My Country

My Country

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I used to fly our small flag from the Washington Post box that hung below our old mailbox. But our old mailbox bit the dust last month, and there’s no easy way to hang a flag from its holder. So the best way to show our colors is to stick a flag in the large flower pot in the front yard. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do.

Which is, perhaps, a good way to look at this 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding — it’s not perfect but it will have to do.

It’s easy to be discouraged these days, especially living so close to Washington, D.C., which has been turned into an armed camp to celebrate a day of independence and freedom.

I turn to a book I recently read, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, the second of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy about our nation’s founding.

“My country. That concept had taken root in the American seedbed, nurtured by a shared faith that this struggle, ostensibly about taxes, autonomy, and other parochial complaints, was ultimately about the chance to build both a new nation and a better world.”

For all of its faults, America at 250 still seems like the world’s best hope. And, more to the point, it is my country.

(Old Glory flies in front of the Maryland State House, which once served as the nation’s capitol.)

Bye-bye, Black Gum

Bye-bye, Black Gum

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The stalwart black gum tree has been looking bad for years, its bark peeling. Even though we’ve lost so many trees recently, I thought this one would pull through.

“That can happen,” said the tree guy of the black gum’s sad condition. We’d finally booked him after losing several giants in one season. It’s his job to keep tabs on our trees, and he warned us that this one might not recover. But he also gave us hope, and I took it. The black gum always bounced back, so I thought it would again this year.

But it was not to be. No leaves, no greenery. Just a bare trunk, brittle and forlorn. Yes, birds still land on a branch from time to time. They use the black gum as a staging area for swooping down to the feeder. But the tree no longer harbors nests or nestlings.

Until today, though, at least its trunk stood sentinel. It remained upright to catch the morning light. But the executioner comes this afternoon to take it down, to turn it into lumber. I will try to be away from home when that happens. It’s hard to say goodbye.

It Bloomed!

It Bloomed!

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I’ve been watching the plant for weeks as a shoot thickened. I’d been hopeful before, so many times, but the shoots never progressed beyond sprouting a slight bulge. But a few weeks ago, I was hopeful again.

I’ve come a long way as an orchid owner. I threw out the first plant I was given after its first bloom. I thought it was dying because its stem had withered.

Then I received an orchid for Mother’s Day two years ago. This one seemed worth keeping, so I learned how to water it — from the bottom and briefly, parked it in the light and hoped for the best.

Orchids are a good test of one’s patience, of a belief in the unseen. For more than two years I’ve kept the plant in fighting trim. Its leaves stay shiny and healthy and well-misted, but no serious bud emerged.

Until a few weeks ago when, almost overnight, two filmy white pockets sprouted from one of those bulging stems. I waffled about moving the plant to a more prominent location. It was happy where it had been the last many months — in a basement window, of all places — but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it much down there.

So I brought it upstairs and put it on the kitchen table. And when I came downstairs this morning there was a papery white orchid flower. It’s a horticultural miracle for someone like me.

(I wish this was my plant — but it’s an orchid that graced my former office.)

Sans Sidewalks

Sans Sidewalks

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I had been flipping through a book I read long ago called Suburban Nation when I heard of a new book called Sidewalk Nation. I love the symmetry in this. The irony, too.

In my suburb, there are no sidewalks. One walks along the side of the road, which is mostly no problem — until it is, in wintertime or during what passes as rush hour in these parts.

New arrivals to our neighborhood complain about the lack of sidewalks — I certainly did — only to be put off when they hear from old-timers about the difficulty of installing them, the property rights battles that might ensure, and the supposed allure of the more “rural” look our bare roads seem to provide.

Sidewalk Nation is on my to-be-read pile, so I imagine I’ll post on it at some point. I’ll be interested to learn what it has to teach me. Until then, I’ll stroll on the sidewalk-less road that is part of our landscape now — and probably always will be.


No Broken Records

No Broken Records

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I forget now whether the rain appeared in 20 minutes on Friday, as promised. But I do know that we had rain off and on all weekend, which made for a cozier and more productive couple of days than I had originally planned.

There was the big basement shelf reorganization project that has languished for months, finally completed. I’m reveling in the space it created.

There was time to sort through the clutter on top of my filing cabinet, the prelude to cleaning out the cabinet’s top drawer. But I would need a week of rain to complete that project.

