Getting to Know the Knickerbokers

On pseudo derivations: "Pliny and the Latin poets abound with similar whimsies, which desrve to be classed with Knicerbocker's derivation of Manhattan (Long Island) from the circumstance of a man with a hat on having been seen there by aborigines.*"

And let's not forget Hyalella knickerbockeri, the colorless fresh water shrimp found in this region, a creature "about a half inch long with a face like a hippopotamus." John Kiernan, The Natural History of New York, p. 47.

*P. 6, Contribution to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian and Metrical, by Mark Antony Lower, 1853

The Flava is Pink

Some people don't do pink, I understand, or only certain shades, maybe some veer towards the magenta but feel stifled by rose tones, others, like me, drool over the softness of shell pink while others never wander far from the warmth of coral. The boys in my son's Pre-K class don't go anywhere near any kind of pink, and made my son's cheeks pink with shame when they learned that he'd gone around as the Pink Power Ranger the previous Halloween. I had done nothing to warn him that this might happen when he'd expressed his desire, in fact I was delighted with a boy who was drawn to the feminine. I can't imagine what could be better in a world short on softness.

Amazing isn't it how in our esteem, respect and even love for our peers we sometimes lose ourselves bit by bit, sacrificial victims to belonging, tearing off pieces of our own essence in respect for the strength of another's opinion. We will never know all that's been lost in the game of pleasing parents, pleasing peers, pleasing the love interest. Even in marriages we lose pieces of ourselves for which the "better half" has no room out of general disinterest, outright dismissiveness, distrust, arrogance, or enculturation.

Long before there were therapists the kinds of people we now call shaman practiced the art of Soul Retrieval, journeying into astral worlds to retrieve pieces of people who'd grown ill because of soul loss, who had lost zest for life having given up parts of themselves that didn't hold up to that which threatened, shocked, suffocated or neglected them. I once watched a shaman performing a soul retrieval on a man from the middle east, a man who as a child has been aware of the presence of nature spirits and other ethereal being no one else saw. When he was told that in fact he could not trust his experience, he must have been only dreaming, he lost that piece of himself, just offered it up like that in order to sustain the bond with people he loved.

Years later while separated from them, living in New York, on meds for depression, I watched a shaman work on the man. People do shape shift depending on what nurtures or strangles their souls from moment to moment. Under the sway of the shaman's intense commitment to his authenticity and freedom I saw this man's soul start to flower, I saw his skin grow pink, I saw a sacred little boy return to him, a boy that no one wanted. I want that despised boy around, that boy who sees nature spirits, who doesn't threaten me even if he may have access to more wisdom than I. And I really want that boy around, that one who likes pink. But what can you do? So many shame-infused beliefs prey upon our most tender, inscrutable, innocent and vulnerable parts, and there is no shortcut to learning to protect them, to sensing their loss, much less finding a way to reclaim them. I was moved this week to read my friend Joe Monkman's blog entry about this sort of thing. It inspires me to find sufficient room for my obnoxious parts, the embarrassing parts, the ones still pink at the roots, the ones I suspect some people I respect would have contempt for. BTW, Joe is the shaman I describe above. I am thankful that in this age of materialism, atheism, and heavily mediated "spirituality" I've been able to learn from a man as intuitive, sincere and careful, a soldier of love.

saturday still life

stories

timing

At Calumet a salesmen was telling a story about growing up in NYC in the 70's. He lived in Bed Stuy, and all the peeps in his neighborhood were terrified to come to Park Slope. He agreed to take out a girl who lived in the Bronx even though he was terrified to go there, because in the 70's everyone who lived in NYC was terrified to go anywhere else in NYC, I guess. It was all Serpico and American Gangster. Standing in front of her apartment building in the Bronx, he put his had up as if to scratch his ear and wound up catching a snowball some neighborhood boys threw at him, scaring them off with his acumen.

Talked to the dad of a friend of Sophie's. I didn't realize he'd been laid off, but he was riding high, since then he'd gotten two job offers from companies he'd worked with. When we spoke, I had the feeling he was in his pajamas.

