Divinipotent Daily

The leaves of 2015

2015-11-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

"I'm so glad that I live in a world with Octobers."
– L. M. Montgomery, "Anne of Green Gables"

This is my annual tribute to the beautiful leaves of autumn. 2015 was a mixed year, with some brilliantly colored leaves, and others that never achieved the color I anticipate.

Let's start with the best: the leaves of the Maple Leaf Vine.

This is a plant I've come to know and love in the years since I first noticed it growing on a fence; the spot once contained a railroad bridge, but the ground has been filled in now. This is the best thing about the change.

The leaf at left is wine-dark, like Homer's sea. Most leaves are more colorful, like the ones below.

But to really appreciate the Maple Leaf Vine, you need to see it in the sun, as in this photo.

There were of course other leaves. Some beautiful maple leaves from trees, posted here.

The basswoods, which are normally my favorites, were a bit off this year. They never reached their normal gorgeousness.

This is what they look like in a good year.

If you'd like to read some of my earlier blogs, here they are:

The leaves of 2011

Autumn Almanac (2012)

The leaves of 2013

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

– Albert Camus

The autumn leaves of 2014

Wishing and Hoping

2015-08-29T08:11:00.001-04:00

Yesterday a Facebook friend posted this video, which is a compilation of the events that happened on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington for Peace and Freedom.

It reminded me of the hope we all had back then. We thought we could change the world. And for a while, it seemed like we could. Less than a year later, on July 2, 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. The following year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was ratified.

But now many of those achievements are under fire. Billionaires who do not believe in democracy are trying to turn this country into a plutocracy — a government run by and for the richest few.

We've also seen the Supreme Court invalidate key parts of the Voting Rights Act.

I can't recall a time when racism was more proudly proclaimed. People parading around with Confederate flags, white supremacists running for public office. It's all so disheartening.

I miss the unbridled hope I had in the 1960s.

"Hold fast to dreams,
for if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly."
– Langston Hughes

Where I've been

2015-08-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

It's been a long, long time since I last wrote a post. Where have I been? Working, mostly. My job has been very demanding. All jobs are these days.

But I've also been indulging my obsessions — taking photos of the sky a lot is one of them. I'm sharing a few of them here. And when I look up at the sky, I usually have this song playing in my head.

Did I mention that I'm also obsessed with the New York City skyline? I am. It's different every day, depending on the light. In the photo below, I enhanced the color a bit to get it closer to the actual intensity of that sunset.

I often walk across the Pulaski Bridge to Brooklyn, and I frequently stop to take a photo there. This is an example.

My other obsession is the East River. Gantry Plaza State Park is a great place to see it from. I took the two photos below on Manhattanhenge, July 12, 2015. The first shows the flotilla of kayaks that awaited the event. The second is the look of the sunset on a magical night.

I don't know when I'll be back with a new post, but I hope 18 months won't have passed. No promises.

The autumn leaves of 2014

2014-11-15T20:01:00.000-05:00

"That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closests, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. Tht country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Where people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain."
~ Ray Bradbury

Autumn came late to New York City this year, and perhaps because of the mild summer, it came strange. Trees that are normally mousy, like the oaks that generally turn brown, were on fire. The basswoods, which are usually my favorites, where monochromatic. So few leaves were on the ground that I asked my husband to come with me to grab a few from the trees.

Basswood leaves most years.


Basswood leaves this year.

"At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Fortunately, the maples and oaks took charge.

This is a maple.


This year's oak leaves.

We also had some leaves that were solid yellow and others that were vivid green.


A mixed bag of colors.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, autumn seems more normal. My social media friend Tiina Komulainen is a talented photographer. This is a photo she took of leaves in water on the far side of the Canadian border.

Photo by Tiina Komulainen.

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."
~ John Donne

Belatedly posting links to my earlier autumn leaf blogs:

Music for melancholy people

2014-10-11T09:19:00.000-04:00

to a young child

"Starry Night over the Rhone" by Vincent Van Gogh

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

"Spring and Fall"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I don't know if this extends beyond Margaret and me, but autumn — my favorite season — sometimes puts me in a melancholy mood. I know the mood has arrived by the songs that start running through my head.

Paul Simon's 1973 song "American Tune" came to mind this morning. It takes me back to the disillusionment of the early 1970s. I remember listing to it with my mother. She was recently out of a terrible second marriage and I was fresh out of Sixties dreams and working as a writer. This was the era of Watergate, when revelations about the misdeeds of President Nixon filled the headlines. Somehow, probably because it's so lovely, it's long been one of my favorite songs.

Another song that reminds me of autumn is Joni Mitchell's "Urge for Going." Tom Rush's version is the one I heard first, and it's still my favorite.

And then there is the classic "Autumn Leaves." Many great singers have sung it, but for the past few years my favorite version has been the one recorded by the late Eva Cassidy.

This last song, "Shenandoah," came out of a distant memory. I've never been to the Shenandoah Valley, so I don't have any direct connection with it. But somehow, the ache for the past is there just like Margaret's mourning.

