The Natural World
Art, Nature, and Nature in Art: The Great Elephant Migration
A very moving exhibit arrived in Newport R.I. recently to tell the tale of conservation, coexistence with nature, and the power of community in safeguarding the natural word. The Great Elephant Migration features 100 life-size elephant statues made from natural materials. From Newport they will travel to other cities around the country to spread the…
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Book Recommendation
The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean, by best-selling science journalist Susan Casey, is shockingly fascinating. Much of it is so unlikely as to seem completely fictional. Just about everything in this book was unknown to me, from the depth of the…
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Art in Nature: Blithwold Mansion and Arboretum
A mile from my home is a wonderful arboretum, Blithewold. On 33 acres along the Narragansett Bay, the grounds of the estate has various flower gardens, but primarily holds a remarkable collection of trees that is a boon to the environment. The property features a 45-room mansion with glorious views out to the water. It’s…
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Down the Shore, to Asbury Park
A recent book event at the Asbury Book Cooperative led me to an excursion the Jersey shore.
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Tulip Time
I love the absolute excess of masses and masses of tulips – their exuberance, their riot of color. On the Upper West Side there’s a lovely community garden that’s nestled among tall buildings https://www.westsidecommunitygarden.org/. Here residents tend a pocket garden that runs between 89th and 90th streets between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. The garden is…
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Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest
Tucked into Madison Square Park is an unexpected installation. At first it strikes one as curious – odd leafless trees in a cluster, framed by the Manhattan skyline. This is a statement piece by Mia Lin, an extraordinary way of making climate change visible. She has literally brought a dying forest to the city, so…
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Researching for A Novel
A challenge for me is squaring the Montauk of my imagination with the “real” place on Long Island. In my novel, for instance, I’ve situated two of my characters in a house on Fort Pond Bay in an area of the coast that doesn’t quite exist. Meanwhile, the two children in my novel, Max and…
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A Sense of Place: Virginia Woolf’s “Hauntings”
Virginia Woolf regularly went on what she called “street hauntings,” where she wandered around London. She wanted to feel absorbed in her surroundings, and in particular to watch people’s interactions with the city. She described this as leading to a “dissolution of the self,” a sense that the boundaries between herself and her environment were…
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“Eating the Sea”
There’s no way to write about Montauk without writing about fish and shellfish. Any beach walk brings treasures like clam, scallop, mussel and oyster shells, the strong tang of dried seaweed, the sight of boats in the distance and fisherman along the shore. Fishing and shellfishing are the heart of the place. The Eastern End…
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Meditation Upon a Frozen River
Is nature so important to us because it’s the ultimate creative force? In my writing and in my life, setting, and being out of doors, is important to me. I find that experiencing nature directly – feeling the sharp prick of a thorn, hearing the soft whoosh of a plop of snow, recoiling from the scent…
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