Brooklyn has saved me from Friendly's

While driving from Rhode Island, where my mother lives, to Brooklyn we stopped for lunch at a Friendly's somewhere in Connecticut. The kids were all atwitter with the lunch and dessert options, but I was depressed because I'm having trouble with the franchise world that the suburbs have been for a long time, where profit mongers load up products with the cheapest, most superficial and unsustainable kinds of mood boosters. Some of us throw these poison offerings at our kids and wonder why they're little monsters. Oh the ruts we're in.

I ordered the vegetable fajita and shared it with my mother. As I bit into the "spanish rice" I was jolted by the terrifying amount of salt in it. At that moment, my son who is 7 suddenly uttered the word "saltanic." Sometimes the universal mind speaks plainly.

We sure have our work cut out for us. But at least there's no Friendly's in Brooklyn. They can keep the expandable temperature sensitive plastic straws that change colors. At least I won't see one of those by the side of the road here. Perhaps the makers of the junk even mean well in some small way, but the artifact of someone's 3 seconds of excitement will mar the landscape for an eternity.

Umbella

No I didn't forget the "r" this time, that's New Latin you see there. I'm inspired to pony out the New Latin, even if Latin of any chronology tends to be a blog killer, on account of reading an amazing post at the abecedariumNYC called the Umbel of Umbels by Erik Shurinck in which he botanizes Coney Island's Parachute Jump Thrill Ride. Talk about Planthropology!

Also under my bumbershoot of happiness, the news that Joyce Hanson, formerly of bad girls, has started a new blog about good girls, which I'm very interested to read. Her new focus won't drop her ratings over here at Brooklynometry. And more joy! M. Thew's now also writing about bee keeping and hive legalization here in NYC, I've discovered a beautiful Brooklyn brewed blog about trees, and Marie Viljoen of 66 Square Feet has returned to the County of Kings and persists in making everything delicious. She includes generous helpings of gorgeous South Africa country side, not to be missed.

Thanks to M. Thew for answering some of my questions about London Plane trees. He thinks the leaf in the Park's Department logo is a Norway Maple, a favorite of Robert Moses. According to the esteemed Professor Gingko of The Daily Plant, we're both wrong, and right.

Piebald Buttonball

I have some questions about our London Plane street trees (Platanus x hispanica for you smarty pants, formerly Platanus acerifolia) that I'd like to have answered. Can someone tell me:

When was the leaf adopted for the Park's Dept. logo?
When were all the Brooklyn street trees planted, more or less?
Does anyone still call them Buttonballs? What is a buttonball?
Were they the inspiration for classic army camouflage?
Why is their use as street trees now restricted?
Why is it called a London Plane tree if this hybrid species orignated in Spain, where the rain falls mainly on the plain?

I often wonder about these things as I walk up Windsor Place, which is lined with an elegant chorus line of the trees, although someone's tried to undermine their grandeur by placing a Groucho mask midway up one tree's trunk. With some display of consideration, they painted the mask to coordinate with the many hues you see in the tree's patchy bark.

In a A Natural History of New York City (1971) John Kiernan describes the trees muli-toned bark as "piebald," which I take to mean spotty. It's not a word people use everyday, even if we really should just to see if anyone is listening. I understand that "pie" refers to magpies, which are black and white, and were originally just called "pie" birds, and "bald" means white. That adds up to black and white, and some more white, but I take it that something pied just means multi-colored.

In the picture above, the London Plane is the piebald one in the back. I have no idea what the lumpy tree in the front is but I admire it's lovely humps.

If you're still reading, here's another question. What variety of the hybrid are our street trees? Ok, that's it.

blue dinner

Especially for me! Someone's feeling better...hooray!

A Sloop Docks in Brooklyn

The Sloop Clearwater, a symbol of Hudson River conservation efforts, will now be able to dock in Brooklyn. Here's the details from Chris Hunt, a spokesperson for the organization.

We're all really excited about the new dock opportunity in Red Hook - Clearwater has been trying to gain access to a dock in Brooklyn for a long time - it was surprisingly difficult because most brooklyn docks are designed for commercial vessels - which means that they're too high for a relatively small boat like the Clearwater.

