I have not added a post here for four years. I have been busy, growing older, lots to say but no time to write. Today...why today? We have nominated a woman presidential candidate, the country is polarized, my friends Peter and Madeline have had a devastating loss of their daughter Sarah, Lots on my mind...in my soul spewing forth unattended.
,
I have launched, over three plus years, a new business...an online retail store Bidderbutter Baubles Plus ---- http://stores.ebay.com/bidderbutter-baubles-plus on ebay. I create, renovate, find, restore, write copy about, photograph, answer customer questions, devise and use inviting packaging, am the shipping clerk and so on. It is a big job. For three years almost all revenue has gone back into the company in inventory, supplies, marketing and packaging materials. I like the creative aspects, finding and researching my finds, fixing and creating new beautiful objects from old things. I like that I keep pretty pieces from returning to a smelters pot to be no more, that I give pretty objects new life, keep the cycle of beauty and usefulness for decorative objects moving forward...out of landfills. I like that I ship pieces all over the world. I like that I have 97-98 special customers who follow my store and watch for new listings and hundreds more who just find me and drop in. I like that some customers take the time to let me know they like my service and merchandise. It's all good. But I am tired.
It's not like I have a choice about continuing to work. Artists generally always continue to work at whatever age...but I did not know it would become more and more difficult. I have a tremor in my left hand...some days quite bad. So being a one handed jeweler is a trial and frustrating. I am slow, I can not do all I want to do. I have to compromise to move forward. Taking photos, on average 40-50 per item is difficult work, uncomfortable, physically draining. But must be done. Adding new merchandise regularly keeps you higher up in the ebay search engines. Without that status, the millions of viewers on ebay will not find your store or buy your products. Learning how to sell retail took months and months and ebay changes the rules regularly. New sales systems to learn about constantly...it is a malleable medium. The Internet is always evolving. And yet.....it is interesting to master or at least compete in a new marketplace, a new venue for me. I am still an artist...aid still create graphic design projects that fall into my hands. I am so far better at graphic design than being a retail store owner and jewelry creator.....but that said, graphic design is isolating, solo work with so few interactions with the folks that see and use the fruits of your labor. Retail sales is in your face interaction with many customers, all unique, all languages, all cultures....remarkable. The Internet makes this possible and doable....just amazing.
So New York Country Girl .,,yes....international audience YES YES YES. Amazing. It's just me in a room with heaps of materials all around me with a giant window onto the world. Amazing. Come see the store and all the 350 odd wonderful pieces being showcased.
http://stores.ebay.com/bidderbutter-baubles-plus
Bidderbutter Baubles Plus
Sunday, June 3, 2012
I feel fine...listening to James Taylor
Funny. His music has followed me or preceded me for my entire adult life. And the music is still just as warm. He envelops you in his tunes, his memories, his words and somehow, like the best artists- they become your own.
Every summer James Taylor gives a fourth of July benefit concert at Tanglewood which is just over the mountain from my place. The concerts are always sold out. When I first moved here, I packed up my gear, ready to head out to sit on the great lawn for the JT concert. I had no tickets - lawn tickets aren't reserved, figured I'd just buy at the gate like any Tanglewood Concert. Almost out the door and a friend called and told me that the concerts had been sold out for weeks and road blocks wouldn't allow me anywhere near the place. I was crestfallen. Each year I think about making the trek to get tickets and every year it is already sold out. One day soon.
In my twenties when James Taylor was a pretty hot commodity - I found myself drawn to a guy, I later married, who looked a lot like the young James Taylor. Ross had the same tall, thin, little bit angular style couched in big doses of charm and humor. Perfect for me - nearly opposite in many ways but overlapping enough to make a relationship of sorts. He made me laugh and very happy as a traveling companion through our young adult lives. But we grew up quickly and the glue that cemented us together was more like little kids' sweet paste than the stuff that keep folks together for a lifetime. It was heartbreaking to pull our lives asunder but it happened.
Learning to live without Ross, with only melodies to measure memories or heal life's wounds - took a long time. Without a map to follow, like everyone else, just kept truckin'. As a result, I became convinced that love was non-existant - some false or shallow hormonal exercise. But I had a lot of healing to do. I was convinced I had no idea what love was, or if I had loved Ross or if he loved me. I was a disaster emotionally, I suppose. Just another victim of the sixties newish emotional open environment.
.jpg)
Now Ross has been gone from me for decades and sadly, from earth for a couple years. Listening to James Taylor and Carol King perform at their Troubadour concert on PBS - reminds me we are, none of us, young anymore but the music is just as wonderful and filled with memories old and those yet to come. Years fall away.
I feel fine.
Every summer James Taylor gives a fourth of July benefit concert at Tanglewood which is just over the mountain from my place. The concerts are always sold out. When I first moved here, I packed up my gear, ready to head out to sit on the great lawn for the JT concert. I had no tickets - lawn tickets aren't reserved, figured I'd just buy at the gate like any Tanglewood Concert. Almost out the door and a friend called and told me that the concerts had been sold out for weeks and road blocks wouldn't allow me anywhere near the place. I was crestfallen. Each year I think about making the trek to get tickets and every year it is already sold out. One day soon.
In my twenties when James Taylor was a pretty hot commodity - I found myself drawn to a guy, I later married, who looked a lot like the young James Taylor. Ross had the same tall, thin, little bit angular style couched in big doses of charm and humor. Perfect for me - nearly opposite in many ways but overlapping enough to make a relationship of sorts. He made me laugh and very happy as a traveling companion through our young adult lives. But we grew up quickly and the glue that cemented us together was more like little kids' sweet paste than the stuff that keep folks together for a lifetime. It was heartbreaking to pull our lives asunder but it happened.
Learning to live without Ross, with only melodies to measure memories or heal life's wounds - took a long time. Without a map to follow, like everyone else, just kept truckin'. As a result, I became convinced that love was non-existant - some false or shallow hormonal exercise. But I had a lot of healing to do. I was convinced I had no idea what love was, or if I had loved Ross or if he loved me. I was a disaster emotionally, I suppose. Just another victim of the sixties newish emotional open environment.
James Taylor
Ross (and me)
Ross (and me)
James Taylor
I feel fine.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Happy 125th Birthday to Sears
As a young child , beginning at the tender age of six, nearly every Saturday morning my Dad and I would drive to Erie Bld. in downtown Schenectady. It was always a happy excursion to be out with my Dad in one or another versions of his red and white autos. We nearly always stopped at Sears. More than often, sears was our sole destination. The Schrnectady store was a big rectangle - not by today's big store standards - but by a little girl's.
http://citynoise.org/upload/34333.jpg
Erie Blvd. had nose in parking because the street was wide. It appeared to begin at the base of General Electric's oldest big red brick buildings and ran not more than a mile to the major intersection with State Street - the city's biggest commercial avenue. But Erie Blvd was unique. It was as wide as four normal city streets- and with sidewalks - five times normal width. It was the filled-in and paved-over site of the original Erie Canal and ran vaguely parallel to the Mohawk River - about 1/4 mile away on the other side of one additional diagonal street. I always found it amazing to be driving "on" the Erie Canal. I still do.
Sears was a modest stand alone little store. Basically it was a hardware store. My Dad, a card carrying DIYer- always had something he knew could be found at Sears. So we traveled the six miles to town from the Glenville hills which overlooked the area. We were not an affluent family group. Any purchase had to be well considered and labored over. However that said, my Dad's discretionary tool money seemed limitless in my eyes. We always left with a bag. It might have contained only a few screws or nails but I think the purchase made all my Dad's week long of long hard work hours somehow balanced by his modest purchase. Have things changed much for today's consumers?
Dad must have known the men who frequented the store and the men who ran the store pretty well. Perhaps the trip was partly social since he did a lot of really boring talking to these guys. I know I was the only child in the store and probably the only female.
On one back side of the store a high counter was placed with a couple copies of the "big book" Sear's catalogue for viewing and for making certain the item numbers, sizes, colors etc were correct before handing in an order. This counter was also where one picked-up happened. Boxed or brown paper wrapped purchases ordered through the catalogue were delivered over this counter from wherever they mysteriously originated. This counter was also where you returned items that did not fit or suit the needs of the purchaser. Amazingly, even on a Saturday, the counter was often empty.
