Spring flow…er…fungi!

Winter always stays a bit too long, and, after the blustery snow storms of March, you can always find me out in the garden frowning at the mud and waiting the first living things to pop up out of the thawing earth. Usually the hellebores bloom first followed by the crocuses, and then the whole symphony of blooms truly begins in earnest. This year, however, featured an unexpected player sounding the first note of the overture. After a light snow, I went out into the garden and found that the dark, cold earth was packed with pretty little mushrooms strewn across a portion of the garden about the size of a queen sized mattress. The mushrooms ranged in size from pencil eraser to a quarter-dollar-piece and were a lovely shade of burnt sienna.

Mushrooms are really the fruiting bodies of much larger underground organisms which are composed of delicate networks of threadlike hyphae. These elaborate filament networks are mutualistic with the roots & bacteria which make up the mysterious subterranean ecosystem. I would tell you more about this, but I don’t know more. Mushrooms are a truly mysterious hidden kingdom of life to me. I know some strange factoids about their cellular structure: primitive fungal cells are motile (!) whereas higher fungi have cellular septae, which allow organelles to be shared by many cells! I know the largest living organism known is a fungus. And of course everyone knows about the aesthetic (and chemical) range of mushrooms which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (and can be poisonous, medicinal, nutritious, or horrid, depending on mushroom type).

These mushrooms were quite pretty (in an earthy way) however my camera was not very good at differentiating them from the bark and leaf litter. In real life, they did stand out to the human eye, which raises yet more questions about their nature and composition. I am glad they are there, waiting underground and I will think about them as a larger part of the true garden (along with strange wasps, brown creepers, pseudoscorpions and tiny fluorescent dayflowers). If anyone knows any actual facts about these little fungi, kindly let me know. We will commence the regularly scheduled floral part of the spring symphony in the immediate future!

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May Day Parade

It is May Day! This weekend I was thinking about whether to celebrate the ancient pagan festivals and rituals associated with this holiday of seasonal rebirth or whether to instead write about the international day honoring workers. This latter manifestation of May Day came about in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a response to the excesses of the industrial revolution and the undemocratic forms of power manifested by the cartels and monopolies which sprang up with the railroad, the mills, the mines, and the oilfields. I was sitting in my yard looking at the spring blossoms when the issue was decided for me. Sirens and chants of “The only SOLUTION is COMMUNIST revolution!” filled up the garden. I ran out to the street and a parade of communists was marching up Flatbush in Brooklyn. They were waving blood red flags and waving placards. Most were wearing red shirts and some were riding in a huge old flatbed lorry which looked like it came out of 1960s Cuba.
Although I can respect the socialism of Jaures and I am fascinated by the social democracy of modern forward-thinking northern European countries like Holland and Denmark, I have trouble uncoupling communism per se from the ghastly totalitarian abuses of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. (plus I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War) so I stared at the communists in shock—as though medieval monks or Sumerian charioteers were riding through. A number of people in the crowd joined them or eagerly grabbed their manifestos though. Evidently the communist message was not as outside of time as I thought.

A lot of these recherche movements have been springing up lately. There are communists, confederates, tea partiers, celibate terrorists (?), and syndicalists popping up all over the place. There are even confused ultramontanists angry that they can’t understand the current pope sufficiently to treat him as an emperor.

The oligarchs who reap the greatest benefits of globalized capitalism have not been sharing the benefits of global commerce, nor reinvesting in next generation technology, nor even buying epochal flounder-themed art (although there is always time, great masters!) Moneyed interests are not even hiding the extent to which they are manipulating the American political system, except maybe with some awkward metaphors about how the financial system is like blood. They are breaking the system to exploit it and weirdness, old and new, is seeping into the cracks.
Our democracy and our fundamental economic system are having serious troubles. It is unclear if these are growing pains, or if they are the onset of the sort of changes which felled Athens or undid the Roman Republic. The ossification of our system has combined with rapid social and economic change to completely undo one political party (albeit through mechanisms which would look more familiar to Tiberius & Gaius Gracchus and Huey Long, than to Ayn Rand or William Buckley Junior).