"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare agains the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Late addition for returning readers

My friend Susan Champlin, author of the excellent blog What Would Katherine Hepburn Do? (WWKHD), told me about Bruce Springsteen's version of "Shenandoah." I've fallen in love with it. It is the "Grapes of Wrath" rendition. Give it a listen.

Remembering Patty

2014-05-25T10:09:00.000-04:00

"Hiya sweetheart!"
~ Patricia Marie Hush

Patty (at left) with sisters Barbara and Joan.

My beloved oldest sister Patty was born on this day in 1931. Her bright light left us on November 23, 2013. My other sisters, along with my nieces and nephews and friends who knew her, put our heads together to share memories of Patty — photos of her, the music she loved, the things she used to say.

My niece Heather summed up the Patty effect well: "She was such a blessing to us all. Anyone who spent any amount of time with her left more compassionate and light-hearted. She was one of the best gifts/life lessons we could have received as children."

Patty was intellectually disabled — mentally retarded, as we used to say before "retarded" became a shaming word. She never learned to read or write. But she was brilliant about people. Her social skills were better than mine will ever be. She was also the family's memory keeper. She forgot nothing, but forgave a lot. She went through some extremely hard times in her life, but her joyous spirit bounced back and became a source of buoyancy to us all.

Let's start with a couple of the songs she loved. "Down by the Old Mill Stream" is a song my dad was known to sing and pantomime to at the dinner table. Patty always chimed in.

This was another favorite — Tex Beneke's version of "Five Minutes More."

My niece Hilary remembered how much Patty adored babies — and here's photographic proof. She would often ask my mom when she would get married and have a baby. The knowledge that it wasn't likely to happen broke her heart.

Another niece, Deirdre, was the first to point out "Hiya sweetheart!" — Patty's oh-so cheerful greeting. It never failed to put a smile on the face of whoever entered the room.

Hilary also remembered the way Patty would inevitably shout out "Happy Christmas!" during a quiet moment at Christmas Mass. She adored Christmases and birthdays. I vividly remember her during my first Christmases on the planet; Patty would sit in a chair and make a fuss over every gift she received.

Even this shower cap — a stocking gift. On Patty's lap you can see one of the Christmas stockings that my Aunt Ella made for all of us.

Whatever Patty said, she meant it. My friend Dawn remembers a night when she slept over at my family's house and woke to find Patty touching her long blond hair saying "So beautiful." She said those words, coming from Patty, meant more to her than all the praise guys gave her (she was gorgeous) because she knew it was sincere.

A few more photos:

Patty with my mom and our dog Gay at our house on Dune Road.


Patty on Easter with our cousin Tommy and sisters Terry, Barbara and me.

Patty flanked by sisters Betsy and Terry in 2009.

Finally, two of my all-time favorite photos, which capture one of the things I miss most: Patty's big, bright smile.

Happy birthday to Billy Collins

2014-03-22T10:19:00.000-04:00

"We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."
~ Stephen Dunn

Billy Collins has become one of my favorite poets ever since I read his poem "The Death of the Hat," which reminded me of my dad in all the good ways.

THE DEATH OF THE HAT
by Billy Collins

Once every man wore a hat.

In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities
are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled
with thousands of strawhats,
brims and bands,
rows of men smoking
and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs
who branded your initials in gold
on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.
Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.
Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat
and a hatcheck girl to mind it
while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.
In your office stood a hat rack.

The day the war was declared
everyone in the street was wearing a hat
and they were wearing hats
when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day
and returned home
carrying the evening paper,
the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded
into the winter streets,
stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house
wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
in their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,
wears a hat of earth,
and on top of that,

A lighter one of cloud and sky--a hat of wind.

I've seen him read a few times now, and each time I've liked him more. But today I came across this video and I wanted to share it with you. He collaborated with Sundance a couple of years ago to create animations of several poems. They're surprisingly wonderful.

But stick around for the final poem, "To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl," which will bring a smile to the face of anyone who's ever had a teenager in the house.

Learn more about Billy Collins and read his poems here:

Academy of American Poets
The Poetry Foundation
You can also see him read "To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl" on the Colbert Report.

2014 at Last

2013-12-31T18:49:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you enjoy it, wherever you choose to spend it.

My gifts to you this evening are a poem by W. S. Merwin and some vintage cards from the New York Public Library's digital archive.

To the New Year

By W. S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

Ring the Bells

2013-12-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

“Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”
― Charles M. Schulz

On Christmas Eve I spent some time browsing through the New York Public Library's extensive digital archive of vintage holiday cards. Although I'm not a believer, I have many great memories of childhood Christmases. What I learned: In the early 1900s, bells and holly were common themes and the red and green "Christmas colors" were not yet set in stone. Cards came in blues, yellows, pinks — every imaginable color, really.

While you look at a few cards I liked, listen to Cat Power's version of my favorite Christmas song. It's about hope in a time of uncertainty, and the older I get the more I understand that this is our constant state.

Now, to the cards. Here's one I think of as the Rocking Horse Loser. Did I mention that many of the children depicted on old cards looked peculiar?

Here is a tinted photographic card. It's a bit like the family photo cards people send out these days...but off in an entertainingly wacky way.