We've always offered educational sails not only for schools in wealthy suburbs, but also for those in underserved and/or urban communities; this year, we finally gained access to a dock in Brooklyn, which dramatically increases our ability to serve students in NYC. To celebrate (and raise much-needed funds to support our programs), we’re having a party at the Brooklyn Brewery. There’ll be food, live music by Chris Cubeta and the Liars Club & Medicine Woman, and various salty crew members from the boat. We’re asking for a $20 donation, which includes (limited) free beer courtesy of the Brooklyn Brewery.

I for one don't think I can resist salty crew members, too bad it's parent-teacher conference night Thursday. So here's a toast to this organization that has done a tremendous amount to clean up the Hudson in the last 30 years. More info at clearwater.org

Benefit Information:
Brooklyn Brewery
79 North 11th Street (between Wythe and Berry), Brooklyn, NY (map)
7-9:30 pm
cost: $20

Photo courtesy of The Sloop Clearwater's flickr.

For he's a jolly good blogger...

My little Nora drew this yesterday morning, and then quickly came down with fever and chills. She spent most of the day moaning and weeping, complaining that "the crying is coming again." She's doing a little better today.

On a more cheerful note, today is the birthday of one of my favorite blogs, A Brooklyn Bachelor, which is all of three years old. Happy birthday to the wonderful blog of M. Thew! I've really appreciated his reading choices, birding, bay and bee adventures, the fancy Bessies, the sundry reveries and revelations, and the products of his discerning ear and eye.

And here's something else to celebrate – Rabbi Andy Bachman didn't really end his blog. He couldn't do it. Oh Happy Day! I do hope he gets traction with his book, in spite of his continued blogging. For today, he invites us to Discover a Truth. Ok, I will!

Shee is a Dangerous Woeman

Newsday ran an excellent article about Lady Moody, founder of Brooklyn's Gravesend, who was kindly brought to my attention by the Reverend Doctor Daniel Meeter who knows I'm a fan of heretics.

It's not known where she's buried, but the fact that she has both a circle and square dedicated to her reminds us that she is admired by many for her conviction, vision and governance. Enjoy the article. Perhaps someone will second the notion to dedicate this the 22nd of February to the Flatlands bad*ss with the goth name, for no reason except that 2-22 is a very nice number. (Out of respect for the Reverend I have censored my language.)

Bartlett's

Coming home from Manhattan Friday night I found the 10th edition of Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, published in 1919, propped against a fence on 10th Avenue. A small ornament on the title page reveals that the Bartlett's collections have been published continually since 1863 by Little, Brown and Company. In this volume the pages are thin, cream bleeding to an inch of brown around the edges, and they break very easily. It was inscribed to someone named Knowles on Oct. 29, 1935. Hard times!

I opened it to Francis Bacon "Come home to men's business and bosoms." I wonder how many of the quotes in this edition have been pruned out to make room for later ones because they don't come home to the modern, um, bosom. I'm sure a lot had to go to make way for the 20th Century. Who got dropped for a modern, I wonder? Thomas Fuller? "Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high" –Andronicus. Maybe Donald Grant Mitchell's been given the boot. "Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depaves it. Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose– easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters. –Reveries of a Bachelor. Well, I don't know what to make of that, I thought coquetry and flirtation were the same thing. Someone named Thomas Middleton, who I take it gave us the phrase "spick and span" urged us to "Beat all your feathers as flat down as pancakes." Something tells me he wasn't a fan of peacocks.

I wonder if the Bacon quote is in the contemporary editions, I can't see people using the fusty word bosom very much these days without some irony, although I'd love to change all that if it were in my power. I've been reading up on the word, yes, I know it means chest, but it also means surface. I recently watched a pair of swans and mallards descending on a brackish inlet, connecting feathery breast to watery bosom with a combination of drama and elegance that might be the envy of many a pilot and airline passenger. And now my bosom bloggers and non-bloggers, I'm off to make some lentil soup, grateful that John Barlett took up the pen for people like me with capricious memories and limited exposure.

Landing Pad

The feminine values are the fountain of bliss.
Know the masculine, Keep to the feminine.

I wonder what Lao Tzu meant by that? I NEED TO KNOW.