I used to carefully review the catalogue items - especially the toys in the "big book.". If I had seen all of these toys in person I probably would have swooned in over stimulation. In my family, it was years before items were regularly seen in person before they were purchased. Our catalogue was well fingered. Christmas lists and birthday presents originated with the Sear's Holiday Catalogue.
Perhaps twice a year, my Mother, Father and I would make the big trip to the Montgomery Wards store. Montgomery Wards known affectionally as "Monkey Wars" was Srars major catalogue competitor in my neck of the woods. The Mokey Wars store was a behemoth. Overwhelming with many floors of merchandize and very, very crowded with shoppers. It was the sort of store a child easily could be swallowed up inside of and lost forever - or at least the best part of the trip. As a result over-tired and cranky, sweaty in snow pants kids hung close to parents. Rowdies, tough children grouped in small huddles could be seen in the giant cement stairwells. They seemed to be on their own. They looked mean. There was something foreign about them. They were "city kids." I am not sure which city. Perhaps Albany. Someplace I only went through - not to and not with any regularity. Did they have parents?
But at Sears, faces were friendly. There was room to move, space to examine the brightly chromed tools or hardware in assorted sizes which sat in open bins and divided cabinet top sections of the big wooden under drawer structures which defined the aisles of the store. Everything was labeled on the bin - not on the thing. Noticeably absent were gummy stickers messing up the surface of the new stuff. The tools themselves had numbers molded into their surfaces. I imagine one walked around the store with the latest catalogue to secure the prices of wrenches and pliers and the amazing variety of tools in the Craftsman brand. Or one asked a sales guy. They knew everything.
I think these sales guys felt sorry for me. Every Saturday waiting for my Dad as he did his thing for tweny minutes, forty-five minutes, an hour while I wandered listlessly or shrank into a corner and sat on the floor or went outside on the sidewalk or out the backdoor near the dirt parking lot and loading dock.
I knew from a young age that Craftman tools were guaranteed for life. I did not know that was a remarkable piece of merchandizing. Sears stood behind these tools. Sixty years later, there are several of my Dad's tools in my bright red tool box. They work as good as new. They outlived my Dad by thirty years and counting and will remain after mine. So guaranteed for life is not exactly accurate... Craftsman brand are multi-generational tools. Would that this was true of a dish washer, an oven... or a washing machine.
So happy 125th birthday Sears. Odd to contemplate that I have stood with you for half your 125 years. Whenever I have an appliance to replace or tires to buy or switch off - where do I go first. Sears.com. Of course I always wait for big 20-30% off sales but still- Sears is a reliable and worthy retailer. And Sears has secured my appliance purchase loyalty. Their website sucks but the salespeople in my local store outside of Pittsfield Mass are always helpful and knowledgeable. They guide me through a big purchase. And, just like when I was a child, the store is always sort of empty. For me it echoes my earliest memories of shopping with Dad. It's in the air.
http://citynoise.org/upload/34333.jpg
Erie Blvd. had nose in parking because the street was wide. It appeared to begin at the base of General Electric's oldest big red brick buildings and ran not more than a mile to the major intersection with State Street - the city's biggest commercial avenue. But Erie Blvd was unique. It was as wide as four normal city streets- and with sidewalks - five times normal width. It was the filled-in and paved-over site of the original Erie Canal and ran vaguely parallel to the Mohawk River - about 1/4 mile away on the other side of one additional diagonal street. I always found it amazing to be driving "on" the Erie Canal. I still do.
Sears was a modest stand alone little store. Basically it was a hardware store. My Dad, a card carrying DIYer- always had something he knew could be found at Sears. So we traveled the six miles to town from the Glenville hills which overlooked the area. We were not an affluent family group. Any purchase had to be well considered and labored over. However that said, my Dad's discretionary tool money seemed limitless in my eyes. We always left with a bag. It might have contained only a few screws or nails but I think the purchase made all my Dad's week long of long hard work hours somehow balanced by his modest purchase. Have things changed much for today's consumers?
Dad must have known the men who frequented the store and the men who ran the store pretty well. Perhaps the trip was partly social since he did a lot of really boring talking to these guys. I know I was the only child in the store and probably the only female.
On one back side of the store a high counter was placed with a couple copies of the "big book" Sear's catalogue for viewing and for making certain the item numbers, sizes, colors etc were correct before handing in an order. This counter was also where one picked-up happened. Boxed or brown paper wrapped purchases ordered through the catalogue were delivered over this counter from wherever they mysteriously originated. This counter was also where you returned items that did not fit or suit the needs of the purchaser. Amazingly, even on a Saturday, the counter was often empty.
I used to carefully review the catalogue items - especially the toys in the "big book.". If I had seen all of these toys in person I probably would have swooned in over stimulation. In my family, it was years before items were regularly seen in person before they were purchased. Our catalogue was well fingered. Christmas lists and birthday presents originated with the Sear's Holiday Catalogue.
Perhaps twice a year, my Mother, Father and I would make the big trip to the Montgomery Wards store. Montgomery Wards known affectionally as "Monkey Wars" was Srars major catalogue competitor in my neck of the woods. The Mokey Wars store was a behemoth. Overwhelming with many floors of merchandize and very, very crowded with shoppers. It was the sort of store a child easily could be swallowed up inside of and lost forever - or at least the best part of the trip. As a result over-tired and cranky, sweaty in snow pants kids hung close to parents. Rowdies, tough children grouped in small huddles could be seen in the giant cement stairwells. They seemed to be on their own. They looked mean. There was something foreign about them. They were "city kids." I am not sure which city. Perhaps Albany. Someplace I only went through - not to and not with any regularity. Did they have parents?
But at Sears, faces were friendly. There was room to move, space to examine the brightly chromed tools or hardware in assorted sizes which sat in open bins and divided cabinet top sections of the big wooden under drawer structures which defined the aisles of the store. Everything was labeled on the bin - not on the thing. Noticeably absent were gummy stickers messing up the surface of the new stuff. The tools themselves had numbers molded into their surfaces. I imagine one walked around the store with the latest catalogue to secure the prices of wrenches and pliers and the amazing variety of tools in the Craftsman brand. Or one asked a sales guy. They knew everything.
I think these sales guys felt sorry for me. Every Saturday waiting for my Dad as he did his thing for tweny minutes, forty-five minutes, an hour while I wandered listlessly or shrank into a corner and sat on the floor or went outside on the sidewalk or out the backdoor near the dirt parking lot and loading dock.
I knew from a young age that Craftman tools were guaranteed for life. I did not know that was a remarkable piece of merchandizing. Sears stood behind these tools. Sixty years later, there are several of my Dad's tools in my bright red tool box. They work as good as new. They outlived my Dad by thirty years and counting and will remain after mine. So guaranteed for life is not exactly accurate... Craftsman brand are multi-generational tools. Would that this was true of a dish washer, an oven... or a washing machine.
So happy 125th birthday Sears. Odd to contemplate that I have stood with you for half your 125 years. Whenever I have an appliance to replace or tires to buy or switch off - where do I go first. Sears.com. Of course I always wait for big 20-30% off sales but still- Sears is a reliable and worthy retailer. And Sears has secured my appliance purchase loyalty. Their website sucks but the salespeople in my local store outside of Pittsfield Mass are always helpful and knowledgeable. They guide me through a big purchase. And, just like when I was a child, the store is always sort of empty. For me it echoes my earliest memories of shopping with Dad. It's in the air.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Correction: Steve Jobs good vibes
Thought of another astoundingly influential being - long gone but a creative presence yet felt around the globe. Walt Disney -- of course. Was he a more significant visionary than Lenin or Mao? HELL YES. I love the tv commercial for California (as a destination and/or frame of mind) that ends it's appealing list of California phenomenon with a voice over - "and one magic kingdom," fade out castle (Disneyland.) Perfect and soooo Hollywood. Those of us in the frozen Northeast may not embrace the healthy, sunny California culture ( don't ask us in Winter) but we recognize the brilliance of the marketing. Hell, the commercial was probably written on Madison Avenue (again frame of mind not physical location).
While it's true Steve Jobs doesn't have fantasy sections of the globe named after him. He's way too cool for SteveJobsWorld. But we all know who we think of when Cupertino, CA is mentioned. And it's none of the other rich geeks.
Visionaries both- Steve Jobs, Walt Disney.
