Thoughts from the Hills

Custom Photoshop Brushes

2011-07-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

A friend recently sent me a link to a website with some gorgeous brushes. After playing with them a little bit, I realized I could also make some lovely brushes in Photoshop. This technique works for any recent versions of Photoshop. It's really simple. For the sample attached, I found a pretty, scripty font. Grunge fonts would also be great. Generally you want to stick to black on white for a cleaner look.

Type your phrase.

Now use one of your selection tools and loosely frame the graphic. In this case I used a rectangular marquee tool, but the lasso tool would work, too.

Go to the Edit drop down menu and go slightly over halfway down to "Define Brush Preset."

Give your new brush a name. Voila! You have created your brush.

Let your imagination be your guide. Try some photo textures (convert your color space to bitmap so you have just black and white), or import clip art. I have many books of lovely Victorian clip art that are perfect for this kind of thing. Also, some of those "dingbat" fonts will work, too.

Busy Photo, Be Gone!

2011-07-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

This beautiful egret posed so gracefully in a eucalyptus tree, but there was a big problem: branches in the way. The solution: the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop CS5, with the Content Aware box in the options bar checked. I learned a few tricks in the process. First, of course, work SLOOOOWLY. Keep the brush size small. Sometimes this brush will do strange blurring at edges between light and dark. My solution was to use the clone tool (again, kept very small) at these critical junctures and then finish up (the rest of a branch, for example) much more quickly with the brush. Sometimes it would be necessary to go over the same area several times. I didn't want to take out ALL the branches, or the poor bird wouldn't have a roost.

2011-04-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

I've spent these last few days doing a massive exhumation of the junk in my office, going through boxes, crates of slides and photo magazines that are mostly from about 2001-2003. The careful sifting of stuff has been a revelation. I didn't deeply realize how drastically digital photography has transformed the medium until I looked at these "old" (most of them 10 to 15 years in age) materials.

Photography has been both my passion and vocation for decades, but not until I looked at these old materials did I realize how much had changed. Before digital, a few of us had the photography field to ourselves, because of the complexity and cost of the medium. Unless one used Polaroid film (now virtually defunct), instant results were impossible. I recall waiting weeks to get my Kodachrome slides returned from the lab. Quality mid-day slide exposures were next to impossible on a sunny day without flash or reflectors.

Yes somehow we prevailed. My old magazines extol the virtues of 3 megapixel cameras (now my agencies and other photo buyers won't even touch anything less than 12 MP and nobody will look at the original slides because their workflow can no longer deal with the medium, plus the possibility of liability for lost/damaged slides). Although a few diehards like myself had adopted Adobe Photoshop technology back in the early 1990s, the early 2000s marked the time when digital imaging software came of age (now a necessity for most photo professionals) and the buzz was all about scanners, which were horribly expensive, $2,000 and up. I still have and use my old LS-4000 (now discontinued) when the occasional photo request comes in for one of my older, timeless images.

What's interesting is what has prevailed: photography is still about light and composition. Also, the emotional wallop always has and always will pack a punch; as I thumbed through old magazines, I cried again at the photos of 9/11 and reveled in Ansel Adams's timeless and amazing images.

What we have today is enhanced craft. The art has always been there. The photograph I post here is a blend of these two things. Let me try to give the thought process involved. With my wonderful workshop folks last weekend we explored a stately if somewhat gloomy cypress grove on the coast. At the end of our walk we came upon a happy family with two toddlers, one of whom was dressed in a red sweatshirt. I asked the parents if it was okay if we photographed the kids running back and forth near the line of trees. They agreed. Prior to that moment my camera had been set up for landscape photography, i.e., f/22 and slow shutter speeds, low ISO, with tripod. I lost a couple of frames with a blur of children before I realized I needed to be set up for action. On my Nikon D300 I dialed up the ISO to 800, opened up the lens, and took a series of photos.

In the computer, I first processed the shot in RAW for optimum exposure, color balance and contrast, actually taking the color down a little bit on the very bright red clothing. Then I ran a b/w adjustment layer on the image, taking the opacity down so there would be a hint of green. Then I used a layer mask to bring out the original colors on the two kids. I also added an empty layer and used my gradient tool (black gradient to transparent) to do a custom darkening of the edges, to bring attention to the kids.

