Another mystery to unravel

I confess, I scour eBay for objects and non-photographic images of Yellowstone, the Tetons, the great American mountain west, and once in a while bid on something interesting. I've just brought back from the frame shop a little image (only 4 x 6 inches) titled Yellowstone Falls, signed just "Beauchamp." The seller didn't have much to add, but she enclosed this info sheet: 

In spite of the several apparent facts that should have been easy to pursue, my efforts on Google have turned up almost nothing. Now there aren't very many questions that a few attempts with Google, varying the query as each turns up a datum of relevance (such as a variant of the artist's name), can't shed light on. However, after several disappointing tries in this case, today I finally uncovered something that suggests the date might have been 1936. That certainly makes sense given the strongly WPA style.  However, the image in the Davis and Ryan book, while convincingly identical in style and subject matter (iconic Yellowstone!) sports a radically different signature. I can't post it here (due to the protected nature of Google books) but here is a close-up of the signature on my serigraph for comparison:

Please click to view the one an only other image of Mr. Beauchamp's art to compare signatures, and read the snippet about how Beauchamp's serigraphs (among the works of many other prominent artists) were at one point acquired and intended to be sold by Jack Haynes, son of the renowned Yellowstone photographer and documentarian, Frank Haynes, in the Yellowstone Picture Shop.

Here's a close-up of this pretty and evocative little image (which I might add, has been wonderfully enhanced by custom framing, in comparison to the shabby mat it was in when I bought it!)

The serigraph depicts the lower falls of the Yellowstone River, and as always, I encourage you to click on it to enjoy an enlarged view of the details. In spite of its 75 years, the colors are vibrant. (I wonder if it was in someone's drawer or trunk all that time?) In the meantime, if you know more than I do about Jack/John W. Beauchamp, artist, please leave a comment or get in touch with me directly, vcwald at yahoo dot com.

Snow up to...wow!

Everybody knows I love watching Yellowstone Web cams. Here's a favorite, mounted on Lake Butte, high above Yellowstone Lake, by the University of Utah's Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (funded by the US Geological Survey). The "capture" of the elk (the rest of her herd was there too) dates from July of 2010; the little critter on top of the snow, which is apparently deeper than the elk is tall, dates from mid-March of 2011. It's a little ermine, or a long-tailed weasel, in winter white -- what wonderful happenstance he ran in front of the camera to be recorded for posterity. After nearly 20 years of drought, Yellowstone had a most wonderfully snowy winter in 2010-11. Let's hope it marks the beginning of a return to normal moisture levels -- or if not "normal" whatever that is, then wetness at the high end of average. If all the snow melts gradually, it will seep into the soils and keep the trees, forbs and grasses hydrated throughout fire season, providing abundant forage for Yellowstone's hooved herds -- bison, elk, mule deer, moose, and pronghorn antelope -- so they can fatten up and better withstand the next winter of deep, long snows.

The "volcano" cam image is refreshed once hourly for public enjoyment on the Web, but for research on changes in the profile of the land it updates continuously. The sweet sleek elk cow and her herd (unlike the ermine) apparently noticed the camera and one of them decided to investigate. Here's the footage, posted by the USGS, titled, Elk Licked My Webcam. Hilarious!
(Even better with your sound turned on.)

Too Many Norman Stories: Story 2. Me, Us, and Norman

To Pia and Robert and
Veronica Wald
Such fine neighbors
Norman Maclean

Norman Maclean could be intimidating to those who sought his admiration, but to me, in every way I would have chosen had it been possible (both my own died before I could know them), he was like a grandfather. Nonetheless, we were circumspect guests while visiting Seeley lake, and the way we automatically endeared ourselves was by bringing Pia, our big beautiful shepherd mix, along. Norman was fond of her, as evidenced by the order in which he dedicated our copy of A River Runs Through It and Woofer, as we always called Pia, had the time of her life. An apartment dog at home, she could roam free outside the cabin, through the unlandscaped, unfenced real estate to the lake shore a few dozen yards away and back, to her heart’s content. The weather was pleasant and we spent hours sitting outside chatting with Norman while she went exploring. At first chance she plunged deep into some very dense brush, thrashing around so much we thought maybe she had entangled herself. But before we could launch a rescue, she burst forth triumphant, grinning her big dog grin, with a thoroughly dried and stiff-as-a-board silver fish sticking out almost a foot from either side of her mouth. A fisherman must have lost it months if not seasons earlier, as it was desiccated to the point of mummification, and to a city dog with a taste for curiosity, a thrilling find. To her everlasting disappointment, we, not being able to rise to quite the same level of enthusiasm, made her drop it into the garbage can and firmly seated the lid.  

