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Nature

Wonder Women

The blockbuster movie Wonder Woman apparently is the hit of the moment – it has made more money than you can count since its recent release and is hailed by critics and audiences alike.  Below is a typical review….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cannes-and-wonder-woman-show-what-happens-when-women-challenge-archetypes–and-triumph/2017/06/01/fa57e254-46ce-11e7-a196-a1bb629f64cb_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_hornaday-730am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d0fa70bc4333

And here is a quote from an article in the Smithsonian magazine about noted psychologist Dr. William Marston, the original creator of the comic strip.

“Marston was a man of a thousand lives and a thousand lies. “Olive Richard” was the pen name of Olive Byrne, and she hadn’t gone to visit Marston—she lived with him. She was also the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most important feminists of the 20th century. In 1916, Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, Olive Byrne’s mother, had opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States. They were both arrested for the illegal distribution of contraception. In jail in 1917, Ethel Byrne went on a hunger strike and nearly died.

Olive Byrne met Marston in 1925, when she was a senior at Tufts; he was her psychology professor. Marston was already married, to a lawyer named Elizabeth Holloway. When Marston and Byrne fell in love, he gave Holloway a choice: either Byrne could live with them, or he would leave her. Byrne moved in. Between 1928 and 1933, each woman bore two children; they lived together as a family. Holloway went to work; Byrne stayed home and raised the children. They told census-takers and anyone else who asked that Byrne was Marston’s widowed sister-in-law. “Tolerant people are the happiest,” Marston wrote in a magazine essay in 1939, so “why not get rid of costly prejudices that hold you back?” He listed the “Six Most Common Types of Prejudice.” Eliminating prejudice number six—“Prejudice against unconventional people and non-conformists”—meant the most to him. Byrne’s sons didn’t find out that Marston was their father until 1963—when Holloway finally admitted it—and only after she extracted a promise that no one would raise the subject ever again.“

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/

  

Timely entertainment? More like they were way ahead of their times….

 

I figured we need some everyday wonder women in our photographs today…..

 

I will soon go and watch the movie – unless I change my mind and look at wonder ducklings instead…. they are out in full force this week in the woods around Oaks Bottom……

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Waves, arrested

For Tuesday’s timely entertainment I thought we look at waves that don’t crash, ever.  Doesn’t that sound like just the remedy needed for the current sense of being swept up and potentially drowned by the waves that rock our (national) lives?

The link below leads you to a magnificent couple of cinema graphs – at least I find them fascinating. Movement without displacement, quite the feat.

 http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cinemagraph-waves?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0196d0dee5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-0196d0dee5-66214597&ct=t(Newsletter_6_2_2017)&mc_cid=0196d0dee5&mc_eid=1765533648

For those of you who have not yet reached quite that stage of vivid, albeit fearful imagination, I offer photographs that lure you to an escape to the beach.

The Oregon coast has much to offer, including beauty that is stark black and grey.

And misty.

And altogether restorative in its untamed, watery nature. I, for one, cannot wait to get back there.

And if that still doesn’t cheer you up you can always turn to the nearest sign boards ( this came across my twitter screen, not photographed by me, alas….)

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Smell the Roses

With the rose festival coming up it felt appropriate to close our week of flowery distraction with photographs of roses.

It doesn’t hurt either that Fauré’s song about those Persian roses makes your heart melt, and let’s you forget the stings of whatever thorns are present in your life right now.

 

 

I will not bring up our President’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord; nor will I mention the ethics waivers to his near and dear.

I will point instead to the wide diversity among rose species (all 100 of them) and how none of their differences makes anyone of them more or less beautiful. Rose fossils are dated to 35 million years old and for a gram of rose oil you need 2000 flowers. 80% of land in Zambia and 54% of land in Ecuador is cultivated with roses (yet Holland is the largest exporter, hm.)

