Grief and Gardening: A Feast of Losses

Posted on 2020-04-07 by admin

It’s been barely a month since the first handful of COVID-19/SARS-CoV2 cases were reported in New York State. On March 4, there were 6 confirmed cases.

As I write this:

There are nearly 5,000 dead in New York.
Nearly 3,500 have died in New York City alone. If NYC was a country, it would be 6th in the world in deaths.

It’s not over. We face the worst in the days ahead. But an end – for New York, at least – is in sight.

It is a strange hybrid collective trauma we are working our way through. So much has changed so quickly. It’s not quite four weeks since I started working from home. My husband started working from home three weeks ago. A week after that, all NYC restaurants and bars were forced to stop admitting guests. On the equinox, I first wrote about living through an epidemic for the second time in my life.

We’ve had the advantage of being able to make (some) preparations for it. Yet we have months of loss and grieving to come.

There is no clear roadmap for how we should react, respond, and recover. Those of us who have survived past epidemics can draw on our experiences, but none of us have ever lived through anything quite like this.

Here’s an excerpt from “The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), from which I borrowed for the title of this blog post:

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Links

https://covidtracking.com/data/state/new-york#historical
https://projects.thecity.nyc/2020_03_covid-19-tracker/

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Grief and Gardening: A Dissetling Spring

Posted on 2020-03-20 by admin

“The Return of Persephone“, Frederic Leighton, 1896 (four years before his death)

The March Equinox – Spring or Vernal, in the Northern Hemisphere – occurs at 11:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time this evening. It’s the earliest it’s occurred in over a century. It seems fitting, given the warm, nearly snowless winter, and the quickened pace of everything else.

We are in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The disease is COVID: Corona Virus Disease. The virus that causes it is known as SARS-CoV2. At this time, New York state has 1/3 to 1/2 of all cases in the United States. That ratio has been increasing quickly over the past couple of days; it was 1/4 just a few days ago. As one would expect, New York City alone has most of those; 1/4 of all confirmed cases in the U.S. are in NYC at this moment.

Once again in my life, I am in the epicenter of an epidemic.

The changes to our daily routines have been rapid.

I have been working from home for just over a week, enforced by my employer. At first it was just to the end of this week. Now it’s to the end of the month. I’m expecting it to last at least into the fall: at least 6 months.
I have been going down to New Jersey every other week to help my sister take care of our elderly disabled mother. I had to call and cancel that indefinitely. Everyone in NYC must assume they have been exposed, if not infected. Any visit from me would be a risk to her life.
My husband and I enjoyed brunch just last Saturday at our favorite place. All restaurants and bars are now closed.
Theaters, museums, zoos, all closed.

Because of rapid changes such as these, it doesn’t feel early in all of this, but it is. The social marketing of social distancing – reducing contact, even indirectly, with others – has been somewhat effective. The streets are quiet. Mass transit ridership is down 40-90%.

Somewhat effective, but not enough. We are still in the exponential expansion of the disease. The number of cases is nearly doubling every two days. Humans’ brains don’t work well with exponentials. If there are 2,500 confirmed cases in NYC today, by this time next week, we should expect over 20,000; in 2 weeks, 170,000. The lack of testing compounds this. We are running blind, because we cannot stop. We must balance ignorance and risk.

This is unique in my lifetime. Yet there are touchpoints with other disasters and atrocities we’ve survived: 9/11, Sandy, AIDS. As bad as all those were, the worst of it was caused by people. I fear – I expect – the same to happen here. Only now, it’s a disease affecting everyone, not a dispensible, disposable community. And it’s everywhere, not just NYC, not just this country.

We are all about to undergo endurance trauma. This is not a singular event. It’s a marathon. It’s going to last through the summer, into the fall. Depending on how effective or ineffective we are at managing ourselves, this could extend into next summer.

Those who profit from fear want to divide us. What I am also seeing is mutual support, resiliency in community. After 9/11, people in NYC were kind to each other. That was when I changed my standard greeting of separation or departure, whether from a loved one or a bus driver, to “take care”. It remains always appropriate, and especially apt during times such as these.

