It’s been a long week and I am tired, back home. Not many of my own words, then, today, other than that I saw grey whales, dolphins, lizards, bees, butterflies, and, of course birds. I know, I know, it’s supposed to be a cultural blog, but today some more bird photographs have to suffice. Finches, goldfinches, and hummingbirds all from this trip  –  facts about humming birds borrowed from the Audubon society.

Hummingbird Abilities

·          Flight: Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly both forward and backwards. They can also hover in mid-air, fly sideways and even upside-down.

·          Wings: A hummingbird’s wings beat about 70 times per second (200 times per second when diving!)

·          Feeding: Hummingbirds are big eaters, eating over twice their weight every day! Their diet consists of both nectar and flying insects.

·          Migration: Some hummingbirds migrate great distances from their summer to winter homes and back. The Rufous Hummingbird flies 3000 miles from Alaska to Mexico twice a year!

·          Senses: Hummingbirds can hear and see better than humans. They can see ultraviolet light. Hummingbirds have little to no sense of smell

Hummingbird Bodies

·          Size: Hummingbirds are the tiniest birds in the world. They average 8.5cm long and can weigh between the weight of 1 and 8 pennies (2 and 20 grams. A penny weighs 2.5 grams.)

·          Tongue: A hummingbird’s tongue is grooved like the shape of a “W” and they have tiny hairs on the tip of the tongue to help lap up nectar.

·          Heart: A hummingbird’s heart is 5 times bigger than a human’s in proportion to its body (2.5% vs .5%)

·          Breath: A hummingbird breathes 20 times faster than a human! (250 vs 12 breaths/minute)

·          Temperature: The hummingbird’s body temperature is 8 degrees higher than a human’s (107 vs 98.6 degrees)

Hummingbird Feathers

·          Males: Female hummingbirds are attracted to the iridescent feathers on the males, and it’s the females who pick their mates.

·          Females: Also, all female birds tend to be drab for camouflage. If you are sitting on a nest full of eggs, and something might come along and eat you, do you want to be bright red or do you want to blend into the trees?

·          Number: The average size hummingbird has 940 feathers.

·          Color: On most hummingbirds, the coloring of the feathers does not come from pigmentation, but instead from prism-like cells within the top layer of feathers. The colors you see depend on the angle of the light when it hits the feathers. When hummingbird feathers reflect light, which make the gorget (throat patch) look like it’s glittering from certain angles, but at other angles will make the feathers look dull.

On my way down to California this weekend I sat next to a chatty guy on my right and a video-playing guy to my left, who, in response to my request to photograph out of the window if we saw fires, closed the shade so he would not have the reflection on his game screen.

The guy on my right turned out to be an interesting character. He was born on an island in Alaska, to a Finnish father and first nation mother, dropped out of high school and build an empire of crab fishing boats. Girls of his mother’s generation still were not allowed to go to school beyond 5th grade – all hands were needed to prepare food (salt fish, can it, etc.) and raise gardens, so they would not starve in the winters. I also learned that many of the Louisiana crab fishing boats went to Alaska when their grounds ran dry, with their crews now dying in deadly accidents because their boats only go 4 feet deep in the water, double that is needed to face Northern storms.

I asked about climate change – he has seen it for the last 8 years, started to get real loud in our conversation about how anyone could deny the facts – not listen to science, not look at the reality on the ground with the Alaskan environment and fishing being so visibly affected. I was thrilled to see a multimillionaire so riled. Funny how you take the slightest notion that there are still rational, decent people out there as encouragement.

Which brings me to the climate effects here. I am staying a bit South of L.A., and although I have not seen smoke or fire, the air reeks, and people are worried. I have written about the fire fighting situation before, but here is the newest bit – since they are running out of inmates to fight the fires, they are now shipping them in from Nevada!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/how-much-longer-will-inmates-fight-californias-wildfires/547628/

Photographs are of the shorelines in La Jolla, where I was over the weekend, which will also change with rising oceans. But for now they are sanctuary for wildlife and eye candy for the photographer!

I started this week of gratitude with photographs from Portland, and so I will end it. But this time the views are the object of my gratitude: the fact that I live in a city with a river. The Willamette draws me out even on days when I really just want to hide under the covers. I don’t know what it is about water, but for me it is restorative. Any explanatory attempts sounds so clicheed that I will spare you – but deep down to me they all sound right.

The images are from a morning walk last week, on these winter days when the sun rises late, but once up puts out a clear light. since the rainy nights wash away air pollution.

The city built a promenade around the river down town, you can cross on one of the many bridges to walk a loop that fits your stamina. The West side is bordering downtown, the East side loops under the highway and is noise, but affords great views of the city. And reflects the tinted light coming across the river from Big Pink, one of Portland’s landmark towers.

I walked South to North on the Westside that day, from the Hawthorne Bridge with the yacht harbor to the Steel Bridge with a view of the industrial harbor. The geese were out in full force, on the lawns which house music festivals and fairs in the summer. So were the homeless, who seek shelter under the many bridges that cross the water.

Many of the bridges either draw up or unfold to accommodate big ship traffic.

Maybe I should turn to airB&B for stints on the water…

Here is another river, captured in sound….

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.