Assorted

Perusing some happenings in our fair to middlin’ metropolis, I see that William Shatner and Suze Rotolo are reading from their memoirs tonight. Are you telling me that Captain Kirk – who, you realize, isn’t even born yet, technically – and the “ex-ragazza di Bob Dylan,” as those Romantic Italians say, to cite only the most glorious moments of their public careers, haven’t written – or, ahem, had someone write – their memoirs before??? Rotolo actually sounds interesting, since she was a red diaper baby, a member of CORE, and traveled to Cuba in the good ol’ days before El Fid sank into despotism.
*
Did you know there were hundreds of cross-dressing women who served on the armed forces of both sides in our Civil War? Private Frank Thompson, 2nd Michigan Infantry, for instance, was really Sarah Emma Edmonds, the most famous of the lot, because she wrote a book about it (Nurse and Spy in the Union Army), and ultimately received a pension for her service to the Union. This historical note brought to you by my employer, but I’m sure they’ll find this kind of stuff too hot for the advertisers who control them.
*
There was a sun dog today around 5:45. I was heading west through the Valley of the Gowanus. Cool, but it's no fogbow, which I've only seen only once; that was pretty magically. The royal paulownia (Paulownia tomentosa), or princess, trees at the Union Street Bridge are in bloom. Usually, the blooms are pretty high up, but these are close, within reach (as I type, I can smell the slightly peppery, citrusy perfume from a couple I snagged). You should check them out (there’s also one on Union between 3rd & 4th Avenues, amidst the car junkies, and an amputated giant in the parking lot next to the Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park, among, obviously, other places). The flowers are lavender trumpets about an inch and half long with a very, very faint yellow interior, especially on what I call the landing strips, those slightly longer sections that lure in the pollinators. Step into my chamber, o bug. The tree is named after Anna Paulowna, a Russian “princess” (I’m very much an anti-monarchist) who is an ancestor of “Queen” Juliana of the Netherlands. They like rough ground, are fast growing, and kick the ass of those other sturdy colonizers, the Norway maple and the ailanthus. Um, I mean the tree, not the royalists.
*
I arrived home, turned on the radio and heard someone praising H. Clinton to the moon. And I recognized the voice, John Edwards, and I thought, holy shit he's endorsing her? How is that possible? Whew, turns out he was just praising her, but actually endorsing the other guy.
*
Stimulated: purchased this city owners manual today, The Works: Anatomy of A City. Should be mandatory reading.

JLG+or-AK=

You’ve been asking, even demanding, to know why I haven’t mentioned the Jean Luc Godard at the Film Forum. Five weeks of the Dynamo’s 1960s movies. Because: 1) I haven’t been to any of the screenings yet, 2) I’ve seen most of them before, at least once. 3) I’m waiting for a revival of the Dziga Vertov Group. But, of course, there’s Anna Karina, perhaps the only person ever to look good in blue eyeshadow.

So I went to see A Woman is A Woman (again) last night. The title sequences sets you up for the palette: Godard/Karina/Lubitsch/Belmondo/Ponti/14 Juillet/Cinema (this is my abbreviated/remembered version). AK’61 wears red stockings and sports a red umbrella, oo-la-la. And, this being early JLG, she’s gender-coded as well, for JLG wallows in misogyny while critiquing it. At least she gets the last wink.

Cobble Falafel

Is there any temperature better than a sunny 70 degrees? Not for me. I ate my lunch in Cobble Hill Park today, the sparrows and pigeons crumbing at my feet. Honeybees were working the round red flower heads of ornamental onions. I think this is the first time this year I’ve seen honeybees in the neighborhood. There’s a hive or two on a nearby Henry St roof from what I understand. A lone crow flapped south. One crow, as you know from your ornithomancy, is bad luck. I had a falafel from Damascus Bakery on Atlantic, where the house hottie makes ’em special for me, or so I like to think. She adds pickles and pickled red cabbage, unexpected tastes, and colors, for the cabbage stains the pita pink. Unfortunately, the chickpea nuggets are not fried to order, meaning the sandwich lacks the essential mix of hot crispness and creamy coolness. This keeps DB’s pocket sammy just outside the gates of falafel heaven. Still, I was happy, even without a second crow.

Learsense

I’ve been stimulated. Oooooooo! Have you? Now I’m supposed to go out and buy some shit, right? Well, I need a new camera. That should do wonders for the Chinese economy … Trouble is, I hate shopping. Morally, emotionally, & physically, I loathe it.

Yesterday was Edward Lear’s birthday. We know him as a wily manufacturer of nonsense verse, of course, but he had a very fine eye for the birds. He was, in fact, one of the great ornithological artists: Lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) above; chough ("chuff" Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) below. From Birds of Europe. More here.
Unfortunately, my 600 simoleons wouldn’t buy but a corner of one of his lesser prints, and besides, I believe he’s well past stimulation. Not that he wouldn’t have liked it, at least that’s what I hear about Mr. Lear.

