Keeva by Ehren Kee Natay at Nativo Lodge in Albuquerque
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
Ehren Natay is a jewelry maker with street-artist DNA — and for a recent project at the Nativo Lodge in Albuquerque he let his flair for outrageous oversize images run wild. He was selected to design one of four “Artist Guest Rooms,” and Natay summoned the Tewa deity Avanyu, guardian of water, who takes the form of a water serpent with horns and feathers. Natay chose to paint Avanyu in a Japanese style, with the serpent suggestive of a Yakuza dragon tattoo and the churning water reminiscent of a Hokusai woodblock print. On another wall, a cartoony Pojoaque Pueblo-style Buffalo Dancer holds a bow and casts a watchful eye on Avanyu. Over the bed is a photograph of Natay himself wearing a mask of his own construction, printed on metal.
Photos by Mike Benbow / For the Herald Pinks like to travel close to shore, so fishing for pink salmon is a great family sport.
They’re expecting 6.2 million pink salmon to enter Puget Sound this year.
If you or a member of your family have always wanted to catch a salmon, now is your best chance.
The sheer numbers of pinks will up your odds of success either in the Sound or in the local rivers.
“A bumper crop of pink salmon always generates a huge response from anglers,” said John Long, statewide salmon manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “You can catch them from a boat, you can catch them from the shore and you can catch them throughout most of Puget Sound. It’s a great fishery for kids and whole families.”
If you’d like to make catching a pink a family project this year, here’s some information that might help. Fishing should be good now and for the next few weeks.
Where to go
More than any other salmon, pinks like to travel close to shore while heading to their home rivers, so fishing from the beach is an effective way to catch them in salt water, especially if you don’t have a boat.
Whether in a boat, on a beach, or on a river bank, look for pinks jumping and rolling as a sign of where to cast your lure or fly.
Salt water with boat: Humpy Hollow (south of Mukilteo) or Kayak Point (south of Stanwood).
Beaches: Bush Point (Whidbey Island), Picnic Point (Edmonds), Kayak Point (south of Stanwood).
Rivers: Stillaguamish, Snohomish, Skykomish. Tip: the fish are in better eating condition if you fish closer to salt water.
The Snohomish/Skykomish system is already open for pink fishing. The North Fork of the Stillaguamish is closed to salmon fishing, and the main stem of the Stillaguamish doesn’t open for pinks until Sept. 1.
Keeping pink salmon
Pinks deteriorate quickly, but they are good table fare if cared for properly.
After catching a pink, remove the gills and let the blood drain out of the fish. You can filet them later. Put on ice right away. Eat the fish in the next day or so.
Cooking pinks
Pinks are an oily fish, so they work well on the smoker. But they also can be tasty on the grill.
Fillet the salmon and add some lemon juice, fresh cracked pepper and some butter.
Cook on the grill at about 375 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes. Much of the oil will drip off the salmon onto the grill, adding a smoky taste.
Serve with lemon basil aioli: In a small bowl mix 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh basil, 1 1/2 teaspoons of grated lemon zest, 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice, a small clove of minced garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt.
Pink marabou jig
I consider pink marabou jigs to be the most effective lure for pinks in both salt and fresh water. You fish them by jigging the rod up and down while reeling in your line, creating an erratic action that is often irresistible to fish.
You can buy them at most sporting goods stores, including John’s Sporting Goods, 1913 Broadway, Everett; Ted’s Sports Center, 15526 Highway 99, Lynnwood; and Cabelas, 9810 Quil Ceda Boulevard, Tulalip.
Jigs are also easy to make and the materials are available at the same locations. Here’s how:
Buy: 1/4-ounce lead-headed jigs, hot pink marabou feathers, hot pink thread, a thread bobbin, Sally Hansen’s Hard as Nails clear fingernail polish (available at any drug store).
You will also need a pair of sharp scissors and some sort of tying vise. Fly-tying vises are expensive, so you can use a regular woodworking vise in your workshop, pliers or vise grips if you’re just going to make a few.
1. Attach jig to vise.
2. Attach thread to jig collar by wrapping it over itself a few times.
3. Stroke tip of entire marabou feather and cut so it extends from the head of the jig to about 3/4 of an inch past bend of hook.
4. Tie cut end in at jig collar with several wraps of thread.
5. Repeat with two more feathers to cover entire collar of jig.
6. Wrap thread repeatedly over cut edge of feathers to produce a neat collar below jig head. Tie off thread with three half hitches and cut end with scissors.
7. Coat thread with nail polish and let dry.
Pink gear
Rods: Use a medium weight spinning rod or a 5- to – weight fly rod, either should be about 9 feet long.
