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Nature

Spring

What do we do during spring here in Oregon?

 

On Monday we tiptoe through the tulips, and ponder which of the below is the best curse to memorize…. courtesy of Aaron Spiegel …

Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews


  • May you sell everything and retire to Florida just as global warming makes it uninhabitable.
  • May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.
  • May you make a fortune, and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson’s casinos.
  • May you live to a ripe old age, and may the only people who come visit you be Mormon missionaries.
  • May your son be elected President, and may you have no idea what you did with his goddamn birth certificate.
  • May your grandchildren baptize you after you’re dead.
  • May your insurance company decide constipation is a pre-existing condition.
  • May you find yourself insisting to a roomful of skeptics that your great-grandmother was “legitimately” raped by Cossacks.
  • May you feast every day on chopped liver with onions, chicken soup with dumplings, baked
  • carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, and may every bite of it be contaminated with E. Coli, because the government gutted the E.P.A.
  • May you have a rare disease and need an operation that only one surgeon in the world, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, is able to perform. And may he be unable to perform it because he doesn’t take your insurance. And may that Nobel Laureate be your son.
  • May the state of Arizona expand their definition of “suspected illegal immigrants” to “anyone who doesn’t hunt.”
  • May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers.
  • And when we are done muttering under our breath we just hum this:
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umw-8J-O14o
6 Comments

Hamburg

It was 15 years ago almost to the day that I saw my father for the last time. We spent his 80th birthday in a hospital room in Hamburg where he thought he was back in the trenches of Stalingrad. Prescription opioids for pain from his war wounds and decades of self-medication with alcohol to combat depression and PTSD had finally ravaged his brilliant brain. It was bitterly cold for March, I froze and shivered during long waits at the bus stop to and from the hospital. His apartment in a luxury retirement home (above) was in the process of being fumigated since the cleaning crews had neglected an infestation with moths who happily devoured the Persian rugs, curtains and cashmere coats.  So I had to stay in some sterile guest apartment, stumbling through the days. The view was great, though, the reason he moved there in the first place.

He died three months later, and as per his request there was no funeral, just a sea burial. Although socially quite charming, we was a bit of a recluse and did not want to attention or burden us with cemetery duties.My sister and I walked on this little beach, threw daisies in the water and drew hearts in the sand, as if we were 16 years old. It was sad and satisfying and fitting for who we are.

8 weeks ago I was back in this town, saying Good Bye to a dying friend and connecting with my living ones who provide the last bridge to my European identity and a shared past that included my parents. Again it was icy cold, though that could be expected in January.

Today we are burying my friend, and it is in the mid 80ies, exceptionally warm for March. I wonder how it will be to have a mirror of aging held to my face when re-encountering people I have not seen for 40 years, among the hundreds of guests. I also wonder if jet lag catches up with me or the irritation to have to wear black stockings in this heat, or a flood of tears that I won’t be able to stop, really not for a person, but for an unrecoverable past.

Luckily there is ALWAYS a bright side. On my morning walk I met this character who was quite happy to be photographed and whose cap, adorned with a peacock feather, says: smile! Which is what he encouraged me to do, a glimpse of a human bond forged by strangers, which gave me some peace.

 

4 Comments

Prickly Things

· Für S. ·

“I had to get out of Los Angeles,” said Quinn, a poetic songwriter who describes his sound as a cowboy waltz vibe meshing with tinklings of sci-fi. I had to choose this musician to accompany today’s photographs for the description of his music alone. You tell me if his assessment is accurate….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RhMnmovEKg

And where did he go? To Joshua Tree National Park, a haven for fringe and not so fringe musicians, stoner rock mostly, made most (in)famous by the Eagles of Death Metal, who lost band members in the terror attacks at Bataclan, the Paris night club.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-desert-music-joshua-tree-20151205-story.html

The title of the article above describes the park as drawing artists, musicians and the pure of heart. None of those were present when my oldest friend and I explored it in 2015 – we had the entire place practically to ourselves in the early morning. She has a passion for cacti – no clue where it originated. Perhaps comforting visits with grandparents – cacti collections were not unknown to be decorating German window sills.

I certainly know that my passion for birds was instilled by walks through the forests and heaths of Lower-Saxony with my Opa, the thin, short man playing the huge stand-up bass in a small Orchestra called Fidelio. He’d whistle bird calls with the joy of a musician and taught me the rudiments about bird species. Here is a hummer in memory of Opa Eduard.

But I digress. Cacti it shall be today, in all their comforting beauty. And their bloom in the wild.

