Cosimo and the Trees, Community Gardens, Barons, Candidates for Office, and Struggles for a Green City, #SaveElizabethStreetGarden, #nowilliamspipeline
"These friendships and distinctions Cosimo recognized gradually, over time... already in those early day, they began to be a part of him, a natural instinct. Now it was the world that was different, made of narrow curving bridges..." wrote Italo Calvino in The Baron in the Trees. These days, we see a lot of this narrowing of bridges and imagination.
Sunday, I woke up thinking about a world series for the ages, reading Calvino's meditations on the trees, histories of magic, friendship with trees, deep ecology and inter-connection, fascism and the imagination.
The teenager and I strolled for a coffee at principles of gi, talking about cemeteries and puritan iconography. Inside of the coffee shop, signs were everywhere about bike lanes, and models of sustainable urbanism, community gardens, and non-polluting transportation.
Sat to finish the book and rode out to Judson, where Micah was preaching about rejecting scarcity, that we can do better, we can see each other, rejecting zero sum arguments.
Out to lunch with Irwin, my mentor, to Village Works, perusing volumes of poetry. And off to Noras, where our book group met, to discuss the baron and his adventures of love and hate, suffering and happiness, in a long conversation into the night.
The Baron of the Trees was with me the whole time, reminding of those times a long time ago, climbing in the trees, of wanderlust and freedom, our treehouse in Atlanta, where I fell, of Blaze Foley, who wrote about living in the trees, and Julia Butterfly Hill, up in a tree for738 days. She began her tree-sit in December 1997 and descended in December 1999 after reaching an agreement to save the ancient tree, known as Luna, from being cut down.
Monday morning, I found myself walking to the Chinatown bus, to see the kid to the bus, here there, looking at the tags, "smooth wheels,” says one, pointing stories, Halloween, critical miss Boston, growing up, living, reading, looking at the stones in the cemeteries, at the world, no gods, no masters, on the way outta town.
Walking back, I thought about it all, the movie we watched Saturday Woody Allen's Love and Death, that seemed to paraphrase from the lovers quarrels from Baron in the Trees,
"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love…"
"Sex without love is an empty experience,” says Diane.
“Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of my favorites,” Woody replies.
Cosimo chases a young woman on horseback, as she rides away, through doomed love, tearing at himself, running after her:
“Why d’you make me suffer?" he asks.
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. “No, no, you don’t love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!”
“People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.”
“Then you’re making people suffer on purpose.”
“Yes, to see if you love me.”
The Baron’s philosophy would not go any further. “Pain is a negative state of the soul.”
“Love is all.”
“Pain should always be fought against.”
“Love refuses nothing.”
“Some things I’ll never admit.”
“Oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer.”
Throughout The Baron in the Trees, Calvino invites us into a conversation on the ways we find each other, delight and suffer, feel connected with everything, with magic, and the everyday epiphanies we find in a garden:
“In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the plants on the ground opened up stars of fretted leaves like the green skins of reptiles, and waved feathery yellow bamboos with a rustle like paper.”
These are spaces where we see something in between ourselves and the world, myths and trees, as integral parts of nature rather than separate, where our differences, our estrangement from the universe disappear.
Watching a cavalcade of history - the enlightenment, French Revolution, Napoleonic wars - from his tree, our narrator reminds us: “If youth vanishes quickly on earth, just imagine in the trees, whence everything is fated to fall: leaves, fruits.”
Viewing history there, ever ebbing, notions of progress come into question:
"Now I don't know this 19th century, which began so badly and continues worse, has in store ... all the innovations - weather Jacobins or Bonopartists -defeated; absolutism and Jesuits hold the field once again, the ideals of youth, the enlightenment, the hopes of our eighteenth century, all ashes," writes Italo Calvino, in his time, coming out fascism, as if our time looking at it again, the long arc of history looking anything but progressive right now.
At Judson, Micah was preaching about The Gospel According to Luke 9:10-17 (adapted from the NRSVUE):
“Late in the afternoon the disciples came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.” He replied, “You give them something to eat.” They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.” (About five thousand people were there.) But he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” The disciples did so, and everyone sat down. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.”
For Micah, this is a story about rejecting models of scarcity, seeing that we have a great deal, that zero sum arguments, win / lose propositions lead us down the wrong road. We can find other ways of living and sharing space together.