This is my favorite of the cards I found (admittedly, there are over 1,500 more that I never got to). I love the way Santa, the children and the dog are piled into the little bedecked roadster — steering wheel on the right — and the little boy in what could be a bellhop's uniform is waving. The sender addressed it on Christmas Eve, 1906, but I can't quite make out the signature.

I'll leave you with the exquisite, haunting final paragraph of James Joyce's "The Dead," which begins at a holiday party and ends in eternity.

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

The Leaves of 2013

2013-12-14T19:01:00.002-05:00

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~ George Eliot

As I write this, snow is falling in New York City. Autumn's colors, which came late, are now gone. But they were glorious while they lasted.

This year, in addition to posting leaves that I found, I asked friends near and far to contribute their own favorites. As a result, this post offers a bountiful array of nature's beauty.

Give this a listen while you look at the leaves — Van Morrison's "Autumn Song".

This is the first leaf I found in my neighborhood; it was a maple bigger than my hand, and it seemed to contain the entire history of its journey from green to red and gold.

The basswoods, most of which contain miniatures of themselves within themselves, are a favorite.

This is a fiery tree that I came across while I was driving on Long Island. I pulled over to the curb so I could take this picture of it.

But enough of my neighborhood. Diane Baranello, a life coach and fellow member of the board of New York Women in Communications, sent magnificent scans of leaves and flowers she's pressed.

Pam Carlson, who describes herself as a "cheerful secular humanist with a cynical misanthropic streak," sent three lovely scans gathered near her home in Marin County. Plums, starfish-like sweetgum (?), ginko and two other yellows that I don't recognize. Update: Pam says the large one is a fig and the smallest is an oak.

My old friend Briggs Meyer — we met decades ago when we were students at the School of Visual Arts — sent autumn ginkos and maples from San Francisco.

"The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and leaves carry her forward..."
~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Author and professor Dr. Harrison Solow sent photographs of vast piles of extravagantly multicolored leaves from her travels in Northern California, Wyoming and Idaho. Do click on them so you can see them larger.

"The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost."
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Want more leaves? See my posts from previous years:

Autumn Almanac (2012)
The Leaves of 2011
Arts & Crafts: Color by Nature (2010)
Why Leaves Turn Red, Among Other Things (2010)

Misty Days Remind Me of Mom

2013-11-17T15:13:00.000-05:00

"The fog was where I wanted to be."
~ Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night

I was one of those children whose idea of a good time was spending a whole weekend watching horror movies on our black-and-white TV. We lived in a large old house surrounded by ancient, heavy trees. Misty, rainy days take me right back there. I can hear the water falling. And I hear my mother's music.

My mother was a shy woman who grew up with three aggressive sisters and parents who didn't get along. But I don't think that's why her musical taste was so melancholy; it's just the way she was.

And she adored music. She played classical music on the piano and listened to music on our bulky hi-fi cabinet whenever she could.

Below, I've included three songs that make me think of mom whenever I hear them. Sorry about the embedded ads, though. So: Ella Fitzgerald singing "Where or When", Eva Cassidy singing "Autumn Leaves" and Erroll Garner playing "Misty".

"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a warm, blessed fog."
~ Joseph Conrad

Magritte again

2013-11-16T10:45:00.000-05:00

"To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen and being always on the lookout for what has never been."
~ René Magritte

Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe), René Magritte 1929
Property of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California

In 1965, when I was in high school, New York's Museum of Modern Art held a sweeping exhibition of the work of René Magritte. My friend Dawn and I went together, not quite sure what to expect. As we walked from room to room, taking in the gigantic green apples, the flaming tubas, the men in bowler hats raining from the sky, the landscape views with landscape paintings in them, we were overcome with giggles. It was pure, exhilarating joy. We were puzzled by the reactions of the adults, who seemed so serious. (Of course, as Dawn recently pointed out, the adults no doubt thought we were obnoxious.)

Now, 48 years later, MoMA has another Magritte exhibition. Titled "The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938", it chronicles the years when Magritte and his fellow surrealists were developing their ideas about art. When I went to this show (twice so far), I only giggled a few times — I've become one of the serious adults, apparently — but I learned much I hadn't known.

"Everything tends to make one think there is little relation between an object and that which represents it."
~ René Magritte

Clairvoyance, René Magritte, 1928
Property of Mr. & Mrs. Wilbur Ross

Magritte spoke of painting as "a tool for thinking" and said he wanted to make "everyday objects shriek out loud". He accomplished this by forcing the viewer to see ordinary objects in surprising new ways.

Magritte was fascinated with the difference between a word and what it represents, and a painting and what it represents. He said, "An object is not so possessed of its name that one cannot find for it another which suits it better."

One of the explanatory placards at the museum quotes his 1938 lecture "La Ligne de vie" ("Lifeline"): "The titles of paintings were chosen in such a way as to inspire in the spectator an appropriate mistrust of any mediocre tendency to facile self-assurance."

The two paintings below make his point insistently. In the painting at left, "The Key to Dreams" (1930), each object is given the name of something else. An egg is an acacia, a shoe is the moon, a bowler hat is snow, a candle is a ceiling, a drinking glass is a storm and a hammer is a desert. In the painting at right, "The Key to Dreams" (1935), which was created in preparation for his first gallery show in the U.S., he used English labels for the same, intentionally disorienting effect.

