Erythronium

We have a small, well-shaded woodlands garden in the SE corner of our yard. (Actually pretty much all of our yard seems to be well-shaded!) For twenty years, a native lily has come up each spring.

Native Lily

Native Lily Close Up

erythronium grandiflorum (wikipedia)

These grew everywhere, it seemed, in the RRCreek valley around Holden Village, along with thousands of trillium (trillia?). They probably grew everywhere around here, too, given this area was woodlands not so long ago (and still is, kind of). Having this flower show up makes HV (our true home?) feel not so far away.

We have another native lily in our yard that usually comes back and blooms each year. I just went out and checked, and its about 16"-18" tall; no buds yet. I will try to remember to post images when it blooms too.

After years of using my iPhone, I got a new camera - an Olympus TG-6. It is basically a point and shoot model, and does not have very high resolution nor very much optical zoom. But it is small, sealed, and kind of shock resistant; it has aperture priority, macro, and a few other modes that make it more useful than a point and shoot model; has some intriguing accessories; and can transfer images to my phone wirelessly. Which makes it easier to get images to this blog, I should hope. I got it partly because there was a wedding and some travel planned in the family, and I wanted more than just the phone camera. The wedding and travel plans are on hold - kind of disappointing - but we are all healthy and in the upright position. Can't beat it with a stick, and it's better than the alternative, yes?

And it shouldn't go without saying, so I will say it: I hope you all are well and and as healthy as can be, and able to use this interregnum to notice what feels good, what works good, and how we can honor the sacrifices of this time to make our world and the lives of others better. OK, I will hop off the soapbox now!

BTW, the phone function seems to be the least used function of my phone. But I still like hearing from family and friends. Drop a dime, folks! (I am so old to remember pay phones using a dime. I am so old for remembering pay phones!) I would love to hear how you are doing.

Peace and balance -
- m2

Headspace 04-Memory, Mind & Environment

Places are not only physical and geographical, they also exist in our minds, and in our imaginations, and in our stories. The physical and geographical places we care about and that we care for - even a pot of flowers, or a raised bed garden - are real, and become more real to us as we think about them. I think more and more that caring about and caring for both real and imagined spaces can make us more real, and more whole.

The systems thinker Gregory Bateson suggested that mind and environment constitute the most basic whole system, and I think that is right: mind and body constitute parallel and overlapping means of apprehending and comprehending the world and our selves. Wendell Berry suggests that we are not separate from our environment, but are intimately connected to it via our alimentary canal and our lungs. We take our environment into our bodies, and elements of our bodies become part of the environment with each breath, and with each meal. The nutrients are sensed, in part, through our senses of smell and taste, and become part of us even at that molecular level before we put one bite of food in our mouths.

I think our environment also becomes part of us through our other senses - especially through our eyes and ears, but also through touch (and proprioception as well). What we see, what we hear, what we touch becomes part of us as surely as the muesli we had for breakfast. My experience is that our diet of things seen, things heard, and things touched feed our invisible selves much as food and oxygen feed the body.

A week ago, I was able to spend time with some folk I had not seen in twenty- or forty-some years, in settings and places I had not seen for that long too. While I was glad to see those people in those places, what surprised and delighted me was that when I closed my eyes and listened to their voices, the intervening years disappeared like smoke in a fresh breeze. While we were drinking coffee, or eating at the Glenwood, or sharing wine after spaghetti, our voices were nourishing our inner selves and building up places that were both old and new. We wandered through familiar rooms of our shared spaces, and discovered and built new spaces as well. With care, I feel certain those spaces will become real and treasured places, though seen only in the minds eye.

This last week also included attending a memorial service, and conversations about other folk whose memorial services I had not been able to attend. These people whose physical bodies are no longer with us are yet with us in ways that are more subtle and less visible. We may share part of their DNA; our bodies were nourished with food they shared with us; and our minds and hearts have rooms they helped build behind doors they helped open.

