Be fruitful and multiply

Not much fruit left at today's Greenmarket, as most folks had come early to beat the storm. But I love it when James S.T. Stranahan, the "father of Prospect Park," has a nice convivial crowd at his feet. These families lingered to listen to the old-timey fiddling band, turning it into an impromptu children's concert.











If you spend enough (or perhaps, too much) time in the Brooklyn blogosphere, you can't see a crowd like this without thinking "Park Slope parents," or "stroller mafia," or some other label with a heavy whiff of disdain; comment threads on Brownstoner and other sites often spiral into vicious spitefests regarding these folks and their (fill in the blank: spoiled kids, affluenza, sense of entitlement, etc.) Scariest of all are the anonymous pot-shots accusing them of further endangering the planet by excessive "breeding"; some aggressively "child-free" commenters refer only half-kiddingly to the kiddies as "spawn."

But stereotypes are most easily entertained from a distance. Up close, every family is just a family, unique in some quirks and universal in others. (Tolstoy was a fool to think that "all happy families are alike.")  There are worse sins than overindulging your children a bit, or being gobsmacked by just how extraordinary and precious they are. The sin of humanity-hating hyper-hipness comes to mind.

Some of the anti-breeding crowd remind me, in their attitude toward "the earth," of Basil Fawlty, who believed that he could run a much better hotel without all these bloody guests ruining things.  A park without spawn might be greener and quieter, but the Hon. Stranahan would be a lonely sight up there on his pedestal.

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE WEEK

I am crazy about rescued track greyhounds, and so I fell instantly in love with Chloe, an 8-year-old girl whose brindled coat is a nice match for her owner's tattoos. Chloe, like many of these retired racers, is described by her people as a mellow couch potato; she had the gentle quality that draws me to these dogs.

Comments

[Karen Friedland]

It's amazing how dogs & their owners resemble one another.

K