New York City, May 31 — The park is quiet at this hour. It’s one of those brilliant Manhattan mornings — clear, cool and breezy. The world feels as though it was recreated overnight and in this city of endless possibilities, the possibilities this day seem endless.
An old friend happens to be in town pursuing a long-held dream to have his musical produced. It’s going to happen at the New York Musical Theater Festival at the end of July. If the right people see and like it …
I have an appointment on another matter just before lunch. In the meantime my main concern is today’s New York Times and a freshly-squeezed orange juice, coffee and a muffin from a fancy French bakery across the street.
The city is full of parks, large and small. St. Catherine’s is a block-long oasis on New York’s East Side on First Avenue between 67th and 68th streets. The park is half a block deep shaded by trees that look like sycamores — London plane trees. There is playground equipment for children, sturdy cement picnic tables with inlaid chess boards and beds of hosta, white hydrangeas and pink roses along with a few weeds for city dwellers with no yards of their own. On days like this, the park serves as a communal living room for the neighborhood.
Soon the park will be crawling with mothers and cavorting children. For now a couple of groggy all-nighters slouch on benches amid day-old newspapers. A gray-haired woman in an orange blouse seems to be removing ivy from the flower beds. She says she comes to the park to pull weeds.
“I just enjoy weeding,” she explains. This is her front yard.
Down the right column on page 1 of The Times is a story about Mayor Michael Bloomberg intention to ban what we call “Big Slurps,” supersized servings of sugared drinks. Nothing larger than 16 ounces will be allowed. Another shot fired in the war on obesity. The thing is Manhattanites already look amazingly fit. This is a city of walkers. Of course, New Yorkers being New Yorkers will find a way to get around Mayor Bloomberg’s law somehow. Buy one 16-ounce drink, get the second one for a penny.
There’s an appreciation by Ry Cooder for Doc Watson, the bluegrass musician, who died on Tuesday at 89. I was fortunate to see Doc twice, once at Horsepens 40, a bluegrass festival near Gasden, Ala., and again at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Like Johnny Cash, another American original, Doc Watson’s music has an almost universal appeal. My earliest memory of Doc is hearing him sing Mississippi John Hurt’s “Make Me Down a Pallet on your Floor.” I was hooked.
And then, wow, here in The Times, A Section, page 19, is Avery Dennison, a child who grew up a block down the street. Avery’s name appears on a full page ad congratulating winners of The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. What a nice and unexpected shout-out. She is one of 15 Mississippi school kids named.
Avery finished at the Mississippi School for the Arts this spring and plans to continue her studies at the Kansas City Art Institute in August. Her winning piece, “Wise Anxiety,” is included in an exhibit at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan this month.
One good way to see the city and New Yorkers up close is to use public transportation. For the uninitiated, the subways are loud, dirty and unfathomable underground labyrinths. Fear not, New Yorkers are unfailingly helpful to the bewildered traveler. When pausing to get my bearings on a subway map, as often as not, someone stopped to ask if I needed help. When I mentioned this to a woman next to me on a bus, she said, “Don’t tell anybody. You’ll ruin our reputation.”
There are impromptu music performances in the subways. On this trip I happened upon two older Latino men — one with a accordion, the other an acoustic guitar — serenading waiting commuters. In Union Square a serious young man with a beard and a dirty tan suit sang Irish folk songs while cranking a stringed instrument I’ve never seen. Both acts were terrific … and free.
Breakfast eaten, newspaper read, I rise to go. The kids and mamas with their strollers are trickling in. The day is young and still ripe with possibility.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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