A dozen years in Brooklyn end

The street - in this case Park Place, as I walked from the 7th Avenue subway stop to return the keys to my landlady on Prospect Place - gave me an image which somehow spoke to how I'm feeling having sent everything on its way to another place. A little messy but free, and a sign of life going on... A pie at Joyce (which I'd never buy) offered complicated feelings about the prospect of parting with Brooklyn, too.
(Of course it's not as if I'm going very far - a dozen miles as the crow flies, and there are even two convenient subway connections from the new place to the old. Brooklyn and Manhattan just feel - or fancy they feel - like different worlds.) An hour away - we're still neighbors...!

Emptied out

It's been a week since we moved, but it seems like more. Because of the more jumbled than staggered way we've had to do this, a busy time of the year for moves, we moved out of Brooklyn a week after moving into Manhattan. (We're lucky; many folks have to move out of one place before they can move into another.) Our other fillip is that the new place only gets painted week after next, so we can't fully unpack... and then some new furniture will arrive! House-warming is still weeks away.

So I spent much of the last week sorting through things that didn't make the cut for the move - finding new homes for a few hundred books and CDs, and for furnishings we no longer need. I was helped immeasurably here by "the street" - the fact that folks in our part of Brooklyn regularly put no longer needed things in front of their houses for others to pick up. A fine but no longer needed HiFi was gone in an hour (perhaps because I'd conveniently packed it in Trader Joe's bags for easy transport!), and the expandable round table on which I served meals for decades found a new home overnight (I'd packed it for the move, too, putting many layers of masking tape around the edge so it could be rolled without damage), and assorted chairs and side tables - a few of which had themselves come from the street!

It's a great comfort to think of these things finding new homes (or even being resold by canny resellers) rather than ending up in the anonymous black bags bound for landfill which, nevertheless, were shockingly numerous, even after tirelessly separating out anything which could conceivably be recycled). It would be merely tedious work, if much of it weren't stuff which once mattered to me. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily!) this all fell during the first week of a new academic year, when schedules have not yet filled up, so I had plenty of time...

And then there was no more time: I'd promised the landlady everything would be out by Friday night. And, framed by two circuits in a ZipCar along the Hudson and across the East River, it is! Much is alas in plastic bags, though not all are black. The one pleasure may have been ripping apart ancient cardboard boxes and bundling them neatly together in clear recycling bags. And the street gets a final repast, just in time for a sunny weekend. And everything else is in our new home, with, as it were, a new lease on life!

Another stunner

Rootbound

Pullin' up roots ain't easy, but sometimes you gotta repot!

Enshrined longings

Over the last week I've donated many books to the Brooklyn Public Library. They were no longer an active part of my life, so this seemed the time to let them go. (Yes, I know, part of the point of a book is that it persists, a gift from one time to all future times, waiting patiently on the shelf until it can again become an active part of somone's life...) Anyway it felt good to bring them to this great temple of civic life.

Back on course

Classes have started! Theorizing Religion tried to make sense of Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, and New School Histories took a trip to the centennial exhibition "In the historical present." The shapeless days of summer are still a recent memory but now, with the students in the room, it's all systems go!

Bustling borough

Moving to Manhattan doesn't mean we won't miss bountiful Brooklyn

Barmen 2019

Toles

I've been writing mostly giddy blogposts about moving house these past days but I'm aware there's an element of denial in it - as if one could leave behind not just an old apartment but all the woes of the world. (There's also something about a mortgage that forces you to feel the future conformable to the past, predictable, accountable.) In fact, the dangerous demagogue leading my land - with help from demagogues in many lands - pushes the world closer to calamity of one kind of another with greater volatility every day. These demagogues are really nullities, with no vision or wisdom, let alone principle. What two years of the horror make clear is that they are enabled by supporters who, for various reasons, accept or even embrace their nihilism.

In my land, a significant contingent of enablers call themselves Christians. Apparently, many are enthusiastic, feeling God at work through this broken vessel. When not tweeting for attention, does he not give his vice president, secretary of state and other white Evangelicals free rein to remake the land in a theocratic way? (They thank him by letting him think he's the Chosen One.) In response, some other Christians have recalled the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which called out German Christians who accepted or even embraced National Socialism as idolaters, and penned an open letter "Against the new nationalism." Here's some of it. (Together with the original Barmen Declaration, it's on the syllabus for "Theorizing Religion" this year.)

1. We reject the pretensions of nationalism to usurp our highest loyalties. National identity has no bearing on the debts of love we owe other sons and daughters of God. Created in the image and likeness of God, all human beings are our neighbors regardless of citizenship status.

2. We reject nationalism’s tendency to homogenize and narrow the church to a single ethnos. The church cannot be itself unless filled with disciples “from all nations” (panta ta ethné, Matthew 28:19). Cities, states, and nations have borders; the church never does. If the church is not ethnically plural, it is not the church, which requires a diversity of tongues out of obedience to the Lord.

