Thursday, August 02, 2007
Stuyvesant Square Park, again, Harry Potter and Albania Mania
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Disaster struck in the Stuyvesant Square East Park just about a week after I suggested that everyone visit the shady center fountain and enjoy the cleome plantings surrounding it. The giant elm tree providing the shade spontaneously lost a large limb. It came crashing down and injured a neighbor enjoying a day in the park. I have no names or details, except that the lady was taken to the neighboring emergency room, and, as of as week later, has returned home. The park talk was of a concussion, broken leg and ribs. We wish her a speedy recovery, and request that the city do its job of looking after its treasures, people and trees. Parkside telegraph reports more suspect trees.
In a speedy reaction, to make up for years of neglect, the Forestry Department arborists descended on the park with their cherry picker truck and took down the elm, carefully sawing off its branches and lowering them down. Then they took down some more old trees in both parks, including a silver maple, overgrown with creepers, next to the big elm. The latter was 300 years old, according to the men with the saw, with a totally dead trunk. The huge stump – you can visit it the fountain area – is not quite three by four feet, nearly rectangular. People with time and historic interests may enjoy counting the year rings, to calculate its true age, and identifying dry and wet years, associating them with events in the city’s history. A minor sliver of the stump that I found shows 118 rings. There was (and maybe still is) a stump in the Tompkins Square Park, with little plaques over rings associated with events such as the attack of the Dutch elm disease in 1931.
It came from French elm logs, brought to Cleveland for furniture manufacture, and killed 77 million elm trees, 90 percent of the magnificent elm alleys that graced Main Streets all throughout our country. The tree we just lost was a survivor, as are others in Central Park, and the individual giants that grow in Madison Square Park, Riverside Park, and a particularly large on in Washington Square, according to my cherry picker truck informant. Since then arborists have developed ways of eradicating the guilty elm bark beetles, of injecting medication and of developing some resistant strains, notably the Princeton elm, from cuttings from a tree that grows in that town’s cemetery.
There have been other outbreaks of the disease, in Europe and the US, particularly in 1970, affecting the English elm, cloned from a Roman elm, called Atinian, that grew in vineyards of ancient antiquity, used to train the wandering vines. These outbreaks, in part, have moved the city arborists to plant such street trees as the Callery pear, a flowering tree that has its own problems, tending to split as it grows older.
Back in Stuyvesant Square Park, some good news. The gardener, Christie Daley, has done a nice job of transplanting and decorating the surroundings of the Antonin Dvorak statue by Ivan Mestrovic, a major work of art, with hostos and flowers. She praises the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association (Carol Schachter, President) for getting the funds together
Next, Harry Potter. You have read about the Harry Potter madness world-wide and in the Big Apple, now let me tell you about the provinces. In an economically struggling agricultural community the CVS drugstore had ordered 10 copies, and nine were sold in a day, by Sunday AM. When I spotted the lone leftover and commented, the girl behind me in line reached our and with a “may I” grabbed it, explaining that as a part-timer at the drugstore she got a discount. Still magic. At the Safeway supermarket the stock clerks were kidding about Harry, so I asked the manager. “We bought 32 and have four left. Want them, they are only $18.99?” she laughed as I backed out. A checkout clerk, a high school weekend worker, quietly shook her head when I asked whether she bought a copy, and none of the solemn clerks and shoppers commented. Money is tight, make no mistake about it. The NYC CVS people are greedy, asking a full $34.99 for the book, and so are the book’s publishers.
Albania Mania? Well, if you were at the Union Square Greenmarket last Thursday, you would have seen a quartet of emaciated wild-eyed kids play and sing their hearts out, with unusual Klezmer-like tunes, playing long trombone groans accompanying an accordion, with a clarinets and mandolin providing the background. The unusual language sung turned out to be Romany, and their spokesman explained that the tunes were Romanian and Mediterranean. The Gypsy kids had traveled up from their native Tennessee, singing on street corners all the way, and Union Square was their debut stage in Big Apple. Or so they said. But the music stopped traffic in the market, and applause was spontaneous. If you see the Albania Mania players anywhere, slow down to listen, they are unusual and worthwhile.
