Walked out my door this morning into the middle of a snowball fight: half-a-dozen nine and ten year old girls ranged against each other. As I stepped on the sidewalk one yelled, “Stop!” Another yelled, “Civilian!” Instantly, a ceasefire. I raised my hands, said, “U.N. observer! Non-combatant!” and made my way to the corner. As soon as I crossed I heard, “Go!” I looked back. Snowballs were flying; all hell had broken loose once more.
I love New York, and if you do too, click the link.
Flakes start, tentative.
On black glove, on red jacket,
Tiny six-point stars.
Mallards at pilings
Gobble barnacle breakfast,
Paddle for cover.
Gauzy white snow veils
Waft across wide stone walkway,
Flow over seawall.
I just had to share this. One of my Rancho Obsesso housemates, James Russell, is the architectural critic at Bloomberg News. This is his blistering take on NYU and Greenwich Village. I had no idea this was coming up, but it’s sure timely.
After you read it, take a few moments and browse the Save the Village Auction. (My books, in case you need them, are around page eight.)
This isn’t about squirrels, it’s about NYU. You might think NYU is a university. It is, and a damn good one, too. But it’s also a real-estate gobbling monster. In their Manifest Destiny building schemes they’ve already smashed to dust some of the old Greenwich Village, including a house Edgar Allen Poe once lived in. Now they want more. In a multi-year so-called “development” plan they intend to devour a good deal of this neighborhood. The good news is, there’s an organization spearheaded by NYU faculty out to stop this self-aggrandizing destruction. To raise funds for legal challenges they’ve put together a Save the Village auction and boy are there some goodies in it. An acting lesson from Philip Seymour Hoffman! Lunch with Bill Moyers! An evening at Susan Sarandon’s ping-pong club! (What?) All these people have donated in solidarity with this effort. And me, too! The link here is to the page with my books on it, but if you find something way cooler than those to bid on, I won’t object.
Last week I told you about the Evil Neighbors who decimated their own garden and one of the other neighbors’ catalpa trees in an effort to rid themselves of squirrrels. Well, not only are the two who are living in Squirrely’s rebuilt nest alive and well, thank you, but I also just saw the black squirrel from the street side of the building hopping along the back fence here. Hahahahaha.
It’s snowing here in NYC! Lovely, just at twilight, soft flakes sifting down to sit on leaves and branches, but melting as soon as they hit the sidewalks and street.
Snow, like rain, can mellow NYC or make it more noir, depending on the kind of day you’ve had. If your day makes you long to give noir-ish holiday gifts, here are a couple of doozies.
Akashic Boooks is selling the all-borough, five-volume New York Noir set for the bargain price of $50, that’s fifty bucks, about a third off the usual price so snap ’em up.
If you’re so completely noir-minded that you absolutely need the whole entire set — every Noir series book published up to January 2014 — you can have that for $500. That’s 60 books for $500, PLUS you get a signed copy of USA NOIR thrown in. So go ahead if you’re flush this year, endow your local library.
And, because I’ve been told my 2014 NYC calendar is kind of noir, though I didn’t mean it that way, I’m suggesting it here, too. Or you could get all cheerful and buy my 2014 accordion calendar. Unless you think accordions are noir; which, when played by the French, they can be.
Gull swoops on pilings.
Wheels over empty dozens,
Evicts other gull.
Breeze ripples puddles
On bench’s smooth wooden slats
Wet from last night’s rain.
Gray pigeon, green head,
Dips under steel pipe railing.
Wind lifts his feathers.
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
— WH Auden on the death of Yeats
Here, from the illustrious Dr. E. Bergmann, we have the history of urban squirreldom. Personally, I’m not taking the revisionist approach to the guys in the backyard. But thanks, Laraine, for the hint on the peanuts. I’ll vary the snacks.
Three migrating swans flying south along the river today. You’re late, fellas. A few cormorants are staying all winter, though a couple of flocks of them rose up in raggedy flight and left. At least one pair each of Gadwalls, mallards, and black ducks look like they’re planning to stay, plus another male Gadwall hanging with the pair. Sometimes all the Gadwalls and the mallards hang together, depending how good the eating is on this stretch of the river. This verges on what Mr. Sibley calls a “mixed flock.” Canada geese are all gone, Brants and buffleheads have arrived, though personally I’m expecting more buffleheads, and maybe a loon or two.
Cardinal pair in the backyard, and a newcomer, a bluejay. Some years we have them, some years we don’t. Hope he finds a mate, come spring. Lots of mourning doves, and something whose call I don’t recognize.
Now, I’ve been asked for a squirrel report. This goes hand-in-hand with the Evil Neighbor report. The blue house on the next street, whose yard I face (along with half-a-dozen other yards) turns out to be occupied by Evil Neighbors. I don’t know them and I’ve never been bothered by their existence before, except that they go outside to smoke and they talk on the phone while they do it. But the phone conversations never last longer than the cigarette, or more precisely, they go back inside with the phone when the cigarette is done. This should have been a clue: these people, though they have a house and a garden, do not like the outdoors.
A couple of weeks ago their garden was suddenly busy with arborists, gardeners, and another guy. They ripped all the jasmine off the fence, lopped off tree branches (including a large curving one from the neighbor’s catalpa and the top of an ailanthus in our yard) because they were hanging over their yard, cut some branches from their own flowering cherry — and then the other guy set out rat traps. And I got it: they’re trying to squirrel-proof their place.
Now, squirrels are too smart to fall for those go-in-you-can’t-get-out traps, so I’m not worried. But the catalpa limb and the jasmine were beautiful! These fools don’t give a damn, though, as long as Squirrely Jr. and crew can’t climb all over their yard, throw shells at them, and chew on their wires. Now, I get it that squirrels can be a nuisance. But you know what? So can people.
Squirrely himself is long gone, either banished by Squeeze after this last litter or just vanished of old age. But the nest that first attracted my attention a couple of years ago has been rebuilt, possibly by Squirt, who is now Squirrely Jr. Or, whoever’s in the nest is now Squirrely Jr. He has a mate, and on rare occasions they’re visited by the black squirrel who lives on the street side on the building. The Evil Neighbors have made it harder for these guys to get to the juniper and their other favorite dining spots, but believe me, they haven’t done away with them.
And I went out and bought peanuts to put on the fire escape. This is war!