Key to Dreams, René Magritte, 1930
Private Collection

Key to Dreams, René Magritte, 1935

The Human Condition, René Magritte, 1933
Property of National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

This painting above, The Human Condition, is one of a handful that were included in both the 1965 and 2013 Magritte exhibitions at MoMA. To me, it is a nearly literal depiction of Magritte's statement that "Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see."

One final painting from MoMA delivers the meaning of this quote to me: "The Surreal is but reality that has not been disconnected from its mystery."

(Not to be reproduced), René Magritte, 1937
Property of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

His pipe and passport
Wikipedia

To learn more about the MoMA exhibition "The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-38", visit MoMA.org

To learn more about René Magritte, see:

Images of Resemblance: Magritte's semiotic explorations

Musée Magritte Museum

Philosophical Investigations: Magritte on Words and Images

René Magritte, A Practice to Make 'Everyday Objects Shriek Out Loud'

Wikipedia

Hey Mr. Bassman

2013-10-19T17:19:00.001-04:00

"When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy."
~ James Brown

Haven't posted in a while. I'm doing so today because everybody needs to see this short video from the Prelinger Archive. It's an almost all-girl xylophone band. The exception is a male bass player. To call him enthusiastic is to understate the case considerably. It's a joy to watch his wild little self. Many thanks to Peter Stampfel for sharing this on Facebook. As he said, "Man, that's jolly!"

And sorry the video bleeds over the edges — it was one-size-fits-all and I'm not good with changing aspect ratios!

Plan B

2013-08-18T07:43:00.000-04:00

"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."
~ Allen Saunders

Saturday, August 17th was the final day of this year's Summer Streets, a program the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) has run for the past few years. Over three weekends each August, the DOT closes certain streets to cars and lets pedestrians and bike riders roam free.

For one of the early Summer Streets, the DOT set up giant dumpsters filled with water in a few places, allowing people to put a literal spin on dumpster-diving. This year the program extended from the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge at Foley Square and up Lafayette Street and Park Avenue to 72nd street and included everything from art to a zip line and a rock climbing wall.

One of the top attractions of 2013 was the Voice Tunnel, an installation by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The Voice Tunnel was installed in the underground roadway that allows cars to travel beneath Park Avenue between 32nd and 41st Streets. I'd been meaning to see it, and today was the last chance.

I made my way down to the entrance 32nd Street. At first I tried walking in the street, but found dodging the teeming masses of bike riders too aggravating and ended up on the sidewalk. More and more people are taking to bikes in this city. In theory, it's great; in practice, mobs of rude boneheads on bikes are making walking less and less fun.

When I got to the tunnel entrance I discovered that everybody else in the city was already there. The line was so long that they closed the entrance more than two hours early to allow the already assembled crowd to pass through by 1:00 p.m., when the street would reopen to cars. Here is a short video of what I did not get to see in the Voice Tunnel.

On to plan B, devised when I walked out onto the street and realized the elevated roadway that runs around Grand Central Terminal was also closed to cars. Until today, I'd only ever been through there in a cab. Now I had the chance to find out how things look from the pedestrian vantage point.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

The first sight to see was Cornelius Vanderbilt, forever memorialized in his extravagant overcoat. Vanderbilt founded the New York Central Railroad; built Grand Central Depot, the predecessor to Grand Central Terminal; and was the patriarch of the family that owned the property Grand Central stands on.

I also had a closer-than-normal view of the sculpture titled "The Glory of Commerce" by French sculptor Jules-Felix Coutan. That's Hercules on the left, Minerva on the right and Mercury in the middle. Learn more about it in this post on the Untapped Cities website.

This is one of four employee entrances that stand, two per side, on the elevated roadway. A little note is posted on all four doors saying employee I.D. is required.

This is another employee door – better lit and possibly cleaned up a bit, but with the same note.

Old, ornate lanterns line the part of the roadway that runs under the Helmsley building.

This is the Yale Club - not my photo, one I found on Wikimedia Commons. The club is across Vanderbilt Avenue from Grand Central, and as I looked at it I thought about Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale. There's a plaque on the corner of the club saying Nathan Hale was hung here. But that's arguable — read this post in Ephemeral New York for an alternative claim.

It was a beautiful day, as this view looking West on 42nd Street makes clear.

The "Vanderbilt eagle" is a familiar site to anyone who walks along East 42nd Street. (This is another Wikimedia Commons photo, by the way.) What I discovered today is, the eagle's wings are supported by a beam and bolts.

And that is how I spent my Saturday morning. What did you do?

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another..."
J. M. Barrie

Migraine and the Last of Migraine

2013-08-10T10:52:00.000-04:00

"Sometimes your pet picks you."
~ Julie Wenzel

Migraine, when we first met

It was a bright, brisk day in the autumn of 2006. My husband, Robert, was outside fiddling with our car. Because this is New York City, our car was parked at the curb across from our apartment building and he was alternating between the sidewalk and the street.

