University of Nebraska Press

Guest Blog: Kevin H. Siepel

A PATHWAY TO PUBLISHING

When I was a kid I loathed reading.  Couldn’t understand how anyone could have the patience to read two hundred or a thousand pages of . . .  words.  My minimally schooled parents each bore the emblem of being readers—namely, excellent grammar and usage, and familiarity with a wide range of topics.  But I didn’t get it.  To me life was roaming the fields and woods with a rifle or fishing rod, playing baseball, or building model airplanes and radios.  I did whatever reading was required for school (almost nothing in those days), but basically books formed no part of life as I saw it.

Just out of my teens, I went away to a Catholic seminary to study for the priesthood, an endeavor that was to last a few years.  Once the path of deep learning was opened to me, I came to see what an ignoramus I was, and that the only way out was to embrace the printed word beyond what was required.  I eased into my new program with historical novels, was surprised to find them enjoyable, and soon moved into the Great Books series, in addition to other sources of literature, history, and science.  Beyond the required Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French, I started studying Spanish and German.  Later, upon giving up the seminary life, I tackled biology.

In the mid-1970s, chance threw this somewhat better educated humanist into a job in northern Virginia.  The job was unattractive, but northern Virginia history proved magnetic.  I was drawn to the story of Confederate partisan commander John Singleton Mosby.  I noted that his life—except for his service during the Civil War—had been neglected by biographers, and decided that I could be not only a reader but possibly even a writer.  Believing strongly in my ability to get a book published simply because, well, because it would be so good, I persevered through three years of research and two years of writing, and voilà—the first publisher to whom I submitted the Rebel manuscript (St. Martins Press) took it.  I thought this was normal.  It’s since been through a second publisher (Dacapo Press), and I’m proud to say it’s now with the University of Nebraska Press.

Success with this particular project bred a confident attitude toward writing, and has helped me to create, among life’s other tasks, a very modest string of publications of which I’m proud.  Along the way I’ve given many booktalks, the thought of which would have sent the 15-year-old I once was into a tizzy.  I’ve exchanged the rifle and fishing rod for the computer keyboard, but only sandwiched in among other duties.

What does all this signify?  Well, I think at least this:  if you’re open to learning, and to following some sort of dimly perceived spirit, unsuspected abilities can bubble to the surface, and you wind up in a place where you never expected to be.  Those unsuspected abilities, however, will not prove to be in the writing line if you haven’t become a reader first.

Kevin H. Siepel
Author of:
Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby
Joseph Bennett of Evans and the Growing of New York’s Niagara Frontier

Tuesday Trivia: July 21, 2007

Well bloggers it hotter than … (well, you know) outside. So to try and get our minds out of the heat this week’s Tuesday Trivia is going to take a look at UNP’s new book, Authentic Alaska II: Voices of the Far North, edited by Susan B. Andrews and John Creed.  Showcasing writers from the Arctic Ocean to the Southeast Alaska rainforests, their stories account for the diverse and unique culture this state has to offer. Their sometimes intimate pieces touch on everything from Global Warming to a mothers fight for her son to go to college. This sequel to Authentic Alaska features both native and non native writers from primarily rural communities. If nothing else then reading this book in the dead heat (like today) might cool you down just a bit!

A.    Alaska is derived from the word Aleut meaning what?
B.    5% if the state speaks one of how many indigenous languages?
C.    The Highest point in Alaska is what?
D.    True or False: Alaska is one of two states not boarded by another.
E.    Alaska is the largest state in the US and covers how much ground?
F.    In 1964 the “Good Friday Earthquake” killed how many people.
G.    80% of Alaska’s state revenues comes from what?
H.    True or False: Alaska has one of the highest individual tax burdens in the country.
I.    How many volcanoes reside in Alaska?
J.    True or False: It was purchased from Russia in 1867 for less than 2 cents per acre.

Ok, bloggers check back tomorrow for the answers!

