The Democratic Idea.

June 15, Rancho Cordova, California.

The circus is parked in Hagan Park, in Rancho Cordova, a suburb of Sacramento.
Beautiful public park, vast expanse of shaded, well-tended lawns, oaks, pines, magnolias, ponds and paths, baseball field after baseball field, stretching as far as the eye can see. The idea that you need to set aside land for public use, as strong today in the expanding suburbs as it was in 1858 when Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed that quintessential public park, Central Park, in New York City, the civic idea, the idea of the American democracy, unique in history, passionately alive despite or because of the other side of the American coin, the greed, the reign of money gone crazy, the Enrons, the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
The public park, or the embodiment of the American faith in the fundamental goodness of its democratic experiment. My own love affair with America and the American idea, the ongoing fascination, after all these years, in spite of everything, still.