Line: Line or leader material should be 8- to 12-pound test.
Lures: Pink Buzz Bombs, 2.5 inches long, or Rotators, or a 1/4-ounce pink marabou jig. Fly fishers can use pink clousers in the Sound and a pink woolley bugger in the river.
By the numbers
2 The lifespan in years of a pink salmon, which spawns in most Washington rivers in odd-numbered years.
3-5 The weight of a pink salmon in pounds. Pinks are the smallest of the five species of Pacific salmon.
18-24 The average length of pinks in inches.
409,700 The number of adult pinks expected to spawn in the Stillaguamish River this year based on a count of the young fry that left the river two years ago.
988,621 The number of pinks expected this year in the Snohomish River and its tributaries.
Steven Hackel and Catherine Gudis curated an unprecedented exhibit at the Huntington Library on Junipero Serra and the impact of California’s missions on Native Americans and the state.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A first-of-its-kind exhibition documenting the life of the Franciscan missionary who founded California’s mission system and the missions’ impact on California Indians and culture — curated by UC Riverside history professors Steven Hackel and Catherine Gudis — opens Saturday, Aug. 17, at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
The exhibition — “Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions” — is unprecedented in its examination of the spiritual and intellectual influences on Junípero Serra’s life that led to his founding of the mission system in California; the transition for thousands of Indians from village to mission life and their responses to it; romantic notions of California born amid myrid myths of mission life; and responses of contemporary Indians, in art and recorded interviews, to the experience.
Hackel, whose research focuses on the history of early California and California Indians, and Gudis, director of UCR’s Public History Program, approached the Huntington Library three years ago with a proposal to develop a modest exhibition that would open this year, 300 years after Serra’s birth in Mallorca, Spain. Hackel also is the author of “Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father” (Hill and Wang, September 2013).
The exhibition grew to 261 rare documents, artifacts and art from Spain, Mexico and California. Some of the items are on exhibit in the United States for the first time. The exhibition continues through Jan. 6, 2014.
“We wanted to create an exhibition that suggests the contours of his life, beginning in the place he came from,” Hackel explained. “People were starving while he was in Mallorca. How you made food determined who you were as a person in his eyes,” and that philosophy was reflected in the self-sufficient design of a mission system that stretched from San Diego to Monterey.
Serra was born Nov. 24, 1713, in Mallorca, Spain, and died Aug. 28, 1784, at Mission San Carlos Borromoéo del rio Carmelo, Carmel-by-the-Sea. He arrived in Mexico at age 36, and was 55 when he established the first of California’s 21 Spanish missions in 1769.
The exhibition features religious art, diaries and Bibles, letters, maps and reliquaries that provide the context for Serra’s early years as a Franciscan priest, his deployment to Mexico as missionary and agent of the Spanish Inquisition, and the work that occupied his final years: establishing the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in Alta California.
The experience of mission Indians figures prominently as well, with art that illustrates their treatment from the perspectives of Native Americans and Franciscan missionaries, including coercion that Hackel said was central to the experience of many mission Indians; examples of the craftsmanship of Indian carpenters, stone masons and basket weavers; and artifacts such as a 9,000-year-old textile fragment believed to be from a child’s sandal.
“We wanted to demonstrate that California Indians had a history and culture that were ancient and rich, long before the Spanish arrived,” Hackel said.
Vital records compiled by the Franciscans document the lives of 81,000 Indians who were baptized, married or buried at the missions. Those records form the basis of one display that projects the name of every Indian associated with a mission, and a video that documents the movement of individual Indians from villages to missions. The video project, funded by two digital humanities grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities totaling $75,000 and the UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, used mapping software to document the transition of California Indians from village to mission life between 1769 and 1840.
Another video Hackel and Gudis wrote and produced, “Contemporary Voices,” records descendents of the mission Indians discussing the impact of the mission system on themselves and their culture.
The exhibition also documents the evolution of mission mythology that began in the late 19th century that romanticized the experience and prompted tourists to visit California. Entrepreneurs like Frank Miller capitalized on the public fascination with the mission period by building hotels like the Mission Inn in Riverside, giving birth to the mission revival style of architecture that persists in subdivisions today.
The name of every Indian recorded by Franciscan missionaries is projected on a wall at The Huntington Library.
“We see the branding of the missions as a source of commerce,” Gudis explained. “The birth of mass tourism is part of the story as Californians tried to determine what their past was. Do they focus on a Spanish past? Is it Americans following in their footsteps and civilizing an unruly land? Is it sentimentalizing Native Americans as having lived in the past, but not in the present?”
