Life is strange. A year ago I sold my car as part of the process of preparing for a major bike tour and being car-free in general. If you've read my blog for awhile you know how much I can rail against automobiles and fossil-burning. Now a car has fallen into my hands unbidden, and personal philosophy be damned, I'm not saying no. It's Sue and Kathy's old Subaru Justy (114,000 miles) which they just a few days ago replaced with a '98 Outback wagon. Kathy bought the car from a guy in Battle Ground and I came along so as to drive the Justy back for her. Except it isn't going back to Eugene, they're probably going to give/sell it to me for a reasonable/nominal amount. I could say no, of course. But a. it is generous and b. its awfully nice to have a means of getting to the mountains or coast on the random day when the city has become too much. And it has always been a reliable vehicle for them and it gets like 40 miles a gallon. So what the heck. I am impure and self-contradicting. But it sure was nice to drive out to the gorge and hike up Hamilton Mountain today. Sometimes I have to be alone on a ridgetop.
I have no intention of becoming an in-town driver. If I pretty much just use it for getting to hikes and stuff it should last for years. Maybe until the end of civilization.
Actually, one year ago yesterday I headed out on my big bike trip. I read a generic daily horoscope the other day that said "beware of reveling in past glories" so I'll try not to be too nostalgic for that adventure, but man, what an incredible thing it was. I still sometimes feel amazement thinking about it, how beautiful and hard it was, every day a new stretch of scenery and weather and people and hill after hill after hill. I can't recommend such a thing highly enough.
I've been giving semi-serious consideration to doing the route from Vancouver BC down to Reedsport, OR, to complete the coast. Maybe not this year but i will definitely do it.
Got out hiking the other day in the Gorge for the first time in awhile. Went to Dry Creek Falls by Cascade Locks, along a little visited bit of the PCT. No one else out there, but the woods and water were wonderful as always. Also did the 2.4 mile loop at Latourell Falls. So drop-dead gorgeous in there. I can't get enough of the big mossy old maples, you really see their form when the leaves are off with the backdrop of basalt cliffs, hanging gardens of ferns, firs and cedars, and the early spring explosion of Trillium on the forest floor.
Have you heard of "Peak Oil"? I've been coming across more and more references to it and it is an important concept. It refers to the fact that not only is there a finite supply of petroleum in the world (which we always knew but were also always able to ignore) but that we may be near, or perhaps right now even at, the absolute possible height of world oil production, beyond which supplies can and will only decline (no matter how much conservation or slackening of demand there is.) In other words, the current oil fields cannot be pumped faster and are in any case in decline, and there are probably no more major oil field discoveries to be made. The implications of this are vast, enormous, cannot be understated. Every facet of our society relies on petroleum. Even those of us who bike and re-use and all that good stuff, we rely on it too: directly in the form of products we take for granted like home heating and the plastic our computer monitors are made out of, and indirectly as the fuel and basic raw material that builds and transports all the goods we regularly use, from California oranges to cell phones made wherever they make cell phones to our nice Gore-Tex rain gear and trail-runners, to (most ironically) the paving of all the smooth roads, lanes and paths that constitute both our automotive and bicycle infrastructure.
Okay, we know all this already. But what Peak Oil is about is that we have entered that time which we've long talked about and knew was coming, but were able to relegate to the theoretical. It is real now. And along with other basic resource issues like food production and distribution (entirely reliant now on petroleum) and climate change, is at the bedrock of what no one can deny is an increasingly chaotic world. It's always the end of the world as we know it, but Peak Oil heralds a *major* ending and new beginning. The response of our so called leaders is to very clumsily try to secure access and rights to what remains of the world's oil and natural gas reserves. The most charitable interpretation might be that they too understand the implications of running out of oil, and want to secure it as well as possible so our economy remains functional during the necessary transition to a post-fossil fuel society. The
problem is (even assuming some kind of well intentioned benevolence on the part of the neo-con cabal that has usurped our republic, and not simply craven self-interest and loony tunes religiosity) is that the rest of the world, and I mean the ordinary people in practically every locale of the globe, think we are a bunch of power-mad bullies. And if they think that, it doesn't matter what our intentions are: they are going to oppose us with every means at their disposal, from economic slap-downs by erstwhile friendly Europeans to terrorist attacks that will make 9-11 look like a skeet shoot. Folks, i hate to say it but thanks to our unelected regime, the United States is cruising for a very big bruising. Even
if we somehow escape the direct wrath of angry plotters, the impact of Peak Oil and our seemingly total unpreparednes for it will be deep and far-reaching. A global depression at least. More and worse mass violence than we've ever seen. Air travel too expensive for any but the very rich (sounds trivial but how many of us rely on cheap airfares to see our family once a year?)
The positive flip side of all this is the opportunity and potential for renewal and sanity at every level of society. All the people-powered, human-scaled, self-entertaining, self-feeding and clothing sort of efforts that have been percolating along in the counter-culture for 50 years now: these are the obvious (and humanly satisfying) solutions to problems that will soon loom very much larger. What you wanna bet bicyling goes totally huge and widespread once gas passes 5 bucks a gallon? Or home gardening becomes a major food source once California lettuce starts costing 5 dollars a head?
Of course anything can be co-opted and crassly commercialized, but we all know this is something different. Sometimes things really do change big-time and fast. If Peak Oil is here, then the next decade or so is such a time.
But whatever happens, let's have fun making our world the way we want it.
For plenty info on Peak Oil just do a search on it. Some good sites are http://www.peakoil.net/
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
www.fromthewilderness.com (which is also a great site on 9/11 issues and general uncovering of Bush Admin crapola.)
