The Pacific

Books: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Food. How can you get more basic than that? Last summer after I blogged about the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program and the importance and joy of eating locally grown produce, Rachel loaned me a book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. “Read it,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.” It looked great but sat on my shelf for months until I begin to feel guilty about not reading it. So I started and found that I could not stop. Periodically during the nights that followed I would literally shout out loud about some tidbit of information. After finishing the book and returning it to Rachel I ordered a copy for Bob to read and for us to have. Also ordered copies for our children. Even recommended it to the book club I participate in.

So what is it about this book? First the topic. Yes, food is important. Maybe more important than we realize as we consume industrialized versions of it. In addition, it is very well written. Reads almost like a novel as Pollan tells the story of four meals. To do this he divides the book into three sections: industrial food, both big and small organic food, and finally the food we get by hunting and gathering. At the end of each section Pollan prepares a meal from the food he has followed.

In the first section I was surprised to discover the extent to which the American diet of fast food is based on corn. Corn, it seems is a part of almost everything produced by the giant agribusinesses that have productized everything from beef to breakfast cereal. One of my shouting out loud moments occurred when I read:

“If the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the United States became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road. We seldom focus on farming’s role in global warming, but as much as a third of all the greenhouse gases that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to the saw and the plow.”

This book does not summarize easily. It is filled with just such insights and tidbits. It is an important book for all of us who have thought that agricultural policy had to do with those who grow food. It also has an impact on those of us who eat it. Read it. I think you'll like it.

Image: Taro fields on Kauai, taken January 2008.

How Important Is the Equipment?

Photographers often debate the importance of equipment. A good camera certainly can't help a bad photographer create quality images any more than expensive golf clubs can make you Tiger Woods. Still, the right lens for the image you are trying to create certainly helps. Last week I invested in a Canon 50mm f1.2 lens after reading rave reviews. Yesterday I took it out for a test drive with Ryan and Samantha - my favorite small subjects. Here is my favorite of the shoot:

And here's another I just can't resist sharing. So, you make the call. I could never have gotten the sharpness or the soft bokeh with any other lens I own. You might also want to notice how really cute the kids are.

Image: Taken of Ryan and Samantha March 2008.

The Christmas Orchid

Every year before Christmas the Kauai Museum holds an orchid sale. Over the years we have gone there to get our annual Christmas orchid. Something like a Christmas tree, only smaller. One of the nice things about a Christmas orchid is that it doesn't have to be decorated since it comes with lovely blooms. It will also live for years and rewards even the most careless among us with more blossoms. Finally, an orchid takes up much less room than a tree - an important point in our very small condo.

This year the orchids were especially beautiful so we got three. They are small after all. Since I have been trying to connect with my inner photoshop more closely I decided to see if I could create some collages that would capture "orchidness." Here are the results of my experiment. Enjoy and Merry Christmas.

Images taken Christmas Day, 2007.

Kona Winds

One of the especially fun things about Kauai is that it is made up of lots of microclimates. Because it was formed by a volcano and is remote from other major landmasses the wind and ocean interact with the land in wildly varying ways. Mt. Waialeale, for instance, is the wettest spot on earth with over 430 inches of annual rainfall and dramatic waterfalls in every direction. But just a few miles away, in the shadow of Mt. Waialeale, Barking Sands records an annual rainfall of just 8 inches and has vegetation most often found in a desert.

On the north side of the island, which is known for its lush scenery, the annual rainfall is 78 inches per year. On the south side of the island, where we stay, the rainfall averages 35 inches a year. And this year it seemed to all be falling in early December during a particularly intense Kona storm.

By the way, the south side of Kauai, often thought of as a tropical paradise, has almost exactly the same amount of annual rain as Seattle.

Image: Taken on the south shore of Kauai during a recent Kona storm, December 2008.

Kilauea Lighthouse

The Kilauea lighthouse is one of my favorite spots on Kauai. The northernmost point in Hawaii, the lighthouse was built in 1913 but hasn't been used as a lighthouse since the 1970s. Today it is best know for its spectacular views and the many birds who live on its protected shores. Occasionally you can even see a monk seal haul itself out of the ocean to take a rest.

Image: taken December 2007 during recent storms.

Kauai Rescue

In Kauai a rescue can require all sorts of equipment. One day at the market I saw this hummer fully equipped with a surf board and snapped the picture. Later I met a local fire fighter. He told me that everyone on the squad must be able to swim at least a mile in open ocean. The surf board is used not to actually rescue someone in trouble but to enable the rescuer to reach the person quickly by paddling out. Once there, the rescuer assists the person in trouble while a jet ski comes to actually transport the person back to shore.

In spite of the vigilance of fire fighters and other rescue personnel Kauai averages 10 drownings/year. It's not something the visitors' bureau advertises but it is something to keep in mind. The ocean is a beautiful, powerful force that must always be respected.

