Richard Cobby captures never-failing light of Provence, winter and summer…
What I do on cold winter days is often to take to the kitchen, starting something hearty and real, such as a stew, homemade applesauce from Pine Barrens apples, or long-simmered spaghetti sauce. Lacking time or specific ingredients, I do what I’m doing now - savor a leisurely post-tax-preparation lunch (of local cheeses, local apples, French wine, bien sur!, a hearty, grainy bread from the Village Bakery of Lawrenceville,) while READING RECIPES. Forever homesick, as NJ WILD readers know, for my beloved Provence, I read Provencal cookbooks. Lines in these recipes jolt me away from my candlelit table (yes, in daytime!) and the redolent book, in word and images- to my computer — for recipes of Provence, sheer poetry! And why Provence, on a gloomy winter’s day? The subtitle of Richard Olney’s treasure, Provence-the-Beautiful Cookbook, is Cuisines of the Sun. Having lived in Cannes in 1987/88, — where I could walk to Picasso’s Vallauris, though not down those cooked-spaghetti strands they consider roads, into Cannes, I know about that sun.
Provence Light on Winter Vegetables Light all over. Everywhere. All the time. Sun that shattered into prisms and rainbows– not only upon water and sand and jewelry along the Rue d’Antibes and the hot metal of my little Peugeot. Light splashed along the concrete of La Croisette itself, upon the red rocks of the Esterel Massif, its pines and cork oaks. But even inside my deep apartment, light’s full spectrum splattered upon dark woods and fabrics, as well as upon wild herbs growing on my curve of balcony overlooking the blinding sea.
Provence Light on Pottery, as in Vallauris That unconquerable sun of Provence! By comparison, sunlight here, –upon my hill above the canal–, is like watered skim milk. No, I was never lonely there. Provence sun was my constant companion, winter and summer. Except when it snowed, which it did upon on the palms of Cannes in January of 1988. Sun was simply omnipresent, even during mistrals. And once, sun was truly obscured, during la pluie du Sahara - the rain of the Sahara, –full of golden, blinding, scouring Sahara desert sand.
Ancient Olive Tree, Provence Richard Olney divides his Provence, [which I never knew til 1976 is a separate world, not just a separate region from France itself], into Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Alpes-de-Haute Provence, the Vaucluse and Bouche-du-Rhone. In his books, he gives the specialties of each. In 1987/88, I explored them all, –in depth, by day and by night, usually alone, with passion never sated in all those months. Sometimes, I would pop my neighbors of the villa into the car, –the Carre’s and Charles Mouzon especially, occasionally La Marquise, La Comtesse — all of whom would burst into song the minute I turned the key in the ignition in those tinny cans that passed for automobiles in Provence. They could never believe how fast my car was, especially at des feus rouges - red lights — despite being une automatique! “Ooo! Ca bouge!”, they would exclaim - roughly, “OOO, it leaps!” Before returning to song.
Old Provence Chapel at Time of Lavender Harvest Most of our trips together were gastronomic, although one was in quest of the lavender harvest. And once, through a troupeau (troop, migrating flock) of sheep and goats led by a shepherd/goatherd with all his needs in leather sacques on either side of a donkey, to Opio for the pressing of the olives. All of our time together was merry and blessed. All the years since, I have been de-paysee(d) –uncountried — lost and longing for my own year in Provence.
The Flock The recipe line that started me on this poeme du Provence is “add the tentacles and wings and saute for one minute” Alas, I have not cooked with tentacles and wings. How matter-of-fact are Provencals about matters unknown, unconsidered, even off-putting to so many Americans. French recipes even explain their commands. A far cry from “microwave for 33 seconds…” “The flesh of skate wings is melting and voluptuous. At table, it separates like magic from the tender, gelatinous bones.” Ah, but we are talking talking of “squids’ tentacles and wings, chopped” here, not skate wings - which I first sampled and savored with black butter (au buerre noir) in Normandy in 1964. We are told to be careful to pack “the squid mantles, or pouches, carefully, because they shrink in cooking.” Their tentacles and wings are to be cooked for just one minute. I didn’t even know that squid had wings.
Fennel leaves are suggested for this recipe, but only “if the season is right.” To auslanders such as I, every season in Provence is the correct one. My neighbors were quick but gentle to correct me - for example cautioning me to make sure either to, or not to, buy cheeses made of ewes’ milk when they were lactating. As I am back in America now, c’est dommage, I am unlikely to need this advice, so have forgotten all but the gentleness with which it was conveyed in late winter of 1988. This particular recipe concludes with putting the daurade (a generous delicate fish) on the grill when the coals are “slightly on the decline” …”with a film of white ash masking the ardent embers.” Right — “The Joy of Cooking” was never like this!
