Even in cronehood there is a special excitement about acquiring clothes. Yesterday, I finally bought the perfect denim jacket, and even on sale 65% off at Macy’s Brooklyn it was not really cheap- not Thrift shop cheap, just comparatively inexpensive. God knows where I’ll wear it- it’s no good for Court, and it’s too nice for turning compost at the garden. But, it goes perfectly with the long denim skirt from National Wholesale Liquidators, hides fat, and well, makes me look ...young. Other than professional clothing, which is necessary, because without a good suit and expensive briefcase no one takes you seriously, it’s a mystery why one continues hunt for that perfect summer top, another shirt dress, or a new evening skirt. A couple of years ago, I walked into the Housing Works thrift shop on East 23rd street and found a green-colored boiled wool cape with large silver double headed eagle buttons and a black crocheted border for 10 dollars. Made in Austria, it is the classic fingertip length style with the extra buttons along the border to secure hand access so the cape doesn’t flap in the wind on a bicycle. This very cape was all the rage 30 years ago when I was a starving singer-student and mother in Heidelberg. All the young women had just such a cape. I would enviously look at the other women at Market in their capes, their hands extended out of the buttoned hand holes and holding little lined market baskets for their groceries, or walking along the Neckar river, pushing prams in their boiled wool capes. I longed for one so badly in those days that I bought some cheap corduroy in Nuremburg on a train stopover to a rehearsal in Bayreuth and made a cape with a matching skirt to wear bike riding in Heidelberg. Now, here was the perfect Cape, thirty years too late, in a New York City thrift shop. If course I instantly bought it, and even occasionally wear it bike riding along the Hudson to the uptown Fairway for groceries. I often wish it could be sent back in time and space, addressed to Jackie Hansen-Bukowski, 6-8 Marz Strasse, Heidelberg 69.

Community Gardens in Chicago and Philadelphia have group insurance policies- why can't New York? Maybe there really is something in this country that discriminates against New York City. Plutonium mines have insurance, rock climbing experiences have insurance- how come New York City Gardens can't get a quote? We don't know if its because New York is still viewed as a terrorist target, or that New York is viewed as more litigioius than the rest of the country. All the Community Gardens in New York City (about 650 gardens) lost their Community Garden group insurance policy last August 31, 2005, ( except for Restoration Foundation's 50 gardens which have their own seperate policy) We were not notified of the pending termination and many of us did not find out until sometime in October. Since then, despite our low "loss runs" none of us - the City, the Landtrusts, and Individual gardens - can get an insurance quote. This loss of insurance affects almost every Community Garden in New York City, and has resulted in a total closing down of public access. The City of New York Parks Dept -Green Thumb, is trying to find a "work around" [The City doesn't want to wholly self insure Gardens on City land because they don't have on site employees.] The Gardens located on the Department of Transportation property are also looking for a quote. One of the biggest gardens in the City is the Bissel Garden, on the Bronx/Westchester boarder on an unused Railroad right of way. A big land trust like Trust for Public Land with some 60 odd gardens and little independent Gardens like mine are together in the same boat scrambling for an insurance quote.As a Board member for our little 16,000 square foot Garden, (westsidecommunitygarden.org) I have been working with two insurance agents and they can't get anyone willing to insure us. The one serious consideration finally turned us down because their actuaries thought someone may get injured by herbicide/pesticides. This excuse came from Chubb- who specializes in large landtrusts that have rock climbing trails, canoes, lakes, and fast flowing rivers. I responded that we are an "all organic garden," and besides, gardens located in the middle of Manhattan don't really have big problems with hordes of locusts, (except twolegged ones). We certainly don't need to use herbicides cause it takes about two minutes to weed the tiny lawn in our amphitheater. If nothing happens by spring, we will have to cancel neighborhood school field trips and our regular school program, a summerful of Children's Shakespeare theater in the floral amphitheater, and a proposal for classical Viol concerts this spring/summer. For the first time in 30 years, our gates will remain closed during the annual Tulip Festival of 15,000 bulbs in bloom.