stilts and swords

Sick, bored, boring and home with the kids for Spring Break, I've figured out a way to spice things up a bit. We pretend inanimate objects have eccentric compulsions, and I try to do everything I can with a plastic sword. I'm getting pretty good at cutting the oranges in mid air, but find it hard to pare my cuticles.

So far, our big outing since returning from Virginia; a trip to the Neergaard on 5th Avenue. I got Sambuca Negra, elder syrup. Meanwhile, news of my mom's Rhode Island neighborhood keeps flooding into our house from the radio, and she tells me the Pawtuxet River was 6 inches deep in her basement this morning. She needs some stilts.

frothy shrub

A flood of flowers is so much easier to take than a flooded basement. Good luck to those with loggy cellars.

vision quest

Justice in Downtown Brooklyn, where N and I went last Friday on a fool's errand. It turns out not only can Justice see, she's not even wearing shades. We passed under her on the way to the Pediatric Ophthalmologist's where we were referred after N failed the school vision test. According to Dr. Deutsch, N can see, too. So I'm wondering what went wrong with this vision screener, but N is just really glad she doesn't have to wear glasses. I couldn't convince her that all the cool people do it.

Animal Killings in Prospect Park, Updated

I hate hearing this...I've just learned what I've been seeing in Prospect Park, the burned phragmites at Prospect Lake, the heart nailed to a tree, is most likely part of a grisly trend in public land use that involves the killing and injuring of both wild and domestic animals. It seems more like the work of a psychopath than artifacts of religious practices or some other rituals, but as of yet who can say for sure. More here.

Updated, John Boy swan didn't survive his injuries, and just because he's mean spirited doesn't mean he won't be missed. Funny to hear these mean spirited people in the comments complaining of how swans are mean spirited, the pot calling the kettle black, or stainless, teflon, or whatever. Just cause he's mean spirited doesn't mean he won't be missed. RIP John Boy swan. The story.

windsor puddle

emergency call box detail

This antique emergency call box stands outside of Rhythm & Booze in Windsor Terrace. Usually I walk by and barely notice it, but I suppose hearing someone calling for their removal helped me realize I like these friendly ghosts. If they do wind up going the way of the payphone, I hope the city will house them in a large museum room where they'd make an excellent red army, something along the lines of all those terracotta soldiers found buried under the surface of Xi'an.

Prospect Avenue Miracle?

I'm trying to keep it real, but walking downhill towards the Crossroads Cafe I came across something very exciting. A lot that had remained wild for years was getting a thorough clean up as the owner of this patch of land intends to farm it for the benefit of the community. Community Supported Agriculture cultivated right here in the neighborhood! This could be an amazing community resource. Mazel Tov to the farm! If you'd like to help get the farm in shape, Tom is asking for volunteers for a crew that will gather Sunday. Here's the info he posted on KWT Neighbors. I'll be down South for Passover, raising a glass to the WT crop mob.

Prospect Avenue Farm Kickoff March 28

As the spring approaches I am preparing the vacant lot below the Seeley Street bridge in Windsor Terrace to become a farm that produces fresh vegetables for our community. It will take a lot of work to make that happen and I can't do it by myself. I've mostly cleared the land but it needs to be terraced; the soil has to be tested; composting has to start and new soil made; and then planting can begin.

I invite friends, neighbors, students and all aspiring farmers to join me in planning and carrying out this project. On Sunday March 28, 9 am to 2 pm, all are invited to come by to help prepare the site and talk about next steps. If you have a shovel and rake bring them along.

While my wife (Emma) and I own the land, our main interest is in showing how small pieces of land like this (about 5,000 square feet) can contribute to local, healthy alternatives to the industrial food system. This will help expand the growing movement of community-supported agriculture. Come along!

Tom Angotti, 1194 Prospect Avenue, Brooklyn

lake char

On a recent walk through Prospect Park the lake looked strange, before I realized what I was seeing my eyes had started to consider the shatter pattern of cane and bottle floating on the surface of these shallows. I rarely see any evidence of fire in Prospect Park, and wondered if this was an experiment in ridding this part of the shore of the phragmites, the supergrass that won't let native flora get in a word edgewise. I wanted to put on fishing boots and pick out the bottles, but who knows, soon the grass might recover and swallow up the plastic again. Or maybe someone else will get to it before I do. Anyway I don't have fishing boots.

