americans and other half-wild animals

the dismal science

2011-08-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

finally watched a fantastic movie the other day: inside job, the oscar-winning best documentary of 2010, about the financial system crash that led to our recent great recession.

let's face it, most of the time beating up on economics or economists - even when i do it - feels a bit like kicking some poor old guy collapsed on the street. it's too damn easy, right? there are so many things wrong with economics and with the way it's used.

but economics survives as a discipline in large part because it is, ultimately, really freaking useful. not just the supply and demand, invisible hand type of things. these are just some applications of economic thought that, as they were being developed, were shaped by the personalities and the times of the people who developed them. sometimes these ideas stand the test of time, sometimes they don't. but that's not what economics is.

at it's very core, economics is a framework for understanding decision making, that works best on an individual level. and decision making is all about incentives. that's what was so great about the movie inside job. although in many ways the movie spent a fair bit of time bashing economists - particularly academic economists - they (we?) were redeemed by the presence of a few who never forgot what the discipline is all about: incentives.

markets are not systems that inherently drive themselves towards stability - something that people often forget. it's part of the base theory of economics that, over time, actors acting in their own interest will produce some outcomes that are stable - in the sense that, say, supply and demand will intersect at an appropriate price. but that is only if the incentives are correct and the actors are bit players. in the late 2000s, while most analysts and academics were all blinded by their own bed-sharing interests, a few clear-headed people looked at the system in place and could see where it was headed. could see that the rhetoric defending derivatives markets and other shady, unregulated financial services industry concepts was flawed.

for example, in 2005, raghuram rajan, the chief economist for IMF at the time, delivered a paper that clearly predicted that the crash would happen. he could see that the short-term incentives at play for the agents controlling the system were such that a crash was inevitable - and that, in fact, there was nothing that would stop it from happening.

or nouriel roubini, an economics professor who predicted a crisis as early as 2006, and was disparagingly referred to as 'Dr. Doom' for it.

or charles morris, who delivered a book about an impending crisis to his publisher in late 2007. published in 2008, the trillion dollar meltdown erred only in underestimating the final cost we'd bear thanks to the financial market shenanigans then occurring.

anyway. a long time ago i had a post in mind bashing micro-economics to follow my earlier macro-economics bashing. it was one of those posts that formed in my head in the middle of the night and was dazzlingly clear and brilliant then that faded away come morning, but nonetheless, it's been sort of sitting on the back burner since then. i've been feeling very grouchy for the past two years about economics - seeing all that was wrong in it, seeing all that is flawed in the fundamentals of it.

oddly enough, watching inside job re-energized me slightly. because, while economics gave us the justification for actions that completely fucked a previously stable system, it also gave us - well, gave some people, anyway - the tools to be able to clearly see where we were headed. it's a powerful field, if we just remember to remove ourselves and our own incentives from our analysis of it. easier said than done, i realize that, but essential, if we want to recapture what's good about economics from what's dismal.

in other news, it would appear that i am the deloach distinguished graduate fellow in economics this coming year. which means, yep, they failed to kick me out of the program, again. oh well. they will surely wise up soon enough and send me packing. until then, it's good to head into the new year feeling slightly warmer towards my chosen field of study.

and so goes twenty years...

2011-08-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

i just got back from my 20-year high school reunion.

what an adventure.

i was a bit nervous - and worried - i admit it. i've changed somewhat, in what people see. i'm not nearly as skinny as i used to be, for starters. i was worried that people wouldn't recognize me, and i'd see it in their eyes as they searched for my name: "...(ohmygod-she's gained so much weight-who was she when she was thin)...oh hi, yes, of course!" but that didn't happen. or at least, not that i noticed. (i did, of course, go straight to bed and dream that it happened, that i showed up in my old black leather motorcycle jacket that i used to stomp around the halls in and someone grabbed my arm, saying 'boy, you've filled out, haven't you?' seriously, what a waste of a perfectly good dream-time, right?)

but at the reunion, one of the first conversations i had with old friends - and i mean OLD friends, like this was a group of people that i went to kindergarten with and went on family vacations with and went to junior high dances with and skipped class with in high school and saw again on our kids' first day of kindergarten - was somehow sort of telling.

"we're all sort of the same, you know?" said one friend.

i said, "you mean, deep down inside, we all have the same dreams and goals as each other?"

the group around the table laughed. "no," said the speaker, "i mean we're all the same, at the core, as we were back then."

the beauty of that few hours, for me, is that both interpretations of that were true. we were all the same - in our deepest core - as we once were. which means that all that striving and trying during those angst-filled years was for naught - and that we are nothing more or less than we always have been, for better or for worse.

but also, the other - at the end of the day, we are all the same. we were all there laughing together and remembering things and talking about struggles with kids and some of us divorced and some of us never married and some with many kids and some with no kids but there was a piece of us that was all the same - this piece that is the product of our place, our time, ourselves and each other - a mysterious alchemy of personality and environment that affected us all.

when i got home today, i dug out my senior yearbook. in one section we had been asked the standard sort of cheesy yearbook sound-bite question: where will you be in five years? and i didn't really have to look up my answer - i remember its general gist quite clearly - but i did anyway, and was struck for the first time just how still completely true it still was (note in particular the misuse of the word "hopefully"):

"MINDY CRANDALL: 'Hopefully I will be driving around the U.S. looking at everything and listening to everyone.' "

well, for fuck's sake. that's just who i am. i have no real higher goal, no loftier aspirations now, no matter what i dabbled with or proclaimed over the past 20 years. i am who i am, and always have been, no matter what shell i'm wrapped in, no matter where i am or what i'm doing, i'm still the same person that these people knew - and somewhat grudgingly accepted - all those years ago.

and that, my friends, is a pretty fucking sweet feeling. it is, in fact, what going home is all about.

so, was it good for you?

2011-07-31T22:17:00.000-07:00

well. it's july 31st. which means i've sort of survived my post-a-day-july. i say sort of survived, not conquered, because i certainly faltered. there were at least two, maybe three, days in which i failed to post, including yesterday! oh, to flail and falter at the very end of the race!

still, it was a good exercise. what did i learn?

- if i want to write more frequently, i've got to somehow let go of the need to write only complete, well-researched and thought out entire essays. that's essay writing, not blogging. all the 'tips' i read of blogging say the same thing: keep it short. which is very, very hard for me to do. so, trying to post every day has forced me, more often that not, to shorten the damn thing up, just because i don't have any choice.

- it's perfectly OK to post something not complete, not 100% perfect. that's the beauty of posting daily: necessity forces one to occasionally post crap. and you know what? the world keeps on freaking turning. this is a good lesson for those of us who don't want to do anything not perfect. or at least: nothing not completely vetted, proofread, and double or triple checked.

- if you want to do something, just freaking do it. this is something i've learned before, and apparently i had to learn it again. back in the day, when i wanted to be an artist, i somehow knew that to draw i just had to draw - i had to draw every day, at every opportune moment. the same is really true for writing, although it's easy to overlook. if i want to write more, i just have to...write. more. that's it. just write, every day. doesn't matter what it's about, really - the focus should be on the activity, not necessarily the output.

so, was it good for me? yes, i think it was. it did get me out of my rut, and it did force me to expand myself a little bit; to post things that i wouldn't normally post. to force myself to write, even if normally i would have made excuses not to do it.

still, i do look forward to the upcoming months, where the expiration of post-a-day-july will mean that i don't have to post. i still plan to write every day, but i hope to spare folks the crap postings that such an arbitrary goal forces.

oh, what else did i learn? this whole facebook networked-blog things is a blessing and a curse. i think there's lots of people who read, but few comment. the funny thing about writing a blog is that you sort of live for comments, no matter WHAT they are. so, readers, don't be afraid to comment! otherwise, i don't know you're reading. and that's what really keeps me going, apart from random self-imposed goals.

and, whew. july is over. thanks, y'all. see you next month...sometime.

homesick

2011-07-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

it's true, i started this post an entire 18 months ago. in all honesty i couldn't change the date. so i'll just finish it off - and finally post it, for better or for worse.

it's january first, 2010. the first day of a new year, a new decade. and i'm sick, sick, sick right through and through. homesick.

which sounds ludicrous when you realize that i'm in my home state, living in a town i've lived in for something like 9 of the last 13 years, in a similar environment to what i'm used to, and only 70 miles from my actual home town. how can i be overwhelmed with homesickness, this close to home? how can the very marrow of my bones long for the salt air, the drops of rain falling through the conifer needles, the rush of coastal creeks riding high on winter rains?

i have a confession to make. i want to go home. i'm like a whiny child, looking for their mother!

and yet, to admit this - to acknowledge it - is a huge step for me. i want to go there. it's like i've been circling around it, avoiding it, for the past 18 years. but wanting to go home, i now realize, does not mean that i'm afraid of failure. it does not mean taking the easy way out. in fact, it might just be the hardest thing i could do.

because it's easy to be anonymous. it's easy not to have to invest in people you meet and places you see. it's easy to be the stranger.

that's the great secret to moving around all the time, i think - that it's so easy to be the stranger. if you don't mind being alone, then being the new person in town simply means not having any obligations, not having any ties, not having a whole lot of responsibility.

what's hard? facing who you were before, whether you liked it or not. facing people's impressions of you that they carved decades ago, and being strong enough to tell them how you've changed and how you want to be seen. working to change, for the better, an imperfect but beloved place rather than searching for a perfect but unknown one.

for me, leaving is easy. going home - that's hard.

"the ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, everything else - is pure theory."

2011-07-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

we were fortunate enough to live in germany in 2006, when they hosted the men's world cup.

the first time germany won, i admit, i had already gone to bed. we lived on the middle floor of an old building, right on a very busy street, in a small, unknown town. suddenly, there was noise everywhere. yells and cars honking. i ran out to the front windows - long picture windows that overlooked the street - and the street was flooded with cars, cars with people hanging all over them, all of them waving flags, cheering, blowing horns, celebrating.

you might remember the 2006 world cup - or maybe not. regardless, germany made a little bit of a cinderella run deep into the tournament that no one was expecting. except they weren't a cinderella team at all, because they are one of the top most successful national football teams in FIFA. but that year, at least, no one expected them to do very well - not even the most loyal german. in fact in 2006, their FIFA ranking was an abysmal 22nd.

they won their group. they won their game in the round of 16. they won in the quarter-finals, defeating no less an opponent than argentina. and these were the games when, post-match, the entire country went nuts. we were coming back from the train station one day in a cab, carrying friends who had just arrived for a visit, when suddenly everything in town - including our taxi - came to a screeching halt. people began mobbing the streets, cars honking, beer bottles in hands everywhere, songs and chants ringing. "what happened?" and our friends, completely bewildered.

"germany must have won again", i said, grinning. you have to enjoy it at that point in time, because you're not going to get anywhere very fast.

sometime in there i realized that there's no comparison to any event in the united states. there is no one sporting event, no one team, that galvanizes the entire country behind it. the most popular sports in the US - [american] football, basketball, and baseball - are sports where the pinnacle of the sport is, in fact, basically an intra-national competition (for the most part - claims of world champions notwithstanding). loyalties are at the state or region or, occasionally, sub-state level. if it's not your state, you may not even care about the outcome, unless there's some super villain (yankees or lakers, say) to root against.

the olympics are a time for rallying behind the american team to some extent - but there are so many events and so many athletes that there's not really one thing to follow.

there's no one sport - the most popular sport - where the title win is at the national level.

my friends and i went to frankfurt for later games in the series. because the country is so soccer crazed, and the tickets were so hard to get, fan viewing sites had been set up all over the country. the nearest one to us was a giant screen - bigger than anything i've ever seen - plopped right in the middle of the Main river. people lined both banks, drinking, partying, laughing, cheering.

in frankfurt, the town was turned out to welcome internationals from all over the world. even ghana, who also made a surprise run in the tournament, advancing out of the group round with a victory over the hapless united states, was represented by fans on the street.

in germany, everything else is theory. in the united states, we're still just some kind of amateur sports fans.

and p.s.: why on god's green earth, for all our stubborn continued usage of the word soccer, did we retain the name fussball when referring to a plastic table game played in bars?

on being lost

2011-07-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

my son is looking for his dinosaurs

all twenty-four of the one-inch figures

bought two years and 3000 miles ago.

he still remembers, and says to

me: there used to be two like this,

where is the other one?

oh, i say, we always seem to lose track

of these small things, checking under

the bed, as if it might possibly be so easy.

it all comes from somewhere

2011-07-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

"The romantic movement gave the forests a new meaning for some people, and this admiration for what had once been rejected was bolstered by yet another change of attitude, which can best be called the ‘patriotic’. After the War of Independence the question was continually asked, ‘What was it in this new country that was distinctively American?’ The continent, with its short history and ill-formed traditions, could not produce anything like the rich cultural heritage and the antiquities of Europe. One thing that America had, however, was vast areas of untouched land – forest, prairie, and mountain – and these seemingly unending wild areas were perceived by nineteenth-century naturalists, poets, writers and artists as something uniquely American and something about which to be proud. Chateaubriand touched upon this feeling when he said, ‘There is nothing old in America excepting the woods…they are certainly the equivalent for monuments and ancestors’."

From Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography, By Michael Williams. 1989.

rain, rain, go away

2011-07-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

last night, at midnight, i woke up to a strange sound.

i thought my partner had turned the fan on. it was a white-type noise, noticeable in its volume, consistent in its tone.

it wasn't the fan. it was...solid and steady rain. pouring rain.

i'm sure it kills folks from other states when oregonians complain about rain. because, after all, isn't it the defining characteristic of oregon, and our existence?

well, yes. to large extent. but not - absolutely not - in july.

once we hit july 5th, we expect - and have earned - our two-plus beautiful, wonderful, dry months. the months that suck in newcomers. the months where, playing at the playground, you hear tourists talking to each other: "it's lovely here. what are the home prices like?"

and you chuckle to yourself, knowing another oregon summer has claimed another sucker.

the thing is, it's so damn beautiful here in july, august, and part of september, that it makes you forget all the pain and suffering of the past 9 months. all the grey skies. all the dreary drizzle. all the mud and clogged gutters and interminable, insufferable rain.

but, our ability to make it through the fall/winter/spring relies on these two to three months of absolutely dry, sunny, warm, breezy, absolutely perfect summer weather.

right now, i don't care that it was sunny in december. or whenever it was unseasonably sunny. because it was cold then, and i couldn't enjoy it. i don't care about sun in winter. i wait for, long for, count on, my two months of sun, warmth, and perfect weather - no humidity, no bugs, no sweat - to get me through.

weeks of sun in december doesn't count, for us. rain in july? just absolutely wrong. so that's when you'll hear oregonians - even "true" oregonians, like me, who love the winter rain - complain about rain.

more from the oregon country fair

2011-07-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

because the country fair is best seen, not pontificated about, i can't resist posting more pictures from it.

although these ones aren't mine - they were taken by a very talented young photographer, hannah mcintosh.

enjoy these views of the fair!

of regional rivalry and...utility-kilts

2011-07-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

something about being at the country fair, and thinking about soccer, has me thinking that possibly one could map out the PNW based on sales of utilikilts.

i mean, really. are there any other states where they are so prevalent?

there have been a great series of posts lately, from all corners, about the fantastic portland vs. seattle and, by extension, timbers vs. sounders rivalry.

what i find so intriguing about this series is the attempted regionalism that people are calling on. as it says in a recent WSJ article, part of the difficulty of the sounders - timbers rivalry is "how to work up a healthy hatred for fans who, in so many ways, look and think exactly alike."

portland and seattle - clearly the anchors of the pacific northwest. similar climate, similar history, similar economy. so, how do residents of these two lynchpin cities of the US PNW differentiate themselves?

from the wall street journal:

Until recently, Seattleites had plenty of reasons to feel superior: A diet that includes mushrooms and berries foraged from pristine local forests, a commitment to fixed-gear bicycles, fair-trade coffee, facial hair and the best attendance of any city with a Major League Soccer team in the country by a landslide.

[But] In Portland, stadium vendors hawk barbecued-tofu sandwiches, spinach salads and chocolate-covered bacon, putting Seattle's relatively mundane offerings, like veggie dogs, gourmet donuts and cappuccinos, to shame.

While Seattle's scarf-wielding supporters may look edgy compared to the baseball fans across the street at Safeco Field, Portland fans boast at least as many piercings, tattoos and mohawks. In the merchandise line at a Timbers game, Bryan Dean, a 40-year-old industrial designer with a tall blond mohawk was sporting a kilt. He said kilts are "considered quite masculine" in Scotland and Ireland and evoke Portland's identity: "underdogs and kinda blue collar, but also fringe, artistic."

Seattle fans like to poke fun at small differences, like Portland's higher unemployment rate and its relative lack of big companies. "Portland fans are icky, they're the trailer trash of the Pacific Northwest," said Kevin Scudder, a 48-year-old company owner relaxing in the stands. "We have a lot more money up here…though they do have a beautiful coastline."

Portland fans insult Seattle supporters by calling them "customers" instead of fans, and pick on everything from their love of boating to their diversity of political views. "In Seattle they have Republicans," said Heather Mathews, a graduate student at Lewis and Clark, who imagines Seattle fans spend most of their free time "sailing around in their sailboats."

from a sports illustrated vault article:

Last week's showdown, which ended in a 1--1 tie, was just the latest evidence that the Cascadia region has become the hotbed of Major League Soccer. Two years after the Sounders joined the league, their average attendance at week's end (36,350) was far and away the highest in MLS—which has a leaguewide average of 17,150—and would have ranked ninth in the English Premier League, sixth in Spain's La Liga, second in France's Ligue 1 and fourth in Italy's Serie A. In Portland the expansion Timbers are the new darlings of MLS, winning their first four home games while boasting regular sellouts at Jeld-Wen Field (capacity: 18,627), as well as a chain saw--wielding human mascot who saws a slab off a giant log for every Portland goal and clean sheet.

"And a lot of the malice goes beyond soccer," added Garrett Dittfurth, 32, an analyst at a public relations firm. "Seattle was like the pinnacle of American coolness in the '90s, right? Now things have changed a little bit if you want to talk about creativity, arts and music."

"Then there's that big-city mentality they have in Seattle, and down here we're like, You've gotta be kidding me," added Dittfurth. "They have a lot more of an East Coast mentality than we do, and that kind of pervades on the field. You feel that air of superiority."

and finally, from grantland:

I was on my way to the game, standing on line in a convenience store, waiting to be rung up. The man on line in front of me was delivering a monologue, somewhat directed at the cashier but really to anyone within earshot, about reproductive rights and health education in various Third World countries. In New York, this guy would have been told to go reproduce with himself and get out of line. What happened here? As the man finished his speech the cashier nodded thoughtfully and said, "Man, I've got a documentary you have got to see."

Yeah, I was in Portland.

And that is going to be the last joke I make about the city's politics, fashions, food, or proclivity for fixed gear bikes. Let he who does not live within walking distance from several restaurants serving bacon-wrapped trout toss the first stone at PDX's hipster/hippie atmosphere.

I don't know what's funnier, that two people mention fixed-gear bixes as motifs of a unique identity - yet one is in reference to seattle, one in reference to portland - or that someone mentions a utilikilt-clad portland soccer fan stating that they are emblematic of portland, when in fact they are made in...

seattle.

FAIL

2011-07-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

well, dear readers, i already failed in my goal.

i truthfully thought i'd get much, much closer to the end of a-post-a-day-july before finally breaking down.

but no! july 11 fail. not even two weeks. not even halfway through. that's gotta be some kind of record, even for me.

my weak-ass alibi? my dear friends were in town. we went out to dinner and then sometime like at 12:35 a.m. as i was pouring us all more wine and we were shooting the shit i looked at the clock and realized i'm not going to get my 7/11/11 post in.

but really, that's just an excuse. it was all about lack of prior prioritization and preparation. if i had planned ahead a little bit, if i had gotten myself organized, it wouldn't have happened.

i'm going to do my best not to fall off the wagon completely here, but get back on track for the rest of the month.

while i'm whining, there's approximately four people i know moving away from the state this month alone. and people whose blogs i've been following for a long time calling it quits, or changing formats, just when i don't even have this one figured out, they are off and running to something new and better.

that's quite enough leaving me behind for one month, thank you very much.

alright. pardon the digression. i'll be back on track tomorrow.

oregon, my oregon!

