Sometime in the 1950s, 20 years before I was even born, my father woke up in Harlem. He and a small group of friends, all new arrivals to this city, decided to walk down to the Battery. It took them the good part of the day – made longer still since they stopped to slake […]
Author Archives: Samantha Hunt
Old School
February 5, 2008 – 1:22 pm
The man I wanted to blog about today didn’t want anything to do with it.
“No publications!” he said.
“Uh, it’s just for a blog,” I told him.
His look said plenty. Blog. Blob. Slog. Slob. Slug.
His name is Chick and he owns a junk shop around the corner from my house. He is called Chick because […]
Gowanus is for Broken Hearts
February 5, 2008 – 1:02 pm
One walk that my daughter and take about twice a week is crossing the Gowanus Canal on Carroll Street and then returning via Union. This walk has the best artwork in New York City. Many creative people live along
the canal and have turned it shores into their own watery gallery.
The Carroll Street Bridge
A Wall of […]
The Engine Room
February 4, 2008 – 10:12 am
I am lucky enough to teach writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After the students, my favorite part of campus must be the buildings — an elegant if surly lot. The school opened in 1887 so a walk through campus can feel like a walk through the Gilded Age — gilded once again by […]
Very superstitious
February 4, 2008 – 9:42 am
As I was writing “The Invention of Everything Else” I started to pay very close attention to the pigeons in my neighborhood. At times, they would even influence my editorial decisions. If I’d spent a day revising and then went outside and saw a sick and mangled bird I took that to mean that perhaps […]
Christmas everyday
February 1, 2008 – 1:50 pm
People in my neighborhood celebrate Christmas with a whole lot of lights. Our downstairs neighbors always put out a glowing Santa and a creche scene. The black king’s nose has been rubbed white so he makes me think of Rudolph the white-nosed wise man.
Here it is February though a number of folks in my neighborhood […]
Planes
January 29, 2008 – 5:32 pm
Planes flying into LaGuardia pass right over my house. When I first moved in and saw them approaching at night I thought it was some sort of magical, magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime convergence. Until the planes kept doing it every single night. Still, it’s quite a spectacle when seven or eight planes are lined up from here […]
Swoon
January 29, 2008 – 11:48 am
The artist Swoon works somewhere near my house and I am the grateful recipient of her close proximity as she’s primarily a street artist and so my walks have been beautified by her efforts. She is both a printmaker and an extreme paper cutter. Her work is lovely. Often, by the time I find […]
Pigeons
January 24, 2008 – 11:32 am
People still keep coops of pigeons on their roofs in my Brooklyn neighborhood. There is one coop very nearby so that when I look out my front window I’m often able to witness a gorgeous, fighting-weight flock, swooping and circling. The birds turn together as if hearing some silent command. It is a fantastic act […]
Fans and Fanatics
January 24, 2008 – 11:24 am
A mind as open as Tesla’s — with room to imagine a device for photographing thought or an engine powered by June beetles (let alone radio and AC electricity) — collects a lot of other freethinking geniuses and oddballs. I met a number of them while researching my
novel.
Helena Bulaja from Zagreb is making an epic […]