Best of all, there was time to finish writing an essay I started weeks ago.

In short, I accomplished a fair amount. But I didn’t break any records.

Rain in 20 Minutes

Rain in 20 Minutes

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Before the storm comes the thickening of clouds and the quieting of animals. Before the storm comes the pause.

We are in such a pause right now. It’s been a warm day and the sky is growing dark. Not a leaf is stirring. The world is holding its breath.

I look at my phone. Rain starting in 20 minutes, the weather app says. How does it know? Maybe it’s looking outside, too.

Miracle of Movement

Miracle of Movement

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Yesterday I walked on the way to the grocery store — didn’t walk to the store, of course; that’s not done in the suburbs. But I have a route I work in on the way to food shop. So I pulled into the parking lot that’s usually empty and found it … full. I’d forgotten that pools are open now, and this lot serves one, a community pool we used years ago, when the girls were younger.

At the end of our several-year membership there, I was the only one who used it. I would slip out after supper and swim laps. It was divine. Yesterday, though, I could only listen to the sound of splashing, the thunk of kiddie cannonballs.

Think of all the sun exposure you’re avoiding, I tried telling myself. It didn’t work. I wanted to be slicing through the cool water doing the crawl or breast stroke.

But I kept moving and the walking worked its magic. I had the pavement and the blue skies and Beethoven in my ears. I had the miracle of movement, which eases the mind and tires the body. I had/have so much. And when I’m walking, I remember it.

Written By Hand

Written By Hand

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Of one thing you can be certain: Walker in the Suburb posts are completely human-written. No AI here. No LLM either, an abbreviation I knew only as a master of laws degree until I recently learned that it also stands for large language model.

Not that I needed convincing, but a recent Washington Post op-ed makes a good case for writing without bot assistance — in fact, for writing without any technological help at all, including the keyboard I’m using to compose this post. A study at MIT shows the benefit of putting pen to paper, of writing by hand.

When I was learning to write, there was no other way. It was the stubby pencil on wide-ruled paper, a dotted line showing us where to line up our ascenders and descenders. I still grasp a pen the way I did those pencils, more ham-fisted than I would like but still workable after all these years.

How fortunate I was to have learned the old-fashioned way, my children too, though they lacked a bit in the penmanship department. But still, they were well ahead of AI. My grandchildren are not so lucky.

I can still remember the pit in my stomach when I opened a blue book in college, knowing that I had 90 minutes to write a cogent essay about English history from 1066 to 1603, the Norman Conquest to the death of Queen Elizabeth. That meant an hour and a half to assemble the evidence, summarize my thoughts, and prove my points … all in longhand.

Somehow, I did it. We all did — and our synapses were humming as a result.

Brains are quieter these days, just like neighborhoods. I do what I can. Now it’s time to write in my journal … by hand.

(A fragment of Homer’s Iliad, handwritten on papyrus, 4th century A.D. Photographed at the Morgan Library.)

Flip-Flop

Flip-Flop

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The sound of summer walking is a slap and a dash, a flip and a flop. It’s the sound of sandals hitting pavement, of rubber soles and seasoned toes, of an extra beat when the shoe hits the foot after it hits the road, as if it’s talking back— which in a way it is. It’s screaming “summer”!

The flip-flop is the footwear of the season, especially to and from the beach and pool. Its only anchor is the thong that passes between the big and second toe, which takes some getting used to every summer, some toughening up. But once the callus forms, the flip-flop seems to become part of the foot, a no-nonsense auxiliary, the least amount of sole you can have between foot and ground.

In some countries, flip-flops seem to be the only footwear. No laces to tie, no Velcro to attach. The toe thong does the trick. But for those of us who live in more northern climes, the flip-flop is reserved for summer, and for that reason, at least for me, associated with freedom.

The flip-flop is the soul of simplicity, the footwear equivalent of the screen door. Pair the two for summer bliss.

Longest Days

Longest Days

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Solstice arrived yesterday in the wee hours, but I slept through the meteorological moment. Today I woke at early light and was walking before my eyes were fully open.

At winter solstice we rejoice because days grow longer. At summer solstice it’s better to forget how quickly it will be winter solstice again. Instead, to remember how many long days we still have. Summer twilights linger. Summer dawns, too.

The season is just coming into its own. We have more day lily buds than day lilies.

There are the longest days. I plan to savor them.