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A lousy cold has left me just enough energy to shovel out the driveway, but not enough to check out Prospect Park after the latest Snowpocalypse. Fortunately, my friend Ralph sent me some pictures on "his side" (the Slope) of the park. They are very artistic on that side, judging by this perky little dragon.
This is either a Snowball of Mass Destruction, or the base for a Snowzilla. Love that cloudscape.
The Marquis de Lafayette has an ermine cape!
Photos: Ralph Bonheim
On a day with more dreary overcast and slush than winter sun, some folks have been having fun in the Concert Grove. This snowman's pipe seemed to have a twig-sketch of smoke.
Nearby, the dignity of auld Irish bard Thomas Moore was upended with a traffic cone.
As disco music pumped from the crowded Wollman Rink, these kids used teamwork to simultaneously construct and batter some snowman components.
Detail of fierce fountain kitty-cat nearby.
Yes, I should absolutely be stumping about in the park, in the snow, taking pictures of Wintry Loveliness on this dreary Mardi Gras. Instead, I am sitting inside surfing E-bay and eating up anything that might tempt me during Lent (in homage to Oscar Wilde, who could "resist everything but temptation").
And what should I find there, under "Brooklyn," than this fantastically expansive view of Prospect Park in 1882. (It can be yours for $55 from a Brooklyn memorabilia seller I've bought from happily if you go here.)The line stretching to infinity and beyond is the once-famous "Children's Parade," a mass mustering of Sunday-school tots who marched adorably under patriotic banners in their finest attire.
This event was covered breathlessly every year by the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times, whose reportage would drip with treacly endearments and mock-serious accolades for the deportment of the young scholars. By 1901, according to the Times, "no less than 15,600 children" marched through the park gates, where "the little Christian soldiers could not withstand the enlivening effect of balmy air and May sunshine, and their overflowing spirits betrayed them into antics even in the august presence of the serious-looking men on the reviewing stand. Once beyond these, the children shook off all shackles of restraint." After the festivities, all repaired to tents and feasts "with menus suited to the juvenile palate."
Imagine a time when we sent kids out under flags emblazoned with "buds of promise." Today, it's almost as hard to imagine as spring.
January ends on a brilliant, frigid Sunday, and the elegiac, distant-star daylight of December is already a memory. The sun blazes off the icy lake and the basking idiot geese.
The Horse Tamers never feel the chill as they rear over the headwaters of Coney Island Avenue.
Just behind the shoreline shown here, mysterious flattened areas in the phragmites look as if a giant dog or cat has been circling in them, preparing a nice soft bed to lie down in. "Signs," anyone?