Kristen was telling me about someone named Peter Goldbeck, a healer type who she feels helps her find the guidance she's looking for. His metaphysical gifts developed after an accident, he was playing the guitar in his house in Queens when it got struck by lighting, seriously shocking him and his grandmother. And that's when he started to hear voices.

neighbors

I didn't sleep well last night because of this cold that tickles my throat all night long. The gagging reflex it creates woke me up during many pleasant dreams about old boyfriends. In the dream I woke up to, I wound up talking on the phone to an old boyfriend I'd long lost track of. A protective male voice broke in trying to make sure I was worthy of the connection, and David Lion says, It's OK, it's Amy. Strange to hear David's voice so clearly on the line because I had been expecting a different boyfriend to pick up.

At work, J told me of her dream which took place in her apartment on 15th St. There was suddenly a mysterious opening connecting her and her neighbor's apartments.

Tonight my daughter mistakenly called one of my friends and spoke to her as if she were the babysitter. She said, "We have to go and get bla bla bla and also you can you please cook the twisty macaroni and cheese" before my friend commented "Do you know who you're talking to?" I watched worlds collide.

spots

Coming home on the A train I noticed that the muddy impressions of people's boots on the reddish flooring looked like the wings of turtle doves, whose spotty feathers affect my brain in the same way as Yayoi Kusama's installations, the marks on the Lady Crab's shell, and Vuillard's vibrating brush strokes. It is visual happiness, tremoring, feather by feather, cell by cell, stroke by stroke.

Venus Mercenaria

That name, which applies to the Littleneck Clam, the Cherrystone Clam and the Quahog, because they're all the same animal in various stages of development, got my attention. I haven't been able to find information on why the bivalve's name means something like "soldier of love," perhaps it has to do with aphrodisiacal properties associated with shellfish, or certain behaviors of the clam. The clam's structure is described in terms like escutcheon, lunula, concentric ridges, radial ribs, spines, umbone, pallial sinus, teeth. The word escutcheon is also used in heraldry as in this passage from wikipedia which you may or may not enjoy. I enjoyed the mention of the lozenge.

The term "escutcheon" also refers to the shield-like shape on which arms are often borne. The escutcheon shape is based on the Medieval shields that were used by knights in combat. Since this shape has been regarded as a war-like device appropriate to men only, ladies customarily bear their arms upon a lozenge, or diamond-shape, while clergymen bear theirs on a cartouche, or oval. Other shapes are possible, such as the roundel commonly used for arms granted to Aboriginal Canadians by the Canadian Heraldic Authority.

Wampum was made of beads fashioned from Venus Mercenaria, the pieces with purple spots worth twice as much as those without. Whether the beads could be described as cartouche shaped I can't say. The shells are also found in abundance in kitchen middens excavated in this area, or rubbish piles of long lost kitchens layered with strata or refuse from which archaeologists read into the past. I understand one was excavated at the Lott House in Marine Park. Middens make good tracers because the high alkaline content from shells help preserve the animal and vegetable remains cast among them.

I have no kitchen midden, I have no idea where my kitchen trash goes, but I did set up my composter yesterday. For the brown bottom layer I used a lot of hydrangea clippings and some Plane leaves I swept up in front of the house. I made the mistake of throwing some fairly rotten brussels sprout trimmings into the pile which will stink to high heaven once it gets a little warmer out. While they're frozen solid a little longer among the dry brown hydrangea blossoms Venus will reign between my neighbors and I, but I'd better be careful once things warm up or else Mars may enter the picture - our yards are fairly close together here in Brooklyn. And perhaps I should avoid casting the onion scraps in there also. When I lived in the suburbs, my mentor, who had an enormous backyard compost pile, laid her dog to rest in her compost heap, which freaks me out even as I admire her total lack of sentimentality and any hint of the embalmer's tweaked fixation on keeping the dead isolated from the cycle of life.

P.S. 107 Science Day

At one of the the local Public Schools in South Slope Brooklyn Beekeeper John Howe taught about bees. In the picture he's playing "robber bees" with my daughter Sophie. I'm in love with John Howe, who is Winnie the Pooh in human form. See the gorgeous creature in back? She's not a bee, she's Jody of Pistols and Popcorn, and if she writes about the day then I can't wait to read what she says. She and her brother are both up for Bloggee awards, whatever that is.