But back to the communists in Brooklyn—who were, after all, surrounded by police (to a disquieting degree, actually) and drew far more chuckles and eye rolls from the Flatbush crowds than they got converts. It is a reminder that we all need to laugh less at the dysfunction in Washington. Fascist totalitarians are cropping up on the left as well as the right. We need to have some serious conversations about democratic reforms and how to reestablish useful and helpful mechanisms and norms to deal with the changes in the world. Otherwise unexpected weirdos will make those choices for us and instead of a comic stunted Mussolini with porn stars and Russian business ties we might end up with a high theocrat or a tribunal of the people. Things are moving fast: let’s talk more and think more clearly!

Shepheardes Calender III: March

Wherever I go these days, strangers come up to me begging to know spoilers for The Shepheardes Calender, Edmund Spenser’s great 12 part poetic masterpiece from 1579 (which Ferrebeekeeper is publishing in its entirety, month by month, to universal acclaim).  Will spring return to the picturesque English countryside? Will the shepherds ply their Arcadian trade while exchanging classical allusions? Will romantic contrivances lead to deeper questions concerning the human condition? Will love triumph anon?

I can’t answer these burning questions.  You will just have to wait for each additional installment and keep reading…but, by coincidence, here is the March eclogue. The grim months, January and February, are giving way to spring, when all of nature awakes. Two callow shepherd youth, Willye and Thomalin, discourse upon the beauties of the waxing season.  Willye lightly teases his friend Thomalin concerning the season’s longstanding connection with amorous pursuits (as adolescent boys everywhere are wont to goad their fellows), whereupon Thomalin tells a hunting anecdote of firing his crossbow at a beautiful winged child.  This supernatural entity easily avoids the inexperienced shafts of the shepherd and gravely wounds the farm lad with a return arrow.  Oh! The wanton follies of love!

Spenser follows up this little scene with an author’s gloss (which makes use of playfully ironic language to hint at deeper and unspoken undercurrents buried in the allusions). But enough of my prating, you came here to read Spenser and contemplate the paradoxical nature of love as explained by a 16^th century aesthete.  So, without further preamble, here is…

The Shepheardes Calender: March

By Edmund Spenser

Ægloga Tertia.

 A R G V M E N T.

IN this Æglogue two shepheards boyes taking occasion of the season, beginne to make purpose of loue and other pleasaunce, which to springtime is most agreeable. The speciall meaning hereof is, to giue certaine markes and tokens, to know Cupide the Poets God of Loue. But more particularlye I thinke, in the person of Thomalin is meant some secrete freend, who scorned Loue and his knights so long, till at length him selfe was entangled, and unwares wounded with the dart of some beautifull regard, which is Cupides arrowe.

WILLY. THOMALIN.
Thomalin, why sitten we so,
As weren overwent with Woe.
Upon so fair a Morrow?
The joyous time now nigheth fast,
That shall alegg this bitter Blast,
And slake the Winter Sorrow.

THOMALIN.
Siker Willy, thou warnest well;
For Winter’s Wrath begins to quell,
And pleasant Spring appeareth:
The Grass now ‘gins to be refresht
The Swallow peeps out of her Nest,
And cloudy Welkin cleareth.

WILLY.
Seest not thilk same Hawthorn Stud,
How bragly it begins to bud,
And utter his tender Head?
Flora now calleth forth each Flower,
And bids make ready Maia’s Bower,
That new is uprist from Bed.
Tho shall we sporten in delight,
And learn with Lettice to wex light,
That scornfully looks askaunce:
Tho will we little Love awake,
That now sleepeth in Lethe Lake,
And pray him leaden our daunce.

THOMALIN.
Willy, I ween thou be a Sot;
For lusty Love still sleepeth not,
But is abroad at his Game.

WILLY.
How kenst thou that he is awoke?
Or hast thy self his Slumber broke?
Or made privy to the same?

THOMALIN.
No, but happily I him spide,
Where in a Bush he did him hide,
With Wings of purple and blue:
And were not, that my Sheep would stray,
The privy Marks I would bewray,
Whereby by chaunce I him knew.

