Walk with me. I know, we’ve done this loop in the State Park at my doorstep many times before. Yet every year I feel compelled to post the photographs of a yellow/orange-dotted world that appears early November, signaling transition, like yellow lights are wont to do.
There is something so utterly optimistic about yellow or orange dots swarming tree trunks, or yellow leaves providing contrast for the increasingly milky brook, or migrating birds – thrushes to be precise – fitting into the color scheme. A last Hurrah before darkness settles in.
There is something tangibly sensuous about the moist surfaces,
and something mysterious about the lamellae and gills.
A recently launched organization called SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) is devoted to study and protect fungi to safeguard biodiversity and curb climate change. They have a pretty slick website and ambitious plans to map mycorrhizal fungi, tiny organisms that intertwine with roots of certain tress and nearly all the other plants in specific forests. You can see videos of their field trips in South America and Europe and learn about the scientists involved – they call themselves Myconauts, a clever contraction of the mushroom subject and the associated explorative adventures. For a shorter, quite educational summary essay I went here – much to learn.
No need to return to Chile, though, as much as I’d be tempted – the visual harvest in forests closer to home is just as beautiful.
Independently, since I was reading about fungi, I chanced on new research that shows fungal DNA in various human tumors. We have no clue if there is a causal connection – if fungi, in other words, could be responsible for certain cancers – we just know there is a link.
A small number of fungal cells have been found in 35 different cancer types, with fungal species composition differing among them. What are they doing there? How did they get there? Are they participating in pathology, or are they just taking advantage of immune system suppression in cancerous tissues? Or maybe there are immune cells that ate fungi and carried sequences to a tumor site?
If we knew what their role is we could use them in diagnostic procedures as markers for pathological growth. Or, more excitingly, if we knew how they got into the tumors we could theoretically have cancer-fighting drugs hitchhike on those cells and deliver the chemo specifically on site, a breakthrough in therapeutics.
Enough, let’s not spoil a perfectly glorious fall walk with thoughts of disease or environmental destruction. Let’s enjoy the ruffled beauty,
and the occasional daily wild life in search of a tasty morsel.
And for sound today there is some use of bio data sonification to help a listen to some oyster mushrooms. Changes in electrical resistance are converted into control signals for a eurorack modular synthesizer. The guy who records all kinds of fungi, electronic musician Noah Kalos, a.k.a. MycoLyco, is based in North Carolina. His goal: “just being able to find a signal that we can really observe helps to raise awareness that fungi are all living, we’re all part of the same thing.”
Alternatively, we can just listen to Massenet’s classical capture of thoughts in fall.
How much beauty can you compress into a single day? Inordinate amounts, it turns out.
It helps, of course, if you live in Oregon, and if you define beauty in the most subjective ways, regardless of whether you look at art or nature.
Come with me then, in the morning, to sneak a peek at herds of elk, in what could count as morning fog, but is more likely a mix of that and the intolerable amounts of smoke and haze wafting over the state from the Camas fires. Indeed, the entire stretch from Portland to the coast was filled with smoke.
The landscape looked worthy of a romantic painter, though, and the elk impervious. Kaspar David, where are you when we need you….
All of this was seen on the way to Astoria, itself shrouded in clouds on and off as well.
Reason for the field trip was the current exhibition at the CCC Royal Nebeker Gallery, The Ship Show, which was all about – you guessed it – ships.
Ben Killen Rosenberg, Clatsop Community College’s Printmaking Instructor, who conceived of and curated the exhibit, explains his concept for this show:
“When visiting Astoria, I always stop to watch the ships traveling up the Columbia River. Large vessels bringing goods or carrying vacationers from places near and far away pass by– a visual delight for all who see them. Ships are mysterious and romantic; they speak to an earlier time and a slower pace of travel, as they pass through vast bodies of waters. Ships can also be ominous harbingers of cruelty and environmental damage. From news reports I’ve followed, I’ve learned of ships carrying illegal cargo or using slave labor changing the GPS locations to avoid being caught by the few authorities on the “look out. Out at sea, in stateless open waters, the environmental impacts and horrendous labor conditions are monitored by almost no one. This is a show about ships as we know them–cruise ships, tanker ships, container ships, offshore vessels and fishing ships–it’s a Ship Show.”
I won’t be reviewing this one other than general remarks, since I have some of my own work in it as well as that of a close friend, but I urge a visit for the opening reception on Oct. 27, at 6:00pm. Not only will you be able to wrap your head around a remarkable variety of work (as well as quality differentials) by 20 artists working with different media. You can also admire Kristin Shauck’s success in hanging a show that would challenge the most experienced gallerist given the range of contributions.
