Monthly Archives: April 2013

As Winter’s Grip Loosens, Here Come the Birds

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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two Canada geese

Two Canada geese. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

There is a brook beyond the backyards of some of my neighbors. Canada geese have been hanging out there for years. But each spring they get very restless, fly up more than usual, call to each other continuously, then circle and land not far from where they started. Some long-held instinct tells them they have to be going. But they and their forebears have been on the fields and office park lawns of suburbia for so long they wouldn’t know where to go if they had a GPS strapped to their bills. Meanwhile, their cousins, the migrant Canada geese, have been heading north to their breeding grounds for weeks in long, v-shaped skeins.

Like the local geese, at this time of year, I feel restless. But I know the cause. I’m waiting for the birds to come north. In particular, I am awaiting warblers. Despite their name they are not the sweetest of singers. Their “songs” tend to be more like buzzes or sounds like “weezy, weezy, weezy” and “sweet, sweet I’m so sweet.”

But after a long winter it is wonderful to be outside, looking up a tree that is leafing, and suddenly seeing a hint of movement that turns out to be a brightly colored, yellow and black bird. Then the fun starts – which bird is it? Is the pattern that of a magnolia warbler or ablack-throated green? Is it on the ground or at the very top of a tree or someplace in between? Warblers are an enjoyable test every spring for bird watchers. Their variety forces you to remember their coloring, habits and calls.

You arrive at a trail and hear nothing. A few steps later you are surrounded by calling birds. It is not uncommon to find seven or eight different types of warblers (not to mention other migrating birds) in one small area that has the benefit of seeds to eat and/or water to drink and bathe in. It can be overwhelming. During the winter I feel sluggish and slow, cold and achy no matter how high I keep the heat. (And with the cost, I don’t keep it that high.) But when the days get longer, and the winds finally start coming out of the south, winter is loosening its grip. I know the floodgates will open and the birds will come.

That is why I am restless. Just as I know the birds are pushing through many obstacles to get north to their breeding grounds, I know there will be several Saturday mornings when I will rise earlier than I’d like and drive to an area I favor in New Jersey’s Great Swamp that is hard to hike, but rewarding because it’s literally off the beaten (or boardwalked) track. There will be birds there, and if I am lucky, I’ll be able to know what I’m hearing, and will see the singers without straining my neck too badly from all the looking up. I can’t wait.

When an Old Box Camera Gives You Bulbs, Make Vases

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

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Flash bulb vases. Made and photographed by Bob Smith

Flash bulb vases. Made and photographed by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

At the old family house in Cresskill, I found a dusty yellow box bearing the name Kodak DUAFLEX IV Flash Outfit. It was that brown box camera that I recently wrote about – the one Mom had used to take our pictures when we were kids. Tucked away inside was the original receipt dated March 1956 for $22.85 – starting with a $10 deposit. Evidently, Mom and Dad didn’t have enough nickels to rub together to buy it all at once.

The Kodak Duaflex. Photo by Bob Smith

The Kodak Duaflex. Photo by Bob Smith.

I decided to get it working again and perhaps recapture some of the magic that camera had seen. A haze of dust had accumulated on the inside of the lenses over the years, so first it had to be taken apart and cleaned. The Duaflex is a simple leather-textured cardboard box with lenses mounted on the front and a viewfinder through the top. Nothing to it.

Well, not completely. I’m mechanically challenged, so once I take something apart, there’s a good chance it’s not getting put back together the same way again. Within 25 minutes, I had screws the size of mustard seeds, lozenge-shaped lenses, metal springs and parts, and the three sections of the leatherette box spread across my kitchen table. Cleaning the lenses took 30 seconds – dab alcohol on a cotton swab, three swipes per side. Done.

Two tense hours later, after numerous cocked screws, a slightly bent viewfinder, and one ugly crease in the cardboard box where I had jammed on the faceplate at the wrong angle, Humpty Dumpty was back together again, nearly as good as new.

But I couldn’t snap pictures yet. Kodak still makes film wide enough for the camera, but not mounted on a spool that fits the brackets on the Duaflex IV. My local camera shop guru cheerfully explained that I could easily adjust the diameter of the plastic spool so it would fit inside the camera housing.

