Procrassion of the Species Photos

Microbio!!

Sharing photos should be instantaneous these days,

but I procrastinate, as usual. Here are a few more from the 2012 Procession.

 

More people said they liked the dandelions than any other creature. The seedheads and flowers were so beautifully crafted that a wave of smiles passed along the route as they walked by, smiling themselves. 

Lots of participants focus on the Species, but a few do something special with the Procession aspect. I've already given the insects their due in the expressive movement department, but this elken amble-lope stands out, and I applaud it. The curious gait of photographers is also entertaining--dash, pivot, crouch, shoot, turn, repeat. Over the years, I have more photos of Homo nikonensis than any other species.

 

 

 Other than belly dancers, I suppose. There are multiple troupes in every Olympia parade. Of course, they are only in the background of this shot, which is mostly about the hippies. One of my favorite species, meandering through jamming and blowing bubbles. Speaking of which, look at that shot again: There's an iridescent bubble centered on her hand,...as she's making a bubble!! Aligned for the instant it took to shoot the photo, never again to be, but eternalized. Blows your mind, don't it? But brothers and sisters, that's just the kind of magic that happens at the Procession.

 This shot, on the other hand, is an example of the kind of random mischief the camera can do. Now maybe today these guys might be pissed at me on account of my clear bias in favor of trombones, but on Procession day I swear they were not marching through town glaring at people. But I hit the button and shuttered out everything except the expressions they had at that minute, which looks like "I'm gonna drop formation and come beat the crap out of you!" I know these guys wouldn't do that. Not even to the girl who's blocking her ears to avoid hearing them. 

 Of course, there are some angry men in Olympia, or otherwise the Olympian newspaper 

would have nothing in the Comments section of every story, finding fault and flogging scapegoats. Like the guy at the left, clad in black and raising a fist. People wrote in ranting at the glorification of terrorism and the gall of the organizers to let a real terrorist march in the parade. Meanwhile, they seemed blithely unconcerned with the serious threat to our community posed by anonyms clad in cartoonish, polyester-furred animal costumes. I don't see an explosive vest on the man in black, but the animal suit guy or girl could pull it off, no problem. And besides, polyester is tacky, and that costume doesn't look home made.

Oops, there I go getting cranky; it's time to quit before I veer into zealotry. But not before showing you one last photo, of Thunder-drumming Guy. By bringing a fake storm, he kept the real rain at bay. Mahalo, dude.

Procession of the Trombones

A loop-de-loop anglerfish trombone.

One of my favorite parts of the procession is the brass. I take vicarious pride in the fact that our little town can marshal several marching bands with horns. It says something about a place that its people have the community spirit to band together and play in a parade without being in high school or even a uniform, necessarily. At least, not the kind of uniform most people think of for marching bands. Olympians walk to many drummers in bands of butterflies and fish. My favorite this year were the anglerfish, a creature who has appeared in many forms in every Procession I've witnessed. 


Besides the benthic headgear, they featured a trombone. The weird and wonderful trombone. Valves, trombonists don't need no stinking valves (although that too can be arranged), they slide right in to everything from classic orchestral maneuvers to burlesque innuendo and of course, the comedic wa-wa-wa-waaaaaah.


My fascination with this instrument goes back to early childhood, discovering the odd case in the attic in which lay my dad's high school horn. I never did learn to play it, but over the years the yellow glow of the bell and the miraculous versatility of the slide captured my imagination. Not enough to get me to follow in his marching band footsteps, but definitely sufficient to fixate on trombones in the sea of brass. For years, my favorite record of his was the one with "76 Trombones;" I'd listen, charged up, imagining rank upon rank of trombone.


There's something in the slide. Not pushing buttons like on those other horns, but exercising exquisite touch to hit the right notes, capable of being a little off if that's what works; like Hawaiians slacking the keys of their guitars the trombonist can expand what the horn can do. The flow from one note to another can roll smoothly, the air keeps flowing if the player keeps blowing, hills instead of steps. Liquid languidity is possible.


Or rollicking. Laughing. Outright craziness. There was this guy who would appear at punk rock shows in Richmond in the early '80s, trombone at the ready, jumping up on stage and unleashing manic solos. Trombone players tend to be the interesting ones even when they are not crazy, or at least that's how I imagine them. The guy willing to learn how to master the slide and take up the instrument for which so few songs are written must have something driving him other than a desire for acclaim and groupies. 


So here's to you, trombone players of the world. I salute you, especially when you ply your trade with an anglerfish on your head.