Importantly, you will have a chance to look at a print that was one of the most beautiful images I have seen all year – and this has been a year pretty full of beauty. It was created by Royal Nebeker, who died some years ago, and for whom the gallery is named, after his distinguished career as an artist, but also a beloved teacher at the College and a strong community activist.
I will write about him, now that I have discovered him, (seemingly the last Oregonian to do so) in some future essay. For now let me say that the print could not be captures on camera to do it justice, but it is an incredibly suggestive and emotionally charged piece.
Here are some of the works on exhibit, paintings, photography, sculpture, and photomontage.
Powerful watercolors in background by Henk Pander
Anna Fiedler’s “Adventures are never fun when you are having them” can be yours for $2500….
Local photographer Roger Dorband captures Astoria like no other.
And here is work about the impact of climate change, any guesses?
The day started with nature, had art in the middle, and ended in the woods. A perfect sandwich to nourish the soul. A 3-mile afternoon hike along Ecola Creek, off 101 near Cannon Beach, provided plenty of daily wild life, and swathes of ferns, some now glittering with sun that had finally broken through.
Someone had left a mason jar with flowers and seashells in a tree hole, like an offering. Beauty in the gesture.
The rains will settle in tomorrow, FINALLY. Cherishing the last of the light.
Here is Ernest Bloch’s beautiful Epic Rhapsody, America – the composer lived in Oregon, and the 3rd movement shows some big ships in the video…..more importantly, I love his music.
Walk with me. It’ll transport you into a world of wonder, visions of fairy tales where gnomes and goblins, witches and wolves cannot be far behind. Unless they’re sent into hiding by the onslaught of photographers…
The short and wonderfully wheelchair accessible hike through a 45 acres coastal marsh and old-growth cedar preserve can be found in Rockaway Beach near Garibaldi. Three years ago, a universal access, raised boardwalk opened, leading across a boggy swamp next to Saltair Creek, filled with humongous skunk cabbages, salal, pine snags and alders. Unfortunately there are very few places equipped with benches across the one mile loop, so that people who have difficulty walking without pauses might have a hard time.
Fungi, wild fuchsias, alder berries and late asters frame the walkway
Part of the loop, if you want to make a full circle rather than an in and out, is even more enchanted, since the absence of man-made structures allows you for a short moment to imagine yourself in a prehistoric temperate rain forest in all its sizable glory, roots and all.
Eventually you reach the largest of them all, an old red cedar, 154 feet in height and almost 50 feet in circumference that stands like a giant among the hemlocks and the Sitka spruce. It is said to be between 500 and 900 years old, in terms of mass one of our state’s biggest trees. It nurses younger hemlocks who send their roots down into the decaying remnants of the trunk.
Old growth forests have played a major role in the fairy tales of my childhood, places of danger and dread, but also of shelter and heroic quests from which the hero/ine emerged triumphant. Think of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White or Rapunzel in their various woods. Forests have been places of lawlessness but also hiding spots for justice warriors (Hello, Robin Hood!) If you are interested, there is a lovely book on forests in the cultural imagination and what their climate-caused disappearance would imply (written and anticipated already in 1992), by Robert Pogue Harrison – Forests: The Shadow of Civilization.
“If forests appear in our religions as places of profanity, they also appear as sacred. If they have typically been considered places of lawlessness, they have also provided havens for those who took up the cause of justice and fought the law’s corruption. . . . In the religions, mythologies, and literatures of the West, the forest appears as a place where the logic of distinction goes astray.”
Just like the airy, feathery boughs of cedars contrast with the bulky forms of century old root systems, so do enchantment and disenchantment. For me as a kid, hiking in the Böhmewald during visits with my grandparents primarily meant magic: seeing birds, finding mushrooms, being surrounded by sounds and smells not quite familiar. But a sense of fear was never far behind. You could get lost, there might be predators (on 4 and 2 legs, we were warned,) and the remnants of the Brother Grimm indoctrination lurked on. Did witches exist, after all?
That fear has never quite left. Every time I watch a movie that starts with someone running or stumbling through a forest, I start to tense up, knowing that doom is impending. It doesn’t help that we now regularly get the view from above, these endless drone shots of trees and trees beyond horizon. Have you noticed how often films and shows use these tools with abandon in about any land- or cityscape, glad for their new toys? Of course I watch a lot of movies, junk and otherwise, evoking the forest, Hanna, The Revenant, Leave No Trace, The Blair Witch Project, and lately The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power among them, where I have developed some affection for a plucky harfoot heroine named Nori. But I digress.
