Art and the” Man Made Continent of Trash”, a Photographer’s Fantastic Story.

• Art and the” Man Made Continent of Trash”, a Photographer’s Fantastic Story.

I was in Seattle visiting my son and his girl friend and while waiting to go out and take in the sites of Seattle while they ran errands I read about Photographer Chris Jordan’s Photographic series “Running the Numbers One” in the Seattle Sunday Magazine. Jordan uses images to create matrix designs based on the numbers of things. An image of two large breasts popped off the page in juxtaposition to a detailed image of Barbie Dolls arranged in patterns that make up the larger view of the breasts. Jordan used 32000 Barbie Dolls to depict the number of breast augmentations preformed each month in the United States. When I got back to Montana I looked up Jordan’s website and found another one of his Fantastic Number Stories,

• “Gyre” 2009 by Chris Jordan, an image of a Great Wave made out of 2.4 million pieces of plastic that represents the amount of plastic that enters the world’s oceans every hour.

The image, made from plastic debris collected from the Floating Continent of Trash in the Pacific Gyre, is part of, Running the Numbers II, Portraits of Global Mass Culture another photographic series by Chris Jordan.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

• The Pacific Ocean Gyre contains a floating continent of Plastic debris estimated to be twice the size of the Texas.

I first read about the Gyre in a story about Captain Charles Moore who was on his way home from a sailing trip, from Hawaii to Los Angeles when he decided to cut across the area, little traveled by seaman on his way back to California.  Moore explains the Gyre as a Spiral that moves in a clockwise rotation created by ocean currents. The natural spiraling current traps debris and holds them in place. Moore estimates that plastic started showing up in the 1950s and has grown to an alarming size, thousands of miles across. The plastic floats submerged just below the surface of the water, undetectable from satellite images because of the reflection caused by the water.

• Garbage had historically broken down in the oceans until plastic came along.

Every year this new man made material increases its presence in the ocean and the Trash Continent in the Pacific Gyre grows. When I read the story, images of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty flashed in my mind about how the twisting currents of the Gyre worked on this manmade continent of trash. As I read more about the Pacific Gyre the more captivating, its relationship to the idea of entropy and natural systems is to me. This continent of trash is an unforeseen result of human behavior at work in the natural system. Un-natural materials discarded in a thoughtless manner now have grown to unimaginable levels that are affecting the eco system and sea life.

This Man Made Structure, this Continent of Trash is not only an extension of Smithson’s ideas about entropy it is at the center of the Chris Jordan’s idea of Global Mass Culture. Jordan helps us put into perspective the volume Global Mass Production through his imagery.

• As an artist I am struggling with the concept of such a large structure whose mass rotates in a natural form, the spiral.
  

But by reflecting on whirlpools and eddy’s in the river where I live I can envision such a fantastic structure created by the forces of nature. The image of such things takes me back to the late 1970’s Robert Morris installations where he used cotton fibers to create seas of cotton waste from the textile industry with mirrors calculated to continuously, reflect the surface into an infinite image of volume and mass. Morris was part of a group of process artists. (Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences, improvisation, and the liberating qualities of non-traditional materials such as wax, felt, and latex. Using these materials, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.) These ideas seemed radical in art, difficult to adjust our thinking too back in 1970s and 1980s. It clear now that the minimal and conceptual ideas of artists like Morris and Smithson is a reflection of the natural systems at work in our earth environment. Unintended or manufactured the only differences are intent; the results are mirror reflections of the outcomes, like Morris’s fiber and mirror installations and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Chris Jordan helps us to understand the Numbers by bringing perspective and Volume to the size of Global consumption.

• Out there off the coast of the Untied States in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is the result of a random occurrence of the accumulation of man made materials creating a New Continent of Floating Trash; a Floating, spiraling continent of Our Own Making; which will exist for an immeasurable measure of time.

Jordan’s Photographic images illustrate the fact that this new continent is sure to grow in mass and volume daily. It will grow unlike the Hawaiian Islands that Captain Charles Moore sailed home from, created by volcanic activity. Our New Continent will grow because of Human activity directly related to Global Mass Consumption without thoughtful contemplation of unintended results and because of our inability to understand the abstract ideas of volume and mass, our lack of understanding the numbers.

Links About:  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

Capt. Charles Moore Ted TV

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html

Chris Jordan on his Photography Ted TV

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html

Chris Jordan Website

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Man Made Continent of Trash a Fantastic Story by David Eubank February 2008

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story/

Want to have some fun use Google Earth

http://earth.google.com/

Just type in “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and see the size of our new continent and where it is located.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Earth Sculpture, Environment, Journalism, On Art, Politics, Trash , Charles Moore, Chris Jordan, Continent of Plastic, Enviro, Great Pacfic Garbage Patch, Pacific Ocean, Plastic in the Ocean

Is this the Beginning of Another Cold War?

Wen Jiabao

The New cold War is Not with Russia and Not an Arms Race. This time the opponent or opponents will be the nations that reach long-term sustainability first. The opponent will be the nations that address their countries Energy, Education, Infrastructure and Healthcare.

 

 

 

This morning as I watched the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao speak at a Chinese National Press Conference aired on CSPAN I realized that the Cold War of the future is going to be about the very issues President Obama is trying to set as a national policy and the direction for the future. Premier Jiabao addressed what China needs to do to maintain its economic sustainability and how China plans to do it. He identified Healthcare Reform, Infrastructure, Education, Energy and Financial Responsibility with Appropriate Regulation, Oversight and above all Transparency. Premier Jiabao made it clear at least to me that the need to address all of these issues now and in the long term is the trump card for the rest of the century. If China or any other international power is going to be able to sustain their global presence in the future, they have to fix these problems to be competitive. I am sure Premier Jiabao is looking at the ambitious Obama plan and sees his country’s adversary in the race for a sustainable economic future. He who creates a sustainable system wins and all others will be out of the race if they fall too far behind.

 

Being competitive in the Global Market Place not only requires intuitive insight and smart business management it requires a vision of the playing field projected far out into the future. It seems to me that this is a difficult abstract idea for many of our political leaders. (I will use this to get an Art Dig in) Maybe those politicians should have had more exposure to the Arts. The Arts help teach Abstract Concepts.

 

At issue, here in America is the idea that we do not need to look forward into the future and address issues that are going to maintain a sustainable future as President Obama is suggesting. But that we need to only address the current crisis as the Presidents detractors suggest.

 

The question I am asking is this, if we do not address our long term sustainability now, if we wait to begin the reforms in Healthcare, Education, Energy and Infrastructure will we fall to far behind those who understand the competitive importance of such ideas.

 

If America fails to take on the tough challenge to create real sustainable competitiveness we will fast become the New Third World. The future is like a Freight Train rolling down a 6% grade and nothing is going to stop it from arriving at the bottom of the hill.

 

An Effective National Healthcare Program would give American business not a competitive edge but a level playing field. We are the only major industrial power on the planet that has failed to address National Healthcare. We are the only MIP that does not have National Healthcare. Just look at the legacy benefit structure of GM compared to Honda or Toyota. Don’t you want a healthcare system that will allow you access without the fear of bankruptcy. 

 

Energy, do I really have to say anything here. Our over use, inefficiency and dependence on foreign sources is a disaster. America failed to act three decades ago because the future was too far away to be concerned, well tomorrow then is here today.

 

Where would we be today if we had taken the steps forward President Carter wanted to take on energy, instead of taking the convenient political road the industrial corporate complex lead us down with the help from politicians?  What if we don’t take the road President Obama is proposing to us now, what will our children and grandchildren write about us? Will they be able to write?

 

Education Reform will create the intellectual capital to ensure a competitive edge. If America falls behind and our children cannot gain the intellectual skills necessary to address the future we are Doomed. Every child deserves by right an education. Our competitors understand this, just look at that rise of China, India and the Middle East. They all invested heavily in education of their populations over the last three decades. That is why they are at the forefront in Energy, Industrial Production and Technology. They educated their workforce.