2011-07-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

is there anything more western oregon than the country fair?

and i mean that in the complete sense. i don't just mean: oh, look at the hippies! i mean is anything more completely and truly western oregon than the country fair?

sure, there's hippies. the last of the few and the proud, leathery skin, wrinkles, grey hair - they are there, there's no doubt.

but there's also sorority girls in bikinis. little yuppie kids with berets and DIY, portlandia-type tattooed parents. middle-aged women with no bras and/or shirts at all. rubber-necking professors. wranglers and cowboy hats. wagons festooned with UO paraphernalia. punks and goths and frat boys and suburban wives.

yet the whole thing is so damn orderly. it's so...oregon. it's no burning man. it's no rainbow gathering. it's clearly based in a set place, it's all about the cash money exchanging hands, it's covered with volunteers. they guide your car in narrow rows and paths to an exact parking spot. everything is laid out and marked - from where your silverware goes to be washed and reused to your food scraps (for compost), glass, and other things. and yet, not completely orderly. it's not draconian state trooper style. it's a...flexible orderliness. as we were leaving, a giant SUV was sneaking in to park in an area designated for a specific group. "aw, just for five minutes", the driver wheedled the parking attendant. "i don't want to get in trouble" she said. "want a cigarette?" the driver asked hopefully. "yeah, i would like a cigarette," said the attendant, easily bought. she accepted the proffered smoke. "ok, but only for five minutes."

the country fair. it's a lovely time, and i love it, for all its surreal nature. everyone is smiling. really. everyone. from the tutu-clad volunteers, standing in the blazing sun for hours directing traffic, wishing everyone a cheery 'enjoy the fair!', to all the other fair-goers, dressed in their best, fairy skirts and lingerie pulled out from the closets, clothes dispensed with, faces painted, smiles on, everything beautiful and magical. even the timbers army put in an appearance and made thier presence known. see, this is oregon, where weird sports loyalty trumps hippie identity.

and, there's bordello-dressed kazoo-playing can-can dancing stiltwalkers. i mean, what more can you want in life?

awesome americans #2: pollock & the abstract expressionists

2011-07-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

i think i've mentioned, probably ad nauseum, how entranced i was by europe growing up.

i couldn't help it. fine arts, culture, classical music, cool watches - let's face it, europe had it, we didn't. and i wanted to be a painter. and everything about painting came from europe - all the classical masters, all the neo-classical masters, almost all of the important movements, the important artists, everything. what was the future for an unknown person from an unknown corner of an insignificant part of the world?

until i took an art history class in high school. and i learned about the movement of the twentieth century that - for the first time in recent history - brought the capital of art out of paris and to the new world, to new york city - abstract expressionism.

i'm not an art historian, nor critic. i can't really write an essay about abstract expressionism - well, not in any reasonable time frame, and not without a lot of cribbing off of online sources, like any undergrad worth his or hers salt these days. all i can really write about is my very personal experience with abstract expressionism - and with, most specifically, the paintings of jackson pollock.

in the classroom, i learned about this seminal movement that brought the art world over the pond and to our shores just following world war II, and i felt my self swell with - let's face it - pride, at being privy to the generation that can remember when we, we!, bested the europeans at art and brought it home to america. when we somehow breached the stronghold that was art in europe - both classical and revolutionary, training and boundary-breaking - all of that happened there, and yet in one cultural shift, we came up with something new, something different, something unique.

i dutifully studied the slides of the paintings on the screen, i looked at them in my textbook. i felt the pride, sure, and i felt the urge to continue working in the fine arts field, which was now - 50 years later - more balanced, with genius and new thoughts coming from all over the world - no longer just the domain of one country or continent. but the paintings on the screen didn't really move me. they didn't really sing, didn't rock me in my gut, didn't truly captivate. there was a secret part of me that couldn't dispute the dismissals about the movement: "a bunch of paint dripped on a canvas? any six-year-old can make that!"

finally, i went to new york city myself one day - and stood before one. and i got it.

jackson pollock was born in wyoming and grew up all over the west. and when you look at one of his paintings, up close and personal...

what do you see? movement. wide open movement. huge arcs of the arm, paint coming off the end. sweeping motions. a person walking around, all sides, of a giant canvas. movement and motion and room to spread out, freedom to do something never done before. how he must have leaned over, to get at the center of the canvas. how he must have moved, faster and slower, stepping back to view it, stepping in to add more.

so, what's the connection, between place and art? between the wide open spaces of his childhood, and the wide open gestures of his art? i don't know for certain that the two are related. but it certainly made sense to me, that day, gazing up at something i'd never seen the likes of before. and to me it did seem related - the american west and this dancing canvas before me.

and i thought, well, that's one thing maybe we - or one of us, at least - got right.

cacophony of place

2011-07-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

i sat on the deck the other night, supremely at peace, and realized that my happiness & relaxation were related to a sound, of all things. i was responding to was the soft swish of wind through the trees, through branches and needles and broad leaves.

i started thinking about the sounds i love most -

rain hitting leaves
wind through the trees
the ocean

and realized they are nothing more than the things i am most familiar with, from growing up on the oregon coast. am i simply reacting to the known? apparently, the known provides comfort, a certain sense of familiarity and understanding and belonging.

where we live now, it's usually not windy, and the rain isn't even as reliable as before. still, i sleep with the window open, and my favorite sound here is the birds every morning and day. they start just before sunrise, going crazy in all the trees around us, a cacophony of tweets and twitters and chirps and calls. i don't think i will ever be able to live in a house again that's not surrounded by trees and bushes and the birds that perch there.

i can't identify any of them except the scrub jays, who are lurking around and calling out all day long. it'd be impossible not to know their sound. and the northern flicker, too, is very distinctive, but i don't know it immediately upon hearing - i just know that there's something in it that makes me jump up and grab the binoculars to search for the source, and then when i find it, try my best to implant it in my memory for the next time.

how long will it take before i respond to bird sounds without thinking at all?

i miss the coast.

today's regionalism brought to you by ma bell

2011-07-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

how to define the pacific northwest?

often, it refers to just oregon & washington, once upon a time one territory, the locations of the major cities in this corner of the U.S.

sometimes, BC and alaska are thrown in - if the focus is more ecological, this makes sense, as it's the swath covered by the temperate west-side forests.

sometimes it's more broadly defined to include instead areas to the east - idaho and montana. neither really fit into any other region, unless one draws an intermountain region that encompasses the territory of the rocky mountains.

but now, this is a super cool way to think about a region, as a community of people who are definitely interconnected - as evidenced by who they talk to.

as reported in the new york times, some researchers at MIT, AT&T and IBM analyzed aggregated cellphone traffic and defined connectivity by the amount of calls sent within an area, irrespective of state boundaries.

what'd they come up with? well, that calls orginiating in and destined for certain areas stuck out. for example, louisiana and mississippi had a lot of connectivity. and the panhandle of florida connected more to alabama and georgia than the rest of florida.

and there's our beleoved PNW! oregon, washington, and the northern bit of idaho - all looking towards and talking to each other. southern idaho, on the other hand, connects - not surprisingly - with utah.

it's too bad that there's insufficient data for eastern oregon and montana, to see what communication community they belong to.

here's the original web page for this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/sunday-review/03phone-map.html?_r=1

a preview of the map they created is below. enjoy!

pride, patriotism, and uncle sam

2011-07-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

"You hate America, don't you?" she said.

"That would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."

--From Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut

------------------------------------------------
pride (n.)

1. a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.

2. the state or feeling of being proud.

3. a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one's position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.

4. pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself: civic pride.

pride. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pride (accessed: September 29, 2009).

pa⋅tri⋅ot⋅ism (n.)

– devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty.

patriotism. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/patriotism (accessed: September 29, 2009).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

pride, and patriotism. these are two words i've often struggled with. i've often found the idea of being proud of being an american a little bit ludicrous. for me, the most immediate denotation of pride is definition #4 above: "pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself". i may be an american, but that is only an accident of birth; i can't claim any sort of ownership or achievement in that. so my affiliation with the group, from the get-go, is rather a result of chance that my own personal accomplishment. then there's the thorny problem of being proud of america. proud of america? of what we've done? having grown up fully steeped in the myriad ways in which we've wronged various groups over our short history - native americans, African americans, the poor, immigrants, as well as all the ill-conceived military actions we've been involved with across the globe - there often doesn't seem a lot there to be proud of.

i do love the landscape. the recent national parks special on PBS quoted someone to that effect; that viewing the national parks was a place where people could see the landscape and be proud of their country. and yet - that still rubs me the wrong way. i can be inspired and fulfilled by the landscape, i can love it, i can think places in our country are the most beautiful in the world, but being proud of the land to me, again, implies that i had some hand in it, that there exists some relationship between my actions and its present state. which is even more preposterous than being proud of the actual country.

and patriotism? devoted support and loyalty? that immediately sets my alarm bells ringing. that sounds a lot like we're getting in to the unconditional realm. i can unconditionally love, but unconditional support? never going to happen.

i guess this is why i've always squirmed a little when people talk about being proud to be an american, or being a patriot. i realize others may not see these words in the same way, not so absolute and threatening. but i've never been able to figure out where i fit in in the whole discussion though.

see, i am an american, through and through - i know that now and know it's no use pretending i'll ever be anything but a product of this country and of this landscape. so, maybe instead of pride, or patriotism, what i really feel is some sort of love - love in a complicated, uneasy, begrudging way. like in the way you might love a very grouchy and unpleasant relative, an uncle sam, say, whom you know is a bit of a bastard, but let's face it - they are family, and you do love them overall, even if you don't always like them. even if you don't want to ever have to back up things that they say or support things that they do. and in some way, whether good or bad, whether you like it or not, their presence has shaped who you are and what you think and feel. so you're connected, and you love, sometimes with a sweet appreciation for all that you have and have been given, sometimes with very little like and a whole lot of anger at the actions your beloved has taken.

happy fourth of july, y'all.

writing therapy

2011-07-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

so my goal is to post something every day in july.

i've been having a hard time writing lately. it's like i've fallen out of the habit, or something. so maybe just doing it every goddamn day will help kick-start that center of my brain. maybe.

sometimes, though, i'm going to post on another blog that i've been wanting to start as well - something less academic and more personal. that's at http://note-underground.blogspot.com/. but either here, or there, i'm going to try to get something out every day. which may mean, of course, that a lot of it will be crappy.

thanks for indulging me in this writing therapy.

you know you're in...

2011-07-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

i'm kind of obsessed with place; you may have noticed. but it occurred to me the other day that when i think about place and a sense of place, i think almost exclusively of natural environments. yet there's this whole other sphere of place-based experience out there: urban.

we have lots of jokes that start follow that "you know you're in/from....when..." format ("we" as collective folks, not the royal we meaning me or even we meaning my family). but most of these relate to habits and culture. ok, of course local culture is a large part of sense of place, but is there an urban equivalent to the natural sense of place? how often can you really tell where you are in the US? if you were dropped in the middle of a city, with no native vegetation around to clue you in to at least a region, and no natives around to observe and clue you in, how many do you think you could truly identify?

i'm going to say i could know, incontrovertably, that i had landed in just a handful of very specific places. not coincidentally, those are my favorite cities in the US: the ones that are so unique, so clearly themselves, that they actually stand out from the mass of 1950s development, 4-lane streets on grids, and strip malls that is 90% of the settled country here.

san francisco

new york city

new orleans

occasionally, we get things right.

a digression (or, why i hate macroeconomics)

2011-01-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

there was an article recently in the economist that laid a fair bit of the blame for the Great Recession at the feet of academic economists, rather than the usual whipping boys of MBAs and financiers. in particular, the author takes on the 'rational expectations hypothesis', which has - as he asserts - fueled economic thinking for the past 30 years because it was logical, mathematical, and fittingly conservative (conservative a la reagan).

in another article in the same magazine, they point out that we will probably cross the 7 billion mark on the planet's population in 2011. remember when we hit 6 billion? that seemed like such a scary milestone in 1999! now we calmly look ahead to predictions of the population stabilizing at almost 9 billion by 2050.

the two are related, really. i'm getting there.

i think the economics problem runs much, much deeper than just the past 30 years, in both macro theory and micro theory. even keynes - who was liberal, claiming that aggregate markets were not self-correcting and advocating for government intervention in markets to keep things running smoothly - was not interested in exploring the long-term effects of the basis of the doctrine.

all of macroeconomics rests on calculations and determinations of gross domestic product. gross domestic product is simply the total sum of all domestic (on our shores) production in an economy. it's easy to calculate, and the government does it all the time, because it is the single most important indicator of overall economic health used.

GDP by country*

at the simplest, you can calculate gdp two ways: you can sum up all of the income in a nation, or you can sum up all the expenditures - all the goods and services purchased - in a nation. it's common knowledge that gdp is a flawed measure. but every so often i am stunned by the depths to which it is a flawed measure. to wit:

activities that raise gdp
a divorce, and the subsequent establishment of another household
buying a new car
buying a new toy for your kids
anything inherently wasteful that requires you to buy something new
ill health - like having cancer
having as many medical tests done as possible
elderly cared for in an institution, rather than by family
taking your kids to disneyland
driving an inefficient vehicle (relative to an efficient one)
getting a new cell phone as often as possible

activities that have no effect* on gdp
saving seeds from your garden and growing food from them
buying a used car from an individual person
swapping used clothes
conserving electricity or water by limiting use
lifelong health
reducing
reusing
reading to your kids
walking in the woods (if you don't drive to get there)
driving an efficient vehicle (relative to an inefficient one)

*when something has no effect on gdp, that means it has no significance in the national economy. you might as well say it hurts our economy.

we know - i think that this is, in fact, almost irrefutable, no matter how rosily you view the future - that we cannot support two billion additional people on this planet at the level of the total consumption of an average american. hell, most likely, we couldn't even support all the existing people on the planet at our level. not at our current technology, anyway.

yet the single biggest factor in determining our nation's economic health is, in fact, consumption, period. that's the metric we use to both assess economic health and set monetary and fiscal policy. the reliance on this measure means that for us to be better off, we have to consume more - all of us.

there's no way around that conclusion. and, both theory and experience tell us that when gdp falls, unemployment rises. the definition of a recession is a decline in gdp for two or more quarters. and recessions, as we know, cause real and immediate pain for millions of unemployed people and families.

we can't just abandon gdp as a measure. for starters, there's no getting around the fact that production does matter. we have to have some production. not everyone can live off the grid, getting their goods and services through bartering, and walking everywhere. someone has to buy new clothes at some point in time, even if only to pass them along to the other, more sustainable members of the community down below at the bottom of the consumption chain. we also know, we know, that increases in wealth - gdp - lead to healthier, longer lives for everyone. almost unequivocally, as gdp and wealth rise, so do education rates and advances for women. here's an interesting video from the viewpoint of a health professor. at the end of the country-wise progression he illustrates, there's still a large gap in income, and he does point out the inequalities within countries, too, as they march along towards higher health and wealth. but there's no doubt that as we've gotten wealthier, life expectancy has increased - and we're healthier, too.

the united nations, recognizing both the flaws with a measure like gdp as well as its significance, uses gross national income per capita as one of the main indicators in its Human Development Index - which combines the income measure with other, more 'healthy' indicators like education and life expectancy.

united nations human development index components

and i know, for certain, how lucky i am. i know the great benefits being born onto this planet as a white american grants a person. i'm grateful, very grateful, for the technology - the progress, the overall wealth of our nation - that enables me to sleep in a warm house at night, type on my computer whenever i want, go to school in my mid 30s, travel around the world if i want, limit my child-bearing if i want, say whatever the fuck i want, and live past 40 (hopefully).

so what can we do? we have to have some primary production. our reliance on gdp as the metric for our economy will push us to constantly expand consumption and utilization of resources. yet, if we all suddenly brought our consumption down to a more sustainable level, our economy would come to a screeching halt - with millions out of work. as people stop spending, producers stop producing - and then workers stop working.

how can we reconcile the motivation at the national economic level for more consumption, with the constant cultural messages that our planet is coming to an unsustainable collapse? how can we internalize - economically speaking - valuing the things that we need to value, like conservation, wildness, and genuine loving and kind interpersonal relationships?

how can we deal with economics? this is what i just don't know. economics runs our entire country - don't let all the rhetoric about democracy fool you. capitalism is our real state religion, and the entire basis for capitalism is microeconomic & macroeconomic theory. i'll pick on capitalism, and micro theory, later on.

i don't know, maybe it's just a pessimistic month for me right now. but as i sit in macro theory class learning about how the models predict any number of dire outcomes for humanity when consumption falls - and yet i know for certain that consumption must fall if we're to bring up billions of people to an equitable standard of living, let alone add two billion more into the mix, and i see the antiquated, uncreative tools that we use to assess economic success - i can think only one thing:

we're fucked.

awesome americans #1: kurt vonnegut

2010-12-31T14:52:00.000-08:00

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.

--Sirens of Titan (1959)

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Make love when you can. It's good for you.

--Mother Night (1961)

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

--God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

--Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

--Breakfast of Champions (1973)

A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness.People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

--An address

What we will be seeking ... for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.

--"Thoughts of a Free Thinker", commencement address, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1974)

I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives-maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifed person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an 'exhibitionist.'

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, 'Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!'

--Bluebeard (1987)

Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."

