For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People

On Thursday we went to a sneak preview of the new Ken Burns' documentary about the National Parks. There's an article about it in today's NYTimes. It was really wonderful. Not, like, accompanied by a performance by Allison Krauss and Counting Crows, but still really nice. The theater had good microbrews and popcorn. We were perhaps 15 years younger than most anyone else there (except the kids who got dragged along with their parents.) I am excited for the series because of I think what Burns says in his interview, the "who are we?" of the Parks is pretty compelling. There's a lot of emphasis on democracy and equality in the Parks, which I am not sure is completely true, but obviously I like the idea of quite a bit. (A side note in the ny times story is that I used to work with Burns' daughter, when she was in the mentioned "internship" where she/they got interested in the Central Park jogger case.) In the parts we saw there is also the story of the evolution of the parks, showing that the first struggle is to get everyone on the same page that we want these at all... but it doesn't end there, there is an evolution of people thinking about how we want to run them. Parks existed completely for peoples' amusement for a long time and it took another kind of revolution in thought that not only do we want parks, but we want them to be faithful to the needs of the environment. There are some natural parallels, I think, to some of other hot debates of democracy today. I am also saddened to see the NYTimes predict the public option is dead today, as well. I'm not sure, but am thinking along the lines of the story of the parks, that perhaps doing it at all is the first step and then we can work towards doing it right.