Pushing Up the Sky

I first encountered this charming woodcut eight years ago in Ella E. Clark's book, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest as I began my research for A Sideways Look at Clouds. I wrote about it in this 2010 blog but did not include this illustration or the Snohomish creation story behind it in my book. There were just too many wonderful local tribal stories about the sky and clouds to do justice to them in my book. 

In a nutshell, the story (sourced by Clark to a book written by Chief William Shelton in 1935) describes the work of several Puget Sound tribes to lift the sky--a sky so low that they bumped their heads on it. Using poles crafted from the giant fir trees and while shouting  "Ya-hoh!" (meaning "lift together") the men of the tribes managed to push the sky up to where it is now. Chief Shelton noted that in his day, the Snohomish still shouted "Ya-hoh" when doing hard work together.

On mid-winter days like today, when the the sky (aka the clouds, the thick altostratus clouds) seem a bit oppressive, I think of this story--not because I'd like the clouds to shove off, but because of the hard work required of us to keep the planet whole, to protect our natural resources, and environmental protections for wildlife and wild places.

The Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest was first published in 1953 with a 50th anniversary edition issued in 2003 by the University of California Press. Last year, a volunteer for South Sound Climate Reality Leaders, handed me a flier outside the Capital Mall movie theater where I had just watched An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Al Gore's follow up to An Inconvenient Truth). The flier featured a simple illustration--clearly adapted from Inverary's Ya-hohing sky pushers. Only there was only one person using a pole--the rest were pushing the clouds with their hands. And one of the four figures was a woman. And, there was no story to explain the illustration. There was a poem--"heiroglyphic stairway" from A Love Letter to the Milkyway by Drew Dellinger.

Ya-hoh!  Ya-hoh! Ya-hoh!

Sideways Plus #4 +MASS+

Oh, dear. It's been nearly two months since my last blog posting. What can I say but...wait for it...the  clouds got in my way. 

The last quarter of 2017 was a busy one ushering my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, into the world of readers, skywatchers, cloud lovers, and hunched-over texting addicts. I hope those of you who bought my book (thank you!) are enjoying it, looking up more, and are appreciating the sky and clouds in new ways.

As you may recall, I am posting an excerpt and supplemental content for each chapter of my book you to enjoy. In case you missed them, here are the links to the first three: Prologue /Cloud /Visible 

Recall that each chapter of my book covers one term in the definition of a cloud: a visible mass of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the earth. This fourth posting covers the chapter on mass--not Pacific Northwest weather guru Cliff Mass, but the mass that is a cloud. 

"Though 'mass' has many meanings, the best fit for a cloud comes from the Oxford English Dictionary: 'a dense aggregation of objects having the appearance of a single, continuous body.'

The 'objects' in a cloud are primarily water molecules, billions of them, aggregated into liquid droplets and ice crystals, billions upon billions of them, further aggregated into a single cloud or cloud formation.

The density of this aggregation varies with the type of cloud at atmospheric conditions in which they form. According to one estimated, a typical Cumulus cloud contains about four-thousandths of an ounce of water per cubic yard. This is about a marble's worth of water in a space the side of a loveseat. A typical small Cumulus cloud contains over a million pounds of water--a weight equivalent to roughly one hundred elephants."

from A Sideways Look at Clouds

One of the most fascinating and troublesome problems I encountered understanding "mass" was understanding how so much water could float. Water--the most amazing molecule in the universe--has a trick: as water vapor condenses to liquid water, it releases a tiny bit of energy, known as "latent heat," which gives it the boost it needs to rise above the surrounding cooler air.

My other big problem was visualizing how the mass that is a cloud becomes visible. Part of my problem was imagining the  invisible water vapor in our atmosphere and the invisible process of convection that is largely responsible for many of our favorite clouds (cumulus, for instance). 

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is one way air is lifted in the atmosphere. On paper, watercolor artist "lift" clouds using paint and a paper towel. To my delight, I found this out in person while sitting in on a watercolor class at the Olympia Center. After several attempts (chronicled on pages 80-85 in my book), I managed to work the paper towel in the wet paint just so to create some masses that could be recognized as clouds. Sure, there's an elephant trunk in the center cloud and a witch's profile in another, but it sure was fun trying to make paint appear to float. 

If you want to try it yourself, here is a very short YouTube video to get you started. 

Next Up: Sideways Plus #4: +Water+

"Sideways" on Tour

As if on cue, the clouds returned to the Pacific Northwest as Mountaineers Books' released my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds. The clouds never do anything on cue, so their timing is notable here. (Even stranger, Hurricane Maria made landfall as I was starting my book tour).

The clouds have been dramatic this fall and I've been on the road encouraging readers to look up and enjoy the every-changing drama in the skies at bookstores and other venues in Olympia, Seattle, Bellingham, Marysville, Kirkland, Portland, and Washington, DC. (Check out my events calendar for upcoming talks and book signings).

More than talking about my book and sharing some of my photos of the spectacular clouds we have in the Pacific Northwest, I've loved answering their questions about clouds: How exactly does it rain? When is a cloud a "cloud" and when do you call them "clouds?" Why do we have so many clouds here? What's the deal with high and low pressure? Are clouds changing? I am going to create a FAQs page to answer all of these and more.

I've also loved hearing people's stories about clouds. Here is one story (handwritten) and delivered to me at the 2017 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) trade show by Mary Anne Fraser, manager of Brilliant Moon books in Shelton.