Back to the tools. With X-Acto knife and metal file, I sliced and shaved a 16th of an inch off the perimeter of each end of the film spool so it would fit into the camera. The hour was laced with epithets and sliced fingers, but at the end, that spool had roughly rounded ends that not only fit inside the camera, but actually (with some effort) rolled to allow the film to advance. Photo ready!

Not. You needed a flash for indoor shots. Luckily the kit included the flash attachment, complete with a half dozen old-fashioned flash bulbs. Of course, installing batteries in the flash unit also required a screwdriver, but there was only one screw holding the hard plastic housing together, and even I couldn’t screw up unscrewing that.

Family photos, courtesy of the Duaflex.

Family photos, courtesy of the Duaflex.

I was finally ready for a test shot of the family dog. The flash was accompanied by a crackle-popping sound like a small explosion, and the inside of the bulb turned hazy and gray with smoke – one step removed from flash powder. Its hot surface had partially melted and was bubbled with caramel-colored burnt spots. The dog was so startled, he spent the next hour cowering under the kitchen table.

I moved on to human subjects, snapping my wife and son, my son with his girlfriend, and even one shot of Mom. With each snap, I reflexively looked down at the camera, seeking digital gratification. No such luck. Once you finished a roll, you sent the whole thing away to be developed and wouldn’t know for a week or more if any pictures had turned out well.

As it turned out, none did. Apart from one backyard shot of the dog (which has gone missing – the photo, not the dog, who’s probably still under the table), they’re all dark, out of focus, or both. Either my technique, or the old equipment itself, was not up to the task.

But Maria liked the spent flashbulbs. Online she learned that people make vases out of light bulbs, and suggested we try the same thing. You removed the metal contact at the end of the bulb to create the opening, which was right up my alley: breaking things. I grabbed the nubby metal tip with pliers and twisted. It made a satisfying glassy crunching sound as I turned it back and forth to free it from the edge. Then I pulled the nub out of the bulb, still trailing gossamer traces of filament. I jammed a screwdriver into the hole, and rotated it to smooth the opening and clear away the underbrush of cloudy stuff filling the bulb. I shook out the tiny glass fragments, and the bulb was ready for mounting.

With synthetic modeling clay, we fashioned circular disks and baked them for 10 minutes to make them hard. Then we glued one onto the bottom of each bulb to create a flat platform, and the transformation was complete: each flashbulb was now a freestanding bud vase. Those unique handmade vases are now proudly collecting dust on a shelf in our family room.

The old camera had given us lemons, and we made more lemons.

Traveling with Scissors (Remember When?)

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Scissors from Spain, bought in 1984

Scissors from Spain, bought in 1984.

BY JULIE SEYLER

I have a pair of scissors I bought in Toledo, Spain in 1984. Everyone knows the connection between Toledo and El Greco, but the city was also once famous for its swords. I could neither afford, nor did I want a sword, but I most definitely wanted a keepsake that would capture their essence.  Every tourist shop was filled with swords and knives, and cutlery characterized by the basic inlay of gold or silver known as damascene ware. The design was different from anything I saw back home, and after much thought, I decided a pair of scissors would be the perfect souvenir. Not only pretty and unique, but functional. They were packaged in a black velvet pouch.  The pouch is long since lost, but I always know where those scissors are because they define a moment in time.

I was 26.  I had met a friend in Lisbon.  My traveler’s checks, totally $1500, were stolen the day after I arrived.  So we started out with a morning at the American Express office, but quickly got back on track and headed out to the beach in Cascais, and up to the medieval village of Obidos, and back down, and across, to Spain.  En route to Marbella, I got a speeding ticket. It was ridiculous, not the ticket, but me driving since I didn’t know how to maneuver a shift.  Once I got into fourth gear, I stayed there because it was comfortable, and easier, than downshifting to third.  We paid the fine, and drove into Sevilla. From there, we circled Andalusia hitting Granada to see the Alhambra and the Cathedral in Cordoba. We drank sherry in Jerez de la Frontera, saw the aqueducts and a bullfight in Ronda, and moved north to Toledo, where I bought the scissors.  In Madrid, our last stop, I lost my camera, but had absolutely no problem boarding the plane with a pair of scissors in my bag.