That's Vinny Voltage who transfixed my son with his science magic for an hour. He owns the best tie known to man, and also a large red crayon.




I don't remember the name of the young man from the Roosevelt Sanctuary who had a remarkably calm and sensible demeanor and puffy pink lips. He presented a domesticated rabbit, a rescued California King Snake, and this Harris's Hawk, who is retired from keeping an airport in Connecticut clear of birds. Anyway, I had no idea hawks were used that way. The only thing I know about Falconry is that you need to have a big big glove.














































That's Dr. Dan and the Biobus. Doesn't he look like Ralph Fiennes? He told the kids that they were made of cells more numerous than the stars in the sky. Applause to the Science Committee, not only for stocking the school with attractive and knowledgeable men and women but for fabulous work putting together the best Science Day on record. And the kids, how can they be so young and so wise and articulate at the same time? They way they talk...

mouth full of stones

The geography chapter in John Kiernan's The Natural History of New York is short and deals little with Brooklyn, but nevertheless it took me deeper than I usually go. The day I read it I found it particularly pleasant to consider the strata whose dips and lifts shape the city, to find lackluster sweetness in the massive solidity of the Fordham Gneiss, (1 billion years old), the Schist whose curvature under Manhattan resembles a spine supporting the highrises of Midtown and the financial district, and the less significant Inwood Dolomite, which I'm sure is not named after pain even if its name rings of the word dolor.

Where the schist which glistens with flecks of muscovite plunges down hundreds of feet on the North side of Washington Square Manhattan gets something like an extensive low back, the waist running East West along Canal, where once the East River and Hudson ran together when waters were high, breaking the narrow island in two. Back in the days of the bowerij and before, Soho and Chinatown were a marshy mass of grasslands and rivulets and springs, and who knows what creatures grew fat on its verdure. When the Canal was built in the early 1800s to make the region easier to trundle, and to drain the contaminated kolch pond, the engineers lined it with trees and picketed it with N-S bridges. Later the canal was bricked over to make the street, encasing the crosstown waters in sewers. It's no surprise that the only ducks to be found in the vicinity in these days are Peking.

I like to think that the impulses expressed in art made in the area pull a bit of the lost soil-souled freedom through the cement, that the sewers vent a waft of the city's ungirdled body unfolding in the dreams of the hungry. It seems that from beneath the asphalt glacier some sense a lump as deep and dark as the egg-sized Almandine garnet brought forth when the will of man undercut the river with an artery running from the Battery to Brooklyn. Even in the smallest remaining patch of ground, littered with the inevitable gifts of an old mattress and boxspring, tire, can of paint, heroin bag or wind twisted umbrella, and all the rest of the wreck, some airborne joy shivers and searches for form.

Inquiring minds want to know

...did you find my head? How about my foot?

More Fun with the Oxford Compact

Paine in Snow

The Litchfield Villa would make a handsome old style Natural History Museum, but I guess the Parks Department needs offices somewhere, and most people I know have had enough taxidermy. Don't tell the authorities, but I do plan to take it by charm if not by siege for a weekend at least. I'm very hard at work on my plan of attack, which is why dinner will probably taste like dish towels.

The work by Roxy Paine entitled "Erratic" lays like a mercury walrus at the villa's base, reflecting the recent snowfall and imitating the nature of ice, rock and water. Last year you might have seen Paine's towering metallic trees in Madison Square Park, which he assembled from large prefabricated sections. They were beautiful and thrilling, but you wouldn't have found me anywhere close to them in an electrical storm. Now the metallic trees have been taken down and the actual ones host tree houses. I find it hard to walk by the installation without thinking of Calvino's The Baron in the Trees, and comparing the shelters in their high perches to the offices granting a view of them from every side of the square.

We found a snowman in the Third Street playground after viewing the Paine, which the kids lost interest in once they realized they couldn't climb it. Russell insisted on kicking the ice man, Nora insisted on giving it eyes, so before long he stared at us from 2 copper Lincolns. She's fascinated with snowmen, and later she commented that the snowman had ice and snow for skin. While picking up Sophie, we'd heard talk on the radio of the how the white phosphorus that might have been used in Gaza sears the skin, and Nora asked me to turn the radio off.

