BOOKS
3C
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2015
WHAT ARE THEY READING?
T
he Daily Astorian invites
people to submit titles of
books they are reading and
share a few thoughts about
the work. This week, Robert
Michael Pyle, an author who
lives in Grays River, Wash.,
passes along some of the books
he is enjoying. Pyle has written
17 books, including “Chasing
Monarchs” and “Wintergreen:
Rambles in a Ravaged Land.”
To submit, send to news@dai-
lyastorian.com
T
he book I’m having the
most fun with right now,
and not wanting it to end, is
“The Book of William: How
Shakespeare’s First Folio
Conquered the World,” by
Paul Collins. It’s a marvel-
ous investigation into the ¿rst
de¿nitive publication of the
Bard’s works, and the crazy
paths it has followed since. It
¿ts right in with a Shakespear-
ean mystery I’ve recently read
called “The Bookman’s Tale:
A Novel of Obsession,” by
Charlie Lovett. Both of these
are real book lovers’ books.
Speaking of mysteries,
I am preparing for an up-
coming trip to Iceland by
reading a number of dark
mysteries by Arnaldur In-
dridason, including “Hypo-
thermia” and “Silence of the
Grave;” also “The Windows
of Brimnes,” brilliant Ice-
landic essays by Bill Holm;
and “The Postwar Poetry of
Iceland,” edited by Sigurdur
A. Magnússon.
For the Scottish part of
the trip, I am reading the
weighty “How the Scots In-
vented the Modern World:
The True Story of How
Western Europe’s Poorest
Nation Created Our World
and Everything In It,” by
Arthur Herman.
Books of poetry,
fiction
At any given time I am
reading several books of po-
etry. Four very strong books
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
The author Robert Michael Pyle in his home in Grays River, Wash.
of poems I’ve returned to
again and again lately are
“Nevertheless: Poems from
the Gray Area,” by Flor-
ence Sage of Astoria, Nancy
Cherry’s “El Verano Burn-
ing,” “Splitting an Order,”
by Ted Kooser, and “Songs
for a Summons,” by David
Guterson. Each of these po-
ets takes me deep into heart,
image, and language.
As for fiction, I final-
ly took The Brothers K by
David James Duncan off
my shelf, and can’t imagine
why I waited so long — it
is a magnificent delight of a
novel, even if you don’t care
that much about baseball.
The most affecting book
I’ve read for some time is
Ann Pancake’s “Strange as
This Weather Has Been,”
about the utter devastation
of
mountaintop-removal
coal mining in Appalachia.
I enjoy English fiction
a lot, most recently David
Lodge’s “Paradise News”
and Penelope Lively’s “The
Photograph.” It’s hard to
keep up with Brian Doyle,
but his new one, “Martin
Marten,” drew me right in
like “The Plover” and “Mink
River” before it. Other com-
pelling Northwest novels
for me this year have been
Ivan Doig’s “Work Song”
and “The Brightwood Still-
ness,” by Mark Pomeroy.
In between, I gobbled three
books of addictive short
stories by Ohio writer Tom
Noyes.
‘Astoria’
Like many of us around
here I read Peter Stark’s
“Astoria” with pleasure,
but I still love Washington
Irving’s livelier book by the
same name, which is more
fun if maybe less reliable.
And of course natural
history is a big chunk of my
reading. Charles Darwin is
my main man, but I’d never
actually read “The Voyage
of the Beagle,” so I just
have — who knew that as
well as very long (the voy-
age lasted five years!) it is
also funny in many places,
and very beautiful in many
others. I’ve since been
reading Thor Hanson, a
fine young nature writer of
San Juan Island. Both his
award-winning “Feathers”
and his new book, “The
Triumph of Seeds,” are
wonderful reads for anyone
who cares about how the
humble parts of our world
actually work. Lastly, I’ve
just begun “Life’s Greatest
Secret: The Race to Crack
the Genetic Code,” by Mat-
thew Cobb. It should make
the perfect bookend for the
Darwin, and take me just
about as long to read.
I read mostly for the
pleasure of better under-
standing the world, and
for the sheer enjoyment of
story and words used well.
None of these books has let
me down in these qualities.
I am very grateful for the
good libraries and indepen-
dent bookstores in the Low-
er Columbia.