There are many, many other influential leaders and remarkable artists in the visual and entertainment realms living and long gone ( think Beetles or Van Gogh) but still Steve Jobs, with his feet in so many pies, able to guide a conglomerate of personalities and skilled folks in the design and production of the best damn "stuff" and convince us (we're so easy) we not only want the "thing" - we want the next iteration of that "thing" and the next and the next. And in so doing, has the audacity to call the "thing" an "iPod shuffle" or "nano" and while claiming the wonders of a "clip" to attach the "thing" to the person to whom it belongs as a design innovation the equivalent of "pocket" as the "thing" knocks the CD market right out of existance. Well this guy beats all other visionaries hands down... If it were a contest of domination. Well, perhaps it is.
While it's true Steve Jobs doesn't have fantasy sections of the globe named after him. He's way too cool for SteveJobsWorld. But we all know who we think of when Cupertino, CA is mentioned. And it's none of the other rich geeks.
Visionaries both- Steve Jobs, Walt Disney.
There are many, many other influential leaders and remarkable artists in the visual and entertainment realms living and long gone ( think Beetles or Van Gogh) but still Steve Jobs, with his feet in so many pies, able to guide a conglomerate of personalities and skilled folks in the design and production of the best damn "stuff" and convince us (we're so easy) we not only want the "thing" - we want the next iteration of that "thing" and the next and the next. And in so doing, has the audacity to call the "thing" an "iPod shuffle" or "nano" and while claiming the wonders of a "clip" to attach the "thing" to the person to whom it belongs as a design innovation the equivalent of "pocket" as the "thing" knocks the CD market right out of existance. Well this guy beats all other visionaries hands down... If it were a contest of domination. Well, perhaps it is.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Good Vibes for Steve Jobs
This reminds me, I had a dream last night or this morning that I was in the city, east village somewhere, helping put together an art exhibit...mine I think, but also a benefit of some sort, and I lost my purse and had no money to travel about except what was in my pockets. Which meant I could take a subway to a friends and beg to borrow money until I got a new bankcard, or go to the bank and try to withdraw money from my account without proof of self. I was also aware that I'd probably left my purse in a taxi....and could use my pocket change to call the taxi people to find my purse and the identity it contained. What a set of choices? I only had enough money to do one of these things. In the back of mind was the memory that this had happed three times in the recent past.
Odd dream, oddly true- isn't it? Yesterday my world got a little jolt when I received confirmation that I will receive a HEAP grant from New York State to help pay for my fuel oil. It's a great thing. And saving $650 in fuel oil means I can readjust expenses or more likely pay bills as yet unpaid...but like the woman with the lost purse of my dream....I think I have an opportunity to buy only one thing with the change in my pocket. I must make a smart choice — what is best for my future financial security and my peace of mind (which often can not be measured in dollasr).
I want desperately to buy an iPad....I want to buy one even more now that Steve Jobs is ill again or more ill than he has been in months past. I want to show support for Apple and for the group who has, in a great part, given me the prosperity that I enjoy today ( even in my lesser and older reality) and have enjoyed since stumbling into their path or visa verso.
If I had to choose between the factors that had the biggest and more significant and best influences on my life....I've thought about this....who would I choose if I had to choose one individual.
I'm afraid my choice of most significant mentor is not either parent, not my husband with whom I travelled the globe and began my adult(ish) life, any of my art professors who set me on a course of study and life, any of my other professors or teachers who opened my eyes and mind or allowed me to decide.."geez - this is crap" and move in another direction, or any of my few bosses who paid me to do the things I loved to do.....or any of my animals who I dearly loved and considered always the members of my multi-species family, or my many colleagues and friends who shared vision, silliness, laughs, stress and ideas with me over the years when knowledge was power......nope...it has got to be Steve Jobs who shared a future with me. His vision was my future, my entire professional and overlapping life which spread into every crevice of my being. And like someone once said — a future is not a gift — it's an accomplishment.
I met Steve Jobs once at Siggraph — the computer graphic conference...the conference I went to on behalf of the little ad agency (KNVB) I worked for who used Macintosh's before anyone else — to find a subtle partner with whom we could create a meshing bit of software to link the Apple platform to the black box platforms of the computers that could already create 3-D and real graphic work (much before Macintosh could do it.) Why didn't Gordon and Carl - my bosses make the plunge? It was a measly $20k investment and they would have reaped an even larger piece of a NYC advertising and publishing pie they already had a nice sized wedge of while creating a spicey piece of computer design history. Who knows.
Anyhow I met Steve Jobs in a small group of men standing at the display in some 3-D modeling booth...maybe it was Pixar...I think Steve Jobs was still absorbed in his NEXT platform (after being tossed by Apple in 1987 in their single most stupid coup of the decade). In hindsight I imagine Steve Jobs was being courted by Pixar or maybe he'd already signed on. For me this Steve Jobs encounter was like standing next to Zeus.....or Cary Grant. (in my mind). I just looked up and there he was. I admit I was slightly thunderstruck to be on the same planet with the guy and awestruck to be in the same space with the guy and frozen in place to think I was sharing oxygen with the guy . That event and a 3-D animation done by the "Late night crew" at Disney (predecessor to Pixar) were the highlights of my conference....well that and going to Disneyland via monorail ...being photographed with Mickey Mouse (maybe that was another conference...) wasn't bad either.
Anyhow I am being to mourn the loss in fear of the loss of Steve Jobs.....of a visionary that has deeply influenced all of our lives (even years and years before I was smart enough to buy Apple stock)...even all you non-Apple platform folks. Your PC platform was always simply a catch-up reproduction of what Steve had already created.
Is there any other single person living who has influenced so positively as many multi-generations of people in as many markets (as in continents) as Steve Jobs? Maybe FDR did the same sort of thing in the USA, maybe Ghandi in India, Mao in China? Steve Jobs with a little help from his friends.... has influenced the greater part of planet Earth's human population.
He's reassured us that we live in a visual world... have you seen the design of the new China Apple Store? It's a sculpture in arhitectural curved glass with a giant platinum apple logo suspended in a 3 story cylinder of space.
Or the design of the new Nano and it's great logo?
Or the iPad? And it's literally snappy tv commercials? With an open screen dripping in droplets on a machine which would seize if actually wet. Odd but very interesting and a "thou shall covet" thing. Boy do I covet...Doth thou covet too?
http://www.apple.com/ipad/gallery/ads.html
Or even the logo of the iPod Touch...with the five colored fingerprints. Beautifully designed bits...the things and their graphics....yum yum. perfect.
For years I have used my Macintosh computers to earn my keep. But for the past couple of years...my iPod Touch has become a dream machine...an article of pure bliss. I love my iPod. Stick it in my jeans and it goes with me whereever I go. I log on when ever, where ever....I see hardly any reason to open a laptop anymore. I draw with my finger on the iPod touch screen.....Of course I can't design on an iPod touch but I am sure I will not need to hold my breath very long until I can use an iPad for just about any design thing I'd need to do. Soon, very soon this will be true.
I think I should buy an iPad now and not wait; use my HEAP grant savings to make the plunge. Ergo, weird dream. I am at the vortex of a Tipping Point.
Good vibes to Steve Jobs. Thank you Steve...thank you, thank you, thank you. Stay tuned Steve.*
* really subtle itunes pun.
SOGO 2 DESIGN
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Old Memories...Old Photos
Yesterday I began in earnest to search for old photos of Ross Goldin (former spouse) who died suddenly last March at the request of his current (chagrin-much younger) wife for his four kids.
Thus far lots of pictures and slides of my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins and child self and ooddles of slides of my art work and technique slides for lectures I gave at workshops years ago. But none of Ross or pretty much that entire decade of my life.
It is a weird trip to look at old images of things you haven't thought of for years. I recall suddenly relationships with a couple professional photographers post Ross and am looking at their photos of me in my thirties. How come I didn't know this is what I looked like, at least to them? Who was that pretty young girl? Geez. How odd.
But considering Ross was also a serious student of photography... I guess he must have left with our photos, if we had any. We traveled all thru Europe for a couple months... Where are those slides? Where are my own slides of an earlier three months in Europe while an u.g.? Did images just disappear during my moves?
