cranes

big up these photos so you can see the birds and all.

back of the big blue ikea in red hook, brooklyn you can find cranes. not the birds, although they are likely nearby, but the machines, standing on towering legs like giraffes in windbent high grass. they are scattered all over, on piers, in parking lots, up among the ships. they are the remnants of the demolished todd shipyards, unrescuable but still very much present in the park ikea finally agreed to in order to appease the city they wanted to build in. and there is plenty to say about a store like that but if you walk right past it instead you are staring at the cranes and this is where brooklyn was glorious. the shipyards. huge steaming monsters carting off all the things brooklyn was making back when that's what brooklyn did. if you are proud of the history of a place it is hard to watch the physical evidence of that history disappear bit by bit. but the cranes, having been surrounded by this park of sorts, are here even after what was around them has succumbed, cogs and belts and chains stilled, just for looking at. but looking at them is something else, to be sure.

i am not from red hook and i do not remember the shipyard in its heyday or the graving dock where the big ships came for repairs or the sugar factory. and i am not such a fool that i think our history is a history of prettiness and light or that this place was beautiful when people worked in those cranes. i am sure it was dangerous and terrifying and miserably sweltering in summer, then bitterly icy in winter. i am sure those machines i stand under maimed folks, maybe killed some. i would not have wanted to stand on these docks, climb the bare ladders to the cabs of the cranes, try to duck the heavy metal hooks swinging across that narrow space. i can imagine cables snapping and slicing through hands or legs or faces. our early industrial history was as bloody as war. but there is something about the technology of our ancestors, the work they had to do to get us all here, that seems to amaze more than a few of us. and so no matter how this small space got itself roped off from the rest of time and progress in a city hurting for space, it is here. seeing these cranes still standing up where they have always lived helps us understand who we were that long ago. maybe it helps us understand where we are now a little. or maybe they're just pretty to look at.

but there are shipping terminals still. huge ships move in and out of the docks and fat tugs scoot up alongside barges. i don't know where they go or what they carry but they go. there are ships you can't be sure about. maybe they leave this still water and go out to sea and maybe they
don't. probably they don't. they are dark like old houses in scooby-do. there is paint but it's mostly gone, revealing bloated wood or rusting metal. it's not clear why they sit there but there they sit anyway. seeing them is like seeing wild animals on your street. you know there are ships and you know they go from port to port but you never think about them cutting through the water right there where you can see them. when you consider how fast everything else moves through the world it seems so unlikely something floating on water would still be so important. you try to imagine them roaming over tall waves where there is nothing in sight but the place where the water and sky touch.

what happens when you walk back behind the blue ikea in red hook, though, is that you see them. you see one and then another and you keep seeing them when you turn, when you walk past a tree or around a corner. you would not think things so large would keep popping up from behind things. but they do. you will look at the cogs and gears and the rail lines that made these seem like living things.

you will hear what you have always heard. how this place was something magnificent back in the day and how it is nothing now, destroyed, a sad shell. you will hear how this place has been an eyesore for too long, how it needs cleaning up. whatever the argument, you will hear how ugly it is now. right now. but you know that is not true. you are looking out at it and you see what is there, the cranes and everything else.

la liberté éclairant le monde

back before this country's centennial some folks, including a man named bartholdi, started thinking about and then working on a statue that would be the embodiment of a beautiful democracy, the embodiment of a nation that had survived internal strife and had struck valiant blows against oppression. because building a giant woman (france's part in the celebration) and building a pedestal for her to stand on (the united states' offering) are both pretty expensive endeavors, the statue wasn't finished until 1884 and the pedestal took another two years. when the country was trying to make money to build the pedestal they held all sorts of auctions and contests and a woman named emma put her poem in one. someone read it aloud and i am sure that everyone clapped, but after that folks forgot until well after emma died. a friend badgered those she could about the poem and finally in 1903 emma's words were pressed into a bronze plaque and hung up inside the pedestal. emma's words became the woman's voice.

The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

i round the corner of the fairway store and snap a few photos before i realize the statue of liberty is in them. she sneaks up on me with all that coppery quietness. now, i am not what most folks think of when they think patriot because i am not always yelling about my country like it is a football team, like it will kick your ass, but that woman standing there so patiently for so long is hard to look at unless you think about why she's there. the statue, meant for a different purpose when it was shipped over from france, became for us the woman in emma's poem, became the very symbol of why we are all here and how. she is the promise of safe haven, of a new life. she is the voice insisting that the least of us is welcome here. always. i cannot see her without hearing the poem in my head, thinking about her turning her back on all that is rich and elegant, turning her back on fanciness. "give me..." she says and who are you to deny a woman who carries lightning in her hand? a woman with broken chains strewn around her feet? "send these...to me." she means this. and i would not want to be the person to get in her way.

she asks for the poor. she asks for the homeless. she asks for people others see as garbage. as garbage. she demands them, says she's waiting right here with the light on, here in my town outside the grocery store.

