Blueskying it

I was surprised this morning by the clear blue reflected in some of the buildings you can see looking down Sixth Avenue toward the financial district. 

This reminder of open horizons in unexpected directions was welcome on an otherwise pretty grim day. 

It wasn't just the November weather, and the daily litany of political lawlessness and economic distress. Some of the details of our university's urgent cost-saving measures became clear today, knock-on effects of enrollment shortfalls that will affect classes and programs and faculty appointments already this coming semester. And all this on top of the ongoing reorganization demanded by structural issues! Higher ed in America isn't well, and we aren't either. 

And then I went to an India China Institute panel discussion on "News Media in an Authoritarian Age," where speakers on India, China and the US described what seemed a shared playbook used by authoritarian regimes across all three countries threatening the freedom of the press and the livelihoods - and lives - of journalists. The moderator observed, ruefully, that when ICI was started two decades ago, one would not have expected the three countries to be on a continuum like this.

The only reflected blue was the India speaker's confidence (based on the aftermath of the press repression of the Emergency) that the "hunger for truth and debate" cannot be extinguished, and only grows in times of propaganda and censorship. Once this authoritarian phase is over, that hunger will call into existence vigorous new forms of investigation and dialogue. May it be so, and soon!

Fall blooms

 

Both of my classes are off to a good start, I think. Back in the saddle!

Twists and turns

In "Religion of Trees" on Monday we spent some time discussing what we've been doing with our drawing. Students said the practice of the drawing which ends each of our classes has become a sort of ritual, and I post all the images faithfully to our Instagram page, but we hadn't thought about what it all adds up to. I told them that our 110+ images had moved beyond being little root tips to form a root plate, but what do we want to build from it? They seem happy to discover each other's perspectives, and are excited that word about the Instagram page is getting around, but I think there's more to do. I'm not sure we're quite getting at what initially inspired the drawing - engaging, responding to, relating to trees in a non-verbal way. 

So in the coming weeks I'm thinking of some more involved drawing sessions. For instance, in one we will plant ourselves (heh) in front of a tree and draw it, looking only at the tree, not the drawing. (This was a practice Katie Holten introduced me to at Tree Wonder last year.) In another, just to free our pencil tips, we might draw in a single line, never lifting the pencil from the page. More ambitiously, we might pay attention to all the twists and turns in a branch, realizing that many are places where a branch was cut or dropped. That came to me today, when we went to Jefferson Market Garden and I found myself drawn to a very contorted branch, very much the work of an artist-pruner. (My jerky drawing is in the spread above.) Most street and park trees are shaped by pruning after pruning, and learning to see this will be important for the class - see and feel it, through drawing. If we had a forest nearby we might notice that trees in the wild sport lots of phantom branches too - maybe we could connect it back to the phantomful tree of life!

After the storm

My Mondays this semester are a stretch: "Religion of Trees" at noon, as students (and I!) surface from the weekend, three hours of "Theorizing Religion" two hours later, as night falls. Leaves me a little logey!

Aflame

This year's tulip delirium at Jefferson Market Garden.

Towering

The Jefferson Market Garden dahlias are still going strong! In case the photo doesn't make it clear, they're taller than me by half. Wow!

Floworigami

Dahlia delirium at the incomparable Jefferson Market Garden 

XXX XXX

In our weekly engagement calendar of New York City-related art from the Metropolitan Museum, this week is devoted to Stuart Davis' 1930 "Jefferson Market, New York." I've long known that the pretty Jefferson Market you see today, housing a library and abutting an opulent community garden, is different from its aspect in the past, when it was a police station and prison, and the current site of the garden was the fearsome Women's House of Detention. And Sixth Avenue was dominated by an elevated trainline! The Women's House of Detention was built a year after Davis' painting, but Jefferson Market already looks part of a much more crowded cityscape. All the pictures I've seen of the "El" are from above or the side; I hadn't considered that Sixth Avenue will have been at least partly covered by metal girders, a twilit tunnel even on a sunny day. And of course the Women's House of Detention wasn't the only new building going up near Jefferson Market in 1930...!

Floral!

Always remarkable, the Jefferson Market community garden's tulips.

The tulips at Jefferson Market Community Garden are out of this world

 

Dark side showing

Earthshine, next Jefferson Market Public Library this eve.

Tulip heaven

 

Once again, an amazing show of tulips, in every shape and variety (including the multi-ply ones that seem to have taken the city by storm this year), in the garden behind Jefferson Market Public Library.

Once upon a time in the Village

A frame shop near school has displayed this old map in its shop window. How old is it? 1961 - old enough for The New School to be contained in the 12th/13th Street neighborhood, for the Women's House of Correction to be overshadowing Jefferson Market, for traffic to be going through Washington Square, and no Bobst. What else can you see?

Our mid-century neighborbood

I'm not sure where she found it, but my co-teacher J found this amazing picture of the Jefferson Market area once upon a time. How much has changed! The Sixth Avenue El - I'd quite forgotten that it was at the end of the block where The New School erected the Urban building on 12th Street! And that huge block - a women's prison, now a beautiful garden (which New School once tried, happily unsucessfully, to acquire). Our local landmark, now a library, was quite overshadowed - except for what looks like a garishly white marble portal... On the other hand, most of the other nearby buildings are unchanged!

Spring ridiculousness

Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the garden at Jefferson Market.

Follow the sun

Colorful sky over Jefferson Market at dusk. My next sunset will be over the Pacific! California beckons. I'll be back in NYC on January 11th.

Scaffolding off!

After more than a year shrouded by scaffolding, Jefferson Market Public Library is back!

Curtain

The wrapping of the Jefferson Market Public Library continues apace. It's a lot of work. Since last week, they added enough wooden platforms to make it look like a Chinese pagoda. Today, the black cloth was spread over - notice the man unfurling the curtain. Soon I expect it will look like a rocket!

It's time

As I was walking to school today, a man stood in the sky! Every building in Manhattan gets sheathed in scaffolding periodically for cleaning, etc. It's the turn of the Jefferson Market Public Library, the architectural landmark of our part of Green- wich Village, an edifice you know well. It looked death-defying.

Fall colors

Beautiful autumnal day! I started in familiar territory, though unfamiliar on a weekend - to school for our Fall Open House for prospective students. Jefferson Market Public Library was looking as splendid as ever as one of its attendant trees starts to turn. And sitting on the stage of our auditorium, a futurist folly from 1930, I noticed it's garish orange actually makes from some lovely effects. Up then to Central Park, in gorgeous color. But I was there because a friend had told me that the hundreds of trees blown down by a freak storm in August were being turned into mountains of wood chips. It's true. And then, since I was in the neighborhood, up to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, passing the crazy statue in the peace garden next door, and then dazzled by the light of the stained glass bathing the newly cleaned white stone columns inside in opulent jewel colors.