fashion guru

14th Street dweller.

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.

Around Carroll

My lens has been scratched for a while now, a piece of beach sand got in the closing mechanism I think and scratched it repeatedly. So now I always get a little extra something when I shoot into the light. Too bad it's nothing supernatural.

The trees at top are either Pagoda (Chinese Scholar's Tree) or Eve's Necklace. I still haven't managed to discover the difference between them. Excellent names, either way.

Green Egg

Made by Ronnie who was puppeteering on the corner of 8th and 14th for the Green Party City Council District 39 candidate David Pechefsky. I hear the political machine doesn't let the Greens out to collect signatures until well after the big boys have worked the crowds over.

Important Information

Went in the Postmark Cafe with my 7 year-old at a time when men working on laptops sat silently at every table, as powered by the wi fi as by the caffeine. At one point my son got punchy during the dice game we played (very quiety!) and broke into a fit of laughter that landed him on the floor. To me his laughter sounded like birds chirping over a happy mountain brook. But I have a feeling the people at work at those tables might have had a different impression. We didn't stay long. Anyway, I like this bit about turning off the faucet with your elbows which appears in this poster in the cafe's bathroom. It seems that when you accomplish that maneuver, you inevitably end up waving hello to the empty room, or yourself.

gloves for foxes

red on red

All the leaves snuck out so fast. Even the plane trees have fuzzy baby leaves now, to die for.

14 days

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.

Adventures in Philanthropy

On WNYC today I heard a person call who explained she lived in Brooklyn. She was commenting on a new venture for her and her friends, every Monday or so they will get together with their children and undertake some kind of charitable deeds. She felt she needed to continue the momentum of goodwill she had been swept away in, like so many others, thanks to the Obama campaign.

I'm not wound up to that degree of spring yet but have a little more tension in the leap than last year. Proof being that we bought tickets to the Progressive Dinner offered by the school PTA. It was the closest I've come to party hopping in, well, I would never tell you how long. We started with cocktails at a newly renovated Brownstone on 8th St., skipped down to 10th for dinner in a house where I mistook a print of a Rothko for an actual Rothko, fool that I am. After that we shuffled to 14th for dessert at a home I mistook for a nightclub. I was afraid I would find the exposure to homes where people take the idea of decor seriously dejecting but found I was really jolly happy to get back to my jolly junk heap of a house. It was a fun night, I'm glad we went, the PTA made a little, and we tramped around the slope like the most ardent trampers.

Like the woman on the radio, I'm excited to pitch in to help my fellow citizens, but first I'm getting used to my own new level of poverty, which in certain respects I love because it narrows my options, simplifying my life. Suddenly cardboard is a freaking fantastic substance, and a large paper cup, when held upside down, a puppet waiting to happen.

I'm sure tomorrow night's concert to benefit the ISSUE project room will be much more of an amazing thing than even the most astonishing paper cup, half empty or half full. I learned of Issues last summer when they sponsored a night of free music under the Brooklyn Bridge which featured the Theremin Society and Jonathan Kane's February, among others. Performers at the benefit will include Moby, David Linton, Charles Cohen, Alex Waterman, Bubblyfish, Talibam, Luke Dubois, Chika and Caspar Stracke. Aside form Moby I don't know any of these artists, but they make a nice list of names, don't you think?

There may be tickets left. More about it here.

Puppets by Nora

Sukka on Garfield

I was just reading about this on the Old First blog written by Daniel Meeter. I'm inspired. To celebrate Sukka in the street with members of Beth Elohim and the Old First congregation, in sympathy for all of our struggles for freedom and righteousness, and in support of the homeless, is something I couldn't miss.

On Sukkot, which was Tuesday, I picked up a book off the street on 8th Avenue, My Father's Rifle, a memoir by Hanir Saleem, a Kurd born in 1964. Too read it was an experiment which ran from sweet to a bitterness I'm still recovering from. It's the story of how his family's life and culture was gradually shut down by the Baath Party, who stripped away the Kurd's right to exist. What hooked me at the beginning was a description of the stunt his cousin's trained pigeon performed. He writes "The bird took flight, soared up into the blue sky, then plummeted like a dead weight in the void and began whirling about itself." Who knew? My immediate reaction was to chuck the Wii and learn to train pigeons. Another excellent vignette posited his mother, spraying pomegranate all over herself while making juice in her orchard. My immediate reaction was to spray pomegranate juice all over myself.

Reading the book helped me to understand more viscerally what it's been like for Kurds, Jews and many others throughout history who've had to survive at times by hiding their identity, who've had to leave hostile territory, at who knows what loss to soul, self, home and hope.

