Strybing Arboretum

Here are some pics in Strybing Arb, all taken with a Canon PowerShot SX110 IS which I bought in April '09. Click on the picture for a larger image. This hummingbird shot was a good case of beginner's luck.

Lately I've been having fun with water reflections in the Moon-Viewing Garden.

Photos

I love taking photos.

Less than two years ago I wouldn't think of writing that. I enjoyed other people's photos without any interest in taking my own. Too much time spent on finding the shot, framing the shot, focusing the shot, taking the shot, retaking the shot, finding another shot---any event or excursion swallowed up in all-consuming, unending sub-routines. The now would be hopelessly misplaced, the glimmering moment only enjoyed if it could be captured for later. No, better to take it all in as it presents itself, a memory formed as soon as my back is turned, maybe kept, maybe lost. Let the world be.

About a year and a half ago my friend Katie got a new camera and had no use for her old one, which she gave to me. It was a little Sony PowerShot, the kind of camera that looks more like a cell phone, a point-and-shoot piece of fluff by any professional standard, but a good camera nonetheless. Having previously steered me toward both a laptop and a cell phone without a green screen, Katie felt confident that I would slip further from my anti-gadget, anti-technology perch and immediately latch on to this new device. I did. In fact, I very soon realized that it was a direct path to two favorite things: Plants and Art.

Living two blocks away from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is a bona fide civic fortune, especially when the closest attraction is Strybing Arboretum. Anyone with any hortisexual tendencies will end up there for hours, exploring plants from South Africa to China and Japan, California natives to a redwood grove, Brazil and Chile to a massive succulent/cactus garden, New Zealand and Australia to a South American cloud forest. I had been taking full advantage of the place well before I had a camera, but when I first visited with the intent to take photos, I realized that the opportunity to take pictures of these beloved plants wasn't as exciting as was the chance to frame those pictures.

I have no aptitude for the visual arts. Everything I've ever tried to draw, paint or sculpt has turned out less than mediocre. Even as a little kid I knew I wasn't talented in this direction, so I didn't spend much time trying to get any better. Still, I had interest. My parents had several of those unwieldy, bulky, coffee-table busting art books, like "COMPANION TO THE LOUVRE" or "CEZANNE: A LIFE IN ART", and I spent considerable time studying the images within. Actually, I just made those particular titles up, but you totally got the idea.

As I looked, certain paintings and sculptures stayed with me after I put the book away, much like a tune plays in your head long after you first hear it. It was as if these images had always existed, that they were beside time, unchanged by the rivers of events roiling around them. Long before I could have understood or explained why I liked these pictures, their balance of form, color, light, perspective, leaped into my brain and made themselves at home. Even though I couldn't make anything of these ideas, I could appreciate and feel them. So what if I couldn't draw or paint or sculpt? I still felt the joy associated with creation just by looking at art pictures and absorbing their balance. Fortunately for me, I found other areas of expression in my young life--music and drama--that allowed room for eventual accomplishment. But that's work.

Photography is play, at least for me. It's a chance to be the painter without the paint, to make without making. As a kid, I used to imagine massive, angular, invisible 3-dimensional shapes made of air floating hundreds of feet up, tilting at odd angles. It was both lazy and abstract, but why not? They could effortlessly be there if I thought them, a mobile of my young mind spanning the sky. It kindled an early fascination with the notion of things existing in and of themselves, a quality that the art book images possessed. Only much later did I realize I could pull these invisible airy polygons to earth; they could encompass the angle, aspect, and depth of a photo.

Most of my pictures are of plants, landscapes or architecture. The stillness of hills and trees and flowers is easier to capture for sure, but the beingness is what I'm after. It gives me a chance to be like James Joyce, paring his fingernails and surveying his dramatic poem as it generates itself seemingly without his guidance. A side-lit calla lily growing under the white kerchiefs of a dove tree, a hummingbird motionless on an old puya stalk, cypress and eucalyptus trees submerged in misty fog. Walking in Strybing Arboretum, you will encounter these worlds within worlds quietly emanating timelessness at every turn. It's a beautiful jewel in the city's diadem, and lately out-of-towners are being charged to enjoy it. Who knows how long it will still be free for SF residents? I'll be going there as much as I can, catching nows for later.

