red hook lot

apricot on the wane

Shocked to notice the other day that the Apricot tree that was full of blooms a month ago has grown leaves on only a scant percentage of its branches. It's not looking good for this lovely thing. The pear across from it is thriving, though.



This is the book I've been getting the line drawings from - W.H. Wise & Co., Inc. New York, 1951. I found it under the hoop tree along with a book on metal working and plumbing from 1945. I assume they're out of print.

Bridge

Along with the photos of the Greek Orthodox wedding (below), which I found on the corner of 14th and PPW, there was a genealogy chart compiled by Judge George P. Lewnes in 1994, so I imagine he was the charming groom. According to this chart, Lewnes was born in 1923, and his name appears to have been Americanized from the Greek surname Liounis. The first page of the chart states "In the 14th Century, A knight templar from Lyons, France, returning from a crusade in the holy land, landed with his crew at Mani on the Southwest cost of Peloponnesos, Greece. His name is unknown. He married into the Petropoulea clan of Nifi. They had three sons. Rosakis, Vendikos, Liounakos."

I learned from reading the rest of the chart that it's possible to get a little high from the classical grandeur cunningly staccato and richly multisyllabic classically heavy rhythm of Greek names given the right state of mind. Try it if you like...Georgios Aspasia Kaliopi Constantina Panagiotis Kostas Visiliki Ioannis Anastasios Paraskevas Ekaterini Stavros Demetra Stavroula Fotios Antonia Hartini Politimi Aristomeni Yannoula Iphegenia Beula Nicholas Hariklia Evangelos Aspasia Panagiotitsa Kleomeni Stamatika Leonidas Basilios Prokopi Eriketi Theofanis Marika.

How ya doin?

I suppose each name has a root word which inspired it, but when I tried to look up the meaning of Panagiotitsa in the baby name book I came up blank. Maybe the name derives from the Panagiotis, which I understand is a picturesque shipwreck lying on the coast of an Ionian Island. More likely both names derive from "pan" meaning "all" plus something else I'm too ignorant to discern.

More on names, odd isn't it that our Bishop Francis X. Ford, who died in a Chinese prison under authority of Communists in 1952, was cousin to Ita Ford, also from Brooklyn, a Maryknoll nun murdered in El Salvador in 1980 under military orders from a Capitalist regime. I understand those who ordered her killing and those of the women she was with lived on comfortably in Florida. Makes the head spin.

double take

Photos found in the trash in front of The Montauk on 14th today.

Brooklyn Scenery

...via the vintage wallpaper mural that has lined the hallway in our Windsor Terrace house since the late 50's. I wonder if the former owners, garment industry players, were hit by the same tide of desire for Asian elements as the architects/planners at Bishop Ford were. It seems a little odd that the school was styled, part Catholic, part pagoda, after the aesthetic of a country in which the Bishop Francis X. Ford was martyred in 1952. The Bishop Ford website describes it in more detail:

The Chinese mission of Francis X. Ford is strikingly reflected in the beautiful design of the school. The cross which surmounts the pagoda on our roof is a landmark visible for miles. Red and Black, the colors symbolic of the Chinese artistic tradition and the Maryknoll Fathers, permeate our school. These colors in the chapel, the main lobby, the auditorium, throughout the classrooms, are constant reminders of Bishop Ford and his contributions and good works.

Another interesting bit they include is that a Federal Prison once stood on the site of the school, which is right next to Greenwood Cemetery.

heavy sand

Semi-solid sand lumps... all I can say about them is that when we take the kids to the beach they'll spend a good long time fascinated with how the sand "rocks" deteriorate in their hands, there one minute, gone the next. A good lesson in life, no wonder it fascinates so much. My father, a geologist, had plenty more to say about the sand once I mentioned to him that I'd noticed patches of dark sand on the beach at Fort Tilden, and brought some home. He had so much to say and teach about it that I wound up forgetting the purpose of my call, which was to thank him for sending me one of his ceramic dishes.

In his rhapsody about what he called "heavy sand" I learned many things. For instance, a granular deposit formed as an outcome of its weight is called a placer (short a), and the major components of this placer that I'd come across, this patch of sand granules heavier than the granules of quartz that wound up in other places, are very likely magnetite, garnet, hematite and ilmenite. Some heavy sand placers on beaches in South Carolina are mined on account of the high ilmenite content, a source of titanium.

