Month: January 2013

As I noted yesterday, I really like poems with a sense of place, which is why I boughtDeer Drink The Moon: Poems of Oregon. I also mentioned that I didn’t think all the poems really had a strong sense of place. Although I’ve driven by the cannery in Hood River countless times while driving to and from Mt. Hood, I didn’t get much sense of the place in “Cannery, Hood River” by Janice Gould. I suspect there are more canneries in Gould’s native California than there are in Oregon, and the poem could have taken place in any cannery anywhere in the world.

So, I was a little surprised when reviewing poems I’d marked to re-read and study in more depth that it turned out to be one of my favorites, as did poet Janice Gould who barely qualifies as a Oregon poet since she was a visiting college poet for three years. Nevertheless, it was a moving poem, even if it focused more on character than place.

In September, the Bartletts were trucked
from the orchards and dumped into bins
that crested with ripening fruit.

We stood for hours by our machines
as the harvest jostled by on conveyors, timed
our movements to the rhythm of the steel

peelers, feeding the cups that grabbed the pears—
six at a time—clamped them tight,
skinned, slit, and sent them to the next

group of women who sorted the halves
from the bits and quarters, trimmed the pieces
of excess hide. When the noon whistle blew,

we broke for lunch in the company cafeteria,
sat at the square tables, downed our chili,
complained about men, work, our pitiful pay
for which we were grateful, nonetheless.

On days it didn’t rain, my friends and I escaped
to the grassy slope near the county library,
ate apples, dozed in the Indian Summer sun.

We could hear the tugs on the Columbia pushing
their freight of logs or grain, and sometimes
a sailboat slipped past, tacking down the river

to the Pacific. I felt the pull of a current
in my own blood, and curiosity welled in me
about what lay beyond where I could see—

but when the blast of the signal came at one,
we’d return to work, don our aprons, make haste
to our peelers at the back brick wall.

Against the din of voices, clank of cans,
and whir of machines, we stood—
guarding our unfulfilled dreams.

Thankfully I’ve never worked in a cannery, though I did work on a very similar assembly line when I worked at an oxygen plant filling cylinders to pay for college. The cylinders come off the line rapidly, and you have no choice but to keep up with the line. It’s back-breaking, soul-crushing work.

A lunch break, if you got one, was a welcome relief . Of course, we complained about women where I worked, not men. I don’t remember a lot of positive talk in the rather barren lunchroom, but as much as workers griped I don’t remember anyone quitting while I was there, either. It was a job, and what can you expect from that kind of job but money to pay the bills.

Hood River is a small, rural community. I imagine many of the workers, particularly those in low-paying jobs, are drawn by the river, dreaming of a better job 60 miles down the river in Portland. Filling cylinders in an oxygen plant certainly convinced me to stick with my college studies, knowing I wanted a better life than I could find there.

Americans bemoan the loss of industrial jobs, and perhaps rightfully so, but factory workers often dreamed of escaping those jobs for better ones. My job was a stepping stone to a better future, but many of my fellow workers were still there years later when the plant was replaced by a newer, more automated one that required fewer workers. You have to wonder how many of them had their “unfulfilled dreams” drowned out by “the din of voices, clank of cans/ and whir of machines.”

Despite all appearances, I really haven’t given up reading poetry. True, I have been distracted. Birding and photography have taken up much more time than I would’ve ever imagined, becoming a major priority. I also took an online environmental course, which, in turn, led me to explore a biology textbook and a chemistry textbook on my iPad. And, as previously noted, I’ve been exploring TED courses in Happiness. I like to think these are all somehow related and their relationship will be revealed in the end, though it’s possible they are simply the result of my ADD personality, though I’d prefer to assume they’re the result of my INTP personality.

However, I have been reading the poetry anthology Deer Drink The Moon: Poems of Oregon since summer. It has been a while since I’ve read an anthology, and I suspect that’s one of the reasons it has taken me so long to get through the book. I forgot how much I dislike anthologies. As a college freshman required to take survey courses my grades often suffered because I would find one or two poets I really loved and go buy their books and read them instead of doing my coursework. I did much better when the course focused on one or two poets and I got to choose which ones I wanted to explore.