--Timequake (1997)

awesome americans

2010-12-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

i started this whole blog idea thinking about being an american, and being patriotic - what that means, and what it doesn't mean, and how it all came to be.

it was living in germany that made me realize two things: that i am, irreversibly, an american through and through; and that i was ok with that.

but this same process happened before, too. i've learned this lesson before.

growing up, it seemed that our existence - out on the corner of the country - was nothing but irrelevant. news was something that happened somewhere else - the midwest, the east. politics, government - the northeast. arts & culture all came from europe. popular culture came from southern california. sports, events, everything - came from somewhere else.

and, in many ways, we didn't even fit into the west. the coastal edge of oregon and washington are an anomaly in the west. not dry. not open. not the typical home of the western archetypes, cowboys. liberal politically and open to government and laws. no one came to experience the west. no ski resorts with hollywood types, no dude ranches. nothing to entice the wealthy easterner or southerner to visit.

feeling irrelevant, and as if everything of value came from away, and loving art, i was a europhile. i wanted only to get to europe, to real culture, civilization, and relevance.

but in high school, i was exposed to a whole new batch of americans, through books and art, ones that made me realize that we had something to offer, that we had contributed something to the world stage other than bravado, empty promises of freedom and success (forced under the guise of war), and optimism. this coincided with trips around the west to visit national parks, where i found a landscape of unsurpassed beauty and joy.

awesome americans - and the national park service - drew me into loving america and loving being american for several years.

so, i've decided to do an occasional series of my personal inspirations. my awesome americans. they don't have to be significant to anyone else, and i'm not even trying to convince other people that they are worthy of their love, too. it's just a way to celebrate and remember the people who led me to recognize some of the amazing contributions we've had.

top of the list & first up: kurt vonnegut, who wrote a body of literature that has never been surpassed for me in terms of honesty, realism, and sweetness. and who could only have been american. not very exciting, perhaps, but coming soon.

old world, new world, no world

2010-10-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

it's always so interesting to return to a place one used to live.

the feeling of belonging, yet not belonging. the feeling of both intimacy and strangeness. the same face of the same cashier who looks at you just a little bit extra, trying to figure out why you look familiar.

all these feelings were present many-fold on my recent trip back to germany, after over two years back in the states.

part of it is that i never really did feel that sense of belonging there. because i didn't really speak the language, and still didn't always get the small niceties and customs correct, i was always a little bit of a stranger in a strange land there.

i don't pretend to really know either germany or france. i don't even pretend to 'sort of' know, or 'make a stab at knowing' any place in the old world. it was while living there, after all, that i realized how completely and utterly american i am, through and through - even if i didn't want to be. but last week, while i was there, a friend idly asked me, "do you think the cultural difference between france and germany is larger or smaller than the cultural difference between the US and germany, or the US and france?"

my first instinct was to respond: oh, absolutely, france and germany are much more similar to each other than the US is to either of them. after all, one is new world, while the other two are old. the US is completely unique, sharing a common historical experience with almost no one, while the other two have been sharing a border and even swapping parcels of land for centuries. there must have been so much cross over between the two that they are like siblings, interrelated and interwoven by both history and shared present experience. we've fought along side one and against the other a couple of times, but we had a lot less at stake in these wars than either of them. we had no damage or atrocities on our soil, no civilians terrified or killed. surely even that negative shared experience would leave them with more in common with each other.

and yet, the more i thought about it, the more i'm not sure that's right. traditional - or even merely frequent - enmity is not always a bonding point.

there's definitely a difference when you cross the border between france and germany. the half-timbered fachwerkhaus gives way to stone or at least plaster over the timbers, sometimes plain, sometimes more ornate, with iron balconies and lamps. the merely occasional piles of dog crap on the sidewalk give way to frequent, almost constant piles of dog crap. favored beer and white wine give way to red wine, while bread you could use to defend yourself gives way to fluffy crumbly croissants. (my german friends are tearing their hair right now, admonishing me that there's many, many types of bread popular in germany, not just dark, heavy ones. i know, i know, but i'm generalizing to make a point. after all, they do drink beer in france, too. just not real beer, right?)

on the trip back from paris to frankfurt, aboard the high speed train line that is cooperatively shared by the french and german national rail companies, i watched an exchange between a french couple and a german guy. the french couple had seats that weren't together - one of them was next to the seat already occupied by the german, while the other was across the aisle. they spoke to him in french. he answered in german. neither spoke the others' language. i was pretty sure they were just wanting to swap seats so they could sit together, but he kept pointing to his seat reservation card. "do you speak english?" the german guy asked the couple. they shook their heads. still, he forged on in english, perhaps guessing that that was his best shot at being understood.

back over here, there's a lot we have in common with the german culture. you could say we inherited a lot of it. and yet thanks to the normans, french culture is not unfamiliar and french words are scattered through our language; in particular, a lot of common food names and terms come from france. the united states is peppered with both german and french last names. you can get a croissant in the morning and a bratwurst for lunch. people are as likely to trace their heritage to one as to the other, or even both. our lack of deep connection - a connection forged either from mutual aid and understand or from mutual distrust or enmity - leaves us free, in a sense, to love and appreciate both countries in any way we chose.

so i don't know. maybe our mixing-pot experiment of a country means maybe we're not so much the far point of a triangle as a bridge. without the baggage of history, without the centuries of grudges and memory, we don't really belong anywhere but here, but we're a little bit familiar with a lot of places.

class warfare

2010-09-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

if there's anything that makes me want to commit my life and actions more thoroughly to the eradication of social and economic classes, it's flying internationally.

it just somehow gets worse and worse. this past trip to europe i flew on united, simply because that was the airline i had frequent flier miles available to use. it's one thing to have to walk past a reasonable first class section or business class section, with wider, leather seats that recline more, personal 'entertainment on demand' units, and more leg room. ok, i look at it with longing, but that doesn't really inspire rebellion in me.

but recently, airlines are upping the anty in providing comfort to these royal classes, at the expense of the rest of us peons. on my recent flights to and from frankfurt from washington dc, united now has no fewer than four classes in which to divide us: first class, business class, economy plus, and economy. first class, instead of being two nice seats next to each other, is now one pod-like structure that completely surrounds and envelops the traveler. the molded plastic 'seat' features an iPod dock, a huge TV screen with entertainment and games on demand, connectors for your laptop, a leg rest and foot rest that - get this - combine with the seat to create a bed that lays completely flat. completely, utterly, absolutely flat, with a nice soft white pillow and blanket. a bed. on a plane. this was not a huge plane - the regular sections fit seven or eight seats across the width of the plane - but first class fit only four of these huge cocoons across the width of the plane, each seat requiring at least the equivalent of two rows by the standards of economy. business class was more like first class than economy - smaller pod-like seats that were next to each other, but still featuring the seat that lies completely flat. both of these sections, of course, also feature better food and free drinks.

it's when you (finally) get to the ever-shrinking area of the plane that's carrying the bulk of the passengers that it really gets annoying. here, the cost of those enormous bed-seats necessitates that every other row of seats be closer together. in the rock-bottom world of economy - i.e., a normal ticket - the seat back in front of me was a mere inch in front of my knees. my knees. i'm not a tall person. in fact i'd go so far as to say that i'm about as small a person as you're going to find on a plane without including minors. i'm the shortest person in 90 out of 100 gatherings of adults (for those of you who think that's a low estimate, my cousin's wife wins at any family gathering). once i had carefully stowed my carry on under the seat in front of me, it was impossible to reach it while sitting in my seat with someone next to me, because my head hit the seat back in front of me long before my arm could reach the floor. the rows are so close together that they cannot recline as much, either. i spent the next 8.5 hours twisting in my seat that barely reclined, desperately trying to find any sort of comfortable position, without even the heretofore sacred international flying perk of a free drink to pass the time with.

that's how they've suckered people into - or as we say in economics, provided incentives to encourage people to - paying more for what used to be standard: this new economy plus gig. as you check in, as you approach the gate, as you're getting ready to board a stream of cheerful advertisements featuring happy, smiling people sitting on the plane with their legs elegantly crossed encourages you to 'upgrade' to economy plus for "five inches more legroom!" it doesn't get you a flat place to sleep, free wine, or better food. all it gets you is what used to be standard - a seat you can cross your legs in and actually lean forward enough in to retrieve something out of your bag. this is what they're doing, my friends. they are going to keep cramming the seats closer and closer together until suddenly the economy section disappears and we're all paying more for what we used to get standard because - ta da! - now it's all economy plus. i'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but as i sat fully upright, legs straight in front, desperately trying to sleep on the way to germany, it wasn't hard to come up with such nefarious schemes being perpetrated on us by the airlines.

everything is temporary

2010-09-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

one of the nicest things about getting to know a place is that you can see when it changes.

sometimes change is good; sometimes, not so good. but i love both the excitement of the new and the mourning of what's lost.

i am irrationally attached to the place i grew up. not just to the overall place, but very specific places within it. streets. vistas. particular doorways or parking lots. specific trails and woods and beach cliffs.

one of my friends will occasionally post on facebook just a name - a name of a place that used to be there, that no longer exists. and everyone from there will leap in with other names, places we remember, places we wish were still there, places that frightened us as kids, places that we frequented as teenagers.

when you grow up in a place, change happens so slowly that you hardly realize what all is gone. it's the accumulated loss, from a perspective 20 years out, that is striking. how interesting it is to see what others remember, that i don't. and how the memories come flooding back, when that list starts getting created!

i don't know olympic national park well. i've only been there a handful of times. but we just got back from backpacking there, in exactly the same place we went last year. and it was astounding and awesome to be able to realize, in a very specific way, exactly what had changed over the year.

last year, kalaloch beach was covered in driftwood. and not just any driftwood. huge, monster, old temperate rainforest sitka spruce driftwood. the logs, several feet in diameter, polished to a grey smoothness, often still with giant root stubs attached, covered the first twenty or so feet of beach from the land. we scrambled up and over them, climbed all around, marveled at their length and girth. they were jumbled together like so many pick-up-sticks, crossing over each other, balancing on each other.

we marveled at the force that brought them miles downstream, out into the ocean, and back onto the beach. each looked as heavy and as permanent as any human construction. logs six, seven, ten feet wide and fifty feet long? they were clearly not going anywhere anytime soon.

except, they were. this year, the beach was almost empty of logs. all that mass, all that volume, all that weight, somehow during the course of the year, simply picked up, and swept away.

last year we camped at a bend in the river a few miles in. there, the river channel spread out and we were near some calm pools on a side channel. the main channel was across a gravel bar, out of sight and out of mind.

this year, the entire river was in the main channel. those calm pools and side channels we were fishing in last year were expanses of gravel and silt, that we happily pitched out tents on. the main river was in one simple, fast moving channel and in twelve short months it had completely changed course.

a few miles down the trail from us were a pair of backpackers who've been coming to this river for 50 years. when the road washed out, they biked in. sometimes they walked in. they'd been here in fall, when the initial ford was impassable, when they rowed in by boat. they'd been here when the only way to get here was on unmarked forest service roads, before the national park began routing people along this upper valley road. i wonder if they sometimes sit around like my friends and i, naming features and landmarks that no longer exist. i wonder if they remember when there was no himalaya berry in the meadow. when the large doug-fir still had its top. when there were more bears, and less people.

i can love this beach, or my hometown, for what it is, but it will never be again exactly what it is now. everything is temporary.

kith and kin

2010-08-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

for all the completely opposite vegetation, climate, and landscape, i feel at home in the southwest. there's one key thing that southwesterners and northwesterns have in common, a key similarity that we can recognize in each other's eyes and culture and think: yeah, so you understand where i'm coming from.

it's rain worship.

for opposite reasons, and through opposite experiences, we both end up at the same point: the point at which rainfall becomes, in many ways, the defining feature of our existence.

in the northwest, as it rains all winter long, it becomes the focal point of our conversations - how much it's rained. how many days it's rained. how long it's been since we've seen the sun. how much above, or below, average this year is. how it compares to soaker years in the past. how, we tell newcomers, this ain't nothin yet; just you wait. sometimes it will rain for months.

and down in the southwest, by the end of fall, they are having similar conversations: how much it's rained. how many days it's been since it rained. how long it's been since they've seen the rain. how much above, or below, average this year is. how it compares to drought years in the past. how, i imagine them telling newcomers, this ain't nothin yet; just you wait. sometimes it won't rain for months.

all of us, eyes fixed to the skies, staring at the clouds. all of us worshipping - in a direct, this-is-what's-shaping my-life way, the rainfall.

and existence in both the northwest and southwest is defined by storms that come, like clockwork, with the rains. in the northwest, it's the winter storms. the grey clouds settle in and cover the landscape, for days on end. then, slowly, a storm will build; with little change in the color or tenor of the overhanging roof of clouds, winds gradually whip up and rain increases until, for hours or days, all natural hell breaks loose. bridges are closed. trees topple. waves crash across lanes of traffic. rivers cease to stay in thier courses and innundate the banks around them, spilling across roads. falling trees cut off power for hours, sometimes days. and all around, coastal and valley residents are comforted by the knowledge that they are, in the grand scheme of things, only bit players; that nature always has the final word on whether thier pitiful endeavors - roads, bridges, houses, power lines - will stand or fall. wrapped in our insignificance in the face of all that's powerful, we can finally relax, and inhale and exhale with the gusts and breaths of the storm. it is a meditation. and we are nothing more or less than rain-worshippers, praying.

in the southwest, it's the summer storms. the dark clouds gather on the horizon almost daily. one can watch them marching ever closer, ever darker. then like a wall, the water hits. torrents run from the skies. freeway traffic slows to 40, to 30, as drivers search for a faster windshield wiper setting. isn't there a three? i can't see a thing! water gushes into roadways, which drop from four lanes to two as rivers form along the sides. rain flows across parking lots and skips over curbs, creating tiny canyons in xeric rock landscaping as it courses along. instead of the drama of the wind, here it's the drama of lightning. streaks split the sky over and over. lightning touches down and, the channel now open, will pulse two or three times over as built-up energy finds an open outlet. thunder booms all around. life comes to almost a standstill as everyone realizes that, in the grand scheme of things, we're only bit players; nature will flood your roads and burn your forests without a second glance. the storm breaths slightly; slowing down, the worshippers exhale a bit, relax a bit, only to realize that the pause was simply an intake of air. wham, another blast descends. until, finally, like exiting a room, the rain slows to a trickle and the foreboding dark sky gives way to the trademark southwest washed-clean blue with little, innocent, white fluffy clouds. everyone is breathing in time. it is a stop-what-you're doing, meditative moment in the hot day. and every person watching the sky is nothing more than a rain-worshipper, praying.

and the runner-up is...

2010-07-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

new mexico just might be the second most perfect state (after oregon, of course).

for starters, it's got solid cowboy sensibility, along with real ranchlands. but instead of libertarian cowboys with a veneer of homophobia & racism (wyoming), libertarian cowboys with a dash of white supremacy (idaho), libertarian separatist, cultish cowboys (montana), urban-style cowboys (colorado), the closest we have to a church-state (utah), or libertarian arizona (more on that later), it's cowboys with a multi-cultural, democratic flair. how refreshing! new mexico is one of only four states with a minority majority - which is to say, no majority at all. it's got diversity, without the mega-populations of california and texas; of the four most mixed states, it's the least populated. it's both bigger in size and less populated than oregon. native americans, hispanics, whites, and african americans are all mixed in a historical soup context of ancient puebloan culture, spanish conquistadors, western expansion, the civil war, and finally statehood.

there's volcanic landscapes and ancient puebloan ruins, including the graddaddy of them all, chaco canyon, one of the most extraordinary places in the united states. there you can step through carefully aligned 800-year-old doorways built by the original inhabitants of the land. there's art-focused santa fe and northern new mexico, where house styles run towards understated instead of ostentatious, and good food abounds. there's public lands, there's grasslands and mountains and rivers, ponderosa pines and desert in the south, and in new mexico one can be as close as you can get to big bend without actually being in texas. there's vibrant tribes and pueblos. there's a hispanic, democratic governor, featured in photographs with his custom made, new mexico-themed cowboy boots up on the desk (http://www.artslant.com/ny/works/show/305119). there's conservative, anti-wolf ranchers (one billboard proclaimed, "lock up your children!") and liberal, obama-stickered cars. and it's all blended, mixed together, in a way that very few states are able to achieve.

and arizona? oh, arizona, what are you doing? it was to my dismay that my long-planned trip took me - with no possible way to avoid it - to arizona, right at this time. following the passage of senate bill 1070, even entities i don't usually find myself politically aligned with - like, the city of los angeles - were calling for a boycott of the state. arizona, where you can now get pulled over and detained for not having adequate proof of american citizenship. arizona, where a drivers license from another state and no accent whatsoever is NOT proof enough of citizenship. where the motto is, guilty until proven innocent. it's a new way of thinking in america! wonder why it hasn't caught on sooner?

governor jan brewer followed up that move with a much lesser-known action: banning ethnic studies classes that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treating pupils as individuals" (http://www.thenation.com/blog/arizona-bans-ethnic-studies—update). in reflecting back on my time in an ethnic studies program - designed primarily for pupils of a particular group, since it was at a tribal school, on a reservation - i find it interesting that those classes were the ones that taught me the most balanced view of native and white cultures.

at first i tried to only spend money on indian reservations (which are sovereign nations, after all, not subjects of the state of arizona) and national parks. it's hard to do that though; i'm certain i scattered some dollars around the rest of the state. i don't know if i found it reassuring or disheartening to come across this passage in "The American West", by michael malone & richard etulain:

"An effort to join the neighboring southwestern territories into one state failed in 1905, mainly due to the refusal of Anglo-dominated Arizona to be joined with Hispanic New Mexico."

ironically enough, there's a new license plate you can choose that says, instead of "the grand canyon state" on the bottom, "live the golden rule". i'm not sure if that means the people driving are ok with children being separated from their parents, or if maybe there's something else they are referring to.

then one comes across this billboard of governor jan brewer:

way to go, governor. you've co-opted one of the most beloved iconic images in recent american history. an image that, at the time it was produced, stood for two things: solidarity among people for the greater good and an increase in opportunities for an oppressed group. you've used that - solidarity and equality - into a promotion for your nativist, anti-equality policies. i suppose it is very western to take the law into your own hands.

you're surely thinking, there must be something good about arizona. it's true, there are some fabulous landscapes. there is organ pipe cactus national monument, still a magically wild and lonely and beautiful place. there's the grand canyon, which can only be felt, cannot be described. there's also many vibrant tribal groups and cultures. of course, these are all the background of arizona; they don't reflect the tenor of culture and society there now. so what did i like in my recent visit, related to human works, not geographical?

well, i have to say i love the new font they are using on road signs. seriously. it shows life, and movement. look at that! especially, look at the snazzy, jaunty little tails of the a and l. have you ever seen a sans-serif font dance like that?!

so arizona, pluses for the landscape and the font choice. but negative, like, one thousand times over for the governor and the anti-immigrant policies.

a note from the road

2010-07-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

july 17, 2010

the day started out perfectly, on a cool morning in chiricauhua national monument, in southeastern arizona. i'd been camped there for two days, loving the respite from the heat and sun. after a week in the southern arizona desert parks & the urban heat island that is modern phoenix, chiricauhua was a sub-90 degree oasis, complete with trees for shade. i had already decided, when leaving, that instead of retracing my steps west and north to willcox and the interstate in order to head east, i'd follow the double grey line on my map that wound just south of the monument, right through the mountains. double grey indicated "local road - typically improved, gravel surface" which seemed doable in the jetta. i tried to solicit more information out of the woman at the visitor's center, who wasn't a park employee. "well, let me see", she said, perusing a list somewhere in front of her. "says it's 26 miles to portal. i think it's a fine road, just a bit slow." "so, maybe an hour?" i venture. "oh, i don't think it'd take that long," she replied cheerfully. "but it doesn't require 4-wheel drive, right?" i ask. "no, definitely not", was her answer.

it turned out to be definitely more than an hour's drive, but definitely worth every minute of it, on a solid second gear road, that as often dipped down into first as rose briefly into third. it wound and switchbacked right over the mountains and exited with a view that was even more spectacular than the origin point, as it dropped down into portal. truth be told, that's just about my favorite kind of road; roads that curve back and forth, through a forest, with views of the surrounding mountains and plains below. i was supremely happy, music loud, windows down, rolling through the ponderosa pine and juniper, which had that wonderful resinous heat smell that these high forests get in the summer.

my destination for the day: gila cliff dwellings national monument, north of silver city, new mexico. first came a long, typically western drive across the high grasslands, the two-lane road stretching arrow-straight in front of me, rising and falling over the ground. just me and, yet again, the border patrol. i hadn't seen them in a few days, but their green-sided SUVs were again more common than passenger cars, and their green-uniformed officers were again out cruising on ATVs in pairs.

new mexico state highway 15, which runs north of silver city into the gila national forest, was another joyous drive. just two lanes - but paved - it also ran up and down and around corners, through the trees. this one, however, was far from deserted. campgrounds lined the road and it was clearly a recreation oasis up here in the cool, forested mountains. it crosses the continental divide, at over 7000 feet. the park service signs at the beginning of it estimate the travel time to the monument as two hours to cover a mere 44 miles. as usual, though, they are overestimating things, as it didn't take that long. or maybe it's just that it's my favorite kind of road. i was briefly stuck behind a truck with a camper canopy on it from new york state. signs on the back read, "retired", "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns", and "no riders, except for blonds, brunettes, and redheads". when they pulled to the side to let me around, i got a glimpse of a tanned man with white hair, smoking a cigar. this seemed to fit the collection of declarations perfectly. i waved my thanks and continued on.

first stop at gila cliff dwellings - the visitors center, where i and four ladies from tennessee watched the educational film together. they were dismayed to learn that you can't see the cliff dwellings from the road. "mother can't walk," they told the empathetic rangers at the center in their sweet southern drawl. clearly now the woman who was mother spoke. "you've got to go up there, we've come all this way!" she exhorted her fellow travelers. but that was the last i saw of them. i didn't see them on the trail up to the dwellings, or at the parking lot at the bottom. probably the heat, trail, and the impending thunderstorm dissuaded them.

it's too bad, because i think they would have really liked the dwellings. there was a volunteer interpreter at the bottom of the trail, to get you started, and another one at the cliff dwellings themselves, to orient you while you're up there. both were older men, probably retirees. "can i answer any questions?" was how the man at the top began, somewhat startling me. "um..." i really want to ask something, but i didn't have my mind on questions right now. he was experienced, though, and jumped right in there, explaining some of the stone work i was gazing at. "see the t-shaped doorway?" he asked while pointing in front. "that's a chacoan-style doorway, the only one here in the park. it may be that the people who built these cliff dwellings were advance scouts, or volunteer settlers, from chaco. i like to think of them as the avant-guard architects for this area. like, what's that place that lloyd wright built in arizona? talesin west, that's right."