 

National Infrastructure not only includes Bridges, Roads, Dams and Buildings it also includes a Healthcare System an Education System and Energy System along with an Agriculture System a strong sustainable Monetary System a viable Cultural System and a National Security System. I know I have left other important areas out of the statement, you fill in the blank.

 

All of these issues are interconnected and they all need to be addressed now.

 

Let’s look at National Security. I would make the argument that every area I have mentioned is a National Security issue and every area plays a major importance in our National Security.

 

You may think that National Security is about protecting us from known and unknown enemies, while this is true the statement does not define the word enemy. While we search out Terrorists, we failed to search out the Bacteria in Peanut Butter that killed many Americans and sickened many others. The result was not only devastating for the victims it was also the largest product recall in American History that caused untold financial losses to American Businesses as the Peanut Butter made its way throughout the American Food Chain in a time a economic crisis. Food Safety is National Security and Infrastructure.

 

My point is this; America has a very large and complex system that requires a complex infrastructure with oversight and forward planning. It is just too big for the quick fix that would make a lot of people and politicians happy. The truth is we need consistence, persistent holistic measures to address a sustainable future.

 

The problems we face today usurp Politics and require courageous sustainable leadership.

 

Now I am going to go make a PBJ for lunch, well maybe not.  

 

Turn Off FOX and Tune into CSPAN       

 

 

Chinese Premier Worried about Investments in U.S. Washington Post Article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031300006.html

 

Filed under: Environment, Journalism, Media, Politics, Uncategorized , China, Cold War, Doom, Economy, Global Economy, Obama, Wen Jiabao

The New Age of Sputnik

Digital Montage by David Eubank

Iran launched a satellite the other day that has gone mostly unnoticed compared to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1959, but make no mistake about the significance of this technological Madness.

The launch is a clear escalation; an intended demonstration of power and real danger. It is an ‘in your face’ threat to the civilized world that few realize. We have been desensitized today about the real danger of nuclear destruction now that the cold war is over, but the reality is a Clear and Present Danger.

For most of my life, I have been interested in The Bomb.

Nearly fifty years ago now, I paid my fifty cents and entered a world of madness, a world of Mutual Assured Destruction at a carnival sideshow in Ohio. Hiroshima, a movie along with photographs of what the first Atomic Bomb had accomplished, was the show. Now as I look back and create a timeline in my mind I realize that Hiroshima was recent history at that time– only fifteen years earlier. The Bomb was real; it was part of the living memory of anyone over the age of fifteen. The images of Hiroshima were forever burned into my mind. Especially when we practiced Air Raid Drills in school. Maybe you have seen the pictures of such drills, where all of the students either get under their desks or go out into the hall and crouch down with heads down in protective postures. I went to grade school in an old stone building. The basement in fact was a designated Bomb Shelter. When the alarm would sound, we would all go very orderly, in single file, down into the basement of the school. I remember the long cavern-like hallway down there, no windows, constructed of reinforced concrete and massive stone. We would get down on the floor, our heads down facing the cavern wall until the all clear sounded. Back then, in the fifties, Bomb Shelters were everywhere, in almost any structurally reinforced concrete building. Those little Black and Yellow signs (some are still around today) identified safe places to hide from the bomb. After I saw the Hiroshima pictures, I knew that down in that Bomb Shelter, there would be no hiding. The invention of the Hydrogen Bomb upped the ante 10 fold and as Sputnik circled the earth blurting out it’s faint beep, we all knew, even the children, that death awaited humanity, if humanity still existed. Just ask anybody who grew up in the fifties. Just watch some of the old movies like On the Beach or Dr. Strangelove that today are bizarre; almost unbelievable snapshots of the danger we faced then and still face today. Only today, we all seem to believe the danger has passed.

My interest in The Bomb never waned; I watched every movie and read everything I stumbled across about the inevitable nuclear Holocaust. It was in the late seventies that I got my real introduction into the subject of Nuclear Strategy. I was in my last semester of college; I needed a social science credit to graduate. As an art student I really didn’t care for most of the courses offered, it was just another petty annoyance on the road to an art degree. Then I saw a course in the catalog: Nuclear Strategy. My advisor said the course would work, so I signed up. I thought this will be more fun B movies, but I was mistaken. On the first day of class, I walked into a room full of very clean cut military officers and political scientists. I can assure you I was the only longhaired hippy in the room and all eyes were on me. The professor was best described as a man in black. He was a well-dressed stately looking man, who I can now say was serious, extremely intelligent, kind and surely had a warped sense of humor because he invited me to stay. Professor David Lauscher, called me aside as he was handing out our reading packages at the end of class. He explained to me that the course was the real deal and that it would be a lot of work for anyone not up to speed. I felt like a donkey running the Kentucky Derby compared to the other students in the class who were serious professionals. After the professor and I talked a little more I assured him I would keep up with the required reading and briefings and that I was serious about learning; he encouraged me to continue. The reading load was incredibly difficult, the most difficult in all my years in college including graduate school. The volume included declassified defense department briefings, studies and history on Thermal Nuclear War. We studied how we as a nation arrived at our current Nuclear Policies and Strategies. We read Machiavelli’s, The Prince and Herman Kahn on Thermal Nuclear War and we studied their ideas in relation to current policy. We studied targeting strategies, damage predictions, and the importance of delivery systems. The information was sobering, frightening. Any hope for a satisfactory outcome to a nuclear confrontation, an actual nuclear war, was at best impossible. At worst, a nuclear war would mean the end of the human race. Machiavelli’s principles of deterrence lead to the current policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, (MAD). Simply stated, both sides said you will be totally destroyed if you attack and the stalemate of the Cold War was founded.

This one idea maintained the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States. Dooms Day, the stuff of B movies, was reality.

The Berlin Wall still stood and the British were engaged in the Falkland’s War with Argentina. That war was the first time modern weapons and modern delivery systems were tested in battle. Images of smart bombs and accurate missile guidance systems that can acquire targets became reality. The idea that a small rogue country who could acquire the technology and a delivery system and would emerge as a new nuclear threat was also reality. The professor predicted that in the future this new threat would become our challenge in the future and would require a very different policy than MAD. You see the balance of power between Super Powers was altered by Argentina. They had gained the ability to challenge a much greater force with limited technology and inflicted serious damage. Britain could have just wiped the Argentineans off the face of the earth, but that would have been a disproportionate use of power. The idea emerged that if a small country got the bomb and could deliver it, they would hold the upper hand in a conflict. Why? Because even though they could be ultimately destroyed, everyone else would still be here and have to deal with a 911 event of biblical proportions.

The hard part is not acquiring the bomb; it is delivering it to a target.

With nuclear weapons you don’t have to be accurate you just have to be in the neighborhood. Therefore, as the professor pointed out then, if Argentina decides to commit suicide and say attack San Francisco we could do little but destroy them and mourn our loss. Where as with the USSR, we would all be gone, as would they. In addition, we would have to consider destroying an entire country where many innocent people would die to deal with a rogue political leader. However, we all have leaders who pilot the car and we all go along for the ride. As you can see, things can get out of hand very fast.

The Iranian Sputnik is a clear demonstration that they have a delivery system and is a serious escalation in threat strategy.

They are now entering the realm of the possible along with North Korea who many believe have achieved the ability to strike a target in the Western United States. The North Koreans plan to launch an ICBM test soon according to news sources. I can only imagine what Dr. Lauscher would say, “I told you so”. He predicted more than thirty years ago the situation we face today would be our future if the then Soviet Union and we did not act to stop the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Well we failed to act then and now the future of the past is our present. Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel, the decentralized former Soviet Union and now Iran are threats. China has grown into a Super Power with the Bomb and the United States and Russia face new threats from many small nations. We no longer face a single enemy or a single threat and if things get out of hand, it is going to be very bad for all of us. The fact is the collective old Nuclear Powers have not developed a new strategy to address these new threats. In fact the Old School Powers (including us) have escalated, proliferated the technology for political and financial gain over the last three decades.

