The leaves of 2015

"I'm so glad that I live in a world with Octobers."
– L. M. Montgomery, "Anne of Green Gables"

This is my annual tribute to the beautiful leaves of autumn. 2015 was a mixed year, with some brilliantly colored leaves, and others that never achieved the color I anticipate.

Let's start with the best: the leaves of the Maple Leaf Vine.

This is a plant I've come to know and love in the years since I first noticed it growing on a fence; the spot once contained a railroad bridge, but the ground has been filled in now. This is the best thing about the change.

The leaf at left is wine-dark, like Homer's sea. Most leaves are more colorful, like the ones below.

 But to really appreciate the Maple Leaf Vine, you need to see it in the sun, as in this photo.

There were of course other leaves. Some beautiful maple leaves from trees, posted here.

 The basswoods, which are normally my favorites, were a bit off this year. They never reached their normal gorgeousness.

This is what they look like in a good year.

If you'd like to read some of my earlier blogs, here they are:

• The leaves of 2011

• Autumn Almanac (2012)

• The leaves of 2013

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

– Albert Camus

The autumn leaves of 2014

Wishing and Hoping

Yesterday a Facebook friend posted this video, which is a compilation of the events that happened on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington for Peace and Freedom.



It reminded me of the hope we all had back then. We thought we could change the world. And for a while, it seemed like we could. Less than a year later, on July 2, 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. The following year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was ratified.

But now many of those achievements are under fire. Billionaires who do not believe in democracy are  trying to turn this country into a plutocracy — a government run by and for the richest few.

We've also seen the Supreme Court invalidate key parts of the Voting Rights Act.

I can't recall a time when racism was more proudly proclaimed. People parading around with Confederate flags, white supremacists running for public office. It's all so disheartening.

I miss the unbridled hope I had in the 1960s.

"Hold fast to dreams,
  for if dreams die,
  Life is a broken-winged bird
  that cannot fly."
  – Langston Hughes

Where I've been

It's been a long, long time since I last wrote a post. Where have I been? Working, mostly. My job has been very demanding. All jobs are these days.

But I've also been indulging my obsessions — taking photos of the sky a lot is one of them.  I'm sharing a few of them here. And when I look up at the sky, I usually have this song playing in my head.

Did I mention that I'm also obsessed with the New York City skyline? I am. It's different every day, depending on the light. In the photo below, I enhanced the color a bit to get it closer to the actual intensity of that sunset.

 I often walk across the Pulaski Bridge to Brooklyn, and I frequently stop to take a photo there. This is an example.

My other obsession is the East River. Gantry Plaza State Park is a great place to see it from. I took the two photos below on Manhattanhenge, July 12, 2015. The first shows the flotilla of kayaks that awaited the event. The second is the look of the sunset on a magical night.

I don't know when I'll be back with a new post, but I hope 18 months won't have passed. No promises.

The autumn leaves of 2014

"That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closests, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. Tht country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Where people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain."
~ Ray Bradbury

Autumn came late to New York City this year, and perhaps because of the mild summer, it came strange. Trees that are normally mousy, like the oaks that generally turn brown, were on fire. The basswoods, which are usually my favorites, where monochromatic. So few leaves were on the ground that I asked my husband to come with me to grab a few from the trees.

Basswood leaves most years.

Basswood leaves this year.

  


"At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Fortunately, the maples and oaks took charge.

This is a maple.

This year's oak leaves.

We also had some leaves that were solid yellow and others that were vivid green.

A mixed bag of colors.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, autumn seems more normal. My social media friend Tiina Komulainen is a talented photographer. This is a photo she took of leaves in water on the far side of the Canadian border.

Photo by Tiina Komulainen.

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."
~ John Donne

Belatedly posting links to my earlier autumn leaf blogs:

• 2010: Arts & Crafts: Color by Nature
• 2011: The leaves of 2011
• 2012: Autumn Almanac
• 2013: The Leaves of 2013

Music for melancholy people

to a young child

"Starry Night over the Rhone" by Vincent Van Gogh

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

"Spring and Fall"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I don't know if this extends beyond Margaret and me, but autumn — my favorite season — sometimes puts me in a melancholy mood. I know the mood has arrived by the songs that start running through my head.

