Art Culture Politics
-
A Forest in Times Square…
.. but the beavers might take a little longer. My friend, the botanist and all around urban nature superhero Marielle Anzelone, is fundraising for a PopUp Forest in Times Square. Sounds crazy, right? A bit of forest in the resolutely artificial, corporate-gagged, light-pollution-bathed, Elmo-stalked, tourist-duped nightmare they’ve made of the ol’ Forty-Deuce? Precisely the point!…
-
People’s Climate March
The march is tomorrow, Sunday, starting at Columbus Circle at 11:30. I’m posting this today because tonight at midnight I will be going on an fossil fuel fast, attempting to use the least amount of power as possible, including everything connected to the internet. Trying to shrink my small urban footprint even smaller; this is…
-
Seen Recently
A male Monarch (Danaus plexippus), part of the mosaic, reliefs, and insets that make the subway station at the American Museum of Natural History so great. Last time, a female in the field.
-
Calling Elk
I liked this so much, I bought it. Wendy Klemperer‘s Calling Elk, plasma-cut steel, approx. 20 x 20 x 1/8th, 2008. (Sorry about the strange cropping at the nose.)
-
Staten Inferno
On Wednesday, I offered up a little slice of heaven in New York City, a NY-state protected piece of Staten Island. Sadly, though, a lot of Staten Island has been turned into hell, another slab of the undifferentiated suburban sprawl that has trashed so much of the rest of the US, through mis-guided development, greed,…
-
Elegy for Martha
One hundred years ago today, Martha died of old age in Cincinnati. She was 29 years old and had been raised since birth in captivity. She never reproduced.Martha was the last of her species, the Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius). Of course, by the time of her demise, the species was already functionally extinct in the…
-
Watching (and Weeping?)
Lost Ladybug Project. Monarch Watch. Dragonfly Pond Watch. Bumblebee Watch. Firefly Watch. Noticing a pattern? These citizen-science projects are concerned with dwindling numbers of particular insects, micro-studies in population decline and disappearance. Start putting them together and you realize that the recent study in Science which found a 45% drop in invertebrate populations over the…
-
Events and Calls to Action
I’ll be leading these tours in the next few weeks: August 27 and Sept 4, 9pm: Prospect Park ~ Night Listening with Brooklyn Brainery. Join us as we listen to the night. Register at the link. $5 (Updated: 8/27 is full, but there are still spots for 9/4.) September 3rd, 6pm: Brooklyn Bridge Park ~…
-
Scavenging
Today is Open House New York‘s Art Deco Scavenger Hunt, which I’m taking part in, so I wanted to share with you some of the city’s Art Deco wonders because many were inspired by the natural world. These first three photos from the Barclay-Vesey Building, designed by Ralph Walker for the New York Telephone Co.;…
Backyard and Beyond 