This Strange Unsettling Winter

First, some cheerful colors, spotted on the Upper East Side, to mitigate the cold midwinter: ducks, ducks, ducks.

 And other plastic yucks! Whoever sells these trinkety toys must be watching the price of oil these days...

 

I never heard that the British rock group The Cure, had opened an Upper East Side pharmacy... note how they address the whole body's wellness, giving you a bit of a work-out with their stiff little door hinges.

 

In a persistently sluggish economy, I'd definitely want Faith Hope Consolo on my realty team!

Faith, and Hope, and Consolation?

...that blast of January
Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day...

This has been an unexpectedly mild winter, and therefore an unsettling time. We are creatures still bound by rhythms of day and night, months which have since time began (it seems) exhibited their timeless character (depending on your hemisphere!). January deepens and lengthens the Winter that has set in, in December. March: in like a lion, out like a lamb... April's showers bring forth May flowers...

Instead of a real winter, so far there there has been a general mildness.

In Brooklyn, just off Church Avenue (above), on St Paul's Place, I noticed some strange graffiti, below.

It almost seems like a dialogue between two or more different people. And, it seems like a discussion that ends with an answer, or solution or something: if there is a way of reading what might be random craziness, from left to right, it all distills down to the final statement: Madison Baptist Church. 

Then again, this unusual winter has reminded me vividly that random craziness lurks around the corner from unsettling times.