I have a few places left to look- an attic box of old family photos that is buried under tons of old crap and empty boxes; through my flat files of all my old design work; my horizontal files of project documentation; in my studio "paper sample" closet and the couple file cabinets left in my studio after my grand exodus and dispersal of all my old computer gear last year. I am not hopeful.
So wondering - old friends- you who are probably much more faithful to old memories in photo form than I ever was - anybody got any old photos of Ross? General call for old Ross photos. Can you who knew me way back when...40+ years ago and who knew well good guy Ross, take a look in your archives? Many thanks. I think his kids would enjoy seeing their dad as we knew him. Don't you?
Thus far lots of pictures and slides of my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins and child self and ooddles of slides of my art work and technique slides for lectures I gave at workshops years ago. But none of Ross or pretty much that entire decade of my life.
It is a weird trip to look at old images of things you haven't thought of for years. I recall suddenly relationships with a couple professional photographers post Ross and am looking at their photos of me in my thirties. How come I didn't know this is what I looked like, at least to them? Who was that pretty young girl? Geez. How odd.
But considering Ross was also a serious student of photography... I guess he must have left with our photos, if we had any. We traveled all thru Europe for a couple months... Where are those slides? Where are my own slides of an earlier three months in Europe while an u.g.? Did images just disappear during my moves?
I have a few places left to look- an attic box of old family photos that is buried under tons of old crap and empty boxes; through my flat files of all my old design work; my horizontal files of project documentation; in my studio "paper sample" closet and the couple file cabinets left in my studio after my grand exodus and dispersal of all my old computer gear last year. I am not hopeful.
So wondering - old friends- you who are probably much more faithful to old memories in photo form than I ever was - anybody got any old photos of Ross? General call for old Ross photos. Can you who knew me way back when...40+ years ago and who knew well good guy Ross, take a look in your archives? Many thanks. I think his kids would enjoy seeing their dad as we knew him. Don't you?
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Fall finally
Ok... Using qnother app of the $.99 variety. Says it will allow for simple graphic work. We'll see .
Columbia County Fall drawing below.
Columbia County Fall drawing below.
Fall fall falling
The mobile blog posting app is remarkably primitive compared to drawing and painting apps. The lack of any real graphic abilities within the apps make design impossible. Hopefully this will be corrected soon.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
a little help from my friends
To those who'd like to be included among a few old friends joining to remember and celebrate the life of a common friend we all enjoyed so many years ago. I hope you will understand my instincts since I do this outside the accepted systems for this sort of thing.
Ross died a little more than a week ago. He didn't have an accident or was sick that anyone knew about. His heart simply stopped pumping and he died immediately. Unfortunately I am told he would have been saved by a simple pacemaker- so his death is doubly sad.
Ross had a third wife, much younger than himself and four children - three of them under 14. The forth he adopted who came as a package with his current wife. That daughter is 20 just like we were when we all knew Ross...can you imagine? His sister said he was a great dad which is very easy to understand.
He was an assistant superindentant of schools in a Long Island South Shore school system. He was still a runner and track coach and lived a very busy life as he always had. A guy who always had several projects in the works but not so busy to drop everything to help a friend move or haul something up some stairs or tinker with an engine. He still had a little sports car (told it was not a Porsche however- some things do remain a first wife's domain) but had given up motorcycles. I am told he still looked great. Always important upon an exit.
He and his wife traveled to Paris last year. He wanted to show her a place he'd enjoyed as a young man. I know he loved the city of light and art. Can you imagine he and I saw a first release of "Easy Rider" in a tiny Parisian cinema so long ago? How iconically American can one get in the 60s?
We all know Ross was a funny and quirky guy who really enjoyed you all. I think I know the affection you held for him. I have lots of great memories of simple times we all shared in that bizarre period of cultural history which coincided with our coming of age. Those old memories are really very odd to have these days, so long buried. But they are part of the celebration of Ross' life and hopefully old friends will take a moment to remember a guy we all enjoyed and who captured my heart.
Perhaps you will send this note on to old friends who also knew Ross so we can send him off in wonderful 60's fashion - with a little help from his friends.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
winter update
Cold and nippy in upstate New York....snow and more snow but mostly lots of chill boosting up the thermostats and the fuel bills. Of course the cost of fuel oil has gone up per gallon.
But it's very, very pretty....always very pretty. But, you know....Winter is o.k. for about four weeks and then it's time for Spring. That's my formula. Ask anyone up here and most of us would agree. O.K. skiers would have a short season but they'd also have their knees when they hit 50. It's a good trade.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Fall again in the country
Screen are pushed up.
Storms are pulled down.
Next I notice the day shutting down earlier and night crowding in.
Then the vine at the edge of the forest turns red.
On a drive over the Berkshire hills I see splotches of color in the Sugar Maples along the road.
A natural sadness settles in as the warmth of the Earth and growth of the summer ends.
Feeling like a faded flower becomes the norm.
I have a pile of bulbs on the kitchen deck in a bin.
I have not decided where they will be planted but a store display challenged me not to buy them and I lost the battle.
Planning for Spring seems almost indecent, like planning a rebirth amist the ripples of a funeral.
This period when it's not quite Summer anymore and not quite Fall. Before the splashes of color that paint our trees can brighten the mood of the meanest humbug while the year winds down....this is a difficult time.
Wanting to curl up under Polertec and sweat shirt with a cat on my knees and a laptop on, well, my lap and doze. My brain becomes slower, chilled.
Tasks become very difficult to do. These days I balance my body's chemistry, really trick it out of wanting to curl up and hibernate through the winter yet to come.
I've spent the last nine months in a visual birthing tank –
in an interesting although it turns out lackluster activity. I've been the primary designer of an interactive children's magazine (created the graphic design, written all the original editorial copy, rewrote all the story copy and submitted some of my own, and scripted the programming to enable the magazine to interact with its young readers) and then been brutally shut away from it's final first breaths...pushed out of the group and the design re purposed. Not quite a still birth but not quite an adoption either... or so it would seem. Can one be fired when funds do not change hands? Blood, sweat and tears.
Ah, the pleasantries of donation.
I've been notified verbally by those, shall we call them fiends for the sake of this announcement, that the magazine design is not my intellectual property, although, of course it is. I've been told that designing a magazine is not so difficult and an inept and unskilled person has taken on the task of designing the next issue. Has my nine month of labor been tossed to the wind? Or simply how it feels. Perhaps the magazine will be totally redesigned by the two who hadn't the time, or experience to organize and give visual and thoughtful life to the material at hand, as I did over the last nine months. Is this where loves' labor lost looms?
Depletion doesn't even come close to how it feels when something goes astray as this project has. Guiding a project into life along the way is like watching a young thing flourish. Ones commitment to the process is intense and passionate. One wonders at those who do not understand that sense of drive and life force which goes into the creation of a thing like a magazine. Hateful to be shut out at the 11th hour and very sad to never see the project into it's full bloom of life. It's like stomping on a thing which is just learning to breath, killing it. Hateful, ignorant people would do such a thing to another person and that person's creation. They're out there. And they righteously feel they have right to do this sort of death march, this slap down of your spirit.
Are lawyers the solution?
Friends say best to move on and they are correct. But the mourning for the thing created out of thin air and pieces of your soul is not a simple thing to leave behind. It is not properly buried. One doesn't know if it lives or has had its guts removed and it's limps amputated by the fiends who you once considered friends. In a daze between seasons, depleted and trying to step away from a train wreck. It's impossible to do unscathed.
So not quite fall, not quite summer....a time of change, a time of endings.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Katmai Dreamin'
What I found after traveling through Alaska's back country with naturalists and ending up in Katmai (National Park) was that living on bear time altered my view of the world. When a bear population (or a single bear) is in control of where you walk, when you walk, what you eat and where and the basics of your entire day, and you love it....well, the jumble of Manhattan simply loses credibility.
I used to wear a baseball hat in Katmai (National Park), mostly since it rains allot and once you're outside somewhere watching bears, you stay out....and just get wet. Ponchos are important apparel in that environment. I even have some rubber pants to slide on over my jeans...but I never wore them. They were just too geeky. But the baseball hat and poncho worked well with long sleeved garb underneath to stay warm. You can not bring something as simple as hot cocoa or tea into the wild with grizzlies out and about. A grizzly can smell food at at upwards to a 18 miles distance (if it's carrion) or so. Therefore traveling with food...not so good. One is not even allowed to chew gum in bear country, if you are not an idiot. I say this because some people, a good number of them, do weigh in on the idiot side of the spectrum and do take in food and bother the bears which is bad news for everyone else. These same idiots will walk up nearly to a grizzly bear and keep the rangers on their toes. The rangers are around to protect the bears. That humans enjoy the result of their do diligence is simply a plus.
