Secret Woods Nature Center

I avoided trick or treaters at the Folly on Halloween by escaping to the Secret Nature Center in Fort Lauderdale.  It's located between two busy freeways, separated from a high-end residential area by a canal.

Aside from the opportunity to observe fiddler crabs, which are numerous but VERY shy, Secret Woods doesn't have a lot to recommend it.

Haulover Park

Miami's Haulover Park is a development-free stretch of Miami from Bal Harbour to Sunny Isles.    Naturists are welcomed in one area.  It was the wrong place to debut my Vilebrequin swim trunks.

People fish from a pier at the south end.

 

Miami lifeguard stations differ only in their color.

 

A shorebird and his shadow.

The i-Phone 11's wide angle lens really captures the development at the north end.

 

Snowbird honeycomb in Sunny Isles.  The condos almost completely shade the beach in the afternoon.

Palm Beach Lake Trail

Two-hour parking is easy in Palm Beach at this time of year.  I used the window to time my walk along the Lake Trail.  Look at the size of this kapok tree.

The Sea Gull Cottage dates back to 1886, two years before my grandmother was born.  It's the oldest home in Palm Beach.

The trail runs along the east side of the Intracoastal.  Perfectly manicured hedges hide most of the homes.

A statue peeked above one.

 

Bethesda-by-the-Sea used to be an Episcopal Church.  Parishioners once arrived by boat.

Pooches have more drinking opportunities than people along the trail.

Aside from these abstractions, photo ops were few and far between.

Winding Waters Natural Area

A cheap rental car (<$200 for 2 weeks!) makes it possible to explore the large number of natural areas maintained by Palm Beach County.  I started with a 5-mile hike at Winding Waters.

The i-Phone's "portrait" mode takes great pictures of the flora.

The ordinary close-ups are pretty good, too.

I loves me a shadow selfie.

For once, I wasn't listening to music or a podcast.  Nature can be quite noisy.

Or not.

On The Road

It took me five hours to drive from New York to DC through the pouring rain on a Sunday afternoon, a distance of a little more than 200 miles.  At least I got this great shot for my collection of bike photos.

The following day, I drove 14 hours from DC to Lake Worth, averaging 71 mph!  Photo ops had to be combined with pee breaks.

I hit the beach as soon as I could. 

Farewell For Now

Central Park always makes leaving New York difficult, even for a couple of weeks.

And a new i-Phone makes it infinitely easier to capture the park's autumnal beauty.

Especially at night!

Late Night @ the Guggenheim

I can't remember the last time I visited the Guggenheim.  Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral always astonishes.  It's almost as old as me!

Two shows drew me there.  Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story documents the murder of Michael Stewart, a young artist in the early 80s, by police.  Only the East Village Eye took much notice at the time.

Here's some of the work Stewart did as a student at Pratt.   The night of his murder, police arrested him for defacing a subway station with graffiti.

Jean-Michel Basquiat created "Defacement," the centerpiece of the exhibit, on a wall in Keith Haring's studio.

He drew his inspiration from a protest flyer designed by David Wojnarowicz.

The murder outraged the downtown artistic community.  Another Basquiat work exhibited is "Irony of Negro Plcemn."  Black and Blue, a new thriller, explores that same irony.

Keith Haring commemorated Stewart's murder with a huge canvas.

He also wrote about it in his journal.

Andy Warhol alluded to the lack of media coverage in a silkscreen of a Daily News page.

Robert Mapplethorpe was active around the same time.  Patti never looked better

Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now revisits his influence on contemporary artists like Lyle Ashton Davis and Catherine Opie.

But it was Glenn Ligon's deconstruction of the Black Book that really got me thinking, not unlike "Slave Play," now on Broadway.  If nothing else, Mapplethorpe's aesthetic focus on black male beauty provoked some fierce reactions.

Even among the men who posed for him, like Ken Moody.

In my downward spiral, I passed more than a few additional masterpieces.  The two Louises, Bourgeois and Nevelson.

A camera angle combined two of Ruth Asawa's works.

Joseph Beuys.  Love how he's depicted in "Never Look Away," my favorite film ever about art (don't tell Gerhard Richter).

Alan Shields (detail).

Cecilia Vicuna.

Simone Leigh seems to be everywhere.  I first saw her work at the New Museum's gender show and more recently at the Whitney's Biennial.  But her curatorial recognition didn't help when New York City commissioned her to sculpt a new monument on Fifth Avenue. 

Wassily Kandinsky.

 

And Constantin Brâncuși.