Driving from Rhode Island to Brooklyn we got off 95 because of traffic and meandered around New Haven, yet another haven of Haves and Have Nots, on a path that happened to take us by the two dramatic cliffs of East Rock and West Rock. Maybe my awesome badass mom is right and they are volcanic, as the ex-wife of a volcanologist she might know what she's talking about. The striated cliff of East Rock is a basalt marvel that reminds me of Devil's Tower, but they chose a fairly tame name for it in comparison. Overall, Eastern Connecticut is an interesting place to pass through because of the many dramatic ridges, forests strewn with boulders, marshes and wide rivers, this time of year often frozen on the West side of the highway and liquid on the East. The drive helped me recover from the sad landscape of route 1 North of Boston where King Profit continues to tragically ravage the hills.

At a stoplight on Eastern Parkway back in BK we noticed an Asian man in a cap with light striking him so that he looked like he only had one bushy white eyebrow. He noticed being noticed and began to sing, so I opened my window and heard his high thin voice. I took this as a welcome, this man with nothing better to do than stand on the median of the Parkway lined with churches and sing. I'll take what I can get. I'll also take the retinue of greats that crown the Brooklyn Museum (my favorite is the Taoist mentioned above,) and I'll take every little bit of stone carving, even the faux-stone molded cement medallions like the ones on my house, the Horse Chestnuts on the square, every pinkish-red brick fired in a Jersey kiln town long before we became cinder block nation. Brooklyn is a Balm.

catkins

Well I was surprised to learn that pussy willows are the male flowers, or catkins as they're called in this case. It's somehow counterintuitive. The female flowers are slinky and long, too weedy in appearance to grace the spring flower arrangements.

These little fellas are considered past their prime now that the silky rabbit's foot has been engulfed in hundreds of yellow anthers, it is really quite a different look. No doubt their masculinity was augmented when we put the cuttings in water.

The other day I saw some cattails in Maine somewhere. This time of year they have an extremely ungroomed motely look, although not quite as unappealing as the grey brown snow piled up along the roadsides now. John Kiernan descrribes the cattail dander seen this time of year clinging to last year's spikes as "ragged cottony remnants." Yes, very much like all the fluff my daughter Nora kept pulling out of our upholstered chair until it was bare bones. When they're cute they get away with murdering upholstery, just like those cats that claw the armchairs.

John Kiernan, Bronx naturalist and author, describes the catbrier lilly as being a blot on the 'scutcheon of the lilly family because it's a pernicious weed. I suppose all our 'scutcheons get blotted eventually.

riverie

River names lead you on their own journeys. Reading up on the Androscoggin in Maine, a prime industrial river so poisoned by various mills that it was one of the sick waterways inspiring the Clean Water Act, I came across its trove of monikers, a wealth that points to its importance to many. It was variously called Amasagu'nteg, Amascongan, Ambrose Coggin, Ammeriscoggin, Ammoscoggin, Amos Coggin, Amoscommun, Anasagunticook, Anconganunticook, Andrews Coggin, Andros Coggan, Andros Coggin, Androscoggen, Andrus Coggin, Aumoughcaugen, Pescedona, and Ameriscoggin River. I'm left wondering if there was an Andrew Scoggin, and if he was someone like Johnny Appleseed.

In Rhode Island we're directly next to the Pawtuxet River, whose name means "little falls," and whose recovery from the fouling by jewelry and textiles manufacturers shows some success. Its mouth here by the bay is the culmination of the largest watershed in Rhode Island. We see egrets race down it just above the water's surface so fast they're gone before you're sure you've seen them. Last week for the first time I saw a hawk stalking in the river well from branches high in the leafless trees.

Yesterday while looking up the river I misspelled its name, leaving out the W, so I wound up reading about the Patuxet Indians and Squanto, also known as Tisquantum. Sad sad sad how his whole village, which was near Plymouth, was eradicated by smallpox in the course of a few years. When he finally returned from England where he'd been forced to go he found all his people had died. I'm not sure how he had the heart and longevity to teach the pilgrims to increase their food supply by fertilizing the crops with fish and eels. He died in 1622.

I'm still wondering what the Hudson was called previously. I'm sure it also had many names, like anything will if it lives long enough.

Around Portland

I assume that's a red squirrel we saw under the bird feeders at the Gilsland Farm Audobon Center in Falmouth, just north of Portland. It's on a hill overlooking the Presumpscot river, the main outlet of Sebago Lake, about a 45 minute drive away. In that distance the river is dammed eight times, according to wikipedia.