Photographs from Joshua Tree National Park and the region surrounding Palm Desert. The park’s trees, rarely found any where else in the continental US, look like some sort of cactus themselves.

3 Comments

Death Valley

We started the week with landscapes in the State of Washington. From there we went South to the Columbia River, then further East to Harney County. Now it’s straight South, all the way to a place where rain is rarely seen – what a concept. California is our destination, and leave it to the internet to cough up information on some obscure painters that were in love with Western National Parks, Death Valley – my choice today –  included. One was a Swede, the other of Swedish descent, both quite adept watercolorists, both drawn to the dry sunny places that mediate the intensity of depression. (Well, the latter is speculation, no clue if they were depressed, but I surely could use some sun to counteract the dark clouds.)

The links below refer to Gunnar Widforss (1879-1934) whose post-humous exhibits found high acclaim. A realist painter, he spent his life alone, in relative poverty, pursuing nature. I actually think he was a terrific painter and am surprised I had never heard of him before.

 

GUNNAR WIDFORSS—PAINTER OF THE NATIONAL PARKS

https://www.californiawatercolor.com/pages/gunnar-widforss-biography

The other painter is Fernand Lungren (1857-1932) an Eakins student and favorite of Theodore Roosevelt. His landscapes were more impressionistic, capturing much of the intense light of and colors of Death Valley and other natural wonders down South.

 http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa439.htm

Last but not least, in addition to some of the photographs above and below that depict what I saw some 100 years later compared to these guys, here is a partial list of movies that were filmed among the mountainous folds and the salty flatlands.

Starwars!!

https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/historyculture/death-valley-in-movies-and-television.htm

Binge watching NOT recommended.

The colors in my photographs are true to what is, not over-exposed – the blues and reds, yellows and purples are just as intense as you see them.

Just as the hills of Eastern Oregon always remind me of sea lions, here I am transported to a more ancient time of mammoths or some such. Or the original elephants…..who also seemed to populate the hallways of the single motel within the park, insanely overpriced and under serviced, the one disappointment during an otherwise perfect excursion.

 

 

3 Comments

Harney County, Eastern Oregon

Malheur lies in the furthest south/east corner of our state. Before this part of Oregon became infamous through the occupation of the right wing, nationalist militia crooks around Amon Bundy last year, it was a magnet for nature lovers, wildlife protectionists, birding enthusiasts and artists. It still is, I suppose, with many working hard to restore what has been defiled.

Childe Hassam 1908 Afternoon Sky, Harney Desert

Hassan Childe (1859-1935) was one of the early painters who lend his impressionist style to depicting the beauty of Harney County. In fact one of his paintings was the first acquisition of the Portland Art Museum, founded in 1905.He captured, in my opinion, an idealized version of what is really a harsh environment around the Steen Mountains. Part desert, part mountain wilderness, few interspersed water features that host 1000s of birds during migration, all combine to deliver astonishing beauty but also intense hardship for the few people who settle this landscape and try to make a living of it.

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hassam_childe_1859_1935_/#.WNHdfzvt–Q

 

I find Henk Pander’s work a more fitting testimony to the reality out there, both in his water colors and his oil paintings that often add a psychologically astute dimension to what is. He captures the intense light but also the foreboding of the Eastern landscape.

Here is a link to his website – check out the watercolors of the Blitzen river, the Malheur Field station and the landscape of the Steens.

http://henkpander.format.com/#1

 

I have only visited once, 2 years ago, for a precious few days on a road trip from LA to PDX. I have been wanting to go back there ever since, and hope this year will afford it.  Who knows.

In the meantime I frequently go back to the photographs I took and try to recreate the experience.

Part of what made it special are the many unfamiliar bird sounds that you hear there, including some birds that make music with its feathers – here is the sound of a common snipe https://www.youtubecom/watch?v=dam0sDp6Xig.

At night you hear owls,

during the day you walk among families of quails,

and you are surrounded by ubiquitous species of blackbirds, many of them unfamiliar to me.

It is a special place if you like birds and find solace in their freedom and their song.

 

 

 

 

 

2 Comments

Painting the Columbia River

Sometimes the painters are more interesting than their paintings. Take George Gibbs, for example, who was an ethnographer, mapmaker, geologist, historian, attorney, and, for nearly twelve years, an explorer, artist, and administrator in the Pacific Northwest. 8 careers! And here I thought I was versatile. We certainly share an interest in Mr. Audubon, the naturalist and bird lover, who he got to meet in person as a youngster, an encounter that shaped his life’s trajectory.

