January 2008 Archives
Confrontations with industry (I generally feel like I’m pretty bad at titles)
By on January 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have a paper to write. The first of the quarter. But first I have to turn in a paper proposal. I feel like such a fucking bookworm. Here’s the proposal:
I am interested in the existence, decomposition, and recovery of now dead or dying industrial sites. In a post-industrial world, a history of labor, migration, production and design exists within these sites. They represent, in some sense, a collective history to societies more true than the national parks and pristine landscapes we like to claim as such. But aesthetically, we despise these places. We seem appalled by the image of the technology that supports us (easily represented in the recent creation of cell phone towers disguised as palm and pine trees). Yet there are instances of industry being incorporated in public spaces, or recovered into newly functioning locales.
My paper will address the differing dynamics that exist between people and the old industrial landscapes they may share space with. How can the dead industrial landscape be perceived as a kind of historical monument? Is there a risk in valorizing an environmentally (and in many ways socially) destructive past by memorializing it? The Duisburg Park in Munich can serve as an example to address these questions. The park is an example of an institutionalized use of an old manufacturing facility and an excellent instance of an industrial site recreated as a place for exploration and enjoyment.
But what of more impromptu relationships we establish with our industrial past? Locally, I will look to the Sacramento Port. The area around the port supports a large number of fishermen, and the port recently constructed a small park at one end that remains mostly unused. What happens to a rural space on the edge of an industrial site? How does a space like this that is yet unplanned get used by the public? Another interesting example to look at is the Mothball Fleet—a collection of old naval ships at the innermost part of the San Francisco Bay. At a distant vista point are interpretive signs explaining the fleet, but an attempt to get closer to the ships gets you lost in a treacherous business park. We are kept far away from these beastly ships.
I will address the ways in which old industrial sites are ignored by or incorporated into current design and development. How do we turn our backs on these sites of manufacturing, and how do we embrace them as a collective element of history and revel in their compelling architecture and image?
Literature review to include:
Lynda H. Schneekloth, “Unruly and Robust: An Abandoned Industrial River.” Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life.
Elizabeth Meyer, “Situating Modern Landscape.” Theory in Landscape Architecture.
Rob Thayer, Gray World, Green Heart: Technology, Nature, and the Sustainable Landscape.
Kevin Lynch, Wasting Away: An exploration of waste, what it is, how it happens, why we fear it, how to do it well.
Clarksburg Boat Launch
By on January 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Yesterday I watched a man slice open a 61 inch sturgeon- still breathing. He wore a flannel shirt, unbuttoned with nothing on underneath. He was covered in tattoos faded to the point of being unrecognizable and wore a large tooth around his neck. He seemed to take a lot of pleasure in ripping through the fish with his dull knife. I watched the sturgeon squirm at first, then calm to a shallow breath. As the knife reached the tip of the fish tail, the sturgeon took one last big breath where its gills expanded and its head lifted, and then gave in and died. Interviewing fishermen, I am forced, on occasion, to remember that these folks are hunters.
The fella who caught it was thrilled and exhausted, wet up to his knees. The hook he used was almost straightened- that fish almost got away. (not the best picture, but this is what a sturgeon looks like.) 
Once the fish was open they examined it for eggs. It is illegal to take female sturgeon out of these waters and there is a prevalent poaching scene here. But I have only heard rumors of Russians on the river at night with guns. But what would these fishermen here have done if this sturgeon had been female and filled with caviar (or bait, depending on your angle)? Suture her up from head to tail and throw her back? Undoubtedly, no. This sturgeon, however, was a male.
The veteran fishermen I talked to on the other end of the parking lost may have thought differently of that fish. One of them mentioned something about a dissolvable thread. If you catch a sturgeon, you can make a small cut in the belly and check the sex. If you’ve caught a female, simply sew the fish up and send it back. A 61 inch fish has seen its share of battles, they are no doubt resilient. The treatment of a sturgeon may be a dividing line between these two groups of anglers.
These veteran fishermen were altogether welcoming. They made no assumption (like many do) that I am an authority or the law. The minute I stepped out of my car at the boat launch I was greeted by Tony who immediately invited me over to his camp and gave me his chair. Tony made the occasional pass at me, but I am a pro at deflecting these comments by now, and Tony’s friends helped me out with the reprimanding responsibility. The four of these men sat around a fire made of a broken table. Tony offered me a can of soup. “Now Aubrey, you look like a chicken noodle soup kinda gal,” he said. He opened a can and placed in over the fire for himself- I declined his offer.
These men knew everything about the river. They could remember the date that the dams were constructed and the water started getting cold. And they remember swimming in these waters when were still warm. One of the men claimed to be the oldest fisherman on the Sacramento River. With the exception of one man (who has been trying to get a hold of the Wilderness Conservation Authority to procure guides to clamming), none of these men really ate the fish they caught. They believed in throwing them back as there are so few left. The problem, they say, is the dam. They say the water is too cold for the fish to spawn, and none of the dams have fish ladders so fish mobility is truncated. There is apparently a fish hatchery at the base of every dam, but these anglers don’t eat wild-caught fish for preservation sake.