Birds sing outside my porch. The succession of blooming trees has already begun. Life around us goes on without us. It is the only glimmer I can perceive this Spring of Persephone’s promise.

Equinox

https://journeynorth.org/sunlight-seasons/news/spring-2020/03192020-tonight-spring-equinox

COVID-19

Social Distancing
https://medium.com/@ariadnelabs/social-distancing-this-is-not-a-snow-day-ac21d7fa78b4
https://socialdistancegame.com/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

New York City
https://projects.thecity.nyc/2020_03_covid-19-tracker/

New York State
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/county-county-breakdown-positive-cases

United States
A live, continually updated version of the map above.
http://www.61n150w.com/COVID19Map.png

The data for the map comes from here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

For “reasons”, there’s little trustworthy federal information available. The CDC is still the official source of stats.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

Global
Global, and you can select a country, and drill-down to more local figures, e.g.: states for the U.S.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

This site has visualizations world-wide and by country, and you can download the data for your own analysis:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Also allows you to drill down to country level.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Grief and Gardening: Ashes (Remembrance Day for Lost Species)

Posted on 2019-12-03 by admin

My alarm wakes me Saturday morning. I go downstairs to the kitchen, nuke myself a cup of coffee, and get a fresh batch going. I didn’t sleep well. Today is the Remembrance Day for Lost Species.

I start prepping my mother’s breakfast. I put some orange juice in her small cup, and add some thickener, probiotic, and her liquid medications. I start working on crushing her morning pills. Each of the half dozen takes a different approach. Some crush easily. Others need to be split first.

Their remains collect in the well of the crusher. The easier ones are reduced to dust. The harder ones leave grit, and small, sharp shards.

A black cat with one spot on her chest, like a priest’s collar, finds me in my garden. She adopts me immediately. I name her “Spot”. She dies in my arms as we try to find the veterinarian emergency room in a snowstorm.

We bring her home in a small tin. Inside the tin is a bag. We transfer it to a reliquary box, an artwork of hammered copper, beads, and glass.

She carries me through 15 years of recovery, reconnecting, and relationship. She comforts the man whom I would later marry through his mother’s dying, and death.

The bag doesn’t quite fit the box. I want to rearrange it. It’s my first time handling cremated remains. I open the bag. Its contents are not what I expect. They are not ash. They are crumbs, and grit, and shards of bone, chalky and white. It’s all that’s left of her.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. My partners, my lovers, my friends, my neighbors. I think of the photo one friend took of another, spreading his dead lover’s ashes from a plastic baggie – before he died – on their property in the Catskills. The images of ashes thrown over the White House fence. A sea of quilts, holding the names of my partners, my lovers, my friends, my neighbors, so scattered across the acres of battlefield, it takes hours to visit them all.

We are traveling upstate, our first real vacation together. Everywhere we go the mood is quiet, subdued. Whereever we go, people ask where we’re visiting from. When we tell them, their eyes well up.

I walk to and from work. The streets and gutters are filled with ash. It takes months for the rains to wash it all away.

We step out of the shop. I ask him to wait. I walk back inside. I return to where I saw the box. Its title is “Our Lady of Abundance”. I buy it for the meaning the word has for him. It goes to his apartment, then our apartment, then our home. Waiting.

I am standing in a mountain river, cold over my feet and legs. I am here for my father. I am here with my father. I take the small, ornate bronze container out of my pocket. I open it, and begin releasing its contents to the wind and water. It’s not what you expect: They are not ash. They are crumbs, grit, shards of bone. Tomorrow is the anniversary of his death. It’s all that’s left of him. I am here for my father.

It is Lost Species Day. We are burning the remains of countless organisms. Even long dead, we could not let them be. We are burning the world.

In the Catskills we watched the towers fall, again, and again, a hundred miles away. Where I bought a box of hammered copper, beads, and glass to give to a man to mark a relationship that arose out of deeply shared loss, like a phoenix, from ashes.

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 and Baking: Rolled Holiday Butter Cookies

Posted on 2018-12-02 by admin

Today is World AIDS Day. By coincidence, the 41st president also just died, reminding me – and the cohort of survivors from his dark reign – how many more of us died on his watch from inaction, and more active hatred.