Also, I had an interesting lesson on the differences between magnetite and hematite, both ferous minerals: magnetite formed before there was oxygen on the earth, and hematite, which looks the same as magnetite except it becomes red when scratched, developed after. The potential for red in the hematite is the product of the oxygen incorporated into its molecules thanks to the earliest oxygen producing organisms, blue-green algae, which commonly grew in columns, or rather, accretionary structures called stromatolites in shallow waters in the Precambrian era. Stromatolites are are the oldest known fossils, dating back 3 billion years.

But back to the beach- theoretically, some of this dark sand - the magnetite component - will be drawn to a magnet. I hope to soon discover how magnetic this Fort Tilden heavy is. And also, thanks Dad, if you read this, for the lesson, and the beautiful, sturdy, heavy dish.

weekend aggregate

Perhaps you too become an aubergiac from time to time? The purple black is so beautiful now as a compliment to all the streets littered with the snows of Callory Pear and Magnolia petals, which fall in such abundance I can't help wonder if someone will someday find an ingenious use for them. One-wear shoe insoles? Sanitary napkins? Maybe not.

Kids for a Better Future, At it Again

Akash Mehta and his young cohorts never cease to inspire! Here's information of their current initiatives. As per his email:

Kids for a Better Future(KBF) wants you to help make the world a better place for children. Many of you have already done so, in which case, you are a part of the KBF family! If you haven't gotten a chance to help out yet, we welcome you with open arms.

Kids for a Better Future (KBF) is a non-profit organization run by kids, which supports children’s rights all around the world. This year, KBF is supporting the rights of the children of Bhopal, India, who suffer dire health problems as a result of the industrial disaster that took place there 25 years ago, when a Union Carbide factory leaked 27 tons of poisonous gases into the air, killing approximately 10,000 people overnight, and over 20,000 to date.


I am writing to let you know that KBF is having its Third Annual Spring Walkathon on Saturday May 9th, 11 am, come rain or shine. All proceeds will go to children's healthcare at the Sambhavna Clinic, which gives free medical treatment to those affected by the Union Carbide gas disaster 25 years ago and their families, and also those who are ill due to drinking contaminated water.

***Let me know if you are willing to participate and get sponsored.

***If you want to sponsor me, email me and let me know. Any amount counts!
One of Park Slope's youngest humanitarians is at it again.

***And if you know any kids who can get involved, PLEASE put them in touch with me right away. I really want kids to get sponsored and walk. They can email me here or call me at 718-623-2611.

Its just a month till May 9th. PLEASE HELP KIDS MAKE A BETTER FUTURE by making our Spring Walkathon a huge success. Tell me HOW you will be a part of it.

Kids for a Better Future is also doing other events, including one on May 17th, which is only 8 days after the Walkathon. Go to www.kidsforabetterfuture.org for more details, or email me if you have questions/comments/suggestions.

Sincerely,
Akash V. Mehta
Founder, Kids for a Better Future
www.kidsforabetterfuture.org
361 Warren Street, Brooklyn , NY 11210
718-623-2611

rainbow tara

Last night I went to bed somewhat unhappy, and woke up the same way. For a second while waking, some nameless joyous thing briefly appeared in my mind, peripherally, something like a gorgeous overlay of jellyfish and jewel-planed diatom, like a thought form carrying a time-release capsule of happiness.

Later I felt a little better realizing that I wasn't upset because of some one's behavior, but in fact all responsibility rested with my attachments. No attachments, no disappointments. So who's to blame for my suffering? My attachment to things that never existed outside of my mind in the first place. Perhaps it might seem like semantics, but it might also have been a flash of wisdom that freed me from wrestling with blame and liberated me from victimhood.

I treasure those moments when such liberating wisdom suddenly appears in my mind, if only briefly. It reminds me of the occasions when I've gone to Prospect Park and am elated, without fail, by the appearance of one of the hawks, whose clear vision and acuity never cease to inspire. What's to stalk? Ignorance and self delusion.

Above, a Thangka of White Tara that hung in the room where I worked on Friday, somewhat distracting me from the rather difficult photographic challenge I faced that day. I'm completely fascinated by the eye in the red-painted palm of her hand. I'm not sure who to attribute the painting to, most likely it was painted by the Tibetan artist Romio Shretha. If you double click the top image you get a closer look at the way the artist suggests Tara's compassionate wishes for true freedom and happiness for all beings with the rainbows spiralling from her third eye and heart. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

pinkcandescence on 3rd street

They're here!