I read somewhere that art is how we decorate space, and music is how we adorn time. We generally think of art as being static objects: painting and sculpture, mostly. But there is also the art of the gardener and the landscaper, or of the housepainter. The art of the forester and of the biologist. The art of the videographer journalist who brings the world to us. The art of the nurse in caring for their patients, or in caring for the nurses who provide bedside care. The art of the acoustic analyst and designer, who helps improve the signal to noise ratio such that we can hear what is important. The art of the carpenter and boatwright, and of the sailmaker. Walt Whitman opened our eyes to these arts in the Leaves of Grass. Thich Nhat Hanh opens our eyes to the miracles of breathing and walking. As we walk, and listen and talk, we are making little miracles. 

We spend our days like Aslan, continually calling the world into existence, and what we call forth hopefully nourishes others as well as our selves. Aslan called not just with words but with song. The playlist for this week has included:

Rutters Requiem

The Gloaming (the Opening Set)

Sibelius: Andante Festivo (1924)

the "Lt. McGuires Jig" set (Fraser and McManus, Return to Kintail)

Brian Bromberg: For My Father

Lynn Arriale Trio: Red is the Rose

Kronos Quartet: Wawshisijay (Pieces of Africa)

Playing for Change

Vaugh Williams: Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus

Carmina Quartet: Fandango, and Night Music of Madrid

Chan Chan - Buena Vista Social Club

Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie - Blood, Sweat & Tears

Saties' Groove - Tedeschi Trucks Band

Summerland - William Grant Still

Hovhaness:

     Alleluia and Fugue;

     Prayer of St. Gregory;

     Prelude and Quadruple Fugue

Worried Shoes - Karen O and The Kids

Jamie Ousley - Someone

Pat Metheny

     Sueno Con Mexico

     New Chautaqua

     Are You Going With Me

End Credits (The Cider House Rules) Rachel Portman

Errata

I am aware that Headspaces 01-03 have not been posted yet. I also cop to the fact I have not annotated/footnoted this post like I usually do or would like to do. And thanks to all my friends and family that helped me make sense of my journey this last week.I am also aware that comments are not turned on, and apologize to those folk who may wish to comment. I refuse to build bridges under which trolls will take shelter. But I figure if you know who I am, then you know my email address and phone number - and will contact me if you are so inclined. Peace and balance -

More Places and Change(s) of Pace(s)

After a hiatus of several years, this blog is becoming more active. I have turned sixty, and have been writing to friends and family via email instead of posting to social media. But that is spamming, in a way, and writing in this weblog seems to be a more humane process, and friendlier too, mayhaps.* 

The blog will still focus on place - but the focus will become larger. When I started the blog, my intention was to make a chronicle and exposition of Holden Village and the Railroad Creek valley. But I do not live there any more, and my vision is once again no longer immediately contained by that U-shaped glaciated valley. I am certain my attention and writing will return there - the place still has a lot to teach me, and I have a lot to observe. 

Places are not just physical locations: they can also be constructs in time as well as space. We might say, at some point in our lives, that we are in a good place (or not!), without necessarily referencing a physical location. I recently stumbled upon a graphic that laid out a hypothetical persons lifespan of ninety years, segmented by blocks of fifty-two weeks. About the same time, I also came across a life-expectancy calculator that suggested I would have a fifty-fifty chance of living to seventy-nine years of age. 

I am graphically, textually, and numerically oriented: my friend Mark DeKay once suggested the term "quantoid" applies to persons who apprehend and comprehend - try to make sense of life - using quantitative tools and processes. Admittedly, I resemble that remark :-) So the 52x90 grid seemed to be a good way to help organize my thinking about how I got here; and what here is like; and how I might get to where I am going. 

If we're all going somewhere, let's get there soon. This song has no title, just words and a tune. - Bernie Taupin, Elton John

(90x52 diagram source as noted)

As shown, I inflected the map to reflect my particular context** by adding equinoxes and solstices, and other events.It is clear that the diagram should be revised, and I will probably do that in CAD at some point. But for a first pass, this is a pretty good approximation, and shows some good stuff. 