Art and craft, now at an amazing new level of photography that pretty much anyone can do. This would have been next to impossible even 15 years ago. I've sent a copy of the photo to the family with the kids, something else that would have only been accessible to high-end pros 15 years ago. Finally, we can show that wonderful image as it appears in our mind's eye.

Catching Up

2011-01-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

It has been months since I posted to this blog. Life seems to have gotten away from me, in mostly wonderful ways. I've been taking thousands of photos, with trips to Europe and Alaska, portrait sessions and weddings, and now, private workshops. My website, sederquist.com, contains links to many of the thousands of photos taken during these journeys.

Recently I've been uploading hundreds of photos to sell as fine art prints at this link:

http://sederquistphotography.imagekind.com/store/

Here you can buy straight prints, or have them custom framed or mounted as canvas wraps. Prices are very reasonable.

I've learned some big lessons in photography from this, as I comb through old images (nearly all of them digital, made in the last seven years). I really see with greater clarification what "works" or doesn't work. Again, as I've often said, simplicity counts for so much. Also, my favorite photos communicate some sort of emotion, from humor to sadness or just sheer, overwhelming beauty. I find that I really love bright color, as shown in my portfolio of food photos. But I also love black and white, with its own special moods. As I write this I have processed and uploaded about 750 high-resolution photos using Adobe CS5 (sometimes resurrecting images through this new software that I previously thought were hopeless). My goal is to upload 1,000 photos, and as soon as I have finished this phase I will be shipping off batches of these images to my stock agencies.

I'll be posting images soon!

2010-08-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

It's been an amazing and extremely busy few months, with little down time. Teaching responsibilities and trips: the ghost town of Bodie, then London, Burgundy, Greece. A couple weeks of respite and doing some lectures, then off to Alaska for almost three weeks. Thousands of photos later, I am still sorting and processing.

I'll be getting to some of these photos soon; meanwhile, here is an image grabbed from my desktop. It was made in one of my favorite places in the world, The Brothers Islands in the heart of Frederick Sound, Alaska. Our athletic cook had decided to jog this wilderness beach on a tiny islet. After beaching her kayak, back and forth she went. I dragged out my 70-200 lens and Nikon D700 and took a series of photos. There's nothing special about technique here, just an evocative moment and magic light in a magical place.

Ballet Dancer

2010-05-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a team effort. My beginning digital photography class worked with the wonderful Folsom photographer Gino Creglia and with my class of 35 students we took several local ballet dancers to a grassy, oak-rimmed field on the outskirts of town. The model in this case was Megan Harrell, a former student of mine. She gamely posed and pirouetted in a rock-strewn, sticker-filled field. There were lots of nervous jokes about rattlesnakes.

This photo was shot in bright, contrasty sunshine, so Camera Raw saved the day by reducing contrast. Since this sort of photo is iconic (anyone recognizes a ballet dancer), it responds well to special effects. This is the Topaz Simplify program, oil painting filter, with the effect applied to a second layer, then a layer mask used to bring back the details of her face. Finally I added a new layer and used the Gradient tool in Photoshop (foreground color to transparent) to darken the edges, then lowering opacity for a more natural effect.

Magic in the Ordinary

2010-04-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

This little dress form graced an armchair in a local bed and breakfast inn. Headless, yet resplendent in sumptuous fabric, the scene gives a sense of unease. Where is the head? I hate yet love the incompleteness. The disassociation seems a bit unworldly, so that is how I decided to treat the image.

First, I aggressively processed the image as an HDR ( seven originals, widely bracketed and then composited) in Photoshop and Photomatix. Then I duplicated the layer, ran a Topaz Adjust filter (one of the sketch filters) on the new layer. I then lowered opacity and added a few touches of color with a layer mask.

A Woman of Mystery

2010-04-12T20:07:00.000-07:00

Actually, this young woman is anything but mysterious. She is a lovely young student in one of my classes and on this day a couple of weeks ago several of the students were posing with various capes and costumes at the new Palladio shopping center in Folsom. The place has a Renaissance feel with its wonderful arches and columns and so we followed the mood. The cape reminds me of the opening scene of the old film, French Lieutenant's Woman, starring Meryl Streep, based on the memorable novel by John Fowler.