Maybe I've mentioned this little story; can't recall. It was the trip I took on my own in 1998 or '99 (first trip was with a handful of naturalists in 1997 and I left NYC three months later). On the second trip I had a nice cabin on a ridge...just a 12x12 foot or so log cabin with a shower behind a drape with a toilet and sink and two bunk beds. I think it also had a small electric heater but I was always cold...reason to get up very, very early. I had the entire cabin on my own which was an enormous luxury (but very inexpensive). I'd asked to reserve this exact cabin and was surprised to find it available. One is allowed to remain in Katmai for a week or a bit less at one time. The housing is in very short supply. Many people actually tent in Katmai in a camp ground which is in some less bear traveled and more isolated area. I think tenting in Katmai is nuts, but hey some people just want to be on the edge...the literal edge when it comes to bear country. You remember the guy (and his girl friend) who was eaten by the grizzly in Alaska who had a major award winning documentary film Grizzly Man (which Werner Hertzog put together in 2005 posthumously) - that's Timothy Treadwell? All the naturalists and rangers pretty much considered Timothy a bit off. If you saw that film, that was Katmai. Timothy lived (for 13 years of summers) and died outside his tent. In the end I think his film did do a lot to education people about bears and what not to do. Plus it was beautiful...just beautiful.
The camp fills daily with day travelers to have a quickie experience watching bears. All the day travelers are float planed in from King Salmon, a little back water through which most travelers must go to reach Katmai. Katmai is a long stretch of land which is open to the sea (ergo the salmon are coming in to spawn which is why the bears arrive each summer) which extends down as an archipelago from the base of Alaska and into the sea. It is hundreds miles in any one direction.
Back to the story. I was returning from a day of bear viewing. I was walking by myself, hat on, sans poncho, head down watching my feet as I climbed up the slight incline, over roots in the path, to my cabin. My cabin was the third one in from the one closest to the main eating lodge. I heard a rustling. Hearing a rustling is never a good thing when you are walking alone on a path in bear country. I looked up. Before me was a moma bear on her hind legs with two cubs tearing apart one of the rubber doormats in front of the cabin. The moma bear was the equivalent of looking at a giant fur wall since she engulfed my entire field of vision. I was about 10- 12 feet from her. She stood up as I picked my head up. We looked at one another.
One never goes within 150 yards of a mother bear with cubs. Mother bears are much more dangerous than their male relatives who might reach 1500 pounds and do kill or maim one another over disagreements over something as simple as a preferred fishing spot. My proximity wasn't even a question...I was entirely too close.
Bears use the same paths as the humans at Katmai. In fact all paths were created by the bears eons ago. So it is a everyday occurrence to bump into bears on the paths...but one is never alone on those paths if you are on the human side of the equation. One waits for other humans to form a little posse of fellow travelers and to sing out "hey, bear" and clap all the way from one place to another. Bears at Katmai are used to this sort of behavior and so everyone generally gets along quite copacetically. Since even 11 years ago, I was forced to walk slower than other folks because my arthritic knees do not bend and recoil as quickly as most people like to walk on a bear path...that being the case, I used the "hey, bear" capacity of my brain and lungs to full advantage within a group of humans walking a path. Because I was always last in line on the path.
So back to moma bear. She was startled. I was startled. If one had to decide who would recover with best advantage it would be a toss up. Moma's bears eyesight isn't great but her nose knows. Maybe I could see fine but if I'd been a bear I would have known she was there from the other side of camp. Bears are pretty aromatic.
And her cubs where curious and double trouble. You might think..."how cute, two bear cubs." Unfortunately, not exactly correct. The two bear cubs where yearlings...meaning spending the summer after their first full year of life with mom....second summer at Katmai. Their first summer they would have been new Spring cubs in twins or triplets or even quadruplets and no one would have seen them except moma bear who'd have them hidden somewhere near where she'd feed (I saw two once...very adorable...now those are the cute cubs one thinks of when the word cub pops up.)
There is a rule at Katmai and any other bear infested area in Alaska and probably anywhere else with a similar mixed population of inhabitants. This rule is "no one can lock a door." No door even is equipped with a lock unless it is the food or fish locker. This rule exists for the person like me who had need to step into someone else's room and hide behind a bolted solid wood door from one or more grizzly bears (or other beasts.) Oddly, even though this rule does exist and even though the circumstances I found myself within completely justified the "no lock" rule...I hesitated at the door and knocked. As I did this, I could hear the cook banging her pot and could see the cub coming down the hill toward me at a pretty good clip undeterred by the pot noise. Something snapped in my mind. I opened the door and stepped inside, feeling a peeping Tom/home invader undercurrent to all the other emotions spilling out of me.
In this case, I knew I was lucky to be alive or in one piece and alive and not in some sort of horrible pain from a few bear bites and clawings. The people I've seen who have undergone that sort of experience are incredibly smart about bears for ever more but they remain obviously stitched back together with tremendous scars and damage to their bodies. It wasn't just luck; some combination of rules of bear behavior and rules of human behavior and rules of my own behavior and good bear karma saved that day for me. I also think the female bear was very intelligent and made a good decision. I can hear her thinking, "damn it's a fishy smelling rubber mat, not a pail of fish and now my cubs are going to rib this damn thing apart unless I find some reason for us to leave quickly...hey, who's that? Ah, my ticket out of here."
It turned out that a fisherman had left a pail of fish on his rubber doormat sometime that day. The bears smelt the fishy rubber and came to investigate and eat it. I cannot tell you what the rubber mat looked like later in the day when camp returned to normal. It was just a pile of scattered shreds and bits. This bear family had been approaching camp that day. The rangers showed up, interviewed me, told me how a big problem unfolds once a bear starts invading the camp to find easy food...they will not stop. The rangers used powerful noisemaker blasters (something like a NYC car alarm....just joking...louder, much louder) to send out intense disturbing noise in all the directions. So much for the extreme quiet and solitude of Alaskan back country. The park rangers also came armed with tranquilizer guns and regular guns. No ranger at Katmai wants to shot a bear. The rangers are there to protect the bears. Odd to think about that isn't it?
Joke:
Anyhow the grizzly bears (or Kodiak bears, or brown bears...name depends on where you are on the planet with them)...anyhow they are about 5 times larger than the black bears that sit under my feeder here. A black bear might weigh from 90-500 pounds and if you stood next to a 500 pound black bear...he'd seem quite big. I've seen a male that stood about 7-8 feet tall on his hind legs rubbing his back against one of my smaller (just a foot and half circumference) sugar maples up on the hill. But you don't see these guys regularly. They travel in a 150 mile area. A larger female black bear (average size is 90-300 lbs) on all fours she'd be about the girth of what appears to be about half a VW beetle if you include her legs. But that's black bears. These other nice fishing grizzlies weigh in at around 600 - 1500 pounds so you do the math about how big they are.
Katmai
I used to wear a baseball hat in Katmai (National Park), mostly since it rains allot and once you're outside somewhere watching bears, you stay out....and just get wet. Ponchos are important apparel in that environment. I even have some rubber pants to slide on over my jeans...but I never wore them. They were just too geeky. But the baseball hat and poncho worked well with long sleeved garb underneath to stay warm. You can not bring something as simple as hot cocoa or tea into the wild with grizzlies out and about. A grizzly can smell food at at upwards to a 18 miles distance (if it's carrion) or so. Therefore traveling with food...not so good. One is not even allowed to chew gum in bear country, if you are not an idiot. I say this because some people, a good number of them, do weigh in on the idiot side of the spectrum and do take in food and bother the bears which is bad news for everyone else. These same idiots will walk up nearly to a grizzly bear and keep the rangers on their toes. The rangers are around to protect the bears. That humans enjoy the result of their do diligence is simply a plus.
When you enter the Katmai National Park, every visitor is given an orientation session, with a film, a lecture and then a button is pinned on you that says "I've been told how to live with grizzly bears with a number) so each person can be easily identified. Without this button (and it used to be about 2" around - very visible), you could not walk around in the Katmai area.
