takes the proofreading crew to dinner, usually at an eatery that advertises with us. After dining at the Broadway Barrel House, Sue and I went home and watched two episodes of a Netflix series that has captured our interest (editor’s note: he means “to which we have become addicted,” i.e. our second viewing of the series “Better Call Saul.”) Once Sue went to bed, I restarted the Mariner game where I’d left off. The score was still Mariners 1, Toronto 8. As the final three innings unfolded, the Mariners chipped away at Toronto’s lead. Going into the final inning, my team trailed by only two points. Amazing!

More amazing was the fact that they loaded the bases with no outs.

The next batter up hit a bloop fly just beyond the infield. Two Toronto outfielders converged on the ball, crashing into each other. Neither caught the ball as both players lay injured on the field. That gave all three base runners the opportunity to cross home plate, giving Seattle a one run lead. Enough to win the ballgame and to advance to the next round in the playoffs.

I may decide to watch that game again. It’ll make a nice break from raking leaves out in the yard. Perhaps I’ll invite a fellow sports fan, or maybe watch alone. For sure it’ll be a “repeat pleasure” to look forward to.

PLUGGED IN TO

COWLITZ PUD

By Alice Dietz

Experiencing an Outage?

Whenever we experience a large outage, I begin receiving texts and calls from folks wanting the inside scoop. Receiving those questions is one of my favorite parts about the job. I enjoy helping people and providing as much information I can. The problem is, not all of Cowlitz County has my cell phone number (and I’m not going to give it to everyone, either). So what do most people do to get more information on an outage? They call our Outage Hotline.

While our outage hotline is a reliable option, we have more resources to discover even more about an outage that may be affecting your neighborhood. On our cowlitzpud. org/outages website, an up-to-the-

minute, interactive outage map provides the location of the outage, number of customers affected, cause (if available), status of the crew and an estimated time of restoration. This map is accessible through any electronic device.

As storm season approaches, communicating with our customers is our top priority. We are continuously working to improve the resources we provide them. I encourage you to look into our outage map, follow us on social media (Twitter and Facebook) and always know you can give us a call at 423-2210.

Alice Dietz is Cowlitz PUD’s Communications/Public Relations Manager. Reach her at adietz@cowlitzpud.org, or 360-501-9146.

By Robert Michael Pyle and Judy VanderMaten

a pleasure to hold; it provokes