Although our subject is intrinsically lovely, I couldn't resist adding a few Photoshop touches: I duplicated the layer, running a strong Gaussian blur on the second layer, then aggressively dialing back the opacity, using a layer mask for finishing touches to bring back details in the facial features. This gives that slight glow. I then duplicated this layer, dialed down the saturation. I then added a black and white adjustment layer, using a layer mask to bring back the half- saturated image beneath. Finally I added a new layer, darkened the edges by using using the gradient tool (black foreground gradient color to transparent, pulling in from the sides) and then lowering opacity slightly to make the effect more subtle.

Gold Miner

2010-04-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

This park docent pretends to scribble in a journal in the so-called "Mormon Cabin" in Marshall Gold State Historic Park. The cabin is next to a replica of Sutter's Mill; perhaps a hundred yards from here on the South Fork of the American River, James Marshall—later in life a troubled soul—found a fateful gold nugget in January, 1848, setting off the great California Gold Rush. He was inspecting the tailrace of a water powered sawmill he was building for Sacramento land baron John Sutter. The gold glittered, the mill was forgotten, and California (and world) history changed with this small discovery. I live only a few miles from this important spot and have been immersed in the often bizarre history of the Gold Rush all my life.

The photo was made under extremely low light conditions. Even shooting a Nikon D700 at ISO 4000, there were misses because of subject movement. The camera (of course) was on a tripod/with cable release. Later I processed the RAW image in Photoshop using the Nik filter "Monday Morning," adjusting the shadow/highlights, which can be problematic with this filter. I tried all sorts of variations with this image, including Topaz, but I liked this one the best.

Love in the Foothills

2010-03-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

I live at the edges of a magnificent sloping mountain meadow ringed by ponderosa pines and gently rolling hills. The view from my home office has brought me much solace and inspiration over the 25 years I have lived here.

Today was a day for smiles. We have a group of amorous male turkeys right outside our front door. They gobble from dawn until dark. They preen and strut and fan for the coy females, oblivious to dangers they would normally heed, like nosy humans or the coyote who stands vigil at the top of meadow, on the prowl for a turkey dinner.

To get closeup photos of turkeys, I have learned that if I walk into the field, they will flee, but if I climb in my car, using it for a blind, I can coast slowly down our dirt driveway and get close, often within 10 feet. They seem almost oblivious to me, lost in their love-smitten quest.

This is one of many photos taken with a Sigma 150-500, handheld out the car window. It was then lightly processed in Topaz Adjust to give it a painterly effect, leaving some detail in the face using layers and layer masks.

I wonder if the coyote enjoyed a turkey dinner?

Spring Poppies

2010-03-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

The spring day began auspiciously. As our little group started on our hike near my home town of Coloma in the Sierra Nevada foothlls, movement on a close-by snag caught our eyes. Vulture? Hawk? No. The bird took to the skies, its steady wingspan enveloping us with its grace and beauty. Its great size, feathers and flying patterns marked it as a golden eagle. They nest in this steep river canyon, yet I had never seen one locally.

Moments later, we found ourselves on a precipice of sorts, marbled by a network of homemade trails that zigzagged hundreds of feet downward to the American River, which made a blue, roaring curve at the bottom of the canyon. California poppies proliferate here in spring, and today was poppy perfection. Great fields of orange--seasoned with little white popcorn flowers and blue lupines-- beckoned us. We had brought cameras, but mostly we took the time just to sit and to absorb these magical moments of spring.

The photo attached to this little remembrance is altered in Topaz, a Photoshop filter. I used Topaz Adjust 4, labeled the exposure correction tool, but I simplified the photo drastically to get this painterly effect. I applied the filter on a duplicate layer, then used a layer mask to bring back the detail of the poppy in the foreground.

Spring Flowers

2010-03-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

The longer days and profusion of spring blossoms gladden our hearts. But photographing flowers can be among the most challenging of subjects. A friend invited me this afternoon to her glorious spread of daffodils and pink peach blossoms. I came equipped with macro gear: 105mm macro lens, extension tubes, tripod, Plamp, and cable release.

This tiny insect was barely visible to the eye, but the camera found it resting on this daffodil. The sun backlit the flower.

A Stormy Day

2010-03-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

In this photo, spring hasn't yet arrived, and the old vines have yet to sprout tender tendrils. Thus, these vines, in the Shenandoah Valley of Amador County, are here in their stark black glory. Dramatic storm clouds form a backdrop.

