A beautiful Saturday in New York brought out the crowds, foreign and domestic. The acrobats had taken over the western stairs, with their loud exhortations to make noise. The entire plaza teemed with people enjoying the day, a very welcoming sight as seen from the eastern stairs, and for a moment I thought it might be possible to coexist with the shouting and clapping of the acrobats, but no. I was content to visit my maple tree, still leafy overhead. The baby mulberries were dripping with bright red, hard-skinned berries, while the enormous parent across the path bore no fruit.

A woman walked by and started me out with a dollar. Moments later, 2 people on bikes stopped to take pictures of The Boathouse Restaurant, and the yellow mums around the railing reflected in the lake. Before remounting their bikes, the woman asked for a picture with me. I put a lei around her neck; he gave me a dollar.

Two toddlers bopped by, put on leis and danced ($2); two young women did not dance ($2).

A girl and her mother told me they had lived in Hawaii for 8 years. “I can play the ukulele,” the girl said. I handed it to her and she plucked out a tune. “I can play the ukulele behind my head.” The girl wrestled my uke into position, but she could not play her song. “This should be higher,” she said, plucking the G-string.

“It’s tuned differently than your soprano uke; it’s an octave lower,” I said.

“So that’s why it doesn’t work.” She handed the uke back to me, turned and walked away, followed by her mother, who waved “Aloha” without turning around.

A 70-something stopped to hear a few bars of “Give Me a Ukulele,” and he gave me a dollar. I asked him what had grabbed him, was it the song? “No,” he said, “it’s the whole…the whole presentation.”