Well, it’s just not our year for screenings…

NY ASLA has decided to cancel tonight’s screening of Women In the Dirt. They’ll be rescheduling sometime in October in a different venue. You can find out more on their Facebook page.

Women in the Dirt is about the groundbreaking work of seven landscape architects. Their projects combine awareness of architectural and landscape principles, concern with sustainability, safety and beauty. The scope of their work ranges from private homes to vast public projects.

Through conversations with the landscape architects in their offices, or in the stunning spaces they’ve designed, the film explores each woman’s personal aesthetics and approach to their discipline. Women in the Dirt shows how these “masters of the obvious” create the sublime.

The New York chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects will be presenting this premiere screening at Solar 1 on Thursday September 15 at 7pm. Solar One is delighted to present this program- Stuy Cove Park was designed by a female landscape architect, Donna Walcavage. You can learn more about the design and construction of the Park on the Solar One website HERE.

Guest Presenter: Achva Stein, Professor & Director, Graduate Landscape Architecture Program at CUNY

Thursday September 15 at 7pm at Solar One

Rain date will be determined 24 hours in advance, if necessary.

Hello, world! Beautiful day today, isn’t it? You’re probably out enjoying it, after being cooped up all weekend. This evening,  join the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association for the next event in the Margaret D, Lawrence and Helen W.Collins Memorial Music and Dance Series at Solar One. On  Monday, local singer-songwriter Paul Sachs returns with his band, and on Tuesday, we’ll have informal dance lessons and open dancing with local legend Evelyn Diamond. Both events are free and open to the public!

Paul Sachs & Band
Monday August 29 at 6pm

Folk Dancing with Evelyn Diamond
Tuesday August 30 at 7pm

Join us tomorrow for a repeat performance of choreographer Gabriel Forestieri and projectLIMB’s Handleless, a site-specific dance work created especially for the Park.

Melissa Guerrero, photo by Luka Kito

ProjectLIMB creates, evolves, and performs work where real time relationships, rather than content, are primary. 

For more information, visit the Dance page.

Benjamin Asriel, photo by Luka Kito

Friday August 26 and Saturday August 27 at 5pm (rain date Sunday August 28)
At Stuyvesant Cove Park
18th Street and Avenue C entrance (Map)

An evening of free dance classes and open dancing with local legend Evelyn Diamond. You’ve never experienced folk dancing like this before! Presented by the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association.

Live jazz music from one of NYC’s oldest and most respected jazz institutions- Jazzmobile!  Vocalist Cynthia Holiday will perform accompanied by piano, bass and drums. Presented by the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association.

The next in our monthly series of walking tours of Stuyvesant Cove Park. Come and enjoy a peaceful walking tour of New Yorks’s sustainable riverside gardens!

RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org

Live Salsa music from some of NYC’s premier musicians.  Presented by the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association. Rain date Monday August 15th

Park Volunteer Days offer the chance to get your hands dirty while helping to maintain the Park. Tasks include weeding, mulching, graffiti removal, tree pruning and general beautification. RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org

If you missed H U G on Friday June 24 and Saturday June 25 at 6pm, you can still come to a special encore performance today, Sunday June 26 at 2pm!

Groups embracing in a city park surprise New Yorkers walking by.
Negative memories of personal loss and conflict are healed through a simple act of compassion.

H U G is a public performance installation that effects social change by spreading a healing message of compassion and human connection. H U G is the distillation of one powerful human gesture that is understood universally and without bias. Surprising park-goers in the midst of their day, H U G travels through Stuyvesant Cove Park. Appearing without warning, pairs embrace in stillness surrounded by dramatic urban nature. They create a seamlessly choreographed grand gesture that sparks a jarring moment of vulnerability easily discernible to those who happen upon it.

H U G relies on two common avenues of communication: personal interaction and electronic messaging. Prior to the performance, personal stories of loss and conflict are collected from the public in order to be honored and commemorated. At the performance, the audience is invited to add themselves into the installation and contribute their own memories. The project is an artistic act of public compassion which presents the body as the location where difficult memories dwell. Healing takes place through the physical interaction of individuals immersed in the transformative natural environment of the riverfront park setting.

H U G promotes community and individual healing and creates an opportunity to replace painful memories with new memories of hope. It supports small acts of kindness as the cornerstone of global social change. H U G creates opportunities for the people of a community to practice compassion for others, to collectively mourn its lost members and to memorialize tragic events.

