Just before the weekend, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order reopening New Jersey’s state parks and golf courses. I have never been interested in
the latter, but lack of access to the former because of the coronavirus—and the
associated shutdown of county and city parks—did as much as anything this past
month to dispirit me and make me feel closed in by this all-engulfing crisis.
Still, I decided this weekend not to take my chances
with even the county parks, as the governor’s relaxation of his prior order came with
a cap of 50% of parking capacity. With temperatures over 70 degrees this
weekend, and with the possibility of New York visitors pouring in, I did not
want to be around any areas sure to test Murphy’s (not to mention the police’s)
tolerance for “knuckleheads.”
So I went to a smaller, less frequented park—Roosevelt Common, about two miles from my
home in Bergen County, NJ. Even here, there were limits, with the tennis court
closed off to users, along with the centerpiece of the site: a stone monument
honoring the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, America’s first conservation
President.
I had wanted to get a picture of this memorial to
T.R. for a different reason: to honor his strenuous effort in 1906 in passing
perhaps the most enduring and beneficial legislation of the entire
Progressive Era: the Pure Food and Drug
Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
To state what should be obvious but which,
painfully, far too many don’t see today: that achievement has been undermined in the
last few weeks by the current occupant of the White House, an individual who,
by undercutting any Presidential role in
safeguarding every American against untested and even insane medical "cures" and food hazards, richly
deserves the nickname given him by one of my friends: “The Orange Menace.”
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