Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Silly Poems

It is a grand day for poetry! Every Thing On It, a book of newly-published poems by the great Shel Silverstein was released today. While you wait for the library's copies to be ready to check out (they're coming soon, I promise!), you can reacquaint yourself with Silverstein's classic poetry collections A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. But, you could also take this opportunity to try out some other classic books of silly poetry! These are two of my favorites:

I really developed a taste for this genre of literature when I encountered Edward Lear. The collection The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear includes his most famous "The Owl and the Pussy-cat," but there are many other, lesser-known gems here too. For example, here's an excerpt from from "Mrs Jaypher": "Mrs Jaypher said, 'it's safer / If you've lemons in your head; / First to eat, a pound of meat, / And then to go at once to bed."

Genius, no? This particular collection has the virtue of being large and therefore chock-full of nonsense, and it also has lovely illustrations by John Vernon Lord.

If this isn't enough silliness for you, it's time to turn to another master of the ridiculous, Roald Dahl. Vile Verses contains dozens of silly poems illustrated by a wide variety of artists. Many are favorites from Dahl's novels for children – for example, "Centipede's Favourite Song," from James and the Giant Peach, which has some really excellent first  lines: "Once upon a time / When pigs were swine."  Once upon a time indeed.

Of, course, the library has many, many other volumes of silly poetry!  To see more, try searching the library catalog for the subjects Nonsense verses and Humorous poetry. And don't forget, you can always get reading recommendations tailored to your interests by using our Good Reads service!  Just go to the Readers page on the library's website and click on "Looking for a good read?" (Or, you could click on the link over on the right side of this blog!)

Birth Control

The Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academies) has just released a report recommending (among other things) that FDA-approved contraceptives should be on the list of services insurance companies must provide to women without copays. This would mean that for women with health insurance, contraception would be free. Public policy about reproductive matters is always controversial in this country, and there is no doubt that this recommendation will inspire a lively debate. I know you, dear readers, have lots to contribute to this debate already – but if you'd like to join with me in a crash course in birth control history, read on!

Let's begin with the ancient world.  Contraception seems like such a very modern thing – many contraceptive methods were invented in the 20th century and it's a little difficult to imagine how folks navigated the challenge of contraception in the distant past. John M. Riddle explores this historical territory in his sharply argued Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Riddle exposes evidence that people throughout western history have known safe and effective means of contraception – from the ancient Egyptians on up. He then goes on to explore the question of how this knowledge was lost during the Middle Ages. Fascinating stuff!

But how were modern contraceptives developed, and how did they become available to people in the United States? In her book Devices and Desires, Andrea Tone explains the history of the technological developments, business innovations, and social changes that brought us the Pill, the IUD, and many other modern contraceptives. Tone lays the groundwork for her history with a discussion of the Comstock Act, which criminalized the production and sale of birth control in 1873, and then details a dizzying array of new products and their consequences: chemical spermicides, antiseptic douches, the Dalkon Shield, vaginal sponges, and many other contraceptive methods and devices.  Along the way, she makes sure to explain the human stories that illustrate how contraceptives have affected men and women's lives in the last 140 years.

And, lest we take a view to focused on technology, let's close our course of study with Rickie Solinger's Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America.  The book chronicles a wide range of reproductive issues across American history – from slaveholders' breeding schemes to the question of which children are removed from their parents into foster care. Some women, Solinger argues, are encouraged to birth and raise children, while others are impeded from becoming mothers, and this pattern is the result of societal biases about race and class. According to her account, women's own choices are hardly the only meaningful factor in whether, when, and how they have and raise children.

City Trees

Twice last week, encounters with the trees of other cities caused me to stop and reflect on the beautiful canopy of urban trees here in Portland. First, I flew across the country with a layover in Minneapolis-St. Paul. As the airplane came in for landing over the cities, I was struck by the lush tree cover gracing nearly every street – from the air, I thought to myself, it looks as though the twin cities may have as many trees per acre as Portland! Then last Thursday, I heard story about a recent effort to map every tree in New York’s Central Park – every tree, all 20,000 of them.  In my opinion, city dwellers (whether they live in superdense giant cities like New York or smaller garden-filled cities like we have in Oregon) need just this kind of tool to nudge them towards noticing and enjoying trees   So today I'm going to tell you about my two favorite Portland- and Oregon-related tree books:

The first is Phyllis C. Reynolds and Elizabeth F. Dimon's amazing Trees of Greater Portland. These two amateur naturalists identified hundreds of different species of trees growing in Portland parks, yards, gardens, and along Portland streets. Their book is a kind of encyclopedia, with trees arranged by scientific name (don't fret, though, if you aren't familiar with all the Latin – there's an index by common name in the back!). Facts and figures about each tree are detailed, together with photographs of the tree as it is found in Portland, with their locations noted. This book is completely fantastic for anyone who is learning to identify tree species, and since tree locations are included, it's also a great way to get to know a neighborhood and its trees.

