Hyacinths, daffodils and pheasant\u2019s eye narcissi are in their glory; white tulips are massed all over the park. Magnolia, pink and white, have already started to drop their petals; gaudy yellow forsythia line the paths. The early trees, elm and maple, are showing green, while finger-sized shoots can be seen on the dogwood, wisteria, cherry, and even the horse chestnut, which appears not to have died again this year despite the blight.<\/p>\n
Rakeem, playing “The Girl from Ipanema” on his sax, occupied center stage at Bethesda Fountain, so I moved on to my second favorite spot, beneath a maple on the path toward the Boat House Restaurant. An opaque green fence blocked my view of the lake, and all in all I felt a little hemmed in, but once I tuned up and started my set with \u201cMaking Love Ukulele Style\u201d I might as well have stood atop Mauna Kea.<\/p>\n
A young couple walked by, stopped to confer, then came back to buy a CD. Mr. Ukulele was bound for Brazil. A man with several cameras around his neck emptied his pockets of $1.07 in change. Perhaps he had taken my picture from afar, but it seemed to me it was money for my music, not my image. An old man broke from his tour group to donate, and a Belgian woman stopped to hula but was hurried away by her male companion.<\/p>\n
A fifty-something man wanted to chat. \u201cYou look like you\u2019re having a ball,\u201d he said. “I should come out here. You know, I invented a device that makes bubbles as big as a car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a man who does big bubbles by the fountain,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that guy. I taught him everything he knows.\u201d<\/p>\n
A young man with a fishing rod stopped near me and, leaning his rod against the fence, rolled a joint. Given my own outlaw status, I played on without notice, but when he lit up and clouds of marijuana smoke wafted over the path, I rethought my live-and-let-live policy. People hurried by; one teenager noticed and asked for a puff. Before I could ask him to move on, however, he moved on, dropping a dollar in my case for my forbearance.<\/p>\n
I had a family of four doing the hula when Vasiliy came by, pushing his wheeled bass fiddle. A classically trained musician from Ukraine, Vasiliy was heading toward the Arcade to join John Boyd and his choir. He watched dad make a contribution, then asked me, \u201cIs this your first time out?\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him I\u2019d been out a few times already. \u201cI played all through the fall,\u201d he said, \u201cup to Christmas. Too cold, this is better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowds thinned after 1pm. Toward the end of my set I was singing to the birds, specifically, a fat robin pecking the lawn, and a bright red cardinal singing louder than me from a branch of the leafless mulberry tree. Another bird I could not identify, with black body, yellow beak and florescent blue head, danced among the rocks, then flew out of sight as I approached for a closer look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"