Archive Fever: Writing and thinking with oceans, memory, and attention.

One of the aspects of living on the West Coast that I still can't get enough of is the sun setting over the Pacific.  I grew up in southeastern North Carolina, seeing sunrises over the Atlantic...possibly taking them for granted.  The sun's daily greeting and parting salutation are different, but equally magical, experiences.  Both can be preceded by (sunrise) or followed by (sunset) a green flash.  I've never seen one at sunset, and long for that...enough to make me chase sunsets ad infinitum.  Here's a photo from last week in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  It intimates so many points of happiness and connection.  We did not see a green flash, but it does feel like we go right in matters of the heart  which is a supposed blessing of the green flash.

FIRST DRAFT (30 minutes) My mom took this photo Winter 1984.  This was the first winter that I surfed and I'm holding my first surfboard, a Dick Brewer (shaped by Gary Linden).  The year before, had started surfing and was hooked.  I surfed every day, whether there were waves or not...I was in the ocean thanks to my mom, grandmother, and the parents of my surfing mates.  I had sat the previous winter out, due to not having a full suit.  As the fall turned into early winter, the water got colder and my Piping Hot 2 mm vest no longer kept me warm; I wanted/needed a full suit.  I couldn't sit another winter out.   During the summer and fall of 1983 my parents were fighting, probably due to my dad's gambling and unwillingness to get a job, as that would interfere with his bar and poker time.  My dad hated that I was a surfer for a variety reasons, mostly due to his ego wobbling under the weight of his son not being devoted to a "real sport...

Green Paths and Golden Rules "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  -H. D. Thoreau I spend a lot of my day on a school campus of some sort, be it grade school or university.  I've been doing so for my whole life basically, either as a student, teacher, or administrator.  For the past five years I have been spending time on school campuses as a parent, which is pretty cool when juxtaposed with my role as university professor/administrator.  Increasingly, one of the characteristics that I thrive on when I'm on any campus is its relationship to nature.  Here are just a few pics I snapped today. What I like about all of them is that they are the path I take to either teach or drop off a young scholar.  The peace, tranquility, and inspiration I derive from moving through these spac...

 So, I'll tell you this: there is arguably no better city in North America to sample world-class coffee, beer, and wine than Portland, Oregon.  I have spared hyperbole, here.  Theses are true words.  As the good ol boy says, "I kid you not". Last night I had a hot date...sizzlin' if you will.  I took a risk and visited unfamiliar ground for the start to our evening.  The venue: a highly rated wine bar, TeSoAria , in North Portland (aka NoPo).  Beyond simply dropping the four letter up down up down capitalization schema for gentrifying neighborhoods, I flag you (the imagined reader) to this for future reference.  Largely, you should go there or imagine going there.  They have great wine and fine curation.  The envrions are cool, hence you'd be in situ cool to boot.  But, I digress. In the course of the evening, we ran across the winery's, relatively famed, Bull's Blood .  Admit it, this is linguistically enticing.  ...

It is hot and dry in the Pacific Northwest.  There is a record drought and acres of forest are burning.  More than a quarter of a million sockeye salmon are dying because the rivers are so hot .  There is toxic algae in the Willamette River.  And,  the city that, just this past weekend, held a big float celebration to show it has cleaned up its river has issued a health advisory.  Things don't seem to be going so great for the environment in the magic kingdom of Ecotopia. The term motivated inference refers to contexts where people's beliefs are biased by their goals   (great academic piece here ).  In such situations, like climate change, it is difficult for individuals to consider problems that contradict their individual or collective sense of identity.    Climate change poses such an instance;  Portland sets forth a particularly frustrating conundrum.  In what many have heralded as America's greenest city, en...

Humility and hubris are two different, and quite incommensurable, qualities.  The recent media (feeding) frenzy, if you will, with regard to shark attacks has me reflecting on how we respond to the environment we live in and are a part of.  My home state of origin, North Carolina, has experienced a lot of attention this summer for its shark activity .  And, most recently, there was the shark attack at Jeffrey's Bay where world champion surfer Mick Fanning experienced an intense close encounter of the great white kind.  Fanning's remarks and reflections were quite humble, however there has been some more insanely hubris-laden commentary shared in media.  Folks have actually called for shark decimation or hunting in an effort to rid the seas of sharks. Fear and hubris aside, it often seems we've lost our ability and inclination to situate ourselves in relation to the natural world.  We've lost our humility.  We've lost our way to make sense of our...

What does it mean to come face-to-face with a hero?   Not anyone’s hero, but your hero.   And, what indelible mark, if any, does it make when this happens?   Maybe the myth and infatuation unravels with disappointment or realization that your hero is a fatally-flawed mortal.   Such meetings may change lives, or they may simply be another pedestrian interaction.   Fundamentally, though, these meetings hold potential to make us look deeply into who we are and what we aspire to be, or what we have to resuscitate. I met one of my heroes last week, and it changed my life.   The meeting summoned from the depths a lost self…a self that I’d sidelined and subjugated for well over fifteen years, dating back to my mom’s death in 1999.   As I reflect, I can see that in the two years prior to my mom’s sudden death, hurdles and hiccups in her life and mine had begun to create a context where I   was losing my self .   Of course, at the time I did ...

