I was at the Left Forum last weekend and ran into Carlos Briggs and his son Gabriel. Carlos and Clara are working on a book about a rabies epidemic in the indigenous region near Surinam in Venezuela. It is caused by bat bites.
Gabriel is living in Brooklyn and has worked as an architect. One of his projects was making a public art project in a vacant lot there. He turned it into a miniature golfcourse for the neighborhood.
A vacant, garbage-covered lot in Bushwick has been transformed into a miniature golf course - the Putting Lot - for the summer. The volunteer-run course was designed by Brooklyn artists using only recycled materials. "When the recession started, there were a lot of construction projects that just stopped in Bushwick," said Gabriel Fries-Briggs, 23, who dreamed up the unique course.
"All of a sudden, vacant lots became much more apparent around here. We wanted to turn one of them into a community space." Fries-Briggs teamed up with his former college roommate and fellow Bushwick resident Rachel Himmelfarb, 23, to get the project off the ground. The two searched dozens of empty lots in the neighborhood before settling on a parking lot-turned-dumping ground at 12 Wyckoff Ave.
The duo and 20 volunteers worked ten hours a day for four straight days to clear the lot. "Trash was everywhere," said Fries-Briggs. "We unearthed whole toilets. We unearthed a lot of car parts ...wheels, axles and bumpers. We even found a bag of golf balls."
Construction of the nine-hole course took over a month. Each hole was designed by a separate artist with their own take on urban sustainability. Recycled street signs, wildflowers, gutters and even a vintage video game are used as obstacles along the course. The third hole has a water hazard made from an old kiddie pool and more than 100 plastic water bottles. The seventh hole is made entirely from recycled bedroom furniture.
Even the snack bar was constructed using discarded shipping pallets from a warehouse around the corner. "They were so happy to get rid of them they actually drove them over in their forklift," said Himmelfarb. "That's the point, though. We're really trying to reuse things that were going to get thrown away."
More than 200 visitors have made their way to The Putting Lot on the weekends since it opened June 6. Along with a steady flow of Brooklynites, vacationers from as far as Sweden and Turkey have swung by for a quick nine. The Putting Lot will remain open Wednesdays through Sundays until Sept. 6. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for kids.Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/06/26/2009-06-26_a_lot_o_green_fun_in_minigolf_vacant_bushwick_lot_becomes_course_made_of_recycle.html#ixzz0j1y5lwbk
It was a shock to see Gabriel, who was a boy when he used to come to dinner at Ezra and Kenia's. He was near Sol's age and Kenia would sometimes tease Sol that he was her boyfriend. I remember being quite uncomfortable with the way she would say things like that-- and I know Sol was uncomfortable also. It was a shock to see that Gabe is now a man. It makes me long to see what Solmaria looks like- to see how she has matured.
We all miss Solmaria so much. She was really like a sister to Molly. Their age difference wasn't that great and sometimes they would play together in lovely games. Now Molly is going to have a baby.
Last night Molly spoke on the phone for a long time to her "other sister", Erin. They went on, chattering away, laughing about what it was like being pregnant, what sorts of clothes fit or don't, about gaining weight or not, about the baby moving and kicking. I thought how sad that Molly doesn't have Solmaria to speak with about these things and how sad that Sol can't grow and learn from Molly's experiences. I thought about how important family sharing of experiences are. I resent deeply that Sol has left our family. She was my first grandchild and the loss of her will always haunt me. I hope she thinks of the good times we used to have-- the friends we made and the joys we had together.
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