The sense of mystery remains as well. Woods are so incredibly nuanced, in their layers, their simultaneous presence of life, decay and death in all imaginable stages, their function to provide food and materials for survival, crowned by their ability to clean the air for us – I stand in awe, every time these thoughts resurface during visits to the forests.
According to the U.N. we are losing 2.5 billion acres of forest – the size of Iceland – every single year. As Olivia Campbell put it:
“Climate change is our collective moral test, the physical manifestation of our sins of gluttony, sloth, greed, selfishness, consumerism, and unchecked industrialism. We have entered the threshold of a forest filled with lush, healthy greenery and teeming with diverse wildlife. The question is, will there be any woods left by the end of the story, or have we run out of places to hide?”
Music, how could I not, is about a fairy tale set in the woods….
Walk with me. I’m systematically doing the rounds of all my special places that will close certain hiking loops after September 30th, to protect migrating birds. Wednesday I was at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refugee.
Fall already visible in the colors. Oaks turning red, yellow poplar leaves dropping, ponds green with duck grits, the whole landscape begging for water colors. Henk Pander, Erik Sandgren, where are you when we need you?
I had come expecting a few straggling flowers and was not disappointed. You have to imagine them bathed in strong smells of wild Thyme, Camomile and something quite sour, hinting at fall.
The usual suspects were still hanging out or taking off for a spin:
Cedar waxwings were stocking up in the Hawthorne,
And then there was this guy, out of the blue, having me stop in my tracks. An adult male harrier, otherwise known as a “gray ghost”, my learned neighbor told me when I asked for help with identification.
You know how during fire works they wait until the end for one final mega explosion? I felt that nature was celebrating the end of summer with a similar display – the pelicans flew over my head, landed in the water, circled and then spread out. Likely on their way down south. Just a stunning sight, and auditory experience, with their wings flapping so close to me.
Anyone with a tendency to anthropomorphize would swear he was grinning at me…
And yesterday off US Hwy 30, some mix and match of the traveling parties, ibises looking on :
The muskrat decided to get out of the way fast, camouflage and all.
Squirrel, on the other hand, was unperturbed, just watching the pelican show while nibbling.
I felt reminded by nature – and in turn want to remind the many people who are dear to me and having a rough time right now – that we aren’t done yet! Change is in the air.
Music is about the Equinox (9/22/2022,) the mood fit.
Walk with me. A lot of joy and a bit of contemplation. This time along the Metolius river and adjacent forests, in Central Oregon near the town of Sisters.
To get there from Portland you drive through mountains that have been burned to crisp in recent years, and along lakes that are lower than ever. Climate change is inevitably on your mind,
Detroit Lake – the floater lines on the right denote where the swimming areas used to be, now dried out.
and then you turn off the highway and veer into an area that is lushly green, filled with the sounds of a healthy river, and you feel like you have landed in paradise.
The Metolius is a 29 miles-long, vibrant river that flows from its spring through the Deschutes National Forest into Lake Billy Chinook then empties into the Deschutes and Crooked rivers.
Its free-flowing condition is protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Actof 1968, established during the heyday of environmental protection attempts under President Lyndon B. Johnson, for rivers with outstanding natural, cultural or recreational values. Only 209 of our 250.000 rivers have been granted that protection. For the Metolius this was awarded in 1988. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife manages the river.
Morning and Evening Light along the river. Low 40s in the morning, mid 90s in the afternoon. Bring a down jacket!
The land around the river is US Forest Service land and so cannot easily be built up. Because of its unusual geology, ecology, fish and wildlife, and cultural and recreational history, the area is now also protected by the Oregon’s Metolius Protection Act. In 2009, the legislature designated the 448 square miles of the Metolius River basin as an Area of Statewide Concern in response to concerns raised by two proposed destination resorts in the basin. The legislation prohibits the development of residences, golf courses, and large resorts within the watershed.
A tiny unincorporated hamlet, Camp Sherman, caters to vacationers and fishermen, with camping sites (21 campgrounds in the watershed area…), small cabins and a store established in 1918 that has not seen much change since the first wheat farmers of Eastern OR came during the summers a century or more ago to escape the heat. Only barbless catch & release fly fishing is allowed these days, the photo of these trout were taken at a fish hatchery adjacent to Wizard Falls on the river.
