US, UK feud over world’s smallest park
Portland’s littlest park getting big headlines
PORTLAND, Oregon, April 13, (AP): The British and the Americans are quarreling – tongue in cheek – over territory again, this time over who has the world’s smallest park.
One, in Portland, Oregon, is essentially a concrete planter, two feet (0.6 meters) in diameter, with soil and some vegetation, and the Guinness Book of World Records says it’s the smallest.
The other is about 5,000 miles (8,050 kms) away, in England. They don’t claim to have a physically smaller park – theirs is 15 feet (4.5 meters) by 30 feet (9 meters). But they dispute whether Portland’s is a park at all.
What started as two Brits’ stunt to drum up publicity for a charity run at their park sparked some cross-pond banter. One online commenter wrote, “If that’s a park then my window box should take the title.”
Someone who said they were from Portland replied, “Yes, but our park has leprechauns. Does yours?”
Unearth
Leprechauns? That’s right. The faux feud has helped unearth the curious story of a Portland newspaper columnist’s quest to get the park declared the smallest and his claim that it was home to leprechauns.
The tale goes back to 1946, when Dick Fagan returned from World War II. From his office at the Oregon Journal newspaper, he could see a hole in the street where a light post was sup- CAP Film Screening: Contemporary Art Platform is pleased to invite you to:
Pictures at an Exhibition (animated film)
Artist: Modest Moussorgsky — Wassily Kandinsky Date: 17th of April 2013 Time: 7:00 pm posed to be erected. Fagan got tired of looking at the hole and planted flowers in it.
An Irishman with a vivid imagination, Fagan wrote about the park in his columns – spinning tales about leprechauns who lived there. Somehow, Guinness proclaimed Mill Ends Park the world’s smallest park in 1971.
Jamie Panas, the record-keeper’s spokeswoman, said she didn’t know how that determination was made. But she said the entry in the Guinness database reads, in part: “It was designated as a city park on 17 March 1948 at the behest of the city journalist Dick Fagan (USA) for snail races and as a colony for leprechauns. “Snail races? That’s right. Snail races. Over the years, Portland has been kind to the tiny park, giving it equal care as that afforded to the 200 or so normal-size parks scattered around the city.
St. Patrick’s Day ceremonies have been held there. It has plants and other vegetation. Strange objects have appeared mysteriously within it – a miniature swimming pool with a diving board, a tiny Ferris wheel and a UFO.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, those protesters against income inequality, gave the park some recognition. In December 2011, a small group put miniature protest signs and toy tents in the tiny park and held a protest. One protester was arrested for refusing to leave.
And now, Portland’s littlest park is getting big headlines. It started with a British sports management company called KV Events, based in Lichfield, north of Birmingham. It was promoting the “world’s shortest fun run,” around Prince’s Park in Burntwood.
Commemorate
The park has the Guinness title of the United Kingdom’s smallest park. It has a fence, a bench and three trees. It was founded in 1863 to commemorate the marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Promoters Paul Griffin and Kevin Wilson decided to have some fun, launching a faux challenge to Portland’s claim – figuring that would generate publicity for the race and for the charity the race is intended to benefit.
The gauntlet was thrown down when Wilson told LichfieldLive.co.uk, a local website, that the Portland park was just a “glorified flower pot.”
Portlanders have come to its defense. Someone put a toy soldier in the vegetation as well as a fence – a defensive perimeter.
“We Americans have a pretty good track record when it comes to taking on the Brits. Perhaps they’re still smarting over that whole American Revolution thing,” said Mark Ross, spokesman for Portland Parks & Recreation.
Wilson says he has no intention of actually asking Guinness to take away Portland’s title. There is talk, however, of a North Atlantic alliance: A sisterpark relationship between the two, whatever that might look like. the “synthesis of arts” idea, so to speak, was in the air. In 1924, another “Blue Rider” member, the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg produced his Die Gluckliche Hand (The Happy Hand), a musical drama for choir and orchestra. Kandinsky took another step towards translating the idea of “monumental art” into life when he staged Modest Moussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, with his own sets and light, color and geometrical shapes for characters. When he returned to Germany after the end of the First World War, Kandinsky for several years taught at the Bauhaus Higher School of Construction and Design, known for its experiments in stage art with the participation of school students. Kandinsky was invited to make a stage composition to music by Moussorgsky. It was the first and only time when he agreed to use a readymade score — an obvious evidence of his profound interest. On April 4, 1928, the première at the Friedrich Theater, Dessau, was a tremendous success. The music was played on the piano.
The production was rather cumbersome as the sets were supposed to move and the hall lighting was to change constantly in keeping with Kandinsky’s scrupulous instructions. According to one of them, “bottomless depths of black” against a black backdrop were to transform into violet, while dimmers (rheostats) were yet to be invented.
Unfortunately, the original stage sets have not survived, nor are there any photographs. All that has remained are the sixteen watercolors of Kandinsky now kept at the Pompidou Centre, yet they are so fragile that they are not even on show in the permanent display. Also there is the piano reduction, which belonged to Felix Klee (Paul Klee’s son) who assisted Kandinsky in that project. This absolutely unique document details nearly every bar with an instruction as to what was to go on stage. This performance has been revived, thanks to an animated film devised by Mikhaïl Rudy, based on the stage directions and Kandisky’s preparative watercolors, which were conserved at the Pompidou Centre. The film was presented in concert for the first time at the Cité de la Musique, Paris, in 2010, accompanied by a live performance by Mikhaïl Rudy. It has since screened in many countries.
“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with man strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul” Wassily Kandinsky.
The screening is part of CAP visual educational program and entrance for this film is free of charge.
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