he's a cheerful man, clearly liking his job, clearly enjoying talking to tourists. the place isn't deserted but neither is it busy; there's a steady trickle of visitors. the group before me is working on a group photo, kids whining that they want to go back, father needling them to sit still on a particularly photogenic bench. other that that, there's no one in the ruin at this time. it's nice, quiet and shady, with the rumble of encroaching lighting and dark clouds contrasting against the green trees. the volunteer offers to take my picture, and then asks where i'm from. this initiates a conversation about oregon, of course. he volunteered at malheur for a while, and at yaquina head in the wintertime once. "it rained 10 inches in january and february that year," he said in disbelief. i believe him, though. "and they'd close it when it got too windy, and it was often closed."

he continues chatting, pointing out petroglyphs, making sure i see all the good stuff. then he asks if i go to osu, since i live in corvallis, and what i'm studying. "forest economics", i say. "good!" he seems pleased. "you're going to keep them from cutting down all the trees, right?" "i'm an oregonian!" i say. "we love our trees." "well, but there's some out there who'd cut them all down, right?" at this point in time i'm halfway down a ladder descent. i stop, and contemplate the difference between management styles, the various forest protections acts, the difference between old growth and plantations...but i'm ready to get out of there, and don't want to get into it. "i suppose so" i say, "thanks for all your help." and continue on.

back at the bottom, i stopped to take off my backpack and look around the parking lot. there's cars from michigan, oregon, california, the truck from new york, and new mexico. there's a car with an obama and a "hay is for horses, straw is for houses" sticker on the back, and a minivan with the entire back window covered in a eagle & flag motif, with plates indicating a veteran. and this is what i love about national parks. they are absolutely, without reservation, for everyone - regardless of politics, regardless of origin. i understand fully that park visitation is underrepresented by african-americans and poor people. part of this is that, with the exception of the urban historical parks in the east, most of them you've got to drive to. and there is an entrance fee. still, i revel in these moments. everyone on the trail is cheerful, and friendly, and relaxed (with the exception of a petulant child or two, but that's to be expected). we're all in this together at these moments. we're all here to learn something, to be amazed at this connection to our country's history and beauty - to people that lived here and built something incredible 800 years ago, to the remnants of populations that stretch back 10,000 years. we've all trekked up this long, winding road, dragged our out-of-shape asses up the trail, in order to revel in the views and vistas that present themselves before us. and we'll all continue on our paths to wherever.

it's still early, too early for stopping. there's too many great shady roads with lovely corners and bends, calling to me still in the warm afternoon sun. i was planning on staying at the forest service campground that is right near the monument, but that won't do now. now i'm in full road-warrior mode. how far north can i get, towards the next destination, el malpais national monument? a quick perusal of the map and i pick out what looks like a promising spot. whitewater, it's called, and it's just outside of a very small town called glenwood. as i get closer, with excitement i realize that it's the same spot i picked up a brochure for at gila cliff dwellings - for a trail called 'the catwalk' that had enticing pictures of bridges and suspended metal pathways in a narrow canyon. yes! this is perfect. i can stay the night there, hike the catwalk first thing in the morning, and continue on. and it's going to be perfect timing, too. tiredness is setting in and the road warrior vibe is ebbing.

there's the sign for whitewater, 5 miles off the road. i follow the narrow road down, slamming on the brakes at each mad dash by a little cottontail rabbit. the sun's going down, and the final approach is through a small creek. that's when i realize that the lack of campground symbol on the sign at the main road was not a fluke, not an oversight, not a lack-of-an update from a recently revamped camping spot. and i suddenly realized that subtle but oh-so-important difference between the solid-outline tent symbol on map and the hollow-outline tent symbol on the map. campground, vs. picnic area.

damn. i'm tired, hungry, and i know from earlier perusals of the map that the next campground shown is at least 20-30 miles further up in the mountains. not only will the sun set soon, but i won't be able to walk the intriguing catwalk. no way am i going to want to come back 20 miles the next day. there's no choice, though - i turn around and head back to the main road. and am almost immediately surprised by a forest service campground, just north of the town! eureka! it's not lovely - hard by the highway, few trees, no view, no water. but it's free, and looks deserted, except for a van nearby that looks broken down. the hood is up and the passenger window is covered with plastic instead of glass. there's no people to be seen though, so i relax, cook some dinner, and enjoy the solitude.

suddenly there's the sound of a sliding door closing from the direction of the van - whoosh-whomp. unbidden, the image of javiar bardem from no country for old men springs to my mind. shit. i quickly slam a car door, to let them know i'm here. as if, like a bear, making noise will deter them from injuring you. then it's just time to wait until they - he? - can be seen; but it's not what i expected at all. it's a man and what appears to be his daughter, setting out from the van, walking - maybe to town? i hear her small voice, at first indistinguishable, then becoming clearer. "...don't know why there has to be all the bugs." "well, says her father, a voice of reason, "you have to remember that god made all the little bugs, to do something important." it's an odd snippet of conversation to overhear. do they often ponder the presence of god and why certain creations were made? could it be that they, like any wild animal, are more afraid of me than i of them? remember they hadn't seen my 5-foot person yet. maybe the dad was imagining the face of javiar bardem, too. maybe their words were talismans, just like my car door slam, to ward off potential harm.

who knows. they continued on without a look in my direction. and i went to sleep, finally, looking forward to walking the catwalk tomorrow morning.

road trip 2010

2010-07-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

well, my peops, tomorrow i take off for a three-week jaunt through arizona and new mexico.

i could wax poetic and say i'm off to find myself, or to find the west, but neither of those is entirely true.

neither of those things can be found in three weeks, for starters. surely not myself. i've never been a big epiphany person, with startling, life-changing discoveries and realizations. i find that finding myself - whatever that means - tends to happen in small little moments of clarity, that are usually immediately followed up by weeks of befuddlement.

two steps forward, one step back.

and surely not the west, either. it encompasses far too much to be 'found' in three weeks. i've lived here for years, and been thinking about it for years, and still haven't come much closer to knowing it. sometimes thoughts crystallize together or form a chain...only to be driven away by competing ideas, new revolutionary thoughts, or just exhaustion.

two steps forward, one step back.

i've been saying all week, when asked about leaving on thursday, "yep, that's the plan." i keep saying that's the plan instead of yes. partly because i can't really believe i'm going to roll out of here tomorrow. i'm not really prepared and it just seems like something will come up to keep me from going. some child illness, some work crisis, something. i've been on several of these sort of road-warrior trips over the years, so it's not an unfamiliarity preventing me from leaping into commitment. 1991 i spent two weeks driving around with a friend, from oregon to california, nevada, utah, wyoming, montana, canada, and washington. again in 1991 with a friend for 2 weeks: oregon, california, arizona, new mexico. in 1992, alone: all through california for 2 weeks to many national parks. in 1993, again solo: from montana to texas and back. in 1994, again solo: from montana to southern california and back, via utah. in 1994, solo, from oregon to colorado and wyoming. in 1996 from oregon across nevada and back. in 1997 with a friend: from oregon through nevada to new mexico and onto texas and back via montana (no kidding). and then three months and 10,000 miles in 1998, with many friends and a son, from oregon to maine via the southwest and south. with lots of side trips. there's more, but you get the picture.

is there anything more american than the road trip? our country is just designed for it! we've got highways - miles and miles of them. we've got cars - millions and millions of them. we've got cheap gas, wide open spaces, and natural wonders around every corner. the road trip has been the basis for more movies of family hilarity and self-discovery than can be counted. roadways are established to celebrate the scenery, mark important history, encourage tourists to visit ridiculous wide-spot-in-the-road towns with little to recommend them.

god, i'm feeling like an american! i love traveling. i love it. i love it, love it, love it! i love driving alone with the music as loud as i want. i love deciding each day where to go, what to see, where to hike. i love waking up someplace new. i love seeing the desert in summer. i love seeing national parks and monuments. i love stopping in new small towns and wandering around. i love imagining living in all these out of the way places. i am going to be doing a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, a lot of wandering around. i'm going to be living healthy, getting lots of sleep, fresh air, taking my vitamins and flossing my teeth every damn day. hell, maybe even after every meal! what's not to love about the chance to reinvent one's self? for the next three weeks, i'm going to be healthy, relaxed, happy, and have good teeth!

the car is pretty much packed. clothes, gear, food, stove, a box of books, and a box of absolutely essential cds. camera. flashlight.

i won't find the west or myself in just three weeks, but i don't expect to. i just hope to make some progress and remember what that sense of discovery feels like.

maybe take four steps forward, and only only back.

what is the american west?

2010-06-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

i ask this question in all seriousness. what is the american west? what does it mean to you? what images arise in your mind when you think of the west? because if i think that the west matters - and i do - i've got to figure out what it is.

at first, it was the area of the louisiana purchase, and everything even further west - which was all occupied by other countries anyway. it's hard to imagine arkansas, parts of minnesota, and new orleans being in the west, but those areas were all acquired in the purchase. so perhaps part of the problem in defining the west has been that it is, in some sense, a relative measure - in part, it is simply the western portion of the united states, however the united states happens to be defined at that moment. this purely geographic definition is - or was - a shifting target. now, the U.S. census bureau defines the west as the 13 state region encompassing alaska and hawaii, oregon, washington, california, idaho, montana, nevada, arizona and new mexico, utah, wyoming, and colorado.

ecologically, there is a basis for considering it as all the land west of the 98th or 100th meridian. this meridian, which runs through the middle of the united states - generally marking the eastern boundary of the dakotas, and running near the eastern edge of nebraska, kansas, oklahoma, and the middle of texas - basically separates the arid from the non-arid; as the approximate line of 20 annual inches of rainfall, it marks a line of irrigation. it is where the dry summers of the west give way to the humid, wet summers of the midwest and east, where summer moisture can be enough to grow crops. it's true that you could define much of the west as this very characteristic - aridity. as wallace stegner said, 'you have to get over the color green'. it is the land of irrigation, of reclamation, of reservoirs and dry heat. even if the aridity definition excludes the verdant pacific northwest (and alaska and hawaii), the pacific northwest can tag along under the umbrella of limited summer moisture and low summer humidity. and, certainly the struggle for water has shaped much of our recent regional history. by including western oklahoma and texas in the definition, we bring into the fold two states with significant minority populations or histories.

certainly part of the definition of the west is cultural. the west include states with large portions of minorities and the four states with no one majority race or ethnicity (texas, new mexico, california, and hawaii), and this diversity has shaped our common experience.

frederick turner, in 1893, considered the west equivalent to that area that was 'frontier' or very sparsely settled (under 2 persons per square mile), and he bemoaned the end of it. his pessimistic view didn't hold true, though - although the overall population of the west has grown consistently over the last hundred-plus years, it hasn't been equally dispersed. there are still many places that are 'frontier' in terms of settlement. and the west encompasses major metro areas like los angeles and phoenix and seattle. so it's not just about rural, scattered population, although that is part of it, as is our shared, frontier heritage. in fact many of the connotations of the West are those relating to the Old West, to the glory days of outlaws, cowboys, immigrants, and wilderness. we also all share an exploitative past. western economies have long been focused on utilization of raw natural resources - whether soil, trees, or rangelands - for eastern capital concerns. all western states share a correspondingly heavy proportion of land federally owned. but are these shared experiences and characteristics enough to give a cultural definition to the west as a region separate from the rest of the u.s.?

these aren't all rhetorical questions. i really feel like the west is different, is unique, but why? it's the most diverse region of the united states. shouldn't that work against a common identity? we have the lowest rainfall and the highest rainfall, the lowest point and the highest point. the most diverse climates and ecosystems, from all of our deserts to our temperate rainforests. diverse populations. very different current cultures - from the liberal left coast to the libertarian intermountain west to the increasingly nativist arizona. so why do i identify so clearly as a westerner, and why do i feel a kinship with others who are from the west, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of background, regardless of occupation?

when i think of the west, i think of several key characteristics: immense, superlative vegetation (redwoods, sequoias, saguaros, douglas-fir). magical and unique land forms (canyons and hoodoos and monument valley). native cultures both living and ancient. iconic places like the grand canyon. small, resource dependent towns and economies; loggers, miners, cowboys. mountains, volcanoes, and geology for the layman to see and understand. the hopeful destinations of millions of immigrants, both foreign and domestic, and the repository of the constant american searching for a better life, just around the corner. wide open spaces, wilderness, parks and natural places - all of which is a function of that public, government-owned land. thank god for our public lands! trust me, i have seen hell (the private-ownership mecca of maine, for example) and it's not a pretty sight.

maybe i haven't figured out exactly what the west is, but i do have my own designation of what states comprise the west. it's oregon, washington, idaho, montana, wyoming, nevada, california, arizona, new mexico, and just western texas. alaska and hawaii are too different in every way to be part of the shared west - although i'm glad they are part of the u.s. i gladly grab western texas, even though - as a state - texas is a big pain in the ass, and i'd never take eastern texas, with their SUV driving oil-drilling mavens and executives and revisionist textbooks. but western texas is as independent and idiosyncratic as the best of the rest of the west. plus, we've got to have big bend, one of the most beautiful places in the united states.

and colorado? why exclude colorado? don't even get me started on colorado. they have eastern butter, for pete's sake. you think i'm joking? i'm not. i have absolutely no basis for excluding them so summarily, but i do. because i'm a goddamn westerner, and have little use for top-down rules and designations.

i am serious, though. i'm curious what anyone reading this thinks the west is. write it in a comment, or if it's too long, send me an email.

map of federal land ownership from an article by David Kennedy. for his (much better) overview of the west, see http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2008/mayjun/features/west.html

looking up

2010-04-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

as in, i was looking up today, in the hopes that things would follow suit.

sometimes i have a hard time remembering the beauty around me, and i find that a camera literally helps me focus my thoughts.

such was the day today. and who can resist the look of fresh maple keys?

of newly-grown dawn redwood needles?

of wild ginger, peeking out?

of the tropical look of about-to-burst azaleas?

and of cherry blossoms against a springtime oregon blue sky?

if that's not enough to keep me looking up, i don't know what is.

an interlude

2010-04-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

i often find myself on the east side of campus, with some awkward amount of time to kill between events over there - say, somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours - that is just not enough time to warrant going all the way back to my office on the west side. yesterday was one such day, so i gravitated to where i always gravitate to - the bookstore.

i love bookstores. when i walk in, a calm and yet excited - or maybe hopeful is a better word - feeling settles over me. calm because i am surrounded by my primary comfort source: books. i know, somewhere, hidden on the shelves, are the books that are most like old friends, that the very title of makes me smile. hopeful because i am reminded, again, that the possibilities for new learning and growth are endless, that there is always so much more knowledge and beautiful prose out there that i haven't read yet, that there's some other new best friend out there, waiting for me. at the OSU bookstore, first comes the entry way displays: staff recommendations, top sellers for indie bookstores, and the bargain table. this always warrants a quick overview. then i head to my favorite aisles in general books. is there a new, absolutely perfect tree or flower identification book out? new hiking guides, travel guides, maps that are calling my name? on to forestry/ecology, then gardening & quilting, then religion, a quick glance at some puzzle or music books, quite a while in history, then literature for the finale. sometimes i'll wander through the kids' section. and, even when not textbook shopping, i always head to the text book section. i always browse the forestry aisle (yep, the book i want is here - silviculture and ecology of western forests - but not a used copy yet; will check back later), but apart from that, i mostly check out what the undergraduate literature courses are reading this year. i check to see that i have a sufficient percentage of them, i look for new and interesting titles, and if there's a classic i need cheap, i'll grab a used copy. this year i'm pleased to see lots of familiar faces - slaughterhouse-five is still on the list, for example - and some impressive new choices - fight club, for example. (nicely done, prof!)

yesterday, though, as i'm going through my normal routine and circuit around the bookstore, it suddenly hits me: what am i doing? not at this moment, in the bookstore, but in a general way: what the fuck am i doing with my life?

what i am interested in, what makes me happy, what i enjoy and get fulfillment out of is perfectly represented by my wander through the bookstore: different places. trees & flowers. quilting. spirituality in its many forms/ideas. music. history. and most importantly, books. books, books, books. writing and reading. prose and poetry. fiction and non-fiction - all of it.

why does this matter? and why am i writing about it? because i am currently a phd student in applied economics. what is applied economics? well, here's what it says on our web page:

The curricula provide, at both master's and doctoral levels, a foundation of rigorous courses in economic theory, and econometrics and other quantitative methods. Areas of concentration are available in international trade, public health economics, resource and environmental economics, and (for the MA/MS only) transportation economics. Students employ economic theories, principles, and methods to examine real-world problems with significant attention to data and institutions.

let's see - do you see books in there? trees? quilts? beauty and the search for meaning? no, me neither.

yet that's what i'm doing. and that's why i haven't blogged lately. why the quilt books i check out of the library languish on the end table until, a couple of testy overdue email notices later, i reluctantly return them. why the trails i want to hike again have remained unsullied by my boots. why i haven't been to my inspiration point since february. because i am studying, continually, a subject that is as foreign to me as chinese and that provides me with no passion, no inspiration - in fact it sucks out my soul.

yesterday morning, before this, i sat in my microeconomic theory class and worked on the problem on the right. that was it. that's what we do.

in just 10 short weeks i have two exams to take: on june 18th from 9am to 1pm four of us will solve 6 of these microeconomic theory problems. if we pass, we continue on to study - hopefully - something genuinely interesting. if we fail, we can try one more time before leaving the program. on june 16th, from 9am to 1pm, is another exam that will be even worse, if possible - over quantitative methods.

i'm not trying to complain too much about being a student and having to take qualifying exams. everyone has to do it. i choose to come back to school, after all - no one twisted my arm. obviously i do find some aspects of economics interesting. i'm just realizing that i will have very little time and inspiration to write between now and june 18th, may have very little soul left after that, and i expect it will take me a while to recover.

and, that i'm still trying to figure out what i'm doing with my life. and these mini-identity crises always take up so much damn time.