In 2018 the Deschutes Land Trust acquired a new preserve along the river, focused on protecting what has been home and nourishment to the Northern Paiute, Wasco and other peoples of the High Desert and Cascade Mountain regions, spiritually significant to the tribes. Metolius in the Sahaptin language means “white fish” in reference to a light-colored Chinook Salmon which historically thrived in the river’s cold (48 degrees !) and stable waters. Here is the origin story:
“Tribal elders tell how Black Butte and her husband carried roots, berries, and deer on a journey. During this journey, Black Butte sat to rest, and because the sun was so hot, she began to sweat. While Black Butte rested, her husband, Green Ridge, began to pout. Together their sweat and tears began to form streams. Today Black Butte and Green Ridge’s streams still flow as the headwaters of the Metolius River. Where they flow, you can find the plants, the roots, and the deer that they carried on their journey.”
These days members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs still come to the river to harvest the foods. Wildflowers still flourish into September.
In no particular order, elderberry, fire weed, lupines, forget-me-nots, asters, Indian paintbrush, nettles, rose hips. Not sure what the yellow flowers were.
Chipmunks made it paradise for a certain dog, who needed to cool off and/or rest after relentless chases. As did we, without the chases.
It was a bit sparse in the bird department when I was there, hoping to see owls that in the end I only heard. But jays were ubiquitous, some woodpeckers, grasshoppers, moths and butterflies, and I saw wild turkeys on several occasions.
Camouflaged turkey
The landscape is dominated by ponderosa pine forests, and red dust reminds of the geologic origin: when the now extinct Black Butte volcano erupted 1.4 million years ago, lava flows filled the valley to its present day altitude of 3000 ft. Fire danger is tremendous and signs of prior damage easily found.
Except for a few signs of human presence, you could think you have landed in a place where time has stood still.
Why anyone would cut down a small tree for a tent, however, is a mystery to me.
***
It must have been the airplane.
My thoughts went back to 2018, the last time I sat on an airplane (as always, wondering if this would be the last time for me to visit Europe – alas, it was), on my way back from Slovenia, or more precisely Ljubljana, a bustling university town where I had visited one of the most interesting museums of all I’ve seen, the Museum for Contemporary ArtMetelkova (MSUM) that I reported on here.
Here’s the connection: the art that I saw, dealing with the trauma experienced by that nation, from the 1940s fascist occupation by Mussolini and then the Germans, to the fight for independence in the 1990s and the partition of the former Yugoslavia, showed an enormous capacity for human resilience. So does the history of the tribal nations who have been killed in wars brought upon them by the colonial settlers, dispossessed of their land in the course of American history, and yet maintaining their connection to their culture and to place. Resilience squared.
And all echoed in the botany that was in front of my very eyes, the resilience to incineration, with new life surrounding the skeletons of fire, with plant life daring to exist in seemingly uninhabitable places.
It was not just the beauty that filled me with joy these last three days. It was the very model of resilience, of toughness in the face of obstacles, even lethal threat, imbuing hope. So, so, so grateful for that reminder.
Here are some Mazurkas resembling at times gurgling water, by an exceedingly resilient composer, Chopin.
The email came out of the blue, from someone I did not know. They liked the way I describe my encounters with the world. Would I be interested in documenting how they see theirs?
Of course I would! How can you not take the opportunity to go to the coast and spend a day with an intrepid band of painters who are out there every summer for a 2- week PaintOut, rain or shine? Meeting at various locations, including Seal Rock, Ona Beach, Rocky Creek State Park, Yachatz North Shore and the old Yaquina Head Lighthouse? Painting, critiquing, freshly exploring a familiar landscape every year or being stunned (or stumped) by it for the first time? Receiving instructions from a veteran art professor, Erik Sandgren, as enthusiastic about teaching as about the act of painting itself?
Off I went to Depoe Bay, not knowing what to expect, but curious how such a collective approach to making art would work. Spoiler alert: It works great. And I had the best day. The weather gods were kind, nature conspired to show off as only nature can, bald eagles on their way to lunch, pelicans on patrol and ambling oyster catchers included.
More importantly, I met a number of artists who were not only engaged with what they were doing, but who had nothing but positive stories to tell: how practicing their craft outside was a godsend during the pandemic, because they could interact, talk, escape isolation and nurture friendships. Many of the people who participate in the annual PaintOut workshop, traveling there from all over the place, continue to practice some form of it with likeminded painters back where they live on a regular weekly schedule, ever more improving the facility and skill with the medium.
From left to right: Deb McMillan, Erik Sandgren, Quinn Sweetman
Speaking of which, there were water colorists and oil/acrylic painters on site, spread across various locations, making me feel, while wandering through the park, like on a treasure hunt – you never knew what sight awaited you while rounding the next corner, or taking a fork in the path. All were enrolled in the three-day paid tutorial that Sandgren offers, tackling specific tasks and problems that arise with landscape painting, with lectures followed by painting session and then a late-in-the-day critique round that helps tie theory and practice together.