It had been that kind of a week, with baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers still finding miracles, and old debates, housing vs gardens, instead of housing and gardens. Healthy cities need both.
I posted a few notes along the way.
Nov 2
Wow. Yamamoto two days in a row. For relief to win it in overtime a day after pitching. A monster three wins in a world series for the ages, I wrote after checking the news. I’d had to go after the 9th inning, before extra innings in game seven. It was all too tragic for my friends north of the border, too stressful for me here.
Nov 1
Fresh as a daisy after a stupendous Halloween, Will and I spun out to Princeton for lunch with Mom. Will took this shot of Mom and me. I took this shot of Shannon and Mom, hanging out, looking out for each other. On the way to the airport, Will and I talked about John Steinbeck, on women and men.
"We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil."
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
October 31
Halloween for the ages, dressed as zombie pipelines at the the West Village Halloween Parade, giving out thousands of flyers, to the world series game six at Knickerbacher Bar where the parade participants were chilling in their costumes, to an underground show on Butler Street, down the street from Public where they were still lining up to get in, and over to Barely Disfigured, for a late night party. Some of the shining twins had made their way to Brooklyn.
Be very afraid of the Williams pipeline, we insisted.
SAYS RISE AND RESIST: IF you are still getting up to speed about the Williams NESE pipeline and why it is so important to kill this project, check out this great resource: https://www.stopwilliamsnesepipeline.org/) And keep calling Governor Hochul at 518-474-8390 to tell her to kill the pipeline project!
Be Afraid of the Zombie Pipeline.
Tell Hochul to be brave!
Earlier in the day, my friends in ACT UP were up at the governor’s office, for Hochul’s Pocus, calling on the governor to: Pass the NY Health Act. On Friday, October 31, activists gathered outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s midtown Manhattan office to demand that she convene a special legislative session and pass universal, single-payer healthcare in New York state in response to the healthcare price hikes and cuts to care that millions of New Yorkers will face in the coming months. Advocates from groups like ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), PNHP NY Metro (Physicians for a National Healthcare Program NY Metro), and Rise and Resist are reacting to the looming expiration of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that will cause healthcare premiums to spike at the start of 2026, and federal cuts to our public Medicaid and Medicare programs. They champion the New York Health Act, a state bill that will guarantee comprehensive healthcare for all New Yorkers, and save billions, while eliminating premiums, copays, deductibles and the source of medical debt. Activists grabbed their witches’ hats and broomsticks and cast spells around a cauldron to support passing the bill, but they were not afraid to hex Governor Hochul if she continues to stay silent on the New York Health Act.
“Governor Hochul can fix this looming healthcare horrorshow with a wave of her magic wand, but she hasn’t supported calling a legislative vote on the universal healthcare bill even though universal healthcare is supported by 62% of the public and an eye-popping 90% of Democrats, and the bill has majority support in both the Senate and Assembly,” said Evan Sachs of ACT UP.
Outside Hochul’s office, activists threw medical bills, pill bottles and other ingredients into a cauldron to cast a spell for the New York Health Act. And they vow to hex the governor if she lets millions of New Yorkers lose their healthcare or see their premiums spike as is predicted with the expiration of federal healthcare subsidies at the end of the year.
“We are holding Kathy Hochul’s feet to the cauldron fire and demand that she call the special legislative session to pass the New York Health Act and protect New Yorkers from these devastating cuts,” said Morgan Moore, Executive Director of PNHP NY Metro.
Activists plan to keep up the pressure on Hochul and the state legislature until they pass the New York Health Act.
It had been that kind of a week,
Trick or treat, I posted after watching the Hell Gate https://youtu.be/sB-fNr6XM9M (35:19 timecode) interview, as Mamdami sneers and laughs saying he would not save Elizabeth Street Garden. Community gardens are mental health and community development, the Elizabeth Street Garden plan cobbled out provides more affordable housing on an alternative site. With flooding all over the city, gardens offer a model of resilience. I can't fathom why a mayoral candidate would be so flippant about such an important issue.
Could it be that he sees this as an elite space, for the affluent? But it's not, the doors are open to everyone. Great cities don’t destroy works of art. Another possible explanation may be more ideological.
Will recalls a book, telling me. In Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng traces a war on nature, recalling the disastrous Mao era war on sparrows as well as a broader crackdown on intellectuals and anyone suspected of "bourgeois" tendencies during the Cultural Revolution. China's Great Sparrow Campaign aimed to “conquer nature” but resulted in countless human deaths. A beautiful, private garden was viewed as a symbol of bourgeois elitism, and the gardener who maintained it an extension of that "bourgeois" class. Could this hostility to green spaces stem from this view?