Father’s Day…I’m glad it’s here.   I love my family and especially my son.   He’s gives me the greatest gifts, with none of them being material.   Well, of course, he does give me great material gifts but the ones I cherish most are the soul soothing heart expanding ones…the gifts of love, experience, and reminders of what it means to see and experience things anew.   Watching and being with him enables me to thrill with delight all of life’s gifts, which include the exhilarating ones as well as the scary, intimidating ones.   If I really allow myself to drop into my heartspace--which is hard for people to do, especially men—my son teaches me a lot about humility.   It’s a gift my dad never gave me and one that I did not (or was not encouraged to) experience as child. Thomas Merton wrote that "pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real".   I like this, a lot.   Pride, namely false pride, is something that can’t inhabit  ...

There has been a bit of press (though not nearly enough) on dementia as of late.  Some has been spurred by findings that Robin Williams (along with 1.3 million Americans currently) suffered from Lewy Body Dementia in addition to early onset of Parkinson's Disease . Here is a recent APA piece entitled "Speaking of Psychology: Protecting Your Aging Brain" that addresses the causes of dementia as well as the effectiveness of activities such as physical exercise and brain training games in preventing it.

I've been going to water a lot, rather as much as I can, this summer.  I've been to the ocean, rivers, lakes, streams, etc.  Mostly, it's been a pretty frustrating experience.  Initially, I thought that I was going to the wrong spots.  What's more probable, though, is that there is something wrong with the places that I've visited.  There's nuance to this supposition, a nuance that's predicated on subjectivity and awareness.  My most recent visit was to Seattle's Lake Union. It was beautiful.  It is beautiful.  People were on the water enjoying what appeared to be the most sublime of natural offerings that exists on the urbanized Puget Sound...enjoyment, seemingly without care.  Hell, why not?  Just about every "how to see Washington or the Northwest" visitors' guide has something like the following in every issue that I've perused this year.  I'm inspired by this messaging too. Until, I notice the "no swimming or ...

It has been a hot summer in the Pacific Northwest.  The heat has ushered forth a lot of physical and emotional discontent for me, some certainly due to the lack of AC in our Portland home; Portland is on track for its sixth warmest July on record.  When we moved here a year and a half ago, the word on the street was that summers were perfect and there was no AC required.  Well, slow down big fella because my psychological dependency on air conditioning has garnered a very real physiological precedent having lived in our sauna of a house this summer. And, it appears from t his National Weather Service article that the East is cooler than the West this year AND this pattern may persist (in the near term) in our increasingly warming world.  Great...drought, wildfires, and less snow in the PNW while the East Coast enjoys new cooler summers.  See except here: cool conditions in the East contrasted, as they have nearly all year, with baking conditions in the ...

This past Monday my son and I took a day off from work to join a couple other parents and their kids on a brief jaunt up I-5 into Washington so that we could swim in Lake Merwin.  The trip was a much welcomed respite from the summer heat that has finally arrived in Portland.  Lake Merwin is beautiful for sure. And, having grown up in and around the ocean on the East Coast I have found myself restless to immerse myself in water sans wetsuit (something not very often done in the Pacific Northwest).  We'd suffered through the rain and cold of Portland all winter, not to mention the torment of Facebook posts from our East Coast friends who've been swimming bareback in 70+ degree water for months now.  In short, this was to be some sort of payoff to a psychological setup that I'd been constructing for months.  Going into it I knew that the swimming wouldn't appproximate the memories I have of the warm Atlantic, but the urge toward nostalgia and hope of discove...

Anthropogenic Biomes(Anthromes) offer a new way to understand our living planet by describing the way humans have reshaped its ecological patterns and processes.  Click here for a link and description of the infographic below.  The work is is based on a system of 21 Anthrome classes divided into 6 broad groups, as described in  Ellis and Ramankutty (2008;Anthromes v1).  

I'll be presenting at the annual conference for APHA in New Orleans on November 17, 2014.  Here's my prospectus for the roundtable discussion.  I'm pretty excited about sharing my nascent research and would love some thoughts, comments, and constructive critiques. Additionally, if anyone would like to participate in this ongoing research concerning ways health care professional engage climate change please let me know. Sustainability, climate change, and nursing education: Curriculum for clinical intervention Monday, November 17, 2014 Hill Taylor, PhD, MS, MA   ,   School of Nursing, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR Nursing and medical education must address current and future impacts of climate change. This presentation examines responsiveness in nursing curriculum and clinical practice at Oregon Health & Science University. This study’s key objective is to establish protocols and frameworks for managing the health effects of...