Author Guest Blog: Beth Boosalis Davis

Reaching for the Brass Ring

By Beth Boosalis Davis, author of Mayor Helen Boosalis: My Mother’s Life in Politics

Flat on my back and sick as I’d ever been, I managed to write on the back of a nearby dental reminder card a specific timetable to do something I’d never before considered – write a book about my mother, Helen Boosalis, and her political life. Days later, after I recovered, I studied my scratchy bedside notes expecting to dismiss them as some delusional sickbed rant. Instead, I realized writing my mother’s story had not come out-of-the-blue but rather from a desire buried deep within. Perhaps my illness had knocked me into a rare state of stillness, a state where something deeper than the next to-do item on my list could command my attention.

Even with clarity of purpose I still had practical matters to consider, such as the fact that I knew nothing about what was involved in writing a book.  I may not have doubted the goal but I certainly doubted my ability to achieve it. That’s when I recalled advice my mother was given when she hesitated to jump into her first race for mayor:  “the brass ring may not come round again.”  I had my timetable, I had my parents still with me, I had my husband’s support.  Time to reach for the brass ring.

I didn’t presume to think I could just sit down and type out a book, no matter how familiar the subject.  First I converted a little-used 8 X 9 feet space to a “room of my own” for writing.  I started journaling, and on my daily walks along Lake Michigan I practiced by writing three descriptions of the lake each day. I bought several books on writing and even read a few, hoping the rest would be absorbed through osmosis. 

Linking in Lincoln: April 23, 2008

THE LINKS THAT BECOME US

Featured this month by the University of Nebraska Press is, What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz. A Collaborative memoir by mother and son, it chronicles the journey from female to male, and scientist to performer of Aaron Raz Link. Hilda Raz, a well known poet and feminist, plays the role of the “astonished” parent who watches the process from the standpoint of both mother and academic. With the poignant perspectives of mother and son, we can see how the self-identification methods we use to create our own lives can have significant impact on the ones we love. Ranging from the scientific to the personal, this book transcends issues of gender, science, career, and even family to come to a conclusion simply human. This week Linking in Lincoln will explore topics with the same variety and (hopefully) thoughtfulness. So link away, bloggers!

Within recent years, the term “Transgender” has become increasingly commonplace. Yet, while perhaps not prominent, their impact on the community has always existed. To get a feel for what the often silenced group has contributed, here is a website devoted to Famous Transgender People ….Who are Known for Something Else.

Hilda Raz is a famous poet, feminist, editor, essayist, and reviewer (not to mention former professor of mine!) who’s impact on the literary world has been significant to say the least. But don’t just take my word for it, check out her website here.

Are you like me (and pretty much everyone else I know), and have no clue what Taxonomy is? Well then check out the greatest resource for all unknown questions at Wikipedia.

Think your life is worthy of print? If so, then take a gander at the Scholastic website to find out how to Write Your Own Memoir

Just a bit jealous that Aaron and Hilda Raz could get along so well they could write a memoir together? I might be myself, a little…. Well fear no longer, here are some steps to dealing with even the most (do we even use the word…?) “involved” mothers. Take a look and get on the fast track to writing your own mother/child memoir at ehow.com

That’s it for today dear bloggers. I hope we’ve inspired you to take a closer look at your own memoir worthy life. Don’t forget to check out What Becomes You this month from the University of Nebraska Press…and make sure to put your mother on speed dial!

Nearly Landlocked Armchair Adventurer reviews Kayaking Alone

Review of Kayaking Alone by Scott R. Anderson, nearly Landlocked Armchair Adventurer, Millersville, PA.

My initial reaction to the idea of kayaking alone was “That’s not very smart.”  Sure enough, safety concerns are addressed (and pretty much dispensed with) by the end of page four. [I should think seriously about getting one of those EPIRB locator beacons for my car keys.]  I felt redeemed by the author; my initial thoughts about kayaking 900 miles of river from Idaho to the Pacific Ocean alone as a potentially lethal undertaking were confirmed.  Refreshed, and with greater armchair abandon, I pressed onward.

Spreading the Word: Advice for the Newly Published Author

By Peggy Shumaker

Congratulations!  Your book’s been accepted for publication! First, you dance! Then you make plans to give your new book its best chance in the world.