All I know is mayor after mayor in New York say they want to create more housing, mostly affordable, and bulldoze community gardens, one after another, from Koch to Giuliani to Bloomberg, de Blasio to Adams, to the current frontrunner. They get in bed with real estate developers, and trade the city away, block by block, replacing unique vistas with a city of identical details.
Oh ve, not a single issue voter. But at least one candidate said he’d save Elizabeth Street Garden, I posted, after reading about Sliwa committing to get arrested to save the garden.
With buyers remorse after voting for Mamdami, the garden was on my mind all week long.
Colleagues described garden activists as “unserious” on social media posts.
Count myself as one of them, I recalled the days a quarter century ago, getting arrested, spending two days in jail after Giuliani bulldozed the garden, thinking about our decade long fight to save Elizabeth Street Garden, the space Christopher Marte said was saved.
No gods, no master, save the garden, save the city.
Just after I voted, I read the post from Elizabeth Street Garden, after the Mamdami said again, that he’d bulldoze the garden, without explanation:
“Dear Neighbors,
Against all odds, we have proven that Elizabeth Street Garden could be saved and affordable housing could be built right in our neighborhood, without any loss whatsoever.
It wasn’t special interests with powerful connections (most of those people said it was a lost cause), it wasn’t the more well-known cultural figures (though we’re always grateful for their support), and it wasn’t “a few rich people” (the majority of thousands of donations are <$50).
We, the many people of our community, did this with a truly grassroots campaign that endured well-funded propaganda from developers and powerful politicians for over 12 years.
But now, despite having overcome a divisive false choice imposed on our community, the Garden is now a subject of the Mayoral race… again.
Elizabeth Street Garden does not endorse or support any candidate in any political race.
We can confirm that the campaigns are informed on the solution that saves the Garden and secures nearly 1000 units of housing, at least 623 of which are permanently affordable at nearby alternative sites. One of these sites is 2 blocks away from the Garden. Not only is this much more affordable housing, but it’s permanently affordable, which the planned development over the Garden is not.
Our community has come so far in this effort, and saving the Garden has given so many people hope. Perpetuating the false choice of housing vs community gardens is a divisive tactic weaponized against communities across NYC. Don’t take the word of developers & lobbyists over the word of the people of this community.
We will continue to do everything we can to protect Elizabeth Street Garden from anyone who seeks to destroy it.
It was there the day before at the graduate center.
October 29
When I was at the Graduate Center I remember walking in after the ride from work in the Bronx, viewing the faculty publications, and going to Stanley or Sharon's classes. It was a blast going back and giving a talk there on my friendship research. Seeing old friends, Judy from Dallas,Greg, Andy. Will was there. We strolled past my first apartment in NYC, at 28th and Lex, to the Russian and Turkish Baths, for a plunge in the hot and cold baths, before watching the Dodgers fade.
After the talk, Ian Williams, who organized the event, posted a note about the reading:
“A fascinating conversation with Benjamin Heim Shepard yesterday at The Graduate Center, on his latest book, "On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies and Conflicts," got me thinking about the many friendships that come from that era - the ones that survived sometimes inevitable conflict, and those that didn't.
There is much to look back on at those times; some wonderful, some quite awful, and also many long meetings and times spent waiting around, or experiences that surface no immediate meaning or value judgement.…”
I was thinking about the garden, last Thursday riding out to the immigration vigil in the rain.
'We will be having our immigration vigil rain or shine," said Jamie. But you don't have to, "It is going to be a long winter of ICE demonstrations, so no need to be macho about coming out for this one." I rode out into the rain to Federal Plaza to highlight the cruelties taking shape there, family separations, deportations, and other inhuman treatment of immigrants. 'We had to be here,' said one woman, standing by me. I couldn't hold a sign as there were way more people than planned. Finishing the demo, I rode back to join our PSC President at our chapter meeting, where James Davis talked about the need to "Challenge Trump regime's higher ed loyalty oath." Some talked about food programs and snap and the need for a food drive, etc. Others about healthcare. And I rode back home into the rain, to change out of the wet clothes. I hope everyone is ok and safe out there.
Save the gardens, save the city, we thought, walking into the night.
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