The Wisdom of Razi...and Flowers

My travels brought me to Denver, Colorado this past week, for a series of meetings and other such stuff.  As usual I also try to get away and sightsee a little.  Rather than simply post nice photos and give boring descriptions, I also like to wax philosophical on these occasions.  The opportunities simply abound, and it was during my cab ride back to the airport I had such an encounter.

The driver's name was Razi.  He was from Casablanca and has lived in the US for 20 years.  Being an immigrant myself, I am always fascinated with the stories of others and learning about their journey.  Somehow our discussion went from Moroccan influence on Spanish architecture, to the contributions of other civilizations over several millenia.  Though he didn't say so, I suspect he follows an Islamic tradition, and we discussed Arabic contributions to our English numbering system...an important thing for us engineers.  That's when he made an interesting comment, about how each civilization's contributions makes the next one better, and so on.  Were it not so, he said, it would be as if all the flowers look the same and are the same color.

Profound!

I had visited the Denver Botanic Gardens earlier, and Razi's comment brought the deliriously beautiful displays back into my mind.  It is true, you know. As I wandered about the Gardens and the tropical conservatory, I was treated to a vast array of plants, insects...and yes, lovely colors.

Inside the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory one finds an amazing collection of colors and shapes. 

The Conservatory is a structure of interlaced concrete arches, and made possible through the estate of Claude Boettcher, of the Ideal Cement Company (hence the concrete, of course).  It is the largest single tropical conservatory in the US, and my images don't even do it justice.  It's a beautiful place.

The surrounding gardens have all sorts of themes.  The water lilies are in the Monet area, in which I could've lingered for a long time.

 I've heard this referred to as a "Chocolate Sunflower", and the backlighting by the sun apparently pleases the honeybee.

Of course, gardens need water, and water attracts insects, which become food for larger insects like this Dragonfly (and yes...I'm certain someone will correct me in saying this is something different.  Please do.  I don't mind learning more about these gorgeous creatures).

Visiting a garden such as Denver's, and meeting philosophers like Razi are truly the spice of life.  Especially when we are faced with the tragedy of the shootings in nearby Aurora, Colorado (which occured not long after I left Razi's car), it is good to be reminded of the beauty of our world

See the links below for more information on the gardens.
http://www.botanicgardens.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boettcher_Memorial_Tropical_Conservatory

The 100th Market...

One hundred market days...that means some of us have volunteered to schlep the canopies, chairs, tables, water canisters and other market accoutrements from the storage shed, and back...100 times.  As the Montavilla Farmers Market opens its 6th year, it is good to reflect and see where we've come on this dusty lot in SE Portland.  From a bunch of neighbors with nothing more than a vision for a grass roots market in the neighborhood to this first market of the 2012 season...and it is impressive!

An army of asparagus meets the eye as one goes to the Maryhill Farms stand.  They have been one of the Market vendors for many years and offers some of the finest sustainably raised produce.  The asparagus pictured here made it to our dinner table this evening.

As you can see, the Market specializes in local sustainable produce, such as from Fiddlehead Farms in Corbett.

If I may brag a little, this little market is big in many ways.  We pioneered the "Durable Dish" program, which uses real plates and flatware for food eaten on the premises.  Thanks to Thatcher's on SE Stark, who allow us to use their dishwasher.  It's all part of reducing the market's carbon footprint.

What Market is without something to quench the thirst during a hot summer day?  What could be better than Liquid Sunshine?  Well...probably some real sunshine for starters, but this is Oregon and yes...it does rain...a lot.  Luckily, this Sunday stayed dry though the sun was filtered through a layer of clouds.  And being true Oregonians, we still drank our lemonaid and ate our ice cream.

I'm not sure of the final tally of people who visited the market, but I've heard estimates of more than two thousand...and judging by this scene (which is how it was throughout the day), I suspect that's close. 

This being the 100th market...and we being a neighborhood always in search of a reason to celebrate (you know, it doesn't take much.  Sometimes just having a dry day is enough), kids are invited to draw, color, plant seeds in paper cups (biodegradable, of course).

Cookies, in the shape of carrots, pears and other fruits and vegetables were given out (a huge thank you to Laura at PastryGirl, just down the street on Stark Street).

The booted flower pots are courtesy of the kids at Vestal Elementary School, not far from the Market. 

Remember what I said about kids and potted seeds? There is something magical about fingers in dirt...especially good clean potting soil, and dad's supervision. 

