I Think that I Shall Never See

A Blog as Lovely as a Tree...

Wizened Eye photo of "Camperdown Elm" by Jacques Hnizdovsky

Mutants have caught my attention lately. (You might recall my posting about treating water with UV light to alter the DNA of giardia lambia... http://wizenedwizard.blogspot.com/2006/11/water-water-everywhere.html). Little Things have also made me take note. (I don't think I ever mentioned my 43 spider bites). Well, here’s a happier story that combines mutants and little things.

Once upon a time (in the late 1830s), the head forester for the Earl of Camperdown discovered a mutant contorted branch growing along the ground in the forest at Camperdown House, in Dundee, Scotland. For reasons lost to history, the fellow grafted it to the trunk of a Wych Elm (Ulmus glabra), and henceforth every “Camperdown Elm” in the world sprouts from a cutting taken from that original mutant cutting, which is then grafted on a 1.5-2 meter Wych Elm trunk.

“So what,” you say, but this wizard says “Wow! What a cool tree!” (I had seen its picture).

Prospect Park is a 585 acre public park in Brooklyn, NY, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux after they completed Manhattan's Central Park. It’s a wonderful oasis of meadows, forests, ponds and small brooks. I know, because when I come out of the woods and visit New York City, I am drawn to such places - even when I could as easily be tromping in Times Square - and this Thanksgiving I wanted to see the Camperdown Elm.

In 1872 it was planted near the Boat House, and in recent years it has been lovingly tended by The Friends of Prospect Park (a non-profit, volunteer organization). It is considered the outstanding specimen tree in Prospect Park, but rather than towering high above the others, this oddity looks like an oversized bonsai. And a wizard’s tree it is: gnarly, arms outstretched and reaching, wizened by time, wonderful.

Time Recaptured

Friends in early childhood were situational, and they weren't really friends; you met them in the park or in other places your parents took you. Eventually you were old enough to venture out on your own, and then you could "make friends" with other kids in your neighborhood (this was before the world was such a scary place that real play was replaced by parentally arranged "play dates"). Again, initially you had location in common - which, as I think about it, has always been necessary to starting a friendship.

Eventually you were discerning and actually chose your friends. In your teens they were kids you "fit with," people like yourself; later perhaps you became friends with someone because you admired them and in some way perhaps you and the friend enhanced each other. Lovers and friends were more distinguishable then than in this generation, although throughout history and even in my youth (when the earth was still cooling) it was wise for lovers to also be friends.

Friendships most often seem to be killed by distance and time, or rather, the lack of time.

Lately I've been making friends from a distance. The Internet has removed that once-essential first step of friendship, Location. The irony of this is that while I have made a number of new virtual friends (some of whom I eventually got to know personally), the Internet has also reconnected me with a number of far-flung old friends from various periods in my life, friends who had been "lost." Yesterday I received these wonderful lines from one of them:

I've never felt pressured to write
By anything you've said or implied.
But yes, there is an urgency about it,
Brought on, no doubt, by my own sense
That time has been lost
And that writing is the only way
To try to make up for it.
It's simple - the more I send,
The more I get back.
And therein lies the time recaptured.

Well said, old friend. How delicious is the recapturing!

Make Your Metaphor!

Wizened Eye photo

Today is "Make Your Metaphor Day" on the Wizened Wizard blog. Here you see a nice big pile of steaming hot manure. Perhaps a politician comes to mind... or a false friend... or your high school cafeteria...

This pile makes me think of horses, but that's only because I'm thankful to them for producing it. But hurry: this offer won't last long! It's already beginning to smell sweet, and soon it will be garden loam, dull as dirt. Compost happens...

New York’s Finest

I’m a pretty good fire builder. Coaxing heat from logs is something I do well, and that skill is a blessing in the cold north woods that I call home. My husband cuts the trees, bucks up and then splits our winter fuel supply, we haul it home (either in the pick-up truck or using the 1952 Ford tractor and an equally old trailer), stack it for the wind to dry, and then move it into the indoor “woodshed” before the arrival of fall’s cool nights. It’s good wood, and we are warm.

This Thanksgiving we carried some kindling and a dozen or so pieces of beech, maple and cherry to New York City for a Thanksgiving day fire in my brother- and sister-in-law’s fourth floor apartment in “Nolita,” the neighborhood between Soho and the Lower East Side. Their place is newly renovated and spacious, with a nice view of the park that runs south from Houston St. just west of Katz’ Deli (you remember the “I’ll have what she’s having!” scene from When Harry Met Sally). The dining room table sits near a modern and attractive fireplace towards the glass-walled balcony end of the flat.

I laid the fire and lit it just as the afternoon hors d’oeuvres and wine were served, but when you ask a wizard to build a fire, expect the unexpected... The wood crackled and everything was cozy, although what had been some distant siren noise suddenly grew closer, and curiosity soon caused some of us to step out onto that balcony. Below were three large fire trucks and a swarm of firemen, all looking up. We looked up too, but as far as we could tell, there wasn’t anything to see.

