Wherein Elise moves to Oregon, Joy to Swaziland, and I stay put! (Sort of.) Below is a gallery of 2011 images; click on any image for more info and a slideshow.
2011 started with a loss: George's brother Ira died peacefully in his sleep. So now my menagerie is down to two, and occasionally (read: hardly ever) George and Beagle Bailey snuggle up with each other...this one taken soon after Ira's departure in January.
At this point, George is the 16 year old patriarch of the household, and does pretty much whatever he wants to. Warm laptops and wet bathtubs are high on his list.
I and my students had our usual spring fun, including kayak-based reconnaissance of the Columbia Slough in Portland…
And a tour of Douglas County to learn more about forest ecology and politics.
Speaking of Douglas County, our land in Canyonville is doing well; here's a view up Canyon Mountain one cloudy May morning. The ACCF pavilion is to left.
One ACCF project this summer involved installing benches and picnic tables along our trail network. Here are students from Phoenix School working with a supervisor from the Forest Service on a rustic design.
Another facet of our southern OR existence is a rather slow construction project...we're now on our third builder. When done, this particular structure will be a bathhouse, but in the near future may be our (tiny) home away from home.
One joyful celebration I got to sing for this summer was a wedding involving a childhood friend of Elise and Joy. As soon as they tied the knot we hopped into the Klamath River for a wildish ride...and champagne.
One conference took me to Calgary, which due to train cancellations gave me lots of solitary time on the road.
En route back, I met up with childhood friend Terry and his partner Meg in Spokane. A bit of evidence of our wet late spring is presented in the background!
A new wedded couple in the clan! Here are Joy and Elise's cousin Colin and his partner Naomi, after a late-evening, um, celebration. We didn't even give them time to get changed.
Colin's wedding in New York gave our family a good excuse to get together; here are Elise and Joy with cousin Brooke and his partner Ryoko.
Another conference took me to Cavallo Point, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The theme: modernizing liberalism, with interesting implications for environmental studies.
Another set of environmental conferences took me to Burlington VT and surroundings; here's the Basin Harbor Club next to Lake Champlain. (No, I didn't spend much time lounging around in Adirondacks.)
One of the biggest events in our Proctor PDX household this year involved Elise and Dan's move up from Santa Barbara; here they are prior to (a rather early) departure for the long one-day trip.
We did our share of fun stuff over the summer, including day hikes in nearby Forest Park...
...and a few bicycle adventures. This is the Bridge Pedal, an annual event in PDX where they close bridges to vehicular traffic for one morning.
Dan and Elise have done quite a bit of cooking since they arrived…more than a bit tempting to a certain canine member of the family.
Here are some Thanksgiving pies we cooked from scratch!...with advice from Elise's aunt Mary...
In late summer we did our annual hike to Cliff Lake, located in a wilderness area in southern Oregon. Here are Elise and Dan at what's left of a log Elise used to stop at to rest when she was little. (The fire happened a few years ago; things are generally regrowing well.)
Elise moved to PDX to attend school at Lewis & Clark; here she is alongside other new students in the processional for our annual convocation.
More fun field trips with students in fall! Here's one that started with a wind generation site next to the Columbia River.
The objective of this long field trip through Oregon was to learn about some heated controversies of relevance to environmental studies. One sample involves resort development in central OR: here are a few choice pages suggesting how these resorts are marketed.
Students here are at the Metolius River, near Camp Sherman, a key site of controversy over resort development.
The Klamath Bucket Brigade has for the last decade offered the voice of (certain) agriculturalists in the water wars in the upper Klamath Basin, where the current federal direction favors removal of dams and other major changes.
Dan's been busy practicing jiu jitsu; here's a tournament he did in Beaverton.
Another big addition to the household was the family piano, which was with Joy but moved to PDX when she moved to Swaziland (more below). After getting it up the stairs, I decided it's time to refinance and stay in this place for awhile!
Perhaps they made these 100 year old units to hold upright pianos! See how nicely it fits in the living room alcove? (Time for Bailey to take piano lessons.)
And speaking of music, a long labor of love finally finished: Jim Proctor Sings released in November, and available online. Joy and Elise sang backup vocals!
Okay, so what about Joy? In November, Joy moved her stuff into storage and left for Swaziland, to see if she could find a way to live there part-time while maintaining her Santa Barbara business. Here's a picture she took near Nhlangano, in the southern part of the country. I think she has fallen in love with the same landscape I fell in love some 30 years ago (I too was stationed in this area)...
One more question: Why no Kojosho pix?? Sadly, I was traveling during spring camp, and our fall Berkeley camp, which I first organized around 1990, was postponed until next year...for the first time. But it's still how I greet each day.