See more at: https://www.williamreesecompany.com/pages/books/WRCAM37235/george-gibbs/pastel-painting-of-a-scene-in-the-pacific-northwest-probably-the-columbia-river-with-indians#sthash.kLSM9vyC.dpuf

Gibbs painted the Columbia river, my choice of subject for today’s photographs. So did John Fery, another European non-conformist who ended up in the Northwest. First he was a hunting guide for millionaires’ expeditions and hunting parties. Later he somehow became a steady deliverer of paintings commissioned by the Pacific Railroad company, I believe 350 or or so. You wonder what it does to your growth and development as an artist if you paint for the man, one pretty landscape after another….

Later in life he settled on Orcas Island where a fire destroyed his studio and most of his accumulated work – he died a few years later.

My photographs are from the Gorge, collected over the years, as well as further downstream where the river winds itself towards the ocean feeding a lot of industry.

It is a marvel at any season and any time of day.

2 Comments

Landscapes

Last week I took a ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island with the plan to visit Bloedel Gardens.

When we arrived at the harbor I asked a fellow traveler for information about busses; she immediately offered me a ride since she had to go in that direction and I naively said yes. Her Volvo had seen better days, not a day under 40 years old, seatbelt not working, leather seats cracked, only one door opened. It felt too late to chicken out, and I was somehow drawn into tales of her mother traveling with 5 kids and a steamer trunk to Switzerland to do post-doctoral studies on Jung. That and the fact that my friendly chauffeuse had not slept in two nights. Hm.

I obviously lived to tell the story. The gardens, a huge expanse of wood- and meadow lands, water features, beautiful views of Puget Sound, were soothing. It rained softly, and I was most impressed by a moss landscape that seemed to have luminescence built in. More than 40 species of moss covering forest floors.

The whole place was empty except for a group of British landscape designers who got a tour by the head gardener, (one of 12 full-time employed gardeners year round.) Somehow these guys managed to pop up whenever I took the camera out of the shelter of my raincoat and make it into the picture. Well, often, not always.

Trees were planted in groves (the Himalayan Birches) carefully pruned in the Japanese garden (Pine tree) or left wild around ponds (the Alders.)

I took the bus on the way back, as sole passenger, and was told that another person needed to be picked up at her house with a little detour. Apparently you can order public busses, just like cabs, with a 2 hour advance notice. The woman inquired about my plans, did I already have lunch? When I replied that I was lusting for some fish and chips, she told the bus driver where to go and here I was dropped off at an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. I leave the rest to your imagination.

By the time I reached my hotel, a 30 minute walk from the ferry terminal after crossing the Sound I was sopping wet and coming down with a migraine. Soon my brain contained as much drama as the Bierstadt painting of Puget Sound, below.

But the gardens were worth it.

For detailed (and astute) discussion of Northwest Landscape painting, go here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/03/battleground-of-the-eye/302146/

4 Comments

Mindfulness

· Für D.P. ·

Today I will not analyze, nor report, nor tell stories or joke around. I will simply think of nature, its beauty and determination, its invariable beginnings and ends. These images were photographed yesterday. Pause and reflect.

Wild Currant

Pussy Willow

Hellebore

Edgeworthia

Scilla

4 Comments

Kitsch, Kunst und Natur – aka my afternoon walk

I have a pretty set route in the afternoons, an enjoyable hour and 15 minutes if the puppy behaves. IF.

It is a loop through our neighborhood which contains numerous landmarks defined by good taste, bad taste, mysterious taste and plain old wonderful nature.

Photos were taken with iPhone in pouring rain, just so you understand the hazy quality…..

What used to be a single rubber duck on a tree stump right down the street is now an ever growing bestiary.

Entering the park, you are immediately among old growth trees, many toppled by this winter’s deluge and wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The playground, a new addition to the park, has little tile figures through out and sports signs “Kids only.” Since my dog can’t yet read we are often in forbidden territory….

Dog Catcher

 

 

The stream waxes and wanes according to the weather, was raging today, beautiful and noisy, both.

Eventually you come by a tree house that seems to have permanent additions or renovations going on, have yet to see a kid in there.

Then you pass number of artful and art-filledmaster gardens, shining with snowdrop and croci this week, all defying the weather.

Some have things jumping out of bushes, though….

Last stop is a little old lady’s house who sells used books out of her garage and decorates her apple tree differently for each season – of which there are approximately 17 since she has so much stuff to put up. Right now it is obviously St. Patricks Day season.

Did I mention it rained?

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