Where Is Ketzel Levine?

Call me Cerberus. You want to get a message to Ketzel, you gotta get past me.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

1:09 PM ET | 01- 5-2009 | permalink

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24/7 Open House At Ketzel.Com

Talking Plants Entry #196

Dear Friends,

I thought it was Fred Rogers I was hearing in my head but I now realize it's Carol Burnett:

I'm so glad we've had this time together. Just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we've just get started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say...So long.

Through no fault of my own (management assures me "it's not personal"), I've been laid off from NPR.

Fortunately, it doesn't take a network to manage a website. Starting here, starting now, I've got my own. So nu, what else should I call it? Ketzel Uprooted! And where else would you find it but at WWW.KETZEL.COM!

Come by; we'll pick up where we left off and go places we haven't been. Lord knows I could use a change of scenery.

A word of thanks and three cheers to my online colleagues who I've enjoyed knowing and working with in the pursuit of Talking Plants: Wright Byan! Eyder Peralta! Andy Carvin! Beth Novey! Coburn Dukehart! Joe Matazzoni!

And to the woman who created the original NPR Talking Plants website, Thea Joselow, she who has gone on to far greater things.

Hold up, Thea. Here I come...

Happy trails to you, until we meet again. Old dogs never die.

photo credit: don't remember!

12:45 PM ET | 12-22-2008 | permalink

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Talking Unemployment

In case this is the first you're reading of this, I'd like to confirm the rumor that I've been laid off.

Or, to put it as it suddenly occurs to me, That's no rumor! That's my life!

And on the outside chance you've just stumbled onto this year and a half old blog and want to catch up -- fast -- my name is Ketzel Levine, I'm a senior correspondent for NPR and my job ends January 12th, 2009.

I was given the news 36 hours ago and I've been on the proverbial roller coaster ride ever since. Earlier this morning, when I took my first shot at this blog item, I wrote something to the effect that my being rift was not personal, "it's just what it is." And that, wait for it, "I've been one lucky woman, why should it end now?"

What was she on? I could use some of that tonight, as I look over at the clock and see that in the last hour I've written three sentences and chewed my nails and cuticles down to stumps. I've also been eating compulsively, only the richest most fattening things: organic peanuts, candy-coated toxic peanut M&M's, and for my last act before sleep, organic raw cashews.

In truth, there is no reason on earth why I shouldn't continue having a long and lively career. It could be in radio, in print, online or in public lectures, on tv shows and in books.

But there's a journey in-between and it heads right through the land of loss, which is where I'm reporting from tonight, live! and up to my neck in decades of memories of the people I've met and the places I've been because of this job...and the nail-bitten terror that the loss will drown me and I won't be able to breathe.

Which reminds me of breathing deeply and fully and one of the happiest moments of the last year. And that's how I'm going to get to sleep tonight in anticipation of a far better day sometime soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

On a golden weekend in May on the Grand Ronde River, before the sun and warmth disappeared for another two months, Zoe Mae and I lucked out and ended up on a 6 hour raft trip that made me a lifelong convert to eastern Oregon.

photo credit: Dana Orrick

 

11:20 AM ET | 12-11-2008 | permalink

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When The Cows Don't Come Home

If you happen to be a vegetarian, the news that a farmer's been losing money on his cattle and has decided to sell them is a good thing. The equation's very simple: fewer cows, fewer cows slaughtered.

I'm all for it.

But watching farmer Dave Burt nurse his lame bull and pick corn for his favorite Braunvieh cows -- knowing he was days away from selling his entire herd -- my heart broke for him much the same way it might have if he was about to lose his favorite dog.

Dave Burt inherited his uncle's 1000 acre farm only eight years ago, but from the ripe old age of 8 when he first drove his grandfather's tractor, he was primed to be a farmer. This picture was taken at an uncharacteristically still moment in his generally hectic life.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

"I guess you'd call them my therapy," he said describing his relationship with his cattle. Having spent a few days with him observing that most of his time is spent behind the wheel of one noisy vehicle or another, I take his point. The quietest and most contemplative part of his working day has clearly been among his cattle, listening to them mooo and graze and watching them nuzzle. (These Braunvieh are so incredibly affectionate!).

