In Salem and back

As I indicated in my previous post, we arrived at  J.E. Seibert's house in Salem on Wednesday evening at about 8:00p.m. Naturally, we talked for quite a while, getting caught up on what was happening in our lives, but eventually we felt our fatigue and we all went to bed. It was pleasantly cool that night and I think we all slept reasonably well. Thursday morning, Ellen got up before I did and was picked up by Bonnie Hull and they went off to a good coffee shop to have coffee and talk. I had a relaxed morning and at about 10:30a.m., J.E. and I got in her car and we went off to the Minto Island Growers Food Cart, where we met everyone for lunch. "Everyone" was Bonnie and Ellen, who came together, and Roger Hull, who came with his daughter-in-law, Ashton (wife of his son, Zach) and her two children, Sidney and Vivian (c. 7  and 4), eight of us all together. Zach had to work. The MIG Cart, as it is called, is a wonderful place to eat: it is located at their farm, so you are surrounded by fields of vegetables and flowers, everything is super fresh, very nicely prepared and presented, the picnic tables are under canopies that provide shade, there is a nice breeze - what could be better?  We intentionally arrived early so we beat the lunch rush.  I sat with Bonnie and Roger, so I was able to find out what is happening in their lives.  We are all facing issues relating to health, aging, housing, etc., so there was much to share.  Roger has just completed his most recent major monograph on a Northwest artist, Alden Mason: Fly Your Own Thing (to be published by University of Washington Press). Roger guest curated a retrospective exhibit  of Mason's  work which is currently showing at the Bellevue Art Gallery in Bellevue, WA. 

Alden Mason: Fly Your Own Thing is the first comprehensive museum exhibition for Northwest artist Alden Mason since his passing in 2013. Mason was a prolific painter whose exuberance and inventiveness in form, color, and style helped pave the way from the aesthetics of the Northwest School to midcentury modernist art in the Pacific Northwest.

Born in Everett, WA in 1919, Mason earned his MFA from the University of Washington in 1947, launching what would become an extraordinarily long career as both an artist and teacher. He reinvented his style several times over the course of his career, exploring and combining new techniques through his Burpee Garden series, Squeeze Bottle paintings, Big Heads, and later acrylic works. Mason traveled extensively throughout his career, yet always returned to the Northwest and the Skagit Valley, drawing inspiration from every aspect of his life and the landscape around him.

While Mason’s visionary artworks helped shape the future of Northwest art, his work in the classroom inspired the next generation of artists in the region. Notable students include Roger Shimomura, Gene Gentry McMahon, and Chuck Close, who called Mason, “The greatest painter to come out of the Pacific Northwest—for me, even greater than Mark Tobey or Morris Graves.”

Alden Mason: Fly Your Own Thing is presented to coincide with the first comprehensive monograph on the artist, to be published by the University of Washington.

Alden Mason Rainbow Rucker, 1973

Roger has written a dozen or so of these monographs in the past, mostly in connection with exhibits at the Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University in Salem, where Roger taught art history for several decades. Ellen and I have been privileged to see several of these exhibitions in the past. But Roger is now carrying on a courageous battle with cancer which  involves chemo every three weeks, and he is thinking that maybe the Mason monograph might be his last.  One never knows such things for sure, I guess, so we'll see!  There is a wonderful video of both Roger and Bonnie on YouTube: if you go on to YouTube and search for "Roger and Bonnie Hull" you will get a "Virtual Tour through the Clifford Gleason and Bonnie Hull exhibitions" at the Hallie Ford Museum and you'll get to hear both of them being interviewed, see Bonnie's art, and get a good sense of Roger as an art historian and curator. 

MIG lunch area

MIG Cart

Bonnie and Roger Hull

J.E. doling out the delicious food; Ashton in background

MIG flowerbeds

After our lunch at the MIG Cart, J.E., Ellen and  I went to the Friends of the Salem Public Library store where Ellen found a big box of old postcards for sale at $0.10 apiece. So J.E. and I left her there and made a quick trip to the Hallie Ford Museum!  There was a Dale Chihuly blown glass exhibit going on, but I was more interested in the other, more permanent exhibits. I always love going there. Then J.E. and I went back to get Ellen, and we went back to J.E.'s house. We rested a bit, had a light supper, talked until dark and went to bed. Friday morning, Bonnie and Roger came for coffee and muffins that J.E. made, and we talked until 11:30a.m. or so, when Ellen and I took off for Boise. I forgot my pill case and had to go back for that. 

I am so fortunate to have Bonnie, Roger, and J.E. as friends, through Ellen, who first met them three decades ago (or so) when she lived in Salem, and I feel particularly fortunate to have been able to make this trip and reconnect with them after the pandemic put a halt to such travel. 

