The daily Astorian., October 19, 2017, Page 23, Image 22

OCTOBER 19, 2017 // 23
BOOK SHELF // GLIMPSE // WILDLIFE // POP CULTURE // WORDS // Q&A // FOOD // FUN
“A Sideways
Look at Clouds”
By Maria Mudd Ruth
Mountaineers Books
208 pp
$24.95
BOOKMONGER
Look up for endless entertainment
When our daughter
was just a tot, my husband
would take her out every
evening at sunset and they
would scan the sky for what
she called “pink cow’ds.”
She’s in grad school now,
but my husband and I still
try to take in the skyscape
at sunset.
Unfortunately, that
doesn’t mean I’ve become
well-versed in clouds —
once I get beyond cirrus and
cumulus, I’m a dunderhead
— which rhymes with thun-
derhead — which delivers
us (at last! some of you are
thinking) to the subject of
this week’s book review:
a hybrid natural history/
memoir called “A Sideways
Look at Clouds.”
Olympia-based author
Maria Mudd Ruth has
written more than a dozen
books on natural history
topics, but as she confess-
es in her prologue to this
book, “I learned the names
of the clouds when I was
forty-eight years old — too
old, it seemed, to be learn-
ing something I should have
memorized long ago with
my multiplication tables
and state capitals.”
Here’s somebody who
is down-to-earth enough
to talk to the 99.9 percent
of us who walk underneath
clouds all the time, but
don’t have a clue about how
they form, why they assume
different shapes and differ-
ent colors, and what makes
them precipitate.
And really, in a region
where clouds are pretty
ubiquitous, shouldn’t we
have at least a nodding
acquaintance with our
neighbors in the sky?
Ruth begins with a brief
historical review of how the
study of clouds developed.
It wasn’t until the early
1800s that the Latin no-
menclature for clouds was
systematized and broadly
adopted. Only two centuries
later, technologies such as
weather satellites, Doppler
radar and so on are ren-
dering even some of those
terms passé.
Which is rather a shame.
Consider some of the poetry
of accepted variety names
in the polysyllabic cloud
lexicon — descriptors such
as “spissatus” (thickened),
“castellanus” (castle-like)
and “floccus” (tufted)
are just fun to roll off the
tongue.
The author takes a
multidisciplinary approach
to learning about clouds.
She swims in a fogbank,
and tours an Iowa factory
that creates research-veri-
fied “virtual skylights” that
simulate real sky in hos-
pitals. She visits museums
to look at cloud paintings,
then takes art lessons in
how to paint clouds. She
sits out on her front lawn to
observe how clouds move
and change over time.
Ruth writes about sun
dogs and glories, and about
clouds on other planets.
She discusses thermals and
relates the true story of one
man’s harrowing parachute
ride through a thermal.
When she gets into the
necessary scientific expla-
nations for things, she tries
to make it fun: Mickey
Mouse’s head as conceptual
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Crossword Answer
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model for a water molecule;
a dance party as metaphor
for understanding how
warmed-up air expands;
bumper cars as a way of
envisioning the collision/
coalescence process, and
so on.
Some of the science was
too much for me to want
to spend time on, frankly,
although I paid very careful
attention to what caus-
es clouds to turn pink at
sunset.
“A Sideways Look at
Clouds” makes looking up
fun!
The Bookmonger is Bar-
bara Lloyd McMichael, who
writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, au-
thors and publishers of the
Pacific Northwest. Contact
her at bkmonger@nwlink.
com.
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E
13th
Annual
Oktoberfest
“Chinook Style”
Fundraiser Dinner & Auction
Saturday, October 21st, 2017
• Buffet Dinner: 5 - 8 pm
• Silent Auction 4 - 7 pm
• Live Auction 7:30
Beach Buddies Band
Raffle for Goplus Inflatable Paddle Board
Wine Raffle
At the Historic
Chinook School Event Center
Tickets available at the door. Admission & Dinner $25.00 Admission Only $5.00
All proceeds benefit Friends of Chinook School, a 501C3 non profit
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