April 10, 2009

I noticed to today on my way to the bus stop this morning that many of the little samaras (maple seed keys) that fell from the maple trees in the fall are now starting to sprout in lawns. So, as your eye glances at the smooth contours of lawngrass, there are these little elongated green leaves that interrupt it. Most of them will wither away/expire within the next weeks.

There have been a record number of loons that have decided to use the lakes and marshes around here as a waiting ground for the more northern bodies of water to thaw. This has caused quite a bit of excitement amongst the naturalists here, as loons usually do not congregrate in urban areas, as they tend to be private, and highly discriminating in the amount of noise and water pollution they will tolerate.

Karen and I went to view two documentary films at the UW Cinematheque. The first one was a bizarre film devoted to leaders and notation strips of film reels from a filmmaker's collection entitled 'Standard Gauge', made in 1984. It was singular to view a film that showed film itself, discussing indirectly the history of 3-print technicolor and the inside term for color rectification, which was termed the "China Girl." This is the woman one would see when a reel of film would begin. It was not always the most engaging film, but it does serve as a document what film actually looks like, something that most of us have less and less exposure to as digital methods of filming become more commonplace.

The second documentary was just as unique, but not as abstract. 'An Injury to One' is a film made by a CalArts MFA student in 2002 that centers on the history of the Butte, Montana Anaconda copper mine, with particular attention to the IWW member Frank Little who was lynched by company men in 1917; one of whom might have been the crime-novel writer Dashiell Hammett. The mine is now a lake that has a pH of 2.5, almost as acidic as battery acid due to copper, cadmium, arsenic, and the sulfate salts of these metal/metalloids. It is a very stark film, and it made me think of when I traveled there as documented in one of the films I posted on YouTube.

My friend and I tried to find Frank Little's grave in the graveyard at Butte with what little time there was before sundown, but we could not find it. We did see Evel Knievel's grave, though, as seen in the YouTube short. Butte's Mountain View Cemetery is just a short drive off I-90, and is quite a cemetery that documents quietly and solemnly the tragedies of mining. I remembered seeing at least two large obelisks commemorating different mining tragedies during the 1910's. It was interesting to see the various ethnicities, especially the preponderance of slavic folk as evident by their names in Cyrillic. Even though we didn't have enough time to check out the entire cemetery to find his grave, I felt at least satisfied in seeing some of the silent and poignant history contained in this place. Since I have been there, Mr. Little's grave has been renovated.