I think I've said it before; forgive me, but its a shame we don't thatch our roofs. I hear brownstone and phragmites thatch are very fashionable these days.

apricot blossoms and the purifying bitterness

Truth wrestles reason to the ground to preserve its immaculate silence, shifts shape to undo the grip of arrogance's hunger. Yesterday was one of those days when what seemed terrible was good, and what seemed good was terrible, one of those days when I felt I could see the exact impression of wisdom's knuckles in my (other, other, other) cheek.

sequence

It was strange splicing, once out of the subway this dove caught my eye, I expected it to fly off when I started taking pictures but instead it came closer. It was good to see it had a proper beak. Suddenly the white bird flew off and was replaced by a white dog, and as I walked the white dog went its way and a white ceramic cat took its place, and later, a ceramic white owl, lined with trails of rusty water.

Acorn Sabotage

I understand the Brooklyn DA recently found no criminal wrong doing on the part of Acorn. Too late I guess. I wonder if there's some way of holding O'Keefe and Gilles accountable for the mendacity of their slander, their misleading editing, but sooner or later I'm sure they'll need to, as my atheist-feminist mother would say, come to Jesus. (I find it not at all unusual that people calling themselves Atheists seem to best comprehend Jesus' preachings about justice, forgiveness, love, acceptance, good works and charity.) About the terrible paranoia that many in our country face, I think Elvis said it best. We can't go on together, with suspicious minds... To all those who aggressively play at polarized politics, do you ever have the sinking feeling that as soon as the joy of the kill is in your mouth, you've gone demonic? It's a bad, bad business.

I look forward to following the works that the organization picking up where Acorn left off, New York Communities for Change, hopes to bring to the city's impoverished neighborhoods. It is not illegal to have a heart, even if it does make some democracy-phobic power mongerers suspicious. Justice never stops watching. I'm not sure one can remain fully human and deliberately ignore another's struggle, or worse, blame the victim.

marks the spot

Heard before seen. The crow found itself a fairly pristine perch atop the finial of The Immaculate Heart of Mary's steeple. This crow's mate, stationed on the rim of a large black satellite dish across E. 4th, seemed to watch in awe. Why it didn't join the other up there on the cross I couldn't say. Perhaps it was crow politics, or maybe the dish crow was too maculate for the position, although beyond a doubt is was not as spotty as a starling.

I was glad to learn that crows are gaining numbers these days, having recovered from the West Nile Virus. A few years ago I was wondering why I never saw any here.

sky dancers

blooms already!

Took a walk over towards Kensington last weekend to visit the critters at the Hamilton Doghouse. We walked two dogs named Owen and Abe while my kids bickered over who would hold the leash. On the way back we walked the path that goes along the Expressway and found two trees spangled with a few small pink flowers, the still hunkered in buds, in their alternate/alternate arrangement, looking much like a rambling embroidery stitch my grandmother Mary K would know the name of.

My mother, visiting from out of town, admired the backs of the houses, she thought it must be nice to have so much sun coming through the windows. But on the other hand, there's the non-stop roar of the expressway.

dairyland

details

I thought inflammed sinuses would immobilize me yesterday but I felt much better once I got out in the yard with the clippers. What joy to see old friends again, the poppy leaves already radiantly emerald, the sage full but lopsided, the rue hanging on for dear life after the last snowfall. I found ghosts of hosta leaves pressed curiously flat against the ground in the back, a testament to the weight of the snow.



Hydrangea flowers, one or two years old, had worn away to the veins.

heart on a tree

No idea who what when or why there was a heart nailed to a tree by the ball field. I saw something odd extruding from the tree's trunk, came close, was aghast. I didn't want to think about it, write about it, take any pictures of it, it felt ominous, brutal, obscene. And then it became the backdrop of my thoughts.

The haunting was less menacing the second day. It seemed something I'd dreamed of and not actually seen, and in this light, it became a metaphor for baring the heart relentlessly. It had me thinking about my heart, which is something I too seldom do. I wonder what my day would be like if I gave it over to that center of feeling that throbs in the chest? I think a lot of gifts would be given. And it's strange, in meditation, how the heart will sometimes announce itself, here I am, as if it lit itself on fire and melted in a flow of gold and honey.

17th st. anomaly, finally gone.

Nothing's left of that tiny house that stood in the back of this long lot. The small red brick one- story that's been empty since I moved to this neighborhood, its long front yard shoulder high with mugwort, has been completely erased. My daughter used to dream of claiming the tiny uninviting building as a clubhouse. Maybe because of the the rarity of the depth and wildness of the yard the building seemed to be the kind of place that offered entry into a world where kids could claim autonomy.

assortment

This peace dove whose beak needs emphasis softens the chipboard boundary of the Staples parking lot where we bought school supplies yesterday. The air is so stuffy and synthetic smelling in the store, I feel bad for the people who work there.

Prospect Avenue Fluter

Who is he I wonder? I like his way of celebrating St. Patrick's day. When I first saw him my eyes weren't sure if he was sniper or piper.

Does anyone know what's happened to Micky, the fluter with the long white hair who used to always play on the F platform at Broadway Lafayette? I haven't seen him in the longest time.