Richard Cobby’s Provencal Fishing Boat - re only out for the morning - fish never fresher! Once the daurade is (minimally) cooked, we are to “sprinkle inside and out with the olive oil, then with pastis”. Of course. Every Provencal cook has pastis ‘ready to hand’. I have relished loup de mer (wolf of the sea - don’t ask! it loses everything in translation, but not in cooking) roasted on fennel branches, then flamed with pastis, at L’Oasis, in La Napoule Plage. That town, that legendary restaurant, were but moments from what would be my Cannes apartment. But with long long ago husband and daughters. That most sublime fish of my life arrived after the tiny, ruddy melons of Cavaillon with their traditional lashings of port. I’m fresh out of skate, squid, fennel and pastis. To say nothing of melon. Much as I love New Jersey, for a homesick former resident of Provence, it is NEVER the right season around here! Yes, of course, I have prepared Provencal specialties back in the States. Le Grand Aioli, for example, up in the Berkshires, in January, for friends who shared a birthday. Turns out, according to Olney, I left out the main ingredient. Despite having hand-ground the garlic in marble mortar and pestle, as instructed, for the garlicky mayonnaise that is the heart and soul of this recipe, my accompaniments were incomplete. They didn’t include octopus: “Serve the octopus hot from its cooking vessel. Its sauce mingles wonderfully with l’aioli.” At our birthday dinner in the snowy north, we were none the wiser, relishing every morsel of poached salt cod, roasted beets, new potatoes, crisp-tender carrots, ditto green beans, hard-boiled eggs, and cauliflower. These were the ingredients served with the Carre’s in a Bistrot/Art Gallery in nearby Biot, where a world-famous artist enjoyed the same at the next table. I had an American art magazine article about him right in my ’sacque’ to share with the Carre’s. When I showed it to the waitress, she took it over the artist so he could sign it. This merry man ate lunch with her every Friday, ‘le jour maigre’ - the meagre day - the fast and abstinence day - feasting on l’aioli. Olney teaches me everything I ever wanted to know about sweetbreads, which I have eaten (in Manhattan and oddly enough, north of Detroit) but did not taste in Provence. “Sweetbreads should be plump and full in appearance, white, with a slight pink cast, moist and glistening.” Although I sought out the regional restaurants everywhere in 1987/88 — not easy in that reign of the ridiculous la nouvelle cuisine! – the closest I came to sweetbreads was a lunch at Lou Nissarda, the Nicoise Place, near the fountain of La Place Massena, in Nice, on the heels of Mardi Gras. After photographing spent flowers from des batailles des fleurs, (Mardi Gras flower battles), abandoned serpentine and confetti, along curbs, in people’s hair, languidly drifting along the Boulevard des Anglais, and yes, in the fountain, a Princeton friend and I went to Lou Nissarda so I could introduce him to Nicoise specialties.
Nice, The High View and the Sea Even Charles Mouzon and the Carre’s had not eaten there, until I drove them to Nice. Though French, they were not Provencal. They didn’t know this regional food. My guest chose, as his first course, beignets/fritters of zucchini blossoms, as did I, among other treasures of Nice. The host brought us a gift of cooked marinated chick peas - the cuisine of the peasants — redolent of fruity olive oil, probably from Aliziari down the street; and lemon juice, from Mentone, about 20 minutes farther along the coast toward Italy.
What my guest ordered next nearly daunted, and yet did not — fried testicles. Lamb, to be sure. The whole point of my year in Provence was the point of my 71st year last year– Do the New. So yes, I tasted them. Fine - except I have nothing with which to compare. We always knew the French would eat anything. And, in terms of unexpected foods, the Provence leave the French in the dust. When in Provence, do as the Provencals do. We ended our meal with another gift from the proprietor - a liqueur, fresh from the freezer, in which twined a sinuous, ineffably thin single paring of lemon. Paradise enow. The height of weekly joy in my Provence was to journey to Old Cannes, Le Suquet, which goes back to the Phoenicians. Cannes-the-glamorous, was named, –though nobody knows it–, for cannes, fishing poles, –canes/bamboo-like, which grew in the Mediterranean, buffeted and therefore toughened by the mistral, month upon month. I like to think that I was buffeted and strengthened for all that lay ahead, by my time in the Provencal hinterlands, back country, garrigues (scrubland where the Resistance hid and managed to prosper), La France Profonde.
Far Vista of Provence in the Luberon My time in Provence toughened me so that, ever after, first in Georgia and then back here, I could wander with and without maps, in all seasons, in the wild regions near our Delaware Bay, learning to love NJ WILD - long before I had ever heard of a blog. Le Suquet was a look-out point for invaders, which arrived in all seasons for more than eight centuries, usually from the sea. Now it is a segment of the town frozen in time - light years from La Cote d’Azur, though only inches away… At Le Suquet, at Marche Forville, I would buy fresh eggs from a woman weighing a lively protesting chicken for another, braver customer. At March Forville, I’d be GIVEN olive oil, my francs waved away, due to my preference for the oil-presser’s favorite, which sounded like “la fruitier” — the fruity one. At Marche Forville, I had my favorite apicultrice - the honey lady - who taught me the joys of lavender honey she had gathered and packaged and was now selling, from her own bees. Outside Marche Forville, the news-seller would also refuse my francs: “Vous etes Amereicaine. Vous avez sauvez nous.” “You are American, You have saved us.” I have been in Normandy more times than I can count - no one there has ever said nor done anything comparable. At Marche Forville, as at our New Jersey Slow Food indoor winter farm markets and our soon-to-be spring farm markets, I could josh with the farmers, take home memories as well as taste. You can, too, in our own regional markets, soon, pretty soon… See Packet Article below - re transcendence - the ONLY word! Thank you, Adam!
Poet-in-Residence and Cool Woman, Judy Michaels, will launch her splendid new book by the fire on the second floor of the Princeton Public Library, on Monday, March 8. Guests are welcome to come early to chat with this legendary poet, from 7 p.m. , then settle into what promises to be a reading of unforgettable power at 7:30. Books will be available for sale and signing at the reading. “Reviewing the Skull” is Judy Michaels’ second collection - after “The Forest of Wild Hands” from the University of Florida. The new work is a wry and indomitable journey through Judy’s recent years, as her unassailable creativity has been beleaguered by repeated bouts of cancer. This lively woman is renowned equally for the strength of her own body of work, as for her indelible and catalytic effect upon students at Princeton Day School for many decades, as well as serving as a Geraldine R. Dodge Poet In the Schools. Her poems have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and Judy has received two New Jersey State Council on the Arts poetry fellowships. In life and in words, with assertiveness and humor, Judy conquers and reconquers the villainous disease, teaching far more than poetry by her every action. Hearing her, at the peak of her powers Monday, will be a night to remember. Judy is my dear friend of long standing, and was my daughters’ favorite English teacher at Princeton Day School during the 1970’s — which seems to be the case with anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to study with Judy. Here’s what the Packet just published: Balm in Poetry
Judy Michaels hears music in language
Friday, March 5, 2010 7:05 AM EST
By AdamGrybowski
BESIDES being a teacher, poet, sister and wife, Judy Michaels is also a five-time ovarian cancer patient — an identity that tends to trump the rest. Cancer is but one topic in her new book of poetry, Reviewing the Skull (WordTech Editions, 2010), but in literature as in life, the weight of the disease commands the most attention.
