Cow Warming

Continues very cold here.  I look out at my warmly wrapped dogwood tree and its partially wrapped neighboring fir, and am grateful that my mother took me, in 1943, to weekly meetings of the Red Cross where I knit little khaki-colored afghan squares ‘for our boys overseas.’  I think that it taught me not only to knit, but also to associate knitting with helpfulness or charity work, anyway, which may or may not of course actually be helpful.

When I started knitting the tree scarves, I knew about ‘urban knitters,’ which group includes women/artists/activists all round the U.S. (and indeed the world) who knit scarves and the like for trees and stop-sign posts, park benches and buses.  One woman for the past 6 years has been crocheting amazing ‘tree cozies’ for very large trees. So I didn’t think of myself as doing something unique, although the urban knitters were not my inspiration.  I was inspired by a woman named Christine Oatman, whose work I saw one Christmas in Los Angeles, around 1978, at an annual Christmas art show called ‘The Magical Mystery Tour.’  She made temporary environmental structures, and then photographed them before or as they disappeared.  One of her pieces involved her knitting neon chartreuse and neon orange lichen for trees.  Thirty years later, she seems to have been teaching at a California college and not getting enough work gallaried to get on the net, but she made a big impression on me those decades ago.  So, these tree sweaters are for you, Christine.

When I was doing the knitting, I worried that once I had used up most of the yarn, I would begin to long for more thrift store yarn to fill up the void.  And, indeed, one day I found myself in a B.C. thrift store that was having a half-price sale (a sale at a thrift store always stuns me!), and sure enough there was a terrific and sizeable bag of various amounts of maybe a dozen different kinds of red yarn.  Different reds, different yarns.  For fifty cents, it was mine.  And a wonderfully invested fifty cents it was.

Looking at it, I thought not about Christine Oatman’s own tree scarves, but about the fact that I was working to get Christmas presents done in time to mail them here and there in the U.S.  And I thought about who, not normally on my list, might need a really nicely varied red scarf for Christmas.  And without much wandering around, the face (or at least the form) of Drewhenge’s iconic cow came to my mind.  So I took to knitting a 10-foot long red scarf for Ms. O’Holstein (as her owners like to call her), while also finishing the tree sweaters.

Yesterday, we walked over to Drewhenge to make the presentation.  But, to our shock, there was no sign of the cow.  Of course, it was 18 degrees and I couldn’t really have explained why there was any sign of me outdoors in that weather, the less so, perhaps, she.  We trespassed for awhile around on the lawn (the owners did not appear to be in residence that day) and eventually found her behind the barn/shed, her nose just barely peaking out from the building’s rear wall.

So we made the presentation and Ed took the picture and now Ms. O’Holstein has her Christmas scarf, which features bells on one end and fringes on the other.  And a good upcoming Winter’s Solstice to her and to us all!

Moo, Y'All

A return visit to the iconic cow who has been making her way about her home field over the past month or so up on Benson Road. I went to visit her in January and learned a good bit about her makeup. This was because I parked the car and got out and went right up to her and said, “Hi!” rather than photographing her with a telephoto from a safe distance away. And I was parked at her environs because Ed’s daughters were here to visit and we were trotting them around the Point to see the sights (a somewhat less scenic tour, I find, in early January: all possibilities are called into service).

She was wearing her serviceable straw hat and her silver tarp overcoat and it was cold and she doubtless needed them. When I first saw her about a year ago I assumed (from a distant sighting) that she was a metal cow with a painted, fiberglass body. To my surprise, on this up-close visit, I found that she had a metal frame indeed, but upon that metal frame was mounted in some unknown manner a foam rubber body and upon the foam rubber body she sported cow pajamas or, perhaps more accurately, cow upholstery. It doesn’t matter of course: she’s still an iconic cow, beauty’s only skin deep, etc., etc. Still it was something of a shock to see her yellow foam rubber poking out around the edges. (Note the knee in the picture: it looks like mine feels.)