Starting with day 4, the meetings are open and free to all, with each day having a specific site announced and anyone who is serious about painting, no matter the level of their expertise, can join the fun. There will still be a conversation about work in the afternoons, but more of a free-for-all, from what I understood.
Some of the attendees have been coming for decades – the workshop started in the late 70s, initiated by Nelson Sandgren, Erik Sandgren’s father, long before the “en plein air” movement saw its recent renaissance in this country. Several of them told me that this annual trip is one of the highlights of their year – and I have to apologize that I did not catch every name, or associate it with the right face – I was so busy learning, admiring, photographing and trying not to lose my notebook in the wind that I was remiss about taking detailed notes for everyone.
Look at the shadow of the hand!
Landscape painting evolved from being a backdrop to religious, mythological or historical themes to a genre important in and of itself only in the late 19th century. Instead of inventing a landscape or creating something from memory, people started to go outside, and document their own perceptions of the way the land looked, a sensory reality that was soon imbued with their own emotional reaction, dependent on how skillfully one managed to get those feelings across. En plein air, a French phrase meaning “in the open air,” anchored the painter – and the painting – in a particular place and a particular time, advanced an understanding and often an appreciation of nature. Or the place you lived. Or both. Some plein air painters, like Théodore Rousseau, for example, even became environmental activist, fighting for the ecological preservation of their habitats.
Painting outside is easier, of course, if you live in a place that has reasonably good weather, in contrast to the nordic countries where landscape painters were known to have to tie their easels down and schlepp large umbrellas against the rains. And talking about schlepping: It was chemistry and technology that enabled people to move beyond the realms of their studios. Bostonian John Goffe Rand’s 1841 invention of the paint tube transformed the practice. Rather than grinding and mixing your own pigments with binding agents, you could use directly from the tube, maybe thin it, but there it was. Add to that a portable easel: the French box easel was easily carried, set up on telescopic legs and had palette and paint box attached. Finally, the development of synthetic pigment allowed a whole new palette to emerge, vibrant shades now easily available, and soon incorporated into what we now know as Impressionism. (Ref.)
Modern gear has obviously advanced. But the engagement with nature has remained the same – a desire to describe, but also awe that takes you away from the easel if special admiration is required. As it was when the whale surfaced, even for the smallest amounts of time. I find it always curious how exited I become – and obviously it was shared excitement – when I get just these tiny glimpses of something dark or grey, there and gone in the blink of an eye. Our brain obviously provides the rest of the story – the thought of the humongous body attached to that small curve, the knowledge how special these animals are and how deserving of our protection of waters that see ever more pollution, dangerous increase in temperature and shrinking feed base.
The more immediate, however, also captured my attention – the landscape’s colors, water and cliffs, both, challenging for the photographer’s eye just as much as the painter’s,
the varied flora,
Clockwise: Monkey flower, wild carrot, daisies, have no clue but could be woodruff, salmonberry, false lily of the valley.
the trees so clearly hammered by harsh winds and salt in the air.
And of course, there are always unexpected odds and ends.
Lost hair scrunchie, anyone?
***
Erik Sandgren is a great story teller, something that I have always associated with gifted teachers. He got his B.A. at Yale in 1975, and earned his MFA at Cornell University in 1977. From 1989 until 5 years ago he taught, single-handedly, art at Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, WA, with a special interest in a Foundation course that allowed him to convey the basics to students, for many of whom this was the first serious encounter with art. He is widely traveled, and entertained me with an anecdote about an encounter with a museum bureaucrat in Germany, who first insisted on the rules of access (Forbidden! Later!) only to break them five minutes hence by opening the doors for Sandgren, on a short break between trains, banging on the doors, to the holy archives of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. I could not help but adore the big smile with which Sandgren confronted this German, yours truly, with the stereotypes about Germans and the approval that they could be defied, apparently. Even more so since the desired archival visit concerned Horst Janssen, enfant terrible and somewhat famous artist during my young adulthood in Hamburg, known in particular for his uncensored erotic watercolors there, but as a fabulous printmaker internationally.
Self portrait Horst Janssen; Plates from Phÿllis, 1977/78 – a book that contains varied scenes with his innumerable lovers (after three marriages and divorces.) Janssen writes in the introduction:
“The mechanism of love requires ambition, serious effort, patience and wit. The observing eye is then required for the implementation of this mechanism, which divides the whole into its parts, subdivides it, on the one hand increasing it by adding a lustful gaze to the pleasure of the understanding hand, on the other hand for the control of pleasure.”