I had no idea

morning walk

Under the Hoop Tree

It was too perfect really, to make a pilgrimage this morning in honor of Earthday to the tree into which someone had flung a hula hoop, and find a pile of old discarded books stacked on a chair under it, a pile that included the one above. Soaked and warped, that photo melted my heart, those vulnerable, wide eyes, despair, confusion, fear, wonder, surprise, love, longing. Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue, even in April when umbrellas lie broken on the ground, even when the world seems to fall to pieces, even as we stand helpless in the face of the wrenching trials and tragedies we watch others go through or we go through ourselves.

One of my Buddhist friends associates pain with purification. I've learned enough to know that something can be horrible and sacred at the same time, like the truth. In Self-Reliance, Emerson wrote that even though something may look crooked from our close perspective, from far enough away, the line appears straight. Perhaps as impossibly straight as a mast pine. And perhaps from very far away, a broken hoop isn't broken.

say ament

I understand the word ament means either catkin or a severely addled person. If these are catkins, that narrows the tree ID down to... birch, willow, hickory, sweet chestnut, or sweetfern.

means river

Buddhist Vocabulary

Yesterday I passed a tree on Prospect Avenue that had a hula hoop stuck very high up in it, and it reminded me of reading Black Elk Speaks, of considering the symbolism of the sacred hoop and tree of life, the central motifs of his visions, that gave a sense of the sacredness of things even as his people died around him of disease or left tribal life due to the decimation of the Buffalo. On occasions, this medicine man was able to cure the sick and bring rain, but he could not protect his people from the settler's relentless grasping for land and resources that were the hallmark of the period. In their hopes of driving the Indians out of coveted land, they killed every last Buffalo, erasing a species and a way of life.

What an example of what the Buddhists call "self-grasping," or "self-cherishing." In last night's lecture Matthew Reichers explored the idea that this mental habit of "self-grasping" is the cause of suffering and conflict in society. He read this line from his teacher G.K. Gyatso's book: "Self-cherishing is like an iron chain that keeps us locked in samsara," stuck in the mind the sees our own personal dramas, beliefs, traditions and property as more important than those of anyone else.

Other religions say it differently don't they? I'm amazed by how many paths there are to the top of the mountain, and yet it's still such a challenging and sometimes terrifying climb. Please throw down rope.

Anthrodeciduaccumulatoriation

Found on 11th Avenue back in dryer days. The cigarette butt is a crappy digital homage to the master of paladium, the poetry of decay and portraiture, Irving Penn. I will never get over his refuse portraits, which look like this but much richer in print. His words in the following quote hold an intriguing freedom from the conventional rejection of such garbage, and hint at a nearly non dual and somewhat provocative view of the world. "Evenings as I walked from my studio to the train station I saw at my feet a treasure of the city's refuse, intriguing distorted forms of color, stain, and typography. The gutters were rich with cast offs flattened and reformed by rain and traffic."

I have found a hero in this the man who turned garbage to wine. As for the weather, how about a cozy Louvin Brothers number to warm things up?

cross section

The wave tank at the Aquarium, a nice place to pause and get hypnotized for a bit by the water's moving volume, momentum and resistence. Not far away is the "Crash Zone," where kids get a sense of the power of waves crashing into rocks while they stand underneath protected by a plexiglass arch. One of my favorite spots at the Aquarium.

Gink, Baby!

sick bat in cup, box turtle

As soon as we got to the shore across from the boathouse in Prospect Park, which was so loaded with sweet gum fruits it was hard not to think of ball bearings as we tried to avoid sliding into the lake, a man gave my husband a cup. I assumed it had worms in it to use as bait (no worries about the fish, the kids spent all day breaking and knotting their lines so profoundly the fish were never safer.) Turned out the cup, complete with lid, held a bat resting on a bed of leaves.

At the Audobon center the woman behind the information desk was at a loss as to what to do with this bat. Luckily a man from the Theodore Roosevelt Wildlife Sanctuary at Oyster Bay was there and offered to take it to the sanctuary with him when he left at the end of the day. From the look of his bins, I assumed he'd be spending the day birding. But as for the bat, it didn't look good, it had no fight of flight response, just laid nose down on its heap of leaves, so I couldn't tell if its nose was whitish with that condition that's been killing bats for the last year or so.











