Settling into the Season
PUPs founder and board member Kath Hansen was on hand at one of the canine calendar's premier events, The Great Pupkin. Let's hear what she had to say:
The 9th Annual Great PUPkin got off to a shaky start this year; we had to move it to the rain date at the last minute due to rain. But things improved from there.
I've seen a lot of dogs in costumes in the past nine PUPkin contests. But this year was honestly the best ever, with a record 64 entrants in such creative costumes the judges had a truly difficult task to pick only six winners.
If you've been coming to the Great PUPkin for the past several years, you would have recognized our returning emcee, Justine Keefe. She moved out of the neighborhood a while back, but continues to host the event every year dressed in her finest polyester.
Our Honorable Mention prizes went to a tiny dog dressed as a Sunflower, an entrant dressed as Gilligan, and crowd favorite Teddy in a magically convincing Dumbledore costume. Third prize went to the RCA-Victrola dog (with a working Victrola on her back!), second prize was The Three Tenors (the three St. Bernards in tuxes had musical accompaniment), and the Grand Prize went to the NASA Astronaut. The crowd went nuts when this black lab mix came out with his astronaut outfit, complete with astronaut helmet and "North American Squirreling Agency" printed on his costume. And he's
a repeat winner--remember the Flying Monkey costume from a few years back?
Our judges were highly discriminating this year. Thanks again to Robin Lester, Carl Grauer, and Ellie Balk, for making the tough decisions. And I want to thank our scorekeeper, Robert Moskal, who does this complicated and stressful task each year.
A big thanks to everyone who entered. And a huge thanks to all the local businesses who donated prizes (Jill Seitz Custom Alpha Dog Portraits, Scooterfood, Woofs & Whiskers, Who's Your Doggy, Kiki's, Thirst Wine Merchants, and the Square Root Cafe). The prizes were phenomenal this year, and we didn't have to beg like a dog to get them.
The hardest working Park Manager in New York City Jeff Sandgrund is always very helpful at the PUPkin! And the volunteers made the event run smooth as silk. Thanks to them and their willingness to forgo dressing up their own dogs (a supreme sacrifice). If you want to have a lot of fun and help us out next year, just be in touch with me. See you at the 2008 event, or in the park.
Don't you just love our new dog fountain? Oh, wait a minute. There is no new dog fountain. After years of hard work lobbying for this particular park improvement, PUPS president Nancy Peterson's latest interaction with the Parks Department has us wondering if Commissioner Adrian Benepe let us bark up the wrong tree these past four years. Here is Nancy's
report:
This summer a number of you asked how to get the dog water fountain improved in the park. As you may know, the Parks Department received $5,000 over three years ago to install a new human/dog fountain and improve the drainage situation.
The project has never gotten underway and several PUPS members wrote to NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe this summer voicing their concern and asking when we could expect to have this project completed. There was even an article in the Brooklyn Paper about the situation.
Below is a copy of the letter PUPS received from Parks Department, looks like we didn’t rate even an electronic signature. Another year has come and gone. The fountain sits in a warehouse. Hard to believe it’s going on year four…..
Download letter
Feel like getting involved? Let Benepe or Letitia James know how you feel.
As a dog owners, we're in the park nearly 365 days a year. But that's just a drop in the bucket for the park's true guardians, the trees. Local artist and silviculturist Mira Manickam is hoping her work makes us see trees as living entities, with histories and individual characteristics worthy of our respect.
"I wanted to create something that captured the life and presence of these trees, that allowed you to stop and think of them as living things." The project will eventually culminate in an installation of photos, video projections, writings, old maps and stories as a meditation on the trees of Fort Greene.
When she moved here after college, Mira found the separation from nature to be the hardest part of city living. "I made it a point to always find places where I could feel closer to nature." But stumbling onto Fort Greene was a revelation, especially since the enormous trees seem to define the neighborhood. More than esthetic choice, it seemed crucial to the way she sees our future: "If we as a country are going to start living in a sustainable manner, there's
got to be some connection to nature, something that happens at a visceral level, with your heart and not just your mind. It starts with connecting with the trees growing on the corner".
Often spending entire days from dawn 'til sundown in the park, Mira's dedicated to recording the lives of the trees as well as the beings who interact with them. Taking into consideration the endless stream of Brooklyn Tech students, morning and afternoon commuters, nannies and toddlers, and countless other park users,
Mira and her work point out that these connections are happening all around, if we just stop and have a look. Some of her favorite human subjects are people who make the park part of their daily routine: "there was an old grandma who looped around the playground in her sari every morning; the ladies who gather the ginko
biloba berries; or the guy who flies balsa wood airplanes and lives in the Walt Whitman Houses but prefers to sleep out in the park in the summer," she says.
And then there are the dogs. "In the morning and evenings, humans are just secondary. It's cool to see the dogs' social interactions -– which dogs are in which cliques, which cliques are super rambunctious, which are more chill and investigatory."
While it's still a work in progress, you can take a sneak peek at Mira's blog, The Lives of Trees blog. Who knows? Maybe your favorite tree is a featured player.
Check out Mira Manickam’s Site
Our PUPS Newsletter Editor:
Chris Franko
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