Punchbowl Falls

Back to the Columbia River Gorge! This time to the famous Punchbowl falls, a serene 30-foot drop over what looks to be the lips of a cup and pouring gracefully into a calm circular pool of green water - or at least that's the impression I got from the pictures online.

Me swimming at the base of Punchbowl Falls (photo by Courtney)

In fact I found the falls to be less peaceful than Google Images had led me to believe. As I've mentioned before, waterfall photography tells lies through high shutter speed to remove movement speed from waterfalls and add silky body; looking at a picture like the first on this post one would expect the falls to sound like a loud trickle with the light sprinkles of a fountain. This was not the case with Punchbowl Falls - this waterfall roared. There was nothing gentle in its plunge, both because of the high volume of water jumping over the ledge each second and because the basin it fell into amplified the sound.

I felt it to be a working class waterfall, diligently throwing water below without much concern for visual beauty or grace. There are only a couple places where one can photograph Punchbowl Falls and I felt like it struggled against my efforts to find new ways to capture it with the camera, as if it were aching to go back to work and my enjoyment was preventing that. It was a hardworking waterfall. Courtney, on the other hand, thought it was nurturing - the cove carved out at the base of the falls was so secluded that she felt like the waterfall was wrapping around her in an embrace (my words, not hers). I bet we're each right.

Punchbowl Falls helped me to realized a very important aspect of Columbia River Gorge waterfalls: the color. The Gorge's lush greenness provides a real challenge when I think about photographing waterfalls there: How can I encapsulate how vibrant the waterfall's environment is without sacrificing the grandeur of the waterfall itself? In my pictures I like the waterfall to be central to the photo's composition, unlike in this excellent photo blog where the waterfalls are usually seen as a part of the background or a larger landscape. I've usually used shapes to bring out the waterfall in composition, but in the Columbia River Gorge color is an effective method as well, and the two can compliment each other.

For example, compare the two pictures above; they're actually the same exact shot, just copied and put into black and white. The photo works well in black and white, but it loses the deep green grass above the top of the falls. In the black and white photo the eye naturally drifts down with the path of the waterfall, but in the color photo the eye stays towards the top of the falls, attracted to the green. Personally I find the color picture more exciting because the geometry of the falls' top more interesting than its base.

However, in the three pictures below, I am most drawn to the sepia because it draws emphasis away from the green-leaved tree and back towards the waterfall, moving your eye in the shape of an L along the river without pulling it back up the tree as strongly. The black and white photo has a similar effect although I personally feel it weakens the definition.







The final note about Punchbowl Falls: its swimability. The water is from snow melt so it was fairly cold, even in the heat of late August. Still, I swam out to the base of the waterfall, plus I jumped off the top of the shorter Lower Punchbowl Falls (all photos by Courtney):

Hurricane

Some say Hurricane Irene is God's way of punishing New York for approving gay marriage. But no one seems to think it's instead a punishment for the greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street.

As for me, I think two things: 1) This is not the first major hurricane to come this far north (though, to be fair, they only come once gay marriage is approved in a northeastern state; note the sarcasm). This means it's probably not an omen. Sorry, folks. 2) It's possible this hurricane's intensity is the result of global warming. Just sayin'. Even though Rick Perry thinks Global Warming isn't real.

Concert At Noon

On August 18th I saw my friend Erika Oba play a free show, sponsored by the Jazz School, outside for the Berkeley public (Peter Hargreaves on alto sax and Rafa Postel on trumpet were with her). Somehow I'd forgotten all the pictures I took, so now I'd like to belatedly share the best of the crop with you:

Erica's piano solo

Rafa's trumpet solo

Peter getting ready for the next part

Rafa playing the melody

In Defense Of Poor People

Just saw this depressing clip on the Daily Show with Jon Steward. He can't even make a joke about it at the end:

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
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After watching the clip I did a quick Google search on the "moocher class" and came up with this:

Syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz says the moocher class is made up of people who are "perfectly content to live at the expense of others."

"I have a right to health care, you provide it to me. I have a right to a place to live, you provide it to me. I have a right to food, you provide it to me," Boortz says to describe the moocher class.

