lushlife

More Salt Marsh, images taken while on a visit there with some friends new to the spot, and we were all enraptured. Gazing at the throngs of fiddler crabs emerging from their innumerable holes, I, for one, felt drugged.

I found this in a small guide to the Gerritsen Creek Nature Trail.

"At the turn of the century developers began making elaborate plans to turn Jamaica Bay into a port, dredging Rockaway channel to allow large ships to enter the proposed harbor. Speculators, anticipating a real estate boom, began buying land along the Jamaica Bay waterfront. Fearing that the relatively pristine marshland around Gerritsen Creek would be wiped out by developers, Frederic B. Pratt and Alfred T. White offered the city 140 acres of land around Gerritsen Creek for a park in 1917."

I move to rename all things Gil Hodges after Alfred T. White. But then again, I'm not a sports fan. Still, I don't think I've come across a single thing in this Borough named after the visionary philanthropist, except of course the book recenlty published by Proteus Gowanus, The Social Vision of Alfred T. White, which I hope to read soon. And today I discovered that the Brooklyn Public Library doesn't have a copy in circulation. Thar's a little irony thar.

We left the marsh around 7, unwilling to leave the light and the briny-fresh air of the marsh and mugwort, dawdling even while the children played at bludgeoning each other with their shoes. When does school start?