Participate in H U G – an open call to the community:
1) Contribute your own memory of personal loss or conflict that you would like us to heal for you by emailing us at hugperformance[at]gmail[dot]com. Your name will be kept anonymous. A list of submissions as you describe them will be made available to the audience. Some ideas for memories to contribute include: a loved one who has passed on, something you regret, something that begs your forgiveness, a conflict, a violent act, or a negative or painful experience. Let us heal your negative memories by creating a new memory of compassion.
2) Come out and support this movement of compassion by either witnessing the event or hugging someone at the installation.
Receive updates on all H U G projects at:
www.myspace.com/hugperformance
& on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hugperformance
Follow the project on Twitter @julietroost

Friday June 24 and Saturday June 25 at  6pm
Rain Date Sunday June 26 at 2pm
At Solar One (map/directions)
Free & open to the public, suitable for all ages.
For more info, visit solar1.org/events/dance.

UPDATE- We just found out that our friends NYC Beekeeping will be coming with their Observation Hive and some special activities to help kids understand even more about pollinators and their amazing and essential role in our food system. Don’t miss it- RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org or dina[at]solar1[dot]org today!

Stuyvesant Cove Park is lush with greenery and ablaze with color. Join Park Manager Daisy Hoyt for a tour of the Park. Each tour focuses on different native plants, wildlife and sustainable gardening practices.

RSVP to daisy@solar1.org

Enjoy!

Stuyvesant Strolls is our evening walking tour series. Explore Stuyvesant Cove Park, with discussion of different native plants and wildlife each month, as well as information on the maintenance of the park according to sustainable principals.

RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org

What is our relationship to water as NYC residents? How often do New Yorkers think about water or even remember that four of our five boroughs are located on islands? In the mind’s eye of the average resident, New York is more likely to be a city of concrete canyons, not bays, rivers, and wetlands that are home to other species besides people. Perhaps that is because today we are used to seeing waterways as dividers that lie between our useful spaces, stormwater as a nuisance for the municipality, and potable water as a problem for engineers. The average New Yorker neither has an active relationship with the water bodies that surround the city nor gives much thought to how we know that the quality of our tap water is safe and secure. But when we start thinking more about water, we find that it has seeped into many seemingly unrelated aspects of our urban lives a long time ago.

On a large scale, it is no exaggeration to single out water as humanity’s most precious resource.  After all,  it is the foundation of life itself. Water is much a part of our bodies as it is an unseen but essential component in the production of food, clothing, energy, and in the operation of industry, buildings, and transportation. In nature, it is a renewable resource thanks to the brilliant simplicity of the hydrologic cycle. In places of dense human activity, however, its lifecycle is often linear: from fresh water to wastewater, which, even when treated, never regains the purity that makes it again suitable for human use. Considering that only 1% of the Earth’s water is suitable for human use, we must reconsider our relationship to water to make it more sustainable for the sake of ecological stability as well as our own security.

The City of New York has an intimate relationship with water. Water defined our city’s physical boundaries and laid the foundation for its financial prosperity. New York, like many cities before and after it, was founded on water for reasons of transportation and, therefore, trade. The City became the financial powerhouse we know today largely due to the Hudson River and the Eerie Canal. And yet today NYC’s port has shrunk dramatically, prompting industry and advocates to re-envision the function of the waterfront in an innovative and sustainable way.

New York’s waterways still retain the polluting footprint of recent heavy industry. While water quality in the Hudson and East Rivers have improved, other waterways, like the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek have recently earned federal Superfund designations due to heavy post-industrial contamination. Government-led efforts are on the way to clean them up, and community groups are teaming up with landscape designers, ecologists, and engineers to devise strategies to keep those waterways clean after the remediation is complete. Some strategies focus on limiting the volume of water that washes over our streets, into sewers, and then into water bodies when it rains while others explore how we can use water in our buildings more smartly and reuse it when possible.

The remaining piers that bristle out of the water all around Manhattan appear to most New Yorkers as the most visible vestige of a more active waterfront. Some have been reclaimed by enterprising individuals and organizations to be transformed into destinations; the Frying Pan on Pier 66 comes to mind. Nevertheless, such destinations are endpoints, often of a lengthy journey from the nearest subway. Rethinking transportation, some urban planners and designers are re-imagining these endpoints as hubs and positing that waterborne transportation can relieve NYC’s roads and subways that chocking with traffic. In that case, water can once again become a connecting medium instead of a divider, much like it had been in the days before Fulton’s Ferry was made obsolete by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Our waterfront must innovate not only in the interest of health, commerce, and connectivity, but also to engage people by offering them access to water and opportunities for recreation. Destinations like the Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson River Park, water sports like kayaking and small boating, all serve to grant access and allow New Yorkers opportunities to learn from and relax on the water.