Philately

Got the package mom! That's an expanse of expanses there on the box, at first I thought I saw palm trees in them which made me feel unseasonably sultry. For a man whose name means beer town, Beirstadt was very dedicated to his art, to celebrating American expanses and understanding indigenous people, even showing concern for the disappearing Buffalo.

Skipping to China: I recently read about a group of Taoist rebels of 17 C.E. named the Red Eyebrows, and their supporter, a woman named Mother Lu, who pooled her resources in support of a peasant revolt after her son was murdered by government agents for refusing to collect taxes. Part of her powers of persuasion lay in the beer hall she ran. I came across all of this while pursuing a line of thought inspired by John Lindeman when he mentioned a painting called the Vinegar Tasters, a Chinese work reminiscent of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters but comparing Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

I'm reading John Kiernan's book again, The Natural History of New York. That is, I'm now enjoying the parts I didn't read before, which is pretty much the whole thing. He mentions that a good part of our 5 sectioned city is not on the continent's mainland. True! That's so exotic isn't it? No wonder we here in 4 out of the 5 are so so sexy. Sorry Bronx! Even Lady liberty joins us mysterious exiles, in a sense, out on that little island all alone, holding that torch so someone might someday rescue her. But liberty is always in some sort of exile, even here in the land of the free we don't get too far from an archipelago of shackles thanks to our fruitless negativity, near constant pleasure seeking, self serving beliefs, small mindedness and of course the ever limiting parameters of our own intense preferences and enculturation. If freedom's a free fall no one wants it. We want our beliefs which amount to nothing, as if believing the world was flat would make it so.

I also read about Henry Hudson's end, how he was put adrift in Arctic waters along with 8 other crew members by a mutinous contingency after they'd all wintered aboard a ship that became ice locked in its course to the New World. He never saw the river to be named after him again, the one that's a mile at its widest, the one Kiernan frequently calls "lordly." I wonder what Hudson called it as he traveled far upriver as a young man, enjoying the kind of freedom reliant on one's bravery, gumption and some kind of crazy faith that things will work out. The man should never have returned to Europe, it was all trouble, he should have just made nice with the Algonquin and left it at that.

words from washington

If, as Antony sings, Man is the Baby, we were fed dove's milk today with the sensitive words of the articulate and well intended President Obama. My father was out on the mall for 3 hours before the speech, he and his wife almost left because of the cold but the speech once started provided enough warmth to keep them around. My dad reminded me that he was there for JFK's inaugaration as well. Having an office in the Museum of Natural History does give one an advantage.

Obama said that "what the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted." With clarified vision of purpose, I wonder if we can cope with less definition on the TV. I mean, how defined does it have to get, can't we at least use the old imagination to fill in the gap in resolution, even if we use it for nothing else?

With the fattening of spirit in the form of hope, I'm wondering if we can get by with humbler cars. Someone drives a Hummer in this neighborhood bearing a bumper sticker that reads "My heart belongs to Jesus." Will the driver soon want to give Jesus his brain too, before it's time to try to drive the thing through the eye of the needle? Not a lot fits in there, I hear. Perhaps only what's common to all.

Some words from the President, like pebbles I gathered today, to put in my mouth..."men and women obscure in their labors...collective failure to make hard choices...rule of law and rights of man...the tempering quality of humility...our common humanity will reveal itself...your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

So what will we build? Funny how people at times suggest that it's up to Obama to change things. Will he disappoint us? It's more likely we'll disappoint ourselves.

Let Down

Breastfeeding a baby gives a new definition to the term that formerly meant disappointment, the moment when, after the baby's hungrily dry sucked for a minute or so, the milk glands respond and engorge the breast with milk that will make the child's breath smell like vanilla ice cream. With the oncoming sluice you can see that baby's eyes grow wide as she sucks for all she's worth to keep up with the rush. There's the rapid tiny whimpering gulps as the baby struggles to maintain her suction or receive the tiny geysers of milk in the face. The mother feels an acute wave of pins and needles with the let down, and the baby's sucking soon relieves the ache and itch of engorgement. Together, mother and child learn to ride the wave which eventually becomes more subtle, although sometimes it takes intense study and commitment to nurture the cycle.