Paul Simon's 1973 song "American Tune" came to mind this morning. It takes me back to the disillusionment of the early 1970s. I remember listing to it with my mother. She was recently out of a terrible second marriage and I was fresh out of Sixties dreams and working as a writer. This was the era of Watergate, when revelations about the misdeeds of President Nixon filled the headlines. Somehow, probably because it's so lovely, it's long been one of my favorite songs.



Another song that reminds me of autumn is Joni Mitchell's "Urge for Going." Tom Rush's version is the one I heard first, and it's still my favorite.



And then there is the classic "Autumn Leaves." Many great singers have sung it, but for the past few years my favorite version has been the one recorded by the late Eva Cassidy.



This last song, "Shenandoah," came out of a distant memory. I've never been to the Shenandoah Valley, so I don't have any direct connection with it. But somehow, the ache for the past is there just like Margaret's mourning.



"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare agains the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Late addition for returning readers

My friend Susan Champlin, author of the excellent blog What Would Katherine Hepburn Do? (WWKHD), told me about Bruce Springsteen's version of "Shenandoah." I've fallen in love with it. It is the "Grapes of Wrath" rendition. Give it a listen.

Remembering Patty

"Hiya sweetheart!"
~ Patricia Marie Hush

Patty (at left) with sisters Barbara and Joan.

My beloved oldest sister Patty was born on this day in 1931. Her bright light left us on November 23, 2013. My other sisters, along with my nieces and nephews and friends who knew her, put our heads together to share memories of Patty — photos of her, the music she loved, the things she used to say.

My niece Heather summed up the Patty effect well: "She was such a blessing to us all. Anyone who spent any amount of time with her left more compassionate and light-hearted. She was one of the best gifts/life lessons we could have received as children."

Patty was intellectually disabled — mentally retarded, as we used to say before "retarded" became a shaming word. She never learned to read or write. But she was brilliant about people. Her social skills were better than mine will ever be. She was also the family's memory keeper. She forgot nothing, but forgave a lot. She went through some extremely hard times in her life, but her joyous spirit bounced back and became a source of buoyancy to us all.

Let's start with a couple of the songs she loved. "Down by the Old Mill Stream" is a song my dad was known to sing and pantomime to at the dinner table. Patty always chimed in.



This was another favorite — Tex Beneke's version of "Five Minutes More."



My niece Hilary remembered how much Patty adored babies — and here's photographic proof. She would often ask my mom when she would get married and have a baby. The knowledge that it wasn't likely to happen broke her heart.

Another niece, Deirdre, was the first to point out "Hiya sweetheart!" — Patty's oh-so cheerful greeting. It never failed to put a smile on the face of whoever entered the room.

Hilary also remembered the way Patty would inevitably shout out "Happy Christmas!" during a quiet moment at Christmas Mass. She adored Christmases and birthdays. I vividly remember her during my first Christmases on the planet; Patty would sit in a chair and make a fuss over every gift she received.

Even this shower cap — a stocking gift. On Patty's lap you can see one of the Christmas stockings that my Aunt Ella made for all of us.

Whatever Patty said, she meant it. My friend Dawn remembers a night when she slept over at my family's house and woke to find Patty touching her long blond hair saying "So beautiful." She said those words, coming from Patty, meant more to her than all the praise guys gave her (she was gorgeous) because she knew it was sincere.

A few more photos:

Patty with my mom and our dog Gay at our house on Dune Road.

Patty on Easter with our cousin Tommy and sisters Terry, Barbara and me.

Patty flanked by sisters Betsy and Terry in 2009.

Finally, two of my all-time favorite photos, which capture one of the things I miss most: Patty's big, bright smile.

Happy birthday to Billy Collins

"We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."
~ Stephen Dunn

Billy Collins has become one of my favorite poets ever since I read his poem "The Death of the Hat," which reminded me of my dad in all the good ways.

THE DEATH OF THE HAT
by Billy Collins

Once every man wore a hat.

In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities
are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled
with thousands of strawhats,
brims and bands,
rows of men smoking
and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs
who branded your initials in gold
on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.
Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.
Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat
and a hatcheck girl to mind it
while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.
In your office stood a hat rack.

