Smyth has delivered a straightforward account of a forest economy's ascension and decline, plus that forest's natural history and management evolution from old-growth to tree farm to conservation area. Any outdoor person can relate to Smyth's recollections of unromantic hard work in the woods while still invoking the inherent romance of forestry among trees big and small. The book is a business history as well, recounting events regional and in the world at large that reached into southwest Oregon to alter best-laid plans.

Daniel Botkin, Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes "Smyth provides a facinating saga of one of Oregon's most productive and intensively harvested forests. In the final analyisis, what Smyth's book suggests is that to deal with and solve our environmental problems about forests, we should understand and learn from the details of history - obtained from many different avenues- and that we need to see the use of forests against the panorama of changes in human values and changing scientific knowledge."

As Eliza Spalding's great-great grandaughter, I was deeply moved by the account given of Eliza and Narcissa's journey into the rugged and primitive Northwest territory in 1836. In our current age of technology, where knowledge of the unknown comes to us in full color without direct experience, it is unimaginable to consider two young women,driven from family and loved ones by their devout spritual quest,brave enough to endure the rigors of exploration. Mr. Drury's words both enlightened me and filled me with pride to be connected to one of these relatively unknown heroines. I will recommend this book to my high school students, to draw on the example of the courageous role modeling illustrated by the lives of both Eliza and Narcissa. In light of their fearless independence and their unparalled commitment to a cause greater than themselves, they teach us much about the human spirit. One may need to rethink the origin of the women's liberation movement as the pages of this book are turned, revealing the strength and enduring power of Eliza and Narcissa.

As a great-great-greatdaughter of eliza hart spalding, I found the book very informative and enlightening. I never realized the perils and problems that being the first white women in a land of natives that could be encountered. Both Narcissa and Eliza had courage and strength even though they seemed to have different personalities. The author was very informative and he backed his findings whenever possible with historical fact and copies of letters and diaries. I found that I was able to visualize the trek across the country and the life that these women had to endure by being missionaries. The author even noted the problems between Catholics and Protestants during that time.

7/24/2003

PIKE PLACE MARKET COOKBOOK:
Recipes, Anecdotes and Personalities from
Seattle's Renowned Public Market
By Braiden Rex-Johnson
Foreward by Tom Douglas

Rex-Johnson puts the reader well into the middle of the frenzy and color-filled mealtimes at Pike Market. She readily lines out signature dishes, menu rotations and histories of those sharing the fruits of their wares and labors. She captures the many faces of the Market, which she describes as "Part meat, fish, and produce market; part breathtaking panorama of water, mountains, and sky; part vaudeville show; part arts and crafts extravaganza; and part slice of nitty-gritty street life." Pike Place Market is the most visited landmark in the Pacific Northwest. One cannot buy a ticket to anything like this!

This 96-year-old mecca has a colorful history, and was almost torn down to make way for "urban renewal" in the early 1970s. More recently, Rex-Johnson tells how in 1997, The Market Basket CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program reinvigorated the farmer population and helped save the Market's farm-fresh food resources.

Each of the nine food sections in the cookbook is headed with a handy preview. The Entrée page reflects such diversity as Irish Stew, Zaire Chicken Curry, Korean Beef Bulgogi, Rouladen (Germany), Pancit Bihon and Mechado (the Philippines), and New Mexico Tamales.

These are just some of the stops she makes:

~Chef Charles Ramseyer, of Ray's Boathouse, shares his simple, yet elegant appetizer, Scallop Terrine, along with chef's tips for perfect preparation.

~From Sosio's Produce comes Microwave Mozzarella Vegetable Pie. This is a simple, health-filled dish of Japanese eggplants, sweet peppers, onion, spice blend and mozzarella cheese. Mic this in 10 short minutes. Even quicker is their Cheesy Tomatoes, baked in the oven.

~The simple Pea Pullao from The Souk is a spicy, vegetable-rice dish. The cookbook cross-references this dish with Marketspice's Chicken Masala (page 86) and Café Campagne's Lamb Burgers and Balsamic Onions, Roasted Peppers and Aioli (page 98).

~A backgrounder on the Pike Place Market Creamery features Nancy Nipples, the proprietress and self-described "Head Milk Maid" of this now-famed institution. Learn about "aracauna" eggs.

~From Alm Hill Gardens comes another fresh pea dish--Raspberry Snap Peas--made with raspberry vinegar and toasted sesame seeds. The handy Techniques section, page 203, refreshes your memory on toasting seeds and nuts.