There are eight dams impeding the flow of the river as it makes its way to the ocean, some of which produce hydroelectric power. These dams are the Eel Weir Dam, North Gorham Dam, Dundee Dam, Gambo Dam, Little Falls Dam, Mallison Dam, Sacarappa Dam, and Cumberland Mills Dam. Dams upstream of Cumberland Mills served the locks of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal; and were modified to regulate water flow through the S. D. Warren Paper Mill after the canal fell into disuse. Since the removal of the Smelt Hill Dam in Falmouth in 2002, the last seven miles of the river after the Cumberland Mills Dam now flow unimpeded to the ocean.

That tree fungus growing on a log in woods near the Presumpscot estuary was looking a lot like the feathers on the breast of many raptors.

sans issue

The only dead end streets I know of in Brooklyn are roads that had once continued but were divided when another road or structure was built. As far as I know, few cul-de-sacs were built for their own sake, as was the one I got caught in yesterday on a walk in my sister's neighborhood in Cape Elizabeth, Me. The sac was vacant of all but a few crows, there are many many here, so I felt free to cut through a backyard that was stacked with lobster traps and a few large boats to get back where I started without having to retrace my steps.

I just read that Voltaire thought the term cul-de-sac was very rude and used the word impasse instead, but this confuses me because I don't believe they had any developments or gated communities in the 18th Century. So what did people use the phrase meaning "end of a bag" to refer to back then?

I came to another impasse yesterday, I found a snow covered road that went through a beautiful marsh which had trees spread out in such a way as to create an unusually appealing sense of depth. Suddenly the road ended in front of a small rivulet which hadn't frozen, maybe the water was brackish. A sapling with several thin trunks leaned in and a delicate ridge of ice resembling some ancient calligraphy was slowly being eaten away by the air that surrounded it on all sides but one.

groomed paths

I was thinking about trying to climb down the embankment and get to the frozen river when my foot started breaking through the solid surface of the snow and plunging at least two feet down, and it seemed unwise to try to attempt to get through the thicket and pass through an acre of snow that came up to my thigh. That's what snow shoes are for. At that moment a gust came up and spun me like a lover, throwing my ridiculous hat to the ground and dropping my other shoe, so I ran away from the elements until after breakfast, and then kept to the groomed trails at Mt. Abrams, as the signs on the chair lift suggested. Abram sounds like a version of Abraham designed by people with a taste for speed.

The next day we passed by frozen lakes supporting these ice fishing huts. Inside you'd probably find the hole the fishermen thread their bated hooks through, and perhaps a heater of some kind. I was fascinated and my sister urged me to go out and talk to the men and see if I could have a look around, but it seemed daunting enough to go out on the ice even if some people clearly felt comfortable driving their trailers out there, even plowing a road out to their ice shelter. Not that I was really scared the ice would break, I was just feeling a little reluctant to descend on the contented sportsmen.

friday the 13th

I suppose that's not my favorite day to travel but a lot of road went under our tread that day anyway. An easy chair that almost bounced out of some one's pickup on 95 North of Boston almost put a halt to our ambitions. In Bethel, Maine we avoided falling through icy lakes, getting stuck at railroad crossings and also getting isolated on snow laden purple mountains majesties. The only birds I saw for the longest time were four crows ornamenting the hotel dumpster, but later I saw a cardinal and in Oxford, 3 blue jays. It's very weird gazing out at the frozen Androscoggin where it courses through Bethel gracefully lined with leafless trees which I can't identify, and observe the complete absence of even one airborne speck, either bird or plane. Until night when the sky articulates pin points and milky spills that seem all the more dazzling in the cold's ruthless pinch.

Very tempting the ice bound forest in the middle of one of the river's turns where the thick grey purple trunks emerged from the glassy yellow green ice, where it seemed just as possible to be abducted by fairies as to fall through the the river's frozen surface.

still icy

...at least on the Southwest side. The water was so low I could walk out about 6 yards on the gravely lake bottom towards the geese which couldn't have cared less. There was no buillion and no sunken ship on the lake bed, no seven Chinese brothers, not even a turtle in hibernation, just some broken bottles and chunks of cement and brick. The song of the of Red-Winged Blackbird cheered me up, it sounded like a splashy guiro spazzing it up for fun and profit.