This was not the poet’s intention, though she concedes it may be true. Nonetheless, she hopes the way she transformed her confrontations with mortality into language — into poetry — can serve as a balm to readers. “My hope is to suggest a kind of transcending of the ugliness and painfulness through the language,” she says. “That’s what I hope for.” Ms. Michaels, who will read during her book launch at the Princeton Public Library March 8, has been an English teacher at Princeton Day School for more than 30 years and poet in residence for nearly as long. Now on sabbatical, she spoke to TIMEOFF from Detroit, where she was reading at a jazz club and working on a book about creative writing (she’s already written two books about teaching writing to high-school students). On a previous stop in Detroit, where a sister lives, Ms. Michaels visited the Detroit Institute of Arts while waiting for test results that would indicate whether or not her cancer had recurred. She became absorbed in Picasso’s “Melancholy Woman.” ”I was looking at the depth of the blueness,” she says. “I think this thing resonated because of what I was going through in the midst of my own life. I invested the painting with my own fear and an intense appreciation of its beauty. I think this (double emotion) characterizes the book as a whole. One feels extremely appreciative and so full of fear that it’s hard to be appreciative.” Of the woman in the painting, she writes in her poem “To Picasso’s ‘Melancholy Woman,’” “All you can do is watch for me to give/ Your pooled blues the weight of mortal fear.”
Because of the nature of ovarian cancer, Ms. Michaels says it is often found late, which leads to a high rate of recurrence. The first time her cancer went into remission, she recalls feeling relieved, as if she was permanently cured. Five recurrences later, her cancer has now been in remission for 15 months, and Ms. Michaels expects it to return in around nine months. (Two years between remission and recurrence has been her pattern.) One way poetry functions in Ms. Michael’s life is as a way to cope with her illness. If it doesn’t provide answers, her poetry gives her a forum to ask questions. “Poetry isn’t about answers,” she says. “One’s life, especially one’s life with a disease, is so full of questions that are unanswerable. My poems spring out of questioning and I don’t really expect answers.” Another reason she writes is to discover feelings she may be unaware of or to crystallize an experience. For instance, in “Presenting the Skull,” she writes about the time she borrowed a skull from the biology department to present to her 11th-grade students, who were about to read Hamlet. ”The image of the skull can lead to an intense meditation,” Ms. Michaels says. “I wanted to see where it would lead them.” Teaching is another source for writing, and as she observed her students and wrote along with them, a poem began to form in her mind. “In a sense, it’s a found poem,” Ms. Michaels says. “They were confronting the visual image of the skull, and it was also resonating for me.” Marshaling her sensations into language, she began to hear music in it, breaking her sentences into lines to create a rhythm. ”I think for me poems often take their shape when I become aware of their music,” Ms. Michaels says. “It’s not so much trying to figure out some answer to mortality or something — I’m listening to the music.” Music was a force in Ms. Michael’s childhood in Connecticut. Both parents gave lessons at home — her father, piano and her mother, flute. As a child, Judy sang and played cello and organ, before giving them up to spend her time writing. “I fell in love with poetry at a very early age, and music was a big part of the love I developed for poetry,” she says. “I also lived in a family where language was important. I got filled with it and it never left me.” Each of Ms. Michaels’ three siblings became teachers or artists. She earned her bachelor’s in English from Middlebury College in Vermont and a doctorate from Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, writing her dissertation on Coleridge. (Her husband, Bill, who earned his doctorate in American literature from Berkeley, wrote his dissertation on Thoreau. “We’re both romantics,” Ms. Michaels says.) Before landing in Princeton, she taught in California and the Berkshires. On sabbatical in 1987, she began writing poetry for the first time since adolescence. “Something turned the juices on,” she says. Ms. Michaels became one of seven founding members of Cool Women Poets, a group of female poets that meets regularly to critique each other’s work as well as to give public readings. For 12 years she has also participated in Survivors Teaching Students, a program sponsored by the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance that is now conducted in 80 medical schools across the country. Women who have lived with ovarian cancer describe their symptoms to medical students, hoping their first-hand experience will aid doctors in diagnosing the disease. ”I’ve found it very rewarding,” Ms. Michaels says. “You feel you’re reaching the future doctors, and it’s very practical. It’s an emotional experience for me. Doing it for 12 years is a little tough, but hearing the other women’s stories is remarkable.” Living with a disease like cancer creates a new rhythm to life, says Ms. Michaels, whose mother died from colon cancer in 1995. “I’ve found that there’s a rhythm that your life assumes, which is true for anyone with a chronic disease. It’s an intensifying of life.” But don’t call her a survivor — she’s uncomfortable with that label because it implies a quality of tremendous courage or perseverance she doesn’t identify with. “I’ve been extremely lucky,” she says. “I’ve had good insurance, good doctors and good hospitals that other people don’t have.” Reviewing the Skull author Judy Michaels will read from her book at the Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, March 8, 7 p.m., free; 609-924-9529; www.princetonlibrary.org
For southern New Jersey’s birds, this winter has turned deadly
Brenda Jones Captures Winter Whiteouts - particularly hard on raptors’ search for food ***
Frozen ground, broken trees limit food, shelter for South Jersey birds
A cedar tree in Lower Township on the afternoon of Feb. 6 shows the effects of the storm that hit that morning. The cedar is one of the most important trees to area wildlife during the winter — the berries provide food, and the foliage provides cover. A dense cedar can even prevent snow from getting to the ground under it, giving birds that eat worms a chance at dinner.
Brenda Jones’ Image of Winter’s Glazing Effects
You think you’ve got it bad? Try finding a worm right about now.
(NJ WILD Readers may recall that robins, at least, can switch from omnivores to fructivores in winter, berries providing all that those birds need. Woodcocks may not have this luxury… Cedar berries aren’t the only ones in southern New Jersey woodlands - but they may be the most important… cfe)
***
As bad as the dual blizzards of 2010 were for people in southern New Jersey, it’s a lot worse for the American woodcock. The rusty brown bird, a rare inland shorebird, has to eat its weight each day in earthworms.
