A day in May sitting in the Park

The Column: 05.12.23

I go to the park because I don’t read the paper because there are too many celebrities to keep track of like Madonna, My Maia, Meghan Markle, Marla Maples, Mary Murray, Marilyn Manson, Marsha Mason, Marky Mark, Mike Marcus, Melissa McCarthy, Mo’Nique, Moses Maimonides, Lin-Manuel Miranda, not to mention Mitch McConnell and Miss Minnesota — the mind spins at the multiplicity of eminence and immortality that I’ve moved away from mass media and the megaworld and simply go walk in the park and admire the nameless walkers. benchwarmers, birdwatchers, ballplayers, and realize that celebrity being so widespread, it is anonymity that is special. Fame is an old story and the nameless are a delightful mystery.

It’s Central Park, 840 acres in the middle of Manhattan, land bought by the state legislature in 1856 at the urging of idealists like the poet William Cullen Bryant, designed by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, and the work was completed in 1876, a peaceful paradise where a person can move at a stately pace or perch in a peaceful spot and observe vegetation, wildlife, humanity, or consult the heart, whatever appeals at the moment.

Timing is everything. In 1856, the tract was rocky, swampy, unurbanized, and had the legislature not moved promptly, developers would’ve figured out how to drain and level the land and the grid would’ve swallowed it and today it would be blocks and blocks of rectangles. Instead we enjoy this fabulous gift from the 19^th century.

That the seed was sown by a famous poet is astonishing. Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” was his big hit; my grandma Dora knew passages of it by heart, especially his admonition to go to your grave unafraid, with unfailing trust, as one wraps a blanket around himself and lies down to sleep.

Well, they didn’t have TikTok back then so they had to do their best with what they had, such as poetry.

What they did have, besides poetry, was a sense of the common good, which New York legislators demonstrated when they bought the swamp and rocky hills and made Belvedere Castle and the Pinetum and Ramble and Great Lawn. Public parks are monuments to that sensibility, along with schools and libraries, the idea that with minimal police supervision, we ordinary folk can commingle peacefully on common ground, respecting each other’s space and dignity. I’ve sat on the benches near the reservoir where some jazz musicians like to gather when the weather is nice, a bass and sax and sometimes drums, and now and then a person has struck up a conversation with me, often starting with “Beautiful day” and then wending into something that happened yesterday or will occur soon, then maybe their life story. If you listen and respond, people will talk. It’s a city where everybody has a story they’d be glad to tell you. Notice their cane and they’ll tell you where they fell, chasing a cab, and the orthopedist that wanted to do surgery.

The daily mass killings have made plenty of people uneasy about public spaces but I live in the past, I don’t read stories about men firing assault weapons into crowds. There is nothing to be learned except that there are wackos around, some dangerous, which we already knew.

One of them was hanging out in Central Park on a December day in 1980 who’d flown in from Hawai'i with the intention of killing John Lennon and waited for him at 72nd Street and accosted him and shot him in the back and killed him. He did it, he explained in order to become famous. He is still in state prison.

That corner of Central Park West and 72^nd is vividly remembered by people my age and the power of the memory is not the death of a celebrity but the death of a 40-year-old man, a husband and father, a friend, a musician, robbed of his life, robbed of ten-thousand walks in the park. It’s the life that’s precious, not his fame or fortune.

The city created a memorial to Lennon in the park, with the inscription “Imagine,” after his famous song, but it was a bad idea. The park isn’t a cemetery and you can imagine on your own. You walk around and hear French and Japanese and Spanish and imagine the immigrants drawn here for centuries. You see the cellist sitting in a field playing a Bach sonata and you feel the soul of the city, wanting to do honor to greatness selflessly. You sit on a bench and someone says, “Beautiful day,” and you agree and you’re hearing a monologue about a crazy girlfriend and the treachery of e-bikes. Anyway, I gotta go. Thanks for listening. Welcome to New York.

---

PUBLICATION DAY - SATURDAY, MAY 13 - ORDER NOW to read or give as a gift!

(FYI - autographed copies and personalized will be slightly delayed)

CLICK HERE!

Add that writer’s touch with a set of 8 Notecards - CLICK HERE!

Garrison Keillor has a lot to say about cheerfulness in his new book, titled (yes) Cheerfulness. With this set of eight notecards — each featuring a different colorful photo and quote from the book — you’re ready to send a little cheer to brighten someone’s day. Approximately 5" x 7". 

NOTECARD QUOTES

Cheerfulness is a great American virtue, the essence of who we are when we’re cooking with gas: rise and shine, qwitcher bellyaching, step up to the plate and swing for the fences, do your best and forget the rest, da doo ron ron ron da doo ron ron.
***

The uncertainty of tomorrow makes today rather cheerful. Beautiful, in fact. This is our
time. We’re lucky to have been born when we were, any later and we wouldn’t know how lucky we are, any earlier and we’d be deceased.
***

Cheer up. Put your bare feet on the floor in the morning and meet the world’s
indifference with a light heart. Pull on your pants, buckle your belt, get your head on
straight and go to the work you were put here to do. The world will be improved by your enthusiasm.
***

The secret of cheerfulness is to Delete. Cut out watching golf or basketball on TV, loud
restaurants, science fiction, most of Florida, the Book of Revelation, broadcast
journalism, and irony, and you’ll be much happier.
***

Gloom is just like carbuncles:
Yours is the same as your uncle’s Whereas the hilarious
Is wildly various
Like the wildlife found in the jungles.
***

Work is crucial. Usefulness can lead to genius. Edison invented the talking machine to
help execs dictate letters and Caruso sang into it and Jimmie Rodgers and King Oliver
and the seeds of jazz and blues blew around the world.
***

Happiness is circumstantial, bliss is brief, joy is for angels and small children,
contentment is fragile and easily interrupted, gaiety doesn’t happen until eighty, and for jubilation you need to find a good roller coaster and someone to ride it with you and
scream, but cheerfulness is a choice, like choosing chocolate rather than a spoonful of
mud. Take the chocolate.
***

Cheerfulness is a choice. Every morning you’re offered Anxiety, Bitterness,
Cheerfulness, Dread, Ennui, and Forgetfulness. It’s a new day, there is work to be done, you are loved, the coffee is on, so choose C. C is always the correct.