Water, however, is both our friend and foe. As a coastal city bounded by water, New York is especially vulnerable to sea level rise. Last year’s exhibition “Rising Currents” at the Museum of Modern Art asked several groups of architects and landscape designers to imagine how the city’s landscape might cope with the disastrous invasion of water. If one were to take this scenario a step further, one could imagine the world transformed by an excess of water, both of the macro level of society and the micro level of individual human lives. This feat of imagination is being undertaken by artists and actors to help us glimpse one possible dystopian future, a future that, unwittingly, we might have helped to bring about.

We at Solar One think a lot about New York’s relationship water. After all, we are an organization located on the East River next to a combined sewer overflow discharge point; we manage a park of water-saving native plants; and we look forward to building a water-smart building, Solar 2. As part of our ongoing series, NYC the Future Metropolis, we invited some of our friends to share their thoughts about the importance of water to New York City on Sunday, May 8. We hope you can join us as well.

Please see the event page for more details: solar1.org/nycfm

It snowed 21 inches in Stuyvesant Cove Park yesterday! Combined with the Great Boxing Day Blizzard, there’s been a lot more shoveling going on than usual. Chris Fowler, our Park Maintenance superstar, has been getting quite the workout- but many people don’t know that Chris is also a great chronicler of the Park and its many changes. In addition to the one of the building practically buried, check out this gorgeous shot of one of the park beds:

One of the most wonderful things about Solar One and Stuyvesant Cove Park is the dedication of our volunteers who do so much to help make both Solar One and the Park so special. Here are two of our Park Angels, Wendy Byrne and Geoffrey Berresford, pitching in to help Chris shovel all that snow this morning (all photos by Chris Fowler):

Snow Angel Wendy

Snow Angel Geoff. Amazingly, he feels no need for gloves…

Thanks to both of you, and to all the Park Angels and Program Volunteers who donate their time, energy, enthusiasm and skills year after year!  We could never do it all without you!

It comes every year- the last Park Volunteer Day of the season. This year, we originally scheduled it on November 6, but we have received a big order of new plants that need to get in the ground as soon as possible. So we’re moving the date up- to this coming Saturday, October 30. Join Park Manager Daisy Hoyt as we plant the new arrivals and put the Park to bed for the winter. Lunch will be generously provided by the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association.

Saturday October 30 from 9am-1pm
At Stuyvesant Cove Park
Meet at Solar One, 23rd St and the East River
RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org.

In the herb garden just outside of Solar One, we spotted 4 Black Swallowtail caterpillars. The were munching on the seedlings of last years dill plant.

At first glance we thought the caterpillars were Monarch caterpillars only because they are the only caterpillars we ever see in that garden, and from a distance they have similar stripes. But on closer inspection we noticed that they were definitely not Monarch caterpillars, nor were they on the correct host plant. These caterpillars were on our dill plants which are one of the host plants for the Black Swallowtail along with carrots, parsley, Queen Anne’s Lace, and a few other species.

The Black Swallowtail starts its life as a cream colored egg, it then goes through 5 larval instars and then forms its chrysalis (cocoon). After the chrysalis it emerges as an adult Black Swallowtail Butterfly.

The instars are different stages of growth the larva goes through to reach its mature size. The first two instars the larva or caterpillar is brown with a white band in the middle of its body. The following 3 instars the caterpillar is light green with black bands that have yellow dots on them (as shown above). It is the larval stage that these insects do most of their eating, in fact is seems like they never stop!

When the caterpillar enters the pupal stage, the time it forms it’s chrysalis, it begins the process of metamorphosis. This is when it changes shape from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Depending on the time of year the pupal stage can last from 8-12 days (if formed in early summer)  or it can over winter (if formed in late summer) and emerge 8-9 months later. The time of year also determines the color of  the chrysalis;  green in summer brown in winter.

It seems as though we may have to wait till next year to see the beautiful Black Swallowtail butterflies emerge from their chrysalides. In a few days these caterpillars are going to form their chrysalides, they seem to be in the 5th instar now.

Check back with us on our flickr account @ solaronenyc for updated photos of the caterpillars, chrysalides and hopefully the butterflies.

SEPTEMBER 16th: Stuyvesant Cove Park Volunteer Days offer people the chance to get their hands dirty while assisting in the maintenance of the park and learning about its history and care.

Tasks include weeding, mulching, plant care, tree pruning, cleanup, graffiti removal and general beautification.

TIME: 9 AM – 1 PM

More info: http://solar1.orf/park