Joys of youth and furies of age

The Chemakum sing, a kinglet pokes out, Barbara has a senior moment, and two friends can't let go. Plus: Pick your new favorite Birds-of-a-Type card.

PICTURE AND WORDS

Chemakum joy

SINCE 1989, the Tribal Canoe Journey has become a central cultural rite for native groups of the Pacific Northwest. The traditional cedar canoes typically land in late July at a beach here in Port Townsend and the paddlers are housed and fed and celebrated for a night before continuing their journey through Puget Sound. This year, for the first time, Chemakum tribal members, the former occupants of this area, formed a greeting party to “sing in” the canoes of the Quileute. The Quileute live on the coast at La Push and are tribal brothers and sisters to the Chemakum, whose historic language, Chimakuan, they share.

I was invited to join the Chemakum greeting party, which met early in the morning to practice their songs. It was a lively gathering of family members who came from as far as Maine and Alaska. These two young Chemakum sprites, giggling and playing in the sand under that morning sun, caught my eye. In this photograph, their happy, made-up dance is caught mid twist—pure joy.

The Chemakum are featured in a series of portraits by my friend Brian Goodman that are now hanging in the Commons building at Fort Worden State Park, just a few hundred yards from this beach. For the Chemakum, who some had declared extinct, it’s a significant statement for their pictures to hang at a former army base on their former land. The exhibit is fittingly called “Still Here.” More information in the exhibit and related events—as well as a short history of the tribe—is available on the Chemakum web site.

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A BIRD NOTE FROM THE ARCHIVE

The elusive golden crown

JEDIDIAH SMITH REDWOODS State Park is one of a group of parks in northern California that contain nearly half of the remaining coastal redwood forest. Just before the highway west from Grants Pass hits the Pacific coast, it twists and darkens under the canopy of Jedidiah Smith’s enormous old trees. Walking the park’s trails, you turn a corner and the light suddenly shifts or a creek suddenly reappears. Always, the giants tower above you. If you allow yourself, it’s easy to conjure elves and hobbits and other mythical creatures.

Kinglets are a tiny birds that dart in and out of the brush, making them difficult birds to photograph. Kinglets come in two varieties: ruby-crowned—which have a patch of red on the top so small that it often goes unseen—and golden-crowned. This Golden-crowned Kinglet teased me down the trail for several minutes. Each time I raised my camera, it disappeared or the autofocus found a branch or leaf more interesting than the bird. To address this problem, I developed a technique with small birds where I follow the bird in the viewfinder and only focus at the last second when it has perched on an unobstructed branch. This kinglet had just poked its head out of the dark forest into the tunnel of light formed by the trail when I hit the shutter.

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WHAT’S BUGGING BARBARA?

Here’s your damn senior moment

By Barbara Ramsey

“Age is a high price to pay for maturity” –Tom Stoppard

I’M SICK OF HEARING how great it is to get old. I hate the feel-good articles, the Sunday morning sermons, the sappy thought-pieces. Not to mention what you overhear in the grocery store.

People my age say crap like, “Now that I’m old, I can accept myself for who I really am.” Hold on there, Grandma! Don’t accept yourself for who you really are. You’re boring. A little self-improvement might be just what you need. Old or young, we’re all works in progress.

Other infuriating claptrap? “Age isn’t a number, it’s a journey!” Yeah? Well, I’m getting seasick. The idea that your specific age doesn’t matter is willful ignorance. As we get older, our body parts break down. Everyone’s disintegration schedule is different, but we all have one, and it’s a one-way street. Long life is mainly due to luck. The survivors dodged the gene for cystic fibrosis or avoided being born black and poor or their parents fed them fruits and vegetables instead of bologna sandwiches. We don’t know all the factors that go into a healthy old age but most of the significant ones are beyond our control. This is one place where acceptance can come in handy. When it comes to chronic knee pain or your failing heart valves, say a serenity prayer.

And don’t get me started on the aging brain. The search for a forgotten word now takes longer than the hunt for my glasses. When a group of older women playing mahjong tries to collectively summon the title of a block-buster motion picture from twenty years ago, prepare for a long wait. I recently read an article that said it was “ageism” to call such a pause a “senior moment”. Really? Call off the thought police.

If you want to raise my hackles further, try telling me something along the lines of “You can shave years off your age by simply ______.” Fill in the blank with whatever you’re selling and make me puke. That BS is why aging is so profitable for the peddlers of anti-aging products, routines, and quick fixes.

Sure, go ahead and exercise and eat healthy food, but don’t try to make it sound fast or simple. And don’t make it sound “fun”. Sure, taking a sunset beach walk can be fun, but getting enough exercise is a pain. You butch up and do it anyway. Expecting it to be fun all the time will only set you up for failure.

As for ageism and the shit that goes with it, let’s fight it. Our culture has a deep-seated prejudice against the old and it’s harmful. I advocate tackling it, not denying or sugarcoating the reality. Saying “I’m young at heart!” isn’t the answer. What’s wrong with being old at heart? I am time-tested. I’ve been around a few blocks and still have a few more to go. Dismiss me as an aging boomer at your peril. I may be missing a tooth or two, but I can still bite.

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A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS

Jon Kaplan, I can’t let go, 2024.

Ambiguous embrace

MY FRIEND JON KAPLAN spent most of his life in the Southwest, mainly in Albuquerque. But he loves sailing and, the scarcity of harbors in the high desert being what it is, moved here to Port Townsend several years ago. As a young man, he studied photography at the University of New Mexico with Beaumont Newhall, who had served as the first director of photography at MoMA in New York. And Jon has never given up his love of photography. His own work tends toward the poetic, often skirting the line between the descriptive and the abstract, right to the edge of obscurity. “That’s where art is born, when the viewer completes the image in their own imagination,” Jon says.

In this photograph, part of a series he calls Embrace, the ambiguity is less in the lack of descriptive detail than in the viewer’s interpretation of the gesture between the two young women. Is the one on the right consoling the other or delivering bad news? Reassurance or a letdown? “Sometimes a touch is more goodbye than hello,” Jon says. The position of the highlighted hands on the receiver’s skirt could signal either. A propped open door is both an entrance and an exit. Alternating vertical and diagonal plays of shadow and light echo the position of the two figures and the angle of one woman’s arm on the other, intensifying the emotional questions at the heart of the photograph.

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BIRDS-OF-A-TYPE CARDS

The third poll

LAST WEEK’S WINNER was Bodoni Booby by a nautical mile. The booby bested Chinese Chickadee and Goudy Geese, with poor Kabel Kingfisher garnering only a couple of votes. In next week’s Wild Things, meet a booby who strayed far off course and became the talk of our town.

Our final poll before the runoff features recent designs based on some of my favorite typefaces. Tough choices this week, if you ask me. What’s yours?