Another of my mentor professors at the University of Oregon*** would sometimes have us post our drawings on the wall, then review them from the other side of the room - twenty to thirty feet away (seven to nine meters). From that distance, it was clear where the linework was most dense, and where we had focused our attention and effort. 

Looking at this diagram (and let us recall that a diagram is a picture of an idea), it is clear that the events of transitioning to adulthood are, at this point, pivotal and significant to me; as they are to most people, I think - as that is where we start growing into ourselves. But the path through that part of our personal landscape was laid out earlier, and leads to later experiences - here as yet not shown. 

One thing that stands out is that if the actuarial tables are correct (and I think they can be trusted in general given the huge sample size), I am about three quarters through my life. A quarter left does not seem like much, given how fast the first three quarters went... But another way to look at it is that given my life thus far, I still have a fourth "third" to go - and a third IS bigger than a fourth, right? (Yes I am aware of how that is misleading).

As noted above, I am graphically and visually oriented as well as textually (and contextually!) oriented. One of the things I value about my phone is that it gives me a way to attain, retain, and organize data. Pictures are said to be worth a thousand words, so I started a directory of images that reflected my life, including inspirations and aspirations. The second thumbnail from the upper left is of course the 90x52 scenario map. The other images represent the things that help me stay grounded: notions, people, and so forth.

Infer what you like from these images. 

m2:60-79 thumbnails_01

When I look at these images, I am reminded that my family is my core, and has been shaped by place and by experience, and by intention; and that my family is not just people related by genetics or marriage. I contend my family includes other people of non-human heritage and persuasion. I am certain that we mammals share more than we generally consider or admit; and that we also share some things with nearly all vertebrates. And I believe that how we treat the bear people, and the rhino people, and the orca people and the puffin people are related to how we treat each other as humans, too. 

m2:60-79 thumbnails_02

Currently there are about 400 images in this directory, and I have generated about twenty sets of thumbnails using the screen capture function to create these pictorial summaries. If the <picture :: thousand words> relationship holds, that is about four hundred thousand words. Nope I will not inflict all of my inflections upon you ;-) But I would like to point some things out, if you will be patient with me. 

m2:60-79 thumbnail_03

Themes that emerge include family of course, and place, and food. Breaking bread is an important part of the human experience. By definition, we break bread wherever we happen to be located... 

Food shows up - a lot! And it begs the question: what sustains us? We do live by more than bread alone. Returning to slow food makes sense - carbon release is maximized at the drive-through window: our cars are (generally) emitting carbon; the fast food we obtain has a high energy and therefore a high carbon foot print (and paradoxically, lower nutritional content); and the production of that food diminishes the environmental ability to sequester carbon.... Chainsaws, cows, and cars: they all overlap at the drive through. 

Stoves are generally related to food, yes? Gas stoves are thought to be "clean" - perhaps as compared to coal, maybe; but still release carbon. Electric stoves can be carbon neutral, but most are probably not at this point. Alcohol and wood (biomass) are mostly carbon neutral, and I would like to use them when possible especially out-of-doors. Yes alcohol has a much lower energy content and cooking takes longer. That actually fits with slower food and a more deliberate pace of life. As Thich Nhat Hanh once observed, if we rush through washing the dishes so we can sit down and relax with a cup of tea, we will probably rush through the tea as well. 

m2:60-79 thumbnail_04

Cars versus bikes? I used to bike a lot, and when I quit for reasons I thought responsible, I got fat. Cars put fat on our collective and individual asses, and bikes help keep it off and help take it off. Minimal carbon footprint too. 
Bikes are pretty accessible technology, and are still repairable by persons of ordinary means and skills (see reference to Wendell Berrys Criteria for Tools below; I will do a post on them sometime). 
Bikes enable us to be more self-sufficient, and less dependent on corporations and governments - which will almost always put their thumb on side of the balance of whatever is good for them, and not necessarily good for us, nor our families, and not our communities (common unity) either. 
As an aside, the two images of people on the muscle-power path in the fourth and fifth rows above are from the Palouse... I am encouraged by the Rails-to-Trails movement and other such programs that are working toward making transportation less car-centric and less car-dependent.

m2:60-79 thumbnail_05

My family and my mom and dads families spent a lot of time out-of-doors. We did not have RVs and so our experiences were minimally mediated and insulated, and were close to the local environment. 