The cabin had only one bedroom, a small, intimate room behind the kitchen, which had been Norman’s beloved mother’s. The men slept in the living room near the fireplace, or, on warm nights, on the sleeping porch facing the lake; I was honored to have his mother’s room to myself, snuggling dreamily deep under soft quilts. While there was tap water from the well in the kitchen sink, there was no toilet in the house, only an outhouse under which, Norman had explained, a skunk raised a litter of kits every summer. Ladies who needed facilities in the middle of the night used the mountain equivalent of a chamber pot: an old 5 lb Hills Bros. coffee can. That might sound like a lot of coffee, but opening on a can that size is a riskily small target for a sleepy woman. It was probably our first night there that the inevitable happened. Fortunately, I was able to right the can before much damage was done, and to thoroughly daub the bedside rug with water from the kitchen without waking anybody. Though until this writing no one else knew a thing about it, I will never forget it.

In the morning, it gave Norman pleasure to fire up the stove, grease the pans, and prepare eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and toast with lots of butter, for his apparently too thin Chicago guests. As neither the mealtime protocol nor the furniture in the cabin was formal, Norman handed each of us our plates right off the stove where they had been sitting to keep warm. We took our plates into the living room to set wherever we were comfortable, to eat before it got cold. I was served, and, sitting at a TV table, started to eat; then my ex was handed his plate, which he set down on the arm of an old-fashioned school desk. Note, as is clear from this photo, the desk arm is slanted slightly for more comfortable reading and writing. Bob turned around to retrieve something, maybe salt and pepper. As he did, the oils on the bottom of the plate suddenly did their thing, and the entire plate slid off the desktop, did a magnificent 180 in mid-air, and plopped, food-side down, on the floor.

Photographer unknown

Bob, stricken by the thought that Norman would momentarily appear from within the kitchen to decry his incompetence to function outside the big city, was far too embarrassed to fess up and request cleanup equipment.  He stood unmoving with a look of terror on his face as I said, at an ever-increasing stage-whisper, Get the dog! Get the DOG!!  GET THE DOG!!! who was outside enjoying herself looking for dead fish. Finally his paralysis passed, he ran to open the door, called her in, and lickety (literally) split, the eggs and hash browns and buttered toast were all...toast. Gone, not a dot of bacon grease to be seen. Bob’s hearty appetite impressed the happily oblivious Norman when he asked for a full plate of seconds. And Woofie had a really, really good start to her day.

As I read this and think back on that wonderful time, I realize it was only by some undeserved miracle that Norman’s  loutish, incompetent human and canine urban neighbors managed a three-day visit to Seeley Lake, Montana, without destroying either their host’s home, or their own reputations.

The blogger and Pia (Woofie) at Seeley Lake,1981

Too Many Norman Stories: Story 1. The Truth Behind the Photo

In 1975 my fiancé (now my ex-) and I moved into a neat little condominium, with a wood burning fireplace of all rarities, at 55th and Woodlawn in the Hyde Park neighborhood, a couple of blocks from the University of Chicago campus where we both worked. We soon began to hear about “the old professor” living in the unit below ours, recently rocketed to unbidden celebrity for his two-short-stories-and-a-novella book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. By 2011, everyone has heard of A River Runs Through It, cinematized by Robert Redford in 1992 (starring young heartthrob Brad Pitt in the role of Norman's brother Paul), but in those days ARRTI was a book, a book of stories resplendent with dimension and imagery, love and loss, trials and triumphs. 

My undergraduate years at the University were only just behind me, and I feared the English professor emeritus would be tough on me. But it wasn’t long before I met and fell unconditionally in love with Norman Maclean. The gruff guy was his persona, but always, always there was affection underpinning everything he said and did around me. And he was kind enough not to complain--much--about our noisy habits over his head.

