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.
Afternoon walk at the beginning of the week. The sun was out – finally – it started to warm up – finally! Somehow it felt as if all of nature erupted into a collective sigh of “Ahhhhh,” turning little flower faces skyward, soaking it all up.
Butterflies hung out, luxuriating in the sun.
Huge tadpoles floated in the water like being suspended from invisible threads, shifting a little with soft currents of the lake. (Hate to break it to you, they are Rana Catesbeiana, invasive bull frog babies, as my learned friend Mary told me when I showed her the pictures.)
Herons stalking in slo-mo, trying to keep a lid on the bull frog population…
Hello….
Ospreys eying the ducklings, then being chased by smaller, upset birds.
Red-winged blackbirds everywhere, as were swallows and brown-headed cowbirds.
I tried to focus on my surround and not on what to do with the barrage of emails that enter my inbox on a daily basis for unknown reasons, often prefaced by Dear Mr. Friderike Heuer…Somehow I must have gotten on a distribution list of people who think I do book reviews for a living. The wrong kind of people. Or the wrong kind of books, as the case may be. Certainly the wrong amount of time spent on reading the mails if only out of curiosity. Here is a selection for last week only, to give you a taste.
Book Review Op – Your Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Guide to a Christ-Centered Relationship – The problems we see in marriages today have existed throughout human history, says Pastor Scott LaPierre, which is why he relies on biblical lessons when dispensing marital counseling. Scott dissects the culture of marriage intended by God in his new book, Your Marriage God’s Way, and he is available to discuss these valuable insights with your audience to help them build relationships that are strong and vibrant. Would you please read the press release below and let me know if you would like to schedule an interview with pastor and author Scott LaPierre? I would also be happy to forward a complimentary copy of his new book in consideration of a review or feature. To hear a recent interview, please visit https://anchor.fm/heidistjohn/episodes/Husbands–Love-Your-Wives-with-Scott-LaPierre-e1i3fcd.
Let’s say mine centers on a Jewish man as well…
Book Review / Interview Op – 60 Clear-Cut Ideas That Make Handling Crises and Career Setbacks Easier -in these troubling times, nothing is easy. But sought-after business coach Chris Westfall says that there is an easier way. In his new book, Easier, Chris uses a profoundly powerful approach to deliver 60 clear-cut ideas for handling crises, career setbacks, loss, grief and more — so we can heal ourselves, our companies and our culture. Please let me know if you would like to schedule an interview with Chris, who makes an extremely engaging guest. I would also be happy to forward a complimentary copy of Easier, in consideration of a review or feature. More information can be found in the press release below. To watch a recent interview, please visit….
Only 60?
I wanted to make sure you’d heard about Jerremy’s new children’s book focused on the stock market? The following is a link to the press release: https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/real-life-trading-making-investment-in-financial-literacy-for-kidsJerremy has been putting an extra focus on financial literacy for children. He was recently featured on CNBC. I’d be happy to send you a copy of his book if you’d like to review it or I can schedule an interview with him if you’d like to learn more about why he wrote it and how he’s giving back to schools and kids. He will also have a guest piece in the Tennessean soon advocating for his home state to pass a similar financial literacy bill as Florida just did.
I know I reared the kids all wrong…
Steamy Romance About Love, Sex and Chocolate – The word-of-mouth sensation, Chocolate Burnout, is now a seven-part series for Hubbard Small Press Publications with the first in the series, Chocolate Burnout: Chocolate 4 Life(June 7, 2022) launching this summer. Each novel in the series will follow a different character and address a variety of social issues including racism and interracial relationships. Chocolate 4 Life follows Chantel Reed, a successful, single African American woman who has given up on romance to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a master chocolatier. Chantel’s best friend Astrid, a prosperous, single white woman who sacrificed relationships to conquer her dream job as a certified chocolatier, is the owner of Sweet Indulgence, one of the most popular chocolate shops in downtown Seattle. The story follows Chantel as she deals with life’s challenges and bounces between an obsession with chocolate, friendships and her desire to find the perfect romance.“Throughout the seven-part series, there will be different perspectives, and the protagonists will develop and change their views as they grow older,” says La-Paz. “The main character, Chantel Reed, her eccentric group of friends and her peculiar relationships give readers something to look forward to as the series progresses.” With a romance series, a memoir, and a picture book forthcoming, Emunah La-Paz is a talented author on the rise. Please let me know if I can send you a review copy of this delicious and enticing tale.
Maybe I’ll have some chocolate. Maybe I’ll pick um painting again…
Hey Friderike — below is an image of American Angie Crabtree surrounded by her hyperrealistic portraits of actual diamonds. Her art speaks for itself so I won’t bother you with fluff and BS. She has a show coming up and a great backstory. She is collected mostly by major diamond companies, celebs etc. How would you feel about a quick interview via zoom phone or email? We would be grateful! Keep sparkling, Tyler.
