1. Drones Come to the Hukilau

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    May 8, 2015 by admin

    The day brought brilliantly sun-lit, hot, mid-summer weather. The chestnut blossoms have creamy white flowers more than halfway up the stalk; people have spread blankets and picnic under the dense foliage. Because I know the blight will soon turn the chestnut into a brown and withered corpse, I was put in mind of some Mexican art, where skeletons can be seen cavorting, death and life commingled.

    The sprinklers are on, surprising walkers from time to time with cool spray. The flame-like leaves of the catalpa are on the boil, sprouting from the branches in all directions.

    “Have you got time for a hula today?” A family from Chicago stopped and, with a little encouragement, two young girls, maybe 4 and 6, rocked from side to side and waved their arms in dance. Dad gave me a fiver.

    Three passersby, in rapid succession, dumped pocket-loads of change in my case. “You should have an umbrella,” a young man advised. “You’ll burn to a crisp out here.”

    “I’ve got a hat, SPF 70, and a bottle of water,” I assured him. “Thanks for your concern.”

    A large group of students from the Netherlands wandered into the plaza. A girl with a camera moved to the rhythms, but would not hula, nor would any of her friends. After a few tunes, however, they couldn’t help themselves, and pretty soon a half dozen Dutch girls donned leis, lined up and danced to the Hukilau. They told me they were from Brabant, that part of southern Netherlands that was the battlefield of The Thirty Years’ War. At the end of the dance they wandered off, although 2 girls did come back with a tip for me.

    People were looking to the sky, so I looked too. High in the air was a drone, an aircraft maybe 18 inches across with a camera mounted on top, and 4 whirring propellers. It climbed to 50 feet over the fountain, flew over the lake, descended to 15 feet, hovered, rising and falling at the operator’s will. “This has got to be illegal,” I commented to a Greek man on a bicycle who stood, with me, watching.

    “There he is,” said the Greek, pointing out a man sitting at the west end of the plaza, who appeared to be staring into a monitor.

    The drone was a major distraction that lasted 10-15 minutes. I kept playing, but people were focused on the sky; it was impossible to ignore. And it was totally creepy. I strummed through to the end of my set and started to count my money, $11.82.

    Three little girls were attracted by my leis. They gathered around me while I packed up. “Have you got time for a hula today?” I asked them. Their eyes widened, they looked around for the man who had brought them to the park. He looked at me, made a quick evaluation, said ok. So I passed out the leis, put one back on myself, and off we went to the hukilau.

    “Turn to your dad so he can take a picture,” I said.

    “He’s not our dad,” they told me in unison. “He’s our uncle.”

    At the end of the dance, uncle gave me a buck. The little girls squealed as they walked away, “that was so much fun.”

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  2. Meta Returns

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    May 6, 2015 by admin

    The pink, rose and yellow tulips, punctuated by white daffodils, lead the visitor into the park entrance, where behind the benches, setting off the greening rose bushes, white tulips are in their glory.

    There was a disturbance at the Imagine Mosaic; a drunken youth was throwing f-bombs at the guitarists and the tourists alike. The guitarist, one of the regulars in the platoon system there, tried to calm him down, only to inflame him further. There would be no aloha here, so I just kept walking.

    The chestnut blossoms are as long as my hand, and tiny white flowers are starting to emerge from the bottom of the stem. Most trees are in full leaf. Over the sunny weekend, the pilot light-like growing tips on the catalpa have strengthened to a slow simmer. The silver bell tree at Cherry Hill is dressed out in, well, silver bells. Azalias have started showing their color.

    An old man playing a small accordion or musette occupied the bench at the fountain, so I kept moving up the path. At the benches sat Meta, the harpist. I wondered when I’d see her, or her partner Arlen, the dulcimer player. We exchanged greetings, then she said, “I heard you got kicked out of the park.”

    “Yes, twice. Where did you hear that?”

    “From Paul.”

    Paul is a young homeless man who, with a full black beard and long black coat worn in all weather, lives somewhere in the park and, apparently, keeps his ear to the ground for busker gossip. I haven’t seen him in years, not since the last outbreak of the Quiet Zone Wars. Meta and I discussed the situation. She had been rousted too, as an unlicensed vendor. She mentioned someone named Jeff who works with, or otherwise has a relationship with Norman Siegel of the NYCLU; Jeff personally had come to argue her case with the rangers. We discussed contingencies and next steps; we’ve both survived spring sweeps before. When someone stopped to ask her to play a piece by Bach, I moved on.