The part of the book I'm having the most trouble recovering from is the story of the writer's young niece, who was singled out in her Baathist school because she had sung a Kurdish anthem. When confronted about it by family, she was told never to sing it again, because by doing so she risked her father's life. Soon after her whole body became swollen and and she developed a fever. Her uncle took her to the Baathist hospital twice but the care they gave her was too little too late since they knew she was the child of a rebel. I have to comfort myself by thinking that she died by the strength of her soul, which refused to live in a world where expressing herself could endanger her father, where her grandparents and family were so dispirited that their gloom hung over their house is Aqra, where there was too much terror to allow any room for the music of her tiny lungs. Her name was Zilan.

I'm so glad to live in an age in which Jews and people of all religions are free to observe holidays openly in the street and be celebrated by neighboring cultures. Where I can express whatever I want without any fear of being drawn, quartered, burned stoned or flayed. Where no one can force me to persecute another. I have no idea what's happening in Kurdish regions now, I don't think I could handle knowing at the moment. It's enough to hear accounts of the Janjaweed in Sudan and houses burning in Georgia. I need to savor the freedom Brooklyn and America gives us, and every spot of earth blanketed by peace, and then get up my courage to look out.

Above, that's the pigeon guy at Washington Square Park, currently under renovation. What's his secret?

buttermilk

An unexpected joy of seeing "Hoffman," an Offenbach opera performed on the Red Hook Pier, was getting such a close view of the Buttermilk Channel, and being shocked by how close Governor's Island seemed. It is, as I read, only a quarter of a mile away. So maybe it's true what Whitman wrote in a newspaper article, that during Revolutionary War times the channel was so narrow and shallow that at low tide dairy herds waded across, leaving a milky trail in the brine. In watercolor painting, that would be called a wet on wet technique. All of this would have been before some hard core dredging, obviously. Now the channel's depth is 35 to 49 feet, deep enough to support the business of the piers, and only passable by very bouyant cows.

The other explanation for the name is that by the time Breukelen dairy farmers made it across the channel to sell their milk in Manhattan it had soured from the rough ride.

Hmmm, these are 2 very different explanations. Being an HUGE fan of the bathers tradition in painting, I fancy the wading cows explanation STRONGLY.

I would have favored a warmer night for the opera. We froze, but luckily the strength of the performance plus a little wine prevented the blood from curdling. We sat there in the outdoor theater flanked by stacks of shipping containers 3 high. The moon was visible through a break in the two stacks on my right, and by the time the show was over it had risen above the highest container. Meanwhile broad swathes of clouds, ethereal drifting proscenium, seemed to embrace The Vertical Players endeavors.

I wondered how far away from us was the pipe that draws the water from the channel a mile inland to flush and oxygenate the Gowanus. If the 600 horsepower pump is the Gowanus' artificial heart, that pipe is a critical ventricle, slowly rinsing the canal of whatever effluvia made it lavender before the pump was fixed in 1989. Of course its original heart was not mechanical, just the endless evaporation and condensation cycle, the tides, and the local watershed created by all the Brooklyn brooks that must have creased the slope of the Slope.

The Old Stone House, 232 Years ago

232 years ago today, as described in an excerpt from Lord Stirling's letter to George Washington, which I read on the wall of the Old Stone House:

"I saw the only chance of escaping being all made prisoners was to pass theh creek near the Yellow Mills; and in order to render this more practicable, I found it absolutely necessary to attack a body of troops commanded by Lord Cornwallis, posted at the house near the Upper Mills. This I instantly did, with about half of the Smallwood's, first ordering all the other troops to make the best of their way through the creek. We continued the attack a considerable time, the men having been rallied and the attack renewed five or six times, and were on the point of driving Lord Cornwallis from his station, but large succors arriving rendered it impossible...I found a considerable body of troops in my front, and several immediately turned to the point of a hill which covered me. I soon found it would be in vain to attempt to make my escape, and therefore weent to surrender myself..."

How depressing it must have been for the men when all those "succors" arrived, what a strange word for disaster. 256 of the men Lord Stirling called the Smallwoods, I believe they are also known as the Maryland 400, died that day in their attempt to allow the colonial army to flee, while 100 more of them were wounded or captured. Worth remembering on this beautiful day, when all was blissfully sedate at the Stone House, rebuilt stone by stone in the 1930's.

By the way, is it really true that the Battle of Brooklyn began when British soldiers raided someone's watermelon plot, tasting the "exotic" fruit? That's so Fall of Man!


Engraving and Diorama above from exhibits at The Old Stone House.