Partying with Pelosi at the Delancey Street Foundation

My friend and colleague Katie Kadarauch knows people. Her friend, the vibrant octogenarian Eileen Caplan, has been politically active most of her life. She has worked for Ted Kennedy and was a personal friend of Harvey Milk, among other things. She had been invited to Nancy Pelosi's New Year's party, this year held at the Delancey Street Foundation, a prisoner rehabilitation center on the Embarcadero, south of the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco. Eileen had room for two guests and invited us to join her and her friends at Pelosi's shindig. We said YES.

These parties are not fundraisers or political action events, they are thank yous to all of the supporters of the political figure in question. In this case, it was a San Francisco gathering of political elites, union members and bosses, fundraisers, PACs, and oglers such as myself and Katie. It lasted a couple of hours, plenty of time to enjoy some hors d'oeuvres and wine, mingle, network, lend half an ear to preliminary speechifying and wait for the big moment, Pelosi herself. Other SF luminaries at the party included San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, California Democratic Party Chair John Burton, and California State Senator Mark Leno.

Who is Nancy Pelosi? Most people have heard of her at this point. She is currently Speaker of the House of Representatives, gaining that post in 2007. She has represented the 8th Congressional District of Calfornia, which is most of the city of San Francisco, since 1987. She was elected the House Minority Whip in 2001, the first woman in this post. In 2002 she was elected to House Minority Leader, also a first for a woman. In 2007 she became the first female Speaker of the House, which gives her the highest political rank of any female in American history, third in line for the presidency should something happen to both Obama and Biden.

She's among the richest members of Congress, holding SF real estate, a Napa Valley vineyard, and a large portfolio of stock investments. She lives in the Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. She was born in Baltimore into the D'Alesandro family, a political force in Maryland, so she is no stranger to the halls of power. As can be expected, she is often vilified by the Right as a "San Francisco liberal", the worst of insults to many thin-skinned conservatives. She's often criticized by the Left as well, even though she was a founding member of the House Progressive Caucus. Cindy Sheehan ran an unsuccessful primary campaign against her in 2008 because of Pelosi's repeated statements that the possible impeachment of President George W. Bush for misleading Congress about Iraq's WMD's and warrantless wiretapping of Americans was "off the table".

As leader of the Democrats in the House and as a representative of her district's avowedly liberal base, Pelosi treads a tricky path. Her past voting record includes opposition to the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraq Resolution in 2002 which authorized Bush to invade Iraq, and opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. She's also voted for the No Child Left Behind Act and opposes freeing travel restrictions of Americans wanting to visit Cuba. Most of the country sees her as a screaming liberal, but it's often forgotten that in 1987 when she was elected to Congress, the Democratic primary saw her running against a more progressive candidate.

Whatever your feelings are for her, she's a very very powerful woman, and a lot of people adore her in San Francisco. The short party was well-attended by mostly well-dressed SF folks, young and old eying each other's name tags and constantly glancing around the room for someone bigger. There's a gleam coming off people at events like this, an unspoken acknowledgment that this many influential people can lead to big scores on the networking card. Lots of chatter and smiles, lots of TV cameras, lots of security detail, although no pat-down to get in. When Pelosi entered the party I didn't see her directly at first. She was surrounded by an amoebic mass of well-wishers, Secret Service, and cameras. The blob oozed its way toward the center platform, picking up threads and strands of people along the way. This lasted for another 30 minutes or so, capped by a short musical presentation by the San Francisco Boys Chorus to whom most folks lent half-an-ear and vigorous applause.

Mayor Newsom said a few words, Chairman Burton said a few more, and then the climax of the afternoon, Speaker Pelosi herself talked for about 8-10 minutes, mostly about the current health care situation. Tellingly, when she mentioned the public option she also talked about legislation that would do "what the public option was intended to do: Keep the insurance companies honest." As she talked I realized she was a master at this kind of appeasement, rallying the faithful that have supported her while craftily acknowledging the reality that things may turn out not so rosy. Most of the Important People were gathered near the central platform, off to one side in front so as to look out into the crowd and catch people's eyes and wave, which they did. Their smiles spoke volumes about victory, about influence, about power. I caught myself thinking that these folks had shaken an awful lot of hands at an awful lot of chicken dinners. Happily, Pelosi put in a plug at the end of her speech for funding and supporting the Arts, always a cause near and dear to my heart. I cheered lustily along with the rest of the crowd for this rather small, osprey-eyed woman who represents so much of the liberal cause.