Now, today, a blog reader has written to inform me that the cow has in the past week been given, by the Drewhenges, her own name: Scarlett O’Holstein. Clearly, not a cow of Icelandic heritage.

Also: it is reported to have snowed in Vancouver today, but we are thankful that the snow stayed on that side of the border. Good job! Homeland Security!

Riding High

I got a blog message from Mr. Drewhenge today with respect to an early December post about the cow and its Christmas Colors. (For those of you who aren’t entirely sure how a blog works, if you write a comment at any time on any posting on my blog, I get the comment right away via email.) Apparently, Mr. Drewhenge is a man interested in challenges, and apparently the challenge of managing the location and couture of his iconic cow on Benson Road is not enough for him. He informs me that he also has a very excellent Rudolph above, ‘waaay above’, his house in Tsawwassen, just over the border from Point Roberts.

As it happened, I was making a laundromat run to Tsa today and added a visit to the Drewhenge Rudolph to my errand list. It was in an area of Tsawwassen (which is about the same size as Point Roberts--1/5 the size of Gaza, you may recall) where I’d never been, someplace called ‘The Village” near English Bluff. I quickly found the street and then the house with the right number (he had given me the address in the comment). I stopped the car, opened the car door and leaned out and up, looking for the Rudolph. Not to be found. I got out and walked around a bit and did not find Rudolph. I thought, momentarily, perhaps his comment/email had been delayed several weeks in the Christmas email rush and he’d already taken his Christmas Rudolph down. And I drove off.

Then, across the street, I saw an easy parking place and once again parked, got out and walked around a bit. And this time, there it was, Rudolph of the Tall Place. Other trees had obscured my view from my first parking place. Now, I saw it clearly, a lighted reindeer some 100+ feet above the ground, topping a tall cedar by about five feet. (If you click on the picture, you can see it better in a bigger version.)

Well, of course one’s first question is how he got it up there. And the second is how is it lighted. I couldn’t see any electric cords coming down the trunk, but on the other hand, I didn’t feel as if I could traipse around in his yard looking for a power source. And as to how it gets up there? My belief is that the world of people with machines of the construction variety have ways of doing these things that are not readily available to the rest of us. Or maybe a helicopter??? (I’m thinking La Dolce Vita’s opening sequence. )

But what I really want to know is whether Rudolph of the Tall Place moves around? Sometimes at the top of the cedar, sometimes on the roof, sometimes at a neighbor’s house? Now that, I’d think, could be Mr. Drewhenge’s next challenge. (You can see the Rudolph of the Tall Place at 1007 Skana Dr.)

Simple Dichotomies

I’ve pretty much heard enough for several lifetimes of binary assertions like ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us.’ Almost always, I think, it’s just not quite that clear. You might be more or less ‘with us,’ and also less or more ‘against us.’ You might not care one way or another because you don’t think it’s an important enough issue on which to have a unilateral stand (or to learn enough to try to acquire a unilateral stand). You might be against us, but only because we don’t share a common view of the relevant facts of the situation, or because we don’t have any facts in the first place. And the same could be said for a lack of common values: you might be for your own values without, particularly, being against ours. It goes on like that for me. Your standard liberal who just isn’t willing to take a stand.

On the other hand, there are some things that seem so self-evidently true that I can’t imagine how we get to thinking there’s any possibility of another side. For example, Jimmy Carter said "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.” I just don’t know what ‘the other side’ of that could be.

But, binary thinking is part of our nature, and so it crops up all the time. For example, I found myself thinking about dichotomy this morning while doing some errands about the Point.

This photo is taken on Benson Road, at Drewhenge. The iconic cow is close to his barn and is now well-dressed for winter with blanket and hat. I think the very existence of the cow, not to mention his wanderings and changes of attire, can only be characterized, with respect to neighborliness, as FRIENDLY.