Brooklyn Royals

Do you remember the splash Duke Riley, artist and patriot, made with the Bushnell Turtle last summer? We haven't had a spectacle like that this year, the only thing that might measure up are Eliasson's waterfalls, that are sickening the trees at the River Cafe. It seems like big art always comes with a price. Big anything comes with a price. Riley got himself arrested, and his submersible didn't really submerge, but even so, the picture of the orb bobbing in the River was the olive in my martini last year. To think of something like that happening in S. Brooklyn filled me with happiness. Wondering what he's up to, I had a look at his website and didn't get much information, but saw his complicated and poetic scrimshaw pieces. What is it about scrimshaw, and who named it that?

I ran into another Brooklyn royal today, an old dog named Baron who was spending the afternoon on the stoop in front of his 9th St. Brownstone with his owner. My daughter freaked the old dog out but the owner interceded, insisting that the little one feel the dog's soft ear. Funny how it was so much like the fuzzy leaf of the mullein plant we had just felt up over on the corner. I've been wanting to see a mullein plant up close for a while, I haven't seen them since traveling interstate, they look so beautiful on roadsides, you know. I hadn't seen one in Brooklyn until this afternoon.

Thank God we didn't get lassoed into going to the playground. It's OK, but I get tired of all the prefabricated experiences people gravitate towards these days. I was spared from some of that impulse when the little one took a great interest in the elephant ear plants that hold a place in the landscaping around the 9th St entrance. Those can be very useful if you ever find yourself stuck in the park without your clothes. We also got to watch the Villa-Lobos Brothers practicing for tonight, and I heard that fiddler fiddle as dramatic changes took place in the clouds. Minutes later the roll cloud hit blowing debris in my eyes and dropping the temperature. To the North, the sky was blue and the clouds unreal.

We also watched this Jack Russell named Leo lapping water out of a can for a very very long time. What strong masculine names some of these little Brooklyn dogs have.

Happy 888! If you got to go see 88BoaDrum, don't tell me or I'll be sick with envy.

My Conscience on 8th Avenue

Getting off the train at the 7th Avenue stop last Friday I hadn't walked half a block before I saw a ten spot lying on the ground a few feet in front of me. There didn't seem to be any obstacle to snatching it up and slipping it in my pocket, no one in my way, so I swooped down for it, vaguely aware of someone to my right a few feet behind me who must have witnessed my dive to the sidewalk. I was also vaguely aware of a man about a half a block ahead of me who was carrying a suit bag, and who I'd seen taking things in and out of his pockets as he rushed along madly, too fast for a Friday afternoon, but you know how it is with summer weekends, places to go, people to see.

I snuck a peek at the woman on my right, medium brown hair, neat as Nancy Drew, a slight curve to her lips which told me she was taking it all in. So I started talking to her, saying I'm not sure who might have dropped this, blah blah blah. She said, well that man up there was just taking things out of his pocket so it might be his. I protested, you know, he's walking really, really fast. I am not going to run up and catch him. And I'm not going to yell, he'll never hear me. I suggested if she felt like running she could take it up to him.

So she did. I handed her the sweaty bill and off she went, running in her skirt. How often do you see a woman so well put together just start running down the street. There was something very beautiful about it. She caught up to Mr. Speed and they started talking. I saw him taking stuff out of his pockets to discover that yes, his money wasn't where it should have been. And that was it. Their talk was over too quickly. I was hoping for something more romantic. It seems like when an elegant woman runs up to you and hands you your lost money you should at least spend it on a drink for her, and maybe some schnitzel. But of course, places to go, people to see. Maybe he was on his way to get his tuxedo pressed for his own wedding, he did have the distracted air of a nervous groom.

My conscience went left on 11th, I took a right on 12th, and the guy took his suit bag into the dry cleaners. Halfway down the block someone had set a book about Fellini out on top of their trashcan. They should have just put it in the trashcan because it was completely waterlogged, it's warped pages foul with mildew. But they couldn't quite bring themselves to dump it in with the rest of the garbage. I'm glad they didn't, there was something compelling about the way colonies of whitish mold growing on the book cover's film still complemented the frilly parasols and frocks of the characters as they rushed up the hill towards the biplane. No free money for me this time, but at least I got to witness the miracle of mold blooming like Queen Anne's lace on an Italian hillside. I took a picture.

Blue Men

Today I overheard a woman ahead of us on the line to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck having a dispute with her son about their evening's aggenda. He looked to be around 6 and expressed a strong preference to go home and watch the show Avatar than go to a performance of the Blue Man group with his family.

His mom was extremely patient, diligently allaying his concerns. There were a lot of people on the line so I got to hear the blow by blow. But mostly I just wanted to jump in and say "But what do the Blue Men do anyway?" I've never seen them, to me they seem like a cross between circus clowns and pharmaceuticals, something people describe as "neat," but I only have my prejudice to go on.

