Art Culture Politics
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Mosaic Reflections
The “Departures and Arrivals” mosaic at the Jay St./ Borough Hall subway station (A, C, F trains) here in Brooklyn. Artist Ben Snead’s notion here, as explained on the plaque, is that species come and go, just like peoples. “The artist is interested in how the natural world mirrors our local population; in both great…
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We know the enemy
Back when Earth Day was young and the word “ecology” (from the Greek root for home) was on some lips, Walt Kelly’s Pogo captured the moment. Kelly’s diffident possum is pictured amongst the litter of the swamp, swamped in pollution. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” he says. Of course, some things…
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Walt Whitman Sunday
“I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and esculent roots,/And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over.”
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Maize Field
“This used to be a parking lot/Now it’s all covered in flowers.” — David Byrne. And before it was a parking lot? It was covered in flowers then, too. And if not flowers, then the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. At Bergen & Smith Streets, the three sisters grow in Brooklyn, thanks to Christina…
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Geological Ruminations
I wish I knew more about geology. It is not a subject suitable for book learnin’. Still, I’m interested. My samples of NYC regional rock include Manhattan schist, purplish diabase from the Palisades Sill, and Staten Island serpentine. But poor Brooklyn, being terminal moraine and outwash plain, is just a jumble of gravel and clays…
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Armchair Naturalist
Printed on the back of my MetroCard (the local public transit system’s swipe fare card, which replaced the token of happy memory) as part of the “Train of Thought” program: “Within five miles of where you live, there are enough strange things to keep you wondering all your life. Probably in your dooryard may be…
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In Praise of Prospect Park
Today is officially “It’s My Park Day.” But it isn’t mine, or yours; it’s not even ours. After all, we’re justing passing through this life, this borough. If we do our job, the park will long survive us. This is a reminder that Prospect Park, indeed, all our urban parks, are combinations of the natural…
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In the woods
Mayapples, Podophyllum peltatum, not yet in bloom, in Prospect Park. “He loved the woods for their freshness, their sublime solitudes, their vastness, and the impress they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their Creator. He seldom moved through them without pausing to dwell on some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure […]” James Fenimore…
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Foxy Thoughts
In our hyper-specialized society, “amateur” is far from a noble description. It is, in fact, usually the opposite, a term of disparagement, insult, attack. Meanwhile, in the sports-entertainment industry, it has lost all meaning, corrupted by the NCAA’s exploitative hypocrisy and the corporate/nationalist perversion of the Olympics. But the word’s roots lie in the Latin…
Backyard and Beyond 