Prospect: A Year in the Park

The accidental tourist

Friday afternoon, as I returned from the ghastly experience of being press-ganged onto a Grand Jury in downtown Brooklyn, we were tossed off the train at Prospect Park station due to a broken rail further down the Q tracks. At first, I was peeved; now I would have to walk 2 stops further to get home, and I had no camera to record my passage through the park. (I never travel without it, but feared they would confiscate it at the courthouse.)

 

 

Then I remembered that my low-end cellphone had a camera built in. Yes, most of the world is already aware of this functionality, but it's fairly new to me; I'd taken a few other shots but never gotten them off the camera. With freezing fingers, I not only took a few shots but e-mailed them to myself. I feel all techie now. Plus, the camera likes to put rainbow rings around the sun, which is cool.

 

Predictably, I wound up blessing the broken rail that gave me an unintended walk through the snowy park. Over the next two weeks, I will miss my accustomed liberty to go there (or not) on a whim. It has been said that a DA could get a jury to indict a ham sandwich. During the next fortnight, I will apparently be sitting around with 23 other People With a Pulse (the apparent qualification), indicting a stream of lowlife ham sandwiches. Get out there and revel in parkitude for me, will ya?

Seeking the mystery photographer of Prospect Park!

This guy, Todd Bieber, is totally in the spirit of AYITP: He found a canister of film while out cross-country skiing in Prospect Park, and used some randomly acquired "pay-it-forward" money to develop the film. It revealed a beautiful series of images by some playful folks who may be European tourists, and now he's trying to reconnect with the photographer who shot them (contact him at [email protected]).

We'll do our part: Here's the video of this great little story.

 

 

Snow frisking

Yikes, morning sun on fresh powder. Makes your ears stand up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the lakeshore near Wellhouse Drive, the breeze rustled some dried leaves and samaras, and sighed through the stand of phragmites. Sparrows made little "chipping" sounds deep in the reeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A snow anaconda wound up a tree trunk, and a snowcap topped a nest. (Presumably the occupants were away, or just hadn't shoveled yet.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not a winter lover, but there are a few blue-and-white, sparkling mornings when it wins me over. The weekend we got engaged, in a snow-blanketed inn in the Poconos, was a morning exactly like this one, when the cold was a bracing delight, and anything seemed possible.

Horror in the white mist

The unwary may be drawn to enter Field 11 when the white mist rises. But the good burghers of Flatbush know better.

 

The open gate beckons...but no soccer players cavort on the Parade Grounds this second morning of 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many are those who enter the white mist, and never return. Some claim to have glimpsed a strange white bubble in the distance, from which issue cries and groans and the sound of blows being struck. Perhaps this mysterious entity swallows the doomed intruder when the mist descends on Field 11.

Or perhaps it is that dreaded spectre from Dutch times, more harrowing to gaze upon than the Hollow's Horseman...

...the Headless Snowman of Caton Park!

 

 

Wishing all of you a blessed 2011...see you in Prospect Park!