When it was finally our turn to buy ice cream it was a hoot because they seemed to be out of whatever my daughter wanted. After she struck out on her first two choices the man looked down at us and said "Is she doing this on purpose?" I told the man she was gifted, which he apparently took to mean she was special, in the sense of riding the short bus. He says "I'm sorry" and then my daughter manages to strike out 2 more times. They had no Cyclone Cones, no Lightning Lemon Shakes, no Bubble Bum-flavored snow cones, no Fruit Punch Shots. By the time she finally picks something they have, her brother's half finished his Chipwich.

We pass the Blue Man family on our way to the minivan, our family's own special short bus. The boy seems to have accepted the fact that there's no other option besides going to see the performance because they have relatives coming into town and they want to do something special. If I see that mom again, I'm going to ask her to tell me all about it, I want to know if her son wound up enjoying it. And maybe she'll be able to tell me why the men went with blue instead of some other color.

Park Slope Meditation has recently gone with a new name. Matthew Reichers had this to say about it when I asked him why:

As far as the name change, no big story behind that...previously, the Park Slope Meditation Group was a branch effort of Chakrasambara center in Manhattan. It has recently grown to the point of being big enough to become a center in it's own right. Vajradhara Center was also a center in it's own right, in Fort Greene. The teacher of Vajradhara center was recently moved to a center in Florida, and so The Park Slope branch of Chakrasambara center and Vajradhara Meditation Center have been amalgamated under the name " Vajradhara Meditation Center," with myself as the new teacher.

The significance of the word "Vajradhara" is that Vajradhara is a Buddha whose main quality is being very blissful and in touch with reality. So it's really a very nice name! People who come here will create the causes to become like this Buddha, abiding in enjoyment and knowing reality directly. Hooray!

Vajradhara, pictured above, is another blue man, or buddha, avatar, emanation, I can't say for sure what he is, it's all very confusing to me. He's a deeper blue than the Blue Man Group's Blue Men, and I understand the color in his case symbolizes truth, perhaps because of the sky, if truth really leads to freedom. I don't know of anything that suggests freedom more than a clear blue sky. Vajradhara is the color of the sky after twilight, but Krishna, the Hindu god thought to be a emanation of Vishnu, is the color of the sky earlier in the evening. The antics of the mischievous and playful Krishna include an incident where he steals all the milkmaids' clothes while they are swimming in the river.

And then there's Siva with his colorful throat, blue from swallowing poison that would have destroyed the world. He's been a favorite of mine since I read that he is thought to embarrass all his relatives because he gets too wild at parties. I'm thinking Jack Black, painted blue.

7th Avenue Heat

Accordion Player

Chevy View

How do you make a car like this one I saw on 12th St. last so long? It's a rare thing, like the depth of that front yard. I rode around in a car like that about 40 years ago, with no car seats, maybe not even seat belts, hot sticky vinyl, cigarette lighter, ashtray, and road rage, which existed long before we called it that. I'm wondering if drivers ever got as hostile driving carriages, buggies and phaetons. Maybe when there was traffic, broken wheels, skittish horses, splattering mud and manure.

Sam Champion, the Man, the Band

There is little room to doubt that if Sam Champion, the sunshine boy of weather forecasting, were part of my life, everything would be perfect. He'd take me bowling, fishing, we'd climb trees and play harmonicas together. We'd choreograph numbers making great use of umbrellas.

Something tells me, it's not going to happen. It's not so bad though, it seems fate has deemed that Sam Champion in another form does beam sunbeams at me. It all started when one of my daughter's nursery school teachers left because of school, to be replaced by a very friendly man you'd be totally justified in calling a dude, whose talent with a hand drum gets all the three year olds hopping around in a breath-taking display of controlled chaos. Whose astonishing bobble headed chin motions belie a keen sense of syncopation.

Once they told me he was in a band called Sam Champion, I looked really surprised and said I love him. Then I forgot. Then I asked him what band he was in and he said Sam Champion. And I said, I love him. He said they were playing at Union Hall that night, and on June 27 at 7pm, at the Bandshell in the Park. Hot dog! Now I've actually become familiar with one of the acts that will be playing this summer. Apart from Isaac Hayes and Deerhoof, Spoon and Feist, I knew none of them. Well, I knew of Gilberto Gil but he dropped out of the lineup to play elsewhere. That was unpleasant.

I listened briefly to Sam Champion the band tonight on their myspace page, where they are self-described as "wooly." Um, yeah. They sounded great to me, like a comfortable sweater, and I hope to hear them again soon. So there you have it, my bewildered encounter with a man who's an angelic preschool teacher by day, a rocker by night, in a band named after the grooviest weather man ever. I hope I'll remember to bring binoculars when we go to the concert, so the wee one can see her teacher behind the drum kit.