Singer, the Whale, swims again, Part 1

    When I arrived at the Vashon Center for the Arts three days before the inauguration of my son, Ela Lamblin's, sculpture—skeleton, steel-outlined body, and suspension structure—of Singer, the gray whale (see post on November 5, 2025), the bones were still on the floor. I entered the ribs and walked through them, like Jonah, who, if he was my height, would have been walking almost upright.

I am in front, Ela in back.             Photo by Michelle Bates

I caressed the bones for the last time. The whale was going up, to hang from the ceiling of the Art Center and to imply, by swimming through the air, how Singer had once swum through the sea.

    Now I had a better idea of the scale of the project, from the tiniest, most intricate creating of beautiful, spliced (not knotted) cables 

Kevin Flick splicing the cables that will hold up the sculpture

to the joining of the bones and the sculpting and building of the steel framework; from the immense size and weight of the skull to the delicacy of the jugal, the smallest bone in the whale's body; from the millions of years during which the whale evolved its complicated mechanisms of structure and movement that allowed it to cease being a land creature and return to the sea—to the centuries of math and science that resulted in the mechanism, beautiful in itself, that Ela and his team of brilliant engineers devised to allow the tail to move in graceful, up-and-down sweeps.  

Each wheel turns a different set of vertebrae to make the tail move.

The entire length of the tail moves in a swimming motion.

    It took a long day for the tail to go up. The intricacies were unimaginable. The data on the computer was checked and rechecked. Skeleton and distances were measured and remeasured with various methods: tape measures, laser, pacing. Once the tail was up, would it be in the right place? Was the space for the skull and ribs correct? Did a whole whate really fit in the building? More than one person on the crew told me his neck was sore from looking up so much. 

    And then, at last, the tail went up.

This whole assembly will be lifted to the ceiling.

    I didn't see the skull go up a couple of days later because I was hosting the party Ela had planned to hold at his house before the inauguration ceremony, scheduled for 6:30 that evening. Ela wasn't at the party because he was still helping install the skull. He told me at midday that he didn't think it would happen in time, but just before 6:00 it looked like all preparations were ready. There was a count-down, and the skull was raised to join the tail at the ceiling. 

    I left the party for the Art Center at 6:10. The guests would have to see themselves out. 

Singer with some of the rigging still attached and
missing the flippers, but in place at the art center.

   

Next post: The inauguration ceremony

(All photos by Diana Coogle unless otherwise noted.)

Tree Trimming

 I live in an area with an unusual preponderance of beautiful California live oaks.

These tall evergreen trees provide a wealth of shade with branch after bushy branch of tiny, serrated leaves. Several of these oaks grow just off my front deck. One in particular is a beloved tree. It shades the deck and provides habitat for birds and acorns for the red squirrel that bops along my deck every now and then. 

    But when I first moved into this house, that same tree was a tangled mess blocking the view of the mountain from my bed. So I called a tree expert, my friend Chuck Dahl, who came, climbed, cut, and sawed until I had a beautifully shaped tree through which I could see Humpy Mountain from my bed.

    Ten years later, that tree's limbs were again blocking my view, and the limbs of other live oaks were cluttering the gutters with leaves. So I called Chuck again. The overhanging limbs were an obvious fix, but he went into my bedroom to see what I wanted there. He tucked his chin onto my bed, said, "Hm. I see," then went outside, geared up, and started climbing.

    For Chuck a tree is not an adversary to fight but a partner to dance with. In his heavy work boots, he dances up the tree en pointe.

 He bows horizontal to saw a limb. He pirouettes to a different position to use his chain saw on another one.

He manipulates a ten-foot pole to clip another one. He clips and saws and cuts; he hangs and swings and dances. If ballon refers to the smooth and elastic quality of the jumps performed in ballet, Chuck is a ballon-ist in a tree.

    When it was over, I had a beautifully shaped tree as well as an extended view from my bed. I had gutters unhindered by leaves. And I had wagonload after wagonload of branches to haul away.

Chuck went home, and I got to work.

    It didn't take long, though, and now, every morning when I wake up, I look out the window at the oak tree that danced with Chuck and beyond it to the music of the mountain I can see from my bed.

Mothing

     Butterflies are like prom queens. They're beautiful and showy and get all the attention. Moths are like the other girls—get to know them, and you'll see how special they are!

    There are about 750 species of butterflies in North America—and about 12,000 moth species. How many species of moths live on the Siskiyou Crest? No one knows, but the Siskiyou Crest Coalition has invited "citizen scientists" to join lepidopterist Dana Ross to try to find out.

    That's why I was setting up a tent at 7000-foot Observation Gap at dusk last week.

    It was cold and windy. Mt. Shasta rose majestically on the horizon, snowy in twilight. In the opposite direction the sun was setting with scarlet brilliance behind the forest. On two places on Observation Gap double sets of large white sheets, billowing in the wind, gleamed in the beam of strong, battery-powered black lights. 

As dark descended, the four citizen scientists and one learned scientist gathered at the sheets, waiting, glass vials in hand, for the moths.

  And the moths came, flying into the sheets. Soon we were all busy scooping moths into vials.

 Then we would show the captured moth to Dana, who would say, "Oh, it's a [such-and-such] moth. That's great!" or, sometimes, "Oh, I don't know that one!" All went in a cooler to take back to the lab to be identified and labeled as one of the moth species found on the Siskiyou Crest. 

    In only a few hours we had 50 or 60 moths in the cooler. Some were thumb-sized. Some were a quarter-inch long, as thin as pencil lead, and so insignificant I thought they wouldn't be worth the catch. But no moth was beneath Dana's consideration. He likes them all, whether tiny or large, dull or beautifully patterned.

    By midnight I was yawning and ready to retire. Soon the others followed me to their tents. Dana suggested we could get up before daylight and see what was still flying around, but when predawn came, I decided I was pleased enough with my contribution to scientific knowledge of the Siskiyou Crest that I didn't have to catch more moths. I snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag and let images of moths flit again through my dreams.

All photos by Suzie Savoie.