Grief and Gardening: Index

Posted on 2022-09-13 by admin

Next Tuesday, September 20th, I will be the guest speaker for Green-Wood Cemetery’s Death Cafe. Next week is also Climate Week; the topic is “Grief and Gardening”, that title taken from the long-running series of blog posts here.

Listed below are my related blog posts, grouped by topic. For now, I’m omitting all the eulogies and remembrances for the deaths of family, friends, and pets.

Grief and Gardening: Ashes (Remembrance Day for Lost Species), published 2019-12-02, is one of my favorite writings on the subject of grief. It weaves together nearly all the topics below.

Biodiversity Loss

Remembrance Day for Lost Species Day, aka Lost Species Day, is November 30th. Many of these blog posts are on or near that date.

Grief and Gardening: Extinct Plants of northern North America 2021, 2021-11-30
Extinct Plants of northern North America 2020, 2020-11-30
Extinct Plants of northern North America 2018, 2018-11-30
Extinct Plants of northern North America 2015, 2015-11-29
Extinct Plants of northern North America, 2014-11-30

Climate Change

The IPCC Report: Grief & Gardening #6, 2007-02-04
https://www.flatbushgardener.com/2007/11/23/gardening-as-if-our-lives-depended-on-it/

COVID-19

Grief and Gardening: A Dissetling Spring, 2020-03-19
Drumbeat, 2020-03-27
Grief and Gardening: A Feast of Losses, 2020-04-06
Correspondence, April 2020, 2020-04-13
Grief and Gardening: The Defiant Gardener, 2020-05-06

I adapted some of what I wrote on the blog, and several of my tweets on this subject, for a short post on McSweeney’s: “Do Not Deny What You Feel“. The McSweeney’s piece was later picked up by YES! Magazine. Search for “Flatbush”. or “AIDS”.

Grief & Gardening: 20 Years

Posted on 2021-09-11 by admin

Written spontaneously as a Twitter thread, and transcribed to this blog post.

I’m avoiding the news today. As well as the retraumatizing snuff porn documentaries. I’ve written about all of it before. I don’t feel the need to day to write any more. I wrote this 15 years ago about Anniversaries, my first “Grief & Gardening” post:

The ways we observe anniversaries is arbitrary. For example, I was shocked to tears for weeks by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, which killed 100 times more people than Katrina [1st Anniversary]. The earthquake which precipitated it left the entire planet ringing like a bell. The observation of “25 Years of AIDS” at this year’s World AIDS Congress is pinned only to the first official report of a cluster of unusual deaths by the Centers for Disease Control in June of 1981. The timelines of epidemics don’t follow our categorizations of them.
Grief & Gardening #1: 1, 5 and 25, 2006-09-04

At the time, I didn’t have the blog yet. I wrote a lot in my journal. I transcribed some of it to back-dated blog posts. This was the first:

Like an earthquake, the initial shocks have affected each of us differently, and to different degrees. The aftershocks will continue for months. The effects will ripple out for decades. If I believed there was anyone to listen, let alone, answer, I would pray that each of us gets whatever we need to come through healthy and whole. I would pray that, individually and collectively, we respond to this violence with compassion, wisdom, courage and strength.
This Week in History, 2001-09-14

The second back-dated blog post transcribes a letter I wrote to Rev. Joanna Tipple, then pastor of the Copake, NY church, which had been my husband’s church when he was growing up:

Again, and still, horrors are committed in the name of God. A month ago, more than five thousand people lost their lives in a smoking crater, killed in the name of God. It makes no difference to me whether the banner reads “Holy War” or “God Bless America.” This crisis has brought out both the best and worst in people. Like any tool, the idea of God is used for evil as well as good. Then what good is God?
Without God

I worked in downtown Manhattan for 35 years before retiring two months ago. As the 5th Anniversary approached, Ground Zero was still just that, a wound. Everywhere were commemorative signs and symbols. You could feel it just walking around.

I have been feeling this one, the 5th anniversary of 9/11. The city is feeling it, too. Peoples’ grief is closer to the surface, more accessible. Mine certainly is. I’ve also been remembering a lot of what it was like in the city right after. There are reminders of it everywhere, on the news, in the papers, special exhibits and events, and especially, at Ground Zero.
Grief & Gardening #2: Five Years After, “Ths Transetorey Life”, 2006-09-09

I moved to NYC, to the East Village, in 1979. Though I survived, many did not. It’s why grief and loss pervade my writing, including my blog. I wrote this in 2007, after learning of the death, from AIDS, of yet another of my last lovers.

