Month: September 2012

Jamestown: Reserved Parking

En route to a dear friend’s wedding, I came down to south early this week in the name of TCB: seeing Miss Ann Marie’s new digs in DC and handling some doctor’s visit nitty gritty (did you know that under the small provisions of Obamacare that have already been enacted my insurance is required to cover my lady-doctor checkups!? Pretty stellar considering how essential these things are. But I digress.). It has been glorious Indian Summer in Virginia, maples just starting to change, the last yellow wildflowers and British Soldiers brimming over well kept yards and highway medians alike, beautyberries shining purple, zero humidity (!), and glorious sunsets. Last night we went out to the original Jamestown landing site for a party. Bluegrass (played by my dad’s band, featuring the head archeologist for the active Jamestown dig on banjo), BBQ, and this view through the magnolias. This 1607 landing spot was the place of the first permanent English settlement in America, where the first vote was cast, the first beads traded, the first oyster eaten. Yesterday it seemed as if they may have picked this location for its beauty, its softness and light. But, then you’ve gotta think they picked this spot essentially because this island is the only place on the James river between the Chesapeake and the impassible fall line at Richmond where they could pull their boats right up to the land, tie their bowlines to the trees, and hop ashore. In essence, and perhaps with the most American impulse of all, they stopped here because it had the best parking. In fact, I think that’s why New York wasn’t settled until 1625, those guys had to keep circling the block looking for a spot.

Working on a Building

Sweetheart and I had the distinct pleasure of going to this benefit concert yesterday. It wasn’t just an afternoon of fabulous music (though the Aoifa O’Donovan-Noam Pikelny-Chris Eldridge-fueled cover of “Don’t let it Bring You Down” really made my day), it felt like the Gowanus equivalent of a barn-raising. Put together by our late-night favorite high-lonesome crooner (and good god-fearing man) Michael Daves, the concert was put on to raise money to replace the coffered plaster ceiling at the Old First Reform Church in Park Slope. The church was founded by our favorite high-lonesome (and good-godfearing-pegleg) Peter Stuyvessant in the 1650’s (around the same time as the Elmendorf Reform Church up in Harlem), and moved around Brooklyn as the congregation grew, landing in its current location in 1891. Loosened over time by the rumbling of the yellow line under its buttresses, the plaster ceiling of the old church started falling, Chicken Little style, just last year:
The whole story- of how the ceiling fell and how it’s being fixed (a little bit at a time) is poetic and human and beautiful. Learn more here, and if you have a few bucks, put ’em in. We’re working on a building.

Basil

In anticipation of the frost, we pulled up all of our flourishing basil and made a huuuuuuge batch of pesto. We’ve now got at least 15 summer-bombs in our freezer to make it through the long winter. I continue to be wowed by the perseverance and successes of our little backyard garden. The last basil plant I kept in the city committed herbicide by jumping out of our 6th floor window and landing, crime scene style, at the bottom of the airshaft. I bet it’s still down there. Are my snack-sized frozen zip-locs a glorious root cellar full of pickles and preserves? Not quite, but, hey, baby steps. Have a wonderful weekend!

Breakfast of Champions

I love New York. Today: on our way to Ping’s in Chinatown for a traditional Dim Sum breakfast to undtraditionally celebrate Rosh Hashanah with Sweetheart’s family. Shanah Tovah, Cha siu bao!

10q

Remember when you were in elementary school and you were supposed to write a letter to yourself to be mailed at a later date? An exercise in self-awareness (if you took it seriously) or silliness (if you wrote about boys), maybe embarrassing, maybe revelatory, maybe a little bit of both. I’ve never been a diary keeper (this here is the closest I’ve come), so for me that sort of time-capsule exercise is the only private kind of rumination I might have had. Until I heard of 10q. It’s sort of amazing. Once a year you answer 10 questions, and then a year later, your responses are e-mailed back to you (and if you keep it up, all of your past responses are saved for posterity). I did it last year and just got my responses back.

