Thursday, May 29, 2008
Democrats must compromise
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
It is truly time for Democratic voters to get really worried. Sen. Obama is running ahead with elected delegate count in the primaries, but Sen. Clinton is collecting palpable majorities in red states that indicate lack of trust in the upstart politician with no record, combined with some racism. to be a continuing factor, with concern that in November an Obama candidacy might push a crucial number of Democratic and disenchanted Republican voters into casting their ballots for the anti-Bush war hero McCain. It says here that racism is minimal – it would not have come into play if Colin Powell were a candidate.
Have the Democrats turned a sure 2008 Presidential victory into a potential defeat? Will Obama, the most probable Democratic presidential candidate, will have the means to prove international and domestic political savvy to turn enough skeptical minds? Will the people who are seeing him as a dynamic and charismatic orator at huge rallies of young and new voters be persuaded that he can real with the nuts and bolts of actual issues, the ones that he has bypassed in his inspirational messages?
Put this together with the fact that Hillary will not give up, claiming her Florida and Michigan votes and insisting that Obama deliberately muddied the waters by not registering in Michigan as a candidate. Then came her Kennedy remark on Friday May 23, blown up by ill-wishers beyond the credible. She was warned of this eventuality even by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who saw it as a botched reference which can be easily exploited y kooks wanting to undermine a candidacy. The Obama Campaign likewise interpreted it as a careless remark, to be treated as such, and emphasized the candidates’ friendship ("I know Hillary Clinton, and the last thing in the world she would want is to wish misfortune on anyone.") But the indignants had been stirred into action, and even such a levelheaded observer as Daniel Shorr of the NPR invoked the image of ill wishing.
What, then, did actually happen? Per Wall Street Journal, at a campaign stop Clinton gave an interview to the South Dakota Argus Leader editorial staff, which was by wire connected to the journalist swarm assembled in a nearby supermarket lobby. They had gathered, prompted by a rumor that she would resign. This was scotched early, and the journalists drifted away, only to be spurred again by a report of a New York Post bulletin already posted on the Drudge Report, with the Kennedy reference. Clinton’s staff was queried, and called the inference scurrilous. Clinton, emerging to make her campaign speech, apologized for the mishap.
What, then, was actually said? Well, Clinton, justifying her continued campaign, said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary sometime in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was shot in June [1969] in California. I don’t understand it." She had referenced the two events previously in interviews, specifically to Time magazine, explaining her continued campaigning in June, without eliciting comment. What was in the Post/Drudge story that coursed the excitement? The actual wording could not be checked, the Drudge Report archive as of this date is not directly accessible.
Among the ill-wishers, the Clintons’ ur-enemy Maureen Dowd added another dimension, noting Hillary’s reduced expectations, specifically a wish to be chosen for the vice-presidency, an unlikely desire to be fulfilled, given the campaign atmosphere, particularly Michelle Obama’s hatred for Hillary. Meanwhile, the Obama Campaign, aware of its thinness in policy-making savants, is looking to poach among Hillary’s star advisers who signed on her team when she was a shoe-in. New York Observer mentions such heavy-weights as Anthony Lake, Sandy Berger, Secretary Madeleine Albright and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. This would be wise, and would add experience and gravitas to the inspiration-heavy campaign, and most importantly, it might change the opinions of the voters who see the Obama vision as lacking experience –based practical solutions and thought. Interestingly, Obama’s own mild response to the Kennedy reference might be due to the fact that his own 1996 and 2004 campaigns received unexpected turns in his favor by sudden withdrawals of both Democratic and Republican opponents with personal problems.
Paul Krugman, in the Monday New York Times, summarizes the events well, identifying the Kennedy squabble as helpful only to the McCain campaign. He finds that current polls in Florida put McCain ahead of Obama, while Clinton sill comes out as the winner against the Republican. His advice appears to be a deal, for Clinton is to bow out gracefully, and for Obama, who will need the disgusted Hillary voters in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, to offer her the vice presidency. Not very unique, but entirely practical, and professional. Politicians have to learn to overcome personal prejudices, reduce expectations, ride out the storms without drowning and make compromises in the interests of common weal.