Reminders of the upcoming 6th Anniversary of 9/11 are piling up. My first day back at work from my [recent] trip, I walked by the Deutsche Bank building – ruined in the attacks, condemned, and only now being dismantled – where two firefighters had lost their lives the day before. I could see the blackened scaffolding and walls of the building. I smelled the smoke, startled for a few minutes, taken back to the months after the attacks, when the fires burned for months, when we walked every day through the crematory of downtown Manhattan.
In the Shadow (How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?), 2007-08-08

On the 7th Anniversary, I wrote my name on a beam that was intended to become part of the Memorial at Ground Zero. I was briefly interviewed by a local radio reporter from 1010WINS. I met a good dog.

Flags, flags, flags … flags waving everywhere. I understand the impulse, yet I don’t feel it as a defiant gesture. It feels like a concession to me. That we have no greater symbol than our nation’s flag makes me sad. What evil has been committed in the name of that flag?
Seven years, 2008-09-10

On the 9th Anniversary, with some perspective of years, I was able to write coherently about what our experience had been that day, that week. I worked downtown, through the months of smoke and ash that followed. And year after year in NYC.

We decided to hold to our vacation plans for the week, somber though it was. There was nothing we could do back home. My workplace downtown, blocks from Ground Zero, would not reopen for two weeks. Reminders met us everywhere we went. And everywhere we went, we were ambassadors for New York City. When we told people where we were from, as often as not, they broke down crying. We were their reminders.
Grief & Gardening: Nine Years, 2010-09-11

I avoid “ticker tape” parades.

The gutters were thick with shreds of paper, and ash, for weeks and months after 9/11. The gray ash was the last to go. Living and working in downtown after 9/11 was being in a crematorium.
Grief and Gardening: Remains of the Day, 2019-07-11

So, I don’t feel a need to write anything new today. I’m going to spend the day away from television, and news, and commemorations. I will instead hug my husband, squish our cats, and spend time in the garden photographing bugs, observing and celebrating the diversity of life.

Grief and Gardening: Remains of the Day

Posted on 2019-07-12 by admin

Walking from my bus stop to work in the morning takes me across Broadway in Downtown Manhattan, the site of some celebration or other yesterday morning. Still this morning, littering the sidewalks, and especially the gutters, was “ticker tape”. Of course, there are no tickers any more – it’s all electronic. So this was all long, thin shreds of paper, individually unrecognizable in its drifts.

And in that moment, crossing Broadway, walking in to work, I was taken back 18 years.

The gutters were thick with shreds of paper, and ash, for weeks and months after 9/11. There was so much of it, it took that long for all of it to finally be washed away.

The gray ash was the last to go. In sheltered spots, it lingered for years. Even if you didn’t want to know, certainly not think about it, you knew what it was.

Living and working in downtown after 9/11 was being in a crematorium. Every couple of years, you might hear about finding “remains”. This is what they’re talking about: some shards or shreds left behind, sheltered until uncovered by demolition or restoration of the ever-changing skin of the city.

And so did yesterday’s remains, of a celebration, remind me of those weeks and months a lifetime ago. I wondered how few of those celebrating would understand the connection. How few around me had the same association.

Did they, too, feel alone in this?

Grief & Gardening: Nine Years

Posted on 2010-09-11 by admin

Let’s get the usual question out of the way. This is where I was the morning of September 11, 2001.

This is Skytop Tower at Mohonk Mountain House at sunset the previous night. Blog Widow and I had planned a week-long vacation upstate, starting at Mohonk. The morning of September 11, we hiked up to Skytop. A rustic retreat, Mohonk had no televisions or radios in the rooms. As we left the massive wooden structure to go out hiking, I noticed people huddled around the few televisions in some of the common rooms. I thought nothing of it at the time. I later realized we left just after the first attack.
We hiked around the lake, then up to Skytop, and climbed up into the tower. We had the trails almost to ourselves. As we came down the tower, I sang loudly, my voice echoing through the stone structure: “I love to go a-wandering …” Part of the way, we encountered another hiker coming up the stairs. I stopped singing and said, “excuse me.” Only then did he lift his head to us, tears streaming down his face. “Did you hear what happened?” “No.” “They flew a plane into the World Trade Center.”