I didn't know this. People don't have the right to food or shelter? You mean people don't have the right to live, that they have to earn it? And how do you earn it in the first place?

I've posted before about how living in the rich Turkish community I felt like entitlement complexes were indeed a real problem for the spoiled wealthy, while in the past I assumed that the "welfare queen" was a Republican invention to cut programs. However, this attitude doesn't transfer broadly to the poor and working class; it's not general human nature to feel entitlement but instead a difference of class culture. Poor people, I've found through my research at NYU, feel like they have to struggle for everything they earn, and instead of feeling like rights belong to them they feel they have to earn them, tooth and nail.

But even if this weren't true, it's unethical to deny basic rights to people just because they believe those rights exist. I can't believe people can publicly say something so blatantly greedy and still be taken seriously.

TV On The Radio and The Weepies

The last couple months have been good for concerts here in the Northwest.

In mid-July I got to see TV On The Radio in Portland, and then a month later I saw The Weepies in San Francisco. Both times I was with Courtney; she didn't know TV On The Radio very well and I'd never heard of the Weepies besides a mildly interesting song Pandora played for me.

As you probably know, TV On The Radio is my favorite active band, so I was predisposed to like the show. Still, I want to talk a little about what made "An Acoustic Night With The Weepies" such a fulfilling concert experience by comparison.

The TVOTR concert, as seen on a blanket laid out on the grass at McMenamins Edgefield, was an incredible concert. It was the first time I've seen them since their disappointing and low-energy "Dear Science" tour two and a half years ago. The energy was there this time, and the band wisely chose to play a variety of music from their long history, only playing half of the new "Nine Types Of Light" yet playing the early EP "Young Liars" in its entirety. In fact, they ended the encore portion with the song "Satellite," a song that holds special meaning in my heart. There was dancing all over the lawn - yes, even on my part - and lots of singing along with the lyrics indescribable to those who didn't know them already, such as Courtney. She enjoyed it anyway because of all the excitement on stage and in the crowd.

Fast forward a month to San Francisco's Filmore, a venue that gives out apples to concert-goers for reasons no one seems to know for sure. This time it was Courtney's turn to know the lyrics and mine to listen with a new ear. It turned out that the band was a husband-wife duo playing folksy love songs with traditional country two-part harmony. The show was not particularly high energy, but I was drawn in by the clever lyrics (that I could actually hear!) and the relaxed tightness between the performers from the ease at which they picked out each other's harmonies to the beady-eyed young-lovers way they looked at each other as the last chord for each song rang out or as they introduced the coming songs.

Having never heard The Weepies before was no detriment for understanding their musical concept. The acoustic music was clear, soft, and silky, like listening to the CD on speakers I could never afford. The sound was subtle and sweet, while at the TVOTR show the speakers' size only bred volume. Yes, I could hear the beat and feel it vibrating in your chest with each bass note, but I couldn't fill in many musical qualities; in a live setting, TVOTR is just a rock show, an excellent rock show, but lacking the band's brilliant originality, counting on the audience to fill it in with imagination or prior knowledge. The Weepies, on the other hand, showed their character honestly through the sound they made. At their show I listened to music. At TVOTR's show I had fun.

The opposite is true on the two bands' records. TVOTR's recordings are incredibly deep and subtle, soundscapes in the truest sense of the word. I could listen to a TVOTR record hundreds of times and hearing something new each time. It's on the records when the band's creativity really comes out. The Weepies' new record, "Be My Thrill," is... well, there's no way to say what I want without sounding mean. It's an average pop record with nothing special at all about it - even the lyrics sound less honest than they did in concert. Many of the songs are performed faster and all of them have a full band with unnecessary layers of sound added without contributing to the spirit of the music.

I feel like concert halls are in the habit of turning up their speakers more and more each day, each show, so all the listener can hear is a pounding bass and kick drum and the high ringing of feedback from the lead vocalist's microphone. This is an exaggeration of course, but it is true that in the rock genre musical quality is being sacrificed for the experience at concerts. The sound of a band live isn't nearly as important as its presentation. This is part of the reason I don't like going to concerts very often; they take a toll on my ears and I've never been much for dancing. That's one reason why The Weepies' show worked so well for me. It was truly about the music.

