UP THE CREEK:

BEAUTIFUL SOLUTIONS

Imagine this: In the center of Princeton, New Jersey, in an empty lot that will soon be home to a condominium complex, a landscape gardener envisions a temporary Eden devoted to science and art.

That gardener, Peter Soderman, joins forces with landscape architect, Kevin Wilkes, Princeton University Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin, and Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman. Dobkin and Tilghman then recruit some of the university’s top scientists and artists.

In concert with the larger community, Soderman’s vision becomes reality and something greater than the sum of its parts is born, an interactive garden called Quark Park.

Although Quark Park flourished for a mere four months, its impact is still felt in the community and preserved in film. In Quarks, Parks and Everyday Life, Kim Nagy, who interviewed many of the Quark Park scientists and artists, revisits the park and its legacy.

She writes, “As George Scherer, a Princeton University materials scientist and one of the leading researchers on stone preservation says,” Anything that makes people realize that science is entertaining as a career and valuable socially is a good thing...We have a serious problem attracting American students into Graduate school. I saw Quark Park as a real opportunity to introduce people to how science works and how it can benefit people.”

Says Quark Park filmmaker, Chris Allen, “If people are made aware of this project through the film, I think there may be some who are inspired to beautify an unused lot in their community. It takes a lot of work and a lot of cutting through the red tape...”

Hong Kong Diary columnist, Dennis O’Donnell, sits in on a conversation between the writer Richard Ford and, newcomer and Dylan Thomas Prizewinner, Nam Le – Of Hitchhikers and Writers – and asks these questions:

“When is a hitchhiker like a writer? What happens in the moment one decides whether or not to pick up that hitchhiker? Or pick up a book, for that matter?”

He finds his answer in a surprising twist, Ford’s admiration of, and deference to, Le. “In fact, at times the conversation was almost an interrogation,” writes O’Donnell, “but not by a gushing neophyte seeking wisdom from the grizzled veteran. It was the veteran Richard Ford who gave the newcomer Nam Le the stage. Almost as if a pact was made beforehand in the green room, Ford opened with a caveat that his intention was to not exactly “huckster” Nam Le’s work, but draw sharp attention to the splendid nature of that work to date. And, not at all ambiguously, to spend almost no time on his own extensive oeuvre.”

Downtown, designer and graphic artist Tim Ogline, stops into Cooper Union to listen to a conversation between PEN World Voices Director Caro Llewellyn and the "Bookish, but Subersive," and wildly successful, graphic novelist, Neil Gaiman.

"Caro Llewellyn opened with some questions about Gaiman’s new book, The Graveyard Book... mentioning during her introduction that this tome had caused her not only to miss a subway stop, but also to cry in public as well. The winner of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Quill Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Squiddy, as well his cherished Ignatz Award (a brick), and now the Newberry Award spoke at some length about the special challenges of writing for kids...

...Stepping forward in his youth, Neil told the tale of how he and a careers advisor shared several moments of awkward silence in the wake of the boy’s stated desire to write American comics as his vocation of choice. The career counseler had absolutely no idea of how to respond to this... other than to ask if the teenager had considered accountancy. "

Katherine Schimmel Baki continues her series of interviews with visual artists, Eye of the Hand, Lens of the Mind, and talks to poet, scholar, professor, and photographer, Carol Armstrong who re-imagines the natural world and challenges our notion of boundaries.

“And water,” writes Baki, “Who captures water on film so that the viewer is left reaching out to touch the very paper which holds the optical illusion? I soon learned that Armstrong does, and that not only is she a master photographer, she is also, a highly respected scholar and poet, having written some of today’s more thought-provoking essays and books covering important areas within 19th century French painting, history of photography, the history and practice of art criticism, feminist theory along with the representation of women and gender in art and visual culture.”

Dorothea von Moltke, owner of the independent bookstore, Labyrinth Books, travels to Berlin and discovers SuKuLTur in The Mechanical Nightingales: “If you are waiting for one of the elevated trains in Berlin, you ought to scout the vending machines. Not because German potato chips are better than any others or because the Twix has an aftertaste of cinnamon in the Berlin air, but because displayed between the two snacks, you are liable to find a bright yellow pamphlet: food for thought during the time it takes to travel between most points A and B in this wide, flat city.”

Bahamian native Marina Sarles will go to great lengths to ease her craving for salad, a solution that requires fortitude and time. As she says, in Bahamian Salad Saga, which appears in her short story collection, Sand in Her Shoes, “Anyone living in The Bahamas knows the stress created by the task of making a salad...Making a simple salad in our islands becomes a Sisyphean task, requiring physical stamina, inexhaustible patience, a healthy wallet and a full tank of gas!”

Harriet Mayor Fulbright, President of the J. William and Harriet Fulbright Center, launches a new series, Peace Talks, which will appear on Wednesdays in Wild Finance. Foodwriter, Warren Bobrow, brings his own twist to food, wine, the pleasure of eating and culture every Wednesday, as well, onWRR@Large.

In his poem, Why Brownlee Left, a leitmotif for the film Quark Park, the poet Paul Muldoon writes about a farmer who abandons his barn and field, pointing to a truth: all we create, all that we see and cling to is merely temporary.

So why not, when faced with insurmountable obstacles and challenges, choose to take our time, reconsider boundaries – those outside ourselves and those of our own making – and imagine the possibility of creating innovative, dangerously poetic solutions?

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.

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