Art Culture Politics
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Blood Memory
George Boorujy’s solo show Blood Memory opens today at P.P.O.W. Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor NY NY (Inner Borough). My earlier post about George.
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Skene Amidst the Daffodils
This is Alexander Johnston Chalmers Skene looking out over the early daffodils in Grand Army Plaza. I assumed that Skene might possibly be the only gynecologist ever memorialized with a statue, but I would be wrong, as you’ll see in that informative Parks Department link: Central Park has J. Marion Simms, the, ahem, “father of…
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Scale
In my experience, the internet shrinks the world, whittling our sense of scale. Everything is on a screen now, and so many of us have very small screens indeed in our hands. I’m curious to see where this leads us. I know that when I look at thumbnails on screen, I often don’t have any…
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Threatened and Endangered
The news that the Red Knot has been put on New Jersey’s Endangered list got me wondering what else was on the list, which of course got me thinking about the region. Here then are the tri-state area’s separate lists: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish & Wildlife’s Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.…
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Don’t Dump Your Turtle
One of the search phrases that’s led people to this blog more than once is about “releasing pet turtles in Prospect Park.” People want to know if it’s OK to do so. The answer is: no, it isn’t, and you shouldn’t ~ which is what I hope they learned from the internet. But, considering that…
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Floyd Bennett Under Threat Again
Staten Island’s reactionary GOP (I know, that’s redundant) Representative Michael Grimm has introduced a bill in Congress to authorize the Interior Department to, according to the Jamaica Bay Research & Management Information Network: “(1) issue permits to allow the planning, construction, operation, and maintenance of natural gas pipeline facilities in the Gateway National Recreation Area…
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A Wetlands Strategy
The New York City Wetlands Strategy document is available in a draft for public comment. I hope you’ll give it a look and perhaps even submit your thoughts about it: the comment period ends on Feb. 18th. Comments can be sent to planyc@cityhall.nyc.gov. (A tip of my Panama here to the excellent A Walk in…
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A Wider View
“The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1852 This blog was begun nearly two years ago under the influence of Thoreau and remains so. Going with a tweeted recommendation from Geoff Wisner,…
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I’m kind of in love with this page from Meriwether Lewis’ journal for February 24, 1806, in which his notes about Thaleichthys pacificus surround his diagonal illustration. The page is reproduced in Field Notes on Science and Nature, a book anybody going into any branch of science that involves note-taking should read.
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Complexity
Back from the winter festive season visiting family, and brushes with differing mindsets. One bemoans environmentalism and its -ists, so I ask if he likes to breath. “When we tug on a single thing in nature we find it attached to everything else,” said John Muir. The fact that we, too, are connected, is unfortunately…
Backyard and Beyond 