Oregon Books

NEVER SALUTE WITH A BROKEN GARTER" is a collection of Peggy Lutz's
memories between the years of 1944 and 1946, primarily recounting life
of a young woman doing her part for the War effort as a US Navy WAVE.
Women Accepted for Volunteer Service, or WAVES, was a fully pledged and
uniformed auxiliary attached to the US Navy only during WWII. They
performed most of the same stateside assignments as their male
counterparts.

Because very little has been written about these women in uniform Lutz
explains that her hope is that "NEVER SALUTE WITH A BROKEN GARTER" will
shed some light on "all the little threads that made up the fabric of military life for a woman between 1944 and 1946.

Sean Gillihan's poetry represents, as William Kittredge writes on the back cover, "a vivid and accurate, true new voice in the American West. He's been down the roads, worked the crops, fed the cattle--he knows the drills, and dignifies each quiet thing he talks about." Indeed, Gillihan's poems have a quiet yet confident strength and a calm yet powerful quality of vision that cannot be denied. Though often hailed as a new and strong emerging voice of the American West, Gillihan's poetry owes as much to an Eastern sensibility as a Western one--a quality reminiscent of Jim Harrison's poetry. But Gillihan's voice is all his own, and from these poems it is clear he has full command of that voice; his poetry is masterful, beautiful, and imbued with powerful and honest meaning.

There are lots of fishing guides but few about fishing in the salt water of the Pacific Northwest. He writes good naturedly about tactics and lures most attractive to the Northwestern fish. He all modes of saltwater fishing, mooching, jigging and trolling. It is both the most complete guide as well as the shortest and most detailed book available on the subject. This book is a real "catch"whether you are relocating or lived here forever and think you have "heard it all"! pelican on Whidbey Island, an avid fisherman.

I had the pleasure of learning from Ron Lansing for three years at law school. He is an amazing mind, and one of the finest story tellers I have ever encountered. Since most of us can't travel to Oregon to hear him lecture on the law, do yourself a favor and get this book.

The author is very knowledgeable about 19th century photographs and his knowledge is evident in this "labor of love." Not only did I learn about the photographers in Portland, Oregon before 1900 I also learned how to date old photographs. This information has been very useful for me as I research my family history.

NORTH BANK explores the patterns and the feelings of recreating a home place. After the author and his wife buy a home beside the Rogue River, he sets about discovering the locale--the hillsides, the neighbors, the rivers, the fly-fishing riffles. What began as strange landscape gradually takes on a familiar and valued quality. This book engages the process of rediscovery that we all experience, in some form, when we move from one place to another and set about putting down new roots. Because the author loves rivers and flyfishing, his particular process has much to do with the rivers and smaller coastal streams of the region. But there is more than fishing here. A wonderful read.

This is an excellent guide to paddling in the northwest. It is up to date and concise, and includes all the things you want to know when going on a paddling vacation with the family.

"What disregards man does man good," wrote Stafford in one of his better known and often anthologized poems, one about sightseers on the astonishing Oregon seacoast.
I purchased this special edition of Northwest Review when it was new and required reading for Professor Glen Love's terrific course in Literature of the Pacific Northwest, at the University of Oregon. Now I seem to have misplaced it and am desperate to find a replacement copy. If anyone happens to have one available, I am willing to pay handsomely for it.

What a great find. We were visiting a friends B&B and she had this book sitting on the coffee table so I started flipping through the pages looking at all the houses, and then I turned the page and there was our house! The William G White house in Olympia, WA It is now the Swantown Inn Bed & Breakfast. The book is a great resource of local Victorian homes, and has come in handy while we look at paint schemes for when we repaint, knowing that the house was yellow at one point and what it looked like is just a plus!

When I first read this book several years ago, I was truly inspired by it. This is a delightful story of a boy that overcame the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of paralysis (if memory serves, induced by polio) by forcing himself to walk in the mountains of the great Northwest, and eventually becoming a United States Supreme Court Justice. Finding his strength and his soul (and his paralysis cure!) in the wilderness, he would often retreat to the great outdoors. This is a story of his lessons, and his adventures. A wonderful read.

There is a problem with it, however. It isn't true. For one thing, Douglass never suffered from paralysis as a child as he claimed in the book. He sufferred from re-occuring intestinal colic. He also stated that he lived in poverty with his mother. As it turns out, his mother was typically middle-class. He claimed to have graduated second in his class from law school. Again, a lie.

Apparently, discerning the reasearch I have done on Douglas, this book was politically motivated by a man who wished to paint himself as wholesome as possible in order to obtain his life's ambition - the White House. Studying more on this man is revealing. He left his wife of 28 years for a series of younger women. He left his third wife for a high school student. 24 months later he married a college student that he met waitressing at a cocktail bar. His own children thought him "scary" who only spoke to them when "press photographers wanted a picture." There is also a controversy about his military service - if he ever did actually serve, and if he deserves to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery (where he is buried.)

The book itself, as I said, is a delightful read. If it were true, I would give it five stars without blinking an eye. Read and enjoy this piece of masterful, self-revisionist fiction.

This book is a wonderful and gentle journey of one man who loved to be in the mountains! As an adult I started backpacking the very areas Douglas talks about in the book and have grown quite fond of the southern portion of the Cascades. Names like Darling Mountain, Fryingpan Lake, Fifes Peak, Old Snowy Mountain and Conrad Meadows - I've been to most of these places!

Through Justice Douglas I get to see how it was so long ago! Very well written, you get to hear about the adventures of young men growing up and doing the things that young men did in the early 1900s. And while specific to the Wallowas and the south central Cascades, the story is told as if the forests he visits were the forests closest to you. Each little lesson he learns, he shares. Tips on cooking and fishing and surviving - and how to be a little less afraid and a little more inspired. These are the forests that are visited by wise scholars and simple horsemen and everyone in between.

The book is definitely not a work of fiction - you couldn't possibly describe these places in the way that he does without having been there. The book is about real places with real people. Don't take my word for it - drive to Tampico near Yakima in Washington and hike up to Darling Mountain. Then go down to Conrad Meadows and to the Tieton Basin. Walk across Highway 12 and up Indian Creek trail to the Blankenship Meadows and then up to the top of Tumac Mountain. When you're tired looking as far as the eye can see, go down to Twin Sisters Lake for bit of fishing and a night of rest before the long journey to Bumping Lake and then on to Goose Prairie where Douglas once lived. These are a few of the places that Justice Douglas takes you to.

If you want the controversy of William O. Douglas read "Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas". If you want to read about men and mountains, then I highly suggest this book.