Norman and his wife Jessie had moved into their condo from a large neighborhood home after their children, John and Jean, had fledged and Jessie was already suffering from the lung ailment that finally took her in 1968, the same year I washed up on the shores of the University of Chicago as a freshman.  

When we entertained we frequently included Norman among other guests, or he came up on his own, for a meal or a cup of coffee. He missed Jesse so terribly, in spite of his busy new career as author-in-demand.  I kept his undated thank-you in which, in his sweetly self-deprecating way, he  reveals all of that and more:

Veronica: It was very nice the other evening. I’m sorry that I stay above [a reference to our home’s location relative to his] too much, because when I’m allowed...I stay too long and talk too much. The fire was nice too. .

I had by this time read, and re-read, ARRTI, and wept (and still do) at the end unfailingly. I was a member of an all-women book club, two monthly meetings of which he graced with his authorial presence. He called us "the Girl Scouts” but there’s no question he enjoyed the opportunity for intimate discussion of his works and respected the bright readers that we were.

The Maclean cabin at Seeley Lake, 1981
Copyrighted and not to be used without permission

Although I’d always been an outdoorsy girl, I didn’t know much about the northern Rockies where the stories were set, so I was thrilled when along came the opportunity in 1981 to stop in at the family cabin on Seeley Lake, Montana where he spent his summers thinking, writing, and fishing.  Norman was a warm host, cooking us big mountain breakfasts, arranging a tour of the local sawmill, driving us far up logging roads into the mountains, and taking us on an unannounced visit to the cabin of this friend Bud Moore and his wife. Alas, the Moores were not in.  But their canoe was sitting by the shore, and Norman said to me, “let’s go for paddle” around the large beaver pond on the property. I was in the back, and my job was to steer. He sat in the bow, offering, as the man (albeit a 79-year old one), the power strokes to move the canoe ahead through the sweet afternoon light of the high mountain waters. Mind you, Norman was an accomplished mountain man, and was especially comfortable on water, be it a rushing trout stream or a serene tarn. Mind you, I was a citified young woman with armloads of camera equipment and boatloads of good will. But no experience or instinct handling a canoe. This made for a slightly riotous ride. When the frustrated Norman turned back to say, “Darlin’!” as he called me and all women he loved, and to unleash annotated comments on what I was doing wrong and how, unless I performed as instructed, we were going to capsize, I whipped the camera to my eye, and caught what has often been captioned as Norman Maclean in “a contemplative moment.” Thank God the canoe made it safely back to shore, my roll of film dry and intact, for the photo, which was first picked up by the University of Chicago Press to use on blurbs and promotional material for later editions of AARTI, has become iconic. 

Copyrighted and not to be used without permission.

More Norman Maclean stories, of which there are many but somehow are mostly about me, to come...

Norman Maclean MUST reads:

• A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

• Young Men and Fire: A True Story of the Mann Gulch Fire

• The Norman Maclean Reader: Essays, Letters, and Other Writings by the Author of A River Runs Through It, edited by O. Allen Weltzein

Norman, I will always miss you.  

Report connects dots between arts education and future arts attendance

For those of you who might wonder what the organization I work for (NORC) does, here is an eye-opening example, my co-worker Nick Rabkin's  exploration of the reasons for the decline in arts patronage and participation in the United States in recent years:

Report connects dots between arts education and future arts attendance

Together Again

Elizabeth (Betty) Horn, May 27, 1914-March 19, 2011

Rest in peace next to your beloved husband Joe. 

Your grandson KLK loved you very much too.

Japan

I have had a very hard time (who hasn't?) wrapping thoughts around the horrors in Japan over the last week or so. It's been difficult enough to understand what happened in Haiti, Chile, New Zealand (twice), Indonesia and Thailand. Of all of them, Japan, as the world's third largest economy and a very technologically advanced country, is easily the best prepared to recover economically.  Its one-two punches were bad enough without the third and probably most serious punch of nuclear meltdown and the looming potential for persistent environmental radiation. On top of that are the multiplying effects of massive long-term loss of power generating capacity; think of what that means for heating, cooling, industry, schools, hospitals, the arts and sciences...All of this on top of appalling loss of life. 