The Eastern Box Turtle was on display in the Audobon Center. I haven't been so close to one of these animals since I was a child and I got a little choked up, thinking of the ones my dad would rescue from road sides and bring home. The turtle handler on duty, Steven, told me that his red eyes meant that he was male. So sexy, right ladies? Who can resist flaming red eyes? This critter was at least 18 years old Steven told me, which was determined by counting certain ridges within one of the scutes in its shell. This only works until they stop growing, and then you're out of luck.

danglers

This tree stands near the base of the South West steps of Lookout Hill, the delicate threads of its flowers lowering 4 tiny plantain shaped yellow-green anthers into the wide world, attached by a very short length of eyelash thick fiber. I don't recall seeing one like it so far this year. I hope it doesn't mind the sanifreshness of the Port-a-Potties nearby.

Another from Sybil

Delilah. For thee have I crowned my brow
With fairest the springtime possesses.
The rose of Sharon I have culled
And twined among my dark tresses.

Samson. O, veil those eyes whose faintest ray
My sense doth blind, my soul possessing;
Conceal that face so all obsessing
That now my freedom takes away.

Oliver Ditson Company, Copyright MDCCCXCV. ugh, 1895?

sybil's sheet music

At the Holy Name flea market I bought a bag bulging with old sheet music. Since I never got tickets to "St. Matthew Passion" at BAM, which I understand is sold out, at least I have this sheet music. I like the fact that it's called "The Passion According to St. Matthew," I'm not a fan of the modern wording. This Oliver Ditson version was published in 1916.

Correction, not sold out!!! Thanks for the following note, Gillian!

Hi Amarilla,

I'm a marketing manager at BAM and a Google Alert notified me of your post. I thought I'd let you know that St. Matthew Passion at BAM is not yet sold-out. In fact, we're offering a limited amount of discounted $25 on-stage seats if you purchase tickets using code 10822. Visit BAM.org for more information!

meow

One thing I've become aware of in the last few weeks. Half the time when I'm walking around in Manhattan, if I look up, I'll see a lion looking down at me, and will feel impressed. Was this place really built by earthlings? Someday I hope to learn more about the people who were so suave with stone. What to read?

By the way, it seems there's some indication that the lion above is a vegetarian.

lady bug

Do you see her in the spirea?

Broken Umbrellas

This morning's wind and rain reminded me of a day when I lived on Maujer St. in Williamsburg years ago, when walking around the neighborhood after a storm I observed wind twisted umbrellas, one after another, in the grisly contortions the weather had bashed them into. This morning I was sheltering under a broken umbrella, because mine is broken and I am still attached to it, even though a few of the ribs flap down, collapsing half of it.

At work James Nachtwey's Inferno was left open to a page showing an impossibly thin Somalian man lying dying on the ground, one of a battery of images of the starving and the dead. It was an odd thing to find at work, pretty hard to recover from seeing. I left the book open to a page showing a broken umbrella lying on the sandy earth, an umbrella in much better shape than the people in the surrounding pictures. So odd though, there are people in horrible conditions who find things to laugh at and be merry about, and there are people in fairly decent conditions who find endless things to complain about bitterly and resent.

Leaving work I noticed a woman on the elevator who was wearing an unusual ring in the shape of a hand and tiger print pants. I lost track of her as soon as I left the building but when I sat down on the F train was surprised to see her sitting right in front of me. I had a feeling she was going to get off at my stop and so she did, so I pointed out that we'd both come from the same office and ridden the same train. She had the inclination to ask me which street I live on and strangely, we live on the same street, just across from each other. Her name is Mary.

By that time the sun had come out and I was able to tuck away my dangerous umbrella, my mind on the Buddhist entity Sitātapatrā, the white parasol goddess. She is described as having 1,000 faces, arms and legs, and a white umbrella that symbolizes a protection that it's a little hard to believe in after looking at Natchwey's book.

1,000 faces. That's a lot of faces. I'm so lucky, in almost every situation I've found myself in I've been protected from any serious trouble by tremendously good-hearted people, as if Sitapatra with her 1,000 faces had come to life through their kindness and concerned awareness. Walking jewels. It is not taken for granted.

beautiful monster

At the Aquarium, a chambered nautilus.