It is truly time for Democratic voters to get really worried. Sen. Obama is running ahead with elected delegate count in the primaries, but Sen. Clinton is collecting palpable majorities in red states that indicate lack of trust in the upstart politician with no record, combined with some racism. to be a continuing factor, with concern that in November an Obama candidacy might push a crucial number of Democratic and disenchanted Republican voters into casting their ballots for the anti-Bush war hero McCain. It says here that racism is minimal – it would not have come into play if Colin Powell were a candidate.
Have the Democrats turned a sure 2008 Presidential victory into a potential defeat? Will Obama, the most probable Democratic presidential candidate, will have the means to prove international and domestic political savvy to turn enough skeptical minds? Will the people who are seeing him as a dynamic and charismatic orator at huge rallies of young and new voters be persuaded that he can real with the nuts and bolts of actual issues, the ones that he has bypassed in his inspirational messages?
Put this together with the fact that Hillary will not give up, claiming her Florida and Michigan votes and insisting that Obama deliberately muddied the waters by not registering in Michigan as a candidate. Then came her Kennedy remark on Friday May 23, blown up by ill-wishers beyond the credible. She was warned of this eventuality even by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who saw it as a botched reference which can be easily exploited y kooks wanting to undermine a candidacy. The Obama Campaign likewise interpreted it as a careless remark, to be treated as such, and emphasized the candidates’ friendship ("I know Hillary Clinton, and the last thing in the world she would want is to wish misfortune on anyone.") But the indignants had been stirred into action, and even such a levelheaded observer as Daniel Shorr of the NPR invoked the image of ill wishing.
What, then, did actually happen? Per Wall Street Journal, at a campaign stop Clinton gave an interview to the South Dakota Argus Leader editorial staff, which was by wire connected to the journalist swarm assembled in a nearby supermarket lobby. They had gathered, prompted by a rumor that she would resign. This was scotched early, and the journalists drifted away, only to be spurred again by a report of a New York Post bulletin already posted on the Drudge Report, with the Kennedy reference. Clinton’s staff was queried, and called the inference scurrilous. Clinton, emerging to make her campaign speech, apologized for the mishap.
What, then, was actually said? Well, Clinton, justifying her continued campaign, said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary sometime in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was shot in June [1969] in California. I don’t understand it." She had referenced the two events previously in interviews, specifically to Time magazine, explaining her continued campaigning in June, without eliciting comment. What was in the Post/Drudge story that coursed the excitement? The actual wording could not be checked, the Drudge Report archive as of this date is not directly accessible.
Among the ill-wishers, the Clintons’ ur-enemy Maureen Dowd added another dimension, noting Hillary’s reduced expectations, specifically a wish to be chosen for the vice-presidency, an unlikely desire to be fulfilled, given the campaign atmosphere, particularly Michelle Obama’s hatred for Hillary. Meanwhile, the Obama Campaign, aware of its thinness in policy-making savants, is looking to poach among Hillary’s star advisers who signed on her team when she was a shoe-in. New York Observer mentions such heavy-weights as Anthony Lake, Sandy Berger, Secretary Madeleine Albright and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. This would be wise, and would add experience and gravitas to the inspiration-heavy campaign, and most importantly, it might change the opinions of the voters who see the Obama vision as lacking experience –based practical solutions and thought. Interestingly, Obama’s own mild response to the Kennedy reference might be due to the fact that his own 1996 and 2004 campaigns received unexpected turns in his favor by sudden withdrawals of both Democratic and Republican opponents with personal problems.