Before I sign off, I just want to let you know that I'm now in Portland, Oregon, trying to start a new life here. Looking for houses, jobs, preparing for the GREs, and all the other wonderful and overwhelming things that come with moving to a new place. Hopefully I'll have some interesting updates to come. Or eve better yet, hopefully I'll find myself busy enough to find interesting things to post yet not have enough time to do so. Cheers!

Detroit Urban Garden: A Case Of Community Building

A week ago, when I was visiting family in Detroit, I got to see the new Grant Park Community Garden in Royal Oak Township, where my uncle Jim works as a community gardener. I can't think of any better representation of unity than a garden after what I saw.

Royal Oak Township is predominantly working class African American, and from what I hear there's a proud history there: many families have lived in the township for generations. Because the township is more or less poor there isn't much money for projects such as a community garden, but my uncle got the chance to work an unused lot into a sustainable food garden. The lot was, I've been told, in terrible condition - overgrown, crawling with all species of weeds, and huge.

I wouldn't have been able to guess it from what I saw.

The children's garden

In fact, the garden's beauty was the first and most obvious joy of being there. Knowing that this land, now lined by labeled green rows of verdant vegetables (kale, collards, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, cabbage, lettuce) had once been nearly impossible to cultivate - that knowledge put perspective into the immense work that must have gone into the garden. The work that transforms an ugly and useless piece of land into a beautiful shared celebration of food draws people together like a magnet.

Also bringing people together was the twice-a-week summer camp being held over the summer to teach children the values of sustainable foods and garden work. The camp had a fantastic turnout considering socioeconomic bracket the participating families were in, and the kids gave every impression of really enjoying the garden. I came on the last day of summer camp, and when the director assured them that they could work on the garden even after the end of camp many young faces showed relief. I felt a twinge of jealousy: how come my Turkish students couldn't have been this motivated? After the speeches there were sustainable food cooking classes and parents wandered through the public garden (there are private rows available to buy) and bought greens from garden volunteers. Besides the camp regulars, the district's state representative Rudy Hobbs came and spoke to the campers and parents, as well as other important members in the local community. It felt like people of all sorts were there to say that yes, this garden and its food are important!

Rudy Hobbs speaking to campers, parents, and visitors like me

Picking collards

The kids making a collage for the garden

The cooking class

It made me feel the deep mistake governments are making by cutting extracurricular activities. Not just gardens but sports and arts, both activities that intrinsically bring people together. The production value of these extracurricular isn't much when you're debating it in the state senate or a school board meeting, but when you're at the garden itself and seeing how it raises the quality of life so much and so simply it seems almost essential. Like a public park, a shopping district, or a senior center, communities need things like gardens, art galleries, and local sporting events.

Aunt Linda with homegrown cucumber

Education System Of Ages

Today's Doonesbury comic so brilliantly sums up my teaching experience in Turkey as well as the direction of education for the wealthy. My favorite is panel 6.

True, I hadn't been teaching in university, but the end result was nearly the same: a school where the point of education was to placate students and parents (and retain their tuition for the following year). Real learning and growth wasn't nearly as important as the appearance that learning and growth were taking place. Who knows what kind of world it will be when the students from that system enter the workforce. Good job, for-profit education!

Short Story: Learning To Purr

It's been a long time since we've seen one of these, hasn't it? I wrote it on the plane between Detroit and Oakland. I hope this means I'll start getting into writing more short stories again but only time will tell.

1336 words

Learning to Purr

It was on an ordinary summer afternoon, hot enough to melt us into the big living room chair before we realized it, when I clearly heard the cat talk. She was lying in my lap and I was absentmindedly brushing her ash grey hairs into clumps that would ball up at her tail then launch lazily into the stale air and float to the ground, shining a brilliant gold for a brief moment as they fell through the window light. We had existed, nothing more than existed, this way for who knows how long – an unwatched half hour in summer’s heat can be in reality either a couple minutes or an entire afternoon – and the cat purred sleepily into my side until suddenly but expectedly she looked up to me with sad and curious eyes and spoke: “How come you never purr when you stroke me?”