This sort of let down is not something that happens in the Pippoliti Rist installation at the MOMA, even though the films are projected from protrusions in the walls that resemble both nipples and the noses of jets. I'm sure if I'd looked more carefully I'd have seen a few of the young ones who were rolling around in the pupil inside the upholstered blue iris start gnawing their fists when the giant breast appears on the screen, bobbing under an erect nipple. The installation delivers an invitation to intimacy that I found refreshing, as the sign at the front asks people to please remove their shoes before standing on the white rug or sitting on the iris, and to please make friends during their visit. I like the work's trippy love-in undercurrent, though my favorite part wasn't the psychedelic tulip field but the stretch when a man walks barefoot through shallow water.

Coming close to the let down of milk, pretensions and barriers between strangers is the let down of the kind of laughter which I heard from my son while he watched Der Lauf Der Dinge by Peter Fishli and David Weiss, part of the Vik Muniz curated Rebus, indicating he'd became engorged with the artists' comic and mechanical genius. I haven't heard those belly laughs in a while, and when I hear them I had to wonder why I haven't devoted my life to creating the conditions under which they occur, how do you garden for laughs, I wonder, where do you get the seeds?

Maybe cultivating that laugh is as hard as gardening under a snowfall, as hard as forcing grace, but my how the babies bring down the milk.

Alluring Lights in the South Slope

These lights, hand made by Ruby of Slope Cellars, stopped me cold the other night. While I photographed them a man came out, coatless into the freezing night, to tell me they were for sale. I asked him which would get me more drunk, the lamps of the wine, and he beat it fast.

My phav's the one with the flickr, no that's Flicker, though I've got nothing at all against puppies and kitties. As for pricing, I really don't care. All I needed was a picture and a sense of appreciation that not only do they trouble themselves with hanging these excellent things in the window, they've also kept that beautiful pink neon liquor sign up all this time. If it ever comes down, I'm going down too.

Meliora Cogito

I recently read someone's point of view about being a lover, can't remember if it was Rumi, Hafiz or Chesterton, but I do remember the point – being a lover means you're never satisfied, everyday you're willing to change, to toss out what seemed good enough the day before and humbly open to better. The lover's discipline is to spend a lifetime climbing out of nested and obscured ruts. This idea struck me because I usually consider a lover to be someone who's quite happy with things the way they are.

How I Love my Anchor Lamp

Home made, I think, courtesy of a 17th St. purger. I don't think the chain was whittled from a single piece, but I can work with it.

MLK Service Gathering, Kids welcome

From Park Slope Parents comes this event promising a little of that sweet milk of redemption on MLK Day. Here's the info from Susan Fox, and a link for more information.

Spend Martin Luther King's Birthday GIVING BACK to the community.

Obama has called for a Day of Service on Martin Luther King’s Birthday. Rather than thinking of it as a “day off” he wants us to think of it as a “day on.” (http://www.usaservice.org/content/home/).

Members of the Park Slope Community have joined together to help a number of community service organizations while at the same time planning some fun along with it. Here’s the details.

sweet

I've been hoping to get up to Carmel, New York this Sunday to finally, finally attend a Reiki workshop led by my friend Kristen, whose skills I've experienced and trust. She's been offering free Reiki treatments at various places for victims of trauma including those grappling with the aftermath of 9-11. She hooked me up with a ride for Sunday, but the man, kind as I'm sure he is, hasn't gotten back to me. For all I know he was on flight 1549. So I'm getting worried. To get up there by train I need to be at Grand Central at 7:40 am.

This morning I told my husband about it and instead of ridiculing my new age predelection he considered driving me up and said, "Well, is there anything up there we could all do?" Wow. I wonder if there is. They can see the statue of 16-year old Sybil Lundington, the "female Paul Revere," who rode her horse through the hills and valleys upstate in 1777 warning of the British invasion. She's posed freakishly, neck strained, mouth wrenched open, the stick in her right arm raised high over her head. The name Sybil means prophetess, and here's one who I'm sure did not get the Cassandra treatment, which I think we've all experienced at one point in our lives, or we wouldn't have the phrase "I told you so."