Procession of the...Monkey Butts

In the eternal contest of Man vs Ape, I think we know who wins the Booty Competition

A troupe of baboons wandered into the Procession of the Species. As they approached, I wasn't exactly sure what they were. Butt when they passed, asses aglow, I knew they had to be old world primates (American monkeys lack the sitting pads that some of their Afro-Asian kin have). 

And yeah, I know you're saying, "But Mojourner, couldn't they just be in estrus? Does a red ass always have to be a sitting pad?" To both, I answer, "NO." There may well be New World primates whose backside reddens when in heat (I am told that this is true of Michelle Bachmann, for instance), but most of the ones in the Procession were males. And male monkeys need no special signal to mount other males, that activity having never been stymied by biblical taboos, so red-ass would just be a waste.

[My spouse just walked in and asked if I was being productive. I read the above paragraphs and showed her the photo. She does not seem to think that this qualifies. In answer to which I post this next photo, which features a primate who appears to be farting. Classy.]

 

The Insect Sect: Procession of the Species 2012

 

This year marked the fourth time I've been to the Procession of the Species (I missed it one year, only because another sacred ritual needed performing elsewhere), one of Olympia's finest moments. Or, as my more conservative townspeople gripe: when the "freaks are out," a "polytheistic" display. They are right, of course, and I glory in it. 

Every year, there is some taxon or other that sticks out in my mind. Like the ferocious Rhinocerocitidae of 2008, or the Mycetozoans of 2011. This year, the Insecta Class graduated to the top. I recognized a few from before, but this year they stood out.

Besides some great, creative costumes on the outside, the mammals inside seemed to have embodied their insect species thoroughly, moving like the species they represented. The giant praying mantis was fluid, stilt-walking with threatening grace. The fly (below), buzzed frenetically from place to place, preening and head-turning just like a fly, hoping for one of the other creatures to drop dead or at least drop dung, I suppose. (Meanwhile, a dung beetle followed the white buffalo, knowing it would pay off eventually.) 

Silly bird, flamboyant feathers are no match for the Lord of the Flies

And the mastery of movement did not end there. A line of leaf-cutter ants marched along, taking time now and then to dance as ants are wont to do when the entomologists look the other way. And although it's not an insect, and it's dance was more that of an extremely mellow Chinese dragon, the centipede did damn well, considering all those legs it has to keep track of.

Ants dance in their pants

And of course, the monarch butterflies. A huge flight of them wrapping up the parade with a dance that was great, even if it did not feature them swarming a mineral-rich downtown puddle for a sip. I'd post a photo, but a bunch of people already have, and most are better than mine.

In 2012, the Procession walked with six legs. 

Something in the Air (KAOS)

It's that time again. After months of soggy-slumber lumbering through the dark, the days are long, Procession of the Species is nearly here, and plants are pumping out blooms and pollen, putting Spring in the air.

Meanwhile, on the air, KAOS. Recently voted Olympia's favorite station. The place we go for a morning wake-up un-marred by commercials, or jack-assedness, or Beltway speak. The place where you can tune into news and music from all over the world and right here in Olympia, without wondering how much it has been winnowed down to nothingness by corporations and professional pundits. 

You listen. You know no other station will carry this much commercial-free broadcasting, this much world music, this much native programming. 

But do you contribute?

I won't get into the whole list of reasons why you should join. Sure, you can get one of the new T-shirts or one of the indestructible mugs. Sure, you can pay off the donation by flashing your KAOS card around town and getting discounts. But maybe the best reason you should join is that the more people who are members, the better KAOS is able to protect this little patch of the people's airwaves from becoming part of the radio blandscape. 

There is strength in numbers. The more KAOS members there are (and it is incredibly cheap to become one; you can get your name on the list without a major sacrifice), the better the station is able to get other funding, and to hold off the various forces that would be happy to turn 89.3 into another outlet for voices that do not speak for our community.

The KAOSticians on and off air volunteer their time and produce outstanding programming that requires work far beyond the hours they put in on a show. Most of them also pay the dues to be members. They do their part, and we can do ours by calling them and saying good job, maybe putting in a request, and joining KAOS.

Do it now. Here.

Procrastination of the Species

 

Spring in Olympia. The cherries and daffodils are a-riot with blooms, buskers have migrated back to our sidewalks, and soon the Species will emerge from hibernation that they may Process. This last event is one of my favorite things about my adopted home, as various writings attest.

Last year, Oly Samba did the octopus thing. Somebody told me what they're doing this year, but I forgot, and besides, nothing quite captivates me like a cephalopod. And so in procrastinatory fashion, I have now completed a superfluous octopus. Not for the Procession, and for that matter not for anything. I don't need a reason to make an octopus, although I am just now realizing that maybe there should have been some thought put into what to do with it now that it is done.

