The heat wave may have broken, but it was still hot. At the Imagine Mosaic, it was\nuncharacteristically still; no Beatle\u2019s music today. Bethesda Fountain, on the other hand, was an\namplified mess. Two guitars, a violin\nand an accordion blasted bad behavior from all four quadrants, while a\nbattalion of aggressively begging Buddhists wove through the crowd, handing out\namulets and just as quickly snatching them back when they didn\u2019t get paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was happy to take up my position in the shade under the Norway Maple.\u00a0 After a while, a 3-year-old girl walked by with her mom or nanny.\u00a0 She was taken with my solar-powered hula girls, and every time the adult took her hand and asked her to come along, she yanked it free and squatted down to continue studying them. In exasperation, the nanny\/mom tossed me a dollar, swept the girl up under her arm and marched her squealing away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHave you got time for a hula today?\u201d A girl of 9 or 10 came forward. With a lei around her neck, equipped with my\nhula instructions, she danced awkwardly, while her dad filmed and her mom hula-ed\nbehind the camera. \u201cCome show her how it\u2019s\ndone,\u201d I said to mom, waving a lei. She\ntook it and joined her daughter for a touching mother-daughter dance. A grinning dad gave me a buck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like my last outing, with 15 minutes to go, I still hadn\u2019t made carfare.\u00a0 Then, as if that realization had conjured them up, an Italian couple stopped to ask about my hula girls.\u00a0 \u201cQuanto questo?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFive dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCinque,\u201d he says to his wife.\u00a0 They discuss the color, turquoise or yellow.\u00a0 Deciding on turquoise, he hands the yellow doll back to me and says, \u201cQuattro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCinque,\u201d I correct him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cVa bene.\u201d\u00a0 He gives me a fiver, and, leaving, he and his wife exchange words. She flashes me a smile; he gives me another dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Singing \u201cLittle Grass Shack,\u201d in wonder at how well the universe treats this \u201clittle Hawaiian, a homesick island boy,\u201d\u00a0I was graced with another miracle: at my final chord, a tall blonde floated a fiver into my case<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"