For Our Connecticut Readers: Last Sunday in the Park

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Scored a couple of dozen vintage Archie Comics Digests for a nickel apiece at the Sunday in the Park gathering in Edgerton Park last, uh, Sunday.

Amazingly, also ran into a guy named George  whom I hadn’t seen in many years. Sunday in the Park with George. It was that kind of day.

Didn’t go there for the cheap comics, or the cheap Sondheim gag. The family goes every year. It’s an honest-to-goodness family-friendly neighborhood fair. It plays out in real time, with an tranquil air. There’s no manic shouting. There are hardly even any microphones. We’re talking an old-school jazz band playing Sinatra standards. We’re talking Morris dancing. Sunday in the park has rides which fit the environment– cables strung between trees, a climbing wall in a grove. It has old fashioned kids games like bean bag toss.

Sunday in the Park is based on British park fairs, conveniently overlooking how different English culture, customs, and especially the weather, can be from New Haven’s. The organizers simply will a mannered, breezy, grassy day of fun into existence. The effort has never failed, and though the event has grown greatly over the years, it retains its essential quaint charms.

And as soon as it was over, it seems, it was Autumn. That gorgeous chill is upon us. The leaves are poised to turn. The Farmer’s Almanac is on the racks in supermarkets. The solstice is this weekend.

May all your Sundays in parks be so wondrous.