Because, what do you do with a 6-foot octopus? Made of butcher block, so it weighs as much as a gross of actual octopi, and will be a shore to install, and a hanging hazard once it is up. Purple, with yellow and orange and electric blue stippling, not to mention day-glo orange suckers, so of course it goes with everything. For a few years now, I've had this dream (maybe scheme or half-baked plot would be more accurate) of staging a guerilla entry into the Arts Walk or Procession, but this thing is way too heavy to carry, and I'm not yet willing to drill holes in it and put in the giant bolts that would be required to put it up. I think it would be a nice addition to the Fishbowl brewpub decor, but do they?

Any ideas?

Neurons ablaze, Moctopus ponders his future.

Laid Low by High Fives

This past Friday, I took a day off work to be at my daughter's elementary school. This was under the aegis of a nationwide program to get dads involved in their kids schools, and to increase the presence of male role models, and although I am not much for taking part in pre-fab programs or role modeling, the idea of spending a day at her school sounded worthwhile. 

I've been around schools and teachers most of my life, but this may have been the first full day I've spent in school since graduating high school. (College doesn't count. Not because it's not compulsory, but because I don't think I spent six consecutive hours immersed in academe during the half dozen years it took me to finish. And I'm supposed to be a role model?) My conceptual appreciation for the difficulty of teaching and wrangling a couple-dozen kids all day was enriched by this does of reality. 


Even as I signed on to do this, pangs of fraudulency bounced around inside my rib cage. Moms go into schools all the time--the day I went in, I recognized one in the classroom as a regular and unheralded volunteer--but a dad goes in one day and kids are encouraged to give him congratulatory high-fives? This particular program has made national news, why? Even before showing up, school officials expressed gratitude that a dad would take a day off work (in my case, a day of paid leave) to participate in the raising of his own kid? Deadwood hangs around for a few hours, more likely interfering than helping, and is exalted?


I vowed to at least try and remedy that last part. Having a head-start, I figured, by having spent some time in elementary classrooms, I could jump in and engage, instead of being in the way. So I engaged the disengaged kid during math, graded spelling tests, nudged writers, managed 8 kids at a time making clay pots, played tag, helped in the library, and read a book to the class (exercising my cartoon-voice acumen). By the final bell, I felt like I'd actually done a few worthwhile things. Like maybe I deserved some of those high fives.


Oh, the high fives. That's where this post started, right? The kids had clearly been told that giving the dads high fives is a great way to show appreciation. At one point, I had a line of kids streaming by doing it. 


And therein lies the biggest fault of the program. People who know have described schools, especially elementary schools, as petri dishes because of all the germs being cultured, but they are far worse. Petri dishes occur in labs, controlled settings in which the growth of unintended species is deemed "contamination." Better metaphors for the germscape of a typical school might be: cuspidor, public toilet, community handkerchief,...you get the point. 


Most of the kids look clean, and of course they are cute and innocent at that age, but there's no escaping the fact that the practice of encouraging them all to slap palms with one individual is a choice to maximize infectious vectors, exceeded only by the shared hanky or having everyone drink from the same cup. Dozens of hands touched mine, each depositing its biota, each picking up a film of the bacteriologic soup teeming there. 


This is not just theoretical. The volume of stomach contents rushing out both ends of me yesterday constitute solid (uh, liquid, actually) evidence. I haven't been sick like that in many years. Having not been in a school for a while, my antibodies were on vacation, and I was slammed. I guess I have some immunity now that I didn't a week ago, along with the realization that when in an elementary school, washing hands every hour is a good policy (and maybe high fives are not).
 

Glad to be of Service

Just think, without this blog, what would the people searching these topics last week have done?

The Other White Album

There will be no image for this post. Imagine an old-school album cover, a canvas of slightly over one gross of square inches where record companies could visually present their product. If this worked, or if dumb luck smiled up a string of hits, then the band could do a Concept Album, complete with specially commissioned airbrush art.


So imagine a young punk's joy at flipping through a bin at Plan 9 and eyeing an album with no damn art at all. Imagine your fingertips treading to the Beatles' "White Album"  (blessed occular nerve relief from Sgt. Pepper's Gaudy Arts Club Band).

Now imagine that you are some lame old longhair, and that in another section of the store is some punk kid looking at a real white album. No words. No fucking advertisement for the band, and sure as shit no critics coming along later and using this marring of White Album-ness pretentiously, as in "Only the original vinyl was thus embossed. Other pressings are worthless...except for the music I suppose."


