Mysteries

Nothing is more enticing than a veil of secrecy cloaking a building, a person or even a car such as the one above. My kids and I always marvel at its outfitting--does the red siren really still work? Do people actually call upon it for services?

It advertises itself as a "Wildlife Control" vehicle and the stickers covering its doors hint at sinister intentions....poor raccoons and pesky skunks. I wonder if the back contains an assortment of cages and traps. Does the owner roam the neighborhood a la Harper Marx? I imagine him prowling with a large net while blowing a whistle and herding the wild vermin into the back of his mobile.

My mission is to find the owner and get his story. Yes, that much I do know. The owner/driver is a man. Word on the street is he's a math teacher at a local public middle school. In fact, I spotted this car parked in front of the rumored school earlier today.

I'm also curious about the tenants of this landmark building, facing the Fairway parking lot in Red Hook. The ediface pays homage to New York Harbor, which it faces, with the shark head jutting above the second floor, anchors, ship's steering wheels and a metal model of the World Trade Center. Sonja asked me yesterday: "Is that a pirate's house?"

Before I get to my final mystery, I have to rant about the mystery of navigating blogspot settings. How come I can't put my photos where I want them?

All right. Nils found this succulent 'shroom in Prospect Park this fall. I looked it up in my Golden Guide to mushrooms, but couldn't find a corresponding species. No luck online. It was a beauty, though. Nils referred to it as his baby, until it turned moldy and mushy. Then it was lovingly tossed into our backyard garden to continue its life cycle, perhaps in peace from foraging raccoons and skunks.

Hope






Welcome, Era of Responsibility!

Fresh

New Year's Eve was cold in Brooklyn despite the warmth most of us felt about the nearing end of the Bush Administration. Freezing temperatures aside, we bundled up and went to a gathering with friends who live on Prospect Park West. Our hostess is from Mexico, where it's a tradition to have the midnight champagne toast served in a flute with twelve green grapes swimming on the bottom. Green symbolizes prosperity and the twelve grapes represent each month of the year. "You're to eat them one by one," she instructs.

None of the kids wanted to leave the coziness of the apartment to walk to the park across the street for watching the fireworks, but to our delight we could see and hear them from their living room window-- bursts of color exploding and popping over the roof of the neighboring building. We ate January, February and so on while the bangs went on outside and a sadly frail Dick Clark welcomed 2009 on TV.

The following day, on the south side of Park Slope, we had some more greens at another friend's annual New Year's Day collard greens and black-eyed peas open house. A Southern tradition dating back to the Civil War, when the Union troops could find very little available food, these morsels were gleaned from nearly barren fields. There's even record of this culinary tradition in the Babylonian Talmud, according to Wikipedia. "...Now that you have established that good-luck symbols avail, you should make a habit to see Qara (bottled gourd), Rubiya (black-eyed peas), Silka (either beets or spinach) and Tamrei (dates) on your table on the New Year."

So, to all cultures that reside in our fair borough, of our fair city, in our fair state and country: Here's to prosperity, health and a fresh start.