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is a collections-based research and educational institution serving scholars and the general public, located at 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. For information about hours and cost of admission go to www.huntington.org.
Springfield, Mo. – Crops grown like those sown by Native Americans 1,000 years ago are growing again at Smallin Civil War Cave just south of Springfield.
Staff archeologist Eric Fuller planted corn, sunflowers, squash and other plants from seeds that have not been manipulated since they were originally grown by the Osage tribes and others that inhabited the area.
The gardens are part of the cave’s mission to educate people about the natural wonders of the Missouri Ozarks and its fascinating Native American history. Not only will they help people better understand where foods came from and how they have changed over the years, patrons also will learn about the diet of the people who were here when Europeans arrived in the Americas, Fuller said.
The gardens will be a focal point of a new tour offered on the cave property titled “Forest of the Osage.” A hike through the forest will give people a new look at the trees and plants of the Ozarks; legends about the plants; and ways the Osage Native Americans used plants for construction, food and medicine.
Smallin Civil War Cave offers a variety of other tours and events, including tours of the cave itself; Civil War Tours in which patrons enjoy dinner around a campfire with guides dressed in Civil War-era costumes telling stories about the past; and Civil War Christmas tours featuring hot cocoa, a cave tour and holiday lights.
Cave tours teach lessons about the archeology, biology, geography, anthropology and history.
The cave is open year round and the paved cave trails are easily traversed by wheelchairs.
For more information about Smallin Civil War Cave, visit www.SmallinCave.com or call 417-551-4545. For information about other things to see and do in the Springfield area, visit www.SpringfieldAdventures.com or call the Convention & Visitors Bureau at 800-678-8767.
Dan Bates / The Herald Veronica Oberst, who was 11 at the time, grooms Iris, a young female Jersey Wooly rabbit that she entered in competition at the 2012 Evergreen State Fair.
Source: The Herald
U.S. 2 heading into Monroe will start to clog up earlier in the day next week as the Evergreen State Fair gets rolling Thursday.
The fair begins at 10 a.m. Thursday and continues until through 7 p.m. Sept. 2 at the Monroe fairgrounds, 14405 179th Ave. SE, Monroe.
Admission is free until 1 p.m. on the first day of the fair.
After that, tickets are $10 general, $7 for senior citizens and youth and free to seniors 90 years and older and kids 5 years and under
Grandstand entertainment will include monster trucks, stock car races and music.
The music schedule includes The Oak Ridge Boys at 7 p.m. Aug. 26 (tickets are $22 to $32); Brantley Gilbert at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 27 ($32 to $55); 3 Doors Down at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28 ($32 to $55); REO Speedwagon, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 29 ($32 to $55); and Mercyme, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 30 ($25 to $37).
The fair has always been the showcase for 4-H and FFA animal exhibitors, showing off cattle, dogs, rabbits, sheep and llamas. Kids will also exhibit their areas of expertise in photography, plant and soil science, veterinary science, home economics and herdsmanship.
This year the Monroe Chamber of Commerce has created Parade Central, on the grounds of Wagner Performing Arts Center, 639 West Main St., Monroe.
Parade Central is the new location for the judges’ reviewing stand, vendor booths, shaved ice, face painting, kettle corn and Monroe-based Hook-n-Ladder BBQ.
These vendors will be at Parade Central to serve the crowds who show up early to get a good seat for the parade.
The route begins at 11 a.m. at the intersection of West Main Street and 179th Avenue on Aug. 24 and ends at West Main Street and Blakely Avenue. For more parade information go to www.ChooseMonroe.com or call the Monroe Chamber at 360-794-5488 or stop by the office, 125 S Lewis S., Monroe.
Highlights of this year’s parade include the Seahawk Sea Gals cheerleaders, the SeaFair Pirates, drift and drag cars from the Evergreen Speedway, the Pirates of Treasure Island, Ixtapa Horses, local bands, drill teams, and tractor and motorcycle clubs, according to a chamber press release.
Bleachers are being brought into Parade Central to accommodate parade viewers and participants near the judges’ reviewing stand.
Butler Amusement will again provide the carnival rides.
Associated Press Singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge performs on June 26 in Wilmington, Del. The folk-rocker will drop by the Tulalip Amphitheatre on Sunday.
Source: The Herald
Folk rock musician Melissa Etheridge will perform Sunday at the Tulalip Amphitheatre.
Etheridge released her debut, self-titled album in 1988, but gained fame withher fourth album “Yes I Am” in 1993, including hits “I’m the Only One” and “Come to My Window.”