My other favorite local tree book is Stephen F. Arno and Ramona P. Hammerly's Northwest Trees. This is more of a traditional field guide, focusing on native tree species of the Pacific Northewest. Chapters on each major species of tree are beautifully illustrated with line drawings showing the tree in its native environment, details of leaves, seedpods, cones, and branching patterns. Occasionally, illustrations of animals or plants that typically live in or near the tree are included as well. The book also includes information about trees' growth habit and life cycles, tree ecosystems, tree history and lore, and other miscellaneous facts and figures. It's a very practical book, but so beautifully presented that it's engaging to browse casually as well.

And, if you're feeling jealous of New Yorkers and their fabulous new map, you should know that Portland’s Urban Forestry department has tree walk maps for nearly twenty other parks and neighborhoods (including one, I can’t help but point out, for the neighborhood around the Sellwood-Moreland Library!). So, go for a walk in the city, look at and identify some trees, and enjoy yourself!

High Water

As you have no doubt heard or even seen, the Columbia, the Willamette, and many other northwest rivers are very full right now. The Willamette is high, but the Columbia at Vancouver is actually over flood stage. Fortunately, the actual flooding at Vancouver has been slight so far, and little damage is anticipated by forecasters. Floods are awful, dangerous, messy things, and I've been fortunate never to have experienced one personally – but I will admit that growing up, I found floods completely fascinating and always wished we'd have one in Portland. I think the two books below may have helped fuel my early romantic ideas about floods:

First, I blame Tove Jansson, author of the eminently satisfying Moomin series (a childhood favorite of mine). In her wonderful book Moominsummer Madness, the Moomin family are flooded out of their house as a wave sweeps through their valley. But luckily, a new house comes floating by right at their moment of need! Everyone clambers aboard and great relief is felt. However, the house turns out not to be a house at all, but a theater, already occupied by a theater-lover named Emma – and many high jinks ensue as the collection of flood refugees explore floats down the valley, and eventually stages a play written by Emma and Moominpapa.

When I was a little older, I got a second hit of flood-fascination from another novel, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. It's a complex coming-of-age story about Ruthie and Lucille, two sisters who are raised by a grandmother, two great-aunts, and eventually, their very eccentric aunt Sylvie. I couldn't begin to summarize the whole plot here, but, here's the important part for our subject today: the flood. Although the family home is in a town that is frequently plagued by floods, it is built high up usually stays dry. But one year, the flood waters rise so high that the house does flood, and the family's response is magical! When the water has just begun to invade the first floor of their house, Ruthie and Sylvie dance around in flood water up to their knees.  When it rises higher they retreat to the second floor, and use a fishing line to rescue inundated objects from downstairs.  Throughout their ordeal, they enjoy the unusual situation rather than worrying about the mess, the damage, and the discomfort.

A common thread in these books is that their characters try earnestly to look at life's challenges with whimsy and optimism, and to find joy wherever they can. I doubt this approach alone would carry me through the challenge of a real-life flood, but I hope that if high water ever reaches me, I'll remember to laugh a little, if I can.

Meltdown

As reports continue to come in from Japan, the news moves from bad to worse – not only did Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the following tsunami take lives, destroy property and natural resources, and render millions of people homeless – it has seriously damaged several of Japan's nuclear power plants. The two worst hit plants, Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Stations, have suffered explosions, loss of power to their cooling systems, and partial meltdown. Radioactive material may continue to be released for months. Sobering news, indeed. Since this is hardly the first time a nuclear power plant has suffered an accident, there are many interesting books illustrating different ways these accidents have affected human and natural history – read on for a hand-picked selection.