We stopped at Rosie's in Mill City for scones and coffee (a favorite stop), took note of the devastation caused by wildfires last September along the Santiam Highway around Detroit, OR, had to deal with something under the car that suddenly was dragging on the road (fixed that with good old duct tape) and made it back to Boise pretty late - around 11p.m. - but it was still dusk!  We talked with Susan and Christian Saturday morning, left around noon, had a nice drive back to Alpine and got here around 8p.m. last evening. As with our Salem friends,  it was lovely re-connecting with Susan and Christian, and we got to see all the amazing work Christian has done on their house as he meticulously re-furbishes it, employing his wood-working skills to a high degree. That is on hold this summer as they both enjoy going to music festivals and visiting family and friends. We managed to catch them at home, and also managed to miss the big heat wave this weekend when both Salem and Boise will suffer temps above 100 degrees. 

We'll be here till Tuesday and then start the journey home. 

Here are a  few selected items from the Hallie Ford Museum collection:

The entrance hall of the Hallie Ford Museum. Drawings by Dale Chihuly 

can be seen on the wall at the left

David Hockney (b. 1937), Looking East, 2019

David Hockney, The Entrance, 2019

Hockney is a British artist of renown, living in Normandy, France, during the pandemic, 

Charles Heaney (1897-1981) Eastern Oregon

Heaney is one of the artists Roger Hull wrote a monograph on for an exhibition Ellen and I got to see. This painting is very evocative of scenery we drove through on our trip from Boise to Salem. 

Balinese Astrological Calendar in the Kamasan style (ca. 1875-1900)

Detail from the calendar above (figures are portrayed as Balinese shadow puppets)

Jean-Baptiste Corot (1796-1875),  A Balmy Afternoon

George Rodriguez (b. 1982), Dreamer (2017)

This little sampling provides a good sense of the diversity of works the Hallie Ford offers.

And from our drive back from Salem:

Rosie's Coffee House in Mill City, OR, which fortunately escaped damage from wildfires last summer

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                      Fire damage aftermath along Santiam Highway near Detroit, OR

On to Salem, Oregon

From Boise, ID we drove to Salem, OR, a one-day trip on Wednesday.  The drive pretty much took up the day: we left at about 8:30.m., and arrived at J.E. Seibert's house in Salem at about 8p.m.  I did not sleep too well in Boise because we lost power and there was no AC and it was pretty warm. Eventually it cooled down and I got my best sleep after 5a.m.!  We took the route through Ontario, ID, Burns, OR, Bend, OR, Sisters, OR, the Santiam Pass and Santiam Highway into Salem.  We drove through dramatic Eastern Oregon scenery; stopped in a little park in Burns for a picnic - a place we have picnicked many times before; visited the High Desert Museum in Bend (first time for me);  stopped in Sisters for supper and ice cream at Sno Cap where we have stopped many times before; drove past the areas hit by wildfires last summer, and finally into Salem. The weather was beautiful, and it was an interesting trip. I read a chapter in our book, Underland, aloud. All in all, a good day.

Here is a photographic record of the trip:

Eastern Oregon scenery

More Eastern Oregon

The town park in Burns

Where we had our picnic

The entry hall of the High Desert Museum

Two dioramas showing early settler life

A diorama of a late 19th century home library

A montage of meteorite fragments

Wildflowers of the region

Tipi life

A artist rendering of the Museum

Sno Cap in Sisters

Mt. Washington from the car window

Today we had a lovely day in Salem. But it is late, and it's time for bed. So I will report on that tomorrow (I hope!). We will have breakfast here at J.E.'s house tomorrow (Friday) morning, with Roger and Bonnie Hull joining us, and then head back to Boise, spend the night there Friday night and be back in Alpine Saturday evening. We will just escape a heat wave here in Salem. Temps are expected to reach 113 here on Sunday! But not in Alpine. Thank goodness! We head back to Vermont next week. Wow, what a trip!

Underland

I haven't said much thus far about the book I am reading aloud in the car. It is really fascinating, and unusual as well. It is Underland by Robert McFarlane. McFarlane has devoted much of his adult life to exploring what is underground. He has gone all over the world seeking out both natural and man-made subterranean rifts, caverns, tunnels, chambers, caves, catacombs - you name it, he's visited it. For example, in our reading, we are currently beneath the city of Paris. I guess we all know about the sewers from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. But they are pretty tame stuff. Paris sits on a vast field of limestone. For over a century, that limestone was mined to build the city above the ground, creating hundreds of miles of tunnels and hundreds of small and large chambers on many levels, all below ground. The mining was unregulated until sinkholes developed which would suddenly swallow up whole neighborhoods: buildings, people, horses and all. They stopped mining, but left the spaces that had already been created. After a while, it was realized that all that space could solve a huge above-ground problem: too many dead bodies and too few cemeteries. Literally millions of remains were exhumed and stored underground, sometimes carefully, sometimes haphazardly, creating a vast labyrinth of catacombs. Eventually, that was sealed off to the public except a small bit for the tourist trade. (I remember seeing ads for tours of the catacombs when I was in Paris). Little did I know! Today it is illegal to go into the catacombs, but adventuresome urban explorers have no trouble finding ways in and keeping ahead of the police. McFarlane has joined them for some memorable explorations. It requires skill, daring, and a tolerance for claustrophobia. But there is a world to be explored under Paris, tunnels have names, chambers have names, maps have been made and are closely guarded, and there are surprises.