"Can one know one's self? Is one ever somebody? I don't know anything about it any more. It now seems to me that one changes from day to day and that every few years one becomes a new being."
--George Sand

pilgrimage

2010-02-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

sunday morning i got up in the dark. i threw some food, the binoculars, and a plant book in my backpack, a change of shoes in the car. i kissed the boys good bye in the pre-dawn and headed west. as i drove and sang loudly and watched the forest wake up in the sunshine, shedding its fog coat in glistening drops, i realized there were two things i was doing. one was simply, going home. but the other was, pilgrimage.

how did this come about? let me back up. a couple of weeks ago, two newcomers to the state asked me what my favorite place in the coast range was, and why. (actually, that's not completely true. only one asked me. the other just mentioned the coast range in an offhand way, which i took as sufficient invitation to expound on the best places. so really there was only one direct solicitation.) the 'where' answer came easy - cascade head. the 'why' answer - well, i had to think about that. and i realized there were two reasons why - one, because it's just a beautiful place; what i think of as the absolute reason. the other is more personal - a relative reason.

i arrive at the lower parking lot to the sight of the salmon river estuary emerging from the early-morning winter mist. ah, the salmon river. it might seem strange to love such a beleaguered, unspectacular river. but that river is the connecting tie, the binding cord running from the house of my childhood about 2 miles upstream - past the hatchery, where i spent bored hours watching the fry, where the rough, red-headed salmon returned to in all their fearsome, dying glory; running through fields and grazing horses; past my home 'town' - to this joining of river and ocean, at the base of the steep, grass-covered headland. no, it's no rogue river, or umpqua. there's no miles and miles of wilderness, or rapids, or much wild fish runs anymore. it simply starts in the coast range and powers through the forest downhill to the ocean, passing only trailer parks, lawns, blackberry vines, and abandoned buildings. but it feels somehow both accessible and familiar; knowable and lovable. this morning, there are birds calling through the mist, and the promise of sun coming in the diffuse light. and, best of all, not a soul in sight. eager to get into the woods, i turn away from the river, and head up the trail.

cascade head - long a place i associate with happy memories of my youth. was it totally familiar, this trail? did i recognize every step? no. in fact, i rarely use - or used - the lower trail. we almost always came from the forest service road on the top. partly that's because we weren't a real big hiking family, despite spending a fair bit of time in the woods. we definitely tended toward the 'hick' variety of backwoods oregonians, as opposed to the 'hippie' variety. the other is that back in the day, that road wasn't closed half the year. at least, not that i remember. it's possible that it was. we definitely had a local's view of cascade head and, in that utterly inexcusable yet endearing local way, probably never really realized there may exist rules to follow, or that they might also apply to us, and not just to people from portland. in fairness, my mother certainly would have followed rules, once made aware of them, but i'm not sure even she would think to seek them out. and my father - well, let's just point out that for fun, as a youth in butte, montana, he and his friends stole dynamite from mines and blew it up. clearly 'following rules' was for wimps.

in truth, i haven't been up here for years. a ridiculous number of years. and i've certainly had the chance. i've played tour guide for several groups in and around the area. and i always expound on how beautiful, how unique, how much i love cascade head - but i haven't come up here. it occurs to me now, walking through the quiet, that maybe, deep in some corner of my heart, i wanted a pilgrimage to this place and recognized that, for me, pilgrimages are best spent in solitude, not among a large chattering group. for once i don't want to share the memories i have of this place with anyone else, while i'm reliving them.

even though the trail itself isn't familiar, the forest itself is. it is beyond familiar; it is like a natural extension of my existence. the trees, the feel of the ground, the bird songs, the smell, the colors of green, grey, brilliant blue, and red; all so familiar it is almost difficult to think of them in parts, in pieces. it is like trying to imagine one single cell of your skin. it is hard to take apart; it just happens to be this thing you're wrapped in, not in any way separable from yourself or your existence. this is what being in the coast range forest feels like, to me. i expect this comfort, welcome it. i was craving it. part of me wants nothing more than to lie down in the moss, the way i used to as a kid, in the little chunk of siuslaw national forest that was right behind our house - that really was my backyard. but i'm also anxious to see the grasslands this time, and so i continue on.

the interest in the grasslands is new and different - and yet still connected to memory. last week i had to track down the grassland plant communities on cascade head. these aren't detailed in the forest service guides to plant communities in the coast range. so i dug out my plants book and started flipping through.

now, my amateur botanist enthusiast career started in grade school, when a terrific teacher taught me how to press, identify, and mount plants. of course i started with the obvious, pretty, showy bunch - the wildflowers. since then, my affection has been focused on trees. but an odd thing happened the other week as i looked through the book. there were some it seemed i could remember, quite clearly. then, i found a phd dissertation written in 1984 for OSU's botany department classifying plant communities in coastal grasslands in oregon. eureka! his classification species jived exactly with what i picked out from the plant book. although i hadn't realized it, i was paying attention in this place i loved so much, all those years ago. in fact looking at the illustrations brought back a flood of memories - the feel of the downy panicles against my palms in spring, the soft feel of the fresh spruce growth, the sunshine so readily felt in the open area, the sound of the waves rising from a thousand feet below. again, some secret little corner of my heart was paying attention, was speaking to me. that's when i knew i had to get back out there.

of course, on this sunday in february, bright sun notwithstanding, it's winter. there's no panicles for my palms, no spruce buds to rub against my cheeks. but it is just as beautiful as i remembered. the grassland is just as open, the view is just as spectacular, the cliff just as frightening. the way the estuary spreads out below you and you can truly appreciate how essential that ecosystem is - when all else you see is cliffs, hills, and trees, you can see how vital that shallow water, that sheltered area is. now that i've learned how rare these coastal grasslands are - and how cascade head was declared one of the best examples of them in the 80s, and was added to the UNESCO world biosphere reserve list - now that i've learned that it was so special to the tribes it was a vision quest site - it's even more beautiful. it is, in every way, an absolutely special place.

as to why i love it so much - that relative reason - well, it's one of the few places from growing up that i only have positive memories of. the thing about having a parent that sort of cut a drunken swath through a small town - and then died young - and being a person with the affliction of memory - means that most places in this, in my home area, in my comfort zone, are a mix of good and bad. in a very specific way. home - lots of both. north bank road - good and bad. otis, rose lodge, lincoln city, all the bars and places in there and in between, the beach, portland, grand ronde, seattle, airports, grocery stores, john day, eastern oregon...in all those places each good memory is tempered by a sad one.

except - and this is so key - except cascade head. how did it escape such association? was it because we always went in the daytime morning, before the scotch got flowing? i even flirted with the thought that my memory might be faulty, and i should verify this with my mom - but good lord, why would i ever seek out such a truth, if it existed? why would i ever willingly pawn off this place of good memories for just yet another, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum boring standard ordinary place of good/bad memories?

there was a brief year or month or maybe just a day, when i was about 10, when my dad got a new camera and really loved to try it out. it was at the height of my wildflower pressing days. he actually made me a flower press - lord knows how he figured out how to do it, but he did. i can still remember the exact feel of the plywood cover, of the elastic straps and screws that bound together the layers of newspaper and blotter paper. in that rare moment, that confluence, of our interests, we got up before dawn one day - at least one day - and drove the old highway from otis to neskowin, through the national forest. stopping for pictures, stopping to collect wildflowers. he taught me how to use his camera, and i took this picture of a snag, and of foxglove. we ended up at the new highway, crossed it, and continued on the forest service road across the top of cascade head. i remember the sun, and the feel of the panicles on my palms. and i remember a good day, a spectacularly good day, just me and my dad, in a good place, in a spectacularly good place.

this sunday, up there, on the top, i feel like a kid again. my soul feels unweighted, my heart light. i relish the breeze, the solitude, the sounds of the waves and the birds. as i descend back down the trail, i stop briefly and tug out some hairs, and let them glide through the air. long ago, when i lived on the reservation, i was taught about traditional uses of wild plants by a tribal elder. she taught us that every time we munched on wild onions, dug up camas bulbs, or chewed up rattlesnake-plantain leaves for a poultice, we should leave something behind in thanks. a bit of tobacco usually was the choice. i don't have tobacco with me these days. but a bit of hair will do, too. something to acknowledge your taking, something to leave behind. i may not have taken any plants today - i know, now, not to gather wildflowers in protected areas. i'm a little better at following the rules. but i sure took something from that place. i took a little bandage for my heart. i plugged up a tiny hole with sunshine, bird song, and good memories. i paid homage to the ocean, to the trees, even to the grass for the first time, and to the river that connected it all. like any pilgrim i went seeking something, and found it.

the best team in the world (that's no exaggeration...)

2010-01-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

ah, winter (and fall, and spring). as the rains settle in and the geese move overhead, a young girl's thoughts turn lightly to...basketball.

basketball! the sport of champions! and a sport that we oregonians have a unique relationship with. why is that? is it because it's a winter sport, easily played indoors, just when we PNWers need something to do inside? well, maybe that is a portion of what motivates our love.

or, is it more accurate to say that it's the sport that we as oregonians have a unique fan-atic relationship with our one and only fabulous team over?

what is it that makes the blazers fans and our love of our team unique? one is the way we express it. i've heard about 'sports towns', with lots of fans and major league teams and the sort of love that expresses itself by upturning cars and setting them on fire after the team wins. we don't really have that here. i've been puzzled before by new jersey or new york folks at sporting events, yelling "get a real player in there!" i was shocked, shocked to the core. that's not how we roll in the PNW. we're like parents, cheering on a kid. we have one team, just one, just one hoped-for and prayed-for baby upon which to shower all our wishes and expectations. just one vessel to pour into all our collective dreamed of sports hero-dom. that's certainly part of it; the fact that we have only one major league team. but that's not all of it.

it's hard to explain, the way we feel about our team. another way of saying it is that we're no detroit, putting up with criminals just to win games. true, winning seasons are nice, but overall, we just want nice people. we want the kind of guys you could bring home to your mother. it's no coincidence that clyde drexler, one of the most universally nice guys ever, is one of our most-loved players ever. the truth is, that oregonians actually just like having a nice, pleasant life. we live in eden - it's kind of hard to put on a hardened, cynical, heckling front when your heart is full of singing birds and flowers and when everyone you see is smiling and pleasant. we like our cheerful life, and we like watching our sports in a positive frame of mind. we want to root for the good guys, and if they win, so much the better. what's that? oh...you want to talk about...*that* time, when the players weren't good guys and the fans weren't behind them? well, this fan blog put it better than i can:

"Roughly 5 seasons ago, Blazer's management recognized that if the Trail Blazers want to become a viable, competitive and successful basketball franchise again, they would have to repair the damaged relationship with the city and the fans. First order of business, fix the Blazer's tarnished reputation. By gutting the team and replacing the coaching staff, they made a pledge to the community that the Blazer's organization was ready and willing to reestablish the ever important bond between a loving but disillusioned fan base and wayward Blazer team. Through a series of calculated moves and a new commitment to draft and sign only those players with the highest moral quality and character, the Blazers reconciled with Portland and the era of "character and family" has been in full swing ever since."

(http://www.bustabucket.com/)

let's recap: management realized that to be a winning franchise, they needed to have the fans behind them, 100%. maybe that goes along with the whole small-market thing. let's face it, in los angeles, you can easily alienate half the population and still sell out every night; there's so many people that you can always find some lowest denominator willing to root you on. but that doesn't fly here. when the team was established, oregon - the whole state - had only two million people, maybe a third of that in the entire greater portland metro area. you can't alienate them, there's nobody else around!

i've been teased before for being fans of players who aren't as good as their billing, or aren't maybe all that good at all. my only defense? they are blazers, and i love my blazers. we are loyal. we're no LA, putting up with egomaniacs in order to win games. we're loyal to the core to our players because we like nice players and we want them to be loyal to us, too. we know anyone good can be courted away by a big, sexy, major market at any time (like hedu turkelo's rejection of portland last summer for toronto, a 'real' city. ouch!) our only hope is to shower them with love and devotion in the hopes that...that...the players will either love our adulation or just be unable to break our hearts by leaving. doesn't matter. the end result is the same. we need them here - we need them more than glamorous places like LA or new york.

and, to some extent, there's just no analyzing my love for the blazers, there's just no way to break it down into understood parts that make sense. isn't that what fandom is all about? that 1 + 1 make 3? that it just maybe doesn't add up?

suffice it to say, that i grew up loving the blazers. my folks lived in portland just before that glorious year we went to the championships; they went to many a game of the fledgling team for the two years before relocating to lincoln county in 1972. growing up in the glory years of the blazers just meant they were a ubiquitous presence, a constant feature of state pride. well i remember the "blazers" signs distributed in the oregonian during each playoff session in the 80s and 90s, and how every car, every window was emblazoned with them, no matter where in the state you were! i remember being at the portland symphony one year on a sunday afternoon when we were in the playoffs. during the applause break between pieces, a tuxedo-ed man briskly walked across the stage to the conductor and whispered in his ear. he turned to us and said, "blazers are up!" and the whole place burst into cheers. somehow, that's what's so unique about oregon and our fan-dom - that the people at the symphony are just as interested to know what the team is doing as the folks across the river at the coliseum.

why are we so close to our team? that i can't say at all for sure, but i can see it might have something to do with acquiring a team that so suddenly did so well - winning the championship just four short years after being established. in one sense, it doesn't matter that we haven't won since then. we don't mind being the overlooked under-dog team. we are the overlooked, underdog state, sandwiched between our more famous neighbors. it's our cross and we'll bear it happily! having tasted glory, having burst on the scene, we know it's possible; until then we are happy to revel in our overlooked status, happy to quote the statistics of clyde when he was overlooked for the first dream team that was assembled in 1992; happy to be indignant that brandon roy was once again not selected in the fan voting for the all-star game (the last two years the coaches have voted him in; let's hope they are wise again this year. he is a super star, after all - and did i yet mention that he's a PNW native?!). we love being our small place, our small market, our happy loving delirious fans cheering on our one-and-only sports team.

as finally the NBA writer bill simmons realized, as answered in his 'mailbag' feature earlier this season after a book tour stop brought him to portland and he caught a game at the rose garden:

"Q: Did your book tour include a stop at the Rose Garden for Pistons-Blazers last week? I hope you checked out the way the Garden treats Greg Oden. Every time he does something basic, the place explodes like he dunked from half court. They are just willing themselves to think he will be good.

A: Yes, I did. And the best way to describe the crowd's support for Oden: It's like watching 15,000 parents rooting for their kid, only all 15,000 parents fathered the same kid. If he ever explodes for 30 points, 20 rebounds and eight blocks in a game, you'll have to carry each deliriously passed-out Portland fan out of the Rose Garden individually like they were victims of smoke inhalation in a burning house. (The funny thing is, everyone in Portland is nodding right now. And yes, I know he's had a couple of inspired games this season. You don't need to e-mail me the stat lines. No, really. Save us both the time. Let's not put too much pressure on him. Baby steps.) I also was startled by Portland fans arguably (see, there it is!) liking Rudy Fernandez as much as, and maybe even a smidge more than, the great Brandon Roy.

Two other things shocked me. First, that's the whitest NBA experience you can have that doesn't involve the words "Salt," "Lake" and City." They didn't play hip-hop either before the game or during the game, each team seemed to have more African-Americans than the entire crowd and the pregame video right before the introduction of Portland's starting lineup was a local grunge band singing "Ballroom Blitz." And second, during a second-quarter timeout, my buddy House and I ran into the concourse to grab beers and noticed there was NOBODY else in line for anything. We felt like Will Smith in "I Am Legend." There was no sign of human life other than the workers. Everyone else stays in their seats. At halftime, those same people pour into the concourse like it's halftime of a football game. I've never seen anything like it. I don't know whether the Blazers have the most loyal, passionate, dutiful fans in the NBA, but at the very least, we can say nobody else tops them.

Here's what I took away from my Rose Garden experience: Portland loves the Blazers the same way a single mother would love her only child. The city's revulsion toward the "Jail Blazers" makes a lot more sense to me now. The team and the city are intertwined, and if one side isn't holding up that bargain, it's even more painful than usual. Anyway, I couldn't be happier that I got a taste of it. Great NBA city."

'scuse me. i've got to catch the end of this game...blazers down, team plagued by injuries, it's the classic rise-from-below story of an overlooked potential superhero! right?!

peace, love, and understanding

2010-01-03T00:37:00.000-08:00

i mentioned montana yesterday, and suddenly there i was again - missing montana. sometimes that happens. it was one of the few places i lived where i woke up every morning and looked at the rugged mission mountains rising above the lake and concretely - not abstractly - thought: i am blessed.

every place has its own unique feel, its own unique combination of culture and social norms that make it fascinating. one of the nicest things about montana is the strong libertarian streak. now i'm a solid democratic socialist; i believe very much in the role of government and why it's important for us to pay taxes and support each other. socially, though, there was something very nice about living in a small town that still had a lot of "don't tell me how to live, and i won't tell you" attitude. you know the joke, "montana, where the men are real men, and so are the women?" of course, the down side to that is that you get more than your fair share of cults, separatists, and militias. not that that doesn't make life exciting. still, it makes me nervous to find out that groups are stocking piling AK-47s in underground bunkers (see the church universal and triumphant; not to mention the "montana freemen", and of course who can forget everyone's favorite recluse, the unabomber?)

the biggest problem, though, was the racial intolerance and intolerance of gays. as an example of the latter: i lived on an indian reservation. while enrolled in a "native american images in film" class at the tribal college - yes, a course dedicated to exposing and exploring the stereotypical ways that natives are presented in film - a fellow student busts out with "i'm all right with everyone but gays. i mean" - she says, maybe sensing that this is sounding a little prejudiced and she might want to show how understanding she really is - "i guess they are all right, as long as they stay away from me and my kids." in other words, men can be men, women can be men, women can be women (grudgingly); but much else...

here's another example, that is somehow quintessential montana. to begin, you have to understand that for the last bit of my tenure out there i was 21, very solo, very un-gainfully employed at a mcdonalds in a town of 3000 people, clearly not getting any kind of a 4-year college degree, and, to add to this laundry list of incredibly attractive characteristics, very pregnant. there was a guy who often came through the drive-thru there, clearly on his lunch break, with a stethoscope draped around his neck. he was young and fairly decent looking, in a sort of manly-man/cabela's way. i'm sure he was in a pick-up truck; i'm sure there was a gun rack. even though he wasn't local, it was clear he fit right in. so one day he asked me out - me! now, i didn't know anything about kids, but i had heard that they got sick all the time. who better to have hanging around then a doctor? besides, it wasn't like i was getting asked out a lot. so, i accepted. he suggested that we drive to missoula to go dancing. that sounded fine, but even a rookie like myself knew to play it a little safer, so i insisted that my roommate come, too. so he agreed and enlisted a buddy of his and we all rode down together to a bar in missoula, me with my big belly, my roommate j., the doctor, and some random hunting buddy of his.

my roommate j. was a thorough cowgirl who worked on a dairy farm - a real montana-style woman - who also happened to be lesbian. she wasn't in the closet, but i think wisely had decided to pick her battles; her friends and family knew who she was, but she didn't broadcast it. we settled in at the bar and the boys quickly started drinking beer. i, of course, couldn't drink at all. i guess it was starting to seem like just being a doctor wasn't enough to make this guy attractive, so to entertain myself, raving liberal and gun-control nut that i am, got into it with them on social issues. as the evening progressed (degenerated?) it turned out that they were also both raving homophobes. she and i were getting thoroughly annoyed before this; by that point in time, we were ready to go. we had a motel room nearby with two double beds. standing our ground, we insisted that neither of us would be sharing a bed with one of them, thank you very much; we'd take one, and they could take the other. which was fine by us, but they absolutely could not do it. one of them ended up sprawled on the ground at the foot of our bed, as if merely touching the bed of another male would somehow brand them a queer for life in montana eyes.

i don't remember the ride back north the next day, but i bet it was pretty quiet. and certainly i never got asked out again. in fact, doesn't it almost sound like the start to a bad joke? "a liberal, a lesbian, a redneck, and a hunter walk into a bar in montana..." only i can't imagine how the punchline would go and how it could end without someone getting shot. no matter. eventually one realizes that "live and let live" can be a pretty shallow notion. and peace, love and understanding can be far away, even in paradise.

drying out

2010-01-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

i staggered into the shop like a traveller in search of an oasis. "i need something for my skin!" i whispered through cracked lips. it is december, and hasn't rained in several days. and my skin is reacting like i've been sun bathing in a desert in august. it is red, itchy, and deperate for moisture. it reminds me of my first winter in montana, where the dry air and hard water gave me a rash on my back.

back in the present, my sister says, "i'm turning into an alligator. my feet are completely cracked."

on the news cast, the weather forecast begins cheerily: "you can put away that lip balm and moisturizer! the rain is coming back."

it's true northwesterners can be pretty wimpy about some things. we are so completely adapted to moisture, that a cold dry spell in winter throws us for a loop. what are we not wimpy at all about? well, rain, of course.

"During the long winter vacation it rained continuously, the sky a low thick motionless rain-cloud, the warmish wet-cold season without dry corner. After day-long rain it rained all night, the dark liquescent, dripping from trees. When he woke in the night to heft his life, he listened to the rain as natural history, the Pacific extending over the land. Huge sopping clouds floated over breakers threading the beaches and struck against mountainsides, rain pouring from an armada of smashed hulls, drenching the craggy crawling forests, drowning green hills black, soaking the grass-lit fields. In the dark Levin remembered the rain of his childhood, blown in wind against the faces of tenements, engulfing the leafless backyard tree in foaming bursts; but when it had ended - after a day, three, a week - it had ended and enter light, the worshipful sun. Here was no sense of being between rains; it was a climate, a condition, the water burbling, thick, thin, fine, ubiquitous, continuous, monotonous, formless. Once in a while he saw two rainbows in the same sky but after rainbows it rained. Wherever Levin went he went in rubbers, raincoat, umbrella; the only other man he saw with an umbrella was Professor Fairchild. Students stood bareheaded in the pelting rain, talking leisurely, even opening a book to prove a point. Meanwhile Levin had grown neither fins nor duckfeathers; nor armourplate against loneliness."