To achieve this surrealistic effect took a bit of work. This is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image, made up of seven bracketed photos. The seven images were then composited using Photoshop and Photomatix software. I then added a layer, and on that layer, used a gradient from black to transparent, changed the blending mode to Soft Light, and this darkened the sky even further.

Struggling

2010-03-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

The weather was cold, the wind bitter on this morning of a clearing storm in Amador County. Several of us had come here together, looking for early spring flowers in the vineyards, but winter had other plans. Then, this forlorn remnant of a tree manifested itself against the glowering sky. Edging into a dubious wide spot on the road, cars honking, we climbed out our vehicle and paid homage.

This is shot with a Nikon D40x camera that has been converted for infrared use. In Photoshop, a second layer was added and gentle color was added with a low-opacity brush. A Soft Light blending mode eased the colors even more. Finally, a third layer was added, and using the Gradient tool (black to transparent), edges became darker. Opacity was dialed back on this third layer.

Cabin Shingles

2010-03-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Ebbetts Pass in the high Sierra Nevadas gets many feet of snow every year. Not too far from the top of the pass is a 100-year-old cabin used by generations of the same family. These shingles on the side of the cabin have endured this weather for all these years.

I enhanced the original wooden shingles, adding color with the Topaz plugin, dialing down the details to create this semi-abstract look. It gives the effect of broad playful brush strokes.

An Old Cowboy

2010-03-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

I was recently at a photography conference where I heard Phil Borges (www.philborges.com) show some of his amazing photos of Tibetan people and also of women worldwide. His goal now is to empower "ordinary" women in simple villages and towns who are making a difference. He used an interesting photo technique that I have let lapse in my own arsenal of tricks: selective color. He also is amazingly gifted in using local backgrounds.

My own life is not as glamorous as his, but I have long been fascinated by the cowboy and western culture that surrounds me in the hills where I live. I decided to apply Borges's technique to this photo of Ron Scofield. I visited Scofield a couple of years ago with a mutual friend. When we arrived, he had been doing some sort of outdoor work, but immediately dodged back into his house and donned his cowboy duds. Scofield is something of a local legend, known for his careful rebuilding and repairing of nineteenth century carriages and wagons.

To get this effect from what was originally a color photo, I desaturated it by about half, applied a black and white adjustment layer, and then used a layer mask to bring back the color in Scofield, leaving the background black and white.

Anan Creek Eagle

2010-03-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Two years ago I was at Anan Creek, south of Wrangell, Alaska. Here, amazing numbers of bears and eagles congregate for a salmon feast during spawning season in late summer. Perhaps 300 eagles were within half a mile of our small photography group. Walking the trail from the bear viewing area to the beach where we would board our Zodiac for the return trip to our boat, I saw this bird on a branch, almost hidden by dense forest. Quietly shooting through the branches, handheld using a Nikon 80-400, I made a quick series of images before the bird moved on.

Today, I revisited this image using Topaz filters. I then brought back the detail in the eye and mouth with a layer mask.

This blog has moved

2010-03-06T16:02:00.001-08:00

This blog is now located at http://betty-sederquistcom.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://betty-sederquistcom.blogspot.com/blog.xml.

The Beauty of Kale

2010-03-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

Often I revisit photos taken years ago, armed with new technologies to look at these images in a fresh way. I took this photo on a rainy day a few years ago in the wonderful kitchen garden at the Gustavus Inn, at the mouth of Glacier Bay. It stands well alone, but recently I've been playing with a Photoshop plug in called Topaz, which can create painterly effects, among other things. I ran the filter on a duplicate photo layer, added a bit of fine tuning with some layer mask work, and voila!

Photoshop Filters

2009-12-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

There are days when I feel like I live in Photoshop, yet even after so many years of using this software I feel like I know about 10% of the program. Take Photoshop plugins, for example. The plugins that come with Photoshop (once part of a stand alone system of filters called Gallery Effects) are often problematic and not all that flattering. With a bit of tweaking you can bring them around, especially in conjunction with layers and blending modes. But life just keeps getting better and better.

There are thousands of great Photoshop plug-ins, but I'll name just a couple here. I love the Nik filters (added as plug-ins to your Filter menu) and use Color Efex Pro often. Recently I bought a set of Topaz filters that are great fun, giving some painterly effects without too much work.