A scene in the Paris catacombs We have also learned about vast potash/salt mines in England that reach both under the mainland and far out under the sea. In one corner of those mines is a laboratory, the Boulby Undergroud Laboratory, where scientists are "trying to pinpoint material known as dark matter, which is believed to permeate the universe in the form of weakly interacting massive particles – or wimps. Incredibly, around 85% of the universe's mass is now thought to be made up of wimps. These particles permeate the space around us, flying through normal matter but only rarely interacting with it." Trillions of particles of dark matter are passing through our bodies constantly, and they are also penetrating deep into the earth. "At the location of the Boulby Underground Laboratory there is 1,100 metres of rock overhead. This makes it an ideal place for research because that 1,100 metres of rock results in a reduction in the rate of natural cosmic rays of a factor million compared to surface levels. With this, and with the surrounding rock salt being low in natural background radioactivity, Boulby makes an ideal site for ultra-low background and deep underground science projects." In simple terms, deep in the earth, the glow created by the collision of particles is more likely to be caused by dark matter than by other particles. Scientists are patiently waiting to see the afterglow of such a collision. McFarlane takes you on a tour of the mine and the lab and you get to meet some of the people there.

A schema of the Boulby Laboratory and a scene in the lab.

A bit of an adventure

We have come to Boise, Idaho today. We left at about 10 this morning, and we got to Boise at about five. It was a nice drive; we stopped at Arco for a little picnic at a park there. i read aloud part of the time. We are staying at Susan and Christian's place. During supper, a wind storm càme up, a transformer blew, and we lost power. So we are making do.

Idaho from the car NE of Boise.

A little trip to Afton

We needed an oil and filter change, and new wiper blades, and a good car wash as well, and the nearest spot for all that was in Afton, WY, about 30 miles south of Alpine. It's actually the town where Max goes to school, so he has a 60-mile roundtrip bus ride every school day! It's about a 42-mile ride down Rte. 89. I had made an appointment for 11am for the oil change, so I had a quick breakfast and Ellen and I went to Afton (Max didn't want to go - he sees enough of Afton during the school year). We went to the Quality Quick Lube. Ellen walked and did a little shopping while i stayed at the shop while they did the work. Afton is also home to a Mormon temple - which is different from a Mormon church. Mormon (LDS) churches are found in most towns in Utah, Idaho and Western Wyoming, but there are relatively few temples outside of Salt Lake City (there are 149 worldwide). They are used for special ceremonies (e.g., baptisms, weddings) which can only be performed in a temple, not a church. And only approved Mormons may enter a temple. It is a striking structure, especially so for a small town like Afton (c. 2000). So we went down and I took pictures. We also went under the elkhorn gate the goes over the main street. A little flavor of western culture. Then on the way out of town we stopped at an Express Car Wash place. So we are all set for our trip to Boise and Salem this week, at least as far as the car is concerned.

More photos from today

Today got off to an early start with the Guilford Community Church service at 8a.m. our time. It was the first in-person service since March, 2020, and it was held outside, but was streamed live. It was wonderful to see everyone being so joyful to be back together. The whole service celebrated new beginnings.

Above; The choir rehearsing before the service. Below: Pastor Elisa Lucozzi leading the service.

I checked out Torah Study at 9:30am (11:30 EDST) but no one was in the Zoom room, so I guess no one led it today after Rabbi Ahuvah's last session last week. I hope they start it up again. Meanwhile, out here in Alpine, it was a gorgeous day. I realized I had not shown photos here on the blog of the finished new house - in the last ones, from 2019, it still had Tyvek and no landscaping. So here are several vantage-points, plus a view from the back and one taken inside.

Oh - one last one of Max taken on a wildflower walk Ellen and Jenny took today

Our new wildflôwer app

We have a new app called Picture This in which you take a picture of a wildflower (or any plant) and it identifies it. It's darn good. Ellen had a great time with it today. Let's see if I can access it:

Here are are photos from a walk we took this evening: