Columbia Books

Down The Columbia by outdoor enthusiast and river expert Lewis Freeman is a wild and exciting memoir of a bold journey down the Columbia river, before the Grand Coulee and other dams somewhat calmed its rushing flows. Filled with respect for the majesty and savagery of Nature, Down The Columbia is a vividly presented adventure highly recommended for armchair travelers who aren't afraid to get their feet wet!

I am a fan of Tim Bowling's poetry. I was a bit apprehensive about reading his first novel, Downriver Drift, after having enjoyed his poetry so much. I was not disappointed. Living in a British Columbia fishing community for 14 years, I found this book enlightening and engaging. I was most intrigued with the theme of the book, which is the Fraser River. We learn about the life of a fishing family--parents, Kathleen and Vic, their sons Corbett and Troy and young daughter Zoe. Kathleen maintains great pride in the lifetyle of her fishing family through good times and bad and she teaches this to them. The entertaining subplots add to the interest of the novel and show small town pastimes. We come to know the butcher and other unusual characters who live in Chilukthan. This is a truly British Columbian novel, not to be missed.

If you're in the natural health field, you really need to read this. It explains how everything got turned upside-down, and how natural healing became so uncommon. It is written by a man that wrote tons of books documenting history.

I'm not sure why he got on this path, but I'm glad he did. He tracks it all back to money, which of course, we still see today. It's a long book, with lots of boring details, but well worth trudging through. I know it's expensive to buy out-of-print books. But this is one it's worth coughing up the dough for.

This occupational memoir traces Fred Friendly's sixteen years with Columbia Broadcasting System where he spearheaded the production of hundreds of public service programs and documentaries. With Ed Murrow he brought series like See It Now and CBS Reports to light.

He resigned in 1966, his last two years serving as president of the news division. He saw the direction of what he was steadfastly accomplishing regarding the organization's responsible handling of the news be summarily emasculated in just several days. The power to decide what was newsworthy was now relegated to a pawn (Schnieder) who was not versed in international events, but heavily influenced by pure profits and the advice of the new efficiency experts. A firm and cold decision by this pawn to air a fifth rerun of an I Love Lucy episode (followed by an eigth rerun of The Real McCoys) over the extremely pertinent testimony of Ambassador George Kennan in the Vietnam Hearings was more than Fred could bear. His principles wouldn't allow it. Every news executive pleaded at the time to air Kennan, but to no avail.

This book is beautifully written and very engaging. It includes Fred's letter of resignation. It is a masterpiece of literature.

This book, or Fred's life, could easily be made into a movie. It has all of the captivating elements of the best dramas. It might appropriately be called "The Big Switch" (which is how the New York Times described the control of the air time).

Fred Friendly is an American hero. He remained determined in his pursuit of journalistic excellence and is responsible for a six hundred round table discussion - 83 that appeared on PBS that featured moderators like Harvard Law School's Arthur Miller. These were the Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society... dubbed the Fred Friendly Seminars. The panels included a wide array of top names in all branches government and business.

I will end by quoting Mr. Friendly in his later life:

"Our purpose is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds, your mind, and to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can escape only by thinking."

Five Stars

Of all the individuals that have served in the premeirship of British Columbia, it is Dufferin Pattullo that Fisher feels was the most significant. He places hime above the likes of WAC Bennett, John Oliver and Richard McBride. The book is a chronological account of Pattullo's life, starting with his early childhood, moving through to his time spent in the Yukon. Next, the entering of politics and Pattullo's appointment as the Minister of Lands where he helped to implement the South Okanagan Lands Project. The book continues with Pattullo's time as leader of the BC Liberal Party and beyond.

In writing the book Fisher states that he set out to prove that the medium of the Biography could still be used in historical writing as a successful means of conveying the history of a region. As Fisher points out, Biography had once been the grand tradition of Canadian historical writing (see Creighton's biography of John A. MacDonald), but with the shift to a more "social" history in the 1960 s and early 1970s Biography fell out of fashion. This is because the emphasis that a biography placed on the individual, who was usually tended to be male, white and a politician, was not seen as representative of the larger society. The result was a shift to some of the more marginal aspects of society that had been ignored in past historical works. This is a trend that Fisher has argued against elsewhere (see the 100th issue of BC Studies). Pattullo is therefore meant to show that biography is still a useful method that can be used to highlight a regional history. To quote Fisher; "for this historian, the individual matters as much as the group. And some people are more important than others." (p. X).

A final note about "Pattullo", in that Duff Pattullo came to view the Canadian federation differenty than most of his counterparts is indicative of the trend in BC historiography at the time. It is my understanding that in presenting his views to the Rowell-Sirios Commission Pattullo was very much influenced by the work of UBC historian Walter Sage. Sage was attempting to apply the concept of Turner's frontier thesis to Canada at this time and had come to see the country as possessed of five distinct regions. With each region having more in common with its neighbours to the south than with the other regions of Canada. Which, of course, ran completely contrary to the centralist bias that was prevelant at the time (again, see the work of Creighton).

Wit'suwit'en and Gitksan Governance existed prior to contact. And so their societal and spiritual structure intertwined with the land through the Potlatch. The Potlatch, once outlawed by Canadian Statutes under the Indian Act at the turn of the 19th Century, Delgamuukw/Gis'DaWay (SCC 1997) accepts the traditional governance of Aboriginal Peoples of Canada as "we are all here to stay". The details of the actual Potlatch and protocols are a combination of spiritual beliefs that connect to the land, language and law (potlatch).The Aboriginal concept, "collective society", is outside the traditional realms of eurocentric thought of the individualism and property ownership. Appreciating the differences with this read may dispel one sided opinions of Aboriginal Society, not yet fully understood. I should know, I am from the Tsa'yu Clan of the Wit'suwit'en. My name is Sha-ohn, sister to Chief Wil'aat and Brothin-in-law to Wah'tah'gyet. Both are contributors to the book, as Indigenous Knowledge teachers. They also were a part of Wit'suwit'en and Gitksan Elders and Chiefs who gave evidence at the trial VS: British Colombia and again at the appeal courts, the Delgamuukw Decision. Enjoy your reading and re-reading as researched and presented by Antonia Mills.

EARLY CHINESE LITERATURE. By Burton Watson. 304 pp. New York : Columbia University Press, 1962. ISBN 0-231-08671-7 (pbk.)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden his books with extraneous matter. His many translations and studies of Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth owning as they are books one often to returns to.

In the present book he has given us an account of Chinese writing from the time of the Chou Dynasty (1100 B.C. to 249 B.C) to the middle of the Latter Han (A.D. 25 to A.D. 220). The important works of this period are described with many illustrative quotations.

After a brief but typically excellent Introduction, three main sections follow : HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY; POETRY. Each section includes a selected list of translations, and the book is rounded out with a Chronology and a detailed Index.

Of especial interest in the Introduction is Watson's discussion of Classical Chinese, where, after a few remarks on the nature of the language, he makes a point of telling us that "the reader should perhaps be reminded that when he reads these early Chinese works in translation, he is at many points reading not an incontovertible rendering of the meaning of the original, but only one of a variety of tentative interpretations" (p.12). This is a useful reminder for those laboring under the misapprehension that there can be such a thing as a 'definitive' translation from Classical Chinese.

Watson covers a wide range of topics in his book. HISTORY gives us his discussions of, and translations from, The Book of Documents, The Spring and Autumn Annals, The Tso chuan, The Kuo yu or Conversations from the States; The Chan-kuo ts'e or Intrigues of the Warring States; and several other works.

PHILOSOPHY takes up Confucian Writings such The Lun yu or Analects, The Meng Tzu or Mencius, the Hsun tzu, etc.; Ritual Texts such as The Li chi or Book of Rites, The Hsiao Ching or Classic of Filial Piety (in style and contents similar to the Li chi though transmitted separately), The I ching or Book of Changes, etc. Then follow the Mohist Writings, the Taoist Writings (The Lao tzu, The Chuang Tzu, The Lieh Tzu), Legalist Writings (Book of Lord Shang, The Han Fei Tzu) and Eclectic Writings (The Kuan Tzu).

POETRY offers Watson's interesting discussions of, and fine translations from, The Book of Songs, The Ch'u Tz'u or Elegies of Ch'u, The Han Fu, and a few selected Songs and Ballads.

Watson's book is civilized, informative, well-written, and richly illustrated, and can be strongly recommended as an excellent survey of a fascinating period, and as interesting background reading for both students and the general reader.

This is an excellent contribution to Scouting history, not just for the council or area, but for the fact that it contains a great saga about a wonderful Scout Executive. The book is a great history of Camp Meriwether: how it was originated and how it developed. There's even a backstory of the shipwreck that figures in the history of the camp. The main subject of the whole piece, though, is "Obie," Oberteuffer, head of the professional staff of the Columbia Pacific Council from 1925-1957. Lots of good stories about camp life in the early days.

Leading worldwide evolutionary chemists, geologists, paleontologists and biologists were invited to Alfred Nobel's manor in Karlskoga, Sweden on May 16-21, 1992 for the 84th Nobel Symposium entitled 'Early Life on Earth'. Herrick and Margareta Baltscheffsky of Stockholm University, point out quite reasonably that prebiological energy-conversion reactions were a necessary prerequisite to the origin of life. It is proposed that pyrophosphate PPi (two phosphate groups) was a common energy molecule used by the chemical reactions of life prior to ATP (adenosine plus three phosphate groups). Membrane-bound PPase in bacteria is much simpler than ATPase. As well, PPi<->Acetylphosphate<->Acetyl-S-R, ie, a link with thioester energy reactions. It is proposed that the PPi/thioester world was a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of the RNA and ATP world.

This anthology illustrates the core problems in Native North American Art History by showing the paradoxes in its founding methodology. The essays deal directly with early scholars' and collectors' cultural barriers to understanding their subjects. The book provides examples of how to question the idealogical bases of what we often accept as the truth regarding the work.

I've found it to be immensely useful in a course that surveys the field; students develop a better appreciation for the work by studying the wider implications of ethnography and collecting. In particular, Marvin Cohodas' essay on Louisa Keyser often opens the way to new levels of understanding the contradictions in the discipline.

Anyone with a serious interest in native art should read this collection.