The day the war was declared
everyone in the street was wearing a hat
and they were wearing hats
when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day
and returned home
carrying the evening paper,
the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded
into the winter streets,
stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house
wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
in their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,
wears a hat of earth,
and on top of that,

A lighter one of cloud and sky--a hat of wind.

I've seen him read a few times now, and each time I've liked him more. But today I came across this video and I wanted to share it with you. He collaborated with Sundance a couple of years ago to create animations of several poems. They're surprisingly wonderful.

But stick around for the final poem, "To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl," which will bring a smile to the face of anyone who's ever had a teenager in the house.




Learn more about Billy Collins and read his poems here:

• Academy of American Poets
• The Poetry Foundation
• You can also see him read "To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl" on the Colbert Report.

2014 at Last

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you enjoy it, wherever you choose to spend it.

My gifts to you this evening are a poem by W. S. Merwin and some vintage cards from the New York Public Library's digital archive.

To the New Year

By W. S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

                    
   

                     

 

Ring the Bells

“Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.” 
― Charles M. Schulz

On Christmas Eve I spent some time browsing through the New York Public Library's extensive digital archive of vintage holiday cards. Although I'm not a believer, I have many great memories of childhood Christmases. What I learned: In the early 1900s, bells and holly were common themes and the red and green "Christmas colors" were not yet set in stone. Cards came in blues, yellows, pinks — every imaginable color, really.

While you look at a few cards I liked, listen to Cat Power's version of my favorite Christmas song. It's about hope in a time of uncertainty, and the older I get the more I understand that this is our constant state.

Now, to the cards. Here's one I think of as the Rocking Horse Loser. Did I mention that many of the children depicted on old cards looked peculiar?

Here is a tinted photographic card. It's a bit like the family photo cards people send out these days...but off in an entertainingly wacky way.

This is my favorite of the cards I found (admittedly, there are over 1,500 more that I never got to). I love the way Santa, the children and the dog are piled into the little bedecked roadster — steering wheel on the right — and the little boy in what could be a bellhop's uniform is waving. The sender addressed it on Christmas Eve, 1906, but I can't quite make out the signature.

I'll leave you with the exquisite, haunting final paragraph of James Joyce's "The Dead," which begins at a holiday party and ends in eternity.

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

The Leaves of 2013

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~ George Eliot

As I write this, snow is falling in New York City. Autumn's colors, which came late, are now gone. But they were glorious while they lasted.

This year, in addition to posting leaves that I found, I asked friends near and far to contribute their own favorites. As a result, this post offers a bountiful array of nature's beauty.

Give this a listen while you look at the leaves — Van Morrison's "Autumn Song".

This is the first leaf I found in my neighborhood; it was a maple bigger than my hand, and it seemed to contain the entire history of its journey from green to red and gold.

The basswoods, most of which contain miniatures of themselves within themselves, are a favorite.

This is a fiery tree that I came across while I was driving on Long Island. I pulled over to the curb so I could take this picture of it.

But enough of my neighborhood. Diane Baranello, a life coach and fellow member of the board of New York Women in Communications, sent magnificent scans of leaves and flowers she's pressed.

 

Pam Carlson, who describes herself as a "cheerful secular humanist with a cynical misanthropic streak," sent three lovely scans gathered near her home in Marin County. Plums, starfish-like sweetgum (?), ginko and two other yellows that I don't recognize. Update: Pam says the large one is a fig and the smallest is an oak.

My old friend Briggs Meyer — we met decades ago when we were students at the School of Visual Arts — sent autumn ginkos and maples from San Francisco.

"The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and leaves carry her forward..."
~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Author and professor Dr. Harrison Solow sent photographs of vast piles of extravagantly multicolored leaves from her travels in Northern California, Wyoming and Idaho. Do click on them so you can see them larger.

 

"The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost."
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Want more leaves? See my posts from previous years:

• Autumn Almanac (2012)
• The Leaves of 2011
• Arts & Crafts: Color by Nature (2010)
• Why Leaves Turn Red, Among Other Things (2010)