Clouds

I've been frustrated that I haven't remembered many dreams lately, but this morning I woke up to the kind that casts a long shadow across the entire day. Not a bad shadow, just a long one. In this dream I was in some kind of subway station, a fancier one like at 59th St., just standing with my back to the wall in a hall people were passing through, with Nora, my youngest daughter, under my left arm. The melody to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" was flowing out of my mouth like a warped and bubbly stream echoing through a cave. Of course in the dream I had no idea what song it was, I only knew it was familiar and could never have remembered the words.

When I woke up, I realized that Nora really was under my arm, only it was the right one, and instantly the words to "Both Sides Now" started to run through my mind. I actually can't handle that song very well, I think it is too powerful for me like some things are, it makes me feel really sad and sentimental, and I'm afraid of its profound stickiness. But today it went through my head all day, and I realized what a sober and poetic meditation Joni Mitchell's comtemplation of life's illusions is, and I'm feeling a pretty strong nudge to read up on this really unreal woman, whose work I've never deliberately come in contact with. The video grabs me by the gut with astonishing ferocity, and I find I can't believe that anyone could be that beautiful. "So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way..." Tell me about it.

I enjoyed the novelty of humming in a dream, even if I was in some sad cave-like place. I'm vaguely aware that my dreams often occur in some labyrinthine area more resembling a major staging place like the Javits Center (depressing!), Grand Central or Ikea than some lovely coral reef or peaceful valley, but I know I'm not the only one who dreams in bleak landscapes embroidered with garbled melodies. I suspect I get frustrated and confused in many of my dreams because they simply don't make sense, and I get tired of it all and stop dreaming. Other dreams I suspect I don't remember because the content falls beyond anything I can even remotely conceptualize.

Some Brooklyn Mystery Spheres

You may recognize the top, smarty pants, but I'd be very surprised if anyone tells me what's in the bottom picture.

Somewhere in Park Slope

Before sliders were bite-sized burgers, they were these, whose kind has been around since before dinosaurs, although I'm not sure there's many Box Turtles left thanks to automobile culture. When I was very young my father would come across them as he puttered around in his VW bug, pick them up to protect them and bring them home. Then they'd live in a muddy pit in our backyard for a while, eventually wondering off. On the other hand, Snapping Turtles seem to be doing fine, I saw one that was about a foot and a half long on a trail in Rhode Island last year. I'm not crazy about them because of their reputation for snagging ducklings, I'm glad the coons and possums get at their eggs.

Joseph Mitchell writes in On the Bottom of the Harbor that Terrapin Soup, made from the Diamondback I believe, used to be on the menu of any NYC restaurant worth its salt and pepper. I came across this from the Princeton website.

In Colonial times, Diamondbacks were abundant and a routine part of the diet of tidewater settlers. Wood cites an account of slaves going on a hunger strike until promised something else to eat (in similar stories about stipulations in the contracts of indentured servants, the offending fare is lobster, salmon, or shad). After terrapin soup became a staple of gourmet restaurants in the late 19th century, unregulated commercial hunting drove the species to the brink of extinction. As Wood wrote in a scientific paper, epicures "considered diamondbacks to be the ultimate treat for cultured palates. Pound for pound, diamondbacks were unquestionably the most expensive meat in the world" -- on the market, a dozen prime females could fetch $125. He believes the species was saved in part by the coming of Prohibition, which made sherry, the other key ingredient in terrapin soup, unavailable, and by a further reduction in demand brought on by the Great Depression.

Hmmm, my sherry amour. I'm surprised to learn that it had anything to do with saving Diamondbacks.

Below Ground Level

The pool at John Jay is 2 flights down a gray painted staircase from 5th St. You have to enter by the side door, there's no access from the front for families taking the kids to Camp Olympia, the swim program they run there. Which is a shame because I love admiring the vintage phone booths that flank the North side of the school's lobby. What conversations have they heard?

Strange that to get to any place referencing Olympia you have to descend down to what feels like the earth's core because of the infernal heat of the pool atrium, which is actually excellent for the chilled little swimmers whose baby fat isn't enough to maintain core blood temperature even in the pool's fairly tepid waters. So they blast the heat, as two people warned me, but still I forgot to wear a t-shirt or tank top. Didn't matter, I was so happy watching Nora enjoy her swim lessons, the second time went much better than the first because I had them drop her level down a notch from Butterflyfish to Angelfish because I could see the higher level had stressed her out. The aura of happiness she has when she's bobbing around in the floaty belt goes very deep. I'm so thankful for this opportunity, which is helping Nora achieve her New Year's resolution.