The worst nuclear power plant accident in recent memory was in 1986 at reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. The nearby cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat (both within about 10 miles of the plant) were abandoned shortly after the disaster because the whole area was dangerously radioactive. Photographer Robert Polidori visited about 15 years later, and Zones of Exclusion is his record of what remains. Houses, schools, parks, and streets are still there, but they are crumbling, peeling, shifting, sinking, and leaning. Trees grow in city squares, abandoned schoolrooms lie disheveled but nearly intact under a dozen years of radioactive dust, and rusting boats list in the shallow waters at the edge of the River Pripyat. The photographs are grim, but surprisingly beautiful – and they definitely inspired me to think carefully about the long-term, unintended effects of human endeavors.

Nuclear accidents have occurred in the United States too. The most well-known is the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1979. At the 25-year anniversary of the accident, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker published Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. This is a serious text, filled with detail and critical analysis. It's not a breezy read, but it is a very thorough and interesting discussion of the accident in political, social, and historical context, with emphasis on the 1970s-era debate about nuclear power, the regulatory structures in place at the time, and of course, the portrayal of the accident and surrounding crisis in the media and popular culture.

Despite the horrors natural and man-made disasters bring, life continues, and people are able to find some hope. For example, the English language edition of the Japanese daily Asahi Shinbun ran a story this morning about two women who delivered healthy baby girls in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture in the hours after the tsunami struck the town. But we also find inspiration and reassurance in the very act of making it through disaster together. Rebecca Solnit explores this territory in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Solnit uses the examples of five historical disasters, and though none of her examples are nuclear accidents, there is no doubt that they illustrate the dynamics that are evident in all disasters. Included are many little-known stories, like the impromptu flotilla of boats that ferried New Yorkers across the river to safety on 9/11, or the woman who set up a kitchen in Golden Gate Park after the 1906 earthquake and fed anyone who would eat, for free. Solnit's core message is that people, as a rule, respond to disaster in the most helpful, community-minded way, and the experience changes us for the better. No one would ask for an earthquake to strike or a nuclear power plant to melt down, but when it does, it brings out the best in most of us.

1968 or 1989?

Newsworthy events naturally inspire speculation, critical analysis, and comparisons to history. The recent pro-democracy protests across the Arab world are no exception – for my part, I've been musing over the question of whether the current wave of revolt is more like 1968, when students and workers took to the streets around the world to protest totalitarian rule and demand an end to the Vietnam War (mostly unsuccessfully) – or whether it's more like 1989, when popular uprisings across Central and Eastern Europe sped the fall of the iron curtain (largely with success). To help me ponder this question, I've found myself consulting these books about the revolts of 1968 and 1989:

The sixties are remembered as a mythical time, which makes understanding the era difficult for people who, like me, are too young to have been present. On the one hand, it wasn't so long ago, so if I want to know about 1968 I can ask people who were there. On the other hand, people who marched and rabble-roused tend to romanticize the era, making it inaccessible and rendering their own accounts suspect. To get a vivid picture, I turned to Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins's 1968: Marching in the Streets. Their richly illustrated chronology gives readers a taste of hundreds of different incidences of protest and challenge to the status quo, including famous events like the US Democratic Convention in August, the student/worker uprising in Paris in May, and the massacre of Mexican students protesting their government's preparations for the Olympic Games in September. But to my mind, the real beauty of the book is its inclusion of less well-known radical actions that took place in 1968 – Japanese protests against the arrival of a nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier in January, Italian students' struggle to govern their universities in March, a strike for equal pay for equal work by women working at a Ford plant in Dagenham, UK in June, and many more.

For a more detailed narrative account of the tumult around the world during 1968, take a look at Mark Kurlansky's 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. Kurlansky discusses, among other things, how mass media came into its own during 1968 with the widespread availability of live television news – a development that changed the how people in one part of the world were able to understand events on the ground thousands of miles away.  This book also takes the global scope of the story of 1968 seriously, making it more eye-opening and relevant than I expected at first glance. 

1989 is only a bit more than 20 years ago, so comprehensive narratives of the whole scope of the revolutions and rebellions that began in that year are harder to come by.  To get you started, I recommend The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Michael Meyer, Newsweek's Berlin bureau chief at the time, argues that the fall of the Wall and the consequent melting of the iron curtain had little to do with American influence. Instead, he uses interviews with politicians, bureaucrats and activists from around the Eastern Bloc to show how popular uprisings in several countries influenced each other in a complex pattern. The book is short and readable, but packed with thought-provoking detail.

