Gowanus
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River of Milky Jade
Signs of life in the Superfund Gowanus, which has a weird milky jade color (and, oy, the stink!) this time of year.
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Death and Life on the Gowanus
The northern, terminal end of the Gowanus Canal. Where we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On Friday, a dolphin ended up in the canal, causing a media frenzy, including, evidently, a helicopter overhead, and the usual circus of social-media-alerted gawkers. (I was blessed to have missed it all.) The animal died in…
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Gowanus Fish
Life in the Gowanus, and I don’t mean the mythological Carroll Gardens flipper-baby frogmen that are supposedly heard plopping and flopping in the greasy water on still moonless nights.
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Three Gowanus Trees
The Valley of the Shadow of the Gowanus, as I like to call it, is the lowland between the ridge of Brooklyn Heights and the Harbor Hill Moraine. The western slope of Park Slope and the eastern slope of Punkiesburg (Cobble Hill) used to drain down into the marshy Gowanus creek, thought to have been…
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Gowanus Lady
This week, the Gowanus Canal, a relic of the Industrial Age that runs through the soft underbelly of Brooklyn, was declared a Superfund Site by the EPA. I’m inordinately fond of the ol’ toxic sewer outlet, which is also known as the Lavender Lake, although I prefer to borrow Kipling’s “great greasy green” aliteration. It’s…
Backyard and Beyond 