Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about Prospect Park’s efforts to replant after a devastating wildfire 11 months ago. We’ll also look at why one of the most memorable newspaper headlines ever has fresh resonance.
It has been 11 months since the anxious night when something unfolded that seen-it-all New Yorkers do not expect so close to home: a wildfire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It broke out as the city was struggling through an unusually severe drought. More than 270 other brush fires had been already reported in the five boroughs that month, the most in the city’s history. The one in Prospect Park destroyed trees and ground cover in a dense area known as the Ravine, the only forest in Brooklyn. That area is about to get some help as park officials continue their efforts to rebuild after the fire. Today they will announce that they are hiring four more gardeners, bringing the total on the 526-acre park’s staff to 11. The officials had planned a sowing-and-growing mission for this morning to plant more than 3,000 trees and shrubs in the burned-out area. They postponed that undertaking when they saw “showers likely” in the forecast. Even so, the city is still somewhat drier than usual. Precipitation last month and this month totaled not quite six inches, through Wednesday morning — well below the nine-inch norm. August was even drier: The city recorded only a bit more than two inches of rain, less than half the 4.3 inches that soaks New York in a typical August. That has left the city’s reservoirs at 67.3 percent of capacity on Tuesday morning, eight percentage points below normal for this time of the year. Looking back, Morgan Monaco, who is the park administrator and the president of the nonprofit Prospect Park Alliance, recalled that the drought last year had created “the perfect condition for one small spark to ignite two precious acres” in the Ravine. And “it just kept spreading,” driven by a strong wind. Firefighters worked for three hours before declaring that the blaze was out. “You think about wildfires in places like California,” she said, but not in the Northeast. Temperatures in the 90s and the Santa Ana winds have again raised the risk in Southern California in the last few days. Some areas near Los Angeles have been under a red flag warning this week. In the park, “triage” began after the firefighters packed away their gear, Monaco said, explaining how park officials and gardeners had assessed the damage. Eventually they hauled away the trees they could not save. By spring they had laid a “soil fabric,” a carpetlike covering containing dirt and seeds for native grasses. That was the first step toward rebuilding the forest floor, the lowest part of the three acres blackened in the fire. The middle section was home to small trees and shrubs. Above that, larger trees formed the canopy, providing shade. She said that it would take several years to rebuild all three layers and that the new gardeners would “assure us we have the people power to take care of our forest.” They are being hired with money from a $10 million endowment grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, named for the hedge fund pioneer and philanthropist Leon Levy, who died in 2003. It was clear from a conversation with his wife, Shelby White, the founding trustee, that Prospect Park holds a particular place in her heart. She grew up two blocks away. “I would go rowing with my dad — you could get rowboats — or skating on the lake, if it was frozen,” she said. It was also where an elementary-school teacher introduced her to birding (which she loved) and where, in high school, she played field hockey (which she hated). “It was my local park — I didn’t know about the other parks,” she said, “and I didn’t know how special it was.” Or, she added, who had designed it (Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, perhaps better known for Central Park). What went through her mind when she heard about the fire? “Your first thought is, is anyone hurt?” she said. “And then, how are these plants going to regenerate? It’s always devastating when a fire destroys landscape.” A building that is destroyed can be replaced, she said, but “you can’t grow a tree that fast, no matter what.” WEATHER Showers and a strong breeze are likely during the day, with temperatures reaching into the low 60s. At night, expect rain and wind to continue, with a thunderstorm possible, while temperatures drop to around 50. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Saturday (All Saints’ Day). The latest New York news
Law and order
And …
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. A famous headline, 50 years later
One of the most memorable headlines ever — “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” in The Daily News — was published 50 years ago today. It was an instant classic. It reduced to five words a 35-minute speech by President Gerald Ford, who did not offer the lifeline that a hard-pressed city had been hoping for. Ford said that city officials were profligate spenders and that he would veto “any bill” that called for a federal bailout of New York City “to prevent a default.” The headline was written by William J. Brink, the managing editor at The News at the time and the father of Bill Brink, a longtime editor at The New York Times. You can read Bill’s reminiscence of how those five words have figured in history here. My colleague Tim Balk writes that the clash between Ford, a Republican president, and the Democratic leadership in New York seems newly resonant. The mayor in 1976 was Abraham Beame, a clubhouse politician from Brooklyn who had been the city comptroller. The governor was Hugh Carey, also from Brooklyn. Now the city’s finances are far stronger, thanks in part to safeguards that were put in place in the 1970s, but antagonism from Washington poses new risks. The Trump administration has already said it would withhold $18 billion in federal funds to extend the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem and to build new railroad tunnels under the Hudson River. President Trump has moved to go even further if Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist whom he has falsely called a communist, is elected mayor. Cuts to programs that low-income New Yorkers rely on, such as Medicaid and food stamps, could put financial pressure on the city to step in. Some experts already say the city is heading into a time of budgetary risk, with the state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, a Democrat, cautioning that the city could “really be in for some very challenging decisions on spending and taxation” if the economy slows. Fifty years ago, Ford changed his position. Two months after the “drop dead” speech, he authorized up to $2.3 billion in loans for the city. Politically, it was too late. In 1976, he lost New York, and the presidency, to Jimmy Carter. And the city eventually repaid the loans with interest. METROPOLITAN DIARY Getting in Tune
Dear Diary: I was on the Upper East Side early on a Friday evening waiting to take the Q to Brooklyn. The platform was not too crowded. Amid the calm, a busker’s song struck my untrained ear as a jarring din. The problem, it seemed, was his out-of-tune guitar. When he paused, I approached him, nervously touching his arm as a signal that he not take me the wrong way, and then suggested that he check the strings. Surprised but affable, he did and quickly made the necessary adjustments. The reward was instant. As the next train arrived, a listener drawn by the guitarist’s sweetly melodic song flipped a fistful of bills into his bucket. — Juliet Faber Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Sarah Goodman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
|
