CARRIED AWAY BY OWLS

Thanksgiving is 48 hours away. Already I’m feeling weighed down -- drowning in too much! I don’t want all that food on Thursday. I don’t want to watch a Christmas Parade, the official opening of the  troughs of commerce. Somebody will bring out a cheese tray and shrimp as the last mega-balloon wafts down 5th Avenue. Really? Didn’t we just finish coffee and Rice Krispies a few minutes ago?

Several women will perform the THANKSGIVING MINUET in the kitchen — a ballet of opening and closing refrigerator, ovens, and cabinets with dogs underfoot and the menfolk waiting for the pre-football announcers. Dinner is timed to arrive at the table between televised events.  

Why are we doing this anyway? I get all that ritual, shared ceremony, national day of thanks — all good. But what about the flip side? If I am to be totally honest, I’m not so thankful for that immigration/genocide event. What about our indigenous friends? Anybody else wonder how the Cherokee or Senecas “celebrate” Thanksgiving? I just saw that it’s a “Day of Mourning” for native Americans. Rightfully so.

Radio talk shows this pre-Thanksgiving week aired conversations about avoiding unpleasant topics at the dinner table. On one show, everybody piled on “Uncle Joe”, the typical family blowhard, the obnoxious political outlier. 

Have you ever wondered if you are the “Uncle Joe?” Or the “Aunt Jean?” I confess: it might be me! I’m sick of “everybody does it” and “how do you know your facts are right?” and “yeah, if the world is heating up, how come it’s so damned cold in here?” I rise to the bait when somebody says “$15 an hour? You might as well shut down all small business.” And “women shouldn’t be paid as much as men —they aren’t the bread winners.”  I want to scream “Shut up! Eat you tenth helping of mashed potatoes! White men can’t jump!”

But I won’t. 

We’ve been watching “The Crown” at our house. It’s a quiet series — no wartime heroics, no alarm bell scandals in England during the period (mid 1960s - early 1970). But if you watch and listen, some soul stabbing ideas are buried in those dialogues. An elderly Princess Ann (Phillip’s mother) says “I realized at age 70 that I was no longer a participant. Now I am an observer.”  My 80-something year old friend MaryAnn wrote “She was right. My neighbors never ask me anything about my life — what I did, where I came from and how I got to this place. Our conversations are always about them. But I remember being in my 40s and I never really knew the retired couple who lived next door. I just never bothered.”

Where to go with all this? I am weighed down with memories, with regrets, with longing for those dear ones no longer here. Is “too much" a blessing or a curse?  

Maybe Thanksgiving is less about giving thanks and more about atonement.

THANK YOU, DANIEL L.

A WEEK END IN THE COUNTRY

THE RESIDENT FOX

Abbey and Lucy, the two West Highland terriers that rule our house, went into full-blown, bat-shit-crazy barking at the window yesterday.  A fox went slinking past outside. He didn’t stop to acknowledge the two domestic cousins totally flipping out on the opposite side of the glass. Instead, he circled the yard, and examined the brush pile and the heavily treed back berm. I last saw him disappearing over the edge of the ravine.

Was he scouting for a suitable den — a place to move his bride? Raise the kits? Or only prowling for food? We have a New York City population of chipmunks holed up around us. The neighborhood cat took the summer off. Chipmunks moved here from all parts of the globe. I don’t really mind but Abbey and Lucy, the Resident Canine Green Berets, saw them as Nazi invasive forces. I assume that foxes eat chipmunks and there you have it — the balance of nature in spite of humans and domesticated pets.

ABBEY AND LUCY

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Our bird feeders are back in action. Chip takes them down in May, as soon as we begin seeing bugs and seed heads in the naturalized “meadow,” aka, backyard. Feeders go back into place with the first snowfall — usually the beginning of November. 

I enjoy watching bird politics. Clearly, the red headed woodpecker rules. He eats first — alone — like royalty. Nobody challenges that right. Once in awhile a blue jay lands but decides not to pull a coup and flies away. The smalls — chickadees, finches — swarm the feeders and are pretty democratic. They easily make room for incoming nuthatches, titmouse, redpols. No big deal — one takes a break and waits in the bar next door for a seat at the table. 

Doves are ground feeders  — the cat fish of the avian set. They eat the dregs, the leftovers that fall to the ground. Doves make me sad. They seem so …gray! No sparkle, no grace, no warble. They remind me of homeless people — ever present in spite of liberal intentions. 

I count cardinals among the exotics even though I see them in the spruce trees year round. That flash of red — impossible to miss against dark green and the first white of winter. They come to the feeders as a pair — male and female — when no-one else is around. 

Dr. Zhivago and Lara, Heathcliff and Cathrine. So beautiful.

We don’t feed sparrows. And we don’t feed squirrels. The feeders are outfitted with anti-invasive devices. One must have limits. 

(Uh-oh. The blue jay just dived in and took position at the very top of the feeding stand. The challenge is on. He looks around with determination this time. All other birds have retreated into the brush. I wonder if I should shoo him away? Just as I am about to rise to the task, I see that he’d flown up to the nearest tree branch. Is this a tactical move? Is he plotting wood pecker assassination?

Oh no! There’s a second Jay! Now what? I can’t handle the stress. This is beginning to seem like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I need a cookie to settle my nerves. I’ll write about art next time.) 

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THREE CHEERS FOR JJ KAPLAN!

THE GOLD NET PROJECT

We can’t all be Jeremy John Kaplan, can we?  JJ is a middle aged man who grew up in New York City doing the usual things that people do growing up…nothing startling. He didn’t develop an app and make a million dollars —he wasn’t a medical phenom — he didn’t write a best seller when he was in high school — he didn’t speak to the United Nations about inequality (or anything else!)

No, JJ is just a typical guy — school, home, shoot a few hoops on the neighborhood playground, grow up to be ….an artist?

Kaplan is that but his “art” falls into a groove hard to describe. He practices tactical urbanism; it’s a combination of performance and civic responsibility. 

Urban playgrounds nearly all have basketball hoops and nine times out of ten, the net is gone or partly gone or hanging by three threads. So Kaplan began his very own “Gold Net Project.” He dresses all in white, a uniform that looks like a cross between the IceCream Man and your average house painter. He drags his ladder to the spot and attaches a new GOLD basketball net. There’s no significance to the color except maybe to instantly identify the ones he’s replaced. There are 291 gold nets at 112 courts so far. (And he’s repainted lines on two but that’s a little out of his purview.)

Kaplan pays for the whole project by making and selling photographs, prints, drawings — all related somehow to basketball courts and nets. He’s been run off a few times by city officials but mostly, people leave him alone. 

Do new basketball nets change lives? Hard to say but for people playing basketball on those courts, nets are a symbol, a spotlight on a very small piece of life that says someone is paying attention to them, their needs, the quality of their environment… like picking up trash…planting flowers…any effort that adds solace and comfort to the shared public space.  Even better, those nets add quality and aesthetic improvement to shared space. What better art form is there than that?

In this world that we share, are we all required to be a tactical urbanist? Or is this just a newly invented term to describe what our parents taught us as kids, a part of the Girl and Boy Scout mottos, The Golden Rule? Whatever it is, I’m grateful to hear stories about the JJ Kaplans out there. Nice goin’.