Here's why:
Maybe I've mentioned this little story; can't recall. It was the trip I took on my own in 1998 or '99 (first trip was with a handful of naturalists in 1997 and I left NYC three months later). On the second trip I had a nice cabin on a ridge...just a 12x12 foot or so log cabin with a shower behind a drape with a toilet and sink and two bunk beds. I think it also had a small electric heater but I was always cold...reason to get up very, very early. I had the entire cabin on my own which was an enormous luxury (but very inexpensive). I'd asked to reserve this exact cabin and was surprised to find it available. One is allowed to remain in Katmai for a week or a bit less at one time. The housing is in very short supply. Many people actually tent in Katmai in a camp ground which is in some less bear traveled and more isolated area. I think tenting in Katmai is nuts, but hey some people just want to be on the edge...the literal edge when it comes to bear country. You remember the guy (and his girl friend) who was eaten by the grizzly in Alaska who had a major award winning documentary film Grizzly Man (which Werner Hertzog put together in 2005 posthumously) - that's Timothy Treadwell? All the naturalists and rangers pretty much considered Timothy a bit off. If you saw that film, that was Katmai. Timothy lived (for 13 years of summers) and died outside his tent. In the end I think his film did do a lot to education people about bears and what not to do. Plus it was beautiful...just beautiful.
This is Katmai National Park and Preserve. It has 4,093,000 acres. I have 12 acres. Interesting to always put things in comparison. You can just make out the green box in the center left(not the one almost on the left edge of the map, the other one)...that's the location of Brooks Camp on Naknek Lake and Brooks River. Katmai is down the archipeglio of Alaska...not too far down. Not much is in this area in terms of "civilization." It is remote.
Everyone homo sapiens arrives at Katmai by float plane. Day trippers or others don't even get off their planes without being greeted by a few of Katmai's curious brown bears. The pilots have learned to land without disturbing the ursine obstacles in their water runways.
The camp fills daily with day travelers to have a quickie experience watching bears. All the day travelers are float planed in from King Salmon, a little back water through which most travelers must go to reach Katmai. Katmai is a long stretch of land which is open to the sea (ergo the salmon are coming in to spawn which is why the bears arrive each summer) which extends down as an archipelago from the base of Alaska and into the sea. It is hundreds miles in any one direction.
It takes an hour and half of flying time to come in to Katmai's Naknek Lake from Anchorage via a stop over someplace in which you change to a float plane and the time you are on land for that change is not counted in the hour and a half of flying time. More commonly, folks fly in to King Salmon from Anchorage on a hour plus regular small plane trip. Then you hang out at a dock and wait for the pilots to arrive at their float planes for an couple hours while your one bag is hoisted on and then you are hoisted on. Then from King Salmon on a small float plane for another 25 minute trip with up to four people on board (depending on how much you all weigh--you have to weigh in to get to Katmai...that will keep a good number of people out thankfully.)
To get to Katmai is not easy; it's what's considered remote and yet it is a major visitor area in Alaska. Go figure. Planes are booked long in advance and space is limited on each leg of the trip. Even the number of day travelers into Katmai is strictly limited. Standing in line with about two hundred fisherman with ice chests filled with salmon (when the salmon have thinned out enough for the fisherman to quit- they never know when this will happen and so they book one way in to Katmai with no return flight)..standing will all these fish and fisherman who want to fly out of King Salmon airport on standby is an entirely different but interesting story. My first trip, somebody forgot to book our flight out so I got very familiar with the fisherman and the little hanger of an airport. I was there for hours.
My little cabin faced an enormous expanse of river and watery march from the vantage point of a hill. This enormous far vista spread out in front of me from one side of my vision and beyond to the other. The distances are deceptive in the enormous open space of Alaska. It was miles I was looking off into from the hill on which the cabin stood. I saw a moose down there eating in the march one evening (remember the sun stays out for 21 hours in an Alaskan summer and as a result your body just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny...it's remarkably neat to have that much energy.) Anyhow I saw a big bull moose munching marsh grass and he was only about 3" tall in the vista...so you can interpolate how enormous the scale and distances were from the vantage of the cabin. By the way, if you stood next to a bull moose in full antlers he'd be about 7 feet tall at the shoulder and his antlers would span 6 feet...a big guy.)
This is probably the exact cabin I had at Katmai.
My little cabin faced an enormous expanse of river and watery march from the vantage point of a hill. This enormous far vista spread out in front of me from one side of my vision and beyond to the other. The distances are deceptive in the enormous open space of Alaska. It was miles I was looking off into from the hill on which the cabin stood. I saw a moose down there eating in the march one evening (remember the sun stays out for 21 hours in an Alaskan summer and as a result your body just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny...it's remarkably neat to have that much energy.) Anyhow I saw a big bull moose munching marsh grass and he was only about 3" tall in the vista...so you can interpolate how enormous the scale and distances were from the vantage of the cabin. By the way, if you stood next to a bull moose in full antlers he'd be about 7 feet tall at the shoulder and his antlers would span 6 feet...a big guy.)
Between the river and marsh, the hillside was covered with brambles and shrubs and the entire area was canopied in log pole pines...high up in the sky with their branches...but just telephone type tall poles of bark for about 10 feet or more from the ground. The area behind the cabin which was one of three or four in a row (and which I noted on the first trip to Katmai where inhabited by the professional photographers who'd reserved them about a year in advance for obvious reasons)...anyhow the area behind the cabins was a hill slanting in the reverse direction, a slight decline with open land and then a long cabin of attached rooms with a small covered porch from the overlap of the slant of the roof - at the front running the length of the 30 feet or so long building. That's where everyone else stayed in communal bunk or four person bunk rooms, even the small staff (all except the rangers who had their own cabin way out in the woods on the other side of the river). The big attached cabin building sat in the clearing and was devoid of all but the woodsy view of all of Katmai. No part is very far from the lake, river or woods. The cabins on the ridge were very special. My little cabin had a little covered stoop and a bench to one side with a nice big rubber mat in front to wipe one's constantly muddy feet.
Here's why people come to Katmai - Brooks Falls' Bears
the quintessential bears at Brooks Falls photo.
The bear viewing platform at Brooks Falls. To reach the platform, you must pass thru 2 1/2 miles of woods on a bear path which brings you up to the platform. On a given day, I've seen 18 big male bears eating on or just below the falls. The upper photo shows 7 male bears....so imagine the population, space, crowding and tempers which 18 big 1500 lb. bears (that would be like 18 VW beattles wouldn't it?) evoke among themselves. The number of humans crowding on the platforms sometime becomes so dense that one is allowed to stay on the platform for only a short span of time. The next people who've walked the 2 1/2 miles and wait outside the platforms gate have to wait for people to leave for them to have space enough to get on the platform. No one is are allowed to hang out at the Falls without being on the viewing platform. You are in transit to or from or your on the platform. No exceptions.
This sort of density of bears and people is true of July, not of Sept. The professional photographers take up a lot of space and since they pay a heavy price to use the platforms at Katmai for every roll of film they shoot they must pay a fee (how this computes to digital photography, got me). As a result of the fees they pay for the privilege of taking pictures they'll sell, they get to remain on the platform longer. Plus they are trekking heavy camera equipment along on their hike to the Falls so that gives them the "poor me" advantage. But many amateur photographs are also so endowed with all sorts of outrageous photo gear. I left my cameras behind on my second trip and simply recorded events the old fashioned way.
Back to the story. I was returning from a day of bear viewing. I was walking by myself, hat on, sans poncho, head down watching my feet as I climbed up the slight incline, over roots in the path, to my cabin. My cabin was the third one in from the one closest to the main eating lodge. I heard a rustling. Hearing a rustling is never a good thing when you are walking alone on a path in bear country. I looked up. Before me was a moma bear on her hind legs with two cubs tearing apart one of the rubber doormats in front of the cabin. The moma bear was the equivalent of looking at a giant fur wall since she engulfed my entire field of vision. I was about 10- 12 feet from her. She stood up as I picked my head up. We looked at one another.
"Hey, Bear!"
One never goes within 150 yards of a mother bear with cubs. Mother bears are much more dangerous than their male relatives who might reach 1500 pounds and do kill or maim one another over disagreements over something as simple as a preferred fishing spot. My proximity wasn't even a question...I was entirely too close.
