Art Culture Politics
-
Where the buffalo roam
From an old school spring-rolled wall map that looked like it dated to the mid-1960s, seen in a loft on Washington Avenue in Wallabout on the Clinton Hill House Tour this past Sunday. The American buffalo, actually a bison, once did roam in the eastern woodlands, along with their megafauna cousins.
-
Listening
Last Sunday, I led a group of twenty on what I called the Listening Tour in Prospect Park. The tour was sponsored by Proteus Gowanus, the interdisciplinary gallery and reading room, which is currently hosting an exhibition called “Paradise.” We were in Prospect for the simple reason that it is a paradise of birds. A…
-
Shhhh
We are out listening to the heartbeat of paradise this morning. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see you’re related to everything else alive on this finite planet? Do you see that you are essentially solar powered? Do you see how you exist because of the waste product of…
-
Field Trip: Our Sunken Forest
We took our first trip to Highland Park and Ridgewood Reservoir last weekend. Straddling the Brooklyn/Queens border, the park and accidental nature preserve deserve to be better known outside of their surrounding neighborhoods. More about our discoveries in Highland will be in my next post. But what’s all this about a Reservoir and accidental nature…
-
Save the dates
May 1 The Listening Tour. I will be leading a Proteus Gowanus event on May Day at 6:00 a.m., as part of the interdisciplinary gallery and reading room’s Paradise exhibition. We will meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. Then we’ll SILENTLY walk through Prospect Park at the crack of dawn to…
-
Birds of Macbeth
We saw Cheek By Jowl’s version of Macbeth at BAM yesterday and didn’t like it much. Among other things, the weird sisters’ brew was cut, and the night watchman’s drunken tomfoolery was stunningly mishandled. But I was struck by all the birds. In fact, Shakespeare is full of birds. These are the birds named in…
-
Spring screen
Baby, we were born to fold. For a miniature Japanese-style screen: 1. Open up image by clicking on it. 2. Print (in color preferably). Carp should be printed horizontally. 3. Trim as necessary. 4. Z-fold into thirds. 5. Position (in appropriate place). 6. Feel the serenity. Or other emotional state (as appropriate).
-
Shifting baselines
Here at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring in our step. Yes, we celebrate, but that’s because we’re starving, and starvation, the best of all sauces, makes every scrap at the…
-
Naming of the names
“Names, names, the naming of the names. What’s this? What’s that? they ask me, pointing to this bush, that bush. I give my standard response: ‘What it is, ma’am, no one knows; but men call it – creosote bush.’” ~ Edward Abbey, A Colorado River Journal Bobby, Violet, Franz. These are some of the names…
-
Look around
It is a truth universally acknowledged that I don’t have the camera & lenses for great bird photography. (You can find plenty of far better shots on the web). But one of the reasons I do this blog is to convey the message that everyone, anyone, can be an observer of wildness. Fancy gear is…
Backyard and Beyond 