Seems to me we could apply that to art just as well.
Here is a photomontage of a photo I took of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, for a series, Postcards from Nineveh (2019) calling for the protection of our oceans, mixing 17th century Dutch paintings and drawings of whaling expeditions with photographs of contemporary landscapes, mostly from the US, and some from my native Germany, to show that 400 years later the need for environmental stewardship is still pressing.
I am lingering on this little anecdote because it seems to encapsulate what I glimpsed in this first visit: someone with a deep interest in art, willing to pursue it, a clear understanding of human psychology – including the rule-obsessed German one, and just a lot of curiosity.
Erik Sandgren
Much of it makes its way into his own paintings, particularly the public art murals that embody social issues as well. Ideas about psychology, however, can also be found in his teaching. As always, he prepares for the annual PaintOut by taking notes across the entire year when he runs into problems to be solved while painting, or encounters topics that might be of interest, or tries to find ways to help students overcome obstacles.
This time around he decided to try something new: ask participants in the workshop to sketch what was in front of them while simultaneously listening to his lecturing. By his reports, the resulting sketches were freer, more refined than what had been produced earlier. Why would divided attention achieve those results? Why might multitasking in this way help? Or does it, wonders the cognitive psychologist?
The most straightforward assessment predicts a mixed result. On the negative side, many of us have had coaches, or piano teachers who would admonish us to “pay attention to what you’re doing!” Presumably that advice rested on the idea that, in the absence of focussed attention, we would rely on well established habits that could be implemented without much thought. The result? A mechanical, soul-less performance.
Sandgren sketch used to show the progression of a watercolor
But that concern gets balanced by considerations that point in the opposite direction. Often anxiety and self-consciousness can disrupt and inhibit performance. Distraction can diminish those concerns leaving us less inhibited. Likewise, sometimes we approach a problem with strongly held, but ill-advised presuppositions. Distraction can help us to loosen our hold on those presuppositions, opening the path toward novel and more successful approaches.
I do not know of any clear science that would help us understand how these opposing forces play off against each other. Surely it depends on the details of the circumstances. But even so, the idea that divided attention might help is entirely plausible.
Patty McNutt using a color sampler paper to sketch a coastal pine; progression across the morning.
We should note, though, that there has been some silliness written on the topic. Years ago, various authors advises that you need to “liberate your right brain” in order to be creative, and this meant somehow shutting down your left brain, presumably the locus for analytic thought. I won’t bore you with the details but the conception certainly overstates and distorts the specialized capacities of the two brain hemispheres. More importantly, this perspective completely misrepresents the interaction between the brain halves. The halves of your brain are not cerebral competitors, instead they interact in complex and productive ways. It is unclear, what could possibly be meant by the prospect of shutting down one half or the other. Both brain halves contribute to creative processes.
Jeanne Chamberlain Whalecove
In any case, the best thing, as far as I could see, about that entire workshop was the fact that product – a finished painting – did not score above process, the way of making art in this indescribably beautiful landscape, among soulmates, with a gifted guiding hand. Or brain, as the case may be.
Watercolor by Robin Berry who moved to the coast from Oregon City 5 years ago.
I drove away filled with envy, reminding myself that I can still photograph, and always have the choice of picking up painting in my next life…. in the meantime, what a spectacular view!
I am knee-deep in several independent writing projects and so, this once (or once again?) I will cheat and put someone else’s review of a book (Orwell’s Roses) I recommend up here, instead of my own. You still get the photographs of last week’s wonders in the mystery garden, though. And, in case you missed it, here are my own thoughts on Orwell, gardening and the disappearance of marital labor, from some time back.
Here is the link to the review of Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses by Gaby Hinsliff. I am attaching the full text below for those who do not have access to The Guardian where it was published last year. If you have read it already, you might also be interested in the 2022 winner, announced yesterday, of The Orwell Society‘s Political Writing award: Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned. Here is a review from March.
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit review – deadheading with the writer and thinker
Inspired by George Orwell’s love of gardening, Solnit’s suitably rambling book should appeal to the green-fingered and the politically committed alike
The roses are in dire need of pruning. My rambler in particular is getting very tangled; too many whipping tendrils snaking out haphazardly at all angles. But it’s so pretty it’s hard to be properly brutal with it, even though it would probably benefit from some judicious thinning. And yes, it is the experience of reading Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses that has jogged my memory.