We have entered into a game of chess between Super Powers where small countries are the chess pieces. Control in the game is an illusion. Leaderships change as in Pakistan, as in Iran, as in North Korea and new players do not follow the old rules. They bring different ideologies, religions and different agendas than their predecessors. Without rigorous evolving policies, the world takes another step closer to the unthinkable. Perhaps it is as simple as human ambition and the thirst for individual power. If you want to sit at the big table, you have to have the Bomb.

The other big item in the news is the new Antimissile System, a missile shield scheduled for deployment in Europe; Russia is opposed to the deployment.

For decades, we had an ABM Anti Ballistic Missile treaty with the Russians. An ABM system could disable enemy missiles and give the opponent the edge in a nuclear exchange. This was destabilizing to the MAD doctrine because if you knocked down enemy missiles you might survive. However, today because of the widened threat, we seek that additional protection not from Russia, but from smaller enemies. The Russians sticking to current strategy see the New ABM system as a measured escalation, a threat as it is according to doctrine.

The final threat that my old professor predicted was non-state attached enemies, i.e. Terrorists, as we know them today.

These enemies are not part of a recognized government. They have no diplomats, no homeland soil to protect, and no fixed infrastructure to attack and destroy. They operate outside of the rules and they are organized. 911 was proof that they can cause great damage and we were unprepared to deal with not only the threat, but also our response. Our policies and our doctrine at the time lead us to take action against Iraq instead of Osama Bin Laden. Why? Because we are unprepared to deal with non-state sponsored aggression, we just had not really thought out what to do. Iraq was a convenient and logical target. They were an aggressor and we knew the address. As misinformed as our leaders were, they believed that Iraq was a host nation to our new enemy. Without a clear doctrine to guide them, our leaders made critical mistakes as they tried to restore the balance of power.  We face the same problem with small countries that have the Bomb. What is the proper response? Certainly Iraq should prove one thing. We are unprepared to deal with a nuclear aggressor like North Korea or Iran. If Iran gets the Bomb and decides to go suicide, we will be left with few options other than total destruction of a people or do nothing. If Iran chooses to proliferate nuclear technology to the terrorists, again what will be the response? Iran may in fact pose a larger threat to Europe, Russia and certainly Israel and the Middle East. Even if a nuclear conflict were isolated to the region, the effects would be felt worldwide as radiation spreads through the atmosphere creating poison air. Not to mention India and Pakistan where millions, even billions, would possibly die in a nuclear exchange leaving the rest of us to slowly die from radiation fallout.

Finally, soon the United States and Russia will begin new talks to reduce our nuclear arsenals.

This perhaps will be another step forward– an opportunity to develop a policy, a doctrine to deal with nuclear proliferation. It is hard to tell Iran you can’t have the Bomb when we have so many. But to change, to go back to a time when no nuclear weapons existed will take trust and confidence and a global effort. It probably isn’t in the cards anytime soon. As they say, it is hard to put the Genie back in the bottle.

The New Age of Sputnik has arrived and we as a species need to find a solution to maintain peace because the other options are impossible.

If you think Global Warming is a threat, the day someone starts launching nuclear-armed missiles you will wish for a little problem like too much carbon in the atmosphere! Yes this situation is serious, far more so than the media reports. Perhaps we have all became just too desensitized to the threat. Iran’s President continues to call for the destruction of Israel. The reasons why Iran hates Israel are complex and require super diplomacy to find a solution. If the world powers cannot convince Iran to stand down their nuclear program and seek peace, Iran will force Israel to act before Iran has a bomb, if the escalation continues. It is a dangerous game and the motives seem insane. From a strategic point of view, it would be better to defend one’s country before the enemy has overwhelming power. This is the idea that led us to preemptively invade Iraq. Even though as it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, our leaders believed there were.

I had an office in Tucson back in the nineties; it was in a row of old railroad houses converted into offices. The building manager Al had a little office at the end of the block. I don’t recall why I went to see him, but I remember it was my birthday, August sixth. Al looked sad and as we talked, he told me about his war experience. Al had arrived in the Pacific just before the end of WWII. A couple of days after he arrived we dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Soon after the Japanese surrender, he was sent to Hiroshima to provide aid to the victims the vast majority civilians, women, children and the elderly. Al’s face told the whole story; the horror of his experience was in his eyes. Al struggled with the why for all of his days. He said he just had to believe we dropped that bomb to save lives.

Have you ever wondered why there are no longer any Bomb Shelters in American cities?

I have been making art about The Bomb for more than thirty years now and as new members seek or join the nuclear club, I add them to my work.  I use monsters like Godzilla because he, like Frankenstein, is a result of science. They represent the uncontrollable creations of men that have not asked the right questions of nature.  Monsters created by ego and the need for power without fully understanding the consequences and human behavior. We may never evolve to a species that can fully answer these questions because we may destroy ourselves before that can happen.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5655143.ece

Related posts by David Eubank

How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-philosophical-cinema/

Monster the Bomb and Modern Art

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/monsters-the-bomb-and-the-development-of-modern-art/

This February 4 2009 Times Article is a well-written synopsis of the evolving strategic situation.

"I Have Become Death"

Filed under: Art, Art News, Environment, Journalism, Media, News, Nuclear War, On Art, Politics, The Bomb, Uncategorized , Nuclear Power, Sputnik, Iran Nuclear Program, The Bomb, Weapons of Mass Destuction, Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, Atomic Art, Neclear War

Swimming with Water Wings in the River Styx

Guest Contributor

Jacob Eubank is a Photographer and Writer Living and Working in the Greater Seattle Area.

By Jacob Eubank

Gallery Photographs  http://www.jacobeubankphotography.com/ltgrant/

Swimming with Water Wings in the River Styx

On December 10, 2007, my father and I embarked on a journey that would take us across much of the Western United States. Just over a year ago, looking back provides an interesting perspective. We were certainly in different times.  Driving southward through Washington and the Oregon Coast our minds were focused on the devastation caused by tremendous rain and wind that occurred in the first weeks of the month.  Our trip was made possibly only because Interstate 5 had reopened only days before our departure. It had been closed due to flooding. Elsewhere in the country millions of people were struggling to keep their families fed in the midst of one of the worst series of ice storms that have hit the central United States in over a decade. It’s interesting to have come full circle, because as I’m writing today the waters are again receding. Now the second year in a row that I-5 has been closed due to catastrophic flooding. Nearly every river in a hundred mile radius was above its banks for three to four days. The conversations I have nearly everyday with neighbors and people who share my community are eerily similar to the conversations that transpired in the first days of our trip. Nobody can quite seem to recall the weather being this extreme in the past twenty years. It was only three weeks ago that we had over a foot of snow chocking the roadways of the greater Seattle area.  This snow stayed on the ground for over a week. It is undeniable that this is irregular. On our long drive to California, we thought much about this. Our leading scientists have concluded that even if our climate were on a normal rising cycle, humanity has still made an impact, and has accelerated this process beyond its normal pattern. Before December 2007, the Oregon Coast had never had a storm on record that had produced Category 3 Hurricane force winds. As we left Oregon and arrived in California adjusting our route to take us through Sacramento, we couldn’t help but see the extraordinary challenge that faces every one of us around every corner.

In Salem, OR I found a need for earplugs due to my fathers boisterous snoring. As I walked into the lobby of our motel I inquired with the clerk at the front desk where I might acquire such a thing. He responded kindly that I could just run over the Wal-Mart across the street. Perhaps I’m foolish and have just been too far removed from an automobile society living in the walk-able city of Seattle, for I took his words literally. As I started walking in my pajamas and flip-flops, I found out it was quite more than just across the street. In all, I ended up walking across roughly three quarters of a mile in each direction. My trek was across many vast parking lots.  As I walked I was reminded of one of the neighboring towns where I spent many days as a growing teenager. In the town of Kalispell, there used to be a thriving downtown. Many small independently owned businesses lined the streets; there was quite a lot of diversity for such a small community. Bookstores, art galleries, and many other attractions filled in around the Historic Hotel and saddle and tack store that remain relics of a time before ours. The last time I had come home had been quite the culture shock. I’d been away for almost a year, and upon arriving again it was as I had landed on Mars. In downtown Kalispell where Highway 93 shares the title of Main Street, roughly 40 percent of the business spaces were empty with signs of for lease availability in their windows. It has now been replaced with a development not unlike that of Salem. What once used to be flowing fields of wheat is now covered by asphalt. The aquifer that lies underneath it, which was once pure, untainted glacieral melt water ten thousand years in the making, is now forever linked to those parking lots. Those sewer drains that permeate the surface now carry all of the debris and carcinogens that fall from our vehicles, straight down to that very aquifer.