Her mouth didn’t move, yet her speaking was the most natural occurrence in the world. She used a voice so familiar that it would be impossible to describe, so commonplace that it defies characteristics, like that of a friend you’ve spent your life with. It was the universal voice, I have come to realize after years of pondering our conversation, of summer. I moved my eyes from a puff of floating grey hair to my cat without turning my head and saw her relaxed, troubled disposition, her question fading in the air like a question asked from one sleepy lover to another at the crack of dawn.

“It’s not how I express enjoyment,” I murmured.

“Ah, but you do enjoy it, don’t you?” she cooed, her mouth still not moving, the upside-down V still frowning under her nose. “When you stroke me, I mean. You know I find it incredible.”

I nodded with slow movements.

“Sometimes I can’t tell,” the cat went on. Her head flopped back onto my thigh. “You never purr. Sometimes I feel like you’re only doing it to humor me.”

I said, “No.”

“Because I do want you to be happy,” she said with sudden intensity, lifting her head and pointing her ears up with ferocity. “I wish I could make you purr, oh, I wish it! What can I do?”

“There’s nothing,” I replied. “I don’t purr. It’s not my thing.”

“So how can I know if you’re enjoying yourself?” Her ears drooped ever so slightly, yet giving the unmistakable air of immense disappointment.

“I do enjoy it,” I said. “Believe me. I wouldn’t pet you at all if I didn’t like to. And besides,” I added as I straightened out my back a bit, “you know by now that we’re very different creatures. I express enjoyment differently. Cats purr. I smile or laugh or sigh, or sometimes I just say it.”

The cat thought this over for a moment, watching a tuft of hair turn gold in the window light. “You do smile as you stroke me,” she said to herself. She snapped her head back up at me. “But every night before you go to bed, your wife tells you she loves you and you repeat it back to her. Word for word, ‘I love you.’ Like a parrot.”

I smiled at her, partly on purpose. “So when you purr it means you love me?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed with exasperation. “Do you know how awful it feels to hear nothing back when I say something like that?”

“Well, I do love you.”

She shook her head. “Words are so emotionless,” she lamented, staring out the window. Outside on a tri-legged black wire stand stood the orchid I’d bought my wife for our anniversary, two long green stalks curling at the top into yellow petals on either side of a bulb that looked like dragon lips. Sunlight filtered through the trees and passed through the orchid’s petals so we could clearly see the deep red veins inside. Beyond the orchid was the eternal front porch, beyond it the patchy, weed-covered lawn littered in patches by the neighbors’ kids’ candy wrappers and their dog’s shit; beyond that the sidewalk, heat oozing out of it, making the concrete shudder before my eyes; beyond that the car – the black one my wife refused to drive in the hot summer; beyond that the street, beyond that the neighborhood; beyond that the city; and beyond that the future. “You can’t even describe sun coming through a flower petal with words,” said the cat. “Try it. There’s no emotion when you put words to it. Words muddle up what’s in front of us. People can talk about two completely different things without realizing it. But with a purr there’s no question. When a cat purrs you know for certain she’s unequivocally happier than anything.”

“It’s not that I prefer words,” I interrupted, still looking out at the orchid. “I can’t purr. It’s not the way my body works.”

“Oh, it’s not hard,” said the cat carelessly. “Physically, that is. You just make a little tremor in your voice box by bouncing air around it as you breathe in and out.”

“Bouncing air around it?”

“Like a rubber ball.”

“That doesn’t sound easy.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s because I used words. The purr has to come from your belly for it to mean anything at all. If you really feel it then it’s easier than walking.”

I gave it a try, but the noise sounded more like a growl than a purr. I could tell the cat was trying not to look hurt.

“It’s because you don’t feel it,” she said. “You don’t like stroking me and you don’t love me.”

The cat never spoke again. Two months later she died. A drunken teenager whipped down the street with his parents’ SUV in the middle of the night and flattened her. There was barely anything left; I couldn’t look so I can’t say what she looked like. My wife tells me the head was completely separated from the body. She knew about the conversation I’d had with the cat, and of course she didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it myself once the heat of summer started to die down and on came the first rains and cool structure of a fully acclimated new teaching schedule – especially because the cat acted as if nothing had changed between us. She still fell into my lap when I sat on the big living room chair, she still purred, she still nested her wet nose into my side, her grey hair still clumped up and turned golden in the window light.