Out Of The Comfort Zone

Art Wolfe’s Photography Studio is beginning to offer some pretty amazing workshops and lectures. Most recently Freeman Patterson conducted a three-day workshop that focused on learning to see creatively. Twenty of us had the good fortune to see through a master’s eyes – to learn something about how to make our photographs better.

In addition to delivering lectures about principles of design and tips on how to execute some pretty cool techniques, Freeman gave us shooting assignments. The first day he asked us to photograph whatever we wanted – within the one block where Art’s studio is located. Each of us brought back three images for critique. The results were unexpected. The variety was so great that we might have been in different countries.

On the second day our assignment was to find images that evoked specific emotions. This time we could shoot wherever we wanted – as long as we were back within 90 minutes.

The fun thing about these assignments was that they pushed us out of our comfort zones. The initial reaction upon hearing the assignment was invariably: how am I going to do that? But as we took our cameras and embarked on our voyage we found it exhilarating, if challenging. By breaking out of our usual approach we found that indeed we did begin to see more deeply.

Images. Taken November 2007 at the workshop. Can you guess what emotions these were meant to evoke?

Namibia

At 55 million years old the Namib Desert measures its life in geological time. Its sand dunes are some of the largest in the world with Big Daddy, Dune 7, measuring 1256 feet, roughly the height of the Empire State Building. And it is only one in a vast sea of sand dunes that continue to shift and change, driven by the winds that shape this coastal desert.

Sossusvlei, lying within the Namib-Naukluft National Park, is the single most arresting landscape I have ever seen. But I found Dead Vlei even more powerful than the towering dunes. This old salt pan within Sossusvlei has been dry for over 500 years but skeletons of dead acacia trees continue to stand - black against the red of the dunes. Seeing it is riveting and eerie, like watching a particularly violent thunderstorm.

Near the entrance to Sossusvlei is Sesriem Canyon, a narrow gorge formed from centuries of erosion. During flash floods the Tsauchap river becomes strong and fast enough to carve out this 100 foot deep canyon. It took two million years but it’s still hard to imagine it after seeing the endless dryness of the desert.

Images: Namibia, Dune 45, Dead Vlei, and Sesriem Canyon. All taken August, 2007

South Africa

South Africans talk about three miracles. The first was the ending of apartheid. The second was Nelson Mandela who was able to lead the country through a peaceful transition to a fully representative democracy. They are still waiting for the third.

Indeed South Africa is a confusing country for the first time visitor. On the one hand its rich cultural and bio-diversity, mineral wealth, moderate climate, long coastline, animal preserves and natural beauty make it an enchanting place to visit. Additionally, Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg is the largest airport in Africa; the Durban port is the largest port in Africa; and the banking system is as solid as most developed countries. These and the well developed roads and infrastructure in the large cities suggest that South Africa is a developed rather than a developing nation.

On the other hand South Africa is facing deep and corrosive challenges. Unemployment stands at 36%-42%. Crime is so prevalent that barbed wire topped walls encase every city building and visitors are warned not to walk on the streets of Johannesburg and Durban – even during the day. According to the United Nations, SA is second in the world for assaults. AIDS has obliterated an entire generation with SA having the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world. And lately, between 2-3 million refugees from Zimbabwe have flooded the already troubled cities of SA.

For all of the challenges it faces South Africa is the linchpin in the development of Southern Africa. As the wealthiest and most developed country in the region it almost must succeed for its neighbors to have a chance. And that is, no doubt, the third miracle South Africans and those of us in the rest of the world are hoping for.

Image: Children in Lesotho, a country entirely surrounded by South Africa, taken August, 2007

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is just about as far away from Seattle as you can get without finding yourself in the Indian Ocean. And it’s not just a geographic distance. The distances are also social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political. They are about more than which place has elephants and which has Starbucks’.

Taken together Southern Africa has an immense fragile beauty. Whether camping in the Okavango Delta or hiking the great dunes of the Namib dessert I couldn’t help wondering how these fragile ecosystems could survive the onslaught of global warming and modernization. And no one has even calculated the cost of the greatest scourge of all, AIDS, which has robbed many of these countries of an entire generation.

It’s tempting to either romanticize or condemn this troubled part of the world. But Botswana and Zimbabwe have little in common beyond their shared border. In 1980 nine countries formed the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the forerunner to today’s Southern African Development Community (SADC). Originally founded to lessen economic dependence on the then apartheid government of South Africa the current organization of 14 nations (including South Africa) that make up the SADC are concerned with various aspects of regional development. The underlying assumption is that to progress the region must work together.

One month is far too short a time to learn anything definitive about such a complex part of the world. Nevertheless, in my next few posts I plan to do a series of quick takes about the countries we visited.

Image: Elephants at dusk, Botswana, September 2007.