The next morning as we got back on the interstate with our headings towards Sacramento, the extent of how reliant we are on our automobiles for everything. The amount of cars on the road was staggering. I thought Seattle was terrible for traffic when I first moved there, and upon seeing Sacramento, I couldn’t imagine what Los Angeles is like. The connection between our reliance on the automobile, and our increasingly extreme weather patterns were becoming more unpredictable had become undeniable for me. I felt it was shameful that so few people could realize the true gravity of this situation.

California brought many other realizations as well.  As you come over the mountains in Northern California, you pass through Redwoods National Forest. This is one of our last great old growth forests in the United States. In 1991, nearly two decades ago, the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry concluded that less that six percent of our forests consist of old growth. The tragedy found in the story of the American Redwoods is that there are no old growth Redwood Forests that exist any longer outside the gates of protected land. In just under a hundred and fifty years a once thriving and ancient forest was reduced to near exhaustion. A forest thousands of years in the making disappeared in just over an average persons lifetime.  This again hit home for me. Where I spent much of my youth was in the shelter of a similar forest. In the many acres that compose Glacier National Park, reside pockets of some of the oldest growth cedar that is found in Montana. In the past year, the forest that surrounds these protected lands has shared virtually the same tale. Over the last several years the community in the Flathead Valley has felt the same critical stress our forests of Northwest Montana have. As harvestable timber has become consumed faster than it can replenish itself, the radius in which retrieving that wood has expanded.  For a short time this business model was sustained by the creation of several trucking companies in the area to haul the materials the extra distance.  Slowly but surely though, those additional forested areas became thinned out, and the bubble burst. It quickly became apparent to these business owners that it was no longer cost effective to haul these immature logs as far as they were. As the logging industry began to collapse, larger corporations swallowed up the failing smaller independent sawmills, thus ensuring their business another few months at a time. Last week, Plum Creek, one of the largest timber companies in the country was for the first time forced curtailed its operations, by shutting down its MDF plant at its Northwest Regional Headquarters. This was one of the last large production lines that had remained open over the last several years. It is a huge blow to the community who had relied on Plum Creek as a reliable source of income. Now, with the environment at the edge of falling into chaos, the real costs are falling into the light. The cost of taking our forests in these ways is being set into the lap of “we the people.” It also threatens the species native to these old growth canopies. Disrupting the balance of biodiversity has wide and long-term effects. It leaves our forests prone to disaster, with nothing left standing to keep the balance. In the last decade there have been numerous naturally occurring events that have had huge consequences as there simply were and are not sufficient numbers of trees standing to survive these events. From bacterial and viral diseases such as Red Blister Rust that effects the ever becoming rare white pine trees, to invasive beetles that destroy the bark of several other species of pine to the point at which the trees atrophy and die. The point that kept resurfacing for us came again and again; what will the ultimate cost of our modern expansion be?

Within a day of leaving Sacramento, we finally arrived in Death Valley. In the middle of the night we drove into our first unobstructed view of the night sky either of us had seen for some time. As we parked the car in the middle of the highway and shut off the lights, darkness set in. I lit a cigarette and turned my eyes to the sky. Moments before, we had finished a conversation that led us to stop the car. We had been talking about the nature of the sky and the stars.  We had been focused on the central theme of how many people have never seen a night sky like we were experiencing. Many of the friends I had made since arriving in Seattle had spent their entire lives in the city. This was something I couldn’t imagine myself. So upon this realization, we stopped the car and got out.  As I inhaled my first drag and blew the smoke out through my nose, a giant green fireball tore across the sky. Death Valley really is incredible for one great reason in my mind. At night, you have an almost perfect 180-degree dome view of the sky. As this meteor rumbled over us, we were able perceive the curve of our atmosphere. The brush and dry cracked desert that it scoured were lit up with the green glow we all experience in the momentary flashes on July Fourth, except this lasted for seconds. As the light faded and we were plunged back into darkness we looked towards each other and just chuckled and simultaneously exclaimed, “Whoa…!” We finished our cigarettes and continued driving until we reached Stovepipe Wells. That night we spent many more hours under the night sky, reconnecting with the world our ancestors saw 10,000 years ago.  I went to bed that night after a few Johnny Walkers with the thought of how great it is that this truly special place has been set aside. The next day would prove to surprise me once again.

Furnace Creek is an interesting place. It is the second of only about five places in Death Valley where drinkable water has been found by drilling a very deep well. This is because the valley floor used to be an ocean, so the only water on the surface is full of salt, and therefore cannot be consumed. What we found in the late afternoon was something I never expected in a National Park. We pulled into the gas station furnace wells and as we filled up the car we surveyed our new surroundings. There is a small lodge and a few private residences fill the rest of this small settlement. In the middle of it all though, there were hundreds of Date Palms.  I’m not kidding, palm trees in the middle of a place that gets less than two inches of water a year. It was even more disheartening to discover their long established golf course. For decades now they’ve been pumping the little water in their special aquifer and using it to maintain that perfect green turf. I’m sorry, but I firmly believe Death Valley is no place for a golf course; A golf course in a desert like Death Valley offers as much purpose as making popsicles in an oven.  I was truly shocked to see that the NPS would allow non-native species to be planted within the boundaries of the park. The entire purpose of the NPS is to keep these wildernesses pristine. The golf course was just insult on top of that, a complete mockery of the design we have made for our special places that need to be preserved.

We explored the valley floor for a while longer, and had to make our way on home to Montana. The road out of Death Valley that we took led us on our way back North through Las Vegas. Our entry to the city of lights was the defining moment of our realization that has brought us to this project.  As you drive in or out of Las Vegas, on each end of the city you’re greeted by two separate power plants, one of which burns coal to generate electricity to run all of those sparkling lights that make up the Vegas Strip. We couldn’t help but think about how out of harmony we are with our planet.

Our drive continued through Utah, Idaho, and ended in Montana. Through the last leg of our trip we slugged along processing all that we had seen. Deciding we needed a rest, we took up residence in the lodge at Chico Hot Springs, MT.  It was the perfect end to our journey into the unknown.  In Chico, a few year round employees run a small lodge, the hot-spring pool, and a greenhouse and garden. During the summer months the community central to Chico grows their own food in the garden, much of it ending up used in the lodge’s restaurant. In the winter, they are able to maintain their comfort foods that normally would be out of season. They have a greenhouse that utilizes the hot mineral water to generate enough warmth in the soil for anything they want to grow.  They actually maintain an avocado tree year round, and are able to harvest that fruit in even the coldest winter months. They certainly have found a sustainable, low impact way of life in Chico. They don’t take more than is needed off their land, and because of such, will be able to benefit from the natural beauty of the hills and mountains of south-central Montana into the future. This was a glimmer of hope in the wake of such an incredibly desperate time in our history. The challenge is enormous; it is a scale of such magnitude that it will take the cooperation of people across the globe. Our trivial disputes of borders, religion, colors, and many of the things that make us different must stop. Without a decisive move on a global scale to abandon or alter our current trends and ways of life, we are all going to be recipients of the repercussions. If we continue to saw down our forests, pollute our air, destroy our clean water, and poison our land, our planet is going to become a harsh wasteland that is uninhabitable. This is the cost of our expansion. Many of these precious few resources that are still harvestable are dwindling. Much of the material is wasted in inferior quality design, the by-product of which is cities that are devastatingly impaired when it comes to surviving natural disasters.  If we keep expanding at our current rates, there will not be enough left to make it through another century before we consume everything on this planet. The degradation we see in the Western United States has only occurred in the last hundred and fifty years, and it’s speed grows exponentially every day. What is going to be the legacy we leave for the next two generations? With the changes that have occurred in the lifetimes of my father and his father, if this arrogant design that is the way we live is allowed to continue, there may not be much left in the world of my future grandson.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Photography, Politics , Climate Change, Columbia Falls, Death Valley, Environmental News, Hurricane Winds, Jacob Eubank Photography, Kalispell, Montana Artists, Photography, Seattle Photographers, Washington Artists, Washington Flooding

