Prospect: A Year in the Park

Winter? Bring it on

This shot was labeled "Boys Ice Skating, Prospect Park, NY" on the original glass plate negative by photojournalist Jenny Chandler, sometime between 1890 and 1910. I'd never heard of Chandler, a real working photographer back when most ladies pursued it as a genteel hobby; the Henry Ford Museum's archive of her work (left behind in her Washington Ave. townhouse after her untimely death in 1922), includes fascinating shots of the park and other New York City environs.

These Urchins on Ice look like troublemakers to me, laced up to wreak carnage on the park's frozen lake. There's no more lake skating, but the doomed Wollman Rink is open for at least one more season starting this weekend; for hours and more info, go here. My favorite time to skate is very early on weekdays, when the ice is almost empty except for a few fellow oddballs. To meet the 21st-century counterparts of these rascals, however, the weekend is your best bet.

Image: Jenny Chandler, Henry Ford Museum. Creative Commons license:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Glory to God for dappled things

...not just "fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls," but the last stand of Indian corn and pumpkins before the harvest is swept aside by a marching forest of bling-bearing conifers. As a kid, I loved Indian corn--it made me feel so Last of the Mohicans, as if I lived in one of the little bark diorama longhouses we constructed for our unit on the Iroquois. I still love it, and bought some at the Greenmarket last Saturday.

Love the illustrated signs in the background of these acorn squash. Wonder exactly where each one winds up getting eaten this week?

 

No dried flower wreaths for us; the cats will contrive to eat them and hurl them up again, no matter where we put them. Speaking of injudicious consumption, before and after tomorrow's Thanksgiving feast, I will gamely suggest a restorative walk in Prospect Park to our extended family, and they will all look at me as if I had grown a third eye. They will then retire to the living room to await the creation of Room for Pie. I will not get to the park because I will be cooking. But to anyone out there doing the Turkey Trot, Happy Thanksgiving!

Shore leave

No, it's not the Second Coming of Christo* on the southern edge of Prospect Park's lake.

*(But rest in peace, Jeanne-Claude, whose death was announced virtually as I posted this--strange coincidence.)

 

It's the first wave of the park's monumental Lakeside project, which will eventually involve the demolition and replacement of the ratty Wollman skating rink and the reconfiguration of the shoreline to its original loveliness as the centerpiece of the Concert Grove. This entire section of shore, from the rustic shelter to the World War I memorial, has been cordoned off with an improvised blue dam and is being drained.

 

Behind the dam, a swath of lake bottom lay exposed to the November sun. I found myself muttering, like Derek Jacobi in I, Claudius: "Let all the poisons that are lurking in the mud...hatch out!"

      

I am a compulsive treasure-seeker; at the beach, I hardly ever look up, and even in the garden I sift eagerly for weird artifacts in the soil. This being Brooklyn, one has a cliche'd expectation of bodies, of course. No such ill luck, but the mud did yield up a bicycle wheel, a barbecue grill, and a rather attractive vase.

Nearby, a lively crew was seining the channel between the lake's island and shore, rescuing fish and turtles to rehome them elsewhere in the lake. An annoyed adolescent swan paddled around, eyeing them closely.

They were soon joined by more helpers from the GreenApple Corps, a fresh-faced bunch of young folks doing public service. They gamely stepped into waders and headed for the water. The goal is to move the shoreline somewhat while clearing and deepening the silted-in areas, although the project stops short of a full-out dredging operation. "Anybody here good at identifying fish?" someone called out hopefully. "I'm good at turtles," a young lady answered. 

Memento mori

On this All Souls' Day, two little souls who enjoyed Prospect Park long ago, and were captured on a summer day in a photo that wound up in a stereoview card set.

The park was featured often in these sets (the predecessors to ViewMasters and IMAX 3-D), testifying to its magnitude as a tourist attraction. The ghostly figures, fixed forever in the distant past on my same familiar and beloved park spots, often remind me of my favorite lines from Dead Poet's Society:

They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Grand Army Pumpkins

It was perfect Halloween weather at the Greenmarket: dark, foreboding clouds but mild enough temperatures to permit costumed revelry.

Apple green stood out amid the harvest colors, in an Asian pear (and Daughter's top), and in Romanesco broccoli. We bought the pear (Daughter gets cravings for the hard, juicy things) but not the Romanesco (whose culinary uses are described here). I wonder if those are Fibonacci numbers in the vegetable's strange and lovely nubbins?

Costumes were in evidence: at left, a young lady dressed as, perhaps, candy corn. (Amazingly, there was also still some real corn; I bought 3 ears.)

At right, "hipsters."

And (as Little Edie says) "the best costume for today": Sister Mary Mackerel and her sidekick Bluefish at the Blue Moon fish stand. The folks here are always amazingly good sports, but today they outdid themselves.

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE DAY

This feathery friend is the gentle Olivia, who belongs to a breed new to me: the Italian Spinone. (At first, I thought her person was saying "Spumoni.") Olivia, hipster-like, has a scraggly little beard and emo-eyes, which she fixed on passers-by yearningly. She is training to be a therapy dog, but has failed her test several times--most recently, for being unable to resist giving kisses! That sounds like good therapy to me.