Old House Dahlias is barely 12 blocks away from the Market. (Hey, you can't get any more local than that!)

No, this isn't Amsterdam, but it is said that Portland is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in America, if not THE most, and yes many either walk or ride to the market.

Skin & Bones is one of the market's newer vendors, with some of the most amazing treats.  They also have a restaurant on E. Burnside and NE 55th Avenue.  (I must check it out now that I sampled their delicious stuff!)

The festivities also included drawings for many items including this basket of produce (won by Rory, with the thumbs up).

Each market day also features a chef demonstration.  Today's is Marliese Franklin, a local radio host and Mindful Eating coach.

Chef Marliese made a dish of cooked greens, using ingredients from various vendors at the market that day. 

There is nothing like the wonder of a child, savoring a fresh strawberry...wearing her finest ballroom gown, of course.  What I found surprising is that I was able to catch this image without any fruity decorations on her white fabric.  That wouldn't have been me.

To learn more about the Montavilla Farmers Market you can visit http://www.montavillamarket.org/

The Old West

One of the perks of my job is that I get to travel to unusual places.  In fact, some of the places are more than unusual...they are downright remote and one can get the feeling of being in a different world, or a different time. 

In mid-May I found myself in such a place, driving a lonely highway between Farmington and Gallup, New Mexico.  As you can see, the road is long, straight and the scenery markedly different from the forests and fields of Oregon.  But then, I like that.  There is a certain beauty in the stark and desolate landscape. 

This random outcropping is a lava intrusion in which the surrounding softer soil has eroded away.  It was taken as I drove past.  Thank goodness for autofocus and exposure control, so I can simply point and shoot with my camera.  Most of the time it works out, and occasionally I get a great shot.  

After my meetings and site visit (which was for a potential dam rehabilitation project at the end of this canyon), I took a slight detour and stopped by Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de shay), near Chinle, Arizona.  This is a spectacular canyon on the Navajo Reservation that has been home to indigenous people for more than 5,000 years, first the Ancient Pueblo People (also known as the People of the Canyon, or Anasazi), and later the Navajo.  The Navajo are also known as Dine', or Dineh. 

There are many cliff dwellings scattered thoughout the canyon such as the one pictured above.  Access was often only made by a series of ladders that afforded both protection from marauding tribes, as well as shade from the hot sun.  (It was in the 90's and very windy during my visit, which is why many of the images have a slight haze.) 

There are three main fingers of canyon that converge at the west end of the system.  This one is named Canyon del Muerto, or Canyon of the Dead, so named for a prehistoric indian burial ground found in 1882. 

More cliff dwellings, of which there are hundreds in the canyon.  Only a dozen or so have been stabilized to prevent or minimize further deterioration, and only a select few are accessible to the public.

Part of the beauty of such a remote location is the stillness, despite the wind.  As I sit and contemplate in a place such as this, I can almost feel the mystical presence of ancient ones, amidst the whistle of the wind, the screech of the hawk and the caw of the raven. 

These are the White House Ruins, so named for the different stone used in the building in the center of the hole in the lower left of the photo.  While most of the buildings used stone of the same reddish composition as the surrounding cliffs, this particular structure used a lighter colored stone.  It isn't known why. 

This is Spider Rock, a 750-foot sandstone spire formation.  According to Pueblo and Navajo/Dineh tradition, the Spider Grandmother spun a web, laced it with dew, and then cast it into the sky thus forming the stars.  She is said to live in the taller of the two spires

In the midst of the desert, there is a splash of color from the bloom of a cactus.  I saw this peeking out from beneath a juniper shrub as I walked back to the car.  If any of you botanical types know what this is, let me know and I will credit you in this blog. 

When traveling in remote areas, one must often yield the right-of-way to pedestrians...especially 4-legged ones.

With the barren landscape stretching for hundreds of miles, it is no surprise that the wind can really pick up and carry dust as though in a blizzard.  The wind gusted over 50 miles per hour and the sand blew across the road like small sand dunes.  Driving back to Farmington was a bit of an adventure, and I was ready for the cooler and wetter climes of the Pacific Northwest. 


For more information about Canyon de Chelly and the Navajo People, you can visit these sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canyon_de_Chelly_National_Monument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Grandmother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_people

La Luna!