This is too much to internalize. To help me in my contemplation, I looked back to a notebook from my one and only visit to Japan, in September of 1983. This trip followed the second of two academic sojourns through the People's Republic of China with my then husband, a physicist much in demand as a speaker at Asian universities (see The China Diaries and They say, but she saw, for example). My first diary entry compared 1983 Japan to China, which was still, though increasingly rapidly, crawling out from under the end of Maoist government and the Cultural Revolution:

The contrast between Japan and China is almost incomparable. This is a country of things that work, of good design, of neatness and cleanness, of riches and abundance, of cleverness and great practicality. The international terminal of Narita [airport] is easy to cope with, highly automated, simplified, and every announcement, written or verbal, appears in English as well as Japanese. Except for our plethora of heavy luggage, getting from the airport by shuttle bus to the Keisei train for a one hour smooth-as-silk ride to Ueno Station, was really easy and amazingly convenient. 

The next day I wrote:

Japan continues to charm us with its convenience, cleanness, and the ease with which we can get around here. This morning we took the famous Bullet Train (Shin Kan Sen line) from Tokyo Station, with one two-minute stop at Nagura, to Kyoto.... The hotel here is classier [than the one in Tokyo], and thus our room is a little bigger. And our little red Hitachi color T.V. is free here—in Tokyo it was “coin-op.” We have the same kind of bathroom, a practical little metal box that looks like it came off a ship and was installed as a water-proof and fire-proof unit in one corner of our room. Here we are also each provided with a toothbrush in a sealed plastic container—also included is a tiny plastic tube of super minty “Happy White Dental Creme” with each. We also once again got a long kimono [printed cotton  yukata] each, plus one short men’s kimono meant to be used as a kind of Japanese equivalent to a British “smoking jacket.  

And in spite of yawning cultural and linguistic gulfs, I noted:

We’ve found that it is easy to communicate by gesture here. Sometimes in China we had more trouble doing so, but the Japanese always seem to understand what we are up to in no time.

Obviously, we were delighted. That night:

We had dinner at a little Japanese-style restaurant in the hotel. We decided to try real tempura, and while waiting for our entrees were brought a bowl of a clear and good-smelling liquid with it. In Chicago tempura is customarily served with a clear soup [miso] and a small bowl of dark-colored strongly flavored salty dipping sauce. Since we weren’t sure whether this lovely liquid was soup or sauce, I volunteered to sip a little while my husband, who was sitting in clear view of the waitresses standing in front of the sushi bar, kept a watch to see if anyone was looking at the American hicks. I sipped a little and (sincerely) declared it to be a delicious soup. Whereupon Bob picked up his bowl to take a gulp—he was instantly spotted by a cook and the waitresses, one of whom came over, amidst her colleagues’ obviously stifled giggles, to straighten us out—the liquid, she demonstrated, was for dipping, not for drinking! It was very funny. In China nobody ever has bad manners, but here we feel like we’re all elbows half the time. 

It was a beautiful country of happy people. What will it be now?       

       

Saying good-bye to winter

 I know a lot of people would tell me I need a psychiatric referral when I say this, but I love winter (there! I said it!) and I'm sorry to see it go. And going it is, no doubt about it, the days are quickly getting longer (though my early morning constitutional, now amply light before I return home, will be in the dark again as of tomorrow, because it's time for the clocks to spring forward tonight--another sign, be it socio-political, that the season is changing). A friend says crocus leaves are already peeping up in the sunny parts of her back yard. The average daily high in Chicago is in the high 30s or low 40s. I looked up at some bare branches yesterday morning and I'm sure they've got telltale swellings hinting that leaves will be bursting forth momentarily (well, in Chicago, I'm pretty sure they have a full month to go before they do, if they have any sense at all). Oh, yeah, Ma Nature could still do it again, she's been known to dump a foot of snow on us in April, and it's still only mid-March. But I'm going to miss winter. I loved the beauty our February blizzard bestowed. I watch webcams on top of high Yellowstone and Grand Teton peaks all the time. This one is at the fire lookout on top of Mount Washburn in Yellowstone, a great hike in clement weather, but unoccupied in winter. The cam slipped its mooring and instead of gazing out over the mountain's shoulder, the grand canyon of the Yellowstone River, and beyond like it's supposed to, it's neatly focused on the railing outside the lookout. How about those fanstastic crystal formations? Winter, I look forward to spring, summer and fall, and to seeing you again in full cold force next year!

