The Hilltop

The Hilltop

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The rain had stopped, the library books were due, so yesterday I returned them. There are several ways to reach Georgetown from Metro, but I took the Key Bridge route. It’s the most impressive way to walk to campus, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Georgetown sits on a bluff above the Potomac, which is why it’s called The Hilltop. When you approach it from the bridge, Healy Hall looms ahead like a castle, like the National Historic Landmark that it is.

Once in the District you’ll need to walk up, either by trudging an impossibly steep street (which was under construction) or by taking the Exorcist Stairs. I chose the latter, and made quick work of it. They are creepy even at 10:30 a.m.

But as soon as I reached the top, I was transported. The campus is leafy and green. It’s final’s week, and preparations are already underway for graduation. Students clustered in study rooms in the library and hung out on Healy Lawn. The morning was picture-perfect. I don’t get to campus very often. Maybe I should change that.

A Shy Guy

A Shy Guy

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In honor of Brahms 192nd birthday today I just listened to a podcast about the composer. I learned that he was shy, self-conscious, and hard on himself. No wonder I love the guy.

Brahms was such a perfectionist that he spent much time, especially later in his life, hunting down and destroying the music he’d written earlier. Pieces he considered sub-par did not make the cut. Who knows how much more of his music we’d have if he hadn’t been so self-critical.

It took Brahms 20 years to write his first symphony. He kept a bust of Beethoven on his desk, just to ratchet up the pressure. The result? Some of the most sublime music this side of heaven. Turn up the volume when you listen to this piece, the finale of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture.

(A clean-shaven Brahms. He didn’t grow a beard until his mid-40s.)

Digital Decluttering

Digital Decluttering

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I use an ancient email provider with limited storage space. I like it this way: I’m not as pelted with ads as I would be if I used Gmail … plus I’m forced to clean out the coffers from time to time. This is one of those times, prompted by a barrage of “storage almost full” warnings. In fact, the other day, my warning color moved from yellow to red. Time to delete!

So I entered the time capsule. Because yes, my inbox is a time capsule and an emotional minefield. Not only did I find plenty of emails from my dear friend Nancy, who we lost almost a year ago, but I found plenty from the girls in various other stages of their lives. Another kind of loss, not nearly as final of course, but still a reminder of time passing.

What I’ve learned in the purge is what I’m reminded of most every day, it seems: the power of relationships. The voice of a friend on the electronic page, the consistency of connections through the years. How rich is this loam of friendship; how honored I am to run across it in digital or actual form.

(One advantage of digital clutter: it weighs less than the other kind.)

Writers, Up!

Writers, Up!

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On Saturday, the Washington Writers Conference, which I help plan, was followed by the Kentucky Derby, which I never miss. The result: a harried trip around the Beltway from North Bethesda home.

This year, it was especially important to watch the race. The favorite, Journalism, was sharing the field with a horse named Publisher. As it turned out, a horse named Sovereignty won. Journalism placed and Publisher was fourteenth.

Shortly before the race came the famous command “Riders, up,” which means it’s time for jockeys to mount their steeds. What I’d been experiencing all weekend was something similar. It was, Writers, leave your house and join us for discussion and inspiration. Writers, take a deep breath and pitch your ideas to agents. Writers, find community, fellowship and lasting connections. In other words … Writers, up!

(Photo: Bruce Guthrie)

May Day

May Day

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Yes, I know, May Day was yesterday, but it was also yesterday that I learned about a sweet tradition that used to accompany it. Neighbors would pick wild flowers and leave them (sometimes in decorated baskets) on their neighbor’s front porch. In some places the tradition was to shout “May basket,” then run away before the recipient saw you.

This flower exchange is akin to dancing around the Maypole or crowning a May king and queen, ancient practices that celebrate the arrival of spring. Very Thomas Hardy, if you ask me: quaffing mead and cavorting on the square of some remote Wessex village.

But not that remote, after all: a tradition enjoyed by a friend of mine, which is how I learned about it in the best and most traditional way of all, face-to-face conversation.

Working in a Walk

Working in a Walk

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I spent the day before May Day preparing for a busy weekend at the writers conference I help plan, and, as it turned out, taking a long walk. The Capital Crescent Trail runs from Bethesda to Georgetown, and yesterday it was hopping with 80-degree temperatures and a feel of summer in the air.