Raw vs. Pasteurized

American cheesemakers have a problem: many soft cheeses, some of which have a short aging period, are best made with raw milk (connoisseurs say it has better flavor notes), but the Food and Drug Administration requires that cheeses aged less than 60 days be made with pasteurized milk. And now, the FDA is considering tightening the regulations for raw milk cheeses. The 60-day rule dates from the 1940s, and at least some dairy scientists say its not based on real science, but the question of how to ensure that cheeses are produced safely is a tricky one.

Safety rules regulate other foods too – bread, eggs, canned goods, nuts, margarine, and many more. But it was not always so. Until a hundred or so years ago, there were no regulations determining what ingredients could be used, what safety protocols were to be followed, or what names foods could be sold under. But perhaps worse than the liberties food producers might take with their products was the free-ranging anxieties people suffered under about the safety of their comestibles. In Sacred Cow, Mad Cow, Madeleine Ferrières examines the social history of the public’s irrational fears about food, from medieval France right through to early 20th century Chicago. The book is sobering, amusing, and intriguing all at the same time.

For those of you who would rather explore the horrors of unsafe food production facilities and contaminated or adulterated food in fictional form, you will want to examine (or perhaps revisit!) Upton Sinclair's classic, The Jungle. Sinclair intended the novel to be an exposé of the exploitation of factory workers, but the book became a best-seller through the attention it received for exposing unsavory food-production practices.  And my are they unsavory!  Safety rules so lax that meat-packing workers fall into rendering vats and become incorporated with the lard, grocery stores in poor neighborhoods selling watered-down milk mixed with formaldehyde, and myriad other awful examples.  The Jungle is a beautiful, compelling read, though, despite the gross-out factor and the inherent desperation of the plot. (If you like comics, be sure to check out Peter Kuper's excellent graphic novel adaptation.)

But, maybe you're not into reading about the details of unsafe food.  Perhaps news stories about FDA regulations for cheese just make you want to read about delicious cheese? I have some suggestions! Mastering Cheese is like a textbook for how to be a more effective cheese lover. Max McCalman and David Gibbons take readers step-by-step through cheese history and cheesemaking, cheese traditions on family tables and in restaurants, matching cheeses with wine and beer, and many other important subjects in cheese education. And of course, they provide a whirlwind tour of the great cheese styles of the world. Yum.

And if you'd like a more close-to-home cheese tour, be sure to consult Tami Parr's Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest. Although it is little more than an atlas of cheesemakers around our region, the brief stories about each business are both interesting and informative.

The Actual Enumeration

As a reference librarian, I am often asked to help locate statistical data. How prevalent is childhood obesity, how many people live in rural areas in the U.S., is it really true that Portland has more bicycle traffic than other cities? I love these kinds of questions, but there is a considerable challenge in answering them: for one thing, it often takes statisticians a long time to report their data. And no wonder, really. This year the U.S. Census Bureau counted 308,745,508 people residing in the United States (3,831,074 in Oregon), and even with computers to speed the calculation, that's a lot of arithmetic! But, ever-stalwart, they released this first piece of Census 2010 data last week, a mere 265 days after Census Day.

The decennial census is a powerful tool for demographers, historians, sociologists, economists, and other planners and analyzers. Historian Margo J. Anderson shows in her book The American Census: A Social History that the census's influence has been both wide and deep – census data were used to plan military strategy during the Civil War, to analyze the crisis of the Great Depression, to map out "white flight" during the 1950s and 1960s, and to track, understand, and plan for numerous other societal concerns. Along the way, Anderson explains the practicalities of census-taking and census-counting (they've changed a lot over the years!). This combination of technical explication and socio-historical analysis is highly successful – with her engaging approach and clear writing style, Anderson makes this supposedly dull topic shine.

One of the big things the U.S. Census chronicles is the migration of people from place to place. To get a better view on the scope of these migrations, check out The Settling of North America, an atlas with maps, illustrations, and brief essays outlining the movements of peoples into and around the North American continent from the last great Ice Age to the present day. It's very handy if you want to quantify and contextualize important social changes – the migration of people from Asia to the Americas at the end of the Ice Age, the impact of the African slave trade on the Americas, the arrival of refugees from the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, the evacuation of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, and dozens of others.

