Matthew Howell dot net

htmgets.js

2025-12-01T00:00:00Z

htmgets.js

1024 Pomelos

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

1024 Pomelos is a small, citrusy generative art project bound for the public domain.

1024 Oranges

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

1024 Oranges is a small, citrusy generative art project bound for the public domain.

1024 Limes

2024-04-12T00:00:00Z

1024 Limes is a small, citrusy generative art project bound for the public domain.

1024 Limes

reasonable.html

2023-09-01T00:00:00Z

reasonable.html

reasonable.work

2022-10-20T00:00:00Z

reasonable.work is the website for Reasonable Company, my values-led, purpose-driven design and creative practice.

matthewhowell.net

2022-10-20T00:00:00Z

matthewhowell.net is my personal website.

1024 Lemons

2022-05-03T00:00:00Z

1024 Lemons is a small, citrusy generative art project bound for the public domain.

1024 Lemons Website

Reasonable Colors

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

Reasonable Colors is an open-source color system for building accessible, nice-looking color palettes.

0021 Tree

2021-07-04T00:00:00Z

There is a temple near the top of a mountain in northern Thailand. At the foot of that mountain, there is a city founded in the thirteenth century.

Surrounding that city’s center, there is nearly-square moat. Tucked inside the perimeter of that moat is a thick wall made of red brick. And along that wall there is a series of wide, fortified gates. Near one of those gates there is a tree that casts its midday shadow on the flower bed and the square, concrete bench beneath it.

There is a friend from years and places ago who lives in this city now. A friend who gets into her car and drives to your hotel, pulls over on the heavily trafficked road and patiently waits for you to settle into the passenger seat. A friend who navigates onto the highway, then leaves it, following another road farther out of city.

A friend who turns down a narrow path toward a large house that sits behind the trees. Attached to the front of that house there is a wide, wooden porch and on that porch there is a long, rectangular table.

The house is a house, but it’s also a restaurant. Your friend has been here before, often.

You sit and eat a meal. And talk. And laugh. No one wants to leave.

The sun sets before you get up from that table, step off that porch, and walk down the steps. The air is cooler now, the sky is dark, and the trees are just outlines.

Your friend drives back toward the city and all of its lights. The house disappears again.

With a mountain behind you, the car crosses over a moat, past a tree, and back through a gate. It stops, again, outside of your hotel and you linger there for a moment to say goodbye and thank you.

Thank you.

0020 Lawn

2021-06-29T00:00:00Z

There is a castle in the middle of Central Park. It's not a real castle, but it's built of real stones and displaces real air just the same. It's never been anyone's home or been stormed by any ragtag bands of heroic outlaws. Its construction was completed in 1872 and until renovations made it a more pleasant attraction, it lived most of its life as an unnecessarily grand warehouse for the park's meteorology equipment.

This castle overlooks a small pond. Its windows offering views of the water and the surrounding park.

North of the pond sits a small, open-air theater. Since it hosted its first performance in 1962, its 1800 seats have faced south, mostly, toward the stage, and the pond, and the pretend castle. A surreal, perfect backdrop befitting the thrill of watching Cymbeline under an open sky.

Beyond the theater there is an expansive, oval-shaped lawn. Its pillowy, green grass, still wet with dew, stretches out past the sand and dust of the ballfields. On an early summer morning, the sun rises behind the tree line.

The birds have the infield all to themselves as a quiet line of New Yorkers wait patiently for a free ticket to a play staged at a theater, under the gaze of a folly perched on a hill, overlooking a pond.

0019 Two Apartment Buildings

2021-06-20T00:00:00Z

There is a small bakery on a corner in center city Philadelphia. Each morning, its shelves are filled with warm, fresh croissants, most of which are gone by the afternoon. Unmarked black awnings extend out from the windows. Above the door sits a large black sign with ornate, gold letters that follow a gentle curve.