Furthermore, this blank expanse of non-ink contained within it more or less the legendary album (even when the Sex Pistols were only stale, not historic) "Never Mind the Bollocks." The punk boy knew this because the counter guy said so. So it was a bootleg! Young punk boy didn't know much, but he did know that buying a legit album would just hand money to wankers. Neither he nor the record store, I think, ever figured out that selling certain albums in unmarked sleeves would incentivise insecure customers' purchases.


The vinyl did not disappoint. Banter not on Bollocks (he did know that meant balls or something) appeared on this disc, and at least one song from the album (that grand old abortion ballad "Bodies") had gone missing. The quality was probably shittier than the commercially real thing. Most of the songs sound different, and young punk boy convinced himself that he had real recordings of the band, and not the over-produced crap in the House of McCLaren album cover. 

And so said album was not hidden in shame, culled, nor abused so badly that abandonment remained the only course. This week, that punk boy (now incapable of a mohawk) rearranged some things in the garage, got the phono simultaneously spinning and plugged in and not scratching the hell out of records. It had been two out of three the last time, but that was a crazy set-up on a table saw. Now turntable rested on a heavy slab o walnut on foam strips atop a surprisingly vibration-free freezer, an elegant blend of opportunism and mechanical physics.


He listened with dulleder ears than he had when this smudged and patina'd album was new, when digital recording was unheard of, groove ruled, and once you done scratched, ain't no going back. He cleaned the vinyl, and it looked pretty good, but antiquity popped, wowed, and fluttered through each side. Which was intense, in that fuzzed up preservation of something rough to begin with adheres to the ethos more than a digitally manipulated (is that a redundant phrase?) version available at vendors these days. 

Alas, it was also untense, slack and slow by the hardcore that supplanted American punks' British fadscination by 1980. Johnny Rotten's relentless tooth-hamming remained audible, sneering clearly after all these years while the bass was hard to pick up anymore, but maybe that just what happens to punk boy's ears after standing in front of PA stacks too much as a kid. 

Even if he cannot hear it right, the Sex Pistols canon is preserved, historicized (I've never seen so many notes on a wikipedian entry: 238 as of today), and curated. The Sex Pistols refused canonization by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few years ago, but they do still manage to cash in on their old man music. Meanwhile, God saved the Queen for a 50th and now 60th year of her reign, while Lydon still mugs for the camera for a few quid. 


Lost luster and ironic subsequencies didn't ruin the listen, though, and when the arm swung back to it's resting place and the turntable drifted to a stop, punk boy was a little less old man than he'd been half an hour earlier.

42 Day

I don't have a shot of 42 Day. Here's Hippopotamidae instead.

42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, according to a wildly popular series of books whose author says it was spur of the moment choice, that the number utterly lacks significance or meaning. 


Predictably, readers who are conspiracy theorists, inclined to religion or mysticism, or left-handed will act all sly and reply, "He's lying...He's a prophet (whether he knew it or not)...He's given us a game...42 really does mean something."


One of those afflictions is why I celebrate 42 Day, faithfully falling on the 11th day of February every year the earth keeps whirling round yon sun and the European calendar prevails. No Eastery shiftlessness, asserting its arbitrariness by refusing to be held to some solar or lunar anchor, 42 Day stays tucked safely in February before a Leap Day can throw it off. 42 is solid.


And yet shifting, un-pin-downable. A day for celebrating the joys of contradiction. For flouting devoutly. It commemorates all and nothing. However you may choose.

Maybe 7 people will read this post, and I wish you all a Happy 42 Day. May you enjoy it, and maybe again next year, but then forget it. To be too dedicated is against the spirit of the day, and procastination and lapsing are no prob. Although many people search "42" on the internet, this blog is snugly buried on results page 7 or 12 or 13 (or 42), and won't go viral. We need not fear that someone will take this seriously enough to get all religious about it. 


But just in case, I'd like to speak to zealous readers: I am neither devotee, disciple, nor prophet. 42 Day is just me messing around, and you should read nothing into it should you discover that Feb 11 was the very day I was born, or the Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance. Don't invoke 42 Day to whip up fervor, to separate the world into the faithful and infidel, to ascribe martyrdom and sainthood. And for Darwin's sake, don't worship hippopotomi. Try not to lose this last paragraph. 

Menehune Action

A recent discussion at Olyblog got me to thinking about civic responsibility, the roles of government and the private sector, and common sense. It started when someone said that the city had told them it was fine for folks to pick up wood from trees being trimmed and felled in the aftermath of a big storm. Then they posted again, saying that no, the City had informed them that this is not the policy. I chimed in with the opinion that it probably boils down to liability, and that city government must officially say no, lest every joker who hurts themselves comes looking for a big payoff.