So whenever I use those scissors I am reminded of the girl and the world of 30 years ago.  I was somewhat fearless and mighty trusting, because although my money was stolen, and I was stopped by a Portuguese policeman, the world seemed like a safe place. I think back and so many things were different.  I always went to the post office to buy stamps because the best way to communicate was through post cards.  Overseas phone calls were prohibitively expensive, and you had to find a place that had international telephone service.  I was able to afford a three- week trip not just because everything was cheaper, but because I could sleep in a lumpy bed in a hostel, and didn’t give a thought to group showers with a bunch of other kids. Even losing my camera was not devastating, because I used film.  The camera was gone, but not the 12 rolls of film documenting every adventure before Madrid.

Fade back to 2013.  Needless to say those scissors have became dull after 30 years of use.  One night, Steve was sharpening knives, so I asked if he could hone the scissors as well. Who knew a knife sharpener is the death knell of a scissor blade?  They no longer cut, and I am in the middle of researching scissor sharpeners, because I can never give them up.

The Take, and the Give, of ‘Out with the Old!’

15 Monday Apr 2013

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Candle Bowl

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Whenever family or friends want to chuck old, unwanted clutter, I am often the one that will take their discards. Much of my home is dotted with stuff that no one else wants.

It is often the story behind that old, chipped china teacup, that’s missing its saucer, the tattered, and faded flag from World War II, or a mottled, cracked, ornate antique mirror frame (no mirror attached) from the 1920s, that draws me in. That red bowl of 50 (or more), 50-year-old (or older), candles, pictured above? My good friend talked me into buying them for two bucks at an estate sale of a deceased candle-lover.

But since my moving into a smaller space is fast-approaching, my role as a taker has reversed. I’m forced to go through the drawers, closets, corners, cabinets, boxes, basement, attic, and every room in my house, to decide what to take, and what to toss.

First, I made piles. Piles for donations. Piles of offerings for friends. Piles of the beloved family relics, including every piece of artwork, the cards, and even the still-sticky mementos that I’ve kept in a cedar chest from my kids’ lives. And I’m impressed with how ruthless a tosser I can be, under pressure (I junked the old, red Radio Flyer!), to the junk pile in my backyard that will eventually be out of any future piles because it will be hauled away by a dumpster. The heap is blossoming by the day, right alongside my daffodils.
daffodils and junk

And then there are the piles of indecisions. The why-keeps? Misfits, to some extent, all of them. Some are ancient, some are broken, but all are the stuff of stories:

The chair that my family bought me for Mother’s Day, way back when my kids saw me as a queen, worthy of a throne. It’s gold, with a crown at the top. But it is a bad, pretty much deadly chair, therefore it has forever been banished to a corner so no one will ever sit in it. To sit back in that chair, is to fall backwards with a head crack to the floor.

Queen chair

There’s the sconce from the 1940s, that I took from an old, art-deco apartment building that I lived in, in the 1980s (the most untamed time of my life), where it had graced the walls for years before I was even born.

Santander sconce

When I moved, I pulled it out of the wall, and the all wires stayed in the wall. It can never be turned on. But it’s hanging on a nail right inside my front door, as if it has power. It reminds me of those days of playing Backgammon by its dim light with people I lived with, and came to love. And it’s also a bitter reminder that I stole it! I maimed, and forever destroyed, not only the wall that it was born on, but an integral part of the story of that building’s beginnings.