A lot going on in a little space

Noticed this very busy vignette at the bus stop this morning. There's a lot going on. For starters, the white box holds an emergency telephone that goes to the University of Chicago police, which is the biggest force, second only to the Chicago Police Department, in the city, and which takes the concerns of community safety very seriously. Click on the photo to enlarge it to contemplate all the details. The call box has obviously been in place for a while but the pink-and-yellow urban "folk-art" item is new. Be sure to check out the background as well. 

As it happened, or as staged?

Turn on your sound for a big clue.

What's real, and what's not, and does it really matter?

Captive or wild? *

Wildlife lovers, do yourselves a favor and read this article, What's Real And What's Not Behind Reality TV's Nature Shows? For some time I have been aware of the ethical issues presented in the article, for example, recently there was lively discussion on the matter among the letters to the editor of Wyoming Wildlife. There really are two sides to the story, in the sense that if the purpose of wildlife filming/photography is to educate, then it seems justifiable to use game farm animals or "rent-a-wildlife" like Bart the Bear actor, as long as the animals are treated properly, although I also think it is reasonable for the viewers to be notified.
I personally know several superb wildlife photographers, including Doug Dance (still photography), who works extremely hard to capture un-manipulated natural reality in all its exquisiteness, and Bob Landis, film-maker/videographer par excellence, who likewise works night and day, every day of the year, at his craft, and who never, ever uses captive animals no matter how expeditious it might be to achieve results. But neither Doug nor Bob works under the thumb of the corporate media and their schedules can attune to that of the natural world they portray so well. For the moment, I will not chime in on the reality, or not, of the human wilderness survival "reality" shows, nor on that of any other "reality" TV.

Please leave your comments, this issue is not straightforward and bears more, much more, discussion. 

*Taken at West Yellowstone's wonderful Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. Is it 100% obvious these wolves are captive?

Musings on Bloggings

Like most bloggers I think, I enjoy and appreciate comments, even those from the rare troll; I eventually edited the comments from Fiddledeedee, deleting all of my own responses – which I tried to couch calmly and rationally–and a few of his/her less-than-diplomatic answers. As  is frequently so in such cases, Fiddledeedee’s topic quickly turned from asserting the apparently inviolable value of cultural relativity to the failings of my character. Nonetheless, I decided to leave a few choice remarks in situ for posterity.  [Sorry about the dead links on that post, it’s a hazard of long-term blogging.]

Sometimes, though, my posts elicit comments emailed rather than appended. Two particularly wonderful ones rolled in last month.

The first was from the affable Fem Bromley, a Netherlands ex-pat living in Canada. She wrote about my 2009 post on the lovely work of the Dutch naturalist  H.J. Slijper, about whom I knew almost nothing. She said [lightly edited for clarity]:

“I saw your postcard pictures of Henk Slijper. I'm Dutch and thought you would like to know a little about him. He passed away in 2007 after he had a few strokes. I knew him very well I took care of his mother for 9 years, and he came often home with his falcon on his shoulder. He was a very nice man and a very good painter. He spent some time in jail as he was involved during the second world war with the  resistance, and got caught.”

She was able to go on to give me more information about his career and reputation:

“He had expositions in AMERICA in 1981,1982,1983,1987,1989 (Birds in Art) at Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.  Also there are a few books out with his drawings. Henk also painted for the laboratory in water colour for illness in plants and bulbs, painted for catalogues for the companies of tulip bulbs. Henk worked together with Prince Bernhard for the nature foundation. He was awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society in London with the Silver Gilt Grenfell Medal. ALSO WAS AWARDED with the Silver Anjer in the Netherlands.”

With these details, and especially with the knowledge of his first name Henk (the postcards are attributed only to H.J. Slijper) Google turned up more interesting information about the artist whom I feared was obscure, underappreciated, and unknown outside of Holland. Among his enduring legacies are his designs for falconry hoods, as it happens, another interest of mine.

The second email came from a relation of the family that owned the children's German language camp, Landheim von Specht, that I wrote a little about over the Thanksgiving weekend last year. In that case, I provided her with entirely new information about her family's story, something I found very gratifying and hope someday someone will do for me about mine.

