BOOKS
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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015
WHAT ARE THEY READING?
Pigs you know
Calling pigs dirty,
author claims, is
hogwash
By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER
Special to The Daily Astorian
N
ever have you felt such pain.
You were only walking through your
kitchen, when you stubbed the Piggy That
Had Roast Beef. Yowza, that made
you dance. Brought tears to your
eyes, too.
Pigs at the end of your feet.
Huh. Ridiculous, but there isn’t
a baby within a mile who won’t
fall for that game and neither
will you, once you read “Lesser
Beasts” by Mark Essig.
Many millions of years ago,
about 10 million years after dinos
died, hooved mammals appeared
on Earth. Among them were
horses, cattle … and porcine-like
creatures that walked on two
digits, possessed a sensitive
snout, and resembled humans in
gut and heart. That creature ulti-
mately became the pig we know.
While dogs were the ¿ rst
animals to be domesticated,
pigs “domesticated themselves”
about 11,000 years ago. By that,
Essig means that pigs hung
around humans long enough to
know that food was plentiful, so
“Lesser Beasts”
they moved in with us on their
own. Humans quickly realized that pigs were easy
to keep; says Essig, “I f it was biologically possible
to raise pigs, people raised pigs.”
Handy and cheap
And that was the case on and off throughout
history: P igs were handy and cheap, which was
good for the poor but bad for a pig’s reputation.
Politically, pigs sometimes “didn’t ¿ t” and were
ignored as food; other times, they were viewed as
a stash of emergency vittles on the hoof. Pigs no-
toriously eat things that are taboo for us to eat, so
they’ve been called unclean and disgusting. On the
other hand, they’ve saved a lot of people’s bacon,
in more ways than one.
Furthermore, calling a pig dirty, as Essig points
out, is hogwash. Pigs are intelligent and resource-
BOOK REVIEW
“Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail His-
tory of the Humble Pig,” by Mark Essig
Basic Books, 310 pages, 2015
$27.50
ful. They’ll seize almost any chance to adapt to
their surroundings and can help clear land quickly
(sometimes to the chagrin of landowners). They
are more fecund than both cows and sheep. And,
thanks to our willingness to ask
where dinner once slept, little piggies
that go to market may enjoy better
lives before they join us at the table.
Rival cats online
Forget cats online: what make
you say “awwwwww” are videos
of those impossibly cute piglets with
their long eyelashes. Agree? Then
“Lesser Beasts” is going to put you
in hog heaven.
Starting with a herd of porkers
and ending with pleas for compas-
sion, the author takes readers on a
world tour that starts even before
pigs became pigs. That science may
be an odd way to start a history book,
but it ¿ ts — especially since we then
head styward to see how hogs have
fell into and out of favor with hu-
mans. Along the way, Essig fattens
up his narrative with little bits of
asides; for instance, the ¿ rst Arnold
Ziffel on TV’s “Green Acres?”
You don’t want to know …
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
It’s got just enough lightheartedness in it to be fun,
but it’s very informative, too. If you love pigs or
you’ve joined the “cult” of bacon, “Lesser Beasts”
is a book you’ll want to take all the way home.
“Pig Tales”
•••
And about that Piggy That Went to Market? If
you’re concerned about where he’s spent most of
his life, look for “Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest
for Sustainable Meat,” by Barry Estabrook. It’s a
look at corporate farming, pig husbandry, environ-
mental issues, and what’s on your plate.
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since
she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere
without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin
with two dogs and 14,000 books.
THE SHIP REPORT
The schooner America comes to Astoria
By JOANNE RIDEOUT
Special to The Daily
Astorian
S
ometimes on The Ship
Report I sound what I call
the “Cool Boat Alert,”
meaning there’s an unusual
vessel on the river you might
want to take a look at.
I’d like to do that right now
— in honor of a very interest-
ing boat coming our way next
week. On Wednesday, in Asto-
ria, we’ll see a very cool boat
indeed, one of the coolest in the
world, in fact. You’ll even have
a chance to go aboard.
This unique and beautiful
vessel is the lovely schooner
America, an immortal yacht
whose name is synonymous
with ocean racing. She’s re-
sponsible for cementing the
United States’ longtime status
as the world leader in sailing
competition. Sailors around the
world know the America.
