Art Culture Politics
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Snake/Privatization
An albino version of the New York native Black Rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta) being held by one of Prospect Park’s “Pop-Up Audubon” staffers recently. 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,…
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Everywhere
Nature is everywhere, and representations of nature are likewise. This is one of Deborah Brown’s mosaics at Houston Street, part of a work called “Platform Diving,” which envisions the station underwater — not so hard to do anymore — with turtles, dolphins, and this octopus swimming through the old rattle and roll.This I found in…
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We are here only a moment
Green-Wood Cemetery, like the city at large, lost a mess of trees during Sandy. One of them was this giant, which was also the home of a Red-tailed hawk nest for several years. Judging from Facebook, these pins were probably put in by the Cemetery’s tree specialist, Adam Rychlicki, who has been doing this sort…
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Sun Print/Blue Print
Yesterday’s lacy skeletonized leaf was so popular it sent me back into my chaos files to find this sun print or cyanotype I made of a leaf skeleton years ago. This particular leaf was 8″ long from tip to petiole end, so you should click on this image to make it fill your screen at…
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Audubon’s Aviary, Part I
The New-York Historical Society has begun it’s three year, three-part exhibit of John James Audubon’s preparatory studies for his masterwork. These were the watercolors that Audubon gave to his printer, Robert Havell, in London, who then made the prints for the multi-volume Birds of America. “Preparatory study” is an understatement, however, for these incredibly detailed…
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Marshall
When I see people get excited by the enormous hollow, or hard white-centered, strawberry-like products marketed across the land most of the year, I despair. It’s tragic that so many consumers have been conditioned by a cynical agricultural industry to think that these nasty things are what strawberries are supposed to be. I protest by…
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Winged
How the mighty have fallen. Eros, the Greek god of love, was originally one of the primordial powers, portrayed as a cruel winged youth against whom neither immortal nor mortal was safe. By the Hellanistic period, however, he had been domesticated, and turned into a plump baby-like figure, the son of Aphrodite, of which this…
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Animacula-finder
This is a model of van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope, circa 1670. It is a few inches long and opened up a whole new microworld for humans, including the somewhat staggering activity found in ol’ Antonie’s own sperm (ah, science!). I found this model at the Grolier Club not so long ago.
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Black Birds
The famous “blackbird singing in the dead of night” is the (Common) Blackbird of Europe, Turdus merula. Ditto the “four and twenty” baked in a pie. The Blackbird is a thrush, part of the family Turdidae, like the American Robin, which also shares the same genus. The “thrush” appellation tells you to expect some lovely…
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Bronzebirds
I’ve always loved the bronze birds in the Canal Street A/C/E station. “A Gathering” was created by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz.There are some crows on top of the ticket booth, and 174 grackles and “blackbirds” (see my next post for more on this slippery word) perched on the metalwork of the mezzanine level. Most…
Backyard and Beyond 