We left New York City well before dawn this morning on a Toronto-Bound train, we chase the incoming storm all the way and just beat it. It arrived on the farm just after we got hoe, and looks like a pretty good one, five or six inches so far, more on the way. The sheep pay no mind to the snow, neither does the pony. The donkeys like to get out of heavy snow, they hole up in the pole barn. I love the stark beauty of the winter pasture, it’s right for the black and white camera.
I sometimes think we have a hard time keeping the things we love, we celebrate the past but bulldoze it, again and again, and what we replace it with is never as graceful or authentic. As I look at the beautiful brownstones that are the heart of Brooklyn’s original beauty, I see them increasingly overpowered by giant buildings everywhere. I hope the brownstones find a way to survive.
I’ve gotten several hats I love at Goorin’s Hat Shop in Brooklyn, one of very few remaining hat shops in the country. My favorite was a big red Hat I rarely wear because I think somebody up here might shoot it off of my head. I got my blue heat there also, and I love to wear it in the warmer weather. I love their window in Park Slope.
Doesn’t every liquor store in America have an Iquana. This liquore store in Fort Greene does, he sits right by the cash register and stares at the customers, he basks under his heat lamp. The skyscrapers are invading Brooklyn, but there is plenty of real Brooklyn left.
Brooklyn has an amazing energy to it, and I love visiting there. Sometimes, it feels like just too much. Americans seem to have this enduring habit of never being able to stop or limit grow, and of letting developers run amok. All around Brooklyn are 69,70 foot towers and strikingly designed office and cultural building. Nature has just vanished from some parts of the city.
We just can’t seem to say no to money. When Emma and Jay bought their apartment, the sun shone in the building for much of the day. Giant skyscrapers now surround their apartment house, and it is pitch dark for much of the day. Someday we may live in a world where the view from people’s windows is considered protected, as Native-Americans protect the water.