WILLY.
Thomalin, have no care for-thy,
My self will have a double Eye,
Ylike to my Flock and thine;
For alas at home I have a Sire,
A Stepdame eke as hot as Fire,
That duly adays counts mine.

THOMALIN.
Nay, but thy seeing will not serve,
My Sheep for that may chaunce to swerve,
And fall into some Mischief.
For sithens is but the third morrow,
That I chauncst to fall asleep with Sorrow,
And waked again with Grief:
The while thilk same unhappy Ewe,
Whose clouted Leg her hurt doth shew,
Fell headlong into a Dell,
And there unjointed both her Bones:
Mought her Neck been jointed attones,
She should have need no more Spell.
Th’ Elf was so wanton and so wood,
(But now I trow can better good)
She mought ne gang on the Green.

WILLY.
Let be, as may be, that is past;
That is to come, let be forecast:
Now tell us what thou hast seen.

THOMALIN.
It was upon a Holy-day
When Shepherds Grooms han leave to play,
I cast to go a shooting:
Long wandring up and down the Land,
With Bow and Bolts in either Hand,
For Birds in Bushes tooting:
At length within the Ivy tod,
(There shrouded was the little God)
I heard a busie bustling.
I bent my Bolt against the Bush,
Listning if any thing did rush,
But then heard no more rustling.
Tho peeping close into the thick,
Might see the moving of some quick,
Whose Shape appeared not;
But were it Fairy, Fiend, or Snake,
My Courage earn’d it to awake,
And manfully thereat shot.
With that sprang forth a naked Swain,
With spotted Wings like Peacocks Train,
And laughing lope to a Tree;
His gilden Quiver at his Back,
And silver Bow which was but slack,
Which lightly he bent at me.
That seeing, I level’d again,
And shot at him with Might and Main,
As thick, as it had hailed.
So long I shot, that all was spent.
Tho pumy Stones I hastily hent,
And threw; but nought availed
He was so wimble and so wight,
From Bough to Bough he leaped light,
And oft the Pumies latched.
Therewith afraid, I ran away;
But he, that earst seem’d but to play,
A Shaft in earnest snatched,
And hit me running, in the Heel;
For then I little smart did feel,
But soon it sore increased.
And now it rankleth more and more,
And inwardly it festereth sore,
Ne wote I how to cease it.

WILLY.
Thomalin, I pity thy Plight,
Perdy with Love thou diddest fight:
I know him by a Token.
For once I heard my Father say,
How he him caught upon a day,
(Whereof he will be wroken)
Entangled in a Fowling-Net,
Which he for Carrion-Crows had set,
That in our Pear-tree haunted:
Tho said, he was a winged Lad,
But Bow and Shafts as then none had;
Else had he sore be daunted.
But see, the Welkin thicks apace,
And stooping Phoebus steeps his race:
It’s time to haste us homeward.

WILLY’S EMBLEM.
To be Wise and eke to Love,
Is granted scarce to Gods above.

THOMALIN’S EMBLEM.
Of Honey and of Gall, in love there is store:
The Honey is much, but the Gall is more.

---

GLOSS.

THIS Æglogue seemeth somewhat to resemble that same of Theocritus, wherein the boy likewise telling the old man, that he had shot at a winged boy in a tree, was by hym warned, to beware of mischiefe to come.

Ouerwent) overgone.

Alegge) to lessen or aswage.

To quell) to abate.

Welkin) the skie.

The swallow) which bird vseth to be counted the messenger, as it were, the fore runner of springe.

Flora) the Goddesse of flowres, but indede (as saith Tacitus) a famous harlot, which with the abuse of her body hauing gotten great riches, made the people of Rome her heyre: who in remembraunce of so great beneficence, appointed a yearely feste for the memoriall of her, calling her, not as she was, nor as some doe think, Andronica, but Flora: making her the Goddesse of all floures, and doing yerely to her solemne sacrifice.

Maias bowre) that is the pleasaunt fielde, or rather the Maye bushes. Maia is a Goddes and the mother of Mercurie, in honour of whome the moneth of Maye is of her name so called, as sayth Macrobius.