Double Bird Strike

So now that the geese, seeking a warmer roost, were hit by US Airways 1549, downing it and leading to "the miracle of the Hudson," will we name a constellation for them?

Dreams

During the day: Palestine and Isreal so love one another that they devote themselves to the preservtion and celebration of the each other's particularities.

During the night: a line of winged ants travels into my mouth.

snowmen last long indoors

He lost a coriander eyeball, that makes him a tuerto, which means "one eyed" in Colombia, one of the lasik capitals of the world. So with the left eye, you see with the right brain? Think about it, pirates.

favorite things

The winter wonderland photograph, which captures Prospect Park in 1904, is one of many amazing images in Historic Photos of Brooklyn, which appears on a blanket crocheted (past tense here a bit tricky) by my grandmother Mary K. I'm finding the book, which contains some images on view for the first time, too rich to consume in one sitting. A note on the compiler, who wrote the text and captions:

John B. Manbeck Brooklyn Borough Historian between 1993 and 2002, taught English and Journalism at Kingsborough Community College for 32 years. In 1997, he was appointed chairman of the Mayor's Department of Records, Research and Information Services Advisory Board, and in 2002 appointed to the New York State Local Historian Advisory Council.

The last image, a macro from The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume II P-Z, speaks for itself.

Historic Photos of Brooklyn was published by Turner Publishing Co. in 2008.

winter glazed

I don't think that's ice covering these buds growing on a tree in a grove near the lake. I was shooting blind when taking this picture because the limb was out of my reach, which explains why she lists. In this case.
The buds swelling under syrup suggest that the tree's just barely pulling off dormancy.

Urban Oyster Thursdays

If an oyster is your world, and it is mine, you will also be very excited about these upcoming lectures hosted by the New York Oyster Garden. Here's the details.

The NYC Oyster Gardening Program announces a series of five lectures on the history, science and restoration of oysters in the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary. These free lectures will be held between February and June of 2009. This series will complement the gathering interest in oyster restoration in the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary and the upcoming conference Restoring the Urban Oyster to be held on Governors Island on April 24th.

Thursday February 19th, 6:00pm
Where the Oyster Grows: A study of Growth and Physiological Performance in NY-NJ Waters.
Dr. Jeffrey Levinton, Distinguished Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution, SUNY Stony Brook.

Thursday March 19th, 5:30pm
Oyster Reef Restoration in an Urban Estuary: Are We Ready?
Dr. Beth Ravit, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers.

Thursday April 2nd, 5:30pm
Oyster Educators' Workshop
NYC teachers and educators are invited to participate in skill building and idea sharing.

Thursday May 14th, 6:00pm
Global Shellfish Reefs at Risk
Dr. Mike Beck, The Nature Conservancy's Global Marine Team Senior Scientist, will discuss their recently completed assessment of the global condition of oyster reefs and what we can do about it.

Thursday June 11th, 6:00pm
Oyster Study at a Unique Site in Upper New York Harbor
Bart Chezar, NY/NJ Baykeeper Project Associate, collaborates with New York Harbor School and others to study this potential reef-restoration site.

(All lectures except the April 2nd Educators' Workshop will be held at Hudson River Park's Pier 84 Classroom.)

This lecture series is made possible through a stewardship grant from the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. Lecture space at the Pier 84 Classroom and Interpretive Center has been generously provided by the Hudson River Park Trust.

To RSVP for individual lectures, please contact:
Katie Mosher-Smith at NY/NJ Baykeeper
k.moshersmith@gmail.com

More information about the program is available at http://www.urbanoysters.org

Child Mugged in J.J. Byrne Park

The beating that the 6th grader received after the mugging reminds me of how after wronging someone, the perpetrators have to hurt them, as if it would erase their guilt.

My daughter, whose friend witnessed the mugging, told me the park was full of kids when this happened, and that the boy was singled out because he was listening to an ipod, which was stolen in the attack. My sympathy to the child who endured the abuse. Also, my sympathy to young adults so pathetically desperate and angry that they're drawn to these sad choices. What. to. do.