In the Kitchen

The figure stood in my kitchen, which is about 5 steps up from street level. I didn't see it standing there, I sensed it, though, and it somehow fit its enormousness into the room. Greyish violet, face hidden, about 8 feet high, it stood near the stove emanating a sense of peace and steadiness I've since come to identify as profound, magnetic stillness, the product only of the largest, strongest, nameless anchor. In his presence, all doubt, all desperation, all striving, zipped up. There was a cloud, an ethereal fog like an anesthetic that puts insecurity to sleep, in which I woke up to a dream that I was really, truly enough and had absolutely everything I needed.

Earlier in the day I had called a woman named Susan Grey who is a distance healer because my sister, in nursing school far away in Iowa City, was in acute pain following surgery, pain that was lasting well after it should have resolved. I paid something like 60 dollars and this woman agreed to call my sister and work on her using something called EFT and her spirit entities. I had no idea if it would work or not but I had the money and was desperate to see my sister free from the terrible pain she was in.

I had a sense of what the figure in my kitchen was doing, just sort of checking me out. I suppose this was a bonus gift Susan doesn't advertise. I took the kids to what was then called J.J. Byrnes park, and as they played I felt I had become the anchor for them and for myself, I felt a sweetness that I fail to articulate but if I were Rumi or Hafiz I think I'd find the words for. The protective fog still hung around us as the children played, creating a peaceful oasis, a barrier from all the violence of doubt and despair I normally navigate with a lot of struggling oar strokes.

So I guess this is a testimonial, but even as I write I'm still of the split mind that is very typical of humanity in the modern world, worshipping rationality and that which can be validated by the physical senses. Some call this Westernization, and feel sadly that any other kind of seeing has lost credit. But skepticism has played an important role in protecting people from all the abuses of power and the self-betrayal those manipulative dictates based on belief have encouraged. It's a fine wire we have to walk on. We're all split minded about it these days, I can't tell you how many people will tell me of an unexplainable experience they had involving spirits, and then the next second, tell me they don't believe in ghosts. I've seen people experience compelling synchronicities and find a way to dismiss the notion that there is some amazing and challenging power in effect. I've heard the word random far too often. Even my sublime friend M remarks that I'm very suggestible, the same friend who has recurring "lightmares." We're just wired like that. No wonder the suburban split level makes such a good icon for modern society.

Anyway, it seems to me that what we know, what we love, how we love, and how much we trust something is much more important than what we believe. How much do we honor the subtle overlooked parts of our experience that we'd rather put out of our minds? Do we bear the brand of our mucho macho quasi-analytical society, with its prejudice against intuition and intuitives?

As for my sister, she felt better soon after Susan spoke with her, and was relieved to be able to stop begging doctors for more pills to end her pain.

scroll

Friday I volunteered to spend some time "sharing a skill" with my daughter's Pre-K class. I figured I would fiddle for them since they were a captive audience too fresh to know the difference between good and bad playing. I played "Hop up Kittypuss" "Soldier's Joy" and "The Golden Notebook" for them, but only after taking my sweet time discussing each part of the darling instrument, the front made of spruce, the neck and scroll made of maple, the bow made of horse tail, and the rosin, sap from various pine trees, boiled like candy syrup until it's hard. I don't know if it's sweet or not, because I never tried it. They say it's sticky.

It was sweet spending time with those gracious little people who seemed so interested in all of this, talking about history of the strings and what they've done for people in hard times, talking about the shape of the scroll, a shape that might as well have been carved as a tribute to the cochlea. Thankfully the spiral echoed Ms. Hilda's little blond pigtail so the kids had an additional example. I hope to visit again sometime to play some more fiddle tunes and explore the history they pack with a wallop.

fortune

This was the first cookie to ever make me cry. Yes, life is beautiful, so beautiful, a beautiful disaster. How we manage to cobble together one future out of all the possiblities, choice by choice, with all the elements holding us up and grinding us down at once, is too much to consider.

Once I get over this bummer of a cold I think I may get my sense of humor back. But no promises. In the meantime you can always click the word yellow below for a little winter warm up, or check out the starlings' beaks, now sunny for courting season.

chilly here

So if the groundhog bites the mayor, what does that forecast?