When I was little, my parents traveled to Holland to visit their parents...my grandparents.  Part of their trip included sidetrips through Europe while I stayed with my grandparents.  Apparently I was homesick for them and my grandfather took me outside at one point.  I happen to see the moon, and cried out "La Luna, La Luna!"  My grandparents didn't know Spanish and wondered what I was saying at first...of course they figured it out, and seeing Luna apparently gave me comfort.  It was a familiar sight for me back home in Maracaibo and I suppose I've always had a soft spot for Luna.

Today was a "Super Full Moon", when the moon's orbit brings it to the closest point to the Earth.  What we see then is a full moon that is 30% brighter and 14% bigger than a normal full moon. 

These images were taken from Rocky Butte, one of the many hills scattered throughout Portland...and I wasn't alone!  There were hundreds of others, many with tripods and cameras like me, and then those simply enjoying the view (and yes there were a few who also howled to the moon). 

It was cloudy all day and the chances of clearing skies seemed more remote as the sun went down, but then the skies suddenly began to clear and Luna rose in all her majesty from a sea of retreating clouds, to shine her brightest for the year. 

To Drive out Tyranny

"De Tyranny Verdryven"

So read the letters on the cross attached to a ribbon of red, white and blue vertical strips, abutted by a wide strip of orange and bordered by black.  On the bottom of the cross, below the torch, are the years 1940 and 1945...the years of occupation of Holland by the German Army.  It reads "To drive out tyranny".

This is the Resistance Memorial Medal, awarded to those who participated in the resistance against occupying forces in Dutch territories during World War II.  It was presented to my father in 1980, on the 35th anniversary of the Liberation of Holland.  It surfaced today, when my mother and I were rummaging through his desk.  I remember when he received it, and was proud of him (as I have been thoughout my life) at that time. 

Ironically, I never saw him wear it.   Not that he wasn't proud of what he did...far from it!  The stories he told me of those years were rife with the adventures one would associate with wartime, such as sneaking into railyards under the cover of darkness, opening up the gearboxes of locomotives and filling them with sand.  The trains would later grind to a halt...and become sitting ducks for Allied aircraft, or other resistance fighters who would open the cars and release prisoners on their way to the German camps.

This he did in secret, while working his job as an engineer with a large construction company. One day, on his way to work he was met by other resistance members.  He was told he could not go to his office...the Gestapo were waiting for him.  He couldn't go home either.  The Gestapo were there too, having discovered the radio he had hidden and used to receive messages.  With the clothes on his back, he was spirited away to the French border where French resistance fighters took him further south to the Canadian Army coming from Normandy.  He joined with the Canadians as they later liberated southern Holland.  That's also when he would meet the young woman who would become my mother.

My father passed on almost 13 years ago, and this year would be the 100th anniversary of his birthday.  I think of him often, and wonder about those years.  I also wonder if I would've had the courage to do the things he did, in the name of freedom...to drive out tyranny.  I'd like to think I would.

Thank you, Dad.


(For a related writing about my father, see: http://musingsbypaul.blogspot.com/2008/10/moment-at-edge-of-eternity.html)

Through the Lens...as it used to be.

All of you know I love photography.  Nothing is more relaxing to me than to wander, or hike, or even drive to out-of-the-way places with my camera and at least a couple of lenses in tow.  What you may not know is that I also like to collect vintage cameras.  It started some years ago, while perusing an antique store that I met my first acquisition.  Perhaps this is that first hit that led me to what some would consider a serious addiction.  Judging by the number of old cameras that now inhabit my room, various shelves elsewhere in the house...and even my office, one could legitimately say intervention may be in order. 

This is what started it all.  A Conley Junior folding camera, ca 1917.  It is one of the earliest roll film cameras.  The leather cover over the case is pretty beat up and the bellows has a lot of pinholes, so it's not well-suited to take any photos now.  I found it in an antique store near the Oregon coast.  (Conley Camera Company was founded in 1899 in Spring Valley, Minnesota, and the plant later moved to Rochester, MN.  Conley supplied cameras to the Sears Roebuck Co for many years during this era.)

This is one of my favorites, a Pony Premo No. 6 by the Eastman Kodak Company, between 1903 and 1906.  Also a folding/bellows-type of camera, this model uses 4-inch by 5-inch plates attached to the back of the camera.  Instead of a roll of film, the image seen through the lens is exposed on a dry plate coated with chemicals.  The plates are later taken to the studio for developing and fixing.  The Premo shown here has a magazine holding six plates.  It is also constructed mainly of wood with leather covering.  You can see the polished finish on the top of the front hinged plate, on which the bellows ride.