Here's the post from Park Slope Parents.

Our sixth grader was mugged and beat up yesterday at 3:20 pm just outside MS 51 in JJ Byrne Park. He was surrounded by 8 older boys while his pockets were searched for valuables. Then he was held and repeatedly punched in the face.

This morning a sixth-grade girl was assaulted on her way to school, and apparently there have been several other attacks in recent weeks.

If you have children at MS 51 please contact the administration and demand more security around the school. 718-369-7603. You can also contact the 78th Precinct youth officer, P.O. Ciuffo at 718-636-6451.

15th St. entourage

Sunday Sliding

Yesterday sledding, or what we should call skidding for the lack of snow, also Nora and Russell's first and non-recession related brush with the term "bailout." On the way to the Washington Monument we passed two who were painting en plein air by the Wellhouse. No hawks in sight, maybe the squeals of the sledded ones sent them elsewhere. We also discovered cupcakes for sale at Bene, where we stopped for an after skidding slice. It may or may not work for you, but if you show great enthusiasm for the cupcakes they now house in the display case, which are baked by a woman who used to work at Lonelyville, and whip out your camera for the beauty shot, you might just get a free brownie.

I overheard a few things while at Bene, for one thing the man behind the counter commenting that the more the Giants get in it, the more pizza they sell, but the icing on the cake was a teenage girl's wide-eyed observation that Windsor Terrace and Wu Tang have the same initials.

For Monday: The Audacity of Peace

Here's something Daniel Meeter, Spoke the Hub, Beth Elhohim and the Interfaith Center of NY have cooked up for next Monday. Hats off to their work, intentions, and dreams!

Announcing a Martin Luther King Day Celebration

THE AUDACITY OF PEACE
Peace-finding and Peace-sharing For the Whole Family

Monday January 19th, 2009, 10:00 am - 4:30 pm
at the Old First Reformed Church (7th Avenue at Carrol Street)
-and-
at the Spoke the Hub Re:Creation Center (748 Union Street @ 6th Avenue)
Park Slope, Brooklyn

For Reservations, Directions & Information: 718.408-3234

Workshops, drama, dancing, meditation, yoga, and artwork for pre-schoolers through adults.Hosted by Old First Reformed Church and Spoke the Hub.
Co-sponsored by Congregation Beth Elohim and The Interfaith Center of New York

At midday: “Four Traditions”: interfaith prayers for peace (and for our new president) led by
Imam Salilou Djabi, of the Imam Ali Mosque in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Rev. T. K. Nakagaki, of the Buddhist Church of New York,
Rabbi Andy Bachman, of Congregation Beth Elohim, and
Pastor Daniel Meeter, of Old First Reformed Church

MORNING WORKSHOPS
CardioDancing: Strengthen Your Heart! (Teens & Adults)
Prana and Prayer (Teens & Adults)
Make Your Own Mandala (All Ages )
Jump On The Peace Train (Preschoolers)
Ahimsa Yoga
Chair Yoga

LUNCH FOR ALL
AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS
Peace Is An Inside Job: An Introduction to Meditation & Mindfulness Practice
Jump On The Peace Train (ages 6 and up)
Make Your Own Mandala (All Ages )

Suggested Donation:
$ 10.00 Adults; $5 Kids & Seniors (per individual workshop or lunch)
$ 25.00 Adults; $10 Kids & Seniors (for whole day, including lunch)
$ 60.00 Family Rate (siblings and parents, for whole day, including lunch)

Please make advanced reservations by January 16th if you will be joining us for lunch:
718.408-3234 or spoke@spokethehub.org

rick rackarama

Detail, African cape

found

One thing to appreciate about being disorganized is the opportunities the condition creates for surprising yourself, like the surprise I felt when I came across this photo of a scarf I made about 20 years ago. I was searching for a dvd with the staying power to keep Nora in place while I conducted her second comb through in my new role as nit nurse. While savagely digging into a shelf of books and discs packed two layers deep I came across a scrap book that my father's wife gave me years ago after they'd had a chimney fire at their house. The book has snapshots of every piece of art made by me or my father– it was amazingly considerate of her to put the book together. One of the pages had a shot of this scarf I'd once made and given to her as a gift. I used to love to make batik designs, I had tjanting tools, electric frying pans and what not for melting wax, dylon dyes, silk, all the accouterments. I taught one session of a batik class at a local community center which was greatly appreciated by its participants. Then I moved on. To what I'm not sure.