Or maybe I’ll escape to outer space since I can keep sparkling there as yet another star…
I am writing to you with an urgent story idea. Former Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver has a new book scheduled to be released on June 21st entitled “Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age.” It is the story of how Garver drove the commercial space program with Elon Musk against the wishes of Senators on both sides of the aisle. It is her story of how she was threatened and called the worst of names by politicians including Senators whose goal was to protect NASA programs in their districts versus Congress investing in the commercial program. The Senator from Florida who led the battle to stop the commercial program was Bill Nelson, now the NASA administrator. Garver pulls no punches on Nelson. She opens up about the excessive $20 billion-plus in cost overruns that have dogged the SLS program that Nelson drove. SLS still has not been launched after a decade of technical and financial issues. Garver writes in her book about working with Musk, Bezos, Branson, etc… and has many personal stories to share. The Former Deputy NASA Administrator passionately writes and speaks about how women have been suppressed, degraded, and objectified in the male-dominated NASA culture. In addition to the PDF, I have attached book highlights and Garver’s thoughts regarding how women have been treated at NASA.
Would you be interested in interviewing Garver for your outlet? This promises to be a dynamic interview, bestseller, and drop a number of political bombshells. I look forward to hearing from you. Please contact me at this email or xxxxxxxxxxx to schedule an interview.
Or maybe I’ll read something truly relevant to my pursuit of sharing tidbits about nature: here is the best article of last week in that regard. It will enrich your weekend!
Some things finally awaken in the garden, the columbines, some iris, a first little hedge rose, corn flowers, daisies, buttercups,
and the foxgloves.
A magnet to bees, this plant is actually highly toxic, but, used in the right amounts, can also be healing. (Don’t try at home…!) As a source of dioxin, it is used to treat cardiac arrhythmia, ever since British physician, William Withering, published his book, An Account of the Foxglove, in 1785. He and subsequent healers used it for a variety of ailments, edema, epilepsy, hydrothorax (fluid in the pleural cavities) and phthisis pulmonalis (probably tuberculosis.)(Ref.)
Some people speculate that Vincent van Gogh used digitalis (the plant’s latin name) to treat his epileptic seizures towards the end of his life. The chemicals cause haziness of vision, or a yellow tinge to everything one sees, known as xanthopsia. Occasionally, points of light may appear to have coloured halos around them. Rarer still are effects on pupil size, such as dilation, constriction or even unequal-sized pupils.
“The effects of digitalis intoxication have been suggested as the cause of Van Gogh’s “yellow period” and the spectacular sky he painted in The Starry Night. More circumstantial evidence comes from the two portraits Van Gogh produced of his doctor, Paul Gachet, showing him holding a foxglove flower. One of Van Gogh’s self portraits also shows uneven pupils.
All of this is very interesting but it is pure speculation. Van Gogh may not have taken digitalis, and perhaps simply liked the colour yellow and the effect of swirling colours around the stars he painted. Unequal pupil size in his self-portrait may have been the result of a simple slip of the paintbrush.” (Ref.)
Then again, he was known to indulge in drinking absinthe. The alkaloids in Artemisia absinthium which is used to brew the liquor cause similar visual effects.
Who knows…
Vincent van Gogh Dr. Gachet (1890)
The bees don’t care….
Today’s poem is by John Lee Clark, a DeafBlind poet, essayist, and independent scholar from Minnesota. The German name for the plant is Fingerhut, which translates as thimble.
Music is some mellow folk songs today. Titled Foxgloves, of course.
I take my victories where I can find them. Two days ago I won a staring contest with a coyote. The bunny, paralyzed with fear between us, lived, too. I stood still for what seemed half an eternity, he approached a step or two but then reconsidered. Time enough to take the photographs, and for a Painted Lady to land on the scat he left behind. No matter how often I feel blessed by nature, some encounters are unexpected, as if by magic, and make my heart race. With joy more than fear.
It had already been a morning filled with sweet encounters. The hungry scrub jay fledglings waiting for their mother,
other mothers readjusting worms in beaks.
Egrets hanging out, with a cacophony of their screaming offspring in nests in the woods behind them.
Glimpses of snowcapped Mt. St. Helens in the distance.
I had come to photograph something altogether different, though. I wanted to capture the star-like flowers of hemlock or cow parsley, you choose. (I have written about the distinction between these two, the former highly toxic, the latter good for making soup, previously here.) I needed a stand-in for stars, since they play such an important role in the poem attached below, not having images for the real thing since I rarely see them these days. Either it is too cloudy, or I am in bed already.
I don’t know why I had not come across this poem earlier – it has been around for a long time. Since 1977, to be precise, in a volume called The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe. The author, Laura Gilpin, had received the Walt Whitman Poetry award the previous year. She died, not yet age 56, barely 6 months after a diagnosis of cancer, in 2007.