She is also a notable activist for gay and lesbian rights.
The show starts at 7 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m.
You must be 21 or older to attend. Tickets start at $25, available at www.ticketmaster.com.
Next up is Foreigner on Aug. 25 and the Doobie Brothers and America on Sept. 7.
Tickets start at $30 for these shows.
The amphitheatre is at 10400 Quil Ceda Blvd. Tulalip.
For more information, visit www.tulalipamphitheatre.com.
A couple of innovative young artists are melding the ancient tradition of formline drawing with the hip canvas of skateboard decks. “The demand for Native art skateboards was made very clear by the popularity of my early hand-painted decks,” Rico Lanáat’ Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan) of Trickster Company said in a recent interview.
Worl painted decks for himself and his family first, but soon saw the need for an affordable line of manufactured boards sporting his digitized designs. He also paints custom artboards, and says his clientele are split fairly evenly between skaters who actually ride the boards and collectors who hang them on their walls.
“I started painting on decks just for fun, just for myself,” Worl said. “It continues to be my canvas of choice while I study the old masters and the new masters of formline design, in the rich history of Tlingit and Athabascan art.” Flowing two dimensional formline designs featuring northwestern coastal sea creatures and other symbols have adorned totem poles and house posts for thousands of years.
Three box boards by Trickster Skateboards.
The clan crest of Worl’s family is the sockeye salmon, which he recreated on his first deck. “We only manufacture designs if our relatives give us permission,” he explained, and the Tlingit culture property includes land, names, songs, stories, crests and more. To respect the clan protocol, Worl focuses on general designs including the eagle and the raven, or abstracts.
“My formline style takes after the Northern Tlingit style which varies as you go from Yakutat to Washington and across tribes, and the style is more bold, with heavier lines and is slightly blockier.” He especially loves the complexity of box designs, as well as the Chilkat weaving influences.
Trickster skateboards, Chilkat pattern.
Artist Ronnie Fairbanks also designs skateboards for Trickster Company (tricksterskateboards.com) when not teaching Native art carving in Craig, Alaska. “My style is a cross between Tlingit and Tsimshian styles, since I was taught by Tsimshian carver Eli Milton,” Fairbanks said. When designing skateboards, he strives for balance over the entire area. “I have spent a lot of time drawing formline and I always try to think of unique ways to fill the space.”
Worl is the arts director at Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska, and is currently visiting the Santa Fe Indian Market with a collection of archival art from SHI to promote the development of a northwest costal arts market.
Trickster Company issued a limited edition rocker snowboard deck last winter and plans to release another this year in collaboration with Chugach Flyer Snowboards who produce the manufactured boards.
Raven skateboard by Ronnie Fairbanks.
Trickster skateboards. Photo by Klas Stolpe of the Juneau Empire.
Artist Rico Worl with Warrior skateboard. Photo by Klas Stolpe of the Juneau Empire.
The big bursts of color light up a garden like a July 4th celebration.
And they stay lit until the first frost.
Dahlias are colossal flowers. Some are the size of pumpkins
Growers will show off their blooms at this weekend’s Snohomish County Dahlia Show in Everett. It is the club’s 104th consecutive year to have a show.
“We’ve had as many as 2,200 or 2,300 blooms,” said Hills Collins, show spokesman.
The judging is done before the doors open to the public.
“We have a head table with all the different winners,” Collins said. “The head table is judged to pick the best flower in the show. All different types are judged against each other, and one bloom is picked.”
Club members will be on hand to answer questions and talk about their blooms.
Longtime member Bernie Wilson, 68, a retired Snohomish firefighter, won the prestigious national Stanley Johnson Medal in 2012 for Lakeview Glow, an incurved cactus dahlia he originated.
The lake part is named after Blackmans Lake that is the backdrop to his 5-acre Snohomish property.
“The ‘glow’ came from if you stand up there by the house and look over the garden down it kind of glows up from all the rest of them,” he said.
His yard is aglow with about 100 varieties of dahlias.
“It’s just a fun hobby. It’s a challenge to show them. I enjoy being outside and in the garden, so it kind of comes natural,” he said.
He started growing dahlias in the 1970s after a neighbor gave him a tuber. Dahlia plants grow from tubers planted in the ground like potatoes.
From the ugly duckling roots come gorgeous blooms.
On show days, Wilson takes the best blooms he cuts to competitions and leaves the rest out for his neighbors to fill their vases. “Saturday morning they’re on the carport. And anybody who wants them can come get them,” he said.
Allison Richards also likes to spread the dahlia love around, in various forms.