At some point he realized that a cat, a blond tabby with big green eyes, was sitting on the sidewalk watching him. After a while he locked up the car and started across the street to our building. The cat followed along. Robert opened the door, looked at the cat and said "Are you coming?" and the cat trotted in. He then followed Robert up three flights of stairs to our door. And came in.

This was our introduction to the cat we came to call Migraine*.

Migraine doing his "noble feline" impression

It was clear that Migraine loved people, but it turned out he didn't like cats. This was unfortunate since we already had two cats – best friends Bogie, a big goofy Tuxedo, and Little Harry, a sweet and beautiful Chartreux. We decided we'd try to find blondie's owner and, if we couldn't, we'd find him a good home. We asked all over the neighborhood, checked with all the veterinarians and shelters, looked for signs about a missing cat. Nothing. But we didn't worry. After all, who wouldn't want this loving and handsome young lad? But first – to our veterinarian, Dr. F.

That's when things got complicated. Migraine was not a young cat after all. Dr. F. was sure he was at least 11 or 12. He also had a "galloping" heartbeat, which Dr. F. correctly guessed (and confirmed via blood work) was related to an overactive thyroid. We tried out medications and eventually found a dosage that slowed his heartbeat without making him logy.

A handsome, friendly young cat is one thing. A handsome, friendly middle-aged cat with a bad heart and a thyroid condition was another. It looked like Migraine was staying with us. We had a talk with our three felines and told them they'd just all have to learn to get along.

Migraine with his favorite newspaper

Gradually, over the next several years they did at least learn to tolerate one another. While they never became great friends, Migraine stopped hissing at Bo and Harry and they stopped running out of the room when he came in. Mostly, Migraine liked to sit beside me on the sofa. He especially loved it when Robert would talk to him and scratch him behind the ears.

Over the years his health declined. By 2012 his thyroid meds were no longer controlling his galloping heartbeat and his kidneys were starting to go. His eyesight was so poor that I had to remove the top from the litter box so he could find the way in.

2013 was an especially bad year for Migraine. He periodically stopped eating. Each time it happened, I'd find some new, more interesting food for him to try. For the past six weeks or so, I gave him pieces of chopped up broiled chicken in every meal. That worked pretty well for a while. But this week nothing worked. He simply stopped eating. After a day he wobbled around or lay on the floor panting. He spent Thursday panting and staring at the side of the refrigerator, or the radiator, or a blank wall. He was getting emaciated. He was confused. He would drink water and pee while he stood there, seemingly unaware.

I thought – hoped – he would die gently in his sleep. But he didn't, so we knew it was time to intervene. We carried him to the veterinarian's office down the block. We took this final picture of our poor sad boy.

It was quick and merciful. We stayed in the room talking to him and petting him and crying throughout it all. No regrets, just tears.

"Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet."

~ Colette

*About the name: We tried out several names for Migraine. This one stuck because he often walked around squinting the way I do when I have a migraine, and because his aggression toward the other cats was enough to give anyone a headache.

April 18 is Poem in Your Pocket Day

2013-04-17T16:06:00.000-04:00

April is National Poetry Month and one of the prizes it holds is Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 18.

Since 2003 New York City has celebrated the day every year with activities in schools and cultural organizations. In 2008 the Academy of American Poets extended the program nationally, and since then many other cities have instituted their own annual celebrations.

Poetry. As we say in New York City, what's not to like?

I'll be carrying two poems in my pocket: "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, which seems almost too appropriate this year, and a wonderful Wendell Berry poem, "The Real Work".

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Real Work
By Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

What poem will you carry?

My niece Heather has chosen her pocket-sized poem: "Still Here" by Langston Hughes. Another friend, Win, has chosen William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" – which could require a deep pocket.

If you need ideas, visit the Academy of American Poets' Poem in Your Pocket Day site.

Also, do yourself a favor and download the Poetry Foundation's fabulous poetry app – you'll be able to carry hundreds of poems in your pocket every day.

New Yorkers can check out our city's Poem in Your Pocket Day activities here.

Celebrating 100 Years of Grand Central with Poetry and Music

2013-04-13T16:19:00.000-04:00

On April 10 in Grand Central Terminal's beautiful Vanderbilt Hall, where the acoustics are so good that every musician should have a chance to play there, the Poetry Society of America and the NYC MTA's Arts for Transit program put on an absolutely terrific show – for free – to celebrate 100 years of Grand Central.

The event drew a good-sized crowd for a weekday evening, but since most people missed it, I'm going to recreate some of it for you. First a friendly warning: If you're in a hurry, you won't have time to read this.

The Yaz Band opened the evening. I missed their performance, but they're familiar from the MTA's Music Under New York program. Here they are playing in Penn Station.

The evening's first poet was Jeffrey Yang. He did not read this poem, but he might have – it's one he did for the city's recently revived Poetry in Motion program of poetry on mass transit.

Aracelis Girmay was the next poet to read. This is not one of the poems she chose – I couldn't find those – but here is her poem for Poetry in Motion, "Noche de Lluvia, San Salvador".