One block north, there is a square that is named for a family of German immigrants who became some of the first papermakers in the United States. One of the city's original public squares and one of its finest public spaces, the park is dotted with quiet, shaded, peaceful places to sit and enjoy a croissant. Tall, aged trees shelter six acres of wooden benches, fountains, sculptures, and gardens.

On the wide street between the bakery and the park there are two large apartment buildings and an alley of blue sky that slices between them. Apartments whose windows, when open, pull in the smell of freshly baked breads and the sounds of people sharing a city.

0018 Koyason

2021-05-02T00:00:00Z

There is a train that leaves Osaka, carrying passengers south and eventually making its way to a station just across the Kinokawa river.

There is a cable car, which leaves from that train station, that slowly climbs the mountain at an unlikely angle, until it reaches a smaller station.

There is a half-empty bus whose driver deftly navigates winding, narrow roads as it enters a town and begins to make more frequent stops along a wider road, dotted with temples, vans, and small trucks.

One of the temples has an entranceway about seven, large stones wide, pitched at a slight incline toward the back gate and an open, gray field of meticulously raked gravel. Bright green trees and shrubs line the perimeter along a path to the door.

There is a smiling, soft-spoken fellow at the front desk to greet you by name and explain everything that merits an explanation before leading you to the stairs that give and creak under the weight of three people, two carrying modestly-sized backpacks.

And then there is the room where the floors are silent and the tatami mats are soft underfoot. On the far end, there is a wall that is also a door, made of wood and paper, that slides open and reveals a smaller sitting area with a well-polished wooden floor. There is a table that sits between two large, low chairs made of wicker and bent wood.

The two chairs face each other, as if in a conversation, somehow ignoring the view from the window behind them.

And there is that window behind those chairs: a sprawling, four-panel window that looks out over a courtyard and draws your eyes higher up the mountain, chasing the tree lines as they rise toward the sky.

0017 Cape

2021-04-26T00:00:00Z

There is a hotel a few miles north of Palm Beach that is sandwiched between a couple of sprawling Florida highways. There is a large office park within walking distance, but otherwise, the hotel is an island surrounded only by other hotels and access roads.

To the east, after crossing a highway named for the Confederate States of America, smaller, sandier, and less problematic roads lead to Juno Beach and a state park.

Go west, up the ramp onto the interstate, and drive north for three hours, skipping dozens more beach towns as the palm trees stream past and there will be a small causeway to Merritt Island.

Follow signs, enter the enormous parking lot, exit the car, and walk back towards the long line that winds its way out from the turnstiles that sit in the shadows of rockets.

With a couple of hours to spare, walk through the gift shop and the large, open cafeteria that doubles as a small space museum.

Another line, a shuttle ride, and short walk reveals a cluster of bleachers looking east. In the distance, past the trees, over the water, find what might appear to be a tall, narrow building.

And wait.

Wait until the sky begins to turn from bright blue to pale orange. Wait as the other onlookers filter in and begin to fill the seats.

Wait for the loudspeaker to come alive and listen to dozens of strangers begin to go through the prelaunch checklist, item by item, result by result.

Wait for the launch status check. Go.

Wait for the launch readiness check. Go.

Wait for the senior staff check. Go.

Wait for the payload readiness check. Go.

Wait for the safety check. Go.

And then wait for the weather check. And hear the pause. And don’t exhale just yet.

No go.

Now, breath. Sit for a few minutes and stare at the clear sky and wonder.

Then a short walk back, another line, a shuttle ride.

Meander through the small space museum that doubles as a large cafeteria, and through the gift shop, and reverse a turnstile that sits, now, in the longer shadows of rockets. Motionless rockets.

Find the rental car in the enormous parking lot, now half-empty, and drive the three hours back to a hotel near an office park a few miles north of Palm Beach, still never having seen anything leave the Earth’s orbit.