Among the crowd were some former participants in the Delancey Street Foundation mingling with the suited and coiffed. They are beneficiaries of something that many on the Right think is a terrible mistake: Money and time spent to help those unable to help themselves, who find themselves in situations that prevent them from being productive members of society, whose choices have lead them astray. The Cheneys of the world would be appalled at such an endeavor, they would call it a waste of money and resources. But check out the success rate of Delancey, it's no joke. Sometimes it's best to help people by actually helping them.

Eugene

I was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, living there from 1974 until 1993. Eugene is a college town, home of the University of Oregon, an ever-expanding academic and athletic juggernaut that has become one of the main financial engines of the city. Since the 60s Eugene has maintained a vibrant counter-culture, and indeed, during the Reagan and Bush I years it was one of the "last hippie bastions". Growing up there, I didn't think anything of the dreadlocked folks that would congregate downtown for the Saturday Market, a still-flourishing weekly outdoor arts and crafts fair and farmers' market. Drum circles, patchouli, cannabis, dreamcatchers, hemp clothing, freeloaders, Rastafarians, bare breasts, kids standing up to nurse (La Leche League), Artis the Spoonman, epic Grateful Dead shows at Autzen Stadium or the Country Fair, Sundance Market, Keystone Cafe, batik, anarchists, a downtown mall with a few blocks car-free, facepaint, naked toddlers, crystals, mandalas, cedar flutes, headshops....

The weather is soft for the most part, although plenty of rain keeps it emerald green most of the year. Snow generally acts properly and falls in the mountains, not regularly blanketing populated areas like so much of the rest of the nation. It's the home of rainbows, cumulo-nimbus and sunlight displays, long summer days that linger golden into early autumn. Spring lasts an eternity, flowering plants often have early false starts that color late winter's rainy gloom. It's the home of stern evergreen forests softened by deciduous display, trilliums and calypso orchids, mahonia and hellebores, ferns and blackberries, fields of grasses and poison oak, senecios and alliums. In the summer especially, there is a fatness to the land, a humming greenness of leaf stretching from the giant oaks and sweet gums to the sky, shimmering up from the damp meadows.

Eugene is in the southern Willamette Valley, one of the world's breadbaskets. Grasses are plentiful, as is corn, mint, strawberries, and more recently, grapes. I had horrible hay fever in the spring through early summer when I was growing up. I wouldn't so fondly rhapsodize over the flora in those days, but I happily grew out of most of it and can return now without suffering the endlessly itchy eyes and runny nose that I dreaded in my childhood.

That being said, I spent a lot of time outside in my young days. Eugene has always fostered a great parks system, with the jewel in the diadem being Spencer Butte, arguably the city's most instantly recognizable feature. It gracefully rises at the south end of the city and has a number of excellently maintained trail systems that take you to the top for panoramic views. Nearby is Mt. Pisgah, a sloping baldy that offers a deciduous contrast to Spencer's evergreen. These aren't mountains per se; the real peaks are the spine of the Cascades to the east, easily seen from both. I spent many many hours rambling around these lovely hills as a child, getting lost in my own thoughts, imagining worlds amongst the roots and moss, finding lizards and snakes, sighting tanagers and cedar waxwings, and yes, chasing butterflies and picking flowers for my mom.

Eugene is also graced by the Willamette river, running first west from the mountains, then bending northward through town, gathering size and strength before meeting the Columbia in Portland 110 miles north at the top of the valley. Running and biking trails follow the river through town, and it was nearly mandatory to swim in the Willamette as a kid. After the rains it can get swollen and muddy, a reminder that this valley was a flood plain before Westerners dammed the river. Much of the land is swampy and fecund; I'm pretty sure there's a limit to the height of buildings in Eugene, not only for aesthetic reasons but to keep them from slowly sinking into the valley's marshy floor.

It's no wonder that hippies found Eugene and the surrounding area to be idyllic. Ken Kesey lived a few miles away in the forest with his Furthur bus. He even came to my high school in a Tlingit totem costume and read Native tales to us. The Country Fair a few miles outside of town has for years been a great gathering of artisans, Deadheads, families, explorers, free spirits and free love. During Gulf War I people congregated in the plaza of the downtown Federal Building and kept a 24-hour drum circle going for the length of the conflict. A lot of people not familiar with Eugene might use the adjective FUNKY to describe the scene. To me, it was pretty normal, until I moved to the Midwest and realized just how different a place it is from most of the country.