Paul Krugman, in the Monday New York Times, summarizes the events well, identifying the Kennedy squabble as helpful only to the McCain campaign. He finds that current polls in Florida put McCain ahead of Obama, while Clinton sill comes out as the winner against the Republican. His advice appears to be a deal, for Clinton is to bow out gracefully, and for Obama, who will need the disgusted Hillary voters in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, to offer her the vice presidency. Not very unique, but entirely practical, and professional. Politicians have to learn to overcome personal prejudices, reduce expectations, ride out the storms without drowning and make compromises in the interests of common weal.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sunday in the Park with Julie Andrews
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
I have something nice and personal to report, for a change. Being shown to our seats at an evening performance of a revival of Steven Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, at the Roundabout, we could not even enter our row – our center seats were occupied. After some shouting back and forth between the ushers and the occupant, the elegant gentleman sent his tickers up for the attendant to examine. The seats were right, but the performance was a matinee. With much apologizing, the man and his lady companion came out. Imagine everybody’s surprise, when the theatergoers recognized her, that British jaw, short curly graying hair, trim figure in a gray pants suit. It was Julie Andrews of My Fair Lady and Sound of Music fame. Of all people, it was my fate to throw one of my two all-time favorite musical actresses out of her seat. Another surprise, five minutes later they were seated in front of us, in two of four empty house seats. I can be as nonchalant as any New Yorker, but this was too much. I lost my cool and finding a working pen in my pocket, shamelessly asked her to celebrate our adventure by initialing my program. I now own a George program, inscribed "Thank you for understanding! Love Julie Andrews," which will be kept inside the sleeve of my original beat-up vinyl 1955 My Fair Lady vinyl record, with Andrews, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway. A truly gracious lady, I never got to tell her how I stood in line for eight hours for a standing room ticket, to hear her; another mysterious event got in the way - at intermission a Roundabout rep whisked Julie and her companion away. We acquired four new neighbors, who probably paid brokers’ ticket prices at $140, according to another neighbor, in NYC from Des Moines just for the shows. As for George, this revival is stunning although a bit hard to follow, but here goes.
There has always been respect if not love here for George Sondheim, lyricist/ composer of edgy musicals (b. 1930), product of an unhappy family life, who as a youngster attached himself to fatherly lyricist Oscar Hammerstein and composer Milton Babbitt and learned the trade by composing school musicals and gofering for Richard Rodgers. At 25 he wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurent’s West Side Story, two years later for Jule Styne and Laurent’s Gypsy, and in 1962 had his own successful musical on Broadway, A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, starring Zero Mostel, never stopping. Roundabout has revived many of his works: Company, a 1970 mixed message about family life, Pacific Overtures, a 1973 opus about Admiral Peary and Japan’s emergence from a primitive Asian monarchy into a world power, and Assassins, a 1990 true downer of the killers of American Presidents singing out their motivations. None of Sondheim’s melodies are hummable, except for Send in the Clowns, in the pleasant 1973 A Little Night Music, popularized by singer Judy Collins.
Now for the 1984 George, based on a huge 1886 painting by the pointillist Georges Seurat (d. 1891 at 32 from cirrhosis), which depicts, in shimmering light points of pure color, Parisians out for a stroll in the park of the Island of La Grande Jatte, stiff bourgeois men and women mixed with simple people, shop girls and soldiers. In the first act George poses his lonely model Dot among the gentry, moving among the people for his composition, and halfway through you notice that some players appear on the stage in multiple projected images, acting independently of the live persons, presumably an invention of the British producing company, Menier Chocolate Factory, whose 2007 revival won five 2007 Olivier Awards. Roundabout imported this production, along with leading British singers David Evans and Jenna Russell, excellent but hard to decipher, given Sondheim’s parabolic lyrics and music.
As the plot progresses, Dot (Jenna) reveals that she is pregnant and has found a kind baker who will take her to America. George does not care, and that brings on the 2nd Act, with Dot’s great grandson George, an artist, opening a lights show at a museum. Dot’s daughter Marie, his grandmother, in wheelchair, contributes earthy observations, and multiple copies of George converse with museum board members, directors and poaching out-of-state curators. This is a scathing critique of the arts scene, and George wants out, to do his own art, without having to court patrons.. In the 2nd half he succeeds, after Marie has passed away, landing on Grande Jatte, the park now surrounded by glass-walled structures. Figures from his family past flow past and tell him not to be intimidated and follow his bent in art, just like his great-grandfather did.
Julie Andrews, product of a different positive and upbeat Broadway, was noted applauding enthusiastically the ambivalent and darkly weighted Sondheim messages (although one might argue that G. B. Shaw, conceivably a Sondheim icon, was not upbeat, and had noir edges even in Pygmalion, the My Fair Lady’s prototype). Follow your own destiny, greatly simplified, appears to be the message of the Sondheim play, sort of affirming the author/composer’s own life and art patterns.