You’ve got nearly a year while the book’s in production, just barely enough time to do the following:

• Contact any reporters or reviewers you know—print, broadcast, or online. Send them advance publicity and reviews. Add them to the press’s standard review list.
• From your acknowledgments page, make a list of the magazines that have published your work. Do they also publish reviews? If so, compile a list of those editors and their addresses. Add these to the press’s review list.
• Prepare your personal address list for advance fliers. These can be sent by snail mail, e-mail, or both.
• If you can afford to, set up readings in different parts of the country. Send a copy of your book to the person who organizes the readings at your venue of choice. Once you get a yes, try to set up two more within driving distance of the first. 
• Know this—universities, community colleges, and schools often pay authors for readings. Some libraries do. Bookstores don’t. Read at bookstores anyway. Read anywhere someone will set up chairs and do publicity. Offer to visit classes, discussion groups, and/or book clubs. 
• If you can’t travel to meet with a class that’s reading your book, offer to talk with the group by audio conference.
• Offer your services at writing conferences and festivals. If you’ve attended some in the past, contact the organizers and let them know about your new book. Try to find a link between your book and their audience or community. Send a sample of your book to organizers who seem interested.
• Say "yes" to interviews on the radio or television, in print, or online.
• Ask bloggers you know to do a blurb on your book. 
• Prepare a one-sentence description and three-sentence synopsis as reference points when you talk about your book.
• Prepare study questions and post them to the Web site for your book. These help teachers who might host you, discussion leaders, and interviewers who might not read your book. Let these questions lead to things you’d like to say about the book.

Once your book comes out:

• Announce your book’s release on listservs and on your own Web page. Link to your press’s Web page to make buying your book a breeze.
• Place your book in local bookstores. Independents and university bookstores will likely buy directly from you or from your press. Chain stores will require you to go through a distributor. Find out who the distributor is. Make an appointment with your local rep. Buy her coffee. Let her know where your book fits into her list.
• Keep a carton of books in the trunk of your car. Keep an extra one in your book bag. Don’t be shy.
• Attend the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) conference. Spend time in the booth talking about your new book, handing out postcards of the cover, and signing purchased copies.
• If you’re lucky enough to get invited to a regional or national booksellers’ association conference, prepare a ten-minute presentation that will help booksellers place your book in the hands of customers. Be prepared to sign books as fast as you can, then mingle. Walk the book show floor and talk about your book.
• Be aware of calls for papers at conferences around the globe. If you can link your book to their programs, submit a proposal. If your proposal is accepted, attend the conference, and take along postcards of your cover and a few copies of your book.
• Donate copies of your book to libraries and nonprofit literacy centers.
• Donate copies of your books to students who cannot afford them.

Throughout this process, you should stay in close touch with the people at your press. They will help you as much as they can. Rely on their expertise. Ask questions. Get suggestions.

Take great pleasure in spreading the word about your words.

*****

Peggy Shumaker is professor emerita of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the author of Just Breathe Normally (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Visit her Web site at www.peggyshumaker.com.

Ode to an Irishman

On St. Patrick’s Day, 17 Reasons to Purchase Dinty Moore’s New Book, Between Panic & Desire

By Kate Flaherty

1. Because at a zippy 140 pages, Dinty provides his readers with all of the angst and none of the bloating.

2. Because Dinty finally explains in full the origins of his name in all its Dinty-ness.

3. Because even his index is funny (Goo goo ga joob, 64).

4. Because his author’s note is even funnier.

5. Because the book is like therapy, only cheaper. (“When you stop beating your head against the wall, your head miraculously feels better.”)

6. Because Tricia Nixon makes a cameo appearance as a 1-900 psychic.

7. Because it includes Gene Simmons vs. Terry Gross, redux, as only Dinty can do.

8. Because Dinty manages to be an unflinching observer without being preachy.

9. Because not being preachy doesn’ t mean Dinty lets us off easy.

10. Because Dinty’s not afraid to admit he used to look a little like John Hinckley.

11. Because Dinty’s not afraid to admit he loved TV.

12. Because Dinty makes trivia less trivial. And he includes quizzes! Multiple choice!

13. Because Dinty juggles brutal honesty with humor and forgiveness.

14. Because Dinty also juggles sex, drugs, and rock and roll with a unique Midwestern flair.

15. Because Panic & Desire is shorter than War & Peace.

16. Because Panic & Desire has all the witty banter of Pride & Prejudice with none of the corseted outfits.

17. Because Panic & Desire is the new, and most apt, dichotomy for the twenty-first century. And it even has what could be described as a pretty happy ending. And we really need one. So thank God. Or Bhudda. Or Dinty.