There’s the tarnished copper, basin-thing, that I found in the garbage somewhere when I was in college. It housed my schefflera tree, dubbed “Alfred II.”  Alfred II lived in this pot for over 10 years (“Alfred I” lived for 20 years), and traveled with me until he died. I believe he froze to death by the avalanche of snow that stormed the apartment (the one that I stole from) because we left the balcony door open in a blizzard. Pot

My Frye boots – dusty, scuffed, bent and smelly. These were actually very close to topping the dumpster pile, but I recently saw the exact same ones in an antique store. I’m embracing the beauty that I knew and wore them when they were new, and now they’re old enough, and worthy enough, to be antique.Frye Boots

And as for that bowl of old candles. I’m keeping them – just because. I’ve lit a few, but since some of them look to be older than me, they’ve earned a reprieve from death by fire. As a whole, these candles must have a story, because the family of the deceased candle-lover, chose not to toss them, but instead pile them lovingly in a big box, in the hopes of passing them on.

The Saturday Blog: Love Eternal

13 Saturday Apr 2013

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Kissing gravestones, Trinity Church

Kissing gravestones, Trinity Church. Photo by Julie Seyler.

We see this photo of contingent gravestones as a metaphor for eternal love. They are leaning on each other, never to part.

Oh Baby! The Art of a Pink Push-Up, Padded with Plastic Ones

12 Friday Apr 2013

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Pink push-up bra. Julie Seyler.

My pink, push-up bra. Assembled by Julie Seyler.

BY JULIE SEYLER

I walk crosstown to swim several times a week. I wear my bathing suit under my work clothes, and always remember to pack my underwear. Except when I forget. It happened a couple of summers ago, so before I got to my office I ducked into Strawberry’s, a discount women’s department store that carries everything from umbrellas to shoes; sweaters to lingerie (albeit the lingerie selection is limited). The choices run from leopard print to neon blue, all made with 100% non-natural fabrics. The best I could do was a hot pink, perfectly constructed, push-up bra in a material designed to evoke faux silk. It looked sort of like a bathing suit top, but it got me through the day. I came home, and retired it to the back room where I keep all my art supplies.

But the basic bones of the bra spoke to me. It amounted to sculpture, and given its vibrant color, I knew I had to do something with it.

So, I lined a wooden box with black velvet. I figured the pink sheen of the polyester would pop out when placed against the black. Over the years, I have purchased hundreds of spools of vintage silk thread. The colors are super pure, and the texture of the thread is lush. I selected a red and a blue to sew the bra into the black velvet box. I am enchanted by miniature plastic babies, so I sewed a few of them onto the bra. I loved it when it was finished, and decided that my friends Deb and John might also love it.

I am so flattered. It’s hanging in their guest bathroom downstairs for all to peruse when nature calls.

Close-up pink push-up bra.

Close-up.

Boiler Number 3: A Blast (of Soot, Sweat, and Broken Spirits) from the Past

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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Bob and the boiler

Bob and the boiler

BY BOB SMITH

When my brother’s friend told us he knew a guy who would pay us $50 a day to clean boilers at some factory in Hackensack, it sounded too good to be true. It was the summer of 1971, I was 16, and that was roughly quadruple the then-prevailing minimum wage of $1.60 an hour. How bad could it be? We eagerly agreed.

The factory was a series of drab brick buildings in an industrial section of town near the railroad tracks. A grizzled guy in a uniform sat in the guardhouse – an upended glass and metal coffin in the middle of the driveway. He looked up from his magazine just long enough to direct us to the “power house,” a two-story brick building at the back of the property.

In front of the power house there were eight monster gas meters with round riveted faces the size of pizza pies. As we stood on the concrete platform waiting for someone to answer the buzzer, we could hear pressurized gas hissing in the pipes.

“You smell anything?” Jimmy asked, looking askance at the meters.

The foreman brought us into an open room where two 12-foot high, 12-foot square, concrete structures squatted, side by side, under long fluorescent lights. The hulks had “Boiler No. 2” and “Boiler No. 3” stenciled on their sides in alarming fire-engine red block letters.

“Okay guys, you’ll be starting on No. 3 today,” said the foreman. His name was Steve, and he ran this business cleaning boilers. But Steve didn’t actually do any work. He just supervised hapless suckers like us.

Steve quickly showed us what to do and hurried away.

“I got another job going across town. I’ll be back at lunchtime with sandwiches and sodas.”

