Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Pine Cone! Acorn! Bee! Weeping Willow! Grass! Squirrel!

I felt like a five-year-old who was still seeing the world with new eyes this past Saturday while visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. As one who has grown up in lush Michigan, living in the city for even a short two months has led me to appreciate the little things like grass, trees and undomesticated animals that are lacking in the concrete jungle of NYC.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens were, simply put, pretty and serene. I felt like I was walking into a completely different world, a world far away from the city with its blaring car horns, dirty streets, unpleasant smells, and air pollution.

What I was rather surprised by was the fact that I spent nearly two hours in the gardens, and didn't even feel bored. It wasn't crowded, there was plenty to see, it was a gorgeous day, and it felt nice to walk around. My favorite part of the gardens was actually towards the entrance. Walking down a set of steps that were lined with trees shading the pathway, it felt as if I were entering a secret kingdom. There were also florescent purple flowers in between the trees. It literally made me stop in my tracks because, even though in reality it was a pretty simplistic layout, it was perfectly gorgeous.

I also enjoyed the man-made pond swimming with turtles and white and orange fish. There is a Japanese-style viewing pavilion overlooking the pond, offering a peaceful place to sit and enjoy the sounds of the outdoors.

I could go on and on about all of the different things I saw that I enjoyed, and as a writer it should be my duty to bring those sights back to life through my writing, but it truly is one of those places that you just need to see and experience for yourself. And, you must have an appreciation of nature in order to really enjoy the abundance of different species of trees, plants, flowers, etcetera that the Gardens have to offer.

During my first visit at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, I felt as if I were having a sensory overload-- but in a good way. My eyes were furiously darting around trying to take everything in as quickly as possible as if the scenery were about to disappear before my eyes. There was so much to see in fact that I plan on going back again, not only to discover numerous things that I'm sure I missed during my first trip, but to also get away from all of the city hustle for a few hours.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens may not be a hot spot for weekend visitors to New York, but after actually living here, it's finding tucked away beauties like this one that continues to make New York an appealing place full of surprises and opportunity.

(Pictures above found on the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens wesbite.)

Guggenheim Experience

This past Saturday I visited the well-known New York museum, The Guggenheim, and had quite an enjoyable experience. It was helpful going with someone with a little background knowledge in art as well as having the free audio tour device that discussed certain pieces throughout the museum. The audio device often pointed out things that I would have otherwise overlooked. That is one reason I love art--one piece can mean something different for each individual, and there are some pieces that are so intricate that the meaning may change each time it is viewed and new things are discovered in it.

There are a few pieces that stood out to me in particular:

* Julie Mehretu: Grey Area Exhibit - On a huge canvas she combines precise architectural lines with abstract forms. The use of different materials creates texture and adds density to her paintings. As the Guggenheim pamphlet states about Mehretu's work, "The images seem to exist at a horizon where the work could either plunge into dense obscurity or nearly disappear into an ethereal cloud of dust. Yet a remarkable sense of pictorial space always exists in Mehretu's paintings, created not just by their layering but also by the contrasts inherent in them." My favorite painting of Mehretu that was displayed actually reminded me of the movie Inception the way the buildings folded into one another.

* Pablo Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair - At first glance I was not impressed with this piece, but it is with thanks to the museum's audio player for giving some of the background story that made me see it with new eyes. The girl in the painting is Picasso's mistress and it shows the girl in an innocent, vulnerable state of sleep. What is also unique about this painting is the few lines used to create the body of the girl. Every line and brush stroke is fluent and precisely round. The gentleness of the strokes resembles the peacefulness of the girl at rest.

*Vincent van Gogh's Mountains at Saint-Remy - Something about this 1889 painting intrigued me. Perhaps it was the rounded mountains that seem to be melting and the quaint tucked-away house and flower garden with his signature sunflowers located at the base of the mountains that give life to the painting. Or maybe it is oddly van Gogh's struggle with mental illness that makes me look more carefully at his work. Either way, I liked seeing Mountains at Saint Remy in person at The Guggenheim, and it may or may not have led me to do a little biography research.


Of course I did not like every painting I saw at The Guggenheim. In fact, I didn't really care for the entire abstract section at the museum. But overall, I was very pleased with the wide variety of artwork displayed. I definitely recommend it to others who are into art or are at least curious to learn a little about art. I also recommend picking up the audio device as it was very helpful.

MoSex

I recently visited the Museum of Sex on 5th Ave, NYC. I'm not sure if it was quite what I expected...but I'm not sure what I expected in the first place. Although the content was interesting, I didn't think there would be so much reading involved. I should have brought my glasses! I guess that's part of what a museum is all about though--to educate.

The museum has three floors with a different exhibit on each floor.

Action: 'Sex and the Moving Image'

The first floor focused on the emergence of sexuality in film and how it evolved over time. There were several TVs that displayed sex scenes from films throughout time that went along with the literature.

Rubbers: The Life, History & Struggle of the Condom

The second floor was divided into two separate themes. The first room had old nude pictures, art work, sexual bodysuits, a sex film made from using paper cut-outs, and other miscellaneous things. The other part of the second floor was the Rubbers exhibit. It detailed the history of the condom, while displaying old condoms, condom dispensers, wrappers/tins, etc. It also discussed the importance of using protection and recalled the syphilis outbreak in Europe that made it's way to America and threatened soldiers in combat during WWII.

The Sex Lives of Animals

Lastly, the third floor was an exhibit on the sexual behavior of animals. Long story short, the exhibit objective is basically to prove that humans are much more similar to animals than we'd like to think --animals are sexual beings that perform sex acts for pleasure and not just for pro-creation too; they masturbate and often perform homosexual acts. There was even a case of rape in which a duck smashed into a window and died in the hopes of escaping its attacker.

The majority of the information provided at the Museum of Sex were things that I already knew due to taking several Women Studies courses, a class on Animal Movement & Behavior, and a class on AIDS & Other Communicable Diseases, but for someone who may not have had as well-rounded of a curriculum, one could certainly learn a lot from it. My only warning is that you have to have the patience to read everything and have at least two hours of time to explore the museum fairly thoroughly to make it worth the $15 admission fee. But of course, the topic of sex makes the information pretty interesting to begin with, and it appeals to both men and women alike.