This photo is taken on APA Road, facing North at Calhoun St. It looks on to a large tract of land that houses one of my beloved abandoned houses. I have walked onto this land any number of times over the past ten years to look at the house, to photograph it, to be drawn into the past it represents. In contrast to the cow at Drewhenge, I would characterize this newly-erected chain, posts, and sign yelling POSTED/NOTRESPASSING/KEEPOUT, with respect to neighborliness, as UNFRIENDLY.

Drewhenge and the APA tract owners: With us or Against us? You be the judge.

Christmas Decor

I was driving east on Benson the other day and turned to look through the Drewhenge Arch as I passed it. I usually do this because I am interested in discovering where Mr. Drew’s black-and-white-spotted metal cow is pasturing from day to day. This realistic objet d’art sometimes is facing the road, sometimes has his back (or side) to passersby, sometimes is close to the arch, sometimes is far back. I imagine that at night he crosses the road and crops the grass closely in the field opposite. I imagine this because that field is always close-cropped and I’ve never seen people or machines cutting it. Must be the work of an artistic cow.

Anyway, there was the cow. But, on the other hand, the cow was not exactly the cow I expected to see. Today, the black and white spotted cow has become a Christmas cow. He is red and green spotted. Not a bright and garish red and green, but instead a subdued, tasteful red and green, the kind of Christmas colors you see in high-end stores.

I have to laugh to think of Mr. Drew thinking to do this. If I had a metal cow, I probably wouldn’t move it around, and I probably wouldn’t change the color of its spots to celebrate the season (will they be yellow and lavender for Easter?). But I am glad to know that he is thinking of these things, and now he is making me think about them, too. I am wondering what else he could do. Will the cow have a mortar board with tassel when we come to graduation time? Will the cow get a parka for the winter? Will the cow ever get a friend? Does Mr. Drew need outside help in thinking about this? I am also thinking of knocking on Mr. Drew’s door and asking him what he’s about. Probably an inventor not only of locking stones but of something even more amazing. Something to do with cows, I imagine.

Holy Cow!

One of the very nice features of the post-60’s world is the reintroduction of folk art into our lives. I’ve written previously about Patrick Amiot of Sebastopol, California (June 15, 2008), who has peopled that area with wondrously fantastic metal sculptures, and about Axil Stenzel of Roberts Creek, B.C. (June 23, 2008), who has peopled his yard with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of strange metal beings. Those who make the trek down the I-5 to California from up here have doubtless seen Ralph Starritt’s rusty cow sculpture to the east of the highway near Yreka in an endless stubble field. It is a life-size cow of welded sheet metal named ‘MooDonna,’ and it’s been in that field for well over a decade.

Down in Sebastopol, Patrick Amiot also has a semi-realistic metal cow sculpture (in addition to his fantasy creatures) that lives in a field populated by real Holsteins. According to the San Francisco Examiner, ‘At dusk, the live cows congregate around the artwork and use it as a scratching post, frequently moving it a few feet a day. Amiot has worried that they might knock over his creation. Which would probably be a first: a cow-tipping with cows as the perpetrators.’

If you google ‘metal cow sculptures,’ you will find that there a lot of them in the U.K., so it’s not just a U.S. thing. But now, Point Roberts has joined all these other excellent towns in having its own metal cow sculpture. [Correction: A reader points out that this cow (referred to as a 'lawn cow') is more likely to be fiberglass or resin than metal.] On the south side of Benson Road, just before you get to the admirable Aydon Wellness Clinic, there is DREWHENGE, where the homeowner and patenter of some kind of interlocking blocks has interlocked them to create an impressively large arch over his entranceway. On the large, grassy field that constitutes Drewhenge’s front yard, stands the cow in the photo above. You can’t always see the cow right from the road as you drive by because the cow moves around. Not under its own momentum, of course: it's a metal sculpture. Nevertheless, one can only hope that, someday, the Drewhenge cow meets up with the Point Roberts’ Marina's cows. I have, of course, no real understanding of why the marina has cattle, but maybe they’re folk art, too, even though they do move on their own and are eventually headed for an abattoir.