Corrected: Eli of Brooklyn Junction arrived after I left. Sorry we didn’t get to meet this time, neighbor!
Some of the Bay Ridge Blogade at Omonia Cafe. Left to right: Rob Lenihan (Luna Park Gazette), Claude Scales (Self-Absorbed Boomer), David Sheffler (Swell Designs), and Tony/Brooklyn Beat (Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn) This past Sunday I attended the fourth Brooklyn Blogade at the Omonia Cafe in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Omonia Cafe, 7612 3rd Avenue, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
I had to leave early to get back to my nabe to attend the inaugural concert of the Victorian Place Cultural Center later that afternoon. I was sorry I had to cut out. The conversation was lively. When I left, we were talking about – gasp – blogging, not real estate. You never know what’s going to happen at a Blogade.
I rarely do portrait photography. Lesson learned from this attempt: Take photographs of people while they’re listening, as in the photo at the top of this post. It’s difficult to get good still shots of animated speakers. All you get are grimaces, psychotic, deer-in-the-headlights, open-eyed stares, and other images that don’t capture the spirit of the speakers. These are the best I got of those whom I met there on Sunday.
I’m afraid I did the worst job with David Sheffler of Swell Designs. This was the best of about a dozen shots I got of him. Sorry, David!
Because I left early, I also didn’t get to partake of the tempting delicacies offered up in Omonia’s huge, wrap-around horseshoe of cakes, pastries, cookies, and everything.
Update 2007.10.24: NASA continues to publish updated satellite imagery of the fires and the natural phenomena driving them. Check the sidebar of their page for “Other Images for this Event”.
By Wednesday morning, 600,000 people had been displaced by the fires. By the afternoon, CNN upped the estimate to over 900,000.
Image acquired 2007.10.22 13:55 PDT Watching the news this morning before going to work, I was shocked to hear that a quarter of a million people – 250,000 – have been displaced by the fires in California. This satellite image, taken less than 24 hours ago, provides some sense of the scale of what’s going on there.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, wildfires ignited in the paper-dry, drought-stricken vegetation of Southern California over the weekend of October 20, 2007, and exploded into massive infernos that forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their communities. Driven by Santa Ana winds, fires grew thousands of acres in just one to two days. The fires sped down from the mountains into the outskirts of coastal cities, including San Diego. Dozens of homes have burned to the ground, and at least one person has died, according to local news reports. Several of the fires were burning completely out of control as of October 22. … The drought in the Southwest throughout summer 2007 has been “extreme” according to the categories used by the U.S. Drought Monitor. Dry vegetation and Santa Ana winds, which can reach hurricane force as they race downslope from the deserts of the Great Basin and through narrow mountain passes, are often a devastating combination in Southern California. According to the Incident Management Situation Report [PDF] from the National Interagency Fire Center for October 22, Santa Ana winds were expected to continue through Wednesday.
The fourth Brooklyn Blogade, a more-or-less-monthly roving meetup of Brooklyn bloggers, neighborhood residents, and others interested in community-building, will be this Sunday, October 14. This month, Rob Lenihan of Luna Park Gazette is hosting in Bay Ridge at Omonia Cafe, 7612 Third Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. His post has more details, including how to RSVP.
Photos of the exterior, grounds, and gardens of the historic Woodfield Inn [defunct] in Flat Rock, North Carolina. These photos are from October of last year and this past Saturday, when we threw a party for my parents’s 50th Anniversary.
I could use some help from my gardening buddies in identifying the foliage, berries and plants. I’m not so good on woody plant identification.
More fall color from Prospect Park South, this time from Buckingham Road. The planted median which runs down the middle of both this streets and Albemarle Road comprise part of Flatbush Malls, which is managed by the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation. Each photo in this post links to its photo page in Flickr, where you can view it at several different resolutions.
The photos are organized so you can take your own walking tour. In the Flickr set, the photos are ordered by descending street address; the street addresses increase going south from Church Avenue to Albemarle Road. All the photos are also geotagged on Flickr, so you can see where each photo was taken. Look for the “map” link on the individual photo pages.