I originally bought the book because I’ve been rediscovering Oregon, particularly Eastern Oregon, through my birding trips. Editor Liz Nakazawa states in the preface that she “wanted to bring these poems together as a way to honor our state’s genius loci, or ‘spirit of place,’ with its unique blend of geographies and climates. “ I’m not sure I’d agree that all the poems in the book actually accomplish that (though it turns out one of my favorite poems in the collection doesn’t seem to focus on that at all). However, it is the ones that convey that sense of place that most appealed to me.

One of the main reasons I read anthologies is to discover new poets I want to read in more depth. There are a couple of poets that I thought might be worth exploring in the future, but the one I’ve already added to my Amazon Wish List is Floyd Skloot whose

Salmon River Estuary

Drifting close to shore, we enter the shadow
of Cascade Head. Our kayak jitters in an eddy
as we dip and lift the double-bladed paddles
to keep ourselves steady. Lit by morning sun,
current and rising tide collide before our eyes
in swirls of foam where the river becomes
the sea. Surf seethes across a crescent of sand.
Gone now the bald eagle’s scream as it leaves
a treetop aerie, the kingfisher’s woody rattle,
gull’s cackle, wind’s hiss through mossy brush.
Light flashing through sea mist forges a shaft
of color that arcs a moment toward the horizon
and is gone. Without speaking, moving together,
we power ourselves out of the calmer dark
and stroke hard for the water’s bright center
where the spring tide will carry us back upriver.

would probably be my favorite poem in the book. Kayaking was once a passion. Once I’d kayaked, I lost all interest in owning any other kind of boat. This poem captures the thrill of being one with the water. You feel the water almost as if you’re swimming. It’s a thrill to be part of a powerful river. Unfortunately, I never got good enough to feel comfortable kayaking on the ocean, but after reading this poem I bookmarked the Salmon River Estuary as a place I’d love to visit.

It turns out to also be an important sanctuary for birds, as the poem suggests. How could I not love a poem with the phrase “the kingfisher’s woody rattle.” I just wished I’d thought to describe it that way in one of my blog entries.

My favorite part of the poem, though, are the lines “we power ourselves out of the calmer dark/ and stroke hard for the water’s bright center.” That’s a literal description of what you would do when kayaking, but it’s also a succinct metaphor for the euphoric feeling you can get when you’re in the flow and everything is going perfectly on a kayaking outing, when you and nature are one.

I’ve been spending considerable time at the authentichappiness site after starting a TED course entitled Psychology: Understanding Happiness. One of the newsletters entitled “Collection” by Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, seemed particularly relevant after spending hours trying to find the “perfect” Christmas presents for kids and grandkids.

This quote, in particular, seemed relevant:

It’s a real challenge to maintain reasonable expectations in the modern world. The combination of material abundance, almost unlimited freedom, and overwhelming choice conspire to create the highest of expectations. I think that runaway expectations help explain the epidemic of depression that I mentioned to you before. My guess is that along with your increased ability to take control over your lives has come an even greater increase in your expectations about what aspects of your lives you should control, and what you should achieve with that control. Your grandparents had different expectations. For them, not everything was possible. For them, life was meant to be lived with and for others, subject to many constraints.

Compared to the way I grew up, there’s no doubt I have achieved “material abundance,” beyond my wildest dreams as a child. Though certainly not rich, I am free to buy almost any present a grandchild would want without worrying very much about the cost. I generally set limits for presents because it seems fairer to me, but I’ve been known to double those limits if I think it’s the best present for a particular grandchild.

Access to the internet has given all of us “overwhelming choice.” If I can’t find what I want in the infinite number of catalogs that appear in the mailbox, all I have to do is log on to Amazon and there’s a whole new world of choices.

Although I spend much time looking for the right gifts, I feel lucky if half the grandkids are really excited by their presents. It doesn’t help that most of the grandkids are getting presents from three or four sets of grandparents, each one trying to get the “perfect” gift. Individual gifts sometimes seem to get lost in the stacks of presents that surround kids. It can be even more disappointing when you check later and the kid has hardly played with that expensive present that you thought they “had to have.”

To make matters worse, I’m suspect I’m what Schwartz calls a “maximizer.”

Choice overload is a problem for everyone, but it’s a special problem for people who feel like they have to get the best when they make decisions–the best college, the best job, the best romantic partner, the best car, the best stereo, the best investment, and yes, the best jeans. Andrew Ward and I call such people “maximizers.” For people like this, choice overload can be a nightmare, for the only way to know you’ve got the best is by examining all the alternatives, by doing an exhaustive, and exhausting, search. And the impossibility of doing such a search almost guarantees that you’ll regret decisions, even if they’re good. In contrast, people who are satisfied with a good enough option–we call them “satisficers”–can stop looking as soon as they find one, and relax.