Disaster struck in the Stuyvesant Square East Park just about a week after I suggested that everyone visit the shady center fountain and enjoy the cleome plantings surrounding it. The giant elm tree providing the shade spontaneously lost a large limb. It came crashing down and injured a neighbor enjoying a day in the park. I have no names or details, except that the lady was taken to the neighboring emergency room, and, as of as week later, has returned home. The park talk was of a concussion, broken leg and ribs. We wish her a speedy recovery, and request that the city do its job of looking after its treasures, people and trees. Parkside telegraph reports more suspect trees.
In a speedy reaction, to make up for years of neglect, the Forestry Department arborists descended on the park with their cherry picker truck and took down the elm, carefully sawing off its branches and lowering them down. Then they took down some more old trees in both parks, including a silver maple, overgrown with creepers, next to the big elm. The latter was 300 years old, according to the men with the saw, with a totally dead trunk. The huge stump – you can visit it the fountain area – is not quite three by four feet, nearly rectangular. People with time and historic interests may enjoy counting the year rings, to calculate its true age, and identifying dry and wet years, associating them with events in the city’s history. A minor sliver of the stump that I found shows 118 rings. There was (and maybe still is) a stump in the Tompkins Square Park, with little plaques over rings associated with events such as the attack of the Dutch elm disease in 1931.
It came from French elm logs, brought to Cleveland for furniture manufacture, and killed 77 million elm trees, 90 percent of the magnificent elm alleys that graced Main Streets all throughout our country. The tree we just lost was a survivor, as are others in Central Park, and the individual giants that grow in Madison Square Park, Riverside Park, and a particularly large on in Washington Square, according to my cherry picker truck informant. Since then arborists have developed ways of eradicating the guilty elm bark beetles, of injecting medication and of developing some resistant strains, notably the Princeton elm, from cuttings from a tree that grows in that town’s cemetery.
There have been other outbreaks of the disease, in Europe and the US, particularly in 1970, affecting the English elm, cloned from a Roman elm, called Atinian, that grew in vineyards of ancient antiquity, used to train the wandering vines. These outbreaks, in part, have moved the city arborists to plant such street trees as the Callery pear, a flowering tree that has its own problems, tending to split as it grows older.
Back in Stuyvesant Square Park, some good news. The gardener, Christie Daley, has done a nice job of transplanting and decorating the surroundings of the Antonin Dvorak statue by Ivan Mestrovic, a major work of art, with hostos and flowers. She praises the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association (Carol Schachter, President) for getting the funds together
Next, Harry Potter. You have read about the Harry Potter madness world-wide and in the Big Apple, now let me tell you about the provinces. In an economically struggling agricultural community the CVS drugstore had ordered 10 copies, and nine were sold in a day, by Sunday AM. When I spotted the lone leftover and commented, the girl behind me in line reached our and with a “may I” grabbed it, explaining that as a part-timer at the drugstore she got a discount. Still magic. At the Safeway supermarket the stock clerks were kidding about Harry, so I asked the manager. “We bought 32 and have four left. Want them, they are only $18.99?” she laughed as I backed out. A checkout clerk, a high school weekend worker, quietly shook her head when I asked whether she bought a copy, and none of the solemn clerks and shoppers commented. Money is tight, make no mistake about it. The NYC CVS people are greedy, asking a full $34.99 for the book, and so are the book’s publishers.
Albania Mania? Well, if you were at the Union Square Greenmarket last Thursday, you would have seen a quartet of emaciated wild-eyed kids play and sing their hearts out, with unusual Klezmer-like tunes, playing long trombone groans accompanying an accordion, with a clarinets and mandolin providing the background. The unusual language sung turned out to be Romany, and their spokesman explained that the tunes were Romanian and Mediterranean. The Gypsy kids had traveled up from their native Tennessee, singing on street corners all the way, and Union Square was their debut stage in Big Apple. Or so they said. But the music stopped traffic in the market, and applause was spontaneous. If you see the Albania Mania players anywhere, slow down to listen, they are unusual and worthwhile.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:32 AM 