NYC beekeeping legalized

Is it really true? Beekeeping's been legalized here in NYC? Well, congratulations to the apiarists, and all else in support living with, understanding, nurturing and being inspired by these sometimes fragile creatures.

Meanwhile brownies and cupcakes are being made illegal at PS schools bake sales. What a strange tangle-limbed monster the law is at times.

Unearthed

The most dramatic uprooting I came across, on Lookout Hill across from the Binnen Bridge. The arboreal casualties round southeast of the Maryland Monument couldn't but be resonant.

I'm wondering what that 2 day storm is called. Considering the damage it wrought, it needs a name. The number of fallen on the East side of Lookout Hill were too numerous to count. I think Prospect Park should hire on some crafts people and set up a furniture shop ASAP, selling the pieces to profit the park. Or the wooden shoes, or whatever. But what do I know of the business of wooden shoes, or wooden underpants, for that matter?



A friendly bunch of tree workers were removing this fallen Kentucky Coffee Tree near Prospect Lake. The base of the tree had a cavity of rot but the upper section of the trunk was sound. This is what the accidental autopsy revealed, anyhow. The tree went over from the root, so the rot probably didn't make a difference. Another tree I found split in half, a garbage bag of trash festering in the split cavity. WTF?

Beyond the bridge a long mound of dirt and stone's been deposited - after the rain, all colors of rock are visible, and many rounded stones lay there, who knows how long ago, where and when they were polished so smooth. Other rocks I found at the limit of their stoniness, decayed so completely that they fall apart in the hand.

If you'd like to help the park recover from the one-two it took from the wind and rain, there's info here.

Pop-tarts in Schools?

...Instead of homemade brownies? Doritos get school passes while homemade cupcakes are barred entry? I don't think so. What's being touted as an effort to protect obese children from calorie loaded goodies sounds like corporate cronyism and the efforts of a near-sighted control freak to me. I will be deeply disturbed to have to hand over my right to bake and sell for the benefit of the public schools, and it won't feel like America, or New York, it will feel like Bloombergsville and it will stink. Meet me at the rally spearheaded by NYCGREENSCHOOLS.ORG ?

BAKE-IN RALLY AT CITY HALL THURSDAY, MARCH 18TH, 4-6PM
To Protest New Chancellor Regulation Banning Home-Baked Foods from School Fundraisers
While Allowing Doritos and Pop-Tarts Instead

soaked

Four days ago the bean on the left looked much like the one on the right, but like the rest of us, it got a good flooding. I was fishing around for recipes for these Great Northern beans, which cooked in less than a half hour after a 24 hour soaking, but the one I liked the best was a sort of hummus (but better), a puree of 2 cups of beans, a handful of cilantro, the juice of half a lime, 2 small cloves of garlic, a bit of salt and a bit of sugar. Even the baby visitor liked it so I plan to make it again, but never, never with canned beans.

The cardboard vegetable tray I used for the background in the shot above supported some organic peppers I bought at key food. Most of the vegetables there still come shrink wrapped onto green styrofoam trays, which is massively depressing and unappealing, so I was happy to find that some are finding healthier options.

wet and green

The blunky weather has upended the ash tree.

The Phantom of Loch McKeyFood

((i))

two handfuls

I found a '62 copy of Captains Courageous on 8th St. the other day, and I think I'll read it since the page I opened to at random made mention of fiddle tunes I've never heard of, including The Song of Fin McCoul, which gives the character Dan the blue creevles, whatever that is. I haven't been able to figure them out. I dare say these are not blue creevles.




It's all about Kipling these days, by George! I was blown away by this poem I recently came across, or charm, rather, from Rewards and Fairies;

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath-
Not the great or well bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation
Lay that earth upon they heart,
And they sickness shall depart!

It shall sweeten and make whole
Fevered breath and festered soul;
It shall mightily restrain
Overy-busy hand and brain;
It shall ease they mortal strife
'Gainst the immortal woe of life.
Till thyself restored shall prove
But what grace the Heavens move...

I think Brooklyn dirt would do just as well, although I wouldn't take it from the groundbreaking sight for the arena, where it appears to be all about the worship of fame and fortune. Matthew's tongue of swords was especially flinty yesterday. I have a feeling recent events have him feeling anything but the blue creevles.

between G and H

old iron

Near the old fences in front of row houses particular to single 8th Avenue block. Maybe the lids once protected coal stores, I don't know. I like the way that rusty old R rolls into the iron - I think I've seen too much helvetica.

near and far

home one the range

The leeks had me dreaming of the ramps and garlic scapes I'll soon be seeking out in various famer's markets, the mustard seeds, once popped, made the foundation to a chickpea curry, and the navel had me contemplating.