Quote of the Day (Vivian Gornick, on the Healing Power of a Walk Through the City)

“As I saw myself moving ever farther toward the social margin, nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human—the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques—was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off. I felt in my nerve endings the common refusal to go under.”—American critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir (2015)

This week seven years ago, I took the picture accompanying this post while walking through the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn—a section of the New York borough filled with tree-lined streets and brownstones. At least for me, it held some of the restorative powers that Ms. Gornick praises.

Photo of the Day: Lorenzo Hall, St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn NY

I took the attached photo just after the start of autumn, in 2016. While intending to visit the school where I got my library science degree—Pratt Institute, in its main Brooklyn campus—I decided to walk around and photograph the nearby Clinton Hill Historic District, too, an enclave of some of the best-preserved 19^th and early 20^th-century architecture in the city. There I encountered St. Joseph’s College, a private liberal arts college.

In the attached photo, Lorenzo Hall, located at 265 Clinton Avenue, houses the administrative offices of the Vice President of Academic Affairs, the Office of Graduate Management Studies and several academic department offices. It and adjacent 269 Clinton Avenue were built around 1878 as single-family residences. In 1948, #269 became a multiple-family building.

Photo of the Day: Brooklyn Campus Library, Pratt Institute, NY

While pursuing my master’s degree in library science at Pratt Institute, I spent many hours inside this landmark 1896 building constructed in the Renaissance Revival style. It is as beautiful outside, with its striking red bricks, as inside, with materials from the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company.

Photo of the Day: View of East River, From Brooklyn Heights Promenade, NY

I took this photo in early October 2016—in effect, Indian summer. It was the type of day so glorious, walking in the area around the Brooklyn Bridge, when you could understand why so many people have flocked to the borough in the last two decades. 

It all seems so far off now. I live in Northern New Jersey, but I have always been glad to realize that a larger city exists out there, waiting only for me to take public transportation to get there. I’m not sure if I will experience that sense of security and wonder again any time soon.

Photo of the Day: Leading Down the Garden Path—Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn NY

Yet another image from what feels like ages ago—June 2014, on a lovely late spring day, on my visit to one of the treasures of New York, now temporarily closed due to COVID-19: the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Something to look forward to again, once we all awake from this nightmare…

Photo of the Day: Prospect Park, Brooklyn—Before Social Distancing

I took this photo on a sublimely sunny Sunday in May six years ago. But there is so little distinctive about the clothing and accessories of these lawn loungers that it could have been taken any time in the last 20 to 30 years.

Now, amid the scourge of the coronavirus, just how much—even whether—people should be out and about in parks in such throngs on a beautiful day is a fraught one. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was so annoyed by a photo of the park’s farmers market that he had “MISTAKE” written all over it. On Friday, the city reacted by announcing it would keep parks open but by ban team sports, even as it strongly urged social distancing. 

We shall see if this is tightened further, or if enough of a backlash develops against restrictions that even this relatively understandable one on team sports is rescinded.

Photo of the Day: Cascading Hopflower Oregano, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, NY

Months, even years, after visiting a botanical garden, I can still revel in its beauty through pictures I have taken. So it has proven with the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which has provided seemingly endless fodder—not to mention images my readers can enjoy—since my visit a few years ago.

The cascading hopflower oregano (Origanum libanoticum) is a perennial with fragrant leaves reaching 1 to 2 feet tall. From summer to fall, its pale green lanterns hang from arching stems, with a purple flower on each lantern.