"100 years ago, when I'd just turned twelve, I spent met hard-earned babysitting wages on a small Kodak camera. Within an hour the complete roll was filled and my mom (knowing how excited I'd been about this long-awaited purchase) offered to take the roll to our local "Pay and Save" to have my photos developed.

The week-long wait was finally over and I ran to the car to discover what my new hobby had delivered. Before I could open the obviously already opened packet, my mom said to me in a rather disappointed voice: "They're all clouds."

I looked at her, waiting for the rest of the observation ("They're beautiful." "I love the one that looks like an otter." "What an artist's eye you have.") but, alas, that was the sum total of her opinion.

I, on the other hand, was thrilled. Yes, they WERE all clouds."

While in Portland, I visited KATU-TV to talk with Helen Raptis on "AMNW" and Tra'Renee Chambers on "Afternoon Live" and also with Jefferson Smith, host of "XRAY in the Morning" (skip to 1:54:48) before my talk at Powell's on Hawthorne

After my interview on "Afternoon Live," the on-set photographer, Mark Plut, showed me photographs of his two recent paintings--of clouds!  "I too am fascinated by clouds," Mark told me, "especially how to paint them." In the first painting, Mark as painted a sky washed with what look like cirrostratus clouds to me. In the second painting, the landscape is transformed by more dynamic cumulus and altocumulus clouds. What a difference, eh? Thank you, Mark!

And because you can never have too many clouds--or paintings of clouds--in the Pacific Northwest, I went on a cloud hunt at the Portland Museum of Art. What a bonanza of clouds! Here is a gallery of a few of my favorites. 

Oskar Kokoschka/Tuileries Gardens, Paris; George Inness/Apezzo Pass, Titian's House; Joe Goode/Torn Cloud Painting; Robert Henri/Rue de Rennes; Robert Goonough/Grey Development; N.C. Wyeth/Rip Van Winkle, endpaper illustration; [forgot to photograph the label of the skyscrapers in the clouds--ooops]; George Michel/Landscape; ibid/detail of cloud

REMEMBER....EARTH WITHOUT ART is JUST "EH"

Speaking of...I'll be signing books at the 37th Annual  Wild Arts Festival at Montgomery Park in Portland, OR. The festival runs November 18-19 and benefits the fabulous Audubon Society of Portland. I'll be there Sunday noon-4 p.m. along with 36 other authors (and more than 200 artists) whose work is inspired by nature.

Sideways Plus #3: +Visible+

This third "Sideways Plus" post offers an excerpt from "Visible," the third chapter of my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds plus illustrations and resources related to the chapter.

"Ironically, the more I understood about the visibility of clouds, the more difficult they were for me to watch. While gazing at the clouds, I would superimpose onto them as many individual water droplets as my minds' eye could generate. Then I'd travel 93 million miles to the sun and bring a big beam of light into the clouds and imagine multicolored wavelengths scattering every which way. My clouds flashed in rainbow colors. My clouds flashed bright white and gray. My clouds vibrated and buzzed with energy. My clouds were exhausting. I felt scatterbrained. I gave up drinking coffee for a while, thinking that the buzz from the caffeine might be jamming some electromagnetic channel of understanding between my brain and the clouds. Some days I couldn't bring myself to look at clouds at  all. They were just big billowing reminders of how little I know. Gone were the happy, innocent days when I saw them simply as dragons or elephants--or ice-cream castles in the air."  (page 49)

"Pure sunlight is not yellow and it does not emanate in lines or triangular rays. Pure sunlight is white and moves in invisible waves. This makes the sun difficult to depict accurately with crayons or any medium." (p. 46)

"That white light was composed of several constituent colors was proven by Isaac Newton  in a serious of experiments he conducted with a glass prism between 1666 and 1672. Although nearly 350 years had passed since Newton's discovery, I was happy to rediscover this 'celebrated phenomenon of color' on this morning." (p. 47) (Portrait of Newton by Godfrey Kneller, 1609)

"There are plenty of books on 'the art of seeing' but none so perfectly--and uncannily--addressed my problems of seeing the clouds as a book of art and literary criticism by British novelist, Jeanette Winterson." (p. 52) 

"'Pea souper' struck me as a quaint and colorful British name for the particularly thick fog common in London and elsewhere in the U.K...[but] this naturally occurring fog turned toxic during the Industrial Revolution when the water droplets in fog formed around sulfur dioxide and the soot belched from coal-boring factories and fireplaces." p. 56 Read the story of the Great Smog of 1952 here. [NOTE: Smog is a word combining "SMoke" and fOG."]

"Fog is the only cloud you can swim in, though no one mentions this fact or recommends this simple, rare pleasure." p. 57

"At the crest of the hill leading down to the lake, I felt a smile stretch across my face. There was no lake. There were no docks, no boats, no lake-front houses. It was all fog. All fog except for the wide cement slabs of the public boat ramp. And the brown wooden fishing regulation sign. And the pickup truck." (p. 60)

Saving the best for last here... PLEASE PLEASE click here to watch Joni Mitchell singing her song "Both Sides Now" on the Mama Cass TV show in 1969. Perhaps unwittingly, Mama Cass is wearing an outfit that shows her uncanny (or unwitting?) understanding of the sunlight and visible spectrum ;)

Read Other Sideways+ Posts:  Prologue + Chapter 1/Cloud