The miraculous all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache stepped on the stage like a convocation of horn-tooting, fiddle-playing, guitar-strumming, vocalizing queens. I love mariachi music anywhere, anytime, but these women were outstanding. But why tell you about them when you can watch the performance I saw right here?

Poet Eduardo C. Corral spoke about his father, a hard-working immigrant sans visa, before reading this poem.

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes
By Eduardo C. Corral

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

The next poet, Bob Holman, is a champion of poetry spoken and performed. Here he is at Fordham University.

Salieu Suso is a kora player from The Gambia. I see him often on my way to work in the morning and always stop to listen to his beautiful, haunting music. In fact, I saw him playing in the Times Square station the morning after he played at Grand Central and told him so; he seemed pleased. Watch him sing and play here.

Marie Howe read next. When she introduced this poem, she said she had written it about her daughter, now 12, when she was four. She realized she was always telling her little one to hurry and began to question it.

Hurry
By Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

Poem copyright ©2008 by Marie Howe, and reprinted from "When She Named Fire," ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009.

Billy Collins topped the poetry bill. That's his new poem for Poetry in Motion above. He spoke about his lifelong relationship with Grand Central – his father commuted via the terminal daily and the family passed through on visits. And then he read this wonderful poem, "The Death of The Hat".

The Death of the Hat

By Billy Collins

Once every man wore a hat.

In the ashen newsreels,

the avenues of cities

are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled

with thousands of strawhats,

brims and bands,

rows of men smoking

and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.

They went without saying.

You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs

who branded your initials in gold

on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.

Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.

Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat

and a hatcheck girl to mind it

while you had a drink

or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.

In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared

everyone in the street was wearing a hat.

And they were wearing hats

when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day

and returned home

carrying the evening paper,

the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded

into the winter streets,

stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside

and the spruce trees behind the house

wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night

in their thin fur hats

to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,

wears a hat of earth,

and on top of that,

a lighter one of cloud and sky--a hat of wind.

The evening ended with a performance by Hot Sardines, and they were hot indeed. This video will give you a sense of what they're like, but for the Grand Central performance they added a tap dancer – très chaud!

April is for poetry...and cherry trees

2013-04-06T14:35:00.000-04:00

"April is a promise that May is bound to keep."

~ Hal Borland

Vintage postcard of Washington DC's Tidal Basin
Library of Congress

For National Poetry Month, I'm sharing a poem by Sharon Olds. It's from her most recent collection, Stag's Leap, a magnificent book that tells the story of the end of her thirty-two year marriage. Her poems record her shock and grief and doubt and rage at her husband (who left her for another woman) and herself with such searing honesty that I literally winced when reading some of them. Eventually, she starts to heal herself. But she is changed.

This poem is from the first half of Stag's Leap, where she is still quite raw and flooded by thoughts of what was.

The Healers

When they say, If there are any doctors aboard,
would they make themselves known, I remember when my then
husband would rise, and I would get to be
the one he rose from beside. They say now
that it does not work, unless you are equal.
And after those first thirty years,
I was not the one he wanted to rise from
or return to — not I but she who would also
rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,
lifting, side by side, on wide,
medical, wading-bird wings — like storks with the
doctor bags of like-loves-like
dangling from their beaks. Oh well. It was the way
it was he did not feel happy when words
were called for, and I stood.

You can see Sharon Olds read her poem in this PBS interview.

For more poetry by Sharon olds, visit:

One more thing: Don't forget to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 18th!

The Season of Remembering

2013-03-02T16:29:00.002-05:00

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
~ Mitch Ablom

Last weekend I read an excerpt from Michael Hainey's new book, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story. The title of the excerpt was "My dad: 35 and dead." You can read it here.

The excerpt struck a chord, not least because this is the season of remembering for me. The season starts a week or two before February 11th, the anniversary of my mother's birth, and it peaks on March 2nd, the day my father died.

Dad has been gone 53 years. That's one year shy of the 54 years he lived. I was a little girl when he left us, but somehow he remains the most important influence on my life, and I continue to think of him every single day.

This is one of my favorite photos of my dad. There are surprisingly few of them. He was usually behind the camera – he loved his Leica. But this is how he was, or at least how I remember him. Always dapper, always ready for fun.

I believe that the last time I saw my father we were at an airport – I think it was Idlewild (now JFK), but it could have been La Guardia. He and my mom were heading to Florida on vacation. That's where he died.

Dad at my sister Betsy's wedding,
about six months before he died.

Mind you, this is probably a false memory – science tells us that the act of remembering rewrites history. And this memory is particularly untrustworthy because it came to me one day when I'd seen someone off at an airport and ended up sobbing for no good reason, as I always did. The sudden memory, if it was a memory at all, seemed to explain things.

In any case, dad had been ill for a while. He'd had a heart attack. His blood pressure was miles too high, and he was severely allergic to the only medication available in 1960 to control it. At first, just after his heart attack, he would wander around in his bathrobe and slippers and spend hours rearranging his slide trays; it made me unspeakably sad.

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
~ William Shakespeare

The days immediately following his death were all sorrow and chaos. There was a blizzard in New York. Dad's body made it out on a plane, but we didn't know if mom could get home in time for the wake (she did).