This used to be even more of a problem when I still believed that Christmas should be the “magical” time of the year it was when I was a child and received one or two presents during a whole year, one on Christmas and another five days later on my birthday. I can still remember more than half the Christmas presents I received as a child because they were so important to me. My grandkids have so many toys and there’s so much emphasis on the commercial aspect of Christmas I no longer believe it’s possible to create that feeling for them. The more toys they get, the less important each toy becomes, and I see no way around that.

If I was only overwhelmed by such choices at Christmas time, I suppose I could dismiss the problem as relatively unimportant. Unfortunately, that’s not true. I face the problem every time I shop for camera gear. I used the same Minolta camera that I bought in Vietnam until I retired from teaching 35 years later. Sure, I added new lenses, but the other cameras weren’t superior enough that I felt the need to replace the camera itself.

I celebrated my retirement by buying a $1,000 Nikon digital camera, that was little more than a point-and-shoot camera. It took nice close-ups and scenic shots, though I still relied on my 35mm Minolta if I wanted “permanent” pictures. Four years later I switched to my first Canon Rebel, only to discover that it woke up from sleep mode so slowly that it was useless for birding. About the time it woke up, the bird had disappeared.

For better or worse, cameras have become the new “computers,” rapidly advancing to the point you feel a constant need to upgrade gear. Anyone who’s looked at even the number of high-end Canon cameras available, much less the entire range of equally superb Nikon cameras, knows how difficult it is to make the best choice. Combined with a seemingly infinite number of high quality lenses, each with their own special advantages and disadvantages, not to mention price ranges, the choices become overwhelming.

I think I’d be appalled if I knew exactly how much time I’ve spent reading about gear, particularly when a new camera or a new lens comes out. Judging from the number of sites devoted to reviewing camera equipment, it’s clear I’m not the only one obsessed with buying the “best” equipment.

Unfortunately, Schwartz’s summary fits me better than I’d like to admit:

A wealth of options creates an opportunity, to be sure, but it also creates a problem that has to be solved. It forces you to have to put time and effort into decisions, even about trivial things. It causes you to worry, if you choose without having explored all the possibilities, that maybe you’ve made a mistake. It forces you to make tradeoffs, passing up an option with one attractive feature to select a different option with another attractive feature. It raises your expectations about just how good the thing you finally choose will be. Expectations can get so high that no result will meet them, no matter how good it is. And finally, it induces you to blame yourself when the choice you make after lots of hand wringing turns out to be less than perfect. Massive effort in making decisions, passed-up attractive alternatives, disappointing results, and self-blame. This is not a recipe for well-being. Yet it is a recipe that more and more people seem compelled to follow.

This seems to be the business model that Canon, and Nikon, rely on to make a profit from their high-end cameras, particularly those a notch below the professional line, where you’d hope people making their living from photography would be able to distinguish real advantages from imaginary ones. People like myself are considered “prosumers,” hobbyists who are gradually willing to spend more for equipment once they get hooked on amateur photography.

Truthfully, I consider the money I spent on my top-of-the-line camera well worth it, but I can’t say the same for my 500mm telephoto lens. The top-of-the-line camera allows me to get auto focus while using a multiplier on my 400mm lens. It’s the set-up I use for 90 per cent of my photos. The 500mm lens is a great lens, and I have gotten some of my very best shots using it. But it’s too heavy to hand shoot and requires a heavy-duty tripod. I soon discovered that I’m not the kind of person who’s willing to sit in one spot for four, or more, hours waiting to capture a shot. I want to walk when I’m outdoors, and I can’t do that with a heavy lens. I ended up blaming myself for listening too much to other birders and to “experts” who claim you need a 500mm, 600mm, or, recently, a 800mm lens to get the best shots.

When people I meet while I’m out shooting say they wish they had my camera, I’m quick to point out that if all they want to do is post to the web, any point-and-shoot camera that has the right lens for them will produce as good of picture as you can post. All of my shots have to be “degraded” before posting so that visitors can download them in a reasonable length of time. Now, if only I could take my own advice.