Civic Summer
9 Postcards from Everyday Brooklyn
1. Relief then Joy
I was on Flatbush Avenue, under building scaffolding, when my sister called. “I have something to tell you,” she said.
That past year my father had died, Trump had been elected for the first time, and I’d had Bell’s palsy and then shingles. Meanwhile my family back home had managed most of the work required at the end of his life, and even though I’d flown back and forth, I carried the guilt of it.
So when I heard “I have something to tell you,” I instinctively grabbed the grimy post of scaffolding to steady myself.
My sister, who at the time had two five-year-old girls, identical twins, then said, “I’m pregnant. And it’s twins.”
“Okay, sure,” I said flatly. “Tell me what it really is.”
She laughed. “No, that’s it. I’m pregnant and it’s twins again.”
After some back and forth, I was finally convinced she wasn’t pulling my leg. Relief washed through me, followed by a wave of joy. I was saturated with it.
“Oh my God,” I said, looking up and throwing my free arm into the air. “I don’t think I realized how much I’ve been needing some good news.”
2. And That's What It's Been Like Here in Brooklyn
While living in a kind of normalized horror, in one weekend we had the Pride parade, the Knicks winning the NBA championship for the first time in 53 years, and the Puerto Rican Day parade.
We are enjoying the good news. We are enjoying the summer.
So the timing of my latest essay on sauna diplomacy (which opened with a blizzard back in February) may have seemed a bit... weird.
To make up for this, and share in that collective wave of relief and joy, here is a short collection of postcards on regular everyday civic-summer life in Brooklyn.
Civic Summer is here.
3. Postcards from a Civic Summer
Postcard 1
Civic Artifacts
Civic joy leaves traces.
I accidentally took this photograph of the ground and it’s my favorite image from the parade.
The detritus of Pride and the Knicks championship commingling happily in a Brooklyn gutter.
Postcard 2
Civic Spectacle
It was a very sporty Pride. A Brooklyn rugby team danced the Pride parade and performed lineout lifts for the cheering crowd at regular intervals. Is it just me, or is the thrower adding jazz hands?
Postcard 3
Local Infrastructure
A neighbor brought their projector down and set it up on a wheelie bin. A Puerto Rican flag is up because always. And also it's the Puerto Rican Day parade the following day.
Just your typical Brooklyn civic infrastructure.
(Photo by my neighbor and fellow reveler Kalya O’Donoghue)
Postcard 4
Collective Memory
We Won!
Postcard 5
Ecological Infrastructure
Meanwhile during the day “Oyster Balls” were being installed at the bottom of the New York Harbor by Sunset Park. Shout out to the Billion Oyster Project and these two magnificent community advocates who happily told everyone all about it.
Postcard 6
Creative Community
It was my turn to host our local Sunset Park Pecha Kucha (20 slides, 20 seconds each, your neighbors as the speakers). Our fifth one. Listening to your neighbors talk about their ideas and passion projects is a much more alive way to get to know them than, say, talking about the weather.
Postcard 7
Collective Spectacle
On the other hand sometimes the weather really is worth talking about.
Summer Storm
A grey and blue
marbled glove
reaches out
towards the city.
Water pours
from fingertips.
They curl.
We watch.
Until, shrieking,
we run through it.
Postcard 8
Public Life
Roscoe has a robust public life because he believes he belongs to everybody. (And he does. And so do we all.)
Postcard 9
Mi Familia
Back in Australia my sister's second set of twins are now nine years old. Here they are last week at "Come as your favorite fruit day" at school. Lachie is a blueberry, and Hamish is a kiwi fruit.
The news is still good.
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