Summer 2020
I welcomed summer because I always have. Spring was pretty mild with more nice days than otherwise. Early summer was cool and rainy. I had to go out on July 5th in mid morning and it required a light jacket...JULY 5!! Anyway by August it was hot and dry every day for weeks on end. I like the heat and sunny days but we really did not need that many of them consecutively Yet we got them.
After 3 months of Covid 19 lock down something of a malaise began to set in. Nearly everyone has developed a helpless sort of ennui largely inspired by the nation's either inability to stop the spread of this virus or an active effort from the White House to thwart any genuine progress. We are all together, a nation of dunces and the progress against Covid 19 is a shining example. Too often we are very proud of our stupidity and actively energize poor decisions.
I didn't do much during the season. This was partly caused by that torpor cited above. The heat of the summer was higher than the average (at least during this my 4th summer out here). Yet I did do some things and I'll highlight the most eventful of them now.
Day Trips
Since the quarantine established 6 months ago, restaurants and bars are either closed or limited in the number of customers they could serve. Many also have plastic partitions so that customers are not exposed to the peers there, who are not sitting with them. It is all quite a drag but its better to comply for the best of all than to defy for some odd and hard to define principle called “personal freedom”. We are not free unless everyone is but such a statement will have deaf ears turned upon it by these freedom lovers.
So as a result I have made no over night trips. Everything was a day trip and included a trip up to Woodland about 15 miles from here so that I could see the memorial to the Finnish Hall there. About 100 years ago the coast had a large number of Finnish immigrants who labored in the lumber and mining industries. They built buildings to house civic and social activities. They also were meeting houses for radicalized laborers many of whom were associated with the International Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies. These halls were built in many of the towns from the Olympic Peninsula to at least Coos Bay, maybe further south. I've seen the one that still exists in Astoria as it is nearly across the street from the motel that I stay at. It is now a social center at least.
Astoria's Finnish Hall
What remains of Woodland's is a memorial plaque that ignores the labor radicalism that served its purpose way back when. It is an example of revisionist history that continually makes America's “good old days”, a prominent subject.
Woodland's Revised Story
One day I drove about 25 miles west nearly to Stevens, WA in order to check out a site that I have passed many times called Cape Horn. It overlooks a valley near the Columbia. The parking area is pretty narrow and near a bend in the road making me fearful of a speeding car careening around the corner and into us few photographers and fortunately that did not happen.
Another day I went to Multnomah Falls where I had been last winter. On the initial trip I had forgotten my camera but not my phone so I got mediocre photos. This second trip I remembered to bring a camera but went at the wrong time of day. It was a beautiful, cloudless day but the sun was resting at a cliff just above the falls themselves and so my photos were largely bleached out. I'll go back on a sunny day later in the fall and try again.
Summer Version of Multnomah Falls
July 4th was the Aphelion
Due to the September air quality, a result of the many forest fires raging nearby I was not able to make a trip up to Seattle to see my daughters and grandson Ali. I had rented a motel room so that neither of the girls had to put me up which was the norm. I last saw Ali when he was about 12 weeks old but he is now 10 months old and has developed a personality.
Now the plan is to visit next week.
On line seminars
Over the years I have joined on line sites to view or listen to seminars or talks. Today it is nearly a necessity since crowds of any size cannot legally (or sensibly) gather. So I have been joining more of these than normal. Some I have had only a whimsical curiosity about. As it turned out all but one was pretty informative.
On July 18 I saw one on Quantum Consciousness. It was bad for too many reasons but mainly it was an appropriation of two words that generally mean something quite different than the purveyors of this video meant, than to me. Quantum is a specific term applied to the sub microscopic world of quarks and muons. Consciousness is our awareness of ourselves at the present. In the case of this on line session, quantum meant something impossible to fathom. Consciousness meant some vague notion of our place in the world. It was far too new age for my interest.
On July 23rd I saw a seminar on the Science of Emotions. Emotions have always been a difficult thing for me. My greatest errors in life have been made because I acted out of an emotional state. To the best of my ability I keep emotions at bay as a result. I heed the advice of Spinoza on this. We all have emotions but we need to check them when we have imagined such things as our 2nd Amendment rights being stripped by what ever politician we are against or when we demonstrate at state capitals armed and with imaginary knowledge of the US Constitution which we have never read and only allow for our demigods to interpret for us (they probably haven't read the Constitution either).
