{"id":1050,"date":"2018-07-31T12:04:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T16:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2018-07-31T12:04:36","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T16:04:36","slug":"a-perfectly-adequate-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"A Perfectly Adequate Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday was neither too hot, nor too humid.\u00a0 The reds, purples and pinks of begonia, ageratum and allium dominated the entrance at 72nd<\/sup> St.\u00a0 The arrival of white cosmos, just beginning to show, held the promise of more variety in the future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Randy sang \u201cImagine\u201d at the Imagine Mosaic.\u00a0 Farther down the path, red and pink dog roses made a nice show across from the plaque of peace, a tribute to John Lennon from the nations of the world.\u00a0 People climbed the rock to get a better look at the contributors; without irony they snapped pictures of the list, which began with Afghanistan and ended with Zaire.\u00a0 Across the path, a giant jewelweed waited to be pulled, and a nearby nettle\u2019s burr-encrusted branches stuck out like a rooftop tv antenna.\u00a0 New life was evident in a clump of astilbe, and farther still down the path, under the pin oak, the wood anemone thrived.\u00a0 I resisted the impulse to count the flowers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At Bethesda Fountain, Colin, the singing cowboy, told me he\u2019d be done soon, so I set up and waited.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first contribution of the day was 51 cents from a pre-teen girl who watched while I waited for Colin. \u00a0A 20-something from Wisconsin happily danced a hula for a dollar, followed by 2 more badgers for $2.\u00a0 \u201cAre you with a tour from Wisconsin?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, just us,\u201d was the answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two Argentinian women danced next.\u00a0 As they walked off, having dropped a dollar in my case, I started to sing \u201cI Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone.\u201d\u00a0 After 8 bars, my low-G string broke.\u00a0 A guy walking by said, \u201cI hate when that happens,\u201d and walked on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I dug a new string out of my case, sat down and put it on.\u00a0 For the rest of my set, I had to tighten it after every song \u2013 sometimes during a song \u2013 until it settled down.\u00a0 With about 30 minutes to go, the park seemed to empty out.\u00a0 During that time only 1 person chipped in a dollar, a 40-something from Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAre you a rocket scientist?\u201d I asked, exhausting my knowledge of Huntsville in a single question.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I am,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cHow did you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIs it supposed to be a secret?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to have to turn you in,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cJust kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My take for the day was $7.51, not great, yet not too bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday was neither too hot, nor too humid.\u00a0 The reds, purples and pinks of begonia, ageratum and allium dominated the …
keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,62],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-i-wonder-where-my-little-hula-girl-has-gone","tag-imagine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mrukulele.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}