this is the gift she offers the world. it is the gift we offer the world not because we are better or more powerful but because it is how we began and how we will be able to continue as a democracy, as a nation. this is what a gift is, an unexpected opportunity. liberty enlightening the world.

dog teeth

when i pick him up from the dog dentist, guthrie doesn't know who i am. this may or may not be because of an intravenous cephalic catheter dripping valium into him all day. it's possible this catheter kept him anesthetized and the valium got into him some other how, but i can tell you he looked like a lot of moms did back in 1975 or so only without that blue eye shadow. i can tell you he likes the valium.

he looks so tiny in the arms of the woman who brings him out, a brown furry puddle with stubby legs dangling off at the corners. his eyes do not focus. the brown one looks straight ahead and the blue one looks up and out. the tech hands him over and then hands me a bag with antibiotics, pain pills and five small, ugly teeth, one with a root so black it looks painted, fake. i have no idea what the tooth fairy will say about this. five is more teeth that she usually deals with. five is a bar fight.

the woman who hands guthrie over tells me how adorable he is. just this morning when i dropped him off, people outside the vet's office were snapping photos of him hanging off my shoulder. a few days before, we walked out the door to two neighborhood women who said they'd just been talking about us. by us they meant guthrie. they asked to get a few photos of him to put up in the window of the corner pharmacy. i feel like the mother of a teenage beauty queen. but i smile when the woman at the vet's office tells me about guthrie because she was snuggling on him when she brought him out and i know she means he's sweet.

i let him try walking and our five block trip is quite an adventure. we round a corner and come face to face with a red dachshund. it prances up to guthrie and steps back a little, probably offended by surgery smells and the luridness of valium. but guthrie suddenly remembers who he is, at least for a moment. his brain lunges forward and his body attempts to follow. he opens his deadly jaws wide to clamp them down on the sweet nose of this dog and the valium washes over him again. he forgets. his brain giggles. he sits a second or two in the middle of that smooshy attack, mouth open, some of his teeth bared, frozen a few inches away from the surprised dog. and then his whole tired, confused head slides back down on top of his lower jaw, shutting his mouth. the red dachshund walks on past, probably making a mental note to just say no to drugs. when we meet his archnemesis, the small black pug, on up the block, the valium is the only one at the wheel and guthrie strolls past on his wobbly legs. the pug's owner and the confused little pug both stare, wide eyed. i motion to the white surgical tape on guthrie's front paw and say "valium". they both nod and smile.

i carry his floppy self up the two flights of stairs and he does not once try to leap out of my arms and knock me back down the stairs. he sees little floating things that make him cock his head from time to time but i can't see any of them. because he's hopped up on valium and missing five teeth, the vet said he's not likely to eat much the next few days and if he eats, it should be soft food. i am prepared. i have food but will not worry if he doesn't eat.

but guthrie staggers down the long hall, through the living room and directly into the kitchen. he turns to the fridge (the dog food lives above it) and runs smack into the corner of the thing with his loose face. he nearly falls over. he tries again. his eyes are puffy and do not appear to be connected to his brain. his mouth is swollen and his lips are flapping loose around his face. not a single one of his sensory organs is fully committed to him at this point. he sits in front of the fridge, looks up at the bag of dog food on top. he starts to cry. it is low and wobbly and i think he is in pain but his head, if not his eyes, focuses on that bag. he has not eaten in almost 24 hours. i get a can of the soft food and put a small spoonful onto a plate. it is gone before the plate is on the floor. i do not want him to get sick so i offer a spoon at a time until the entire can is gone. we will start with the toothbrush and the dog toothpaste in two weeks.

farmer's year book 1963

there is a 1959 denoyer and geppert pull-down classroom map of the state of new york, physical and political, on the wall of our bedroom. in the top left corner is an inset map of the state's rainfall from april 1 to september 30. (best growing months) whispers the inset. the bottom left corner is a population density map with a dot for every 500 people. bottom right is my own long island, which could not be crammed onto the regular part of the map and had to be set aside, hawaii-like. the big map is done all in greens and yellows and oranges for elevations and features railroads, canals and the new york state thruway. if i follow the green of the hudson valley up, north, i can see the orange of the catskills and on up of the adirondacks. over there in the catskills i can trace the ghost of what is not yet my reservoir, yellow of the delaware river valley snaking through those orange and even brighter orange peaks.

there are more of them, of course. a map of the reservoir with depths and power lines hangs over a desk in a bedroom with bunkbeds and altimeters. the reservoir is so long it is split into two bits at the downsville bridge. a copy of a map of my own hometown on thin paper lies curled in a tube. it shows the mine my great grandpa worked and all the others that made a little stretch of hilly land in southwest missouri into a lead town, now laced with occasionally collapsing tunnels and questionable soil. there is another pull-down map, this one of the united states when alaska and hawaii were still territories. we own books of lists, encyclopedias of anything and everything, books of old city boundaries. i am lucky to have found someone who tolerates, even supports, this desire to get and pore over old information. whatever it is that makes me want those things has got him, too. there is a reason we got married at a dragline shovel in the middle of strip mines.

