In addition to all else that is wrong with it, it is unconscionable that no environmental impact statement was made before the scheduling of this event in the middle of migration and breeding. (A tip of the hat to the Flatbush Gardener for bringing this to my attention.)
***Nothing says “park” like dozens upon dozens of porta-potties and a traffic jam.

UPDATED: Although I hardly believed it when I heard that the Prospect Park Alliance was getting such a paltry sum for selling off the Nethermead ($75,000), I am even more stunned that the NYPD got a far better deal: they’re making $325,000 from the Googa Mooga (another fine piece of neoliberalism, buying your own police protection). More details here in this City Room piece. Outfuckingrageous. As a former volunteer for the Alliance, I’m disgusted.

More on the Googa Mooga Occupation:Nethermead in Bondage
Snake/Privatization

Update: As you can tell, I’m not happy with this situation. The fact that the returns for all this trouble seem paltry indeed only adds fuel to my fire. Perhaps intemperately, then, I called the Prospect Park Alliance suckers on their Facebook page for taking such a lame deal, and linked to this post. They deleted the comment and link — they can do whatever they want, of course, being a private entity — but if you think other “friends” of the park, if not necessarily of the Alliance, would be interested in reading this and yesterday’s post, I can’t stop you from adding this link to their FB page.

This is the largest snake species in the state, reaching up to six feet in length. They get bigger in the South. Constrictors, Black Rat snakes squeeze their prey to death, and will eat anything from eggs to other snakes, with small mammals, including bats, a mainstay. That last menu item is a good clue for where you might find these snakes: they are excellent tree climbers. Generally a woodland species, they are also fond of barns and their attendant mice and rats, meaning they are a good friend of the farmer.

This guy normally lives in the Audubon Center at the Boathouse, which, unfortunately, will not be open on weekends in the near future. Instead, “Pop-ups” (a trendy term for “temporary” and subject to the weather; last Saturday’s was cancelled) will be positioned around the park under a flimsy tent — without the restroom, water fountain, cafeteria, air-conditioning, and safe space services that the Boathouse also provided. This is a bad state of affairs, particularly when one sees private parties using the facilities for weddings and the like. Now, the Audubon Center will be open later in May on Thursdays and Fridays, but weekends are the park’s busiest times. The fact that the Boathouse will be open on weekdays suggests that this decision isn’t one of funding, but one of fundraising. Money is to be made renting out the Boathouse for persons of means.

This is, as I have noted for many years, the inevitable result of privatization. Those with money get the goodies, and, perhaps more importantly, control the agenda about those goodies. The Prospect Park Alliance — an unelected entity, it must be remembered, that of necessity follows the course of which people will fund what projects — was set up to help fundraise for the park. It has done very many impressive things, remaking the park for the better after the disastrous abandonment of the urban by tax-supported white flight, subsidized suburbanization, and the long counter-revolution against the public sphere, that profoundly successful assault on American democracy. And, over time, under the administration of neoliberal tribunes like Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, and Bloomberg, the Alliance and similar entities has been progressively pushed towards funding the majority of the park’s operations as public monies, and oversight, have been withdrawn.

Of course, compared to Central Park, which has reveled in the millions of the super-rich, Prospect is barely a glimmer in the eye of our masters of the universe. Meanwhile, parks without wealthy neighbors — in the Bronx, Queens, other neighborhoods of Brooklyn — simply hope to have a few drops of largess dribble down upon them, trickling down from the heady heights. When parks manifest the great gap between haves and have-nots, we know how far into the hole of injustice we’ve fallen.

Maryland Memorial Parking Lot

As a side-note — the snake of the minority constricts the majority of us — it should be noted that philanthropy is tax-deductible, which means that it is not actually charity, that is, given, sacrificed, without any promise of give-back. It’s a system that results in even more of the tax burden being pushed upon those who can not lawyer-, accountant-, and Congressperson-up.

Pictured: In the Ravine, a Wild Geranium, or Crane’s Bill, so named because of the beak-like seed capsule (to come, should this survive the fence-jumpers, long-armed pickers, loose dogs, etc.). The genus name Geranium comes from geranos, Greek for a crane. Newcomb describes the flowers of G. maculatum as “rose-purple”; National Audubon Society says the flowers are “pink or white.”

It’s surprisingly dark under here — these pictures were taken with flash — so a better place to see these swallows nesting is at the Boathouse, where they build their nests in plain sight underneath the building’s eaves. The proximity to water is no accident. That’s where you will usually see these birds acrobatically coursing after airborne insects.

The most-widespread species of swallow in the world, the Barn Swallow almost exclusively nests on human structures. What did they do before humans? And, considering they breed across Eurasia, did they have a feather in inspiring pottery, or at least the earliest unfired agglomeration of pieces of clay air-dried in the sun?
Down underneath Pier One at Brooklyn Bridge Park is another place Barn Swallows nest. This is right next to Barge Music, where you may see the birds perching on their tiny feet on the rusting hull.