~From Chicken Valley comes an unusual Northwest Chicken Stir-Fry. It contains the usual stir-fry basics plus hazelnuts, spinach and dried cherries, plumped. Meet the owner and learn of the restaurant's background and their take on all feathered-food sources. Rabbits, too.

~On the bread scene Nancie Brecher, teacher of cuisine to thousands of Seattleites, shares her Fresh Dill Beer Bread, an unusual accompaniment.

~From Tim's Fine Berries, a recipe combines raspberries, brown sugar, raisins, apricots, citrus juice, zest, onion and toasted almonds for a lip-smacking Red Raspberry Chutney.

~On the dessert track, find a recipe for Chilled Strawberry Soup from Northwest food expert Sharon Kramis. Guests will enthuse over this berry, banana and pineapple fruited gazpacho.

~From Mech Apiaries comes a Sour Cream Cranberry Pie, a tart, yet creamy treat.

~You will feel quite quenched and close to Danny McCullem of Danny's Wonder Freeze, after Rex-Johnson introduces you to his concept. His "Real" New York Egg Cream, is a gem in the heart of Seattle, a simple drink which is a lot method.

The Pike Place Market Cookbook has excellent Appendixes: Techniques, Produce Availability Chart, Mail-order Information and a comprehensive index. Rex-Johnson's book is part cookbook and part intriguing Seattle travelogue.

(From Take 5 newsletter)
Braiden Rex-Johnson's revised edition of the Pike Place Market Cookbook is a delightful read about the Market's colorful vendors and includes delicious recipes from shopkeepers, restauranteurs and local chefs. Rex-Johonson's first edition was published in 1992, and a decade-plus later nearly a third of the businesses featured in the original book have changed hands. She describes current vendors from the fishmongers to French bakery, smokehouse to spice shop, berry vendor to brewery. Among her 130 appetizer-to-dessert recipes are 60 new recipes and 70 of the best from her previous book. The Pike Place Market is a popular destination for locals and tourists alike - this book will guide readers to the many tucked-away shops and cafes, and its recipes will prompt a shopping list for the next trip.

(From Wine Press Northwest magazine)

Braiden Rex-Johnson's newest offering is her second edition of the best-selling Pike Place Market Cookbook.

Rex-Johnson, a Wine Press Northwest columnist, published the first Cookbook a decade ago, and it's been wildly popular with residents and tourists alike.

Like the first edition, the completely revised version is loaded with recipes by and features on vendors and chefs, and it beautifully captures what a special and magical place the Pike Place Market is in the Pacific Northwest.

If you own the original Cookbook, you'll thoroughly enjoy the revised edition, and if you never picked up the first version, this will become a treasured part of your cookbook collection.

This book does an ok job of giving you a brief overview of the Blackfeet--although it is very introductory and does not go into as much depth as I would like on various subjects (religion, daily life, etc). One problem I have is that Ewers choice of words. He refers to the Blackfeet and other Native Americans as "red men" and bloodthirsty and other terms that are rather derogatory. If you can get past that... I guess it's not too bad.

A highly detailed history of the Blackfeet Nation. After you read it, it makes you think how selfish and greedy our historical white leaders were. Talk about terrorism.....we did it to them........

This book is a researcher's dream, and a pleasure to read. First published in 1958, this volume traces the history of the Blackfeet from pre-horse days through to the 1950's. The author displays a thorough understanding of his subject, and extensively annotates his work, paying meticulous attention to dates, places and names. John C Ewers was the first curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian near Browning, Montana, and many of the items in the museum collection were given to him at the time by elder members of the tribe at the time. He used primary sources for much of his information for this book, and corroborated details with these tribal elders as much as possible. This is a well-written, respectful history of the Blackfeet nation, and ought to remain in print for decades to come. Potential buyers should scan the Table of Contents page for an overview of subjects covered.

This is an excellent book and the aouthor is fantastic. My favorite creation story was A Trip to Indian Heaven.

well this is obviously a book with a lot of content on Husserl and is based on scrupulous scholarship..but also maybe too ambitious for an introduction..the references to Husserl's works contain those works that are little known to the general reader or actually the student of philosophy.. such ambitious study of Husserl'as nachlass is naturally praiseworthy, but it can be confusing and overcomplicating rather than illuminating for those only familiar (hopefully) with some major works of Husserl available in English. Better read for advanced researcher than the average reader of Husserl.