It’s also my dad’s mortiversary, the 10th anniversary of his death.

As I did ten years ago, I turned to baking. In anticipation of our upcoming tree-trimming party, and a hoped-for cookie-decorating side activity, I chose a rolling cookie recipe from King Arthur Flour. Since I’m unfamiliar with this type of cookie, I stayed as close as I could to the original recipe.

I consider these a qualified success. There are some improvements I can make, mostly about technique. I’m happy with the basic recipe.

Ingredients

Confectioners’ sugar, 1-1/4 cups / 5-1/2 ounces (Their recipe gives 5 oz as the weight equivalent, but this is what my scale came up with)
Unsalted (“sweet”) butter, 18 tablespoons = 1 cup + 2 tablespoons, room temperature (I neglected to let mine come to room temperature, but with an electric mixer, it whipped up just fine, anyway)
Yolk of 1 large egg (reserve the white to brush the cookies and add decorative sugar before baking)
Salt, 1/2 teaspoon (I usually omit salt from my baking, but this was my first time with this recipe. The “Tips” section of their recipe suggests using 1 teaspoon when using unsalted butter. It wasn’t necessary.)
Flavoring:

Vanilla extract, 2-1/2 teaspoons
Lemon oil, 1/4 teaspoon
(I started with 2 teaspoons of vanilla. a taste test indicated it needed more assertive flavor, and a little something more than vanilla.)
(The original recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon of Fiori di Sicilia. I’ve never used that; I’ve only ever seen it in their recipes.)

White whole wheat flour, 2-3/4 cups / 11-1/2 ounces (The original recipe calls for unbleached all-purpose flour)

Directions

Whip the butter until it’s smooth and starts peaking. (If your butter is still cold, as mine was, slice it into small ~1/2T pats first.)
Gradually stir in the confectioner’s sugar. Once combined, whip some more at high speed. (If you add all the sugar at once, you’ll get a cloud of sugar. I used a pouring shield to add it while the mixer was on slow speed and keep dust down.)
Separate one large egg. Add only the egg yolk to the batter. Beat it in until the batter is smooth. Keep the white refrigerated for the cookie-making.
Mix in your flavorings of choice.
Add the flour, mixing at slow-medium speeds until just smooth. If the dough is sticky to the touch, add a small amount of flour to adjust the texture. (Their recipe notes: “The mixture will seem dry at first, but will suddenly come together. If it doesn’t, dribble in a tablespoon of water.” This wasn’t a problem for my first time.)
Remove the dough from the bowl. Wrap and chill the dough for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Preparation and Baking

Our kitchen is tiny, with no counter space. (Seriously: attentive readers may notice that the “counters” in the photos are the side-drain of our sink and the space between the burners on our stove.) Since I was doing this as a tech rehearsal for a party activity, I used our dining room table as the surface for setup and rolling. I rolled the dough out directly onto parchment paper for cutting and pre-decorating, then lifted the parchment directly onto the baking sheet.

“When you’re ready to bake, remove the dough from the refrigerator, and let it soften for about 20 to 30 minutes, until it feels soft enough to roll. It should still feel cold, but shouldn’t feel rock-hard.”
“Sprinkle your rolling surface with flour, and flour your rolling pin. Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll it 1/8″ to 3/16″ thick.”

Notes: I found rolling the dough evenly to be difficult. This resulted in uneven baking, both among the cookies, and even across the surface of larger cookies.

The thicker cookies baked more evenly, and had a nicer “tooth” to them. The thinner cookies ended up more like crackers. I want to invest in some rolling pin rings to eliminate this variation, and get more professional looking cookies. With rolling pin rings, I can do some more precise experimentation with different thicknesses. I think 1/4″ cookies will end up being my favorite.
Use a cookie cutter to cut shapes. Collect the trimmed dough for re-rolling. They won’t spread much in the oven, but leave 1/2″ between them so they don’t butt up against, or into, each other. (Most of the cookies I cut out in these photos were too close together. Lesson learned!
Optional Pre-bake Decoration: Mix 1 teaspoon of water into the egg white you reserved earlier. Brush cookies lightly with with the white-water mixture. Cover the cookies with coarse or colored sugars, edible glitter, etc. (I tried some peppermint crumble, but it wasn’t designed for baking; it all melted.)
Bake the cookies in a preheated 350°F oven for 12 to 14 minutes, until they’re set and barely browned around the edges.
Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool right on the pan. If you’ve used parchment, you can lift cookies and parchment off the pan, so you can continue to use the pan as the cookies cool.
Repeat with the remaining piece of dough, rolling, cutting, and baking cookies.