Kate Flaherty, a fiction writer and essayist, is the former managing editor of Prairie Schooner.

Authors Reflect on the Challenges of Writing About Others

Authors Sonya Huber and Mimi Schwartz both penned fascinating creative nonfiction works newly published by the University of Nebraska Press. Huber's is a memoir and recreated family history that tells a layered story of an overlooked history of socialism in Germany before and after Nazism entitled Opa Nobody. Schwartz's memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times, focuses on recovering the Nazi-era history of her father's German village where Jews’ and Christians’ claims of congeniality were often proved true. Both women faced a number of challenges in writing non-fiction accounts of the lives of others. How does a creative writer do justice to her subjects as well as her craft? How does she practice artistic freedom and expression within the confines of a story largely about people other than herself? In their guest blog postings, Huber and Schwartz address these questions and speak to the uniqueness and importance of the creative nonfiction genre.

*****

Accountability and Joy

By Sonya Huber

I felt compelled to write Opa Nobody, but my fear of the outcome was almost as big as my desire to write. Throughout the research process, I worried that I was bothering people, dredging up too many buried feelings with my questions. I worried that I was inevitably getting it wrong, that I was missing sources and doing other sources a disservice by misunderstanding them. I worried that the final outcome for all of this work would be hurt feelings for anyone and everyone mentioned in the book. In my writing classes, my students and I regularly discuss ethics and the predictable and surprising fallout that can result from a work of family-based memoir. I worried about these consequences, and I knew as I wrote that my internal “writer” would be unable to reach the ideals of responsibility, transparency, and accuracy so cherished by my internal “editor.” Every day when I sat down to write, the “writer” in me took over—this reckless person who elbowed into the story, flung around metaphor, and pushed toward the points of maximum conflict and difficulty. Then the “editor” came back and worried over the pages, always desperately behind, looking for the holes and the blind spots.

My relatives in Germany have now received their copies of the book, as have friends and family in the United States. A new “blind spot” has been revealed: I realized that I never dared to dream about positive reactions. I held my breath as those closest to me read their copies, and I flinched when I opened my e-mails. I never anticipated the wonderful messages of praise; I did not adequately imagine the generosity of my family. These people who had been so forthcoming with their stories and their memories have now been as equally giving with their support. I have realized in the weeks since publication that a public focus on the sins of memoir and family history—and my research interest in critical response to controversial works of memoir—had obscured for me the productive beauty of the genre and the reasons why I am committed to it. I did not imagine that my relationships with my subject matter—my German family—could continue to shift and develop, even after publication. I thought I had said everything possible about my relationship with my imagined Opa, but I find that as family members send me their reactions, I feel a web of connections drawing through and beyond the text as if an electrical circuit has been established. I thought that publication equaled the end of an exploration, a sign that the last chance to fix my mistakes had passed. Instead, new conversations have begun.

*****

The Ups and Downs of Telling Other People’s Stories

By Mimi Schwartz

If it’s nonfiction, why change the name of your father’s village—and also of the villagers? It’s a question people ask about my new book, Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village. My answer is: Privacy. When people are neither famous nor infamous, and they prefer to have pseudonyms, why not?  Most readers of memoir, I’ve found, don’t care about names; it’s the stories that matter—and the obligation to get them as true as possible on the page. Readers also want you to let them know what you are doing and why. That’s why I wrote this in my Author’s Note in the front of Good Neighbors, Bad Times:

The people I met, the stories they told, the facts of village life and history, are true as I learned them. Nothing is made up—except for people’s names; the name of the village, which I call Benheim; two other place names; plus some identifying details that I changed to protect the privacy of the non-famous.

Of course, inventing pseudonyms doesn’t work for family members. My father, or rather his voice in my memory, is central to my book. All through my childhood I heard him say, In Benheim we all got along before Hitler. In Benheim we respected each other. And echoes of those stories, forty years later, propelled my writing along.  My father died in 1973, before I started Good Neighbors, Bad Times, but I think he’d be pleased with what I captured of his old world. I even imagine him saying, “You got it right!” They are the magic words a creative nonfiction writer hopes for, signaling that real people, whether their real names are used or not, believe that their lives feel true on the page.

