A Forum for Diary Entries, Essays, Observations, Poetry, News, and Reviews
August 14th, 2026
Join me in reading my travel diary that opens on June 26, 2003, and you will see that “this was the wettest June in one-hundred years, and Central Park is lush and sodden as it prepares to host three-hundred people from twelve countries to celebrate the park’s one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary. My administrative duties on this occasion are over, and yesterday I found myself high-and-dry as I flew into wet Oaxaca where the much appreciated rainy season has begun. From the air I could see the cultivated fields: long, narrow strips of brown earth with a new green effloresce, almost luminous in its vigorous vegetal resurgence. READ MORE >
August 11th, 2026
As an ardent New York City adoptee living on the Upper Side of Manhattan, I have regular contact with Central Park, which offers me, as well as many others who come from both inside and outside the city, an experience of unblemished nature amid recreational facilities. Habitual occupation of certain areas in the park by some people goes as far as taking nightly residence oneself within a secluded plot rich with tree cover and camping there for an indefinite time. Protagonists in certain books written primarily for children live in imaginary homes there too. But now, enough of that. As a native Texan and traveler with a great affinity for the American West, in 1988 I felt it incumbent upon me to enroll my sixteen-year-old son David Barlow in a supervised camping experience offered by NOLS (Natural Outdoor Leadership School) in the Wind River mountain range of Wyoming. Many mothers like me enjoy living our children’s lives vicariously, but in my case, two years after he got back home, I actually ventured forth into an unknown dimension of personal experience by following Dave’s self-discoveries through supervised wilderness hiking. READ MORE >
August 4th, 2026
In 1990 when my husband Ted Rogers was set upon taking a dose of Marathon-motivated training by participating in a mountain climbing adventure in Russia (then the Soviet Union for one-more year), I was fit enough to be in a position to have a large-scale wilderness experience that was less strenuous but equally interesting. Logically, I have never aspired to climb one of the seven highest mountains in the world and was therefore able to enjoy a wilderness adventure with our mutual good friends Roger and Frances Kennedy, who had, through Roger’s National Parks Service connection as director, the ability to plan a true “behind-the-scenes” sojourn in Yellowstone National Park. Join me now as I recall the pleasurable challenges that fell into my lap. READ MORE >
July 7th, 2026
Most people marveling about and public pleasure afforded by Central Park think that the credit for its utility and beauty today belongs solely to the nineteenth-century icon of architectural genius Frederick Law Olmsted. Credit is rarely given to the British architect Calvert Vaux, who had designed homes in the Hudson River Valley before asking Olmsted to partner with him in the 1857 design competition that resulted in their “Greensward Plan,” the entry that became the blueprint for the construction of the Park. Thanks to landscape design historian Francis Kowsky and the not-for-profit publisher Library of American Landscape History, a biography of Vaux now exists. As a board member of the LALH, I was pleased when our president, Robin Karson, asked me to give a celebratory party, which I was happy to do on May 28, 2026 in my apartment overlooking Central Park. A speech by me to welcome my guests was in order, and I was happy to give one on this occasion. Here, to learn what I had to say as I sat beside a coffee table on which I had placed several interrelated landscape-design-history books that brought Kowsky’s into focus. If you would kindly accept my invitation to join me at this post-party date, you can learn what I had to say if you pretend that you are in the living room of my apartment on a high floor facing midtown Manhattan and the lower half of Central Park. You may have to sit on the floor since thirty-seven guests have gathered in a large circle around the chair where I am sitting beside a coffee table and imagine yourself now, wine-glass in hand. READ MORE >
April 22nd, 2026
“A landscape of buildings and streets” – this is a visual definition of urbanism. Connecting one with the other in order to accommodate pedestrians who seek to reach desired destinations on foot while absorbing impressions by eye must be taken into consideration. Therefore, the word “sidewalk” can be defined as a pedestrian path comprised of identical ground-level slabs of limestone that form a continuous route to a series of geographically linked human constructions. To be precise, a sidewalk is a pedestrian pathway adjacent to one side of a street or roadway with a linear curb to separate the surface for vehicular movement from an adjacent ground-level pathway designed for pedestrian mobility, a statement that implies that this form of outdoor hallway may also run alongside a group of contiguous commercial and residential buildings or individual public or private institutions, such as schools, hospitals and museums, and fenced public recreation spaces, such as parks and playgrounds. Based on the property linkage of individual homes within a residential community, sidewalks provide an opportunity for sociability among neighbors and the establishment of routes for children who walk to school. READ MORE >
June 4th, 2025
How on earth did the Old New York become New New York sixty years ago? The answer lies in the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission as a branch of New York City government. In assembling a roster of architectural critics and knowledgeable aficionados of historic landmarks preservation versed in the processes and political difficulties of saving historic buildings and neighborhoods Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel has produced and edited twelve essays that comprise a thought-provoking compendium from which the author of the following review excerpts passages that shed light upon the meanings of the steps undertaken and results achieved by landmark restorers and the nature of the political and economic forces with which they contend. READ MORE >
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