Possibly the most photogenic block in all of Brooklyn. I took most of these photos this season, in September, October and this month. The title of this posting links to the Flickr set of these photos: Albemarle Road, Prospect Park South. Each photo in this post links to its photo page in Flickr, where you can view it at several different resolutions.
The photos are organized so you can take your own walking tour. In the Flickr set, the photos are ordered by street address; the street addresses increase going east from Coney Island Avenue. All the photos are also geotagged on Flickr, so you can see where each photo was taken. Look for the “map” link on the individual photo pages.
Still cleaning up my blogger clutter. Some recent news and other items about the area where we live.
November 2: FEMA preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) are available for Brooklyn and the other boroughs from the NYC Department of Buildings Web site.
[2006.11.01 18:00 EST: Linked to The Farm.] [2006.11.01 16:00 EST: Described t-shirt text.] [2006.10.31 23:00 EST: Updated with photos from the rest of the evening. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!]
It was a great day. I walked to the subway through the cemetery at Trinity Church. There was a magnificent sunset. Over 330 trick-or-treaters. All candy gone. We went out to dinner at The Farm at on Adderley on Cortelyou Road, where most of the staff and many guests, including me, were in costume.
Over 33 pounds and 1,695 pieces of candy: $50 (estimated)
Wigs, makeup, ghoul teeth: $60 (approximate)
Seeing small children freeze in shock and hearing their shrieks of gleeful terror as they look up at your hideous face:
PRICELESS The t-shirt has a drawing of a leering devil on it. The text reads: God’s busy. Can I help you?
[Updated 2007.02.23: Added link to the issue of Plants & Gardens News (PDF, requires membership login) which mentioned Shiota’s death in the U.S. internment camps.]
A video sparked a connection for me among three seemingly unrelated topics: a Japanese Garden built over 90 years ago, World War II, and the Department of Homeland Security.
This is a view from the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I took this photo last year, November 5, 2005. BBG has this to say about this garden on their Web site:
It is considered to be the masterpiece of its creator, Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881-1943). Shiota was born in a small village about 40 miles from Tokyo, and in his youth spent years traversing Japan on foot to explore the natural landscape. In 1907 he came to America, driven by an ambition to create, in his words, “a garden more beautiful than all others in the world.” – Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Note the year of Shiota’s death, 1943. I learned recently, from a review of the book Defiant Gardens in the Fall 2006/Winter 2007 issue of BBG’s Plants & Gardens News (PDF, requires membership login), that Shiota died in a United States internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
It has happened here before. It can happen again. And our government has plans to do so.
The Pearl Harbor attack intensified hostility towards Japanese Americans. As wartime hysteria mounted, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 causing over 120,000 West Coast persons of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) to leave their homes, jobs, and lives behind to move to one of ten Relocation Camps.
The largest, so far. I am painfully aware of the parallels between Pearl Harbor and September 11. As bad as the hysteria has been, it can get worse.
On January 24 of this year, the Department of Homeland Security awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) a $385M contract [my emphasis added]:
The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.
The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. – Halliburton Press Release: KBR AWARDED U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY CONTINGENCY SUPPORT PROJECT FOR EMERGENCY SUPPORT SERVICES
This has been widely reported in the press, including the New York Times. Peter Dale Scott wrote an extensive analysis for Pacific News Service.
I can add little, except to relate these current historical events to the atrocity committed against a single person over 60 years ago, and share my feelings about all of this. Takeo Shiota was responsible for one of the most beautiful gardens in the world, one which I and millions of others have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy. I will never again be able to visit that garden without wondering about him and his life, and thinking of how my government killed him. It is the least I can do.
Video: Crosby & Nash, “Immigration Man”
I haven’t thought of this song in many years, decades maybe. It was always one of my favorites, hauntingly beautiful vocals and chord progressions.
I don’t know who’s responsible for assembling the images into the video, but it’s an effective piece of work. This is what reminded me of the Halliburton contract, and led me to post this.
Additional Links:
Kenneth Helphand, author of “Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime”