Amazing to find this since the image has been on my mind since last week, I was trying to remember what it looked like exactly, and how I'd managed to pull it off without getting the stencil clogged with wax. At any rate, I find these mini plots involving searching for one thing but finding another to be very entertaining swivels in whatever this is that we call life. This twist I owe to the lice.

North of Here

midnight sun

Minus an L

Lice, Red Belly

Please take these photos as proof that the Red Bellied Woodpecker has no red belly. Obviously, it has a red head. Birdists, kindly explain.

If I could have gotten this red head to come home with me it could have helped a great deal. We got the call last night around 6 that a bunch of kids we know had head lice, and it turned out that a bunch of us had the scourge too. Yes, that includes me. But I'll have you know I have very sexy, sophisticated lice throwing a swanky party behind my ears complete with acrobats and dancing bears.

If I could only train a woodpecker as a nitpicker when I get a little tired of the clingy squatters. Our Brooklyn nitpickers charge a pretty penny, you know? Anyway, there were none around to help me last night, and alas, nary a woodpecker or sister wife to come to my aid when the skeeving hit me hard. Alone, in the shower, I probably lost a quarter of my hair to the steely fine-toothed comb pulls lubricated with copious pantene.

A few things I hope I remember if this ever happens again.
• If you're head itches a lot, especially behind the ears and at the nape of the neck, you might have lice.
• Keep extra combs for family infestations so you don't have to stop and do the 15 minute comb boil.
• 30 minutes in the hot dryer will kill lice dead. So maybe I don't have to wash pillows and bedding over and over again every day while the problem continues. You can also freeze things to kill the lice.
•your comb is your best friend.
•don't skimp on the pantene.

Any other hot tips for sexy lice welcome. I'll be reviewing the CDC guidelines sent by my mom. Happy snow day.

Seed Drop

London Plane Trees seeds are fluffing up the sidewalk cracks as we speak. Why now, I wonder? Trod upon and crushed under car tires, the spherical fruits make some very interesting pancakes.

Morning Light: Rust, Rosehips

Morning Light

Why does not Photoshop have an automobile eracer brush? Note to Adobe, get your programmers on that, OK? It's not like people don't need work.

Anyway, later in the morning, there was a brief sunshower of snowflakes, some kind of green gray warbler in the rose bush, and the chief plumber showed up, chittering at the squirrel on the windowsill as he came in to pick up the dubloon I wanted to keep for myself. He's a soft spoken giant who walks with some difficulty and looks like Sinbad, the comedian. So for these tight jobs he sends in the younger men in bandanas still able to bend themselves into pretzels to fit in your bathtub.

mixed match

The mason who fixed the shower wall was from Grenada, a word that makes me very thirsty because I hear in it a blend of grenadine and granita. When he learned my name was Amy he chuckled and I asked him why. He'd never heard the name used before outside of TV, and it struck him as funny. He kept chuckling. Why does it seem to happen that some of these men of Brooklyn find me so amusing in a pathetic way, like some kind of oddly groomed dog?

I took my revenge later and asked him if he was a Freemason. He smiled and said "Yes, I work for myself." He's just lucky I didn't send him out until he found tiles glazed in the exact pink that was installed 30 years ago. He found something pink but duller after hitting his third source. Or so he said. I'm not sure if he just grabbed the first thing he found to make his life easier or if I suffer from a "deficit of trust," eloquent words coined by Obama today. So we have a checkerboard of pinks in the shower now, which I think I kind of like, since 2 shades make for a better story than one.

The back of the house sweetened up with the musty, earthy smell of grout. I wonder if that's what Iceland's Blue Lagoon smells like. I wonder if my California friends who are doing their part to support the economy in that land of extremes are in the silty impurity-leaching bath right now, butt naked.