I thought I’d take a brief stroll, but walked almost to the District line. I noticed more e-bikes on the trail (as I notice more e-bikes everywhere), which kept me on the slightly-safer cinder path beside the main trail. It was warm enough that I felt the temperature drop as I reached Little Falls Stream Valley Park.

As I ambled I thought about all the walks I’ve worked in through the years: while the girls were at cello, clarinet or voice lessons — or much earlier, when they were in preschool. I discovered many of the trails I walk now during those first early forays on the Reston Trails.

Working in a walk means making do with where you find yourself — and that can be an adventure.

An Inventory

An Inventory

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Four years ago on this day, I left the world of paid employment and embarked on a new kind of life. Because the years seem to pass at the speed of light now, it hardly seems like two years since I made the leap. But in fact, it’s been twice that long.

My first instinct is to ask myself what I have to show for it. Although my newly found “wisdom of the pause” (is that what it is?) tells me that no metric is required, that to properly appreciate this stage of life one must cast aside the old ways of measure, I’ve just spent the last two hours taking inventory.

That’s right … taking inventory. I know; it’s box-checker behavior to the max, but it’s strangely satisfying. I won’t bore you with the list itself, but I will share that it’s more than 2,000 words long and reminds me why I feel busy all the time. Suffice it to say that although I’m no longer paid (much) for my services, I still produce. And that, I’m sorry to say, still makes me happy. Plainly, I have much to learn.

Light Show

Light Show

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I wake these days in medias res, a Latin phrase I remember from my study of The Odyssey in high school. It may not yet truly be “in the middle of things” — 7 a.m. isn’t that late — but it feels that way with so much light pouring in the front windows.

Wasn’t it just weeks ago when waking at this hour felt like getting in on the ground floor of the day? Not anymore. I feel like the party’s half over by the time I open my eyes. Sunrise at 6:14 and ever earlier through the next couple of months.

And so begins the season of light. It began weeks ago, I suppose, but I was too busy to notice. Now I have time to marvel at the way it slants in the house early in the day, making shadows on the wall, splashing us with warmth and well-being.

It’s not easy to sleep late these days. But why would you want to?

A Day in the Kitchen

A Day in the Kitchen

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Yesterday, after I’d read as much of the newspaper as I could handle, and while listening to smooth jazz on my “Sunday station,” I heard the kitchen calling. It doesn’t call very often, so when it does, I try to listen.

First, I made a casserole, then I baked a quiche. And finally, I whipped up some granola. Nothing “went” with anything else. Nothing was supposed to. One dish was to give away, another to use up some leftovers. The granola was to replenish my supply.

The menu items aren’t important, though; it’s how I felt preparing them, what a few hours in the kitchen can do for a body (and a mind) when the body and the mind aren’t on deadline. There is something — much! — to be said for the whisking of eggs and cream, for the rolling of piecrust dough, for the slow stirring of a white sauce.

It gives one time to think, to gently unravel thoughts that may have gotten tangled earlier in the week. I won’t be spending today in the kitchen; that’s for sure. But I treasure the time I spent there yesterday.

(This time, I cleaned up as I went along.)

Picking Dandelions

Picking Dandelions

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It’s dandelion season, which always brings to mind a story from my childhood. When I was in fourth grade, my parochial grammar school, Christ the King, had a dandelion problem. The whole expansive front lawn was filled with the yellow flowers.

I don’t recall them being as noticeable on the side yard, and behind the school was a parking lot with a line down the middle: girls played on one side, boys on the other. (A few of us found a way to circumvent that: we devised a game of “Four Square” with two boys on one side and two girls on the other.)

But that isn’t the only absurdity for which I remember Christ the King. One lovely April afternoon when spring fever was running high, the nuns turned the whole bunch of us out on the front lawn to pick dandelions. Mind you, we weren’t digging them up, just plucking them from the stem. Which guaranteed they would be around next year.

I’m trying to imagine what would happen if a school did that now. Without permission slips?! Despite seasonal allergies?! To say there would be an uproar is putting it mildly. But for a fourth-grader who liked to stare dreamily out the window, it was the best possible way to spend a spring afternoon in school. Which is why, all these years later, I remember that day.

(I was younger than fourth grade here, but it’s from the same era … and are those dandelions in the yard?)