[ykboo] Tonight's Talking Earth-- Monday 12/6 KBOO : 10 PM (fwd)

[peter webster]

>X-From_: owner-ykboo at holodoc.peak.org Mon Dec 06 21:53:34 1999
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>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 13:48:00 -0800 (PST)
>From: MichaelP <papadop at peak.org>
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>To: Yaney_Maciver at ex.cv.hp.com, cherie <cblackfeather at uswest.net>,
>        crowx4 at hotmail.com, ingramm at ccmail.orst.edu,
>        Jessica Lamb <jessl at caclbca.org>, weaverr at ucs.orst.edu, ykboo at peak.org
>Subject: [ykboo] Tonight's Talking Earth-- Monday 12/6 KBOO : 10 PM (fwd)
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>Subject: Tonight's Talking Earth-- Monday 12/6 KBOO 90.7 FM,92.7FM,
>100.7FM 10 PM
>
>Talking Earth Monday Night December 6, 1999
>Naked Against the Rain and the craft of Enduring and Beautiful Books with
>Rick Rubin and John Laursen
>
>
> "Once there was a people so wealthy, plump and sleek that they drank sea
>lion oil straight and didn't have to look for food all winter long.  They
>danced and sang and recited stories instead.  These people's upriver
>neighbors bent under ninety-pound packs.  These people just carried their big
>boat down to their river, piled in several tons of trade goods-- cranberry
>preserved, smoked salmon, dried clams, six or seven kinds of vegetables, fur
>robes, and arrow-proof armor-- and paddled a hundred miles or so up the river
>to trade.
>
>"They were not just rich but highly intelligent and comparatively sane.
>Their numerous villages of fancifully decorated houses lined the shores of
>the mighty river, from which they drew most of their living and much of their
>pleasure.  That river-- we call it the Columbia-- was all they ever wanted.
>It provided them with more than they could use.  Fish in profusion swim up
>the river-- they called it Wimhl-- salmon, sturgeon, smelt and lamprey came,
>each in its season, to offer their flesh to the people"
>
>                      from "Naked Against the Rain," by Rick Rubin,
>                        Press-22 Books, 1999
>
>
>Rick Rubin,  in the kind of madness that sometimes seizes writers, needed to
>do research to pin down some details about the way of life of the people of
>Portland and the lower Columbia River for the second chapter of a book  he
>was writing, and ended up spending more than ten years researching the
>Chinook.
>
>There is little left of Chinook culture now other than evocative artifact and
>a scattered written  record compiled by whites, largely in diaries and
>letters, and articles in archaeological and historical journals, student
>papers, magazines and newspapers. Until Naked Against the Rain, only a few
>books were published that tried to pull all the historical record together,
>and those few books were marred by cultural prejudice and a dense academic
>prose.
>
>Naked Against the Rain combines scholarship and accessability in a
>beautifully written book that opens  the window on a way of life and a people
>which drew on the wealth of the river to make them wealthy, a people who
>managed their riches so well that they remained wealthy for thousands of
>years.
>
>Naked Against the Rain is a book that will endure, but, in the kind of
>madness endemic to this country's literary life, Rick spent years trying to
>find a publisher until, determined to get it out, he published it himself.
>Like many other Northwest writers whose aim is to produce enduring
>literature,  Rick turned to John Laursen, master book designer, for help in
>designing and producing.   John joins Rick at 10 P.M. tonight on KBOO to talk
>with Barbara LaMorticella about the Chinook, and about process producing
>"Naked in the Rain."
>
>The end of a century which is perilously close to extincting the biological
>miracles of the salmon and the smelt seems a good time to get a fresh take on
>our forerunners on the Columbia, and Rick's labor of love will be read and
>referred to for many years to come.
>

peter