Living on the Edges of 2012

Plum Creek winter 2007

Living on the Edges of 2012

A cold damp wind blows across my face; it burns the eyes, as I look toward a sky empty of artificial clouds of steam and smoke that once dominated my view of the valley where I have lived for the last 13 years. Today only, a passing car breaks the silence, as the constant hum of Plum Creek one of the largest sawmills in the Northwest is quiet. The sound of nothing is deafening and suddenly frightening. The mill had operated seven days a week working three shifts, seldom was there ever a break in the clouds of smoke and steam. The economic collapse that has rocked America has arrived in Columbia Falls is a small town of around 5000 residents known as the industrial heart of Northwest Montana with a stunning blow to our small community.  Plum Creek is one of the largest timber corporations America. They are also one of the largest landowners in the country only second to the Federal Government here in Montana and they are in desperate trouble. The demand for wood products have ceased with the collapse of the housing bubble.

My mind wanders as I listen to nothing this morning. I think about Last year 2007.

It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley. It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate change. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road, lined with trees torn out of the ground, snapped off mid trunk as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides flooded; devastated the small towns along the west coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm dominated the news like Katrina but the damage was impressive, severe. We stopped to take pictures and walk on the beach in Oregon. You would hardly know that only a few days ago the ocean covered shoreline up to the first stories of homes and hotels along the beach except for the line of debris that had been contained along the sea walls. People were collecting wood scattered by the storm, building fires to warm themselves as they waited for the sunset. A man was moving big logs on a stairway that led up to a patio at one of the hotels, was asked him how all those logs got there. He told us about the storm and that he had never seen the water come up as far as it did water pushed by a weeks worth of hurricane force winds. He told us how the town of Oceanside had been cutoff with no escape by tidal flooding that blocked the roads. He told how the residents banned together to help each other and share food and whatever else they had.

As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot, about the effects of coastal flooding we had witnessed and changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not. We talked about the Mayan calendar and the Hopi prophecies http://www.geocities.com/whitecrystalmirror/prophecy.html that predict and end to this phase of modern civilization in 2012. We talked about how these prophecies might play out, how this might happen. Would natural disasters like Katrina, Oceanside or the results of climate change, play a role in the end of modern civilization? Or would our behavior today as a society be the catalyst for failure.

After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark. Night comes early in December.

Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road, where no artificial light could penetrate the darkness except the headlights of the car that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. Turning off the car and headlights, we got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle.  As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? “What the Fuck was that”, Jake said. “A meteor I think”, I answered. Excited by the event our consensus was, let’s go!  We jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. Every now and then as the road turned the headlights, spied large water tanks located in turnouts. The water tanks were a reminder of where we were and how fortunate it was December and not August because the modern automobile is still no match for natural heat of that desert.  As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did the scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. That was little more than a year ago December 2007 before the turmoil of 2008 had occurred. I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.

Now it seems that economic collapse is perhaps the immediate threat to the system of how we live. The cascading failures of banks and businesses that have sustained our way of life are collapsing. Perhaps the Mayans and the ancient ones of the Hopi Indians knew that history has a way of repeating itself, that human prophecies are self-fulfilling. These events of collapse and failure are the historical facts of life of written history of history no longer spoke by silent voices. A silent history recorded in the ruins of past civilizations here in the American Landscape. These Ancient ruins and ghost towns preserve the presence and failure of our ancestral people and our history.

Today the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company, CFAC is also quiet; their plotlines are cold and empty, as the demand for high-grade aluminum has vanished and the costs of energy and material have soared.  CFAC as we call them around here has announced that they can no longer operate at today’s prices in today’s metals market on Christmas Eve and they have decided to close permanently.

Semi Tools a high tech company a front-end manufacturer in the computer industry, a company that supplies the computer manufacturing industry worldwide with the machines that actually make your computers.  Announced they have to reduced production and cut their workforce by more that fifty percent. These dramatic events have occurred over the last two weeks, with CFAC announcing on Christmas Eve they will close permanently and Semi Tool and Plum Creek making their announcements this past Friday January 9 they will curtailed until further notice. This news came to workers who were on mandatory furlough for the past month as an emergency cost saving measure by all of these companies had returned to work after the first of the year. In addition, Plum Creek has told all of their contractors to stop work, stop logging operations. The news is devastating for a small town a small community and for America, that is already suffering the effects of the housing and construction market failure. In one week, more than a tenth of our small population lost theirs jobs and these were the highest paying jobs in the Flathead Valley as well as Montana.

We moved to Columbia Falls about 13 years ago where I became the Director of the local Art Museum located in downtown Kalispell Montana. This was at a time of franchise infancy in the community. Wal-Mart and Costco arrived to the Flathead valley just after the first McDonalds. Before that, the infrastructure of the Flathead Valley was local Mom and Pop un-franchised businesses. The Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana was mostly untouched by the mass distribution of corporate enterprises that dominate the larger communities of America. Its sense of place was unique; a small Home Town, a Rural Paradise that offered a haven from the large urban communities of modern America. It was a place where a kid like Jake can grab a towel and walk to the end of the street to the community swimming pool with no worries. Thirteen years after McDonalds and the explosion of Franchise Businesses I can hardly recognized the original community I moved too in 1996. The valley has taken on the same visual characteristics as the rest of America it has become part of the Homage-O-Nation! As you drive through the valley on U.S 93, the landscape reveals the same architecture, a true assimilated American Community. Wal-Mart, Boarders, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walgreen’s and a plethora of corporate franchise restaurants to supplement a major anchor complex. You seen one you seen em all. This is how goods and services are delivered today, the Architecture is functional and predictable, a box with ornamentation stuck on it giving each box an identifiable appearance, or as I like to think of it, a CODE. One-step farther inside the box and we identify the product line. It really doesn’t matter what McDonalds you walk into anywhere on the planet, you know you can get a Big Mac and you identify the product with the architectural Code. The architecture is the reinforcement of the Code an image of the corporation, the franchise; it is part of the brand. This is where the sameness of products of the landscape, cityscape and culture started. The code or brand reinforces the product into our culture and our ideas about ourselves changed. We began to seek our comforts in unifying products. These products help us define our status or place in the social economic pecking order. These product identifications, brands, codes enhance our personal likeability our sexuality to others. Many of us now live in towns in houses and neighborhoods that all look alike. Even the color of the houses and building are regulated, all the same color scheme, no variation on the theme is tolerated.

The Development that we have come to believe we need, that we want, has created a sameness that has overtaken the cultural landscape across an America of endless McDonald’s, Strip Malls and Big Box Stores that has grown into new cities and towns, not built to live and walk in, but to drive to. Development and Sameness has changed us as a culture. Perhaps this is how it happened? Developers brought us development and products and we were all told we needed them and we believed the developers, the corporate retailers, and their advertising and we believed we needed these products. This idea is in stark contrast to having true needs and then developing products and services to fill our true desires and needs. I am sure we all really want a MacDonald’s hamburger that is smaller than the pickle slices on the bun. But “Your Love n It”.

Today’s headlines detail the failure of our way of life, a human system on the brink of Collapse. If the effects of this rapid growth this manmade disaster only impacted Columbia Falls and the Flathead Valley then perhaps emergency aid and relief could help stabilize the situation. The effects are in fact global and not centralized to us alone. The effect of our modern model and its collapse will touch all of us around the world in ways; we have yet to experience because of “How We Live” and our dependence on a global market place that apparently according to world leaders has become un-stable, unsustainable.

