There's a kind of madness. August Heckseher, Commissioner of Parks in the New York City, meets with hippie leaders from the East Village. The hippies, in rites of love, have clashed with cops in Tompkins Square Park.

Police brutality. Make love not war. Immoral, amoral people. Bongo drums. Peace and quiet. Decent folk. Puerto Ricans and Negroes. Conflict of interest raises its scarred and tawdry head. At 5 p.m. the office staff goes home, leaving Heckscher with the hippies. The spring afternoon melts into darkness.

"Yes"

Heckscher emerges with a settlement. He wants a press release to go out. The hippies smile, "Yes." Together he and they--a bow tie and flowered robes--draft a release, run the mimeograph machine, stuff the releases into envelopes.

And excitement. One hundred and thirty five thousand people flock to the Sheep's Meadow in Central Park to share an evening with Barbra Streisand. Around the Meadow rises a wall of trees, dark and mysterious. In the distance loom the colorfully lit buildings of the city.

The crowd roars as Barbra, its Barbra, comes on the outdoor stage. She, in a flowing pink gown, is but a twinkling spot in the distance. Around her, her lovers, who listen together to her voice. "There couldn't be 135,000 people," says Commissioner Heckscher, "They'd all have to be embracing. But then a lot of them are."

And hope. The Jazzmobile, a small pickup truck whose back has been converted into a stage, drives into a "play street" in Central Harlem. The street is closed to traffic; in its squalor the children play.

It's early evening. The Jazzmobile stops, and out climb three jazz musicians. Men and women sitting on their dirty stoops rise and walk over to see what's going on. Kids come running, pushing, fighting, laughing. The trio starts to play. It's an evening whose gaity relieves for a moment the oppression of dirt, disease, and hunger. "We're buying time," Heckscher says. "But you have to buy time in any way you can and hope that some how things will grow better rather than worse."

And magic. Nickle hot dogs and free beer, the soft midsummer night air, and trees enchanted in the hazy light. Men stroll with their wives on the Mall; lovers lie quietly in the grass; kids running twisting in the crowd; the band plays a slow waltz of the 1890's. On a warm June night 50,000 New Yorkers gather in Central Park to celebrate the good old summertime. "Look at all those people," says the Commissioner. "Isn't it exciting!"

And toughness. He drives through Bushwick, a low income neighborhood in Brooklyn, with members of the Bushwick Task Force. The parks and playgrounds are desolate; the fences torn down, the benches ripped apart. A dog lies dead in the corner of Mount Washington Park where it has lain for three days. One longs for lights, and music, and the play of children. Instead there is fear and a lonely silence. Heckscher stares into the night, "There's a feeling that time is running out."

The madness, the excitement, the hope, the magic, and the toughness are all part world of the New York City Department of Parks. Three years ago Central Park at night was a sombre, haunting place; Morningside Park, which borders on Central Harlem, was called the most dangerous park in the country.

Some of the loneliness and danger remain but the city's parks are becoming colorful, crowded, festive places where picnickers, bicyclists, strollers, and families with their children come to enjoy the freshness of the open air.

In the dramatic rebirth of New York's parks, three men have played key roles. John Lindsay had the vision to understand the role that parks play in an urban society. Thomas Hoving, his first Parks Commissioner, now director of the Metropolitan Museum, has the genius to translate Lindsay's vision into spectacular "happenings" that reoriented the attitudes of an entire city toward its parks. And August Heckscher, the present commissioner, is expanding on Hoving's work and creating a structure that will make it endure.

But the new administration's philosophy has not been without opposition. Last summer Henry Hope Reed, Curator of Central Park, attacked Heckscher, his boss, for "Commercialization" of the park.

The charge emerged in the aftermath of the Streisand concert. The crowd had left Sheep's Meadow strewn with garbage, the refuse of a festive evening--papers, beer cans, food, old bottles, and a single black miniskirit. The mess took three days to clean up. Reed charged that the landscaped beauty of Central Park was being lost in a deluge of commercial events--shows, concerts, happenings.