Parks and the Arts Can Transform Us

Stepping into nature helps to boost our spirits and elevate our world

A sweet poodle mix twirled on her back, inviting us to pet her belly.

Little kids romped around and played with a large beach ball.

And some older couples and younger ones danced to the music of Rose’s Pawn Shop, a folk-rock group, while many sat on lawn chairs or on blankets next to picnic tables under the stars in a bower at Brand Park in Glendale, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles.

It was my third night of outdoor events this past week, events that were all held at parks or other green spaces in Southern California.

As I listened to Rose’s Pawn Shop play its tunes, some of which, as Carol, my wife, pointed out, had a country sound with banjo, fiddle and mandolin players, I was reminded of my days at the New York City Parks Department in 1988 and 1989, when I enjoyed the splendors of being at parks and along the waterfront in Gotham.

At a time when our national parks and arts budgets are being cut by the Trump administration, we should all keep in mind how glorious and how critical it is for the soul to immerse ourselves in nature and to be able to do so with loved ones, who also appreciate green space, as well as music, theater, dance and other forms of art.

While Trump is threatening to intervene in the New York Mayor’s race and has defamed Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, by falsely claiming that Mamdani is an anti-Semite, it might be useful to remember an earlier era when Ed Koch, mayor of New York from 1977 through 1989, handled Trump years ago.

Mamdani, a state assemblyman, won the Democratic primary earlier this year with innovative ideas about making New York City more affordable. He has inspired many New Yorkers with his eloquence, his progressive stance and his ideas, such as freezes on rent and free city buses, among other proposals.

Koch too gave hope to New Yorkers, who were suffering during a fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. He turned around the city, restored its economic solvency, and improved the quality of life for so many residents of Gotham decades ago.

The consummate New Yorker and a self-made man, Koch stood up to everyone, including the solipsist in chief, then a real estate developer, who had a contract to renovate Wollman Rink in Central Park in the late 1980s.

When Trump realized that his attempts to intimidate Koch had failed, the solipsist and blusterer in chief, in an effort to impress the mayor, pushed his employees so hard that Trump’s company completed work on Wollman Rink a bit early and perhaps even under budget, if memory serves.

Such a prospect would seem impossibly quaint now when Trump recklessly balloons our budget deficit and disrupts our economy with chaotic tariffs and mass firings, while he fails to make good on pledges or boasts, such as his claim that he could bring peace to the Middle East or Ukraine in 24 hours.

I can recall going to a night out at Wollman Rink for employees of the NYC Parks Department and skating around the ice with some colleagues in the late 1980s.

We had a good time, as we often did at such gatherings.

A fan of the city’s parks, Koch chose Henry J. Stern as commissioner of the department in the early 1980s, and the mayor would often show up at parks events.

I remember when the city in 1988 opened the remodeled Central Park Zoo, devoid of the bars of the old zoo and with more open space for the animals, including penguins and sea lions, to splash in the water.

At the zoo opening, Koch, who was known to like the nickname of Hizzoner, came to the afternoon event and gave a nice off-the-cuff speech in which he told everyone in attendance that this should be one of the five or 10 places in Gotham where we could all come, bring a date and have a great time.

I can also recall when Commissioner Stern hosted a 100^th birthday party for the late Robert Moses, the legendary parks commissioner and city planner, who had built so many of New York’s bridges, tunnels and parks.

We held the birthday celebration in 1988 at the Central Park Arsenal, where Mayor Koch and former Mayor Robert Wagner, as well as Robert Moses’ widow, Commissioner Stern and others spoke glowingly, for the most part, of Moses, who was somewhat controversial because he damaged neighborhoods when he constructed highways and buildings and because of his views on minorities, which may have been racist.

To be fair to Moses, it is also true that he did indeed build many of the city’s parks, more parks perhaps than any urban planner before him.

Quoting from Julius Caesar, Robert Caro wrote of Moses in The Power Broker, a biography of the urban planner, “He bestrode the narrow world like a colossus.”

If I may add an amusing anecdote to this story, I will never forget when Koch was leaving the Arsenal that afternoon after his speech; he walked toward the elevator on the main floor of the parks headquarters, and I said hello.

