Ethically made and hand-drawn, this boxy tee is for those who notice field marks, love thrushes (Turdidae forever), worry about habitat loss, and maybe also rewatch Twin Peaks every solstice.
A strange bird shirt for strange bird people.
(Chrissann is 5’6” in an M; Alec is 5’7” in a L.)
Among the over 1,300 plant species native to New York City stands the staghorn sumac, Rhus typhina. @colorant_official hand-dyed 20 all white, 100% Cotton crewnecks using sumac (foraged in the Hudson Valley!) and indigo. Our dancers logo is embroidered onto every left wrist.
Plants are native when they live where they evolved. Because their traits were created by a specific environment’s geology, climate, and suite of pollinators, native plants require less water and maintenance to thrive and attract other beneficial lifeforms. In this way, native plants show us how everything in an ecosystem is connected.
Sumac had numerous uses for the indigenous people who inhabited precolonial New York. From @adkinsarboretum: As a food, sumac drupes were eaten or consumed as tea. The bark was eaten as a delicacy and sprouts were consumed raw.Craft uses included making red or black dyes from the drupes, and the inner bark to make a yellow dye.The dried red leaves and root were used for smoking and in ceremonial tobacco mixtures.
About a year ago, a friend told me (Michael) about the Japanese Microseasons. Instead of our Gregorian calendar, which divides one earthly orbit of the sun into 12 months or 52 weeks, microseasons break the year into 72 brief, nature-based segments, such as— Peonies bloom (April 30–May 4) … Wild geese return (October 8–12) … Deer shed antlers (December 27–31) … Poetic, animistic, and suggestive of ritualized noticing? As a penitent ex-tech worker—15 years guiding people ever deeper into their screens, all from a desk in seasonless Silicon Valley, who then discovered birds and promptly blew up his life—I had to learn more. Ragwort flowers (Sep 23–30) But reliable info on the calendar’s origins was hard to find online, so I was left to daydream. I pictured enrobed sages moving slowly through foggy valleys and hilltop villages, their forest-bathed attention interrupted only by the sudden CLACK of a shishi-odoshi. They’d pause by burbling streams to consult ancient scrolls, allowing a quiet smile when, just as predicted— Rotten grass become fireflies (June 11–15). Such reverence for the rhythms of wild nature certainly feels mythological these days. We, Homo skyscrapius—go-getter primates of steel and glass—live largely divorced from the natural world. Our landscapes and ecosystems are plundered in the name of “development.” Our mental lives are colonized by “advancements” in tech—mostly addictive, phone-shaped unrealities. Pin Oak reddens (Nov 25–Dec 1) Our devotion to growth and stimulation has made a return—to pristine nature, to our truest selves—feel impossible. And yet. Since I watch birds, I already follow a kind of alternate, quasi-animistic calendar. An NYC birder, in broad strokes, might read a year like this: —Strange ducks and geese inhabit city waterways (January) —Common Grackles return (February) —Eastern Phoebes reappear (March) —First-wave migrants arrive; strange waterfowl depart (April) —Northbound migration hits its vibrant peak (May) —Warm, quiet weeks; migrant breeders linger (June to mid-August) —The slow, muted wash of southbound migration (Mid-August to late October) —Strange ducks and geese return (November–December) Because I knew the birds were still here, and that most New Yorkers no longer saw them, it struck me that the same might be true for flora, insects, fungi, and subtle shifts in weather I’d never learned to notice.
About a year ago, a friend told me (Michael) about the Japanese Microseasons. Instead of our Gregorian calendar, which divides one earthly orbit of the sun into 12 months or 52 weeks, microseasons break the year into 72 brief, nature-based segments, such as— Peonies bloom (April 30–May 4) … Wild geese return (October 8–12) … Deer shed antlers (December 27–31) … Poetic, animistic, and suggestive of ritualized noticing? As a penitent ex-tech worker—15 years guiding people ever deeper into their screens, all from a desk in seasonless Silicon Valley, who then discovered birds and promptly blew up his life—I had to learn more. Ragwort flowers (Sep 23–30) But reliable info on the calendar’s origins was hard to find online, so I was left to daydream. I pictured enrobed sages moving slowly through foggy valleys and hilltop villages, their forest-bathed attention interrupted only by the sudden CLACK of a shishi-odoshi. They’d pause by burbling streams to consult ancient scrolls, allowing a quiet smile when, just as predicted— Rotten grass become fireflies (June 11–15). Such reverence for the rhythms of wild nature certainly feels mythological these days. We, Homo skyscrapius—go-getter primates of steel and glass—live largely divorced from the natural world. Our landscapes and ecosystems are plundered in the name of “development.” Our mental lives are colonized by “advancements” in tech—mostly addictive, phone-shaped unrealities. Pin Oak reddens (Nov 25–Dec 1) Our devotion to growth and stimulation has made a return—to pristine nature, to our truest selves—feel impossible. And yet. Since I watch birds, I already follow a kind of alternate, quasi-animistic calendar. An NYC birder, in broad strokes, might read a year like this: —Strange ducks and geese inhabit city waterways (January) —Common Grackles return (February) —Eastern Phoebes reappear (March) —First-wave migrants arrive; strange waterfowl depart (April) —Northbound migration hits its vibrant peak (May) —Warm, quiet weeks; migrant breeders linger (June to mid-August) —The slow, muted wash of southbound migration (Mid-August to late October) —Strange ducks and geese return (November–December) Because I knew the birds were still here, and that most New Yorkers no longer saw them, it struck me that the same might be true for flora, insects, fungi, and subtle shifts in weather I’d never learned to notice.
