I can read this.

I can read this.

I can read this, sort of. (The yiddish poem by Meylekh Ravitsh is called Ein Lied und ein Name (a song and a name.)

So why can’t I read a cookbook? Always get something wrong if I try?

Today’s gratitude, then, is dedicated to my Beloved, who cooks the best Thanksgiving dinner ever, every year (shown is the year 2011); which is a feat, but nothing compared to what he does every day, every year, for all of us, his family, his students, his research colleagues, his publisher, and, importantly, those caught in the wheels of the justice system. Happy Thanksgiving!

The third thing I am grateful for this week – and every week –  is light. It made the “gratitude list” for two specific reasons beyond the general one that it enables photography, among other things.

Sunlight is somewhat absent in Oregon – we have so many uniformly grey, dark days in the course of the year. When the light is unimpeded by clouds, or the cloud cover thin enough to let it through here or there, it is like a gift. Then again, the light provided by interesting cloud formations has its own beauty.

Secondly, the light here in the Pacific Northwest bears much similarity to the light of places in Europe that are close to my heart. The light at the coast is comparable to the light at the Baltic Sea, the light on Sauvie reminds me of Holland, and the light in PDX with the driven clouds or darkish skies are reminiscent of Hamburg, another harbor city located about an hour from the sea.

Norham Caste Sunrise – JMW Turner 1895

Milo at Manzanita Sunrise  2017

I always thought that Turner was magnificent when it came to painting light. In some or another review of a current exhibit  by Ellen Harvey that pays tribute to Turner I found this sentence: Harvey’s eponymous Nostalgia sets the stage for a show in which art serves as a problematic intermediary between past and present.  Given what I just wrote in the paragraph above, you will understand my claim that light serves as an unproblematic – and welcome – intermediary between my own past and present. 

Past, present. I wish a trip to England to see Harvey’s exhibit was in my immediate future, which it of course isn’t. The show looks fascinating, even if you are not familiar with Turner and her homage to him would have to stand on its own.

Here are the details.https://hyperallergic.com/411561/ellen-harvey-nostalgia-danese-corey-2017/

Instead, I will use whatever light there is, silver or golden or blue or crystalline, to continue documenting the natural beauty in our own vicinity; photographs today (other than the Turner from the web) were taken at the coast this spring, the Sandy River delta and near Camas, WA last week.

Sometimes I read something about people I have never heard of before and I spontaneously think: wouldn’t it be cool to meet that person? This was certainly true when I encountered the article below, describing Lotte Geeven, a Dutch artist who is passionate about making a concert out of samples of singing sand collected from around the world. The idea alone is ingenious – focussing an audience’s attention on sound that is natural by source (and rare) but now delivered in manufactured fashion – however she plans to do that.

The preparation for such an undertaking involves figuring out where these sands can be found, how people can be approached to send them, and of course how to re-create the sound once the sand is in your possession.

If you click on the short video embedded in the article you can see the process first hand – how she writes to strangers, how they respond, how so much depends on simple kindness and willingness to do the unusual for the sake of art.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artist-crowdsourcing-sand-around-world-recreate-sound-singing-deserts-180966966/

For the mechanically inclined, here are some sketches of her “instruments.”

 https://hyperallergic.com/394661/lotte-geeven-sand-machines/

Here is a sound sample from our own “backyard,” sand dunes in Death Valley who sing during the summer (at 118 degrees…)

Here they are in Liwa (UAE) close to Saudi Arabia

You can find them in China, Mongolia, Scotland (apparently…) and you can find stand-ins at the beach and the Portland Zoo.

The sands there don’t sing, but I needed photographs for this blog so the elephants’ play ground came in handy. When I went there last week to take these pictures I happened to be in time for the elephant training/feeding session. Thus you get a bonus picture of an elephant’s mouth in all its pink detail….

Maybe singing elephants are next.

She doesn’t think so…. 

Yesterday I posted photographs of painted birds – today I feel inclined to share the real thing. I can never decide which season is the best for photographing birds – so I probably will talk about them for every single one, starting with fall. In fall you have the color of the leaves and berries that spectacularly offsets the shape of the birds.

The light is relatively low at the times they are feeding allowing for better shots.

Some trees are almost bare already from the summer drought or have few leaves left after the onset of the rain, allowing for good viewing.

There is much we can do to help them through the winter – or, as the case may be, we should do little in terms of cleaning up the yards…..http://www.audubon.org/news/to-help-birds-winter-go-easy-fall-yard-work

There is, alas, less we can do for the migrating birds, which are now arriving or gathering in large groups to take flight towards warmer climes. They are killed by the millions from hitting TV and radio towers, and up to one billion birds die each year from flying into windows in urban areas.

The link below describes an interesting study that also looks at the consequences of light – mostly urban, industrial-strength light, that disorients birds enough to loose their migrating paths. On my walks I frequently see signs in neighborhood backyards calling for lights out in the city. I now understand why.

Here are some of the migrating birds you can see in these October/November weeks – geese, cranes, swans, red-winged blackbirds,pintail ducks and snowy egrets.

http://www.audubon.org/news/9-awesome-facts-about-bird-migration

When I walk the fields surrounded by their calls I feel a mix of extreme gratitude to be so close to nature, and equally strong longing that I could just take off with them. There is something so unbound, so untethered about the whole migration, never mind that it is a dangerous travel, and really preprogrammed into your genes, not exactly “free.”

This surgery shortened week is devoted to cheerful passions and preoccupations. For me, birds belong in the former category, graffiti in the latter.

So when I saw this article in last week’s NYT I had to grin – been there, done that, as today’s photographs will confirm. Here is the link to the NYT, click on the picture.

The article is about a fabulous project: painting and spray painting the hundreds of bird illustration by John James Audubon, a pioneering ornithologist, onto surfaces where they can be admired daily. The bird murals are spread across Harlem and Washington Heights, and number so far between 70 and 80 (of an intended 314…) – many more than when I visited in March 2016 trying to scout them out without a serious map.

Audubon was an extraordinary man. His life reads like an adventure novel written by someone like Jules Verne, Daphne du Maurier or Alexandre Dumas, tropical islands, slave mistresses and nursemaids, escape from the Napoleonic Wars, travel with Native American tribes, changing names and nationality, included. He traveled more in his time, on horseback and sailboats across the continents and between them, than most people I know in our own century. He was into birds from the get go and throughout his life which had twists and turns he pursued knowledge about them and painted them all. Reading about him, even on Wikipedia, makes you dizzy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon

The National Audubon Society was founded in honor of this adventurer, naturalist and artist in 1896, with President Roosevelt creating the first national wildlife refuge in 1903. Here is an overview of the history – (including the bit of proper Boston ladies trying to get women to boycott wearing hats with feathers as to protect the birds….)

http://www.audubon.org/about/history-audubon-and-waterbird-conservation

And the next link gives up-to-date info on the Audubon Mural Project.  http://www.audubon.org/amp

Just have to get back to NY, don’t I?