This book is at the same time the least and the most "Melvillian" of all Melville's corpus. Melville wrote in Moby-Dick that "two thirds of the world revolve in darkness." This idea certaily holds true for most of Melville's works, but not Israel Potter. In this uncharacteristically light-hearted and crisply written rewriting of American history, Melville gives an early literary version of Woody Allen's film Zelig. The character Israel Potter is that same sort of insignificant historical non-entity who just happens to get caught up in incredibly significant historical moments. In his various wanderings Israel meets and becomes politically involved with a trio of the most important American patriots--Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. It is through these encounters that Melville subtlely (and sometimes not so subtlely) realizes his critical agenda and those darker themes that dominate so much of his other work begin to show themselves. In his portrayal of Franklin, Melville takes a bash at what he sees as the exemplar of American "genius"--the same American genius that ignored and misunderstood his most significant works and forced him into obscurity and poverty in his lifetime. Melville sees Franklin as representative of all that is wrong with the American character--he is parsimonious, small-minded, hard-headed, and morally hypocritical. In the other two historical figures, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen, Melville finds redemption. In them he sees represented more of that European idea of genius, the manly half-savage/half-civilized genius of Thomas Carlyle. Like Queequeg in Moby-Dick who is described as "George Washington canabalistically rendered," Jones and Allen are wildmen in a civilized society, raging against the world as they utter their outrageous and at times incomprehensible truth. A fun yet undenialbly thought-provoking read. Enjoy

Gruchow certainly has an eye for detail. Growing up close to the Minnesota prairie he describes, I missed seeing some of the sights, flowers, and animals he describes. His multi-page description of a summer thunderstorm brought back so many memories as did his marsh descriptions. It is a nice short book that deserves to be savored. It is easy to read a section, put the book down and come back later and be right back on the prairie. The feelings I got reading this book reminded me of how I felt after reading Dakota by Kathleen Norris. Both brought back good memories of my growing up years in the Midwest.

These journals present one of the few areas (for me)
in which Melville is less than he might be, but the
scholarly backup provided by the main editor for
this volume, Howard C. Horsford, ably assisted by
Lynn Horth, G. Thomas Tanselle, Harrison Hayford,
and Alma A. MacDougall fills out the volume with
a wealth of "Discussions" (notes to mentioned items
in the texts of the journals -- these notes go from
page 250 to page 542), "Textual Notes" (not very
interesting except to persons interested in the
picayune details of Melville's underlinings,
spellings, cross-outs, etc.), -- but then, the
editors supply a section titled "Melville's
Agricultural Tour Memorandum (1850)", "Melville's
Notes in Hawthorne's _Mosses_ [From An Old Manse],
and "Melville Abroad: Further Records (1849-1860)".
Many of the "Discussions" items are very interesting
and informative, but the excellent additions are the
drawings, photos, and photo-copies which enrich
the text and the references. There is a photo
of the 5 manuscript notebooks used for his journals
on p. 210 of this volume; there is a photo of
Melville and his youngest brother Thomas, captain of
the ship _Meteor_ on p. 196; there are also maps
such as the one on p. 248 of Melville's European
Route 1849-1850, Melville's Mediterranean Route
1856-1857 on p. 380.
The drawings in the volume are very interesting
and fine. There are personal drawings and photocopies
of personal letter entries that show the "human" side
of Melville and his family. On p. 642 there is
Melville's own drawing of his home and fields at
"Arrowhead" (outside of Pittsfield, Mass.); there
is a photo of Melville's children on p. 637 --
frail, thin looking Stanwix, Malcolm looking off
into the distance, and Elizabeth looking glumly
at the camera. It follows a chilling (from the
apparent lack of warmth, but maybe only from the
inability to express it to his own children) letter
which Melville wrote to his son Malcolm while on
his Pacific voyage of 1860. Here is an excerpt
from that letter on pp. 636-637: "I hope that you
have been obedient to your mother, and helped her
all you could, & saved her trouble. Now is the
time to show what you are -- whether you are a good,
honorable boy, or a good-for-nothing one. Any boy,
of your age, who disobeys his mother, or worries her,
or is disrespectful to her -- such a boy is a poor
shabby fellow; and if you know any such boys, you ought
to cut their acquaintance." Knowing that this son
Malcolm committed suicide several years later,
at home, in his bedroom, gives this letter a chilling
bit of resonant context.
The journals included in this volume are: "Journal
of a Voyage from New York to London 1849," "Journal
1856-1857" (of his trip to Glasgow, to Liverpool -- where
he had that most interesting meeting with Hawthorne
and the resulting walk and talk in the sand dunes;
to Constantinople, to Alexandria and Cairo, then
to Jaffa, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea (from which he
would later write _Clarel_), to Athens, to Sicily,
to Naples, to Rome, to Florence, to Venice, Milan,
Turin, Genoa, Berne, Strasbourgh, Heidelburgh,
Frankfort, Cologne, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and
London, and a trip to Oxford ("Most interesting spot
I have seen in England. Made tour of all colleges.
It was here I first confessed with gratitude my
mother land, & hailed her with pride. *** Soul &
body equally cared for. *** I know nothing more
fitted by mild & beautiful rebuke to chastise the
ranting of Yankees."), Stratford, Warwick, and back
to Liverpool. The final Journal is the one of 1860,
"kept on board ship "Meteor" ...From Boston to
San Francisco."
Some of Melville's notes are brief and cryptic,
and one is at loss to know what appears to be a
personal, secretive note to jog his memory at some
later time. Some of the drawings included which I
found interesting were of the Hotel de Cluny,
Ehrenbreitstein, a full image photo of the statue
of Antinous at the Capitoline Museum ("G.S. Hillard
described the Antinous as 'not merely beautiful' but
'beauty itself' --from note on p. 465), the relief
of Antinous at the Villa Albani, the Athena at the
Villa ALbani.
What surprises one from the journals is an awareness
of how much walking, smoking of cigars, and drinking of
various kinds of alcoholic beverages Melville did on
his trips. But then there are also the interesting
people he met such as the young man he dined with
who gave him a flower. Melville was also a lover of
opera, good food in cheap restaurants, and a grumbler
about hotels with crawly critters in the bed clothes.
All in all this is interesting country to travel
through, but more from what its suggests and causes
the imagination to mull over rather than the fully
written text about his travels. Like many, perhaps,
the experience was the thing to be treasured and
remembered, rather than to be rendered into a fully
articulated prose recounting as a creative work itself
(such as Thoreau's journals, or Hawthone's notebooks).