So much time to do stuff, so little time to blog

Reached new heights of culinary delight Saturday night, merging asparagus, eggs, caciocavallo, and … sweet potato. (I’m afraid there are no pictures, as you may not be mature enough to handle it. Also, my camera, like Oedipus, has gone blind.) We were at the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market during the day and OHS suggested a frittata when we were trying to figure out dinner plans. I thought: some potato would be nice with that. But we were about 2/3rds through the vendors, and I didn’t want to backtrack to see if there were any actual spuds for sale. I spied sweet potatoes, though. Hmmm. A couple of sweeties later, I sliced one thinly with the skin on and laid the rounds out in the hot cast iron. More than fit the skillet, so I juggled them around to get ‘em cooked. Mostly; I figured the continued heat after the addition of the eggs, cheese, and caramelized onions would finish them off. Not to mention the last bit under the broiler. Good figuring. An educated guess (all those summers under the hot lights of greasy spoons and haute/expensive restaurants…). What a combo: salty cheese, tangy, ineffable asparagus, sweet potato and caramelized onions. For you aesthetes, I’d recommend trimming the asparagus short so that you can make a radial design of the spears. The era of Emmenthaler is over. All hail caciocavallo! Some baked rhubarb with yogurt for dessert.

Thus fortified, we went up to Hunter College to see roller derby. Women’s flat track roller derby, that is, O, my. Actually, I expected a little more of the ol’ T&A and ultra-violence, perhaps on the basis of early film going experience, not to mention the tight security at the door. Anyway, the Manhattan Mayhem hosted the Queens of Pain; the Queens hurt so bad, trouncing by the Outer Borough broads (if I may), with many of the mostly rookie Mayhems going down repeatedly. But damn, they showed a lot of character out there. Beyond the vampy/campy, I took most of the match to figure out how they scored the spectacle, and near the end I saw some fine tactics. All the players have noms de blade: Surly Temple, Fisti Cuffs, Roxy Hotrod, Sweet Cherry Pie, Em Dash. It’s a very pale subculture, players and audience alike. Also, OHS’s friend said that she bet the rollergal’s had lots of boy fans. No doubt, but the audience also suggested that there were plenty of girl crushes, too.
*

On Sunday I went a bee-ing, but things didn’t quite work out as planned. Back to the drawing board, and we’ll try again next week. Anyway, a couple who showed up to help turned out to have a hive only a few blocks away. We visited. It’s in the back of a small garden. They’re everywhere, the hives, but not nearly enough.

Then I meet OHS and the Adventuress at Grand Central. We took the faster train to the New York Botanical Garden. (On the weekends, there’s an MTA City Ticket for trips within city boundaries. Harlem Line trains are way cushier train than the scow I take up to Stammy.) There’s a exhibit on Darwin’s garden. The place was packed with Mother’s Day revelers. I hadn’t been there in a very long time: it’s so enormous compared to the BBG. We had a good time and I want to go back because I couldn’t take it all in. We were almost cold when we returned, so radical was the weather change in the late afternoon.

start with the redstart

The day started nicely with a male American redstart singing in the first of the Zelkova elms at what I call Zelkova Alley on the west side of Henry St. between Congress and Pacific. When warblers start showing up in neighborhood trees, you know it’s the heart of the season. To the park, and stat!

There, at the northern edge of the larger of the Pools, formerly Swan Boat Lake, was an excellent view of a green heron, normally rather elusive, but showing off its russet neck and orange legs to great advantage. Several oven birds, with their orange stripe over the head, a racing stripe if there ever was one, were observed; more than I’ve ever noticed before. Chipmunks were also to be had everywhere. At the little observation platform in the pool above the waterfall at the Lullwater, there was a huge bullfrog. It didn’t move the entire time we were there. This guy, who has some excellent pictures on the web, stopped by with his adorable bird-named daughter, who is just about as tall as her daddy’s telephoto.
*
Tonight, for a change of pace, it's roller ball.

roosting

I’ll be helping out on the NYC Audubon’s harbor heron tours[drag down for details] this summer (swabbing the deck, talking pirate, ogling the saucy wenches: there is nothing quite as fun as simply messing about in boats, as Ratty so wisely noted). These “three hour tours” (actually, about an hour and a half) head up the East River on an NYC Water Taxi catamaran to observe the bird colonies on U Thant, Mill Rock, and North and South Brother islands. Great egrets, snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, and double-crested cormorants (along with lesser numbers of glossy ibises, cattle egrets, little blue herons, tricolored herons, yellow-crowned night herons, & green herons) nest on theses uninhabited islands, along with 14 others that are regularly surveyed in the great estuarial system that is the Hudson River, New York Harbor, Long Island Sound, and Jamaica Bay. Considering the massive damage we do to our archipelago home, it’s heartening to know that last year they counted 6352 nesting sites. The tours are every Sunday starting June 8.

If you look up in the evenings, you’ll often see herons and cormorants heading to their nesting sites after a day spent foraging. Birds from Prospect Park head SW towards Hoffman and Swinburne Islands south of the Verrazzano Bridge. In Central Park, you will see them flying easterly, heading home towards the Brothers after a day spent stalking the Meadowlands. Early mornings, they’ll make the reverse flight, day after day. The night herons, on the other hand… well, you can guess from their names: they like to feed at night. The other night in the Loch while owling, we saw a black-crowned fly in. Later it, or another, had perched on a log over the water, patiently waiting for fish, amphibian, or mammal to wander before its still razor beak.
*
Stumbled upon this beautiful book about damselflies last night. Some of the (un)common names of these Odonata: superb jewelwing, smoky rubspot, sweetflag spreadwing.
*
Via bee maven Gerry, read this wonderful cranky piece on why beekeeping, and by extension our whole "relationship" with nature, is all so god-damned wrong. We don't have a relationship with nature, we are nature, and we have to return to thinking like that.