And remember that you were fortunate enough to spend an afternoon in the warm sun, looking past the palm trees at the still, quiet water and the clear, blue sky. And hope for better luck for the anyone who might sit on those bleachers tomorrow.

0016 Dill

2021-04-18T00:00:00Z

There is a particular narrow alleyway in a neighborhood on the outskirts of a large city in Japan that is dotted with small restaurants and bars. It’s all but empty on a warm Thursday afternoon in August.

There are four dark brown doors that each frame a single, large window painted with gently arched gold and black letters. The doors, well cared for, slide readily along their metal tracks, parting with little effort or noise.

Past the large copper still in the front corner and beyond the pile of discarded silver kegs on the floor, there is a long, dark, wooden bar. The doors are closed again, but light leaks in from the windows and mixes with the glow of the pendant lamps that are suspended from the ceiling by thick, black cords. The light reflects off the richly lacquered wood and brightens the room.

A few menus rest on that bar, the pages handwritten on card stock, wrapped in thin sheets of crinkled plastic. Small, rectangular wicker baskets hold stacks of paper napkins.

And there, after a sip of a wonderfully bitter, wheat-colored ale, appears a bright, white plate piled with golden yellow chips. The flecks of finely chopped dill, lightly sprinkled on top, are the only green found in a nearly empty, brown and gold room on a warm Thursday afternoon.

0015 Pilots

2021-04-10T00:00:00Z

There are a pair of parallel bridges in downtown New Orleans that cross the Mississippi River, connecting the business district to Algiers and the neighborhoods that lie east.

In 1958, when the Greater New Orleans Bridge first opened here as the longest cantilever bridge in the entire world, it was only a single span.[^1] When second bridge was completed thirty years later, the two would still be the fifth-longest cantilever bridges on the planet.

[^1]: After a contest held in 1989, the bridges were officially renamed the Crescent City Connection. The sizable Vietnamese American community in New Orleans refers to them as Cầu Con Cò, the Pelican Bridge. Read more at Wikipedia.

Like most functioning infrastructure, a bridge that does its job can be safely ignored by most of the people who use it, almost all of time.

Some folks, though, driving over that newly opened length of steel and concrete more than sixty years ago must have been aware, in that moment, that they were on the world's longest bridge as it crossed the world's fourth-longest river.

And maybe that knowledge made a repetitive commute a little more thrilling. Maybe their hands gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as their car left the solid ground. Maybe the view from the midpoint, out over the water, seemed more significant.

For a while, at least. Novelty can evaporate quickly in the warmth and comfort of routine.

On an overcast, winter day awash in grays and blues, the red hull of a ship pushes through the water. A river pilot navigates the familiar bends after years of training and apprenticeship, and countless journeys up and down that river. On the early trips, before the newness wore away, maybe they, too, were thrilled to be piloting a ship that just passed beneath what was once the longest cantilever bridge in the entire world.

0014 Thunderbird

2021-04-04T00:00:00Z

There is a metal and glass display case in the lobby of a motel in Savannah, Georgia. This display case is surrounded by other items that one might expect to find in a well-kept motel common area: two insulated coffee pots, bins of sugar packets and single-serving containers of creamer, a napkin dispenser, and a few, assorted boxes of Bigelow tea bags.

The large, silver, metal case is the most substantial object on the counter. Its two clear, glass doors are the size of small windows. Windows whose views are best in the morning when the case is full, brimming with a variety of donuts from a well-known North Carolina donut company. The case's four shelves crowded with fried rings of dough, topped with sprinkles, filled with cream, finished with pink icing, dark brown chocolate, and frosted glazes.

As the summer sun rises, guests begin to trickle into the lobby empty-handed. They walk out, minutes later, with steaming paper cups of coffee and breakfasts that can be stacked into small, cylindrical towers.

Most continue on, returning to their rooms to eat and drink and begin their day. Some, though, may stop and look up to admire the multicolored neon sign that hovers above the building. Their eyes trained on the two enormous, stylized birds, that stand on its edges.