The image posted here started out as a photo of a small manta ray from the recently renovated Seattle Aquarium. You can see its startling mouth and eyes, but I felt like it needed a bit of tweaking. I enhanced color with the Topaz Simplify Filter.

Mama Bear

2009-12-16T15:45:00.001-08:00

After some thought, I have decided to veer away from curmudgeonly opinions and stick to what I know best: photography. My thought is to post an interesting photo and give some background. This process will be intermittent, as I do have a life besides blogging.

I photographed this beautiful black bear mother and her two little cubs at Anan Creek, one of the best places in Alaska to see black (and occasional brown) bears. The U.S. Forest Services maintains this area south of the town of Wrangell and it is only accessible by floatplane or boat. For this photograph, I used an 80-400 Nikon telephoto (since swapped for a Sigma 150-500 because of the slow performance of the lens), and shot from a spacious viewing deck at the creek. This mom took good care of her babies, regularly bringing them salmon from the stream just below. I have visited here many times while serving as a photo tour leader for Dolphin Charters. Each time I take hundreds of photos of the bears as they swipe and dive for fish. It's always a fascinating sight.

Earth Abides

2009-07-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

I don't often post here anymore, but I just reread an aging, yellowed paperback, Earth Abides, by George Stewart, who in his day was an English professor at U.C. Berkeley. The book was published in 1947. Stewart was a somewhat aloof academic who with some prescience in this novel postulated a great plague that wiped out nearly everyone on the planet. In Northern California, particularly Berkeley, only a few people survived.

This book is not the stuff of the movies Mad Max or I Am Legend. The post World War II years were kindly, gentle, almost naive times in comparison to the bloodshed and terror that surrounds us now. There is almost no violence in this book, but instead one finds an interesting case study over several generations of survivors of devolving civilization, evolving cultures, rotting infrastructures and changing ecosystems. The protagonist is an anthropology grad student at Cal, who in spite of himself records and ponders the changes. He particularly agonizes over the loss of reading and math and occasionally wanders in the great Bancroft Library, looking at the millions of books ignored by the illiterate, primitive offspring around him.

This book would be very different if written today. Pandemics are a real, everyday threat, almost unheard of in 1946. Now, survivors would likely think with their guns first rather than look at more complex and long-range solutions. Agriculture, described in this book as slowly going away, overrun by weeds, would today implode rapidly with the loss of water and our dependence on hybridized, genetically modified, monocultural crops. And the weeds themselves are more voracious than ever, with star thistle, Himalayan blackberry, and the like.

Having spent a lot of time in Berkeley in recent years, this book is more real to me than ever. In some ways, Stewart describes a sort of utopia. Now, more than 60 years after the book was written, we know such an aftermath would hardly be that. Yet, it is interesting to dream and wonder how our generation would handle things.

The Times They Are A Changin'

2009-02-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

Wow, so much has happened in recent weeks. Our economy--and that of my home state, California--is in freefall, yet many of us carry on like nothing has happened. However, more and more of my friends are being affected. Hopefully we can carry on as a group, helping one another. Strength in numbers and all that. Perhaps we will devolve (or perhaps evolve?) to a subsistence society. I was recently reading some of my father's World War II letters and his memoirs of a visit to a remote French village. He talked of the villagers raising everything they needed. They were not dependent on the outside world at all, not even for infrastructure like electricity, getting all they needed from small hydro-electric systems. They even had a town crier. The war barely affected them.

Other letters talk about an Italian family that had lived in the same stone house for generations, again raising everything they needed. Decentralization might be a good thing, but perhaps not, as it would lead to political/religious factions. I don't pretend to have answers.

About the only thing I do know is that we are living in historic, life-changing times.

An Upside to the Down Economy

2008-12-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

There is a bright spot to the shaky economy: the weakening of credit card companies. I consider these companies to be one of the lowest life forms ever, preying on the gullible and then never letting go, sinking users in astronomical interest rates and late payment fees. Their strength is waning. How do I know? By the contents of my mailbox, which used to be stuffed with credit card offers. I can't simply throw these things in the trash. They must be shredded or burned, to prevent thieves mining garbage from getting critical information and opening up credit card accounts in my name. Blessedly, the avalanche of offers has slowed to a trickle.

