The last day in July is another gem. The homeless man is singing \u201cAll You Need Is Love\u201d at Strawberry Fields. The chestnut leaves, as expected, are starting to brown from blight. Across the road, past Daniel Webster and the hot dog stand, the pods on the catalpa trees are 18\u201d long. There is the usual commotion up on the mall, where the acrobats whip up the crowd, but all is quiet at Bethesda Fountain. I keep on going; one day a week in the sun is sufficient.<\/p>\n
A couple stopped to chat. He was from Ireland, County Galway; she was from Jersey City. \u201cI\u2019ll give you a dollar if you play something Irish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I faked a couple of bars of \u201cThe Harp Which Once Through Tara\u2019s Halls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Satisfied, he reached for his wallet. \u201cWe used to sing that in school when we were little kids,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve heard it since.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple of Portuguese girls stopped to hula. One of them showed me how much she\u2019d learned to play the uke from the internet.<\/p>\n
No sooner had I taken the leis from the Portuguese girls than I heard a cry of delight. \u201cOh, look, it\u2019s the hula man. Remember me?\u201d asked a dark-haired twenty-something. \u201cFrom Beirut? I still have the video.\u201d While she searched her backpack for her camera\/phone, she made the introductions. \u201cThis is my sister and my cousin and her friend from Queens. Let\u2019s hula.\u201d She pressed some buttons then handed the camera off to her cousin\u2019s friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did we dance to before?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHukihukihuki,\u201d she said, handing out the leis. So this time we danced to \u201cMy Little Grass Shack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI come every year,\u201d she said, while her cousin dropped a fiver. \u201cI see you next year, ok?\u201d<\/p>\n
Aloha to that. A young man told me as he walked by that I was the best yet. I presume he meant best busker and thanked him for the compliment, which was all he had to give. A group of Italians, who did not have time for a hula yesterday, were back today with time to kill. A gay guy in a porkpie hat did a languorous hula for his friends. Add a couple of toddler hulas, and before you can say humahumanukunukuapua\u2019a there was over $16 in my case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"