The world’s largest rosebush is of the Lady Banksia variety. The rosebush’s canopy measures 8,500 square feet (around 790 square meters), its trunk has a circumference of around 12 feet (3.6 metres), and it comprises of over 200,000 blooms. Oldest rose on record seems to be the 1000 year-one covering the nave of a church in Hildesheim, Germany. (Photographed by your’s truly in 2015 but somehow hiding in the archives….)

 

 

The most expensive rose, Juliet, (not shown) was introduced by David Austin in 2006. It took 15 years and £3 million (about $5 million) to breed. It is the world’s most expensive rose cultivar. Distracted yet?

So, visit the rose garden this week, before the festival hordes descend. Smell the roses  – and then think about what you can do to keep this planet in shape to grow them for generations to come…..

 

 

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The Garden in the Rain

A soft rain, almost a mist, graced the garden on Tuesday. It was different from the relentless downpours of this winter/spring and actually quite soothing.

I took photos to match one of my favorite piano pieces, happy that we finally had some blossoms opening on the roses, irises and lady’s mantle.

 

Let’s think of the raindrops as tiny prisms for light rather than tears in this week’s attempt at counterbalancing the world’s woes.

 

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Chasing the Blues

Today’s antidote for the politics-related news blues offers blue flowers and an interesting musical crossover – from classics to blues (or at least jazz with a hint of blues… )

For some reason blue is not a frequent color in nature. Less than 10% of the 280.000 species of flowering plants have blue flowers. Or so I learn from the link below, that should hold some interest for avid gardeners.

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/the-science-of-blue-flowers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s something else that’s rare, if in art and not nature: truly successful musical crossover. I chose Bach’s concerto in D minor as arranged and played by Jaques Loussier and his Jazz trio.

Loussier and his trio have been at the cutting edge of fusing complicated classical pieces with jazz, exploiting and expanding the rhythmic and harmonic implications of the original(s). If this doesn’t bring cheer, I don’t know what will.

 

 

 

 

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May Bloom

Yesterday I read that a landmark-protected German cathedral – a rather small one that really should be called a church – is going to be razed this week. Immerath cathedral happened to stand in a neighborhood that has been forcibly emptied since 2013 to make way to open-pit brown-coal mining; a dirty business, an insanely destructive but seemingly lucrative one.

The reason the news caught my attention was that the church is located in a region where I went to school when I was ten years old. I know the neighborhood. I knew some of the people who had to leave their homes and schools and churches behind, moving away from Erkelenz for good into isolation and an uncertain future.

For some reason it floored me.  The article, in a progressive German news outlet, talked about the fact that the building would have been saved with protests and determination if it was a mosque, and that the replacement church, a village or two further away was a building of such ugliness that it would have pleased Trump.  It seems such a strange chain of associations by an author who was clearly despairing over the final loss of a landmark, usurped by greed.

And then I learned that Republican Multnomah County Chair Buchal wants to hire right-wing militia groups to protect Republicans going to the streets for Trump. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/29/portland-attack-republican-james-buchal-militia-groups

So, I insist on an antidote to the news of the world this week – otherwise I am going to loose my mind.

For the next couple of days it’s going to be the beauty of flowers, coupled with some uplifting music to start the day on a semblance of optimism. I assume you don’t mind joining me in such an endeavor however futile it may turn out to be in the long run….

We start with the prettiest PINK, and Beethoven’s Spring Sonata.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRyzOVLq2BE

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Safe Keeping in Stone

The last installment in this week on stones is an article about a storage site that holds millions of packages of seeds – a stronghold, or so the scientists thought, to protect humanity from losses of its most important crops.

The idea is, of course, brilliant. Put all of the world’s food seeds into a stone bunker in the depth of permafrost, deep in a mountain, in Spitsbergen, Norway, and know they will be safe from many, if not most, forms of destruction.