 Her initial inquiry was:

“I'm a relative of the ‘von Specht’ family in Starnberger See, but have never heard about the ‘Landheim von Specht.’ Was it run by someone with the family name ‘von Specht’? I'd be curious if you could tell me more about it.”

The next day I answered, “...as I was only 13 years old at the time, I don't believe I could now recall (if I ever knew) the first names of ‘Frau und Herr von Specht’ but they seemed to me to be very elderly at the time they were running the international children's German language camp. Herr was bedridden, Frau was vigorous. They had a kennel of several Afghan hounds, all of whom...were named Rahu. As you can tell from the photo, the estate was right by the lake, directly across the road from it as I remember. The reference to Landheim von Specht came from the back of one of my photographs, in my childish handwriting....”

She responded “...So the Landheim was definitely run by a Herr and Frau ‘von Specht’ or possibly just a couple by the name of ‘Specht’? ... At the time my relative Joachim von Specht born 1894 lived with this wife in Ambach am Starnberger See. We only know him as an ‘author’, but maybe this family was running the Landheim?”

So it seems even my distant childhood memories have added substantively to her efforts to reconstruct her personal past. What an unexpected reward of blogging!

Niña, a red-tailed hawk at the 2006 SOAR (Save Our American Raptors) Lady Hawkers fund raiser, Earlville, Illinois

Aftermath

Just a few random shots, post Taken by Storm...the Storm started the afternoon of Tuesday, February 1, and ended the afternoon of Wednesday, February 2. The first three photos were taken the morning of Thursday, February 3, when the city started to come back to life. The fourth pic was from that evening; the storm had scrubbed the sky clean. The last photo is from today, Saturday February 5. There are massive piles of snow everywhere the plows have been, causing especially large vehicles like city buses untold misery coming around corners and the like. 

Digging out, the morning after it was all over

A little pathway

Stuck in a berm (two more days before that car in the middle of the road got out)

Gorgeous evening...snow on top of the ice, Lake Michigan (and still no traffic on Lake Shore Drive)

After the snow plows...those two cars are lucky, with a little digging they might actually get out of their spaces.

Taken by storm

There are only two things being reported on the Chicago area news: the revolution in Egypt, and the Storm of The Century in Chicago.
It was not a tempest in a teacup. It was a TEMPEST. Was? Is. It's still carrying on outside, though from my 11th floor condo perspective, things have settled down extraordinarily since last night, when it peaked. Well, I'm not sure I would say it peaked, in the usual sense of a point on a line graph at the top between steep upward and downward slopes. It plateaued, raging unchanged for hours and hours and hours.

We can't say we weren't warned. For the last 48 hours all radio and TV channels trumpeted warnings: The Storm of the Century is coming! The sky is falling! Sixteen to 24 inches of snow! Dangerous gale-force winds! How often this kind of anticipatory hyperbole is deflated when in actuality we manage to pile up 4 or 5 inches of snow. This time, they were right, and the prediction has so far been phenomenally accurate. The winter storm warning went into effect at 3:00 p.m. yesterday, just about the time I arrived home. The president of the organization I work for had sent around an email with subject, "Winter storm event" (so that's it's called!) suggesting people leave while the going was good, and announcing that we are to work from home today, so here I am, signing off the blog momentarily to carry on the good fight.

But before I go, I have to say, I've never experienced anything like last night's storm. The wind coming unimpeded off of Lake Michigan seemed to blast right through my (modern, industrial-strength, double-paned, heavy aluminum-framed) windows at high velocity, making it uncomfortably cold and creepily noisy to sit anywhere near them. Somewhere deep inside my building, a 15-story mid-century mid-rise, something set to vibrating at about the same frequency of a jet flying within hearing range overhead, the oddest, steadiest background hum I've ever heard in the the 23 years I've lived here. The view outside was so whited-out that it wasn't possible to see snow, only occasional long cloud-like streams of scintillating moisture shooting past horizontally against the background glowing gray from the city lights.  I kept thinking of the early Arctic explorers, imagining homesteaders in their sod houses on the Dakota plains, stray kittens huddling in alleyways, and above all, Chicago's homeless unwilling to go to shelters. Soon we'll know how many did not survive Chicago's Storm of the Century.