Another of my favorites,  the Auto Graflex Junior, made by the Folmer & Schwing Division of Eastman Kodak (Folmer & Schwing was founded in 1887 and was owned by Kodak from 1905 to 1926).  The Auto Graflex Junior was introduced in 1914.  This is one of the early versions of a reflex camera, with which one looks down and through the lens from the top via a mirror that flips up to expose the film when the shutter release is pressed.  It also features a focal plane shutter.  The film is a plate-type with a cartridge that clips on the back.  The lens retracts and the leather hood on top folds up and closes into a compact box about 8 inches in all directions.

This is an Ansco Speedex 4.5 Special folding camera, made by Agfa/Ansco in the early to mid 1950's.  Ansco is the merger of Anthony & Scovill in 1901.  Both companies predate Kodak by almost 40 years and are among the oldest photographic names in North America.  Agfa of Germany bought Ansco in 1920.  This camera was manufactured in Germany.  It's a medium format camera that produces larger negatives than the standard 35 mm film cameras.  (Larger negative size is comparable to modern digital cameras with higher pixel counts).  This camera has a roll of film in it, that's waiting for a good day to shoot.

Why the fascination with older cameras?  I think it's a reminder of when photography was more an art form that also involved science.  One had to know the principles of light and exposure, and an understanding of the relationship between aperture, shutter speeds and film speed was necessary...things that modern cameras with their computerized settings take care of for us.  The intricate mechanisms that control how fast the shutter opens, or how the film is developed, all without any electrical controls of any type are engineering marvels of its day.  They seem crude by modern standards, especially when I set my Nikon next to them.  Yet it could be argued that the images taken with those cameras tell of our history, our world, and the lives of those around us.  Photography documented much of the people...and the horrors of the Civil War, and later images by the likes of Dorothea Lange left us with stark images of the Great Depression.  

Today's images are so easy to obtain and so plentiful, they almost become cheap and routine.  Just look at an Ansel Adams photo and see the grandeur of nature.  Those images were few and far between, and it took a lot of hard work to capture them.  These old cameras help to remind me of those efforts and the artists behind them.

(I was tempted to seek out and copy some of those images onto this blog, but I don't want to run afoul of any copyright issues.  Instead I will add a couple of links for your perusal:
http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams/
https://www.google.com/search?q=dorothea+lange&hl=en&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS439US439&prmd=imvnsob&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=mCCDT7ScB4Oq2QXxtrzoBg&ved=0CEQQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=897)

Thin Places - A Trip to Portland's Japanese Garden

In today's Oregonian Travel section is an article about "Thin Places"...places where the separation between the wordly and the spiritual is thinner than we normally feel, and where we can experience a closer contact with the Eternal.  Most of us have had them, whether in a church, a special place in the wilderness, or even in the midst of a city.  It is often a time when we feel slightly disoriented and our normal routine seems off.  We may feel a disconnection from the world around us and a nudge from the spiritual.  It is in these moments we can be transformed...or not. 

These occurrences are usually serendipitous, and happen when we least expect them. Other times we go into a space or place without expectations, and feel a strange peace. Such was one today, as I visited Portland's Japanese Gardens, near Washington Park. 

Water...or the sound of water, can be very soothing.  Whether it's the reflective pool or the cascading falls, one can sit next to water and feel the calm. 

The design of a wall, with the repetitive pattern provided by the tiles on top bring a visual calm when broken by the softness of a bamboo branch.

The Sand and Stone Garden, with it's placed stones and raked sand and rocks give a quiet feel through the beauty of a "blank space", offering a place for contemplation.

 Beauty is in even the most sublime of things, such as a moss-draped tree that hides a hole.

Patterns, whether random or repetitive leads the eye...and the mind, on a contemplative journey.

The quiet strains of a bamboo flute adds to the meditative air of the gardens.  One can almost breath in the presence of the spiritual when the soft traditional music blends with the surrounding lush plantings.

The first blossoms ...the gift of renewal each Spring when what has been dormant through the cold winter awakens with new life.  The sap can practically be seen running through the branches, feeding the buds.

For more on the article about thin places, see the link:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html?pagewanted=all

For more on the Japanese Garden, see: http://japanesegarden.com/