But what really interested me was the next comment, from a resident of Legion street, where some beautiful but doomed oaks were damaged. Under normal circumstances, she said, the city crew would cut, and the neighbors would then come through and salvage the wood. But this storm hit too many trees, and a contractor was hired that proceeded to block access to locals, while allowing someone from out Delphi Road way to come in and load up with prime firewood. The commenter said she called the City, which said that no, the contractor was not entitles to the wood.

Yet again, we see how transfer of a government function to the private sector can devolve to piracy. I don't know whether the load of firewood is destined for the market, or just heating some guy's house. But I do know that putting up barriers and preventing the neighbors from getting a share is wrong. I also see that when all is said and done, private entities will have lined their pockets with government funds, even if they are not ripping off firewood, for work that some of the neighbors would have done for free.

When I lived in Hawai'i, and worked for a chronically cash-strapped government, we sometimes relied on neighbors. Sometimes they formed a group, and signed an agreement, and became official curators of a place. But just as often, they pitched in, doing at least some of what needed doing. This kind of work came to be known as "menehune action," a reference to the menehune, ancient Hawaiians known for getting big jobs done with amazing speed and prowess.

In modern tourism-dependent Hawai'i, the menehune have been cutesified and co-opted, turned into grinning big-eyed munchkins and pressed into service selling everything from keychains to bottled water. (Disclosure: Menehune water was my favorite, but more because I knew it came from deep below Halawa Valley than for the logo.) Long ago, Hawaiians themselves mythologized the menehune to some degree, noting their strangely short stature and ascribing to them incredible feats such as building fishponds and other massive public works in a single night.

I don't doubt the power of a determined group of hard workers unfettered by red tape, but there is at least a little of the phenomenon in which elites unaccustomed to manual labor exalt the physical ability of their laborers. The word menehune derives from Tahitian for commoners, the people who worked for the chiefs. Hawaiian lore, however, enriches this relationship with some complexities. For one, the menehune are often described as being the first people, or at least the ones who were in a place before the big Hawaiians and the bigger south sea chiefs. Also, no matter how high a chief, mistreating the menehune or ignoring their demands to work in privacy, led to them disappearing and not completing the job.

The secrecy of their work, often under cover of darkness, usually without tolerating non-menehune, survived in some of the menehune action I knew of. Where the state insisted on complicated and onerous work rules, volunteer labor sometimes evaporated like water on hot lava. Where the menehune saw something really needed to be done, and the officials were oblivious, it would sometimes mysteriously happen. Some of these officials knew exactly what was happening, their blindness was really just a long wink at their menehune partners.

Like the city guy who said take the wood. No City Official will say in print that people can come with saws and wedges and work in a right of way, but plenty of city workers know the deal, and wink or turn the other way as they drive past our own northwest menehune, cleaning the land and getting firewood.

The subject is rich, and I could go on, but it seems like now is a good time to go get some wood. The chiefs don't often work on Sundays, so I won't be bothered. I suspect that they'll be happy on Monday, judging from the number of other menehune I've seen this weekend.

building

Brittle-flex

 

The photo above is of ice on an apple branch. First, the branch caught snow and ice that stacked up on top, and froze there. And here, the next day, some of that ice has slipped and slung itself don below the branch. 


But ice is hard. When I whack it, or some giant branch comes crashing down, ice breaks like the glass it mimics. Crystal brittle fragility. Or, if it gets thick enough, hard and unyielding, unchanging if nobody turns up the heat.


Or speeds up the clock. Unimaginative reckoning of time traps our perception, makes us think things are solid when they are fluid, immutable when they are changing before our eyes. I've always had a weakness for the revelatory power of time-laps photography: a seed spreads her dicot to reveal a luscious tendril that becomes a plant. But with a little patience, the same can be seen without the fancy equipment. Glaciers flow, the hard little ice on an apple twig sags like a rope.

Or, the thousands of frozen shards cracked from a falling branch cascade like water, like in this shot (yeah, I know, it doesn't really show up). Hard pointillist frags conspire to produce a fuzzy flow. Then the virtual shutter of my camera freezes it into a cloud that will never move on. Of course, not even that is true: the file will degrade, pixels will disappear and move every time it is copied or re-saved. And by the way, your screen shifts everything a little to the right.

Stolidity becomes fluidity. Slow is not unchanging. Pieces become wholes and break up again. This post may be edited.