4. We reject nationalism’s claim that the stranger, refugee, and migrant are enemies of the people. Where nationalism fears the stranger as a threat to political community, the church welcomes the stranger as necessary for full communion with God. Jesus Christ identifies himself with the poor, imprisoned foreigner in need of hospitality. “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me” (Matthew 25:41-43).

5. We reject the nationalist’s inclination to despair when unable to monopolize power and dominate opponents. When Christians change from majority to minority status in a given country, they should not contort their witness in order to stay in power. The church remains the church even as a political minority, even when unable to influence the government or when facing persecution.

Amen!

Local greenery

We took some time out from unpacking (we put much of our stuff in recyclable bins; our movers are green) to explore the neighborhood.

Morningside Park turns out to have some quite wild sections! Also not far: a Korean grocery with Asian vegetables galore. We're going green!

Sailor's delight

We've moved! Here's how the western sky's welcome wound down.

Orientation leaders

It's Orientation week - new students and faculty are in the house! The New School is welcoming them with more than the usual info sessions: it's our centennial, of course. So there's special signage...

I found these somewhat underwhelming posters of our male "founders" in the lobbies of 66 W12th., 55 W13th and 2W13th; the ones destined for the UC and 6E16 - a Dewey surely! - were nowhere to be found.
Good thing I included a woman's image instead in remarks I made to Lang's 550 (!) incoming students (most of them women). Let Dorothy Payne Whitney, one of our foundresses, be their image of the school!

Curated!

The latest installment of our newer truer history of the New School is up! Here one of the curators of an exhibition for the centennial explains (and relishes) the paradoxes of commemorating a history of the new.

Turning

Just in time, our philodendron's putting out a final Brooklyn leaf.

Archaeology of knowledge

The moving-out part of moving is never fun. It's mortifying how much stuff one accumulates, even if one (thinks one) isn't into that. Even stuff that was worth keeping may have passed its expiration date since you put it away some- where. For a person in the book biz this hits especially hard with books which were relevant when boxed, but are now out of date. This describes many of the tomes I excavated from a wall of books I boxed two decades ago and haven't cracked open since. (They were covered by a very attractive Indian textile.) Sedimented but not quite fossilized: Japan, Princeton, Paris.

Temps perdus

Now tell me

As the death of Ann Snitow sinks in, people are sharing memories.

One, which I suspect will resonate with everyone who knew her: 
[Ella Boureau:] There was nothing like being invited over to Ann’s house to see her standing in the doorway, waiting to accept me with a big bear hug and an “Oh, my darling Ella!” There was nothing like the anticipation of the moment she’d sit across from me, arranging her long legs, before saying, “Now tell me,” her eyes serious and head cocked to suggest that her question was of the utmost importance: “What are you thinking about these days?”  

Another confirms that her interest was as true as true can be:
[Sarah Leonard:] She was skeptical of hard categories like, for example, “woman.” For some, reflexive skepticism might lead to a sort of academic cul-de-sac. But Ann’s questioning led her not to hopelessness or inaction but to expansiveness. When queer politics was becoming a bigger force at the New School, Ann was thrilled: “The idea that gender is a construct, a performance, moved to the center of feminism . . . It was opening up the whole question of why we have organized the world in this rigid way. And, you know, I love that,” she told me. This attitude pervaded her relationship with younger feminists, to whom she provided invaluable guidance, but also listened. She is the only person I’ve ever met who seemed unthreatened by the dissolution of the categories that were fundamental to her field and by that field’s reshaping by successive generations. She delighted in change.

Yes, it was about delight.
[Vivian Gornick:] She had the great gift of making everyone she encountered—from the closest friend to the merest acquaintance—feel themselves not only a person of worth but of delight. While you occupied her field of vision she seemed to be thinking, “This is an enchanting creature, I could happily go on talking to her alone for a year or two.” This gift was intimately related to the pleasure she took in being alive, and in a world whose every aspect she found attractive, deeply attractive. She was the only political person I’ve ever known whose organizing powers stemmed from the fact that she found everything in the world endearing—and I mean everything: people, politics, literature, food, gardens, movies, Polish dolls and Moroccan rugs, Doris Lessing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then of course there was her abiding love of the feminist movement, evoking for more than fifty years joy and amusement, anger and outrage, hope and anxiety. But not despair, never despair. Because hers was a great soul, and great souls hold it all together for the sake of that beloved world, the thought of whose salvation they never abandon. We shall not soon see her like again.

Might find myself missing the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket...

Yellow brick road

The building I've lived in almost a dozen years might have guessed we're leaving. The Japanese Pagoda/Chinese Scholar tree planted to replace the one destroyed by a tornado 8 years ago is sparkling like fireworks.

Pray for us sinners

August 15th is a day many kinds of Christians devote to Mary. Two remarkable images my far-flung friends shared stopped me in my tracks: one a stunning icon by a young woman artist in Ukraine named Lyuba Yatskiv, the other from the Catholic Worker's Maryhouse here in NYC.