I cursed my hat, I backed away. I whispered "hey bear"....one is taught (or you think you are taught until you have to use the lesson) to firmly say "hey, bear" and raise your arms above you head to appear larger, when you are walking the paths from viewing spot to viewing spot so the bears know you are a human and not another bear approaching or walking by (or at least think you are a big human if you meet at a stand still.) I was aware of my arms hanging like dead weights on either side of me as I stood before moma bear and her two cubs. Lessons are only as valid as a body willing to comply. There was no way that I would appear anything more than a puny human in moma bear's eyes.
Katmai corner at Brooks River.
A group of people wait to cross the bridge (because a bear is on it) or gather to join forces before trekking up a path or to cross the river on a pontoon floating bridge with a railing on both sides and a latched entrance gate which is a little bit to the left of this photo. Sometimes you can wait at this corner for a long time while bears play on the bridge or under it. The railings have limited ability to keep a determined bear off the bridge. It's part of life at Brooks camp.
Same corner, different trekkers.
The travelers on the path have changed from Homo sapiens to Ursus arctos. Same path, slightly different time frame...but note the sun and shadows...not a significantly different time than the photo with humans above. This corner is at the edge of the "residential" camp and just across the river from the lower river viewing platform...meaning it is relatively safe ground. So this is what I mean by sharing the paths. This is a mother bear and her cub, an older Spring cub.
Pontoon Bridge over Brooks River.
Talk about a gated community; in this case the bears are supposed to be on the outside of the gates but yearling and two year old cubs play in the sun on the ONLY bridge across the river all day long. Mostly mothers and cubs are down river at this location
waiting for salmon bits to float down from the big males greedy and lavish fishing and eating habits 3 miles upstream.
Why fish if you can simply wait for your meal to float by pre perpared? So who's the smarter bears? Sounds right but it isn't. Not enough makes it down river. A bear has to fish to gain enough weight to make it thru the winter. So mother bears at the pontoon bridge are only on a break. They end up in the water after food for hours too. The cubs simply hang out at the bridge waiting for them. One might say the bridge is the bear's babysitter.
Viewing platform, other side of Brooks River over the pontoon bridge.
Bears use the same paths as the humans at Katmai. In fact all paths were created by the bears eons ago. So it is a everyday occurrence to bump into bears on the paths...but one is never alone on those paths if you are on the human side of the equation. One waits for other humans to form a little posse of fellow travelers and to sing out "hey, bear" and clap all the way from one place to another. Bears at Katmai are used to this sort of behavior and so everyone generally gets along quite copacetically. Since even 11 years ago, I was forced to walk slower than other folks because my arthritic knees do not bend and recoil as quickly as most people like to walk on a bear path...that being the case, I used the "hey, bear" capacity of my brain and lungs to full advantage within a group of humans walking a path. Because I was always last in line on the path.
I probably looked a lot like this fellow below as I trekked up the path to the Falls.
All the Katmai paths are the original bear paths. The area has had inhabitants of humans for 9,000 years...bears longer. That's enough time to get a good path established.
Every visitor walking on Katmai's paths is also on the look out for bears lounging or sleeping (or running) in the woods on either side of the path as one walks the paths in bear country. Since a running bear is apt to take to the path (it being their's to begin with and the shortest distance between two points and because a running bear is usually in pursuit or being pursued by another running bear), the self same path you are waking upon - knowing when to surrender ground and hop to either side of the path into the woods is part of diplomatic foot travel in Katmai. All of which is a rather intense activity which takes full concentration and better mobility than I even had then.
It is unusual for bears to show up "in camp." The camp is full of fisherman who fish the river for salmon just like the bears...except the humans use tackle and the bears use its earlier version -claw and tooth (and are still better at it.) But fisherman are NEVER allowed to bring fish into camp. All fish are stored in a raised fish refrigeration room that is on the edge of camp. The smell of raw fish is not allowed in camp (apparently stewed or other such cooked fish is not all that appealing to bears...thankfully.) All smart and logical rules. And of course, as rules, they are broken by the idiot humans who don't give a shit.
The reasons formal strict rules are part of the overlapping cohabitation of the bear and human space is because the humans are the visitors. The bears have convened at Katmai all summer for centuries to feed. They have a biological and hormonal imperative to feed intensely for three months and then travel back to the 500 or so square miles which they solitarily inhabit to their dens and sleep through a rather horrible winter.) The amount of fish the grizzlies consume will determine if they survive another year. So they are not fooling around. They are eating 24/7. Grizzly bears are not buddies with one another. They tolerate one another in varying degrees of success at Katmai and other locations where they convene to feed for the duration of the Alaskan summer which begins in July and ends in September. On both sides of that window, one can expect it to snow. Nice summer huh?
Sockeye Salmon on their way to spawn.
Sockeye salmon change to bright salmon red with a greenish head as they travel into fresh water from sea water on their way to spawn. After they spawn...they look lifeless...since they are barely alive. Bears like to eat them in any variation and will consume upwards to 90 lbs of salmon a day...and bears are not only carnivorous, they also eat veggie each day if they get out of the water. That's a lot of sockeye. Can you imagine how much weight they gain in a summer of eating like this?
It is unusual for bears to show up "in camp." The camp is full of fisherman who fish the river for salmon just like the bears...except the humans use tackle and the bears use its earlier version -claw and tooth (and are still better at it.) But fisherman are NEVER allowed to bring fish into camp. All fish are stored in a raised fish refrigeration room that is on the edge of camp. The smell of raw fish is not allowed in camp (apparently stewed or other such cooked fish is not all that appealing to bears...thankfully.) All smart and logical rules. And of course, as rules, they are broken by the idiot humans who don't give a shit.
The reasons formal strict rules are part of the overlapping cohabitation of the bear and human space is because the humans are the visitors. The bears have convened at Katmai all summer for centuries to feed. They have a biological and hormonal imperative to feed intensely for three months and then travel back to the 500 or so square miles which they solitarily inhabit to their dens and sleep through a rather horrible winter.) The amount of fish the grizzlies consume will determine if they survive another year. So they are not fooling around. They are eating 24/7. Grizzly bears are not buddies with one another. They tolerate one another in varying degrees of success at Katmai and other locations where they convene to feed for the duration of the Alaskan summer which begins in July and ends in September. On both sides of that window, one can expect it to snow. Nice summer huh?
Standing bears
Here you get an idea of bear size when standing tall. The bear on the right might be a female but probably this is a real argument of two males, one clearly superior by a foot. Who knows who ticked off who.
So back to moma bear. She was startled. I was startled. If one had to decide who would recover with best advantage it would be a toss up. Moma's bears eyesight isn't great but her nose knows. Maybe I could see fine but if I'd been a bear I would have known she was there from the other side of camp. Bears are pretty aromatic.
Bears in camp
She was in camp with two cubs which made something wrong with the picture. There was some reason why she was not fishing with the other female, cub and male bears up at Brooks Falls or below the falls. Females generally feed with their cubs down from the Falls to catch all the salmon meat, skin and guts the males allow to flow down river in their haste to catch yet again another salmon. And maybe the males do this to help feed the females and cubs. One just doesn't know. However, male bears will kill cubs so a mother will breed again..which her body can not do if she is nursing cubs...just like cats and kittens. So mother bears and cubs generally keep their distance from the big males at the Falls preferring the salmon dregs than the danger.
The other activity the bears convene in Katmai for is breeding but this is accidental and not the purpose for their journey to the Brook River (as far as I know.) Anyhow something was wrong if this mother was in camp. Perhaps she was injured or ill. Well, you couldn't tell by looking at her. She was lookin' good if one can fairly judge the appearance and health of a grizzly bear from 10 feet in a split second. I was clearly at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Moma bear ferries a Spring cub across Brooks River or in Naknek Lake which the river joins at Brooks Camp.
And her cubs where curious and double trouble. You might think..."how cute, two bear cubs." Unfortunately, not exactly correct. The two bear cubs where yearlings...meaning spending the summer after their first full year of life with mom....second summer at Katmai. Their first summer they would have been new Spring cubs in twins or triplets or even quadruplets and no one would have seen them except moma bear who'd have them hidden somewhere near where she'd feed (I saw two once...very adorable...now those are the cute cubs one thinks of when the word cub pops up.)
Look closely; mother bear is followed by four slightly older Spring cubs, in the first summer at Katmai. Bears are born in a female's den in January or February and nursed there until April or May. Once the family leaves the den, the cubs follow their mother where ever she goes. Bears are not weaned until they are two and a half years old, then they are on their own and leave the mother's den. Females breed at 3 1/2 years and males at 4 1/2 years. Bears begin eating salmon along with nursing probably at the end of their first summer.
Yearling cubs are about the size of a black bear. Not a big black bear but easily a 150 pound and counting bear. In this case, I became a bit more interesting than the fishy smelly rubber mat. So while moma bear viewed me from her impressive height, baby bear decided to come over and give me a sniff. A closer up sniff would not be tolerated by moma bear (with me in one piece) but baby bear apparently did not know that. Undoubtably I was closer to the cubs than any other human had ever been, seen or smelled. This was a big day for the cubs. Me too.
One does not run from a grizzly bear. A running thing is prey. Humans back away from grizzly bears and shout "hey, bear." I think shouting "hey, bear" in close proximity is not a normal thing for one's vocal cords to execute. But I do think I got out a "BEAR"...which was fairly loud as I backed away. Luckily, a cook was outside of the main lodge, about 100 feet or more away, from which I was walking. It was in the other direction. A big open room with a kitchen for eating communal meals of wonderful versions of salmon this and that. And a cook was outside washing out a pot. She heard me, she saw the bears and she began to bang on the pot she was washing with a wooden spoon, making a nice loud enough clanging sound.
One does not run from a grizzly bear. A running thing is prey. Humans back away from grizzly bears and shout "hey, bear." I think shouting "hey, bear" in close proximity is not a normal thing for one's vocal cords to execute. But I do think I got out a "BEAR"...which was fairly loud as I backed away. Luckily, a cook was outside of the main lodge, about 100 feet or more away, from which I was walking. It was in the other direction. A big open room with a kitchen for eating communal meals of wonderful versions of salmon this and that. And a cook was outside washing out a pot. She heard me, she saw the bears and she began to bang on the pot she was washing with a wooden spoon, making a nice loud enough clanging sound.
And the cubs' two sets of eyes and the moma bears eyes quickly turned from me to the pot banging. This allowed me the time to back track and move down the hill to the bigger log cabin. It was a 30-40 foot back walk, down hill. The span of time to do this was a couple of minutes. It seemed like an hour and a half with each second, distinct and separate and held as if in a big glob of Plexiglas like those dandelion puffs that one sees sold as a paperweight. I couldn't get to my cabin or any of the other single cabins since the bears were a convincing traffic diversion. I had to go toward the large building of connected cabins and so I did. I wasn't walking slowly. I realized that moving in reverse from a wall of fur was not possible to do in slow motion. I was moving much too fast. I was not shouting "hey, bear." I doubt that I was breathing.
Keep Your Doors Unlocked
There is a rule at Katmai and any other bear infested area in Alaska and probably anywhere else with a similar mixed population of inhabitants. This rule is "no one can lock a door." No door even is equipped with a lock unless it is the food or fish locker. This rule exists for the person like me who had need to step into someone else's room and hide behind a bolted solid wood door from one or more grizzly bears (or other beasts.) Oddly, even though this rule does exist and even though the circumstances I found myself within completely justified the "no lock" rule...I hesitated at the door and knocked. As I did this, I could hear the cook banging her pot and could see the cub coming down the hill toward me at a pretty good clip undeterred by the pot noise. Something snapped in my mind. I opened the door and stepped inside, feeling a peeping Tom/home invader undercurrent to all the other emotions spilling out of me.
I stood behind that bolted door for some time. I began to breath. My heart was racing. Something way beyond everyday fear filled my blood stream. The dose of adrenaline which continued to spurt into my system was more than I have ever had the misfortune to have felt in my lifetime....and I have been in some pretty dicey situations in the past. I felt both very alive and made out of something other than flesh and bone. Odd.
Just to justify that I'm not a whimpy scaredy cat...I've had my share of close calls. Hey, I lived in NYC of 16 years. Go figure. But I recall being alone, on the side of steep mountain in a rental non four wheel drive car on a dirt road that suddenly disappeared with no way to turn around except to retreat in reverse up the mountain, in isolated Navajo country somewhere in New Mexico as night settled in. That was scarey. I on a short cut from one area of weaving to another during my textile designer years. Lesson learned: Maps lie.
Or trying to get up and out of an extremely steep gully about 50 feet down to a dry river bed where some sort of crystal rock or other was supposed to be located for which rock hammer type gear was in my pack as well as all the rocks pulled from the earth. And finding that the wall of the gully was pulverized stone which just kept sliding you back to where you began...the bottom. I tried to get out of that gully with my partner for a very long time (as in hours), until some good samaritan stopped his vehicle, seeing our car by the side of the road with no persons visible. This was someplace on some mountain road in the rockies and but for the good samaritan, I'd still at the bottom of that gully.
These sorts of bad news experiences had provoked adrenaline rushes which helped me survive but nothing compared to meeting a grizzly in close encounter.
Luck or Something Different
In this case, I knew I was lucky to be alive or in one piece and alive and not in some sort of horrible pain from a few bear bites and clawings. The people I've seen who have undergone that sort of experience are incredibly smart about bears for ever more but they remain obviously stitched back together with tremendous scars and damage to their bodies. It wasn't just luck; some combination of rules of bear behavior and rules of human behavior and rules of my own behavior and good bear karma saved that day for me. I also think the female bear was very intelligent and made a good decision. I can hear her thinking, "damn it's a fishy smelling rubber mat, not a pail of fish and now my cubs are going to rib this damn thing apart unless I find some reason for us to leave quickly...hey, who's that? Ah, my ticket out of here."
It turned out that a fisherman had left a pail of fish on his rubber doormat sometime that day. The bears smelt the fishy rubber and came to investigate and eat it. I cannot tell you what the rubber mat looked like later in the day when camp returned to normal. It was just a pile of scattered shreds and bits. This bear family had been approaching camp that day. The rangers showed up, interviewed me, told me how a big problem unfolds once a bear starts invading the camp to find easy food...they will not stop. The rangers used powerful noisemaker blasters (something like a NYC car alarm....just joking...louder, much louder) to send out intense disturbing noise in all the directions. So much for the extreme quiet and solitude of Alaskan back country. The park rangers also came armed with tranquilizer guns and regular guns. No ranger at Katmai wants to shot a bear. The rangers are there to protect the bears. Odd to think about that isn't it?
That this mother and her cubs would either have to be destroyed or removed somehow, was now clearly a necessity unless she learned a lesson. She didn't learn from a pot banging or from me and was long gone by the time the rangers arrived. I was in camp for the rest of the week. I can't remember what I heard about this bear family. I know I must have blocked out the end of the story. Killing a bear is intolerable to me. And, of course, the reverse is equally true (meaning being killed by a bear.)
Naknek Lake at Brooks Camp. A bear playing with a stick. Note the view. geez.
Joke:
A fellow stumbled into a local sporting goods store in Alaska and asked,
"You got any bears around here?"
The clerk replied, "Yep."
"Big bears?"
"Yep."
"Mean bears?"
"Yep."
"Black bears?"
"Yep."
"Grizzly bears?"
"Yep."
"Got any bear bells?"
"What's dat?"
"You know, them little dingle-bells ya put on yer bakpack so bears know yer in the perimeter so's they can runs away..."
"Yep. Over yonder..."
"Great. I'll take one fer black bears, and one fer grizzlies. Say, how'd you know if yer in black bear country anyway?"
"Look fer scatt*."
"Oh. Well, how'd you know if there's Grizzlies?"
"Look fer scatt."
"You just said that."
"Yeah. But grizzly scatt's different."
"Well now, just what's IN grizzly scatt that's different?"
"Bear bells."
* scatt is bear poop.
At Katmai, no on wears bear bells. The bears wouldn't know why you were making the noise. In Denali National Park, people do sometimes wear bear bells. On the other hand, I've heard them referred to as "meals on wheels" in Alaska. I have them on my doors here at the rose cottage and the bears definately know the sound when I open a door. So do all the other wild animals who visit. I like to give every body a head's up when I'm coming outside. I'm sure this has avoided some conflicts. And they sound nice. Mine are from a sporting goods store in Alaska. Where else?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