She’ll be here thanks to the
efforts of the Astoria Yacht
Club; the club is sponsoring
this visit to Astoria, which is
part of a world tour leading up
to the October 2017 America’s
Cup Race, to be held in Ber-
muda. The America began her
2015 tour in San Diego. She’ll
be sailing up the Oregon Coast
from Coos Bay to Astoria, and
will travel to Portland while
she’s here on the Columbia.
From here she’ll journey north
to British Columbia and Puget
Sound.
Bated breath
When I was a kid growing
up in a sailing household in
Long Island, N.Y., the Amer-
ica’s Cup was a big deal. We
waited for the results with bat-
ed breath. One time my dad got
to go out on a boat and observe
the race in the waters off New
England. It was a once in a life-
time experience for him. It was
sort of assumed, then, that the
America’s Cup would be won
by a U.S. vessel and for many
years that was true. It wasn’t
called the America’s Cup for
nothing.
The trophy was held by the
New York City Yacht Club
from 1857 until 1983, when
the cup was won by the yacht
Australia II for the Royal Perth
Yacht Club. I remember that
race, and the sense of disbelief
felt by people in the U.S. sail-
ing community when those up-
start Aussies won “our” trophy.
Sheer silliness, to be sure —
the race went to the best boat
and crew and they were it that
year. But it was a loss, a shift,
in the (perhaps a bit cocky) tra-
dition of U.S. supremacy in all
things maritime. Things were
different after that.
The America’s Cup race
has always boiled down to
a competition between two
boats: one the current holder
of the trophy and the other a
challenger who hopes to win
it away. Challengers jockey for
position and compete until one
wins the right to go up against
the previous winner. In recent
years, the America’s Cup has
evolved from a competition
between two 12-meter yachts,
specially designed mono hull
boats, to the current crop of su-
per-fast multihulls.
Lingo
In case you’re not a sailor,
here’s what that lingo means.
Most boats you see have a
body or hull that sits in the wa-
ter. The ships we see on the riv-
er are that way. They’re called
monohulls, meaning they have
one displacement hull. Dis-
placement hulls deal with a lot
friction because they have to
literally push the water out of
the way. They have maximum
hull speeds determined by their
length and other factors.
Multihulls, on the other
hand, are boats like Hobie
Cats, which have two or three
light pontoons that hardly
touch the water. They can À y
along at speeds unheard of
for monohulls, because they
don’t displace water, they
skim along on top of it. The
huge multihull boats that now
compete in the America’s
Cup À y over the water barely
touching the surface, and they
attain speeds of more than
50 mph. The shift to these
vessels as America’s Cup
contenders has been a contro-
versial game changer in the
racing community. That kind
of precision, high-stakes sail-
ing is something most of us
will never do. Reputations are
won and lost on the strength
of split-second decisions
made at high speed.
Grand tradition
Racing
controversy
Joshua Bessex/The The Daily Astorian
KMUN General Manager Joanne Rideout is the voice of
The Ship Report.
aside, what you’ll see next
week in Astoria is the boat
that started a grand inter-
national sailing tradition.
A once-in-a-lifetime boat.
If you’re fond of beautiful
vessels, you ought to go
down to the dock and see
her, take a tour on board or
even book a sail if you can.
Even though this America is
a replica of the original ship,
she’s still the emblem of the
sailing hopes and dreams of
people around the world,
and it took many, many
years of planning, designing
and skillful sailing to finally
wrest the trophy from her.
You’ll be able to see the
America at the 17th Street
Dock by the Columbia River
Maritime Museum between
1 and 3 p.m. on Wednesday,
and you can reserve a sail
on board by going to this
website: www.zerve.com/
nxtlevelsail.
Joanne Rideout is general
manager of Coast Community
Radio (KMUN-FM) in Asto-
ria. She’s also the creator and
producer of The Ship Report,
a radio show and podcast
about All Things Maritime.
You can hear The Ship Re-
port on Coast Community
Radio at 8:48 a.m. weekdays
at 91.9FM, streaming at www.
coastradio.org. Podcast avail-
able on The Ship Report web-
site at www.shipreport.net.
W hile other n ew spa pers give you less, The D a ily Astoria n
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From left: Peter W on g, H illa ry Borru d , M a teu sz Perk ow sk i