I lift up mine eyes

Our soon to be new neighborhood is veritably awash with religious institutions. Out the window we'll see the Riverside Church and Union Theological Seminary (where the wondrous ceiling at right is to be found), up the block is the Jewish Theological Seminary, and around the corner from Riverside the so-called "God Box" where a gaggle of religious non-profits are based. And that's just looking south and west!

Illuminations

In other news, someone just told me that the illuminated Byzantine Bible from which I took the cover picture for my Job book Has been digitized! There are many more scenes than Paul Huber was able to reproduce in the book where I found them at UCLA. Above, messengers bring Job news of the destruction of his world; through it you can make out shapes from the scene on the page before: the death of his children.

Preen

Hey, didn't know I could post gifs - here a bluejay who took refuge in the trees outside my office window after a burst of rain.

Anti-racist religious studies

Shall I include this in my syllabus?

Statement Against White Nationalism

 August 12, 2019

The American Academy of Religion resoundingly condemns white nationalism and urges all members, individually, institutionally, and collectively, to fight against white supremacy and white nationalism while standing alongside those who bear the brunt of this violent ideology, willful ignorance, and oppressive behavior. The American Academy of Religion advocates for the study of religion as a powerful means to resist white supremacist structures, policies, and thought patterns. In promoting its values of academic excellence, professional responsibility, free inquiry, critical examination, diversity, inclusion, respect, and transparency in the study of religion, the American Academy of Religion hopes to help uncover and dismantle white supremacy at the structural and personal levels. The American Academy of Religion acknowledges that the lives of scholars, teachers, and students of religion are made better, more productive, and more meaningful by diversity of all kinds.

RIP Ann Snitow

 

Our beloved colleague Ann Snitow has died. Seeing her in an obituary in the Times makes it real but also unreal. The many communities she's inspired have known she was ill, but it'll take some time to absorb that her great spirit is now living only in us. Ann's been a central part of the story J and I tell about the New School, and even about the way we tell it. I was happy to spot her among the slides at the "In the Historical Present" exhibition. It's from her retirement party in April, also the last time I saw her. Wizened by her struggle with cancer but indomitable in the love, intelligence, humor and joy she radiated. May it shine on.

Blueskying

New digs! Bring new decisions....!

And yet it moves

You might remember these sand dollars. We found them on the beach at Del Mar in December. Finding ten at once was so remarkable we took it as the universe's chipping in for the down payment on the new apartment we were seeking. Well, not too many months later, we are today the proud owners of a new apartment! (And it's one better in every way than the one we were angling for in December.) Moving our stuff in will take a few more weeks, but we're already half there!

Moving up

I'm looking at even the non-spaces of my Brooklyn life with anticipatory nostalgia. Not just farmer's market, botanic garden, favorite shops and restos, the charm of tree-lined brownstone streets at dusk, but uneven pavements and subway stations! Tata 7th Ave, hello 125th St!

Sex is for fun?!

Latest installment of our newer truer history of the New School is up!

This tribute to the life-changing work of my feminist colleague Ann Snitow as part of the Transdisciplinary Center for Democratic Studies in eastern Europe is part of our "in the classroom" series, a reminder that our campus has extended well beyond New York - and that questioning received views of gender has always been part of our message!

Late summer late afternoon

Having the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a short walk away is something we know we'll miss as we move Manhattanward. What new gardens await?

Shedding

Moving is shedding sin. Not just the skin of your current life, but skins of past lives, things you held on to last time you moved, and even the time before. These are my files from graduate school and my first job. I haven't looked at them, or thought of them, in years. I recognize the research projects, completed and forgotten, but won't ever return to them. It's sad I'm not sadder to let them go, but only a little.

For real?

As we approach the finish line for our move - we "close" on our new apartment on Friday! - it's amusing to get an inside view of the real

estate machine still grinding away. A specialist photographer brought in by our landlady's agent has transformed our current digs into glossy

real estate, with just a little wide-angling and photoshopping. The dining room has never had so much light, or New York such jewel skies!

Your home is your temple

Encountered an unanticipated blast of spirituality - if that's what it was - at a home furnishings place replete with religious figures today. Buddha accessories are nothing new, but this place stood out. For one thing, the entrance to the store is full of bundles of sage and other herbs for American Indian-inspired 
smudging of your home, enterprisingly, or shamelessly, combined with Indian statuary (Ganesh) and a first cluster of what turn out to be a cave's worth of crystals. Faux-Norse magic incense sticks are available too. And the decorator's pantheon is ecumenical - a few lost-looking angels are there too.

     

But there's more, as becomes clear on the furniture floor. ABC Carpet and Home has a special link to Thich Nhat Hanh, whose calligraphy graces all the walls. Enjoy your self free day, it urges, Breathe and smile. Mother Earth is the Kingdom of God. Look with compassion. Available for

a (steep) price, too, but mind (from the website): Purchasing the artwork is an agreement to accept the piece just as it is and in the manner the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh intended it to be. Haha! I'm tempted to try to find a way to integrate this homey hodepodge with all its spiritual sleights of hand into "Theorizing Religion"!