The book simultaneously is and isn’t about George Orwell, just as it is and isn’t about roses. It belongs in a whimsical category of its own, meandering elegantly enough through lots of subjects loosely connected to one or the other; more of a wildly overgrown essay, from which side shoots constantly emerge to snag the attention, than a book. But at its root is the fact that in 1936, the writer and political thinker planted some roses in his Hertfordshire garden. And when Solnit turns up on the doorstep more than eight decades later, she finds the rose bushes (or at least what she takes to be the same rose bushes) still flowering, a living connection between past and present.
From this blooms the most enjoyable part of the book – a reflection on what gardening may have meant to Orwell, but also what it means to gardeners everywhere; beauty for today, hope for tomorrow, and a desire to create something for those who come after – all of which find an echo in the best of politics.
To make a garden is to feel, in Solnit’s words, more “agrarian, settled, to bet on a future in which the roses and trees would bloom for years and the latter would bear fruit in decades to come”. By the time Orwell’s roses flowered that summer, the Spanish civil war had broken out. As they grew, Europe spiralled closer to conflict. But the buds would still swell and the petals would still fall, and in the midst of death there would be new life, a cycle that helps explain why gardens and nature more generally have been such a comfort to so many through the grief and loss of the pandemic.
But roses, in Solnit’s story, don’t merely symbolise the eternal. They also symbolise joy, frivolity and a kind of sensual pleasure not always associated with Orwell, so often presented as a rather dour and austere figure; a chronicler of hardship in his writings on the low-paid and exploited, and in his fiction a prophet of doom, warning against the evils of totalitarianism. By choosing to focus on the gardens he planted – in Hertfordshire and, later, on the farm he bought on the Scottish island of Jura – and the happiness they brought him, Solnit restores something often missing not only from Orwell but from the political tradition of which he is part.
But not all the branching diversions of this book are so successful. A chapter on coal, which ends by arguing that Orwell’s planting of a garden half a century before climate change entered the public consciousness could be interpreted as the nurturing of “a few more carbon-sequestering, oxygen-producing organisms”, feels at best tortuously grafted on to the rest. I could have happily taken the secateurs to Solnit’s musings on the coincidence between being served Jaffa Cakes on her British Air [sic] flight to Britain and then reading an article about Palestinian children visiting the beach at Jaffa – an anecdote that tells the reader nothing of any significance about either.
But then into every garden a little bindweed creeps. The green-fingered and the politically committed alike will want to curl up with this book as the gardening year draws to a close and we reflect on a time during which nature has been more of a solace than usual. It’s been a good year for the roses, at least.
“A rose is a rose is a rose,” said Gertrude Stein. Well here is a musical bouquet of a rose and a rose and a rose. Fauré, Schubert in a Fritz Wunderlich performance, and Berlioz.
A perceptive friend remarked that I have been offering much contemplation on nature when not writing about the larger art projects across the last months. It is true, I have been using nature to distract myself from politics, the relentless onslaught of bad news, piling up like yesterday’s clouds, pictured below.
So it was yesterday when I hung out with a number of ospreys. Or so it was supposed to be. Alas, the politics refused to leave my head. While the birds circled, hunted, tended to their brood, I thought about how the accumulation of shootings not only numbs us, but makes the average citizen more eager for strongman or authoritarian protection. The repeated shocks drive the last ones away from our attention, to be replaced by the newest massacre.
Remember the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, mid-May? The school shooting in Uvalde, some weeks back, now Highland Park during the 4th of July parade? So far, in the U.S. this year, we have had 322 mass shootings, (defined as 4 or more dead, excluding the wounded.)
And then this:
” the shootings were “designed” to get Republicans to support gun restrictions. Here’s what I have to say. I mean. Two shootings on July 4: one in a rich white neighborhood and the other at a fireworks display. It almost sounds like it’s designed to persuade Republicans to go along with more gun control. I mean, after all, we didn’t see that happen at all the pride parades in the month of June,” Greene said.
“But as soon as we hit the MAGA month,” she continued, “as soon as we hit the month that we’re all celebrating, loving our country, we have shootings on July 4. I mean, that’s … oh, you know, that would sound like a conspiracy theory, right?”
So spouts Congress woman Marjorie Taylor Greene, conveniently forgetting that just a few years back 49 people were killed at an Orlando gay bar. This month police in Idaho foiled an attack by affiliates of a white supremacist group on a Pride celebration in a park. A scooting scare at the SF Pride Parade sent the crowd running (evidence was not found.)
And then there was the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, that killed 60 people and wounded over 400. At a music festival, not during “MAGA” month….
Kathy Fish wrote her most widely anthologized piece to date in response to that murderous act.
