March 2010
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Review: The Journal
The Journal: 1837-1861 By Henry David Thoreau Edited by Damion Searls Preface by John R. Stilgoe New York Review Books. 677 pp. $22.95 “‘What are you doing now?’ he asked. ‘Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry to-day.” So it began, October 22, 1837. Twenty-year-old David Henry Thoreau, who would never…
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First Bees of 2010!
Yesterday, I went through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where things are still pretty quiet plant and arthropod-wise. There were, however and hallelujah, honey bees to be found in the crocuses. Apis mellifera is in the house! These are the first bees I’ve seen this year. Nothing says “spring has begun” to me more than this.…
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Brooklyn Bestiary: An Exhibit
An exhibit of prints by Lisa Studier opens today the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch at Grand Army Plaza. Her subjects are the animals living right here in Brooklyn, which go sadly unnoticed by the great majority of (human) residents. How could I not be interested? The natural world is everywhere, we have only to…
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Field Notes: Dead Horse Bay
For a motley collection of unnatural history, Dead Horse Bay at the southern end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn is the place to go. It’s the city’s old refuse heap, and it is eroding into Jamaica Bay, providing archeologists studying the ruined civilization of the 20th century with many a wondrous artifact. . My ode…
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Natural object: Sweetgum pod
I’ve always liked these. The seedpod from the sweetgum tree, Liquidambar styraciflua. They are persistent; this one, one of a whole host, only recently (probably in our recent heavy snow) brought to earth. Each cavity contains many tiny seeds, which provide food for songbirds, chipmunks, squirrels, and couple things we don’t see much of in…
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Field Notes
Top, left to right, Lacebark pine, crocus, snowdrop. Bottom: Paulownia seedpod, snowdrops, sweetgum seedpods. Prospect Park, Friday morning/early afternoon. Mild weather: overcast early, clearing, little to no wind. Temperature: low 40s by the time I was done, hat off, coat unzipped. I walked half way around the Lake from the south end, and then ran…
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Gowanus Lady
This week, the Gowanus Canal, a relic of the Industrial Age that runs through the soft underbelly of Brooklyn, was declared a Superfund Site by the EPA. I’m inordinately fond of the ol’ toxic sewer outlet, which is also known as the Lavender Lake, although I prefer to borrow Kipling’s “great greasy green” aliteration. It’s…
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Learning from Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau didn’t particularly like cities, including New York, all that much. “The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population,”he wrote while visiting in 1843. Thoreau was a country mouse at heart, not a city rat. He was neither the first nor the last to believe that there was a…
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In the beginning
“We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention — all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge.” — Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life. Chrysemys picta
Backyard and Beyond 