Anyway...politics aside, I learned that there are survival mechanisms that require our emotions to step in and give us some direction. At least as long as they need to. I learned much more but that was because the seminar was presented by a genuine scientist using data to make her case.
Then there was one done by a reporter who has been studying conspiracy theories. These abound currently where our more truculent but less sage fellow citizens and some of their leaders propound. I did not learn much as this is a topic I have read much about during the last 30 years. It was still quite good and some of the audience questions were thought provoking. A new conspiracy for me, living in the middle of forest fires and with a smoky shroud blotting the sun are in the middle of now. That is that bands of left wing anarchists are actually going about setting these fires or impeding resolutions. I have not heard about this one from POTUS yet but it undoubtedly will be suggested soon.
Finally I watched one about diversifying various intellectual or liberal political organizations. Its true that while these sort of groups (which I am a proud member of several) talk a good game, we tend to be Caucasians with education. The main lessons that I left with were that we should be advertising in some way, to racial and cultural groups other than the ones we currently are in. We should assume nothing about visitors and new members-let them each tell their own story.
Spiders
I have no particular fear of spiders. Back in Baltimore I used to study the spiders in my basement. I wrote about this a few years ago when I noticed that I had the perfect setting for sort of a spider laboratory where I could view their web making or in the case of jumping spider, how they would wait patiently and then pounce on the prey that never saw it coming. Actually they usually had some sense of it because it would take about 3 attempts before success.
While I enjoy observing them and things like some of the beautiful orb webs they create-especially when they get dewy as dawn approaches. That being said I do not want a spider walking on my face. When that occurs I move quickly to resolve it. When one is on my pants I just flick it off.
Late summer in the PNW means that many species will be looking to get into warmer and drier homes. Who can blame them? They come into mine through a variety of means. Maybe one attaches itself to my shoe and strolls in with me. Others scurry quickly and unseen in the brief interlude occurring between the time I open the door until the time I close it. I think this is especially so when I am preparing food on my deck. I go in and out a lot and the door is open longer as I carry food out (raw) and in (cooked). There is also a small gap in the window screen in my bedroom that could give them access.
When I find them I catch them. Using a clear tumbler I enclose the spider who, sluggish in escape becomes enlivened by their new prison. They can see out but they can do nothing about it. I then slide something like an index card between them and the glass and put it on a convenient table top for some observation.
While looking at a spider from three or more feet distance generally shows a spider of one color and it is pretty uniform at that. Taking the time to examine an enclosed spider (when it has calmed down) one will see sometimes many colors not unlike the sharkskin material that were popular for men's suits 50 years ago. They also have markings that can readily be seen if the viewer examines them more closely. It rarely occurs that they die while in this short period between capture and release outdoors. When they do I like to look at them under a microscope. That sort of scrutiny reveals much more in terms of coloring and marking.
One predawn morning in late August while making my nightly bathroom return I spotted a very large spider in my bathtub. I had the wherewithal to grab a glass for the first part of the experiment, finished my original business and went back to bed. When I awoke for the day I took a look to see how my hostage was faring. It was dormant even as the light went on but as I knelt down for a closer look it became frenetic and literally climbed the walls.
I left it be for several hours while I did all of the things necessary for morning homeostasis. Around two in the afternoon I determined that the experiment was over and slid some stiff paper under the glass, lifted the package out of the tub and out to a brick wall in front of my apartment. I took a camera with me.
The spider which in the meantime I found is called a Giant House Spider-perhaps a mundane moniker but certainly a terse and pithy name. When I released the spider it immediately darted and headed a few inches down the wall which made it easy to get a photo. After a few minutes of pretty intense sun it crawled under a ledge and made itself as small as possible. I checked on it several times. If I did not already know it was the under the ledge, I never would have seen it. I did know however and spotted the crouched spider several more times. In the morning it was gone. Maybe it found itself back into someone's apartment. Maybe it was my own.
I'm glad I spotted the spider in the convenient way that I have just described. This would be an entirely different story if I had ventured into the bathroom and saw the same spider next to my nose.
Free at last
Labor day
September 7th , was quite uneventful as far as these sort of holidays go. Children will not return to school shortly afterwards and no one goes to a sporting event. However I still barbecue. The apartment complex I live in has outlawed grills so I now smoke meats and vegetables. This year it was a slab of St. Louis style ribs, some sausages, an onion and some garlic. That was all well and good.
High winds began in the early afternoon. The skies grew increasingly overcast. It was not from normal clouds that might produce rain (which we have not seen for many weeks). We would not see rain that day either because these were not normal clouds.