Fiddles...and Cake!

If you have a distaste for either fiddles or cake, then I hope you can forgive me for this post, which I write to welcome (belatedly) the blog Fiddles and Cake, which also elected to be part of the blogger minima template club. From the Brooklyn Fiddlers Union profile page....

We got to thinking, we love cake....obviously....and we're obsessed with fiddle.... tunes, settings, players, paraphenalia, luthiers, string shops, techniques, sessions, fiddle camps, ephemera, festivals, gigs and trying to play at 116bpm. Sigh. Sometimes the fiddlers make cakes, and sometimes they just eat them. Shop Stewards : KAREN BROWN (Scottish and Irish Fiddle - inventor of the dog ear protector and scone mistress) HANNAH MARCUS (indie rockstress, Scottish, Irish and Old Time Fiddle - folk art baker). Join the Union, bake a cake, tell us about your fiddle, your session, your resource....the calories don't count if you practice a lot or dance while you're baking.

It makes me wonder what other instrument/dish combinations could follow suit...clarinets and cabernets...cymbals and soup...but there isn't a thing I can think of to match fiddles combined with cakes. Fiddles and Cake, Forever!

already, the keys!

Red Maples seem precocious.

sectioned

The pod was plucked from a young tree growing in the municipal landscape of Arlington Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center, where my son got to observe a pot being thrown on a wheel for the first time. My observant little nephew remarked that the pod looked like a heart, "the one inside your body." It fell apart while I was trying to photograph it, and I wasn't having much luck capturing the pyramidal pod's brittle, papery membranes riddled with veins, silvery on the side exposed to sunlight and coppery where sheltered by the angle, the thickness of the tree and the foliage, which was only beginning to emerge, pinnate, lobed.

As usual I have no idea what kind of tree this came from, and although my facebook friend Prospect Park has been helpful in helping identify the plants I've posted about up here in BK, I think I'd better not push my luck.

curious words

A parable:

Big Concealment said, "If you confuse the constant strands of Heaven and violate the true form of things, then Dark Heaven will reach no fulfillment. Instead, the beasts will scatter from their herds, the birds will cry all night, disaster will come to the grass and trees, misfortune will reach even to the insects. Ah, this is the fault of men who 'govern'!"

"Then what should I do?" said Cloud Chief.

"Ah," said Big Concealment, "you are too far gone! [僊僊] Up, up, stir yourself and be off!"

Cloud Chief said, "Heavenly Master, it has been hard indeed for me to meet with you—I beg one word of instruction!"

"Well, then—mind‑nourishment!" said Big Concealment. "You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root—return to the root and not know why. Dark and undifferentiated chaos—to the end of life none will depart from it. But if you try to know it, you have already departed from it. Do not ask what its name is, do not try to observe its form. Things will live naturally end of themselves."

Cloud Chief said, "The Heavenly Master has favored me with this Virtue, instructed me in this Silence. All my life I have been looking for it, and now at last I have it!" He bowed his head twice, stood up, took his leave, and went away.

~Chapter 11, the Zhuangzi (莊子 "[Book of] Master Zhuang"), 3rd century BCE, (11, tr. Burton Watson 1968:122-3)

Rehabilitated

We came across these birds- a Red-Tailed Hawk, Barred Owl and Great Horned Owl- in sheltered pens at the Potomac Overlook Regional Park. They didn't seem particularly happy to see us, and the owls were especially bleary for good reason. I know the rehabilitators can't release these injured birds back into the wild in good conscience, but it's also hard to see them held within this vacant compound, facing off with whatever thrill seekers find their way in. I'm not sure how they were injured, but the owls both seem to have eye issues.

Breeches, Beeches, Bryophytes

In the VA woods that line the Potomac the trees tower over ravines carved by steams that hold only lazy water today. Children happily ensconced in the streambed, ticking from schist to gniess while wildflowers drink in the early spring sun that feeds the forest floor with the canopy in absence. Still a distance from the George Washington Parkway, it is quiet enough to hear bird calls. Cardinals everywhere, and others, seem to define space with echoing metallic chits and tin pipes and syrupy splattering twirs. I recognize a call I haven't heard for years, but have no idea what bird is its source. I notice a reddish fallen tree webbed with tiny fractures, in such a state of decay it barely holds its shape.