This is not a new story in the history of civilization. It is a story of transition from the past to the present and an uncertain future. Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670033379,00.html

He compares modern Montana with past civilizations. He writes about the people of Chaco Canyon http://eubank.home.bresnan.net/ and the failure of their system, their way of life. They exhausted the natural resources that had been the source of their success as a culture. In the end the climate, the environment changed and civilization failed. Throughout the Western United States lay the ruins of the past. The people vanished as their environment no longer sustained them, from the Wupatki http://www.nps.gov/wupa culture in northern Arizona to the Chaco http://www.nps.gov/chcu Culture in New Mexico they were gone with countless others. Today the reasons why these civilizations failed is part speculation and part science, the mystery of what, when and where they went remains un-spoken in stories of a vanished civilization. After reading Diamond’s account of the failure of the Chaco Culture, I wanted to go to New Mexico and see for myself this place of mystery of un-spoken stories. As I embarked on my expedition of discovery in November of 2006, I went as an Artist not as a Scientist. My discoveries are intuitive, based on my feeling about this place.  My intuition, my gut feeling about what happened and what remains were my source, my sense of this place. Diamond writes about an enterprising culture that had a purpose to develop beyond their limits and technology to sustain them. They were a culture that destroyed their sustainable environment for the sake of development of expansion. It is un-clear in the forgotten stories why this development was so important to the Chacoan’s.  Some archeologists believe the people used the pueblos during ceremonial seasons and that only a small population of people inhabited the area year round. As the story goes, thousands of visitors would come to Chaco during the ceremonial seasons to celebrate their stories, their beliefs. Perhaps this account is true or maybe there is a story untold. Diamond writes about how the people deforested the landscape. They cut down all of the trees of what once was a forest far beyond what the eye can see into the distance from the canyon so they could build their city. What remains is a desolate landscape void of any large trees. Ponderosa Pine covered the landscape before. Diamond estimates that the Chaco people cut down tens of thousands of trees as far away as a sixty-mile radius from the Chaco site. This was a time when horses did not roam the landscape and all of the timber moved was by the manual labor of the people. They carried or pulled the fallen trees to the city and they built great structures. In the process, they changed the flow of water, their life substance and slowly the environment turned against them. Corn, which was the food of the gods no longer, grew in this place. Slowly they vanished as a culture. There is evidence that the last Chacoan’s began recycling. They salvaged material from older buildings and reused them to continue building new ones. But this was an effort too late because the environment became the master of this land– a land unable to sustain a human presence. To be sure, descendants of the Chaco Culture still exist. Fragmented disenfranchised from one another they either sought survival on their own or assimilated into other groups. They became us a thousand years into the future or perhaps we have become them and as future inhabitants look back from a thousand years forward.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=IESYMFtLIis

For me Jared Diamonds story of Chaco Canyon has real meaning as a modern Montanan. As the economy, stock markets and global development soared to never before seen heights, the evidence of the cost of that great expansion are present all around us. Building boomed as more people bought homes and big rides SUV’s. Corporate development seemed destined to reach every undeveloped area in the modern landscape while small and large sawmills closed by the dozens and left once thriving communities dependant on them devastated in the wake of their failure. If you look at a map of Montana where the forests cover the land every community saw, mills go out of business. They failed in the midst of one of the most prolific periods of building and development in our history. Over the last ten years, year after year dozens of wood product, timber businesses failed after decades of sustainable production. Why, the availability of harvestable timber was not, is not available, it is gone. The once abundant old growth timber stands are gone, harvested. The existing stands today are in a second harvest or re-growth period. The re-growth period of Timber in this region spans the measure of a human lifetime, about 80 to 120 years. The second growth timber now harvested, replaced the old growth stands harvested a century ago. Add to this the devastation of forests by fire and rural development the supply of harvestable trees declined disproportionately with the development of our society. Today’s demand has placed unsustainable pressure on the natural system, demand on the forests for trees. Timber a renewable resource for the wood products industry is now on the fringe of collapse with the pressure of current demand. Time is the enemy in our current business model. Demand operates on a much faster clock than natural growth.

People ask me if I am a religious man and I tell them I am a spiritual man. Religion I think is a collection of ideas that a group of people agree on, principles that the group shares and follows. A spiritual belief recognizes the ideas and principles of all religions and agrees to share with tolerance those that seek a higher truth the fundamental truth of all things.

Jake and I discovered a joy in the adventure together and found that our ideas, our hopes, our paths were spiritually connected through our individual work as Artists, Photographers, Writers and our relationship as Father and Son”. While we were sitting under a sky full of falling stars in the desolation of Death Valley, we arrived at a moment, an idea that things fall apart that all things change and are renewed. We talked at length about the environment and the impact of our modern society. We talked about how millions of modern people have never seen the real sky, unmasked of the artificial illumination of modern cities. We talked about the disconnection of modern human beings from their natural environment and we wondered how civilization could go forward with out reconnecting to the natural environment in a sustainable way. Our present time is shocking and full of fear and the unknown, of what the future may bring. But if we are still the masters of this place this land this planet then we have the power to choose our future a sustainable future.

Elders Speak

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1299816/indigenous_native_american_prophecy_elders_speak_part_1_5/

Coming Soon Energy and Metal

About The Project http://davideubank.wordpress.com/about-jacob-and-david-eubank-and-the-living-on-the-edges-of-2012-collaboration/

Sources:

Semi Tool

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/11/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_01.txt

Plum Creek

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC and Plum Creek

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/

Plum Creek Formaldehyde pollution

http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/facility.tcl?tri_id=59912PLMCRPOBOX

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/articles/2004/09/29/news/news01.txt

About Plum Creeks New Bio Filter System

http://www.timberbuysell.com/community/DisplayNews.asp?id=3681

Blog about Formaldehyde

http://www.toxictrailers.org/2008_03_01_archive.html

Toxic Emmissions

http://static.uspirg.org/reports/toxics03/toxicreleases1_03report.pdf

• Coming Soon Energy and Metal in Montana

Filed under: Art, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Economic Predictions 2009, Obama Stimulas Plan, Columbia Falls Montana, Plum Creek, Sustainablity

Change Happens

 

• It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley.

It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate changes. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road lined with trees torn out of the ground and snapped off as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides had devastated the small towns along the coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm like Katrina was in the headlines but the damage was impressive. As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot about changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not.

 

• After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark.

Night comes early in December. Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. We got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle.  As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? What the F_ _ _ was that Jake said. A meteor I think I answered. Let’s go! So we jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did this scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. But that was in 2007 and I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.

 

•  As I watched my son work, I realized how much he had learned in school, studying his craft as a Photographer.

He was perfectly at home with a camera in his hands; the camera was an extension of him now. He had encouraged me to bring his old digital camera with me; I wasn’t really a digital guy then, so struggled with this new gadget. While for him, the digital technology was just part of him. Jake I thought has always had a good eye a Photographers eye an Artists eye. Even back when he was a kid and I taught him how to develop film in the laundry room. He always made interesting and stunning images. Now I got to see him working at a professional level with confidence and excitement.

 

We spent the next couple of days running around Death Valley taking pictures by day and talking about what we had done around a campfire at night while watching an amazing meteor shower drinking Johnny Walker. Too soon, we headed home to Montana, it was the holidays and we promised to come home. Jake finished school and graduated in June. I went back to work life was good. Then came the bust, chaos, fear, and well you all know the story so it needs no repeating. Jake is still taking pictures, but jobs are lean. Me I am laid off for the winter and hope that spring will bring more work; there is nothing here in Montana now. That seems to be the story across the country, bad news and more bad news. Its damm, depressing.

 

 

Jake and I are beginning to work on a new project and have been talking on the phone and planning. Death Valley and our experience there is a starting point for what I, we hope will be an exciting Photo Documentary project, a future project. You see we have to keep going, we have to keep keeping on. So this is where I leave you with a poem I wrote about our trip last year.