We hiked back. When we returned to the buildings, the common rooms were packed with people, watching the news on every available television. We went back to our room. Blog Widow went back downstairs to find out what happened. I had brought my laptop with me, so I tried getting online. He returned to tell me the World Trade Center had collapsed. I was incredulous; I couldn’t imagine what that meant. By the time I went downstairs myself, both towers were gone. I sat and watched those horrible images for the first time.

We decided to hold to our vacation plans for the week, somber though it was. There was nothing we could do back home. My workplace downtown, blocks from Ground Zero, would not reopen for two weeks. Reminders met us everywhere we went. And everywhere we went, we were ambassadors for New York City. When we told people where we were from, as often as not, they broke down crying. We were their reminders.

We drove back to my apartment in Brooklyn that Sunday. I was startled when I saw the first airplane flying overhead; with all flights grounded, the skies had been empty since the attacks. I got my first glimpse as we drove along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway: twin trails of heavy smoke, orange and red from a setting sun. I burst into tears. Somehow, I had expected the fires to have burned out by then.

When we were allowed to return to work, I got my first personal glimpse of Ground Zero.

The fires continued to burn for months, through the winter, into 2002. For weeks, until a few heavy rains washed the city, everything was covered in ash and dust. It collected in drifts along sidewalks and gutters. Every day I went to work, for months, I smelled and breathed the smoke. All of Downtown Manhattan was a crematorium.

Thousands of shrines and memorials appeared and grew throughout the city. The most heart-breaking were those around St. Vincent’s Hospital, which prepped for massive casualties, but received very few. Few who didn’t walk, or run, away survived. Even today, remains have yet to be found for over 1,000 people murdered in the attacks.

The ash washed away, the fires died, the smoke cleared. The candles and posters gradually eroded. A year after the attacks, the memorials which covered the fences around St. Paul’s Chapel were carefully removed and preserved. Eventually, even the basin which held the foundations of the towers and other structures on the site was emptied. As the direct evidence of what happened faded, new symbols emerged. For me, these are far more powerful and meaningful than any flag or banner.

Tonight, the Tribute in Light will shine again.

The Sphere, the sculpture by Fritz Koenig that had held place of prominence in the center of the WTC Plaza, was heavily damaged in the towers’ collapse, but survived. It’s been on display at Battery Park for the past few years. It will be returned to the Memorial for its permanent home.

Another sculpture, Steve Tobin’s “Trinity Root,” was placed in the courtyard of Trinity Church, two blocks from Ground Zero. It was cast from the roots of a Sycamore that stood in the cemetery of St. Paul’s Chapel, a few blocks north, and directly across the street from Ground Zero. The tree was destroyed when the towers fell, but it shielded the church itself from even greater damage.

St. Paul’s Chapel has been a moving memorial all these years. It’s filled with an ever-changing display of artifacts and remembrances from all over the world.

And finally, the official, multi-million dollar memorial will occupy the footprints of the towers and the plaza between them. Here’s a model of the National September 11 Memorial at the Preview Site on Vesey Street, across the street from St. Paul’s near the corner of Church Street at Ground Zero in Downtown Manhattan.

The first of 400 trees for the grove were planted just two weeks ago, in time for today’s observations. These are Quercus bicolor, Swamp White Oaks. The other species will be Liquidambar styraciflua, Sweet Gum. A forest and waterfalls will take the place of devastation, natural elements no less powerful and evocative for being constrained to an urban grid. They will also remind me of where I was when I first heard of the attacks. A garden as the ultimate embodiment of reflection and recovery.

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[goo.gl]

Growing 387 trees for the National 9/11 Memorial

Posted on 2009-02-19 by admin

A video interview with two of the people who are charged with growing nearly 400 trees that will populate the plaza of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan. The Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone will reside on the street-level plaza somewhere among these trees.

Speaking are Ronald Vega, Project Manager, National September 11 Memorial Park, and Paul Cowie, Consulting Arborist, Paul Cowie & Assoicates, Montville, New Jersey. The “gothic arches” Vega mentions are also reminiscent of the architectural details of the twin towers.

Links

Films, National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center

Seven years

Posted on 2008-09-10 by admin

This morning I went to Battery Park to sign my name on a beam which will be used in the construction of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero. This beam-signing opportunity runs through 6pm today, and again tomorrow, September 11, from 10am to 6pm.