Sunday in the Park with George is playing at the Roundabout’s Studio 54 Theatre, 254 West 54th Street, Jan. 25-June 25, 2008
I have something nice and personal to report, for a change. Being shown to our seats at an evening performance of a revival of Steven Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, at the Roundabout, we could not even enter our row – our center seats were occupied. After some shouting back and forth between the ushers and the occupant, the elegant gentleman sent his tickers up for the attendant to examine. The seats were right, but the performance was a matinee. With much apologizing, the man and his lady companion came out. Imagine everybody’s surprise, when the theatergoers recognized her, that British jaw, short curly graying hair, trim figure in a gray pants suit. It was Julie Andrews of My Fair Lady and Sound of Music fame. Of all people, it was my fate to throw one of my two all-time favorite musical actresses out of her seat. Another surprise, five minutes later they were seated in front of us, in two of four empty house seats. I can be as nonchalant as any New Yorker, but this was too much. I lost my cool and finding a working pen in my pocket, shamelessly asked her to celebrate our adventure by initialing my program. I now own a George program, inscribed "Thank you for understanding! Love Julie Andrews," which will be kept inside the sleeve of my original beat-up vinyl 1955 My Fair Lady vinyl record, with Andrews, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway. A truly gracious lady, I never got to tell her how I stood in line for eight hours for a standing room ticket, to hear her; another mysterious event got in the way - at intermission a Roundabout rep whisked Julie and her companion away. We acquired four new neighbors, who probably paid brokers’ ticket prices at $140, according to another neighbor, in NYC from Des Moines just for the shows. As for George, this revival is stunning although a bit hard to follow, but here goes.
There has always been respect if not love here for George Sondheim, lyricist/ composer of edgy musicals (b. 1930), product of an unhappy family life, who as a youngster attached himself to fatherly lyricist Oscar Hammerstein and composer Milton Babbitt and learned the trade by composing school musicals and gofering for Richard Rodgers. At 25 he wrote the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurent’s West Side Story, two years later for Jule Styne and Laurent’s Gypsy, and in 1962 had his own successful musical on Broadway, A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, starring Zero Mostel, never stopping. Roundabout has revived many of his works: Company, a 1970 mixed message about family life, Pacific Overtures, a 1973 opus about Admiral Peary and Japan’s emergence from a primitive Asian monarchy into a world power, and Assassins, a 1990 true downer of the killers of American Presidents singing out their motivations. None of Sondheim’s melodies are hummable, except for Send in the Clowns, in the pleasant 1973 A Little Night Music, popularized by singer Judy Collins.
Now for the 1984 George, based on a huge 1886 painting by the pointillist Georges Seurat (d. 1891 at 32 from cirrhosis), which depicts, in shimmering light points of pure color, Parisians out for a stroll in the park of the Island of La Grande Jatte, stiff bourgeois men and women mixed with simple people, shop girls and soldiers. In the first act George poses his lonely model Dot among the gentry, moving among the people for his composition, and halfway through you notice that some players appear on the stage in multiple projected images, acting independently of the live persons, presumably an invention of the British producing company, Menier Chocolate Factory, whose 2007 revival won five 2007 Olivier Awards. Roundabout imported this production, along with leading British singers David Evans and Jenna Russell, excellent but hard to decipher, given Sondheim’s parabolic lyrics and music.
As the plot progresses, Dot (Jenna) reveals that she is pregnant and has found a kind baker who will take her to America. George does not care, and that brings on the 2nd Act, with Dot’s great grandson George, an artist, opening a lights show at a museum. Dot’s daughter Marie, his grandmother, in wheelchair, contributes earthy observations, and multiple copies of George converse with museum board members, directors and poaching out-of-state curators. This is a scathing critique of the arts scene, and George wants out, to do his own art, without having to court patrons.. In the 2nd half he succeeds, after Marie has passed away, landing on Grande Jatte, the park now surrounded by glass-walled structures. Figures from his family past flow past and tell him not to be intimidated and follow his bent in art, just like his great-grandfather did.
Julie Andrews, product of a different positive and upbeat Broadway, was noted applauding enthusiastically the ambivalent and darkly weighted Sondheim messages (although one might argue that G. B. Shaw, conceivably a Sondheim icon, was not upbeat, and had noir edges even in Pygmalion, the My Fair Lady’s prototype). Follow your own destiny, greatly simplified, appears to be the message of the Sondheim play, sort of affirming the author/composer’s own life and art patterns.