The way I'm describing Eugene makes it sound like a hippie haven, which is was and is. It has many sides to it, however, as can be expected of a place big enough to house a major university while being on the edge of major farmland as well. When I was growing up in Eugene it was decidedly white, "cauliflower land" as my father puts it. In my high school of 1800 or so students, there were probably 30 black kids and very few Latinos. There were some Asians, but the supermajority of folks were white, white, lily white. Where there are white people, there are generally rednecks, and Eugene has its fair share of this scene as well, with the west side of the city being much more agricultural than cultural. Because of the university, there's also a good deal of money in town. Large areas of the surrounding hills are suburban paradises replete with 4bd/4bath manors in the firs, golf clubs in the garage, shaved ice cubes from the fridge, deep green lawns perfectly edged.

I'm familiar with all of these environments from my complicated living situation as a child (another post another day). I also got to know Eugene delivering pizza for Izzy's (pizza plus a whole lot more), from trailer parks to 70s-style apartments to doctors' pads. In all the time that I delivered I didn't get one order from any hippies....Their taste for beautiful surroundings rivals their taste for superior pizza.
Seriously, don't go to Izzy's for the pizza.

Avatar

I saw Avatar in 3-D a couple of weeks ago while visiting my parents in OR. I'm not usually one for seeing movies everyone else MUST SEE (with the notable exception of LOTR) but this one had enough oooohs and ahhhs in it to warrant a viewing in the multiplex after waiting in line with the mall people. Malls---oh they are terrible spaces, everything about them is manufactured for comsumption and temporary satiety. James Cameron's movies are much the same way.

Don't get the wrong idea, he's majorly talented and puts on a great show. Think of the classics he's directed: Terminators I and II, Aliens, and Titanic are enough to ensconce him in cinematic greatness for the foreseeable future. He's introduced new film technology in Aliens of the Deep and Ghosts of the Abyss, and he's kept Mr. Redenbacher's family in 1000 thread count sheets for generations to come. With this in mind, I gamely opened my senses to Avatar, his first full-length feature in ten years.

Suffice to say it's Dances With Wolves II, with a colorful cast of tall, lanky beings with quasi-Keane eyes and a penchant for groovy planetary fiber-optic bonding. And of course, the evil humans and their ravenous, destructive search for "unobtainium" (nice one) that will destroy the natives' sacred dwelling. There are the requisite army baddies, as well as the soft-hearted scientists exploring this new world and trying to find a way to convince the natives to leave their home so the humans can obtain the unobtainium. The title refers to the futuristic technology that allows the humans to inhabit a genetically reconstructed alien body so as to infiltrate the tribe. That's all you really need to know.

What can I say? I was SATIATED. Visually, at least. The effects are stunning and deserve to be enjoyed in 3-D in the theatre. Cameron doesn't let up with the inventive, fantastical world he's been dreaming up since the late 70s, supposedly after he saw the first Star Wars. In fact, there's so much tropical color splashed on every living thing, after a while I was transported back to the late 80s-early 90s surfer fashions that were so popular with the suburban kids (OP, Hang Ten). I was also reminded of the brief popular fascination with day-glo face paint. Radical. Tubular. Sweet.

In ten years or so, this movie will be something to snicker at, mostly due to the predictable storyline and outdated special effects (just wait). It's an important message: Our plundering of resources, our 'might makes right' mindset destroys life and cultures other than ours. But it's wrapped up in WOWS and GASPS, rendering it both more and less effective than a crying Native American guilting us into driving hybrids and recycling. Is the point to entertain or scold? Cameron clearly wants to entertain first and let the viewer decide later whether or not they feel sufficiently admonished to, say, not use their car for a few hours, or turn in their old cellphones to the local recycling center. One wonders at the amount of precious rare-earth metals used in the making and screening of Avatar. Probably, most people just want to see the pretty lights and colors again.

Before the movie started we were treated to endless commercials for the Army National Guard, for your country, for your fellow patriots, for yourself. etc etc etc
I'm not sure how many folks watching the movie compared these glowing tributes to military service with Avatar's evil (and profoundly American) army of the future, ready to blow em all up for unobtainium. Irony is so not 21st Century.