Suddenly I feel like I’m standing on sacred ground. My sense of kinship with the place expands in the company of cedars, some large enough to barely get my arms around. I press my palms against the taut skin of their trunks. I revel in the scent of sprigs picked up from earth their kind have nourished for lifetimes.
Open Forum on the Edge
For the rabbi’s first blog entry on the Edge, we’ll go to the daily paper in the area, and respond to the Open Forum letters to the editor section. I hope to make this a regular feature of this blog, as well as muse about myriad other things that crowd my mind and need to get out. Hope you can join me for the ride…
Indian Summer
Autumn conjures up hallowed thoughts of education. Scholars conversing under sturdy campus oaks. Visits to libraries late at night, haunted by information.
Yet harvest’s end heralds an older turn from physical to mental labor, one that predates mortarboards and standardized tests. It’s a release of time to reflect on our ways, raid the smokehouse of knowledge, slice into some farm-cured ideas. [Read More]
Back to Interlochen – Observations on the Roads of the Lake Michigan Watershed
Last summer, I traveled with my son Tevan to Interlochen, Michigan, where he attended the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, an amazing conglomeration of over 2000 kids from all over the world, studying music, theater, dance, creative writing, film and visual arts. [Read More]
Love in the Wrack Zone
Where others strolled with their buckets of shells, we were dragging leaf bags along, combing the wrack zone, that line of debris where the tide recedes; where all manner of incongruent sea life coalesces. Steve and I shared a passion we never would with anyone else. Steve knew much about how to work kelp and take advantage of its ability to become as leather when wet, and wooden when dried. I followed through with finished products in my own style. [Read More]
Crab Pots and Chinook Scales
The sloshing of bloody water from the cutting board
proclaims another crimson muscle-bound Chinook
has given life in the beautiful spectacle of
a carefully-guided filet knife only a salty,
wave-beaten man can sheath on a belt by his side.
Oregon
This is Oregon
Her coastline a tattered skirt torn from the sea
Stiff boots of stone propping
Up the dear old lady and baring legs of old-growth wood;
Her ferns are showing but she doesn’t mind if you look.
Counterstomp
In 1984 a bioacoustic researcher was studying whale songs on the west coast. She heard news that four baby elephants were born at the Oregon Zoo, and went to see them. While there she sensed a vibration near the elephant cages. It turned out the animals were using low-frequency sounds to send messages back and forth across the zoo grounds. [More]
Trust Trek: The Next Generation
When I was seven years old I had my first encounter with the Lower Nehalem Community Trust. The Alder Creek Farm property was in the process of being purchased, and I can recall how excited I was to be on the land. The most vivid memories for me are the things you’d expect to entrance a seven year old… I can remember that there were two calves in what is now the main building, and that the dairy part of the farm was still in working order [Read More]
Cool, clear water
We can live without petroleum, but we can’t live, literally, without water. Water is becoming a politically charged issue. In a complex water deal in the Columbia River gorge, Oregon might swap half the spring water supplying a fish hatchery to the town of Cascade Locks in exchange for city well water. Then the city could sell the spring water to Nestle to bottle.
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