The Economics of Population: Classic Writings collects influential essays from philosopher-economists (the two fields used to be more closely linked than they are now) going back to the 18th century. Several interesting debates are illuminated – for example, the battle of ideas between British intellectuals William Godwin and Thomas Malthus. Godwin posited that when given the room to act autonomously, people’s natural capacity for reason will help them further community interests. Malthus, on the other hand, argued that population pressures were paramount – in times of plenty, populations increase, which then strains available resources, a cycle which ultimately results in misery and want. Here’s where it gets interesting (and statistics-ish) – Godwin countered that Malthus’s analysis was based on flawed data concerning population increases in the American colonies. In order for Malthus’s claims to be valid, each family would need to produce eight children, which, Godwin stated, wasn't actually happening. Malthus went on to be hugely influential to economists, philosophers, sociologists, and other thinkers, regardless of this dispute, and his ideas have helped shape government economic policy around the world. So, it’s quite interesting to get a view on the original debate.

* * *

For those of you who are looking for even more great reading about population, get yourself on the (regrettably quite long) hold list for Isabel Wilkerson's critically acclaimed The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Wilkerson's history of the Great Black Migration of the 20th century is organized around the stories of three compelling individuals who migrated to try to escape the pressures of institutionalized racism in the South. The obstacles they faced, the adjustments they made, and the ways in which their migration changed them sheds light on the larger story of one of the greatest population shifts in American history.

Or, if you're data-hungry and want to geek out with some counts, percentages, and statistical comparisons, I highly recommend the U.S. Census Bureau's super-handy annual volume, the Statistical Abstract of the United States. It collects statistical data on nearly every topic you can think of, from government and private sources. The book version is in every Multnomah County Library location, but if you're in a hurry or just don't favor the printed page for this sort of information, you can always look at the online version.

Take a look at the details of the first release from the 2010 Census, while you're at it.  It's pretty interesting!  And be sure to ask a librarian if you'd like help with your statistical investigations (or indeed, if you'd like help with anything).

Diplomatic Communications

One interesting feature of the media coverage of Wikileaks's release of a quarter of a million secret U.S. diplomatic cables, I think, is that it's made us all stop to think about what diplomatic cables are, how they work, and why they're important to our political history and future. For example, NPR's All Things Considered had a story about why cables are called "cables," and Morning Edition featured an interview with former ambassador Mark Lagon about the art and craft of composing a really good diplomatic cable.

This led me to wonder, how did the introduction of telegraphy change diplomacy? David Paull Nickles examines this very question in his history Under the Wire, and not surprisingly, one of the conclusions he comes to is that when diplomats began using telegrams regularly, the speed of their communications forced a quickening of the pace in other areas of diplomatic work. This wasn't always to the good – Nickles points out that delay in getting messages from place to place (as was both possible and expected when messages had to be physically conveyed) could be a tool for diplomats, allowing them to prevent, or alternately to provoke conflict. Once telegrams were in wide use, this tool was no longer available. Old-school diplomats complained about this, and they also expressed widespread frustration at the growth of centralization and bureaucracy that the telegraph inspired. Once cables were zipping all over the globe, it just wasn't possible to kick back and spend the length of one's foreign posting in aristocratic leisure.

One cable that had tremendous influence on world events has gone down in history under the moniker "The Zimmermann Telegram." In the beginning of 1917 it was clear to all that the Great War was at something of an impasse. The opposing sides were so well matched that neither could budge the other without some kind of unexpected advantage. Britain's greatest hope was that they could convince the United States to join the war, but President Wilson was staunchly neutral. How to change his mind? When British Naval Intelligence intercepted a German diplomatic cable addressed to the government of Mexico, they saw their chance. The cable proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico, and offered support to a possible Mexican war against the U.S., to reclaim territories lost to the United States during the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. The British proceeded to decipher the cable, convey its contents to U.S. diplomats, and convince Wilson to support a declaration of war against Germany and its allies – all without revealing to the Germans that their code had been broken. Eminent popular historian Barbara Tuchman tells the whole story in beautiful, clear prose and with riveting detail in her book The Zimmermann Telegram.

If you'd like to learn more about the cables released by Wikileaks, or read news stories about the controversies surrounding them, there's lots to wade through. You might start at one of the news organizations that received the cables directly from Wikileaks: the British newspaper The Guardian, the French newspaper Le Monde, the New York Times, Spain's El País, or the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Multnomah County Library's guide to research on conflict and terrorism has further recommendations for information about the leaked cables.