THE SHIP REPORT
The science of hot water
By JOANNE RIDEOUT
Special to The Daily
Astorian
I
n this year of scary
drought in our part of the
nation, I’ve been reading
a lot about how bad warm
temperatures are for 3aci¿c
1orthwest ¿sh, speci¿cally
salmon.
Warm water temperatures
and low water levels are
wreaNing havoc with ¿sh pop-
ulations in two critical water-
ways in the West: The Sac-
ramento River in California
and the Columbia River here
in our neck of the woods. The
result will likely be a greatly
diminished salmon run this
year.
The assumption in most of
the news pieces I’ve seen or
heard is that “warm” is bad
for marine life in these parts.
I’ve never seen much of an
explanation as to exactly why,
and I got to wondering about
that. As a human, the water
doesn’t seem too warm to me.
Seems kind of nice, actually.
I could go swimming quite
comfortably in some spots on
the Columbia right now. Usu-
ally it’s too darn cold. What’s
the big deal for salmon?
Hot water and salmon
don’t mix
So I did some research
(one of my favorite things to
do) and found a tsunami of in-
formation as to why hot water
and salmon don’t mix, with all
the bad connotations the word
tsunami brings.
To start with, let’s draw a
quick parallel between us and
salmon. As living beings, we
all have a range of tempera-
ture at which we feel and live
at our best. At the extremes
of those ranges we have trou-
ble, and if we’re outside that
range for very long without
protection, we risk dying or
being seriously injured. The
same is true of salmon, but
they like things colder than
we do. Salmon love cold wa-
ter. They are happy in water
that’s about 60 degrees but
can cheerfully handle water
much colder than that. When
the water starts to get up in
the high 60s and 70s as it is
on inland rivers, that begins to
cause stress. For reference, by
the way, the Columbia River
water temperature off Astoria
this week was a little over 70
degrees. Getting uncomfort-
able for salmon.
What happens to salmon
in warm water? A number of
things that make life hard-
er for them. First of all, be-
cause they’re feeling warm,
their respiration rate goes up.
They’re breathing more, try-
ing to get more oxygen. The
catch is that warm water holds
less oxygen than colder water
does, and so the cumulative
effect of many ¿sh trying to
do this can be oxygen deple-
tion, weakness, illness, and
death.
Toxic soup
Then there’s the effect of
warm water on chemicals dis-
solved in the river, like toxins
from runoff. Many substances
that are relatively inert in cold
water become more extreme
in their effects when they
are in a warm solution. And
things like algae and fungi
grow more quickly and spread
more rapidly. Those can bring
episodes of blights like domo-
ic acid, which makes shell¿sh
toxic to humans.
Add that to low water con-
ditions on key rivers, what
you have is a lot of salmon
swimming in a hot, toxic
soup of things that are bad
for them. Kind of like how it
would feel to be in an uncom-
fortably warm, smoke-¿lled
room, with a heavy coat on
that you couldn’t take off.
This is not a good situation
for our ¿sh, and some experts
estimate that on the Columbia
we could lose up to 80 percent
of this year’s salmon run.
What would it take to put
things back to normal? We
need rain, lots of it, to ¿ll trib-
utaries and cool water mass-
es down. In the winter we’ll
need snow to replace our lost
snow pack.
But with scientists predict-
ing a continued and intensify-
ing El Nino season, with con-
tinued dry conditions through
next spring, our salmon trou-
bles could be far from over.
Life loves water
Years ago, when I lived
Joshua Bessex/The The Daily Astorian
KMUN General Manager Joanne Rideout is the voice of
The Ship Report.
in the desert Southwest, I
was always amazed at how
the desert could change in
a heartbeat from a barren
wasteland to a lush spread
of wildÀowers, grasses, and
blooming cactus with just
a short period of rain. Life
loves water and responds to
it quickly.
But on the Àip side of
these occasional wet times
in the desert were the long
stretches in between, normal
there, where cherished wa-
ter did not come and things
quickly withered. Creatures
that endured hunkered down
to wait for the next Àood or
downpour.
Native cultures there val-
ue rain and hold ceremonies
to request it. They understand
the vital connection between
life and water, for ¿sh and
people. It’s clear we need
some water here pronto to
preserve things as we know
them. If you’re the praying
kind, this might be a good
time.
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 Report on Coast
Community Radio at 8:48 a.m.
weekdays at 91.9FM, streaming
at www.coastradio.org. Podcast
available on The Ship Report
website at www.shipreport.net.
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