Spring 2014

Spring is off and on as usual, some days sunny and warm, others windy and rain but however changeable the weather, it is still fine to be out.  The apple tree over the dog run bloomed nicely,

and bees showed up despite the news about hive collapse.

Cherry blossomed. Pussy willow came and went.  Deer ate the tulips, left nothing but stems. Daffodils sprang up in the old apple orchard next to the house.

The mallard pair returned and scarfed down cob I scatter

and the geese don't seem to mind.

They spend more time fussing at me than at the ducks.

The chickens have started laying again.  A nice day's haul is five or six eggs from the eight hens.  They are getting old, three or four years, so occasionally produce a freak, extra small or large.

The Anna's Hummingbirds drain their feeder every couple of days and mostly ignore me and the camera but catching the male showing off his plumage is a tricky coup─a play of light and angle.

Usually all the camera catches is the dark side, but one day I caught him flicking his tongue, even rarer than catching color.

Not exactly part of the local scene, flowers at Pike Street Market are particularly lovely this time of year.

Locally, camas are back.

While out feeding, I discovered deer at the end of the back pasture, first one,

then another, five in all.

And then there's Bugsy the porch kitty, a year-round delight, looking for his lunch: "Feed me!  Feed me now!  Please?"

Blood Moon

April 14, an eclipse of the moon would be visible on the West Coast if clouds stayed out to sea.  In 2013, Texas televangelist John Hagee published a book that called this eclipse the "Blood Moon."  Hagee stated that it was prophesied in Acts 2:19-20 "...the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood," a sign, Hagee felt, of "End Times."  (Earlier he claimed Katrina was God's punishment for America's sinful ways.)  Before his book, the term "Blood Moon" was an alternate name for October's "Hunter's Moon."  However, television commentators picked up Hagee's name and the hype was on.

I went into the backyard about 10 and set the big Leica on a tripod and snapped the first photo.  Clouds surrounded the moon but for the moment it was clear with no sign of penumbra or blood.

At 11, I went out again.  The show was beginning.  At about 11:30, light from the moon was cut enough that the star Spica was visible.

So began the first of a tetrad─four consecutive lunar eclipses at approximately six-month intervals with no partial eclipses in between.  In the years 2001-2100, there will be eight tetrads.  From the first century CE through the 21st, there have been only 62.  The last one occurred in 2003-2004, and the next will be in 2032-2033.  In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there were none at all.

At about midnight, the moon started turning reddish, but hardly blood red.  At about 12:05, the hype seemed inadequate.

The next show will be in October.

Seattle Redux

Hard to imagine it's been a year since we attended the last Pac-12 Women's Basketball Tournament, but here we were again, on the train to Seattle, 6 a.m., arrived King Street station about 12:15, walked to F.X.McRory's for their oyster sample platter in the bar, a whiskey lover's dream,

then a taxi ride to the Mediterranean Inn in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood to meet with other Beavers.

Breakfast next morning was at Lowell's in Pike Place Market, always a joy, corn beef hash, eggs, and coffee with a fine view of Elliot Bay.

The most interesting sight was a lone monk fish; flowers, food, antiques, crafts, tourists, smells and sounds could keep one there all day.

Instead, we walked to the Seattle Art Museum where we found the same introductory installation as last year--not sure what to think of a series of hanging cars pierced with flashing Christmas lights.

We went, however, to see the featured exhibit of Joan Miró from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid: 50 paintings, drawings, and sculptures created between 1963 and 1981.

Miró takes a little getting used to, but I believe I would be less likely to grow bored with his work than with much representational material, especially his women.

We also revisited the extensive ethnographic collection: African, Pacific lands, and Northwest Native material.

The first evening, we ate at Elliot Bay Oyster house, starting, of course, with a dozen Olympias, then moving to other scrumptious sea food.

Yum.

We attended Key Arena,

where OSU women dominated--until the championship game.

Sadness.

We saw on the news that a construction crew had dug a mastodon tusk which was displayed at the Burke but when we got there it had already been removed for conservation.  The Burke claims to have the fifth largest collection in the U.S. of Northwest Native art but you couldn't prove it by us.  Striking, however, was a roof decoration from the turn of the 19th century--gathered along with other artifacts by a group of Seattle businessmen when the village men were gone on a summer hunt: a century later it is "on loan" with permission of the village, to be returned some time soon.

Most surprising  was the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle Center, practically under the Space Needle.  Dale Chihuly (born 1941, Tacoma, Washington) has glass sculpture in more than 200 museums and has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

We walked through the entire display, then walked through it a second time.  Each installation invited viewing from all around.  I think my favorite was the Northwest room with Edward S. Curtis photogravures, Northwest Coast Indian baskets, and American Indian trade blankets as counterpoint to his glass creations.  The explanatory text stated that Chihuly's discovery of the natural slumping over time of old baskets freed him from symmetrical dictates.

