The Useful and the Beautiful - Meet Here

Once more, Art, meet Wonk...Wonk, meet Art.

See?! HERE’s what I mean about The Municipal Art Society (MAS).

MAS, in conjunction with Brooklyn Speaks , has just reminded us about their June call for Forest City Ratner to revamp its plans for the Atlantic Yards Project (16 skyscrapers, 18,000 seat arena), citing 5 design and planning principles:

1. Respect the character of existing nabes (i.e. reduce the density of the project and don’t build megaskyscrapers).
2. Public streets should not be eliminated (keep 5th Ave open)
3. Create a real public park (don’t pretend that strip of green behind the skycrapers is going to be geographically inviting for locals who don’t have access to proposed skyscrapers)
4. Promote lively streets ( by promoting the small businesses that characterized the area, and not overshadowing them with skyscrapers)
5. Deal with the traffic increase that will be created (by actually coming up with a plan for it, including improving public transit).

Check out the featured Brooklyn Speaks slideshow contrasting the current Ratner “vision” with what is and could be. You can also add your name to those who support the Brooklyn Speaks.

I keep the 2003-04 Annual Report for MAS on my desk, because in addition to being the most useful and beautiful (my two principles for anything) annual report/ advocacy tool combination ever, it quotes, over a photo of the lawn at Bryant Park, their founding members from 1893:

“To make us love our city, we must make our city lovely.”

Volunteerism

I find it interesting and disturbing that when the BBC asks its readers How to Stop School Shootings (in response to the PA Amish killings), virtually all of the responses focus on gun control.

I agree that the U.S. prediliction for guns is a big piece of the puzzle. But what no one seems to acknowledge is that in so many of these cases, the killers turn the guns on themselves. That suggests to me that these acts are about desperate attention seeking, and like more straightforward forms of suicides, when covered by the press in ad nauseum, this post-mortem attention encourages similar acts.

The public has our Right To Know, but i'm not sure we always need to know about things moments after they happen. My First Amendment Fundamentalist status notwithstanding, I propose press organizations voluntarily (no gov't compulsion involved here) simply stop covering school shootings on a breaking news basis. Don't descend en masse, and don't take satellite feeds. Maybe leave it to the local old-fashioned print media to send a few reporters out. Leave the cameras behind. Then, in a few days or a week, put it on page 2 as a post-event analysis. Or don't cover it at all. It seems plain that all that media doesn't prevent these things from happening, and I really think it may be part of what prompts others to act similarly. There are plenty of violent events that don't get any coverage. Why shouldn't school shootings be the same way?

The Polar Bear Post

When I first read about this guy who decided to get really close to a captive panda, I thought the guy gave the Panda a gash that required stitches. Thankfully, it was the other way around. And, the facility (not a zoo, but more like a breeding facility) says it won't punish the perp (i.e., the guy, not the bear).

This interests me because in my long-delayed post about the 1987 polar bear attack on a 12-year old who'd taken a swim in the bear's moat in Brooklyn's Prospect Zoo, the bear was most definitely punished with a swift death by responding emergency services officers (the Gothamist panda bit links to the Times Select articles about that event). The kid *was* killed, mind you, but he was also messing around after dark in a zoo full of wild animals that was off limits, and entered the bear's moat on a dare, suggesting that the 3 kids involved knew they were flirting with danger. Don't think that I'm some animals-should-have-the-same-rights-as-humans type, or that I'm not sympathetic to a terrible result of the oh-so-typical behavior of a 12- year old kid.

But polar bears are easily the largest, most aggressive, most defensive, strongest, toughest mofos among mammalian carnivores. Barry Lopez's chapter on the bear in his book Artic Dreams is highly recommended. It's practically a love letter - a deep appreciation for what is an astounding being. Auugh. He describes the bear from behavior to physiology, including the amazing and efficient hairs that keep in warm in its chilly home, and the reprehensible record of man's interaction with the bear. It's an homage that helps you understand why the Inuit traditionally respect and fear the bear in equal measure, without ever having to visit up north. (Lopez' book is fascinating even if you aren't interested in the Artic).

Most of us don't get drunk or dared and climb into zoo enclosures to, for whatever reason, be nearer the animals. But I still have to wonder what zoos actually teach us about wild animals, and especially what they teach us about our place in relation to them. I grew up with the zoo and wild animal parks in San Diego as my main form of weekend entertainment; my mother has Super-8 footage of me gleefully cavorting with the goats in the petting zoo as a toddler. I had a stuffed raccoon until I was 8 or 9. I got as close as the chainlink fence and 6 inch glasses permitted me to see the tigers (always my favorite) at the wild animal park. I have a natural fear and awe of things that are bigger than I, and owed at least in part to the zoo, an appreciation. But I wonder how much that natural fear - and therefore, appreciation - is diminished when, after watching Gus (pictured here) at Central Park Zoo mellow and swimming, an 8 or 10 or 12 year walks into the gift shop at the zoo to see a dozen cutified and stuffed versions of Gus there for the purchase.