To the question: What are your predictions for 2012?

My Answer:

We may move, we may nest, and there will be a terrible election that will take over everything and solve nothing (really).

 

See? You should do it. Get started here.

 

image of Gramma’s beautiful watercolor hydrangeas. Oh to have her garden!

Found Birds

Waiting on pictures from the grand festivities of this weekend, in the meantime, it’s officially fall and my need and want to nest has escalated to epic proportions. I am especially coveting Katherine Wolkoff’s amazing photographs of FOUND BIRDS. The silhouettes are striking, austere—sort of like an Audubon mug-shot—and each has the description of where the bird was found, under what circumstances (brought down by a storm, taken from a cat etc. and by who. There is something sort of morbidly curious but also noble and honoring about the series. As always, it’s the story behind them that makes them matter most.

Above: left: Black-billed cuckoo, Coccyzus erythropthalmus. Killed by flying against a lighted window, presented by Alice Northup. May 6, 1925. right: Yellow-billed cuckoo, Coccyzus americanus. Killed by South East Lighthouse, salvaged by Charles Rogers Jr. September 23, 1935

Red-Tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis. Found beneath wires by Stanley Stinson. December 11, 1929.

Barn Owl, Tyto alba. Blind in one eye- telephone wire victim. Found by George Grime. December 25, 1943Great Blue Heron, Ardea hernias. Found dead in road by Richard Conley. November 15, 1947Great Egret, Casmerodius albus. Brought to Block Island by Captain Alfred Jacobsen. Alighted on fishing vessel “Friars” at Georges Bank during N.E. storm. April 2, 1931Greenbacked Herons, Butorides striatus left: Immature: taken from a cat by Mr and Mrs Herb Winsor. September 23, 1944. right: Male, Wired victim found by Mary Elizabeth Lewis. May 18, 1944

Dinosaur Love

Hello Dear Ones! Just a short note, Sweetheart’s dear sister is getting married this weekend at a summer camp upstate- it should be a perfect Indian Summer weekend full of joy and love and music. Typical to their laid back selves, rather than hire a whole complement of staff and rent linen napkins and have everyone check chicken or fish, the bride and groom have decreed that whole shebang is going to be super mellow, campfires and marshmallows, craft beer and soul food, Sweetheart and I singing and playing the first dance song…and yours truly in charge of all decorations. So. I’ll be signing off here today, packing up these dinosaur cake toppers I made the bride and groom as a surprise, and heading up to the land of the pines to cut flowers and string ribbon until it’s time to kick off my shoes and dance the night away under the stars. See you next week!

Silent and Great

Sweetheart was born and bred in Rockaway. A slender wrist of sand between the vice-grips of the Atlantic and Jamaica Bay, his part of Rockaway (nestled between Riis park and “The Buildings” far off in the distance) is a safe haven, a real old fashioned Rockwellian neighborhood, boys on bikes tearing around the 20 or so square flat blocks of small but well maintained white-shuttered bungalows, well kept lawns, geraniums, impatiens, front porches, and everywhere, American flags. A neighborhood of teachers, cops, firemen. From the bay side, you can see the entire languorous spread of Manhattan, the Empire State and Chrystler buildings standing, silent and great, for the old guard in midtown, and the riot of downtown seemingly (and actually) miles away. A distance you can’t really feel when you’re in the city, but from afar seems silent and great. We were there last night, visiting his Mama, getting some supplies for his sister’s wedding this weekend, the mundane. From afar, streaming up from downtown the light was on, the beam shining up, up, up endless into the heavens, silent, and great. I didn’t take a picture. My heart was silent, and great.

 

image of Manhattan from Rockaway from here

Butterflies

Couldn’t get enough of this bush literally coated in butterflies. I thought it was a bushy butterfly bush, but Lucy told me it was salvia. Add to my “must plant in eventual dream garden” list (which is getting quite long).