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Glories Strung Like Beads
A nondescript work morning on a nondescript street in East Flatbush. 8:00 a.m. 39th Street off Snyder Avenue. I haven’t seen one resident –are they all asleep?–but the backhoe is going gangbusters. The usual. Except…Holy Cross Cemetery across Snyder is getting a haircut and I can smell the cut new grass as the mower motors…
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When Gertude Stein Came to Brooklyn
The barricades attach themselves to barricades on West Street on the Brooklyn waterfront. The flagwoman holds her sign she loves the barricades she hates the trucks and she blows on her whistle her whistle her whistle. The laborers work with one another they flirt with one another they work and they flirt. Inspectors inspect one another. The sky shines…
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The Pleasures of the Urban Arborist
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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Yesterday, the first day of winter, I bought jonquils, the hoity toity term for daffodils. I had taken my fill of soup dumplings and braised seaweed in Flushing, NY’s Chinatown and was rolling out to the car. Could that really be daffodils they were advertising in the shop window — cut flowers, an unexpected bouquet? Turns…
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Feed the Tree
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The Sidewalks of New York
What lies under the city sidewalk? Dirt. Sand. Rocks, bricks, miscellaneous debris. Skeletal remains of vermin. And thousands of miles of pipes. And roots. I found one today on the job, a gnarled and grizzled specimen, a time capsule from before the jungle of New York was so concrete. This London Plane root, a yard…
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April Daffs
Is April really the cruellest month? Just because T.S. Eliot phrased it so beautifully in The Wasteland doesn’t necessarily make it so. April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. I saw my first daffodils of the season today. I’m in…
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Stop by My Author Page and Say Hi
My Facebook author page has a brand new cover – it quotes Library Journal saying that Savage Girl is “A fanciful and occasionally surreal take on Gilded Age New York.” And hey, I just reached 100 likes, a figure I’m a little proud of. But I’d like more likes, more! And more visitors. Come see reviews…
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A Room of One’s Own-Thank You Virginia
A belated happy birthday to Virginia Woolf (born January 25th), a writer whose fiction I idolized when I was around sixteen. I had the firm conviction that her novels To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, innovative, modernist, poetic, were about as good as literature got. When I discovered Woolf’s book-length essay A Room of One’s Own,…
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The Power of Words
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is an occasion that celebrates among other things the power of words. The man was a Shakespeare for our day. And so I really like this post by someone who talks about how some good novels lead us, as Wordsworth once put it, “toward obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness.” I…
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Edward Lear in Flight
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Bit by Bit
Stitch after stitch. The easiest in knitting is the knit stitch, worked over and over, row after row, dignified by its pattern name the garter stitch. Time honored and simple, it’s the foundation of sweaters and scarves all around the world. I man the couch (woman the couch?), man up (woman up?) to knit stitch…
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Gil’s Prize-Winning Apple Crumb Pie
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Making Book
Frank Stella’s splashy, enormous constructions line the walls of the lobby where my book publisher has its offices. Three collages, to be precise, of mixed media on a base of etched magnesium. Standing in front of one, you have to crane your neck to see the top of the piece. Standing there, I try to…
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Thank You for Reading
I am thankful. This is a post about this blog. At Thanksgiving, in a lot of families, a blessing is performed before the turkey comes on in its golden, crispy glory. The blessing consists of going around the table with every guest sharing some thing they are especially grateful for. On the occasions I’ve taken…