Weekend Frivolities: Tour de Bears, Real, Imagined, and Stuffed, of Central Park

Now that the winter solstice has passed quietly in the night (approx. 1:08 a.m. EST NYC), I continue to dream of hibernation. I have feasted on nuts and berries and slumped into carbohydrate narcolepsy, and I dare not disturb my slumber until the vernal equinox. But I cannot rest up here in the frosty north. Some rotund bearded guy keeps me awake at night, my obese compadre of El Norte, and the frozen tundra has started to melt under my den. I shall seek out then quieter caves and lazier company in Manhattan's Central Park.

Da Bears -
• Real live polar bears named Gus and Ida live in the Central Park Zoo.
• A Dancing Bear statue is near the Zoo.
• "The Bear Dance," a satirical painting by William Holbrook Beard (1825-1900) on a poster for the New-York Historical Society, is popular with young people. The painting is also known as "The Bears of Wall Street Celebrating a Drop in the Market." For more on this bearish subject visit the office of Bear Stearns at 383 Madison Avenue, or better yet, see Walking Off the Wall Street Bears on this website. Dancing bears, a street act in which real captured bears are made to perform, is a cruel tradition and should be universally condemned.
• The bears in the American Museum of Natural History include the Alaska brown bear, grizzly bear and polar bear dioramas.
• "Group of Bears" (1932, cast 1963), a statue on the south side of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is by American modernist sculptor Paul Manship.
• The Art Bears inside The Met include Leonardo da Vinci's "A Bear Walking" and a Roman vessel in the shape of a bear made 200-400 AD. I'm sure there are more bears in there.

The Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, Dec. 23 at home on Soldier Field. 1 p.m. Check your local listings.

The name Arctic is derived from the Greek word meaning "bear." Antarctica means the polar opposite.

Walking Off the Big Bears (!) will go into hibernation December 25-30, 2007.