Tony fishes with his homemade fishing pole , works in dry-walling, and speaks of living with roommates. None of them is drinking or smoking. They speak of Nostradamus and his predictions and we chat briefly about the concept of whiteness (one of them refused to take the US Census because his ehthnic group- Irish-American- was not represented). They invited me back for a tour of the river and an earful for stories. I am seriously considering it.
sniffles and a rant about school
By on January 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
I am sick and in bed and have thought about staying here until I feel like a functioning human being, but unfortunately I have to pee so I don’t think I will last much longer. The wind has been howling outside for two days and every once in a while the power flashes off and then back on and we have to reset all of our clocks. I have another window open on my computer and am waiting to watch the video of Ton Cruise talking about Scientology that Lisa sent me. But not until I finish a blog posting.
Ok, but I want to say something about school. The thing is that I really like it. Maybe too much. I thought I came back to school to learn professional skills, to become a better swimmer. But there is no question of sink or swim in school. I can float. By that I don’t mean coast. I work. But it’s all a daydream about the world and reveling in the fact that there is too much to know and so you’ll never get bored. Maybe tired, but not bored.
I see this as more than a bit dangerous. Academia is incredibly self-reflexive and, at least in the program I am in, begs us to situate ourselves properly and find work that is not an imposition. As in- don’t work where you aren’t welcome. And when I linger too long on my own identity, I worry that I may be left with few places to go. Further, academia finds problems in everything. Everything. And I am struggling with the idea that I have always somehow thought that solving problems makes things simpler. But in fact, my very presence in a situation makes it more complex, and sometimes the acceptance of that complexity is all the simplicity I can find.
Academia, of course, does not solely untangle. In fact, the very concept of research has a keen ability to tie very tight and complicated knots. And so, while I may get to unpack concepts and theories and systems of the world and at the end of the day feel like I’ve accomplished something because I have a better grasp on the way society understands (for example) its relationship with nature, I have in fact tied a little bit tighter knot because I’ve stepped just an inch further away from the world.
Did you know that Davis is a Land Grant University? I didn’t know this until I got here, but I have fast learned why this can be a major problem. In essence, the California government gave the university some land in exchange for the university creating technology to take into the world. So to be in a place that has always worked under the mission of imposing ideas onto a greater society, being in a program that questions that very mission is perplexing. I’m not really a part of that mission, but I’m not apart from it either. I am of this machine, but I am trying my damnedest not to be that machine. And I don’t know (yet) how to do that.
Ok, for the first time in four days I can breathe through my nose. Perhaps it is time to get out of my bed. But first, Tom.
The Myth of the Breeze: Industrial Fields and Windy Days on the Outskirts of Davis (the first in a series)
By on January 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)
They told me there was a nice breeze out here. I remember it exactly. “It’s always a bit cooler here than in town, and a nice breeze comes through in the evenings.” Little did I know that a “nice breeze” translated to a motion-stopping wind on my bike ride home from town. With little other than fields of produce anywhere nearby, I become the only resistance to the wind. Sometimes I envision all the tiny particles of wind changing their course when they see me coming. It feels like battling a sunny-skied hurricane trying to get home. Recently I stepped off my bike to take a brief break and the wind died. Oh, I guess this is a nice breeze.
In September I moved from Los Angeles to the countryside. I wanted a garden and a quiet room in which to focus on my studies. I was not particularly interested in a small town. I wanted either the city, or the opposite of the city. But the tomato field next to my house is being harvested to head to the Campbell’s factory. Those are headed for the city. And I can’t tell if my garden is bug-free because of my stellar compost or because the pesticides from neighboring fields are carried here by the ‘nice breeze.’ And my room is not quiet. The tree outside of my window whistles all evening long in the wind. It may as well be a police helicopter. Alright, perhaps that is a bit drastic. But what I have found in the time I have been living here is that I have not escaped the city. This industrial landscape has changed the weather, the biodiversity, the shape, and the smell of the land. As I bike along the perfectly flat, straight road to school, I realize that the changes that have come to this land have put me closer to the industrial than I may have ever been in Los Angeles. And I grapple with this. This land is utilitarian and commercial. But I have, in my quest for romance, given in to this land as pastoral and nostalgic. I have fled the city in search of the quiet. I am student of landscapes, and am learning of the dangers of my own.
dogged determinations
By on January 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5)
I’m starting a blog. I know that everyone has one and that, as usual, I am tardy. So it goes. This is my blog. Its’ bare bones are a bit exposed right now, but should get some meat on them in due time. Hopefully. I have a long list of things to do and I have little concept at this point as to which items will take priority. With any hope, I will achieve more than just finishing my homework. Here is the list. It is optimistic (at moments even fantastical). But I am a firm believer in the New Year. And I am trying to be more specific about things. Last year I attempted a New Year’s motto, but I don’t think it traveled further than my myspace page. And Julie has inspired me to make lists. So this is my list, as it stands today. It will no doubt get longer. But hopefully it will get shorter.
In no particular order:
1. start a blog (you have to be able to check the first one off right away)
2. learn to play dominoes
3. go to appropriate doctors’ appointments
4. get a new tattoo
5. learn to play dueling banjos
6. teach Daniel to ride a bike
7. get a medical marijuana card
8. become a morning person
9. get some chickens for the farm
10. fit into the jeans I just bought
11. rebuild the barn
12. go on dates
13. better my writing, articulate my interests (somewhat synonymous with having a blog).
Who knows how long I’ll keep up with the blog. I have a lot to do.
Shit. I’m already making excuses.