While people struggle with power outages, dead cell phones and impassible streets, woodcocks are trying to find dinner under several feet of snow. The birds can be seen probing with their long bills on the few bare spots uncovered by snowplows on the side of the road.
The woodcocks that stay this far north in the winter gamble that the weather will not be that bad and that they will have the habitat to themselves, experts say - and this year the gamble did not pay off.
“A lot of birds are dying. It’s a tradeoff, and a lot of times it works,” said Don Freiday, a naturalist at the Cape May Bird Observatory.
It isn’t just the woodcocks dying. Freiday said that the fact that the salt marshes are frozen is also deadly for birds, such as rails, that winter there - there isn’t one in sight.
“I look out at the marshes of Cape May County and don’t see a sign of life,” Freiday said.
Birds that rely on evergreens, such as the Eastern red cedar, also are affected. The wet snow Friday stuck to the foliage of the evergreens, and high winds sheared the tops off or stripped their branches. Cedars tend to be very brittle.
“I hate to lose them because they’re habitat for tree birds in the winter,” said Jay Schatz, who chairs the Cape May Shade Tree Commission.
The red cedar is arguably the single most important tree in this region during the winter for birds. The blue berries on the female trees provide food. The green awl-shaped leaves, or needles, provide cover. A dense cedar can even prevent snow from getting to the ground under it, giving birds that eat worms a chance at dinner.
“A lot of cedars got killed and that impact is strong and bad. It will affect roosting of owls that like that cover in front of them. Yellow-rumped warbler is a main winter eater of cedars. Cedar waxwings and robins also eat the berries,” Freiday said.
Brenda Jones’ short-eared owl sails high in auditory search for vital nourishment in Pole Farm fields
The good news is the berries produced last summer are still on the broken trees and they will continue feeding birds. The cedars that survived may take on a more bush-like appearance this year.
Cedars, actually members of the juniper family, are an old tree found all over the world. The Eastern United States is one of its major strongholds and Freiday expects the trees to bounce back. Tree experts in the region give the red cedar the tree version of a four-star rating, which includes D (drought tolerant), S (salt tolerant), N (native) and W (flood tolerant). It’s one of the few trees at the shore to be rated at D, S, N and W.
“I don’t think it will affect berry production. I think we’ll have the same number of trees, but they’ll be shaped differently,” Freiday said.
The weather has also led to some strange animal behavior. A bat, which probably decided to migrate too late, came down the chimney into a Lower Township home. Field mice are moving into houses. People with bird feeders are seeing unusual visitors.
“I’m hearing people have meadowlarks at their bird feeder, which is crazy,” said Freiday.
Brenda Jones’ Magnificent Eastern Meadowlark in More Convenient Weather
Schatz said deciduous trees are faring better than cedars and pines unless they are covered in vines. Trees along New England Road in Lower Township were devastated for this reason.
“The vines held the snow,” Schatz said.
Bushes in Cape May, many planted to benefit birds and butterflies, were also flattened by the snow load.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is not worried about the impact of the blizzards on wildlife because nature always bounces back.
“It’s all part of nature’s cycle, as devastating as it seems,” DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said.
(NJ WILD readers are savvy enough about political agencies to know that the DEP will downplay the seriousness of a problem such as this, lest we look to them to resolve it. Unfortunately, the solution lies in ending the exacerbation of catastrophic climate change, something for which we have to look to politicians, once seen and known as leaders, of nations, above all, our own! cfe)
Contact Richard Degener: 609-463-6711 Posted in TOP THREE on Monday, February 15, 2010 1:14 pm Updated: 1:56 pm.
“To Watch These Woods…” mused Robert Frost - a peaceful past-time the poet enjoyed, rendering his “little horse” quizzical, “to watch these woods fill up with snow…” In the 21st Century, watching snow is no longer peaceful. Somewhere, somehow, weather has turned into something about which to be warned, from which to be rescued.
Ceaseless snow-fills my Canal Road woods –one of three storms, so far, in February. In the 1960’s, there was a nursery song, taught to my daughter by my mother –way before I thought that baby could learn jingles — at four months. Immediately, Diane would begin its traditional gestures, the moment my mother would begin to sing, “This is the way the snow comes down, snow comes down, snow comes down.” … a soothing song. Because watching snow used to be joy. The nursery tune, however, ends with “softly, softly falling”. Anything BUT true of of storms of recent months, –starting with the Nor’easter whose devastating aftermaths Betty Lies and I discovered at Island Beach State Park late last year. Let alone what repetitively takes place outside my new Canal Road windows.
If we learn nothing else from this WILD Winter, we need to face the reality that both the violence and the frequency of these tempests are consequences of catastrophic climate change. Devastation is not a future possibility - devastation is now. Every snow flake (although even the flakes are altered, abraded, by these severities into something small and round and hard) reminds us. WE we are doing this — to our storms; to our planet; to the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the winged, (as the Native Americans would say), who share the planet with us; and, yes, to ourselves. We are destroyers and despoilers, we who were put on earth to be its stewards. Our guilt lies in heedless actions. And, even more-so, in indifference. Our guilt is fueled by greed. Someone at dinner this weekend balked at my fury that people see this snow as ‘disproving’ global warming, rather than recognizing every “Winter Wallop” as climate change’s dire signature. “Carolyn, nobody wants to learn about climate change.” NJ WILD readers know what I answered: “Well, they HAVE to!” Scientists know we are in the middle of an extinction scenario. It has a name, as did the extinction of the dinosaurs. “The Holocene” is ours. Edward Humes, in his riveting multi-bio of modern heroes, Eco Barons, jumps right in with “Planet Earth is experiencing a major extinction event. Life is dying everywhere, and at unprecedented speed.”