Sunday in the Park with George is playing at the Roundabout’s Studio 54 Theatre, 254 West 54th Street, Jan. 25-June 25, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Union Square Park – restaurant stopped
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
On April 17 this column bid a fond farewell to the Union Square Greenmarket, as we knew and loved it, in view of its displacement to the periphery of the Park. We also noted that the Union Square Community Council might soon take the matter of the conversion of the Pavilion into a restaurant to court, along with the other desecrations of the landmarked North Plaza and its adjacent areas.
It so happened, a week or so later, that, with the aid of a “green-minded” lawyer, the USCC, Carol Greitzer, a the former local city council person and others, spearheaded by the New York Parks Association, presided by Geoffrey Croft, sued the Parks Department and Union Square Partnership to cease renovation operations. A temporary injunction was granted by Judge John E. H. Stackhouse of the NYS Supreme Court, prohibiting the city to engage in any physical destruction, site preparation and/or construction pertaining to the renovation... Alas, it was too late for stopping the destruction of the North End pavement and its colorful painted maze, it had begun, as though the injunction had been expected, and a backhoe had already dug up the east part of the North Plaza, fenced in with heavy 8-ft cyclone wire, with only a walking path left in the center. Thus, Union Square greeted the sunny May Day, its customary day of celebration of 1st Amendment rights, with no lectern and no place for the population to gather.
On Wednesday, May 7, Supreme Court Justice Jane Solomon reached a truly Solomonic “split the baby” verdict (reported only in Metro and minor media, NYTimes where were you?), declaring that the restaurant planned for the Pavilion is inappropriate, but the balance of the playground, North End and adjacent restoration may go on. This leaves the parties of the lawsuit in a quandary, as of this, my deadline date. The $21M restoration product would have been the 120-seat seasonal restaurant, a bathroom and some other facilities in the Pavilion, a tree shaded Plaza, partly funded by a $5M anonymous donation (suspected as coming from the public-minded restaurateurs and Union Square Partnership co-chairman Danny Meyers, who has subsequently sworn an affidavit certifying that it is not his gift) and a highly desirable improved though tri-sected children’s playground, the latter funded by a $2.2M City Council grant. Barry Benepe of the USCC, the funding father of the Greenmarket system, has been heard to forecast that the US renewal project rests on all of the above legs, and pulling out the restaurant, no matter how distasteful that feature was to him and the other preservationists may endanger the beneficial parts of the project, such as the playgrounds renewal. Let us hope that it does not happen.
Meanwhile, the USP /Parks Department people have been reported to say that the restaurant project was not cast in stone, and they will reconsider (which may include appealing the NYSSC verdict). USCC people speak of pursuing their rights under the doctrine of parkland alienation, which may not permit certain significant changes in parks without approval of the NYS legislature. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, a parks-pay-for-themselves restoration advocate (this classic father and son clash sadly highlights the profundity of the confrontation of generations and cultures) has further identified the need to trim out some 14 trees on the North Plaza/ Pavilion periphery, as dead or dying. It is reported that this part of the project - already named Treegate by some quick minds - will be stopped, at least partially. Only two of the five Siberian elms will be removed. Meanwhile Team Bloomberg is looking forward to successful completion of the full renovation. Given their rate of success, that alone should scare the proponents of the project.
Walking through the Greenmarket on Saturday, May 10, was an encouraging experience. The Greenmarket is still there, mostly along Union Square West, and so were the crowds. The mild weather had brought out good-natured neighbors in thousands, smiling, sneezing and coughing. I would certainly wash all the produce after purchase, and one’s hands. The cut flower and plant vendors were everywhere, and the soft aroma of lilacs permeated the area. The rarely seen Lilies of the Valley were offered by two vendors, just in time for our Mothers’ Day bouquets, one each at the south end and the less noticeable eastern path of the park, where t-shirt and art goods sellers are more interspersed with the market.
Later in mid-day, about 40 lithe-bodied young women and men had brought their mats to the South Plaza, and did their Hatha Yoga excursuses in unison, under the guidance of an instructor whose hand-printed t-shirt proclaimed the event to be free, while his photographer assistant guarded a pile of the participants’ back-packs and street clothes. These smiling kids could hold the rocking bear figure for minutes, while the instructor corrected some individual kinks. The sight was certainly more impressive as those of stone-faced Chinese masses doing regimented exercises in Beijing parks.