The sign looks different in the daylight: subdued, dormant, only an outline of its nighttime self when the current flows through the noble gases trapped in the glass tubes and those two birds glow so bright that their light spills out across the parking lot, multiplying in dark car windows.

The reds, golds, and blues crawl all the way to the green doors of the motel rooms, climbing up the brightly painted panels beneath the windows until some finds its way through cracks in the perimeters of closed curtains. And there, in quiet rooms, the colors might land on an empty, damp paper cup or a plate that was once filled with donuts from the metal and glass display case, in the lobby, under that sign.

0013 Giant

2021-03-27T00:00:00Z

A few blocks from a little restaurant that perhaps invented the hamburger[^1] and a short walk from another restaurant that probably created the white, clam pizza[^2] there is a rectangular 12-story residential tower.

[^1]: There are competing claims to this invention, but this one appears to be in good faith. Read more at Wikipedia

[^2]: A pie topped with olive oil, oregano, cheese, garlic, and littleneck clams, is sometimes called New Haven-style. Read more at Wikipedia

On the top floor of that tower, there is a small apartment with a large, northwest-facing window. Being a relatively tall building in the comparatively short city of New Haven, Connecticut, the view from that window does not find much competition. On clear days, limited only by the curvature of the Earth, the visibility stretches out past the parking lots and the centuries-old university offices.

Some days, in fact, it's easy to find views of a state park that sits about ten miles north of the this large, northwest-facing window. A park named for its most prominent land feature, which from a certain angle, resembles a very large person lying down.

But, not from this angle. No, this angle only offers a glimpse of those hills, without humanizing them. From here they are simply a sloping, green foreground for the blue midday sky and the bright orange sunsets.

A colorful backdrop for a slice of canonical white, clam pizza.

0012 Triangles

2021-03-21T00:00:00Z

There is a well-used pedestrian triangle in New York City, just before Broadway meets Fifth Ave, across the street from Madison Square Park.

When the weather cooperates, the metal chairs and tables that speckle the concrete fill up with people sitting, eating, drinking, and talking. People coming and going, spending lunch breaks and investing in friendships.

This little triangle is a quintessential New York City street feature. Find a shaded seat and look south at an iconic profile of the city’s most famous three-sided building, another perfect triangle.

The view from the west side of that building, though, will forever be my favorite. The afternoon sun lights it with such purpose and uniformity. Stand at the foot of the foundation, look straight up into the sky, and find the absolute symmetry of the facade.

The details are made mortal by the dots of air conditioners hanging from the windows. A common, modern wart that older buildings cannot seem to avoid. But, the buzz of those rectangles and the water dripping from their edges is a signal that the weather is cooperating in the other triangle across the street.

And maybe, too, in the irregular concave pentagon of the nearby park.

0011 Bridges

2021-03-14T00:00:00Z

There is an ice cream shop near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a few steps from a pier that offers some very nice views of the Manhattan skyline over the East River.

The river, at this point, is about a half-mile wide, but the buildings on the other side feel immediate, as if placed on that island with the intention of becoming a backdrop for photographs of handheld ice cream cones.

And that backdrop, looking west over the water, is just fine. There’s a pleasant and interesting Frank Gehry apartment building over there. One World Trade Center stretches out into the sky, perched behind an array of smaller financial district office towers. It’s a perfectly sufficient slice of NYC architecture.

Look north, though, and find a better resting place for eyes and cameras. On clear nights peering under the Brooklyn Bridge and over the Manhattan Bridge in the distance, the familiar tiers of the Empire State Building peak out, towering above its puny, midtown surroundings.

At any moment, at least a few people are standing on the 86th-floor observation deck of that building and looking south over the river. Their eyes following the straight lines of the bridge over the water towards Kings County.