Berries

I am a huge fan of berries. I love the familiar ones that are available in the supermarket (blueberries, strawberries, blackberries), I will go out of my way for the unusual varieties (gooseberries, currants, tayberries), and especially I adore the berries that grow wild in our part of the northwest (huckleberries, juneberries, thimbleberries). And I feel quite smug about eating berries as often as I can get them, because the more scientists study their health effects, the more they agree that berries are superfreaking good for us. If you are also beloved of the berry, these books are for you; if you aren't yet converted, they may do the trick!

It's completely possible to eat berries right off the vine or bush, or directly out of the carton. They don't usually require a lot of dressing-up to make them palatable – but there are so many delicious ways to cook with berries that it is worth trying a few recipes! The Pacific Northwest Berry Book should give you a good start. Bob Krumm and James Krumm have divided their book into chapters for each type of berry – familiar friends like blackberries and Oregon grape, and lesser-known (or less-frequently-eaten) species such as chokecherry, salal, and blackcap raspberry. Each chapter includes a guide to identifying the berry in question and harvesting it, and of course, recipes both sweet and savory. Yummy.

Wild Berries of the West, by Betty B. Derig and Margaret C. Fuller, is a great place to turn if you want a fully-fledged field guide to berries. Scientific and ethnobotanical information is provided about each berry, together with color photographs to aid in plant identification, and a bit of advice about using the plants in the garden. Some of the ethnobotanical information is particularly interesting – did you know, for example, that Oregon grape wood was (and perhaps still is) traditionally used by Native Americans as a yellow dyestuff?

Although there is no doubt that the Pacific Northwest is a completely berry-rific-est place, there are many famous varieties of berry from other parts of the world, some of which figure greatly in literature and folklore, like mulberries, black currants, and lingonberries. These three can all be grown here; you might find them at the farmer's market here in the Willamette Valley. Then again, you might have to grow your own! But never fear, Lee Reich can show you the ropes. He introduces more than 20 exotic-seeming fruits (many of them berries) that can be grown in temperate climates in Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. This book is kept in the fruit gardening section, and it does contain a lot of information for gardeners (and gardening daydreamers), but Reich doesn't stop there – he also includes a nice history and brief ethnobotany of each fruit he discusses. So even if you have no garden and/or want never to be a gardener, Uncommon Fruits is a pretty engaging read.

Fungi Reading

This is a bumper year for mushrooms here in the Pacific Northwest, so in celebration, I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite mushroom-related books and zines:

I was a great reader as a child (I know, you're totally surprised, right?), and when I liked a book, I went back to it over and over. One of my favorites, which I read and re-read many, many times, was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron. It's the story of two friends who assemble a spaceship from scrap and spare parts, in response to a newspaper advertisement. They contact the advertiser, and he finds that both they and their ship are perfect for the journey he is commissioning. He supplies a special coating for the ship (kind of like space-proofing) and fuel, and sends them on their way to the planet Basidium, where they find the people suffering a great calamity. The good sense, friendlieness, and practical skills of the two young heroes are sorely needed!

Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo lives in a city, with his family, and works as an unskilled laborer. His life is grim and challenging, but he is stubbornly optimistic, and sees hope and life in the oddest places. In one of the first stories in this collection, Marcovaldo spies new mushrooms poking out of the earth while he is waiting for the tram on his morning commute. They aren't ready to pick yet, but he bides his time, waiting for the perfect moment to harvest what will surely be the foundation of a great feast for his family, and hoping that no one else picks the mushrooms first!

Of course, there are endless useful and beautiful books of mushroom nonfiction, from field guides to cookbooks to mushroom ecology. Radical Mycology covers all of this ground and more, in 35 information-rich pages. Do you want a basic introduction to using mushrooms as dyestuff? Do you need instructions for making paper with mushrooms? Do you need a glossary of mushroom terminology? Radical Mycology is the zine you need!

Books in 3-D

Books can be amazing in a variety of different ways, as all you reading-focused people know. Some stories transport you to another historical era, or get you inside the head of someone whose life is completely different than yours. A few writers have a special gift for getting the dialogue just right, so it sounds completely natural and realistic. Some books are a treat for the eye, some feel good in your hand, some are excellent to read out loud – the list goes on.