More than accuracy is involved. A writer must capture what I call the “emotional truths” of her characters: the spirit of who they are, what they said, worried about, and thought. Yes, dates, numbers, and other facts must be correct: I fled Hitler in 1937, not 1938. I had three brothers and two died. My mother was a seamstress, not a baker. But correct facts alone won’t reveal how fleeing in 1937 left scars today and what the emptiness of losing two brothers was like. Even small humiliations, ones like your bread not rising and turning golden like your sister-in-laws’ breads, need to produce, “You got it right!”

To make that happen requires the craft of creative nonfiction: description, dialogue, and dramatic narrative. It requires imagination to fill in what isn’t in archives, transcripts, and pages of notes. It requires a willingness to bear a big responsibility: to be honest and fair to your real-world characters. I felt that responsibility in my first book, Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, which was about my life in a long marriage. But I felt it even more in Good Neighbors, Bad Times, writing about subjects who didn’t know me and so generously let me into their lives. I wanted to be worthy of that trust.

I rely on two guidelines to encourage my honesty and fairness. One I started using when writing about my husband, and it goes like this: If I call him a moron, he gets to call me a moron. In other words, I must give him voice; I must empower him to tell his side of the story—and it seems to have worked. Six years after publication, we are still together!

The second guideline comes from memoirist Kim Barnes who wrote the best-selling memoir, In the Wilderness. She was very nervous that her father, in particular, would be angry at her version of her rebellion against the Pentecostal religion of her parents, but he wasn’t. He only wanted her to change a few minor facts, and much relieved, she realized:

One thing that we always assume, wrongly, is that if we write about people honestly they will resent it and become angry. If you come at it for the right reasons and you treat people as you would your fictional characters—you know, you don’t allow them to be static—if you treat them with complexity and compassion, sometimes they will feel as though they’ve been honored, not because they’re presented in some ideal way but because they’re presented with understanding.
(from an interview in Fourth Genre, Volume 2, issue 2)

Two of my characters have read my newly published Good Neighbors, Bad Times and both have liked it, but I’ll be uneasy until all responses are in. In the meantime, I keep rereading an e-mail I just received from one of three sisters I wrote about. They all survived in the village as half-Jewish little girls who weren’t deported:

For three days I did nearly nothing else but reading [your book] and now I am almost speechless, that means words especially English are not enough to express how impressed I am. Your voice in the book is so near to me.

She had been trying to write about her experience, she goes on, but had been blocked. Reading my book gave her permission to try again: this time talking about the bad and the good: “I have a photo, showing me as a child leaning at the wall of our house . . . with a fissure on it. . . . And I would tell how life brings the cement to fill it.”

Her words affirm for me the power of this genre called creative nonfiction. More than its cousins, fiction and journalism, it is in this genre (when “You get it right!”) that one voice encourages others to speak.

*****

For more information on Opa Nobody, visit http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Opa-Nobody,673370.aspx.

For more information on Good Neighbors, Bad Times, visit http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Good-Neighbors-Bad-Times,673371.aspx.

“A Few Words of Love for Ted Kooser’s Valentines” by Kate Flaherty

Before I commence lauding Ted Kooser’s collection of poetry, Valentines, out this month from UNP, let me begin by confessing that my credentials for reviewing poetry are suspect. My education in poetry is as haphazard as the patchwork anthology I have on my bookshelf—a few full collections here and there, plus a notebook of Xeroxed and hand-copied poems given to me from friends of their favorite selections from Lisel Mueller or Vladimir Mayakovsky, James Wright or Billy Collins. It’s a big mixed-tape kind of compilation that I can pull out whenever I’m in need of some poetic therapy. Here’s what I do know: when you need a dash of hope, Mary Oliver is the ticket. Angry and jilted? Mary Kerr has been there. Don’t know whether to cry or throw yourself out a window? Laugh at your desperation with John Engman.