So much fun stuff these past few days. I don't have much time to write in detail but the highlights are: participating in Amy Stork's move by bike to her new place at Peninsula Park Commons, going to the anti-Bush rally Saturday, Puppetganza 2, and a Monstercard party at SCRAP. These bike moves are amazing. This is the second one I've helped on. In truth the couch and bed went by pickup truck on Friday, plus Dat and Nick and I each took a bike trailer load Friday, but the rest of it went in a festive convoy of 14 bikes and trailers Saturday morning. I just posted a few pics in the photo gallery of that and other stuff.
After the move we rode downtown and marched in the big anti-Bush rally. I broke out my clarinet (which I had with me for an event later in the day) and played along both by myself and with other musicians: the "Musical Distraction" singers (old protest folk songs) and the March Fourth Marching Band. I also serenaded a pair of riot cops next to the Federal Couthouse. I'm not a great player but it was a lot of fun.
After a meal at Nicholas on Grand Avenue with a nice gang of folks including several of the talented "Radical Cheerleaders", I headed to Nocturnal to participate in Puppetganza 2, a production of Bruce Orr and his Mudeye Puppet Company. Bruce teaches puppetry in after-school programs, and Puppetganza is a showcase of puppetry by kids he teaches as well as several grown-up puppeteers and puppet companies. My role was to be the puppetganza orchestra (so far just me and my clarinet plus Erin (Bruce's assistant and MC) banging a drum and the kids shouting "PuppetGanza!!"
I also helped out Bruce with a giant origami fortune-teller that he invented and i helped build.
Sunday was more low-key but I spent an enjoyable couple hours at SCRAP playing "Monstercards" with a good mix of adults and kids. Monstercards, if you don't know about them yet, are great fun. I was introduced to them by Carye Bye (aka Red Bat), artist and curator of the Bathtub Museum (http://www.bathtubmuseum.org). The concept is this: you sit down with a group of people and a stack of blank cards (usually made out of old grocery sacks or other recycled paper stock) and draw several (usually 5 to 7) "monster cards." The drawings don't have to be "monsters" in the usual sense, in fact most are not. There is no conceptual limit. One of my favorites yesterday was "squirrel with a two by four." Another was "Chewed up Corn Cob." When everyone has drawn their cards, you group together and play the game. It just involves putting down one card and then the next person puts down a card and the whole group votes on their favorite. Winner challenges the next person, and so on. Everyone gets their cards back at the end. Simple but super fun.
I've finally put up some photos (in the Photo Gallery) of art I've been working on for the past several months. This is very different stuff from my paintings. Painted ceramicware and pen and ink drawings. Graphic explorations, organic and inorganic forms, trees, leaves, extrapolations on the idea of Celtic knots. A number of the general motifs (trees, flames, etc) show up a lot in my paintings too, this is just a different way of going about it. I've been doing this particular kind of glorified doodling since High School, but not until fairly recently have gotten more "serious" about doing a whole serial exploration of it.
The painting I'm doing right now is interior house painting. You know, walls and ceilings and whatnot. It's a great gig, I'm working for some friends who are doing a cohousing project up next to Peninsula Park. Peninsula Park Commons, they are calling it. They bought an old 7 unit apartment building and are in the process of moving in, which involves a vast amount of painting and other interior inprovements. Fun work (though goodness does your neck get tired after hours of craning up and painting ceilings) and exciting to see it all come together for them.
The news that trumps all else is that Kathy Miller and Sue Dewhitt (my sister and her partner of over 15 years) have gone to San Francisco and gotten married. They called me en route with the news of their plan. And now as I write this on my Pocketmail device they were married two minutes ago and I was able to listen in on my cell phone while riding the train through Kelso en route back to Portland after a weekend in Tacoma. It just makes me so happy I can't even speak. I don't often cry in public.
Imagine that some people think it weakens the institution of marriage when a couple who've been devoted as long as and have worked as hard on their relationship as Kathy and Sue have, are allowed to sanctify the relationship legally. That STRENGTHENS the institution immeasurably.
More mundanely now, it was another busy weekend for me. Took the train to Tacoma Friday for the second weekend of my PRH class "Who Am I?". Besides the class sessions, the weekend also included a Friday night soup social and an impromptu trip to Seattle on Saturday night for another event/show at Luscious Studio. Didn't get back to Tacoma until 8:30 AM Sunday (after 3 hours sleep) but I had a lot of fun. That was the point. I'm all about the fun these days. I didn't undertake a big project this time but I did (among other things) give away a bunch of little mini-art pieces, these little 2x2 inch drawings i've been doing for the sole purpose of giving away. They are not business cards and do not have my name or anything, though a couple people did ask me to write on them. It's just a fun excercise in creating a quick little piece of art and releasing it. People loved them too, which is gratifying. Granted, maybe some of them were on drugs, but its nice when someone grasps your hands and stares into your eyes and says "Thank you SHO much, thatsh beautifulll! I will cherish thish!"
The featured art and music this time was coutesy of a very fun collaborative gang called "Beep Repaired" who are an energetic collection of bands/musicians/artists, several of whom happen to be pre-school teachers in their daytime life. I enjoyed the cognitive dissonance of seeing this guy who I know is a pre-school teacher (Malaki) up there singing and hoarsely shrieking with full throated joyful abandon. But it fits somehow.
The Academy Awards: what a collosal freaking bore. Why do we ever
bother?But hey, there was a guy playing a bicyle in the Triplets of Belleville song. I've been meaning to see that film for months now. Maybe this week.