For me, pop-up books are just about the apex of fabulousness. I love to read, sure, but how can you top a book so visually oriented that the images literally jump off the page? If you want to get a look at some amazing pop-up books in person, you're in luck – local gallery 23 Sandy is featuring an exhibition of pop-up books this month, to coincide with the Moveable Book Society's biennial conference, in Portland starting today. In honor of this local whirlwind of paper engineering, I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite books-about-moveable-books.

My first suggestion isn't a pop-up at all, and you could argue that it's not technically a "moveable book," either. Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine is the first in a series* of very short, epistolary novels about a London painter and a woman half-way around the world who can somehow see his work, while he's doing it. Their letters are in envelopes attached to each page – you must lift the flaps and draw out the letters to read them. The story is mysterious and engaging, but it's the physical trick requiring readers to handle each letter that really sucked me into the narrative.

If you want to make your own pop-ups (and really, why not?), I suggest taking a little tuition from Paul Jackson. His Pop-Up Book takes you through a course in paper engineering, with an emphasis on understanding how each element of folding and cutting affects the final pop-up. Jackson's illustrations and instructions are beautifully clear, and the projects he's chosen expose amateur paper workers to a nice range of forms.

The Penland Book of Handmade Books, edited by Jane LaFerla and Veronika Alice Gunter showcases ten master bookbinders. The book has ten chapters, each devoted to a single artist containing an essay in which the artist talks about their work, a short lesson on one of their favored techniques, and a miniature exhibition of book art selected by the artist. Even though the collection only features ten artists, there is a breathtakingly wide array of bookbinding techniques and styles presented here – folded pop-ups, pages with pockets, reduction linoleum cut prints, fore-edge clasps, and more. If you're not yet familiar with artists' books, or with contemporary bookbinding, this is a great introduction.

If you are deeply interested in handmade books, you should take the time to visit the John Wilson Special Collections at Central Library. It's an oasis of beautiful, odd, and fascinating materials, including a variety of lovely artists' and fine press books. (The John Wilson Special Collections has limited hours, and you can get to it by going up the stairs or elevator in the southeast corner of the Periodicals room.)

And, if you are inspired to learn even more about how to create your own books and paper crafts, I'd suggest leafing through the resources in the library's Bookbinding how-to booklist.

* The other books in the Griffin and Sabine series are: Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean.  These three are followed by a related trilogy: The Gryphon, Alexandria, and The Morning Star.

Lighter Than Air

I may just be a romantic, but I've always been sorry that airplanes turned out to be more practical than dirigibles. Doesn't transoceanic travel in a ship-in-the-sky, appointed with aluminum art deco furniture and proceeding at a stately pace sound lovely? Given the opportunity, I'd certainly choose this sort of slower, more graceful conveyance over the stressful hustle of travelling in a commercial airplane. Airships aren't just a relic of a bygone age, though: the German firm Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik is building modern dirigibles made of aluminum and carbon fiber, filled with helium for loft, and fitted with a set of fancy engines for greater maneuverability. And one of them is visiting Washington State right now! If you get to go flying, be sure to let me know how it goes; but in the meantime...

Lighter Than Air, by Tom D. Crouch is a nice, all-around history of the oldest way to fly, from the earliest innovators and their endeavors to create a lighter-than-air gas through the history of adventure ballooning and military applications for lighter than air craft, the golden age of airships in the early 20th century, scientific applications for balloons, to contemporary sport ballooning. Lots and lots of pictures illustrate the text, which is detailed but completely engaging.

Airships opened the way for many new endeavors, not least among them the military's project to expand warfare and intelligence-gathering to the skies. Sky Ships, by William F. Althoff tells the story of the U.S. Navy's airship program. There's lots of detail here, including careful histories of disasters like the wrecking of U.S.S. Shenandoah in 1925, an account of the Navy's use of airships during World War II, and information about the wide variety of experimental airships proposed in the post-war period. (If military airships and their history are right up your street, be sure to check out They Sailed the Skies, by J. Gordon Vaeth – it focuses on the life and accomplishments of the Navy's most lauded airship commander, Thomas G. W. "Tex" Settle.)

I can't leave this topic without pushing my favorite slightly-airship-related book, Cities From The Sky, by Thomas J. Campanella. It's a collection of vintage (c. 1930s-50s) aerial photographs, taken by Fairchild Aerial Surveys, a firm which sent photographers up in planes all across the country to take aerial photographs on speculation. Since many of the photographs were taken in the heyday of the commercial airship, you'll see a few dirigibles floating nonchalantly above Manhattan and whatnot – but perhaps more importantly, aerial photographs give you the feeling of being up there, humming along through the sky in a ship that is, almost magically, lighter than air.

