Retention

It's cute to say I can never remember where I was when I first I learned about retention.

On East 20th, just east of Commercial Street, an instance of mixed-media retention, though the wood feels more decorative than practical, and of course is more short-term than rock. 

The last time I was in Paris (ten years ago?) I woke up early one morning and walked through Vincennes. Eventually I found myself in an alley, below an elevated stretch of something (a rail line?). The bank of land between the alley and this something was about eight feet high and severely-inclined. Shoring it up was a system of cinder block-like structures arranged in a way that left triangular (scalene) pockets of about eight inches on their longest side, inside which were contrastingly delicate plantings (coryadalis, dicentra). As Rickie Lee Jones says in "Little Fluffy Clouds" (1990), "They were beautiful!"