EXTINCTION OF DUNES BY NOR’EASTER BLIZZARD, ISLAND BEACH, 2009 [Once seamless dunes, overwashed, had been turned into flattened separated mesas. A foot of snow/sand lies beneath walkers ON the boardwalk toward the very distant sea.] Peter Galvin, –deeply interviewed in Eco Barons, because both deeply concerned and INVOLVED–, calls our Holocene extinction “The New Holocaust.” While politicians use the verb ‘believe’ conjoined with science, in the summer of 2007, scientists measured one million square miles of sea ice melted — pouring fresh water and icy temperatures into oceans in general and the Gulf Stream in particular. We could be all out of glaciers in ten years. It’s not only the polar bears, everyone. They’re NOT the top of the food chain - we are. We are all in this ice soup together. What are you doing about it? Now? All along, NJ WILD readers have borne with me, carrying on about saving New Jersey. Because I for one never again want our state to be “the place where eagles used to be.”
Brenda Jones’ Eagle - lifting off into a healthy future, or oblivion? At this rate, our planet is going to be the place where life used to be. At best, our state and our planet are the walking wounded. Remember, EXTINCTION IS FOREVER. The Eco Barons in Humes’ mighty book were chosen because “They do not flinch.” “They are willing to be hated because they are certain they are right.” Whether it’s plug-in cars or sea turtles or grasslands or stopping developers/road-builders/tree-cutters in OUR public lands - his eco barons and baronesses step up to the plate, although far worse than baseballs are aimed at them. They do not flinch.
Humes’ heroes spend decades reversing the fate of net-suffocated sea turtles.
Humes’ heroes, like our splendid photographer, Brenda Jones, are “unwilling to sit by and watch society casually lay waste to the natural world.” Carole Allen’s was a quarter-century battle, with children as her crusading soldiers, finally managing to save the Kemp’s ridley turtle from the Texas Gulf Coast Shrimping Industry. Eco barons share Richard Louv’s intense concern about children and grown-ups left indoors. Because, as with Germans boys bombing Coventry Cathedral; the Japanese destroying Pearl Harbor fleet and men in WWII; and yes, American boys over Dresden and so forth: “DISTANCE MAKES DESECRATION POSSIBLE.” Distance from nature, not knowing nature’s names, makes destroying her a matter of indifference. Humes’ eco barons are particularly concerned about the destruction of language - over-simplifications, slang, street talk — facets of the deliberate dumbing down of our country. It used to be that everyone recognized the trees - they would refer to the oak, ash, maple, fir, dogwood… 21st-Century children know brand names beyond number, but barely a bird, let alone a tree. What is not known won’t be missed as the greed-mongers take over. Humes’ eco barons were chosen because they “are game-changers.” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made many enemies in his determination to heal his state: “I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat. The time for ACTION is NOW.” Hated, yes - yet he instituted healthy change where everyone said it was impossible. And as one who cares about art as well as science to a very high degree, I rejoice that the Governor saved beauty in the process. Saved rivers and bays and coves and hills and forests where art can happen. Eco barons know that science in general and climate in particular should never have been politicized. We ALL live in this climate. Climate doesn’t belong to states of one color over another. Concern over its fate is not that of a certain hue on a television map! Humes asserts that “Federal leadership has languished since Carter left office.” Did you know that President Carter was way out there re climate change, that he’d installed solar panels on the White House roof? did you know Reagan tore them off? I just learned this, this weekend. Within the hour, a very aware and savvy friend from Idaho called to tell me she’d just learned it for the first time also, from a 500-page tome on climate and other changes through which she is ‘tearing’ with disbelief and shock and some hope: Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. Humes’ eco barons include Ted Turner, a man of memorable quotes. “Fossil fuel’s day is over. We are poisoning our children and ourselves.” “We are destroying Paradise - one plot, one fence, one tree at a time.”
“Life can adapt to gradual change. But this is not gradual change - this is abrupt.” “We are living in the RED ZONE.” Sweden took warnings to heart in the 1990’s. That country proves the lie in the all-too-prevalent agreement that green change will harm jobs and productivity. Sweden produced an easily read and easily understood explication of the dangers of uncontrolled emissions, The Natural Step, proposing solutions. It was mailed to every household and school in 1990. Sweden is now the most sustainable country. Its emissions are below 1990 levels — everyone else has gone on accelerating. Their determination is to remove oil from their lives by 2020. And what has happened, financially, in the wake of these ‘green’ changes? Sweden’s economy expanded 47% between 1990 and 2008. America, meanwhile, has willingly knuckled under to those whom Humes dares to term “craven leaders.” He particularly deplores the fact that we are providing massive subsidies for polluters and destroyers, for the inefficient and the misleaders, the river- and salmon-killers, the oil-leakers and sewage-spillers. the loggers of forests and scrapers of mountains. One aspect Humes does not address is the lack of Pete Seegers of today’s musical world- those who sing us into consciousness, as they carry us aboard their splendid schooners, painstakingly restored, sailing us on the Clearwater toward the impossible dream - the clearing of the waters of the Hudson, which came about because one person cared enough to take a stand. The focus of Eco Barons is that level of courage. Ted Turner is only one of a brave new breed, the Conservation Philanthropists. Ted Turner and his peers, men and women, (and with regard to the turtles, CHILDREN) do not knuckle under. Neither must we: In Turner’s phrase, “IT SHOULD NEVER BE TOO LATE FOR AMERICA!” How very odd, this Saturday morning, that I can find news of the Chilean earthquake only on Spanish channels. Terremoto, I understand - moving earth. Pericoloso - did I HEAR that, in the rapid-fire Spanish coming out of the ravaged town of Concepcion? Mucho panico, I did hear and do understand. As well as the single words tsunami and Hawaii. But no one is speaking in any language of American Samoa. There, my sister’s brother-in-law, Quinn Weitzel, serves as Bishop of Samoa. He and his people are still attempting to recover from the (seemingly unheralded?) 