--from "A New Life", by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud, who wrote "The Natural" and won the pulitzer prize for "The Fixer", taught in the English department at OSU for four years. During that time he wrote "A New Life", about an english instructor from the east, teaching for the first time in a beleaguered liberal arts department at a small agricultural school in a town called Cascadia. Although OSU wasn't so excited about the portrayal at the time, we happily claim Malamud now. And although "A New Life" isn't his best work, it's great read for those who know OSU and Corvallis.

where am i?

2010-01-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

there ought to be a word!

i feel like the word displacement should refer to lack of sense of place, or loss of sense of place. but no, according to dictionary.com:

dis⋅place⋅ment [dis-pleys-muhnt]

–noun
1. the act of displacing.
2. the state of being displaced or the amount or degree to which something is displaced.
3. Physics.
a. the displacing in space of one mass by another.
b. the weight or the volume of fluid displaced by a floating or submerged body. Compare Archimedes' principle.
c. the linear or angular distance in a given direction between a body or point and a reference position.
d. the distance of an oscillating body from its central position or point of equilibrium at any given moment.
4. Machinery, Automotive.
a. the volume of the space through which a piston travels during a single stroke in an engine, pump, or the like.
b. the total volume of the space traversed by all the pistons.
5. Nautical. the amount of water that a vessel displaces, expressed in displacement tons.
6. Geology. the offset of rocks caused by movement along a fault.
7. Psychoanalysis. the transfer of an emotion from its original focus to another object, person, or situation.

for the sake of brevity, i was tempted to cut out a couple of those. but i couldn't, because it somehow proved the point: we have all these highly technical and specific definitions of displacement, yet none lined up with what i was looking for.

we've got rootlessness and detachment and drifter, but somehow none of these conveys what i'd like it to convey. rootlessness and drifter imply a choice; detachment, a non-feeling.

i think it's interesting that in attempting to explain the utter disconnect of his main character in Independence Day, richard ford describes the main character's thoughts in this way:

"I am not sure what chokes me up: either the place's familiarity or its rigid reluctance to act familiar. It is another useful theme and exercise of the Existence Period, and a patent lesson of the realty profession, to cease sanctifying places -- houses, beaches, hometowns, a street corner where you once kissed a girl, a parade ground where you marched in line, a courthouse where you secured a divorce on a cloudy in July but where there is now no sign of you, no mention in the air's breath that you were there or that you were ever, importantly you, of that you even were. We may feel they ought to, should confer something -- sanction, again -- because of events that transpired there once; light a warming fire to animate us when we're well nigh inanimate and sunk. But they don't. Places never cooperate by revering you back when you need it. In fact, they almost always let you down, as the Markhams found out in Vermont and now New Jersey. Best just to swallow back your tear, get accustomed to the minor sentimentals and shove off to whatever's next, not whatever was. Place means nothing."

which is more a hatred of place, a feeling of being betrayed by place, than 'drifter' or 'footloose' can imply.

of course, there's not only situational or self-imposed displacement. there's also displacement that occurs because of outside forces. and the most beautiful, concise depiction of outside-enforced displacement i've ever come across is the following poem by ed edmo, from oregon ("From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry", Oregon Literature Series, OSU Press, 1993):

I sit in your
crowded classrooms
& learn how to read about dick
jane & spot
but
   I remember
   how to get a deer

   I remember
   how to do beadwork

   I remember
   how to fish

I remember
the stories told by the old
but

   spot keeps
   showing up
   &

   my report card
   is bad

-Ed Edmo.

happy new year. where are you?

better living through bibliography for dark days

2009-12-24T18:54:00.000-08:00

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages will show."

--Charles Dickens

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all...

--Emily Dickinson

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

--Mahatma Gandhi

One regret, dear world,
That I am determined not to have
When I am lying on my deathbed
Is that
I did not kiss you enough.

--Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

--Jack London

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver

california dreamin'

2009-12-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

i'm getting ready - again - to head to california soon, and i'm absolutely thrilled. i answered a little questionnaire the other day that began "what was your favorite place to visit as a child?" and i had to put: california. where did i go this past summer? california. where did i go last spring, the first recreational trip since moving back to the states? that's right. california.

i've got mixed feelings about california in general, just like i've got mixed feelings about a lot of things - like america, and religion. but that doesn't stop me from loving the hell out of it.

as a kid, california represented the golden land of opportunity to me - just like it does to so many other people. the first time i ever went there, i must have been about 10 or 11, to sacramento. i didn't care so much about opportunity and golden lands at that time, but i cared about food, and they had orange trees, right there on the street! i was blown away. i took one look at that, and figured a person would never starve in california - you could just walk down the street, eating oranges all day. and oranges meant two other things, besides free food: sunshine and warmth. there had to be sunshine, and warmth, and lots of it, for there to be oranges, just growing along the sidewalk like that. what can i say? i fell in love. even though, as an oregonian, i had been raised on california-hatred with my mother's milk, as they say. i was born in the tom mccall era, for chrissakes. you know, the whole "Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live." A-1 on our shit list, throughout the 80s and 90s: californias, and all the property-value-increase and fancy-lettuce-demanding that went along with the consistent steady stream of in-migrants from that state to the south.

so i tried to fight it, that first inkling of forbidden fruit. but who can fight true love? the second time i fell in love with california was when i was 18. i drove down the coast with a friend. we landed in LA, rounded up some friends, and headed east to joshua tree in the middle of the night. although i was mesmerized by - and a little frightened by - my first night in the desert, it was when the sun rose that i fell completely, head-over-heels in love, this time with the california desert.

the room! the space! the crisp air! to a northwesterner, there's no bigger contrast to our cramped, moss-covered, excessive-plant-exhaling atmosphere (i mean, really...who needs that much oxygen?), no bigger contrast to our choked, can't-move-through sea of intertwined vegetation. i woke up and saw that i could see, could actually see, for miles and miles. i could have run for miles and miles, with nothing, nothing to stop me! in the oregon coast range, you can't even walk across the landscape. it's slog, pushing with all your might, against the dense salal and ferns, and step high over the impenetrable thickets, and then - there's a damn 8-foot diameter tree down right in front of you, that you have to walk 200 feet along to cross, or scramble over. there's no running, ever. there was only one word to describe that awakening, up with the sun, lookin out across that vast, beautiful expanse of openness - magical, truly magical. i was spellbound.

the best description i've ever read sums it up in this sentence:

no, wait, i can't just skip to the end. the whole post is too good. it's from a brilliant blog that hasn't been updated since 2008, which is too bad. here's the gist of this post though (see http://feemus.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html for the whole legitimate thing):

"I live now in the Northeast, but I’m from the Northwest. And if you’re from the West, and anywhere north of Monterey, I think it’s encoded in your DNA to believe that Los Angeles is the place where quality of life and human decency go to die.
...I went on my vacation, which coincidentally was a hiking trip in California's central coast area. My hiking buddy is an old friend who lives in the Northwest but is French. We got to the top of some very pretty mountain which looked out over a beautiful valley, the sparkling ocean, and about four other gorgeous mountain ranges, and he asked, "So why exactly is it that everyone hates California?"

My first reaction was to clarify: "We don't hate California, we hate Southern California." But he pointed out that two years ago we had an equally terrific hiking trip, and a more visually stunning one, in the Mojave. He also pointed out that I actually like Los Angeles when I'm there, just not when I think about it.

So I tried harder to explain why we have this fascination with and simultaneous antipathy toward Southern California. ...

Then I realized something. I told my friend: "California is for us what the US is for Europe." If Oregon is California's Canada, then California is America's America: big, rich, powerful, and vulgar."

well, that's it, right there (with a slight modification): oregon is america's canada, and california is america's america. i love it, and hate it, for all the same reasons that i love, and hate, america: the vast expanses of open space; the impression of bounty neverending; the desert, mountains, ocean, trees; the whole complicated, convoluted history: gold rush, mining, shenanigans, land grabs, tribal decimation, spanish influence; diversity of people and thoughts; the modern era of hollywood and the good life and yes, arugula - california is all the crazy best and worst all jumbled together in a huge, chaotic mixing pot that occasionally explodes, but still - is "working on things". and working on things means the hope that the golden land exists, that opportunity is there.

i don't live there, it's true. in some ways it's exhausting just being around all that possibility, and i like the quiet life up here. our history is not so colorful, our population not so colorful, which is to our detriment, it's true. but for all that, i'm glad to be next door. it's like living next to the most lively, popular person in town, the one who has the most beautiful house, the most fabulous parties, that you can go visit anytime, but can leave when the drama all gets to be too much. when you don't feel the need to run, run, run anymore.

we were just back from europe 3 months when we went to california in 2008. heading back across the desert on the freeway between LA and las vegas, we encountered a traffic jam. according to the radio - truly - a semi-truck full of salsa had overturned on the freeway and there were thousands of pints of salsa spread all over the two lanes headed east. the why wasn't important so much. we had been camping in the backcountry of the mojave national preserve and for the past two or three days hadn't seen a single person. now i got out of our little rental car, amidst the unexpected complete stop, and basked in the sheer wonder of america. and by this i mean: the people everywhere were popping out of their cars, they were chatting, they were laughing, about the stoppage. they were comparing notes. there were at least 3 or 4 languages wafting on the cold spring desert morning air. there were at least 4 colors of skin mingling. everyone was in it together on that east california freeway, folks from the south, folks from the north, local folks passing though, people looking for solitude, people looking for sin city, all of us looking for the promised land, all of us not minding being waylaid for those few moments.

my heart wears a black turtleneck (or, my inner french soul)

2009-12-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

i was having a nice conversation the other day with my tarot card reader, who happens to be french (i mean that in the real way, like born in france and even has an accent, not the american way, like some one of his most recent 32 ancestors was french), about views on life and the like, and he said, "but you're french!"

he clarified by explaining it this way: "you know french movies? there is never any closure, and in french books, you finish and look around for the gun." his point was that some people are by nature very positive, seeing the bright side of things, and some are by nature more negative; and that some cultures are more positive, literal, and emphasize the bright side, while some more naturally emphasize introspection, the grey areas of life, and...make you want to shoot yourself, i guess.

i laughed, because i thought it was a funny thing to say, especially coming from a french person. but i should have said, "i'm not french, i'm from the oregon coast!"

the second best book about the oregon coast is uncle mike's guide to the real oregon coast, by michael burgess. it is geared to the first-time visitor and has things like this in it:

"Don't bother putting your best foot forward. Your villagers are simply too miserable to care. Nothing you do, not even throwing your life away and joining them, will change things. These are humans who, from the cradle to the grave, never really get warm and dry, and it's foolish to think their inner child is somehow nourished by the gloom and damp."

"The first rule is not to try and fit in...Your best approach is to regard the nasty bit of nowhere you've come to as a theme park for the depressed, and the villagers as hired rustics with wet blankets to sell".

which came first - the personality, or the environment?

and the ennui of france & the french - or anywhere in europe, for that matter - that world-weary, nuanced view of the world that comes with having been a country, in one form or another, for thousands of years. thousands of years of experience with wars, revolutions, religions, fads - that will make a society a little grey around the edges.

which came first, the personality or the society?

it's funny, because as i was thinking about this post, i remembered some writing i was doing while on the train in france, my first visit there, in 2005. what struck me was how america is really just a teenager on the globe - and, how like a teenager, we - as a country - are loud, impetuous, impulsive, exhuberant, with little ability to think through what the implications of our actions will be, little knowledge of or empathy for others, self-centered, anti-intellectual, and living for the moment.

from my journal that day:

it seems strange but i love the absolute human-ness of the landscape. i love the quiet, settled human dominance, the lack of struggle for supremacy - both supremacy over nature as well as supremacy about whether the preservation of wilderness has any merit in and of itself. it is a moot point here; the issue has already been decided by 2000 years of settlement, during which time most of human effort has been dedicated to eating, having children, and surviving wars with each other. people smile less. but they are not so naive, so full of youthful impetuosity. i used to love that aspect of americanism most of all. now maybe as i see its negative effects on others, it's only natural that i should also seek out a more somber, serious place, without the predominance of absolute rhetoric, without the lack of responsibility for the health and welfare of others, without the emphasis on freedom at all costs...

hack away at that hypothesis - it's full of holes, i know. i'm just telling you that when i was riding on the train through france, in the aftermath of bush's reelection, that is what i was thinking of, and a little fucking societal perspective on the grey areas of life sounded pretty damn good.

was i ready to move to europe? you bet your ass. i just didn't realize it was maybe in part because my inner frenchy was longing for some native soil - that my oregon-coastal soul had found a society to match out there. because maybe for those of us from the coast, the environmental greyness of our youth produces the same personality effect as historical greyness of a society.

i also didn't realize that it was in fact the first step in my patriot retraining program (PTPtm). but more on that later.

more learning - imagine that!

2009-11-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

the great thing about being in school is that you're constantly learning new things.

(of course, the downside to being back in school is that you're constantly learning new things, too. for example, my math professor is fond of saying, "consider a set..." or "consider the relationship..." which, in my opinion, simply begs the retort: "how about we don't consider it, and go home instead?" this reached the maximum of ridiculousness at our recent midterm, which i no doubt failed. the last question began, "consider an arbitrary universe...". you can perhaps imagine what my impulse response was. hint: it wasn't the answer.)

anyway, originally i was going to write this about the great things i'm learning in a fire management class, but that got preempted by a seminar i attended the other day. the main speaker was a man who, at age 88, is mostly retired, but who has been a major force in the rural studies field. he had an interesting talk about a conceptual frame for considering rural places, something i'm genuinely interested in.

then the discussant got up. a professor at psu's urban studies program, he proceeded to talk about regionalism in general, and where we could go from here as a rural studies program. in his brief talk, he said several things that were so fabulous i intend to steal them and run with them in my own future work. until then, i at least have to give them breathing room here.

first was the notion that perhaps, as technology advances, place becomes more important, not less. part of the difficulty in advancing a philosophy of 'place matters' is that, with our increasingly homogenized landscape, we may be moving to a future in which built places are no longer so different from each other. his point, however, was that increasing technology has enabled more choice in people's location decisions - thus, enabling place to matter more. if i can choose to live anywhere, that says more about where i do live.

he also talked about the fact that, along with this, as people choose more consciously where to live, the importance of place is allowed to interact more with their lives. as an example, he used a jazz musician in portland; a world class caliber musician who chose to live in portland and is now, instead of seeking to make his music more cosmopolitan - instead of striving to be more truly urban and fit into the music capitals of the world - is seeking to identify, purposefully, what role living in portland may have on his music. in other words, letting the region influence his music and work. a la dvorak, coming to the US - but maybe the first time a classical musician went to portland to be influenced by the region.

two classic views of regionalism are that you can define your region in opposition to the whole - rural is what urban isn't - or, you can define by what it contributes to the whole - rural is the things that it contributes to the overall state. here the discussant also made an excellent point about oregon in particular. we have an outstanding opportunity - should we want it - to explore this idea of rural and urban in our own little exemplary, non-standard place - oregon. not only is our one urban area not very urban, in the grand scheme of things, our rural areas also aren't the typical rural. portland as an urban area doesn't even register on the national or global scene. and certainly, one of the defining things about oregon is their interconnectedness - a rural resident can easily drive into portland and be comfortable, and our urban residents surely spend more time than the average in rural areas. isn't that outdoor lifestyle what Oregon's all about?

well, for those of us excited by ideas but getting lost in the math sometimes, and forgetting the magic of possibility and thinking of ways to redefine where we are and how we identify ourselves, all this was a much-needed motivational shot in the arm. at least until the midterm grades come back.

"all that the rain promises"

2009-11-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

i'm not a good sleeper. i often spend a large portion of my nighttime awake. lately it's usually a cat or a kid inside, or a screeching raccoon fight outside, that wakes me up. once awake, there are then a million things that can keep me awake: hooting owls, random thoughts, the rain and wind.

last night, trying to get to sleep at about 1 am, all i could hear was the sound of the pouring rain. it had been pouring steadily for hours. once i focused solely on that sound, i was suddenly overcome with an extreme feeling of peace and contentment. i'm so happy we don't live in the middle of an apartment building; it is the unique patter of heavy, solid rain on the roof above and broad green leaves - like the large rhododendron outside my bedroom window - that is the sound i remember from my childhood. rain is never far from a northwesterner, from anything we write or talk about; and suddenly a phrase popped into my head, clearly connected in some way to something literary: "all that the rain promises". what was it from? it's not from the usual rain-soaked PNW literary oeuvre ("The Good Rain", by Egan; "It Rains All The Time" by Laskin; etc etc). finally i remembered: it's nothing more nor less than the title of a mushroom identification book by everyone's favorite wacky mycologist, david arora.

still, i love that phrase. it seems somehow so meditative and evocative and hopeful. it kept running through my head last night (this morning), resonating something deep inside. all that the rain promises. all that the rain promises. what does the rain promise (apart from mushrooms)? why do i love it so much?

to me, it promises green, growing, living things; it promises the need for a hot cup of coffee and fires in fireplaces; it promises books to read and a repetitive sound to lull me to sleep; it promises flowers and trees and yes, mushrooms, streams and fish; it promises a slowing down, a rest, a family pulled together for the fall, winter and spring.

what does the rain promise to you?

in the interest of time

2009-11-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

let's face it, loyal (15) readers, this going-back-to-school thing is kicking my ass, no two ways about it.

i have several posts in line but can't seem to find the time to complete anything these days, not even simple knitting projects.

but just to keep y'all interested, i'm going to take a moment to promote a blog i stumbled across and love:

http://www.weathersealed.com/

i don't know how this guy can do it - or exactly what it is - but it's almost invariably great. be sure and check out the recent post on everyone's favorite governator and an uncanny coincidence in a letter he wrote...

http://www.weathersealed.com/2009/10/30/wild-coincidence/

and especially, if you look at nothing else, read this enormously clever look at regional speak via word clouds from internet-harvested blogs and social sites, comparing the relative frequencies of words used in the northeast as compared to the south...

http://www.weathersealed.com/2009/10/07/of-mason-and-dixon/

there, now you have something to read this long afternoon. enjoy! i'll be back soon to promote the blogs that i love that are actually produced by people i love. how fabulous that is!

in which i finally, really, give a shit about climate change

2009-10-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

i can't stop thinking about the redwoods. before this summer, i hadn't been there in quite a while, so i was awestruck anew at them. redwoods are awesome. they are superlative in size, incredible to see in person. they are masters of their environment, overseeing all other trees. they are like nothing else on the planet.

in looking for more specifics to understand redwoods, i turn to the dry but essential 1965 version of "Silvics of Forest Trees of the United States", old Ag Handbook No. 271, from the USFS. they have this to say in part about the fantastic coastal redwood, a.k.a. Sequoia sempervirens:

"This redwood belt...is an irregular coastal strip about 450 miles long and generally 5 to 35 miles wide. ... The frequent summer fogs which blanket the redwood region seem to be more important than the amount of precipitation in delineating the redwood type. ... The range of this tree is limited to areas where heavy summer fogs provide a humid atmosphere."

our friends at the USDA forest service (this edition compiled and revised by one H.A. Fowells) go on to explain to us several key facts, eventually: that redwood trees grow from sea level to about 3000' in elevation, but don't tolerate ocean winds, and so don't grow directly on or facing the ocean; that they reach their maximum development on alluvial soils (i.e., floodplains); that redwoods sprout from the stem or base if the top is damaged or removed; that they are, indeed, the tallest trees in the world, maxing out at 368' (in 1956); that redwood stands are dense, supporting nearly 1,000 stems per acre at 20 years; that redwood trees have no major tree-killing diseases; that old redwood stands show evidence of three major fires per 1000 years, but that old trees survive by virtue of their foot-thick bark. foot-thick! there's no exclamation points in the original, as you well may guess; Fowells et al do not let themselves tend toward exuberance. that's ok, because anyone reading it must pause at that statement, and exclaim to whomever is sitting near, while holding out their hands just so: foot thick bark! that is astounding!

the far more entertaining and poetic "A Natural History of Western Trees", by Donald Peattie, with an original copyright of 1950, at least attempts to capture more of what is so awe-inspiring about redwoods:

"In all the world there is no other forest growth like that of the Redwood. It is at once the tallest and the densest of stands - not dense like the jungle's tangled quantities of trees, lianas, and undergrowth, for the Redwood groves are spaciously open to your footsteps - but dense in the sheer volume of standing timber. ... The [transition into redwood forests] is like stepping into a cloister, one infinitely more spacious and lofty than any raised by man, and closing the door behind you on the bright secular world. ... Your footfalls make no sound on the needles and moss that have lain there for centuries. Your body makes no shadow in that green, lake-like diffused light. ... But this solemnity is not like that of a church or tomb; it is enlivened by the soft dispute of a stream with its bed... And now and then the treetops utter a slow, distant sea-hush, a sigh that passes, and then comes again, as if it were the breathing of a life beside which our lives are as a single day. ...