“It was first published in Jellyfish Review. It was then chosen by Sheila Heti for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and by Aimee Bender forBest Small Fictions 2018. Variously described as a poem, flash fiction, prose poem, or flash essay/creative nonfiction, this hybrid piece has also been selected for Literature: A Portable Anthology (Macmillan), Stone Gathering: A Reader (French Press Editions), Humans in the Wild: Reactions to a Gun Loving Country (Swallow Publishing), Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, (Bloomsbury), and the newly released 15th edition of The Norton Reader (W. W. Norton).“
Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild
A group of grandmothers is a tapestry. A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: abewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of visual artists is a bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of musicians is — a band.
A resplendence of poets.
A beacon of scientists.
A raft of social workers.
A group of first responders is a valiance. A group of peaceful protestors is a dream. A group of special education teachers is a transcendence. A group of neonatal ICU nurses is a divinity. A group of hospice workers, a grace.
Humans in the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a target.
A target of concert-goers.
A target of movie-goers.
A target of dancers.
A group of schoolchildren is a target.
by Kathy Fish
I have no use for conspiracy theories, from any faction. The facts speak for themselves. The number of available guns needs to be reduced. Gun laws need to be reformed, waiting periods initiated, background checks performed. Large capacity magazines need to be prohibited. Politicians need to be prevented from benefiting from lobbyists’ largesse. As long as we do not acknowledge these facts, children remain targets. Or their parents. Or anyone else in the fabric of things.
Come on ospreys, do your thing. Distract me.
Here is a beautiful album that might do the trick.
I was thoroughly bummed. A friend had reached out if I could resume photographing one of his Master Classes, this time at BodyVox and on-line, offering a Dance Workshop on July 8th and a Drum Workshop on the 9th. How I would have liked to do that, but of course I can still not attend inside sessions. It’s been almost three years since I’ve documented those African drummers and I miss it (wrote about them last here.) Check it out – it’s open to all and an exhilarating experience.
My mood did not exactly improve when I tried to soothe my irritation with a walk. The extent of the damage that last summer’s drought and this spring’s cold floods did to the trees at the Oak Bottom nature preserve is now evident, and it is considerable. Worse, there are open fire pits to be found in the park, a clear and present danger to the old growth around it, never mind the trash. I so understand the houseless pitching their tents away from dangerous highways, or sidewalks where the next forced removal is around the corner. But my heart fears for the safety of the forest when fire becomes involved.
Fire ring ashes above, Cottonwood tree fluff lying around like tinder below.
In case we’d forget, someone spelled out the systemic root causes, adding cries for help.
“Capitalism ruined everything.”// Save Kids.
Read by me during a month when the Supreme Court had revoked women’s constitutional rights to bodily autonomy, decided that Miranda rights aren’t really necessary, declared that states can’t regulate firearms, assured that the EPA cannot regulate assaults on our – and the world’s – environment, but states can use new powers in “Indian Country,” not just further diluting Native American sovereignty, but also opening an avenue to criminalize and punish any non-native protesters who come to states that go ahead with drilling and pipelines. Mood further deteriorating.
As Vox Senior Correspondent Ian Millhiser remarked: “The United States has three branches of government, the Judiciary, which makes laws. The Executive, which sends a lawyer to the Supreme Court to argue in favor of laws. And the Senate, which blocks Democratic nominees to the Judiciary. Oh, and the House which asks for campaign donations.”
Still, wildflowers, chicory and sweet peas, morning glory and jewel weed among them, lined the path.
Ducks went about their business, watched over by a solitary heron (where did all the others go?)
Raccoon and I exchanged meaningful glances before we parted.
And the birds ignored it all and just trilled out their song. Or foraged for lunch. Or fed their fledgelings, closer to home. At the equal opportunity bird feeder in front of the study window.
This is about 5 meters from the road which she regularly crosses to get to my roses and hostas….whatever small fruit had managed to set on the apricot trees are gone as well.
Daily practice of hope? Turn to British writer and poet Tom Hirons. How can you not seek help from a poet who describes himself on his website as:
Essentially a cheerful fellow driven to apoplexy and grief by the madness of our times, Tom is calmed most effectively by walking on Dartmoor, by sleeping in the deep greenwood and by the sound of true words spoken.
Holding each other fast against entropy was likely the principle behind this tagger’s planting of joy, which ultimately cheered me up – a distributed garden of flowering hearts, specimens all photographed at Oaks Bottom on this one round yesterday. Grace occurs in unlikely places.
Here is a recent performance of Sekou, his mates and the young dancers at a Blazers game.