I went alone. The collective spirit of those assembled felt strange to me. People waiting to enter were talking with each other, laughing, catching up. For many of these people, it seemed to be a reunion, or even more causal, like a ride in the elevator.

Those of us who arrived before 10am had to wait nearly two hours to sign. Everything had to wait for the arrival – and departure – of Mayor Bloomberg. He played the role of the bad dinner guest, who arrives late, so everyone else’s food is cold, and lingers far too long, straining the patience of even the most gracious hosts.

While I was waiting, reporters trolled through the crowd. Shortly after I arrived, I was interviewed briefly by 1010WINS, a local radio station. They asked my name, asked me to spell it out, asked me where I worked. Then they asked me, something like: When you think about that day, what comes to mind? I looked up at the sky, as blue this morning as it was that morning. My eyes filled with tears. I choked out a response: It’s an atrocity. For anyone to do that in the name of their god is an atrocity.

Ground Zero, September 27, 2001

They also asked what I was going to write. I told them I was going to write the name of the Memorial Cobblestone Campaign I started: Gardeners for Recovery.

Eventually we got to actually wait in line, instead of muddling about in the cattle pen on the sidewalk. Some of this drudgery was relieved by the company of a bulldog. His name was 6, the number. With his underbite and watery eyes, he reminded me of a deep-sea anglerfish. He was very sweet and affectionate. His person said he hated to get his picture taken, but we seemed to have developed a rapport. Perhaps it was the butt-rubbing and ear-fluffing that won him over.

Each of us was given a commemorative marker with which to sign. A magnetic template on the beam constrained the area in which we could write. I had hoped to write the statement of the cobblestone campaign I started:

Gardeners for Recovery recognize the importance of gardens and gardening for individual, community, and global healing and recovery.

There wasn’t enough room for that, so I simply signed it with my name and that of the campaign.

At that point, I had waited so long, I didn’t know what to do next. I was actually shaking a little, so I sat down on a park bench just outside the signing area. I half-collapsed when I sat down. Each beam weighs 4 tons. I was feeling the symbolic weight of what we were all doing there this morning, why each of us felt, in our own way, we wanted to do this.

When I left the beam-signing area, I walked over to The Sphere. Battered and bent, it was relocated from the plaza of the World Trade Center to Battery Park. It will eventually be returned to the site when construction is completed.

The Sphere, Battery Park, September 2003

The radio guys had asked me if signing the beam would make a difference. I don’t really believe it does, certainly not one signature. I told them, “it’s a gesture,” an expression of the hope for recovery. Maybe the collective weight of all those signatures can have an impact, can make a difference on someone. Maybe we can reflect on our own collective responsibilities as a people, as a nation.

The Sphere, yesterday

Flags, flags, flags … flags waving everywhere. I understand the impulse, yet I don’t feel it as a defiant gesture. It feels like a concession to me. That we have no greater symbol than our nation’s flag makes me sad. What evil has been committed in the name of that flag? How is it any different from the evil committed against us seven years ago?

Anti-war graffiti on the base of a statue of George Washington in Union Square Park, September 24, 2001

It has taken far too long to reclaim that void. It will be several more years, and billions of dollars, before we can really reclaim it. I am comforted that the vision for the memorial is essentially a garden: a plaza filled with oak trees, waterfalls plunging into the earth where the towers stood, stairs to lead us down into the earth, where we can be surrounded by emptiness and the white noise of the leaves of the trees and the rushing waters, where we can be alone together, and reflect.

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Gardeners for Recovery
9/11

Links

National September 11 Memorial
The Sphere

15 Years Ago Today …

Posted on 2008-02-26 by admin

… the World Trade Center was bombed.

At 12:18 p.m., terrorists detonated 1,500 pounds of explosives in a rental van in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, blasting a crater five stories deep and half a football field wide. While the terrorists fled the area after lighting the bomb’s fuse, they left behind six victims, including a pregnant woman, and one thousand injured people.

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center will also memorialize those killed in the first attack in 1993. I invite you to join me in supporting the memorial through the the Gardeners for Recovery cobblestone campaign I started:

Gardeners for Recovery recognize the importance of gardens and gardening for individual, community, and global healing and recovery.

Check out the Gardeners for Recovery widget near the top of the sidebar on this blog. There you can get more information, track our progress, or contribute. We’ve already raised $300. I will match the first $500 contributed toward the $1,000 goal: every dollar you contribute is worth two.