Links

Original recipe: King Arthur Flour

Extinct Plants of northern North America 2018

Posted on 2018-11-30 by admin

I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post.

If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree

Extinct versus Extirpated

I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City.

“Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation.
“Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species.

When a species is known only from one original or remaining population, as those listed above were, loss of that population means extinction for the species. In this case, extirpation and extinction are the same thing.

Another category is “extinct in the wild,” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

Links

Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas
IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild
The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions
Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)

Remembering Sandy, Five Years Later

Posted on 2017-10-28 by admin

Rockaway Beach Boulevard, between Beach 113th & 114th Streets, Rockaway Park, Queens, November 4, 2012

The storm surge flooded this block to at least five feet. Fire broke out and was quickly spread by 80-mph winds. These buildings burned down to the water line.

This was the site of a heroic rescue by FDNY Swift Water Team 6 and other firefighters attached to this unit for rescues during the storm. Firefighters Edward A. Morrison and Thomas J. Fee received awards for their actions during these rescues.
www.fireengineering.com/articles/print/volume-166/issue-5…
www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/pdf/publications/medal_day/2013/Med…

Investigators later determined this fire was caused by downed electrical wires falling onto 113-18 Rockaway Beach Boulevard. 16 homes were destroyed by the fire.
www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sea-water-surge-behind-serio…

There was worse destruction than this on Beach 130th Street, between Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach Channel Road. That fire started at 239 Beach 129 St. and destroyed 31 buildings.

Links

Remembering Sandy 5 Years Later, National Weather Service
Saved by Sand Dunes, Cool green Science blog, Nature
Five years later, AN looks at the impact of Hurricane Sandy on New York’s built environment, Audrey Wachs, The Architects Newspaper, 2017-10-27

Extinct Plants of northern North America 2015

Posted on 2015-11-29 by admin

I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post.

If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree

Extinct versus Extirpated

I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City.

“Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation.
“Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species.

Another category is “extinct in the wild,” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

Links

Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas
IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild
The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions
Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)

Ripley, 2000-2015

Posted on 2015-05-21 by admin

Our Ripley died with us around 1:30 this morning.

It’s still the middle of the night. We had an 8am appointment with the vet for an ultrasound exam to find out what was going on. Instead, I’ll be taking his body in for cremation.

I need to try to get at least a few more hours sleep. I needed to write something first.

We adopted him when he was almost 8 years old.

He had a good seven years with us – almost half his life. He had lots of love.

He loved to get brushed. He had a porch to watch the birds, and more love.

So much love.

We adopted his baby sister, Annie, to help keep him company, because two grown men weren’t enough for him.

He’s been in decline for a few months. This is the last photograph I took of him. Three weeks ago, when the weather had warmed up, I took him outside into the front yard. He wanted to wander around and I had to keep herding him back. It was the most active he’d been in weeks. Eventually, he let me brush him – which used to be his favorite activity – and he settled down into the grass.

I don’t want to dwell on the details of his passing. I might have more I want to say later. I’m just grateful we were both with him. With us there to give him what comfort we could, he passed quietly at the end.

Extinct Plants of northern North America

Posted on 2014-11-30 by admin

Updated 2014-12-22: Added years of extinction, where known. Started section for Extinct in the Wild (IUCN Red List code EW).

I’m limiting this list for two reasons:

Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post.

If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

Extinct in the wild

Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree

Extinct versus Extirpated

I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City. “Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation. “Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species. When a species is known only from one original or remaining population, as those listed above were, loss of that population means extinction for the species. In this case, extirpation and extinction are the same thing. Another category might be “extinct in the wild” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

Links

Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild, The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)

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