Lettice) the name of some country lasse.

Ascaunce) askewe or asquint.

For thy) therefore.

Lethe) is a lake in hell, which the Poetes call the lake of forgetfulnes. For Lethe signifieth forgetfulnes. Wherein the soules being dipped, did forget the cares of their former lyfe. So that by loue sleeping in Lethe lake, he meaneth he was almost forgotten and out of knowledge, by reason of winters hardnesse, when al pleasures, as it were, sleepe and weare out of mynde.

Assotte) to dote.

His slomber) To breake Loues slomber, is to exercise the delightes of Loue and wanton pleasures.

Winges of purple) so is he feigned of the Poetes.

For als) he imitateth Virgils verse. 

Est mihi namque domi pater, est iniusta nouerca &c.

A dell) a hole in the ground.

Spell) is a kind of verse or charme, that in elder tymes they vsed often to say ouer euery thing, that they would haue preserued, as the Nightspel for theeues, and the woodspell. And herehence I thinke is named the gospell, as it were Gods spell or worde. And so sayth Chaucer, Listeneth Lordings to my spell.

Gange) goe 

An Yuie todde) a thicke bushe.

Swaine) a boye: for so he is described of the Poetes, to be a boye .s. alwayes freshe and lustie: blindfolded, because he maketh no difference of Personages: wyth diuers coloured winges, .s. ful of flying fancies: with bowe and arrow, that is with glaunce of beautye, which prycketh as a forked arrowe. He is sayd also to haue shafts, some leaden, some golden: that is, both pleasure for the gracious and loued, and sorow for the louer that is disdayned or forsaken. But who liste more at large to behold Cupids colours and furniture, let him reade ether Propertius, or Moschus his Idyllion of wandring loue, being now most excellently translated into Latine by the singuler learned man Angelus Politianus: Whych worke I haue seene amongst other of thys Poets doings, very wel translated also into Englishe Rymes. 

Wimble and wighte) Quicke and deliuer.

In the heele) is very Poetically spoken, and not without speciall iudgement. For I remember, that in Homer it is sayd of Thetis, that shee tooke her young babe Achilles being newely borne, and holding him by the heele, dipped him in the River of Styx. The vertue whereof is, to defend and keepe the bodyes washed therein from any mortall wound. So Achilles being washed al ouer, saue anely his hele, by which his mother held, was in the rest [invulnerable]: therfore by Paris was feyned to bee shotte with a poysoned arrowe in the heele, whiles he was busie about the marying of Polyena in the temple of Apollo. Which mysticall fable Eustathius vnfolding, sayth: that by wounding in the hele, is meant lustfull loue. For from the heele (as say the best Phisitions) to the preuie partes there passe certaine veines and slender synnewes, as also the like come from the head, and are carryed lyke little pypes behynd the eares: so that (as sayth Hippocrates) yf those veynes there be cut a sonder, the partie straighte becometh cold and vnfruiteful. which reason our Poete wel weighing, maketh this shepheards boye of purpose to be wounded by Loue in the heele. 

Latched) caught. 

Wroken) reuenged.

For once) In this tale is sette out the simplicitye of shepheards opinion of Loue.

Stouping Phaebus) Is a Periphrasis of the sunne setting.
Embleme.

Hereby is meant, that all the delights of Loue, wherein wanton youth walloweth, be but follye mixt with bitternesse, and sorow sawced with repentaunce. For besides that the very affection of Loue it selfe tormenteth the mynde, and vexeth the body many wayes, with vnrestfulnesse all night, and wearines all day, seeking for that we can not haue: euen the selfe things which best before vs liked, in course of time and chaung of ryper yeares, whiche also therewithall chaungeth our wonted lyking and former fantasies, will then seeme lothsome and breede vs annoyaunce, when yougthes flowre is withered, and we fynde our bodyes and wits aunswere not to suche vayne iollitie and lustfull pleasaunce.

Kelly Green

Hey, so Ferrebeekeeper has written about all sorts of esoteric and oddball colors, but what is up with Kelly green, a color so famous and prominent that it gets its own month? Actually, I have been avoiding writing about Kelly green because the truth is Kelly green is a pretender–a modern American color masquerading as an ancient Irish one!