Camels and Strings

Just when I'd convinced myself there were no camels in Brooklyn, I came across Peter Khoury's image of these tasseled ungulates marching down Graham Avenue in a Three Kings Day parade in late January. I'm so glad he was there to capture the moment. Next year, I'm there.

I'm hoping Obama has a camel to ride. I know, he's not a king, we don't do royals here, but he's going to need a real hard-times animal to get through the economic wasteland he's bravely leading us across. It might be a little like climbing an avalanche, or opening the closet in which a certain mischief has led some to stash difficult realities for years and years. Most likely a Bactrian will be a more comfortable mount for the crossing, he can nestle between a fore and rear hump like a built-in secret service.

I learned from the movie The Weeping Camel that in Southern Mongolia a camel colt receives a blessing that states "may your humps grow straight and your hooves strong." Later in the movie a violinist is called into the remote outpost in the Gobi Desert to perform a ritual meant to improve the bond between a mother camel, presumably traumatized by a very long, difficult delivery, and her hungry colt. If I were to choose a movie to run on a loop in my house, this would be it, for so many reasons, because I adore camels, because of the sweetness and sensitivity of the young Mongolian mother as she cares for all the herds around the house and her children, the breathlessly beautiful landscapes of the Gobi, and of course, all the lustrous tunics and adorable booties warn by the denizens of the silk road.

Another thing I could stand on a loop would be the bassists playing live on the Internet as part of Deep Tones For Peace. On Friday from 4-4:30 you can view Brooklyn Bassist Reuben Radding take his turn in this newly envisioned web-based ritual dedicated to expressing hope for peace in the Middle East. The initiative is a "daily streaming of live meditations for peace." What an amazing way to punctuate the day and welcome sundown. I'm inspired.

Thanks to Peter for the camels, appearing at Graham Avenue at Powers St., my old neighborhood! In closing, a taste of the Gobi from The Weeping Camel. What a beautiful Earth she is. The movie is worth viewing for the landscapes alone.

Spring Peepers

Today is Groundhog Day and I am in a terrible mood, partly because I'm still sick and coughing up globs of scary umm, sputum (how was that for you?), and also because I'm not ready for warm weather. More ice please. Nevertheless I was able to appreciate the sky, which at around 3 this afternoon looked like a spilled tangerine egg cream near the Southern horizon. I was also able to appreciate the way Nora's sister and brother came to her aid when she tipped off her chair hard onto the floor, soaked in the ovaltine that had fallen along with her. I didn't really want to come to her aid before getting a towel, sticky as she was, all the while wondering what the hell was the matter with me.

A woman who came to our house today to pick up her daughter commented that the light had changed lately, and as she's an expert in Dutch painting I think I'll defer to her observation. Why not, the groundhog's observations about light gets credited all over the country today even though it payed for much less schooling. So, did all those groundhogs of Brooklyn see their shadows today? I didn't manage to turn on the local news, in fact I never do because the superficiality is bottomless. A trustworthy blog I found recently informs me today is also Candlemas and St. Brigid's Day. St. Brigid, among other things, is the patroness of midwives, according to the blog called At Your Cervix.

Is there a patron Saint of beanbags? If so I'd like to know who because I've developed an irrational passion for making and holding them, my therapy over the inexplainably brutal weekend. No, I won't whine to you, it will become too clear what a shamefully self-indulgent wretch I am at the moment and how much I take for granted. I'm getting down in the trenches with my despair soon, I've had it. After that I'm going to get down under a log with the small frog formerly known as Hyla Crucifers, or spring peeper, give it a big kiss, and wait for the chirping, which starts mid March.

Googling "Spring Peeper" and "Brooklyn" I came across an article in the Brooklyn Museum Quarterly of March 1914-January 1915, published by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the forebear to the Brooklyn Museum. The issue mentions the sticky-toed ones in an article called the Frogs and Toads of Long Island. Can't help but wonder if we have as many species of the amphibians around now as we did then. About the peepers it states "Its color is some shade of brown, and the little fellow sitting in a small tussock of marsh grass, looks like a miniature negro baby ready for a swim."

The way they talked back in the day! Still, I can't help but enjoy the use of the word tussock, I'm sure using a word like that more often will significantly improve my mood. And not being sick, holding beanbags, and hearing this sound.

The frog picture above is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the United States Geological Survey. Thanks USGS!