He stuck out his hand, which I shook.

“Mayor Koch, I liked your reference to Shakespeare,” said I, wearing my Parks Department nametag.

The mayor, who had quoted that line from Caro’s book during his speech, grinned and said, “Didya?”

“Yes,” I said, as I recited the verse from Julius Caesar.

While he filed into the elevator, which took him down to the first floor, Koch craned his neck, and, though I could be wrong, he appeared to try to read my nametag in the midst of the crowd of other Parkies.

Prior to leaving the birthday celebration at the Arsenal, Koch had said near the end of his speech that urban planners like Moses still existed.

“They’re out there,” Koch said with a smile on his face.

I smiled, too.

Though I knew that Moses was controversial, he did have “tenacity and vision,” words that my supervisor at the NYC Parks Department, Ann L. Buttenwieser, would later use to describe me at the opening of the “Baseball Ferry,” a form of urban transportation that I conceptualized in 1988.

The ferry, which I was able to implement in the summer of 1989 with the support of Ann and Commissioner Stern, took fans from various locations in the city to the World’s Fair Marina, part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, home at the time of Shea Stadium, where the New York Mets then played baseball games.

I also wanted a ferry to take fans to Yankee games, but at the time that was not possible because the state of New York had invested millions of dollars in the Oak Point Link, a full-freight access route that, if built, would cut a swath across the Harlem River slips near Yankee Stadium.

(Years later, the Yankee Clipper would follow the “Baseball Ferry” and make stops along the Harlem River for Yankee games.)

As I have written before, I gave the keynote address for the “Baseball Ferry” on August 4, 1989, at Pier 11 in lower Manhattan, where we christened the boat.

Introducing me that day was Ann, a longtime parks and waterfront advocate, who was the head of waterfront planning for the NYC Parks Department.

Ann, like Commissioner Stern, had provided her imprimatur to the ferry. From the moment I gave her my proposal for the “Baseball Ferry” in 1988, Ann backed me completely, and she helped shepherd the project through a bureaucratic maze.

I have written about both Ann and Commissioner Stern in pieces for Thrive Global, “The Floating Pool Lady Floats Again” in May 2021, and “My Best Job Ever – At the New York City Parks Department” in June 2019.

In those articles, I discussed, as I did in my recent post on Substack, “Jesus Embraces Everyone at the Hollywood Bowl,” the boon that it is for all of us to enjoy recreational and arts activities at parks and along the waterfront in New York, Southern California or anywhere else.

Getting out into nature, enhanced by creative endeavors, is therapeutic for everyone, and in fact some psychiatrists and psychologists prescribe time out in nature for their patients, as Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently revealed in one of his CNN podcasts, “Chasing Life.”

Ann and Commissioner Stern would, of course, agree with the benefits of being outdoors in parks.

Commissioner Stern was a brilliant man, who had gone to Bronx Science, CCNY and Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Ralph Nader and one of the youngest graduates in the history of the school.

Famously eccentric, he was known to talk to trees and to scoop cold Progresso soup from a can.

He also loved parks, as did Ann, with whom I became good friends.

Like Commissioner Stern, Ann is a brilliant public servant and evangelist for parks; she was like a surrogate mother to me.

An urban historian, who has written books on the New York waterfront and who in the late 1980s taught at Columbia University, Ann introduced me to many of the other young Parks employees, with whom I played softball games in Central Park and with whom I went to baseball games at Shea Stadium.

I also attended other fun outdoor events, including Shakespeare in the Park, where I saw a number of wonderful performances in the 1980s starring actors such as Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, as well as summer concerts of the New York Philharmonic, including one led by conductor Zubin Mehta, concerts that took place on the Great Lawn.

Shakespeare in the Park and the New York Philharmonic concerts on the Great Lawn were free events that raised the quality of life for all of us, who lived in the city.

Recently, as I mentioned earlier, I attended three outdoor events in Southern California, including the free concert at Brand Park in Glendale the other night, in which Rose’s Pawn Shop performed in front of a family-friendly crowd. The large green space at Brand Park includes a music library, an art gallery, a Japanese teahouse, a doctor’s house and a ballfield, as well as the bower, where the band played, all of which reminds us of the possible synergies involving the arts and recreational activities outdoors.

