The Right to Signs

A well regulated landscape, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to post and bear Signs, shall not be infringed.  —An Amendment

Our own 

dialect was abstract, 

we wished to understand 

not how things were

but what spectacle we might 

make of them.

—Meghan O’Rourke

Below:  Along the tracks in Crescent, Klamath County.  A crossing-place for millennia between the Columbia Plateau and Klamath River basin.  As the sign below notes, Ogden passed through in 1826, as did Fremont in 1843. Two centuries of tumultuous change followed, and continues. As the signs -above- indicate...

If you pay attention to every detail,

they will be become our alibi for not arriving on time.

or for never arriving at all

wherever we had set out to go. 

—Luljeta Lleshanaku

Above:  Note from the manager of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge posted at the (closed) Refuge HQ, October 6, 2025, the sixth day of the US Government shutdown.

Below:  A marker on Rock Creek, the primary drainage of the northeast slope of Hart Mountain.  A survey marker, mining claim, burial?

NOTES

—Oscar Wilde:  ”The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

—Meghan O’Rourke from the poem My Life As A Subject in Once (2011)

—Luljeta Lleshanaku from the poem Small-town Stations (trans Albanian)

—All photos by Douglas Beauchamp, Klamath & Lake Counties (Oregon), October 2025 (except as noted below.)

CODA

The gravesite of Modoc leader Kintpuash, aka Captain Jack, at Fort Klamath, Oregon. (Photo October 2025, courtesy Bryan Andresen) 

Captain Jack was hung by the US Army with three other Modocs in 1873. An effort is ongoing to exhume and conduct a traditional ceremony and burial on Modoc traditional lands, now northern California’s Modoc and Siskiyou Counties.

FREE & = !!!

Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: He's free.
—Rumi

<<<INTERMISSION>>>    

Mini FREE-WALL (two-sided) in Eugene near the Willamette River and the Jefferson-Washington Bridge.
Jefferson.  Washington.  Key framers of the US Constitution.  In dismay these founding “fathers” as yesterday the sitting “president” in Washington DC "decided" to “order” federal troops to Portland Oregon.  Portland — just downriver from this FREE-WALL.   
What is Order?  What is Freedom?  What is Art?  And what is a River?

Artworks, various artists:   January-September 2025. 
Photos by DB, on walkabouts.  
With gratitude to the Artists.

Water Is Life

Reservoir: Demolition of 20 million gallon concrete tank built in the 1930s.  Construction of seismic-resilient two water-holding tanks.  A major part of network of tanks and pipes supplying Eugene with gravity-fed water.  All photos today, August 23 2025, about mid-point of the three-year project. 

Water is Precious. And Costly.  EWEB avoids stating project costs. AI says projects of this scope cost tens of millions of dollars.  EWEB avoids saying who pays.  EWEB invests in sophisticated PR and "news" stories simply restate its media releases. But really, does any of this matter?  Water is Life.  And we will do what we need to until such a time...

This photo-essay elides certain truths and exposes others.  A sliding calculation looking closely at matter.  At particular early morning angles, drawn to color and juxtaposition. Curiosity.  The materiality of modernity.  The arbitrary slant of necessity.  

Recalling, tens of thousands cubic yards of rock and “debris” were removed in the first year, completed this spring. Now, installing underdrains, completing grading, readying for construction of the two new 7.5 million gallon tanks "built to withstand a Cascadia-level event." 

 

Wondering.... what does "gallon" as measurement of liquid volume mean?  Or, for that matter, a cubic yard?  Millions of dollars?  Cascadia-level "event"? 

Are we at war with the Earth?  Shock-and-Jaw?  Or, are we nurturing the ancient well-spring of devotion?  Trust-and-Awe?In the ebb-and-flow of tides, we, born of water, bearers of water, feel deeply: Water Is Life. 

 

CODA
Usually one gets what one expects, but very rarely in the way one expected it.
—seismologist Charles Richter (1900-1984, namesake of the Richter scale)

Transient Global Amnesia

In an eye, in a mirror—

The mastery of passion requires loneliness.
The teacher said.
    —Elisa Gonzalez

Emily Dickinson - Poem 895 

Further in Summer than the Birds -
Pathetic from the Grass -
A minor Nation celebrates
It's unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen -
So gradual the Grace
A gentle Custom it becomes -
Enlarging Loneliness -

Antiquest felt at Noon -
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify -

Remit as yet no Grace -
No furrow on the Glow,
But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now -

 

NOTE 

Transient global amnesia: a neurological disorder with a temporary but almost total disruption of short-term memory with a range of problems accessing older memories. With no other signs of impaired cognitive functioning, a person recalls only the last few moments of consciousness and has almost no capacity to establish new memories, but generally appears otherwise mentally alert and lucid. The degree of amnesia is profound.

Further, I imagine this disorder as viral among groups, creeds, and adherents of certain beliefs; even entire nations. Certainly the three words — Transient. Global. Amnesia. — individually and collectively evoke a familiar state of affairs.

The street art visibles presented here emerge as recognitions of this deeply abiding archetype: Transient global amnesia.