Down Under

Completed in 1883. At the time, the longest suspension bridge in the world

When Alice came to the city she had a hankering to go over the bridge into Brooklyn, which got her talking about the time in the 70s, when her artist husband, Chris, had a studio in a backwater neighborhood located between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Later, one of their friends came up with the name DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), to discourage developers from moving into the area.

Lot of good that did! DUMBO is now one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Brooklyn. So yesterday I went to see for myself, setting off across the Brooklyn Bridge with about a thousand other people—mostly French tourists.

Halfway over, I met a young poet sitting on a Benjamin Moore paint can, with "poems" written on a cardboard placard, attached to his sweater; his name was Robert. He looked like he'd just stepped out of Bloomsbury London, circa 1927, or perhaps a Steinbeck novel about the Great Depression, but actually he was a student at Brown, getting a Masters Degree in Literary Arts.

The Poet with his Royal 

Robert had the coolest little Royal typewriter from the 50s, which conjured up images of the Joseph Mitchell/New Yorker era, when writers and poets would poke at those extended, stiff keys to tell stories of the sea, or ports of call, or cantankerous stubby characters—or in Mitchell's case—all of the above, as embodied in the South Street Seaport. Fishmongers, river captains, and legions of rats populate his stories, which recorded life around Fulton Street. Good thing Mitchell can't see the old neighborhood now, with its Disney like setting and Bath and Body Works and Gap stores.

For an unspecified donation, Robert said he'd write me a poem. It seemed like a good idea. I stood patiently by, while he attacked one key after another, resting between each stroke. Finally, the poem was finished. Here it is, to be shared by poetry lovers everywhere:

                                                  Die Woge (The Wave)

The borrower would spend

nights with her own arms

hauling

national surveys

to 

lost bodies;

wall crosser;

green fog;

your first 

word 

was

was

The poem is profound I think. Or if not, then, at least, is the poet sitting on the bridge, and I slipped him a nicely sum under his papers. 


Once over the bridge I walked down the cobblestone streets of DUMBO, passing boutiques and storefronts that had homey names, like, "The General Store," which in this case turned out to be a white table clothed eatery. At Front and Washington, I found a great used bookstore, where I bought three books, had a double macchiato at a little French bakery around the corner, and then caught the subway home— sweet funky Canal and Broadway home. May the old and the smelly, the historic and the dilapidated, of Canal and Broadway never change!

Rats: the reality

Gambian giant pouch rat with trainer

(photo credit: www.animalplanet.com)

Before you start shrieking and running from the computer, say hello to the bravest rat you'll ever meet: the Gambian giant pouch rat, also called African giant pouch rat. This fellow has been trained to detect landmines—40 million of them in Africa—and has the ability to rat out TB virus in humans, through its acute sense of smell. These pouch rats are not only hard workers, but are on first name basis with Jane Goodall, who's teamed with APOPO, a humanitarian group that "researches, develops and deploys detection rat technology." The rats save lives all for a liter of bananas! Nicholas Kristof was so impressed he wrote about their work in an article about Father's Day, called "Dad will really like this" (thanks to Lu for pointing out). 

Talking about dads, my father hated rats. Once when I visited my parents' home in Florida, I was hit by the most putrid stench as soon as I walked through the door. "What's that smell?" I asked. "What smell," my father said, eyeing me suspiciously. Me: "That death smell." Him: "I don't smell anything." He left it and turned back to whatever he was doing, while I turned to tearing the house apart to find out what had died. The next day, while doing laundry, I saw two long, stiff tails sticking out from a hole behind the dryer. The dryer vent had been circulating that rankness in every corner of the house, to which my parents were oblivious because they'd lost all sense of smell. My mother remembered putting out poison, but hadn't thought about it since. "Oh, so that's what happened to them," she said, amused.

Why do people hate rats so? The answer to that question can be found in Joseph Mitchell's Up In the Old Hotel in the chilling "The Rats on the Waterfront" (written in 1944 about NYC rats, although things haven't changed that much according to recent reports).

 Joseph Mitchell

(photo credit: www.nytimes.com)

Mitchell, the great New Yorker writer, interviewed exterminators, ship's captains and fish mongers to get the real story of rats in the city. Even I, a rat lover, could barely sit still reading about the rat that climbed up a mop pole and bit off a ship boy's thumb nail. "A trap means nothing to them," said a NYC exterminator, "no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait. And they can detect poisoned bait a yard off. I believe some of them can read." 

To that point, I'd agree. Rats are extremely intelligent; but domesticated rats are as different in temperament from street rats as domesticated dogs are from wolves. From my experience, their intelligence and sweet disposition ranks right up there with the pouch rat (also their love for bananas!). APOPO trainers say they take clues from their rats as to where the landmines have been buried, but the thing of it is, each rat communicates differently, i.e., each has a distinct personality with a distinct way to point out where there's trouble. I'd say for a liter of bananas, Malka, our pet brown Dumbo, would do the same.
 

Malka, just another crazy, banana lovin' rat.