I wish I could do a "flip book" version of my nuzzling cow pix, I just couldn't stop snapping shots of them (this cozy trio in particular). The tableau kept changing, as the little one nursed and the big one licked the mid-size mother. Affection? An itch? Mesmorizing, nonetheless.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

In case you haven't heard the Morning Edition feature on Dave Burt, the reason he's giving up his cattle is because raising them has become unprofitable. His costs have doubled and tripled over the last few years, while cattle prices haven't budged.

Except recently, that is. Now they're plummeting. It appears he got out just in time -- not an entire surprise, since successful 21st century farmers like Burt are as skilled at playing the market as they are about feeding the cows.

Dave Burt worries about the availability of meat should more and more small farmers his age (he's 56) decide their cattle aren't worth the work. If his own 50 and 60-something colleagues are any indication, a whole lot of farmers are poised to give them up.

The happy ending to Dave Burt's story is that the cow he's most attached to -- the one he raised from a bottle -- is going to be living within visiting distance at his good buddy Clem's. I'm particularly happy to report that this animal will be kept in the style she's been accustomed: alive.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Incidentally, the real cash cow on Burt Farms is agriculture: corn, wheat, soybeans, sunflowers. So lucrative (she says, tongue firmly planted in cheek), that at the current market price for these commodities, Dave Burt will lose a quarter-million dollars next year if his seed, fertilizer and fuel costs are what they are today.

8:26 PM ET | 12- 7-2008 | permalink

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Shivering to Sleeveless in 24 Hours

Before I started to shiver in Wallowa County, eastern Oregon, where my friend Nani and I escaped over the weekend, I grabbed a few shots of my new courtyard now rich with flowing water and fall flowers and where, admittedly, you and I have not spent enough time kicking back.

Then suddenly, Nani and I were through the Blue Mountains and entering La Grange, OR in a bloody snowstorm! Nani grew up in Hawai'i and spent the next few glorious days swaddled in fleece. The landscape was, as ever, relentlessly gorgeous but the winds got so brutal, we had to curtail a hike on Saturday after getting chilled to the bone.

And then unexpectedly, before my Zoe Mae was able to fully realize her inner beast (I have pix to prove it), we were rushing back to Portland so I could make a last minute plane to Chicago where the weather is now fully summer and I'm back in sandals and a sleeveless top.

Global footprint? Embarrassingly large. Stimulus factor? Overwhelming. Sense of gratitude? Off the charts. These last few days have been peopled with astonishing characters everywhere I've gone, some of whom you'll be meeting in my late fall Morning Edition series, AMERICAN MOXIE: HOW WE GET BY.

Right now it's back to the future, with an image from my next destination where today's blog all began.

Red and center, a huge stalk of dahlia blew over and broke so I popped it in the fountain (I'm rethinking all the dahlias I planted so prominently because I don't want to look at stakes). Foliage highlights include black and green taro plus hardy banana to the far right. And that weird white thing on the fountain ledge is a candle; the set designer let that one slip.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

9:02 AM ET | 10-14-2008 | permalink

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The Floating Photographer

Couple weeks back, I checked in from eastern Oregon while I was out there on assignment. You can now read the story I was chasing, and better yet, hear it. I love recording natural sound as much as I do talking to people; it doesn't get any better for me when I get to do both.

But I admit, radio can only take you so far when the subject is the visual arts. So be sure to check out the underworld world of Mary Edwards, part biologist, part artist, and yes, part fish.

Mary and I spent a day in dry suits on the Lostine River outside Joseph, OR. It was salmon spawning time and she wanted to shoot some big ones. In the radio story, she finds a slightly beat-up male about 4 years old. The light was dim -- he was under a big log, and she doesn't use a flash -- but a few liquid rays filtered through his tail.