Announcing the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign, September 2007
on 9/11
on Ground Zero
on Recovery

Links

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center

Thanks to the Contributors to Gardeners for Recovery

Posted on 2007-11-21 by admin

Thank you to the anonymous contributor or contributors who donated $100 to the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone campaign over the weekend. Your contributions increased the fund from $100 to $200. I matched your $100 yesterday. The total now stands at $300. Just $200 more – your $100 plus my matching – will bring us to the minimum of $500 needed to have our own paver in the National September 11 Memorial Plaza:

An eight-acre landscaped Memorial Plaza filled with more than 300 oak trees will create a contemplative space separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city. The design is unique in its use of ecological considerations which exceed sustainability standards.

Gardeners for Recovery is on its way!

Posted on 2007-11-13 by admin

[Update 2007.11.20: Added clarification that cobblestones will not be marked.]

Cobblestones, Van Dyke Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn

The Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign has received its first contribution. The fund now stands at $100, one-fifth of the minimum amount needed for a cobblestone, and one-tenth of the way toward the goal of $1,000. See the thermometer at the top of the sidebar.

Gardeners for Recovery is a Cobblestone Campaign for the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. Gardeners for Recovery recognize the importance of gardens and gardening for individual, community, and global healing and recovery.

The contribution was in the amount of $50. I matched it, to bring us to $100. I will match the first $500 contributed, to bring us to the goal of $1,000.

Out of respect for the victims of September 11, cobblestones will not be inscribed with donor names or any other markings. When the Memorial is completed, we will be able to identify the exact location of our cobblestone by using a kiosk on the Memorial Plaza.

If you would like to make a contribution, please visit the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign home page, then click the DONATE NOW button. This lets you contribute online, anonymously and securely, using a major credit card. If the National Tour visits your city or town, you can also contribute there; just let them know you’re contributing to the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign, so I can match it.

Announcing the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign, September 28
Gardeners for Recovery, September 11

Links

Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign home page
National Tour Cities and Dates
National September 11 Memorial Museum

Announcing the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign

Posted on 2007-09-28 by admin

Two weeks ago, I wrote at the end of Gardeners for Recovery:

I’ve submitted a proposal to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum to sponsor a paver for the memorial plaza through a campaign for contributions.

The online proposal form asked for information about the “group”. Since I’m not a group, here’s how I responded:

Please give us some information about you, your group, or organization which you would like to fundraise on behalf of.
Response: Gardeners for Recovery recognize the importance of gardens and gardening for individual, community, and global healing and recovery.

They approved my proposal. I invite you to join me in supporting the memorial. I will match the first $500 contributed toward the $1,000 goal. So, every dollar you contribute is worth two. You can visit the Gardeners for Recovery Page on their Web site for more information, or to contribute. There’s also a link now in the sidebar of this blog.

The National Tour

In addition to viewing photographs, artifacts, and a film featuring firsthand accounts of 9/11 and the aftermath, individuals and communities across the country will have a chance to contribute directly to this historic effort by signing a steel beam that will be used in the construction of the National September 11 Memorial.

The Memorial and Museum recently added ten more stops to the national tour: St. Louis, MO; Little Rock, AR; Memphis, TN; Oklahoma City, OK; Ft. Worth, TX; Shreveport, LA; Jackson, MS; Birmingham, AL; Atlanta, GA; and Tampa, FL. By the end of the year, they will have visited 25 cities in 25 states. They have requests for 8 more cities; on their Web site you can enter your zip code to request a stop in your area.

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on 9/11
on Ground Zero
on Recovery

Links

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center

Flatbush Gardener

Urban Habitat Gardening with Native Plants

Tag Archives: 9/11

Grief and Gardening: Index

Biodiversity Loss

Climate Change

COVID-19

9/11

AIDS

Miscellaneous

Grief & Gardening: 20 Years

Related Content

Links

Grief and Gardening: Remains of the Day

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Links

Grief & Gardening: Nine Years

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Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign

My photos

Links

Trinity Root

Growing 387 trees for the National 9/11 Memorial

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Links

Seven years

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Links

15 Years Ago Today …

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Links

Thanks to the Contributors to Gardeners for Recovery

Gardeners for Recovery is on its way!

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Links

Announcing the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign

The National Tour

Related Posts

Links