    A school group from The Netherlands stopped to hula. Two boys donned leis while their classmates hooted and snapped photos. When I looked down after they’d gone, there were 5 singles in my case. A dog walker told me, “Very charming, you and your little ukulele.”

    Maggie and her master, Marcel, paid a visit. I’d alerted him to Maggie’s picture of the other day, for which he wanted to reward me with a dollar. I should probably start giving Marcel money, because Maggie is a big draw for photographers. While she sat in rapt attention during “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone,” a man took pictures from several angles, netting me $2.

    I got 26 cents from a 30-something, and a dollar each from 2 old ladies.

    “It’s the ukulele man,” shrieked a teen from Barnegat, NJ. She and her friend enjoyed a fast hula before running off to find their group.

    Meta was still at it when I walked out of the park. “Did you have a good day?” she asked.

    “Always,” said I. And, on yet another beautiful day, I believed it to be true.

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  3. No Problem

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    May 1, 2015 by admin

    I entered the park with some trepidation. There were 3 guitarists in Strawberry Fields, one playing, one on deck and one counting his money on the fringes of the throng. At the outcropping with the international plaque, the homeless guitarist made it 4 musicians operating in the Quiet Zone. I looked around for the Park Rangers, hardly noticing the white dangling bells of the Solomon Seal spreading beneath the trees, or the delicate violets emerging from heart-shaped leaves in the lawn.

    At Bethesda Fountain, Rakeem was blowing up a storm on his saxophone. I asked Jim, the big bubble man, if he’d had trouble yesterday. “Yeah, they tried to chase me, but I made them call their sergeant and she said I was okay.”

    Rakeem said, “I haven’t had any problem, and I just saw them walking by a few minutes ago. They rousted you? With that puny little uke?”

    I set up on the path, looked around, started to play. Not long afterward, an energetic young man asked if I could play while he rapped. I asked him for a beat and he started huffing and bupping in syncopated time.

    “Sorry, man, I’m pretty much a plink-a-plink kind of guy.” After playing around with a few more chord patterns, he found one he liked (Am, E7, Am, E7) and off he rapped about hanging in the park with the ukulele man. About 10 feet away, a cameraman and soundman captured the show.

    His name was Ed Bassmaster, a YouTube star, and he was gathering material for his upcoming tv show on CMT (Country Music Television). Ed pulled $4 out of his own pocket, then a production assistant gave me another $20 after I signed a release. He took my card and said he’d let me know when the show was on.

    An old man took my picture and gave me a dollar. Another man emptied his pocket of quarters; he was a Brit, judging by his “you’re welcome” when I thanked him. A Japanese man listened to “Honolulu Baby.” After 2 verses, when the 3rd chorus came around, he started singing quietly with me. We chatted for a while. “Haru wa kite,” I said.

    “Yes, spring has arrived,” he said. He dug deeply into his backpack and pulled out a change purse. Turning his back to me, he seemed to be counting for a long time, then he put 17 pennies in my case.

    A black man, bopping his head to the music, walked by with his girlfriend. As he got close, he let go of her hand, crumpled up a single and tossed it, like a foul shot, into my case.

    A couple from Virginia came in view. “Have you got time for a hula today?”

    “No, no, but I like your music,” said the man, giving me a dollar. “If we did have time, I’m sure my wife would love to hula.” A guitar player himself, he was interested in my instrument, how it was tuned. I handed it to him; once he got used to the missing 2 strings, he was playing beautifully. It wasn’t long after that I had a lei around his wife’s neck and off she went to the Hukilau. “Boy, that’s worth something,” he said, handing me a 10-spot.

    Every few minutes, it seemed, someone was giving me money: a few teenagers, 2 German girls, a dog walker who swooped past, dropped a buck, and said, “That’s because you sound so happy.”

    By the end of my set, I’d made $47.76, a very fine take for a day that started out with so much anxiety.

    Leaving the park, I saw the song and dance man whom I warned last year to lose the amplifier. Waiting patiently for him to finish his number were 2 park rangers, not Officers Brown and Wheeler this time, rather Officers Thomas and Gonzales. They wanted him to turn off the amp, and to take down the self-promoting sign he’d rigged to the balustrade.

    I recognized Officer Thomas from years past and, explaining what had happened yesterday, asked if the rules had changed. When I named Brown and Wheeler, a knowing look crossed her face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If you aren’t amplified and are at least 50 feet from a monument, no problem.”

    “Would you say it’s 50 feet from the fountain to dry ground?”

    Officer Gonzales took a good look. “No problem,” she said.

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