Credit cards—and the consumers who find them too easy to use—are one of the weaknesses of our society. I am glad that they are suffering. I hope that consumers, however, will find an easier time of things soon.

The Numbers Game

2008-11-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted to my blog in a long time, but one aspect of my life is driving me crazy: numbers. A bit of perspective here: some years back I asked my elderly mother what her social security number was. She said, I have no need to memorize it, as I use it so seldom. She memorized a couple of phone numbers of friends and family, and that was about it.

Life is far different today. For example, just today I had to yet again redo my user name/password for accessing my computer at the college where I teach. I am required to do this pretty much every semester. That's just the beginning of the password maze. I have different user names/passwords for bank accounts, web access, and on and on.

These days, I have to memorize not only my social security number, but that of my husband's. Often when I go into a bank for an important transaction, the bored, gum-chewing teller asks, "The last four digits of your sowsh?"

And phone numbers? Not only do I need to remember my own land line numbers, but that of my cell phone (and of course, password to get into my voice mail).

I use my driver's license number so often for transactions that I have memorized it. I maintain a number of websites, and there are different passwords for each.

The numbers lists go on and on. And we wonder why we live in a stressful environment? C'est la vie in the twenty-first century.

Humanity and Inhumanity

2007-09-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I alluded to the trials of ancient Egypt, where a Pharoah tried to implement his high ideals some 3,000 years ago, with disastrous results. Man's inhumanity perseveres to this day. We see it now in Iraq and Afghanistan and Darfur. Hellholes like these will always be with us, as long as there is greed and want in the world.
But what of our humanity? Our daughter is now studying medieval literature in England. The cost of her education is putting a serious dent in finances, and to what end? When friends ask, I almost embarrassingly mention her field of study, but one wise woman friend, a teacher, put it so well. "She is carrying on civilization." Yes, we need our doctors, plumbers, carpenters, accountants and others; without them we could not survive. But what of the bigger picture? What about our humanity?
A cousin's son, the same age as our daughter, is now doing humanitarian work in Africa. Needless to say, his experiences have utterly reshaped his world view. A neighbor's daughter recently graduated from a top university with a degree in scientific ethics, a skill sorely needed in this rudderless time when GM foods and run-amok pharmaceutical companies are the result of corporate-driven funding. So there is hope. We may never solve the quagmire of Iraq and other hot spots, but we must always strive toward that higher humanity, no matter how futile it may seem. Many twenty-somethings are doing just that. We cheer them on.

Waging Peace

2007-09-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

I am just finishing rereading Finnish writer Mika Waltari's fascinating 1945 novel, The Egyptian, about ancient Egypt. Set more than 3,000 years ago, it chronicles the struggles of the all-powerful Pharoah Akhetaton, who decreed that Egypt would worship a peace-loving, monotheistic god, Aton. Pharoah pulled slaves from the mines, decreed universal literacy, refused to make war with his neighbors—in particular, aggressive Syria—and divided the wealth of the kingdom among rich and poor alike.
Disaster followed, with more bloodshed than ever. People starved, and civil war plagued the kingdom. There's a lesson here: a utopian society such as this won't work unless the people are already acculturated to the idea, and much careful groundwork needs to be in place before trying to institute sweeping reforms such as these.
Politicians promising earth and sky would do well to look to their history. It's not that easy, folks.

