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
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(90x52 diagram source as noted)
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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).
Infer what you like from these images.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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/
