Look Up and See!
New York is a particularly “birdy” city (to use the birder’s term). Someone who makes a serious effort to find birds in the city almost every day—there are such people—can find upward of three hundred species in one year without ever leaving the city limits, using only public transportation. The cumulative bird list of Central Park alone includes over 280 species.
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Degas Invents a New World
Degas was a loner. He had always felt alone. Alone because of his character, alone because of his unyielding principles, alone because of his severe judgments. He exhibited with the Impressionists but he didn’t consider himself a member of the group, if for no other reason than that he violently rejected the very idea of painting outdoors. “If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on the people who paint landscapes from nature,” he told the art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
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