this means that from time to time we stop at flea markets and antique stores to leaf through their books. the sweetie is a fool for science books- space, weather, geology. who isn't, really? i will snatch up anything with a map or chart or graph. anything with a visual representation of something large. anything with step by step instructions. this weekend we grabbed a few little books, including the farmer's year book, a gift of the national bank and trust company of norwich, new york, with offices in chenango and delaware counties. 1963.

i like books like this because they are full of information. not necessarily information i can use, but things i like being able to know, just in case. the first page of the book promises me i can use it for reference, for records, for information. and i am in love. in smaller type it goes on to say "there are several pages which contain special information of value and ofttimes of immediate need". and i know that if i do not take this book home with me and make its valuable information my own i will surely die. immediate need indeed.

there is information on land measure, times to cut hay and how to measure a haystack. there is a common nails reference table. and not just a common one but also one for finishing nails and casing nails. separate tables. i do not know what casing nails are but i know a 10d is three inches long, 10 1/2 gauge and that i can get 95 of them in a pound. there is a chart on description and use of files, including a cross section of each file drawn to help the user determine what is what. if i felt so inclined, i could record my acres, yield and value of corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, clover, timothy and a handful of other crops. timothy? it's a grass used for hay. if i wanted to call up my pals in maryland every morning, i could record the layings of their four hens in a beautifully graphed egg record. that's right. beautifully graphed. the book tells me how to mix paint to get such colors as copper (red, yellow, black) and freestone (red, black, yellow ochre, white).

i now know the most common paint failures by name and my favorite is alligatoring. i can tell you that you can get 400 square feet per gallon covered if you paint hard brick with a single coat of gloss finish oil paint. 350 square feet if you paint soft brick. there are weights and measures and information on crop pests, when they show up and what to do. i know now for a fact that my lemon tree, which is currently in fruit, had better watch out for 31 degree temperatures because they are injurious to a tree in that state. when in bud the tree can withstand a whole degree more and when there's no reproduction going on at all, my tree is brave to 28 degrees. i know that strong tea was used as an antidote to most poisons at the time except those treated with milk or raw eggs. i am glad it is not 1963.

but here is what just ripped my heart right out of me. "quantity of silage required and most economical diameter of silo for dairy herd". if that is not a beautiful heading for a table i do not know what could be. this is an elegant arrangement of headings and subheadings and even a footnote. for herds from 13 to 70. with options for 180 and 240 day ensilings. the index will help me with anything i can't find by instinct and there's a two page section called "belting pointers" that clears up just about any possible questions a
body could have about belts and pulleys, including, but not limited to, finding the horsepower that any given belt will economically transmit.

nobody needs this. nobody has to figure out any of this stuff without help anymore. paint comes in every shade imaginable and the person behind the paint counter will tell you exactly how much coverage you can get if the paint can itself won't. you can wade through 4 million interweb sites on the standards for grading of corn, but you can't get those standards opposite 18 rules for safe tractor operation and a page away from images of eight useful knots just the way they are right here.

there's a nice ruler on the back with the numbers 1 through 6 in thick red lettering and the edge of the book ruled off in sixteenths of an inch in a dreamy blue. a two year calendar. so maybe this is the interweb in 1963, the resources of the world, a farmer's world at least, all complete and immediate. day or night. right in your pocket.

lake

click photos to enlarge.

for a while when i was very little my grandparents ran a sort of motel or maybe a handful of cabins on beaver lake in northwest arkansas just out a bit from rogers. i can tell you now there's not much i thought i remembered about that time other than smells. the smell always of pine-sol from my grandma's cleaning and the similar, but oilier smell of the paints she used to capture and keep what she saw when she looked out onto the lake. the smell of my grandpa's cigars. the smell of lake water itself, which is not easy to describe but which is immediately recognizable to anyone who knows a lake anywhere, full of fish and a good breeze and coolness. not much else a child that small could gather up except a few rocks and shells.

but then the sweetie and i drag the boat into the water here in our own new york mountains i look around and feel like i am snagged on something, that crazy proust and his cookies again, something from so far back in myself it is barely there. the water is low this time of year, the city needing so much more in this heat. the drop of eight or nine feet has unearthed a part of the world that usually lives without air and keeps to itself. bare rock and sand that will soon enough slip back into the water. but for this day the sweetie and i row around inside the water of my grandma's paintings, rocks and trees overhanging, right up inside the earliest part of my thinking about what a person needs. rocks and water and trees and sky. not survival needs or comfort needs. higher up than that, less necessary and maybe because of that somehow more vivid. it is funny to think that needs, desires, can be passed down through generations like eye color or curly hair or dimples. but there they are, reminders of who we are and where we come from.