2009 tsunami. Quinn hasn’t been home to his Chicago family for the trip scheduled that week, not in all these months. My first thought was of Quinn and his people - for his heart belongs to all Samoans, not only to ‘parishioners’. But even when I Google Samoa Tsanami Warning February 2010, I find one brief mention that a warning has been issued for Samoa, without a word re ‘measures’, followed by 10s of 1000s of ‘hits’ about their 2009 disaster. And on television, what do I find? No earthquake, world reactions, no tsunami scenarios - except on Spanish channels, which have most appropriately given this entire day over to earthquake coverage. At 8.8, this is s way beyond San Francisco in 1906: 7.8 to 8.25 in some reports. Furthermore, San Francisco’s main shock lasted but 42 seconds, originating off-shore. This one seems to be right in the center of now devastated Concepcion, lasting “90 segundos”. Far worse, Chile’s nighttime terror registered at 8.8 on the Richter scale. In Spanish, I think I’m learning, this quake was 500 times stronger than Haiti’s. How can this be? Many Chilean aftershocks, I learn in Spanish subtitles to Spanish speech, are 5.6 and 6.something - serious quakes in themselves - “felt and causing damage”. San Francisco’s aftershocks are not measured in the articles I’ve found so far. But to what am I treated on television this Saturday morning, in quest of hard news: leaping humans barely dressed in electric costumes, exhorting everyone to “Firm up those abs!”; a man violently shoveling take-out food into a woman’s mouth; cartoon characters blowing one another up; several very skinny women in several different immaculate kitchens, and a couple of men, one of them rotund, announcing what is very plain to see: “Now we’re going to saute these onions in olive oil.” Never mind olive oil! What’s happening in the REAL WORLD? The Weather Channel would rather talk about “shoveling out” and Vancouver. Isn’t this supposed to be the Information Age? For all our prattling about DIVERSITY, do we care so very little about people of other lands and languages? And o, by the way, a glacier the size of Luxembourg fell into the sea yesterday, altering temperatures, salinity and currents. Could that have shocked this earthquake into being? It is one p.m. I know no more in English. I have yet to discover what happened in Santiago. Presidents past and future of Chile have spoken, but I cannot understand them. She appears grieved. He seems still to be running for office. The Chilean ambassador, in Washington D.C. spends HIS time talking (in English) of how prepared Chile is for this sort of disaster. Consummate politician, covering…….. no evident compassion. No plans. No personal or party commitments. All he wants to convey is “We can handle this.” Meanwhile, in all the films, on the Spanish channels, I have seen but a handful of officials on the scene attempting rescues, let alone protection. I did see, very early, apparent looters filling bags in the half-light, exchanging high-fives as they clumped through rubble. There has been no President Obama reassuring these shattered people of Chile, let alone the about-to-be-shattered people of his Hawaii and Samoa, about our concern and compassion, prayers and support…
Foods from previous Indoor Winter Farm Market, Held at D&R Greenway Land Trust
ON FIRE by Susan Blubaugh In every season, one of my favorite excursions is to wander over hills and through meadows and forests to lovely Lambertville. Part of the allure of this tiny town is its setting - on the hem of my beloved Delaware River. Hers is the bridge that I crossed to my new life, my free life, after the shattered marriage. In Lambertville, I was asked to give first poetry readings. In Lambertville lived one of my all-time favorite artists, Bernard Ungerleider - a New Jersey Delaware Valley Impressionist. In Lambertville is my all-time favorite framer, Hrefna Jonsdottor - who matched the wood of one frame to the striations in the cane being cut by the Hawaiian caneworker; who married the wood in another frame to the tiny islands once called Sandwich, now Hawaii, where I’d purchased the antique map. In Lambertville lived the realtor who sold my New Hope Condo, so that I could move to Provence, and then to Georgia. Now, in Lambertville, are two of my all-time favorite galleries. Janet Hunt’s The Coryell Gallery at the Porkyard is a perennial lure when the art fever is upon me.
END OF THE DAY, Susan Blubaugh, Des Champs Gallery, Lambertville The newer is des Champs Gallery, on the very selvedge of the shimmering fabric of our Delaware River. And, right now, upon its walls are featured the superb art works of Susan Blubaugh. Susan has been a D&R Greenway Artist of high degree. A friend and I recently happened upon this artist, as she was hanging her newest show - which NJ WILD readers can still drive over to see - February 29, 2010 being its last day. Directions and to see more of Susan’s work: http://www.deschampsgallery.com/Gallery/SusanBlubaugh/tabid/62/Default.aspx
7 Lambert Drive is just to your right before the old green bridge to New Hope. Solid and welcoming, des Champs rises above the glimmering waters, whose light not only inspired its cadre of superb artists, but also dapples the works the river and its nearby hillsides inspire. Susan is “working larger these days”, say those who know. Others, in the same conversation add, “And looser.” I never needed Susan to work differently. But I must say, I am overwhelmed by the excellence of these new canvases, especially those of grazing cows on flatlands high above the river.
Lise des Champs is your gracious hostess. If you’re very lucky, you might even kayak with her, once the ice is out of our river. Kayaking being something I treasure on our canal - but have yet to try upon the Delaware. Lise has an unerring eye for excellence. Awe will be your companion, as you rise from floor to floor of her handsome gallery. And joy will accompany you home, as it has my friends, with your new art purchase snug in the back seat of the car. Without being dogmatic, Lise and her artists do what they can to call attention to the wonders of nature in the Delaware Valley - implying on canvas after canvas the urgency of preserving New Jersey’s last open spaces, especially farmlands and waterways. Give yourself a treat. Wander to Lambertville in the days remaining of this too-short month. Enjoy Susan Blubaugh’s masterpieces and the nature that catalyzed them. You won’t be sorry!
OLD SHADE TREES, Susan Blubaugh
D&R Greenway Tree Exhibition Artist, Clay Johnson, Immortalizes Urban Trees “Each tree, each part of each tree, has its own particular destiny and its own special relationship to be fulfilled. We roam the world to find our relationships with these trees.” George Nakashima, Woodworker, Bucks County
‘An Invitation to NJ WILD Readers: 2D&R Greenway Receptions: Feb. 26, 5:30 - 7:30; March 19, 6 - 8. Free. Call 609-924-4646 to register.