The thing that's been bothering me in this season of memories are all the things I don't know about my dad. I know he was terrific father and the kind of man people felt comfortable telling their troubles to. I know he loved New Orleans and adored the music of Al Hirt.

I know his parents came from Baltimore and at some point moved to New York City. I know that he, too, lost his dad when he was quite young. I know he liked sports and played hockey on a team called the All-Americans. But I don't know what life was like for him as a boy, what my grandfather was like, whether he ever knew his own grandparents, what family stories he grew up with and so much more. I never got a chance to ask him.

About three years ago a wonderful relative I never knew existed found my sisters and I through her genealogy research. She is descended from one of my paternal grandfather's brothers, who went to live in Cuba. When Castro came to power, she and her relatives moved to Iowa. She has been terrific at tracking down the past, and took these photos of Hush tombstones in a Baltimore graveyard. Everything I know about these people is inscribed on those stones.

If I had had any idea how the wondering would haunt me, I'd have made a list of questions and interviewed every relative I could find before it was too late. I'm dedicating this post to the younger generation in my family – and encouraging them to start asking their questions now.

Signing of with more Al Hirt for my dad.

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
~ Langston Hughes

The Great Weight of Balloons

2013-01-06T09:56:00.003-05:00


1941: A workman crawls from a hatch in a barrage balloon after making repairs. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs

The other day the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day email brought this tiny gem to my mailbox.

The Balloon of the Mind
by William Butler Yeats

Hands, do what you're bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.

The lightness of a balloon, the heaviness of a mind, the image of hands pulling a troubled mind into a calm berth. So much depth packed into twenty-two words. Masterful, Mr. Yeats.

Model of a statue to French balloonists
Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs

Of course the Yeats poem reminded me of another poem involving men and balloons. This one is by E. E. Cummings, who also asked in a different poem, "Who knows if the moon's a balloon?"

[in Just-]
by E. E. Cummings

in Just-
spring         when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far          and          wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

          the

                   goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles
far
and
wee


Balloon ascension at Concord, NH State Fair c: 1901 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

May our minds be as light as balloons in this new year.

Party Like It's 1909

2012-12-31T16:16:00.004-05:00

On average, odd years have been the best for me.
I'm at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version
of someone I already know.
~ from "Fragments for the End of the Year" by Jennifer K. Sweeney

Today I spent a little time with the Library of Congress's Prints & Photographs online catalog looking at New Year's celebrations of the past. I was fascinated by the year 1909, when everybody seemed to be down in the dumps for no particular reason.

Not even funny hats and feathers produced smiles on this crowd of sourpusses.

The magazine Puck ushered in 1910 with an illustration called "The Safety-Valve".

Proving that some things never change, I found an illustration titled "New Year's Eve at the Hotel Prosperity" – where all the tables are reserved for special interest groups.

All of this left me wondering about 1909 – what was going on that year? According to the Internet, it was fairly quiet. On March 4, William Howard Taft succeeded Theodore Roosevelt, becoming the 27th U.S. President; the NAACP was founded under the leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois; unemployment was just 5.1%; and Paul Ehrlich discovered a cure for syphilis. From this distance, it doesn't look too bad. Then again, new years are always overstuffed with portent.

To see some cheerful images of year-end celebrations where at least some people appear to be having fun, visit Flavorpill's "Amusing Vintage Photographs from New Year's Eves Past".

All within is warm,
    Here without it's very cold,
    Now the year is grown so old
And the dead leaves swarm.

In your heart is light,
    Here without it's very dark,
    When shall I hear the lark
When see aright?

Oh, for a moment's space!
    Draw the clinging curtains wide
    Whilst I wait and yearn outside
Let the light fall on my face.

"In Tenebris" by Ford Madox Ford

Autumn Almanac

2012-11-27T21:18:00.001-05:00

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

At this time of year for the past few years I've posted scans of the lovely autumn leaves I've found around my neighborhood. This year the pickings were sad and slim. Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed so many beautiful trees, also battered the stuffing out of the ones it left standing.

In many cases, as the photo above shows, some leaves never changed color at all but grimly went from green to dead.

Here is my haul for 2012: three leaves, the best I could find – and even these are a little ragged and bruised.

Since there isn't much to show for the current year, I decided to show you some of my favorite leaves from previous years. And as you look at them, have a listen to the Kinks singing their wonderful "Autumn Almanac".

Autumn Almanac by The Kinks on Grooveshark

The tradition began in 2009 with these three leaves.

Here is my pick for 2010, which was a spectacular year for color...

And from 2011...

More information:

To see more leaves, visit my posts from 2010 and 2011
To find out why leaves change colors, scroll to the bottom of this post

"Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."
~ Nora Ephron

Thanksgiving lessons

2012-11-22T13:46:00.001-05:00

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose."

~ Woody Allen

1940 photo by Jack Delano, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration.
For more about this photo, visit the Library of Congress Prints and Photos blog.

These are some of the lessons I learned on Thanksgiving 2012, including a few I re-learn every year.

It is best to "shake well" before you open the can of evaporated milk.