Another favorite was the Macchia Forest exhibit, a collection of multi-colored bowls up to four feet in diameter.

The exhibit continued through several rooms, all filled with fascinating multi-colored collections,

and then extended into a green house filled with giant glass flowers and thence outdoors where glass constructs vied with real flowers and the winter rain.

Then Monday to the King Street Station, the Amtrak Cascade, and a pleasant ride home.

A memorable visit.

February 2014

After the snow and cold in December, the weather was dry and relatively warm through January.  The entire West Coast is experiencing serious drought.  Usually by February, crocuses start to bloom and pussy willow begin to form but on the 6th, snow started falling.  As I put the feeder out about 7:30, the male Anna's flew to it before I even had it hung,

drank his fill, then flew into the willow to rest as the snow continued.

The sulky was heading north again.

At noon when I went out to feed, temperature was about 28°F.  Halfway to the barn the snow was 10 inches deep

and drifting up on the temple censer.

Later that afternoon, I decided to drive downtown to see who else was crazy enough to be out.  Cleared snow off half the pickup hood, poor mastiff was ready to run.

Noon Friday still snowing--horses almost covered.

The Thinker really chilling out.

Update at 5: still snowing, 13-14 inches,

the censer covered.

February 8:  freezing rain on the holly, 32°F.

Keeping warm near the bird feeder.

Sunday, February 9:  Path to the chicken coop; chickens fine, three eggs yesterday, none today; temp about 40°F, quiet, the only sound the crash of ice falling from plants, trees, roof.

The snow pack in the mountains is still well below normal, California is arid, the Great Lakes are almost completely frozen over, snow fell in Alabama and has buried most of the rest of the country but here the Pineapple Express brought warmth and rain; we were back to Oregon sunshine.

Samurai Thoughts

At the Portland Art Museum we were confronted with three Samurai warriors mounted on Steiff-like horses, also in complete armor, an imposing sight that must have been overwhelming to Edo era Japanese who rarely caught a glimpse of such magnificence.

Samurai started as warriors in Japan about 1100 C.E. who became a segment of society wielding varying degrees of wealth and power for some 800 years and even today spark the imagination of the world in ways similar to that of the cowboy of the American West—adventures in tales, books, film—which may explain part of the attraction of the PAM exhibit: 140 items in a traveling show from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection in Dallas, Texas.  Except for the examples in the entrance hall, most of the exhibits were within Plexiglas displays, making photography difficult but perhaps adding to the mystique.

The exhibits ranged from elaborate masks and helmets to complete outfits, all in pristine condition, from the 14th through the 19th centuries.  Although presented as battle gear, clearly none of these had ever seen a skirmish.

In fact, most of the Samurai accoutrement available today postdates the establishment in 1615 of the Tokugawa military dictatorship which brought an end to battle but left Samurai families among the elite (even though one of the elaborate cuirasses had two pock marks, evidence of bullets fired by the maker to prove its protective qualities against new weapons).

As I worked through the displays, I was entranced by the artistry but conflicted.  These were clearly costumes created by the super wealthy and powerful, in a society largely made up of poor farmers, for play and display.

One costume, a miniature complete in every respect, was constructed for a child's coming of age party, and, one assumes, despite the hours—months even—to construct, almost as soon as the party was over the recipient must have outgrown it—not unlike, I suppose, marriage gowns in the West and marriage saris in India: hugely expensive, worn once, then stored for a generation or two.  The adult costumes showed little evidence of having been utilized more.

This collection, touted as "one of the finest and most comprehensive collections [of Samurai artifacts] in the world," assembled over 25 years by Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller and their children, is now almost 1,000 items and growing.

The Barbier-Muellers established a museum in Dallas to display the collection, mimicking actions of previous generations of the family who set up museums for their collections in Europe and Africa, Gilded Age consumption conspicuous enough to rival that of the Samurai class itself.

Also on display at PAM was the 1969 triptych of Lucian Freud perched on a wooden chair by Freud's friend and rival, Francis Bacon, which recently made news by garnering the highest price at auction paid to date for an art work: $142.4 million.  (The price topped the previous record of $119.9 million for Edvard Munch's The Scream—which we saw in New York and which can be found elsewhere in this blog.)  In both cases, the buyer was a bidder who wished to remain anonymous but who was willing to display the trophy publicly before hiding it for private pleasure.

Post script:  Art world sources say the buyer of the Bacon triptych was Elaine Wynn, a co-founder of the Wynn Casino Empire, who has, according to Forbes, a net worth of $1.9 billion.  The median net worth of U.S. households, as of 2011 according to the Census Bureau, was $68,828.

And a further note:  According to the New York Times (4/13/14), by shipping the painting first to Oregon, instead of her home in Las Vegas, Wynne may be eligible to avoid as much as $11 million in Nevada use taxes.