Earth Day 2023

04/22/2023

Earth Day 2023

Stephen received an alert from the New York Botanical Garden saying that because of the recent heat wave, the tree peonies were opening earlier than usual this year. We weren't prepared to visit the the Botanical Garden so soon after our last trip, but I found a few tree peonies in Fort Tryon Park that were also in early bloom. I remembered when we tried to plant tree peonies in our garden. They did well for a few years, but as the surrounding trees grew taller, they didn't get enough sun and they succumbed to mildew and pests.

Fort Tryon Park is also in peak phlox season.

We've also had many varieties of phlox in our garden over the years, but sadly they have all perished, again due to the lack of light. Now we're careful to buy shade-loving plants, which offer a more subdued kind of pleasure.

I thought about Earth Day, which thanks to its limited focus -- one day, lots of small things you can do -- feels increasingly hollow and saccharine in the global-warming era, when it seems we need a new daily holiday called Revolution 24/7 if we are going to restructure society in a way that will address the root problems of global warming and other forms of existential, environmental destruction. But I guess it can't hurt to read about forests, either, as the NYT likes to recommend.

At the very least we could add a subtitle to the holiday each year. Earth Day 2023: Hopelessness and Denial. Earth Day 2023: Carbon Dioxide Levels Higher Than Ever. Earth Day 2023: Sorry, Earth!

But there's still a lot of beauty to be found in the world, as the mind-blowing azaleas reminded me.

Earth Day 2023: A Retreat Into Psychedelic Flowers

Posted at 12:45 PM in Expression, Science Projects | Permalink

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#gods

ORDER HERE

A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE

A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.

In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.

Praise for #gods

“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal

“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch

“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America

“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World

The Metropolis Case

'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'

-- The New York Times

Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

04/22/2023

Earth Day 2023

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