NJ WILD readers know that the core of my being, attention, and productivity these days is preservation, especially of New Jersey land. Most of you also know that D&R Greenway Land Trust, has been saving and providing stewardship for open land, beginning at the edges of the D&R Canal and Towpath in 1989. We have 21 years under our collective belts, around 22 miles (Manhattan-sized) accomplished. Our motto could be, “Saving New Jersey - one acre at a time.”
Most of you also know that D&R Greenway creates sequential art exhibitions on changing nature themes, calling attention to the beauty of nature (especially in our beleaguered state) and the urgency of saving it. We invite you to partake of our newest exhibition,l “Living Among Giants: Seeing the Forest for the Trees.”
“Red Roots” by Clay Johnson All are welcome at the Opening Artists’ Reception, Friday, February 26, from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. And our March 19 Poets’ Reception and Reading from 6 - 8 – when the most stellar poets of our region will be reading poems chosen by our Editor’/Hosts, Lois and Lee Harrod, on the subject of trees.
Trees found and lost. Trees remembered. Trees wished for. Trees imagined. Places where trees used to be. Farmers who grew and harvested Christmas trees. Fathers who cut down beloved trees — you get the picture.
Writing our poets, –spectacularly generous in response–, I naturally (pun intended) alluded to Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”. When I lived in New Brunswick, my husband would detour us past Kilmer’s home, knowing even then how poems and poets mattered to me.
Writing our poets, I felt that no one who cherishes poetry and/or New Jersey could overlook this New Brunswick writer, whose poem was set to music long ago. To the D&R Greenway Poets, I frankly admitted, “Kilmer’s ‘Trees’ may not be deathless poetry. So, send me YOUR deathless poems.” And they have — I do not envy Lois and Lee the choosing.
But I do envy all who will be in the audience March 19, to enjoy their results, work of the highest and most stirring caliber, read by their legendary authors.
Both receptions are free - simply call 609-924-4646, so we may put you on the Rsvp list and order wine and savories appropriately. Co-Curator, Maia Reim’s “Yellow Farmhouse, Yellow Willow“
In case you’ve not seen a Press Release, lately, here is what has been sent to the local media - from New York to Philadelphia and everything in-between and over into Bucks County. Together, we will keep an eye on the wonderful world of print journalism, while it lasts — take note of their response to this news:
For Immediate Release: D&R Greenway Land Trust’s “Living Among Giants — Seeing the Forest for the Trees” art Exhibition, February 8 to March 19, Opening Reception: Friday, February 26, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.; Poets’ Night: Friday, March 19, 6 – 8 p.m. call to register for receptions: 609-924-4646 www.drgreenway.org Contact: Cedelmann@drgreenway.org, 609-924-4646 – X 131
Princeton, New Jersey: D&R Greenway Land Trust’s art exhibition, “Living Among Giants: Seeing the Forest for the Trees,” is available for viewing in their Marie L. Matthews Galleries from February 8 until March 19. Challenging viewers to consider the magnificent beauty of individual trees, and the importance of preserving them, the exhibit’s free Artists’ Reception will take place Friday, February 26, from 5:30–7:30 p.m. To register: 609-924-4646. Art is available on business hours, business days; call to check whether galleries have been rented on day of visit.
The luminous canvases of Manayunk / Philadelphia plein-air artist Clay Johnson are combined with the work of area photographers chosen by Maia Reim. Fine-art photographer and co-curator, Ms. Reim has laced together a broad range of photographic images both haunting and mysterious. Local artists include preservationist Clem Fiori, (whose works grace Kingston’s Eno Terra Restaurant, as well as D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center), Alice Grebanier, Mary Leck, Frank Magalhaes, Tasha O’Neill, Bennett Povlow, Maia Reim, Olga Sergyeyva, Igor Svibilsky and Barbara Warren.
New Jersey poets of the highest caliber are submitting work inspired by trees for the Poets’ Night Reading and Reception on March 19, from 6 to 8 p.m., to which the public is also invited. A complete list of poets will be released, once editor/hosts, Lee and Lois Marie Harrod have made their selections. Both events are free, but registration is requested. [www.drgreenway.org]
D&R Greenway has collected an impressive body of work for the tree exhibition, art that captures the inner soul of these giants in the form of captivating tree portraits. “Considered the oldest and largest living things,” observes D&R Greenway Curator Jack Koeppel, “trees are often overlooked and under-appreciated on their own merit. From earliest times, trees have helped make possible life on earth.” Koeppel adds, “I want visitors to see trees as individual living beings that teach us and lend their wisdom to our own lives.”
BACKGROUND: TREE QUOTES: “I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.” Henry David Thoreau
“Each tree, each part of each tree, has its own particular destiny and its own special relationship to be fulfilled. We roam the world to find our relationships with these trees.” George Nakashima, Woodworker, Bucks County
“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts; they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” Hermann Hesse, Wandering
CLAY JOHNSON: D&R Greenway’s Curator, Jack Koeppel, has chosen the paintings of Philadelphia artist Clay Johnson for “Living Among Giants — Seeing the Forest for the Trees.” Johnson is renowned for imposing plein-air paintings of regional subjects. An alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, his work is avidly sought by major individuals and corporations. Clay Johnson’s landscapes are represented in numerous private and public collections, including IBM, Standard & Poor’s, Price-Waterhouse, McGraw-Hill Publishing, Bell Atlantic, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and AIG Insurance, as well as The Glenmede Trust Company, Pepper Hamilton, LLP, and Drinker, Biddle & Reath, LLP. Of his approach to art, Johnson asserts, “I am not an objective reporter taking inventory of the natural world. ‘Free play of the imagination’ best describes my aim. Since observation is where it begins, it helps to start with great material”, such as the Schuylkill and Delaware River Valleys.