The last three images (above) are of the Suiattle River, Mt. St. Helens (from Image Lake) and the Sulpher Creek campground area on the Suiattle River. My family spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods... Home in a way that cuts straight to the core. 

So:

Places - actual, physical and perceived. People and processes that sustain us. People and processes we need to protect. People and places and processes that we in turn need to sustain, to preserve, and restore not only so that we can be sustained, but for their own sake as well. 

I hope you will join me again on this journey. 

- Matt

* I posted to social media for a while, and (mostly) enjoyed seeing posts from friends and family. The signal-to noise ratio got worse over time: the algorithms allowed and encouraged more shit-posting (controversy generates clicks, clicks generate money - but not for us). And the god-damned pusherman started extracting and extorting after getting us hooked, and sold us down the river of exploitation... 

While living at Holden 2013-2015 I found that the mbasic version of FB worked pretty well in that very-low-bandwidth setting; and worked even better at cutting down the noise generated by the algorithms. I still use the mbasic sign-in, even with a desktop OS. But the revelations about how social media has been manipulated have been pretty disappointing, dismaying, disheartening and disgusting. I have not yet ditched social media but I will soon, I think. This weblog will, I hope, compensate in part for the loss of the good parts of commercial media. 

** With a nod to Professor William 'Bill' Kleinsasser, Department of Architecture, University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Bill introduced the concept of 'inflecting' to his students: the notion that context varies, and our responses should too. The front and the back and the sides of the building are different things... 

*** Philip Dole. He and Bill K. helped me acquire the tools to move from doing design to doing good design; and put me in a good position to learn the next lessons.

Wendell Berry - Criteria for Tools
https://riversong.wordpress.com/wendell-berrys-criteria-for-appropriate-technology/

Soft & Hard Water

Some New Snow Pictures

Martin Ridge This Morning 2014-12-30
Agape (L) and Chalet 14 (R)
(Taken with iPhone 4)

Winter arrived here in Railroad Creek Valley just before Thanksgiving, and like much of the western US we are enjoying arctic air after about a foot of new snow just after Christmas. We have as much snow  or more now as we did at the beginning of February 2014! We also have a lot more power due to the rainy fall and early winter - about 210 kW for the village instead of say, the 120 kW that we might have by now in a more normal year. This means we are still on electric heat (no stoking wood furnaces yet) and can still use clothes dryers: so the season of crunchy shirts has not yet descended upon us!

A Classic What The _? Plastic Deformation...
Gotta love adhesion and cohesion, yes?
(taken with iPhone 4) (and no, the gazer is not me!)

For those of you that might want to see the weather is like here, you can go to the Holden Village website, or to the NOAA weather forecast website.

http://www.holdenvillage.org/weather/

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=48.19813361113582&lon=-120.75691223144531#UtcOm_XeBbo

And a bonus -
a picture of the reader board outside my office. The cute little LED string (warm white) runs on AA batteries and has a timer - 6 hours on, 18 off. Clever little thing... Has been running since the day before Christmas. That's about 24 hours run time...

Office Reader Board
(taken with iPhone 4)

Observers will note the board includes a picture of Laura and me from when we were on staff here at Holden 26 years ago (1988-1989). In the background (left) - a picture of the NW end of Lake Chelan at Stehekin (also 26 years ago); and art tile from the Moravian Tileworks of Doylestown, Bucks County, Penna: found at the Mercer Museum (also in Doylestown). OK, those pix are pretty fuzzy - but they have been part of my office for a long time, and I am glad to have them here.

Light On Two Sides of Every Room (Pattern 159)

Spring is in the air, and in the trees and bushes. But there is still four to five feet of snow on the ground here in the village. It is decreasing about an inch everyday, more or less, depending on sun, rain and temperature. This morning I awoke to clear skies and about an inch of new snow that had fallen over night.

