{"id":3526,"date":"2010-09-19T18:51:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T22:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3526"},"modified":"2010-09-19T18:54:08","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T22:54:08","slug":"parks-and-recreation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/parks-and-recreation-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Parks and Recreation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fact that London is 25% green absolutely boggles my mind.\u00a0 I love that the English place such an emphasis on green open areas, even in the middle of their capital.\u00a0 One of my favorite days during our trip here incorporated an afternoon in Regent\u2019s Park.\u00a0 After my walking tour I went to the park, armed with a book and a sunny day.\u00a0 I then sat there for an hour and read.\u00a0 And while I did not get much actual reading done, I experienced something far more important \u2013 the breakdown of English cultural barriers.\u00a0 It started when someone\u2019s puppy wandered over to me.\u00a0 Instead of calling back their dog, the owner just smiled at me and kept going, trusting that I would respect their pet and that it would go back to its owner when it so desired.\u00a0 This complete warmth towards a total stranger is not something I had experienced yet in the usually reserved London public sphere.<\/p>\n

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This breakdown of reserve was apparent the more I walked around the park.\u00a0 Everywhere I looked there were older gents playing with their dogs, mothers entertaining their children, and couples walking around paying more attention to each other than to their beautiful surroundings.\u00a0 While Kate Fox always talks about the English \u201csocial dis-ease\u201d the atmosphere of Regent\u2019s park was completely the opposite.\u00a0 Both at Regent\u2019s Park and at St. James\u2019 Park the wealth of examples of the English comfort, not with just themselves, but with those around them, showed more warmth than I am accustomed to in Los Angeles.\u00a0 It is almost as if the British use their parks as a place to escape the normally tight social boundaries regarding affection and interaction with strangers.<\/p>\n

Parks also serve to remind the English that they\u2019re inherently country folk.\u00a0 In times of crisis throughout English history (like the Plague), those who could afford to would flock to the countryside and to their agrarian roots.\u00a0 The English find safety in green open spaces and in city filled with smog and where everyone is in a constant rush, there has to be an emphasis these parks.\u00a0 These parks help make London English and help to remind English Londoners that they are English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that London is 25% green absolutely boggles my mind.\u00a0 I love that the English place such an emphasis on green open areas, even in the middle of their capital.\u00a0 One of my favorite days during our trip here incorporated an afternoon in Regent\u2019s Park.\u00a0 After my walking tour I went to the park, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6678],"tags":[1559,828,1028],"class_list":["post-3526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-amy","tag-london-parks","tag-parks","tag-the-regents-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}