It was simple. You crawled inside the boiler through a cast iron access door barely big enough to allow one person to wriggle through, carrying a narrow brush on a stick and a work light on a long extension cord. Once inside the boiler, you laid on the pipes that spanned the length and width of the unit, and used the brush to sweep piles of soot off the top surface of each pipe.

You started at the far end of the boiler, about eight feet from the access door, and worked your way down the length of the boiler. After knocking the soot off all the pipes, you opened another access door at floor level and shoveled the grimy, black powder into barrels for disposal. (This being New Jersey, probably in a landfill near a major source of drinking water.)

The soot built up on top of the pipes because the boilers were really gigantic ovens. When the array of gas burners at the bottom were fired up, the space inside was a blazing, white-hot inferno. That fact was not lost on me as I lay at the far end of the unit, far from that tiny access door, hoping the guy in the control room didn’t forget No. 3 was supposed to be down today for cleaning.

Then there was the soot. Steve insisted that before we went into the boiler we put on paper breathing masks, purportedly to prevent us from breathing in the black dust. However, within 15 minutes, the mask was useless – a sodden mass of soot, saturated with sweat. You had to pull it off your face to breathe at all – dust be damned.

By the end of the day, our clothes were heavy with embedded black ash, our hair matted tangles of soot, and our spirits broken. Like the Peanuts character Pig Pen, we exuded a cloud of dust with every step.

When we got home, I showered for a full half hour, watching the water run black as I scrubbed that persistent blackness from every pore, follicle, and crevice of my body. I spat and blew black from my nose for a week.

Being successful at a job, or at anything in life for that matter, often is a matter of just showing up. But sometimes not showing up is the better way to go.

Jim and I didn’t return for day two in Boiler No. 3.

Searching for Spring, and Finding a Phoebe

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

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spring buds

Spring buds. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

On Thursday, March 21, 2013, the first full day of spring, I took a walk to get the morning paper, and detoured home through a local park. At one point, I crossed a brook. From the bridge, I saw a small gray bird fly to a branch and bop its tail.

I had seen my first Eastern Phoebe of the season.

The Phoebe is a member of the flycatcher family. There are three types of Phoebe: the Eastern, the Say‘s (its western equivalent), and the Black (found in the Southwest United States, Mexico, and along the California coast).

In New Jersey, the Eastern Phoebe is one of the earliest of spring migrant birds.

According to my various nature guides, Eastern Phoebes show up in my region somewhere around March 10-20. Marie Winn, author of “Red-Tails in Love,” posted in her blog on March 15, that the first Phoebe had been seen in New York’s Central Park that day.

So mine was more or less on time.

Yet, it did not feel like spring. The temperature at 8:30 that March morning was in the upper 20s, and it was cloudy with a breeze. I was wearing a thin scarf around my head and neck, a hat over that, and a warm parka with the hood up.

This Phoebe was hunting –  until I spooked it. It eats insects, and in the cold there were few to be seen – at least by me.

The year before, we’d had next to no snow, and the temperature was unusually warm in March. But this year we’ve had the winter that won’t end. The 50-degree days – normal temperature – had been few and far between, and the with weather casters predicting snow and warmth maybe by April, I was feeling distinctly depressed about the continuing cold. Until I saw the Phoebe. It hadn’t heard the warnings about climate change. Its internal clock said it was time to leave the winter grounds in the deep south of the United States and Mexico, and head north.

Phoebes are remarkably faithful to a good nesting spot. Once found, they will return every year. When John J. Audubon was living in Pennsylvania, he tied silver thread on the legs of young Phoebes he caught. The next spring he caught two that returned — they still had the thread. It was the first bird-banding experiment in America.

I, meanwhile, feel stuck here. It’s getting harder for me to get through a cold New Jersey winter. I feel achy and dried out by the furnace heat, and can’t just pick up and head south for the winter.

The Phoebe reminds me that there will be other migrating birds coming through my area in the next month or two on their way to northern breeding grounds. Some will travel no farther than New Jersey, and will provide a reason for me to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning.

By then – climate willing – it should be warmer.