And there, at the base of that bridge, on the pier that juts out into the water, a few steps from that ice cream shop, fellow tourists, or perhaps neighbors, mill around taking photos, leisurely eating vanilla ice cream cones, and looking back at them.

Looking back, past the two bridges, at those beautiful lights.

0010 Please

2021-03-07T00:00:00Z

There is a slide, near a playground, in a park in the middle of a town in southern New Jersey.

The slide isn't on the playground, it is near it. It rests closer to a small, unnamed pond, on large patch of grass about 200 feet away from the orderly mulch and paved pathways that mark the borders of the recently upgraded play area.

There, within those boundaries, park-goers will find newer slides with fewer metal edges, softer corners, and a consistent thematic design.

It's fair to assume that, at some point, before this playground was updated, the older slide was relocated to its current home. Perhaps it was always alone. Or maybe it was surrounded by other aged pieces of equipment that found less peaceful ends.

Sometimes, the old slide still manages to entice curious, little visitors to walk over to the patch of grass near the small, unnamed pond. They climb its stairs, their feet strike the firmly packed dirt at the bottom. And sometimes they stay for a while before they leave.

But, this slide remains. Stationary in its repose, within clear view of the children scaling the miniature rock wall that is attached to the play castle with the two red towers. The red towers that are each topped with a rigid, blue flag that points, motionless in the wind, back toward that old slide.

And not far from those immovable flags, near a winding entrance road, sits a small, wooden sign on a sturdy post. Its white paint, which is beginning to chip, is covered in stenciled, black letters detailing the park's regulations.

Three words on that sign were able to break free from the confines of that stencil and are painted in a beautiful, imprecise script. At the top, a Please unfolds, stretches, and pleads. And a small Thank You, near the bottom, stacked onto itself, crowds into the only available space.

The sign, like the slide that is no longer on the playground, shows its age. Both, though, still labor, capable of their tasks.

0009 Ferry

2021-02-28T00:00:00Z

The Cape May-Lewes ferry makes four round trips each day between the two ocean-front towns.

My childhood was dotted with occasional rides on these steam ships with my sister, parents, and grandparents. I remember waiting on cushioned chairs in the Lewes, Delaware terminal, staring out the tall windows, watching the ships dock and travelers disembark. And all the time wasted in the small gift shop, looking at keychains and miniature lighthouses.

Once, a few years ago, after attending the wedding of two very good friends near Cape May, I found myself in the New Jersey terminal. It's something of a south-facing, funhouse mirror image of the building in Lewes. A generous friend shuttled me from my motel. I purchased a one-way foot passenger ticket, and sat, waiting for my boat, in the cushioned chairs, staring out the tall windows.

An hour or so later, we departed. The ship pointed square into the beautiful, clear, September afternoon. I stood on the deck for ninety minutes as we glided through the water under pristine, cotton clouds, floating in the rich, blue sky on the way home, toward Delaware.

0008 Beams

2021-02-21T00:00:00Z

There is an old, unremarkable apartment building in Manhattan on the south side of West 77th Street, near the corner of West End Avenue, that has an odd little duplex apartment on the first floor. A few blocks north, on the other side of the avenue, there is another, equally nondescript, building with a tiny studio apartment on the third floor.

Another block north, on the corner of 86th street, there is an old Methodist church with an ornate bell tower that casts a long shadow beside the crosswalk on sunny afternoons.

Each fall, that church opens its heavy, wooden doors and serves as one of the neighborhood's larger polling places.

During my sojourn in the city, living for years between those two apartment buildings, I cast ballots in that church in at least four different elections. Each time, each cold November Tuesday morning, voters would wait in the pews while volunteers, mostly children, walked up and down the aisles, carrying small paper cups full of coffee and hot chocolate.

Leaving that church, vote cast, throat warm after gulping the steaming drink, I would walk to the corner of Broadway and down the stairs into the train station. I'd wait there, on the grey concrete of the platform, near the bright yellow line, sometimes leaning on the thick layers of dark blue paint caked onto the steel beams.