Yet after she died, I felt more and more certain that our conversation really did take place. I had indeed tried and failed to purr for my cat and she couldn’t hide her heartbreak at my failure. As time passed following her death I began to believe what she said was true: I didn’t love her. I hadn’t looked at the carcass and I hadn’t cried. I also didn’t feel loss but instead overwhelming gain and responsibility. I plunged into the world of my students and class work without having a chance to retreat into personal sanity. In losing our aimless half-hours together I gained tension and focus. In losing her warmth on my lap I gained a new cold determination that neither satisfied nor disappointed. I was snapped back into the rigors of daily life with nowhere to retreat, like a lover fully awake and prepared, yet ferociously longing for the warm blankets as if clinging to a precious fading memory. The cat faded into my memory: her voice so natural sounding on the day of our conversation now utterly impossible to recall, her grey hair only ashen as a word, her purr only a tremor. The memory had nearly gone before I realized its importance, only after I had begun to notice how passionlessly I was saying “I love you” to my wife each night and how there was no unequivocal tremor rumbling inside me to better communicate that precious message. 

Performing Music Again?

The minute I walked through the door Nana was reminding me to play the piano for the other seniors at dinner, and along with it reminding me how much I didn't want to. She had that wide smile and mischievous glint as she asked, too, as if she knew and enjoyed how divided the prospect made me feel. For I didn't know why I was so afraid to play. In Portland I'd put out a bike helmet on Hawthorne Street and sang with my guitar - made 37 cents too - but I'd been scared then too. I couldn't even look up as I sang, so I bet no one heard me. It was guitar, though, not piano which is an instrument I'm far better at. I was terrified of performing on an instrument I'm supposed to be good at.

It came up a couple more times before dinner too, inevitably at the moment I started hoping she had forgotten - after looking at student letters from the school she had volunteered at, after going through pictures on my laptop, and again after a wind strong enough to throw cars blew up out of nowhere, followed minutes later by a fierce rain, followed by an eerie, uneasy sunshine. We even played a game of checkers for the right to abstain from the piano. I lost - Nana cheated, and announced it with a laugh. She got me to play a couple blues tunes while Liz, Papa's main caretaker, was still here. They said I was good, and it gave me more stage fright than the actual playing, and Nana insisted that I should play on the dining hall piano. It felt the same as when I played on the piano in Bahcesehir Koleji and suddenly became aware of small lungs breathing and turned to see a pair of my Turkish students glowing behind me - that unmistakable feel that I was somewhere I didn't belong doing something I shouldn't have been doing.

Well, I did end up playing, delaying and fumbling all the way. I played Blue Monk and later a sort of medley - All Blues until Nana hovered over me and whispered "Summertime" in my ear until I segued into minor. And all the while, conscious of the performance-style nature of what I was doing, I heard myself from years past pushing the keys and watched my old music training struggling to flow through my fingers. It was a trial. I didn't like feeling that way, the way I'd felt before. I didn't like feeling like a musician. But that's not entirely true - I like performing on guitar and self-taught voice much better. It had to be the thought, I realized, of playing this instrument I'm supposed to be an expert in after studying music all my life, being praised for it (as I was), and knowing I now was no good compared to this past that I have tried to reject.

Credit Rating

So here I am, in the Detroit area visiting with family, and I see this article in the New York Times about Standard and Poor's downgrading of the US credit rating. Its emphasis is on how lawmakers are questioning S&P and other credit rating agencies' legitimacy as financial evaluators. (Funny, no one seemed to care about S&P's legitimacy while we had a perfect credit rating)

This kind of thing really irks me. It's so typical of a politician to royally screw up, but after being called out on it by someone or an organization, the reaction is to ridicule that person or organization and create false doubt in their competence. Totally hackneyed and bogus blame shifting tactic.

Is it because Congress is pulling dumb stunts like this that they can't get anything real accomplished?

Susan B [Who?]