This time of year there are forest fires nearby. In 2017 they were quite close but mainly on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. One day that year we had a rain of ash that covered everything with about a tenth of an inch of soot. Of course the smell of burning wood was prevalent everywhere. I understand that dense fires such as these create their own weather which makes them more difficult to fight. That includes high winds.
So this year we had mighty and destructive winds beginning on Monday afternoon and lasting for about 48 hours. They dumped a pile of leafy detritus at my door step but more importantly over Monday night all of my porch garden plants were unceremoniously dumped head first onto my porch floor.
Porch Garden before the winds
I don't know why but I did not take an “after” photo before spending a significant amount of time cleaning up the mess.
As it turned out, most of my garden was an utter failure anyway. With the exception of the herbs-basil and oregano, each plant had a dismal death to accompany its rather distressed life. I had about 5 mealy tomatoes to account for from three plants. I also reaped about 10 small jalapenos most all of which I incorporated into a batch of tamales I made for a planned but uncompleted trip to Seattle.
Then came the smoke. Fires are raging all around us and some sort of low pressure event coupled with the smoke from these fires, have provided us with low hanging clouds and a reddish color fog. During the first couple of days the sun could still be seen but through the filter of this pollution. It appeared as an eerie neon pink orb. The last few days we haven't even see that ball in the sky at all for the dense smoke.
Unfortunately I lack the filter that would let the photograph show the pink sun
Life Bird Sighting
Bird watchers refer to the event when one sees a bird species for the first time as seeing a “Life Bird”. I don't know where the awkward phrase came from but is entrenched in that vernacular. I have seen several of these since I moved out west and that is mainly due to some different species this side of the Mississippi or the Rockies.
However the elusive American Bittern finds itself on both coasts. No one else finds it however. They are particularly shy and excellent at hiding in reeds. I have been in their midst sometimes for a considerable period. I could hear them but could not see them.
The other day I went to my favorite nearby park called Salmon Creek mostly to see what sort of ducks might be there in September. Out the corner of my eye I could see something of a lump on the edge of a fallen limb over a pond. I was busy photographing other birds from this little hidden niche. Finally I focused my camera on that lump and saw it was a bird. By its posture I thought it was a green heron. Well American bitterns pose in the same way as they survey the waters for the fish they prey on.
It was pretty far away and even with a 300mm lens could not get a perfect image. I got a little closer and spooked the bittern into flying a short distance away. I went around to where I could see it again and this time it was back lit so I just observed it to the best of my ability. It fed many times which is always fun to watch.
From the west
From the east
I spent 10 hours getting Vestibular Therapy. Sounds like some new age idea doesn't it? For the last few years I've had an increasingly difficult time with my balance. I had about 10 different tests to discern the root of the problem. Obviously that was in order to resolve it. Finally I got referred me to an ENT who referred me to an audiologist. I went there for some tests and she determined that the problem was in the vestibular canal in my right ear. Then I went to a therapist who also put me through a test and saw that I could only perform at 35% of the norm.
So she put me through a series of exercises to improve my balance. Initially they were easy so my homework every week was to do the exercises that got more difficult each week. Initially the sessions seemed to increase the number of days with vertigo but suddenly those days disappeared and I haven't had a single episode in about 2 months now. I still do the exercises but now once a day instead of the 3 time a day regiment I was on.
I was enthused by the actual diagnosis because it was new, provided tangible evidence and simply made sense to me. I was less enthused as I faced the therapy because it is my nature to be pessimistic about things working. I expect more failures and that is not the trait of mine that makes me the proudest. However my pessimism waned to the point of non existence a few sessions in. Now I can finally take up skate board hot dogging.
The many local fires ruined summer's end. Labor Day was pleasant but as already mentioned, came with afternoon winds and a cloud of smoke that has lasted for a week now. What began in a nearly hopeless national sense ends with yet an increasingly bleak season on its way. There is no reason to feel heartened except that maybe at the very mid point of the autumn we will have a new administration for the winter and maybe something to look forward to come 2021.
I do worry that it will not be the peaceful transfer of power (if in fact a new president is in the cards) that our mythic history and civics classes suggest.
So during the summer of 2020 in my northwestern neck of the woods we had 13 days that reached 90 degrees and two that hit 100. No fall looms so we are not apt to see any more days with that sort of heat. We are apt to be doing pretty much the same as we are doing now though.