That local 1 stop is where I started and ended most days, not many as satisfying as those that began in that old Methodist church, sitting in a pew with hundreds of warm, friendly New Yorkers.

0007 Candyland

2021-02-14T00:00:00Z

There is a piano in the dining room of a restaurant that occupies the first floor of an oceanfront hotel in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. That dining room's very large windows look out onto the weathered boardwalk, past the reeds and grasses that cover the dunes, over the smooth sand of the beach, and into the gray-blue Atlantic Ocean.

The boardwalk's worn, wooden planks extend south toward the city's main avenue, the hotel perched near its the northern end.

On the corner of that avenue, in an old YMCA building, sat a candy shop that had been making and selling salt water taffy there for more than ninety years. In the hotter months, that shop's door was always propped wide open, welcoming the humid, ocean air. Local kids with enviable summer jobs leaned out the windows handing bags of caramel corn and rectangular boxes of taffy to tourists. But, not only to tourists.

And above that candy shop there was a large, orange sign, pushing into the sky, taller than everything around it, visible up and down that boardwalk and across the avenue.

That sign soon came into view for anyone walking south from the restaurant that occupies the first floor of that four-story hotel. The restaurant with the piano in the dining room.

Even in the winter, when the city was quiet, and the candy shop's doors were often closed, the sign was still bright and the color still warm.

0006 Hills

2021-02-07T00:00:00Z

There is a tiny international airport on a very small island just off the east coast of Tortola.

On its north end, this airport's single airstrip slices through the tree-covered landscape, pushing across the sand and out into ocean as it becomes part of the shoreline itself, a boundary of concrete and moved earth forming one edge of a small, U-shaped bay.

Passengers arriving on this very small island can exit the airport terminal, flag a taxi, and take the short car ride over the bridge to the bustling capital city of these islands.

They can also, if they choose, walk past those waiting cabs and continue east for about a half-mile along the narrow road until they find the shallow beach that wraps around the southern perimeter of that small, U-shaped bay.

On that beach there are a half-dozen wooden docks that extend out into blue water, as if pointing the way to the awaiting, accidental fleet of idling ships, anchored, gently rocking in place, shielded from the stronger ocean currents by the small peninsula to the east and that runway from the tiny international airport to the west.

Those ships will, eventually, return to more open water. The bay unrolls into the greater Atlantic Ocean, dotted with drops of green land.

Out on that water, from particular angles, the local islands begin to stack on top of one another. The clear horizon, full of peaks and minor elevations that look as if they're part of a larger, connected whole rather than a scattered archipelago.

Green hills behind green hills behind green hills, water between, but from this vantage, invisible.

0005 Tracks

2021-01-31T00:00:00Z

There is a small train station in Wilmington, Delaware a few blocks away from a community college and a few more from the city's regularly redeveloped waterfront.

The station, a Frank Furness designed, brick and terra cotta building that was completed in 1908, was restored in 2011 and renamed for the then vice president. A man who was well-known, at least locally, for departing on the southbound Acela service every morning and returning home each night.

That train station and the tracks that run through it have played an unexpectedly outsized role in my life. Most often, Wilmington served as the southern terminus of my regular Amtrak trips from New York City.

Visiting family in Delaware meant waiting in Penn Station's crowded concourse, watching the clock, listening for departure announcements, and then descending down the escalator to the tracks.

Returning home meant waiting in a smaller concourse, watching the clock, listening for departure announcements, and then ascending up the escalator to the tracks.

An email search reveals that, during my seven year residency in the city, I made that trip more than 50 times.

The train tickets themselves are a throwback to a simpler world, mostly before ubiquitous computer phones. The earlier trips all depended upon physical paper tickets. Many printed at the FedEx-Kinkos on 80th and Broadway. Some printed on the 15th floor of the an H-shaped financial district skyscraper. Some printed in a harshly lit basement cubicle in Morningside Heights. Some printed on the 5th floor of a SoHo office building, originally built for John Jacob Astor. Some printed in a very forgettable 7th Ave tower with oddly ornate elevators.