"And they are mighty past telling. Their enormously swelled bases are buttressed with great lynx-like claws, as if the trees gripped the earth to keep their balance. ..."

what does all this mean? well, from an ecological viewpoint, redwoods are specialists. they fit so thoroughly, so completely, in their narrow ecological niche, they survive only in this almost-coastal, fog-belt laden strip 5 to 30 miles wide and 450 miles long. fires are infrequent here, but when they come, redwoods survive by virtue of the incredible thickness of their bark. one sees many, many still-living trees where the bottom has been completely hollowed out; first the heartwood was weakened by fire, but the strong sapwood remains, keeping the tree alive. floods are frequent here, so redwoods have enormously spreading roots to anchor them firmly into soggy soil and let them take advantage of the nutrient-rich floodplain soil. should they topple over, they sprout back up again from all around the stem. given no windthrow, catastrophic fire, or other such disturbance, they can live over 2000 years.

actually, redwoods are more than specialists; they are master craftspeople. lots of plants are specialists; little particular species or variants of species that survive in small pockets here and there, where some certain condition is just right. what really separates the redwoods from the rest of the endemic plant crowd is the way they are able to parlay their special environment into the most spectacular growth possible. like most conifers, they are able to photosynthesize long into the winter season; in the dry summers, they capture fog and drip it down to the forest floor to the equivalent tune of an estimated several inches' worth of rain. they are so successful that redwood groves can support incredible amounts of woody biomass.

what does this have to do with climate change? sure, i care about climate change, believe it's human caused, believe we should do what we can to mitigate it, etc etc etc. i toe the party line, so to speak. but deep down inside, i can't get worked up about the possible disappearance of some of the more obscure species at risk. i understand why they are important; that we never know in advance the possible ripple effects of loss of a species. who knew a little rabbit could wreak havoc on australia, or that possums could almost single-handedly defoliate much of new zealand? i understand why we should care. i even get really excited when i see an unusual plant. i'm just saying that, deep down inside, i'm not convinced that every species is equally important for ecosystem functioning. i've also been coming to appreciate more and more the impermanence of all ecosystems; even the old-growth forests of the oregon coast range have fluctuated greatly over time, settling on thier current form as recently as 1,000 years ago. things come and go; they ebb and flow. mass species extinction should be avoided, of course. but in many specific instances, it's easy to imagine that an endemic species could disappear with nary a blip in the ecosystem overall.

ah, but the redwoods - those highly specialized masters! what if the climate changes, the fog declines, the fires and floods increase, new insects that can bore through the bark are able to migrate into their habitat? what then? my world, minus a special bluebell - not so different. but my world, minus the redwoods? that would be tragic. to never again stand in those groves, taller than any other on the planet, taller than imagining? to never again touch the crisscrossing bark? to have them as dinosaurs, existing only in dreams? to never again be able to lay down in that perfect cathedral, hearing only the distant hush of the ocean? that would be losing something, for everyone. and standing there, contemplating the possibility of the disappearance of such a marvelous thing, such an ancient craftsman as an old-growth redwood, i suddenly could motivate my lip service to worrying about climate change. climate change appears like a coming industrial revolution, with the potential to render obsolete so many of our natural master crafters.

in the aforementioned book "A Natural History of Western Trees", the author discusses the initial preservation of redwood groves (which began at the local and then the state level, not the national) with these final sentiments. can we rally round the redwoods once again, with the threat of the possible loss of their ecosystem this time instead of chainsaws?

"...For the members of some of the sponsoring organizations live in Iowa or Vermont, in Geeorgia or New York. The great majority of them are probably not persons of wealth at all. They gave anonymously, they gave purely, they gave to the future, to people yet unborn; they gave not only to the country but to the world. And they gave out of a deep religious feeling that the beauty and the age and greatness that here have risen from the earth to tower above us are holy and shall not be profaned."

amen to that, brother.

a minor freedom

2009-10-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

a group of us were studying the other day for a class when one of my fellow students, a student from france, leaned over and asked me, "how old are you?"

i told her - 36, if you're curious - and her eyes got wide. "i sink, in all ze history of frahnce, tat tere has never been a graduate student az ancient az you", she said.

ok, that's what i heard. that's not really what she said. but she did say something like, "i think in france, one does not see graduate students as old as that" or something like that.

i guess i'm glad i spent some time in germany and france, for two reasons: one, i know that different things are taboo to talk about and ask people about there as compared to here; and two, i know she's pretty much right. both of these together mean i can't really be offended by what she said.

first off, people in at least germany, and i'm guessing france, are much more willing to comment on your - or anyone else's - weight and age than americans are. it's just not taboo. i think the reasoning is that they are both obvious characteristics; why bother pretending you aren't curious or shouldn't know or couldn't guess? you could also argue they are far, far less obsessed with youth culture, image, and anti-aging. although they generally are more 'made up' than we are, they are also far more comfortable, in the aggregate, with human bodies and thier imperfections. (what do we, as americans, have no compuction talking about that they do? money, of course. we talk about money to the point of discomfort for many germans i knew.)

second, it's true that there probably aren't a lot of 36 year old grad students in france. if the system is much like germany - and i'm guessing it is more like germany than like here - university is something you do straight from high school, and if you continue on, that's right after that. period. in germany, your track - whether to a general high school degree, a vocational high school degree, or to university after high school (excepting professional programs such as MBA or skilled training) - is traditionally mostly set at age 10. in fifth grade is when you are sent to one of the three types of secondary schools and that, friends, is pretty much all she wrote*. i have asked germans about this and while it's technically possible to buck the system and switch tracks, or go to university after completing a different track, it's so difficult socially and culturally that it doesn't happen very often.

so although my inner american nature automatically bristled at the implied "you're old!" comment, i just smiled and said, "yes, i think you're probably right. it's different here; here you can go to school pretty much whenever you want." of course with the caveat of being able to afford it (no wonder we're so obsessed with money; getting a college degree in the US is highly correlated with family income; rich kids are far, far more likely to go to college than poor kids, for lots of reasons). but it's also true here that you can barely pass high school - or not finish at all - and maybe have a kid, or maybe screw around a while, maybe have some jobs and whatnot - and still decide to go to school on your own terms, without your parents' backing if needed. and go. and once you've gotten the first hurdle down - a four-year degree - you can take some time and go back and continue whenever you want. whenever! you put in the application, have the requirements, get all the documentation you need, and it's your choice.

it's not perfect here (i wish it wasn't so connected to family income, for starters), and it's a minor freedom in the grand scheme of things, but it's a specific and identifiable one, and one i'm particularly glad to have right at this moment. sure, it would have been nice to be doing this at 25 or whatever, when i had more energy and more free time. but i made other choices then that i'm happy with. isn't it nice to get to choose something totally new now? instead of fighting off offense, i should have thanked her for reminding me of this fact - that it's far easier for me to make this radical shift at 36 here, than it would be there.

plus, joke's on her! i wasn't even the oldest one there.

*note: there is work to change the german system to a more flexible, integrated, american style one. but that change is painful and not everyone agrees with it. the old system has its advantages, too.

a narrow focus

2009-10-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

much of my life in germany was focused around grocery shopping.

you wouldn't think it would be such a big deal. but it ended up being, if not always huge, still a daily ordeal.

one reason would have been the same, regardless of place. i was at home with a toddler, for the first time in my life, for the first year there. those of you who have spent a lot of time at home with a toddler - even without being a stranger in a strange land - know how important daily routine is to survival.

without a daily routine, and a reason to get out of the house, getting out 'for fun' means that the window of opportunity between nap time constraints has to occur when the entire food/sleep continuum is at an optimum and you're already prepared with all the equipment ready to go - well, at that point in time, who's really going to notice if, at 3 pm, you're still in pajamas, the kid's still in pajamas, and your afternoon coffee turns into an afternoon irish coffee, and before long your hard-working partner's wondering why there's all the empty whiskey bottles in the recycling?

it's a slippery slope. that was my first reason to go to the grocery store every day. i had a sum total of one friend in town, and she worked every day. i could go to a park, but i couldn't understand anyone if they started talking to me - plus, that first winter was freezing cold and featured lots of snow. i couldn't spend a lot of time browsing at boutiques, even without buying anything, with a wiggly toddler.

but grocery stores, apart from fulfilling a useful-family purpose, are heaven for little kids in germany. every where you go, there's free stuff! there's always a bit of meat for them at the meat counter, a sample of cheese at the cheese counter, and everywhere, the chance of picking up an inexpensive, freshly-baked soft pretzel, covered in salt. one of those is worth at least half hour of patience from a small child. and, apart from these 'legitimate' giveaways, i can't count how often some random person just gave t. a candy or cookie.

[the first time that happened, it totally freaked me out - when traveling with j. in austria, before we moved to europe. initially, my american-urban-myth-filled head pictured only cyanide/razorblade apples. then i realized that people - especially grandmother-types - in germany just have an inexhaustible well of sweets in their bags, ready to pass out at a cute glance from any little kid. the most amazing disbursement of this type happened once while we were in the checkout line. a woman ahead of us finished paying, reached into her purchases and opened up a bag of chocolates to be able to hand one back to t. we're not talking little jolly ranchers, here, either, but pretty nice chocolate bars or cookies or other treats.]

apart from my mental health, there was a logistical reason to go to the store everyday: our refrigerator, for a family of four, wasn't much larger than a dorm fridge, with a small freezer on bottom. we purchased a middle-of-the-road fridge from a standard appliance store, and the whole thing was not taller than me (5') and not much wider than maybe 2 feet. and that included the separate freezer unit. (we did see a big, silver, double door refrigerator for sale one time. it was advertised as an "american-style refrigerator!")

anyway, you could not fit any milk container larger than a quart in it. which is fine, because - that's the biggest size of milk they sell, in general, in germany. cheese comes in 100g units or so. that's like - 1/4 of a pound. there's no 2 lb baby loaf or gallon of anything. everything comes in these teeny quantities, because everyone has teeny refrigerators, so everyone can only buy these teeny quantities.

there's also just a different style to shopping there. people expect to have fresh bread. they expect to have fresh cheese, and fresh meat, and fresh eggs. even if you get most of your staples at large store runs, you still expect to go out several times a week for fresh bread. most people still buy their bread at the bakery, separate from the grocery store. the culture and the size of your refrigerator work together here, keeping you going to the store every. damn. day.

these daily trips became something of an ordeal. you have to understand that part of this was my own stubbornness. stuck at home all day with a toddler meant i wasn't getting any exercise. so, instead of taking the bus down to the big supermarket in the mall in wetzlar, i always walked to the small market nestled within the wetzlar old town.

which would have been great, except that it was the opposite set up for successful exercise. that would have required decent equipment and a route designed to reward me for my effort. instead, we had one stroller (we really came to germany with minimal things) - one that was great for collapsing as we got on and off trains bound for distant lands, but was not good for daily shopping with. it had no basket of any kind and tiny wheels, which made it hard to go fast or maneuver. not to mention that the perfect route would be to go uphill to get to town, while everyone was still fresh and happy and unladen with lebensmittel. but of course that was not how it worked. we lived half-way up a monstrous hill, with the old town right at the base of it. so i went down first, and up last, once i had several heavy cloth bags full of groceries hanging off the handles and sometimes balanced in t.'s lap. and, of course, all the streets were charming cobblestone - which, when you're pushing a stroller, is almost like working through gravel. almost.

so these daily trips were both the focus point and major frustration of each and every day. every day, we'd head down the hill. every day, fight our way back up, with me sweating, cursing, leaning into the wobbly rickety stroller, telling t. to hush as i tried to concentrate on pushing him up the hill. or, worse yet, discovered he'd fallen asleep on the ride home, so that i faced either waking up a still sleepy/grouchy toddler at the foot of the stairs of carrying it all, stroller, toddler, bags of groceries, up 1.5 flights of stairs.

and yet - it all was worth it. not just because i still had moments where i could look up at the 400 year old buildings and realize, deep down inside, that i was living in europe, where i had wanted to live for so long. it was worth it also because, after a few months, i started to get the town. as a foreigner, i know, but still - i knew folks. the fabulous blond checkout lady at the small store knew me, asked about the kids, commented (slowly, she could tell i was very linguistically challenged) on the day and how it was. the lady at the bakery knew me, and my laden stroller, and always had a cookie for t. the guy at the post counter in the stationary store knew me, and my clumsy attempts to request stamps or shipping for the US. it must have become apparent that we were 'the americans', because folks who knew a bit of english would start asking me things. the lady at the cheese counter, for example, one day asked me how to tell tourists that they should pay up front for the cheese she sliced and bagged for them. 'they always try to pay back here', she confided in halting english. 'how do i tell them where to pay?'

i had learned this before, when we moved to maine - that there are some communities that you have to prove that you're going to stick around in before people start opening up to you. i had to show up, day after day, rain or snow or shine, toting my toddler around, to prove i was worth trying to get to know. it can feel isolating at first - but the reward, of course, is that i bet if i walked into that market now, today, and the blond lady was working, she'd say 'oh! how have you been? and where is your little son? oh, he has grown so much!' as if i had only been gone on vacation, and certainly hadn't returned to another country for almost two years.

people as places

2009-10-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

"I'll be scrambling 'round, hunting high and then low
Looking for the face, love; or somewhere to go
I hardly had places that I needed to go
Cause you're the places that I wanted to go"
-- "People as Places as People", Modest Mouse

recently i got to thinking about this - people as places.

does this happen to everyone? where a person and a place get lodged together so completely in your mind and heart, you can't think of one without thinking of the other?

what is it about certain people that leads to this phenomena? are they the people who are themselves so attached to their place, that one can't imagine them anywhere else? or is it something about our specific set of experiences with a certain person that leads to this mental confusion? do we have our significant experiences in unique, place-specific settings as opposed to generic ones, and that's what makes them people as places as people?

i've had entire states break my heart. i look at a map, and see pain in the shape of a specific geography.

or, conversely, in a moment of sublime beauty & happiness i occasionally wonder: do i love this landscape because of who i'm with? or do i only like this person next to me - because of what i see?

the 'real'ization of germany

2009-10-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

the first place i ever lived where there was a wal-mart was wetzlar, germany.

no kidding! talk about depressing and discouraging proof of the american 'culture' overtaking the world. we never made the trek up to the wetzlar wal-mart, but it didn't last long. while we were living there, wal-mart pulled out of germany - sold all thier stores and never looked back. the stores, bought by a european chain called 'real', i'm sure are pretty similar, but i bet there's no greeters.

i talked this over with a german friend of mine, and we're pretty sure it was the greeters that did wal-mart in.

when you walk into a large store in germany (it's slightly different with small boutiques and small stores), it's just silent. there's no help, anywhere. there's no, 'how are you today?', no extraneous conversation, no 'can i help you?'

i spent the first 6 months in germany shopping with a cloud hanging over me, convinced that somehow my mere presence had offended everyone so much that they were ignoring me. i was certain i had done something wrong without knowing it. why else would no one speak to me? why else would no workers be around to help when i was struggling to get something off the top shelf? why wasn't the cashier asking me about my child's day at school and complaining about her backache? why wasn't there a cheery, smiling stockboy asking if i found everything ok? it must be my fault!

eventually i not only realized that it's just the way things were, i even adapted to it without realizing it. the first time i was back in the states was about 9 months after moving to germany. we were driving from portland to LC and i stopped at a safeway for something - may have even been to just use the bathroom (ok, one nice thing about the states - public bathrooms). i entered and was walking through the store - walking with purpose, mind you - when a cheery, well-scrubbed lad of maybe 18 popped in front of me.

'hi! can i help you find anything?' he said.

i was a bit surprised and taken aback. 'uh, no thanks', i said and continued on my very directed walk.

then another fresh, bright person accosted me. 'finding everything ok today?' she said, grinning hugely.

'yes', i said, now a little put out. did i look lost? was i going slowly, scanning the shelves? no! what was the freaking deal with these people?

on the return trip - a bee-line, really - from the bathroom to the exit the same cheery cherub that first interrogated me appeared again. 'find everything alright?' he said, smiling.

by now i was downright annoyed. who were these people, and why would they not allow me to move through the store in silence? why were they trailing me, nagging me with their incessant questions? then i remembered - oh yeah. that's just how it is here.

i had only been in germany a matter of months. now imagine a native german, walking into wal-mart for the first time, encountering a person whose sole role in the store was to immediately jump on you. 'HI! WELCOME TO WAL-MART!' how utterly confusing, and kind of frightening. i can just picture nervous frauen clutching their handbags a little tighter when confronted with such a madperson, vowing never to return. it's just not how it's done there.

call it a customer service desert, call it peaceful. sometimes it's annoyingly one way, sometimes another. but sometimes, despite the best efforts of a wildly successful company, their way of doing things just isn't quite - right.

for me, back here in the US, i've completely adjusted back to this way. i love the smiles, the over-effusive offers of assistance. i let those cheery smiles wrap around me like a comforting hug - that familiar way that is neither right or wrong, good or bad, but just what i'm used to.

note: the picture of the real- store in germany comes from another blog which appears to be, randomly enough, devoted to discussions of brands and retail chains - not anything more or anything less than brand talk. how obscure. but the proper credit is thus:
photo from krikor.info [http://krikor.info/category/retail-distribution/]

postcards from the edge

2009-10-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

one of the random collections i've accumulated over the years is of postcards. generally speaking, i don't get them all together and peruse them; they tend to pile up in little stacks and live, scattered, in various boxes helpfully marked like so:
~~misc mc~~
~~kitchen stuff~~
misc mc

but lately, with the whole settling down thing, i've been actually putting my random collections together. with these postcards, i am kind of fascinated by what people choose to celebrate or showcase about their place. the very function of postcards is to impress upon the recipient some key image about somewhere else. i suddenly noticed a striking similarity in two postcards that i found funny:

really? there's two states bragging about potato growing? and they are so cheap, they won't even pony up for a new image? what are you doing, maine? potato growing in maine is a fairly small industry. there's the whole beach/lobster/scruffy tree thing you should be talking up. and idaho? when you've got the sawtooth mountains, the salmon river, and craters of the moon - you're going to advertise potatoes? is that going to bring people there in droves?

i think the winner of the postcard that is inspiring me the least to jump in the car anytime soon is:

really, endless fields of soybeans is more attractive than that. and if you've been near a pork farm/iowa...and can associate the appropriate smell with this image, all the better.

i tend to collect 'themes' of postcards: from exotic places, featuring maps or plant identification information, funny ones, and scenes of environmental pillage. i guess the last one isn't too surprising, given my natural resource focus (forestry & ag). still, sometimes it amazes me that we have such a frontier mentality that we will celebrate rampant resource use in these ways. the classic one, from oregon:

a more subtle one, from new mexico:

i know, not all cattle production is environmentally unsound. but let's be realistic - in general, stampedeing tons of cows across fragile rangeland is not entirely sustainable.

then there's the grand champion expression of american pride in progress and utter lack of future-thought:

the berkeley pit, of course, was at one point in time one of the largest open-pit mines. it was owned by a huge conglomerate that dug all the copper out...and then removed the pumps that kept it dry and walked away. since then, it's been slowly filling up with water...which, thanks to the mining residue, is heavily contaminated with arsenic, cadmium, zinc, etc. did the flock of snow geese that landed in the water and died die from toxins or a bacterial infection? we don't know, but over 300 carcasses were pulled out in 1995. it was for many years the largest superfund site. not to mention the fact that the company abandoned the community and people of butte without a backward glance...all in all, a really cheerful scene to send on my family back home while i'm travelling.

or how about this one?

ah, sweet hanford! currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the US - fully two-thirds of the entire nuclear waste of the country sits there (53 million gallons of nuclear waste). plus, you can read up a little bit on it and come up with this fact: that plutonium from hanford was in the bomb that fell on nagasaki. the back of this postcard cheerfully proclaims: "Plant 2 can produce enough electricity to serve about 35,000 all-electric homes". that's it? thousands dead, millions of gallons of toxic waste - but on the plus side, enough electricty to serve a town!

there really used to be a town there, too. everyone was moved to make room for the 500+ square mile site. but they kindly named the new site after the town that had once been there. a sort of tribute to progress, i suppose. plus, they got a postcard out of it. i bet there weren't any postcards of hanford the town.

an inferiority complex of superlative size (or, don't insult the locals)

2009-10-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

here's an interesting story i ran across that got me thinking about westerners, easterners, and understanding other places.

it seems that a young woman from new england moved to dillingham, alaska, to work on the local public radio station. while there, she took up blogging, as a way to share her experience in the wilds of alaska with all those civilzed folks back home. given that the blog is called "I'm in Dillingham Alaska, What's Your Excuse?", you can maybe guess a bit of the tone.

that's the quiet version. where it hit the regular news was when suddenly, the locals got whiff of what all she was writing, and the shit storm began.

turns out they didn't always like their drunken and other rural escapades to be shared in a semi-scathing way with liberal elites out east. public sentiment swung against her, she was asked to resign from her job, and found herself the recipient of random pushes while on the street, that sort of thing.

there's a couple things going on here that i find interesting. heck, there's a million things, if you go through and read some of her blog posts, which i won't touch on here, but they have to do with native culture vs. white culture, alcoholism in rural, native areas, etc. it's a gold mine of things to talk about (if not all that well written), but for now, i'm just going to focus on what i think is the most important take-home message. it's one that i tell my cats, in fact, every time i have to stuff one of them into a kennel for a long car ride or plane trip.