The next thing we knew, the stainless steel elevator door into the apartment opened and three FDNY professionals in full active duty attire entered, looking for the fire! Someone had smelled our smoke and called 911.

They declined the hor d’oeuvres and a glass of wine, but – like us – were pleased that ours was a fire they had no need to extinguish. We exchanged greetings, and they left.

Here’s to these men who – on Thanksgiving and every other day of the year – work to protect and rescue us. Thank you, Fire Department of New York.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent

I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I’ve read enough whodunnits and seen enough TV to know that most criminals get caught. Sometimes they’re tracked down and a confession squeezed out of them; sometimes their guilt overwhelms them and they tell all as the investigator simply bears witness. Whether it’s Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or V. I. Warshawski – they always get their man... or woman, as the case may be. I knew it, but that didn’t stop me.

It was a dark and rainy day, the kind that makes you wonder why you got out of bed in the first place, and as Lady Luck would have it, it was Parade Day. I stumbled from my bed, cursed the previous night’s wine and rich food, and groped my way to the bathroom. The mirror didn’t lie: I looked like yesterday’s leftover fish.

The TV was blaring, maybe left on overnight or maybe the others had seen it and gone out without bothering to silence it. I looked through the window down to the wet street reflecting neon and gathering dirty puddles: Turkey Day, 2006.

On the large flat screen, two anchors bantered of floats and bands and celebrity marchers, probably from some snug, warm studio, the parade projected behind them. ‘Easy for them to laugh, I thought.

The true criminal probably spends most of her time living a mundane life, thinking thoughts common to all of us. She sleeps, she rises, she makes her coffee, and only then perhaps does the evil, deviant plan begin to formulate in her mind. So it was with me. I picked up my camera, faced the flat screen and began shooting.

The rest of the weekend I tried to forget what I had done. The sun came out, and as I pushed my way through the crowds in Chinatown, I snapped some more photos. It had been the perfect crime, and a few outdoor NY shots (and editing the NBC logo out of the parade pictures) would cover it up completely.

And then I saw Vincent D’Onofrio coming toward me on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Glimpses of New York City, Thanksgiving 2006















A rainy Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade





The Rockettes dance despite
the cold drizzle














A Saturday walk across the Brooklyn Bridge






Vendors and shoppers
along a Chinatown Street













Fish market offerings

New York, New York

Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it - New York, New York
These vagabond shoes, are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it - New York, New York

I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep
And find I’m king of the hill - top of the heap

These little town blues, are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it - in old New York
If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you - New York, New York...

Well, at least for a few days.

This weary old blog, is needing a rest
While I chow down gravy and stuffing
Yams and cranberries, and turkey breast
If I can eat it here, I can eat it anywhere - New York, New York

I wanna sip joe in a downtown corner Starbucks cafe
Gawk at the people and lights uptown at 7th Ave. and Broadway

I’ll walk Prospect Park, sing karaoke at night
I’ll pretend I’m part of it – New York, New York
And when I’ve done my share, I’ll say goodbye to there
And come back to you - Upstate New York

Have a good week, and be well and thankful.

Blogging: Take 2

I just took the plunge into the new version of blogger.com, and a quick look tells me I have some work to do. We wizards like our stuff to be noteworthy, but it also should look good...

Making the switch from a comfortable, predictable (if sometimes ornery) platform to something called "Beta" is difficult for those of us who have lived through Dubbya, Nixon AND Santa Claus. We just don't trust. They should have at least called it "Nadine" or "Peggy Sue"- names that harken back to the days when our country was generally more right and we yearned for (and trusted) the way of the future.

'Good thing I'm a wizard.

Our Children’s Children

Today my husband and my four-year-old grandson built an elaborate tower of blocks. Their building was many stories tall, and on it they perched hard rubber farm “amals,” matchbox cars and a couple of old Fisher-Price Little People. It was an impressive structure and they delighted in its construction.

After completing it, my grandson picked up one of his small, metal, toy airplanes and “flew” it into the building, knocking blocks, amals, cars and people asunder. He laughed with childish pleasure at the destruction, obviously thinking it was a pretty good joke on Grandpa (and that they could now repeat the shared enjoyment of creation).

Stunned, I asked him if he thought that airplanes ever really fly into buildings. “Yes,” he said, “in New York City.”

So many of us once thought we could make the world a better place. So many magnanimous speeches contain the words, “so that our children’s children may have...” I am now one of those who knows a child’s child, and this is his milieu: a world where hatred and mass murder (although not yet understood for that) has become the play of pre-school children.

The Whirled Wide Web

I am delighted to have one of my photos featured on Jeremiah McNichols' blog, Think In Pictures: Adventures in Visual Education. Here's the link: http://thinkingpictures.blogspot.com/

To jump to my photo within Jeremiah's blog:
http://thinkingpictures.blogspot.com/2006/11/git-r-done.html

His site is a feast of images, and he has made a practice of featuring a wide array of artists and photographers. Here you'll find some interesting and thought-provoking pictures as well as links to the blogs/sites of many other artists. Enjoy!