Those tickets were such a corporeal piece of my life that I still occasionally find a paperback Vonnegut novel, pages yellowing, holding on to a makeshift bookmark that reads New York, NY - Penn Station to Wilmington, DE.

The tracks that carry those trains to Wilmington press farther south, arriving later in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. They run through the university town where I spent four years in the early 2000s. And one of their arteries branches farther down the state until it passes my parents' hundred-year-old farm house so closely that the vibrations from the track gently rattle the decorative, wrought iron window on the opposite wall.

Those passing freight trains were an ever-present part of my childhood. Their horns announcing themselves several times each day of my early life. I have crossed those tracks on foot, scooter, bicycle, or car, conservatively, thousands of times. I can feel their smooth, rounded steel under my sneaker.

Those tracks that, decades before I knew them, had once carried passenger rail service rather than coal and stone. The nearby town's train station (now a museum) functioned as a hub, allowing riders to head further east toward the beach or continue south, down the peninsula, toward a little sliver of Virginia.

And some of those passengers, surely, were headed north, toward Wilmington. Toward New York City. Passengers who might have seen an earlier version of my second-floor bedroom window as they rolled through southern Delaware.

A bedroom that I left to go north, toward Wilmington. Toward New York City. The bedroom that I can still find by following a particular set of train tracks.

0004 Airplane

2021-01-25T00:00:00Z

There is a train line that crosses the Delaware River, running along the edges of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

On the east bank of the river, eastbound trains descend underground before eventually reemerging and climbing onto elevated tracks that carry commuters through the small towns that dot the increasingly suburban landscape of southern New Jersey.

From one of those small, drowsy towns, those trains can be heard clearly as they pass. The whine of the electric motors and the rush of the passenger cars cutting through the air makes a repetitive, comforting addition to the acoustic rhythm of the place. The train sounds like the town. The town sounds like the train.

High above this town, which lies just a few miles northeast of the Philadelphia International Airport, there is a particularly busy strip of troposphere. The planes flying overhead are sometimes low enough to make their own contribution to the soundscape, with their softer, slower hum.

On clear nights, the methodical blinking lights that announce those planes creep across the dark sky, past the faint stars and the distant Philadelphia skyline.

And on clear days, the afternoon sunlight sometimes reflects so perfectly off of those aircraft that their outline appears carved from the blue of the sky itself. The body of a plane, shimmering in the warm sun and the underside of the wings, a deep black. It pulls a shadow behind it that will cross those train tracks, leave that small town, and float over the river, in want of no bridge.

0003 Moss

2021-01-17T00:00:00Z

A charred piece of wood, cracked and decomposing, sat for months in a slowly rusting fire pit on a concrete slab in a small back yard. It sat there through summer heat and rainstorms. It sat there through the cooler fall days and into this winter.

This small, square fire pit collected the water from those summer storms. It collected leaves, dropped from an oak tree in a neighbor's yard, branches outstretched over a wooden fence. The leaves dried and broke.

It collected the season's first snow on an overcast day in December. That snow melted in the low, warm sun a few days later. Its water dripped though the metal mesh, blending with ease into the cold pool below.

That water, the leaves, and the charred piece of wood remained, undisturbed, until a sunny day just before the new year. And when the heavy, screen lid was removed from that small fire pit, it revealed a soft, damp, thick carpet of unexpectedly bright green moss.

The piece of wood and the moss now sit, without complaint, in a window box hanging off of a small shed in that small yard. The only of bit green in an already long, grey winter.

0002 Glass and Steel

2021-01-10T00:00:00Z

There is a building in center city Philadelphia, made of glass and steel, perched over the east bank of the Schuykill River with a large, open courtyard at its base.