I buy sugar once a year, always on Thanksgiving morning (because I always forget).

The ground cloves in my kitchen almost certainly date from the last millennium.

All of my pie pans but one have migrated to my daughter's house.

There's always a little too much pumpkin pie filling – just enough for a couple of great mini-pies.

Cats are not immune to the eat-until-you're-ill theme of the day.

Something is always too salty.

I have never met anyone who likes turkey wings*.

I am grateful for tea towels.

References to "doorbusters" are a heinous linguistic blight at this time of year.

Speaking of the cashification of Thanksgiving, linguist Ben Zimmer decimated the myth that "Black Friday" has anything to do with profitability. To learn what it's really about, read his 2011 Visual Thesaurus article. This morning I asked him (via Twitter) if he's written anything about "doorbuster" – he hasn't – but he directed me to Oxford Dictionaries, which first included the word in 2006, when he was an editor there. It has a surprising second definition. Update: The unfailingly polite Ben Zimmer sent me a follow-up note (tweet) today directing me to this comprehensive entry from Barry Popik's blog.

* Another update: After I posted this, a Facebook friend said that she does like turkey wings "as long as they're crispy."

"I'm thankful to be breathing, on this side of the grass. Whatever comes, comes."

~ Ron Perlman

Bonus! For those who had a less than blissful thanksgiving, watch this video and discover it could have been worse.

A story about a tree

2012-11-04T14:17:00.001-05:00

"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree."
~ Joyce Kilmer, Trees

Joyce Kilmer's 1913 poem Trees was one of the first poems we were given to memorize in grammar school. I didn't like it then and don't like it much now, but there is a certain truth to its opening lines – especially when it comes to one particular tree, a willow that I have loved for decades.

When I first moved to Hunter's Point, Queens, in the early 1980s, the area was vibrantly industrial and trees were in short supply. Paint factories, chemical plants, electrical parts manufacturers, printing presses were all going strong, employing tens of thousands. Down the street Empire Iron Works was piling beams onto trucks from dawn until dusk. Two blocks down, the Pepsi bottling plant was working shifts and trucks bustled by at all hours.

The Pepsi plant is gone now, as are almost all the area's manufacturing jobs. But as this photo I took a couple of years ago shows, its sign remains as a reminder of the neighborhood's past.

Another part of the past that stayed and stayed and actually has grown more beautiful over the years was a three-tree stand of weeping willows on a corner a block away. It was not only a rarity in this nature-starved area, it was so lush that the tops had merged into one giant canopy. Here's how it looked in the wind on Monday afternoon as Hurricane Sandy drew near. I joked that it resembled a shaggy dog shaking off water.

Sandy, as we now know, was no joking matter. In the past week I've had this song running through my mind, over and over – Bob Dylan's High Water (for Charley Patton).

High Water by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

On Tuesday afternoon, as soon as the worst of the storm had passed, I walked down the street to see how my tree had fared. The news was bad – the beautiful willow was broken and bowed across the street.

Then, yesterday, I was out walking again, taking photos of the storm damage, when I came upon this shocking site. One tree had been removed completely. The remaining willows' broken limbs had been removed, leaving this sparse, mangy shell of what had been.

I've read that weeping willows are fast-growing trees – growing up to 10 feet a year. Even so, it will be years until this old beauty restores itself. Mourning is in order.

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
~ by Maya Angelou

Read the rest of "When Great Trees Fall" here - it's a lovely poem about large things.

One more song for the road – Allison Kraus's "Down to the River to Pray".

Gordon Parks captures the drama of the docks

2012-10-20T19:20:00.000-04:00

"At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it."

~ Gordon Parks

November 30, 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks. He was a man of many talents – film director, musician and writer among them. But for most people, including me, he was first and foremost a photographer with a varied portfolio and a quite particular vision.

In the early 1940s Gordon Parks won a fellowship from the Farm Security Administration (FSA), where he joined eight other exceptional photographers – Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott – in documenting the human toll of the Great Depression.

If I may digress for a moment: In these imagination-bereft times, when even Big Bird is under threat of extinction by budget-cutters, the idea of the government hiring creative people to contribute to our national legacy is unthinkable. But during the years when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran the country, programs like the Works Progress Administration and the FSA put our painters, writers, sculptors, photographers and dramatists to work. In return they created a national treasure, most of which survives and is available for all to enjoy through the online collections of the Library of Congress.

A few months ago I came across this photo, which Gordon Parks made for the FSA at New York City's old Fulton Fish Market in 1943.

The market is gone now – its smells and messiness banished from fancy downtown Manhattan and relocated at the Hunt's Point Market in the Bronx. But for decades it was the place where fishermen brought their catch and rough and tough stevedores did the hard work of getting the fish to market.

The original photo inspired me to go into the Library of Congress's collection and find the rest of the photos you see on this page.

"The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really – the important people are the people he photographs."
~ Gordon Parks

Learn more about Gordon Parks

The Gordon Parks Foundation

International Center of Photography digital exhibition

Gordon Parks at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center

Gordon Parks slideshow in the New York Times

Learn more about the Library of Congress

Library of Congress American Memory Collection