My Sixth, Zero-Birthday, and Counting (On Two Hands)

09 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Frank bday

It’s my birthday.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Fingers. We have 10 of them. So ancient people decided that our numbering system would be based on 10 – one number for each finger. I bring this up because it causes us to get all worked up about birthdays ending in a zero. Does turning 50 or 60 or 70 really mean anything? The answer is that it does for many people.

The first zero-birthday that mattered to me was when I turned 30. Having grown up at a time when we were warned not to trust anyone over 30, there was some trepidation at reaching that milestone. Turning 40 was a bit more traumatic. It’s the entrance to “middle age.” It would have been tough to take no longer being “young,” except that by this time, I had two young children, and I knew full well what young was.

I can honestly say that turning 50 was a big snore. Oh sure, it’s a half-century, and that sounds really old. And the AARP comes to claim you. But all in all, it’s no worse than turning 40. That being said, my body sure knew the difference between 40 and 50. Cancer,” the “Big C,” hit me at 52, and again at 57.

That old saying is correct – you’re as old as you feel. Billy Crystal’s Fernando character on “Saturday Night Live” used to say that it doesn’t matter how you feel, as long as you look “mahvalus.” But I think it’s just the opposite. It doesn’t matter how you look, as long as you feel “mahvalus.”

All this is apropos of my turning 60 today. I have survived a decade that was hard on my health. But I can truthfully say that I am as healthy today as I was when I was 40. So for me, the idea that turning 60 is a milestone is strange. I don’t feel any older. That is not to say that I won’t take advantage of the senior citizen discounts that will now come my way. I certainly will. (If I remember I’m 60.)

Frank bday 2

I was “Medieval” in the ’60s.

Back in the summer of 1967, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was 14, and was playing lead guitar in a garage band called, The Medievals.

We played local dances, and actually got paid for it. My band mates and I sat and listened to Sgt. Pepper’s as soon as it came out. On Side 2 was a song called, “When I’m Sixty-Four,” that imagined a distant future, and the uncertainty of love surviving. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a time 50 years into the future when I would be 64. Now, it’s just four years away.

When I started writing for this blog, I wrote an article about the sands of an hourglass, and the days of our lives. I have had 21,915 days so far. Some of them have been dull; some exciting. Some lovely. Some terrifying. Many of them have been memorable. On my 60th birthday, I look forward to several thousand more memorable days. On to 70!

My Buddy, His Birds, and Appreciation from the Sidelines

08 Monday Apr 2013

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Birdland

Birdland. Photos by Julie Seyler.

BY JULIE SEYLER

I have a friend who is a birder.  When he first told me that he took excursions to Central Park every Saturday morning during spring migration season to catch what was coming up from down South, I was baffled.  But over the course of our 20-year friendship, I have come to appreciate the mystery of birdwatching.  So while I have never become a bird groupie, I thoroughly understand the pleasure that comes from a successful sighting; the thrill of spying the bird that seemed to get away. And the overall satisfaction of a day spent with warm-blooded creatures that have the power of flight.

And because I know the excitement of seeing something rare and unexpected, I no longer blink an eye if we are driving along, and come to a sudden stop because he spots something in the sky, on the road or in a tree. As a result, I have picked up minimal knowledge of being able to distinguish terns from gulls, and plovers from sandpipers. But basically, I’m a rube.

Nonetheless, if I’m going on vacation to someplace that is known for some exotic, colorful bird species, I most definitely pack my binoculars.  I know I have been very lucky to have seen lilac-breasted rollers, spoonbill cranes, secretary birds, and malachite kingfishers.

Lilacbreasted roller. Botswana

Lilac-breasted roller. Botswana.

So on a recent trip to Sherwood Island State Park in Connecticut, my friend brought the car to a sudden roadside stop to check out bufflehead ducks.  On the walk to the beach, he pointed out Canada geese and coots, and then off he went with his binoculars to see what else he could find.

seeking shore birds

Seeking shore birds.

He came back with a report that he had seen a few more buffleheads, some mergansers and long-tailed ducks. For a 30-minute stop in 30-degree weather, it was definitely gratifying.  Meanwhile, I had ended up walking along the beach checking out the shells. I guess nature calls differently to each of us.

me holding a shell

Me, holding a shell.