This courtyard, a seemingly-public space, expands past the building itself and sprawls out an entire city block. In the warm days of summer, the pavement is thick with the remains of spotted lantern flies that met their violent ends under the sneakers of frustrated Philadelphians.

Both the north and south sides of the building offer stairways, winding up into the air until they meet at opposite ends of a second courtyard, this one with views of the water and a steady, cool breeze. There are picnic tables, benches, shrubs, small trees, flowering vines climbing on wire lattices, and even more open space.

Open space that, in any city, can be hard to find. Open space that gave my daughter enough room to ride her bicycle for the first time, gliding down what, to a 3-year-old, must have seemed like an absolutely endless car-free corridor of smooth concrete.

Open space that gives way to the South Street bridge on its north end. A bridge that crosses over the river toward the western edges of the city. A bridge that, before crossing, splits into a ramp that descends toward a boardwalk, running along that river, leading north until it winds inland just enough to branch off again. This time, reversing back up another ramp onto a pedestrian walkway that overlooks a crowded dog run and a pair of basketball courts that my infant son spent hours watching on summer evenings, joyfully yelling some barely intelligible version of the word basketball, over and over, at strangers.

The end of that walkway settles into the middle of Schuykill River Park. A park that, with its open lawn, well-maintained playground, expansive community garden, and narrow walkways, can seem both empty and crowded at the same time.

But, before that, just after the ramp rises from the boardwalk, there is a place that, on humid summer mornings offers a tiny, perfect retreat from the weather. This place, close enough to the water to feel its cool air and watch the barges inch past, is thoughtfully hidden from the sun and tucked into the narrow shadow of another building, made of glass and steel, that cuts into the grey-blue sky and glows yellow in the early light.

0001 Sprouts

2021-01-06T00:00:00Z

A few days ago, while I was tidying up a large plant pot full of garden miscellany, I happened upon a small, empty paper envelope. Or, what I initially thought to be a small, empty paper envelope.

If it had actually been empty, it wouldn't have been sitting in that large, metal plant pot in that small shed in southern New Jersey. It probably wouldn't have. It would have been, after being tossed into a recycling can in an unremarkable, midwestern city, carted up to the regional paper recycling plant in St. Paul, Minnesota. The envelope would no longer exist. It would have been transformed into something else. Maybe a sheet of paper or maybe something more interesting like an egg carton sitting in a grocery cooler or a thrilling page of a paperback novel tucked into a nondescript shelf in some quiet bookstore.

But, no, this paper envelope was not empty when I happened upon it a few days ago. It contained a small quantity of sweet Thai basil seeds. Not a handful, not even a spoonful or a thimbleful. A dozen at best.

Seeds, which a few years earlier, had been purchased from a small company in Fairfield, Maine. Seeds that were packed into this small paper envelope, placed inside of a larger envelope, and then mailed to a three-bedroom apartment in that small, midwestern city. Seeds that followed my family and I last fall when we moved to a narrow, brick row home in southwest Philadelphia. Seeds that joined us again this year when we moved to a slightly wider house across the Delaware River. Seeds that up until a few days ago were lying dormant in that small, nearly empty paper envelope.

Seeds, years old and mostly forgotten, which after a few days of rest in their new bed of dark, brown soil, have erupted into a tiny, delicate forest of future pad krapow.

Seeds, which were seeds and are now plants.

Plants that spend their lives under a purple-hued grow light, in a white, ceramic pot, in between some (non-Thai) sweet basil and two small Asia Ip shiso plants. Plants which will grow taller and more fragrant each day. Plants which will, with luck, outgrow their new home and someday retire to the small garden that stretches along the wooden fence on the north edge of a backyard where they can, finally, breath fresh air and feel the rain on their leaves.

The small, empty paper envelope, its work done, now sits in a recycling can in our kitchen. It awaits its new life, wondering what it might become.