As I wrote not long ago in my post for Substack, “Jesus Embraces Everyone at the Hollywood Bowl,” I also attended the August 2 performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Bowl, a night of wonder and delight.

That event, which featured the Los Angeles Philharmonic and actors such as Cynthia Erivo, Adam Lambert, Phillipa Soo and Josh Gad, was not free. But like the performances of the New York Philharmonic on the Great Lawn in Central Park, the Hollywood Bowl’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar was the kind of event that enriches all of us, allows us to forget our troubles, including existential threats such as climate change and a wannabe dictator, by transporting us through art, music, theater and dance into a realm of imagination.

And that experience, like all of these experiences, was elevated by its taking place outdoors in the wonders of green space in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

I know that Ann and Commissioner Stern would have enjoyed being there at the Hollywood Bowl.

Ann has studied the history of waterfront parks in New York and researched, among other recreational activities, the pools that floated 100 years ago in New York City’s polluted waterways.

She came up with the idea for the Floating Pool Lady, a hygienic swimming pool berthed by parks and other locations along the East River, and she was able to bring this pool to fruition during the years that Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City.

Ann also funded the pool, a place where kids and adults benefit from the pleasures of being outdoors, amidst the river and parks, without the fear of dipping into or inhaling polluted waters.

The Floating Pool Lady, Ann’s baby, has been a blessing to New Yorkers for many years now.

Back when I worked for Ann and Commissioner Stern in the late 1980s, so many of us were idealists, as most of us still are.

We supported Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run when Trump reportedly touted himself as a possible VP candidate for then-Republican presidential nominee, George Herbert Walker Bush.

I still have my Dukakis pins, one of which focused on the environment; the other one, “MBB Dukakis ’88,” alluded to the perilous future of the U.S. Supreme Court.

MBB referred back then to the three oldest justices of the Supreme Court, Marshall, Brennan and Blackmun, who were also the three most liberal justices of the high court at that time.

Sadly, our concerns about the court have been realized, decades later, in that we have a chief executive of our country, who, far more than any other, has loaded our Supreme Court with lackeys, who have contributed to rulings overturning Roe v. Wade, an opinion written in 1973 by Justice Blackmun, as well as hideous decisions by the Roberts court on affirmative action, gun control and other issues.

Our concerns about the environment also sadly have been realized in that Trump has promoted fossil fuel companies at the expense of green energy and has harmed the natural world.

Still, I remain hopeful, because, even at a time of worsening climate change, accentuated by the actions of Trump, we can still appreciate the outdoors, wherever we live.

It goes without saying that we have many scenic splendors here in Southern California, and I experienced a particularly unique one a few days ago at the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, which has long been an artists’ colony.

At the Pageant of the Masters, a staple in Laguna for nearly 100 years, volunteers recreate paintings by posing onstage in frozen tableaux that bring to life works by artists such as Monet, Degas and Da Vinci, including “The Last Supper,” which typically serves as the finale of the two-hour show.

Like Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, the Pageant of the Masters was held in an outdoor amphitheater that has been carved out of a canyon.

The title of this past Wednesday night’s show was “Gold Coast.” Not surprisingly, many of the recreated works of art had a waterfront theme, and all of the tableaux were based on art that is showcased at museums in California, including the Norton Simon in Pasadena, which houses some Degas paintings and sculpture; Hearst Castle, which displays many works of Roman and Greek antiquity; as well as art from other museums and galleries in the golden state, including in Laguna, a crescent-shaped beach in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.

That the volunteers, made up by artists and costume and prop experts, could transform themselves and their surroundings on the outdoor stage into a pageant of artistic gems, paintings and sculpture by the masters, tells me once again that there is hope in the world, that art and nature are two of the most precious resources we have, and that love and imagination will always defeat evil.

While Caesar bestrode the narrow world like a colossus, there are others in positions of power, who seek only to destroy.

And then there are citizens, who create magic by bringing us art and music and who generate sublime moments for us along the waterfront, in our parks and other open spaces, interstices of serenity that elevate our lives and expand the world.