Chalet 6 from Chalet 14

This is a view across Chalet Hill Road from the SE corner of Chalet 14 toward Chalet 6. The snow bank in the foreground is from the snow that slid off the roof over the winter, and is still about seven feet above grade. The tree is a hardy, resilient maple - a vine maple, perhaps - that gets bent by the roof snow each year.  Only a couple weeks ago the snow was high enough that it obscured the window. 

Chalets 10, 9, & 8 from Chalet 14

This is a view from the NW corner of Chalet 14 - from the north window. In this picture, Chalet 10 is to the left (it has a clipped or Dutch gable); Chalet 9 is in the middle, and Chalet 8 is to the right. Martins Ridge is behind all... This window is in the kitchen of Chalet 14, on the NNW corner facing north, and on the gable end wall - so it usually does not get obscured by snow. The WNW window of the kitchen (over the sink and facing West) is on the eave side of the roof and has been obscured by snow for weeks.

About half of the windows therefore remain clear of snow, and half are obscured. We can be thankful that the original designer(s) did not use an inappropriate kind of roof form here (say, a fully hipped roof), or all the windows might get covered. To be sure, much of the deepest accumulation off the eaves happens on the uphill side of the buildings: the downhill sides have a greater elevation change between grade and window sill. And given the village is on the north side of the valley, those windows that remain less obstructed are on the sunnier south sides. A happy coincidence? I think not.

I have inferred, but not yet explicitly stated that the rooms on the main floors of the Chalets have windows on two sides. [The upper floors have windows only at the gables, as they usually do not have dormers (at least on the smaller chalets).] This is a rather wonderful daylighting strategy, and enables us to have good light without turning the lights on - especially noticeable in winter when the snow bounces a lot of light into the buildings even on overcast days.

I should also mention that Chalet 14 is the least well day-lit building of all the chalets: it sits in a bowl shaded by trees, and it is still wonderful.

This configuration of having windows on two sides of a room is an important traditional design strategy. In A Pattern Language, the authors state:

The importance of this pattern lies partly in the social atmosphere it creates in the room. Rooms lit on two sides, with natural light, create less glare around people and objects; this lets us see things more intricately; and most important, it allows us to read in detail the minute expressions that flash across people's faces, the motion of their hands . . . and thereby understand, more clearly, the meaning they are after. The light on two sides allows people to understand each other.In a room lit on only one side, the light gradient on the walls and floors inside the room is very steep, so that the part furthest from the window is uncomfortably dark, compared with the part near the window. Even worse, since there is little reflected light on the room's inner surfaces, the interior wall immediately next to the window is usually dark, creating discomfort and glare against this light. In rooms lit on one side, the glare which surrounds people's faces prevents people from understanding one another.

Pattern 159 

A Pattern Language was published in the middle 1970s and presented notions about the built environment that were successful because they resolved or mitigated social tensions. It is more than just an architectural cookbook, it is a way to start thinking about design wholistically and humanely. The primary author, Christopher Alexander, went on to write a series of books that quite clearly used A Pattern Language as a point of departure, culminating in the publication of The Nature Of Order. The notion of pattern languages influenced other fields as well, especially software design. But the Pattern Language remains the most accessible of the set. What it does is lead us from prosaic kinds of buildings to ones that become poetical in density of meaning, interpretation, and experience. It is very cost-effective design, too, because we start getting more bang for our buck. Chalet 14 has to have windows - by having them on two sides of each room, we get the light that makes this a place apart. But it is also anchors this building deeply and securely to this place. 

Don't take my word for it - check out a copy or purchase a copy and have at it. You will recognize why you like some places and why you don't like other places. It will make you think differently about the next house you want, or how you want to remodel your present house if you like the location. If you don't want to pop for the book, think about subscribing to the website - the link to the quote will take you there. 
Again, from Pattern 159:

When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty.
Therefore:
Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction.

Pattern 159 

By mid-morning today, the fresh snow had come off the trees and was dripping down off the edges of the eaves.