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t see the meteors for all of the shooting stars

 

 Meteors hidden by the tales of shooting stars

 

Foreign palm trees thirst in the sands at the bottom of the world

 

The desert broom blossoms with scant drops of morning dew

 

Butterflies nap in shady crevasses of wash cut walls waiting for the night

 

Ravens fly to and fro calling to those who wait for their voices ready to hear

 

Land void, punctuated by the transgressions of fickle men

 

Abundant rainbows of solitude waiting to fill the dry breath of eyes looking

 

Spring weeps courageous over the land parched after seasons of scorched thirst and death, full of breath and spirit and life

 

Do not grieve that; that is to pass and passing, continuance replenishes the void

 

Hope rises with every new sun; rest comes when coolness covers the world with a moon dark

 

Shooting stars hide meteors with fireworks in the moonless sky

 

Glass bottles melt in the fire so hot, cracking in the cool desert air into mirrors reflecting the end of all things that must come

 

Morning brings the grey dove of this desert that feasts on the ashes of the night lost

 

Follow the raven that sees over the horizon, flying without fear he enjoys today, his kind knows tomorrow having survived countless yesterdays in the barren landscape many forsake, hope is found by those who look, who see

 

Tomorrow will come as stars fall from a blue sky, be not like the coyote who waits at the crossroads for his dinner, fly with the raven who is master in this land

 

Wear hope like the meteor whose copper green beacon fills the sky

 

Falling stars have marked time since the beginning of everything

 

 The Raven sees meteors when no one else is looking

 

See more of Jakes work at Jacob Eubank Photography Seattle Washington.

 

Jacob Eubank and the Raven

http://jacobeubankphotography.com/

 

 

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Death Valley, Poetry, Change, Photo essay

RUSSIAN PROFESSOR PREDICTS AMERICA WILL FAIL DISINTEGRATE IN 2010!

 

REALLY, IT IS TRUE HE DID.

 

• The Wall Street Journal reports in an article “IF Things Weren’t Bad Enough”, by Andrew Osborn.

Professor Igor Panarin’s forecasts are all the rage in Moscow, America Disintegrates in 2010.

  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html 

 

• The Professor said that until recently nobody took him seriously, about his predictions. Now they are listening.

Professor Panarin says the economic and moral collapse the United States will trigger a Civil War that will end the union between states. The new independent states will realign themselves with foreign countries like Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Russia and the European Union. Of course, the Russians will get Alaska. Well they the Russians can see it when they look out the window. I wonder if they can see Sarah waving at them.

 

• The professor provides us with a map of the new AMERIKA.

The map is color-coded; I like that because I am an Artist. I like color. I like visual props it helps me understand information that is hard to imagine. Now I see the professor’s point his theory.

 

 

 

 

 

• To tell you the truth I am having a hard time with Igor’s theory.

First, he realigns California and Arizona with China, well they would go with Mexico don’t ya think, at least Southern California.

 

Then he only gives Hawaii to Japan. I think that Japan would for sure get more states especially where they have manufacturing plants like WV, LA, ALA, GA, KY, TENN, SC, and NC.

 

I would remove New Mexico from Mexico because the Aliens have already claimed them along with Nevada, so China looses one too.

 

Then there is the question of the Canadian section. I really think they will negotiate with Mexico over Arizona because there are more Canadians there than Mexicans. Florida too will surely go to Canada.

 

Now I wonder about Minnesota as most of you do anyway. But Wisconsin; no way will we give up the Packers to the Canadian league.

 

And those states he gives to the European Union, Nah I just don’t see New Hampshire or Vermont going that way let alone New York and New Jersey, they are well you know, it is a defiant NO!

 

As for the Western, Rocky Mountain States, NOPE I just don’t see it.  In fact, I just don’t see it at all with any of the states. Sure, we all have our opinions and we all have our differences, that is the strength of America.

 

Here in Montana we argue and debate all the time, but I can guarantee if trouble comes we will all stand up together and face trouble head on. Look at our Military they are not Californians or Republicans or Mexican Americans, they are Americans period and so are we all.

 

• Now to tell the truth things are bad in America with the economy right now.

But we all know we will come through this, better and stronger and just maybe smarter. Our Parents and Grand Parents did. And remember this Professor the world tested America in the 1940’s because some people thought we Americans were to weak to over come the Great Depression. But history is the definitive answer to that test.  

 

• And let’s talk about art.This is an Art Blog.

Modern Art owes its birth to the hard times of the past, the wars the depression. The artists and other creative thinkers were inspired and created a new world of intellectual ideas and art from their experience of the hard times.

 

Yes, the economy is hard it is scary and uncertain. However, the real deal the real important things are and will remain the same throughout this test, so be grateful, and be fearless. Change has come to America embrace it, welcome it and ask yourself what kind of America you want in 2009 and 2010.  We need to stand up together and fix what needs fixing and move forward as One Nation. And if those who would see us fail want to test us when we are struggling, well so be it. I for one don’t think it will work out to well for them.

 

As for Russia taking control of Alaska Professor I don’t think Sarah is waving at you, look harder I think she just has one finger up.  

I made my own map, I think it is better than Igor’s

My Map

I predict that the Professor will re-evaluate his data and check his pants in 2011

 

Filed under: Art, Culture Economey, Environment, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Politics, Trash, Uncategorized , Money, 2009 predictions, Wall Street Journal, Andrew Osborn, Igor Panarin, Predictions, Economic Collapse, American Failure, Russain Professor Predicts America Will Fail

Dave’s Psychic Art Predictions for 2009, what are your Psychic Predictions for 2009

• 2008 was a year of years for sure, who could’ve predicted Two Thousand and Eight.

I dun’ no but here are some of my predictions for the New Year 2009.

 

 

 

• Wall Street Investors and Bankers who bought multi-million dollar artworks of various livestock genre to hang on the walls of their mansions will begin to create recipes for new and unusual entrees.

Beef Formaldehyde-tine, and of course, the new hamburger rave, the Mad Cow. Yes, it is a lot of beef but let’s not forget about the sea food menu. Pan Sautéed shark in a cream formaldehyde sauce with “capers”. This is a quick variation on a stuffed flounder recipe. And I predict Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern will show up at several of these feasts wearing a new Damien Hirst Tee Shirt and exclaim, now boy that’s really good as he samples the various delicacies.

• My prediction for the art market and art sales for the New Year is the same as last year.

Art will still be sold to the highest bidder and perhaps to the bidder that is“High”… But from what I can see is we all want the relationships between the artist and the market to change, well I predict that it will. Those questionable galleries that we all complain about, well they are going away in 2009. Artists will re-invent the Art Market Place by taking their art to the streets. Most will be holding signs, that they painted that read, “Will Make Art for Food”. But just maybe you have an unrealized ace in the hole? Christie’s reports that Collectable Wine sales reached the third highest ever $50,665,602.00. Global sales were $1,898,068.00. The top seller was a vintage 1961 Hermitage La Chappelle for $60,000.00 The good news for me is I found a vintage bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry 1968 or 69, who can remember it was the sixty’s,  while cleaning out the old VW Bus getting it ready for the scrape yard. So I predict if you look under that sofa or under the cushions you might just be rich. As for art sales I dunno, Art Business.com Reports that trying to track art sales is like trying to count the stars in the sky.

 

• The Associated Press reports that nobody knows where the first 350 billion of the bailout money went.

They contacted 21 banks that received a billion dollars or more to find out. Nobody is talking. They asked, how much did you spend, what did you spend it on, how much are you saving and what are your plans for the rest? Only JP Morgan/Chase commented and they said, “We’ve lent some of it, we’ve not lent some of it, we have not disclosed that to the public, we’re declining to.” REALLY that was their answer. So I predict the next $350 billion will be spent trying to figure out where the first $350 billion went. I also predict that throughout corporate lunchroom’s you will hear, Hey Morgan can you pass the  1961 Hermitage La Chappelle, this Beef Formaldehyde-tine is a little dry. Here you are Chase, by the way do you miss “The Golden Calf,” by Damien Hirst that was in the boardroom. How bout those hooves and horns of 18-carat gold. You did save those didn’t you?

 

• I predict that the global Environment will improve; better cleaner air and water.