So of course I love Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, where he shares one poem a week by a different writer, along with the briefest of introductions for those of us who might need a nudge toward better understanding. Ted is such a friend to those whose quest for poetry, like mine, is both random and timid, and several of his selections have ended up in the notebook on my bookshelf. And of course I love Ted’s own poetry because naturally it is just as careful and just as giving.

Ted’s new book, Valentines is even more generous, since it is a collection of poems that were originally written as gifts. For the past twenty years, every February, Ted would write a Valentine poem and have it printed up on postcards. Then he’d affix a tiny red heart sticker and hand them out or send them to his women friends all over the country (and the introduction to the collection does include a word of thanks to his wife for tolerating the fact that he’s a harmless flirt).

Ted’s Valentine poems are both endearing and eclectic, with poems on everything from celery hearts to hog-nosed snakes. What I love best about the poems is their wistfulness and hint of melancholy, even when Ted is plying his metaphor for humor, like in “The Celery Heart” or “Barn Owl.” While some of the poems are on romantic love or unrequited love, others look at platonic love or just the theory of love itself, masked in the metaphors that Ted is such a master at creating.

The book itself is lovely too, with a simple cover that is reflective of what the original Valentines Ted handed out actually looked like, shiny little red sticker and all. The book’s spare illustrations throughout are by Robert Hanna, who explains that they’re of Ted’s workspace and local landscape (and I suppose that must be Ted’s Collie dog too!), and they complement the poems perfectly and make Valentines a charming and original purchase, whether you’re looking for a Valentine’s gift, or just an addition for your own haphazard bookshelf.

I’ll end this review with a little Valentine to you, gentle blog reader, of my favorite poem from Ted’s wonderful new book. Enjoy.

“Tracks”

Using a cobbler’s shoe last
I found one summer at a yard sale,
and the heavy leather uppers
from cast-off boots, a jigsaw,
some wood, an awl and thread,
and a few evenings sitting alone
thinking of you, I have fashioned
a pair of red valentine shoes
with heart-shaped wooden heels.
Look for my tracks on your doorstep
where I stood with sore feet
through the evening, too timid to knock.

Kate Flaherty is a fiction writer and essayist.

UNP Author Blog: To Save or Not to Save the Columbia River Salmon

University of Nebraska Press author Mike Barenti kayaked nine hundred miles along the Columbia and its tributaries during the summer of 2001 and wrote a book about his journey entitled Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho's Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, he got an up-close-and-personal view of the endangered salmon issue. Now, nearly seven years later, people in the Pacific Northwest and all over the country are still talking about the fate of the salmon. While politicians continue to play “bait and switch,” little has been done to reach a consensus on what should and can be done to protect the salmon from extinction. In today’s blog post, Mike Barenti lays out the main facets of the debate and issues a call to action.

Talk to enough people around the Northwest about salmon, a part of the country where people always talk about salmon, and eventually somebody will say “we have to save the Columbia River’s salmon.” Of course as the old saying goes, only death and taxes are inevitable, and at least in the Northwest, some people claim even taxes are optional. The truth is we don’t have to save the salmon; doing so represents a social and political choice, not a requirement.

In the summer of 2001, I kayaked nine hundred miles from central Idaho’s Redfish Lake to the Pacific Ocean to find out for myself just where salmon fit in the regional culture of the northwest corner of the country that I call home, and what obligation we, as a region and country, have to protect salmon. The trip lasted almost two months and took me down the Salmon, Snake, and Columbia rivers, three rivers now mired in controversy. I examined those rivers for answers to my questions. I paddled alone for much of the trip, but met many people along the way, and I also listened to what those who lived near and depended on the river had to say. At the end of the trip, I sat down to write a book called Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho’s Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

While writing, I had long conversations about the rivers’ salmon with a close friend who also is a fisheries biologist. Over the years, billions of dollars have been spent on restoring salmon populations throughout the Columbia River and its tributaries. But our money has bought us very little. Instead, the Columbia’s salmon seem perpetually on the verge of extinction. Despite all the money spent and the claims that we all want to see the region’s salmon thrive, we in the Northwest, and in the rest of the country for that matter, have never really decided whether or not we are willing to make serious changes in the way we live and act for the sake of the salmon. So we stumble along with expensive half measures struggling to answer that most basic question: do we want to save the Columbia’s salmon?

