Limekiln Latitudes
On place, purpose and pretty things.Archive for August, 2009
The National Parks: America’s Best Idea
as i sift through all things NPS, i have to put in a plug for the new ken burns documentary coming out in a few weeks. it’s called “the national parks: america’s best idea” and from what i hear it’s brilliant – poignant and relevant and celebratory in all the right ways. here’s what ken burns’ longtime collaborator and producer dayton duncan says about the project:
“Making this film was one of the greatest joys of my life,” said Dayton Duncan, who has visited all but one of America’s 58 national parks and who is the author of the companion book, to be published by Alfred Knopf. “Each park is unique and has its own fascinating historical story. But they are all connected by the transformative idea that they belong to each of us, providing a shared place that lives in the memory of every individual and every family that has visited them over the years. And they are connected by the notion that individual Americans, in the best possible example of democracy, worked to make sure that future generations could enjoy them.”
that last idea – that all the parks are connected by their innate publicness, and that the founding and ongoing preservation of each national park points to the truest of democratic principles – is something we’re striving to drive home in the envisioning gateway publication. i have the pleasure of working with some really fantastic NPS scholars and managers on this – ethan carr and rolf diamant, specifically – and it’s a challenge to balance this message with some of the more dire and complex realities of gateway as a landscape. on top of all this, we’re also arguing that design matters (read: nature is constructed) and that the park service needs to reconnect to the latest innovations and practices in landscape architecture and urban design/planning in order to address those complexities. quite a task, but one i’m honored to undertake.
ah, summer.
i’m not feeling much summer love because of this book deadline (it’s midnight on sat and i’m sitting on the porch with my laptop), but one look at this lovely polaroid and i’m transported:
(still) envisioning gateway
3 months of silence is a long time! i suppose i’ve been distracted by weekend getaways and a steady stream of visitors – two things that characterize summer in NYC for me – and now i’m staring down the barrel of a four week push to finish the manuscript for a book about gateway national recreation area. gateway is a 26,000 acre stretch of the NY-NJ harbor under the jurisdiction of the national park service – home to bird refuges, drowning salt marshes, historic airfields and military buildings, and a huge portion of new york city’s waste infrastructure, among other things – and the book builds upon the “envisioning gateway” initiative that van alen institute has been a part of since 2006.
the photo here is one i took over memorial day, when i spent a gorgeous afternoon and evening on a boat in jamaica bay with broad channel resident / former NPS manager don riepe and landscape photographer laura mcphee. i contacted laura a year ago to see if she’d be interested in contributing to our publication, and as a wilderness enthusiast and native of the new york metropolitan area (not to mention daughter of science writer john mcphee) she enthusiastically accepted the commission. she’s been visiting the park about once a month since then, and works with this stunning 19th century large format camera. the waders are evidence that we were racing against the rising tides that day.
it’s been a total treat to work with laura and, more broadly speaking, to assemble a constellation of journalists, historians, designers and political advocates that can shed new light on gateway. more on the project as it comes together these next few weeks!