Going to the Mall

2007-06-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, way back in the 1970s, a big suburban mall was THE place to be. Here, at big department stores and boutiques, we shopped for prom dresses, back to school clothes and we gawked at art shows and other attractions in the mall's air-conditioned heart. Downtowns were dying, with one venerated business after another in cities' cores imploding from lack of business. The malls were the future. Or so we thought.
Yesterday I learned otherwise. I hadn't been to our regional mall in years, preferring mail order, outlet stores, or my favorite mom and pop shops. But my husband needed a certain brand of clothing only available from a certain mall anchor store, and so away we went, swearing at the traffic and the heat. Everything in the store was 60% off, which makes one wonder about pricing schemes. Clothing—most of it cheap, thrown-together stuff—boasted clothes-du-jour countries of origin: Vietnam (we fought a war over this?), Honduras, Bangladesh, and on and on. What kind of money do those garment workers make if I can buy an outfit for $30? I was paying prices like these 30 years ago and meanwhile gas and housing prices go through the roof. Something was very wrong with this picture. Depressing thoughts, but things got worse.
We went to the cash register with a few questions on styles and sizes. We utterly flummoxed the young cashier, who probably would have trouble qualifying for a job at a fast food eatery. Several other purchases in the same store provoked similar reactions from the sales staff. I tried on an outfit, but had to wait 20 minutes to get into a changing room, which was a chaos of hangars and clothing piles. The attendant was there for a couple of minutes when I first arrived, then just disappeared. A fresh coat of paint at the entrance showed crooked lines at a wall corner, indicating that whoever did the job had never heard of masking tape.
Later, hungry, we stopped at a food court. We ordered Japanese food, hoping for a few vegetables. The meal was almost inedible. A woman wearing a security uniform wandered in a desultory fashion, parking chairs and wiping tables.
As we left, angry at our lackadaisical mall treatment, we wondered what had happened to this icon of suburbia. I tried to put myself in the shoes of department store management and realized that their challenges must be immense. With the giveaway prices in the department store, the company probably can only pay minimum wages. And what do you get in California these days for minimum wage? Not much. With luck, the store might be able to hire teenagers who may or may not have graduated from high school, and of course, high school these days is something of a joke as far as real learning goes as teachers and administrators battle the multiple challenges of No Child Left Behind, competition from TV and video games, gang warfare and absentee/dysfunctional parents. The other low-end workers consist of immigrants who work their hearts out and cram together in crowded quarters so they can make the rent. California in particular these days is a place of the working poor, folks who sometimes work two and even three jobs just to make ends meet. Housing (with median homes in even "affordable" areas beginning at $500,000) in most parts of California is unaffordable for these folks.
Even college graduates struggle; the high cost of tuition has forced many of them into massive loans that take years to pay off.
So where do we go from here? I have no easy answers or quick fixes. Education, the long-term fix, is in desperate straits. Meanwhile the rich get richer, the poor—like our department store cashiers and food service workers—fall desperately behind, and globalization changes the economic face of our planet. The talk these days is of losing in Iraq, but we are losing in our malls—and our economic heart—as well.

2007-05-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

Simple But Effective

European settlers who encountered California Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries considered these indigenous people "primitive." Unlike the elaborate Haida, Aztec or Inca cultures, California Natives lacked the elaborate infrastructures of these civilizations. They didn't need it. An easygoing climate in much of California made for the simplest of lifestyles. Ubiquitous oak trees provided a rain of acorns, the staple food for these peoples.

A few days ago I had the privilege of watching the construction of a traditional Miwok "grainery," used to store acorns in the off season. The above-ground storage unit, capable of holding hundreds of pounds of the acorns, was a model of simplicity. Supervised by Diane, who learned the technique from her grandmother, who died at the age of 103, several strong young men stuck four poles several inches in diameter into the ground, anchoring them with rocks. The workers then crossed two strong grape vines about a foot from the ground, lashing them to the poles with strips of pine that had been soaking for hours. Then the group loosely wove thinner lengths of willow around these thick sections. As the acorns are added to the grainery, layers of insect-repelling plants are also added.

The process took hours. The builders took time off to eat, play with children, and visit with old friends. The building of this deceptively simple structure provided some important lessons: more is not always better; and relaxing into a project is sometimes a better way to get it done than trying to over-schedule.

The Miwok had it figured out.

2007-05-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hello world,

I've finally decided to enter the twenty-first century and do a bit of musing online with my first-ever blog. I've been a writer forever, it seems, but I've been a traditionalist, preferring paper to pixels. However, I'm seeing powerful, life-changing commentary online, so maybe there's something to all this.

My blog is called Thoughts from the Hills, a title I chose because it pretty much covers everything and anything. I live in a relatively remote area of northern California, and from my office window I see hills and more hills. I've lived here many years, and the area has changed much. Ozone drifts here from cities to the west. McMansions are sprouting on every hilltop. Large planned developments blast the sky with street lights, cutting down our nighttime star viewing.

Fortunately, much is the same. Red tailed hawks soar over nearby ponderosa pines. In our little herd of deer in the meadow that we call our front yard, bucks are just now sprouting their antlers. We planted our vegetable garden in soft evening light yesterday, adding peppers, beans, lemon cucumbers and melons to the already flourishing lettuce, radishes, tomatoes and squash.