Today Mom and I went to the Contemporary Jewish Museum here in San Francisco to see the exhibit on Gertrude Stein, moments following a phone call from the Obama campaign that really offended her. It's kind of galling to think he'd be soliciting money right after the brutal debt deal he's putting America through, especially since Democrats here in Berkeley are probably the most alienated of his liberal base right now. You all probably know that I'm still a supporter and I've always thought people unfairly labeled him farther left than he really is, but after this debt deal that seemed to make no one happy would make him want to hold off asking for donations for a time. It's just not smart.

So we went to the museum and had a really wonderful time. The exhibit was well designed and pleasurably interactive, a couple of iPads scattered around the rooms with sound catalogs of audio recordings, cartoons, newspaper clippings, quotes, and so on to browse. It was easy to take at whatever pace felt most comfortable for me, even with my mother going at a different pace.

But I was most moved by the original posters for Stein's second opera, "Mother Of Us All," about Susan B Anthony and celebrating her accomplishments. For some reason I was particularly touched by that, as if women had only gained the right to vote last week and I was living in monumental history, finally having achieved something embarrassingly basic but fought so long and hard for. The right to vote, something so small that too many of us throw away with negligence or disdain, felt worth struggling and protesting for even now that we take it for granted. Such an inalienable right has rarely felt so present for me - I'm not a woman so I've never been confronted with equal protection discrepancies; I could have gotten married to a stranger in Nevada when I was 16, and because I'm not gay I don't know how it feels to be barred from marriage in most of the United States, disgustingly including California; I have white skin so I've never felt the butt of racial slurs, segregation, or cultural alienation. And yet I walk through each day without even paying any attention to my great fortune, nor to the many who aren't as fortunate. And in comes Susan B Anthony to uncompromisingly remind us and to win those forgettable but essential rights for those without.

Who is our Susan B Anthony of today? Who's out there fighting for what's undeniably right and deserved for the unfairly persecuted and the unrecognized minorities in the world? Looking at the posters for "Mother Of Us All" I thought about Mom's anger at the Obama caller earlier in the day and the deep frustration inside her, feeling that the man she voted for won't fight for her rights or well-being. I voted for Obama because I thought he would be willing to compromise, and I turned out to be too right. Mostly it's great to compromise, but there are some rights (equal marriage, for example) that can't be won through compromise. The most-remembered leaders throughout history aren't remembered for how they sacrificed their convictions to the pressures around them. No one would know the name Susan B Anthony today if she'd struck a bargain at the polling office, and women would've had to wait for even more painstaking years for the rights they're due.

Before and After the Wedding

Greg Mulford

 My family and I have just returned home from my cousin Andrew's wedding - and what a wedding it was! It was on a public beach, complete with the sandy children with their boogie boards and a sunglasses-wearing man probing the sand with a metal detector in the background. The groom put on his ring while wearing sunglasses and sneakers, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen didn't wear shoes at all. And within this layer of fun and childlike joy there was also a serious sweetness, quite a few tears, quite a few more cheers, and a wealth of good wishes and good feelings going forward. Congratulations Andrew and Lindsey!

My brother Joel and his sunburn

Bert, Joel, and my father

Nana and Great Aunt Bea under the blanket... it was a cold evening!

 I didn't take many pictures of the event because there were professionals running rampant all over the place so there wasn't much of a need. All the pictures you see here were taken at the dinner on the night before the wedding.

Now I'm preparing to take a trip into Detroit to visit the rest of my family, leaving no stone unturned! Next time I write it will probably be from the motor city.

Dad posing for his book cover

Nana and myself, or as I like to say, "Homie G(rannie) and the pimpin' pop top"

And finally - how could I have forgotten this? - I failed to mention in my Portland posts about my trip to the TV on the Radio concert. I wasn't expecting much because when I saw them in Oakland after the release of "Dear Science" the show wasn't that great. But they nailed it on this tour. I was most impressed that they played a lot of their old music, waiting until the third song to play something from their newest project, "Nine Types Of Light" (the second song, a southern-rocking-feel version of "Wrong Way," left many in the crowd in the outdoor venue standing around wondering if it was a cover, but I was geeking out over how utterly amazing it was). They ended up only play about half of the new record, which was great because it left room for "Young Liars" (another geek-out moment) and the encore set finisher, "Satellite" (my heart geeking all over the grass). It was ridiculously fun. This is a tour worth seeing.