“I give people at my work a bunch of tubers, and they just go nuts,” said Richards, 42, IT and general services manager at Maple Systems.
She started out growing a few dahlias and now has about 60 to 70 varieties and 200 plants.
“I threw myself into it; let’s put it that way,” she said. “I tie it in with my photography hobby. I put together a dahlia calendar for family and friends. The colors are so vibrant. There are so many different varieties and shapes and sizes.”
Dahlias are her tonic.
“I work with computers. Things break. Things don’t always go the way they should,” she said.
“I go home and go out there and there’re pretty flowers.”
See the show
The Snohomish County Dahlia Show is from 1 to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, at Floral Hall at Forest Park, 802 Mukilteo Blvd., Everett.
Snohomish County Dahlia Society meetings are 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of the month at Legion Park Hall, 145 Alverson Blvd., in Everett. The club has a tuber sale in April.
Caring for dahlias
In summer:
Remove old or spent flowers.
Water deeply every four or five days during the summer heat.
As the blooms develop, fertilize with a low or no nitrogen fertilizer, such as one labeled 0-20-20, to encourage flower and tuber development.
Control for slugs, snails and other pests.
Remove two side buds at each budding tip to encourage better blooms.
Digging dahlias:
Enjoy the flowers until the first frost kills the foliage.
If you have good drainage, leave the tubers in the ground, cut off any dead foliage, and cover with 3 to 4 inches of mulch. Clumps should be divided every third year for bigger, better flowers and stronger stems.
If you choose to dig the tubers, cut off the stalks to 3 or 4 inches above the ground and leave in the ground for a week or two to allow eyes to set before digging. Begin cutting down and digging by November even if no killing frost has taken place.
Dig around each tuber clump with a shovel or garden fork and lift gently. Hose off the dirt from the tuber, clip off the feeder roots with garden scissors and let dry overnight.
Dividing and storing:
Divide clumps in half by splitting with pruning shears.
Cut off tubers using hand pruners, garden scissors and a sharp knife. Wear protective gloves. Each tuber should have an eye you can see. The tuber eyes are located at the swell of the crown near the stem.
Soak tubers in a solution of 1 cup of bleach and 3 gallons of water for 15 or 20 minutes to kill bacteria. Allow tubers to dry several days on newspaper in a cool, dark place.
Label the tubers before storing with a permanent marker or no-blot pencil. If you don’t know the name, just list the flower color.
Store cut tubers in plastic bags with a few handfuls of vermiculite, wood shavings or potting soil. Another method is rolling tubers in a long strip of plastic wrap, making sure each tuber isn’t touching the others.
Keep tubers in a dark, cool place that does not freeze. A crawl space, root cellar or old refrigerator are good locations.
Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center is celebrating two years of sharing Coast Salish culture and highlighting the stories, people, art and history of Tulalip.
Saturday, August 17, 10 am to 5pm. Included in the activities are carving, beading and flute music demonstrations, storytelling, craft activities, a salmon lunch and a special performance by the Tulalip Lushootseed Language Camp students.
Tulalip artist James Madison is known for putting contemporary twists on traditional Salish and Tlingit Northwest Native Art.
For instance, Madison will create an aluminum sculpture depicting salmon in a fish ladder that represents the life of the Snohomish people, one of the Tulalip tribes.
Madison puts that modern twist on tradition in his upcoming exhibit, “Generations,” at the Schack.
That exhibit will show Madison’s commitment to sharing traditional native art using a contemporary approach and it also honors Madison as the Schack’s pick for 2013 Artist of the Year.
In a prepared statement, Madison said that he strives to “create art with an open mind in the sense that I am always thinking of new ways to add a modern twist to a traditional piece. This allows for me to help keep my culture alive. As we move into the future, so does the teachings of my ancestors.”
Madison was surrounded by art and the culture of the Tulalip Tribes as a child. At the age of 8, Madison learned how to carve at his grandfather’s kitchen table. Madison’s father, an abstract painter, encouraged Madison to try sculpting. And his uncle, a teacher, shared stories of American Indian culture.
Madison said these influences led to his intense interest in art and his native heritage.
Madison’s work can be seen beyond the Schack.
He is best known for large-scale pieces, including a 24-foot story pole, at the Tulalip Resort and Casino. He has pieces displayed at many of Washington’s state parks, as well as museums and galleries in New York, Alaska and Canada.
“Generations” opens with a catered reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 15 and is on view through Sept. 21 at Schack Art Center Main Gallery, 2921 Hoyt Ave., Everett. For more information, go to schack.org or call 425-259-5050.