This guy was probably 3' long with an 18" body depth. Mary almost had to touch him before I could discern his shape, he was so thoroughly camouflaged by his clean, clear and oh so cold environment.

photo credit: Mary Edwards

 

She snapped a whole bunch of other pix that day, but I'm now going take up some mega bandwidth on this page to feature a whopping photograph from her trip to Alaska last year. It's a hell of a pix, and hers is a hell of a tale.

To hear it, all you gotta do is CLICK.

Is seeing believing? Guess it depends on what you want to believe. This seemingly impossible shot of underwater fish and above the water bears might be possible, but is way beyond the pay grade of Mary Edwards' camera. Instead, she stitched these two images together in post-production, images she indeed captured in the same Alaskan river within the same hour.

photo credit: Mary Edwards

 

5:41 PM ET | 09- 8-2008 | permalink

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Cold Water, Happy Salmon and Hungry Deer

Lying in a mountain river on a 100 degree day turns out to an excellent reason to live. Who knew? The secret is long underwear, fleece and a well-fitted dry suit. The ability to think or swim are optional.

Meet my guide into the glories of mountain rivers, Mary Edwards, who is executing a difficult maneuver known as letting it all go. Mary had indeed put in an arduous day, photographing often elusive salmon in eastern Oregon's Lostine River.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I don't have much to say about the aquatic plants in the Lostine River. Didn't see anything that turned my head. Admittedly, the competition was stiff: sunlit pools, bright orange stones, bubbles of clear blue water. Oh, and the reason we went to the Lostine River: spawning salmon.

No, those are not big dogs, those are little does who are standard issue in the front yards of the botanically-challenged residents of Joseph, OR.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

I have lots of great tape and a few darn good pix from my recent visit with fish biologist Mary Edwards, gathered for a Morning Edition story you'll get to hear in the next few weeks. But I've little to feed your appetite for tales of chlorophyllic glory, since it was just too hot to hike.

However, I did snap this wee pix outside Mary's house in Joseph, OR., where she does her best to grow flora despite the fauna.

Dare I even invite response on the subject of gardening with deer? You game?

8:25 PM ET | 08-19-2008 | permalink

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Chasing A Story In The Wallowa Mountains

I'm about 300 miles east of where I was when last we met. I have left the gardenesque Pacific Northwest behind. I'm now in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon, where the rolling hills and valleys are the color of parchment (unless under cultivation) and the chocolate brown mountains are naked of snow.

I am crazy for this landscape. The sky is huge. Sitting in a restaurant chilling out earlier this evening, I came across a description of this sky in the book I'm reading, The Prairie Keepers by Marcy Houle. (More about the book, and the Zumwalt Prairie it describes, another time).

"The blue sky, with a clarity found only in alpine regions, arched like a blanket thrown over the tops of the mountains and held taut at the horizon of the grassland."

When I was last here in June, it was to hike and see wildflowers (they were admittedly ho hum but in a setting like this, a handful of lupines and a paintbrush is almost over the top). While here, I met a fish biologist and photographer named Mary Edwards.

Turns out, come August, Mary dons a dry suit, packs up her underwater equipment and spends the day suspended in the shallows of the Lostine River shooting salmon.

A juvenile salmon, either steelhead or chinook, photographed this time last year by Mary Edwards in eastern Oregon's Lostine River. We're hoping to see big, I mean BIG, 3' long salmon tomorrow, spotted and golden brown, in river pools anywhere from from 2' to 10' deep.

Mary Edwards

 

So August's here and I'm back, this time to do a Morning Edition story about Mary and her work. We'll be spending tomorrow together in 50 to 60-degree Wallowa Mountain river water dressed in the insulated equivalent of a plastic bag, underneath which we'll both be wearing layers and layers of warm clothes (not to worry, Mom).

I live for stories like this.

And if all goes well, I'll be heading up into the mountains over the weekend, for another look at what might be blooming in this ruggedly beautiful back-of-beyond.

Stay tuned! and have a wet hot summer weekend.

10:31 AM ET | 08-15-2008 | permalink

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