Except, the idea relies on the condition of permafrost – which, as we all know, is beginning to thaw.  Melting water, then,  managed to seep into the entrance of the seed vault.  No harm done, so far.  The floods did not reach the inner sanctum. But climate change is obviously forcing many projects to reconsider if and how they can be maintained.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts

Photographs are of stones/rocks in Indian Canyon near Palm Springs, CA.

 

 

 

 

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Heart of Stone

As cold as stone, a heart of stone, trying to squeeze blood out of a stone – so many phrases come to mind when reading about the Trump administration’s plans and strategies. But just like developmental psychologist Alison Gopnick, our esteemed colleague at Berkeley, argued that comparing Trump to a 4-year old was an insult to children, I find that these catchy phrases are an insult to stones – some of the most beautiful sights to be found on this planet.

 

(Click on picture to open Gopnick’s NYT op-ed.)

During this week, then, I will offer stories that describe social and political issues that are related to hearts of stone or, alternatively, prove that there are always people who rock. They will be juxtaposed with photographs of stone in various forms and guises.

Let’s start with an interesting analysis how the GOP is using its anti- abortion rights playbook to further its voting rights agenda.  The key legal issue that can and will be applied to the suppression of voting rights are so called TRAP laws – something that enabled antiabortion forces to undermine the rights granted by Roe vs Wade. TRAP stands for Targeted regulation of abortion providers, and emerged from legal reasoning that claimed “Medical uncertainty underlying a statute is for resolution by legislatures, not the courts.” Claim some, any scientific uncertainty and the state can swoop in and legislate. The essay below spells out how that transfers to gerrymandering…..

https://thinkprogress.org/gop-anti-abortion-playbook-voting-rights-aa0ccac3304e

The photographs are from Enchanted Rock National landmark in Llano County, Texas.

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Status: In Flight

I figured we can all use some lift by proxy at the end of this very week. So here are some birds in flight. Given my amateur equipment, it is hard to get far away, moving birds in focus, but I lucked out with at least some of these shots. They were collected over the last couple of years in my favorite haunts: Sauvie Island, Steigerwald Bird Sanctuary, Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Finley Refuge, Ankeny Refuge and Fernhill wetlands. All except Finley are less than an hour’s drive from Portland and none charges fees.

 

Flying today are geese, cranes, egrets, swans, hawks, ospreys and eagles. You might find it interesting – I certainly did – how eagles are put to work in our modern times. Rather than train them to hunt small pray, they are now made to hunt drones. One can imagine all kinds of applications….. and here we thought drug sniffing dogs were (custom)men’s best friend.

 

This next photograph was taken in pouring rain, a harrier hawk attacking a red tail hawk.  Fuzzy but quite the sight then and there.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/01/trained-eagle-destroys-drone-in-dutch-police-video/?utm_term=.1e5709a0d3cd

 

 

 

 

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Ardeidae

Ardeidae is the family name of those long legged waterbirds: herons, egrets and bitterns. Herons are beautiful birds. They come in different colors and sizes but all have amazing plumage. Their movements are elegant, on land and in flight, with an economy to their motion, an ease and fluidity. When the light hits just right they are almost iridescent. And they are pretty peaceful, quite unflappable.

To wit, here’s an encounter I photographed last week while standing on a shaded bridge in the woods.  The red-winged blackbird was sitting on the log, probably close to the reeds where his mate is nesting. When the heron decided to join him, the blackbird wouldn’t have it. He flew wildly around, eventually pecking at the heron, then in exasperation sitting next to him for a while as if he could prevent him to move. Eventually the heron gave up and stepped into the pond, searching for lunch.

 

 

 

Unfazed, as I said. Regal in their indifference. Beautiful.

 

 

Except when they open their mouth, or their beak, as the case may be.

Taken in the evening, low light made it hazy…..

Have you ever heard a heron’s voice? It is as ugly as their appearance is pretty. Squawks of such shrill and loud discordance will want you to cover your ears if you are close by. The mismatch between what you expect to hear and what fills your hearing reminded me of this.  Enjoy!

 

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