..
On April 17 this column bid a fond farewell to the Union Square Greenmarket, as we knew and loved it, in view of its displacement to the periphery of the Park. We also noted that the Union Square Community Council might soon take the matter of the conversion of the Pavilion into a restaurant to court, along with the other desecrations of the landmarked North Plaza and its adjacent areas.
It so happened, a week or so later, that, with the aid of a “green-minded” lawyer, the USCC, Carol Greitzer, a the former local city council person and others, spearheaded by the New York Parks Association, presided by Geoffrey Croft, sued the Parks Department and Union Square Partnership to cease renovation operations. A temporary injunction was granted by Judge John E. H. Stackhouse of the NYS Supreme Court, prohibiting the city to engage in any physical destruction, site preparation and/or construction pertaining to the renovation... Alas, it was too late for stopping the destruction of the North End pavement and its colorful painted maze, it had begun, as though the injunction had been expected, and a backhoe had already dug up the east part of the North Plaza, fenced in with heavy 8-ft cyclone wire, with only a walking path left in the center. Thus, Union Square greeted the sunny May Day, its customary day of celebration of 1st Amendment rights, with no lectern and no place for the population to gather.
On Wednesday, May 7, Supreme Court Justice Jane Solomon reached a truly Solomonic “split the baby” verdict (reported only in Metro and minor media, NYTimes where were you?), declaring that the restaurant planned for the Pavilion is inappropriate, but the balance of the playground, North End and adjacent restoration may go on. This leaves the parties of the lawsuit in a quandary, as of this, my deadline date. The $21M restoration product would have been the 120-seat seasonal restaurant, a bathroom and some other facilities in the Pavilion, a tree shaded Plaza, partly funded by a $5M anonymous donation (suspected as coming from the public-minded restaurateurs and Union Square Partnership co-chairman Danny Meyers, who has subsequently sworn an affidavit certifying that it is not his gift) and a highly desirable improved though tri-sected children’s playground, the latter funded by a $2.2M City Council grant. Barry Benepe of the USCC, the funding father of the Greenmarket system, has been heard to forecast that the US renewal project rests on all of the above legs, and pulling out the restaurant, no matter how distasteful that feature was to him and the other preservationists may endanger the beneficial parts of the project, such as the playgrounds renewal. Let us hope that it does not happen.
Meanwhile, the USP /Parks Department people have been reported to say that the restaurant project was not cast in stone, and they will reconsider (which may include appealing the NYSSC verdict). USCC people speak of pursuing their rights under the doctrine of parkland alienation, which may not permit certain significant changes in parks without approval of the NYS legislature. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, a parks-pay-for-themselves restoration advocate (this classic father and son clash sadly highlights the profundity of the confrontation of generations and cultures) has further identified the need to trim out some 14 trees on the North Plaza/ Pavilion periphery, as dead or dying. It is reported that this part of the project - already named Treegate by some quick minds - will be stopped, at least partially. Only two of the five Siberian elms will be removed. Meanwhile Team Bloomberg is looking forward to successful completion of the full renovation. Given their rate of success, that alone should scare the proponents of the project.
Walking through the Greenmarket on Saturday, May 10, was an encouraging experience. The Greenmarket is still there, mostly along Union Square West, and so were the crowds. The mild weather had brought out good-natured neighbors in thousands, smiling, sneezing and coughing. I would certainly wash all the produce after purchase, and one’s hands. The cut flower and plant vendors were everywhere, and the soft aroma of lilacs permeated the area. The rarely seen Lilies of the Valley were offered by two vendors, just in time for our Mothers’ Day bouquets, one each at the south end and the less noticeable eastern path of the park, where t-shirt and art goods sellers are more interspersed with the market.
Later in mid-day, about 40 lithe-bodied young women and men had brought their mats to the South Plaza, and did their Hatha Yoga excursuses in unison, under the guidance of an instructor whose hand-printed t-shirt proclaimed the event to be free, while his photographer assistant guarded a pile of the participants’ back-packs and street clothes. These smiling kids could hold the rocking bear figure for minutes, while the instructor corrected some individual kinks. The sight was certainly more impressive as those of stone-faced Chinese masses doing regimented exercises in Beijing parks.
..