A male model presenting a conservative  three-piece Kelly green suit

As you probably know by now, Kelly green is a bright mid-tone green which inclines toward yellow rather than blue. It looks like newly sprouted grass and it stands out to our primate eyes/brains–probably because of ancient dietary issues of our monkey-like forbears (although all sorts of respectable people and institutions constantly appear on the news exhorting us to eat more salad). Different sources give different dates for the first known references to Kelly Green as either 1917 or 1927, so the color does not even reach back as far as the great waves of Irish immigration, but is a wholly modern invention. Indeed it seems like someone chose the brightest grass green color and named it after a short punchy Irish surname (which sounds like the modus-operandi of Madison Avenue, political operators, Hollywood, or some other enclave of sharkish American marketers).

Saint Patrick’s Day Noisemakers

Throughout the twentieth century the color was further popularized by representing all sorts of professional and semi-professional sports teams, but it has found its greatest hold on our collective attention as the heraldic color of Saint Patrick’s Day and the month of March in general. In my head, the name instantly evokes puking teenagers with wigs, cheap clothes, and plastic spangles all of the brightest Kelly green.

Saint Patrick’s Day in Chicago Illinois

Yet the history of Kelly green (or lack thereof) needs not interfere with the appreciation of the color! I have never been to Ireland, but I have laid eyes on it from a plane and it was indeed a rainbow of brilliant yellow-greens. In the populous northern hemisphere, March is the month when the new grasses–and all sorts of other plants–begin to return from winter dormancy so the marketers hit upon a deeper truth of the biosphere. Also, I have been that greensick teenager with a plastic derby and it was horrible and glorious. The color is a perfect representation of early springtime in one’s life as well as in the broader ecosystems of the temperate region!

Did I mention the green hills of Ireland?

Some Pictures of Brooklyn in a March Snowstorm Part 2

This post is really the second half of yesterday’s snowstorm post. After I realized how pretty the snow in the backyard was, I decided to put on all my winter gear and walk around the neighborhood. For reasons which elude me entirely, I live in a really beautiful neighborhood (well, I know why I live here, I just don’t know how I continue to do so). The majority of the houses were built during the first twenty years of the twentieth century and they have an outstanding grace and style which modern houses lack in every way (although my landlord and I can both vouch that these magnificent old homes start to fall apart somewhat during prolonged cold weather).

I am a painter rather than a photographer, but who wants to set up an easel in a billowing snowstorm? For that matter who wants to stand on the sidewalk to paint an elegant old house? Architectural paintings are not my métier as a fine artist! However today I think the monochromatic winter landscape helped smooth out some of my weaknesses as a photographer…

Sadly, as always with my photography, I don’t feel like I really captured the dark beauty of the blizzard or the decrepit splendor of this part of Brooklyn. Still the pictures are worth looking at just to appreciate the lovely houses of Ditmas Park. Also, with any luck, we have said farewell to this sort of snowstorm for a good long time. Hopefully you are looking at these photos in the tropics or in June and the snow provides only a frisson of wintry intensity rather than weary resignation which all New Yorkers feel as the winter of 2014/2015 draws onward toward its conclusion.
 

Some Pictures of Brooklyn in a March Snowstorm

My Back Yard, March 5th, 2015

It’s March! As spring takes hold across the United States, I thought I would show some pictures of my garden as the first tender shoots begin to… argh! [indecorous remarks withheld by censors] Well, OK, it looks like winter is going to be here a bit longer. I guess it’s pretty in a cold majestic way, right? We can learn to live like this with no hope or resources…or does anybody maybe want to trek south like in “The Road” and build a New New York somewhere closer to Cuba?

Well, anyway, here are some winter pictures of the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. I know it looks like something out of a darkly beautiful Russian fairytale, but I assure you, there is a dynamic city somewhere behind all of that snow and ice. We’ll check back on spring in a few weeks… In the meantime maybe read some Tolstoy and sacrifice some more sheep to the dark gods?

The street out front, March 05, 2015