In discussions with my biologist friend, I would say we need to debate until we reach some kind of consensus about what we are willing or not willing to do for the salmon. If what we are willing to do isn’t enough, that’s a kind of answer. Consensus would mean taking real action to restore salmon or it would mean the possible extirpation of the river’s wild salmon. My biologist friend always asked how we would conduct this debate, who should participate since salmon represent a national resource, and how we would know when consensus was reached. I never had a good answer.

The federal government has, in its own way, grappled with these same issues. In particular, the government has struggled to find a way to operate dozens of dams in a way that will let salmon if not thrive, at least achieve stable populations. Thirteen of the Columbia’s salmon and steelhead runs are now listed as threatened or endangered. As required under the Endangered Species Act, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) submitted a report in 2000 explaining how it planned to manage the Columbia’s hydro system in a way that would allow salmon to recover. The National Wildlife Federation sued NMFS, a federal judge in Portland found the plan, called a biological opinion, didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and ordered the agency to try again. In 2004, NMFS submitted a second plan; again the judge threw it out and ordered the agency to write a new plan.

In October of 2007, NMFS submitted a draft version of its third biological opinion to U.S. District Judge James Redden. And not long after that, the Portland, Oregon-based judge made it clear the new plan didn’t protect salmon either. He also made it clear there would be no fourth chance for NMFS. According to The Oregonian, Redden indicated that if the final plan didn’t pass muster, he would consider appointing a panel of scientists to help him manage the river. Some groups say the only way to restore some of the Columbia’s salmon is to remove four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington, and in the past Redden has said that dam breaching was an option the court might consider. Though he has recently backed away from dam breaching, Redden might take other actions that will seem just as drastic and just as controversial.

The twenty-eight federal hydroelectric dams spread around the Columbia and its tributaries have many uses. Obviously, they generate cheap electricity for power-hungry cities, but they also impound irrigation water that grows Idaho potatoes and Washington apples and make Idaho and eastern Washington part of the Pacific Rim by creating a series of reservoirs that allow barges to move between deepwater Pacific ports and inland river towns. The remedies the judge has mentioned for protecting salmon—taking water stored behind irrigation dams and sending it down river and lowering the reservoirs on the main stem Snake and Columbia rivers to speed salmon to the sea—would mean less water for farms and barges and hydroelectricity.

Right now, various groups around the Northwest are waiting and speculating on what Redden will do. The final NMFS plan is due March 18, 2008. I talked to a NMFS biologist who said politics makes any major changes to the biological opinion almost impossible. Most people following salmon and hydropower have reached the same conclusion, and they expect Redden to do something drastic. Politicians and business groups will howl, environmentalists will cheer, and the government certainly will appeal if that happens.

I don’t like the courts intervening in what’s essentially a political matter, and normally would chafe at a judge managing the Columbia and its salmon, but in this instance there are few other choices. Not because we have to save the salmon, but because we must have the debate we have put off for so long. A drastic ruling might finally bring the matter to a head, providing a framework for debate and a way to know when we have reached a decision.

Under the Endangered Species Act, the Secretary of the Interior can convene a panel, referred to euphemistically as the “God Squad,” to decide the fate of an endangered species. The God Squad can remove a species’ protections, leaving its existence solely to chance and whim. If sometime after March 18th Redden does what most expect, and if his decision brings the protests most anticipate, discussion about the God Squad will start. If this happens, it will set off a real and deep public debate. Either the public will side with those advocating serious action to save salmon or with those arguing to end the salmon’s protection. The risk of course is that, if we have already chosen sides in the fight over the Columbia, its salmon, and its dams, our side might loose. But I see no other option right now. We don’t have to save the Columbia’s salmon, but eventually, we will have to make a decision.

*****

Read more on the Columbia River salmon issue in this article from The Oregonian:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1197345328250200.xml&coll=7

Mike Barenti is a writer and journalist who has worked as a reporter for the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Idaho Falls Post Register and has taught English and creative writing at various colleges. He has published work in such journals as River Teeth and Ascent.

Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho's Mountains to the Pacific Ocean
By Mike Barenti

To read an excerpt from Kayaking Alone, click on the link below.

Download barenti_kayaking_excerpt.pdf