"kitty", i say, "don't shit where you have to sleep. i'll be happier, you'll be happier, it's a win-win situation. trust me on this one."

i've never learned it to the extent that this person has. i mean - i think i've never managed to piss off an entire town. and it's more than just a matter of common sense. there's more to it than just not shitting where you sleep (i could find a less crass way of saying that, but then i'd have to forego the alliteration - and i love me a little alliteration). it's all about communication, and condescension. in some ways, i can't believe she didn't see it coming. did she really think it was going to be ok for an outsider to tell those stories in that tone - regardless of whether or not they were the truth?

just as teasing only works (i.e., doesn't hurt) when the other person knows you actually like them, so scathing commentary on another place, culture, or person is only not offensive when the two parties feel like equals. and easterners, bless thier sheltered hearts, will never understand that westerners just don't feel like equals. i referred to it as an inferiority complex previously, i think, but you can call it what you like: rural bias against perceived urban elitism seems to be the current catch-phrase. since most of the west is rural - and the rural areas tend to be more conservative out west - and most of the dominant, liberal population centers are in the east, this can easily be translated into a west vs. east kind of thing. and, now that i'm writing this, i'm realizing that she was a white urban easterner, commenting on a native, rural, alaskan culture. she came from at least three dominant cultures, compared to most locals. whenever you're not equal - whenever one person is speaking from a position of power - offense comes so much faster. and even if you think you're equal, you may not be. that's for the person in the subjugated position to decide - not the dominant one.

maybe one understands this more readily when one comes from a place that has been dubbed both the "20 miserable miles" and "the ugliest town on the Oregon Coast". even so, i had to learn it the hard way. i thought being from such a place gave me some sort of redneck cred. i thought growing up in otis - going camping in clearcuts, riding dirt bikes and ATVs - gave me an 'in', made me an equal, when i moved to montana. so, one day i flippantly referred to native Montanans - and, by extension, my dear friend Kevin, whom i was speaking to at the time - as 'hicks'.

he was totally, utterly, shocked and hurt. i had completely insulted him, without meaning to. i should have known better. i know how offensive it was, growing up, to hear portlanders complain about how ugly and horrible lincoln city was, how unsophisticated us natives were. i can remember in conversation with a friend, we agreed that "they don't get to [have a right to] complain about here yet, because they don't live here and know it. they don't know all the good. and until one loves it, one doesn't have the right to say how much it sucks." not that we had any sort of philosophical or rational logic to that statement, but doesn't it seem somehow kind of right? just as you have to love someone to tease them, shouldn't you have to also love a place before you insult it? i guess i thought he knew that i loved montana already, and the people in it. i guess i didn't understand that he still saw me as an outsider. he didn't push me over in the parking lot or anything. no - worse, to me - he just looked really sad.

i think i've veered off track here. and probably not made my original point clear, at all. i think it was - don't insult the locals. and the other point is - if you hurt someone, say you are sorry, as soon as you can. because sometimes, we're left wondering - did i say what i wanted to say, before they disappeared forever? but that's a different story, and i've veered so far off track, all i can do is add in a picture of kevin (on the left, camping in March 1995).

instead of a kind of conversational post about an interesting story, i've left myself missing a place i loved and left, and a person i'll never see again. next time i'm going to make a goddamned outline and follow it. sometimes place attachment and loss hurts almost as much as person love and loss.

itchy feet & staying put

2009-10-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

we just bought a new house, and it's kind of freaking me out.

here's the thing: for all that western oregon is the only place i feel at home, for all my over-developed place attachment, for all that i can never seem to stay away, i get - with striking regularity - seriously itchy feet every two to three years that demand to be taken out for a long walkabout, so they can see and experience new things.

ever since i was 16 and moved to eugene, it's been the case:
1990 - to eugene (and back to LC in 1992)
1992 - to montana
1995 - back to oregon: albany, then corvallis
1998 - to maine
2000 - back to oregon: LC, then corvallis
2004 - to germany
2007 - back to corvallis

the trend is ominous. it's been two years now and prior history would indicate that my yo-yo nature - or, as i prefer to think of it, my tidal nature - is about to slingshot me out on another run. yet i'm full of this conflicting desire - or dedication, really - to make sure that j. can graduate high school here. in other words, it's time for somebody to nail my feet to the floor. i guess being a homeowner might do the trick.

instead of moving, i've been talking with my palm reader about 'radical openness'. not radical in the sense of packing up and moving someplace new. radical in the sense of trying tiny new things every day, so that one can have new experiences while staying in the same location. this blog is part of that - sort of an ongoing discussion about place, what it means, and a bit of reveling in what it means to stay. so is my current doubling of jewelry-wearing (i put on another ring recently, and have decided it is ok). i'm learning to fly-fish, which i'm pretty excited about. i'm trying to stay here - mentally and physically - instead of always looking forward. i'm returning, in some sense, to my 'see america first!' phase. only it's even more restricted: see the northwest first! i'm trying to get back to really knowing my place, renewing my appreciation for my place, living local - remembering favorite trails, remembering the names of plants, trying to let - say - the sun rising through the trees be my own 300-year-old cathedral.

in the midst of this worry, we went to olympic national park to go backpacking last weekend. and i found my cathedral.

so, it's working. i mean, if that isn't the voice of god/spirit/earth/whatever telling me to stay put and celebrate, i don't know what is.

and just in case the subtlety of that message escaped me, the beach in washington left me a more explicit one:

i'll be staying put for a while.

thank you, trees! thank you, sun! thank you, beach! i love you too.

the relativity of 'of course'

2009-09-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
--Kurt Vonnegut, In an Interview

when we were getting ready to move to germany, lots of people pointed out that 'unfurnished' means something different in europe than here. i kept thinking, thanks, but i get it already. i know about there being no closets. why else would IKEA sell all those wardrobes? and all those british kids keep popping out of them in stories?

when we landed, we had a place to live for the first month in a furnished apartment in giessen that was owned by the university. it had two bedrooms & a bathroom and worked more like a guesthouse, even though it looked like an apartment building - we had to clean the floors and do all our own food and all, but linens were even provided. we didn't want to be there very long, however, and so we quickly got to work looking for a place to live.

our friend lutz took us to view the first apartment we wanted to see. it was in wetzlar, a nearby town that was much more attractive (sorry, giessen, for bombing the holy hell out of you in WWII). it was a beautiful old building, with three floors; each floor was its own apartment. a surprisingly young woman, the owner, met us all there - all four of us, and our german friend/guide/translator - and began to give us the tour.

now i've looked at lots of apartments over my life. viewed them in various states. i know how to disregard the current furniture, and all that. so we were going through, visualizing the living room empty, that sort of thing, and just generally admiring the hell out of it. then we came to the kitchen.

i think i said something totally generic and innocuous, like: "this is nice".

then one of the germans - either lutz or the owner - seemed to realize what i was thinking and said, "yes, but you do know the kitchen is theirs, right?"

the kitchen was theirs. it belonged to them. yep, all of it. the cupboards. the cupboards on the wall. the cupboards on the floor. the counter top. the stove. the fucking sink. when they moved out, it was all going with them. the kitchen would be just like all the other rooms - a bare box, only with a drain hole in the floor and a big outlet for the stove on the wall.

feeling pretty taken aback, we went back into the living room, which looked so nice partly because the floor was a dark pergo-type instead of the dark blue carpet that was in the rest of the apartment. i think at that point in time i commented on how nice that was.

can you see where this is going? i couldn't. turned out the floor was theirs. they had put it in, and they were taking it with them when they moved out. it was pergo laid right on top of the carpet. then we learned more, and it kept getting worse. those lovely overhead fixtures? those belonged to the tenants, too. we would be treated to entirely bare rooms, with just some wires hanging down from those charming 12-foot ceilings. my brain was suddenly in overload, redefining 'bare' and contemplating how a family of four, new to the country, not speaking the language, without a car and with only the contents of 6 suitcases between them, was going to get overhead lights and a ladder tall enough to install them on the day we moved in. not to mention - a sink.

we went back into the bathroom. feeling a little desperate, i asked, is the toilet and bathtub going to be here? the germans laughed. "of course!" they said, like i had said the funniest thing they'd ever heard. the idea of anyone taking a toilet!

of course? of course, my ass! of course the sink would be there. i had never contemplated a world where the sink was not immutable. in fact, in my world, the sink is so damned immutable, that it's a phrase used to express when absolutely everything else is gone. 'she took/sold/packed everything but the kitchen sink'. the kitchen sink never goes. in a bad divorce you might take the shower head - but no one even contemplates taking the kitchen sink. the kitchen sink will be the last thing standing, the last thing in a house, always.

then it hit me - turns out that's why ikea sells all those kitchens. turns out that the existence of a kitchen sink is a matter of faith, not truth. cultural relativity, in a very unexpected, small, yet concrete way, hit me like a ton of bricks.

i try not to say 'of course!' too often now.

"everything is so amazing..."

2009-09-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

we just got back recently from a nine-day tour of southern oregon & northern california national parks & monuments. 2 adults, a 14-year-old, and a 5 and 5/6ths year old. to his credit, the 14-year old didn't complain too much once we got on the road. and to his credit, the 5 year old didn't ask "how much longer?" more than 4,326 times.

this post could have a lot to do with place, but it doesn't. it's about wildness instead. what got me thinking was when we were driving in between lassen national park and lava beds national monument. suddenly J (the 14 year old) realized we were in cell phone range. 'cool', he said, 'maybe we'll have coverage at the campground'.

here's where i don't go all curmudgeon-y. in fact, i'm a little tired of people my age and older constantly complaining about how connected kids these days are and what dire consequences for society and face-to-face interpersonal communications that will have. how it signals the decline of Western Civilization, Since They Will Not In The Future Be Able To Communicate At All. i remember vividly the days of not being connected. of arranging call times with friends, racing to pick up the phone after one ring so as not to disturb the parents, dragging the phone with the 20-foot cord to the bedroom and closing the door (until the time the irate parent picked it up and said, 'get off the phone!'). am i a better person for it, with better communication skills? i kind of doubt it.

it is amazing, though, that these days even camping does not necessarily mean disconnected. used to be that heading out on a weeks' vacation with the parents meant absolutely no contact with your friends. it was like exile, really.

and what if that's not such a bad thing? used to be that we all dreamed about being out there - you know, beyond the reach of anything. in the true wilderness. you against the land. my side of the mountain, and all that. totally alone...well, except all the jet trails crossing overhead. these days, there's no such illusions. maybe it's only appropriate that teens these days have no expectations of wilderness, of being truly alone. they don't consider it an option. they are - always connected. and, with 6+ billion people on the planet, i'm wondering if that won't be an advantage, survival-wise.

humans are incredibly adaptable. without adaptation, without societal evolution, my only option in life would be to be an uneducated breeder. i'm thinking that teens these days - who don't ever mind being utterly connected, who never expect otherwise, who can find privacy in the midst of crowds with ipods and by texting as opposed to phone conversations that can be overheard - i'm thinking that they might be better positioned for our crowded future than we are, with our archaic expectations of wilderness and solitude.

maybe i was most amazed at my reaction to his comment. when he said that, i didn't really care. turns out he'd been with us for a week already, and had never complained about lack of contact, lack of cell coverage. he had, in fact, hiked 5 miles a day with us. he had been duly, and i think truly, impressed by redwoods and volcanoes, fumaroles and mud pots. he had hiked down to the beach in northern california where there were no other humans in sight the entire time - from start of hike, to exploring the beach, to the return. all this, without complaint. he was just saying hey, it'd be ok with him to once again be in contact. i can't really begrudge him that. i saw him at that moment as a supremely adaptable human. i was reminded of a video clip i love of Louis CK, talking about someone on a plane who was disgruntled at a momentary lack of wireless service - "Everything is so amazing, and no one is happy". everything is so amazing - redwoods, a secluded beach in california, craters, and texting in the middle of a lava field. i guess i'd rather seek out the good, and be happy, than decry unequivocally the decline of culture*.

*especially since it doesn't matter a bit which i do.

the best book about where i'm from

2009-09-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

"And for another thing, there was nothing, not a thing! about the country that made a man feel Big and Important. If anything it made a man feel dwarfed…Important? Why, there was something about the whole blessed country that made a soul feel whipped before he got started…The flora and fauna grew or died, flourished or failed, in complete disregard for man and his aims. A Man Can Make His Mark, did they tell me? Lies, lies. Before God I tell you: a man might struggle and labor his livelong life and make no mark!"

--Sometimes A Great Notion, Ken Kesey

the best book ever about the oregon coast range is without a doubt sometimes a great notion. it's not the best book ever. in fact, i'm not entirely sure it's even a great book, or even successful in what it's trying to do. Kesey's best, by far, was one flew over the cuckoo's nest. that is a gem of a book: succinct, powerful, unforgettable. SAGN, on the other hand, wanders too long, uses a shifting narrator perspective that is insightful at its best and distracting and confusing at its worst, and is so verbose and wordy that many don't stick with it. one of the main characters is not even all that likable.

"For what profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun if the trees and the brush and the moss strive everlastingly to take it back? Strive everlastingly until a soul felt that the town was only a sort of prison cell with green prison walls of brush and vine and he had to labor everlastingly, day in and day out, just to hang onto whatever pitiful profit he might have made, labor everlastingly day in and day out just to hang onto a floor of mud and a ceiling of clouds so low sometimes he felt he must stoop…Floor and ceiling and a green prison wall of trees."

but there's no better book about the oregon coast range. i've never read any prose that can capture better the suffocating feeling of the heavy grey skies, the rain, the enormous trees; the stifling, small-town interconnected community; the pride of woods workers; the incredible richness of the fauna that covers everything.

"For this land was permeated with dying; this bounteous land, where plants grew overnight, where Jonas had watched a mushroom push from the carcass of a drowned beaver and in a few gliding hours swell to the size of a hat – this bounteous land was saturated with moist and terrible dying. Saturated and overflowing! The feeling haunted Jonas’s days and tortured his sleep. O, Jesus, light of life, fill the darkness. He was being smothered. He was being drowned. He felt he might awake some foggy morn with moss across his eyes and one of those hellish toadstools sprouting in the mist from his own carcass."

that's exactly how i felt growing up. feel that everyday and maybe, just maybe, you wind up thinking that place matters. it's the only place where i feel utterly, truly, at home and like i belong.

in addition to being the best book to capture the feeling of the coast range, kesey's book is all about place. he is obviously a person for whom place matters. the main oregon characters - hank & henry - are inseparable from the forest environment. they have lived and worked in the woods their entire lives. furthermore, thier relationship with the place - the human community as well as the environment - was partly in response to thier ancestor jonas's hatred and disconnect with the place.

so, it's got place, and more specifically, my place. no wonder it's one i turn to almost every year. when the rains start and the geese start honking overhead i know it's time to loose myself once again in the battles of hank, henry, the union and wakonda pacific...

Photo from eyeliam, flikr creative commons, of the poster used in a portland stage version of SAGN.

and how did you celebrate statehood day?

2009-09-13T22:45:00.000-07:00

for those of you living under a rock and/or in another state, oregon this year celebrated its sequi- sesci- somegodaweful thing -centennial. in other words, oregon turned 150 on february 14th, 2009.

i wouldn't even necessarily know that oregon's statehood day is february 14th except that, while growing up, our class had a couple of jehovah's witnesses in it, which meant we could not celebrate any holidays. so our teacher in the 6th grade had a 'statehood day' party, instead of a valentine's day party. i guess it did firmly fix 'statehood day' in my mind.

turns out this is how i celebrated oregon's sesquicentennial this past 2/14/2009 with my friend holly (that's the correct spelling, i looked it up). the tree tattoo i got years ago while i was in forestry school. adding the state - and lincoln county, where my heart is and always will be - along with other things i think of as truly oregon (salmon and trillium) seemed a good fit.

damn, i love oregon. what is it about this state that inspires such weird loyalty among people? there are others like it in terms of loyalty - i've seen texas tattoos, and california. but those states are icons, if you will - giants both geographically and culturally in the overall american landscape. oregon is a bit player, really, when it comes right down to it. a professor once said, talking of economics, that oregon was about 1% of the nation as a rule of thumb. my jaw dropped, but he's totally right: we're 1% of the population (3 million out of 300 million), and our state economy is about 1% of whatever comparable national measures. 1%? that's nothing!

there are a few other places that are completely unimportant in the national scheme of things that, nevertheless, have a unique pull on the people living there - montana springs most readily to mind. people there are very attached to being Montanans, and always will be. but there's lots of other states that struggle away in relative obscurity and unimportance, and fail to inspire the allegiance of residents. maybe i'm wrong but - can you imagine a delaware tattoo?

note: it's entirely possible that, in fact, oregon does not inspire great loyalty. since i am speaking only from my personal experience (n=1), it's possible that, in fact, i'm just a kind of overly-attached freak, and if i had grown up in deleware, would have in fact a delaware tattoo.

rationale

2009-09-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

i am a 100%, through-and-through, died-in-the-wool, American.

i'm not saying that that's a good thing, but it's the truth. and really i should say not just an american, but a Westerner; and not just any westerner, either, but an Oregonian.

way back in high school i became dedicated to 'seeing america first' (and not just because i was a fan of cole porter). deep down inside, i was a raving europhile. but i had no resources to fund a 6 week or 8 week soul-searching, backpacking/eurail pass adventure of the type i dreamed about. so, i pleaded the moral highroad of "america first!". gas was cheap, i had a small car, and i could drive all over the west - which is so full of amazing natural places that it was easy to justify.

culturally, though, i still struggled with our western-american-inferiority complex, and saw europe as the center of all - or at least, new york and europe in combination. american history, world history, art, architecture, museums, opera, music, dance - it flowed from there. then i finally got a chance to live there, in central Germany, from 2005-2007.

i moved there at the height of my own anti-american stance. but in the process of living there is when i fully understood that i was an incurable american - an incurable westerner - for good or ill.

this blog is going to be just a sort of series of reflections mostly on what that mean to me, observations about life in germany as an american, thoughts about the west in general, and about rural life. i don't pretend to have any answers or new insights. but it's stuff i like to think about. since i have 2 kids and a partner, there'll no doubt be some random family waffle too.

i was thinking of titling this blog 'americans and other freaks of nature' at first. but probably not everyone revels in our freakiness, so that may sound too negative. but what do you call uncivilized people? wild? we aren't wild anymore; not even in the west. half-wild though - that seemed appropriate.