With the downturn in manufacturing, I see un-looked for benefits that will help the environment. Except for the floating continent of Plastic trash http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story  in the Pacific Gyer, Its size will increase by an untold magnitude as trillions of new small bits of plastic turn up this year. I predict scientists will trace the increase to all of those credit cards we will all be cutting up and disposing of in 2009. And don’t burn them either or Global Air quality will plummet.

 

• I predict the old Obama slogan of Hope will be replaced by Obama’s new slogan What the F_ _ _ were they thinking.

He will also be heard yelling, they did WHAT!…

 

 

• One more prediction for 2009 is that if the New Year is anything like the old one it will be exciting and unpredictable.

But artists are the creative pulse of the human existence and creativity is our business. Many new innovative and creative ideas begin in the arts. Artists recognize the new first and then the rest of society well follows. So I predict we will be the creative leaders of the future as we have always been. . Don’t blow it!.. Stay positive and create.

 

• And please share your predictions for 2009, come on have some fun.
• Happy New Year!…

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Politics, Uncategorized , 2009 predictions, Bailout, Barack Obama, Collectable Wines, Economic Predictions 2009, Environment predictions 2009, Floating Trash

Chaco Canyon Revisited, “We Can Never Speak Their Names; No More”.

awareness-of-memory-self-portrait-of-an-artist-forgotten

 

Today’s headlines detail the failure of our way of life, a human system on the brink of Collapse.

This is not a new story in the history of civilization. It is a story of transition from the past to the present and an uncertain future. Several years ago, I read Jarred Diamond’s book Collapse. He writes about the people of Chaco Canyon and the failure of their system, their way of life. They exhausted the natural resources that had been the source of their success as a culture. In the end the climate, the environment changed and civilization failed. Throughout the Western United States lay the ruins of the past.

• The people vanished

as their environment no longer sustained them, from the Wupatki culture http://www.nps.gov/wupa to the Chaco Culture http://www.nps.gov/chcu they were gone.

 

• Today the reasons why these civilizations failed is part speculation and part science, the mystery of what, when and where they went remains un-spoken in stories of a vanished civilization.

 

After reading Diamond’s account of the failure of the Chaco Culture, I wanted to go to New Mexico and see for myself this place of mystery of un-spoken stories. I embarked on my expedition of discovery, I went as an Artist not as a Scientist. My discoveries are intuitive, based on my feeling about this place.  My intuition, my gut feeling about what happened and what remains were my source, my sense of this place.

 

• Diamond writes about an enterprising culture that had a purpose to develop beyond their limits and technology to sustain them.

They were a culture that destroyed their sustainable environment for the sake of development of expansion. It is un-clear in the forgotten stories why this development was so important to the Chacoan’s.  Some archeologists believe the pueblos were only used during ceremonial seasons and that only a small population of people inhabited the area year round. As the story goes, thousands of visitors would come to Chaco during the ceremonial seasons to celebrate their stories, their beliefs. Perhaps this account is true or maybe there is a story untold.

 

• Diamond writes about how the people deforested the landscape.

They cut down all of the trees of what once was a forest far beyond what the eye can see into the distance from the canyon so they could build their city. What remains is a desolate landscape void of any large trees. Ponderosa Pine covered the landscape before. Diamond estimates that the Chaco people cut down tens of thousands of trees as far away as a sixty-mile radius from the Chaco site. This was a time when horses did not roam the landscape and all of the timber moved was by the manual labor of the people. They carried or pulled the fallen trees to the city and they built great structures. In the process, they changed the flow of water of their life substance and slowly the environment turned against them. Corn, which was the food of the gods no longer, grew in this place. Slowly they vanished as a culture. There is evidence that the last Chacoan’s began recycling. They salvaged material from older buildings and reused them to continue building new ones. But this was an effort too late because the environment became the master of this land– a land unable to sustain a human presence. To be sure, descendants of the Chaco Culture still exist throughout the region. Fragmented disenfranchised from one another they either sought survival on their own or assimilated into other groups. They became us a thousand years into the future beyond Chaco.

 

• As I drove toward Chaco Canyon in December 2006 Diamond’s description of the landscape became un-mistakable, a desolate place, a vast void in the forest.

Traveling many miles from anywhere, you come to the canyon. At first, you look hard to see any remains, any ruins, as they appear camouflaged, assimilated into the cliffs of the canyon walls. Then the ruins rise up out of the ground and the land takes on a new presence, a human presence.

 

As I walked through the ruins, I imagined the stories told and the laughter in the Kivas, circular rooms where people gathered to enjoy the company of others. Room after room the presence of the people remains. The great canyon wall that shelters the city is a place for stories bearing evidence of art and culture. Rock Art, perhaps the billboards or the signs of the culture tell the story– water, rain, of corn, and of new comers. I think many of these drawings are maps, signs for the next generation that tells where the water flowed and where you plant corn. Stains in the rock face of the canyon show the eons of sediment from the flow of water now gone.

 

• Images of plenty, of corn and raindrops on water and an awareness of time speak to me from the images of ancient artists.

Artists who were aware that they had the ability to speak beyond their own time, to communicate into a future they would not know themselves. 

 

• The question I asked myself was, “Did their simple depictions of life in Chaco etched into the rock hold the key to the complexity of their culture?” Like images in a child’s picture book absent of sophisticated language, the artists tell their stories.

Stories told with the awareness of time for us.  Stories told with the intention to teach generation after generation. As time flowed where water stopped, the lessons have changed. Are we now today looking at our future through the eyes of the artists and builders of Chaco Canyon?

 

This is the very premise that Jarred Diamond writes about in his book. It is the awareness that systems fail, that things fall apart. It is the idea that if a culture can recognize these changes– the limits of their environment soon enough, that they can change their behavior to ensure their sustainability.

 

• It was not war here in the Americas or some far-reaching natural disaster like an asteroid impact that brought failure to the Chacoan’s.

It was a system design of their own making that brought upon them the end of their culture. A failure just as we are surely bringing upon ourselves.

 

• This series of Photographs will perhaps tell the story of my intuitive feeling about the stories and names we can speak No More.

 

Visit The Gallery and see the Exhibit

http://eubank.home.bresnan.net/We%20Can%20Speak%20Their%20Names%20No%20More/index.html

 

we-speak-forgotten-stories-no-more

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Art Prints, Environment, Journalism, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Collapse, chaco canyon, Green Building, Climate Change, Enviornment and Art, Travel Photography

Plastic Oceans Update: Man Made Continent of Trash a Fantastic Story

Junk Raft

 

 

• Back in March I wrote a piece on the Plastic in our oceans.

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story/

Today a the News Hour feed reports on the Junk Raft, a journy into the sea of plastic on a raft made of , well plastic.

• http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/science/plasticoceans/index.html

Science educator Marcus Eriksen and photographer Joel Paschal set sail from California on June 1, 2008, on a raft made of plastic bottles and an old airplane fuselage. Eighty-eight days later, they landed in Hawaii. Eriksen, who made the trip to raise public awareness of the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, describes the journey.with comments from NOAA. Credit Newshour.

These Guys are just nuts. Listen to their story, it too is fantastic!

• http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/science/plasticoceans/slideshow_raft/index.html?type=flash

• NewsHour Pod Cast; Listen

MP3: Some scientists and environmentalists believe that more than 5 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean has become a soup of plastic confetti — the remnants of plastic trash that travels on ocean currents from the world’s shorelines. Now, researchers are trying to quantify the extent of the problem, and learn more about how plastic pollution affects fish, marine mammals and birds. NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels reports.

• In fact you can ask Charles Moore himself questions on the Continent of Plastic at the News Hour Forum website along with other experts who will take your questions and give you direct answers.

• Just follow this link.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/science/july-dec08/plastic_11-13.html

• I am glad that the media is picking up on this story. It is urgent that world governments begin to regulate the disposal of plastic in our oceans.

SPEAK UP NOW NEVER BE SILENT

 

Filed under: Environment, News , Charles Moore, Continent of Plastic, Plastic in the Ocean, Plastic Oceans