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BOOK SHELF // GLIMPSE // WILDLIFE // POP CULTURE // WORDS // Q&A // FOOD // FUN
PHOTO BY LYNETTE RAE MCADAMS
Tim and Michelle Wunderlich, owners of Seaside Coff ee
Roasters, outside their downtown location.
A G LIMPSE I NSIDE
By MATT LOVE
Seaside Coff ee House
I walked into Seaside
Coff ee House on a gray
Thursday afternoon and
Michelle Wunderlich, the
owner, didn’t waste any time
greeting me warmly like the
semi-regular I am.
My order was the same:
the angst-ridden writer
special — black coff ee in a
white mug.
After handing me my
mug, Michelle launched into
a wonderful story about her
teenage daughter, an ob-
sessive reader, who recently
exhibited signs of impres-
sive writing ability by cranking
out a dystopian tale that caught
the attention of her teacher. Per-
haps that teacher’s attention will
light a fi re in Michelle’s daughter
to become a writer. It can happen
that way. It did for me at 16 when
one of my teachers noticed.
What a lucky kid! She can
hang out in her mom’s café all
day and write her dystopian
novel series and coff ee is eternally
free! My advice: set the series in
Seaside after global warming has
caused sea levels to rise and all
the tourists have disappeared.
Maybe have the surfers running
everything. No zombies
please.
The Seaside Coff ee House
boasts one of the most
delightfully eclectic interiors
of any coff ee joint I’ve ever pa-
tronized. It acts as a de facto
art gallery for local artists, a
quasi museum of vintage
bicycles and toy wagons, a
library with books, magazines
and old Seaside High School
yearbooks, and a groovy time
warp back into the 1970s
when potted and hanging
plants were the decorative
rage.
What I particularly enjoy
about this place is that a
customer has an astonishing
array of choices of how they
want to sit: couch, stool at
window counter, student
desk, plush chairs or plain old
wooden chair at a table. My
preference is typically wood
seating at a table where I can
look out the window and
watch people come and go.
On my most recent visit, I
saw an elderly bald man wear-
ing camouflage shorts. His
head was covered in a green
and orange tattoo of the most
intricate design. He seemed
very much like a possible
character in a dystopian novel
set in Seaside. I bet Michelle’s
daughter is already on it.
NW
word
By RYAN HUME
Cormorant
[kor•mɚr•ent]
noun
1. any number of spe-
cies of large coastal birds
of either the genus Phala-
crocorax or Nannopterum.
Cormorants commonly
have long necks, dark
plumage, four webbed
toes and hooked bills that
they use to feed their vora-
cious appetites by diving
for fi sh in the ocean.
Common throughout
Europe, Asia and the
Americas, the three most
typical cormorants found
on the Oregon Coast are
the Brandt’s cormorant, the
double-crested cormorant
and the pelagic cormorant,
which nest on off shore
islands throughout the
lower Columbia River
estuary and upon rocky
Origin:
Enters English with the
-ant suffi x in the early 14th
century. Borrowed from
the Old French, cormarenc,
by way of the Late Latin
corvus marinus, which
means “raven of the sea” or
“crow of the sea.”
Corvus is still used today
in taxonomy as the genus
for crows, ravens, rooks
and jackdaws.
“‘Is there any cormorant fi shing
in Japan?’
‘Yes, I have brought back some
excellent photographs showing how
cormorant fi shing is done,’ said Dr.
Smith. ‘I do not know that the cus-
tom originated with the Japanese,
but it is mentioned in Japanese
literature as far back as 700 A. D. The
people go out with cormorants,
sometimes using as many as
16 birds to one boat.
‘Before the birds are
started out, a string is
tied tightly about the
neck of each to keep it
from swallowing the
fi sh. They are also
tied by long
strings to the boats. Sometimes
metal rings are put around the
throat to prevent the fi sh from
sliding into the stomach.
‘The birds dive down into
the water and bring up the fi sh,
whereupon the boatmen pull them
in, force open their bills and squeeze
the throats until the fi sh drop out.
Then the birds are started out for a
fresh catch.’”
— Frank G. Carpenter, “Enterprising
Fishermen Are the Japanese,” The Sunday
Oregonian, Dec. 25, 1904, P. 36
“To lower predation on endan-
gered juvenile salmon migrating
downstream, the (U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers) started last year trying to
cut the number of birds on East Sand
Island from 13,000 to 5,600 over a
four-year period.
“The agency estimates East Sand
Island holds the largest dou-
ble-crested cormorant colony in the
world, with
the number
of breeding
pairs growing from
100 in 1989 to more than
15,000 in 2013, making up 98
percent of the breeding popu-
lation in the estuary
and eating about 12
million salmon.”
—Edward
Stratton, “Activists
release video of cormo-
rant culling,” The Daily
Astorian, May 10, 2016
Matt Love is the author/editor of 14
books, including “A Nice Piece of Asto-
ria.” His books are available at coastal
bookstores or through his website,
nestuccaspitpress.com
“Offi cials say thou-
sands of cormorants
abandoned their nests
on East Sand Island
in the Columbia River
and they don’t know why.
Reports indicate as many
as 16,000 adult birds in the
colony left their eggs behind to be
eaten by predators including eagles,
seagulls and crows.
The birds’ mysterious departure
comes after the latest wave of
government-sanctioned cormorant
shooting.”
102.3 fm
the Classic Rock Station
headlands along the coast.
nerd
A double-crested cormorant.
— Cassandra Profi ta, “Thousands
of cormorants abandon their nests,”
The Daily Astorian, Reprinted
from Ecotrope, Oregon Public
Broadcasting, May 20, 2016