Trees, Steve Loved

Steve's Words:

The driver, the
trees, the sun and the seasons.

Yesterday I named three favorite winter trees at 86th and 5th Ave -
"reaching, curling and spreading".

I've gotten so I love trees. When I first got my glasses in about the fifth grade, I came out of the
optometrist's to realize that I could actually see the individual leaves. I had come to see trees as little kids draw
them - circles of green on trunks of brown.

It was before disease stripped the Midwest of its American elms, which really did make cool arched boulevards of our
modest main streets. Old towns now look like denuded suburbs.

Before that only many decades or the big winds near tornados
could kill off a few of them.

In my backyard there was a huge one which took several kids
to touch hands around.

When we learned to get to its lower limbs with a rope, we
began to build a tree house in a very high crotch. My dad took over and built a
big, solid one, much lower down. For beams he used the varnished hardwood
pieces of a big old pipe organ, which had just been replaced in the next door
church where he was pastor. He did not view little kid helpers as actually
helpful or safe, which I understand, but also regret.

Today, in New York City, I often reverse "you can’t see the forest
for the trees". Here they stand
more isolated, individual.

In winter we can see the fabulous differences of their limb
structure. Since they've been cared for and pruned over their decades of life,
I sometimes wonder if an old arborist could say, "Now that's pruned in the
Mendelssohn manner. And you can see O'Neal's work in that one."

The isolation and care of our trees in Central and Riverside Park and around the Natural History museum may
explain why we enjoy some of the few stands of these magnificent trees which
remain in North America.

We all enjoy the first leaves in the spring. The green that
will later seem uniform at first has great various beauty, just as the fall
dying leaves draw bus tours to Vermont,
but may be less noticed in the midst of our city.

Then of course there are the many stages of a tree's cycle
of renewal that each species present to us as the days grow longer, and then
shorter.

If we look up close, we can see the wonderful little
structures that nature has constructed over ages to give each tree the best
chance to live on.

Horse Chestnuts are my favorites. Lindens are good too.

As well as the changes over the warmer months, each day
trees present many different views to us. At high noon, the shade of their
leaves cools us, but obscures the tree's details.

But as the sun lowers, its light cuts between the leaves and
lets us glimpse the structure that we love so much in winter.

These are things I've learned to see over time as I grew
older. Who says there’s nothing to look
forward to. Just like the little piece
of white paint that looks like a gold ring on the finger of a Rembrandt
portrait.
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A sharing from Marsha Niemeijer

Steve used to call me regularly to talk. He would start our conversation by saying that I should just tell him when he needed to stop talking. And then he would start. He would talk about Occupy or about a Labor Notes article or the Sotheby's contract fight. He wanted me to tell him if he was being impatient and he would ask me for perspective, to help balance out his passion.

In the last few years it seemed like Steve was on the edges of the movements and struggles because he was also struggling with his mental health and generally feeling an acute sense of disappointment that many of us on the left feel about the state of the world today. But even if he was on the edges, he was there actively, in that whole body kind of way that Steve had about him. 

He was out there looking for the younger activists who were inspiring to him, sparking relationships with them and helping teach them about the left that he had grown up in and the movements that had made him into the amazing organizer and thinker that he was. 

And above all, he shared his vision. More than ever we struggle with a lack of vision, of being hopeful and thinking that our efforts during the small upsurges that we all get involved in, despite ourselves, will make a difference. But Steve held on to his bigger vision, our bigger vision, and he never gave up. I'd like to think that his vision kept him together. 

Those are the kinds of things he would talk about on the phone with me. And I wanted to be there for him because we're a community and we need each other. As I worked to be present for him in ways that were at times trying--he did have a way of drawing you into his sense of urgency and even with my relative youthfulness, that wasn't always easy!!--Steve taught me the value of fighting for one another too, for keeping us all in this fight for a better world together. I just wish he and I had talked about how I needed him too during those phone conversations, because his passion, energy and vision kept me together as well.

I miss Steve deeply. But he knows--in a way that we all know this deep down about ourselves and our movements--that we will keep on fighting, and that we will do it with love, courage and humanity too. Si se puede, si se puede, Steve.

-- Marsha N

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Thanks for your input to the Steve Blog. Learning about him through one another's stories is something we can continue to enjoy, beyond his passing. May his vision, work and passions live on through our paths, and be invigorated by our stories, sharings, and dialogues.
Thanks, from niece Audrey Kindred