The Two-Headed Calf
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.
by Laura Gilpin (1950- 2007)
The poem hit me at gut level, about the precariousness of life, about “othering,” and the hope one can find when staying in the moment, if only for a moment. It also fascinated me with a level of writing skill that manages to suggest so many different scenarios in so few lines.
What do we have here? Immediately we get introduced to the derogatory term freak. Wrapped in newspaper (a calf with two heads? Large newspaper…) reminiscent of ways to discard refuse like stinking fish. It will be displayed, gawked at, the museum replacing freak shows of yore on the circus circuit.
“...a term used to describe the exhibition of exotic or deformed animals as well as humans considered to be in some way abnormal or outside broadly accepted norms. Although the collection and display of such so-called freaks have a long history, the term freak show refers to an arguably distinct American phenomenon that can be dated to the 19th century.”
Promoted by P.T.Barnum, people raved about the entertainment delivered by watching disfigured animals or humans with disabilities, weight and height differences, dwarfism included, absence or increased presence of limbs, vitiligo, and persons with ambiguous sexual characteristics including hermaphroditism. Given how indefensible and indecent amusement at the sight of human abnormalities is, it is no surprise that the world saw a “Revolt of the Freaks” in 1898, when a collection of the 40 or so most-famous performers in the world staged a labour strike while on tour in London, demanding that the management of the Barnum and Bailey circus remove the term freak from promotional materials for their shows. To no avail. It took until the middle of the 20th century for these shows to be abandoned.
What is unfortunately alive and well, though, is a (religious and ideological) movement that defines “non-normative” people as freaks, abnormalities to be eradicated from a healthy societal body, and threatens to, at best, exclude them and force them into hiding, or punish them and those who support them, or, at worst call for their extermination. From a church pulpit, no less.
In this year alone, more than 240 bills have been introduced directed against LGTBQ people, most of them trans, and the year isn’t half over. The Human Rights Campaign reports that last year, 50 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed in the U.S., 14 so far this year. That is not counting the suicides of mobbed or despairing trans teenagers. According to NPR, a third of the known trans-youth, 58.000 people, are in danger of losing gender affirming health care. Actually, newest statistics show that the U.S. has about 1.6 million people who are transgender, 43% young adults or teenagers.
Gilpin draws a scenario in the second stanza that shows the domesticated framework of a summer evening at the farm. North field, like a neighbor’s address, with mother, a loving family then, mellow conditions lit by the moon, soothing noises by soft wind, the mention of an orchard promising the sweetness of fruit. All is right here, as long as the cruel world can be kept at bay, and the fate of non-conforming to norms, or of disability, postponed for just a few hours longer. It is inevitable, but in the meantime there is beauty to behold. And here is a glint of magic: four eyes in two heads see double the beauty, a privilege not granted to the rest of us.
Yet the added shimmer is no compensation, in my mind, for the lack of a glimmer of hope that people will attempt to integrate physical or mental disability without prejudice, or accept gender non-conformity (not a disability!) as a human right. Or stop using it as a wedge issue in a war between polarized ideological factions.
Gilpin worked for decades on a second volume of poetry, finished shortly before her death and published posthumously, The Weight of a Soul. Mine was left less heavy by the thought that poetry can still help us think things through, sort out who is discriminating and who needs protection. My soul was also made lighter by the hocus-pocus of nature, creating every variability imaginable, shimmering in the light.
Here is some beautiful music from Australia Superclusters. More stars, for your ears this time.
The sun was out. The sky was blue. Puffy white clouds. Miracle of miracles, after these endless rains, the cold, a May more like February. Yesterday was a promise of better times.
And everyone, I mean everyone, was out drying their plumage, preening, soaking up some warmth.
The herons opened their wings to the sun rays, or flying low in a bit of a breeze.
The Bullock’s Oriole (says my bird book) competed with the golden light around it, more interested in getting the gnats out of its feathers than watching the busy swallows right above it.
Bullock’s Oriole
And the turtles?
Lined up in a row, late comers trying to score a place as well, not too successfully.
Mothers and offspring sharing a log.
Heads stretched up high, opening wet folds, drying out.
Before we get too excited with all those harbingers of better times ahead, let’s be pragmatic. The rains will reappear in the not too distant future, says the weatherman. Good for our parched state, bad for our mood. Lets not be like the theoretic turtle – let’s follow canine advice: work around it and all other nuisances…
The Theoretic Turtle
The theoretic turtle started out to see the toad; He came to a stop at a liberty-pole in the middle of the road. “Now how, in the name of the spouting whale,” the indignant turtle cried, “Can I climb this perpendicular cliff and get on the other side? If I only could make a big balloon I’d lightly over it fly; Or a very long ladder might reach the top though it does look fearfully high. If a beaver were in my place, he’d gnaw a passage through with his teeth; I can’t do that but I can dig a tunnel and pass beneath.” He was digging his tunnel with might and main, when a dog looked down at the hole. “The easiest way, my friend,” said he, “is to walk around the pole.”