The Sisala and their neighbors the Dagara and Lobi share many orientations, one of the chief being their decentralized polities: their governing bodies are local, they have no conception or notion of kingship. Before there were any national governments (the Sisala region currently straddles northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso) there were not even any 'chiefs': the local Earth Priest in tandem with the local village council did whatever governing was needed. This book outlines in nearly exquisite detail the spiritual, social, economic and political underpinnings of this society, and how the Earth Priest and the religion he represents interfaces with it.

All things considered, there's really not much to get picky about as regards this book. It gets annoying when you forget the meaning of a Sisala word and there is neither a glossary nor an index to hunt for it. So by all means, write down these words and their definition as you read - otherwise things will tend to get more than a little fuzzy around the edges as you try to slog your way through. Being the published version of his doctoral dissertation, it should not be expected that there be an index and glossary contained here. I myself still wish it had one or the other.

There are times when you wish Tengan would quote directly from his informants rather than just write about what they are saying - such distillations are always somewhat suspect, even when coming from the most evenhanded of writers. It's a bit hard for me to trust that nothing is being lost in translation. There's not much here that even slightly resembles poetry, and that's rather sad. You get a well-exposed skeleton and enough sinew that one can sense the culture asserting itself; what you don't get is all of its flow, and hardly any of its flavor. But once again I forget that this is a dissertation. I would suggest reading any or all of Malidoma or Sobonfu Some's books - though they are neighboring Dagara rather than Sisala, their perspective will provide plenty of the kind of juice missing from Tengan's account.

On the other hand, there is a fountainhead of information presented here, rendered in an organized and non-chauvinistic manner. For instance, the passage when he makes comparisons with other African cultures, showing how differing climates may influence given ethnic groups' spiritual relationship to the land - his ruminations are handled very well, and never overdone. Tengan keeps track of context and does not overvalue generalities at the expense of perceived, individual variants.

In general, his explanations play themselves out quite well, without the excess jargon and/or mental constipation one almost comes to expect from such a detailed tract.

One cautionary note: unless you are already well versed in anthropological theory and its history, it might prove wise to skip the section on anthro-historical approaches to cosmology. Other than this section's introduction and where he is writing about Claude Levi-Strauss, it's pretty hard to follow, and I believe poorly digested/written.

But pretty much everything else, even the "slower" sections, is very worthwhile. Throughout the text there are ample insights and well-gauged comparisons to whet the appetite for further study. In most of the sections, the way he builds up and paces the discussion is highly skilled.

And the chapter on the "individual" in Sisala society - especially the section where he's talking about the different parts of the soul and so forth - is much clearer than what Ephirim-Donkor was able to do regarding the Akan peoples immediately to the south geographically. To borrow a metaphor from a song written by one lovely American singer (Joan Baez), it's like comparing diamonds to rust.