20 September

Two Daughters: Equal Justice For All

by Jon Katz
Two Daughters
Two Daughters

I hadn’t noticed this photograph of my daughter and her daughter, Emma and Robin, that I took in New York City last week, tableau of love, connection and vulnerability.  Seeing this photograph brought out some considerable emotion in me, daughter to daughter, my own blood and heart in both of them.

I could see in the photograph how much Emma loves her new daughter, and how at east Robin is with her mother. I suppose motherhood is an idea. A friend showed me something Bono said about America in an interview this morning, he said there were lots of countries, but that America was an idea: equal justice for all, under the law.

That’s what I would like for my daughter and granddaughter, I think, to live in a country that was still about this idea.  I hope Robin gets to know about that idea, it gave birth to her family in many ways.

Two daughters, set off on a new chapter in both of their lives.

20 September

Park Slope

by Jon Katz
Park Slope
Park Slope

I loved the shape and texture of the buildings I saw in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when I walked around during my visit last week to my granddaughter and daughter (I’m going back for the day on  Friday). I feel as if I’ve slipped into an old documentary or Harold Roth novel about the city at the turn of the century. I love all the detail that went into this old tenement house, soon, I am told, to be torn apart and renovated for the wave of young professionals pouring into the neighborhood.

20 September

City Of Extremes

by Jon Katz
City Of Extremes
City Of Extremes

(I visited my daughter and granddaughter in Brooklyn recently and took some photos.)

Brooklyn, like much of New York City, is a place of extremes, great wealth and vitality, but also, great poverty and dislocation. Everyone in New York talks about the gentrification of the city, the explosion in rich people, tall towers, fancy stores, box and chain stores.

The poor are also evident, everywhere, they tend to hand out around the city’s beautiful churches where they can get a meal, sometimes a shower, sometimes some shelter, a stoop or step to sit down on. There are more than 55,000 homeless people in New York City,  I don’t think the county I live in has that many people.

In Park Slope, I bought a bagel and coffee and sat down with my camera and watched the parade. There is not much more that is entertaining in the world than watching people walk by in the city. A man sitting in a chair with a cup asking for help was a few feet from me, he seemed very nice and well-spoken and many people walked by and said hello.

He came over to me and politely asked if he could sit down next to me while I  had my coffee, he assured me that he was sane and clean. I said sure, the chair was available to anyone. I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He said his name was Marshall and he had once owned a store on this same block, it was a vacuum cleaner repair shop. He was a Vietnam vet, he said, and when Park Slope gentrified, he lost his business and then, he was evicted from the apartment he had lived in with his mother for 23 years.

Technically, he said, he is homeless, but he usually sleeps with a sister or nephew, or sometimes at  a church shelter, for $15 a night. People know him, he said, because so many were his customers. And many people did greet him and know him. We talked for awhile, he was once a photographer and is also a grandfather, he said he loved the city, but soon, he said, average people would disappear from Brooklyn as they had disappeared from Manhattan.

He said the veteran’s administration took care of his health care, and he had a small pension, which, in modern Brooklyn, he said, might buy a week’s rent in a tiny apartment. He spent it on clothes and food.

He had no idea, he said, what would become of him, but this was his home and he didn’t care to leave it. When it was time to go, I stood up and gave him a few dollars, he thanked me and we shook hands.

I doubt we will ever meet again, I wonder what will become of Marshall.

My breakfast with a homeless man in Park Slope, one of the trendiest and richest neighborhoods in America, was not quite what I expected.

It was good though.

20 September

How Trees Love

by Jon Katz
Tree Love
Tree Love

The Hidden Life Of Trees, by the German biologist Peter Wohlleben, is one of those books that will forever change the way you see a tree, or a walk in the woods. A beautiful mixture of romance and grounded science, Wohlleben did not write a woo-woo book for tree huggers, he wrote a perceptive and scientifically support study of the social networks of trees, the way they care for one another, help their sick and dying, share the sun, fend off dangers and communicate through smells and roots and microbes.

I’m on chapter four, which is called “Love,” and in it, Wohleben describes the ways in which trees love one another and mate. The leisurely pace at which trees live their lives is also apparent, he writes, when it comes to procreation. Reproduction is planned at least one year in advance.

Sometimes, tree love happens once a year, sometimes it takes longer, it depends on the species. Conifers send their seeds out into the world at least once a year, deciduous trees have completely different sexual habits. Before they bloom, they agree among themselves. Should they go for it next Spring, or would it be better to wait a year or two?

Trees in a forest, says Wohlleben, prefer to bloom at the same time so that the genes of many individual trees can be well mixed. Deciduous trees have other factors to consider: how browsers like boar and deer distribute their seeds, and survive by eating them in winter. Conifers bloom every year, which means bees are an option for pollination because they would always find food. Because there is almost no animal that likes to store conifer seeds for winter food, the trees release their potential offspring into the world on tiny wings. Thus equipped, their seeds float slowly down from the tips of their branches and can be easily carried along on a breath of wind.

Some species avoid inbreeding: each individual tree has only one gender.  There are male and female willows, which means they can never mate with themselves but only procreate with other willows. Scientists have found that all willows secrete a particular scent to attract bees, and once the bees arrive, the willows switch visual signals. Male willows make their seeds bright yellow, which attracts the bees to them first.

Once the bees have had their first meal of sugary nectar, they leae and visit the inconspicuous greenish flowers of the female trees. When it comes to love for some species of trees, wind and bees come equally into play. As both cover large distances, they ensure that at least some of the trees receive pollen from distant members of their species, and so the local gene pool is constantly refreshed. Isolated strands of rare species of trees, where only a few trees grow, can lose their genetic diversity. When they do, they weaken, and after a few centuries, disappear altogether.

I am eager to get to Wohllenen’s writing about how trees communicate and for social networks. Walking in the woods today, I came to understand how much more is happening – right under my nose – than I have ever comprehended and shared, and I am eager to read this much-acclaimed and loved book and see the forest anew, and in a completely different way.

When I looked up take this shot of the forest canopy over my head and Maria’s, I could almost hear the trees talking with one another, and working to share the sun to the benefit of all. We can learn so much from them.

20 September

Socks And Clotheslines

by Jon Katz
Socks And Clotheslines
Socks And Clotheslines

Just a short while ago, I did not have a clothesline, nor did I have socks that were not gray or black. Today, our clothesline waves proudly off of the back of the house, a pennant of a sort, a look backwards to the future, there is, in fact, nothing sweeter than the smell of fresh clothes off a line.

Clotheslines are illegal in many communities in many states, they are considered unsightly and a mark of the poor. We love our clothesline, and consider it a beautiful addition to the house, we also save a lot of energy when we don’t have to fire up our dryer.

But for me the biggest change is perhaps the socks. I was wedded to the anonymity of male socks, they were just about about covering feed in a somber and businesslike way, it never occurred to me that they could be colorful and bright and make me  smile. Maria bought me my first pair a year ago (from Heather’s shop, Over The Moon), and all of my dark and somber socks are gone.

There is no brighter way to start the day than by putting something original and colorful on my feet. And then to see them all waving so brightly in a soft breeze on our clothesline.

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