Dying, Quality of Life, and Decision-Making

Have you considered what you would do if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness? Many people choose to fight, seeking the aid of skilled specialists, researching experimental treatments, and looking for any possible avenue that could lead to an unexpected good result. Others prefer to step back from the struggle to win out over disease, and instead ask their doctors to focus on palliative care – controlling their pain, and helping them try to live comfortably and well for however long they have. This second route, it turns out, may actually help people live longer than they would under aggressive treatment, a finding which is contrary to many people's instincts.

Our society has a history of intense debate on end of life issues, and as science and technology advance, new questions arise. Dr. Lewis M. Cohen's new book No Good Deed explores some of this tricky territory, using as a framework the true story of a terminally ill patient, two nurses who treated her, and the nurse's aide who accused them of murder. This is a fast-paced story, and it raises a variety of challenging ethical questions. Cohen does a good job of exploring the conflicts while also clearly explaining the science, and respecting the intelligence of his readers.

What, then, is the role of the physician in caring for terminally ill patients? Dr. Eric J. Cassell argues that the relief of suffering is the central role of medicine. In his book The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, Cassell lays out a philosophical framework for integrating the science of medicine with the art of caring for the ailing. For example, Cassell explains that classical disease theory considers the patient as essentially a container for the illness: no matter which person is affected by an illness, the result is the same. A more accurate view, he says, takes illness as a process, rather than a discrete event. Illness happens to a person over the course of time, and it affects that particular individual in a specific and personalized way – and doctors must understand this if they are to attend to that individual's actual well-being.

All this begs the question, how do doctors actually manage this work of considering the patient and his or her illness, treating an ailment, and tending to a sick person's suffering? Dr. Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think sheds some light on these questions, by taking readers through the diagnostic and clinical methodology in which new doctors are trained, and examining how physicians in practice actually make decisions day-to-day. It's an interesting window into a subject that will ultimately be of direct interest to most of us, since sooner or later, nearly everyone needs to see a doctor for something.

If you are eager to read more about health, medicine, and related topics, be sure to take a look at the library's list of Medical Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction!

Centennials

The Oregonian’s Janie Har wrote an article last week arguing that all the centennials we’re seeing around town are in part due to something that happened more than a hundred years ago – the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905, which, she says, drew a great deal of businesses here, encouraged migration to Portland, and helped the city define itself. As you know, I’m in the business of recommending books, and I took this as an inspiration to recommend a few books about the things we’re currently celebrating for having started 100 years ago (or 105!):

I’ll start with the obvious topic, the exposition itself. Local historian Carl Abbott’s readable account, The Great Extravaganza: Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition will get you started. If you’re looking for a scene-setter, or you want a sense for how foreign the Portland of 1905 might seem to us 21st century folk, this is the book for you. Abbott takes readers through the whole story of the exposition, from the idea stage through the planning and building of the site, to the four and a half months of festivities, right through to the tear-down of the buildings and the settling of financial accounts afterward. Probably the most useful elements of the book, though, are the copious photographs (including many aerial shots of the city and the exposition grounds) and the stories of people’s experiences planning, working at, and visiting the fair. It becomes very clear, reading this book, that a lot has changed in Portland, and in the world around us, since 1905!

Perhaps the most visible Portlander celebrating its 100th birthday this year is the Hawthorne Bridge. The bridge is being honored through August 8th with the Portland Bridge Festival. And what’s on everyone’s reading list? Sharon Wood Wortman’s Portland Bridge Book. I’ve touted this book before, so you may already know that it’s a great place to learn the detailed history of each of our Willamette River bridges, and examine a variety of lovely photographs and technical drawings – but now is the perfect time to give it a read.

History buffs who like to get their exercise will appreciate Laura O. Foster’s Portland City Walks – a collection of Rose City tours that focus on local history and lore. Several walks highlight city features that are just reaching the centennial mark: walk #1 winds through Port of Portland facilities on Swan Island, walk #2 goes past Jefferson High School; and walk #6 takes you by the Jantzen factory at NE 20th & Glisan. Foster’s earlier guide, Portland Hill Walks, features a walk through the former town (now neighborhood) of Linnton, which is also celebrating its hundredth birthday this year.