D&R Greenway Land Trust: One of New Jersey’s premier land preservation organizations, D&R Greenway Land Trust preserved 22 miles of land in our beleaguered state by their 20th Anniversary Year. Their restored circa-1900’s barn, the Johnson Education Center [JEC], increasingly fulfills its purpose as a vital venue for exhibitions, lectures, professional workshops, indoor farm markets and corporate retreats. An ever-expanding array of individuals and groups rents the JEC for seminars and retreats, ever expanding the reach of D&R Greenway artists and showcasing the importance of art to nature and nature to art. www.drgreenway.org
Photographers: Clem Fiori: http://fioriworks.com/welcome.html
Frank Magalhaes: http://photogallery14.com/FrankMagalhaes/Frank_Magalhaes.htm
Tasha O’Neill: http://tashaphotography.com/
Bennett Povlow: http://www.churchvillephoto.net/spotlights/images/bennett_povlow/gallery_bp.php
Olga Sergyeyva: http://www.photographyforever.com/OlgaSergyeyevaPhotogallery/
Igor Svibilsky: http://www.igorsvibilsky.com/ http://www.photographyforever.com/ria/
Maia Reim: Ms. Reim is a graphic designer in the publishing industry, Advertising Art Director at Princeton University Press since 1989. As a member of the Princeton Photography Club, she also has participated in numerous group shows. The Jonathan Krist Memorial Award at the Phillips Mill Annual Photography Exhibition was given to Ms. Reim in 2007. She was honored with a one woman show in the Small Gallery of Hopewell’s Fine Arts Photography Cooperative Gallery 14 in March of 2008. Her work is currently on view at the Jewish Center Gallery of Princeton.
Mary Leck: Mary Leck: Botanist / Photographer Mary Leck, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Biology, Rider University: Mary Leck’s “River Dance,” an abstract of water flowing over plants, won the All Categories Prize in the 2000 Wetlands of the World Photography Contest, used in the journal Science and featured on a calendar cover. Half of her works sold from “Secret Universe”, –Dr. Leck’s first solo exhibit of photography, at Ambré Studio, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In fall 2008, Ms. Leck won this honor for her best-of-show picture in a 2006 Ambré exhibit. Dr. Leck is a Trustee of D&R Greenway Land Trust and Founder and moving spirit behind Friends for the Marsh and their annual Voices for the Marsh Photography exhibitions.
Alice Grebanier: Her work is currently featured at Grounds for Sculpture, in their Focus on Sculpture 2010 exhibition. A member of the Princeton Photography Club, her work has also been accepted for the Phillips’ Mill Gallery Exhibitions..
Barbara Warren: “I proceed in the classic way: I look until I see something that moves me and then construct a painting around that experience. Much of my work is done en plein ai.
NJ WILD readers know that my key hiking/birding/art companion, Janet Black, and I set out on Christmas Eve for old Cape May. Old as in sheltering and feeding Lenni Lenapes 10,000 years ago. Old as in welcoming whalers of Cape Cod in the 1600’s, some of which old New England seafaring names remain in the town today. Old as in still living by the seasons and the tides, as do so few places in our modern world. This Christmas Eve, however, there was more of a certain season - i.e., Old Man Winter, than we might have preferred, had we known. We traveled there to escape commercial frenzy - that we achieved. We traveled there to hike and to bird — that was another story. NJ WILD readers also know that I haven’t been able to insert many pictures since before that journey. Therefore, I may allow the pictures to speak, rather than words. These few, in this thin sun, were all we were granted. The trip held other gifts, the kindness of strangers, gastronomic surprises of the remarkable seafood variety, magical fogs that somehow brought all that Victorian architecture to life as though back in its time- another story, also. Here then, is Christmas Eve Cape May. Enjoy.
Jetty Motel Christmas
Winter Ocean and Cape May Light
Cold Shells, The Jetty
Gilded Grasses, Cape May Beach
Cape May Bird Observatory’s Hawk Watch Platform - Unshoveled, No Hawks
‘Rare Birds’ Takes on New Meaning: this was ‘It’!
Christmas Eve Last Light on Concrete Ship
Cape May Light from Beach near the Jetty
Christmas Eve Walk, Cape May
Christmas Eve Gifts Someone Had Arranged
Great Black-Backed and Other Gulls - Christmas Eve Congregation
Christmas Eve Church
‘Snice’ - Snow and Ice on Sand- Our Christmas Reality
Last Rays in The Shelter at The Jetty
Cape May Light from Hawk Watch Platform
Silent Night, Cape May
Christmas Eve Gifts - Waiting for Santa
One advantage of 21st-Century snowstorms, that seems the polar opposite (pun intended) of the snows of childhood, is that we are not, thereby, cut off from our friends. In fact, comparing snow experiences and snow images and memories, is bringing friends of all parts of my life nearer, since those first Nor’easters of November.
Joy Kreves - Valentine’s Snow Joy Kreves is one of our D&R Greenway artists, a ceramicist, yes, but renowned for mastery in many media. Joy maintains a riveting blog and lively web-site, upon which her poetic gifts are as evident to me as her visual mastery. Joy gives me permission to use this, taken on The Day, needless to say. She laments that Valentine’s Day is past, which thereby seems to mean to her that I would not want to use this scene. On the contrary, I was with friends on Valentine’s Eve, two people of very different backgrounds, and yes, ages — who declared, frankly and adamantly, “For us, every day is Valentine’s Day.” The way it should be. And they’re not even poets… So I thank Joy and yes, indeed, utilize her loving vista for NJ WILD - because Joy’s art most of the time is drawing attention to the urgency of saving nature, especially in our beleaguered state. Enjoy Joy’s snowstorm tribute to our splendid Delaware River - which renders us the only state with three coasts — the Atlantic Ocean, to the east, to be sure; the Delaware River herself to the west; and the Delaware Bay - the most overlooked coast in our country, if you ask me!
Here is the work Joy is now turning out, with an eye toward her one-person show at Rider University this coming September. Joy is legendary for finding beauty, even majesty, in weeds, especially dandelions:
Dandelions and Twilight by Joy Kreves In her life and in her art, Joy seeks out and celebrates the wild - often through some of Nature’s humblest offerings. Joy demonstrates that there is no class consciousness among the wildlings, nor should there be. Ways to relish more of Joy’s wizardry, even with all this snow: www.joykreves.com : Galleries of Original Artwork http://www.jerseyarts.com/ArtistGallery.aspx?ID=81
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